of wings as a disturbed pigeon flapped past her face and swooped through the door, making her scream.
‘Edith, come up here!’ Marvinder’s voice came from somewhere above her head.
Edith looked slowly round, and then she saw the opening in the far wall and the start of some stone steps. The steps were narrow and twisting with no rail to hold on to, and the treads were worn, as if thousands of feet had climbed up and down and up and down, gradually hollowing out the stone. She put one foot into the first indentation, then the next and the next, as steadily she climbed upwards.
A shock of brilliant daylight greeted her eyes at the top. She had emerged on to the first terrace. It was like stepping out on to the deck of a ship, for the whole palace seemed to be floating in a great green ocean of foliage which trembled and undulated all around.
‘Edith! Look at me!’ Marvi’s voice came from inside the enormous room which extended almost the full length of the terrace. Edith dashed in through the large rectangle of a door.
It was a wonderful room, which must once have been furnished with huge silken cushions, magnificent rugs, embroidered hangings, low, intricately-carved ebony tables on which stood brass lampstands and ivory boxes inlaid with precious stones; a room whose walls must have been hung with the skins of tiger, leopard and cheetah and the antlers of deer decorating the doorways. A room fit for a king, a hunter, a proud ruler, a warrior, where princes and princesses rustled by in fabulous silken clothes and brilliant turbans; a room with space enough for eye-flashing dancers to whirl and stamp, and musicians with sitars and tamboura to hypnotise the night with passionate ragas, while tabla drums beat their audience into a frenzy.
Edith sensed it, though the room was stripped as bare as a rock. It was as though some strange spell had been cast over the palace; the carpets had been turned into dry, dead leaves, which tumbled lazily across the dusty, stone floors; the silken cushions had become lumps of stone; the only trophies on the walls were the lizards which streaked like lightning from one diagonal to another, only to stop suddenly, utterly motionless, as if playing some game of statues. And the kings and queens? The princes and princesses? Where had they gone? Had they turned into the shiny-backed beetles which scuttled in corners? Or the long-legged spiders which spun their own web of curtain across the windows? Or were they the ghosts the people whispered about, who emerged sometimes to reinhabit their chambers and walk the verandahs and terraces?
‘Look at me!’ said Marvinder softly. She sat at the far end of the room on a slightly raised stone dias. She sat cross-legged with her turquoise saree swirled all around her. The sunlight caught the silver and gold threads and made them glisten. She looked like a queen.
They began to play; almost silently, almost as if they, too, were under a spell. They laid out the cushions and draped themselves in sarees and veils; they moved around making royal gestures, and began to wander up and up through the palace, till finally they reached the roof.
At this height they were level with the tops of trees and looked out over the landscape around them. They felt like gods. There was the church and the graveyard; there was the long white road, running like a shimmering thread, on and on, past Marvinder’s village, on and on until it would have reached her mother’s home village, except that it disappeared over the horizon.
‘I can see my house!’ screamed Edith gleefully.
When they crossed the roof to look out over the other side, an avenue of sky ran between the great spreading boughs of eucalyptus and mango and neem trees; it took the eye all the way down to a shining lake which Edith never knew existed.
‘Look! Oh look!’
‘That is the rajah’s lake,’ said Marvinder. ‘It’s where he used to fish. My uncles go there often.’
The lake was surrounded by wild undergrowth, which made the waters look dark green. In the middle of the lake was a small island with a landing stage for mooring a boat, and a cupola, which jutted out like a stone umbrella under which a king might sit and fish through a hot afternoon.
Beyond the lake on the other side, the jungle had been kept at bay by the farmers, whose fields of wheat and mustard came right up to the boundary. Across one of these fields, Jaspal and his buffalo came into view carrying Ralph and Grace on its back.
Edith leapt up and down with excitement, screaming at them. ‘Ralph! Grace! Look! Over here! Oh, please look, you two!’
Marvinder, too, waved and yelled at the top of her voice. ‘Jaspal! Jaspal bhai! ’
But somehow the three of them didn’t seem to hear. Perhaps they were too intent on the boat. Jaspal helped Ralph and Grace to slide off the buffalo’s back and while the children ran their fingers over the battered, wooden sides of the boat, the buffalo ambled down to the water’s edge and immersed its great body in the mud and weeds.
The boat was already very close to the water so when a slight breeze ruffled the surface, the stern bobbed gently as tiny waves lapped around it. All it took was a push and it was afloat.
Edith and Marvinder watched, at first still waving and shouting in their efforts to get the children’s attention; then they fell silent mesmerised by the scene, which slowly unfolded like a piece of mime.
Ralph pointed to the island in the middle of the lake. Grace and Jaspal looked and nodded enthusiastically. Grace climbed into the boat and awkwardly crawled over the centre seats to the stern. She didn’t notice the loose planks or the holes in the sides. Ralph and Jaspal, still on land, put their hands to the prow and began to push. The boat wobbled and they could see Grace laughing. She put her hand to her mouth as if to stiffle anxious squeals.
The boys pushed and heaved, their arms extended to the full, out in front, their legs stretched behind as they put the full weight of their bodies into the push to get the boat away from the shore. At last, with a final heave, the boat slid away with the boys plunging into the water after it.
‘Oh, what fun! what fun!’ cried Edith, clapping her hands despite herself. ‘Look at them trying to get into the boat!’
The boys were both balanced on their tummies tipping and rocking as they pulled themselves aboard.
Marvinder didn’t speak.
Ralph found an oar and wriggled it out from under the seat. There seemed to be only one. He began to plunge it into the water. Meanwhile, Jaspal and Grace were using their hands to paddle the boat along.
Slowly, slowly, the boat began to drift further and further from the shore, whether by the exertions of the children or by a faint wind which caught the craft in its grip and tugged it out towards the centre of the lake.
The same wind suddenly sent a heap of dead leaves scurrying and rattling across the palace roof, and made the girls’ sarees billow out like sails. A flock of green parrots exploded into the sky with a wild screech. If only they could have leapt as easily into space from the parapets and flown down to the lake side. If only their sarees could have turned into wings and given them the power of flight. Instead, they stood, helpless and rooted.
It was like looking through the wrong end of a telescope. They saw the terror of the children as the boat began to fill with water. The children used their hands, frantically trying to scoop out the water. It was all so fast. Suddenly, the three children were up to their waists in the water, then their chests and then . . .
Edith was aware of a whimpering at her side. Marvinder’s fingers were clawing at her saree and she began to run, first away then back to the balustrade, then away, then back. Her whimpers became fierce screams, squeezed out of her body in short gasps. Then suddenly she was gone. Edith was hardly aware of it, for Edith just stood as if she had become one of the hard, grey, immobile palace stones; inactive; doomed, as these stones had been doomed to be a dumb, passive witness; to see but never to forget.
They looked so small, so insignificant, struggling there in the water. Their splashes were no bigger than a dog might make as it swims after a stick. Then suddenly, there was nothing except a blank expanse of water. No boat, no children.
Edith gave a deep