Next morning, the two parties broke camp early and left Kothapore together. They intended making Sawangee, some twenty miles thence, before nightfall, where the old rajah had a hunting lodge – which perhaps the new Ranee kept also. It was near twice the distance that Bunda Ali would have travelled as a rule, but, said Ghufoor Khan, the road was good, not too rutted by bullock carts, and they would easily reach the little town by evening, with its pleasant camping ground and good wells. He would send on some of the men to keep the better part of it, and to have the naan-baa’ii (bakers of bread) make ready for them.

And the road proved as Ghufoor Khan said. It ran level and even, directly north-west, little deviating from its line except to skirt a hill, of which there were few. But it was a desolate country, the soil black and stony, unfit for the plough or even broadcast, and so villages were as few as the hills. The jungle through which they’d passed the day before had given way to forest edge, and there were but two rivers, both of them narrow and shallow enough to ford without hazard. Throughout, Bunda Ali rode between his ‘hosts’, finding them excellent company, just as they’d promised the evening before. Behind him his wife and daughter rode peacefully, speaking only to each other; and his new-born – another girl (a beautiful girl, but needful of another dowry in her turn) – scarcely cried at all. And now, as he beheld Sawangee ahead, with the sun still an hour above the horizon, he gave thanks yet again: ‘Allhm rb alsmawat … O Allah, You are the Lord of the seven heavens and all the things that are under these heavens and whatever is over these and of Satan who misled and all those misled by him and for the wind and all that it blows. Thus we seek the good of this town and the good of its people and seek refuge from its evil and the evil of its people, and from the evils of whatever is in it.’

Ghufoor Khan’s lughaees – those who went ahead to prepare the ground – had done their work too, keeping another pleasing grove (of bamboo this time) not too distant from a stream. A dozen bechne-walee, sellers of all manner of good things, were gathered in expectation, and were not disappointed. Bunda Ali’s servants pitched the tents as deftly as the evening before, watered and washed the horses, cut them grass, gave them a little corn, and then attached them to a running line before getting down to the business of pots and kettles. Soon afterwards, a small detachment of the Company’s soldiers came in from the south, Native Infantry and two English officers, advance party for a magazine train (Chintal found it expedient to buy powder and fuze from the Company). They made camp but a hundred yards away, with just a clump of bamboo and the running line between them and the larger travelling party. Bunda Ali gave thanks once again, for surely Allah himself had sent these men for his protection, and thought he might present himself to the Angreze, and tell them he was moonshee to Colonel Matthew Hervey-sahib and His Majesty’s Sixth Light Dragoons, who were also Princess Augusta’s own (although of this latter he might not speak, for he himself did not quite understand how a regiment of the English king might also be that of a princess – and a foreign princess also). He might, indeed, offer them the hospitality of his own shivir.