The Elephant Keeper's Daughter Read online

  “Superb!” Charles exclaimed. “Gather the engineers. Before the explosion takes place, I want one final camp meeting.” He trotted away on his horse without paying any further attention to his brother.

  “This road would be a great achievement if only you could build it without destroying so many people in the process,” murmured Henry.

  Eranga stood with Siddhi at the edge of the blast area and looked at the enormous boulder. He wanted to see as much as possible of the explosion. Over the weeks spent on the construction site, he had witnessed one or two lesser blasts. It fascinated him to see how a handful of black dust and a flame could shatter huge rocks to smithereens, and he wanted to know everything about this magical phenomenon.

  If we’d had this gunpowder in Uva, we’d have won the battle and Kanda Uda Pas Rata would be a free kingdom today, he thought. He wondered whether he should try to steal some. But he swiftly dismissed that thought from his mind. The British guarded their munitions aggressively, and he would only expose the village and its inhabitants to danger if the theft came to light. The old Kanda Uda Pas Rata had perished and would never rise again, even if he stole a whole barrel of explosives.

  The piercing warning bugle sounded, first once, then twice. Engineers lit the fuses. Eranga smiled to himself as they ran like rabbits.

  Siddhi snorted in agitation. She knew to associate the sound of the bugle with a huge bang. As all the elephants on the site were afraid of explosions, the mahouts had to secure their front and back legs to stop them fleeing in panic. During the explosion, they always stood close by their animals to calm them.

  From the folds of his sarong, Eranga took a piece of flatbread, saved from breakfast, and offered it to Siddhi. The elephant, however, ignored this tasty tidbit and tossed her head back and forth restlessly. Eranga saw the fear in her eyes and hummed soothingly as the fuses hissed and burned. The flame arrived at the blast holes. There was a deafening crack and bang as the gunpowder caught. The enormous boulder shattered into countless pieces, and a mighty dust cloud rose, splinters of stone flying in all directions.

  The elephants let out piercing sounds as their mahouts struggled to soothe them. Siddhi ripped up chunks of undergrowth and tossed them in the air. Eranga placed the flats of his hands across her broad chest to pacify her and hummed a gentle melody.

  Once the dust had subsided, Charles went first to one engineer, then the other, thanking them with a handshake. The bugle sounded again, signaling the end of the danger. The mahouts and elephants were now to drag the biggest and heaviest pieces of broken rock out of the roadbed. Eranga loosened Siddhi’s foot bindings and checked that her harness was sitting properly. Then he led her to the crater created by the explosion. Intrigued, he peered down into the pit, as deep as a man is tall. The sides dropped down steeply. Its base was covered with gravel and rocks that had broken away. The gravel shone with moisture, showing that the groundwater here was close to the surface. A hefty boulder rested on an angular granite ledge which, before the explosion, had been hidden in the ground, and its other end projected above the edge of the hole. Eranga studied the boulder. It was big and heavy, but Siddhi would be able to drag it out of the hole. He decided to run a rope along the length of the boulder and create a strap. But first he needed help raising the stone with poles so that he could run the rope beneath it. He called over two men from the village, and together they set to work. Just as he had fixed the rope to Siddhi’s harness, Charles sauntered over.

  “Time to show us what your elephant can really do, widan,” he said in the mix of languages Eranga had learned to follow. “I’m going to watch the show from down below.” He squatted, then slid down the crater wall.

  Eranga positioned himself by Siddhi’s head and rubbed the ankus against her shoulder. “Daha! Forward!”

  Siddhi’s muscles tensed as she bent her powerful body forward, her back curving with the effort. She took one small step, leaned into the harness again, and took the next. The boulder shifted and started slowly to slide forward.

  “You’re doing well,” Eranga encouraged the elephant. “Daha, daha. You’re nearly there!”

  Just then Charles shouted, “Stop!”

  “Ho, ho,” Eranga ordered Siddhi reluctantly.

  The elephant shook her head in frustration. She could feel the weight of the stone and knew she hadn’t completed her task. Eranga praised her and stroked her trunk. Then he went to the edge of the pit and looked at the Englishman.

  Charles’s head and shoulders were hidden behind the huge rock linked to Siddhi’s harness, so only his body was visible. Odell’s hands appeared to be scratching at the ground. Eranga could hear scraping noises, and small stones and lumps of earth came flying over the crater edge. Then Charles’s head came into view. “Give me that elephant stick of yours!”

  Eranga handed him the ankus. Charles vanished once more behind the rock, and Eranga heard scraping sounds.

  “How long will your investigation take, sir?” he asked. “It is tiring for Siddhi to sustain the weight of the stone all this time.”

  Charles’s head popped up once more. “Loosen the strap. No further work is to be done here.” He threw the ankus over the edge of the crater and clambered up behind it.

  Eranga stared at him.

  “Did you hear?” snorted Charles. “Disappear with your elephant. The work here is over.” He hurried away.

  Eranga shook his head in annoyance that Siddhi had been made to work so hard for naught. On top of this, he had to use a knife to cut through the rope attached to her harness, because it had been pulled so tight, he couldn’t undo the knot. Once the huge rock at last slid back onto its granite ledge, the elephant fell forward with a little puff of relief. Eranga turned and saw Charles giving orders all over the site for work to cease. He then called all his engineers together. When the British had gone inside their meeting tent, Eranga went to the edge of the crater and squinted. What on earth had Odell seen down there?

  Two weeks later the construction work was running at full capacity again. The sound of axes echoed through the jungle, interspersed with agonizing cracks and crunches as yet another giant of the primeval forest toppled. Eranga watched as the trunk of an ancient tamarind split and snapped. The moment the tree hit the ground, the workers started hacking off the boughs, and Eranga helped drag them to the side of the forest path.

  When only the stripped trunk was left on the ground, Eranga guided Siddhi to its end and got the harness ropes into position. He wondered yet again why Odell had decided to change the course of the road after the blasting of that huge boulder. The abandoned section was nearly a mile long, and as useless and ugly as a scar. The new route no longer went west to Colombo but through the jungle, a good way northwest of the original plan.

  This change worried Eranga deeply. As the work progressed, it became ever clearer to him that the road would lead straight to Mapitigama. He knew the major would give no consideration to a small Sinhalese village in the path of his road.

  As he placed the rope around the end of the tree trunk and secured it to Siddhi’s harness, Eranga thought about Charles’s justification for the change. He’d claimed that the ground revealed by the blast had turned out to be predominantly granite and, consequently, was far too hard for excavation and leveling.

  On the same day, the engineers had marked out the first section of the new route. Then clearance work had started and was now speeding toward Mapitigama. Eranga calculated that in a week, ten days at the most, they would reach his ancestral village.

  When he had harnessed Siddhi, he noticed Charles was riding along the pathway.

  On impulse, Eranga hurried to meet him, waving his arms to attract attention. “A word with you, sir?”

  “What do you want, man?” Charles rode right up to Eranga, reining in only at the last moment.

  But Eranga did not flinch, and his voice was steady when he spoke. “The new road, sir. If it takes this course, it will pass straight through our village.”<
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  “What’s your village to do with me?”

  “These people live there; it is our home. If you continue to build in this direction, we’ll lose everything: our houses, our fields, our spice trees.”

  “For heaven’s sake. You’ll just have to build your houses and dig your fields somewhere else. Now get out of my way. I have no time for such nonsense.” Charles brought his heels to his horse’s flanks.

  But Eranga swiftly stepped in, grabbing the reins.

  “Are you insane?” Foaming with rage, Charles raised his riding crop, but Eranga stood firm.

  “At least think of our Bodhi tree, living residence of souls and gods. To chop it down would bring bad karma on us all, on you!”

  “Do you know how little I care about your stupid tree?” Charles jerked at the reins, but Eranga held them with an iron grip.

  “You cannot build the new road through Mapitigama, sir. It will bring great misfortune.”

