The Weeping Ash (28 page)

She sipped at her drink, then pushed it away, exclaiming, “Oh, how can I drink after seeing those poor women in agony? It is disgusting!”

“Come now, Miss Amanda,” Cameron said abrasively, “you know perfectly well that those women died completely happy, believing that they were carrying out the wishes of the gods and assured of a superior position in the next life. Also, that if the miserable Mahtab Kour had
not
immolated herself, it's dollars to doughnuts that her serving maids would have dropped a paving stone on her in her bath. She
could
not have survived for long. So let your grief for her be equally brief, I beg. We have the future to consider. And it does not lie in Ziatur. Your hospital, ma'am, is no more. And we have only a few hours' grace—if that—before soldiers come to chop off our heads. In order to gain a little time, I told Mihal that I had another consignment of guns and ammunition on the way here—so that he might think it worthwhile leaving me alive long enough to show his men how to use the carbines; but it was not true, and I am not sure he believes me. I am in bad odor because I declined the honor of running his army. The French emissaries have Sada's ear; they have won her favor with a package of Paris fashions. The ways of diplomacy are strange! Who would have thought that an embroidered muslin gown and a bonnet shaped like Athene's helmet would change the course of history? But so it is.”

He was talking, Scylla thought, in order to give Miss Musson time to compose herself. She quietly handed the older woman a plate of fruit and said:

“Come, you must eat something, my dear ma'am! Colonel Cameron is very right, we have to make a plan. As he says, the hospital has been pillaged; I am afraid the patients are all gone, and the contents carried off. It is quite plain, I fear, that we must not stay in the city any longer.”

Cameron gave Scylla an approving nod, and Cal, coming in from the stable, added his mite:

“All those brutes of servants have run off, and they have taken our horses.”

“What?” exclaimed Scylla, shaken out of her attempted calm. “All the horses? Not
Kali
?”

“Kali too,” replied her brother grimly.

Cameron grunted, as if he had expected this.

“So you see, Miss Amanda, little though you may like it, the time has come to up sticks and go.”

Strangely enough, Miss Musson did not seem inclined to argue the point. She had spent all her argumentative powers up at the palace and merely replied, wearily:

“No, I perceive that we must do so. But how is it to be managed? We have no horses, and it is unlikely that we shall be able to buy or hire any. How shall we travel?”

“Spoken like a woman of sense!” exclaimed Cameron approvingly. “Now, if you will all attend, I will tell you the plan. We must not all leave together, or we should assuredly be noticed and stopped. Disguise yourselves as beggars, carry as little as you may, only a few absolutely essential possessions, and some food for the journey. Meet me outside the Kohat gate at dusk, just before they close the gate. Come singly,” he repeated. “I will be there and will arrange to have transport waiting. Is that agreed?”

“I fear so,” said Miss Musson with a sigh. Cal merely nodded, with an absent expression; his sister guessed, sympathetically, that he was calculating how best to pack up all his poetry, his quills and cakes of ink, and which of his books must be left behind.

Scylla herself said, “There is just one thing, Colonel Cameron.”

“Well, what?” Immediately he looked ruffled, ready to flare into exasperation at any opposition to his arrangements.

“Do you not remember our promise to the Maharajah? That if anything happened to him we should undertake to see that little Prince Chet Singh is conveyed safely to England, to his cousin in London?”

“Oh, that.”

“Yes, that, Colonel Cameron! I do not forget a promise, even if you do!”

“Hold your fire, my dear.” Cameron looked at her kindly and sadly. “I respect a promise, child, as much as you do. But this one we shall be unable to honor—and I must confess that our journey will therefore be relieved of a decided encumbrance. To be carrying a child with us, the way that we must go, would necessarily slow our pace and make us more vulnerable to attack.”

“But why may we not take little Chet Singh?”

“Because little Chet Singh, child, was thrown over the battlements, by Sada's orders, early this morning. Already the crows will have picked his bones clean.—Now I must leave you. I have many things to arrange.—Dusk, then, at the Kohat gate. Wear old clothes, but warm ones. Miss Amanda, if you have any medicines in the house, you had best bring a bagful—” And he was gone.

