by M. M. Kaye
Ash paused beside the old man and said in an undertone: ‘Come and talk with me in my tent, Cha-cha (uncle), I need advice. There are also many things that it may be you can tell me. Give me your hand. I will carry the hookah.’
A hurricane lamp with the wick turned low had been left hanging in Ash's tent, but he preferred to sit outside under the narrow awning, from where he could look out past the dense shadows of the banyan tree to the wide plain that lay beyond it, dim in the starlight. Mahdoo squatted comfortably on his hunkers while Ash, impeded by mess dress, had to content himself with a camp chair.
‘What is it that you would know, beta (son) ?’ inquired the old man, using the familiar address of long ago, which was something that he did very rarely in these days.
Ash did not reply to the question immediately, but was silent for a space, listening to the soothing bubble of the hookah and arranging his thoughts. At last he said slowly: ‘Firstly, I would know what connection there is between this Maharajah of Karidkote, whose sisters we take to their wedding and whose brother travels with us, and a certain Rajah of Gulkote. There must be one, I am sure of that.’
‘But of course,’ said Mahdoo, surprised. ‘They are one and the same. The territories of His Highness of Karidarra adjoined those of his cousin the Rajah of Gulkote, and when His Highness died, leaving no heir, the Rajah left for Calcutta to lay claim before the Lat-Sahib himself to the lands and titles of his cousin. There being no one nearer in blood, it was granted to him, and the two states were merged into one and re-named Karidkote. How is it that you did not know this?’
‘Because I am blind – and a fool!’ Ash's voice was barely more than a whisper, but it held a concentrated bitterness that startled Mahdoo. ‘I was angry because I knew that the Generals in Rawalpindi were only using this appointment as a pretext to send me further away from my friends and the Frontier, so I would not even take the trouble to ask questions, or to find out anything. Anything at all!’
‘But why should it matter to you who these princely folk are? What difference does it make?’ asked the old man, troubled by Ash's vehemence. Mahdoo had never been told the story of Gulkote. Colonel Anderson had advised against it on the grounds that the fewer people who knew that tale the better, as the boy's life might depend on his trail being lost. It was the one thing that Ash had been forbidden to mention before Ala Yar or Mahdoo, and he did not wish to go into it now. He said instead:
‘One should know all that one can about those under one's charge, for fear of… of giving offence through ignorance. But tonight I have been made to realize that I know nothing at all. Not even… When did the old Rajah die, Mahdoo? And who is this old man whom they say is his brother?’
‘The Rao-Sahib? He is a half-brother only: the elder son by some two years, though being the son of a concubine he could not inherit the gadi (throne), which went to a younger son whose mother was the Rani. But all the family have always held him in great affection and respect. As for the Rajah – the Maharajah – he died some three years ago, I think. It is his son, the brother of the Rajkumaries, who now sits on the gadi in his place.’
‘Lalji,’ said Ash in a whisper.
‘Who?’
‘The eldest son. That was his milk-name. But he would have been –’ Ash stopped, remembering suddenly that the District Officer had spoken of the Maharajah of Karidkote as only a boy and ‘not yet seventeen’.
‘Nay, nay. This is not the son of the first wife, but a younger one: the second son. The first one died of a fall some years before his father. It is said that he was playing with a monkey on the walls of the palace and fell and was killed. It was an accident,’ said Mahdoo; and added softly: ‘– or so they say.’
‘An accident,’ thought Ash. The same kind of accident that had so nearly happened before. Had it been Biju Ram who pushed him over to his death? Or Panwa, or… Poor Lalji! Ash shuddered, visualizing that last hideous moment of terror and the long, long fall onto the rocks below. Poor Lalji poor little Yuveraj. So they had done for him at last and the Nautch-girl had won. It was her son, Nandu, the spoilt brat who had been banished, shrieking, on the occasion of Colonel Byng's visit to Gulkote, who was now Maharajah of the new State of Karidkote. And Lalji was dead…
‘It seems that the family has suffered many misfortunes of late years,’ said Mahdoo reflectively, and sucked again on his pipe: ‘The old Maharajah also met his death from a fall. I am told that he was out hawking when his horse bolted and fell into a nullah, breaking both their necks. They think the horse must have been stung by a bee. It was very sad for his new bride – did I tell you that he had recently taken another wife? – yes, indeed, his fourth, the first two being dead. They say she was young and very beautiful: the daughter of a rich zemindar…’ The hookah bubbled again and it seemed to Ash as though the sound was a malicious chuckle, laden with sly innuendo. ‘It is said,’ continued Mahdoo softly, ‘that the third Rani was greatly angered, and had threatened to kill herself. But there was no need, for her husband died and the new bride burned with him on his pyre.’
