by M. M. Kaye
‘Time,’ said Ash succinctly.
‘That much is clear. The old fox held us in talk for the best part of an hour, and then that servant took so long to fetch our men and our horses that it would not have surprised me to learn he had fallen asleep by the way. They wished to delay our departure – and they succeeded. But why? For what purpose?’
They had learned it within ten minutes of leaving the city.
The Rana had acted with considerable speed, for the twin forts that earlier that day had been garrisoned by no more than a handful of sentries were now manned by scores of artillerymen who swarmed on the battlements and stood ready by their guns, a sight that the delegation from Karidkote, riding back to their camp, could not fail to take note of, and that must bring home to them the vulnerability and helplessness of their own position when faced with this threat of force.
The camp had already taken note, and anxious groups of men, who would normally have been taking an afternoon siesta in the shade, were standing about in the blinding sunlight to stare at the forts and speculate uneasily as to the reason for this ominous show of force. A dozen explanations, each one more alarming than the next, were in circulation among the tents, and presently a rumour arose that the Rana was about to open fire on the camp with the intention of killing everyone in it, so that he might seize the money and valuables that had been brought from Karidkote.
By the time Ash and Mulraj returned, panic had spread with the speed of a whirlwind, and only drastic action on the part of Mulraj, who set the pick of his troops to keep order with lances, musket butts and lathis, had averted a riot. But there was no denying that the situation looked exceedingly ugly, and within an hour of his return Ash had dispatched yet another message to the palace, requesting an audience on the following day – this time in public durbar.
‘Why send so swiftly?’ raged Mulraj, who, had he been consulted, would have preferred to save face by ignoring the threat for as long as possible. ‘Could we not have waited at least until the morrow before begging that – that dagabazik (cheat, trickster) for an audience? Now everyone will think that his guns have thrown us into such terror that we dared not waste a moment for fear that he should loose them upon us.’
‘Then they are due for a disappointment,’ snapped Ash, whose hold on his temper was hourly becoming more precarious. ‘They can think what they choose. But we have already wasted too many moments, and I do not intend to waste any more.’
‘That would be good hearing,’ sighed Kaka-ji, ‘if only there was anything we could say to the Rana. But what is there left to say?’
‘A good deal that should have been said long ago, had I had my way,’ returned Ash shortly. ‘And I trust that you will feel strong enough to accompany us tomorrow, Rao-Sahib, so that you too may hear it.’
They had all acompanied him: not only Kaka-ji, but all those who had attended the first durbar. And this time they had been required to present themselves at the city palace in the late afternoon. They had gone there dressed in their glittering best and escorted by thirty splendidly uniformed lancers. And despite the fact that the thermometer in his tent still registered 109 degrees, Ash himself had donned the fullest of full dress to ride with them through the sultry heat to the Rung Mahal, where they had been met by a minor official and conducted to the Hall of Public Audience. Here, as once before, they found the entire court awaiting them, seated in serried ranks between the painted arches.
Today the outer arches on the windward side were closed by kus-kus tatties and those on the opposite side by split-cane chiks, which while helping to reduce the temperature to something approaching coolness, filled the Diwan-i-Am with a shadowy gloom that seemed even deeper by contrast with the brightness outside. But even the combination of shadows and the low sunlight of the waning afternoon did not prevent Ash from seeing that every face in that crowded assembly room wore an expression of smug anticipation that was, in some cases, tinged with derision, and it was immediately clear to him that they were confidently expecting to witness the public humiliation of the emissaries from Karidkote and the foolish young Sahib who was their spokesman, and to enjoy the skill with which their crafty ruler had played his cards and out-witted his hapless guests. It was a pity, thought Ash sardonically, that they were to be disappointed on both counts. And dispensing with the accepted preliminaries of debate – the polite greetings, the compliments and the hollow expressions of mutual esteem and good-will that wasted so much time – he came straight to the point.
