Then silently in the darkness, the jemadar’s men searched the bodies. Those of the servants and syces returned just a few silver rupees, but Bunda Ali’s yielded gold and the fine watch given him by the general at Fort St George, while his wife and daughter had about them jewelled bangles and rings. Their baggage of course would render much more.

Then the jemadar’s men stripped the bodies. It would make it all the more difficult to recognize them if – Allah and all the gods of the Hindoos forbid – the bodies were ever found. The silks and satins would all bring coin at the bazaar, too; and even the coarsest dhoti was worth something as shoddy. Then they dragged them through the thicket to the long grass where that afternoon Ghufoor Khan’s lughaees had dug two pits, practised as they were in judging precisely how deep and wide was wanted. They broke the joints of every one of them, and then out came the knives to slice through the sinews, all the better to pack the corpses into their secret tomb; and then as if this desecration weren’t enough, they plunged the blades into the belly of each – even the wife and daughter – so that bloating would not displace the earth and reveal the murderous deeds.

Ghubbil Khan, the jemadar’s second, who had plucked the child from its mother’s arms as she lay choking, stood to one side with his mewling prize.

The jemadar gestured sharply.

‘She is mine,’ Ghubbil Khan protested; ‘I shall raise her by my own hand, and she will marry my son!’

The jemadar cuffed him hard. ‘She is not a peasant child. She will be recognized, and we discovered.’

So Ghubbil Khan tossed the child disconsolately into the pit, and the others shovelled in earth until the pitiful crying was no more. They trod the soil and then tamped it with the spade until there was no sign that the ground had ever been disturbed. Then they returned to the campfire to drink bhang thandai. In the small hours they took down the moonshee’s tents, packed his belongings and stowed it all neatly on the bullock cart. An hour before dawn – before even the soldiers had risen – they left the bamboo grove with not a sign that Bunda Ali, his servants, his cherished wife, his fair bridal daughter or his nursling infant had ever been there.

II

Words of Command

Fort St George, Madras, Tuesday, 7 October 1834

‘That’s right, Miss Hervey: arm extended, locked at the elbow and wrist. Lower the piece onto the target, eye running the length of arm and barrel to the centre of the observable mass …’

Serjeant Acton could but instruct in the same language he would use with a recruit, if markedly less severe in tone. He supposed his commanding officer’s daughter to have rather more education than the usual dragoon, even at the tender age of sixteen, and undoubtedly more sensibility. That said, a cavalry pistol was still a cavalry pistol … ‘and firm but even pressure in the trigger …’