The Weeping Ash

by Joan Aiken

  “She would not come home, Abdul. She said she must wait as long as possible. Do you wait here for her. I am not happy about her.”

  The old man scowled, thrusting out his lower lips. “It is not right for the young mem to go home unescorted.”

  “Nonsense, Abdul. I know the way backward and shall do very well. I order you to remain here!”

  Grumbling to himself, he squatted down again, and Scylla hurried on through the narrow, rutted streets, noticing yet again the town’s unnatural hush.

  There were signs that the hot weather was coming to an end. The monsoon was near. Heavy, threatening masses of cloud piled up in the sky over the distant hills, then broke and moved off, but always reformed. The air felt humid and oppressive, saturated with heat and moisture, full of small stinging, biting flies. Hastening homeward, Scylla thought, Shall we have to leave, to travel, just as the rains begin? Shall we not stay for the autumn festivals, for the winter?

  She loved the winter in Ziatur. Freshened by the monsoon, the air became tingling clear, like iced wine. Smoke from camel-dung fires smelled nutty and pungent in the sharp evenings, the mountains put on coats of snow and glowed at sunset, the sheepherders came down from the hills with their jingling flocks. Suddenly all the winters of the past five years seemed to present themselves as one moment, irretrievably dear, the last of childhood. Where shall we be next year this time? she wondered.

  A silence in the street made her pause and glance around her. The few people about, white-swathed women lamenting on doorsteps, peddlers calling their wares, had all, it seemed, been struck mute and were staring in her direction. Glancing sideways, she realized the reason for this. An enormously large, tall man, white-robed, bare-footed, was rushing down a narrow side alley. He seemed mad, or drunk; he was veering from side to side, waving his arms and bobbing his head; his features were distorted in a crazy grimace; he held an enormous curved kukri, or tollman’s knife. As when confronted by the tiger, Scylla was held in almost fatalistic calm. He is coming straight for me, she thought; he is running so fast that I cannot possibly escape him. Turning her eyes with an effort from the approaching man to the women seated on their doorsteps, she realized that nobody was going to help her; so far as they were concerned, she was dead already. Perhaps word had been sent out from the palace…or perhaps they merely knew, intuitively, that it would be bad luck to help the Feringi or Yagistani. They would watch calmly as she was sliced in half.

  Strangely enough, the approaching madman did not decapitate her with his kukri; instead he snatched her up as if she were made of straw and, shouting, “God is great!” rushed off along the street. Scylla, dangling helplessly, head down, over his shoulder, saw the red betel-stained cobblestones flash past and wondered, with detached irony, where Colonel Cameron was at this moment; it seemed so unlike him not to be at hand to rescue her.

  After a time it seemed that her captor’s footsteps were slowing down; presently, to Scylla’s utter astonishment, he came to a standstill and placed her respectfully on her feet. When her head had stopped swimming and she had her eyesight back, she realized that they were in the forecourt of Miss Musson’s hospital; also, looking at her companion, now that his face was no longer distorted, she recognized him. He was an Afghan, Sirafraz Ali, who had been in the hospital with a severe brain fever, caused by a camel’s kick on his skull; Miss Musson had succeeded in curing him, after a month’s care, with infusions of chamomile tea and poultices of cold wet sand, but he had remained completely bald thereafter and somewhat unsettled in his wits. However now he appeared rational enough; he was shaking Scylla urgently and saying over and over:

  “Missy sahib, tell the mem that she must not come to the hospital—ever again! Missy and Cal Sahib and Kamaran Sahib must all leave Ziatur—the danger here is too great. None of the Feringi will live until the rains if they do not leave now. Does the missy sahib understand?”

  He shook her again as if to force the information into her. Looking over his shoulder into the hospital, Scylla saw that all the string bedsteads and bedding rolls had been taken away; the drug closet was open and stripped; nothing of the equipment remained but some handfuls of straw and a broken crock or two.

