by M. M. Kaye
The old gentleman's intentions were admirable, and he would have been shocked to realize that his well-meant efforts to alleviate the invalid's boredom had proved far more disturbing than all Jhoti's questions put together. But there was no denying that Jhoti's uncle loved to talk, and Pelham-Sahib, immobilized by splints and bandages, proved an ideal audience. Kaka-ji had seldom found so good a listener – or Ash acquired so much valuable information by the simple expedient of keeping his mouth shut and looking interested. On the subject of Nandu, Maharajah of Karidkote, for instance, Ash had learned a great deal – far more, in all probability, than Kaka-ji had intended, for the old gentleman's tongue was apt to run away with him, and even when he was being discreet it was not difficult to read between the lines.
Janoo-Rani had undoubtedly been a clever woman, but as a mother she appeared to have been singularly unintelligent. Doting upon her sons, she had allowed no one to correct or punish them, and her first-born, Nandu, had been indulged to the point of foolishness, his easy-going father being too idle to take a hand in disciplining the boy. ‘ I do not think,’ said Kaka-ji, ‘that my brother really liked children, even when they were his own. He would tolerate their presence while they behaved well, but the moment they cried or were in any way troublesome he would send them from his presence and often refuse to see them again for many days, which he chose to believe was a punishment; though I do not think it was regarded as such by any save Lalji, who was his first-born and died many years ago. Lalji, I think, loved him greatly and would have given much for his father's favour; but the younger ones saw too little of him to love him, and though Jhoti might in time have taken his dead brother's place in his father's affections, Nandu was no horseman…’
This, it seemed, was once again Janoo-Rani's fault – one could hardly blame the boy, who was barely three years old when he took his first toss off a pony's back. Unaccustomed to being hurt, Nandu had screamed from fright and the pain of a few small scratches, and Janoo-Rani would not let the child ride again, insisting that he had suffered great injury and might easily have been killed. Even now he would not ride one if it could possibly be avoided. ‘He uses elephants instead,’ explained his uncle. ‘Or drives out in a carriage – like a woman.’
Janoo would undoubtedly have done the same to his youngest brother had he not been made of different stuff, for the first time Jhoti took a fall he too screamed aloud. But when he had finished howling he insisted on mounting again and would not let the syce put him back on a leading rein, which delighted his father who had been watching – though Nandu, said Kaka-ji, was not so pleased. ‘I think there has always been a certain jealousy there. It is not so unusual between brothers, when one has talents that the other lacks.’
Fortune had evidently favoured Nandu in many ways. Firstly, he was his mother's darling, her first-born and the favourite child. Then the death of his half-brother, Lalji, had made him heir to the throne, and now he was Maharajah of Karidkote. But it seemed that he could still be jealous, and that he was wholly the Nautch-girl's child both in character and physique. Like her he possessed a violent and ungovernable temper: and no one had ever made any attempt to control his rages, for his mother thought them royal and high-spirited and the servants were afraid of them, while his father, seeing little of him, was unaware of them. He had never excelled in any sport, and had not the build for it, being short and stout, like his mother; though, unlike her, he had few claims to beauty and was strangely dark-skinned for a northerner: A ‘Kala-admi,’ said the citizens of Karidkote scornfully, a ‘black man’. And they would cheer when Jhoti rode past, and keep silent when it was Nandu who drove through the city or the countryside.
‘Jealousy is an ugly thing,’ mused Kaka-ji, ‘but alas, few if any of us can claim to be free of it. I myself was often afflicted by it in my youth, and though I am now old and should by rights have outgrown such unprofitable emotions, there are still times when I can feel its claws. Therefore I am afraid for Jhoti, whose brother is both jealous and powerful…’
The old man broke off to select another sugared plum from a box of candied fruit that he had brought as a present to the invalid, and the invalid inquired in a deceptively casual tone: ‘And not above doing away with him, you think?’
