Far Pavilions (15 page)

He did not broach the subject again, and after that he pretended that all was well in the Yuveraj's household and did his best not to let her see that he was disgruntled or unhappy. Kairi, severely lectured for lack of consideration towards his mother, assured him earnestly that Sita's duties were not heavy: ‘I think perhaps she only gets tired because she is old,’ ventured Kairi, thinking it over. ‘Old ladies do get tired, you know. Dunmaya is always saying how tired she is.’

But his mother was not old – not like wrinkled, white-headed Dunmaya, thought Ash; and was once again afraid. Because of that fear he spoke sharply to Kairi, telling her that she was a stupid, brainless baby who did not understand anything and he did not know why he wasted time talking to her or allowed her to follow him about like a mangy kitten, never giving him a moment's peace. ‘Miaow! Miaow! –
Girls
!’ said Ash with masculine scorn, and added unkindly that he was thankful that he hadn't any sisters. Whereupon Kairi wept and had to be comforted by being allowed to tie a strand of floss silk about his wrist, which made him her ‘bracelet-brother’ in accordance with an ancient custom that permits a woman to give or send a bracelet to any man, who, if he accepts it, is thereafter honour-bound to aid and protect her if called upon to do so, as though she were in truth his sister.

But although Kairi's persistent adoration frequently exasperated him, Ash had, in the end, become genuinely fond of the little creature and developed a strong sense of ownership, something that he had not felt since the death of Tuku. Kairi was a more satisfactory pet than even Tuku had been, for she could talk to him. And like Tuku, she loved him and followed him about and depended upon him, so that in time she came to fill the empty place in his heart that had once belonged to the little mongoose. It was good to know that here at least was a creature he could pet and protect without any fear of harm befalling it from Lalji or anyone else. But caution made him warn Kairi not to show her partiality for him too openly: ‘I am only your real brother's servant, and so he and the others might not like it,’ he explained.

Young as she was, she had understood; and after that she seldom addressed him directly unless they were alone or with Sita. They had devised a way of communicating with each other through the medium of a conversation ostensibly directed at a third person, and such was their rapport that they soon learned to translate the real meaning from an apparently casual sentence addressed to Lalji or one of his household or, more frequently, to a macaw or a pet monkey. It was a game that delighted both of them, and at which they grew so expert that no one save Hira Lal – who seldom missed anything of significance – ever suspected that the little girl's chatter and the boy's occasional remarks had two meanings and were directed at each other. In this way they would openly arrange to meet at certain times, and at certain places for which they had invented code words: either in Sita's courtyard or, more often, in the Queen's balcony, where they would feed the birds and squirrels, discuss the doings of the palace, or sit in companionable silence gazing out at the far snows.

Ash lost one of his few friends that year, for in the autumn Zarin left to join his two elder brothers, who were sowars in the Corps of Guides.

‘ I have taught him all I know of marksmanship and swordplay, and he was a horseman born,’ said Koda Dad. ‘It is time he made his own way in the world. Fighting is a man's trade, and there is always war along the Border.’

Koda Dad had seen to it that his son was provided with the finest horse that Gulkote could supply, for vacancies in the Corps were much sought after, and went only to the finest riders and best shots among a long list of applicants. Neither Ash nor Zarin doubted for one moment that a vacancy would be won, and Zarin rode confidently away, assuring Ash that he would return on his first leave.

‘And when you are full grown, you shall come to Mardan and be a sowar too,’ promised Zarin, ‘and we will ride in cavalry charges and see the sack of cities. So look to it that you learn all that my father can teach you, so that you do not disgrace me when you come as a recruit.’

Life in the Hawa Mahal had seemed more irksome than ever after Zarin had gone, and when word came from Mardan that he had won a vacancy in the
rissala
(cavalry) and was now a sowar in the Guides, Ash's restlessness had increased: and with it, a determination to emulate his friend and become a soldier. With this in mind he missed no chance to ride or shoot with Koda Dad; though Sita did her best to discourage this new plan for the future. The very mention of the Guides terrified Sita, and a large part of her hostility towards Koda Dad and his son stemmed from their connection with that Regiment. It had been a severe shock to her to discover that even here in Gulkote, where she had thought herself so safe, Ashok had made friends with men who might one day bring him to the notice of his
Angrezi
uncle, and she had done everything in her power to avert this calamity.

