Jane Steele(51)

“What excellent taste you have in exotic weaponry, Miss Stone.” Instantly I relapsed onto my heels, wondering whether it was too late to affect disapproval. “No, no, I cannot fault your appreciation for what may be the most extraordinary collection of Sikh artefacts in England. This is an aara, and only highly advanced warriors are trained in them. Essentially, you regard a combination of a whip and a sword—when unrolled, the metal strip divides flesh as if it were butter. I need hardly add that foolhardy fascination with this weapon leads only to missing fingers or worse.”

I allowed my pupils to lose their focus in the aara’s shining whorls—half recalling all the times in London when a strange man had approached, the jaundiced light of malice in his eyes, and imagining that I could have snapped the blackguard’s head off from twelve feet distant.

“Will you show me, sometime, when your schedule permits?”

“I regret I must decline.” Mr. Singh held the door open for me, signalling a need to return to his tasks. “I was once considered formidable with the aara, I admit, but fell out of practice. For that pleasurable spectacle, you will have to await the return and good humour of Mr. Thornfield.”

? ? ?

I’ve finished, I promise. Now I must see that Dalbir’s hoof has been tended properly.”

Five days later, Sahjara and I sat in a converted schoolroom which would have elevated most eyebrows—draperies of orange and amber embroidered with flowering trees lined the walls, conjuring an impossible forest when outside all was grey and snow-softened. There were also chalkboards, paper and ink, drawing utensils, plentiful books, and a pianoforte which look neglected and obligatory.

“If you’ve finished translating the entire passage, I’ll correct it—then of course you may check in on Dalbir.”

Sahjara’s pony, Dalbir, was named “brave soldier,” a moniker I should have thought droll for a pony had he not been more along the lines of a petit dragon, dappled-grey and wonderfully irritable with everyone save Sahjara and myself; the unfortunate beast had suffered a badly chipped hoof that morning.

My pupil ambled over with her French essay, handed me the papers, and then unselfconsciously sat upon the luxurious carpet with her head against my knee.

I patted her awkwardly at first, then drew my fingers over glossy braids smelling of the almond oil she used to smooth out the tangles. Sahjara was demonstrative with everyone, adorably so, and it did not mean anything, I told myself; she probably expected a tyrant, but I recalled tyranny and preferred rebellion. Anyhow, I had neatly solved the problem of attention to her lessons by making each and every subject horse themed. She painted horses in watercolours, explored their anatomy, learnt geography specific to legendary cavalry marches, and translated French passages about horses, as she was doing now.

“We will be great friends, won’t we?” she mused as I shifted to correct her work.

“I hope so. Did you expect a shrivelled old crone with a cane and a pocket Bible?”

Sahjara shrugged against my calf. “Not precisely. I feared someone who would think me unnatural, though.”

This gave me pause, even as I marked an improper conjugation of avoir: she was almost exactly the age I had been when I left Highgate House, and Sahjara in five short days had already revealed her character; she was headstrong, impulsive, recklessly affectionate, and had gifted me with thirteen possessions of Mr. Thornfield’s to date. What did a murderess four times over care if Sahjara was browner skinned than I, forward in her speech, and was familiar with the housemaids? If surnames were to be taken as given, they could be her aunties for all I knew.

“Would you have seemed unnatural at home—or do you remember?”

“That’s a hard question,” Sahjara said slowly. “The Punjab comes out all jumbled when I try to remember. I see pictures without any story to them.”

“Do any of the pictures stand out?”

“The flap of the tent was ripped by a sword, and I was afraid of who would come through the gap, but it was Charles, and he carried me away and fed me. I was very hungry, I recall. And soon after, I was sent to England for safety’s sake. I was five.”

Well, there is a remarkable fragment indeed.

I pressed, “Did England improve matters?”

“Oh, yes!” she exclaimed. “Yes, before England, men had always been asking me questions. How was I faring, but also Where is it? and I hadn’t the faintest, you see, and so kept quiet. Keeping quiet made them very cross.”

“I can imagine.”

Where is it? is a very specific question. Had Sahjara been caught in the middle of the First Anglo-Sikh War and interrogated at so young an age as five? A startling surge of protectiveness coursed through me. I liked Sahjara and wanted her to erase the other little girl, the one who had wandered these halls suffocating on her aunt’s hatred.

“Look, I’ve scored eighty percent!”

“You have indeed. What were the men looking for?”

“A trunk,” said she, taking her translation and glaring at the errors. “It had my dolls in it. Though they couldn’t have wanted my dolls, so perhaps they thought something else was inside—there was a terrible row when it went missing, I know. I just wanted my dolls back, as I was only a chico.”

“Perfectly natural.”

“I was very upset over losing them.”