Voices in the Night

by Flora Annie Webster Steel

So Noormahal watched the child's least movement day and night, and Khâdjee wrote the attributes of God for the paper pills, while Khôjee worked her old fingers sore, or tramped about openly to do the marketing. But no matter how pressed for time she was, no matter how far from home, her old hands or feet hurried up, so that they should be free for another task at sunset; a task which, so long as they had had a servant, had never been omitted, and must not be omitted now--must never be omitted so long as these crumbling walls and the wide empty courtyard held the heir to a Kingship. And this task was the sounding of the naubut from the gateway where the stucco peacocks still spread their plaster tails.

In the old days, this ceremony of sounding the royal kettledrums as a sign that majesty lived within, had been quite an imposing one. Then, a posse of liveried servants and soldiers had gone up into the naubat khana, and whacked away at a whole row of slung kettledrums, and blared away at the royal nakârahs, until all the city knew that sunset had found the King still on his throne. But for some years back it had been very different; a half-hearted apologetic drubbing on one dilapidated drum, a breathless blowing of an uncertain horn had been all. And now, when only one poor tired old woman limped up the broken stairs, it was a very feeble claim to royalty, indeed, that echoed into the courtyard below, though Khôjee drummed valiantly for all she could, and blew her withered cheeks plump as a cherub's over the nakârah. Feeble as it was, however, it could be heard, and it brought comfort even to Noormahal's hungry heart; for it meant that the child was still on his throne at sunset. And that was all the world to those lonely women, shut up inconceivably, helplessly, from all hope, almost from all desire for help from that outside world, into which only Aunt Khôjee ventured at times timorously; and only to return poorer, more helpless than she went out.

Once, however, when--at the risk of a fit of hysterics, which might incapacitate Aunt Khâdjee from even the writing of paper pellets--Khôjee had persuaded her to allow the little knot of silver earrings without which no court lady could be considered decently clothed, to pay a temporary visit to the pawnbroker, Khôjee had come back from that outside world with a new look of hope on her face.

A piece of luck had befallen her. She had met, quite by chance, an old servant of her mother's, who, when the court had been broken up, had taken service as ayah with the mems. And this old dame happened to have in her possession a priceless European medicine for just such delicate children as Sa'adut.

A mem had given it to her, she said, when her child needed it no more. She did not add that the child, despite the Brand's essence of beef and the care of three doctors, had wasted away into its grave quite as quickly as Sa'adut was doing with neither, and that the unopened tins had been part of her perquisites when the stricken parents had sought distraction from grief in three months' leave. She only said that they were worth rupees on rupees, but that Khôjee might have them for three, because it was for the little Heir. So the patient bent figure and the limp had come back to that cot set in the sunshine, with the feeling that now, at last, the child who lay among the faded cushions of state must pick up strength, since all the world knew that whatever faults the Huzoors had, they were clever doctors--all too clever perhaps!

But there could be no danger of poison here. This was the actual medicine a mem had given her own child. This must be the real thing. Still, to make sure, they continued the paper pellets, since Mercy and Truth, and Justice and Charity must counteract any nefarious intent!

Even with this mixed diet of the East and West, of essence of faith and essence of beef, Sa'adut gained nothing. He continued to lose, though the women refused to see it.

For the courtyard was still quiet. Perhaps once or twice a day some gad-about neighbour in passing would look in, and for half an hour or so after she had left, Noormahal's big brooding black eyes would be on the door of the women's courtyard, with a fierce fear in them. The fear lest she should see the shadow of another new-comer on the angled brick screen before the door; the screen built on purpose to show such warning shadows. In other words, the fear that those strange eyes should have thought it worth while to send other eyes to look on a sight that would not be long seen, either in sunshine or shadow.

But the stillness would remain unbroken, and her gaze would go back to Sa'adut, ready for her to smile assent when he should smile up at her and say, 'Look! Amma-jân,' because he had managed to jam the ring hard and fast over some combination of fingers.

The days and nights were cloudless, the air kindly and warm, and in the silence which comes with the darkness--even to a large town when there is no wheeled traffic in it, and the footsteps of men have ceased from going up and down the city--the only sound which came to disturb the courtyard was the shriek of the railway whistle,--an almost incredible sound in that environment.