by Joan Aiken
“Oh, fiddlestick! What do I care? Or what does Cameron care? He’s a great gun—a regular out-and-outer. Do not be a muttonhead, Scylla! We can pay him back when we get to England all right and tight—I daresay our great cousins will advance the money till we are in the way of earning some for ourselves. So in the meantime it would be foolish to regard it; and I don’t, in the least.”
“How can we be sure that we shall be able to earn money in England?” despondently replied his sister, dropping a pebble in the river—they were sitting on a wall in a riverside village called Aq Qara, waiting while Cameron bargained for and organized the construction of a raft.
“My poetry is going to make me famous. It will earn us a great deal of money,” Cal forecast with total confidence. “I shall take a house in the best part of London; you may buy a perch phaeton (or whatever is the fashion when we get there), mix with all the ton, go to Almack’s, rig yourself up in the first stare of the mode, and, I daresay, even meet the Prince of Wales.”
Scylla smiled faintly at Cal’s cheerful predictions. At bottom, she, too, believed in his talent, and that he would have a great success; very likely all his expectations would come to pass; then why was she not more excited at the prospect? Two or three months ago the greatest ambition in her life had been to reach London, to get a glimpse of the world of cultivated, fashionable society. Then why did this interesting future no longer please as once it would have?
Absently, she looked across the tumbling water to the gray shingle banks, fringed with ice, on the other side of the river. Beyond the shingle, supported on struts, rose the flat-topped Kafir houses, tier on tier. A street bazaar, by the river, was roofed with branches. Single willows and apricot orchards beyond the houses were covered with golden buds. Above the orchards rose the white peaks of Laghman Konarha. A kingfisher darted over the water with a flash of blue. Children were throwing flat stones at a post in the stream. Women, dressed in red and blue, bustled past them carrying triangular baskets of firewood. Flocks of sheep jostled and bleated in the street, being driven to spring pasturage on the lower slopes. Cuckoos were calling. A great brown and white lammergeier floated serenely overhead, hundreds of feet up. The sun, at last, felt warm.
“I wonder how long it will take us to reach London from here?” she pondered.
“Perhaps a month to Kabul,” Cal thought. “Then from Kabul to Herat is twenty-five days by camel caravan, Rob says; or ten days on horseback. Then on to Yezd, another thirty-five days by camel.”
“Which cost more, camels or horses?” prudently inquired his sister.
“Camels cost more to buy, of course, woolly crown, because they are bigger! But it costs more to join a horse caravan, because they travel faster. Then from Yezd to Baghdad is another thirty-five days—and then from Baghdad to the sea is no great matter, perhaps four hundred miles. That may be done in a few days by coach, I believe.”
Scylla reckoned on her fingers. “So from Kabul to the Mediterranean might be done in perhaps a hundred and ten days.”
“After that, I suppose it may take another two months to sail from the eastern end of the Mediterranean to a British port. This is the end of February—we might be in London by mid-September. How strange it will be to see you rigged up in fashionable gear!” he added, regarding his sister, who, at that moment, was wearing a black pleated wool dress that she had bought in the town, over a pair of blue baggy trousers, or perjamas, fastened tight around the ankle; she had curly toed shoes, a black wool vest, a wide-sleeved jacket, and a black headcloth. On these items of apparel she had spent most of her dwindling funds, and now wished she had not.
“Even now you look as fine as fivepence!” Cal teased her. He himself had purchased a peaked fur cap, a black sheepskin coat, wide white trousers, and short black boots, for the clothes he had worn during the mountain journey, like Scylla’s, had practically fallen to pieces. “Rob says,” he went on, “that fair-haired women from the Kirghiz fetch immensely high prices as slaves here in Kafiristan—as much as twenty thousand rupees. If we could only sell you to some rich nobleman, we should have plenty of money for the journey.”
“Thank you! And I am to settle down in his tent while you travel to England?”
“Oh, you could very likely run away and join us.”
