Far Pavilions (118 page)

The black stallion's body and his own were one, and his blood sang in rhythm with the pounding hooves as the air fled past them and the ground flowed away beneath them as smoothly as a river. The sound of the gongs dwindled away until it was no louder than the sough of wind under a door, and ahead a water channel cut a wide dark furrow across the plain. Dagobaz took it in his stride and raced on towards a wicked barrier of thorn bushes. Gathering himself together he rose to it smoothly, cleared it with ease, and landing on the far side as lightly as a bird was off again without a check.

Quails, partridges and an occasional sandgrouse whirred up and scattered before him, and a young cobra, rudely disturbed, reared up hissing from the grass and struck out furiously at the flying hooves. But Dagobaz ignored them all and swept on, nostrils wide and mane and tail streaming out on the wind, racing to meet the morning…

‘You beauty,’ crooned Ash, ‘you wonder!’ He began to sing at the top of his voice, swaying in the saddle in time to the tune and the swift, effortless stride of the horse:

He laughed aloud, realizing that he had without thinking been singing one of the rousing hymns that he had so often heard Wally sing in his bath of an early morning – and on many other occasions when they had ridden together galloping neck and neck across the plains around Rawalpindi – it being one of Wally's favourite descriptions of a particularly fine day that it was ‘A day for singing hymns on‘. But the laugh froze in his throat, for suddenly he heard a far-away voice, faint but clearly audible above the pounding hoof-beats, chanting in answer to him: ‘
Al-le-lu-ia
!’

For a moment his heart stopped and he tried to check Dagobaz, because he thought it was Wally. Yet even as he pulled on the rein he realized that what he had heard was only the echo of his own voice thrown back at him from the far hillsides. The discovery sobered him a little; there were villages among those hills, and realizing that if he could hear that sound so clearly there might be others who had done so too, he sang no more. Yet some of the exhilaration that had caused him to do so remained, and instead of feeling sad or apprehensive he was conscious of a curious sense of excitement: the taut, ice-cold excitement of a soldier on the eve of a battle.

By the time Dagobaz slowed down they were far beyond the dark grove of Govidan, and all about them the great amphitheatre in its circle of hills lay bathed in a pearl-pale light that cast no shadows. The quiet stretch of the lake mirrored a sky that was already yellow with the dawn; and as the light brightened and partridges and peacocks awoke and began to call, the gongs in the city stopped beating, and Ash turned back towards the burning-ground.

He rode slowly now, drinking in the beauty of the early morning, the sight and the sound and the scent of it, like a man parched with thirst and slaking it with spring-water. Few people would have found much to admire in such scenery, and to the majority of Europeans the flat, featureless plain and the circle of barren hills would have appeared ugly and daunting. But though Ash had every reason to dislike Bhithor, the dawn sky and the cool pale light slowly flooding the land, the clamour of partridges and peacocks and the scent of dust and smoke and
kikar
blossoms were an integral part of the world that he had loved and was leaving, and he savoured them with a new sense of awareness and a deep feeling of gratitude for benefits received.

He rode with a slack rein, and Dagobaz, having worked off his suppressed energy, was content to keep to a walk for a time. There was no need to hurry, as it was unlikely that the Rana's body would arrive at the burning-ground much before mid-day. For though the funeral would take place as soon as possible because of the heat, the procession would take time to organize, and there were bound to be endless delays. On the other hand the crowds would get there early in order to secure good places, and already there were signs of activity in the grove. Pin-points of brightness, barely visible in the fast-growing light, betokened cow-dung fires, and gossamer veils of smoke crept out from among the tree-trunks, creating an illusion that the place was an island surrounded by shallow water.

As he came nearer Ash could glimpse the saffron-clad figures of priests moving to and fro, and looking towards the city he saw that there were horsemen on the road, riding at a gallop to judge by the dust cloud that rose up behind them and partly obscured the groups of pedestrians that followed in their wake. Presently the twin forts that crowned the hills to the left and right of the city caught the first rays of the sun and flamed red-gold against the cool aquamarine of the sky, and now from every corner of the plain pale smudges of dust told of parties of people converging on the burning-ground in carts and dhoolies, on horseback or on foot. It was clearly time to get to the grove, and obedient to the pressure of Ash's knee, Dagobaz quickened his pace.

