The Tiger Warrior Part 10

Pradesh glanced back, his lip curled in disgust. "The Maoist guerrillas. They see the Koya as their allies, but you don't curry favor by desecrating the buildings of your friends. When they're sober the Koya are pretty contemptuous of them, but the hill tribes have been driven into a corner and are desperate for some backing against the mining companies. The ideology of the Maoists means nothing to them, though, and this will be daubed over soon enough."

Jack and Costas followed him toward the end of the level ground where the jungle closed around the village and began to climb in tangled profusion up the slope. There were signs of life all around, wisps of smoke from fires, half-stacked wood, carved wooden toys, but they could see no one. "Where are the people?" Costas murmured.

"Watching us," Pradesh said. "For them, being invisible is second nature. It's something else you learn in the jungle, how to meld in. They know who I am, but they've had other outsiders here recently, mining prospectors, and they've got reason to be suspicious." He led them into a small clearing beyond the village, hemmed in by soaring trunks of rosewood, satinwood, palm, teak. He squatted by the base of a h.o.a.ry old tamarind and pointed to a slab of ochre-red sandstone about half a meter across that had become embedded in the trunk, rising up as the tree grew. Costas knelt beside him. "One of those sacred stones you were talking about?"

Pradesh shook his head. "Look closely. This is what I wanted to show you."

"Okay. I see it's got an inscription on it."

Jack squatted down on the other side of the tree, where the light was better. He touched the stone, feeling the roughness, the condensation. There were several lines in English, crudely carved. He read out the words: WILLIAM CHARLES BEBBIE.

a.s.sISTANT COMMISSIONER, CENTRAL PROVINCES.

SHOT BY THE REBELS, 20 AUGUST 1879.

AGED 41.

"That's your guy, isn't it, Jack?" Costas said. "The one who led the sappers into the jungle, the official responsible for this area who'd hardly ever been up here before?"

"That's him all right," Jack murmured, placing the palm of his hand on the stone.

"Pretty basic inscription. I mean, no sacred memories, rest in peace, all that."

"He was lucky to get an inscription at all. This must have been done by the sappers when they got back from their foray in the jungle. They'd probably buried him there at the shrine, on the spot where he died. I don't think much love was lost."

"Quick burial. Get rid of the evidence."

"What do you mean?"

"Well, if he was fragged. I mean, if those sappers took him out. Who would ever know? They're being shot at from all sides. They were holed up and desperate, and he may have been lording it over them. It sounds as if he was probably putting their lives at risk. An officer like Howard might have understood if he found out, turned a blind eye. He'd have been more loyal to his sappers than to some blundering civil official."

"Possibly," Jack murmured. "And a quick burial wouldn't have excited any interest. People were buried in India the day they died. Howard's little boy Edward was buried in Bangalore only a few hours after he was taken ill, months before Howard even got to the graveside."

Costas yelped, and sprang backward. Jack stared with horrified fascination at what had appeared a few inches from his face. It was a huge snake, a cobra, yellow-brown with dark bands, rising ramrod straight from a hole in the roots in front of Bebbie's tombstone. It flattened its neck and stared at Costas, its tongue flickering in and out, hissing and swaying.

"Okay," Jack murmured through clenched teeth, not moving a muscle. "What do we do now?"

"Keep absolutely still," Pradesh said.

Costas began swaying slightly.

"That means all of us," Pradesh whispered. "It doesn't matter how far away you are. You should see how far these things strike."

"Just getting into the spirit of things," Costas murmured.

"That's something you definitely don't want to do," Pradesh said quietly, his eyes glued to the cobra. It opened its mouth wide, fangs extended and dripping with poison.

Costas stopped swaying. "Got you."

Pradesh reached down slowly, to a gourd wedged between the roots, and scooped up a handful of what was inside. He raised his arm above the snake, and dribbled vermillion powder over it. The snake began to lower, coiling down, somehow soothed, and then it leapt sideways, straightening like a spear and flying several times its body length into the matted foliage on the edge of the clearing. There was a rustle, and it was gone. Jack and Costas remained stock-still, in stunned silence. Pradesh turned to them and grinned. "A little trick I learned as a boy. When I stayed up here with my father. I used to keep one of those as a pet."

"A pet," Costas said weakly.

"It's a portent," Pradesh said. "The rising of the snake signals the beginning of the festival of Thota Panduga. That's what's about to happen here." He gestured at the tamped earth of the clearing. "This is where they dance. It's a sacred spot, and not because of Bebbie. Back in 1858, the hill chiefs were hanged here by the British for carrying out human sacrifice. The Koya don't forget these things. They still sacrifice fowl here, under the toddy-yielding trees. They'll have prepared food last night and left it among the roots, to feast on today."

Jack relaxed slightly, rocking back on his haunches, and looked around. Geckos flickered across the rocks, and ran up a dark brown termite mound in front of the jungle. Insects were everywhere, not just mosquitoes but dragonflies and b.u.t.terflies, alighting on the flowers that cl.u.s.tered in the sunlight around the edge of the clearing. The jungle seemed to erupt in noise. In the dripping canopy above, Jack saw hanging fruit bats, their wings furling and unfurling. He noticed that the troop of langur monkeys they had heard on the rocky path up from the beach had followed them here, and were sitting on tree roots around the clearing, suddenly chattering and screeching. Beyond them Jack realized he was looking at human faces, men, women and children, several dozen at least, silently watching.

"We've got a friend," Costas said, gesturing.

A man had silently materialized on the edge of the clearing. Pradesh said something in Koya, and touched the man's hands in greeting. The man was lithe, wiry, with taut muscles, his skin dark brown. He was wearing only a white loincloth, tied by a cord of twisted creepers, and a loose turban, and he was barefoot. He had wide cheekbones and a broader nose than the lowlanders they had seen along the river, and his eyes looked jet-black. He was carrying a bow and a handful of arrows, and he had a curved, viciously pointed dagger in his belt. Pradesh turned and gestured for Jack and Costas to come forward. "This is Murla Rajareddy," he said. "He's a toddy-tapper." Pradesh pointed at an old car tire and a coil of rope against a palm tree, evidently a sling used for climbing up into the canopy. "He uses the knife to cut open the bases of the palm leaves, and then collects the sap in gourds. Now's the best time of year for it. That's what the festival's really all about." Jack saw that the man's torso was scarred with gouges and furrows, some old and healed, some fresh, lines of parallel weals that glistened red beneath some kind of medicinal paste. Pradesh spoke to the man, who replied softly, pointing at his scars. Pradesh turned back to Jack and Costas. "He's also the village tiger hunter, the only one allowed to kill them. He says a tiger came through about ten days ago, and he had a narrow escape. It had taken and eaten a child from another village. He thinks the arrival of the tiger was an omen of what was to come next, the arrival of other outsiders who've been through here recently. I'll ask him about that. It's why they're so suspicious of us. They thought we might be the same."

Jack and Costas shook hands in turn with the man, who bowed his head slightly but kept his eyes on them. He reeked of alcohol. He was surrounded by a cloud of mosquitoes, but he seemed oblivious to them.

"How do they deal with the malaria?" Costas asked.

"They make pills for the fever. It's a paste made from the bark of Alstonia scholaris, the root bark of Ophioxylon scrobiculatum and the root, stem and leaves of Andro-graphis paniculata."

"You believe in it?" Costas asked.

"It's worked for me. Sir Ronald Ross established the role of mosquitoes in malaria after treating Rampa veterans, but there was more to learn. Even today, doctors from the lowlands think jungle remedies are the work of witch doctors. The irony is, it's their own superst.i.tions about the Koya that prevent them from learning from these people."

The toddy-tapper reached down and picked up a gourd from behind the tree. Fat black rats scurried into the darkness of the jungle behind, then turned around, eyeing the men ravenously. Costas looked at them, and gave Jack a baleful look. The man ignored Jack, and handed the gourd to Costas.

