He did learn a lot about Kali, though. Very popular in Bengal—even the name of the region’s largest city, Calcutta, was an Anglicized form of Kalighata, the huge temple built to her there. The Black Goddess. Not a deity to take comfort in. She was called Mother Night, devouring all, slaying all, even Siva, her consort upon whose corpse she stood in many of the pictures Westphalen had seen. Blood sacrifices, usually goats and birds, were made regularly to Kali in her many temples, but there were whispers of other sacrifices… human sacrifices.

No one in Bharangpur had ever seen the Temple-in-the-Hills, nor known anyone who had. But he learned that every so often a curiosity-seeker or a pilgrim would venture off into the hills to find the temple. Some would follow Jaggernath at a discrete distance, others would seek their own path. The few who returned claimed their search had been fruitless, telling tales of shadowy beings creeping about the hills at night, always just beyond the firelight, but unmistakably there, watching. As to what happened to the rest, it was assumed that the pilgrims true of heart were accepted into the temple order, and that the adventurous and the merely curious became fodder for the rakoshi who guarded the temple and its treasure. A rakosh, he was assured by a colonel who was starting his third decade in India, was some sort of flesh-eating demon, the Bengali equivalent of the English bogeyman—used to frighten children.

Westphalen had little doubt the temple was guarded, but by human sentries, not demons. Guards would not deter him. He was not a lone traveler wandering aimlessly through the hills—he was a British officer leading six lancers armed with the new lightweight Enfield rifle.

As he stood beside his mount, Westphalen ran a finger up and down the stock of his Enfield. This simple construction of wood and steel had been the precipitating factor in the Sepoy rebellion.

All because of a tight-fitting cartridge.

Absurd, but true. The Enfield cartridge, like all other cartridges, came wrapped in glazed paper which had to be bitten open to be used. But unlike the heavier “Brown Bess” rifle the Sepoys had been using for forty years, the Enfield cartridge had to be greased to make the tight fit into the barrel. There had been no problem until rumors began circulating that the grease was a mixture of pork and bullock fat. The Moslem troops would not bite anything that might be pork, and the Hindus would not pollute themselves with cow grease. Tension between British officers and their Sepoy troops had built for months, culminating on May 10, a mere eleven weeks ago, when the Sepoys had mutinied in Meerut, perpetrating atrocities on the white populace. The mutiny had spread like a grass fire across most of northern India, and the Raj had not been the same since.

Westphalen had hated the Enfield for endangering him during what should have been a safe, peaceful tour of duty. Now he caressed it almost lovingly. If not for the rebellion he might still be far to the southeast in Fort William, unaware of the Temple-in-the-Hills and the promise of salvation it held for him and for the honor of the Westphalen name.