‘Suttee? But that has been forbidden,’ said Ash sharply. ‘It is against the law.’
‘Maybe, child. But the princes are still a law unto themselves, and in many states they do as they wish and no one hears until it is too late. The girl was in ashes long before anyone could interfere. It seems that the Senior Rani would have joined her on the pyre had her women not locked her in a room from which she could not escape, and sent a word to Political Sahib, who was on tour and could not be reached in time to prevent the Junior Rani from becoming a suttee.’
‘Very convenient for the Senior Rani – who I presume became the power behind the throne in Karidkote,’ observed Ash dryly.
‘I believe so,’ admitted Mahdoo. ‘Which is strange indeed, for they say she was once a dancing-girl from Kashmir. Yet for more than two years she was the true ruler of the state, and at least she died a Maharani.’
‘She is dead?’ exclaimed Ash, startled. Somehow it did not seem possible. He had never even seen Janoo-Rani, yet her presence had so dominated the Hawa Mahal that he found it difficult to believe that the violent, ruthless woman who had ruled the old Rajah and plotted Lalji's death – and his own – was no longer alive. It was as though the fortress-palace itself had fallen, for she had seemed indestructible… ‘Did they say how it happened, Cha-cha?’
Mahdoo's wise old eyes glinted in the faint glow from the hookah as he looked sideways at Ash, and he said softly: ‘She quarrelled with her eldest son, and soon afterwards she died – from eating poisoned grapes.’
Ash caught his breath in a harsh gasp: ‘You mean –? No. That I will not believe. Not his own mother!’
‘Have I said that he did it? Nahin, nahin,’ Mahdoo wagged a deprecatory hand. ‘There was of course a tálash (inquiry) and it was proved to be an accident; she herself had poisoned the grapes for the purpose of ridding the garden of a plague of crows, and she must in error have left a few of them on her own dish -’
The hookah chuckled slyly again, but Mahdoo had not finished: ‘Did I not tell you that the ruler of Karidkote has suffered much misfortune? First his elder brother and then his father; and two years later, his mother. And before that there were also one or two small brothers and another sister who died when they were babes in a year of sickness, when cholera killed many children – and not a few grown men and women too. The Maharajah now has only the one brother left – the little prince who is here in the camp. And only one full sister, the younger of the two Rajkumaries who are being sent far away to be wed, for the elder is only a half-sister, the child of his father's second wife, who they say was a foreigner.’
‘Juli!’ thought Ash: and was stunned by the thought. That tall, veiled woman whom he had seen in the brides' pavilion two nights ago was the Feringhi-Rani's neglected little daughter, Anjuli; the child whom the Nautch-girl had scornfully likened to an unripe mango, and who had been known thereafter to everyone in the Palace of the Winds as
‘Kairi-Bai’. It was Juli – and he had not known it.
He sat silent for a long time, staring into the starlight and re-living the past, while behind him the camp settled down to sleep. The voices of men and animals sank to a murmur that lost itself in the rustle of leaves as the night wind breathed through the branches of the banyan tree, and beside him Mahdoo's hookah bubbled a rhythmic accompaniment to the monotonous tunk-a-tunk of a distant tom-tom and the howl of a jackal-pack out on the plain. But Ash heard none of these sounds, for he was a long way away both in distance and in time, talking to a little girl in a balcony on a ruined tower that looked out upon the snows of the Dur Khaima…
How could he possibly have come to forget her almost completely, when she had been so much a part of his years in the Hawa Mahal? No – not forget her – he had forgotten nothing. He had merely pushed her into the back of his mind and not troubled to think of her: perhaps because he had always taken her for granted –
Later that night, after Mahdoo had gone, Ash unlocked the small tin cash-box that he had bought with his first pocket-money and in which he had kept his most treasured possessions ever since: a little silver ring that Sita had worn, his father's last and unfinished letter, the watch that Colonel Anderson had given him on the day they arrived at Pelham Abbas, his first pair of cuff-links and a dozen other trifles. He turned them over, looking for something, and finally emptied the contents of the box onto his camp bed. Yes, it was still there. A small flat square of yellowing paper.
