Three of the soldiers followed, taking seats facing him and at his side. There was a scuffling on the roof as the baggage was loaded. The driver mounted the box, and Edgar heard shouting and the sound of a whip. The carriage began to move.

He was seated facing forward, and the position of the window made it difficult to see outside, so that the images passed in quick succession, like the flipping pages of penny picture books, each vision unexpected, framed. The soldiers sat across from him, the young captain still smiling.

They moved slowly through the crowd, picking up speed as the vendors cleared. They rode past rows of more government houses. Outside one, a group of mustachioed Englishmen in dark suits stood talking, while a pair of Sikhs waited behind them. The road was macadamized, and surprisingly smooth, and they turned up a small cross street. The wide facades of the government offices gave way to smaller houses, still in European style, but with terraces festooned with languid tropical plants and walls stained with the dark, musty patina he had seen on so many houses in India. They passed a crowded shop where dozens of younger men sat on small stools around low tables laden with pots and stacks of fried food. The acrid smoke of cooking oil wafted into the carriage and stung his eyes. He blinked and the tea shop disappeared, replaced by a woman holding a plate of betel nuts and tiny leaves. She pressed close to the carriage and stared inside from beneath the shade of a wide straw hat. Like some of the vendors by the shore, her face was painted with white circles, moonlike against her dark skin.

Edgar turned to the soldier. “What’s that on her face?”

“The paint?”

“Yes. I saw it on some of the women by the docks. But different patterns. Peculiar…”

“They call it thanaka. It is made from ground sandalwood. Almost all the women wear it, and many of the men. They cover the babies with it too.”

“Whatever for?”

“Protects against the sun, they say, makes them beautiful. We call it ‘Burmese face powder.’ Why do English ladies wear face powder?”

Just then the carriage jolted to a halt. Outside they could hear voices.

“Are we here?”

“No, still quite far. I don’t know why we stopped. Wait a moment while I look outside.” The soldier opened the door and leaned out. He pulled himself back into the carriage.

“What’s happening?”

“Accident. Look for yourself. This is always the problem of taking the small streets, but today they are repaving Sule Pagoda Road, so we had to go this way. This could take several minutes. You may get out and watch, if you like.”

Edgar poked his head out of the window. In the street in front of them, a bicycle lay sprawled amidst scattered mounds of green lentils, spilled from a pair of overturned baskets. One man, apparently the rider, nursed a bloodied knee while the lentil wallah, a thin Indian man dressed in white, frantically tried to salvage the few lentils that had not soaked up the muck of the street. Neither man seemed particularly angry, and a large crowd had gathered, ostensibly to help, but mostly to stare. Edgar stepped down from the confines of the carriage.

The street was narrow, flanked by a continuous facade of houses. In front of each one, steep steps climbed three or four feet to a narrow patio, now filled with onlookers. The men were wearing loosely tied turbans, and long cloth skirts wrapped around their waists, passed between their legs, and tucked in back. The turbans were distinct from those of the Sikh soldiers, and, remembering a traveler’s account of Burma, Edgar guessed they must be gaung-baungs, the skirts pasos. On women the skirts hung loose, and carried a different name, hta main, strange syllables that seemed breathed, not spoken. The women all wore the sandalwood paint, some covering the cheeks in thin parallel stripes, others with the same circles as the woman they had just seen from the carriage, others yet with swirls, with lines descending the crests of their noses. To the darker-skinned women it gave an eerie, ghostlike appearance, and Edgar noticed that some of the women also wore a red lipstick, giving the thanaka an aura of the burlesque. There was something disturbing about it that he couldn’t identify, but once his surprise wore off, he would admit in his next letter to Katherine that it wasn’t unattractive. Perhaps not befitting an English complexion, he wrote, but beautiful, and he added with emphasis, in the same way that one appreciates art. There is no need for any misunderstandings.

His eyes followed the faces of the buildings up to balconies draped with hanging gardens of ferns and flowers. These too were filled with spectators, mostly children, their skinny arms interlaced in the wrought-iron banisters. Several called down to him and giggled, waving. Edgar waved back.

In the road, the bicyclist had righted his machine and was straightening the bent handlebars, while the porter had given up on salvaging lentils, and had set about repairing one of the baskets in the middle of the road. The driver shouted something at him, and the crowd laughed. The porter scurried to the side of the street. Edgar waved at the children once again and climbed back into the carriage. And again they were moving, the thin street opening onto a wider road that circled around a vast gilded structure bedecked with golden umbrellas, and the Captain said “Sule Pagoda.” They passed a church, then the minarets of a mosque, and then, by the town hall, another market that was set up in the promenade before a statue of Mercury, the Roman god of merchants, which the British had erected as a symbol of their commerce, but who watched over the street merchants instead.

The lane widened and the carriage picked up speed. Soon the images spun past the window too fast to be seen.

They drove for half an hour and then stopped on a cobbled road outside a two-story house. Ducking their heads, the soldiers climbed out of the carriage one by one, while the porters scrambled onto the roof to pass the trunks down from above. Edgar stood and took a deep breath. Despite the intensity of the sun, which had now begun its descent, the air was cool compared to the stuffiness of the carriage.

The Captain beckoned Edgar toward the house. At the entrance they passed two stone-faced guards, swords hanging at their sides. The Captain disappeared down a hallway and reappeared with a stack of papers.

“Mr. Drake,” he said, “it seems we have several changes in our plans. It was our original intention that you would be met here in Rangoon by Captain Nash-Burnham, from Mandalay, who is familiar with Doctor Carroll’s projects. Nash-Burnham was here only yesterday for a meeting on efforts to control dacoits in the Shan States, but I am afraid the boat you were scheduled to take up the river is under repair, and he was in a hurry to return to Mandalay. So he left on an earlier ship.” Dalton paused to look through the papers. “Don’t worry. You will have plenty of time to be briefed in Mandalay. But it does mean that you will be departing later than expected, as the first steamer we could find you a berth on was with the Irrawaddy Flotilla Company, which leaves at the end of the week. I trust this is not too much of an inconvenience?”

“No, that shouldn’t be a problem. I wouldn’t mind a few days to wander about.”

“Of course. In fact, I was going to invite you myself to join us on a tiger hunt tomorrow. I mentioned the idea to Captain Nash-Burnham, who said it might be a fine way to pass the time as well as become familiar with the surrounding countryside.”

Edgar protested, “But I’ve never hunted.”

“Then this is an excellent way to start. Always a jolly good time. Anyway, you must be tired now. I will call on you later this evening.”

“Is there anything else planned now?”