by M. M. Kaye
‘They know the Hakim-Sahib's,’ said Ash curtly. ‘And Manilal's.’
‘TTrue. But those two were both from Karidkote, and therefore it will be supposed that their accomplices were also from that state. The Bhithoris can have no reason to think otherwise, for they will never connect you, an officer-Sahib of a rissala in Ahmadabad, with the escape of one of the widows of the late Rana. Nor will they try and revenge themselves upon the Rani's people, who are too powerful – and too far away. But you and I are neither: and nor is the Rani-Sahiba until such time as she is safely back in her own state, which may not be for many weeks if there are to be police inquiries. The law moves slowly, and once let it become known that she is in Gujerat and will be required to give evidence on our behalf and her own, her life will not be worth an anna's purchase. Or yours or mine either. If you think awhile, Sahib, you will know that what I say is true.’
‘Yes… Yes, I know,’ said Ash slowly. The British authorities were going to take a very poor view of the whole affair – even though they bore a large part of the responsibility for it, having failed to take any action of their own – because the fact remained that a large number of men had died, and it was not as if the band of amateur knight-errants could claim to have saved the Ranis from death; Ash himself had actually hastened Shushila's, while Anjuli, by her sister's contrivance, would in any case have escaped being burned on the Rana's pyre. (She would have been blinded instead – but would anyone believe that story when all Bhithor would deny it flatly?)
The Diwan and his fellow-ministers would also claim, with some justification, that the Senior Rani had insisted on her right to immolate herself on her husband's pyre, and that no one had been able to dissuade her; or to put a stop to it either, as she had the support of the common people who would have brooked no interference from officials or guards. All of which would sound very plausible – far more so than Ash's own story. In the end the court would inflict a fine on Bhithor, which would inevitably be paid by increasing the taxes on the peasantry; and as the new Rana was too young to be held responsible, the Political Department would lecture the Diwan and his accomplices on the evils of breaking the law and the dire consequences that would follow any further misdemeanours, and probably recommend that a detachment of British-Indian troops be quartered on the state for a short period to make a show of strength. And that, as far as Bhithor was concerned, would be that.
But what of Lieutenant Pelham-Martyn and Bukta, shikari? How would they come out of the affair? And Juli… what would become of her if everything became known? When it was learned that she had escaped from Bhithor in the guise of a male servant, with a band of men who were not even related to her and in whose company she had subsequently spent several days and nights, would it be said that she was a brave young woman and much to be pitied? or a shameless one who, careless of rank and reputation, had eloped with a Sahib? – the very Sahib who three years ago had escorted her and her sister to their wedding! Because it would not be long before that too was discovered; and when it was, heads would be shaken and tongues would wag, and before long it would be believed by all that the Sahib and the Rani had been lovers for many years.
Juli's name would become a ‘hissing and an abomination’ throughout half India, as even if there had been no grain of truth in it, the tale would have sounded plausible. How else to explain Lieutenant Pelham-Martyn's excessive display of anxiety on behalf of the Ranis?… his interviews with his Commanding Officer, the Commissioner and the District Inspector of Police? the telegrams he had dispatched on his own responsibility to several important officials, and his subsequent action in journeying to Bhithor in disguise, abducting the Junior Rani and firing on those who had attempted to prevent him?
The fact that there was actually a great deal of truth in it meant that he would have to watch his words and lie about his motives, and make certain that his lies carried conviction. Even then…
‘I must have been mad,’ thought Ash, remembering how he had meant to come back to Ahmadabad and so shock the authorities with the tale of Shu-shu's death and Juli's wrongs that they would be galvanized into taking punitive action against Bhithor and assuming the reins of government until such time as the new Rana came of age.
‘Well?’ asked Bukta.
‘You are right,’ said Ash heavily, ‘we cannot tell the truth. We shall have to tell lies instead. And they will have to be good ones. Tomorrow I will speak with the Rani-Sahiba and persuade her to agree. While as for our story, we have only to say that you and I and your master the Sirdar went into the jungles to shoot, as we have often done before, and that adventuring beyond the foothills, he and his horse fell from a steep path and were killed; as was my horse also – I myself receiving only bruises. We can also say with truth that it being impossible to bring his body back, we burned it near a stream that will carry his ashes to the sea.’
‘And the Rani-Sahiba? How do we explain her?’
Ash thought for a minute or two and then said that she would have to pretend to be the wife of his bearer, Gul Baz; or better still a widowed daughter. ‘Tomorrow when we are free of the jungle and can buy food, you must find us a place where the Rani-Sahiba and myself can lie hid while you take the pony and ride to cantonments to fetch Gul Baz – and also a bourka such as Moslem women wear, which will be an excellent disguise for her as it hides all. He and I will decide together on a tale to tell, and when you come for us the Rani-Sahiba can return with him to my bungalow while you and I go to the Sirdar-Sahib's house with our news.’
‘And afterwards?’