  “Soldiers coming here soon,” Sirafraz muttered in Scylla’s ear. “Prince Mihal gave the order. Shoot the Feringi ladies, cut their heads off. Understand, missy?” He shook her again, menacingly, then, picking her up once more, resumed his wild dash through the town, up one alley, down another, all the time, by degrees, drawing closer to Miss Musson’s bungalow. As he ran he shouted, “Slay the heathen! Crucify the unbelievers! God is great, God is great!”

  At last, depositing Scylla gently in a lane that ran down beside the bungalow garden, he laid his finger on his lips, writhed his features into a last frightful grimace, and bounded away.

  Scylla walked very thoughtfully into the house, to find Cal, for once not writing, but pacing about on the veranda, looking very anxious.

  “Is Miss Musson not back yet?” she asked. He shook his head.

  “Not yet. And Cameron has been summoned for an interview with Mihal.”

  “Perhaps Mihal wants Cameron to command his army, as he did the Maharajah’s,” Scylla said wearily. “Where are all the servants?”

  “I think they have run away. All but Habib-ulla.”

  “I have just been warned that we must all leave Ziatur or we shall be killed,” Scylla remarked.

  “Oh, things will blow over, I daresay, once Mihal feels secure of the kingship,” Cal said. “He is not a bad fellow, after all. By the by, do not forget that the dentist fellow, Wharton, is in town, and going on to Surat; have you written a note for him to take? He can see that it is sent to our cousin in England, with the Company’s mails.”

  “If we are to leave in any case, why write a letter? We may go to England ourselves and get there before it.”

  “Not if our guardian can discover any means of remaining here,” said Cal with a grin.

  * * *

  About two hours before dusk Colonel Cameron arrived at the bungalow. When he heard that Miss Musson was still supposedly at the palace he let out such a string of heartfelt curses that Cal gazed at him in admiration.

  “I beg your pardon, child,” Cameron said then, glancing at Scylla—he looked, she observed, even more exhausted than on the previous night, his hair dusty and dark with sweat, prickles of sweat marking the hollows of temple and cheekbone, the whites of his blue eyes bloodshot. “I beg your pardon, but if that woman’s obstinacy is the cause of our all being trapped here and cut to pieces, it will be enough to put a saint in a passion. And I am no saint.”

  Fortunately, soon after this Miss Musson herself appeared, riding slowly to the front of the house on her black pony. “Where is the syce?” she called, dismounting.

  “Don’t worry, ma’am, I will see to your pony,” Cal said, and led the beast to the stable, while Scylla ran to fetch her guardian a long cool drink.

  She did not like to ask how Miss Musson’s mission had sped, since it was all too evident, from the older woman’s ravaged and angry appearance, that it had gone ill, but Cameron had no such delicate scruples and said with his usual bluntness:

  “Well, ma’am? Is it all over? Did they all roast themselves?”

  “You may see for yourself,” Miss Musson replied briefly, nodding her head toward the citadel, from which, Scylla now saw with a shiver, a thick, sluggish column of black smoke was coiling up into the humid air. “They all accompanied Mahtab; all the wives and most of her women; even that poor wretched child, with her broken leg, was there, allowed, as a mark of special favor, to sit on the queen’s lap. And that Jezebel, Sada, watching from a window with such a satisfied expression; I would gladly throttle her.”

  She sipped at her drink, then pushed it away, exclaiming, “Oh, how can I drink after seeing those poor women in agony? It is disgusting!”

 
“Come now, Miss Amanda,” Cameron said abrasively, “you know perfectly well that those women died completely happy, believing that they were carrying out the wishes of the gods and assured of a superior position in the next life. Also, that if the miserable Mahtab Kour had not immolated herself, it’s dollars to doughnuts that her serving maids would have dropped a paving stone on her in her bath. She could not have survived for long. So let your grief for her be equally brief, I beg. We have the future to consider. And it does not lie in Ziatur. Your hospital, ma’am, is no more. And we have only a few hours’ grace—if that—before soldiers come to chop off our heads. In order to gain a little time, I told Mihal that I had another consignment of guns and ammunition on the way here—so that he might think it worthwhile leaving me alive long enough to show his men how to use the carbines; but it was not true, and I am not sure he believes me. I am in bad odor because I declined the honor of running his army. The French emissaries have Sada’s ear; they have won her favor with a package of Paris fashions. The ways of diplomacy are strange! Who would have thought that an embroidered muslin gown and a bonnet shaped like Athene’s helmet would change the course of history? But so it is.”