"It seems that you're the chosen one," Pradesh said.

"Chosen for what?"

"It's called tiger food." He grinned. "Those who eat it gain magical powers, allowing them to charm the tiger and bind him to them. When the festival's over, you'll be stripped naked and sent into the jungle to find the tiger, a kind of meet and greet."

"Right. So when exactly is that chopper arriving?"

Pradesh checked his watch. "Twenty-five minutes."

"I think I might just go and wait on the beach."

"When you enter into a native ritual, you should never back off Very bad form, you know. Any anthropologist will tell you that."

"Anthropology, archaeology, it's all the same to me," Costas grumbled. "I'm an engineer. An engineer who's supposed to be on holiday." He peered into the gourd. "Anyway, what is it, exactly?"

"It's fruit from the tamarind tree, the tamar-i-hind. They're like velvety green broad beans, and you suck the pulp of the seeds. They mix it with palm pith and mango kernels. As a special treat for the festival, they've already cracked the seeds in their mouths, and spat out the pulp. The saliva makes it congeal into a paste. Really rather good."

"I didn't hear you say that." Costas looked pale.

"It's their greatest delicacy."

"Do I have to?"

"Count yourself lucky. He might have been fingering you for sacrifice."

"They still do that?"

"You never can be too sure. Old habits die hard. And they've been provoked recently, just as they were in 1879. I suggest you accept his gift."

Costas peered into the gourd, smiled appreciatively at the man then dipped a finger. Taking it out, he licked it, then smiled, nodding enthusiastically. He glanced at Jack, then at Pradesh. He swallowed hard, and for a split second looked like a child about to throw up. "Tell him it was excellent. Got anything to wash it down?" he said hoa.r.s.ely, still smiling.

"Coming your way."

The man picked up another gourd, and held it out to Costas. Pradesh stopped the man's hand, and sniffed it. "It's kallu, palm toddy, fermented in the sun. Sometimes they add poppy leaves to it, sometimes marijuana. But not today. It has to be pure, for the festival." He let the man pa.s.s it on. Costas took a cautious sip and then a mouthful, swilling it around and then swallowing it. He exhaled and looked appreciatively at the gourd. "Not bad. A little like cider."

"I was checking it wasn't arrack," Pradesh said. "That's what you get when you distill this stuff A lethal mix of methyl and amyl alcohols. That's another way the lowlanders exploit these people. There are arrack stills in every village now. Palm toddy kept them floating along, but arrack destroys them." Costas made as if to hand the gourd back, but the toddy-tapper pushed it away, insistent. The man then took Pradesh by the hand and led him to a group of Koya who had edged into the clearing and were sitting in the shade of a spreading tamarind tree. Pradesh glanced back. "I'll question them about the Maoists," he said. "I need to find out where they're operating." He squatted down beside the group, and Jack and Costas watched intently. At first his questions were met with silence, and then the toddy-tapper became animated, talking hurriedly, putting his fingers by his eyes, pulling them, making a face, then jabbering again, gesticulating at his wrists, his forearms, as if he were drawing on them. He took something out of a little bag on his loincloth and pa.s.sed it to Pradesh. The other Koya slunk back into the edge of the jungle, looking fearful, squatting on their haunches with their bows and spears. Pradesh asked several more questions, then put his hand on the man's shoulder and stood up, turning back to Jack and Costas with a look of concern on his face. "I have to go with him somewhere private. He won't talk here. You go to the beach. I'll meet you there."