‘No, no, no! You must not think – I did not mean…’ Kaka-ji swallowed the plum in his agitation and had to be restored with a drink of water, and Ash realized that he had made a grave mistake in trying to rush the old gentleman and put words into his mouth. There was nothing to be gained by such methods, and much by letting him ramble on unprompted. But if Kaka–ji was indeed afraid for Jhoti, what exactly was he afraid of? To what lengths did he think his nephew the Maharajah would go to injure a young brother of whom he was jealous, and who had had the temerity to flout him?
Ash was well aware that Jhoti had joined the bridal camp without permission and against his elder brother's expressed wishes. But the very fact that Jhoti had found it possible to ride after the camp, accompanied by at least eight persons and a not inconsiderable amount of baggage, proved that there could not have been any serious restriction of his liberty, and there was something about the whole affair that Ash did not understand; something that did not quite agree with his mental portrait of a jealous and tyrannical young ruler, who, for the pleasure of spiting his young brother, had banned him from accompanying his sisters to their wedding, and on hearing that the ban had been defied, flew into a fury and planned his assassination. There was, for instance, the question of time…
The Maharajah would not have heard of Jhoti's escapade (it could hardly be termed an ‘escape’) for several days. In fact it was probably much longer, because according to Kaka-ji, Nandu's reason for accompanying his sisters to the border of his state had been less a brotherly gesture than because it suited him to do so, it being on his route to the hunting grounds in the foothills to the north-east where he had planned a fortnight's sport, taking only a small party with him so that they could keep on the move, camping in a different spot each night and following the game by day. He did not often indulge in such expeditions, but when he did, he preferred to forget the affairs of state and shelve all such matters until he returned from the forest. Runners with messages were therefore discouraged, and as the hunting party was continually on the move, news of his little brother's behaviour was unlikely to catch up with him for some time. This fact was probably well known to Jhoti – and certainly known, thought Ash, to the men who had accompanied the boy on his flight from Karidkote, for however faithful and devoted to his interests they might be, they would hardly have agreed to take the risk of being stopped at the border or overtaken within a few miles of it, and ignominiously brought back to face the Maharajah while his anger was at white heat.
In Ash's opinion they would have been wiser not to have come at all, but Kaka-ji took a different view: they were all, said Kaka-ji, loyal members of Jhoti's household who had been appointed to his service by his mother the late Maharani, and it was not only their duty to obey him, but to their interest also; their fortunes being bound up with his.
‘Besides,’ admitted Kaka-ji, ‘Jhoti too can be very obstinate, and I understand that when they attempted to dissuade him he threatened to go off alone, which of course they could not permit. The boy being in their care, it would have brought great shame on them had they allowed him to go alone and unattended; though I do not think that they would have dared accompany him had they not known that his brother would hear of his flight too late to stop him before he reached this camp. But once here, they can feel safe for a time, since they are no longer in the territory of the Maharajah but in that of the Raj. They are also under your protection, Sahib, and they reason that His Highness cannot know how you might regard an attempt to drag an unwilling child away from his sisters and return him to Karidkote to be punished – for all must know that Jhoti would never go willingly. Therefore his servants hope that His Highness will realize that there is nothing to be gained by sending men to arrest
the child, particularly when he has only to wait until this wedding is over, as after that Jhoti will of course return. But by then we must all hope that the Maharajah's rage will have had time to cool, and he will be less inclined to deal harshly with something that is, let us admit it, only a boy's prank.’
Kaka-ji's words were optimistic, but the tone of his voice was less so, and he had changed the subject a little abruptly and begun to talk of other matters. However, he had already provided Ash with plenty of food for thought in the long night watches when the discomfort of splints and bandages kept sleep at bay.
The difficulties that he had foreseen, or been warned of in the prosaic, official atmosphere of Rawalpindi, had all had to do with such matters as provisioning or protocol and the possibility (considered to be negligible) of the camp being attacked by raiders in the remoter parts of the country through which it must pass. But neither he nor his military superiors had visualized the far more complicated and dangerous problems that now confronted him, and which, for the present at least, he had no idea how to deal with.