Hastily, discarding the accumulated possessions of a lifetime, Miss Musson and her two wards packed a few necessities. It was, in a way, a relief that they were given so little time for thought or conjecture.

Scylla went to the deserted kitchen, where Habib-ulla remained, alone of all the servants. Giving the old man a month's wages, she told him that he had best forget he ever served the Feringi ladies, who now found themselves obliged to travel away from Ziatur.

“Alas! But how will the mems ever manage without me?” he inquired dolefully. “When do you go?”

“Tomorrow,” Scylla replied, mindful that even he, faithful though he had always been, might by now have been perverted by Sada's minions. “Bake us plenty of bread, therefore, tonight, for our journey, Habib-ulla; also, go now to the bazaar and buy a big sack to carry provisions. And take this letter to the Sahib Wharton, who lodges in the Street of Silversmiths. Here is the money for the sack.”

When he had hobbled off sadly on this errand, Scylla swiftly collected what food she could, along with such drinking and cooking utensils as would not immediately be missed, and packed them all in a sheepskin pouch. Her own clothes and trinkets were of little value. She left them all.

Cal, working with commendable speed, had wrapped up a parcel of his manuscripts and a few books, in layers of muslin and oiled silk, and now declared himself ready; only Miss Musson, though she had put together a bundle of medicaments, seemed anxious and ill at ease, unready to take her departure. Scylla felt a deep pang for her guardian; leaving this house must, for the older woman, mean abandoning the last home she had shared with her dearly loved brother Winthrop. It was a step forward into a bleak and unpromising future.

“What is it, dear ma'am? Something you are trying to remember? Can I be of any assistance?”

“No, my dear child, thank you; no, it is nothing. Do you and Cal start off now, dusk is beginning to thicken; I will follow in a few moments. Colonel Cameron said that we must not all leave together.” Cal, nodding, strode off into the twilight, adjuring his sister to allow five minutes to elapse and then go after him but take a different route to the Kohat gate.

“Ma'am,” said Scylla, troubled, “you do
mean
to come with us, do you not? You are not proposing to remain here, or—or do anything dreadful?”

Miss Musson's hawklike face broke into its rare, brilliant smile.

“No, no, child—have no fear of that! I shall be with you as soon as I may. But warn Rob Cameron to be prepared for a little delay—I must wait for an important message, here, before I depart. Now run along with you—veil your face and be as prudent as possible.”

With this rather unsatisfactory reply Scylla had to be content. Carrying the bundle of food on her back, she slipped out of the house and along the street, moving from one patch of shadow to another. For once Miss Musson had relaxed her rule about European dress; Scylla wore a hill woman's black headcloth, a voluminous white homespun wool cloak pulled forward over her face and latched at one side so that only her eyes were visible; under the cloak she had a red wool tunic, Pahari trousers, and goatskin mountain boots. At present they felt stiflingly hot; she was bathed in sweat and found it difficult to hurry. The air was vaporous and steamy; every now and then a distant mutter of thunder came as a reminder that the rains were due to break. A mad time to start a journey, thought Scylla dispassionately as she slipped, like a humble village woman bowed with her burden, between the armed guards who stood on either side of the gate in the town wall. They did not concern themselves with her, bored, chewing pan, they were informing an old fortune-teller with a fat, sleepy python in a basket that he must either come in or stay outside for the night, in which case he would inevitably be devoured by wolves; he was begging them to keep the gate open just one more half hour for his apprentice, who was following behind but had been delayed by a thorn in his foot.

“No more than a half hour, then, old man! Our orders are to shut the gate when the evening star shines clear of that peepul tree.”

“But, Your Worships, suppose clouds cover the star? How will you know then what time to shut the gate?”

It was true, Scylla noticed, that, blotting the green twilit sky, huge mushroom-shaped clouds were growing above the distant mountains, black as ink; darkness was coming on apace. She moved inconspicuously away from the gate and along by the side of the great red wall to where a buttress, thrusting out, would screen her from the view of the guards. Beyond the buttress a great peepul tree grew, and under it a mahout was grooming his elephant. It seemed a strange time of day to be doing this, Scylla reflected idly, and then, looking again, she was startled to see that the mahout was Cameron's Therbah servant. He salaamed to her briefly, placing a finger on his lips.

