by M. M. Kaye
The brides' tent was the largest in the camp, and as it was always the first to be pitched, the remainder formed a series of circles about it, those in the inner ring being occupied by ladies-in-waiting, serving women and eunuchs, and the next by high officials, palace guards, and the little prince and his personal servants. By rights, Ash's tent should have been included in the latter circle, but he preferred a quieter and less central position, and had arranged for it to be pitched on the outskirts of the camp, which on this particular evening was some considerable distance from the brides' pavilion. He had been escorted to the meeting by two officers of the guard and an elderly gentleman who had been introduced to him on the previous evening as the Rao Sahib, a brother of the late Maharajah and uncle to the two princesses.
The custom of purdah – the veiling and seclusion of women – was adopted by Hindu India from Mohammedan conquerors and does not go far back into the roots of the country, so the fact that Ash was permitted to meet his two charges was not really surprising. As a Sahib and a foreigner, and more particularly as the representative of the Raj whose duty it was to see to their safety and comfort on the journey, he merited special treatment and was therefore accorded the honour of speaking with them; a privilege that would not have been accorded to any other man who was not a near relative. The interview, however, had been a brief one, and by no means private, having been conducted in the presence of their uncle and a second elderly kinsman, Maldeo Rai, as well as their duenna and distant cousin Unpora-Bai, several waiting women, a eunuch and half-a-dozen children. The decencies were preserved by the fact that the brides' faces, and that of Unpora-Bai, were partially covered by the fringed and embroidered saris that they held in such a way that only their eyes and a small segment of forehead were visible. But as the saris were of the finest silk gauze from Benares, this was more a token gesture than anything else, and Ash was able to gain a fairly accurate idea of their looks.
‘You were quite right about them,’ he wrote to Wally in a lengthy postscript to the letter describing his arrival in camp, ‘they are as pretty as pictures. Or the younger one is, anyway. She's not yet fourteen, and just like that miniature of Shah Jehan's Empress, the lady of the Taj. I managed to get a good look at her because one of the children tried to catch her attention by tugging at her sari, and twitched it out of her hand. She's the prettiest thing you ever saw, and it's thankful I am that you can't see her, you susceptible Celt, for you'd fall in love with her on the spot and there would be no holding you. You'd be rhyming heart, part and cupid's dart all the way from here to Bhithor, and I'm not sure I could endure it. Thank God I'm a soured and unimpressionable misanthropist! The other sister kept a bit in the background and is quite old, at least eighteen, which in this country is practically on the shelf, and I can't think what they were about not to marry her off years ago; except that I gather she is only the daughter of some secondary wife, or possibly a concubine of the late Maharajah's, and from what I could see of her I wouldn't say she was exactly the Indian idea of a beauty. Or mine either, for that matter. Much too tall and with one of those rather square faces. I prefer oval ones, myself. But her eyes are magnificent – “like the fishpools in Heshbon by the gate of Beth-Rabbin” – not black like her sister's but the colour of peat-water, with little gold flecks in them. Don't you wish you were in my shoes?’
Ash might choose to describe himself as soured and unimpressionable, but the fact that the Karidkote princesses were far from unattractive undoubtedly added a fillip to the situation; though as he was unlikely to see very much of them their personal appearance, one way or another, was a matter of little importance. Nevertheless, the thought that he was escorting two charming young creatures to their wedding instead of the ‘pair of dowds’ that he had visualized made the whole affair seem more romantic. It even lent a redeeming touch of glamour to the din and dirt and inconvenience of the enormous camp, and he strolled back to his tent humming the old nursery rhyme that tells of a lady who rode to Banbury Cross ‘with rings on her fingers and bells on her toes’, and mentally recalling the names of legendary beauties whose stories are chronicled in Tod's Rajasthan: Huma-yan's wife, the fourteen-year-old Hamedu; lovely Padmini, ‘the fairest of all flesh on earth’, whose fatal beauty had led to the first and most terrible Sack of Chitor; Mumtaz Mahal, ‘Splendour of the Palace’, to whose memory her grieving husband had raised that wonder in white marble, the Taj Mahal. Perhaps Wally was right after all, and all princesses were beautiful.
