The Weeping Ash

by Joan Aiken

  Fanny could tell at once from the raised tones that Thomas was in one of his towering rages. He was shouting orders to Jem bootboy to do something or other. “And do it directly! I wish to see it gone in five minutes—make haste about it!” Then came the sound of his quick, angry feet on the stairs, and the next moment he was in the old lady’s room.

  “What is this I hear—” he began furiously, but Dr. Chilgrove, without ceremony, hustled him out of the sickroom.

  “Hush, sir! This is no place for loud voices.”

  Fanny was glad to remain with the patient and so avoid the first overflow of Thomas’s displeasure; and indeed, by the time Dr. Chilgrove had talked with him and reasoned with him, it was evident that he had been brought to see the necessity for the doctor’s visit, and his anger had somewhat diminished; also Jem had apparently carried out the orders given him, whatever they were, to his master’s satisfaction.

  In due course Nurse Baggot reappeared from her afternoon’s outing—“visiting her cousin at Heath End,” was her only explanation. She had evidently bought a new bonnet, ornamented lavishly with poppies, her color was high, and her breath redolent of gin and peppermint. She listened without comment, but with a scornful expression, to Fanny’s account of the doctor’s directions; Fanny left her with a sinking of the heart and went to change her dress for dinner. She expected, and duly received, a trouncing at this meal from Thomas, first for having returned home by herself from Petworth House, secondly for having, on her own initiative, called in the doctor for her mother-in-law; but to her agreeable surprise these offenses were passed over more lightly than she had anticipated; most of Thomas’s rage appeared to be directed against some person or persons unknown who had written up several defamatory statements about him, in paint, on the Hermitage gate at the end of the driveway leading into Angel Street; Thomas did not divulge what these remarks had been (Jem had already cleaned them off) but Fanny gathered that they had been scurrilous to a degree.

  Recalling the scene in the square, Fanny shivered, thinking how many people in the town—people who had lost sons, brothers, fathers, husbands to the press gang—must have cause to hate her husband.

  However presently Thomas reverted to happier topics and grew more cheerful. It seemed that the meeting of the local gentry had been highly successful; a scheme for the local troop had been drawn up, and a long list of volunteers was already in hand; agreement had been reached as to the uniform, accoutrements, and weapons; Thomas and another gentleman were to travel to London very soon, possibly next week, in order to make the necessary purchases.

  Fanny’s heart bounded; several days without Thomas! But then she wondered if perhaps he would expect her to accompany him, as on the previous ill-starred occasion. She dared not broach the question for fear of exposing her hopes; and she suspected, from several angry and undecided glances given her by Thomas, that he himself had not made up his mind on the matter.

  Late in the evening Fanny returned to the old lady’s chamber. The patient was whimpering and moaning restlessly, with most of her covers thrown aside. Since it was a close, thundery night, with a storm muttering outside, Fanny removed most of the blankets and replaced them with a light quilt. Meanwhile Nurse Baggot slumbered peacefully in a wicker armchair, letting out an occasional snore. Fanny had to shake her arm quite sharply several times before she could be roused out of her heavy sleep.

  “I will sit with Mrs. Paget now,” Fanny said when she was awake. “Do you go and lie down on your bed.” Nurse Baggot threw her a glance of suspicion and malice compounded, with very little gratitude in it.

  “What does Master say?” she demanded.

  “I have told him that I am going to sit with his mother,” Fanny quietly replied.

  When Nurse Baggot had gone, she sat down by the bedside and took hold of the clutching clawlike hand that was restlessly searching, searching, among the crumpled sheets.

  “Where is it, where is it?” murmured the old lady. “Where can it be?”

  “Never mind it, ma’am,” Fanny murmured. “Try to sleep!”

  “My poor boy! When he was a little lad I used to sing him lullabies. But Thomas would be so spiteful to his poor little brother. Often he has slammed the bedroom door on purpose to wake the baby just as he had gone off to sleep.”

  Like father, like daughter, thought Fanny, disagreeably struck by this resemblance to little Patty.

