A Christmas Garland Read Online Free PDF

felt. He believed he had seen real desperation there, the kind a man has when truth is on his side.
    How could Narraway even begin? If Tallis was innocent—and that was the only assumption he could work with—then either someone was intentionally lying, presumably in order to protect himself, or someone had been badly mistaken, gotten the facts wrong. Check everything—that was the only workable possibility, Narraway decided. It would at least provide him with his own set of details. Stand where each man said they had been, prove for himself that they had seenwhat they said they had, time it all, go over the work they claimed to have been doing. Find the mistakes, the excuses, or the lies.
    He turned and headed back through the trees toward the town.
    The events of the mutiny were about a year old. It had begun in January, in Dum Dum. Almost every day since then there had been some new disaster, victory and then reversal, siege and relief, a new uprising somewhere else. How ridiculous to be trying one soldier for the death of one guard in the middle of Cawnpore while all over northern India, tens of thousands of men shot and slashed and stabbed one another.
    He looked around at the officers’ sprawling houses, with their verandas; their wide, scruffy gardens; the tamarind and mango trees, the lazy wind not stirring the leaves. In the summer the heat had been furnace-like, brutal. Now, at night, it was sometimes even cold.
    He was not fighting with sword or rifle, although that would come soon enough. Scores of towns and cities were besieged or already fallen. This was only a respite.
    In the meantime, as this day dwindled into nothing and disappeared, Narraway must prepare for the hopeless task of pretending to defend John Tallis, for which everyone would despise him, in spite of the fact that they knew he had no choice. He was cast as the second villain in a charade.
    He increased his pace a little. He would speak with the witnesses Busby would be bound to call. That had to be the three men who answered the alarm and found Chuttur Singh dying on the floor in a pool of his own blood, and Dhuleep Singh gone.
    He was walking past one of the rows of houses where various noncommissioned officers had their homes. They were all built of brick coated with white plaster, in various degrees of shabbiness. Verandas ran around three sides of each one, a flight of half a dozen or so steps leading up to the doors. They each stood separately in their own arid two or three acres, as if space was no object at all.
    Narraway knew what they were like inside. The main door led into a wide, comfortless sitting room full of overused furniture—items that looked like they hadbeen salvaged from a secondhand sale and intended only for temporary use, until something worthier could be found.
    On either side would be smaller rooms, for beds, and one for a bath. The water for it, when needed, was left to cool outside in a row of large, porous red jars, so the officer’s bath might be refreshing.
    He looked back at the road and saw ahead of him a woman walking slowly. She had a small child in her arms and a large bundle of shopping carried in a string bag, its handles biting into her shoulder. She was bent under the weight of it and limping slightly, although from what he could see of her slender figure, she was not many years older than he.
    Narraway increased his pace and caught up with her.
    “Ma’am!” he said more loudly than he had meant to.
    She halted and turned slowly. Her face was gaunt, and there were smudges of dirt where the child’s dusty fingers had touched her cheek, but her skin was smooth, blemishless.
    “Yes?” she said without curiosity. There was anxiety in her eyes, a shadow not unlike fear.
    “May I carry the bag for you?” he asked. “I’m goingthe same way you are. Please?” he added. He smiled at her. “My day has been fairly useless so far. I’d like to do something to make it better.”
    She smiled at him,