‘I have noticed,’ said Ash, addressing the Rana in a voice that none present had ever heard him use before, ‘that Your Highness has seen fit to man all three forts that command the valley. For which reason I desired this meeting, so that I might inform you, in public durbar, that if so much as one of the guns that are trained upon our camp should be fired, your state will be taken over by the Government of India and you yourself will be deposed and sent away to spend the remainder of your life in exile. I will also inform you that I intend to strike camp and remove to our first site, outside the valley, where we shall remain until you are prepared to come to terms with us. Our terms. That is all I have to say.’
The grim certainty of his own voice surprised him, for his mouth was dry and he had, in fact, no confidence whatsoever in the Government's willingness to take such action – or indeed, give him any support. They were, he thought, more likely to reprimand him for making unauthorized threats in their name and ‘exceeding his instructions’. But then the present company was not to know that. The Diwan's jaw had dropped and the Rana's face was a study in shock. And of a sudden it seemed as if every man in those close-packed ranks of men had caught his breath and was holding it; for though the wind still whined through the kus-kus tatties and rattled the swaying chiks with a maddening, monotonous tattoo, there was no other sound under the painted arches. Noting this, Ash realized that any further discussion could, at this point, rob the threat of half its effect, so without giving the Rana time to reply, he collected his own party with a jerk of the head and stalked out of the Diwan-i-Am, the jingle of his spurs and the clank of his sword sharply audible in the stunned silence.
This time no one had been sent hurrying after them, and there had been no attempt to delay their departure. The escort and their horses had been ready and waiting for them, and they had mounted without any words of farewell and clattered out of the courtyard and back through streets that were full of strolling citizens come out to ‘eat the evening air’.
Kaka-ji had been the first to speak, but only after they were safely through the city gate and riding down the valley into the eye of the setting sun, and even then he had lowered his voice as though he were afraid of being overheard:
‘Is it true, Sahib, what you told the Rana? Will the Sirkar (Government) indeed dispossess him if he uses his guns upon us?’
‘I do not know,’ confessed Ash with a wry grin. ‘They should. But then one cannot tell how the affair would be reported to them, for how many of us would be left alive to tell the true tale? However, all that matters now is whether the Rana himself believes that they would do so; and that is something we shall find out as soon as we start moving off.’
‘So you do mean us to move?’ said Mulraj. ‘When?’
‘Now. At once. While they in the palace are still afraid that I may have spoken no more than the truth. We must be out of this valley and beyond the reach of those forts before the sun rises again.’
‘But will that not be too great a risk?’ demurred Kaka-ji, alarmed. ‘What if they should fire upon us when they see us preparing to leave?’
‘They will not do so while there is the least doubt in their minds as to how the Government may react; which is why we must not lose a moment, but move immediately, while they are still debating it. If there is a risk, it is one that we must take because there is nothing else we can do except give in and let the Rana have everything he asks. And that I will not consider. We march within the hour.’
‘It will
not be easy to move by night,’ observed Mulraj, squinting at the setting sun. ‘There is no moon.’
‘All the better. To fire in the darkness at a moving target will not be easy either; also it might mean the destruction of much treasure – and perhaps of the brides also. Besides, in this heat a night march will at least be cooler than moving by day.’
By the time they reached the camp half the valley was in shadow and the wind had fallen with the approach of sunset. Cooking fires were already being lighted and smoke hung in the still air like a long scarf of grey gauze, spanning the valley floor and touching the flanks of the hills that hemmed it in on either side. Sunlight still lay along the heights, and its rays seemed to be concentrated on the sandstone walls of the nearest fort, turning them to burnished gold and striking blinding glints from bronze cannon and the barrels of muskets.
The opposite fort was only a dark violet shape against the evening sky, but its crouching bulk was no less menacing, and Ash felt a shiver run down his spine as he looked up at it. Supposing… just supposing he was wrong, and that his bluff had not deceived the Rana? Well, it was too late to worry about that now; and as he had told Kaka-ji, they would soon find out. He gave orders for the camp to be struck, and went off to change his uniform for clothing more suited to the work that lay ahead.
With less than an hour-and-a-half of daylight left, few men had found time for an evening meal, and those who had, had eaten it standing, the threat presented by the manning of the forts having been clear to all of them. They were as eager to quit the valley as Ash himself, and not only had no one queried the order to march or raised any objection on the score of short notice and the difficulties involved, but every man, woman and child had set to with feverish speed and worked with such a will that dusk had barely fallen when the first laden cart moved off towards the gorge, preceded by a picked band of cavalry.
By midnight the tail-end of the long column marched out, leaving the cooking fires still burning, as Ash had given orders that the fires were to be left to die out untouched so that watchers in the forts would be uncertain as to how many men had moved, and how many remained behind. The marchers themselves had been forbidden to carry lights, and seen from above and by starlight, they would be almost invisible, for as they plodded forward, the dust that rose up under their feet and made the going a torment served to screen them from view more effectively than anything else could have done, and made it difficult to guess at the numbers involved.
To Ash, riding in the thick of the press, the noise of their progress seemed appallingly loud; for though no one spoke except to give an order or urge on a reluctant animal – and then only in an undertone – there were many other sounds that could not be avoided: the creak of wheels and the crack of whips, the tread of innumerable feet, the click of hooves and the jingle of harness, the wails of children and the grunts, squeals and grumbles of cattle, sheep, camels, horses and elephants. Not to mention a continual yapping from the horde of pi-dogs that had attached themselves to the camp and could not be persuaded to leave it.
Ash consoled himself with the reflection that deafening as it might sound at close quarters, from half a mile away even this amount of noise would be inaudible, and in any case there had never been any question of keeping the Rana's men in ignorance of the move. He had told them himself what he meant to do. All the same, he preferred to keep them guessing as to how long such an operation would take, for, if they under-estimated the speed with which it could be done, and were expecting to find at least two thirds of the camp still in the valley by morning, it might discourage them from taking any precipitate action that night. The critical part of the affair was going to be the passage through the gorge, for there progress was bound to be slow, and the fort that stood guard over it was over-close. He wondered how soon he would reach it and whether the small force that Mulraj had sent to lead the way had already done so, and were safely through it. And where Juli was…
He had seen the ruth move off, surrounded three-deep by an escort of armed guards and preceded and followed by a detachment of cavalry, together with the covered carts bearing the brides' women, servants and personal effects. Mulraj and Kaka-ji had ridden alongside it, and Jhoti had travelled with his sisters. Ash had seen the boy's excited face by the smoky light of a hurricane lamp as he climed into the ruth, but the brides had been no more than a fleeting glimpse of two shrouded figures, indistinguishable from their women; and but for the fact that one of them was taller than the other he would not even have known which was Juli. A moment later the escort had closed about them and the ruth had jolted off into the darkness, and he could not even ride within sight of it. The most he had been able to do was to arrange that if the forts opened fire, or if it should come to a fight (as it would do if the Rana's soldiers attempted to close the gorge road), Juli, Shushila and Jhoti were to be snatched out of the mêlée by Mulraj and a small band of horsemen, who would circle back and attempt to find their way out across the hills, while he himself remained behind to cover their retreat and deal with the Rana in the morning.
It was a sketchy plan and far from foolproof. But if the worst came to the worst it would have to be tried, and Ash could only hope that it would not come to that; for though he and Mulraj had searched diligently during the past weeks, the only paths they had found among the hills were goat tracks that wandered aimlessly between outcrops of rock on the steep, grassy slopes, and appeared to lead nowhere. But there was no profit in worrying about that either. The die had been cast and by now the matter was out of his hands. There was nothing else he could do – except pray that he had convinced the Rana that any attempt at force would be fatal.
‘If it does come to a fight,’ thought Ash, ‘there will be no wedding. They couldn't go ahead with it after that… Even Nandu would not consider doing so. Nor could the Government overlook such a thing – they'd have to take some action, even if they didn't actually take over the state… perhaps appoint another ruler, and see that Nandu was repaid some if not all of what he has spent on this sorry business… I ought not to have interfered. I should have left well alone, and then Juli would have…’
But he knew that he could not have done anything else. He could not have disregarded his orders and stood aside, leaving the bargaining and the decisions to Kaka-ji and his compatriots who would have been forced in the end to pay the blackmailer in full – as well as forfeiting Anjuli's dowry and leaving her behind, unwed. All the same he found himself listening for the sounds of battle and half hoping that the Rana's soldiers would deny them passage through the gorge, for a fight was the only thing that would put an end to any further talk of a wedding. Yet if it came to fighting, men would die. Probably a great many of them…
Ash was suddenly filled with a sick disgust of himself. Had he really fallen so low as to contemplate, even for a moment, the death of men he knew and liked, men in whose company he had travelled southward all the long way to Bhithor, merely because their deaths might help him achieve a purely personal desire? Juli, he knew, would never dream of buying happiness at such a price. And neither could he. With that thought it was as though she moved quietly away from him, as she had done when she left Kaka-ji's tent. The night noises ceased to whisper her name or the dust to hold a scent of roses, and as his mind emptied of her, he could listen once more to the many sounds about him with his ears alert to catch the crack of a distant musket.
It was no longer necessary to fear the cannon in the two forts behind him. If their crews had been going to open fire they would have done so before now, instead of waiting until the camp had moved out of range. The real danger lay ahead in the short half-mile of track that wound through the gorge below the third fort, where it would be only too easy to entrap a large part of the column, leaving all those who had not yet entered it with no alternative but to turn and retreat back into the larger trap of the valley.
‘If they attack us there,’ thought Ash, ‘we are finished.’
But the threat of annexation a
nd exile had destroyed the Rana's confidence. It did not occur to him that the Sahib could have spoken in that fashion on his own authority and without a shadow of official support. He presumed that the Sahib must be speaking as the mouthpiece of the Political Officer, who was himself the mouthpiece of the Raj; and he also knew that there had been many precedents for such action. Too many to allow him to count on the fact that as these had occurred in the days before the great uprising, when the East India Company ruled the land, they would not occur again under a Raj headed by a Viceroy representing the Padishah Victoria herself. If in the past such princely states as the great Kingdom of Oudh could be annexed, how could he be sure that a similar fate could not befall his own, which was small and by no means powerful? The Rana and his councillors had quailed at the thought, and urgent messages had been dispatched to the commanders of the forts, ordering them to abstain from any action that could possibly be construed as hostile.
The bridal camp passed unmolested through the gorge, and by the time the sun rose it was busily setting up tents and lighting new cooking fires on the old site, well out of range of the fort and in a position to defend itself against attack or, if necessary, to retreat over the border.
‘Now let those sons of jackals try to threaten us,’ said Mulraj viciously. ‘Arré! but I am weary. I am not a fearful man, and the gods know I would fight with the best against any odds in open battle. But I tell you, Sahib, I died a thousand deaths last night as we crept through that gorge in the darkness, knowing the slaughter that a mere handful of men on the cliffs above could have wrought on us, and expecting every moment to see the cannons speak and hear armed men pouring down to attack us. Ah well, it is over: we have broken out of the trap. But what happens now?’
‘That is up to the Rana,’ said Ash. ‘We shall wait and see what he will do. But I am inclined to think that we shall have no further trouble from him and that he will pretend that it has all been… what was it the Diwan said?… “an unfortunate misunderstanding”. Tomorrow, or perhaps today, he will send us a deputation bringing gifts and soothing messages, so we had better take what rest we can before they arrive. How is young Jhoti?’