  He was talking, Scylla thought, in order to give Miss Musson time to compose herself. She quietly handed the older woman a plate of fruit and said:

  “Come, you must eat something, my dear ma’am! Colonel Cameron is very right, we have to make a plan. As he says, the hospital has been pillaged; I am afraid the patients are all gone, and the contents carried off. It is quite plain, I fear, that we must not stay in the city any longer.”

  Cameron gave Scylla an approving nod, and Cal, coming in from the stable, added his mite:

  “All those brutes of servants have run off, and they have taken our horses.”

  “What?” exclaimed Scylla, shaken out of her attempted calm. “All the horses? Not Kali?”

  “Kali too,” replied her brother grimly.

  Cameron grunted, as if he had expected this.

  “So you see, Miss Amanda, little though you may like it, the time has come to up sticks and go.”

  Strangely enough, Miss Musson did not seem inclined to argue the point. She had spent all her argumentative powers up at the palace and merely replied, wearily:

  “No, I perceive that we must do so. But how is it to be managed? We have no horses, and it is unlikely that we shall be able to buy or hire any. How shall we travel?”

  “Spoken like a woman of sense!” exclaimed Cameron approvingly. “Now, if you will all attend, I will tell you the plan. We must not all leave together, or we should assuredly be noticed and stopped. Disguise yourselves as beggars, carry as little as you may, only a few absolutely essential possessions, and some food for the journey. Meet me outside the Kohat gate at dusk, just before they close the gate. Come singly,” he repeated. “I will be there and will arrange to have transport waiting. Is that agreed?”

  “I fear so,” said Miss Musson with a sigh. Cal merely nodded, with an absent expression; his sister guessed, sympathetically, that he was calculating how best to pack up all his poetry, his quills and cakes of ink, and which of his books must be left behind.

  Scylla herself said, “There is just one thing, Colonel Cameron.”

  “Well, what?” Immediately he looked ruffled, ready to flare into exasperation at any opposition to his arrangements.

  “Do you not remember our promise to the Maharajah? That if anything happened to him we should undertake to see that little Prince Chet Singh is conveyed safely to England, to his cousin in London?”

  “Oh, that.”

  “Yes, that, Colonel Cameron! I do not forget a promise, even if you do!”

  “Hold your fire, my dear.” Cameron looked at her kindly and sadly. “I respect a promise, child, as much as you do. But this one we shall be unable to honor—and I must confess that our journey will therefore be relieved of a decided encumbrance. To be carrying a child with us, the way that we must go, would necessarily slow our pace and make us more vulnerable to attack.”

  “But why may we not take little Chet Singh?”

  “Because little Chet Singh, child, was thrown over the battlements, by Sada’s orders, early this morning. Already the crows will have picked his bones clean.—Now I must leave you. I have many things to arrange.—Dusk, then, at the Kohat gate. Wear old clothes, but warm ones. Miss Amanda, if you have any medicines in the house, you had best bring a bagful—” And he was gone.

  Hastily, discarding the accumulated possessions of a lifetime, Miss Musson and her two wards packed a few necessities. It was, in a way, a relief that they were given so little time for thought or conjecture.

  Scylla went to the deserted kitchen, where Habib-ulla remained, alone of all the servants. Giving the old man a month’s wages, she told him that he had best forget he ever served the Feringi ladies, who now found themselves obliged to travel away from Ziatur.

  “Alas! But how will the mems ever manage without me?” he inquired dolefully. “When do you go?”

  “Tomorrow,” Scylla replied, mindful that even he, faithful though he had always been, might by now have been perverted by Sada’s minions. “Bake us plenty of bread, therefore, tonight, for our journey, Habib-ulla; also, go now to the bazaar and buy a big sack to carry provisions. And take this letter to the Sahib Wharton, who lodges in the Street of Silversmiths. Here is the money for the sack.”