“That sounds like one of your romantic sagas,” she said, jumping down from the wall. “Hark! I hear Miss Musson calling us.”
The negotiations for the raft were complete. A number of massaks, or inflated skins, had been purchased, and they were now being roped together and reinforced with brushwood.
“Will it really support five people and a baby?” inquired Miss Musson, surveying it doubtfully as it bobbed by the riverbank.
“Certainly it will, ma’am! I hope you are a capable boatman, my boy,” Cameron said, turning to Cal. “If not, you will have to learn.”
“Cal and I can both row,” Scylla coolly said. “Do you remember, Cal, how we used to go in a boat on some lake near Umballa, when Mama was still alive?”
“This will not be quite the same as rowing in a pleasure boat, Miss Paget,” Cameron dryly informed her. “The paddles are about three times the size and weight. And a great deal of the time we shall be negotiating rapids.”
“What a fortunate thing it is, Rob, that you were born on the shores of Lake Superior,” Miss Musson said comfortably. “You will be able to show us all how to go on.”
Scylla could not help wondering if her guardian intended this remark as gentle mockery of the colonel’s somewhat magisterial manner, but, if so, he took no notice, merely addressed himself to the stowing and fastening of the stores. The raft was a strong but fairly light structure, some ten or twelve feet square, with a kind of gunwale around it.
Before embarking, to fortify themselves for the journey, they had a meal at an eating house in the center of the town. Compared with many skimpy meals in the mountains, this seemed like a feast: chicken cooked with wild onions and apricots, rice, and the avid wine of Kafiristan, served on trays, around which the travelers sat cross-legged on the ground. The unwonted comfort and luxury had the effect of relaxing the constraint which, of late, had affected several members of the party.
“What religion is practiced in Kafiristan?” inquired Miss Musson of the colonel, as she neatly bit the meat from a chicken bone.
“Well, ma’am, since the Kafirs have been repeatedly invaded by the Muslims, a large number of them now subscribe to the Mohammedan faith. But the original Kafir religion still obtains in the mountains, where the people worship Moni the Prophet, Imra, the forefather, Gesh, the earth god, and his wife the producer of all things—this pair seem equivalent to the Hindu Shiva and his consort Parvati. Kafirs also reverence sun, moon, fire, and water. They have holy men, called pirs, who live in caves like hermits. And when the Kafir people die, it is customary not to bury them but to leave the body on some mountain peak for the birds to devour.”
“How very heartless!” exclaimed Scylla. “If I had a loved one—a husband, parent, or child—who died, I should think it horrible to abandon them in such a way. It seems quite shockingly callous. Do you not agree, Colonel Cameron?”
He looked at her, she thought, rather strangely. After a moment or two however, he replied:
“If one lives in a country, ma’am, it is better to adhere to its customs, whatever one’s private feelings. It would be impossible to contravene local mores without giving terrible offense. One must subdue one’s own inclinations. And, when all’s said and done, what difference does it make, once the soul is fled, what happens to the earthly envelope?”
She was silenced; taken aback at something different in his tone, which, as a rule, was characterized by curtness and dryness, particularly when addressing her. Rather lamely, after a moment, she replied:
“I—I daresay you are right.”
After the meal the party embarked cheerfully amid
shouted good wishes from bystanders who stood on the riverbank, and housewives out enjoying the sun on their flat, wide-eaved roofs. “May you be healthy!” they shouted. “May you never tire! May you remain harmonious, one with another!”
Replying to these good wishes, Miss Musson bowed with dignity as the three men, wielding poles and paddles, untied the raft and urged it on its way.
For several days nothing occurred to trouble them. By day they drifted downstream, sometimes swiftly on rapids through gorges of dark red rock, sometimes at an easier pace through wide, curved valleys where the fields were beginning to show green sprouts of barley and maize, where poplars grew by the water’s edge and apple and walnut groves were covered with rosy buds.
