Shadow of the Moon by M. M. Kaye

passes, were the seeds from which sprang the rank growth of rebellion that was in time to deluge all India in blood. For the power and the prestige of the Company had been humbled to the dust. Their troops had been defeated in battle and herded and butchered like sheep, and their bones lay bleaching in the sun and wind to bear witness that the mighty ‘John Company’ was mortal. All along the Border and throughout the length and breadth of India the news spread swiftly, and many men sharpened their swords in secret - and waited.
    In the little pink palace in Lucknow Juanita wept for her brother, clutching his orphaned daughter in her arms until the child too wept aloud in bewilderment and alarm.
    When her first grief had spent itself she wrote to Sir Ebenezer, addressing the letter to his house at Garden Reach near Calcutta because she did not know his address in England, and enclosing papers relating to the de Ballesteros estates that Marcos had left with her, instructing her to send them to Sir Ebenezer should anything happen to him. She wrote in March, but Sir Ebenezer had sold his house and sailed for England nearly two years previously, and summer had gone and the leaves were falling by the time the letter reached him.
    He read it with difficulty, for his sight was failing and his knowledge of the French language was limited. And when he had finished it he rose stiffly and went to a heavy mahogany desk that stood against one wall of his study, and unlocking a small drawer, removed the packet that it contained and stood weighing it in his hand. It was the same packet that Marcos de Ballesteros had given him two and a half years ago at Pavos Reales, and it contained Marcos’s will and Sabrina’s last letter. He had hoped that the necessity of delivering them to his father-in-law would not arise, because he had his doubts as to the Earl’s reception of the news that his grand-daughter’s only child had been orphaned and that he was expected to take her in charge.
    Sir Ebenezer had seen Emily’s father only once since his return from India, and the old Earl had made no mention of Sabrina, and had been taciturn to the point of rudeness. But Sir Ebenezer did not know his father-in-law as well as Sabrina knew her grandfather, and Sabrina had been rightwhen she had told Emily that whatever she did and however angry he might be with her, he could not stop loving her.
    The Earl was well into his seventies, but he did not look his age. He read Sir Ebenezer’s brief covering note at the dinner-table where the package had been delivered to him, and his face hardened. Sabrina’s marriage had infuriated him, but though he had raged and threatened and vowed never to see or speak to her again, at the back of his mind there had lurked the thought that one day she would return and beg his forgiveness, and that all would be well again.
    The news of her death had come as a crippling blow. It was as if, in some strange fashion, Johnny too had died again, but this time in some final and irrevocable way. The fact that Sabrina had borne a child meant nothing to him, except inasmuch as it had increased his bitterness and resentment. The child was his great-grand-daughter, but it was in no way his or Sabrina’s: it belonged to this unknown foreigner whom Sabrina had married against his express command, and he was unlikely to see it or hear of it again.
    He read Juanita’s letter to Sir Ebenezer telling of her brother’s death in the Afghan passes, and the will that Marcos had made in favour of his only child, in which he had concurred, in the tortuous legal phrases required by the law, with his wife’s desire that the child should become the ward of her grandfather.
    The Earl untied the strings of the small brocaded bag that still smelt faintly of sandalwood, and his lip curled with distaste. The letter within it was sealed with a large circle of wax and impressed with curving Sanskrit characters,