Once among the trees on the eastern fringe of the grove, Ash dismounted and led his horse towards the ruins of an ancient
chattri
surmounted by a triple dome. There were several tunnel-like passages in the massive plinth, some of them leading directly to a central tank that was open to the sky, while others sloped sharply upward and had once contained stairways that led up to the broad terrace overlooking it. The stairs had fallen long ago, and nowadays no one visited the ruined
chattri,
but one of the passages was still in good repair, and as a temporary stable would be far cooler and more comfortable than the charcoal-seller's shed.

Ash tethered Dagobaz to a fallen block of masonry and fetched water from the tank in a canvas bucket that he had brought with him. He had also brought grain and a small bundle of
bhoosa
in a saddle-bag, for he knew that Sarji might not be able to collect the horse for another hour or two, and that after that there would be no stopping until they were clear of the valley and far along the trail through the hills. So it was necessary to supply Dagobaz with food and water now.

The water was green and stagnant, but that wild gallop across the dusty plain had made Dagobaz thirsty and he drank it gratefully. When he had finished, Ash fetched a second bucket-full and wedged it carefully between two blocks of sandstone so that it would not collapse. Dagobaz smelt it but did not drink, and ignoring the
bhoosa
, dropped a wet affectionate nose onto his master's shoulder, nuzzling him as though he sensed that there was something wrong.

‘You'll be all right with Sarji,’ consoled Ash huskily. ‘He'll take care of you… you'll be all right.’ He put an arm about the black head and gave it a brief, hard hug, and then pushing it aside, turned on his heel and walked out of the shadowed archway into the brightness of the sunrise.

The fringes of the grove were still deserted, but near the centre the sound of bird-song gave place to the voices of men. Where the trees stopped behind the
chattris
that faced the open sweep of the burning-ground, groups of people could be seen hurrying to and fro: enterprising vendors of food and drink busily setting up their stalls under the shade of the branches, and already serving a handful of early customers. But as yet there did not appear to be many spectators, and although there were a score of priests and officials and a number of men in the uniform of the palace guard in the clearing, none showed any interest in Ash, since all were far too busy supervising the construction of the pyre and talking among themselves.

The
chattri
nearest to them was a larger and more elaborately decorated version of the far older one where he had left Dagobaz, being built in the form of a hollow square surrounding a vast tank. But here the stairways in the thickness of the outer wall were in excellent repair, and Ash climbed one, and reaching the broad stone terrace without being molested, took up a position in the angle between the outer parapet and the wall of a small pavilion that flanked a much larger central one consisting of three tiers of diminishing width, each tier composed of graceful pillared arches with the final one topped by a number of hump-backed domes.

Similar though smaller structures adorned the other three sides of the square, and below them, from the level of the terrace and facing inward, wide, shallow stone steps led down to the water's edge. The
chattri
had been built to face eastward into the sunrise and the clustered trees, but directly behind it lay the open ground, and today the western pavilions looked down onto a hastily constructed brick platform not thirty yards from the foot of the terrace wall, where half-a-dozen priests were constructing a pyre from logs of cedar and sandalwood strewn with aromatic spices.

The newly risen sun striped the ground with brilliant bars of light and long blue shadows, but as it moved up the sky the shadows shrank and changed their shapes and the dawn wind died; and suddenly the freshness was gone from the morning and the day was breathlessly hot. ‘There will be a breeze soon,’ thought Ash. But today there was no breeze. The leaves hung limp and still and the dust lay unstirred, and behind him the green, glassy surface of the tank mirrored every detail of the
chattri
so clearly that had he moved to the back of the terrace he would not have needed to look up to where the purdah-screens formed a make-shift room out of the second storey, because it lay there in the water.

For the present it appeared to be untenanted; there was no flicker of movement from behind the split-cane
chiks
that faced towards the burning-ground, but by now there were many more people in the grove: a number of early arrivals from near-by villages, several ash-smeared Sadhus and a further influx of minor officials, puffed up with their own importance and issuing orders to the men who had brought the logs and to those whose task it would be to hold back the crowds and keep a way clear for the funeral procession.

It was as well for Ash that he had taken up his stand when he did, for before long what had begun as a trickle increased to a flood as the thousands from the city poured into the grove, turning the wide, dusty space and the long, narrow aisles between the trees into a sea of humanity that stretched back on either side of the road by which they had come.

Above this, men clustered as thick as swarming bees on the walls and terraces, the stairways, pavilions and rooftops of the surrounding
chattris
, and soon every branch of the nearer trees bore its load of determined spectators. The voice of that multitude was a corporate sound – a deep and deafening one that rose and fell like the purr of some giant cat. And still the wind did not blow…

The dust that fumed up under the restless feet of the crowd hung in the air like the smoke trails of the early morning fires, and with every passing minute the heat increased as the sun blazed down on the stone-built
chattris
and glittered blindingly on the quiet surface of the tanks. But the crowd were impervious to these discomforts. They were used to dust and heat and cramped conditions, and it was not often that they had the opportunity to witness such a notable ceremony as the one that would be enacted here today. If it involved a certain amount of discomfort, well, that was a small price to pay for something that all who were privileged to be present would talk of for years to come, and describe to generations yet unborn. For even here, in this remote corner of Rajasthan, there were few who were not becoming uneasily aware that in the India beyond their borders the old ways were changing and old customs dying out, and that if the Raj had its way, this might be the last suttee that anyone in Bhithor would ever see.

Ash, from his vantage point on the terrace, was equally unaffected by the dust and din and the soaring temperature. He would probably not have noticed if it had suddenly begun to rain or snow, for all his faculties were concentrated upon keeping calm and relaxed. It was essential that his eye should be clear and his hand steady because there would be no second chance; and remembering what Kaka-ji had told him about the benefits of meditation, he fixed his gaze on a crack in the top of the parapet and counted his heartbeats, breathing slowly and evenly and forcing himself to think of nothing.

The crowd pressed upon him from the left, but his back was against the wall of the pavilion, and the space between his knees and the edge of the parapet was too narrow to allow room for even the smallest child to squeeze in front of him. So far, this side of the terrace was still in shadow, and the stone at his back still retained some of the coolness of the previous night. Ash relaxed against it and felt curiously peaceful; and very sleepy, which was hardly surprising considering how poorly he had slept ever since Manilal's arrival in Ahmadabad, though in the present circumstances, with the prospect of eternal sleep a mere hour or so away, it seemed a little ridiculous.

Ridiculous or not, he must actually have dozed off; for aroused by the sudden impact of a solid body and a sharp pain in his left foot, he opened his eyes to find that the sun was directly overhead and the crowd were no longer facing away from him, but had turned and were staring up at the
chattri
.

On the terrace itself half-a-dozen helmeted members of the Rana's palace guard were laying about them with their staves in an attempt to clear the way to the stairway leading to the second storey, and as the crowd surged back before them, the stout gentleman on Ash's left had been forced to give ground and had jerked him into wakefulness by stepping on his toes.

‘Your pardon,’ gasped the stout one, recovering himself and struggling to remain upright. He appeared to be in imminent danger of falling backwards over the parapet to land on the heads of the citizens twenty feet below, and Ash put out a hand to steady him, and inquired what was happening.

‘It is some high-born women who have arrived to see the burning,’ explained the stranger breathlessly, replacing his turban which had fallen off in the struggle. ‘Doubtless the family of the Diwan. Or perhaps that of the heir? They will watch from above – from behind the
chiks
up there. Though the boy himself will walk in the procession and set light to the pyre. They say that his mother…’