The Weeping Ash

by Joan Aiken

  “Now, my dear child, pray do not be distressing yourself about Rob! He is stiff-necked, as most men are—especially those of Scots descent—he will come around by and by. You have done your part by apologizing—you did very well—all you need do now is keep out of his way as much as possible until we recommence our journey, so as to avoid occasions for dispute.” Scylla received this discouraging news without comment.

  * * *

  At the end of two more days’ cave life Scylla was heartily weary of incarceration and longed to be on the move again. Even the Bai’s castle would have been preferable! Following Miss Musson’s advice, she had hardly seen Cameron—except for brief intervals at mealtimes—but she heard from Cal that he still thought it best not to move on.

  During this period the two women mended their clothes and those of the men; the Therbah assiduously groomed the camels and made a new carrying frame for little Chet; Cal spent as much time as he was permitted in theological discussions with the Holy Pir, a good many hours in waiting, and the rest of his time holding long conversations with Scylla.

  Sooner or later these always came around to the subject of Sripana and his feelings about her; certain that the more he was allowed to discuss his hopeless passion, the sooner he would begin to recover from it, Scylla indulged him in this, though she was beginning to find these dialogues inexpressibly painful.

  How Colonel Cameron passed his leisure Scylla did not know, nor did she inquire. But at the end of three days his caution received its justification, for a troop of armed men in the service of Mir Murad Beg came climbing up the slopes of the Pir’s mountain.

  Fortunately there were no external traces to betray the presence of the fugitives. The incessant wind (the Therbah said it was called “the wind that blows for a hundred and twenty days”) removed all footprints from the rocky, dusty terrain, and all camel droppings had been thriftily scooped up to be used for fuel. The indignant camels themselves had had their muzzles tied up to prevent them from roaring, snarling, or shrieking and had been led by the Therbah to the deepest cave he could find that would accommodate them, as soon as the first tiny puff of dust, denoting a troop of horses, had been sighted on the horizon.

  The humans, likewise, took refuge far inside the mountain, where they were obliged to remain without light or fire, because the smell of smoke, drifting through the tunnels, might betray their presence. Even little Chet was somewhat dismayed by the cold and the blank darkness; he whimpered dolefully at first but was appeased by Scylla’s holding him tightly and singing all the lullabies she could think of, in a voice hardly above a whisper, until he finally fell asleep.

  This disagreeable period of imprisonment seemed to last for an eternity. Cameron had asked the Holy Pir’s disciple, Buyantu, a small, stocky, taciturn monk with a very Mongolian cast of countenance, to let them know when the searchers departed; but hours elapsed before his shuffling tread was heard coming along the rocky passages, and the glimmer of his taper gradually illuminated their tomblike place of refuge.

  Buyantu explained to the Therbah (the only one who understood his dialect) that the Bai’s men had been obliged to remain for several hours—it had seemed like days to the captives—because the Holy Pir was engaged in one of his periods of prayer and could not be interrupted. Meanwhile Buyantu had blocked all their questions with the answer, “I know nothing; I know nothing.”

  The leaders of the troop—two of the Bai’s sons—were finally admitted to the Holy Pir’s presence.

  “Bless the old boy, he was quite equal to them,” said Cal cheerfully, telling his sister about the interview later. “Apparently they said to him, ‘Have you seen some European thieves and murderers here?’ or something like that, and he answered, ‘I have seen nothing but God.’ He wasn’t telling any lie. That’s all he does see. And of course they were obliged to accept his word, because he is the Holy Pir.”

  “Did he learn what had happened to Dizane?” asked Scylla anxiously.

  “Yes, they told him the whole story—how the Bai had been wounded and insulted and deprived of his rightful property—meaning Dizane.”

  “Where is she?”

  “She is dead.”

  Scylla had expected as much, but still the news came as a kind of numbing grief: she remembered so clearly how the girl had knelt to her, how she had snatched up the gun, the urgency of her speech, the touch of her hand—now all that proud energy was gone, finished.

  “What happened?”

  “They were following her on horseback, coming closer, and she slowed up a little and turned around to shout back at them, ‘You will never catch me, never!’ and then she jumped her horse over a cliff.”

  “Oh, I am glad!” Scylla said fervently. “Does Cameron know?”

  “Yes, he was there when the Holy Pir was telling us about it.”

  “Did he say anything?”

  “No; he asked about the Bai.”

  “Was the Bai badly hurt?”

  “No; he is better now.”

  “That is fortunate… So now we can continue on our journey?”

  “When a pilgrim caravan passes by.”

  This did not occur for another ten days, during which the party had time to grow exceedingly weary of cave life and a diet composed mainly of mountain goat.

  However on the fifth day the Pir, learning by chance from Cal that they were very short of funds, suddenly announced that he would escort them to a spot where they might supply themselves with enough wealth to provide them with provisions and equipment for the rest of their journey.

  “How very singular!” exclaimed Scylla when Cal told her this. “Wealth to be picked up in the wilderness? What is this place?”

  “A ruined temple, it seems, destroyed by King Ogotai when he came down from the north.”

  “Ogotai?”

  “He was a son or nephew of Genghis Khan,” replied the well-informed Cal.

  “If there are treasures,” said Scylla, thinking of the Great King’s tomb at Ziatur, “why have thieves not made off with them long ago?”

  “They believe the temple is watched over by a powerful djinn.”

  * * *

  It took them half a day’s journey to reach the temple of Koh-i-Ruwan; this was partly because of the Pir, who, owing to his stationary life, could not move very quickly. He rode on a white ass; the rest of the party walked, and the outing took on something of the cheerful aspect of a picnic excursion, because the Pir was delighted as a boy to have a chance of a day out from his cave and continual orisons.

  “I shall have to pray for twenty-one days without stopping at all to make up for this,” he confided to Miss Musson. “But yet it will have been worth it! I know that the world we see about us is merely an illusion, an insubstantial show, a shred of vapor, no more important than a dream—but still, it has a very agreeable appearance!”

  Miss Musson admired the white ass, a handsome beast, and he told her that he had once ridden it all the way to Mecca. “I have been to all the holy places of Asia.—But there is nothing in Mecca,” he said sadly. “It is just a place, like any other. For true sanctity one must look inward.”

  Scylla discovered with amazement that the Pir had also been to Jerusalem, to Constantinople, and even to Rome, which was where he had learned his excellent English.

  “But all this running to and fro in the world is as nothing! Travel, even to the greatest seats of learning and sanctity, weighs nothing in the balance—no, not so much as a grain of sand—against remaining in one spot, withdrawing from temptation, abstaining from all actions, even virtuous ones, and loosening one’s ties with everything temporal and corporeal.”

  Miss Musson sighed.

  “I daresay you are in the right of it, Your Holiness. Indeed, as I grow older, the appeal of such a life grows very great. But, after all, somebody has to make the laws and teach the children and look after
the sick and feed the pigs!”

  “I see no occasion for it. If men had not already committed a great many follies and wickednesses, such activities would not be necessary,” loftily replied the Pir.

  Scylla could hardly feel that was a valid argument.

  “You mean, because everybody would be meditating in their own little cell? But—if they were—I do not precisely see, Your Holiness, how the human race would continue at all. Surely it would very soon die out altogether because—because there would not be any families to ensure its continuation.”

  The Holy Pir smiled. “Aha, my child! I see that you, like your brother, suffer from the intellectual curiosity and the disputatious nature which is just as much an enemy to holy abstraction and meditation as—as any other form of worldly activity. Mind! I do not deny that it is very enjoyable to encounter it from time to time,” he confessed, as if he found it necessary to apologize for his interest in their ideas.

  “I hope our disputations will not disturb your meditations, sir,” put in Cal, who was walking on the other side of the white ass.

  “No, my son. I am thankful to say that I am too far along the True Way for that. When you are gone from here, it will be no more than as if two birds, flying past, threw their shadows for an instant upon my wall and then vanished forever.”

  Scylla felt chilled by this image, but the Holy Pir went on, surprisingly, “Now your excellent guardian, Miss Musson here, is different; she has the contemplative habit; if she were to remain with me in the wilderness, I feel very sure that I could soon set her feet upon the Way.”

  Miss Musson remained silent for so long after this remark that, amazed and a little apprehensive, Scylla began to wonder if she intended to take the anchorite up on his unexpected offer. At last, however, sighing, she said:

  “The prospect of a tranquil old age learning contemplation in this comfortable wilderness, Your Holiness, is indeed not one to be lightly rejected. But, alas, one is sometimes obliged to decline the greater good in favor of the lesser. I have lines to follow—knots to untie, promises to keep.”

  Scylla felt herself strangely moved by this, but also a little shocked.

  “Dearest Miss Musson!” she exclaimed. “If you would truly prefer to remain here—pray do not be feeling that any commitment to us must take you farther than you wish to go! I do not”—she gulped—“I do not pretend that we should not miss you! But we are not children! I am sure that we could manage very well. Cal and I could—could deliver little Chet to the provost of Eton—”

  “Certainly we could,” agreed Cal, but Miss Musson said calmly:

  “No, my dear children; I am very sure that you could manage to admiration without me—but I promised my eldest brother Henry that before it was too late I would return to keep him company. He is—is blind, you know—”

  She sighed again and once more fell silent.

  Colonel Cameron had been walking a little ahead of the rest and taking no part in their talk. This was not to be wondered at, since the route must have awakened sad memories for him. They had been skirting the mountainside, just above the tree line. Down below them a dark, thickly forested ravine fell away abruptly—so deep, so dark, so densely crammed with trees that it resembled a black crack in the landscape.

  “Sun never shine down there,” said the Therbah sadly.

  And, on the opposite side, on a crag above the trees, they had seen a ruin which, Miss Musson murmured to Scylla, had been the fortress belonging to Cameron’s lost princess. By unspoken agreement they all increased their pace past this tragic spot and felt relief when it was out of sight.

  Gradually the deep ravine became shallower and formed a series of cup-shaped hollows in the mountainside, linked by tumbling waterfalls; rounding a spur of the mountain, they presently saw that they were on a level with the topmost of these hollows which formed a great natural amphitheater, magnificently situated at the head of the valley. In the center of this great space were more ruins—pillars, round arches, fragments of wall—and the Holy Pir, loosening his rein, said:

  “That is the temple of Koh-i-Ruwan, where there was once a thriving community.”

  “How long ago was this?” inquired Miss Musson.

  Scylla had expected the Pir to answer forty or fifty years, but he reflected and said, “It must be some six hundred years now since the priests were all slaughtered. I was a priest there once myself, in a previous incarnation, but that was long before; in the time of the great king Alexander, who visited the temple once, on his way to his northern city of Cyropolis.”

  Scylla was somewhat startled at the Holy Pir’s claim to clear memories of earlier incarnations, but Cal and Miss Musson took them calmly enough and evinced no doubt of his ability to recall events of previous lives.

  “So that is how Your Holiness happens to know where the treasure is hidden?” Cal said. “You were there when it was stowed away perhaps? You do not think it might have been removed in the meantime?”

  “I think it very unlikely. In those days there was much gold to be found in the streams and rivers of this region. All that men needed to do was lay fleecy sheepskins, weighted down by stones, upon the river bed and leave them there—for about twenty days, as I recall. Then the fleece would be dried in the hot sun and shaken carefully over a white cloth, and many grains of gold would be found. Also there were ruby mines, farther north, in the sandy foothills, deep tunnels like those made by wild beasts, burrowed into the soft rock. Many great rubies were discovered… I recall the king Alexander took a basketful with him, as large as red grapes. There was a great deal of treasure in the temple,” said the Holy Pir simply. “I do not think it will all be gone.”