Fifteen minutes later Jack and Costas were back beside the boat, sitting in the shade of the pontoon. The sun had been burning fiercely, but was now low in the western sky over the river gorge. They had about three hours of daylight left. Jack was tapping his fingers on the side of the pontoon, but then stopped himself For once someone else was in control, and Jack was unaccustomed to it. But Pradesh seemed to have everything reined tight, and he knew better than Jack how long it would take to get to the jungle shrine and back out again. Jack relaxed slightly, and slid down the side of the pontoon, his elbows on the sand. He watched Costas in amused silence. Costas was sitting on the sand with his knees slightly bent, and the legs of his shorts flapping open. In the distance a river crab had spied a cozy nook, and was hurtling sideways toward him. At the last moment Costas arched upward and the crab shot under him and past the boat, disappearing off down the beach behind them at prodigious speed. Costas saw Jack watching him, and waved the gourd with an innocent look on his face. "What?" "I think you might have had enough of that." "I've only had two slurps. Anyway, I'm on holiday. On the beach. At last." He took another slurp and wiped his mouth, gasping. "Okay. Enough to take the edge off the disappointment, no more." He turned the gourd upside down on the sand, then took a long drink from his water bottle. "While we wait, Jack, fill me in. This guy Bebbie. What was he doing here? What was the rebellion all about?"

Jack leaned back and put his arms behind his head. He looked at the palms fringing the beach, and watched another toddy-tapper s.h.i.+mmy expertly down a trunk. He reached over and tapped the upturned gourd. "A tax on toddy. Totally unnecessary, hardly a significant revenue stream, but a ma.s.sive source of contention for the tribal people. That's how so many colonial conflicts began. A simmering resentment, and then a small administrative blunder that takes catastrophic center stage. And in 1879, with war again in Afghanistan, an internal rebellion was the last thing the government wanted. The reaction was typical. Years of indifference and neglect of the jungle people were followed by heavy-handedness and inefficiency in putting down the rebellion. From the outset the British were hampered by poor knowledge of the people and the jungle conditions. That's where Bebbie comes in. There were many remarkable British officials in the Indian Civil Service, of high intellect and moral rect.i.tude. Bebbie was a lower tier official, a.s.signed to a backwater. For the tribals, there were some outsiders they wors.h.i.+pped, like their memory of the fabled prince Rama himself Bebbie was a.s.suredly not one of those."

A noise made them turn toward the jungle. It was a new sound, like chimes or distant gongs. It was hard to tell if it was the breeze through the trees, or real. Then it began in earnest, a drumbeat from the direction of the village, three deep beats, a silence, three more beats, intensifying as more drums joined in. Then they saw them, men in loincloths carrying long, double-ended drums, coming out of the jungle on either side of the path, then stepping back, then coming out again with each set of beats. Women appeared between them, wearing bells in their ears, shaking their heads vigorously. They stamped the earth in unison, gathering force with the drumbeat, swelling in numbers, going in and out in line between the drummers. Voices began rising and falling in a plaintive chant. Then the line parted and a man appeared wearing a bison skull on his head, wrapped around with a red sari and mounted with peac.o.c.k feathers, the horns arching high and dripping red. More men with horns followed, forming a circle on the sand, stamping in and out in unison and chanting.

"Horns of the gaur," Jack murmured. "The other dreaded beast of the jungle. Looks like they've bloodied them already."

"Just with chickens, I hope," Costas said. "But it's still pretty d.a.m.n terrifying. Add human sacrifice, and put yourself in the mind of a British soldier watching this from that river steamer in 1879. This would have looked like the vision of h.e.l.l that all those Victorian pastors would have drummed into them as kids. These were heathen savages, and those horned men are a vision of the devil himself."

Pradesh came down the path through the line of drummers and strode toward them. The toddy-tapper had been with him, but stayed behind at the edge of the jungle. Pradesh glanced at his watch, then peered up at the sky, scanning the eastern horizon. "The bison dance," he said. "The first act of the festival. The toddy's flowing freely now. It's a good time for us to leave."

"Before they strip me and send me on a little hike in the jungle, you mean," Costas said.

"Any luck?" Jack asked.

"You saw what the toddy-tapper did with his hands, in the jungle clearing? He pulled the skin of his face to make his eyes slant. He said a man came here before the monsoon broke, about four months ago. He had eyes like that."