  When he had hobbled off sadly on this errand, Scylla swiftly collected what food she could, along with such drinking and cooking utensils as would not immediately be missed, and packed them all in a sheepskin pouch. Her own clothes and trinkets were of little value. She left them all.

  Cal, working with commendable speed, had wrapped up a parcel of his manuscripts and a few books, in layers of muslin and oiled silk, and now declared himself ready; only Miss Musson, though she had put together a bundle of medicaments, seemed anxious and ill at ease, unready to take her departure. Scylla felt a deep pang for her guardian; leaving this house must, for the older woman, mean abandoning the last home she had shared with her dearly loved brother Winthrop. It was a step forward into a bleak and unpromising future.

  “What is it, dear ma’am? Something you are trying to remember? Can I be of any assistance?”

  “No, my dear child, thank you; no, it is nothing. Do you and Cal start off now, dusk is beginning to thicken; I will follow in a few moments. Colonel Cameron said that we must not all leave together.” Cal, nodding, strode off into the twilight, adjuring his sister to allow five minutes to elapse and then go after him but take a different route to the Kohat gate.

  “Ma’am,” said Scylla, troubled, “you do mean to come with us, do you not? You are not proposing to remain here, or—or do anything dreadful?”

  Miss Musson’s hawklike face broke into its rare, brilliant smile.

  “No, no, child—have no fear of that! I shall be with you as soon as I may. But warn Rob Cameron to be prepared for a little delay—I must wait for an important message, here, before I depart. Now run along with you—veil your face and be as prudent as possible.”

  With this rather unsatisfactory reply Scylla had to be content. Carrying the bundle of food on her back, she slipped out of the house and along the street, moving from one patch of shadow to another. For once Miss Musson had relaxed her rule about European dress; Scylla wore a hill woman’s black headcloth, a voluminous white homespun wool cloak pulled forward over her face and latched at one side so that only her eyes were visible; under the cloak she had a red wool tunic, Pahari trousers, and goatskin mountain boots. At present they felt stiflingly hot; she was bathed in sweat and found it difficult to hurry. The air was vaporous and steamy; every now and then a distant mutter of thunder came as a reminder that the rains were due to break. A mad time to start a journey, thought Scylla dispassionately as she slipped, like a humble village woman bowed with her burden, between th
e armed guards who stood on either side of the gate in the town wall. They did not concern themselves with her, bored, chewing pan, they were informing an old fortune-teller with a fat, sleepy python in a basket that he must either come in or stay outside for the night, in which case he would inevitably be devoured by wolves; he was begging them to keep the gate open just one more half hour for his apprentice, who was following behind but had been delayed by a thorn in his foot.

  “No more than a half hour, then, old man! Our orders are to shut the gate when the evening star shines clear of that peepul tree.”

  “But, Your Worships, suppose clouds cover the star? How will you know then what time to shut the gate?”

  It was true, Scylla noticed, that, blotting the green twilit sky, huge mushroom-shaped clouds were growing above the distant mountains, black as ink; darkness was coming on apace. She moved inconspicuously away from the gate and along by the side of the great red wall to where a buttress, thrusting out, would screen her from the view of the guards. Beyond the buttress a great peepul tree grew, and under it a mahout was grooming his elephant. It seemed a strange time of day to be doing this, Scylla reflected idly, and then, looking again, she was startled to see that the mahout was Cameron’s Therbah servant. He salaamed to her briefly, placing a finger on his lips.

  A hand gripped her; Cal moved quietly from the far side of the tree.

  “Is not this famous?” he breathed in Scylla’s ear. “I did not above half care to leave Ziatur, but Colonel Cameron knows how to do a thing in style! He is the most complete hand! Where do you suppose he got it? Can he have stolen it from the palace stables?”

  There were stone rest shelves around the peepul tree, for travelers to pause a moment and take the weight off their loads; Scylla perched herself on one of these, thinking, An elephant! How masterly! Really, there is no end to Colonel Cameron’s resourcefulness.

  The town gate was about to close. They could hear drums being beaten, a gong boomed, and the guards bawled out their evening message: