No, this morning he’d confine himself to simpler objectives. Yet one thing did give him hope: it was Mira Bai passing through the gates of the citadel without hindrance, exactly as she said she’d be able to – for a day or so at least, until the dewan would for sure take counsel of his fears and deprive the Ranee of all comforts. She’d glanced at him as she hurried by, with the look that one conspirator had on seeing another – uneasy but confiding. She’d take the Ranee his message, that help would come though he knew not when.

* * *

Hervey slept in his cloak on a bed of ferns. Campfires and torches blazed, for Johnson had taken charge to ward off – in the words of the chaplain – ‘every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth’, words which had gained a peculiar following among the dragoons but with additional adjectives unfit for the chaplain’s hearing.

Somewhat contrarily, however, as was his wont, Johnson (who’d not himself bedded down yet, instead playing dice with the orderlies) now reckoned he quite liked the forest, or the ‘jungle’ as he preferred, for that was what old India hands called it, which he considered himself to be. It was a bit like the place he’d rambled as a child when he slipped free of the Poor Law stewards of a Sunday. There he’d spend a whole day without seeing a soul and hearing nothing but a bird singing or the bark of a roebuck – ‘that pleasant district of merry England which is watered by the river Don’ and which, as he’d learned later, Ivanhoe loved. But in those pleasant green places there’d been no creeping things to give him more than a bit of a sting – an ant or a bee or a wasp; nothing in the remotest bit deadly, and which a dock leaf could ease. There were adders, people said; but he’d never seen one. And besides, an adder couldn’t kill you, while here, they all did, one way or another. They’d strangle you or crush the life out of you, or poison you for no reason. And that wasn’t the worst of it: there were good snakes and bad snakes, as poor Annie had almost found out for herself in the stillroom when she’d heard Allegra call out in fright and rushed to see what it was, and gathered her up in her arms to shield her from the cobra, and Serjeant Stray had killed it in the nick of time ever so deftly with his sabre.

Everybody thought the world of Annie after that. (Well, they had already, but …), especially the colonel, and Mrs Hervey, and when Allegra’s governess had given her notice, they’d promoted Annie in her place to be ‘Miss Gildea’, and she’d become quite the lady now – but just as nice and friendly, and a real good companion to Miss ’Ervey. He wasn’t sure it was right that Colonel ’Ervey had changed his mind and let them both come into the jungle, but if anybody was hurt and had to go to Dr Milne’s, Miss ’Ervey and Annie’d look after ’em right enough, and the wives who’d come as well …