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“And Sang was with you.”
Weaver nodded and swallowed. His throat was clearly dry, his voice weak from lack of
use. Rayley pushed a pitcher of water across the table toward him with one hand and a glass with the
other. Weaver poured and drank lustily, even slurping a bit, then sat back to resume his tale.
“Sang went everywhere with us. He never left Roland’s side.”
“And you traveled in a cart,” Rayley prompted, happy that he did have this one small
detail with which to possibly frighten the man. But Weaver merely looked at him, his expression a bit
vague with memory, and nodded again.
“Yes, a pony cart,” he said. “When we got to the farmhouse we found the family not only
alive but quite unaware of any impending danger. We were pushing them to hurry but the woman….it
is not good to speak ill of the dead, I suppose, but Mrs. Sloane was a fool. She was trying to pack, to
take some sort of silver with her and a cot for the little ones. We kept saying no, that we must hurry,
but news traveled slowly in those days and misinformation was rampant in the outlying areas. She
had no idea how bad the mutiny was…she had not seen what we had seen as we passed the homes of
her neighbors and Roland was trying not to alarm her. Being his usual gentlemanly self. Careful with
the ladies, he always said. We had to be so very careful with the ladies. I suppose marriage to Rose
had convinced him that they would shatter like fine china at the slightest provocation. The woman
seemed to be under the impression that she would only be going to Bombay for a few days, almost
like a holiday, before returning to the farmhouse with her children. And so Mrs. Sloane was….she
was trying to put things in a basket. Food for the little ones and nappies for the baby and then, just
like a shot, they were upon us. At least a dozen mutineers. We smelled smoke…”
He paused. “Burning people from their homes was a favorite trick of the rebels. The
farmhouses we had passed had all been burned or partially so, with the slain bodies in the yard, the
women and children shot or hacked to death as they tried to escape the flames. And so when I
smelled smoke, I ran. Ran out the door and to the cart.”
“With two of the children.”
“No,” Weaver said. “No. If honesty is the price I must pay for my sins, then at least let
me pay it in full. Roland thrust two of the children in my direction. Put them into my arms and then…
I sat them back down, I believe. Dropped them, threw them, placed them gently in their beds…this I
cannot tell you. Only that I discarded the children in some manner and then I ran. Had I reached the
pony cart first, I further assure you that would have deserted them all. It was panic. I cannot begin to
describe my impulse, much less defend it.”
Rayley struggled not to let emotion show on his face. After all, he was trying to maintain
the fiction that Felix had shared far more of the story than he actually had. So it would not do to rail
or shout at the old fop, a man so calmly describing an act of the most appalling cowardice that it was
as if he were reading a scene from a book.
“It was Sang who must have picked two children back up,” Weaver continued. “An
infant and a little girl of about five or six years. How he managed to carry the both of them and still
make it to the pony cart at the same time as me that I did, I cannot say. Plus he had been grazed with a
shot. There was blood on his shirt, blood which had seeped through onto the blanket which wrapped
the baby. It was my initial thought that the child was the one hurt. No matter. During the entire event it
was as if Sang moved with an almost supernatural strength and purpose, or perhaps it was just more
that my own reactions were dulled by shock. What was happening in the house we had left behind, I
cannot tell you. Roland and Mrs. Sloane presumably tried to steer the other children toward safety. I
can only state that when I arrived at the cart Sang was right on my heels. He put the children in the