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“And your uncle described that day to you? The day Roland Everlee was killed?”
Felix paused, perhaps uncertain of the word “described.” Rayley tried again.
“What did he tell you of that day?”
“Take children from house. Two. Wish to bring more but sword. Uncle tell me Sahib
Eberlee good man. Best white man.”
Ah, thought Rayley. And so this is how the two children survived the raid. “Your Uncle
Pulkit,” he said. “He brought the two white children back to Bombay?”
“Yes. Guns and fire everywhere. He put children in cart.”
***
“Well, that was quite the revelation,” Emma said, when Felix had been escorted from the
room by Davy to offer his fingerprints to the growing collection. “I thought no one survived
Cawnpore.”
“No white person survived Cawnpore,” Trevor said grimly. “I imagine quite a few of
the Indian rebels got away.”
“But Sang was with the English,” Emma said. “Servant to their highest ranking officer
and thus, to turn the phrase, playing for the wrong team. Why would the Indian rebels not have set
upon him too?”
Rayley leaned back in his chair. “I reread the reports of Cawnpore just last night. Quite
a few of the top ranking officers brought their menservants with them into battle. These fellows,
Sang, and the rest, must have occupied a strange perch. Dark skinned, Hindi, quite possibly with
friends and relatives among the rebels but still, just as Emma says, standing on the white side of the
divide.”
“Did your report mention what happened to any of these servants once the battle began?”
Tom asked. “I can imagine several scenarios. Perhaps some of the servants were killed beside their
masters. Others may have changed allegiance once they were engulfed and thus escaped. Or who
knows, there may have been plants for the rebellion among these menservants all along. That would
be rather a coup for the mutineers, would it not? To have spies posing as servants for the Raj?”
Rayley shook his head. “The report only mentioned them in passing and certainly shed
no light on their ultimate fate.”
“Another thing occurs to me,” said Trevor. “Every man of my generation was raised to
admire Roland Everlee. He was considered the very best of everything British, just as Felix said.
But exactly how did his legend begin? If every white Englishman at Cawnpore was slain, who
returned with the tale of Everlee’s great sacrifice?”
“Precisely what I was wondering last night,” Rayley said. “The stories were told, the
report said…which is all very well, but told by whom?”
“Are you suggesting it was Pulkit Sang?” Emma said, literally twisting in her seat with
excitement. “That the man who now lies dead in the Byculla Club kitchen was also the primary agent
of Roland Everlee’s near canonization? It seems bizarre that anyone in the Raj would even listen to
the account of an Indian servant, but who else could it have been?”
` “You were a grown woman at the time, Geraldine,” Trevor said. “How was the event
reported?”
“I only read the accounts of London newspapers, darling,” Geraldine said. “And you
know how they color the truth in search of a good story. Two children escaped. I don’t recall any
mention of how, or what might have happened to them later.”
“The baby boy was soon dead of cholera,” Rayley said. “And the girl was shipped to