Soldiers, asserted Sita, were brutal, ill-paid men who lived dangerous and disorganized lives, sleeping in tents or on the hard ground with never a roof over their heads or the security of a settled home for their families. Why should Ashok suddenly desire to become a soldier?

She had appeared so upset that Ash had dropped the subject and allowed her to suppose that he had not been serious. He imagined that she had only taken a dislike to it because it had been suggested to him by Koda Dad and Zarin, neither of whom she had ever approved of, and did not suspect that there was any other reason for her opposition. But though he did not mention it again to Sita, he continued to discuss it with Koda Dad, and would often talk of it to Kairi, who despite her tender age and limited understanding, made an admirable and uncritical audience.

Kairi could be relied upon to listen by the hour to anything he had to say, and he found that he did not have to explain things to her, for she seemed to understand him by instinct; though it is doubtful if she remembered any of it for long – except when he spoke of the valley. Kairi preferred that subject to all others, for by now the valley had become as real to her as it was to Ash, and she took it for granted that she would go too and help to build their house. The two children would plan the house together room by room, adding and embellishing, turning it from a cottage to a palace, until tiring of grandeur – they would demolish it with a wave of a hand and begin it again, this time as a miniature dwelling with low ceilings and a thatched roof. ‘Though even that will cost a lot of money,’ said Kairi anxiously. ‘Tens and tens of rupees’ – she still could not count further than ten.

One day she brought him a silver four-anna piece as a beginning, telling him that they should start saving up for the house. The little coin was more money than Ash had held in his hand for a long time, and to him even more than to Kairi it represented something approximating to riches. There were a dozen things he would like to have spent it on, but he hid it instead under a loose stone in the floor of the Queen's balcony, telling her that they would add to it when they could. They never did so, for money was hard to come by in the Hawa Mahal; and though there was always enough to eat, and clothing could be had if one could prove the need of it, Ash looked back on his life in the city as a time of affluence as well as freedom, and recalled with longing his modest wages as a horse-boy in Duni Chand's stables.

It was humiliating to realize that in these days he could not even match Kairi's meagre contribution, and that if he should ever obtain permission to leave the service of the Yuveraj, and overcome Sita's prejudice against soldiering as a career, he would not be able to join Zarin. For Koda Dad told him that the Guides Cavalry was recuited on the
Silladar
system, by which each recruit brought his own horse and also a sum of money with which to buy his equipment, the latter being refunded to him on discharge. Zarin had had both money and a horse, but Ash could see little prospect of acquiring either.

‘When I am married, I will give you all the money you need,’ consoled Kairi, whose betrothal was already being discussed in the Women's Quarter of the Hawa Mahal.

‘What's the good of that?’ retorted Ash ungratefully. ‘It'll be too late then. You won't be married for years and years – you're only a baby.’

‘I shall be six soon,’ urged Kairi, ‘and Aruna says that this is old enough to be married.’

‘Then they will take you away, perhaps days and days of marches from here; and however rich you are, you won't be able to send money back to Gulkote,’ said Ash, determined to look on the dark side of things. ‘And anyway, your husband might not give you any money.’

‘Of course he would. If I were a Maharani I should have crores and crores of rupees to spend – like Janoo-Rani has. And diamonds and pearls and elephants and –’

‘And an old, fat, bad-tempered husband who will beat you, and then die years and years before you do, so that you will have to become a suttee and be burned alive with him.’

‘Don't say that.’
Kairi's voice shook and her small face turned pale, for the Suttee Gate with its pathetic frieze of red hand-prints had always filled her with horror, and she could not bear to pass that tragic reminder of the scores of women who had made those marks – the wives and concubines who had been burned alive with the bodies of dead Rajahs of Gulkote, and who had dipped their palms in red dye and pressed them against the stone as they passed out through the Suttee Gate on their last short journey to the funeral pyre. Such slender, delicate little hands, some of them no bigger than her own. The British had forbidden the barbaric custom of suttee, but everyone knew that in remote and independent states, where white men were seldom seen, it was still practised; and half the population of Gulkote could remember seeing Kairi's grandmother, the old Rani, immolating herself in the flames that consumed the body of her husband, together with three lesser wives and seventeen women of the Zenana.

