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focus to cooperating with the Viceroy. Tom pushed back the brim of his hat and studied the ruins. He
could indeed see three men working their way slowly up the broken steps leading to the crumbling
fortress gate: Seal leading the way, Everlee following in a bizarre bright gold jacket, and lastly a
man Tom could not name, but who he remembered from the Byculla Club dinner. The old deaf one
who had been so insistent that Everlee must come to Cawnpore to view the plaque laid in honor of his
true father.
“You think I drink too much, do you?”
Tom turned back to Morass, startled by this sudden shift in tone.
“I do not judge you, my friend. It is usually the job of others, in fact, to tell me that I
drink too much.”
“Yet you turned away from my offer of beer.”
“Only until after luncheon. It is my only rule.” Tom shut his eyes and saw his brother
Cecil’s face floating in the speckled darkness. Cecil the Troubled, that should be the man’s moniker
should he ever, God forbid, find himself at the helm of an empire. At what point in time had Cecil
began drinking before noon and had that truly been the start of his moral demise?
Morass studied him through red-rimmed eyes. “And who set this rule?”
“I suppose I set it myself,” said Tom. In order to cover his unease, he again shifted the
subject. “How did you and Davy come along with the fingerprinting tutorial?”
But Morass was not mollified. “You find this amusing, that I wished to learn such a
skill?”
Tom sighed and decided to leave the man to his self-pity and his beer. Something told
him this was going to be a very long day.
But when he looked back toward the ruins, he noted with surprise that he could now see
the figure of Emma on the hill as well, picking her cautious way down the rubble from another
direction. She was wearing a brilliantly white blouse and skirt that he had seen her in several times
before – she had bought the outfit before their sail to Russia at the beginning of the summer, based on
her charmingly naïve assumption that grand ladies always wore white at sea. The soot-belching
engines of the Queen’s yacht had soon taught the girl that wearing her cherished new garb was more
of a romantic affectation that a practical choice of travel clothing, but Emma had made the precise
same mistake here today. For Tom suspected that the decision to wear starched white clothing to a
dusty ruin would shortly reveal itself to be an even greater sartorial mistake, if it hadn’t already.
Emma was also carrying a large parasol in a bluish-green color, which she had tilted to protect
herself from the sun, and Tom wondered where she had gone on her own, so far from the others, and if
she might lose her footing on the way back. He should go and help her.
“I do not judge you in any way, man, I assure you,” Tom said to Morass. “And I have no
doubt that the two of us shall share a brew soon enough. But in the meantime, might I ask you…
Where is the plaque bearing tribute to Roland Everlee’s sacrifice actually located?”
“In the most important spot in all of Cawnpore,” Morass said, turning the tin jug up and
shaking the final drops into his cup. “At the bloody well.”
***
The fat man in the lemon-colored suit must be her brother. She watches him from the
shade of a tent canopy as he climbs up the hill with two other men. Important men, evidently - at least
that would be her guess based on their clothing - and by the way they are all waving about their arms,
she can only conclude that they are making important speeches as they walk.
There can be little doubt that this is Simon – or rather Michael Everlee, and he lives in