At night they erected their skin tents and slept on the bank, unmolested by wild animals.
Cal occupied himself during this time with fishing, at which he soon showed considerable skill, and making notes for his poem on Genghis Khan. He had been unable to find any paper in Aq Qara but had discovered an old book, in one of the teahouses, which he had been able to purchase. That it was in Russian made no difference to him; he wrote in the margins and between the lines. “I daresay I shall be able to procure paper in Jellalabad,” he said. Meanwhile he provided them with trout, and Cameron, when he was awake, shot a sufficient quantity of duck and waterfowl to vary the fish diet. The latter, however, passed a great deal of time asleep, unless the increased speed of the raft alerted him to the fact that they were approaching rapids, when he awoke, by instinct apparently, and seized a pole or a paddle.
“He is worn out, poor man,” Miss Musson said softly one day as he lay sprawled at length, slumbering deeply, in the mild sunshine. “I fear that it was a great anxiety for him, getting us through those mountains. See how thin he has become.”
Scylla realized that this was true. Looking at the defenseless sleeping face, she saw the hollows under the jutting cheekbones, new lines of worry around the closed eyes, a hint of gray in the lion-colored hair. Even asleep, his lips were set together in a determined line, tucked in deeply at the corners, as if to conceal emotion and give nothing away.
“Well, he will soon be rid of us now. He can dispatch us on some caravan bound for Baghdad and heave a sigh of relief.”
“Not so,” Miss Musson contradicted her. “He intends to escort us at least as far as Baghdad and, if he considers it necessary, all the way to the Mediterranean.”
“Indeed?” With a lift of her brows Scylla inquired, “Does he not think us capable of traveling without his aid?”
“Do not be foolish, child,” Miss Musson returned equably. “The way is beset with dangers—Baluchi brigands, Turkoman robbers who haunt the passes and at times capture the caravanserais. And there are dishonest local officials who would exact extortionate taxes from unwary travelers—but Rob has been that way many times and knows the hazards. So do not be decrying his usefulness and generosity.”
“Look, look!” exclaimed Cal in a thrilled whisper, his fingers digging into Scylla’s arm. “A huge wild goose! Should I waken Rob so that he can shoot it?”
Neck outstretched, the bird was flapping slowly across the valley of bean and clover fields.
“Do not waken the poor man—shoot it yourself,” Scylla whispered back “Make haste—or it will be gone.”
“I’d miss—and the shot would wake him—then it would be too late and he would be angry.”
“Oh!” Suddenly impatient, she snatched up Cal’s gun, which lay beside her, aimed, as she had so often seen the men do, and fired. As she had instinctively taken aim ahead of the bird’s flight, the shot was exactly on target, and the goose dropped heavily into the river ahead of them.
“Very good shot, Missy Paget!” exclaimed the Therbah with an approving nod.
Cal gaped, Miss Musson exclaimed, “Gracious me!” and Colonel Cameron awoke to the sight of Scylla, pink-cheeked with triumph, dropping Cal’s gun beside him on the raft.
“Miss Paget!” Although he had been asleep the instant before, his voice was like the crack of the shot itself. “Did you fire that gun?”
“Of course she did, Colonel!” Cal cried joyfully. “And look what she has bagged us!”
At this moment the raft overtook the floating body of the goose and Cal succeeded in hooking it out of the water with his pole. “See what a markswoman my sister proves to be!” he said, holding up the massive bird. “We should have had her shooting for the pot any time these past three months!”
Cameron darted such a look at Scylla that she found it hard not to flinch. “You might have blown somebody’s head off!” he said harshly. Scylla bit her lip. Cal looked mutinous, Miss Musson appeared pensive. There was a terrible silence. Then, suddenly, the colonel burst out laughing.
“I ought to wring your neck or box your ears, Miss Paget, but I will be magnanimous and admit that it was a very fair shot—or a very lucky one! But no more impulsive firing of this kind, I beg; I have not brought us all the way over the mountains only to have somebody killed by mischance on the last leg of the journey.”
“I am sorry,” Scylla murmured, catching Miss Musson’s eye, which was fixed on her.
“Truly, sir, I think my sister is a natural shot,” Cal said eagerly. “Will you not instruct her how to handle a gun, as you did me? I think she would prove a far more rewarding pupil!”
“Is that your wish?” Cameron demanded of Scylla. She nodded, bright-eyed. “Very well! It is a bargain.” He stretched out his hand, clasped hers for an instant, then let it go. “But I shall prove a very hard taskmaster, I warn you.”
“Goose quills!” said Cal, lovingly stroking the great bird. “Now I can make myself some proper pens at last.”
* * *
Another day and a half brought them into regions well known to Cameron.
“These are the lands of Mir Murad Beg,” he said. “I have skirmished over them often enough to recognize the contours of the hillsides.”
It was a mountainous area, with dry jagged peaks, and watchtowers built of dried mud perched on the steep hillsides. Soon enough, in a riverside village, a couple of white-trousered, turbaned men greeted Cameron, bowing deeply and addressing him as “Arb Shah.”
“That was my name in these parts,” he explained to his companions. “They took me for an Arab, since I said that I came from the Western lands.”
“Our lord the Bai will indeed be happy to learn that you have returned to his territories,” one of the men said in Pushtu. “We will send him word that you are journeying toward his castle, and without doubt he will dispatch envoys to greet you,” and both men bowed respectfully again.
Despite the warmth and evident welcome of the greeting, Cameron seemed oddly constrained and ill at ease, talked little after they had reembarked, but sat in frowning silence, his unfocused gaze resting on each peak in turn as they drifted slowly along the rocky windings of a valley where black and white humped cattle grazed near the water and shaggy sheep roamed on the higher slopes.
Scylla wondered if this return to a place where he had been before was distressing to him in some way; he certainly seemed to derive no pleasure from it.
“What is he like, this Mir Murad Beg?” she ventured to inquire.
Cameron turned to her, his brow lightening.
“The Bai? He is a great autocrat, Miss Paget—a feudal baron, rather after the style of the old Normans. He lives in a fortified castle—has complete power over his vassals—is of mixed Kafir and Tatar descent. But his rule is fair enough—he cares for his people and is an excellent overlord, after his fashion. He is a handsome old boy, too—I think you will like him. His wives seem devoted to him.”
“How many wives?” Miss Musson wanted to know.
“Four, when I knew him last—but also some unofficial relationships.” Cameron began to laugh. “I can remember once, when he came back from a trip to Kalat, all
his wives beating him with their slippers, upon his admission that he had been unfaithful to them while in the city. And they laid on, too! But he only laughed. He told me that he chose his first wife for style and high birth, the second for beauty, the third as a handmaid, and the fourth as a pet.”
“I am sorry for the third!” was Scylla’s comment. But Cameron had relapsed into silence again and was once more gazing into the distance.
Toward noon they saw a number of riders on horseback galloping over the hillsides.
“Is it a hunt?” speculated Miss Musson. “Or would these be your friends coming to greet us, Rob?”
Cameron scrutinized the riders for a while with his keen eyes before replying.
“No, it is neither of those things. It is a betrothal chase.”
“A betrothal chase? What in the world is that?”
“Do you see that girl riding ahead? The figure in red, on the beautiful black horse, riding with her bow slung?”
“I cannot see the bow, but I see the one you mean, ahead of the rest.”
“All those young men behind her are her suitors; she must be some rich man’s daughter—or very handsome—to have such a number after her. If she can ride around the mountain and return to her village still with her bow, she may choose the suitor she likes best. But if one of the hunters can catch her and take the bow from her—then he keeps the girl too!”
“Suppose two of them catch her?” Cal suggested.
“Then they fight it out with short swords called katars.”
“I hope her father has equipped her with a good horse,” remarked Scylla.