Tower of Silence Read Online Free

a group of children–five English, one Canadian–Selina had cared nothing for her mother’s fastidious discontent. She had been absorbed in that day’s game, which was a new one called the Maiden Tower. Christabel Maskelyne’s father had told them the tale of the princess who had been imprisoned in the doorless tower in a place called Baku because she would not marry her father. This had been interesting, although nobody had properly understood the bit about marrying her father, because everyone knew you did not marry your father. Still, it was a good story, and it was going to make a good game. Christabelhad thought they could pretend that a maharajah, which meant a prince, came to rescue the princess, and so there was going to be a journey through the mountains, with the maharajah riding on an elephant, and servants bearing gifts of gold and ivory.
    Selina was the princess, in one of mother’s evening scarves and a dab of Max Factor lipstick on her forehead, and Douglas, the boy from Toronto, was the maharajah because his Canadian accent made him sound a bit foreign. Christabel, wearing a discarded curtain for a cloak, with a kitchen knife for a sword, was the princess’s wicked father, and everybody else was a servant. They had put a ladder against a tree for the doorless tower, and Selina was going to look down and say, ‘Oh, who is this handsome prince,’ and then Douglas had to climb up the ladder for the rescue while Christabel waved her arms in the air to indicate impotent fury. After this everybody would say things like, ‘We bring you gold from the east, princess,’ and, ‘Let us flee to the shining palace in the mountains.’
    They had just reached the part where Selina was saying, ‘Oh, who is this—’ when somebody said, ‘What’s that?’
    This was not in the script, but Christabel thought you should improvise in games, and so Selina said, ‘Oh, do you hear my father’s men coming?’ And then stopped and looked across the gardens, because she had heard it as well.
    The sound of something clanging and banging–something that went on and on clanging, and made your heart jump in fear, because you knew deep inside thatsomething bad was going to happen, and something very fearsome indeed was coming to get you.
    And then one of the others said, ‘It’s a bell,’ and another said, ‘It’s the alarm bell in the old tower. It means there’s a raid or something—’
    For a moment they had stood looking at one another, none of them quite knowing what to do, the smallest ones not even sure what a raid was. Then Douglas said, ‘Listen–I can hear horses coming. And men shouting,’ and Selina, who was still in the tree and therefore higher up than the others, saw a group of men running towards them, shouting as they came. The shouts echoed through the sleepy squares, and the men’s feet churned up the dust as they ran, so that they seemed to be coming out of a vast whirling cloud of smoke. They were wearing turbans and raggedy cotton gowns, and brandishing knives, and as they came hurtling across the quiet English garden she saw that the ones at the front had guns and she clutched at a branch of the tree, because her legs had suddenly gone trembly. Something bad was about to happen–the alarm bell was still ringing, on and on, and that meant something frightening and terrible was going on…
    Other people were screaming by now, and several of the children’s mothers were running towards the March house. Selina could hear her own mother and she could hear Christabel’s mother as well. Somebody was shouting something about Sikh dissidents, and somebody else was shouting about Muslim spies, and the garden with its pleasing scents of jasmine and spices, and the huge splashes of colour from the rhododendrons, was suddenlybecoming a place filled with anger and fear; it was turning into a dust-storm because the rioters were beating huge whirling clouds out of the hot, dry ground. And all the while