Читать книгу Captured by Moonlight - Christine Lindsay - Страница 3

Amritsar, Northern India, Late October, 1921

If the head woman from the temple looked in her direction, Laine Harkness wouldn’t give two squashed mangoes for her life, or Eshana’s. Laine could never be confused for an Indian, but with the tail end of this cotton sari covering half her face, and her brown eyes peeking over, she simply had to blend in. Still, any minute now that hatchet-faced female standing guard to the girls’ quarters could let out a pulse-freezing yell.

A sudden blare of a conch shell from within the Hindu temple stretched Laine’s nerves. She and Eshana must be mad to risk this exploit again. The principal matron at Laine’s hospital would give her a severe reprimand if she ever found out. More likely sack her. If either she or Eshana had any sense at all, they’d turn around, go back to the mission, and mind their own business.

But a line from Wordsworth, one of Adam’s favorites, ran through her mind...little, nameless, unremembered acts of kindness and of love...

Blast! She wouldn’t call what she and Eshana were about to do little, but please let it be unremembered. Unnoticed would be better still.

Nudging Eshana in the side and closing her mind to the writhing creatures in the burlap bags they carried, she hissed into Eshana’s ear. “Well off you go. You’ve got yours to dispose of, and I’ve got mine. Just please keep that guard distracted.” Laine jutted her chin toward the obese head woman waddling around in a sari stained down the front with betel juice. Every once in a while she would take her long wooden club and rap on the doors of the hovels.

Eshana hurried through the narrow alleyway toward the guardian of the temple girls, carrying a burlap sack similar to Laine’s.

On the opposite side of the bazaar, the globelike spires of a temple devoted to a Hindu goddess poked above nearby rooftops. Like a multi-tiered cake decorated in a variety of colored icings—pinks, blues, orange—the temple enticed like a sugary concoction.

But from there the loveliness ended. In these alleyways behind the temple, the pervasive scent of incense and stale flowers mixed with the reek of human misery. Girls who should still be playing with toys, and some a little older, chatted with one another. Many of the paint-chipped doors were closed, imprisoning within those adolescent girls forced into ritual marriages to a Hindu deity.

Laine flattened herself against a peeling plaster wall to watch Eshana shake out the contents of her sack at the base of a cluster of clay pots. Now she waved her hands about, talking in rapid Hindi to the older woman. Good girl, Eshana, that’s the ticket. Laine’s stomach writhed in rhythm to the creature in the bag she carried. She strengthened her grip at the top of the sack though the drawstring had been tightly pulled.

Sure enough the head woman stomped off with Eshana and began to clatter around the pots with her club, giving Laine the moment she waited for. Sixth door from the end on this side, Eshana had told her. Eshana had been visiting the inhabitants of this alley on a regular basis in an attempt to give them some sort of medical aid.

Laine hunched down at the correct threshold. A gap of five or so inches between the door and the mud floor of the girl’s hovel afforded her the needed space.

The low voice of the so-called midwife seeped out. Midwife, my eye. Nothing more than witch doctors with their foolish notions that no water should be given to those giving birth and that the mothers be kept in dark rooms with filthy concoctions of ash smeared over them. Laine shut her mind to the atrocities of how they forced a baby out if it took too long to be delivered.

She kneeled at the bottom of the closed door. With a deep swallow and shudder, she slotted the top of the sack into the gap below the door. With her other hand she eased the drawstring, loosened the bag’s opening, and jumped back to flatten against the wall.

Another shudder rippled through her as she waited. Nothing. Her gaze flitted from the ground to the flat rooftops of this rancid boil of a place. Where had the horrible, disgusting creatures gone? Oh please don’t come out at me.

At last, screams from inside room number six shattered the sleepy deadness of the afternoon.

“Snake!” one woman screeched in Hindi.

Another cry pierced the air. “A cobra!”

They tumbled from the room, and with a gulp Laine slipped inside. “They’re not poisonous. They’re not poisonous,” she repeated to bolster her flagging courage. But she had no time to worry where the rat snakes had wriggled off to.

She went still. There lay the girl.

So small for fourteen, lying on a heap of rags stained with water and blood. She peered at Laine with eyes soaked with pain. There was no time to waste. Laine picked up the girl and, cradling her in her arms, ran from the hovel. The young mother weighed no more than a ten-year-old. All skin and bones except for the mound that was a baby in her womb. The girl batted at Laine’s arm as ineffectually as a wounded bird against a tiger.

Eshana, having heard the screams, scurried away from the women who were beating the bushes, searching through the earthen pots for the harmless snakes. Eshana ran ahead to help Laine lift the girl into the closed purdah cart they had hired. As soon as the three of them were in the cart, Eshana yelled, “Drive, juldi, juldi! Hurry.”

Their Sikh driver flicked a whip, and his startled horse bolted down the cobblestoned bazaar. No one followed them as stalls full of wares, bolts of silk, fruits and vegetables, copper pots of steaming food, and a multitude of people flashed past in a blur of color.

Laine placed her fingers on the girl’s pulse. “She’s dehydrated. Feel her skin, her fingertips.” She pulled back the girl’s eyelids. “Eyes dull.”

The patient pushed Laine’s hands away and moaned.

“It’s all right now, little one.” Laine spoke in Hindi. Lifting the girl’s wrist, she planted a kiss against the weakening pulse. “We’re not going to hurt you.”

The girl’s gaze tracked from Eshana to Laine’s while the purdah cart wound through the streets to the other side of Amritsar. Her eyelids drooped and closed by the time the cart stopped outside the narrow, four-story mission close to the Jallianwalla Bagh.

Mala and Tikah thrust the front doors open and carried out a cot. Within minutes they transported the patient into the surgery where they were met with the clean smell of carbolic soap. As Eshana and Laine washed their hands, Mala hooked the girl up to a saline drip while Tikah bathed her with a warm soapy cloth allowing them to see her pallid skin beneath its applied layer of ash. Laine pinned her nursing veil to her hair.

Eshana tightened the blood pressure cuff on the patient’s arm. “Her pressure is dangerously low.”

The girl fluttered her eyes open to see the sterile clinic and instruments. With a pleading look she tried to speak. Laine brushed the girl’s hair from her forehead. “We only want to help you and your baby. Just tell me your name.”

“Chandrabha,” the girl choked out.

“All right then, I’m going to call you Chandra for short, and now I’m going to examine you. Don’t be afraid.”

~*~

Half an hour later, as the last of the afternoon sun faded, so too did Eshana’s hope. Drenched in sweat and the girl’s blood, she watched Laine step away from the examining table.

“No use, Eshana. The pelvis is too small. We have to get a doctor.”

Eshana sank her head into her hand. “There is only Dr. Kaur. He is very kind, but I do not wish to involve him.”

“If we don’t involve him she’ll die. If she does die, then we’ll need him to record her death properly.” Laine’s matter-of-fact tone matched the steadiness in her gaze. “And you and I could go to jail.”

Eshana gave a firm jut of her chin. “What of it? If Miriam still lived, she would do all she could for the life of this girl. I will go.”

Tikah glanced up from bathing the girl’s brow. “It will be well, my sister. Go, and bring the doctor. Mala and I will assist the nursing-sahiba.”

Chandra gave a weak moan. The saline had rehydrated her body so that she had gained only enough strength to communicate her pain. There was no time to lose. Eshana rushed from the room and quickly changed into a clean garment. Whipping the end of her cotton sari over her head, she raced out of the mission. Lord Yeshu, keep the temple woman from remembering my face. Do not let them come here to hurt the people of this house.

Dr. Jai Kaur’s office lay two streets away, and Eshana’s thin-soled chappals pounded the cobblestones. She bumped into several people and pushed her way through the crowded bazaar. Her chest burned as she tried to catch her breath and opened the door to his clinic.

Patients sat cross-legged or hunched down against the walls waiting, but Jai Kaur shot her a glance as she stumbled into the room.

He left the patient he had been examining behind a curtain, strode toward Eshana, and towered over her. “What is it?”

“A girl in labor. She is dying.” Eshana’s hand crept to her throat to settle her breathing.

Jai turned away to wash his hands and spoke to someone behind another curtain. “Father, I will leave you to see the rest of the patients. I must attend an emergency birthing.”

Hooks screeched along the metal rod as Jai’s father, Dr. Kaur Senior, pushed aside the curtain. Beneath his red turban, the man’s heavy-lidded gaze swept Eshana then rested on Jai. “Your responsibilities, my son, are with our own patients.” He modulated his voice low for the sake of the people filling the room.

Jai met the older man’s gaze. Like his father, in the custom of the Sikhs he had combed his un-cut black beard and rolled it beneath his chin. He had meticulously tied his royal blue turban around his head, adding several more inches to his imposing height. “Father, I have already ascertained that no one in this room is requiring emergency care. I will return as soon as this other life is out of danger. Is that not why you had me follow in your footsteps? To give aid to those who are suffering, no matter what their faith?”

The senior Dr. Kaur slashed a hand in the air. “Go then. But hurry back. It is most likely this woman is trying to save the life of another of those temple girls, who are no more than harlots. Disgusting, this Devadasi, a Hindu practice that is a terrible blight on India.”

Eshana understood his Sikh revulsion for this particular Hindu custom, but felt that his distaste included her too. Jai did not waste another moment. He picked up his medical valise and strode from the clinic. She had to run to catch up with his long strides as he struck out for the mission.

Unlike her, Jai breathed normally in spite of his pace. “Is this patient a temple girl?”

“The suffering of this human being is no different than any other.”

He stopped suddenly so that she had to turn back to face him. People filed past them in the bee-hive of a bazaar. “So it is true. I can see it in your eyes. You were never meant for subterfuge, Eshana.” He picked up his pace again. “I have no qualms about helping anyone who needs my services. But you must take a care for yourself. I am worrying about you and the other women of your mission. It has been a year and a half since your founder, Miriam, died, with still no administrator to fill her place.”

She pushed her chin out in a way her beloved Miriam would have recognized. “I have written to the mission headquarters. I see no reason why they should not consider me as administrator to carry on Miriam’s work.”

Jai must have seen something in the unbending set of her neck. He softened his tone. “The mission headquarters would do wisely to place you in that role. But do you not still desire to become a physician?”

Memories of sitting with Miriam at the top of the four-story house pulled at the strings of her heart. Many times they had sat mending clothing in the evenings while the houseful of orphans and patients slept. Many nights they had discussed Eshana’s desire to become a doctor, and prayed for that. But Miriam had died. Eshana shook off the memories. “I cannot be leaving the mission to study medicine. Besides, the women of our house have learned much from Laine Harkness. And if we need a doctor you have been gracious to come to our aid.”

His eyes as black as agates grew somber. “I cannot always come, Eshana. Someone in your mission needs to gain proper medical training.”

“As I have said, I must keep the mission running.” She turned her back to him, straight as a ruler, as her mother so long ago had taught her, and renewed her steps.

His swift paces caught up to her. “What will you do, Eshana, if the Hindu priests and certain high-caste people learn of what you are doing, that this is not the first untouchable female you have taken away, but the second? Your charitable work could come under scrutiny.”

She let her gaze drop from his piercing one. Jai was right, of course. Miriam’s mission could come under scrutiny. Did she have the right to place the mission—the children—in such danger? Or worse than scrutiny, what if one night a Hindu fanatic who believed her actions showed no respect for their religion entered the house as the children slept?