The Weeping Ash

by Joan Aiken

  Why did I not know—not guess—that it was Cal? she asked herself over and over. Why had the mental sympathy failed, that had so often united them in thought, in feeling? And each time she came back to the conclusion that for once Cal, obsessed with his own hopeless passion, and she with hers, had been deaf to each other’s thought patterns, absolved from reality—or perhaps, she thought, shivering, aware in a deeper, more basic way of the other’s inextinguishable need.

  Besides her distress about Cal, she was left with the full understanding of her own hopeless, comfortless case; she loved Cameron, bitterly and deeply; just how deeply she was now made well aware; and that there was no likelihood of his reciprocating her feeling she also perfectly well understood. His cool reply to Miss Musson had made that quite clear, when she had said:

  “Suppose the poor girl were to fall in love with you?”

  “Well then”—and a pause—“I suppose I could marry her.”

  Every tone and nuance of that exchange, Scylla thought, would be stamped in her memory until the hour of her death. I might just as well be carried off by some amir and spend the rest of my life in his harem, she thought despairingly; I cannot imagine any other prospect that would be less wretched.

  On the following day, however, her misery was mitigated by one degree. Cal slept long and late, as he often did after his epileptic seizures or during intensive, inspired spells of writing. When he finally woke and joined the outers, although his sister scanned his face with close, anxious, passionate attention, she could see absolutely no sign of consciousness or guilt; he behaved to her in precisely his normal good-humored casual brotherly fashion; it was plain that the episode, must have seemed to him like some fantastic, feverish dream, born out of the longing for his lost love. Thank God, Scylla thought with heartfelt sincerity, oh, thank God for that; he has been spared the guilt and horror that must otherwise haunt him all his life. And with this knowledge, her own agony of spirit was somewhat relieved. Now she had only herself to contend with. Eased in this way, she was now at liberty to reflect that she was still faced with a physical hazard. Girls in her situation—seduced girls—with a wry mouth she remembered another of the colonel’s statements to Miss Musson—such girls became pregnant, such embraces were the means by which children were engendered. She knew all about this, theoretically, from her work at Miss Musson’s hospital. Well—that was no matter either; with a kind of ironic inner shrug she recalled the bizarre interview with old Khalzada and Habiba in the Bai’s castle. Perhaps Khalzada had intended to safeguard her against the Bai! At all events, if she did prove to be with child, she had the means to cope with the situation. Thank God again! Had Colonel Cameron known that, she thought with a wry chuckle, he might not have felt it needful to make his self-sacrificing proposal to Miss Musson.

  * * *

  It had been a huge relief to Scylla, who found the continued inactivity in the Holy Pir’s cave hard to bear, that three days after these events a southward-traveling pilgrims’ caravan passed by the mountain. It was in fact that same queens’ procession of which the Bai had spoken to Cameron, suggesting they capture the royal ladies and hold them up to ransom. An elderly princess, the mother of one of the queens, had unfortunately died of exhaustion on the return journey from the shrine of Hazrat Imam, and the caravan had traveled around by way of the Holy Pir’s mountain in order to ask if her body might be left in that sacred spot. Permission was given, and the funerary ceremonies occupied two days; after that it was a simple matter for Cameron to request that he and his companions might join the caravan. Since the mountains were known to be full of raiders, the escort of three extra men was welcomed, and the ladies were allowed to ride in the palanquin of the deceased princess. Scylla would have far preferred to ride and see the country they were passing through; but Cameron assured her that, in their present company, this was quite out of the question and she must just make the best of it. She was obliged to obey, but the long hours of traveling in stuffy semidarkness did not improve her spirits. Miss Musson talked very little during the journey; her mind seemed far away; and Scylla found the week spent on the road to Kabul by far the most miserable part of the trip so far.

  During the journey they had hardly a sight of their male companions, who, at night, slept with the armed escort of fifty sowars. Cameron had put it about that his ladies were a pair of nuns from Debuje in the Himalayas, on a pilgrimage to various Middle Eastern shrines, including Mecca, and this was curiously accepted.

  At first Scylla was relieved when, reaching Kabul, they parted from the caravan, which was continuing southward to the royal town of Kandahar. But the inactivity in the little house was even harder to bear than imprisonment in the palanquin. Consequently she was overjoyed, as Cameron had hoped, when, returning one evening, he announced that he had secured them places in a westbound caravan departing in two days’ time.

  “It will travel south, taking the longer route, along the Helmand River, so as to skirt the Koh-i-Baba range, and the Koh Siah, but we are lucky, since it is a horse caravan; it should take us no more than ten or twelve days to reach Herat. Unfortunately it goes no farther in our direction; but very likely we may pick up some other caravan there.”

  “What will it cost?” inquired Miss Musson.

  “Six sequins apiece, and we must provide our own food, naturally.”

  Through his bazaar acquaintance, Cameron had disposed of some of the party’s gold, and he now went out to procure supplies for the journey and arrange for the dispatch of their camels back to Mir Murad Beg.

  Coming out of her own preoccupation somewhat at this news, Scylla noticed that Cameron seemed unusually downcast and taciturn—even more than commonly; later she learned from Cal that he had had a discouraging report of his friend and previous employer, the ex-Amir Mahmud.

  “He is being kept imprisoned by his brother the Shah Shuja’; for a time he was in his own town of Herat, but Shuja’ has now moved him to Kandahar, and rumor has it he is ill, as a result of his imprisonment; I believe Rob is afraid that he may die if he is not soon released.”

  This news aroused in Scylla more compassionate and kindly feelings toward the Colonel than she had entertained of late.

  “Poor Colonel Cameron; no wonder he looks so worried.” A thought struck her. “Now that he has arranged for us to join this caravan, I wonder that he does not leave us? He must be anxious to try and rescue his friend; he is probably wishing us all at Jericho.”

  “Just what I said to Rob myself,” Cal agreed. “And I believe that, if the caravan had gone right through to Baghdad, he might have considered leaving us to make our own way; but since it does not, he thinks it his duty to accompany us.”

  If Scylla had been a man she could have exclaimed, “Damn Colonel Cameron and what he thinks is his duty!” As it was, she gave a shrug and remarked, “Well, he must do as he thinks best; we certainly cannot influence his decision; one might as well order the Holy Pir’s stone horse to break into a gallop.—How does your poem go, by the by?”

  “It is nearly done—I will read it to you presently—may I? And I am happy it is nearly finished, for I have had a capital new idea—I find this life of travel and movement quite famous in that way—ideas seem to bubble up all along the road, and I feel that I am writing better and better every day. Even losing Sripana”—his voice shook a little—“even that seems to have opened a door in me—opened my mind in a new direction.”

  Scylla was silent for some minutes; then, rousing herself, she said affectionately:

  “Dear Cal! I am very glad for you. What is the idea for the new poem?”

  “It concerns a tree—a great tree. For some odd reason—I do not know how it comes about—perhaps because we traveled through so many of those dark, wooded, vine-grown valleys coming down to Kabul—but ever since we left the Bai’s castle, night after night, I have been dreaming about a tree, a great twisted tree.”

 
Scylla stared at him, profoundly struck.

  “Why, Cal, how strange! So have I!”

  “Do you remember when we were children, we would very frequently be dreaming the same dream? You often used to remind me of what we had dreamed when we were eating breakfast, and Mama used to scold us and say it must be nonsense.”

  “So I did,” Scylla said slowly. “I had forgotten that. I expect—” She stopped, then said, “Very likely all the adventures we have been through together lately have brought us back into that old childhood connection which we had when our whole world was each other. But tell me about your tree. What is it like?”

  “It is an ash; Odin’s tree, you know, the lightning tree.”

  “Yggdrasil! I remember Uncle Winthrop telling us that its roots passed through the center of the world.”

  “The Greeks, as well as the Norsemen, worshipped ash trees,” said the well-read Cal. “Hesiod quotes a myth of man being made from an ash bough. Zeus was nourished by an ash nymph, one of the Meliae, and the goddess Nemesis is sometimes represented as an ash tree.”

  “Nemesis: Fate…” Scylla shivered, remembering Khalzada’s words over the salt bowl: “I see a great tree, a great twisted tree—it is a sacred tree, but far away, far in the north—a tree of great anger and power—”

  The coincidence was very strange. Had the tree passed from her mind into that of her brother? Should she tell him about Khalzada’s prophecy? But it made her profoundly uneasy; there was something shadowy and menacing about it; and she decided to wait until some later time when she was in better spirits. Cal, in any case, had moved on to other matters and was telling her of the Emperor Babur’s tomb, which he had visited, and another, quite unexpected one—

  “Just fancy, Scylla, the inscription was in English and it said, ‘Here lyes the body of Joseph Hicks, the son of Thomas Hicks and Eldith, who departed this lyfe the eleventh of October 1666.’ Was not that a strange thing to find in Kabul?”

  “He certainly died far from home,” said Scylla, and shivered as if a goose had walked over her grave.

  * * *

  The caravan to Herat set off several hours before dawn, and this was to remain the pattern of travel throughout the journey. Taking advantage of the cooler hours of darkness, the long string of loaded horses and mules would make as good speed as they could between 4 a.m. and noon, then rest through the hottest hours of day, then move on again between evening and midnight. Scylla and Miss Musson, heavily veiled, still in the role of holy nuns from the Himalayas, which had served so well on the previous leg of the journey, rode on mules; Cal and Cameron and the Therbah had small shaggy but powerful horses from the northern plains. The journey was uneventful. They spent several days skirting the mountain slopes forming the central massif of Afghanistan: stony hillsides covered with shrubs, wild pistachios, rhubarb, and gooseberries. Occasionally in the distance they would see a group of wild pastoral nomads with flocks of sheep or goats, and black tents, but no marauders came to attack them. The rough stony track was marked along its way with mud towers. Here and there they must climb over a mountain pass or ford a pebbly river, but these mountains were tame and unimpressive compared with the ones they had left behind. The main problem here was lack of water; as spring advanced and the weather became hotter and hotter, the rivers shrank to mere trickles, and often a day would pass without their finding any water that was fit to drink. For this reason, Cameron told them, the route became impassable during the very hot weather. On the twelfth day they arrived in Herat.

  “Why do we have to go so far north?” Scylla demanded impatiently of Cameron. “Does not Persia lie to the west of us? Why may we not strike directly westward to Isfahan?” and he replied simply, “Because there is no road, my child. The land to the west of here is one of the worst deserts in the world, the Dasht-i-Lut. No one has crossed it and survived.”

  “Oh,” she said, quite quenched.

  Herat (the Greek Aria, Cal informed his sister) was a thriving town that lay in a beautiful fertile valley, making a pleasant change from the bleak land they had passed through. The town was surrounded by a high mud wall with great towers at frequent intervals (built by Tamburlaine) and, as additional defense, a wide moat, fed by the Hari River. Herat, an important posting stage on the east-west route, had more than twenty serais where silk, wool, and manufactured articles were sold. The skyline was bulbous with the domes and minarets of mosques. In this busy place Cameron was able, without too much difficulty, to arrange for the party to join another caravan, a camel cafila this time, which was due to set out for Baghdad in four days.

  Now he will surely leave us and go back to help his friend Prince Mahmud, Scylla thought.

  But to her amazement—and, she thought, that of Cal and Miss Musson also—he did not. It seemed there was another friend of his, an exiled adherent of Mahmud, who now lived in Baghdad, and Cameron had decided to make contact with this man and enlist his help. He was a wealthy merchant and could probably do more, if he was willing, than many devoted but humble followers in Herat. Therefore they were to have Cameron’s company as far as Baghdad. Scylla found herself almost sorry that it was so. Since he was bound to part from them sooner or later, she could not help longing, in a kind of feverish impatience, for the parting to be over.

  Cameron, however, set about calmly and capably equipping them for this longer desert journey. The distance from Herat to Baghdad, traversing the whole country of Persia, would be about sixteen hundred miles, or eighty days’ journey on camelback. The road was not difficult, however, as for most of the way, it ran across open, level plains; it could even be undertaken by wheeled vehicles during the cooler months, but both Scylla and Miss Musson were emphatic in their preference for riding.

  “It will have to be camels, you understand?” Cameron warned them. “It is too hot for horses now; only camels can survive the long dry stretches.”

  “Then camels let it be,” said Miss Musson.

  Accordingly Cameron bought seven (he said it was cheaper to buy than hire, and then resell in Baghdad); five riding camels and two for baggage. They were expensive, moreover, since there was a shortage: sixty rupees apiece for the riding beasts and forty for the baggage carriers.

  At the last moment Cameron’s Therbah suddenly announced that he was not coming with the party; he intended to go and visit his own village to the north of Herat. Briefly, with the minimum of ceremony, he mounted the camel that had been bought for him, took his leave, and departed. Everyone was sorry to see him go, for he was such a friendly, cheerful little man; nothing ever seemed to put him out. Scylla wondered how Cameron would ever manage without him; but there seemed to be a very good understanding between the two men, and it was evident that they planned to meet again when Cameron returned to Herat.

  As on the previous portion of the journey, they set out before dawn. The saddles were different from those of the Bai’s camels; these consisted of a framework of four upright poles, lashed together by crosspieces, supported on a kind of mattress stuffed with camel hair. The rider sat on the mattress and, when the sun was at its hottest, could stretch a blanket over his head, its corners tied to each of the poles, and so ride along shaded by a traveling tent. In the morning the caravan would set out at a trot, which was not so bad and seemed a fairly fast rate of progress; but as soon as the sun rose the file would slow down to a walk and maintain this pace throughout the day, in order not to overtire the camels. The distance they were covering as too great to allow of carrying much fodder for the beasts, which must therefore graze along the way. These halts were exasperating to Scylla. What a dawdling method of progress this seemed! And the walking gait of a camel was torture to the rider, at the end of the first two or three days she and Miss Musson were so stiff when they dismounted that they could hardly stagger a yard until they had rubbed each other’s aching backs and thighs.

  There were occasional trees along the route—palms, tama
risks, and a mimosa-like tree with yellow blossoms—but for the most part the land was bare desert. The route was marked along its way by conical pyramids constructed by Shah Abbas to guide travelers. At each stage they found caravanserais built of sun-dried clay bricks, generally in the form of walled courtyards with stalls or cells around them, the walls often twenty feet high, the cells entered by arched doorways. These had been erected for the use of voyagers by various wealthy and pious persons—but they differed considerably: some were ruinous, little more than crumbling shells, while others were in a fairly good state of upkeep. Sometimes there would be a well, and palm trees giving shade, in the center of the courtyard. But often, if the day’s march had been slow, the whole caravan would be obliged to pass the night in the bare desert, with the camels crouched around the outside of the camp in a ring and the humans inside. The men would strike their daggers on bits of flint to kindle fires of camel’s thorn. Sometimes Cameron or Cal managed to shoot a gazelle or a desert hare, from which the women could make soup; otherwise the party subsisted on pulse and dried fruit.