For this reason, if for no other, he had cause to be grateful for the injuries that tied him to his bed, as they not only gave him time for thought, but postponed the need for action. There was nothing he could do at the moment beyond encouraging Jhoti to spend as many hours as possible in his company, and trusting to Mulraj to keep an eye on the child for the rest of the day. Though there was always the night… But possibly Jhoti was safer then than at any other time, for he slept surrounded by his personal servants, all of whom, according to Kaka-ji, were devoted to him. Or if not to him, decided Ash cynically, at least to his interests, which must also be their own.
On the face of it, these men had taken a grave risk in order to let the little prince enjoy himself for a strictly limited time – possibly only for a day or two, supposing a search-party had set out at once to fetch him back, and at best a few months, since after that both he and they must return. How did they expect to be received on their return? Did they, like Kaka-ji, hope that the lapse of time would have cooled the Maharajah's wrath and allowed him to regard the episode as no more than a childish prank? Or was there some other plan?… Perhaps the murder of Nandu, who had as yet no son, and whose Heir Apparent was still his younger brother, Jhoti?
But then it was not Nandu but Jhoti who had very nearly been murdered – and here in the camp; though to the best of Ash's knowledge (it was a point on which he had taken the trouble to inquire) no one had followed after them or joined the camp since he himself had taken over from the District Officer in Deenagunj, nor had there been any messages from Karidkote. This suggested that the attempt had no connection with the boy's escape but must be the work of one of the rival party; some adherent of Nandu's, who, like Ash, concluded that there must be something more behind Jhoti's unexpected arrival than a ‘boyish prank’, and had decided to take no chances, but to scotch any further plotting by the simple expedient of killing the heir.
If only I could talk to Juli,’ thought Ash. She if anyone would know what went on inside the frowning walls and fretted wooden screens of the Hawa Mahal. The things that were whispered in its planless maze of rooms and corridors or gossiped about behind the purdahs of the Zenana Quarter… Juli would know, but there was no way of reaching her; and as Kaka-ji had taken fright, it would have to be Mulraj instead. At least Mulraj should know whom to watch, for the number of suspects must be limited to someone who was out with the hawking party that day. There had not been very many of them, and all those with alibis could be eliminated as a start.
Mulraj, however, had not proved helpful.
‘What do you mean, “not very many of them”?’ he demanded. ‘It may have seemed a small party to you, but then your thoughts were not with us that day and you did not even see the game we put up – let alone who was there. Do you know how many there were? One hundred and eighteen, no less – and two thirds of them paid servants of the state, which means the Maharajah. Of what use to interrogate them? We should hear nothing but lies and would only succeed in putting the true assassins upon their guard.’
‘Well, why not?’ inquired Ash, ruffled by the impatience in Mulraj's voice. ‘Once they realize that we know there has been an attempt on the boy's life, they may think twice before they make another. It will be too dangerous to try such tricks again, knowing that a watch will be kept.’
‘Just so,’ said Mulraj dryly. ‘And were you dealing with your own people, your plan might be a good one. I myself have met few Sahibs, but I am told that it is their custom to go straight for an objective, looking neither to the right nor to the left. This is not so with us. You would not scare off those who meant to kill the child: you would only warn them. And being warned, they would, as you say, play no more tricks, but use instead such methods as would be less easy for us to guard against.’
‘Such as?’ asked Ash.
‘Poison. Or a knife. Or perhaps a bullet. Any of those things would eliminate chance.’
‘They would not dare. We are in British territory and there would be a strict inquiry. The authorities…’
Mulraj grinned derisively and said that naturally some more discreet method would be preferred, as plain murder would necessitate the provision of a scapegoat to pin the blame on, and there would also have to be a reason for the killing; one that would have no connection with the true one, and yet be acceptable as the truth. Neither of these things, in his opinion, would be impossible, but they would be a little more difficult to arrange, and as those who desired the boy's death would not want questions asked, an accident would serve them far better.
