Carriage Line at Government House

What Happened

Around 10:40 p.m. on the night of the Government House ball, the horses at the carriage line began to panic. Two thin figures in wet white cloth moved slowly down the line, swaying, humming and murmuring a word — samapti — under their breath. Lamps swung wildly and one horse kicked a handler flying.

Katherine and Freddy came outside — Katherine for smelling salts, Freddy to speak with Pratap Singh — and saw the men in the lamplight: the fingers of each man’s left hand fused into a single smooth paddle, one man’s forearm curving in a long, jointless line with no elbow, their skin carrying a wet, pearlescent sheen. Pratap Singh was already watching. Inside, Georgiana heard the hum through the ballroom windows and worked out, before anyone else, that the two men were drawn to the music.

The Cavendish servants Apoo, Abrar and Asif scrambled to control the family’s own horses while other handlers dragged theirs clear. A half-dozen carriage bodyguards armed themselves with sticks and beat the two men from behind, driving them to their knees. The men showed no sign of pain, rose again, and walked steadily toward the river. Pratap Singh tried to persuade the handlers to secure the pair instead of driving them off; by the time he made his case, both had waded into the dark water and disappeared.

The men were also murmuring Ma dakchhe. The next afternoon the Wentworth sisters asked the watchman at the Circular Road Burial Ground what it meant: “Mother is calling”, the Mother being the goddess.

Why It Matters

The party’s first direct sight of what the temple at Baranagar does to a man: fused hands, a jointless arm, a pearlescent sheen, and a word — samapti, “the end” — that the temple gives to the mothers of the men who vanish into it. One of the two men is the drowned body reported in the Gazette’s Found Drowned notice the next morning.

Related

• Places: Government House — where it happened, among the ball’s waiting carriages.
• People: Havildar Pratap Singh — watched, and failed to have the two men secured. Freddy Cavendish, Katherine Ward — witnessed it directly. Georgiana Wentworth — deduced the music connection from inside. Apoo, Abrar, Asif — controlled the Cavendish horses.