  “Go away and take your superstitions with you,” growled Charles. “And get back to work or I’ll cut your rations.” He dug his heels in, and the horse shot forward, its shoulder knocking Eranga to the ground.

  Stunned, he lay there for several seconds. Then he struggled to his feet. He would defend his village and its sacred tree. He’d seen granite blasted with gunpowder time and again. The Englishman was lying; it wasn’t too hard. If Eranga wanted to save his village and the tree, then he had to find out why the road was being rerouted.

  That night Eranga lay awake on his makeshift bed of palm leaves and listened to the sounds around him in the darkness. He heard the snorts of elephants tethered nearby, the breaths of sleeping men, the gentle scurrying of rodents in the undergrowth, and, in the distance, the muted voices of two British soldiers on watch.

  When the moon, looking like a great golden fruit, rose out of the jungle, Eranga sat up cautiously. For a moment his thoughts drifted longingly to his village, where the remaining women and elders would be celebrating tonight beneath the Bodhi tree. Binara Poya was the celebration of the full moon in the seventh month of their calendar, the ninth month of the British calendar. It was likely that a monk had come from a hidden forest monastery and was there, telling stories from the life of the Enlightened One. The villagers would be sitting before him on the ground, listening attentively, praying, and meditating.

  Eranga put his palms flat against his forehead, closed his eyes, and breathed deeply. If he wanted the people of his village to celebrate Binara Poya beneath the Bodhi tree in the years to come, then he needed to reflect hard on his plan.

  He reached for his oil lamp and an earthenware bowl in which he had concealed, under some dried moss, a piece of glowing charcoal stolen from the cooking fire. When he stood up, his muscles were stiff, and his bones ached from the relentless daily labor. He suppressed the pain and slipped silently away. When he reached the chatting guards, he snuck past unnoticed.

  Without making a sound, Eranga moved parallel to the new course of the road, through the jungle, guided only by the fractured light of the moon through the trees. When he eventually stepped out of the forest, he saw before him the junction leading to Odell’s new route. He looked around carefully, then bent low and moved swiftly to the blast crater. He looked over his shoulder to check that nobody had followed. Then he squatted down and slid into the black hole itself. Water had accumulated in the bottom, so Eranga splashed in up to his calves. Using the piece of charcoal, he lit his lamp’s cocoa-fiber wick, and soon a small but bright light illuminated the crater. Eranga shone the light around the pit but saw nothing unusual. He bent down, scooped a handful of gravel out of the water, and held it to the lamp. In the light of the flame, the little stones glinted. Eranga placed the lamp on the protruding granite slab and let the little stones run through his fingers. Sometimes he would hold on to one, look at it hard, and then let it drop back into the water. Then he took another small stone, scrutinized it, and put it in a little bag he had concealed in the folds of his sarong. What he saw in the dancing lantern light transformed his suspicion into certainty. Now it was clear to him why the major had altered the course of the road. But how should he use that knowledge to save the village and the Bodhi tree?

  Some small rocks gently clattered behind Eranga as they rolled down the crater wall and softly plunked into the water. He whipped around, knocking over the lamp. With every muscle tensed, he curled like a wild cat ready to strike its prey and listened hard in the impenetrable black of night.

  Chapter Eight

  September 1822

  “Higher, Grandma, higher!”

  Little Thambo giggled on the swing Eranga had hung from the mango tree in Anshu’s garden. His playmates hopped about with excitement as they eagerly awaited their turn. Anshu did as he asked, and she smiled as her grandson shrieked delightedly and waved his little feet with glee.

  That smile faded the moment she saw the horseman. He was an Englishman, just like the rider who, more than two full moons ago, had taken away all the men from the village. But this man was not a solider. He wore jodhpurs and boots, a dark jacket, and a broad-brimmed hat pulled low over his eyes. Anshu looked frantically for a weapon but saw nothing. She stopped the swing, lifted her grandson off, and transferred the child to her hip. With her free hand, she shooed the other children.

  “Run home now! Quickly, quickly!”

