by M. M. Kaye
The hymn ended and once again the only sound in the grove was the cooing of doves: that soft monotonous sound that together with the throb of a tom-tom and the creak of a well-wheel is the voice of India. The silent crowds stood motionless, and none stirred as the suttee mounted the pyre and seated herself in the lotus posture. She arranged the wide folds of her scarlet dress so as to show it to its best advantage, and then gently lifted the dead man's head onto her lap, settling it with infinite care, as though he were asleep and she did not wish to wake him.
‘Now,’ breathed Anjuli in a whisper that broke in a sob – ‘Do it now… quickly, before – before she starts to be afraid.’
‘Don't be a fool!’ The retort cracked like a whip in the quiet room. ‘It would make as much noise as a cannon and bring them all down on us like hornets. Besides –’
He had meant to say ‘I'm not going to fire’, but he did not do so. There was no point in making things worse for Juli than they were already. But the way in which Shu-shu had cradled that awful head in her lap had made up his mind for him at last, and he had no intention of firing. Juli took too much upon herself: she forgot that her half-sister was no longer a sickly infant or a frail and highly strung little girl who must be protected and cosseted –or that she herself was no longer responsible for her. Shu-shu was a grown woman who knew what she was doing. She was also a wife and a queen – and proving that she could behave as one. This time, for good or ill, she should be allowed to make her own decision.
The crowd outside was still silent, but now a priest began to swing a heavy temple bell that had been carried out from the city, and its harsh notes reverberated through the grove and awoke echoes from the walls and domes of the many chattris. One of the Brahmins was sprinkling the dead man and his widow with water brought from the sacred river Ganges – ‘Mother Gunga’ – while others poured more ghee and scented oil upon the logs of cedar and sandalwood and over the feet of the Rana.
But Shushila did not move. She sat composed and still, looking down at the grey, skull-like face on her lap. A graven image in scarlet and gold: remote, passionless and strangely unreal. The Diwan took the torch again and gave it into the trembling hands of the boy-Rana, who seemed about to burst into tears. It wavered dangerously in the child's grasp, being over heavy for such small hands to hold, and one of the Brahmins came to his assistance and helped to support it.
The brightness of that flame was a sharp reminder that evening was already drawing near. Only a short time ago it had been almost invisible in the glaring sunlight, but now the sun was no longer fierce enough to dim that plume of light. The shadows had begun to lengthen and the day that had once seemed as though it would never end would soon be over – and with it, Shushila's short life.
She had lost father and mother, and the brother who, for his own ends, had given her in marriage to a man who lived so far away that it had taken months and not weeks to reach her new home. She had been a wife and a queen, had miscarried two children and borne a third who had lived only a few days; and now she had been widowed, and must die… ‘She is only sixteen –’ thought Ash. ‘It isn't fair. It isn't fair!’
He could hear Sarji's quickened breathing and the thump of his own heart-beats, and though Anjuli was not touching him he knew, without knowing how he knew, that she was shivering violently as though she was very cold or stricken with fever. He thought suddenly that provided he fired a shot she would not know if the bullet had done its work or not, and that he had only to aim over the heads of the crowd. If it comforted Juli to think that her sister had been spared the flames, then all he needed to do was pull the trigger –
But the trees on the far side of the clearing were full of men and boys who clung like monkeys to the boughs, while every chattri within range swarmed with spectators, and even a spent bullet or a ricochet could cause death. It would have to be the pyre itself; that was the only safe target. He lifted the revolver and steadied the barrel on the crook of his left arm, and said curtly and without turning his head: ‘We leave as soon as I have fired. Are you ready to go?’
‘We men are,’ said Gobind very softly. ‘And if the Rani-Sahiba –’
He hesitated, and Ash finished the sentence for him: ‘– will cover her face, it will save time. Besides, she has already seen more than enough of this and there is no need for her to stand staring any longer.’
