The Weeping Ash

by Joan Aiken

  Miss Musson smiled at him indulgently, her keen, wrinkled old face creasing like some ancient piece of parchment.

  “Rob, Rob, don’t waste thought and anxiety on our account, I beg! There is always trouble up at the palace, and nothing ever comes of it. Besides—if there were any danger—which I am persuaded there is not—I have many friends here, people I have cured, or whose children I have cured.”

  He shook his head. “I would place no dependence on them.”

  “And the Maharajah himself is very favorably disposed; he set much Store by Winthrop’s opinion and treats me with great kindness in his memory; it was he who endowed this hospital, you know.”

  “The Maharajah will not live forever. Indeed, my dear Miss Amanda, it would ease my mind amazingly if you would only consider removing to some larger city where there were a few Europeans.”

  “Stuff and nonsense, my dear boy. Your head is full of fancies because you have been careering about so long in the wilds. If you stay here a few more weeks you will see that there is no occasion for anxiety. Now run along with you; unless you wish to help me stitch up that poor fellow who was bitten by his camel.”

  “No, thank you, my dear Miss Amanda; I meet with quite enough of that kind of task when I am careering about in the wilds.”

  “You can come to dinner this evening if you do not object to one of Habib-ulla’s curries!” she called after him. “And why do you not take this child for a ride later, when the heat has died down—she will have had enough of pills and bandages by then.”

  He crossed to where Scylla was helping an old woman take a little rice.

  “Should you care to come for a ride with me this afternoon, Miss Paget?”

  “Why, thank you, Colonel Cameron, that would be delightful!” she replied, the formal politeness of her curtsy offset by her captivating triangular smile.

  * * *

  They were accompanied on their ride by Cal, who, having completed the first canto of his poem, had reverted to his usual sunny frame of mind and was prepared to be friends with everybody in the world.

  “And so have you written to your cousin the Countess van Welcker, to thank her and accept her very obliging invitation?” the colonel inquired as they put their horses into a trot past the melon beds and the sugar-cane patches.

  Cal replied cheerfully, “Why, no, sir, my sister was all agog to, of course, there’s nothing she would like so much as to strike up a correspondence with this unknown Cousin Juliana, but the thing is, there has been nobody leaving the town in the direction of a seaport since you brought us the letter. You know how it is in Ziatur: lacking the luxury of a regular postal service, we must be dependent upon the good offices of merchants or travelers such as yourself. However we are in hopes that a fellow countryman of yours, a traveling dental surgeon, will pay a visit to the town during the next week or so; he generally arrives before the rains; and if no other messenger has turned up in the meantime we can make use of him.”

  “Wharton? Ay, I have run into the fellow; came across him in Peshawur, on my way here, about to drag a molar out of an old begum who could ill afford to lose it, for she had only two others in her head.”

  “But in any case,” Cal went on carelessly, “it don’t greatly signify whether we answer this Cousin Juliana or not, for it’s all Peshawur to a pie that we never get to England. We can’t leave our guardian alone here, and for my part I’ve no wish to leave; Ziatur suits me very well.”

  Cameron caught Scylla’s look of resignation and gave her an encouraging smile.

  “Tell us about your own travels, Colonel Cameron,” she suggested. “I collect that, having dispatched the Maharajah’s armaments by sea from wherever you acquired them, you yourself traveled overland to India. Pray tell me, why did you do that? Is it not a much longer journey than the sea voyage? And more dangerous? Did you come through the Holy Land or Turkey? Have you seen Jerusalem and Constantinople and Baghdad?”

  “I dispatched the Maharajah’s arms by sea because there are too many marauders along the land route,” replied Colonel Cameron. “Baluchi brigands from the south—Turkoman robbers from the north—there are plenty of Afghans, too, who would give their dyed beards to get their hands on a consignment of carbines and ammunition. So, for the arms, the sea trip is safer. But I have been around the Cape of Good Hope five times and that is quite enough; four months at sea I consider a dead bore. I find the overland journey more amusing. Besides I have friends all along the way. And a few enemies, too,” he added. Then, guessing quite correctly what Scylla hoped of him, he broke into a lively account of his adventures between Gibraltar, where he had consigned his cargo to the care of a merchant captain, the passage through the Mediterranean to Tyre, and the overland journey to the Khaiber Pass, by which gateway he had finally entered India.