  “Then, when he was older, little Edward was so loving to me. He used to sing to me so sweetly. Ah, if only I could hear it now!”

  A tear trickled down the thin, withered cheek that had the bright flush of fever like a scarlet penny below the eye.

  “I will sing to you if you wish, ma’am,” said Fanny softly.

  “I would sooner he sang,” said the old lady in a fretful tone.

  “He is not here, though, ma’am.”

  “Oh, very well, sing, then; my ears are teased to death by all that rumbling,” the old lady grumbled.

  Indeed, the thunder was loudly audible overhead, even to a deaf ear, and the drawn curtains could not exclude the continuous flicker of lightning.

  Very softly, Fanny sang to the old lady, as many ballads, hymns, and lullabies as she could remember, many of them to tunes of her own invention. And when these had run out she recalled the lilting, insidious tune she had heard whistled that afternoon by young Talgarth as he went his carefree way down the valley path, and she hummed that, and then set it to some words that she remembered from a poem by the Earl of Surrey:

  “And in green waves, when the salt flood

  Doth rise by rage of wind,

  A thousand fancies in that mood

  Assail my restless mind.

  Alas! Now drencheth my sweet foe

  That with the spoil of my poor heart did go

  And left me; but alas! why did he so?”

  Ten

  Some twelve weeks had elapsed since Cal’s unfortunate seizure on the brink of the gorge. During that period of time he had not, mercifully, been subject to another severe attack of his malady, but the party of travelers had undergone many other trials and vicissitudes. Hazarah, the guide, from neglecting to follow the precautions advised by Colonel Cameron, had been afflicted with snow blindness; he moaned in agony all day long and was of practically no use to them in his prime capacity, since he could see virtually nothing and must have every feature of the landscape described to him before he could suggest which way to go. Miss Musson made him tea-leaf poultices until Colonel Cameron forbade this use of their precious scanty supplies, saying that it was the man’s own stupid fault and he must suffer the consequences.

  For a period of many weeks, now, they had been above the snow line; the blond grass hillsides which had succeeded the forests had in their turn been succeeded by unbroken white: sometimes a slippery crust on which the travelers must proceed with the utmost caution for fear of falling and sliding hundreds of feet; sometimes, in the passes and ravines, the snow formed a soft layer, knee deep or thigh deep, through which they were obliged to flounder at a painfully slow rate of progress.

  And what Colonel Cameron gloomily apprehended had come to pass: owing to their tardiness, the full severity of winter came down while they were between the passes of Lowacal and Weran, so that they were obliged to pass six weeks of somewhat acrimonious inactivity in a mountain village, before being able to continue their journey. Miss Musson, to be sure, occupied her time in advising the hill people on their ailments, and by learning how to spin goat hair on the locally made spindles; while Cal succeeded in completing his epic poem on Alexander’s invasion of India. Owing to a complete lack of writing paper, he was obliged to inscribe his verses between the lines of the few books he had carried with him, cultivating a microscopic script for the purpose. The accomplishment of this task filled him with great satisfaction, and he was now meditating his next work, undecided as to whether it sho
uld be a heroic drama on the life of Timur Leng (or Tamburlaine), a narrative saga about Genghis Khan, or a romantic elegy on the fate of the Children of Israel, some of whom, by Colonel Cameron’s account—those deported from their homeland by Nebuchadnezzar—had subsequently drifted eastward and come to rest in Kafiristan, as evidenced by the frequent use of the proper name Israel among the natives of that region. Thus absorbed in literary planning, Cal was perfectly contented.

  It was far otherwise, however, with Scylla and Colonel Cameron, both of whom, for different reasons, chafed exceedingly at their enforced inaction and were impatient to be on their way.

  During this time they were all, also, in some degree affected by the great height to which they had ascended; intermittently they all endured blinding headaches, nausea, shortness of breath, and palpitations. Little Chet Singh, the baby, suffered even more severely than the adults, for besides the trouble from the altitude he also fell victim to a colicky disorder caused, probably, by the poor quality of the provender consumed by Ammomma the goat, who supplied his milk. Consequently the baby, who had been so well behaved on the first stages of the journey, now cried despairingly for hours at a stretch; provoking Colonel Cameron, every now and then, to such exasperation that he was wont, more or less seriously, to urge putting the child out for adoption by some village woman.

