Joanna was dreaming.
She saw herself leaning on the arm of a handsome young officer, grateful for his support but otherwise immune to his solicitous attentions. She was oblivious also to the British soldiers, standing erect in their smart uniforms, and to the ladies, elegant in their gowns and bonnets. Officers on horseback raised their sabers in salute as the two coffins were lowered into the graves. Joanna was aware of only one thing: that she had lost the only two people she loved, and that, at eighteen, she was suddenly alone in the world.
The soldiers lifted their rifles and fired into the air. Joanna looked up, startled, as the clear blue sky tore apart. Through her black veil she saw the sun, which seemed too large and too hot and too close to the earth.
As the commander of the regiment began to read the eulogy over the graves of Sir Petronius and Lady Emily Drury, Joanna gave him a puzzled look. Why wasn’t he speaking clearly? She couldn’t understand what he was saying. She looked around at the people gathered to pay their final respects to her parents, and noticed that they ranged from servants to the highest army officials and royal elite of India. None of them seemed to find the commander’s speech muddled or out of the ordinary.
Joanna sensed that something was terribly wrong, and she was suddenly afraid.
Then she froze: At the edge of the crowd was a dog—the dog that had killed her mother.