‘And I am very sure that they will set about arranging another, provided they think that the first has gone unsuspected. I am also sure that knowing what we know, we shall be able to prevent it from being successful, and may even discover whose hand prepared it, and why: thereby putting an end to these attempts once and for all. It is our best chance. Perhaps our only one.’
Ash was forced to agree. Reason told him that Mulraj was right, and as the present state of his health debarred him from taking any action, he decided that the only thing to do was to try and collect more information as to the character and habits of Jhoti's elder brother; which sounded simple enough, but proved to be more difficult than he imagined. As he grew stronger the number of his visitors increased, and most of them remained to gossip; but although their talk was largely concerned with their home state, and certainly increased his knowledge of the politics and scandals of Karidkote, it taught him little more than he already knew about its ruler, and merely prevented him from having much private conversation with Kaka-ji or Mulraj – not that those two gentlemen appeared over-anxious to talk of the Maharajah either.
Jhoti, on the other hand, would have been only too willing to discuss his brother, but in such uncomplimentary terms that it was not safe to allow him to do so. There remained the dai, Geeta, a gaunt, pock-marked crone who under Gobind's orders continued to treat Ash's dislocated wrist and wrenched muscles, and to remain on watch for part of each night, squatting silently in the shadows in case her patient should wake and be in pain.
As a poor relation distantly connected to the late ruler's first wife, it was safe to assume that she would know all the gossip of the Zenana and prove a mine of information. But she had proved a sad disappointment, for she was far too timid; so much so that even a direct order from Shushila-Bai had not been able to persuade her to venture out except after dark and at an hour late enough to ensure that most of the camp would be asleep, and then only when shrouded in a cotton bourka such as Mohammedan women wear, for fear that a strange man should catch a glimpse of her face. (Ash, who had had that privilege, considered these precautions unnecessary, as he could not imagine any man in his senses wishing to spare her wrinkled and respectable visage so much as a passing glance.) Nevertheless he welcomed the lateness of her visits, for he found it difficult to get to sleep by the end of the day, and the dai's belated appearance and skilful minis
trations came at an opportune moment and always helped him to relax. But try as he would he could not coax her into talking. Her bony hands were firm and sure, but she was too shy and far too much in awe of the Sahib to do more than titter nervously when spoken to, or at most, reply in monosyllables.
Ash gave up the attempt, and deprived of more direct sources of information fell back on Mahdoo, who could be trusted to hold his tongue when necessary and at the same time collect a great deal of miscellaneous gossip from acquaintances in the camp. This he would relay of an evening when the lamps were lit and the visitors had gone, sucking at his hookah between the leisurely sentences while the smoke from the camp fires and the fragrance of cooking drifted out across the plain, and Gul Baz kept watch to see that no one crept near to listen.
Much of what he related could only have been apocryphal, and most of the rest was a hodge-podge of hearsay, speculation and scandal-mongering: the usual buzz of the bazaars, in which little credence could be placed. But here and there a nugget of useful information could be sifted from the spate of gossip, and these, put together, not only told Ash a good deal about the conditions that prevailed in the one-time state of Gulkote, but shed considerably more light on the temper and disposition of its present ruler. A score of anecdotes testified to his vanity and love of display, while many others hinted at a streak of cold-blooded and precocious cunning that had shown itself in childhood and grown with the years, and if even a fraction of the latter were true the picture that emerged was far from prepossessing.
Among the plethora of rumours, guess-work and gossip, two things stood out quite clearly: that Nandu could not endure to be defeated, and that he had very unpleasant ways of dealing with those who displeased him. An instance of this last was his treatment of a tame cheetah, one of a pair of hunting leopards that had been loosed after a buck on the plain below the Hawa Mahal, and which Nandu had backed with twenty gold mohurs to reach and pull down the quarry first. It had failed to do so and he had lost his money and his temper, and sending for a tin of kerosene oil, flung it over the wretched animal and set it alight.