A hand gripped her; Cal moved quietly from the far side of the tree.

“Is not this famous?” he breathed in Scylla's ear. “I did not above half care to leave Ziatur, but Colonel Cameron knows how to do a thing in style! He is the most complete hand! Where do you suppose he got it? Can he have stolen it from the palace stables?”

There were stone rest shelves around the peepul tree, for travelers to pause a moment and take the weight off their loads; Scylla perched herself on one of these, thinking, An elephant! How masterly! Really, there is no end to Colonel Cameron's resourcefulness.

The town gate was about to close. They could hear drums being beaten, a gong boomed, and the guards bawled out their evening message:

“All ye who are without, make haste if ye wish to enter the town! Oh, townspeople, prepare to be shut in for the night!”

“Miss Musson, where can she be?” gasped Scylla.

“Hush!”

“Ai, aie! My poor apprentice!” wailed the old man with the python. “He has not come yet! How will he know where I am gone? I shall have to remain outside and wait for him.”

“Stay outside, then, with the jackals and wild boars, what do we care?” replied the guards, and the gates clanged together. Just before they did so, a stooped figure in a black burqa slipped between them; Scylla breathed out a heartfelt sigh of relief. Hurrying forward, she clasped the arm of the older woman, who murmured:

“Careful, my dear. He is asleep, do not wake him. A cry
now
, and we are lost!”

“Ma'am? What can you mean?”

With utter astonishment Scylla realized that, as well as the pack she carried on her back, Miss Musson was cradling a bundle in the folds of her voluminous black garment—a warm, tiny bundle that moved and breathed:

“A
bab
y
?”

“Hush! When we are well away from the town I will tell all.”

“But—good God, ma'am!—oh well—let me take your pack, then.” Scylla led Miss Musson to the elephant, which was now kneeling to accommodate its passengers. They climbed into the howdah, where Cal was already settling himself. A moment later, and they were joined by Cameron. Scylla was astonished to recognize in him the old fortune-teller; she would not have thought it possible that the tall, vigorous Cameron could appear so hunched and stooped.

“But what have you done with the python?” she whispered. “I trust you have not brought it as well?”

“No, child.” She could hear the ghost of a laugh in his reply. “The python is rejoicing in unexpected freedom; I left him under a fig tree. Are you ready, Therbah?”

“Yes, lord.”

“Then let us be off.”

Silently as a cloud the elephant rose to its feet and drifted away downhill, rapidly leaving the town behind, taking a zigzag route through the orange orchards, the melon beds, and the opium fields.

“Best not to follow any road,” Cameron whispered.

“Where are we going?” Cal inquired. “South, to Surat, to ship for England?”

“What is your will, ma'am?” Cameron turned to the silent Miss Musson in her corner. “Is it to be Surat, and a ship?”

“No, I think not,” she replied after a moment's considering pause. “When Mihal discovers what has happened there is bound to be a hue and cry, and he will be looking first along the road south, to Surat. We had therefore better go west, to Peshawur and Jellalabad. Rob, do you not agree? Once we are through the Khaiber Pass, Mihal will hardly pursue us. And that is little more than a hundred miles, but Surat is many hundreds, and his vengeance could follow us all the way.”

“I am in agreement with you, Miss Amanda—though, I must confess, I am surprised that you plump for the land route!”

“But the baby!” burst out Scylla, who could contain her curiosity no longer. “What baby is that, ma'am? Not little Chet?”

“
Baby?
” Colonel Cameron, who was sitting at the front of the howdah, suddenly screwed around as if a hornet had stung him. “In God's name, ma'am, what act of madness have you committed now?”

“It is the Maharajah's youngest son,” placidly replied Miss Musson, glancing down at the anonymous dark bundle she carried. “He was born only this afternoon, to that Khalzai girl who was Bhupindra's last favorite. She, poor wretch, was thrown into the underground crocodile tank, by Sada's orders. But I bribed a servant with a bag of gold dust to bring the babe to me. He has not yet been christened; perhaps we should do so without delay. Do you have any liquor on you, Colonel Cameron?”