  With reluctance, the children toddled away but not far, as they did not want to miss anything.

  The Englishman reined in his horse. “Ayubowan,” he said in greeting.

  “Ayubowan, stranger,” replied Anshu hesitantly. No Englishman had ever greeted her with courtesy, not in his own language and certainly never in her own.

  The stranger looked at her for some time. Then he bowed and said, “I didn’t expect us to meet again.”

  Anshu studied the Englishman, and slowly his face brought back images of the day that changed everything forever. Here in front of her was the man who had saved her youngest daughter’s life. But did that mean she could trust him? An Englishman?

  “What do you want?” she said, her voice flat.

  He smiled kindly. “How are you and your children?”

  He must mean Samitha and Mihiri. The commander had ordered his removal before the soldiers had raped Mihiri to death. And he couldn’t have known Phera was her daughter. Anshu was relieved that Samitha and Phera were out pulling weeds in the rice field.

  “Is that your grandson?” continued the Englishman. He winked at Thambo, who was gazing wide-eyed at the horse.

  Anshu nodded warily and held the child closer.

  Henry sighed. “You do not wish to speak to me. I fully understand. I ought to introduce myself: My name is Henry Odell. I am surgeon to the Fifteenth Infantry Regiment and am the doctor accompanying the new-road construction work.” He paused to remove his hat. His voice took on a solemn tone. “What happened then, in Uva, was appalling. My brother should never have incited his soldiers to such barbaric behavior. And the execution of your husband and the other man was a crime.”

  Anshu listened in shock. His brother? Was the only Englishman who had objected to the atrocities against her people really the brother of the monster who had given the orders?

  How can two people as different as day from night be born to the same mother? she thought, shaken to the core.

  “Grandma?” Thambo’s little voice pulled her from this numbness. “What’s that?” He was pointing at Henry’s mount. Instinct made her put her hand on the back of his head, and she drew his face protectively toward her chest.

  “A ‘horse,’” she replied, setting him down. “Now go on with your friends.” But the little boy clung to her sari and whined, pointing at the fascinating animal.

  “Be a good boy, Thambo.” She nudged him gently away. Reluctantly, he stomped off, his face crumpling, near to tears.

  Henry watched him go. “How old is the boy?”

  She ignored this, too, and asked again, “What do you want, stranger?
”

  Henry turned his attention back to Anshu. “Where can I find the village leader’s family?”

  She hesitated again, then said, “You can talk to me. Our widan was associated with my husband all his life.”

  “Well, in that case—” Henry took a deep breath. “Sadly, I do not bring good news. Your village leader is dead.”

  Anshu’s face showed only disbelief. “Dead? How—?”

  “This morning he was found lifeless at his elephant’s feet. Numerous wounds cover his head and body. It seems the animal was restless overnight, and he went to calm it. The elephant must have attacked him.”

  Anshu narrowed her eyes. Elephants did occasionally kill humans, but it was usually a bull in the rutting season or an animal previously beaten and maltreated. For Eranga, elephants were divine creatures worthy of the utmost respect. And Siddhi loved him almost as much as she did Phera. That the cow elephant had attacked Eranga was, in Anshu’s eyes, out of the question. But why should she explain that to an Englishman who understood nothing of elephants and the significance they held for her people? So all she said was: “I shall arrange for the widan and the elephant to be brought home. He must be cremated.”

  “It’s not as simple as that,” responded Henry. “The animal won’t let anybody near it or the body. Even though it’s tethered, it tries to attack anyone who gets close enough. I need a mahout who knows the animal and how to deal with it. My brother has given me until this evening to find one, or he will shoot the elephant.”

  “No!” Anshu cried. “Do you British murder everything that goes against your wishes?”

  “Not in my case,” said Henry. “Would I be here looking for a mahout if I didn’t want the elephant to live?”

  Anshu’s head spun. There was one mahout: Phera. But the thought of her daughter being anywhere near the evil commander made her stomach clench. On the other hand, Phera would never forgive her mother if she didn’t have the chance to save Siddhi.