A Question of Honor Read Online Free Page B

almost as soon as I’d learned to speak English. My ayah, my nurse, had been a Hindu, the porter at our gate Muslim, and our majordomo, nearly as tall as my father, was a gray-bearded Sikh. I’d absorbed their culture along with their dialect without even trying, much to the horror of my proper English governess.
    Kneeling beside the stretcher, I spoke to the man in Hindi, and his eyes flew open, gazing up at me with such relief, I was glad I’d come to him.
    Clutching my hand as if it were a shield against the approaching darkness, he began to speak, rapidly and carefully, as though reporting to his English officers. I listened in dismay, then made a promise I hoped I could keep.
    “I will find a way.”
    He thanked me with an almost imperceptible nod, no longer able to form words. And then he was gone. I closed those dark, pain-filled eyes as they went blank. Rising, I found that men were standing just behind me, watching.
    “What was it troubling him?” the orderly asked. “He was that upset.”
    “His family at home,” I said, lying, but knowing it was the safest thing to do. “He wanted them to know he died bravely. Who brought him in? I’d like to speak to the stretcher bearers.”
    “There weren’t any,” the orderly told me. “He must have crawled here. One minute he wasn’t there, and the next he was lying where you see him, holding out his hand as if to beg for help. I went to him, got him settled properly on that stretcher, but I couldn’t make out what he was saying.”
    I shook my head. “Poor man.”
    I went back to my duties. Wounded were still arriving by foot and by stretcher. As I worked, I wondered how that Subedar had reached us. Had he crawled from wherever he’d been shot? And who had shot him? A nervous sentry? Was it a stray bullet from the last German attack? If he wasn’t in the line—and he shouldn’t have been—how had he got that near to the Front?
    And then the ambulances were coming in, first one and then the others in an irregular line. The worst cases were quickly loaded, and we went on treating the steady stream of wounded.
    At seven o’clock I was relieved by another Sister coming on duty. I ate my dinner as usual, trying not to hurry.
    And then in the privacy of my quarters, where there were no prying eyes, I sat down on my cot and began a letter to Simon. I stopped halfway through my first sentence. What was I to tell him?
    These were matters I couldn’t put into a letter.
    Finally, I wrote to my father instead.
    It’s my sad duty to inform you that Subedar Shanti Gupta of Agra has died of his wounds. He was a good man, and he worried at the end how his family would manage without him. I am writing to ask that you look into his affairs and see if there is some relief for his wife and children.
    Satisfied, I signed it and addressed the envelope to my father. When the next runner came through, I sent the message to HQ with him, to be forwarded in the military pouch.
    Two days later, Simon was there as the last of the light faded and faces were hard to distinguish in the dusk. But I knew him instantly: his height, the way he carried his shoulders, his stride. After all, he’d been there, underfoot in our household since I was a child and he a very young raw recruit just out from England. Too well spoken to be a guttersnipe given the choice of gaol or the Army, he never mentioned his past. There had been whispers about him, and the chip on his shoulder was the size of a boulder. My father, already a Captain with a promising future, had taken Simon under his wing before he got himself shot for insubordination. First as a batman, to replace an older private whose enlistment was up, and then as the man he turned to for dangerous missions, because Simon had picked up the local languages so quickly. The Colonel Sahib’s trust had proved to be justified. Rising to Regimental Sergeant-Major, Simon had left the regiment when my father resigned his commission.
    “Your father