Ash had been far too interested in the brides to spare more than a cursory glance at the remainder of the company, several of whom would have repaid a little more of his attention. And as the next day's march was to end on the outskirts of a town where there was a small garrison of British troops, he had ridden on ahead to speak to the officer in command, and seen little of anyone in the camp during that day, for the Garrison Commander had invited him to dine in mess.
Unlike Wally, his host that night appeared to think that a British officer landed with Ash's present task was greatly to be pitied, and had said as much over the port and cigars. ‘Can't say I envy you the job,’ said the Garrison Commander. ‘Thank God I'm never likely to be told off to do anything in that line! It must be nearly impossible to live in among that lot without putting your foot in it twenty times a day, and frankly, I can't think how you manage it.’
‘Manage what?’ inquired Ash, puzzled.
‘Coping with this caste business. It's no problem with Mussulmans, who don't seem to mind who they eat and drink with or give a damn who cooks or serves the stuff, and don't appear to have too many religious taboos. But caste Hindus can pose the most appalling problems, as I've learnt to my cost. They're so hedged about with complicated rules and customs and restrictions imposed upon them by their religion, that a stranger in their midst has to walk like Agag to avoid offending them – or at the very least, embarrassing them. I don't mind telling you that I find it a devil of a problem.’
The speaker had gone on to illustrate the pitfalls of the caste system with a long story about a sepoy who had been wounded in battle and left for dead, but recovering, had wandered for days in the jungle, famished, delirious and half mad with thirst, and eventually been found by a little girl who had been herding goats, and who had given him a drink of milk that had undoubtedly saved his life, for he had been at his last gasp. Not long afterwards he had come across some men of his own regiment who had carried him to the nearest hospital, where he had lain gravely ill for many months before being discharged and returning to duty. Several years later he had obtained leave to go to his home, and on arriving there had told his story. His father had immediately said that from his description of the child she could have been an ‘untouchable’, and if so, his son was defiled and must not stay in his own home, for his presence would pollute it. No arguments had been of any use, and not only his own family but the entire village recoiled from him as an outcaste and unclean. Only after costly ceremonies (for the performance of which the priests demanded every anna of his life's savings) was he declared ‘purified’ and allowed to enter his family home again.
‘And all this,’ said the Garrison Commander, summing up, ‘because the poor devil had once, when crazed with wounds and thirst and at his last gasp, accepted a cup of milk from the hands of a child who might possibly have been an “untouchable”. Apparently he ought to have preferred death to the remote possibility of defilement. Can you beat it? And I assure you that the story is true, because a cousin of mine had it from the sepoy himself. Just shows you what we're up against in this country. But I suppose you've found that out for yourself by now.’
Ash had found it out many years ago. But he refrained from saying so and merely said that he thought that in these matters a fanatical regard for the letter-of-the-law and an obsessive terror of pollution was, in general, confined to the priests (who benefited greatly from it) and to the middle classes, both upper and lower. The nobility tended to be less hag-ridden by it, while royalty
, secure in the knowledge of their own superiority over men of lesser birth, usually felt free to stretch the rules to suit themselves – fortified no doubt by the knowledge that if they overstepped the mark they could well afford to pay the Brahmins to put them right again with the gods. ‘It isn't so much that they are more broad-minded,’ said Ash, ‘but they are firm believers in the Divine Right of Kings; which is not surprising when one thinks that a number of the princely houses claim to be descended from a god – or from the sun or the moon. If you believe that, you can't really feel that you are quite like other men, so you can afford to do things that people with less exalted ancestors wouldn't dare do. Not that the great are irreligious – far from it. They can be just as devout. But possibly less bigoted.’
‘You may be right,’ acknowledged the Garrison Commander. ‘But then I have to admit that I don't know any of the ruling princes. Have some more port?’
The conversation had switched to pig-sticking and horses, and Ash had not returned to his tent until well after midnight.
The following morning had dawned wet and windy, so that he was able to sleep late, for under such conditions the camp took longer than usual to get on the move. And because of the weather, he again had little opportunity to take note of his fellow-travellers, who unlike himself were shrouded and unidentifiable under cloaks or blankets worn to keep out the wet. Not that this worried him, as there would be plenty of time later on, and he was more than content to jog along in silence; even the discomfort of spending the day in a damp saddle, head down against a gusty wind that tugged at his sodden cloak and drove the rain into his eyes, being infinitely preferable to being tied to an office desk in Rawalpindi. The almost total lack of paper-work was, in his opinion, one of the main advantages of this present assignment, another being that any problems that arose were likely to be familiar ones, differing only in degree from those that cropped up frequently at regimental durbars, and just as easily dealt with.
But in this he was mistaken, for that self-same evening he was to come up against one that was not only unfamiliar, but very difficult to deal with. And, potentially, extremely dangerous.
The fact that he was entirely unprepared for it was largely his own fault, though insufficient consultation between Army Headquarters in Rawalpindi and the Commandant of the Corps of Guides, together with inadequate briefing by the Political Department and the illness of the District Officer, could also be held responsible. But it was Ash's original attitude to his appointment – that disgusted dismissal of it as a mere matter of playing sheep-dog and chaperone to ‘a pair of dowds and a parcel of squealing women’ – that had led him into the old error of his early school-days: neglecting to do his homework.
He had no one to blame but himself, since he had, quite simply, not bothered to find out anything about the background and history of the state whose princesses he was to escort to their wedding, while the authorities in Rawalpindi, for their part, had given him no information on that head because they assumed that Mr Carter, the District Officer, would deal fully with it; and they could hardly have been expected to know that an attack of malaria would prevent the District Officer from doing anything of the sort. But as a result, Ash had entered on his command in a blithe state of ignorance and wholly unaware of the pitfalls that lay ahead. Even the information that a young brother of the Maharajah's had elected to join the camp at the last possible moment, and would be travelling with them, had not struck him as particularly interesting. After all, why shouldn't the child accompany his sisters to their wedding? He had dismissed young Jhoti's presence as something of no importance, and beyond sending a polite inquiry as to his health, gave the matter no more thought. But that evening, as darkness fell, a servant brought him a message to say that the little prince was now fully recovered from his indisposition and would like to see him.
The rain had stopped some hours before and the sky was clear again as Ash, wearing mess dress in honour of the occasion, was once more conducted through the roaring, lamp-lit camp to a tent near that of the princesses, where a sentry armed with an ancient tulwar provided a token guard and a yawning servant waited to usher him into the Presence. A solitary hurricane lamp hung on an iron pole outside, but passing in under the tent-flap Ash was met by a blaze of light that momentarily dazzled him, for the interior of the tent was lit by half-a-dozen European-style lamps that had been designed to carry shades of silk or velvet, but that now stood, unshaded, on low tables set in a half-circle about a pile of cushions on which sat a plump, pallid little boy.
He was a handsome child, despite his plumpness and his pasty complexion, and Ash, blinking in the glare, was suddenly reminded of Lalji as he had seen him on that first day in the Hawa Mahal. This child must be about the same age as Lalji had been then, and was sufficiently like Ash's memory of the Yuveraj for the two to be brothers, though Lalji, thought Ash, had been a far less personable child than this one, and he would certainly not have risen to his feet to greet his visitor, as Jhoti was doing. The resemblance was mainly a matter of dress and expression, for Lalji had worn similar clothes and he too had looked sour and cross – and very frightened.
It occurred to Ash, bowing in acknowledgement of the boy's greeting, that if (as Wally maintained) all princesses were beautiful, it was a pity that all young princes should be plump and cross and frightened. Or, at least, all the ones that he himself had met so far.