  On closer approach to the ruined temple, Scylla could well understand why it was believed to be haunted. The situation of the building was awe-inspiring, poised on its natural shelf, overhanging the valley. And the only approach to it was along a single track, part of which, for a stretch of about thirty yards, traversed a narrow man-made shelf across a cliff face, a sheer drop of some four hundred feet into the ravine below. At the far side of this the path ran between the massive, pillarlike legs of an immense equestrian statue. This, like the temple, was shattered: only the legs remained upright, supporting a portion of the horse’s body. When the party had passed under it they all paused to exclaim at it. The legs, some fifteen feet high, were carved from black, flinty porphyry with veins of dark red and green.

  “It was all cut from one rock,” the Pir told them. “I can just remember when it was made—that was in my sixty-ninth incarnation.”

  “Where is the rider?” Cal asked, looking about.

  The head and neck of the horse, carved with wonderful fidelity and skill, were to be seen on the blond grass nearby. The head seemed gazing across the valley. And a portion of the tail and hindquarters lay not far off. But of the rider there was no sign.

  “There is a local tale about this horse,” said the Pir. “Our friend there”—nodding at Cameron—“will have heard it. Like all such tales, it is part superstition, part fact; every auditor must ravel out the truth, as best he can, for himself.”

  “Pray tell us the tale, sir,” said Cal, and Scylla echoed his request.

  “Pray do, Your Holiness.”

  “Very well,” said the Pir, with an indulgent smile, and went on. “This horse is called the Asp-i-Dheha. Once it had wings and could fly. Its master, a giant, lived many thousands of miles to the north, beyond the Hiung-nu mountain range. Every night he flew southward, through wind and storm and blizzard, thousands of miles, to visit the beautiful queen of this region. But she died at last, and one night her lover arrived to find that she had been buried in a tomb on this mountain. The giant was so distraught with sorrow that he cut off his horse’s wings and buried himself beside the queen, deep under the mountain. The horse remained on this spot, year after year, grieving for its master, until at length it tu
rned to stone. But even now it still speaks, and sometimes cries aloud, imploring its master to come back to it; you see how the head looks to the north, where it believes its master to have gone.”

  “Poor horse,” said Scylla softly, and Cal said:

  “Does it really speak, Your Holiness?”

  The Pir tapped a piece of flint against one of the massive legs and it gave off a clear ringing note, like bell metal.

  “When the wind blows between these four legs, it is like a great stringed instrument; one may hear the sound from many miles away. That is why thieves are afraid to visit and rob the temple. But come, now, let me see…”

  Leaving his ass to stray where it liked, the Holy Pir walked across a wide paved area which must once, presumably, have been the main entrance court of the temple. Climbing a zigzag ramp to a higher level, he made for what looked as if it had been a small shrine, set against the back wall of the amphitheater. This had a double row of columns on each side, some of them still upright, others prone among the pale grass and thistles. At the rear of the shrine stood a weathered block, apparently an altar, and, going to one side of this, the Pir tapped with his piece of flint here and there upon the paved floor, until his ear caught the sound that he was expecting. He called Cal to him and said:

  “My son, push this paving slab sideways, depressing the left-hand edge and raising the right; after some centuries, it may be a trifle stiff.”

  This proved an understatement; and in the end it took the combined strength of Cal, Cameron, and the Therbah to force the slab to swivel. But at length it did so, apparently rotating on a stone axle, and a cavity was revealed below, about the size of a clothes chest. It seemed to be full of birds’ bones.

  Scylla was too polite to voice her disappointment, but Cal said disgustedly:

  “Are you sure this is the right cache, Your Holiness? I see nothing but a lot of drumsticks!”

  “Vision without knowledge is little better than blindness,” replied the Pir calmly. “Break one of those shank bones, my child, and tell me what you see then?”