The Weeping Ash (27 page)

“And this packet of gold dust for my friend the Mem Musson,” she directed; a small silk-wrapped package was handed to Miss Musson, whom Scylla now noticed for the first time, sitting swathed in her black burqa among the shadows behind the queen; she held a Bible, marking the place in it with a finger, and looked exceedingly angry, harassed, and weary.

Bowing respectfully to the queen, Scylla slipped around to join her guardian and sat on the floor beside her.

“Those hopeless, silly heathen!” Miss Musson exclaimed in English—Scylla had never seen her so shaken out of her customary calm. “One might as well talk to a herd of
cows
—they take no notice at all. They seem utterly bent on self-destruction.”

Scylla could not wonder at it. What real pleasure or purpose did the existence of these poor women hold, that might constrain them to wish to hold onto it? And their future lot, as castoff retainers of a defunct queen, would be dismal indeed; death might well seem preferable to a life of prostitution and ignominy.

“At least, Highness, let me take this little one away with me?” suggested Miss Musson, who apparently, in the course of the night, had most uncharacteristically given up on the major issue. She petted the head of the slave child on Mahtab's lap.

“Take my little Lehna? But then, whom shall I have for a pet and plaything in the next life?” demanded the Maharani in astonished and injured tones.

“My dear Queen, in the next life you will not require cheering and solacing—you will not require
playthings
,” the American lady told her forcefully. Mahtab Kour appeared wholly unconvinced. However after a long argument she finally agreed that little Lehna, at least, should be spared from the funeral immolation.

“Quick, take the child away before the wretched woman changes her mind!” hissed Miss Musson to Scylla. “Go
now
; take her back to the bungalow; I will come when I can.”

“I wish you would come too,” Scylla murmured urgently. “Pray do, dear Miss Musson! There seems no more that you can do here. Colonel Cameron is exceedingly anxious about your safety. And so am I!”

The older woman shook her head.

“I cannot, child, while there is the least hope of saving any of these miserable, stupid, enslaved women. I will come only when I am convinced there is nothing more for me to do. But do you take that child away!”

When the child Lehna realized that she was to be separated from her mistress she struggled and screamed. Scylla did not care to drag her bodily; she stood nonplused. Mahtab Kour said in an exhausted voice:

“Go with the mem, Lehna! She will take good care of you.”

“I do not wish to leave Your Highness!” wept the child.

“I am to be burned on a great fire; that is not a fate for such a little one as you.”

“I wish it, I wish it!”

Suddenly Mahtab Kour recaptured some of the royal command that must have dignified her at a younger age. Her eyes flashed.

“
Go
when I tell you, child!”

Silent and humble, Lehna crept from the room with Scylla.

But as they were crossing a courtyard high among the battlements of the women's quarters Lehna suddenly dragged her hand away from Scylla's clasp and, shrieking, “I will join her this way, if not the other!” she ran to the low parapet and threw herself over it. Appalled, rushing after, Scylla leaned out and looked down. Twenty feet below, injured and moaning, the child lay on the cobbles of a lower courtyard, the very one where the pyre was heaped; one of her legs stuck out at an unnatural angle; plainly it was broken. Gritting her teeth, Scylla looked about, found a staircase that led to the lower court, and ran down it. But already when she reached the spot where Lehna had fallen some of the queen's women had picked her up and were carrying her away.

“Her Highness says, if the child is so determined to die with her, then she shall have the honor to accompany her on the pyre. Go, leave us, mem.”

Silent, sick at heart, Scylla walked away past the huge heap of wood and bamboo and thorn splinters. She saw men pouring great jugs of oil over it, to make it blaze up as rapidly as possible when lit. A platform had been erected in the middle, and a flight of steps was being constructed, leading up to it.

Supervising this work with an expression of calm approval and satisfaction was the Rani Sada Kour. She was wearing, not her usual robes, but a high-waisted European dress of striped jaconet and a Parisian bonnet, over which a veil was draped. She sparkled with diamonds, which were set in her hair, her ears, her nostrils, around her neck, her wrists, her ankles; she looked, Scylla uncharitably thought, like the pictures of chandeliers in the Bombay
Gazette
. The queen appeared slightly startled at the sight of Scylla, her gaze flickered from top to toe, like the tongue of a snake, paused on the white gloves, and then she said smoothly:

“Surely this is no place for you, Feringi lady? I did not look to see you here today.”