He carried it over to the lamp, and unfolding it, stood looking at the thing it contained: a sliver of mother-of-pearl that was half of a Chinese counter shaped like a fish. Someone – the Feringhi-Rani, perhaps? - had bored a hole through the fish's eye and threaded a strand of twisted silk through it so that it could be worn as a medallion, as Juli had worn it. It had been Juli's most precious possession, yet she had given it to him for a keepsake and begged him not to forget her; and he had hardly ever thought of her again… there had been so many other and more urgent things to think of: and when Koda Dad had left Gulkote there had been no one to send him news of the palace, because no one else – not even Hira Lal – knew what had befallen him or where he had gone.
Ash slept little that night, and as he lay on his back looking up into the darkness, a hundred trivial incidents that had been lost with the years came trooping back again to dance before his mind's eye. A night full of fireworks and feasting that celebrated the birth of a son to Janoo-Rani – Nandu, who was now Maharajah of Karidkote. The names and faces of the boys he had played with in the streets of Gulkote – Gopi and Chitu, Jajat and Shoki and a dozen others. The death of Tuku the little mongoose, and Hira Lal telling him that he should be patient with Lalji, for he, Ashok, was more fortunate than his master. Juli bringing him a silver four-anna piece so that they could begin saving up for the house they would build in Sita's valley, and the two of them hiding the precious coin under a loose stone on the floor of the Queen's balcony. They had meant to add other coins to it from time to time, but had never been able to do so, and it was curious to think that unless Juli had taken it out after he had gone, it must still be there, hidden away and forgotten – like his half of her luck-piece that had lain so long in the bottom of the tin cash-box, out of sight and out of mind.
The stars were beginning to pale by the time he fell asleep, and just as his eyes closed, an odd fragment of a conversation returned to him out of the past – something that he himself had once said, though he could not recall the occasion, or why he should have said such a thing:
‘If I were you, Juli, I wouldn't get married at all. It's too dangerous.’
Why dangerous? thought Ash drowsily as he drifted into sleep.
15
‘Ahsti! Ahsti! Khabadar, Premkulli. Shabash, mera moti – ab ek or. Bas, bas! Kya kurta, ooloo?… Nikal–jao! Arré! Arré! Hai! Hai! Hai!…’
The camp was fording a river to the usual accompaniment of shouts, yells and confusion, and inevitably a cart had become bogged down half-way across and was being pulled out by one of the pad elephants.
Mulraj, who commanded the contingent of Karidkote State Forces, had ridden on ahead with Ash to test the depth of the ford, and now the two sat at ease on the far bank, and from the vantage point of a bluff overlooking the river, watched the unruly multitude straggle across.
‘If they do not make haste,’ observed Mulraj, ‘it will be dark before the last is across. Hai mai, what a business they make of it!’
Ash nodded absently, his gaze still on the men splashing through the shallows or wading knee-deep in mid-river. Three days had passed since he had come face to face with Biju Ram and learned that the Princely State of Karidkote was one and the same as the Gulkote of his youth, and since then he had looked more closely at the men about him and found himself identifying several of them. There were more than half-a-dozen among the mahouts alone, men who had served in the elephant lines of the Hawa Mahal. And there were others too: palace officials, syces, members of the State Forces and a handful of servants and courtiers who four days ago would probably not have attracted his attention, but in the light of his new knowledge were suddenly familiar. Even the elephant, Premkulli, who was being exhorted by his mahout to be careful, was an old friend whom he had fed many times with sticks of sugar cane… The last rays of the sinking sun caught the river, glittering on the water in a blaze of gold that dazzled Ash's eyes so that he could no longer make out the faces of those who were crossing, and he turned away to discuss various matters of administration with Mulraj.