"Katya's uncle?" Costas said.

"Could be," Jack murmured. "Hai Chen was Mongolian Chinese. Anything else?"

"The man told the Koya he was a friend of Christoph von Furer-Haimendorf He was an anthropologist who came here with his wife in the 1930s, during the final years of British rule. They stayed in the jungle for several months, and championed the tribals' cause. Christoph befriended my father as a boy, and was always spoken of by the Koya with great reverence."

"The tribals remember a visitor from almost eighty years ago?" Costas asked.

"Absolutely," Pradesh replied. "And they remember Lieutenant Howard, Jack's great-great-grandfather. In the months after the rebels had been defeated and the main Rampa Field Force had been withdrawn, Howard and his sappers remained behind to clean up and begin road building. Apparently, Howard went out of his way to help the villagers, improving water supply and sanitation, showing them tricks of construction. He was unlike the missionaries who occasionally came up the river. He told them the only G.o.ds they should wors.h.i.+p were their own. They remembered that. He became ill with exhaustion, and they looked after him here, in this village. He was especially solicitous of the children, and made them toys while he was convalescing. And they remember the day the steamer came to take him away, the day he was told that his own son had died. He was inconsolable, and came out to this riverbank by himself, to the place where the rebels had cajoled the Koya into carrying out the sacrificial ceremony that day in 1879. It was where they sacrificed the child. Perhaps the sight of that had most affected Howard.

Jack swallowed hard. "That sounds like him," he murmured. "He was devoted to his own children, the ones he had in the following years."

"But he never returned the sacred velpu or the tiger gauntlet," Costas said.

"For some reason he and Wauchope decided to keep them," Jack replied. "Howard may have intended to go back to the jungle shrine and try to find a way back in, but after he was struck down by illness he never returned to the jungle."

Pradesh turned to Costas. "You asked about how the Koya remember. Because they have no timeline, visitors of a hundred or a thousand years ago are described in the same terms, as 'in the time of their forefathers.' Eventually, those most distant take on the mantle of mythology, and some of them become G.o.ds."

"By claiming friends.h.i.+p with von Furer-Haimendorf Hai Chen was deploying the oldest technique in the anthropologists' book," Jack murmured. "Gain your subjects' confidence by claiming friends.h.i.+p with a revered visitor from the past. Hai Chen would have known that."

"Apparently, he spoke to them in the Khond language of the northern jungle, well enough for them to understand," Pradesh said. "The Koya language is a dialect of Khond."

"That clinches it," Jack exclaimed. "Katya said her uncle was an accomplished linguist, and had made a study of the tribal languages when he first began exploring the jungle peoples of India. What else can they tell us?"

"He was interested in their mythology, in ancient traditions, their artifacts. The toddy-tapper told him about the velpus, and the man pressed him to see one. Eventually the toddy-tapper produced his family velpu, already removed from its bamboo container. Ever since the most sacred velpu, the Lakkala Ramu, disappeared in 1879, the velpus have lost a lot of their power, and the family velpu is the least powerful. Even so, the other villagers disapproved, and that's why you saw them backing off in the jungle clearing just now when he produced this." Pradesh held up the object the toddy-tapper had given him, a coin. They peered at it, and Costas whistled. "I've seen those before. Our s.h.i.+pwreck in the Red Sea. It's Roman."

"An early Imperial denarius," Jack said, taking the coin and looking at it closely. "Not gold like the wreck coins, but silver. It's very worn, but the portrait's early Augustus, no doubt about it. Amazing."

"They're found all across southern India," Pradesh said. "We have a numismatist at Arikamedu who's making an exhaustive study of them. She knew about John Howard, as his boyhood collection of Roman coins from India was bequeathed to the Survey of India by his daughter. The coins are usually mint, uncirculated. They were exported by the Romans as bullion. This one was worn because it must have been handled for generations by the Koya, probably as an ornament, before it gained sacred status and was hidden away as a velpu. The toddy-tapper said that portrait was an image of Rama. He's watching us with eagle eyes over there. I've got to return it before we go."

