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London, far away from this dusty and inconsequential place. Oxford, Covant Gardens, Savile Row,
even the Houses of Parliament…the components of her brother’s city life mean very little to her.
They are nothing but pictures in a book she’s seen once or twice, places that she understands to be
centers of power. Men’s power, white power, English power. The shrieking baby thrown so
carelessly into a cart thirty-two years ago has grown into a man of influence, one declared to have a
promising future.
She tilts her head and considers the figure above her. He is walking up the hill with a
surprisingly slow and unsteady gait for one so young. She wonders if she likes him. He is the only
true relative she has in the world and her heart surprised her by leaping at the first sight of him. His
face is strangely familiar – not just from the pictures he has studied in the Weaver household, but also
because it prompts memories of her father. A face once only dimly recalled, but now the indulgent
smile of her dear Da comes back to her in a rush, and she is suddenly weak, clutching the
insubstantial cloth wall of the tent in an effort to steady herself.
The men are almost up the hill. They are climbing, it would appear, to the heart of the
ruins, to the infamous well which now bears a plaque in honor of Roland Everlee. Roland Everlee,
the hero of Cawnpore, the man her brother believes is his father. A thought occurs to her and for a
moment it gives her pause. It would seem that of the two of them, Michael is the one who was given
everything, but she does have one thing which he likely, for all his fine clothes and fashionable
houses, will never possess.
She has the truth.
Her hands steal down her sides, the palms running over her rough clothing. The money
waits in one pocket. The glass dropper waits in another. Her fingers close resolutely around it, her
thumb running nervously over the rubber plug. She must not grow sentimental. She must not fall
down her own well of memory, for she has other business here in Cawnpore. Serious business.
She must confront her blackmailer and finish this, once and for all.
***
“That is it?” Michael Everlee asked, his voice flat with disbelief. For the famed well of
Cawnpore looked precisely like any other well.
“Here is the plaque,” said the old man from the Byculla Club, some chap named Norton
who had yammered incessantly as they had made their slow climb up the unreliable steps. He said it
eagerly and pointed a shaky finger toward a brass plaque, already dulled by dust.
“Indeed,” said Everlee, looking about. The well had been engulfed in a snarl of green
vines, which had grown up from the center and spilled down the sides. It resembles a hand, he
thought. A long-fingered green hand reaching out from below the earth to choke everything within
sight.
“Are the bodies…” Everlee asked weakly, and then broke off. The other two men
looked at him expectantly. They were both older, but he supposed he surpassed them socially and that
is why they held back in respectful silence. Or perhaps they mistook this shiver of fear that had
overtaken him for a deeper emotion. Grief, most likely, or nostalgia for a man he had never known.
“Are the bodies of the victims still in the well?” Everlee finally managed. “Or were
they removed?”
“Oh, extricated and given a proper Christian burial, of course,” Norton said in
confidence, although Seal had begun talking at the same time.
“My understanding is that this is a burial site as well as a shrine,” he was saying, before
he broke awkwardly off in deference to the older man.