“No?” Scylla retorted, making no attempt to keep the hostility out of her voice. “Nor I you, royal lady—unless, indeed, you had thought fit to join Mahtab Kour on the funeral pyre. But that, I gather, is not your intention.” She let her eyes rest for a moment, ironically, on the young queen's fashionable attire.

Sada's glance darkened. She said, “Beware your insolent tongue, Angrezi, lest I order it to be cut out. My lord Mihal will do all I ask him.”

“Allow me to congratulate you on your good fortune,” Scylla said coolly. She swept Sada an angry curtsy and walked on, turning to say as an afterthought, “I believe I have you to thank, Rani, for a beautiful sari that was sent me. Unfortunately an accident befell it—I regret to say that it was all burned up.”

And I hope you suffer a similar fate, she thought, remembering poor Bisesa's death agonies and the two wretched little princes. She hurried on out of the gate, leaving Sada staring after her, furious and puzzled.

Old Abdul at the main entrance demanded, “Where is the Mem Musson?”

“She would not come home, Abdul. She said she must wait as long as possible. Do you wait here for her. I am not happy about her.”

The old man scowled, thrusting out his lower lips. “It is not right for the young mem to go home unescorted.”

“Nonsense, Abdul. I know the way backward and shall do very well. I order you to remain here!”

Grumbling to himself, he squatted down again, and Scylla hurried on through the narrow, rutted streets, noticing yet again the town's unnatural hush.

There were signs that the hot weather was coming to an end. The monsoon was near. Heavy, threatening masses of cloud piled up in the sky over the distant hills, then broke and moved off, but always reformed. The air felt humid and oppressive, saturated with heat and moisture, full of small stinging, biting flies. Hastening homeward, Scylla thought, Shall we have to leave, to travel, just as the rains begin? Shall we not stay for the autumn festivals, for the winter?

She loved the winter in Ziatur. Freshened by the monsoon, the air became tingling clear, like iced wine. Smoke from camel-dung fires smelled nutty and pungent in the sharp evenings, the mountains put on coats of snow and glowed at sunset, the sheepherders came down from the hills with their jingling flocks. Suddenly all the winters of the past five years seemed to present themselves as one moment, irretrievably dear, the last of childhood. Where shall we be next year this time? she wondered.

A silence in the street made her pause and glance around her. The few people about, white-swathed women lamenting on doorsteps, peddlers calling their wares, had all, it seemed, been struck mute and were staring in her direction. Glancing sideways, she realized the reason for this. An enormously large, tall man, white-robed, bare-footed, was rushing down a narrow side alley. He seemed mad, or drunk; he was veering from side to side, waving his arms and bobbing his head; his features were distorted in a crazy grimace; he held an enormous curved kukri, or tollman's knife. As when confronted by the tiger, Scylla was held in almost fatalistic calm. He is coming straight for me, she thought; he is running so fast that I cannot possibly escape him. Turning her eyes with an effort from the approaching man to the women seated on their doorsteps, she realized that nobody was going to help her; so far as they were concerned, she was dead already. Perhaps word had been sent out from the palace…or perhaps they merely knew, intuitively, that it would be bad luck to help the Feringi or Yagistani. They would watch calmly as she was sliced in half.

Strangely enough, the approaching madman did not decapitate her with his kukri; instead he snatched her up as if she were made of straw and, shouting, “God is great!” rushed off along the street. Scylla, dangling helplessly, head down, over his shoulder, saw the red betel-stained cobblestones flash past and wondered, with detached irony, where Colonel Cameron was at this moment; it seemed so unlike him not to be at hand to rescue her.

