Chapter 24 #2
Constance studied him as Neil ducked under a branch heavily laden with flowers.
“But you’ve already been going about it, haven’t you?
I mean—I’ve always been myself, and I’ve gotten along well enough at that, I think.
I’m just seeing it all differently now than I did before.
Encountering circumstances that make being both Indian and British more… complicated.”
Neil’s heart tightened at her words. He glanced back at her as he held up the branch.
“There is absolutely no doubt in my mind that you are going to do it splendidly,” he burst out feelingly. “Britain and India are both lucky to have you.”
Constance’s grin was like a beam of sunshine breaking through the monsoon. “Do you really think so? I mean—I agree with you, but it’s still nice to hear someone else say it.”
An answering smile tugged irresistibly at Neil’s lips. “I’ll say it as often and as loudly as you like,” he vowed—and found to his surprise that he meant it.
Her eyes narrowed playfully. “Do you need me to tell you that you can be both a scholar and a little magical?”
Neil grimaced as a wave of familiar discomfort washed over him. “I’m not sure I’m ready to hear that yet. I still wish the whole thing had never come up back in the village. It’s only going to make everyone think I can do something that I can’t. I don’t really do it at all. It just… happens.”
“Well, if it’s happening at all, it sounds to me like you’re halfway there,” Constance concluded authoritatively.
A low rumble of thunder echoed through the trees. Jignesh leaned over the path above them, his amber eyes bright in his weathered face. “Up! Quick!”
Neil offered Constance a hand and helped her scramble up the last of the climb.
They emerged at the top of the ridge, where the forest gave way to a flat, rocky plateau accented by tufts of grass and scrubby bushes. At the end of it, a natural arrow of land jutted from the peak, pointing slightly northeast.
The point was topped by a stubby column of stone roughly Neil’s height. The surface of the monument was round at the top and smoothly polished.
Subhas stood beside it. The law student had pulled off his shirt, tucking it into the back of his trousers. The strap for his Enfield crossed over the objectively well-defined musculature of his torso.
“Hmm,” Constance mused.
“What’s that?” Neil asked.
“Just admiring the scenery,” she returned blandly. “But isn’t this a Shiva stone?”
“Of course, it is!” Neil exclaimed, scholarly fervor kicking into gear. “It’s a lingam, one of Shiva’s sacred symbols. Shiva is known as the Supreme Lord and Destroyer—but also Nataraja, the Lord of the Dance. Join the Lord of the Dance!”
Neil punctuated the remarks with eager jabs at the smooth, polished pillar—and then caught himself at Subhas’s dry look. “But you must have already known that.”
“Where are we supposed to go next?” Subhas asked.
“Let his shadow lead you to the ruins of the most loyal kingdom,” Constance recited.
Subhas’s haughty expression flickered with uncomfortable emotion—and he glanced to the south.
Neil followed the look to where a pale stone needle pierced the canopy. It emerged from the trees like a finger of bone, hugged by the ridge that circled the cupped hand of a broad, forested depression.
His blood thrummed with rising excitement.
“That pillar must be at least forty feet tall to break through the canopy. Carved from a single piece of stone, I should expect, or it wouldn’t have remained intact without regular maintenance.
” He whirled back to face Constance and Subhas.
“Don’t you realize what this means? A monument like that wouldn’t be isolated in the middle of the wilderness.
There would need to be access to quarries.
Engineers. Laborers. Ritual or civic centers that justified an immense architectural undertaking. ”
“It’s a city,” Subhas returned flatly.
The words sparked an overwhelming sense of wonder.
An entire city hidden in the deep forest, untouched for centuries. It would be rife with knowledge about India’s past, just waiting to be painstakingly uncovered.
Neil was unable to keep the eagerness from his voice. “You’ve been to it?”
Subhas’s expression hardened. “No.”
“Why not?”
“We don’t go down there.”
The assertion was so surprising, Neil found it hard to absorb. “But don’t you want to know what’s there?”
Subhas’s voice snapped with anger. “And what good do you think that would do us? Should the Adrija submit a paper on it to the Royal Geographical Society?”
His voice dripped with sarcasm. Neil’s billowing excitement about the promise of the pillar abruptly popped, leaving behind an unexpected uncertainty.
“I…” Neil started. “That’s not what I was…”
“Do you know what I want?”
Subhas stepped closer to him. They were roughly even in height, but Neil felt smaller in the face of Subhas’s ferocity.
“I want to know that my village isn’t going to be labeled ‘criminal’ and forced from our homes on some Englishman’s whim.
I want to know that we won’t be shut out of the forest that feeds our children.
” Subhas waved a hand over the dark, secret sprawl of the wilderness around them.
“That all this isn’t going to be torn up for some mining contract granted by men who’ve never so much as seen it.
Do you know what I’ve learned about the law after three years at university?
I’ve learned that it exists to protect your interests over ours. ”
“Mine?” Neil echoed, thrown.
“The English.” Subhas bit out the word like a curse.
“And it is not enough to steal our present and our future. You steal our past, too.” He jabbed an accusing finger at the pale tower that tantalizingly pierced the canopy below.
“What do you think would happen if word about this got back to Madras? How quickly do you think some English expedition would be out here to cut it all down and carry it away to one of your museums—for safe-keeping?”
The words whipped with sarcasm, cutting like blades.
Shame burned through Neil as Sayyid’s voice echoed in his memory.
No matter that it is our history the world is digging up. Our language on the walls. Our ancestors in the sarcophagi. I could only—ever—be the help.
Neil’s chest ached with guilt. “You’re right. Of course, you’re right.”
“I don’t even care,” Subhas retorted. “It’s not the ruins that concern me. It’s that your people would happily eradicate my own if you thought we were in the way of claiming them.”
His eyes were like embers, flaring with a terrible and bitter heat. “Tell me I’m wrong.”
Neil wanted to. Two months ago, he would have, flush with faith in his profession and the institutions that shaped it.
That faith had died in the echoing silence of an Old Kingdom quarry, witnessed by the endless columns of chiseled stone—and the heartbroken gaze of the friend he’d let down.
“I can’t,” Neil admitted helplessly.
Constance watched them silently, her eyes wide with surprise at how quickly the dynamic had turned.
“You’re here because my grandmother wants you here, and I respect her wishes,” Subhas bit out. “But I don’t trust you, and I won’t let you get in our way.”
Neil felt the words like blows. He wasn’t sure that he didn’t deserve them.
Subhas turned toward his men, who watched the exchange from the other end of the peak like they might eye a tiger mauling its prey. “We can be there in a half-day’s walk tomorrow, but we’re stopping here for the night. It’s going to rain.”
As though to punctuate his remark, another roll of thunder rumbled across the sky.
He walked away.
Neil remained rooted to the spot like a statue, his mind and heart reeling.
“Neil?” Constance asked softly.
“It’s all right,” Neil blurted out. “It’s… He’s… I’m…”
The words failed him.
Constance looked quietly sympathetic, but she said nothing to reassure him. How could she?
Subhas wasn’t wrong.
Neil had spent so much time over the last few weeks tormenting himself over the question of how to reconcile his impossible powers with his identity as a scholar. He had nearly forgotten the other lesson he had learned in Egypt—the one Sayyid had so painfully taught him.
If he was ever going to do this work again—work that he truly, passionately loved—he had to find a way to do it differently. To do it right.
Neil stared out at the uneasy promise of the slender stone that pierced through the shadowy trees.
“We should go help,” he concluded numbly, and turned away from it.