by M. M. Kaye
‘I cannot, Heart's-dearest. You must go alone. You will make better speed without me, and be safer too. They are hunting a woman and a boy travelling together, and I know that I should have parted from you long ago except – except that I could not endure to.’
‘That's silly. You know I wouldn't have gone,’ said Ash indignantly. ‘Who would have looked after you if I had? Mother, please get up. Please! We'll walk very slowly’.
He knelt beside her pulling at her cold hands and coaxing her. ‘You want to get to the mountains, don't you? Well, there they are – look, you can see them plain. You'll be better once you reach them. Your cough will go in the hill air and you'll feel well again, and then we'll look for our valley. You haven't forgotten the valley and the goat and – and the almond tree and…’ His voice wavered suddenly and he tugged at her hands again, trying to lift her to her feet. ‘Only a little way more, I promise.’
But Sita knew that she had come to the end of the road. Her strength was almost spent, and what little she had left must be used for one last, bitter task that must be done quickly, before it was too late. She freed her hands from his grasp and fumbled among the folds of her sari for a sealed packet and four small, heavy, wash-leather bags that she had carried tied about her waist in a length of cloth, and looking at them the tears gathered in her eyes and rolled slowly down her wasted cheeks; the fact that Ashok believed himself to be her son had been so sweet to her that even now, when she knew that the truth might save him, she could not bear to tell him. Yet he must be told. There was no other way in which she could help him to escape; and even this might not serve….
‘I am not your mother. You are not my son,’ whispered Sita, forcing the words through trembling lips. ‘You are the son of an Angrezi… a Sahib…’
The words made no sense to Ash, but her tears frightened him more than anything that had ever happened to him during the years of servitude in the Hawa Mahal or the dreadful weeks since their escape: the death of Tuku, the poison and the cobra, the terror of pursuit – nothing had been as bad as this. He put his arms about her and clung to her, begging her not to cry and telling her that he would carry her if she could not walk: he was strong, and if she would hold about his neck he was sure that he could carry her. The things she said made no sense to him, and it was only the sight of the money that at last shocked him into attention. He had never seen so much money before in all his life, and at first it only meant one thing to him: they could afford to hire a cart – to buy one if necessary. His mother need not walk now, and they could out-distance their pursuers and pay for doctors and medicines to make her well. They were rich. ‘Why didn't you tell me before, mother?’
‘I did not want you to know that you were not my son – my own son,’ wept Sita. ‘I would have thrown it away had I dared, but – but I did not dare… for fear that one day you might have need of it. That day is here, for the Rani's men are close on your heels and if you are to escape them you must leave me and go on alone, and take refuge with your own people where even she will not dare to follow you. You will be safe with them. There is no other way…’
‘What people? You have always said we had no people. And of course I am your son. You mustn't say things like that. It's only because you are feeling ill and you've had nothing to eat, but now we can buy some food, and a horse and a cart and –’
‘Ashok! Listen to me.’ Fear and urgency sharpened Sita's voice and her thin hands clutched his wrists with unexpected strength. ‘You cannot go back to buy food, and if you show that money they will say you stole it, for it is too great a sum for a boy such as you to possess. You must hide it as I have done, and keep it until you reach your own people. There is much written stuff in the packet, and more on this paper here. You must find someone who can read Angrezi and they will tell you who to take it to. Your father wrote it before he died, and – and I would have obeyed his commands and taken you to his people but for the great rising and the slaughter of the Sahib-log in Delhi. But I kept the papers and the money for you, and I did as he asked: I took care of you. He said: ‘Look after the boy, Sita.’ And that I have done… But for love's sake; because alas, alas, I am not your mother. She too was Angrezi, but she died at your birth and it was I who took you from her arms and gave you the breast… I who cared for you from the first – the very first! But I can do so no longer. So now must I send you back to your own people, for with them you will be safe. And because I can go no further, you must go alone. Do you understand?’
‘No,’ said Ash. ‘You are still my mother and I won't leave you. You can't make me! And I don't believe any of it; any of the rest. Or if it is true, it doesn't matter, for we can burn these papers and then no one will ever know, and I shall still be your son.’
‘If you are my son, you will obey me – I do not ask you to do this. As your mother, I command you. Stay with me if you will until I go. It will not be long. But afterwards take the papers and the money and go quickly. Do not destroy them. If you love me, promise that you will not destroy them, but that you will use them and return to your own people. And if you will not do it for love's sake, then do it because I am… because I have been your mother. Promise me, Ashok?’
‘I – promise,’ whispered Ash. She could not be dying… it wasn't true. If only he could fetch help – a hakim. Or some hot food: that might revive her. Yet she looked so ill, and supposing he were to leave her and run to the nearest village, and be caught?
He dared not risk it; she was too weak to move and she would die slowly of thirst and starvation. Yet even if he did not go, they would both die, because sooner or later someone would find them here, for there was no other cover for more than a mile in any direction – only the flat, treeless plain and wide reaches of the river. He would never have taken refuge in such a place except that it was dusk when they fled from the serai, and not daring to keep to the highroad he had turned towards the open country. They had reached the rocks by the riverside an hour after moonrise and had been forced to stay there because Sita could go no further; yet, recognizing the danger of such an isolated spot, he had meant to leave it at first light and find some safer place of refuge. But now the sun was already shredding away the morning mists and he could see the foothills, and above them the snows were no longer pink and amber but sharply white. The day was here – and his mother was dying…
‘It isn't true. I won't let it be true!’ thought Ash frantically, his arms tight about her as though to hold her safe. But suddenly and hopelessly he knew that it was, and that she was leaving him. Grief and terror and desperation tore at his heart, and he hid his face against her shoulder and wept wildly, as a child weeps, shuddering and gasping. He felt Sita's frail hands patting him and soothing him, and her beloved voice against his ear, murmuring endearments and telling him that he must not cry for he was a man now – he must be brave and strong and outwit his enemies and grow up to be a Burra-Sahib Bahadur, like his father and old Khan Bahadur Akbar Khan for whom he had been named. Did he not remember Uncle Akbar who had taken him to see a tiger shot? He had been no more than a babe then, yet he had not been afraid and they had all been so proud of him. He must be as brave now, and remember that death came in the end for everyone – Rajah and Beggar, Brahmin and Untouchable, man and woman. All passed through the same door and were born again…
‘I do not die, piara. I rest only, and wait to be reborn. And in that next life, if the gods are kind, it may be that we shall meet again. Yes, surely we shall meet again… perhaps in that valley –’
She began to talk of it in a slow, halting whisper that struggled for breath, and presently, as his sobs quieted, she turned from that dear familiar tale to the old nursery rhyme with which she had been used to sing him to sleep – ‘Nini baba, nini, muckan, roti, cheeni,’ crooned Sita. ‘Roti muckan hogya; hamara… baba… sogya –’
Her voice died away so softly that it was a long time before Ash realized that he was alone.
The blue far-reaching shadows of the early m
orning shortened into the scanty shade of mid-day, and slowly lengthened again as the afternoon wore away and the sun moved down towards the far horizon.
There were partridges calling out on the plain now, and wild duck quacking on the river, and along the white banks of the Jhelum the mud turtles that had basked all day in the hot sunlight were slipping back into the water. It would be dusk soon, and he would have to go, thought Ash numbly. He had promised to go, and there was nothing left to stay for.
He stood up slowly and with difficulty, for he had crouched all day by Sita's body, holding her stiffening, work-worn hand in his. His muscles were cramped and his mind dazed with grief and shock. He could not remember when he had last eaten, but he did not feel hungry, only very thirsty.
The river was bright with the sunset as he knelt on the wet sand and scooped up the water and drank greedily, and afterwards splashed handfuls of it over his aching head and hot, dry eyes. He had not cried again after Sita died; and he did not cry now, for the boy who had wept so bitterly in the dawn was dead too. He was not yet twelve years old, but he would never be a child again. He had grown up in the short space of a single afternoon and left his childhood behind him for ever. For it was not only his mother whom he had lost that day, but his identity. There was no such person – there never had been – as Ashok, son of Sita who had been the wife of Daya Ram, syce. There was only a boy whose parents were dead and who did not even know his own name or where to find his own kin. An English boy – a feringhi. He was a foreigner, and this was not even his own land…
The coldness of the water helped to clear his head and he began to wonder what he should do now. He could not go away and leave his mother lying there, for an ugly memory from the almost forgotten past came back to him, and he shivered uncontrollably, recalling a hot night that had been made hideous by the sound of jackals and hyenas quarrelling in the moonlight.
Out on the quiet surface of the river something moved. It was only a piece of driftwood, floating down on the current, but as he watched it slide past him, Ash remembered that his people – no, his mother Sita's people – burnt their dead and cast the ashes into the rivers so that they might be carried at last to the sea.
He could not make a pyre for Sita for there was no fuel. But there was the river. The cool, deep, slow-flowing river that had risen among her own hills, and that would take her gently and carry her to the sea. The setting sun flamed on it with a dazzling brilliance that was brighter than fire, and he turned from it and went back to the shallow cave among the rocks, and wrapping Sita's wasted body in her blanket as though to keep her warm, carried her down to the river and waded through the shallows until the water took her weight. She was stiff already, and so painfully light that the task was easier than he supposed. And when he released her at last she floated away from him, borne up by the blanket.
The current drew her out and down-stream, and he stood waist-deep in the water, straining his eyes to watch her go until at last her small shape was lost in the sun dazzle and he could see it no more. And when the brightness faded and the river turned from gold to opal, she had gone.
Ash turned and waded back to the shore, his legs numbed with cold and his teeth clenched together to keep them from chattering. He was hungry now, but he could not bring himself to eat the paste that he had made for Sita and that she had been unable to swallow, and he threw it away. He would have to find something to eat soon or he would not have the strength to go very far, and he had promised her… He lifted the sealed packet and the little wash-leather bags that were heavy with gold and silver coins, and weighed them in his hands, wishing he could leave them and knowing that he must not. They were his and he would have to take them. Removing only a single rupee for his immediate needs, he wrapped them again in the length of cloth and tied it about his waist as Sita had done, concealing it under his ragged garments. The folded sheet of paper with the faded, spidery writing that he could not read he hid in his turban, and now there was nothing left in the shallow cave to show that anyone had ever been there… Nothing but the footmarks and a slight depression in the sand where Sita had lain down to sleep on the previous night and where she had died in the dawn. He touched it very gently, as though she were still there and he feared to wake her.
As he did so, the first breath of the night wind blew in from across the river, and eddying about the cave, stirred up the dry silver sand and left it smooth again.
Ashton Hilary Akbar Pelham-Martyn shouldered his bundle and his burdens, and turning his back on the past, set out in the cold twilight to search for his own people.
7
‘It is for a Captain-Sahib. A Captain-Sahib of the Guides,’ said the bazaar letter-writer, peering at Hilary's last letter through a pair of scratched spectacles. ‘Yes, see – here it says “Mardan”. That is by Hoti Mardan, which is up Malakand way. Beyond Attock and the Indus, and across the Kabul River.’
‘The Guides,’ breathed Ash in an awed whisper. He would have made for Mardan long ago had he dared, but he knew that the Rani's men would expect him to go there and would lie in wait for him, for his friendship with Koda Dad's son had been no secret in the Hawa Mahal. But by now the watchers must surely have decided that he was too cunning to make such an obvious move, and they would have left to search elsewhere. Even if they had not, the situation itself had been drastically altered by the fact that he was no longer a friendless bazaar brat, hoping to find shelter with a sowar of the Guides, but a Sahib who could demand protection from his fellow Sahibs. Not only for himself, but for Zarin. And if necessary, for Koda Dad too.