"Rama," Jack mused. "Anything else?"

Pradesh squatted down. "There is something else. And it's disturbing." He paused. "The man, Hai Chen, arrived here just before the monsoon broke, and wanted to cover as much ground as he could before the jungle became impa.s.sable. They sent him with a guide to Rampa village, and from there he went on alone to see the shrine. None of the Koya would go there with him."

"The cave you were talking about?" Costas said.

Pradesh nodded. "And then a few days later, others came, also like this." Pradesh drew his eyes back with his fingers.

"More Chinese," Jack said.

Pradesh nodded. "But they were different. There were seven of them, and they came by helicopter. They said they were mining prospectors. They were aggressive. The villagers were very apprehensive. They'd had prospectors out here before from the mining companies, and the Koya hate them. The hills around here are rich in bauxite and the whole area is under threat. But there was something that especially terrified them. The men had tattoos on their forearms, all identical - it was an image of a tiger."

"A tiger," Jack repeated.

"The toddy-tapper was petrified. He thought the konda devata had come to punish him for revealing his velpu to Hai Chen. He still thinks they're lurking in the jungle around the village, waiting for the moment to strike. And he has good reason to be apprehensive."

Jack felt suddenly uneasy. "Go on."

"These prospectors' approach to information gathering was slightly different. They grabbed one of the children, a little girl, and held a gun to her head. They wanted to know where the other Chinese man had gone. The anthropologist."

"And the toddy-tapper told them."

Pradesh nodded. "That was over three months ago. The Maoists came here and told them not to go near the shrine. They're used to the Maoists telling them to stay away from their camps, and the shrine's pretty well taboo for the Koya anyway. But this time it was different. After the disappearance of the Chinese anthropologist, the toddy-tapper knew something else had gone on. Evil spirits had been awakened."

"What's the problem with sending in police troops?" Costas said. "Sounds like enough justification now."

Pradesh shook his head. "n.o.body in government's going to buy this story. There's still an ingrained contempt for the tribals among the lowlanders who make up most of the regional government and judiciary, and if any word leaked out that they'd been hara.s.sing prospectors solely on the basis of a story from the Koya there'd be h.e.l.l to pay. There are powerful elements in government who would happily see the tribals dispossessed and these hills turned into a gigantic strip mine. The financial stakes are huge. Military intervention could only come on the back of Maoist violence in the jungle, and the Maoists are usually careful to avoid that. The jungle is their safe house. My father was murdered by the Maoists in Dowlaiswaram, not up here. If the Maoists shoot at troops it becomes a federal matter, and the next thing you know there would be helicopter guns.h.i.+ps hosing down the jungle. Turning this place into a version of the Vietnam War will not help the tribal peoples. You have to tread very carefully. Officially, I'm here on holiday and the two chaps from our a.s.sault company who will be with us in the chopper are private bodyguards, employed by you."

"And what you really want to do is kill the Maoists yourself, in your own time," Costas said quietly. "For your father."

Jack glanced at Pradesh, who looked at the ground, saying nothing.

"And what about the anthropologist, Hai Chen?" Costas said.

Pradesh shook his head. "Not a sign of him since then."

The thudding of a helicopter filled the air, drowning out the drumbeat from the edge of the jungle. Pradesh took out his radio receiver and spoke rapidly in Hindi. The helicopter reared up over the river and backed off, dropping down on the opposite sandbank. Pradesh waved at the toddy-tapper, who was gesticulating at the helicopter. "I told them to land on the other side of the river. The Koya deserve some leeway after the last time one of these landed here. And we don't want them losing control and rus.h.i.+ng us."

Jack peered at the dancers. "They look a little too far gone to notice." He stood up and walked back across the sand to where he had tied the painter line. Costas marched off, gourd in hand, to where the toddy-tapper was standing. "I'm just going to say good-bye to my new friend."