“Your slave is a poor ignorant Moorwoman, Beebee,” she replied, “and don’t understand such fine notions. What good would they be when you was dead? But it is fate, and it en’t for your slave to complain that you design to slay her as well. She has but to submit.”
“Pray,” said I, but feebly, for the warmth with which I had spoke had wearied me, “how can my persistence injure you?”
“Alas, Beebee! your slave has incurred the displeasure of Ally Verdy Cawn Begum, his Highness’s grandmother. Knowing that I was skilled in treating the sick, the Begum sent to me when I lived at Muxadavad for a medicine to cure a favourite slave-girl of some ailment. Unhappily the remedy fell into the hands of another slave—a rival of the young person in the good graces of the Princess—who mingled poison with it, and succeeded in effecting the death of the favourite. The unhappy event was attributed to me, and had I not fled precipitately to Calcutta, I had fallen a victim to the Begum’s resentment. You are carrying me back to Muxadavad, Beebee, and what can I look for but death? If you enjoyed the Nabob’s favour you might protect your slave, but resolved as you are to withstand him, there’s nothing but destruction for both of us. But it is my fate.”
She sat down again in her corner, and covered her head with her cloth, wailing to herself in a subdued manner, while I tossed and turned upon my bed, endeavouring to discover some means of saving the poor soul from sharing my destruction while maintaining my own punctilio.
“Misery,” I cried at last, “there’s no need for you to perish with me. The soldiers will surely permit you to walk on the deck, since you are their countrywoman, and you must seize your chance and slip on shore at some place we touch at. They won’t even perceive your absence if you are prudent.”
“Nay, Beebee,” said she, with a dogged air, “I was carried hither to attend upon you, and I’ll do it. If I am fated to die, die I must, but I won’t abandon the lady I have the honour to serve.”
And as though to show that the matter was put aside, she brought some water, and asked whether she should wash my face and dress my hair; but when this was done, and I found myself somewhat refreshed, she returned to her corner and her lamentations in the oddest and most resolved manner. I can’t be quite sure how the time passed after this, for I had a great deal of fever, but in the intervals of my disease, if Misery were not waiting upon me, which she did with a curious sort of skilfulness that I found very soothing to my aching frame, I heard her still bewailing herself. This did not add to my comfort, as my Amelia will guess, indeed it perturbed my spirits extremely; but I could not see that I was called upon to sacrifice myself for the sake of this unfortunate woman, even though ’twas her unaccountable fidelity to me that kept her from saving herself. Also, I must confess, I had sometimes the notion that she was endeavouring to work upon me to play the infamous part she had proposed, through my pity for her, but in this I did her an injustice, as you’ll perceive. I suffered more and more from the fever as the time went on, regaining my senses less frequently, and finding myself continually weaker, and this gradual decline served to suggest an expedient to Misery.
“Beebee,” she said to me, as she tried to make me drink some sort of broth she had brought in, “your slave would fain offer you her counsel.”
“Say on, Misery,” said I, too weary to do anything but wish she would be silent.
“Since you was pleased to reveal your lofty notions to your slave, Beebee, she has thought about them very often, and it seems to her that she has devised a plan by which it might be possible for you to escape the Nabob.”