  “How dare you make such suggestions!” Scylla exclaimed on one such occasion. Her eyes bright, her voice unsteady with emotion, she confronted him in the narrow, snow-packed street of a tiny hill town where they had paused to buy such scanty provisions as were available, little stone houses rose on either side of them, built squatly into the mountainside, their flat roofs held down by large rocks; a couple of hill women, clad in striped blankets, adorned with large brass earrings, paused to gaze in wonder at the recriminations of these strange, fair-haired foreigners. But Scylla went on without regarding their curious looks:

  “It is just like a man to make such a suggestion—merely because the poor child is sick and in pain. He does not cry expressly to annoy you! What can you know about such matters? I daresay you have never looked after a child in your life!”

  “There you are wrong, Miss Paget,” replied the colonel coolly. “And show some ignorance and some folly. However that is not to the point. I made the suggestion for the child’s own welfare. I daresay, left with one of these hill women, he would soon become acclimatized and thrive well enough. But I am aware that my opinion on this subject is of no consequence. Miss Musson is quite resolved on taking him to England. I only hope that her obstinacy does not imperil all our lives. Excuse me.”

  And, turning on his heel, he walked away. Scylla remained fuming for a moment; then, recalling that she was supposed to be buying grain for porridge, she turned to the women who had been watching the argument.

  Their wondering stares recalled her to a sense of her own undignified appearance: wrapped, likewise, in a striped blanket, to keep out the bitter cold, her torn boots stuffed with straw, a long, dirty, knitted muffler twined around her neck, and an equally dirty goatskin cap crammed on her head. Miss Musson fortunately had a pair of scissors among her medical supplies, with which she obligingly kept Scylla’s locks trimmed short, since washing was generally out of the question. As a result of the constant trimming and the sun that beat down, day after day, her hair had curled up tightly and bleached almost silver; in contrast, her skin was tanned, and her nose peeling from sunburn. She felt dirty, disheveled, and miserable from various itches and sores; whereas the colonel always appeared healthy and untroubled, in good physical trim. He had bought a poshteen, a sheepskin jacket, in one of the villages, walked bareheaded and barehanded through the fiercest cold, and seemed less affected than the rest of them by the altitude. It was really unfair!

  Returning to the main street with her purchases, she encountered Cal, carrying half a sheep. He, in the course of twelve weeks, had been transformed into a decidedly piratical-looking figure, with a curly black beard (also kept trimmed by Miss Musson) and a skin tanned almost as dark as the hillmen themselves. He excited far less attention than Cameron and Scylla.

  “Only see what I have managed to obtain!” he greeted her gaily. “We shall be able to have roast mutton tonight!”

  As they hurried to join the rest of the party, Scylla thought for the hundredth time how blessed she was in her brother; invariably sweet-tempered, never complaining, ready with a joke when the rest of the travelers had become despondent from the rigors of the journey, always interested in his surroundings; if it had not been for his epileptic affliction, he would have been the perfect traveling companion. Sometimes, as they walked, he would be withdrawn for several hours, and Scylla knew that at these times it was a severe deprivation for him not to be able to sit down and commit to paper the verses that were forming in his mind; but even at such times he never showed any sign of bad temper or chagrin; what a contrast to Colonel Cameron, who became daily more curt and acerbic!

  However on this occasion the colonel appeared better humored than usual, made no reference to his exchange of words with Scylla about little Chet, and informed them of his discovery that from here it was probably only a week’s journey to the point where the Kunar River would be navigable by raft as soon as the spring thaw had produced a sufficient body of water.

  “Or so this fellow says—” indicating a wrinkled toothless ancient with a straggling white beard and a large goiter on his neck. All the hill people suffered from goiter to a greater or less degree; Miss Musson said this was due to a lack of salt in their diet. Salt was an exceedingly precious commodity up here, more valued than money, which, indeed, was of little use in many villages.

