So she leaned against the wheel and watched the pattern of dancers in the orange light of the bonfires, and the huge oval of faces, and the sudden fountain of curling sparks that erupted when a log collapsed. Neena came out of the dark and sat beside her.
“Are you happy, Nicky?”
“No, I don’t think so. I don’t know. I ought to be, but I’m not.”
“What do you want?”
“I don’t know that either.”
“We’ve been talking about you.”
“Yes, I noticed.”
“We think it’s time we tried to get you back to your own family.”
“Please don’t talk about it. Please!”
“No, listen, Nicky. Mr. Maxie’s cousin is a sailor at Dover. Mr. Maxie sent a message to him and he heard the answer yesterday. Ever since . . . since all these changes happened, boats have been going over to France, ferrying people away. Millions of people have gone. And the French have set up offices all along the coast, where they take everybody’s name very carefully. The French are good at that sort of thing. It may take a little while, but in the end they will find your parents for you, and all this will become just like a dream, or a story that Ajeet tells.”
“But why should anyone take me to France? What can I do in exchange?”
“We will pay them.”
“But no one’s got any money, not any more.”
“The smallest of my mother’s rings would buy a fishing boat ten times over. And she would give every jewel she owns to make you happy, Nicky. I sometimes think she loves you more than any of her own children or grandchildren. It is strange, is it not, how sometimes a soul will speak to a soul across language, across the generations, across every difference of race and birth and breeding.”
Neena spoke some sentences of Punjabi. Nicky knew enough to understand that she was translating what she had just said. Nicky put up her hand and felt the other hand take it, felt the hard, cold knuckles and the harder rings.
“Mr. Maxie’s cousin will come and fetch you next week,” said Neena. “He will see you safely right out to the middle of the Channel, where the big ships wait and the madness ends. Mrs. Sallow insists that she will go with you as far as the sea, so that you are not among strangers.”
“I don’t want to go,” said Nicky. “I daren’t.” “But why? You have dared and adventured much more terrible things. This should not frighten you.” “It’s not that kind of fright. It’s ... I don’t want to explain.”
Neena spoke quietly in Punjabi, and there was a short silence.
“Nick-ke,” said the old voice above her head. “Ai?” said Nicky.
The old lady began to speak, her voice dry and quiet, like the sound of a snake rustling across hot rocks in her own far country. This time it was she who spoke in short sentences, so that Neena could translate.
“Nicky, you are in danger. It is not the sort of danger we have fought through this last year. It is inside you. We have been in bad times. We have all had to be hard and fierce. But you have made yourself harder and fiercer than any of us, even than us Sikhs. In bad times you have to wear armor around your heart, but when times are better you must take it off. Or it becomes a prison for your soul. You grow to the shape of it, as a tortoise grows to the shape of its shell. Nicky, you must go to a place where you can take your armor off. That place is your parents’ hearth.”
Nicky felt a chill in her bones which was not the chill of the night air. The small smithy under her ribs started its hammering, and in her mind’s eye she saw the iron doll topple, grinning and jointless from his huge horse.
“How did you know about the armor?” she whispered.
Neena translated, and the old lady’s cackling laugh surprised the night. Then the snake-rustling sentences began again.
“I was married when I was twelve. To a man I had never seen. It was the custom of our people. I loved my parents and my brothers and sisters and our happy house, and then I was taken away from them. I too put armor around my heart. But I was luckier than you, Nicky, for my husband — oh, how old he seemed — was kind and patient and clever. He made a place, a world, in which I wanted to take my armor off.”
“Perhaps they’re dead,” said Nicky.
“Perhaps they are not. Perhaps you will not find them. Who can say? But until you have tried to find them you will make yourself stay hard and fierce. That is the danger of which I spoke. It is in your nature to become like that for ever.”
And that was true. Nicky knew that her kinship with the robber knight went deeper than the armor, deeper than the glorious wash of victory she had felt on the morning of the battle. Yes, she must go. But still she felt reluctant.
“Must I go so soon?” she said. “Next week is . . .”
“You must go now,” said Neena decisively. “We have not talked to the village about this, but we think that all this island is closing in on itself. Soon they will have forgotten about how to get people away; they will have forgotten about France. We must expect difficult times.”
“Then I ought to stay and help you,” said Nicky obstinately.
“No, We have learnt to be careful. We will survive and prosper. If you ever come back, you will probably find that Jagindar is an earl. Nicky, you don’t have to go. We all love you here, and we should like you to stay, out of our own selfishness. But we think you should try to go to your family.”
Nicky made up her mind, as usual, in one irrevocable rush.
“Yes,” she said. “Yes, I will go. But perhaps one of you could come with me as far as the sea. Kewal or Uncle Chacha or Mr. Surbans Singh.”
Neena sighed in the dark, and Nicky could hear the rustle of her sari as her shoulders made the familiar shrug.
“It would be nice, Nicky, but it would not be safe. Outside these few fields we are still the Devil’s Children.”