The absurdity of this reflection made him grin and he was still smiling when he straightened up… to find himself looking directly at a face that even after all these years he recognized instantly and with a paralysing sensation of shock – the face of a man who stood immediately behind the little prince and less than three paces away, and whose narrow eyes held the same slyness, the same chilling look of calculation and malice that had been so familiar in the days when their owner had been Lalji's favourite courtier and the Nautch-girl's spy.
It was Biju Ram.
The smile on Ash's face stiffened into a fixed grimace and he felt his heart jerk and miss a beat. It was not possible – he must be mistaken. Yet he knew that he was not. And in the same instant he knew too, and without any shadow of doubt, why the boy Jhoti reminded him of Lalji. Because Jhoti was either Lalji's brother or his first cousin.
He could not be Nandu: he was too young for that. But there had been at least two more children, and for all he knew the Nautch-girl might have borne many others later on. Or could this be Lalji's son…? No, that was not likely. A cousin, then? – a child or grandchild of one of the brothers of the old Rajah of Gulkote…?
Ash became aware that several people were beginning to look at him curiously, and also that there was no trace of recognition in Biju Ram's narrow-eyed gaze. That slyness was habitual; and so was the malice. As for the look of calculation, it probably only meant that Biju Ram was assessing the calibre of the new Sahib and wondering if it would be necessary to placate him, because in no circumstances could he have recognized this Sahib as the ‘horse-boy’ who had saved the life of the Yuveraj of Gulkote so many years ago.
Ash forced himself to look away and to reply to the polite questions of the little prince; and presently his pulse steadied and he was able to glance casually about the tent and assure himself that there was no one else there whom he knew. There were at least two. But even then he could surely not be in any danger of discovery, for apart from Koda Dad (and he would never have told), no one else in Gulkote could have learned that Sita's son was an Angrezi. There was nothing to connect the boy Ashok with a Captain Ashton Pelham-Martyn of the Guides, and little enough resemblance between the two. It was only Biju Ram who had not altered. True, he was much fatter and beginning to grow a little grey, and the lines that dissipation had already begun to draw on his face when he was a young man were deeper now; but that was all. He was still smooth and spruce and sly, and he still wore a large diamond drop in one ear. But why was he here, and what was the relationship between the Yuveraj of Gulkote and the ten-year-old Jhoti? And who,
or what, was the child frightened of?
Ash had seen fear too often not to recognize it, and the signs were all there: the wide, over-bright eyes and the swift glances that flickered to left and right and back over the shoulder; the tensed muscles and jerking turn of the head, and the uncontrollable quiver and clench of the hands.
This was how Lalji too had looked; and with good reason. But then this child was not heir to a throne. He was merely a younger brother, so it seemed inconceivable that anyone should wish to harm him. A more likely explanation was that he had run away to join the wedding party against the wishes of his elders, and was only now beginning to assess the possible consequence of his escapade.
‘He's probably only a spoilt brat who has gone too far and is now scared of being spanked,’ thought Ash. ‘And if he is playing truant, I'll bet anything that Biju Ram put him up to it… I must find out about his family. About all of them. I should have done it before…’
The little prince had begun on introductions, and Ash found himself greeting Biju Ram and exchanging the few formal sentences suitable to the occasion before passing on to the next in line. Ten minutes later the interview was over and he was outside in the semi-darkness, and shivering a little, not only because the night air struck cool after the heat in the over-lighted tent. He drew a deep, shuddering breath of relief as though he had escaped from a trap, and was ashamed to discover that his palms were sore where his nails had pressed into them – though he had not even realized until this moment that he had been holding his hands tightly clenched.
That night his tent had been pitched under a banyan tree, some fifty yards beyond the perimeter of the camp and screened from it by the cluster of smaller tents that housed his personal servants. Passing these, he changed his mind about sending for one of the Karidkote clerks, because Mahdoo was sitting out in the open smoking his hookah, and it occurred to Ash that by this time the old man had probably picked up as much information about the royal family of Karidkote as any denizen of that state. Mahdoo enjoyed gossiping, and as he came into contact with many people whom Ash did not meet, he heard things that are not usually spoken of to Sahibs.