After a time it seemed that her captor's footsteps were slowing down; presently, to Scylla's utter astonishment, he came to a standstill and placed her respectfully on her feet. When her head had stopped swimming and she had her eyesight back, she realized that they were in the forecourt of Miss Musson's hospital; also, looking at her companion, now that his face was no longer distorted, she recognized him. He was an Afghan, Sirafraz Ali, who had been in the hospital with a severe brain fever, caused by a camel's kick on his skull; Miss Musson had succeeded in curing him, after a month's care, with infusions of chamomile tea and poultices of cold wet sand, but he had remained completely bald thereafter and somewhat unsettled in his wits. However now he appeared rational enough; he was shaking Scylla urgently and saying over and over:

“Missy sahib, tell the mem that she must
not
come to the hospital—ever again! Missy and Cal Sahib and Kamaran Sahib must all leave Ziatur—the danger here is too great. None of the Feringi will live until the rains if they do not leave now. Does the missy sahib understand?”

He shook her again as if to force the information into her. Looking over his shoulder into the hospital, Scylla saw that all the string bedsteads and bedding rolls had been taken away; the drug closet was open and stripped; nothing of the equipment remained but some handfuls of straw and a broken crock or two.

“Soldiers coming here soon,” Sirafraz muttered in Scylla's ear. “Prince Mihal gave the order. Shoot the Feringi ladies, cut their heads off. Understand, missy?” He shook her again, menacingly, then, picking her up once more, resumed his wild dash through the town, up one alley, down another, all the time, by degrees, drawing closer to Miss Musson's bungalow. As he ran he shouted, “Slay the heathen! Crucify the unbelievers! God is great, God is great!”

At last, depositing Scylla gently in a lane that ran down beside the bungalow garden, he laid his finger on his lips, writhed his features into a last frightful grimace, and bounded away.

Scylla walked very thoughtfully into the house, to find Cal, for once not writing, but pacing about on the veranda, looking very anxious.

“Is Miss Musson not back yet?” she asked. He shook his head.

“Not yet. And Cameron has been summoned for an interview with Mihal.”

“Perhaps Mihal wants Cameron to command his army, as he did the Maharajah's,” Scylla said wearily. “Where are all the servants?”

“I think they have run away. All but Habib-ulla.”

“I have just been warned that we must all leave Ziatur or we shall be killed,” Scylla remarked.

“Oh, things will blow over, I daresay, once Mihal feels secure of the kingship,” Cal said. “He is not a bad fellow, after all. By the by, do not forget that the dentist fellow, Wharton, is in town, and going on to Surat; have you written a note for him to take? He can see that it is sent to our cousin in England, with the Company's mails.”

“If we are to leave in any case, why write a letter? We may go to England ourselves and get there before it.”

“Not if our guardian can discover any means of remaining here,” said Cal with a grin.

* * *

About two hours before dusk Colonel Cameron arrived at the bungalow. When he heard that Miss Musson was still supposedly at the palace he let out such a string of heartfelt curses that Cal gazed at him in admiration.

“I beg your pardon, child,” Cameron said then, glancing at Scylla—he looked, she observed, even more exhausted than on the previous night, his hair dusty and dark with sweat, prickles of sweat marking the hollows of temple and cheekbone, the whites of his blue eyes bloodshot. “I beg your pardon, but if that woman's obstinacy is the cause of our all being trapped here and cut to pieces, it will be enough to put a saint in a passion. And I am no saint.”

Fortunately, soon after this Miss Musson herself appeared, riding slowly to the front of the house on her black pony. “Where is the syce?” she called, dismounting.

“Don't worry, ma'am, I will see to your pony,” Cal said, and led the beast to the stable, while Scylla ran to fetch her guardian a long cool drink.

She did not like to ask how Miss Musson's mission had sped, since it was all too evident, from the older woman's ravaged and angry appearance, that it had gone ill, but Cameron had no such delicate scruples and said with his usual bluntness:

“Well, ma'am? Is it all over? Did they all roast themselves?”

“You may see for yourself,” Miss Musson replied briefly, nodding her head toward the citadel, from which, Scylla now saw with a shiver, a thick, sluggish column of black smoke was coiling up into the humid air. “They all accompanied Mahtab; all the wives and most of her women; even that poor wretched child, with her broken leg, was there, allowed, as a mark of special favor, to sit on the queen's lap. And that Jezebel, Sada, watching from a window with
such
a satisfied expression; I would gladly throttle her.”