  Miss Musson appeared from the doorway of a nearby house. Tanned, deep-eyed, hawk-nosed, white-haired, she, more than the rest of the party, looked as if she belonged in the mountains; although very different from the snub-nosed Mongol-featured hill people, she was regarded by them with immediate, instinctive respect. A tall staff which she used to assist her limping progress (having strained a knee joint while crossing a glacier) added to her prophetic appearance. She had been conferring with a local medicine woman about little Chet’s ailment and held a handful of wizened roots which somewhat resembled parsnips.

  “The hakima thinks that he may well have commenced teething; if so, these will help relieve the soreness and counteract the overacidity. Poor babe! It is rather hard that he should have painful gums as well as the mountain colic. Here, my lamb—”

  She broke off a piece of root and offered it to the baby, who immediately thrust it into his mouth and mumbled it avidly.

  “Really, Miss Amanda!” exclaimed the colonel in a tone of exasperation. “How do you know that insanitary-looking root will not poison the wretched child? Not but what its untimely death would relieve us of a decided encumbrance,” he added bitterly. Scylla gave him what she hoped was a withering glare.

  “No, no, I recall having come across this root before, or something very similar,” Miss Musson tranquilly replied, passing the baby to Scylla, who settled him in a sling on her back. “The Huron Indians make use of a similar remedy as I recollect; it is wonderful how many identical medicaments are used in widely differing areas of the world—I am ready to set off, my dear Rob, shall we proceed?”

  * * *

  Their spirits were all raised, soon, by indications that this arduous portion of their journey was nearly over. The snowy slopes gradually gave way to dry mountainsides the color of bleached bone, often riven by deep, red-cliffed gorges; occasionally, on a sunny day, they would see the glitter and sparkle as a frozen waterfall began to melt on a cliff face.

  Ten days later, in a little town called Kotka, they were overjoyed to reach, at last, the river that was to help them on their journey. Up here the Kunar was still a rocky mountain torrent, and they must follow down its banks for some fifty miles before it became navigable, but in Kotka, for the first time, they were able
to procure mules, and so would be able to accomplish the next stage at a greatly increased rate and in comparative comfort. Here, too, without regret, they parted from Hazarah, and were also happily able to wash themselves in the stream and purchase a few items of clothing. They also felt it possible to dispense with the goat, for the greater frequency of villages made it possible to purchase milk as it was required.

  “What shall we do when we run out of money?” Scylla said to Miss Musson privately. At the time of their flight they had brought with them all that they had in the way of cash, but it was quite plain that their funds would not last them all the way to the Mediterranean.

  “I have discussed the matter with Colonel Cameron,” Miss Musson replied placidly. “He informed me that there is a nobleman named Mir Murad Beg, residing in Kafiristan not far from the route which we shall take, who owes Rob a considerable sum. This was in payment for helping Mir Murad to plan and conduct a military campaign against a feuding neighbor who had invaded his territories. Rob plans, therefore, to visit this man and collect the debt, which, he says, should be quite sufficient to pay our expenses as far as Baghdad; there I may make contact with the American consul and arrange for funds to be sent by my brother Henry.”

  This plan did not recommend itself to Scylla. “We must depend on the generosity of Colonel Cameron as far as Baghdad?”

  “Since we are already dependent on him for his company and protection, what difference does it make if he helps us with money—a commodity which both he and I regard as of very little consequence?”

  Although this made perfectly practical sense—indeed, Scylla herself had never attached particular importance to money, or the lack of it—she found herself strongly averse to the prospect of being altogether dependent on the colonel. She resented the thought of needing to apply to Cameron should she wish to purchase a head shawl or a new pair of shoes.—Miss Musson, it was true, sometimes received payment from people for her medical services, but the payment was generally in kind, a small lump of salt, a bowl of curds, a gluey handful of dried mulberries. And, more often than not, her patients were so needy that even these offerings were declined if it could be done without offense. “Rather pray for our safety on the journey,” was her formula.—Well, there seemed no help for it; they must accept the colonel’s bounty. Cal, when his opinion was canvassed, exclaimed: