by M. M. Kaye
‘The trouble with you,’ retorted the incensed poet, touched on the raw, ‘is that you have no soul. And what's more, if you're going to go on posing as a misogynist for the rest of your life just because some silly chit gave your fresh young illusions a black eye and a bloody nose a few years ago, you haven't any sense either. It's about time you got over Bertha or Bella or Belinda or whatever her name was, and realized that there are other women in the world – and very charming ones too. Not,’ conceded Wally generously, ‘that you have to marry them, of course. I don't think, myself, that a soldier should get married until he's at least thirty-five.’
‘ “A Daniel come to judgement”!’ mocked Ash. ‘Well, in that case, the sooner we remove ourselves from temptation the better.’
They removed themselves to Kashmir, leaving most of their luggage behind in the hotel and hiring hill ponies for the long trek between Murree and Baramullah, from where they turned aside to shoot duck on the Wula Lake and red bear and barasingh in the mountains above it.
It was Wally's first experience of high mountains, and gazing at the white crest of Nanga Parbat, the ‘Naked Mountain’, rising tall and stately above the long range of snows that ring Lalla Rookh's fabled valley, he could understand the awe that had moved Ash as a small boy to pray to the Dur Khaima. The whole country seemed extravagantly beautiful to him, from the lotus-strewn lakes and the winding, willow-fringed rivers, to the vast forests of deodar and chestnut that swept upwards to meet the shale and the great glaciers that lay above the snow line. He was loth to leave it, and 'Pindi seemed hotter and dustier and more unpleasant than ever as their tonga rattled along the cantonment road on the last day of leave, bringing them back once more to their bungalow. But the mountain air and the long days spent in the open had done their work. He returned fit and well, and suffered no more illness during the remainder of that hot weather.
The heat had not worried Ash, but desk work bored him to distraction and there was always too much of that in Rawalpindi. Zarin, riding over from Mardan, told him that the Guides were to provide an escort for the eldest son of the Padishah (the Queen) when he visited Lahore during his tour of India in the coming cold weather.
‘It's a great honour,’ said Zarin, ‘and I grieve that you will have no share in it. How much longer do they mean to keep you here, tied to a desk? It is nearly a year now. Soon it will be three years since you last served with the Guide Corps, and that is far too long. It is time you came back to us.’
But the authorities did not agree with this view. They had made a promise to send Lieutenant Pelham-Martyn further away from the Frontier as soon as a suitable opportunity presented itself, and now, nearly eleven months later, they roused themselves from the lethargy induced by the hot weather, and redeemed it.
A letter had come from the Governor of the Punjab's First Secretary requesting them, on behalf of His Excellency, to nominate a suitable British officer to escort the two sisters of His Highness the Maharajah of Karidkote, to Rajputana, to be married to the Rana of Bhithor. The officer's principal duty on the march would consist of seeing that His Highness's sisters were received with due honour and the proper salutes by any British garrisons on the route, and that their camp was adequately provisioned. On arrival in Bhitor he would be expected to see that the agreed bride-price was paid and the brides safely married, before accompanying the camp back to the borders of Karidkote. Taking all this into account, and bearing in mind that the camp was likely to be a large one, it was essential that the officer selected should not only be a fluent linguist, but have a thorough knowledge of the native character and the customs of the country.
It was that final paragraph that had brought Lieutenant Pelham-Martyn's name to mind; and the fact that the assignment would certainly take him well away from the North-West Frontier had served to clinch the matter. Ash himself had not been invited to express any opinions or allowed the option of refusing the appointment. He had merely been sent for and given his orders.
‘What they appear to want,’ said Ash disgustedly, describing the interview to Wally, ‘is someone to act as a combination of sheep-dog, supply officer and nursemaid to a parcel of squealing women and palace parasites; and I'm it. Oh well, bang goes polo for this season. Who'd be a peace-time soldier?’
‘Faith, if you ask me, it's a lucky divil you are,’ said Wally enviously. ‘I only wish they'd chosen me. Just think of it – jaunting off across India in charge of a pair of beautiful princesses.’
‘Pair of bun-faced dowds, more likely,’ returned Ash sourly. ‘Bet you anything they're fat, spoilt and spotty – and still in the schoolroom.’
‘Blather! All princesses are ravishingly beautiful. Or they should be, anyway. I can just picture them: rings on their fingers and bells on their toes, and hair like Rapunzel's – no, she was a blonde, wasn't she? They'll be brunettes. I adore brunettes. You wouldn't be asking if I could go along with you, would you now? As a sort of right-hand-man: head cook and bottle-washer? You're sure to need one.’
‘Like rabies,’ observed Ash inelegantly.
Fifteen days later he said goodbye to Wally, and accompanied by Mahdoo and Gul Baz, his head-syce Kulu Ram, a grass-cutter and half-a-dozen lesser retainers, set out for Deenagunj, a small town in British India where the wedding party, at present under the charge of a local District Officer, awaited his arrival.
14
Deenagunj lay on the fringe of the foothills, a day's march from the border of the independent State of Karidkote and some twenty miles from the nearest British garrison.
Barely more than a village, it was indistinguishable from a hundred other little towns in the northern half of the territory that is watered by the Chenab, the Ravi and the Beas Rivers, and its population seldom rose above two thousand. At the present moment, however, this figure had been disastrously increased, the Governor's secretary having under-stated the case when he expressed the opinion that the bridal camp was ‘likely to be a large one’, as it was, in point of fact, enormous.
The assembly sent by the Maharajah of Karidkote to escort his sisters to their wedding outnumbered the citizens of Deenagunj by almost four to one, and Ash arrived to find the town a mere annex to the camp, the bazaar sold out of all foodstuffs and fodder and rapidly running short of water, the city-fathers in a state of near hysteria and the District Officer, nominally in control of the camp, down with malaria.
It was a situation that might well have daunted a great many older and more experienced men than Ash. But the authorities had, after all, not chosen so badly when they nominated Lieutenant Pelham-Martyn (temporarily elevated to the rank of Captain by virtue of his office) for this particular mission. The uproar and confusion that would have conveyed, to an alien eye, an impression of riot, aroused no dismay in one who had been brought up in the bazaars of an Indian city and become accustomed at an early age to the extravagance, muddle and intrigue of life in the palace of an Indian prince.
The size and disorganization of the camp did not strike Ash as in any way remarkable, for he had not forgotten Lalji's wedding and the army of attendants that had accompanied the bride to Gulkote and settled like a swarm of locusts on the city and the Hawa Mahal. Yet Lalji's bride had only been the daughter of some small hill Rajah, while the brother of the Karidkote princesses was a full-blown Maharajah and ruler of no small state, so it was only to be expected that their escort would be proportionately larger. All that was needed was someone to take decisions and to give the necessary orders, and Ash had not served with the Guides and been tutored by Koda Dad's two sons for nothing. This was familiar ground.
He sent Gul Baz to find a guide who could take them to the District Officer, and presently they were riding through the mêlée, led by an elderly individual in uniform – presumably that of the Karidkote State Forces – who laid about him with the scabbard of a rusty tulwar as he cleared a passage for them between the shifting, shouting crowd of men and animals.
The District Officer's tent had been pitch
ed under a sal tree and its occupant lay prone on a camp bed, shivering helplessly in the grip of fever. His temperature was a hundred and three (which was much the same as that in the tent) and he was unfeignedly glad to see his replacement. Mr Carter was both young and new to the district, and as it was also his first experience of malaria, it is hardly surprising that he should regard the whole situation as some form of nightmare. The endless stream of petitions, complaints and accusations, the chaos and the heat and the noise – particularly the noise -made his head feel as though it was an anvil on which iron hammers beat unceasingly, and the sight of Ash, who would relieve him of responsibility, was as welcome as water in a desert.
‘Sorry about this,’ croaked the District Officer. ‘Devilish nuisance. Afraid you'll find things are in a… bit of a mess here. Undisciplined beggars… better get 'em on the move again, soon as you can… before there's a scrimmage. There's this business about the boy, too… Jhoti – H.H.'s brother. The Heir Apparent. Arrived last night. Ought to tell you -’
He did his best to give Ash an outline of the position and some idea of the responsibilities and problems involved, but it was plain that he found it almost impossible to marshal his thoughts or make his tongue obey him, and he eventually abandoned the effort and sent instead for a native clerk, who reeled off a tally of the dowry contained in a score of iron-bound chests and the amount of ready money available for the journey, produced lists of men, waiting-women, baggage-animals, tents, supplies and camp-followers, but admitted that the numbers were only approximate and the actual total was probably somewhat higher. Even on paper the entourage was formidable enough, for it included a battery of artillery and two regiments of the Maharajah's soldiery, together with twenty-five elephants, five hundred camels, innumerable horses and at least six thousand camp-followers.
‘No need to have sent so many. Bit of swank – that's all,’ whispered the District Officer hoarsely. ‘But then he's only a boy still. Not seventeen yet… H.H., I mean. Father died a few years ago, and this… this is his chance to show off to the others – fellow princes. And to us, of course. Waste of money, but no arguing with him. Difficult young man… tricky…’
It appeared that the young Maharajah had escorted his sisters as far as the border of his state, and then turned back to go hunting, leaving the cumbersome camp in charge of the District Officer, whose orders were to accompany it as far as Deenagunj, where he would hand it over to Captain Pelham-Martyn of the Guides Cavalry. But neither His Excellency the Governor of the Punjab nor the military authorities at Rawalpindi had realized how large that camp would be. Nor had they known that there would be a last-minute addition to the party in the person of His Highness's ten-year-old brother, Jhoti.
‘Don't know why they sent him. Though I can guess,’ mumbled the District Officer. ‘Nuisance, though… didn't even know he was here until last night… More responsibility. Oh well – your pigeon now, thank God! Sorry for you…’
There were a good many other formalities that had to be completed, and by the time these had been dealt with the day was far advanced. But the sick man insisted upon leaving, not only because he craved for quiet and for clean air to breathe, but because he recognized the pitfalls of divided authority. The camp was no longer ‘his pigeon' and therefore the sooner he left it the better. His servants transferred him to a waiting palanquin and jogged away into the dusty glow of the late afternoon, and Ash went out to take over control of his command.
