Before we ventured to call upon our cousins, I wanted a chance to speak with Jane. I found her in a little dooryard, scooping grain and overripe fruits into a basin.
“Let me,” I said, taking up the weighty basin. She gave me a grateful look, straightening and pressing her hand to the small of her back. “Are you very uncomfortable?”
“Not usually. I was desperately sick the first few months. And if I am not careful in what I eat, I have acute indigestion. But it has only been in the past fortnight or so that bending and walking have become such a chore.”
“You should be in bed,” I scolded. She paused and drew in a great draught of the crisp mountain air.
“Perhaps. But it does feel so good to be up and about. Come through. We must feed Feuilly. I ought to have one of the staff do it, but the hierarchy is so complicated, it is simpler just to do it myself.”
She led me through an arched gateway into a part of the garden I had not seen before. If I had expected a pig or a little goat, I was entirely mistaken, for out of the bushes strode a peacock, trailing his train of feathers behind him. But this was no ordinary peacock, for he was enormous, and bore the scars of battles, I observed from the marks upon his beak and legs. This creature was a warrior, like something out of myth to guard a rajah’s treasures.
“Oh, my,” I breathed. Jane began to scatter grain and fruit from the basin. I watched him peck elegantly at her offerings before I turned to Jane.
“What did you mean about the hierarchy?”
She smiled, her lovely Madonna smile of old, although now it was tinged with fatigue and perhaps with something of melancholy as well. I wondered if it was a sort of catching disease in these remote mountains. “I am surprised you haven’t heard. One scarcely has to set foot upon Indian soil to learn of the servant problem.”
“I thought obliging staff were one of the pleasures of living in India,” I offered.
“Oh, they are obliging, certainly, but they have the most curious system for the dividing up of responsibilities, most of it based upon religious persuasion. Here are Bengalis, Sikkimese, Nepalis, Bhutanese, Lepchas, all with their own beliefs and special diets. We have to keep three cooks just to ensure everyone is fed!”
“Are there so many?” I asked, looking around the deserted dooryard.
“You do not see them, but believe me, they are about. And it is not just that there are dozens of them, it is that the Hindu house servants will touch neither porcelain nor food cooked by anyone who isn’t Hindu, so the servers at table must not be Hindu, but it is a Hindu of the lowest caste who empties the porcelain chamber pots, which I confess makes no sort of sense to me at all, but everyone else seems to take as perfectly ordinary.”
“Why do they refuse to touch porcelain?”
“It is made from animal bones and the cow is sacred here,” she explained. “If they were to touch porcelain made from the wrong sort of bones, it would defile them.”
“It must be difficult to have the running of such an establishment,” I soothed.
She gave a short laugh. “Yes, and I thank God and his angels every day the lot does not fall to me.”
“But you are mistress of the Peacocks, are you not?”
The melancholy smile returned. “In name,” she said softly. “But the truth is that Aunt Camellia is much better suited to the job, and I am content to leave it to her. I do not wish to become attached to this place,” she finished in a low voice. Before I could question her further, she nodded briskly toward Feuilly.
“He’s beautiful, isn’t he? I loathe him.”
I gave her a sharp look and she continued on. “I know I oughtn’t. But he cries and shrieks at the most inconvenient times.”
“Ah, I shall have to tell Morag the house isn’t haunted after all. She thinks the Peacocks is thick with ghosts.”
I meant to jolly her out of her seriousness, but the mention of ghosts seemed to sadden her. “I think it may be. In Grandfather Fitz’s estate office, you can still smell his tobacco and boot leather.”
“To be expected,” I told her firmly. “He has been dead a short time, I gather.”
“A year, almost. He died when Freddie and I came. Aunt Camellia said he was only holding on until he saw Freddie settled. As soon as we arrived, he let go. Of course, it made the servants instantly suspicious of me,” she said with a shaky laugh. “They think I brought some curse to the house that the master should die so soon after my arrival.”
“Superstitious nonsense,” I told her. The peacock crept closer, then paused and gave a shudder, as if to lift his tail. But the effort proved too much and he left his great tail to drag behind like some travesty of a royal masque.
“Your peacock looks despondent,” I observed.
“I know. And his melancholia is affecting us all. I cannot sleep for his shrieking and crying.”
“Why do you not get rid of him then? You are expecting, Jane. You ought to have your rest. Or does he not belong to you?”
“Oh, he is mine well enough. One of the few things here that is,” she added, bitterness lacing her words. “But he was a gift and I cannot bring him back without giving offence.”
“A gift from whom?”
She tossed a handful of juicy cherries at the peacock. It approached languidly, as if it merely deigned to eat. “There is a gentleman who lives up at the monastery on the ridge. He is something of a recluse, but he was kind enough to send Feuilly. He thought the bird would be a diversion in my mourning.”
My interest quickened. “I believe Miss Cavendish mentioned him, although she gave no name.”
“He is called the White Rajah out of deference for his lifestyle.”
“The White Rajah! How extraordinary.”
Jane shrugged. “It was common in the early years of the English presence in India for bachelor gentlemen to sometimes go native. It seldom happens now, of course—not since they all started importing wives from England and establishing their little outposts of Britannia across the country. But there was a time when it was quite a widespread practise to adopt Indian ways. This fellow wears a turban and jewels and speaks perfect Hindustani and Bengali and plays the sitar. He is quite a character.”
She tossed another handful of jewel-bright fruit to the peacock. “He must have been in India forever, although he is something of a newcomer to this valley. He simply rode in one day and took up residence in the monastery, treating the whole thing like a great, wrecked palace. He never stirs a foot from the place, but the gentlemen in the valley go up, naturally, and I understand he is a most genial host. I called upon him myself out of the grossest sort of curiosity.”
“Curiosity?” I eyed the peacock as it crept ever nearer my shoes.
Jane shrugged. “Oh, you know how stories get started. He is a rather mysterious person, clearly a gentleman and possessing some wealth but no one knows much about him. Everyone wants to discover the truth, so they put about stories of a great tragic love affair or a cursed inheritance. It’s nonsense, of course. He is most likely a younger son of a good family sent out to make his fortune in India and fallen into the habits of secrecy and eccentricity.”
“You have enough experience with that particular failing to know it at a distance, I should think,” I said ruefully. Feuilly began to peck at the toe of my shoe.
Jane dropped a few more cherries in his path and he abandoned me for sweeter prospects.
“I think eccentricity is a virtue much undervalued,” Jane said. “Our world would be a drab and uninteresting place if everyone in it were the same.”