‘That lies with the Rani. But she loved her sister, the suttee, very dearly; and if she should agree to keep silent her sister's death will go unavenged and the Diwan and those others will escape punishment. Therefore for her sister's sake she may prefer to speak out and take the consequences.’
Bukta shrugged and observed philosophically that no one could predict what a woman would do or fail to do, and they must hope that this one would be reasonable, as however dearly she loved her sister she could not undo what had been done, and her sister was dead. ‘Let us sleep on it, Sahib. It may be that in the morning you will think differently. Though I trust not, for we both know that the truth is too dangerous to be told.’
Ash had not thought differently in the morning. The cost of this venture had already been appallingly high: it had taken the lives of Sarji, Gobind and Manilal (not to mention Dagobaz and Sarji's beloved Moti Raj), and any number of Bhithoris. And that was too high a price to pay for saving Juli's life if she must lose her reputation and become a byword among Indians and British alike, while Bukta ended his days in gaol and he himself was cashiered and deported. However strongly she might feel about Shushila's fate, she must be brought to see reason.
Ash foresaw difficulties and prepared his arguments accordingly; but they were not needed. Surprisingly, Anjuli had offered no opposition and had consented without demur to everything that had been suggested, even to wearing a bourka and masquerading as a Mohammedan woman, though Ash had pointed out that this could entail spending more than one night in the servants' quarters behind his bungalow, and pretending to be a relative of his bearer's. ‘What does that matter?’ returned Anjuli indifferently. ‘One place is as good as another – and I myself have already been a servant in all but name…’
Her agreement brought considerable relief to Bukta, who had expected a good deal of opposition to the suggestion that she should pose as a relative of Gul Baz's – both on the score of caste and her royal blood – and he confided to Ash that the Rani-Sahiba was not only a brave woman, but a clearheaded one; which was much rarer.
Stopping on the outskirts of the first small town they came to, he bade the two to keep hidden while he went ahead on the pony to purchase food and more suitable clothing for them (the garments in which they had left Bhithor being far too conspicuous in Gujerat) and they had continued their journey in the sober dress of the hard-working local villagers – Anjuli still in male attire, a
s Ash had considered this safer. He had also taken the precaution of burning every shred of those gaudy palace uniforms, for he did not believe in taking chances.
In the late afternoon Bukta brought them by circuitous ways to a ruined tomb that stood among thickets of thorn trees and pampas grass in a desolate stretch of uncultivated land. No paths ran near it and not many people could have known of its existence, since it lay far from the beaten track and there were no villages within several miles. Part of the dome had fallen in many years ago, but the shell of the building remained standing and the tomb-chamber below still contained a pool of brackish water, the remnants of flooding from the rains of the last monsoon. Dust, twigs and fallen feathers littered the ground, but it was cool and dark under the arches, and Bukta swept a space clear, and cutting armfuls of dry grass, strewed it on the paving stones and covered it with the saddle-blanket to make a bed for Anjuli.
He would, he said, be as quick as he could, but it was unlikely that he would return much before sundown on the following day, and if he were later than that they were not to worry – and taking the tired pony he led it away through the tangled thickets and the tall grass. Ash accompanied him as far as the open ground and watched him mount and ride off into the dusty evening sunlight towards Ahmadabad, and only when he could see him no more did he turn and walk slowly back to the ruined tomb.
The thickets that hid it were alive with birds that had spent the heat of the day resting in the shade, while overhead, flights of parrots streamed out from the ruin, making for the distant river. The pigeons, following their example, wheeled up and up before setting off in the same direction, and a peacock woke from its afternoon siesta and paraded up and down between the tall clumps of grass.
But there was no movement from inside the tomb, and finding it empty, Ash suffered a crippling moment of panic, until a movement above him made him look up and he saw that Anjuli had not run away: there was a stairway in the thickness of the wall, and she had climbed it and was standing high above him, outlined against the sky and gazing out across the tree-tops to where the hills rose up along the northern horizon; and something in her face told him that she was not thinking of the country on the far side of them or of the beloved little sister who had died there, but of other hills – the true Hills, the high Himalayas with their vast forests and glittering snow peaks thrusting up into the diamond air of the north.
He had made no noise, but she turned quickly and looked down at him, and once again he was made sharply aware of the toll that Bhithor had taken from her…
The girl that he had known and loved and whose picture he had carried in his heart for three long years had gone, and in her place was a stranger. A thin, haggard woman with great haunted eyes and a startling streak of whiteness in her black hair, who looked as though she had endured torture and famine and suffered a long term of imprisonment, shut away from the sunlight and fresh air. There was something else too: something less definable. A curious sense of loss. A deadness. Adversity and sorrow had not broken Anjuli, but they had numbed her.
Ash too was aware of a deadening of his senses. He loved her still: she was Juli, and he could no more stop loving her than he could stop breathing. But now, as they looked at each other, he was not seeing her face only, but the faces of three men: Sarji and Gobind and Manilal, who had lost their lives so that he and she could escape together. The tragedy of those deaths was an open wound in his mind, and for the moment love seemed a trivial thing in comparison with the cruel sacrifice that had been exacted from his friends.