The servants and camp-followers, with the baggage animals, had been the first to cross, for there were tents to be pitched, fires lighted and food cooked. But the brides and their immediate entourage preferred to follow at a slower pace and delay their arrival until all was in readiness for them. They had picknicked today in a grove of trees half a mile from the ford, and knowing that their camp would be pitched at the first suitable spot on the far side of the river, had passed the afternoon there, waiting for the word to move on. But the trees had been full of birds coming home to roost by the time a messenger brought word that they might now proceed, and before they were ready to do so the sun had disappeared below the horizon. Accompanied by a rear guard of some thirty men of the State Forces, they had moved on at last in a leisurely manner that brought them to the ford in the twilight.
A covered cart full of waiting-women normally followed immediately behind the gaily caparisoned ruth in which the brides travelled, but tonight it had fallen some way behind, and when the ruth entered the water it was escorted only by a handful of soldiers and servants, and by the brides' uncle, who had announced his intention of walking the last mile, and having sent his palanquin on ahead, was dismayed to discover that the ford was not nearly as shallow as he had supposed.
On the far bank Ash had already called for his horse, and he was back in the saddle and moving down towards the level ground when a further outburst of shrieks and curses arose from the rapidly darkening river, and he stood up in his stirrups and saw that the near bullock of the ruth had fallen in midstream, snapping a shaft and throwing its driver into the water. Held fast by the traces, the animal was struggling and kicking in a frantic attempt to avoid drowning, and the ruth was already tilting over on one side. From behind its tightly laced curtains came the piercing shrieks of one of its occupants, while a dozen vociferous men milled about it in the dusk, pushing and pulling as the floundering bullock began to draw it towards deep water.
With night closing in it was difficult for the majority of those in the river to see what had happened, but looking down on the scene Ash had a clear picture of it, and he dug his heels into his horse's flanks and rode down the slope and into the river at a gallop, scattering the gaping crowd in the shallows. The shouting men who surrounded the ruth jumped back to give him room as he leaned from the saddle and wrenched at the curtain fastenings until they tore.
A soaked and screaming woman, lifted by a pair of f
irm, capable hands, seemed to leap at him from the darkness, and he snatched her out just as the off-side wheel broke and the ruth fell on its side and began to fill with water.
‘ Quick, Juli! Come on, get out!’ Ash was unaware that he had called to the remaining occupant by name as he shouted to make himself heard above the tumult of yelling voices and the ominous sound of water rushing through the half-submerged ruth, but in fact his words had been lost in the din, for the small figure in his arms was clinging to him in a frenzy of terror and still shrieking at the top of her voice. He beat down the clutching hands and thrust her at the nearest person, who happened by good fortune to be her uncle, though it might just as easily have been a sowar or a bullock driver. The next second he was off his horse and in the river, with the water swirling above his waist.
‘Get out, girl!’
There was a choking, spluttering sound from the darkness and a hand reached out between the torn curtains. Ash gripped it and dragged its owner up and out, and lifting her off her feet, carried her to the bank.
She was no light and fragile creature like the little sister whom she had thrust out of the ruth into his arms, nor did she scream or cling to him as the younger girl had done. But though she made no sound he could feel the quick rise and fall of her breast against his own, while the weight of her warm, wet body, and every slender curve and line of it, spoke eloquently of a woman and not of a child.
He was breathing a little unevenly himself by the time he reached dry land, though his reasons for doing so were not emotional but physical, and few men, called upon to carry approximately a hundred and twelve pounds across a river, with the current tugging at their knees and a crowd of excited spectators splashing and jostling alongside, would not have done the same. It seemed a long way to the shallows, and when he reached the bank there was no one to whom he could hand over his burden. He called for torches and the Rajkumaries' women and waited in the dusk, holding Anjuli's dripping figure in his arms while his syce set off to retrieve his horse, and far too many helpers struggled to free the bullocks and drag the broken ruth out of the way, so that the cart with the princesses' waiting-women could cross in safety.