  Cal could not help being interested in this narrative, particularly as so many of the places mentioned by the colonel had also been visited by Cal’s current hero, Alexander of Macedon. He wanted to know how many towns along the way were still named Alexandria, what traces yet remained of the Greek army that had passed through, and if any inhabitants still bore signs of Greek descent. Scylla, rejoicing to hear this catechism, rode quietly smiling to herself as Colonel Cameron good-naturedly answered all the questions he could.

  “One would think, my boy, since you are so interested in campaigning, that you might wish to become a soldier yourself?” he remarked.

  “Become a soldier? Good God, no, sir! Are you out of your senses?” Cal exclaimed. “To have had a general for a father is bad enough; thank heaven I was born on the wrong side of the blanket—or more or less so. There need be no question, for me, of following the family tradition, for which I can never be sufficiently thankful! No, no, my dear Colonel, any interest that I have in campaigning is wholly a literary one. I like to write about campaigns, not take part in them.”

  “I wonder?” Cameron pulled his long red mustaches thoughtfully, eyeing his young companion with some interest. “I wonder what you would do, for instance, if a party of wild Baluchis came galloping over that hill yonder, waving their spears and firing their matchlocks?”

  “Do?” said Cal, laughing. “Take my word for it, sir, I should indubitably make off at top speed, ventre à terre, as the French say, and head for the town, leaving you and Scylla to bring up the rear.”

  And he gave a teasing glance at the colonel as he set his mare into a gallop.

  * * *

  At dinner that evening, while eating Habib-ulla’s excellent meal of curry, rice, and fruit, Colonel Cameron, whose humor seemed of an eccentric and personal nature, quietly chuckled as he glanced around the table.

  “What is amusing you now, Rob?” tartly inquired Miss Musson. “I suppose after carousing with amirs and shahs and khans all over Central Asia (none of them any better than they should be, I daresay) you find our appointments too simple?”

  “No, not at all, my dear Miss Amanda, I find your appointments eminently suitable, and the meal was delicious. No, I was remembering the last dinner I ate in a Company official’s house in Surat—soup, roast fowl, mutton pie, forequarter of lamb, tarts, cheese, butter, bread, and a plum pudding, if you please, all accompanied by copious draughts of Madeira. And this in a temperature hot enough to fry an egg out on the maidan! It is a wonder that all those English do not die of apoplexy. They have no notion of regulating their lives by the custom of the country—except, it is true, that quite a number of them keep zenanas,” he added thoughtfully.

  Miss Musson, with a disapproving glance in Scylla’s direction, was about to turn the conversation when there was a slight bustle outside and Habib-ulla came in with a bow to announce that a servant from the palace had brought a package for the Mem Periseela.

  “The palace? Who was it from, Habib-ulla?”

  “The Rani Mahtab Kour, sahiba. The servant said it was a gift in requital for
a healing Missy Sahib did on the young slave girl, Laili.”

  Greatly surprised, Scylla undid the fastenings of the package, which was swathed in layers of unbleached muslin. There was no accompanying note—Mahtab Kour, like most of the ladies in the palace, could not write—but inside she found a very beautiful sari, made from the most delicate silk gauze, of a color somewhere between rose and brick red, interwoven with a pattern of black and gold, embroidered all over with a myriad tiny seed pearls, so that it shimmered in the lamplight. The choli, or blouse, that accompanied it was of pure silk, also embroidered with pearls.

  “Good gracious!” she said, staring at, the shimmering folded material. “All I did was wash the little girl’s ears and anoint them with lotion. It is a miracle if that was sufficient to heal them.”

  “Perhaps Mahtab Kour wishes to ask some favor of you, and this is a preliminary move,” suggested Colonel Cameron, whose keen eyes did not miss Scylla’s look of somewhat frowning uncertainty as she gazed down at the costly gift.