He found the stairway in the wall, and climbing it, joined her on the flat strip of roof that circled the ruined dome. Below them the thorn trees and thickets and the tall grass that had grown up around the tomb were full of shadows and the tomb itself was very dark, but up here the evening sun was bright among the tree-tops and the countryside basked in the dusty golden light of an Indian evening. Out on the plain every stick and stone and blade of grass threw a long blue shadow on the ground, and soon the parrots and the pigeons would be returning to their nests and dusk would sweep down, bringing the stars and another night. And tomorrow – tomorrow or the next day – Bukta would return; and after that the lying would begin…
Anjuli had returned to her silent contemplation of the hills along the far horizon, and when at length Ash reached out and touched her, she flinched and took a swift step backward, putting up her hands as though to fend him off. His hand dropped and his brows drew together as he stared at her, frowning, and said harshly: ‘What did you think I meant to do? You can't think that I would harm you. Or… or is it that you no longer love me? No, don't turn away.’ He reached out again and caught her wrists in a grasp that she could not break. ‘Look at me, Juli! Now tell me the truth. Is it that you've stopped loving me?’
‘I have tried to,’ whispered Anjuli bleakly. ‘But… but it seems – that I cannot help myself…’ There was such despair in her voice that she might have been admitting to some physical disability like blindness, an affliction that could neither be cured nor ignored and that she must learn to accept and to live with. But Ash was not chilled by it for her mood matched his own.
He knew that though their love for each other had endured and would always endure, it had been temporarily submerged by a smothering weight of guilt and horror, and that until they had struggled free and could breathe again they had no desire for any active demonstration of it. That would return. But for the moment they were both in some way strangers to each other, because it was not only Anjuli who had changed. So much water had flowed under the bridges since they parted that even if they had met again under far happier circumstances it would have been surprising if they had found themselves able to pick up the threads again at the point where they had been cut off. But time was on their side – all the time in the world. They had come through the worst and were together again… the rest could wait.
He raised Anjuli's wrists and dropped a light kiss on each, and releasing her said: ‘That's all I wanted to know; and now that I know it I know too that as long as we are together nothing can really harm us again. You must believe that. Once you are my wife -’
‘Your wife –?’
‘What else? You can't think that I would lose you a second time.’
‘They will never permit you to marry me,’ said Anjuli with tired conviction.
‘The Bhithoris? They won't dare open their mouths!’
‘No, your people; and mine also, who will be of the same mind.’
‘You mean they will try and prevent it. But it's no business of theirs. This is our affair: yours and mine. Besides, didn't your own grandfather marry a princess of Hind, though he was a foreigner and not of her faith?’
Anjuli sighed and shook her head again. ‘True. But that was in the days before your Raj had come to its full power. There was still a Mogul on the throne in Delhi and Ranjit-Singh held sway over the Punjab; and my grandfather was a great war-lord who took my grandmother as the spoils of war without asking any man's leave, having defeated the army of my grandmother's father in battle. I have been told that she went willingly, for they loved each other greatly. But the times have changed and that could not happen now.’
‘It's going to happen now, Heart's-dearest. There is no one who can forbid you to marry me. You're no longer a maid and therefore a chattel to be disposed of to the best advantage. Nor can anyone forbid me to marry you.’
But Anjuli remained unconvinced. She could see no possibility of any marriage, based on religion, between two persons of widely differing faiths; and in their own case, no reason for it either. Or for any legal tie, as for her part she was more than content to spend the rest of her life with Ashok for love's sake, and no ceremony involving words spoken by a priest or magistrate, complete with documents in proof that it had taken place, would ever make any difference to that. She had already taken part in one such ceremony, yet it had not made her a wife in any sense except a purely legal one: a chattel of the Rana's – a despi
sed chattel on whom, after those ceremonies, he had never again deigned to lay eyes. Had it not been for Ashok she would still be a maiden, and he was already the husband of her body as well as of her heart and spirit… his to do as he liked with. So what need had they for empty phrases that to one or other of them would mean nothing? or scraps of paper that she herself could not read? Besides –
She turned from him to watch the setting sun that was painting the tree-tops below her bright gold, and said in an undertone as though she were speaking to herself rather than to him: ‘They had a name for me in Bhithor. They called me… “the half-caste”.’
Ash made a small involuntary movement, and she glanced back at him over her shoulder and said without surprise: ‘Yes, I should have known that you would hear that too,’ and turning her head away again said softly: ‘Even the Nautch-girl never called me that. She did not dare while my father lived, and when he died, and she taunted me with it, Nandu turned on her. I suppose because it touched his pride, he being my half-brother, and therefore he would not have it spoken of. But in Bhithor it was thrown in my teeth daily, and the priests would not permit me to enter the temple of Lakshmi that is in the gardens of the Queen's House, where the wives and women-folk of the Rana worship…’