He spoke with deliberate harshness in the hope that Juli would be forced to busy herself rewinding the free end of her turban across her face and so miss the last act of the tragedy. But she made no move to cover her face or turn away. She stayed as though rooted to the spot: wide-eyed, shivering and unable to stir hand or foot, and seemingly unaware that he had spoken.
All of forty paces, Sarji had said. It did not look as far as that, for now that there was no movement in the vast crowd the dust had settled; and with the sun-glare no longer dazzling his sight, the faces of the chief actors in the tragedy could be seen as clearly as though they were only twenty feet away instead of thirty-five to forty paces.
The little Rana was crying. Tears poured down the pallid, childish features that were crumpled with fear and bewilderment and sheer physical exhaustion, and if the Brahmin beside him had not held his small hands firmly about the torch, he would have dropped it. The Brahmin was evidently exhorting him in an undertone, while the Diwan looked scornful and the nobles exchanged glances that varied according to their temperaments – and the degree of their disappointment over the selection of the next ruler. And then Shushila looked up… and suddenly her face changed.
Perhaps it was the brightness of the torch, or the sound of it as the flames streamed up on the still air, that woke her from the dream-world in which she had been moving. Her head came up sharply and Ash could see her eyes widen until they looked enormous in her small, pale face. She stared about her, no longer calmly, but with the terrified gaze of a hunted animal, and he could tell the exact moment when reality broke through illusion and she realized, fully, what that flaming brand signalled…
The boy's hands, guided by the Brahmin's, lowered the torch until it touched the pyre near the feet of the dead man. Bright flowers of fire sprang up from the wood and blossomed in orange and green and violet, and the new Rana having performed his duty to the old one – his father by adoption – the priest took the brand from him and went quickly to the other end of the pyre and touched it to the logs at the suttee's back. A brilliant tongue of flame shot skyward, and simultaneously the crowd found its voice and once again roared its homage and approval. But the goddess of their worship thrust aside the head on her lap, and now, suddenly, she was on her feet, staring at those flames and screaming – screaming…
The sound of those screams cut through the clamour as the shriek of violin strings cuts through the full tempest of drums and wind-instruments and brass. It drew a gasping echo from Anjuli, and Ash lifted his aim and fired.
The screams stopped short and the slender scarlet and gold figure stretched out one hand gropingly as though searching for support, and then crumpled at the knees and pitched forward across the corpse at her feet. And as she fell the Brahmin flung the torch on the pyre, and flames gushed up from the oil-drenched wood and threw a shimmering veil of heat and smoke between the watchers and the recumbent figure of the girl who now wore a glittering wedding-dress of fire.
The crash of the shot had sounded appallingly loud in that small confined space, and Ash thrust the revolver into the breast of his robe and turning, said savagely: ‘Well, what are you waiting for? Get on – go on Sarji – you first.’ Anjuli still seemed dazed, and he pulled the cloth roughly across her nose and mouth and made sure that it was secure, and having adjusted his own, caught her by the shoulders and said: ‘Listen to me, Juli – and stop looking like that. You've done all you can for Shushila. She's gone. She has escaped; and if we hope to, we must stop thinking of her and think of ourselves. We come first now. All of us. Do you understand?’
Anjuli nodded dumbly.<
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‘Good. Then turn around and go with Gobind, and don't look back. I shall be behind you. Walk –!’
He turned her about and pushed her ahead of him towards the heavy purdah that Manilal was holding open for them, and she followed Sarji through it and down the marble stairway that led to the terrace and the crowds below.
43
He was riding headlong across a stony plain between low, barren hills, and there was a girl on the crupper behind him who clung to him and urged him to ride faster – faster. A girl whose long, unbound hair streamed out on the wind like a black silk flag, so that when he glanced back he could not see the riders who pursued them, but only hear the thunder of following hoof-beats that became louder and nearer…
Ash awoke, sweating with terror, to find that the sound of galloping horses was only the desperate beating of his own heart.
The nightmare was a familiar one. But the awakening was not, because this time he was not in his own bed, but lying on hard ground in a dark patch of shadow thrown by a boulder. Below him a belt of scree fell steeply away down a gully that was bright with moonlight, and on either hand the bare hillsides swept upwards to shoulder a sky like a sheet of tarnished steel.
For a moment or two he could not remember how he came to be there, or why. Then memory returned in a scalding flood and he sat up and stared into the shadows. Yes, she was still there; a pale huddled shape lying in a hollow that Bukta had scraped out for her between two boulders and lined with his horse-blanket. At least they had brought her this far in safety, and when Bukta returned – if he returned –
Ash's thoughts checked sickeningly, balking like a horse that suddenly recognizes the dangers of a fence and refuses to face it; for the position of the moon told him that it was long past midnight, and by rights Bukta should have arrived back at least two hours ago.
He stood up cautiously, moving with extreme care to avoid making any noise that might disturb Anjuli, and peered over the boulder; but nothing moved on the bare hillside, and the only sound that he could hear was made by the night wind whispering through the dry grass and between the tumbled rocks. He could not believe that he had slept so soundly that he would not have heard the noise of returning footsteps, yet even if he had, there would still be the horses…
But there were no horses on that empty expanse of hillside, and no sign of Bukta, or of anyone else; though far away, in the sky above the valley, a red pulsating glow told of camp fires, and by inference, the presence of a large force bivouacked there for the night and only waiting for dawn before taking up the trail.
Ash rested his arms on the boulder, and staring out across the grey folds of the moon-washed hills towards that distant brightness, coldly calculated his own and Juli's chances of survival in an almost waterless region where there were no recognizable paths or landmarks; or none that he himself could recognize, even though he had come that way barely a week ago. Yet if Bukta did not return he would have to find the path back through this trackless maze of ridges himself, and by way of the few places where there had been springs in the parched wilderness – and later on through the many miles of jungle-clad foothills that lay across the northern borders of Gujerat.
It had been no easy road before, but now… Once again the train of Ash's thought jarred to a halt and he dropped his head on his folded arms, shutting out the moonlight. But he could not shut out the memory of all that had happened, and now he saw it again, printed searingly behind his closed eyelids…
They had walked out of the screened enclosure, Sarji leading, and down the narrow stairway to the terrace where the crowd – spectators and sentries alike – craned to watch the suttee's last moments, and swept by emotion, prayed, shouted or wept as the flames shot upwards and the pyre became a blazing, blinding pyramid of fire. No one present had spared a glance for the small party of four palace attendants led by a helmeted member of the Rana's bodyguard. They had left the chattri unhindered and unremarked, and within minutes had reached the shelter of the older and more ruined buildings.
Dagobaz had been standing with his ears pricked, listening; and despite the roar and crackle of the fire and the cries of the crowd he must have heard Ash's step and recognized it, for he whinnied in greeting before he saw him. There were four other horses tethered to a tree near by, one of which was Sarji's own Moti Raj and another the hack he had lent Manilal for the return journey to Bhithor. The third belonged to Gobind, as did the fourth, which he had acquired with one other some weeks earlier, in the hope that it might be possible to rescue both the Ranis.
‘I bought one for each of them,’ explained Gobind in an aside to Ash as he adjusted the girths, ‘but this is the better of the two, so I have left the other behind, which is no loss – we cannot cumber ourselves with spare horses. If the Rani-Sahiba will be pleased to mount –?’
They rode out of the grove and circled back across the dusty plain towards the entrance of the valley, where the walled city stood like a vast block of sandstone in the centre of the valley mouth. The sun had not yet sunk behind the hills, and because here their route lay west they rode directly towards it. Its glare dazzled the eyes of both riders and horses and the heat rose in waves from the stony ground and beat against them – and Ash had forgotten about that nameless merchant of Bhithor who had been a great traveller, and had brought back from foreign parts the secret of how men could speak to each other over great distances with the aid of small shields of polished silver.
Even if he had remembered it would not have helped much – except that he might have been warned. As it was, riding into the eye of the setting sun and half blinded by its glare, he did not see the brief flicker from a high rooftop in the city, or the one from the walls of the right-hand fort, that could be translated as ‘Message understood’. And Sarji, who did see them, supposed them to be only sunlight flashing on a window-pane or the burnished barrel of a cannon.
Neither of them was ever to know how their escape came to be discovered so soon, though the explanation was very simple, and proved that Manilal's advice on the score of killing their prisoners had been sound. A gag, however efficient, does not prevent a man – or a woman – from making a certain amount of noise, and when six people combine to moan in chorus, the noise they produce is not inconsiderable. The captives were unable to move but they could moan, and they did so to such good purpose that before long one of the guards below, on his way up to the top storey of the chattri from where he hoped to obtain a better view, stopped to listen as he passed the curtained entrance, and supposing the sound to come from the Junior Rani, could not resist twitching it very slightly aside and putting his eye to the crack.
Within minutes all six were free and pouring out a wild tale of murder, assault and abduction. And shortly afterwards a score of soldiers set off in pursuit, guided by the long, betraying cloud of dust that Ash and his companions had raised as they rode away, and that showed like a white streak across the face of the plain. The chances of overtaking the runaways were slight, for they had too good a start and should have got clean away. But as luck would have it, one of the bodyguard had been provided with a signalling shield and charged with keeping in touch with the city and the forts in order to report the safe arrival of the funeral cortège. He now made use of it to flash a warning to both that said, in effect – Enemy. Five. On horseback. Intercept.
The signal was seen and acknowledged, and though the hilltop forts could do little, the city took immediate action. There were no more than a handful of troops within its confines that day, the majority having been called on to keep a clear pathway for the funeral procession or sent to control the crowds at the burning-ground. But the few who had remained on guard at the palace were hastily rounded up and dispatched at full gallop to the Hathi Pol, the Elephant Gate, with instructions to cut off a party of five horsemen who were presumed to be making for the border.
But for a zealous gunner in the right-hand fort, they would have done so, as by now the fugitives were riding through the g
ap between the hillside and the northern wall of the city, and were as yet barely level with the Mori Gate. Having not seen the signals, or realized that their escape had been discovered, they were not pressing their horses overmuch, for fields of grain and stubble, criss-crossed by irrigation channels, are hardly the safest places to take at a gallop. Besides, the valley with its hard, sun-baked ground lay ahead, and once there, with the city behind them, they would be able to go more quickly.
The sudden appearance of a party of yelling horsemen, who having left by the Elephant Gate were not only well ahead of them but riding at a tangent with the obvious intention of cutting them off before they could reach the valley, was a shattering blow; as was the simultaneous spatter of shots from somewhere away to the right. Yet even then, for a brief moment it seemed to all of them that they must be mistaken and that it was not possible that the shouting men could have any interest in them or the shots be aimed at them, for there had not been time… But the moment passed and suddenly they knew without a shadow of doubt – as the fox knows when he hears the hounds give tongue – that the hunt was up and that they were the quarry.
It was too late to turn back; and there was no point in doing so, since by now there would be other men on their heels striving to overtake them. There was nothing for it but to go forward, and reacting as one, they set spurs to their horses and made for the narrowing gap that the men from the city were racing to close.
Whether they would have reached it in time is doubtful. But it was at this point that Fate, in the form of a gunner in the fort, intervened on their behalf.
The garrison of the fort had seen the sun-signals, and had been manning the walls and excitedly watching the approach of the five fugitives and the progress of the pursuit. Their eyrie on the hilltop gave them an advantage that the five did not possess, because from here they could not only see the quarry, but the pursuers who galloped far behind them following their trail, as well as the handful of armed men who had suddenly debouched from the Hathi Pol and were now riding to head them off.