‘If I were you, Juli,’ said Ash thinking it over, ‘I wouldn't get married at all. It's too dangerous.’

Few Europeans had ever visited Gulkote, for although the state was now officially part of the territory that had come under the jurisdiction of the British Crown after the sepoy mutiny of 1857, its lack of roads and bridges continued to discourage travellers, and as it had given no trouble, the authorities were content to leave well alone until such time as they had settled the more pressing problems of the sub-continent. In the autumn of '59, the Rajah, with an eye to forestalling interference, had prudently sent his Prime Minister and a deputation of nobles to negotiate a treaty of alliance with the new rulers, but it was not until the spring of '63 that Colonel Frederick Byng of the Political Department paid a formal visit to His Highness of Gulkote, accompanied by several junior secretaries and an escort of Sikh Cavalry under the command of a British officer.

The occasion was one of considerable interest to His Highness's subjects, whose acquaintance with Europeans had so far been limited to that colourful Cossack adventurer, Sergei Vodvichenko, and his hapless, half-caste daughter, the
Feringhi
-Rani. They were curious to see what these Sahib-log looked like and how they would comport themselves. And more than ready to enjoy the festivities that would mark the occasion. It was to be a right royal
tamarsha
(show), and no one looked forward to it with keener anticipation than Ash, though Sita made it clear that she disapproved strongly of foreigners visiting the state, and did her best to dissuade him from attending any of the ceremonies, or even appearing at court during the time that the Englishmen would be present.

‘Why should they wish to come here and interfere with us?’ complained Sita. ‘We do not want
feringhis
here, telling us what we should or should not do and creating worry and trouble for everyone… asking questions. Promise me, Ashok, that you will have nothing to do with them.’

Her vehemence puzzled Ash, who had never quite forgotten a certain tall, grey-haired man who had lectured him repeatedly on the crime of being unfair… he could remember nothing else about this man except a curious and uncomfortable memory of his face seen fleetingly by lamplight, drained of life and colour; and afterwards the sound of jackals snarling and quarrelling in the moonlight, a sound that had, for some reason, left so strong an impression of fear that even now he could never hear the yelling of a jackal pack without shuddering. But he had early discovered that his mother disliked any mention of the past and could not be persuaded to talk of it. Perhaps the
feringhi
had been unkind to her, and that was why she was so anxious to prevent him from having any truck with the English visitors? It was, however, unreasonable of her to expect him to absent himself from duty for the duration of their stay; this would not be possible, as Lalji would need the services of all in his household during the visit.

But on the eve of Colonel Byng's arrival, Ash was unaccountably taken ill after a meal prepared by his mother, and for the next few days he remained prone on his bed in her quarters, unable to take any interest in anything but the acute discomfort in his head and stomach. Sita nursed him devotedly, accusing herself, with tears and lamentations, of giving him bad food, and while refusing to admit the hakim (doctor) who had been sent by Hira Lal to treat the sufferer, dosed Ash with herbal brews of her own concoction that had the effect of making him drowsy and heavy-headed. By the time he was on his feet again the visitors had gone, and he had to be content with a second-hand account of the junketings, relayed to him by Kairi, Koda Dad and Hira Lal.

‘You did not miss very much,’ said Hira Lal sardonically. ‘The Colonel was old and fat, and his secretaries young and foolish, and only the officer in command of their escort spoke our tongue with any fluency. His Sikhs said that he was a pukka devil – which they meant to be a compliment. Are you well now? Kairi-Bai said she was sure you had been given poison to keep you from seeing the
tamarsha
, but we told her not to be a little owl, for who would care whether you saw it or no? Not Lalji, whatever his foolish little sister may think. Our beloved Yuveraj is too full of his own importance these days to bother his head over such matters.’