The Weeping Ash

by Joan Aiken

  “Yes, I see. Thank you, ma’am. I am sure you are right.” Scylla sighed. “What a tedious pair we are.” But she was immensely relieved at this confirmation of what she had vaguely thought herself.

  “Not tedious.” Miss Musson smiled slightly. “Now I believe you should drink a little goat broth and go to sleep again.”

  “But—little Chet—you must have such a deal to do, ma’am—”

  “Psha. The Therbah is looking after little Chet, very capably. He is the best baby in the world—no trouble to anybody.—Ah, here comes Cal with your broth. I am sure that you will wish to have a comfortable coze together, so I will leave you for the moment.”

  Scylla, now accustomed to the dim light in the cave, perceived immediately that her brother was looking thin and pale. His faunlike pointed face was even more pointed than usual, for it had great hollows below the cheekbones; and his wide-set eyes under the soft black-winged eyebrows were tired and sad. His look of strain broke up, however, into an affectionate smile when he saw his sister recovered, and he squatted down by her and offered a steaming bowl, saying:

  “Drink this disgusting beverage! I have done my possible by scattering wild herbs into it, but it still tastes to me like essence of old rope, if not something much worse.”

  Obediently Scylla gulped it down, and agreed with his verdict.

  “How are you, dearest Cal?” she asked, searching his face with anxiety.

  He took one of her hands and clasped it in both of his.

  “Oh, I shall come about!” The lightness of the tone could not disguise the real depth of his feelings. He added after a moment, “No, it is very bad. To tell you the truth, I feel as if I were being stretched on the rack all the time! I have written poetry about love so often, and so glibly, but, sister, you have no idea; I had no idea; no idea whatsoever! It is a terrible force; a fever. It really burns. And to know that I shall never see her again; ever—ever—ever—Oh, it is not to be borne!” he cried in anguish, and hid his face in his hands.

  “I know,” said Scylla softly. “It is very bad. Poor Manny—” which had been her childhood name for him. She knelt up on the pile of feathers and put her arms around him. After a moment he turned his head speechlessly and rubbed his cheek against her hand.

  * * *

  When Scylla woke from her second sleep she was pronounced well enough to be introduced to her host, the Holy Pir; her awakening, fortunately, happening to coincide with one of his short daily periods of intermission from prayer.

  Miss Musson escorted Scylla to the rock chamber generally occupied by the Pir; and on the way to it she was able to see for the first time the true extent and vastness of the cave system where they were quartered.

  A whole mountainside, it seemed, was pitted by great natural vaults, which, in the course of many centuries, had been enlarged, added to, joined by passages, and made into dwelling places by countless generations of humans. Air holes and entrances at every level allowed light to penetrate to a greater or lesser degree. As Miss Musson had said, the passages delved far back into the mountain, but the chambers nearest the surface were the ones that had evidently been in most frequent use. At one time, it was plain, a huge multitude of people must have inhabited the place; it had been a whole city inside a mountain. Now the sole remaining inmates in this great hilly honeycomb were the Holy Pir and his disciple, who kept their quarters high up on the brow of the hillside. To reach this part the visitors must climb hundreds of worn rock steps, mostly inside the cave, but some of them winding among crags or crossing uncomfortably precipitous rock faces. At last they reached a small, chilly cavern, illuminated by three great round holes in the cliff, which, facing north, allowed in plenty of light and freezing air but no distracting sun. Here the Pir stood all day inside a kind of semicircular barrier, or desk, carved from the rock. With one hand he tinkled a tiny golden bell, with the other he swiftly flicked a set of ancient carved ivory beads along a string; and meanwhile he chanted continuous invocations, reciting the ritualistic words of prayer with incredible speed, acquired, no doubt, by long usage and familiarity. Cal was already in the room, sitting cross-legged on the floor, he seemed thoughtful, soothed and calmed by the devout atmosphere and the peaceful murmuring of the holy recluse. Little Chet sat on Cal’s lap, silently chewing the teething toy that the Bai’s wives had given him, his round black eyes intently following the to-and-fro movement of the golden bell. Miss Musson sank matter-of-factly to the floor and Scylla followed suit, thankful to rest after the quite arduous climb.

  About ten minutes later the Pir’s chantings came to a stop. He brought his eyes back from the invisible distances they had been contemplating and laid down his bell. Picking up a censer full of incense that had been standing on his desk, he rotated it on its chain until blue coils of aromatic smoke drifted about the room and out of the window holes. Then, setting down the censer, he raised his string of beads and beckoned Cal to come to him. Cal rose obediently, holding the baby in the crook of his arm, and went forward to the desk; the Pir swung his rosary so that the beads touched Cal’s forehead, while murmuring what was evidently a blessing; then he did the same to little Chet. Finally he beckoned to Miss Musson and Scylla, who approached and were blessed in their turn.

  When this ceremony had been completed, the Pir’s face broke into a smile. He was a very impressive-looking man; quite six feet tall, Scylla thought; his skin weathered almost to the color of old oak by exposure to mountain air. He wore a dark red wool robe, tied around the waist by a hair-rope girdle, and had on his head a pirpank, or conical hat, made of black wool. His face, Scylla thought, curiously resembled some old prints Miss Musson’s brother Winthrop had had in his study, depicting those other Indians, the North American Comanches or braves. He had a long hooked nose and high, deeply undercut cheekbones; his aspect was proud and calm. When he smiled, Scylla noticed his large fine white teeth. She wondered how old he was; his face seemed hairless as from extreme age, but a long black braid hung down his back, under his cap. She suspected him to be far older than he seemed.

  “Good evening, ladies,” said the Pir, startling Scylla nearly out of her wits. “How do you do, Miss Musson; I am happy that you have brought your young companion to visit me.” His smile became wider as he observed Scylla’s look of astonishment. “You are surprised, miss, that I speak your language.”

  Scylla blushed, feeling that she had been detected in discourtesy, and stammered an apology.

  “His Holiness has traveled to many lands and speaks many languages,” Miss Musson explained suavely; the glint in her eye suggested to Scylla that she had deliberately withheld this piece of information in order to entertain herself by observing her young friend’s surprise.

  “How do you do, sir—Your Holiness.” Scylla curtsied politely. “It is very kind of you to—to allow us to visit your retreat.”

  “I am very happy to be visited.”

  The Pir’s eye rested on little Chet. “Especially by young persons and children.” He studied the baby gravely for a few minutes and then remarked:

  “Would you have any objection, Miss Musson, if I performed a simple test on the baby?”

  Even Miss Musson appeared slightly puzzled at this. “A test, Your Holiness? No, I see no reason to object, but—what kind of a test?”

  The Pir walked to a cavity in the rock wall and delved about in it. Glancing around his sanctum, Scylla noticed that it was furnished with all kinds of sacred odds and ends, on rock shelves and in corners—brass goblets, full of moldering grain, highly colored cakes, copper jugs of oil, sacred images, cloth paintings attached to the walls, bells, antelope horns, gongs, scrolls, lamps, and little pots of yak butter.

  Presently the Pir withdrew his head and shoulders from the closet and lifted out a flat basket containing an odd mixture of articles—three or four horn cups, a couple of what looked like aged, brittle loincloths, three or four rosaries, half
a dozen small ivory images, a couple of scrolls, two snuffboxes.

  “This should really be done after much prescribed ritual and several weeks of prayer,” he observed, carrying the basket across the room and setting it down in front of the baby. “But as I am not quite certain how long I am to have the pleasure of your company on my mountain, it is perhaps best to conduct the test without so many preliminaries; it is quite valid in all circumstances.”

  He watched intently as little Chet, delighted at the sight of so many new, interesting, and unfamiliar objects all set within his reach, studied the contents of the basket absorbedly.

  Scylla had been on the point of asking what the test was intended to prove but, seeing from the Pir’s expression how much importance he evidently ascribed to its outcome, she closed her lips again and, like the other three, concentrated her attention on the baby.

  Presently, with a crow of pleasure, little Chet reached out a hand to finger one of the rosaries. Then he grasped the handle of a cup and thumped it gently up and down. Then he found a bell which gave out a sweet tinkle when he shook it, so he waved it lustily, laughing with joy.

  The Holy Pir sighed and gently undid the small brown fingers from the bell handle. “No, my friend,” he said, patting Chet’s head while he picked up the basket, “you are a good boy and a clever boy, but you are not the boy I am looking for,” and he carried the basket across the room and restored it to its place in the rock cleft.

  “May one ask,” inquired Miss Musson when he returned and sat down cross-legged, “what would have been the result if Chet had been the boy you were seeking, Your Holiness?”

  “He would have been my successor as keeper of this shrine,” the Pir explained. “As you may know, the shrine has had a guardian for many hundreds—perhaps thousands—of years. When one guardian dies, his spirit is rehoused in another body and returns, in course of time, to its place.”

  “How can it be proved that it is the right spirit?” inquired Cal, greatly interested.

  “Why, as you just saw! A child who is claimed to be the new Holy Pir will be able to select, without hesitation, all the articles that have belonged to his predecessors.”

  “I see; how uncommonly neat! But I do detect a difficulty here, sir,” Cal pointed out. “After all, you aren’t dead yet! So how could your spirit be rehoused in little Chet here?”

  The Pir sighed again. “I am afraid you may be right, my son. It is so seldom that a baby as young as that visits my mountain that I thought, perhaps, by some happy dispensation, it might have been vouchsafed that my successor had arrived before I had died, so that I myself would be permitted to train him.”

  “But that would mean sharing one soul between two bodies,” objected Cal.

  “Such a situation might be covered by various sections of the holy writings,” the Pir assured him. “I am not certain that it has happened, but it would not be impossible. However it was not to be!”

  “I must acknowledge, I am greatly relieved at that!” divulged Miss Musson. “I do not doubt that Colonel Cameron would be delighted to be rid of our charge in such a respectable way as discovering that he was the reborn guardian of a mountain shrine in Central Asia, but as I have undertaken to see that little Chet receives the education of an English gentleman at Eton, it must have been a decided setback to my plans for him.”

  The Holy Pir laughed kindly.

  “Do not perturb yourself, ma’am! I will not deprive you of your charge. And now”—he glanced at the light in the sky—“I must return to my devotions, but I look forward to conversing with all or any of you again next time I am at leisure.”

  He returned to his desk, picked up the bell and the rosary, elevated his gaze to the northern sky, and recommenced his chanting as if he had never stopped.

  Somewhat awed by this remarkable duality and detachment, Scylla followed Miss Musson on tiptoe from the cave. Outside, above a fairly narrow ledge overhanging the precipice, she noticed an altar, liberally smeared with yak butter and loaded with offerings: goats’ heads, green disks of flat buckwheat bread, silver beads and amulets, markhor horns. It was evident that some pilgrims ventured no farther than this, perhaps fearing to disturb the Holy Pir at his devotions.

  Cal did not follow his companions.

  “He will come by and by,” said Miss Musson tranquilly. “I hope that he is learning resignation from that holy man.”

  They retraced their way down the winding rock steps and when they had reached the foot Miss Musson said:

  “If you are feeling truly recovered, my dear, would you care to accompany me in a search for camel fodder? Rob does not dare allow the camels to graze outside because, of course, if the Bai does send any pursuers this way, they would be instantly recognized. And it seems too hard that all the labor of finding forage for them should devolve on the men.”

  “Of course I will help you,” Scylla said instantly. “I shall be glad to see what lies outside the cave.”