That first evening had been a chaotic one. No sooner had the District Officer's palanquin disappeared from sight than a clamouring horde converged upon his successor with demands for payment of bills, accusations of theft, brutality and other forms of zulum (oppression), and loud-voiced complaints on a score of matters ranging from inadequate accommodation to a dispute between the camel-drivers and the mahouts from the elephant lines over an allocation of fodder. Their behaviour was understandable, for the age and rank of the new Sahib who had taken over from ‘Carter-Sahib’ presupposed inexperience, and judging solely by this yardstick, it seemed to the camp (and also to the city-fathers) that the Sirkar had sent an almost insultingly inadequate representative to act as ‘sheep-dog, supply-officer and nursemaid’. They therefore reacted to this belief in a predictable manner, and discovered their mistake in something under five minutes.
‘I addressed them,’ wrote Ash, describing the scene in a letter to Wally, ‘and after that we managed to get things straightened out all right.’ Which is probably as good a description as any, though it hardly conveyed the impact that his words and personality had on the noisy gathering in the Karidkote camp. No Sahib of their acquaintance had ever possessed such a fluent and picturesque command of their language as this young Sahib – or been able to compress so much authority and sound commonsense into half-a-dozen trenchantly phrased sentences. The few Angrezi-log whom they had previously come across were either polite officials, earnestly striving to understand a point of view that was alien to them, or, on occasions, some less polite Sahib on survey or shikar, who lost his temper and shouted at them when crossed. Pelham-Sahib had done none of these things. He had spoken to them in the manner of an experienced sirdar (headman), wise in the ways of his fellow men and the customs of the district, and used to being obeyed. Ash, it will be seen, had learned much from the regimental durbars.
The camp listened and approved: this was someone who understood them and whom they could understand. By the time the tents were struck on the following morning and they were ready to move on, the townsmen's accounts had been paid, a majority of the disputes settled, and Ash had managed to meet and exchange courtesies with most of the senior members of the bridal party; though he had not had time to sort them out, and retained only a confused impression of scores of faces momentarily concealed by hands pressed palm to palm in the traditional Hindu gesture of greeting. Later he must get to know them all, but at the moment the most important thing was to get the camp on the move. The District Officer's advice on that head had been sound, and Ash resolved to hurry them forward with as much speed as they could make, and if possible avoid stopping for more than one or two nights in any one place, so that they did not repeat the mistake of wearing out their welcome as they had done at Deenagunj. Close on eight thousand humans and more than half as many baggage animals were worse than a plague of locusts, and it was clear that without planning and forethought their effect upon the country they passed through could be quite as devastating, and equally disastrous.
He found little attention to spare for individuals on that first day's march, for he rode up and down the long column, taking note of its numbers and composition and estimating their capacity for speed, thereby unconsciously enacting one of the roles that he had mentioned to Wally – that of sheep-dog. This was easy enough to do, for progress was slow. The mile-long column moved at a foot's pace, plodding through the dust at the same leisurely pace as the elephants and stopping at frequent intervals to rest, talk or argue, to wait for stragglers or draw water from the wayside wells. At least a third of the elephants were baggage animals, while the remainder, with the exception of four state elephants, carried a large number of the Karidkote forces and a weird assortment of weapons that included the heavy iron cannons of the artillery.
The four state elephants bore magnificent howdahs of beaten gold and silver in which the Rajkumaries* and their ladies, together with their younger brother and certain senior members of the bridal party, would ride in procession on the day of the wedding, and it had also been expected that the brides would travel in them on the journey. But the slow, rolling stride of the great beasts made the howdahs sway, and the youngest bride (who was also the most important one, being the Maharajah's full sister) complained that it made her feel ill, and demanded that both she and her sister, from whom she refused to be parted, be transferred to a ruth – a bullock-drawn cart with a domed roof and embroidered curtains.
‘Her Highness is very nervous,’ explained the chief eunuch, apologizing to
Ash for the delay caused by this alteration in the travelling arrangements. ‘She has never before been outside the Zenana walls, and she pines for her home, and is greatly afraid.’
They covered less than nine miles that first day – scarcely three as the crow flies, for their road wound and twisted downwards between low, scrub-covered hills that were barely more than folds in the ground. It was clear that they might often do less, and Ash, poring over the large-scale survey map that evening and calculating their weekly advance at an average of fifty to sixty miles, realized that at this rate it was going to be many months before he saw Rawalpindi again. The thought did not depress him, for this nomadic open-air life with its constant change of scene was going to be very much to his taste, and he found it exhilarating to be free from supervision and senior officers, in sole charge of several thousand people and answerable to no one.
Halfway through the following day he belatedly recalled that the Maharajah's young brother had arrived, but on inquiring if he might pay his respects to the little prince, he was told that His Highness was unwell (the result, it was reported, of eating too many sweetmeats) and that it would be better to wait a day or two. The Sahib would be informed as soon as the child was feeling fully recovered. In the meantime, as a special mark of favour, he had been asked to meet the prince's sisters.