  “Very pretty,” was Miss Musson’s dry comment. “It is too bad that our humdrum existence allows you so few chances to wear such finery, my child. Are you going to try it on?”

  Despite the sari’s beauty, Scylla was more than a little reluctant to do so. Strongly suspecting, as she did, that it was intended as a bribe to persuade her to act as a talebearer to the Maharajah, she would have preferred not to accept it at all. However there would be no way of returning it which would not be a mortal insult, so she merely resolved never to wear it and said, laughing:

  “You know, ma’am, that pink is not my color. The palace ladies would have even more occasion to call me Monkey Face and Daughter of a Pig were I to stroll about all swathed in rose color!”

  “You are very right, Scylla my dear!” congratulated Cal. “If you wore that plum-colored robe, it would make you look exactly like one of those sticks of crystallized rhubarb they sell in the bazaars.” And he remarked to Colonel Cameron, “You might not believe it, sir, but my sister has a decided sense of style. Take her into high society, and, in spite of her looks, I fancy that she would shine them all down after a week or so, when she had got her bearings.”

  “Indeed I do believe you,” said Cameron, amused. Miss Musson was about to make some moralizing rejoinder when Cal, glancing at the clock, said to the colonel:

  “I have an engagement, sir, to go with Prince Mihal to see a very uncommon fortune-teller from beyond Samarkand who has just come to the town. He is a yogi; it is said he lives high in the mountains, at a height of over twelve thousand feet, where no normal person could survive. He is said to have very remarkable powers—would it amuse you to accompany us?”

  Cameron had seen a legion of fortune-tellers in his time and had no very elevated opinion of them; he would much have preferred to remain comfortably where he was; but, catching a certain pleading look in Scylla’s eye, he correctly divined that she thought his company a useful corrective to that of Prince Mihal for her brother and would be glad if he joined Cal on the excursion. He therefore said gallantly:

  “If Miss Paget is not going to delight us by trying on the queen’s gift—”

  “No, no,” interrupted Cal. “It wouldn’t delight you the least bit, my dear fellow. I tell you, she would look like a stick of rhubarb.”

  “And I have my accounts to cast up, so we will bid you good night,” said Miss Musson firmly.

  As soon as the two men had gone, Scylla pulled the folds of muslin back over the queen’s sari and laid the bundle on a cedar chest in her room.

  * * *

  By the time that Cal, Colonel Cameron, and the prince entered the house where the fortune-teller had taken up residence it was already past midnight. Mihal had insisted on their spending several hours at the palace, drinking Kafir wine and sherbet and watching a series of nautch dancers. The dancers were skillful but Mihal paid little attention to them; he was being exceedingly affable to Colonel Cameron, who wondered, with his inborn caution and skepticism, what this unwonted civility betokened; hitherto Mihal had appeared curt, if not hostile. He was a smoothly handsome young man, a little shorter than Cal, stockily built—indeed, already running to fat, like his mother; at Mahtab Kour’s age, he, too, might be mountainous; under the jollity of his manner was a total reserve, and his cold dark eye was deep as a bottomless pool.

  The hot weather was fast approaching and at midnight the town was still buzzing with life and activity; families talked and laughed on rooftops, the smell of spices, urine, and mutton fried with onions and cabbage was almost suffocating; drums and conches sounded in the distance, ballad singers and storytellers occupied every street corner.

  Prince Mihal had put aside most of his jewels, armlets, sarpeches, and the ruby-hilted kirpan that he generally carried; he wore a plain blue muslin turban with steel quoits and a blue tunic which, though made of the very richest material, was not conspicuous.

  A skinny old lady stationed in the doorway of the fortune-teller’s house let them by with a cursory nod when Cal dropped a couple of pice into her outstretched claw, and they climbed up a narrow, stinking flight of stairs and came into a medium-sized room, very dimly lighted by a series of small lamps with red glass shades. There appeared to be no window; when his eyes were more accustomed to the obscure light, Colonel Cameron perceived that the walls were covered with tapestry upon which embroidered devils were engaged in every possible kind of unpleasant activity. A veiled girl motioned them to sit down against a wall where cushions were piled, and Mihal gave her a handful of rupees.

