‘Dear Taylor Memsahib. I am an uneducated Punjabi woman who cannot write nice words of thanks in English. Ask one of your clerks to read this to you. God bless you for what you have done. You wanted to share the grief of a mother whose child has been stricken. There is no greater act of kindness in the world. May the Guru’s blessings be on you, your Sahib, and on your children. May you have many sons. May God ever keep your household full of plenty and keep sorrow and suffering away from your door.’

Sabhrai folded the paper with her shaking hands. Her head shook and she had difficulty in licking and sealing the envelope. She asked Shunno to give it to the Deputy Commissioner’s chauffeur, who had driven her back from the police station, and then light a fire in her bedroom. By the time Shunno came back with old newspapers and firewood, Sabhrai was in bed with her quilt wrapped about her. Despite her will power, her teeth began to rattle and she began to shiver violently.

‘Bibiji, you have fever,’ said Shunno in alarm. ‘You must have caught a chill.’

Sabhrai wanted to tell her to get on with her work, but no words would come out of her mouth. She shivered and shook; her forehead was hot, her body cold. Shunno quickly lit a fire. She came to her mistress and began to press her. The fit of shivering was soon over. Sabhrai relaxed in her warm bed and fell fast asleep in the heated room.

Neither her husband nor her daughter got a chance to ask her about her interview with Sher Singh. She had gone straight from the car to her room. An hour later, Shunno came to tell them she was asleep. They knew that she had been away all night and needed rest. If she had had anything really important to tell them, she would have done so before retiring. Obviously, thought Buta Singh, everything had gone according to plan and his son’s release would now be a matter of time, an unpleasant time, with other arrests, and a public trial where Sher Singh, being the Crown witness, would be branded as a traitor. It would finish Sher’s political career—but only for a time, for public memory was notoriously short. In any case it would save the boy’s life. It would also save Buta Singh’s face vis-à-vis Taylor who had trusted and relied on him and had been so good to his family in the worst crisis in his life. Buta Singh felt that at long last the nightmare of the past month was coming to an end. He was full of gratitude to Taylor and to God; even to Sabhrai—his illiterate, superstitious, half-companion of the past thirty years.