‘The Guides,’ repeated Ash softly. And suddenly his eyes were bright with excitement and the grey despair that had filled his mind and heart for so many days began to shred away like mist at morning. His luck had changed at last.
‘It is the name of a pulton (regiment) that is stationed at Mardan,’ explained the letter-writer importantly, ‘and the Sahib's name is As-esh-taan. Captain Ash-tarn. As for the rest -’ he made as though to open the folded paper, but Ash snatched it back, explaining that it was only the Sahib's name and address that he needed, the rest was of no importance.
‘If it is a recommendation, it is better to know what has been said,’ advised the letter-writer sagely. ‘Then if harsh things have been written, one can tear it up and say that one has lost it. Or if it is a good recommendation, it may be sold for much money. Such things fetch good prices in the bazaars. Do you hope to take service with this Sahib, then?’
‘No, I – go on a visit to my cousin's wife's brother, who is his servant,’ improvised Ash glibly. ‘They told me the address, but I had forgotten it and I cannot read Angrezi.’
He paid over the half-anna that had been agreed upon and having made sure that he had memorized the name correctly, tucked the paper back among the folds of his turban and spent the other half-anna on a handful of roast chunna and a stick of peeled sugar-cane.
Ash had come a long way since the night he left the cave by the Jhelum River. It had not taken him long to discover how much farther and faster he could travel now that he was alone; or how right Sita had been when she had told him that he would be safer by himself, for he had heard of inquiries made in the villages and was aware that the hunt was still up. But since the men who hunted him knew that he would never leave his mother, they still looked for a hill-woman and a grey-eyed boy travelling together, and were not concerned with a single ragged urchin whose colouring, in the north-west of India where the Khyber hills lay along the horizon, was nothing out of the common.
He had not been questioned, but because he was afraid of doing anything that might draw attention to himself, he had not dared to ask for a translation of that paper in any of the smaller towns where such an inquiry might arouse interest. Only when he reached one large enough to boast half-a-dozen letter-writers had he felt safe enough to risk it; and now the name and address on it had turned out to be that of an officer of the Guides – Zarin's regiment. It was almost too good to be
true.
Ash remembered that his mother had said she did not know what was written on that paper. But he thought that she must have had some suspicion, and that this perhaps explained her antipathy towards Koda Dad and his son, and her opposition to his plan of joining Zarin one day and enlisting in the same Corps. Yet in the end it was she who had set him on the road to Mardan, where he would see Zarin and become a sowar in the Guides – or even an officer, if this Captain-Sahib should prove to be a relative and prepared to help him. But that last was something he was never to know, for William Ashton was dead.
The Guides had taken part in the Ambeyla expedition, a campaign launched against certain hostile Border tribes in the autumn of the previous year, and William, still unaware that he possessed a nephew, had been killed in action only a few weeks after his sister's son escaped over the walls of the Hawa Mahal. But now it was spring, and the almonds were in bloom and the willows in bud as Ash took the road that leads from Attock to Peshawar.
The Kabul River ran red with the red earth of the Khyber that the spring rains and the melting of the snows in far-off Afghanistan had washed down on the flood, and the fords were impassable, so that he must cross by the bridge of boats at Nowshera. Ash had already made a detour of some dozen miles to avoid crossing the Indus by the Attock ferry, it having occurred to him that it would be an easy matter for a single man to keep a check on all who passed that way: in which he was wise, for there had indeed been a man on watch, an innocent-seeming traveller who appeared to be in no hurry, and who had made friends with the boatman and spent his days idly observing all those who used the ferry. Ash had crossed instead some five miles down-stream, having begged a lift on a farmer's raft, and from there made his way back to the Peshawar road. And now once again providence was kind to him, for in Nowshera a kindly villager on his way to Risalpur with a load of vege-ables gave him a lift, and on pretence of being sleepy he burrowed down behind the cabbages and knole-kole and crossed the bridge of boats unseen. So towards evening on that same day – dusty, footsore and very weary – he reached the cantonment of Mardan and asked for Sowar Zarin Khan of the Guides.