  Now they could see that in the middle of the room there was a large earthenware basin, flat and shallow, apparently filled with red liquid. Cameron wondered cynically whether the liquid was really blood or merely water reddened with betel juice; it was evidently intended to look like blood. On the far side of it, cross-legged, sat a motionless man, clad only in a loincloth; by degrees, becoming accustomed to the dimness, they were able to observe that he was as bald as an egg, also plainly blind; his eyes were overlaid with a white cuticle, like those of a leper. He took no notice whatever of the newcomers but remained sitting, apparently wrapped in thought. The girl who had let them in now began to play softly on a flute.

  After five minutes or so Cameron noticed that the water in the basin commenced to undulate a little, like a pool where a crocodile is lurking below the surface. Now the motionless man broke into speech; his lips, however did not move, and the voice that recited the names of a whole catalog of demons, convoking and summoning them to appear and lend their aid, did not appear to come from his throat but, eerily, from a far corner of the room; Cameron, though, watching closely, perceived that the muscles under his jaw occasionally rippled as the sonorous names rolled out, polysyllabic and ominous. Cal was observing the man with dispassionate, critical attention; he seemed, Cameron thought with some amusement, to be memorizing the scene for use in some future versical work. But Prince Mihal began to appear decidedly uneasy and fidgeted with something under his tunic; Cameron suspected it to be a pistol.

  Now the water in the bowl became violently agitated, and suddenly an object bobbed up from below the surface; even Cal drew in his breath sharply, for the round dark bobbing thing was the head of a baby; as it seemed, freshly severed from its body. The lips parted, and it spoke.

  “What do you ask of me, O Father from the past?” it asked in a gnatlike high-pitched whine.

  “Sat Sri Akal!” muttered Mihal, and he began softly reciting passages from the Adi Granth, the holy book of the Sikhs.

  The seer said:

  “These unlettered ones seek to learn of your wisdom, babe from the black deeps. They ask you to look into the stars and see what fate has in store for them.”

  “Let each one, then, hold in his heart an image of that which he longs for most; and wait, patiently, while I call upon my great masters.”

  Now ensued a long, muttering si
lence. The veiled girl left off her flute playing and blew upon the smoldering charcoal in a brazier, tossing on handfuls of incense until the room was filled with pungent coiling clouds of blue smoke. Meanwhile the endless incantation to the demons went on; aid was besought from demons of every denomination: demons from the dry winds of the desert, demons from the snow of the hills, serpent demons from the jungle, and female vampire demons, souls of women who had died in childbed, who walked at night with feet turned backward on their ankles; demons of fire and of plague; demons from the far distant sea.

  Colonel Cameron, listening, wondered irreverently what were the images that his companions had summoned up to symbolize their hearts’ desire: for Mihal a crown perhaps—riches, power, glory? Was that his wish? And what of Cal da Silva Paget, that gentle, soft-spoken, amused young man who apparently wanted nothing, valued nothing, regretted nothing, esteemed nothing that he did not have already? Was such insouciance really the secret of his nature? Had Cal no hidden longing? As for himself—a man who had long ago buried all his hopes and affections on a windy hillside five hundred miles south of Hazrat Imam—Cameron shrugged and smiled; at present his chief wish was a well-filled hookah, comfortably bubbling; a glass of cognac, a cup of coffee, and perhaps a spoonful of mangosteen or guava jelly… But then, strangely enough, the face of Scylla Paget flitted through his mind. It was a charming face, certainly—with that absurd short nose, that bewitching three-cornered mouth, and those enormous, innocent eyes…

  Too young and innocent for you, my boy, Cameron told himself. The only thing for you to do is to steer well clear of her. A girl who sees a European male perhaps twice a year; flirt with her, and you leave her with a broken heart. Marry her… But the last thing I want is to saddle myself with a wife. No, no, Rob, old fellow, you had best stay away from the Musson bungalow; besides, you are twice her age.