  The view from the Pir’s window in the cliff face had shown a series of gradually declining foothills, rippling away northward into a great flat desert plain, of apparently almost limitless extent. But when they left the cave by an eastward entrance, Scylla realized that they must be at the northern tip of the chain of mountains which, she knew, curled through the center of Kafiristan. Great peaks, some of them still snow-covered, surrounded the upland plateau which lay behind the Pir’s mountain. Here grew wild sage and wild rose, huge thistles, pale spear grass, leaves of wild hollyhock and uncurling tendrils of wild rhubarb. It did not take the two women very long to gather a large bundle of grass apiece, but, Miss Musson said, “Camels eat a deal of fodder; we had better take in at least a dozen bundles each.” Scylla had no objection; it was pleasant, here on the mountainside, going to and fro, and on the slopes sheltered from the keen and constant wind the sun was very hot.

  “Pray tell me, child, if you see anybody approaching,” Miss Musson said. “My eyes are not as good as yours.” And presently, far off across the plateau, Scylla was able to inform her guardian that she could see the tall, rangy figure of Cameron and the shorter, rounder one of the Therbah, carrying some large beast slung between them. As they came closer, this was revealed to be a large, shaggy deerlike animal.

  “Cameron Sahib shoot a foo!” called the Therbah joyfully.

  Cameron, less enthusiastic, apparently, about the acquisition of the foo, approached the females with a forbidding expression.

  “I did ask you, ma’am, not to venture far from the cave,” he remarked irritably as soon as he was within speaking range. “Supposing the Bai’s warriors should ride this way? They could see you for a great distance in this open place.”

  Scylla was tempted to retort, “In that case, was it not rather foolhardy of you, Colonel Cameron, to go hunting so far from the cave?” but, with an effort, she held her peace.

  “I am sorry; I did not think of that,” admitted Miss Musson. She did not seem too perturbed, however, and added placidly, “Well, it is fortunate that Scylla and I have collected a great deal of fodder. Now nobody need go out for two days at least, as I see our stewpot has been handsomely provided for; and, by the end of that time, perhaps you may be satisfied that danger of pursuit is over.”

  “How can I be?” he replied gloomily, and was turning to climb up to the cave mouth (a large cleft in the mountainside, approached by a kind of rock stair) when Scylla walked up to him.

  “Colonel Cameron,” she said resolutely. “I am very sorry indeed for the inconvenience and trouble that my—my action at the Bai’s castle has brought upon you. Heaven knows that we have immeasurable cause to be grateful to you. You must have been tempted to abandon such awkward charges as we have proved many times over, and yet you have borne with us and rescued us from the predicaments in which we have involved you, again and again. I can only apologize and hope that you may be able to forgive me.”

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nbsp; She had prepared this speech with some care and spoke it slowly, with a thudding heart. Concluding, she looked up into his face and held out her hand. But his face, she saw with dismay, was set like granite, and he replied dryly, without taking the extended hand:

  “Let us proceed into the cave, if you please, before we discuss your behavior at the Bai’s castle, Miss Paget.”

  Deeply mortified at this rebuff, she spun around on her heel and climbed up into the cave entrance, biting her lip to keep herself from tears. When they were inside and she was certain of her voice, she said:

  “I have not the least intention of discussing my behavior at the Bai’s castle, Colonel Cameron,” and walked hastily away through the heaps of camel fodder toward the chamber where Miss Musson had arranged her sickbed.

  Miss Musson followed her, while the two men, assisted by Cal, who had come down from the upper cave at that moment, set about carrying the fodder into some more remote area where the camels were quartered.

  “The camels must be housed deep inside the mountain, poor things,” Miss Musson explained in her matter-of-fact way, following Scylla with little Chet balanced on her hip, “for, of course, if a troop of the Bai’s riders arrived, and they had any camels with them, they would all call to each other; camels are very communicative beasts, it seems.”

  “I see,” replied Scylla mechanically, taking little Chet from her guardian. His friendly warmth was consoling; she sat down on the pile of feathers and gave him a hug. Noticing her inattentive tone, Miss Musson said kindly: