by M. M. Kaye
All these arrangements had taken time, since the Rana himself had remained in Bhithor and the envoys he had sent to negotiate the marriage had not been able to accept an extra bride without consulting him. Messengers had ridden back and forth between the two widely separated states, and the journey being a slow and arduous one even for a rider with relays of fast horses, it was many months before Nandu's sisters at last set out for Bhithor.
Anjuli had had no say in all this: her future had been decided by her half-brother and his favourites, and there was nothing she could do about it. Even if her wishes had been consulted (and, even more unlikely, had carried any weight), she would never have dreamed of deserting Shushila. Shu-shu had always needed her, and now she needed her more than ever. It would have been unthinkable to let her go away alone, and Anjuli had quite simply not thought of it. She had not even given much thought to their future husband, or what her feelings might be for a man who was prepared to marry her solely in order to get her younger sister. That the bargain did not hold out much prospect of happiness for her was of minor importance, because Anjuli had never expected very much of marriage. It seemed to her a gamble in which the dice were heavily loaded in favour of the opposite sex, for no woman could choose her husband; yet, having married him, even though he proved to be cruel and unjust to her, or physically repulsive, she must worship him as a god, serving him and doing his will to her life's end, and if he died before her, immolating herself on his pyre. A bridegroom who was disappointed when he lifted his bride's veil and saw for the first time the face of the girl he had married could console himself with other women; but a disappointed bride had nothing but her sense of duty and the hope of children to sustain her.
In the circumstances, it did not do to build too heavily on the chance of a happy marriage, and Anjuli had not done so; partly, it must be admitted, because somewhere in the back of her mind there had lurked the hope that one day Ashok and his mother would come back for her, and she would be able to go away with them to live for the rest of her life in a valley among high mountains.
That hope had never quite faded; though it had grown fainter as the years passed and they had not returned. But as long as she remained unmarried it seemed to her that somewhere a door was still open: and as she grew up and left childhood behind her, and there was still no talk of a husband for her, she began to think that perhaps there never would be.
For Shushila of course, it would be different. Shu-shu was going to be as beautiful as her mother: that had been clear from the first. She was also a person of considerable importance, so an early and splendid marriage for her was a certainty. Anjuli had long ago resigned herself to the fact that it would separate them – perhaps for ever - and the news that this would not happen, and that they were to stay together after all, had compensated her for many things. For the closing of that door and the final abandonment of a dream. For having to leave Karidkote and live out her days in a hot and arid country far and far to the southward, where no one had ever seen a deodar or a rhododendron or a pine tree, and there were no mountains – and no snow…
She would never see the Dur Khaima again, or smell the scent of pine-needles when the wind blew in from the north. And if Ashok were now to keep his promise and return, it would be too late, for he would find her gone.
21
Not many people in the camp were able to sleep late. There was too much work to be done, and the majority rose early in order to feed and water animals, milk cows and goats, light fires and prepare the morning meal. Or, like Mahdoo and Kaka-ji, to pray.
Mahdoo's prayers did not take too long, but Kaka-ji's pujah was a protracted affair. The old man was keenly aware of the existence of God though he confessed to being uncertain as to whether God was also aware of him. ‘But one must hope,’ said Kaka-ji. ‘One must live in hope.’ The Unseen was very real to him, and as he had no intention of allowing the fact that he was on a journey to interfere with his religious observances, he took to rising well before dawn in order that he might devote his customary two hours to his pujah.
His niece Shushila was one of the few who lay late abed, but her sister, Anjuli-Bai, rose almost as early as Kaka-ji; though for a different reason. Habit had something to do with it, but in the early days of the march she would be up by cockcrow in order to peer out between the tent-flaps and gaze at the mountains.
For a time the snow peaks of the Himalayas had remained clearly visible in the dawn, floating silver and serene in the cool air of morning. And though at mid-day the dust would hide them, when the day waned they would emerge again, rose-tipped now against the green of the evening sky. But as the weeks wore away, the snow-capped ranges receded, dwindling and growing fainter and further away, until finally they vanished. And Anjuli looked for them no more.
There came a day when the Punjab too, with its five great rivers, its friendly villages and fat crop-lands, was left behind. And with it, British India. They were crossing Rajputana now: Tod's fabled Rajasthan – the ‘Country of the Kings’. A land of feudal states ruled over by the descendants of warrior princes whose deeds colour the chronicles of Hindustan with blood and violence and splendour, and whose names read like a fanfare of trumpets – Bikaner, Jodhpur, Gwalior and Alwar; Jaipur, Bhurtpore, Kotah and Tonk; Bundi, Dholpui, Udipore, Indore…
This was very different country from the fertile and densely populated Punjab. Here towns and villages no longer stood cheek-by-jowl, but were widely scattered, and the land itself was for the most part flat and featureless. A place of limitless horizons and little shade, where the light seemed harsher than in the north, and men, as though in compensation for the lack of colour in their surroundings, painted their houses blinding white or sugar-pink, and decorated their walls and gateways with gay murals of fighting elephants or legendary heroes. Even the horns of their cattle were often brightly tinted, and the country-women did not wear saris but favoured voluminous skirts in vivid tones of sapphire and scarlet, cerise, orange, grass-green and saffron, printed and bordered in black. With their tight, bright bodices and headscarves of strongly contrasting colours, they were as brilliant as a flock of macaws, and they walked like queens, balancing vast brass cooking pots, water chattis or heavy loads of fodder on their heads with graceful ease, and moving always to the clash and jingle of silver, since every ankle and wrist bore its load of bracelets.
‘Like dancing girls,’ sniffed Mahdoo, disapprovingly.
‘Like Houris,’* retorted Ash. ‘Like peonies, or Dutch tulips.’ The aridity of the landscape depressed him, but he approved of the gay garb of its women, and of the fact that this sandy and rock-strewn country was by no means as barren as it appeared at first sight, but supported more wild life than he had seen during all their days in the Punjab. Herds of black-buck and chinkara roamed the plain, and the scanty scrub seemed alive with partridge and quail and flocks of pigeons. And once, in the early dawn, he had seen a great cloud of sandgrouse that must have numbered many thousands, rising from a lonely pool of water in a treeless waste of sand. Apart from the beauty of these sights, it was a relief to realize that there would be no need for him to follow the example of such orthodox Hindus as Kaka-ji, and turn vegetarian.
A dâk-runner arrived in camp bearing a large packet of mail addressed to Captain Pelham-Martyn. Most of it was of little interest, and having skimmed through this dispiriting collection of waste paper and consigning it to its proper place, Ash turned gratefully to the only two items that interested him: a short letter from Zarin, and a much longer one from Wally, who was frankly envious and complained of the dullness of Rawalpindi and wished that he was in Ash's shoes.
‘I told you those girls were bound to be beautiful, but you wouldn't believe it,’ wrote Wally. ‘They're wasted on you!’ And then went on to belie his complaints by giving Ash a lyrical description of a Miss Laura Wendover, who unfortunately (or perhaps fortunately?) had turned out to be betrothed to a civil engineer. There was also a poem written to commemorate a fellow officer wh
o had died of enteric, that began ‘Lo, e'en ere his day had reached full morn’, and ran to seven lengthy verses, each worse than the last.
Ash waded through the first two before crumpling it up and tossing it away, and as the wind caught the paper and carried it out of sight, wondered idly what a stranger, finding that effusion and unacquainted with Wally, would make of the poet. Any impressions gained from such turgid stuff would be nothing in the least like the writer, yet Wally's six-page letter conjured him up as though he were there in the flesh and talking aloud, and Ash laughed over it and re-read it, and for a moment almost wished himself back in Rawalpindi.
Zarin's letter, on the other hand, consisted of a single page and was a curious document. For one thing it had been written in English, which was surprising, as Zarin knew perfectly well that there was no longer any necessity for this, and Ash had received two letters from him while in Rawalpindi, both in Arabic script. This one like all the others had been dictated to a professional letter-writer, and apart from the usual flowery compliments and prayers for the recipient's health and prosperity, it contained only a few quite unimportant items of regimental news, and ended with the information that Zarin's mother was in excellent health and desired him to urge the Sahib to have a care for his own, and to take special precautions against such things as snakes, centipedes and scorpions - the latter being very prevalent in the wilds of Rajputana…
As Zarin's mother had been dead for a good many years, Ash came to the conclusion that Zarin too had made the belated discovery that Karidkote and Gulkote were one and the same, and was attempting to convey a warning. He would know that the use of her name would arrest Ash's attention and put him on his guard, supposing he had not already discovered this for himself, and that remark about scorpions was plainly a reference to Biju Ram, whose nickname in the Hawa Mahal had been ‘Bichchhu’, while the fact that the letter was written in English suggested that Zarin was taking precautions against the possibility of it being opened and read by someone else.
This last had obviously been a prudent move, as a close examination showed Ash that every single envelope that the dâk–runner had delivered to him had been tampered with – an unpleasant discovery, but one that did not worry him unduly, for he knew very well that there was no one in the Karidkote camp who could read English well enough to make much sense of them; and at least it proved that the risks that Zarin was trying to warn him against were not entirely imaginary.
Ash put Wally's letter aside, and tearing up Zarin's sent it to join the others in the waste-paper basket, and went out to exchange compliments with the local Tulakdar who had agreed to deliver a supply of sugar-cane to the elephant lines.
The camp had been on the march again for less than a week when he abandoned the sedan and insisted that he was now perfectly capable of riding once more, and impatient to try the paces of the mettlesome Arab, Baj Raj – ‘the Royal steed’ – that MaldeoRai, in the name of the panchayat, had presented to him in replacement of his dead roan, The Cardinal.
That he was able to ride at all was a tribute to Gobind's skill and the ministrations of Geeta, the dai; and though his first day in the saddle had been more of a strain than he cared to admit, the next one had been better, and the next better still, and by the following week he was back to normal and feeling as fit as he had ever been. But the pleasure of being free of pain and bandages and on his feet again was not entirely unalloyed, because it also meant that there was no longer any need for the dai's treatments; and once her visits ceased it became too dangerous for Juli to come alone.
For the time being there seemed no alternative to seeing her only in the durbar tent, which in Ash's view was a thoroughly unsatisfactory state of affairs and comparable to standing in the snow and looking through a plate-glass window at a warm room and a blazing fire. Besides, the evening meetings were still subject to the whims of Shushila, and now that the Sahib was no longer an invalid, Kaka-ji would have preferred to have discontinued them altogether, though he did not forbid them and appeared to enjoy them as much as anyone whenever Shushila happened to convene one. But Ash had become too used to being able to see Juli alone and talk with her freely to give that up, and he had no intention of doing so. There must be some other way in which they could meet.
Once again he lay awake at night making and discarding plans and weighing risks. But he could have saved himself the trouble and the hours of lost sleep, for Jhoti unwittingly solved the problem for him by complaining to Kaka-ji that his sisters were growing dull and tiresome and that even Kairi, who was never ill, had twice refused to play chess with him because she had a headache. And no wonder, declared Jhoti scornfully – what else did she expect? – cooped up for hours on end in a stuffy ruth when she wasn't shut up in a purdah tent, never taking the air or any exercise at all, and walking at most a dozen steps a day. At this rate, by the time they reached Bhithor she would be as bad as Shu-Shu – always ill and no use to anyone.
As for Shu-Shu, if she wasn't careful she wouldn't get there at all, for in addition to all the ailments she complained about, she was now not even eating properly, and if she went on like this she'd shrivel up and die, and then the Rana would find himself left with only Kairi, and probably refuse to have her. And then, added Jhoti, his imagination running away with him, they would all have to turn round and go back to Karidkote with nothing to show for all the trouble and expense, and Nandu would be so enraged that he would probably have everyone beheaded – or anyway sent to prison. Or perhaps he might even have a fit and fall down dead.
This final flight of fancy seemed to cheer Jhoti considerably. But there had been enough truth in his previous remarks to alarm Kaka-ji, and the next time he saw his nieces he looked at them with more attention and decided that Jhoti had been right. Kairi-Bai appeared tired and heavy-eyed and there was a listlessness in her manner that he had never noticed before. It alarmed him, for if she fell ill what would become of Shu-shu? None of the other women would be able to take her place, and it was easy to see that even she was finding the task of keeping her little sister's megrims within bounds a taxing one. The younger girl was also looking far from well, and Kaka-ji, studying her, decided that she was growing too thin and that it did not become her. She was beginning to look like… yes, like a skinny brown monkey, all eyes.
The thought shocked him profoundly, for until this moment he had always considered Shushila to be an exquisitely beautiful girl; and though he had no apprehensions that she might die before they reached Bhithor (as her little brother had so gloomily predicted) it would be almost as great a disaster if she were to lose her looks. After all, the Rana had not only been promised a beautiful bride but, as part of her bride-price, compelled to accept her much older half-sister as well; so there was no knowing how he might react were he to feel himself cheated on the deal. Something must be done at once, and Kaka-ji hurried away to see Pelham-Sahib; and spent the next half-hour discussing his predicament with an interested and sympathetic listener.
From Ash's point of view, the situation might have been tailor-made to suit his convenience, and seizing the opportunity with both hands he suggested that what both girls needed was more exercise. A daily ride, perhaps – preferably of an evening while the tents were being pitched and the air was cool and refreshing. Something of this nature could not fail to do them good, and coming at the end of a long day spent in the dusty discomfort of the ruth, it would provide a welcome relief for their cramped muscles and not only give them an appetite for the evening meal, but help to ensure a good night's sleep as well. He was sure that a quiet mount could be provided for the Rajkumari Shushila, and there would be no necessity for a guard to accompany them, for Kaka-ji, Mulraj and himself would be sufficient protection. Also it might be a good idea to encourage Jhoti to give his younger sister riding lessons, and there was even – chance that Shushila-Bai might become a good enough horsewoman to ride for some part of the journey instead of travelling the whole way in the ruth.
By us
ing all the guile and diplomacy at his command he contrived to convey the impression that the whole scheme was in reality Kaka-ji's own idea from start to finish, and that all he, Ash, had done was to agree with it. With the result that later that evening, after consulting Gobind (who had agreed that the effect of exercise in moderation could be as beneficial as tonics and purges), the old gentleman had produced it to Mulraj as his own solution to the problem, and charged him with procuring suitable mounts for the brides and making any other arrangements that might be necessary.
Jhoti had been delighted at the prospect of showing off to Shushila, and was only too willing to instruct her. The plan had been put into effect on the very next day and been a success from the start; particularly from Ash's point of view, for the evening rides were an enormous improvement on those gatherings in the durbar tent, as they allowed far more latitude for private conversation and were free from the observant eyes of waiting-women.
The ruth would be stopped a mile short of the selected camping site, and Ash, with Jhoti, Mulraj and Kaka-ji, would ride back to meet it, taking two spare horses for the girls; a slow, sedate and well-mannered animal for Shushila-Bai and a more mettlesome one for Anjuli.
Sometimes they would bring hawks with them, and sometimes a shot-gun if there was a chance of game. But mostly they rode for exercise and pleasure. And as Shushila preferred to keep to a walk, or at most a gentle trot, while Jhoti, in the role of instructor, stayed close beside her with Mulraj to keep an eye on them both, and Kaka-ji was usually too tired by a day in the saddle to do more than jog along behind, Ash and Anjuli-Bai found it the easiest thing in the world to ride ahead and explore the countryside together without arousing any comment. Once again it became possible for them to talk freely, and this time without any fear that what they said might be overheard; for out in the open country they were safe and Ash could watch Juli's face as she talked, instead of only listening to a voice that whispered in the darkness from behind the folds of a bourka.
