The Weeping Ash (45 page)

“Imra, Moni, and Gish watch over you. We shall be friends and shall exchange many secrets,” Khalzada said to Miss Musson. “Now child,” to Scylla, “give me your hand.”

Over Scylla's palm she pored for many minutes as if perplexed, screwing up her eyes, muttering to herself. “These lines are so faint, I can make nothing of them.—Bring me the salt bowl, girl,” she said to one of the slaves, who fetched a flattish black curved pottery dish with a handle at each end and a very small handful of rather dirty salt in the bottom.

“Stir that with your finger,” said Khalzada. Scylla accordingly stirred it, then the old lady carefully shook the dish and inspected the pattern thus formed. “It is very singular,” she murmured to herself. “I see much trouble here—a dead man, a dead child—”

“Oh no!” Scylla was horrified, her thoughts flying to little Chet, happily playing at this moment with a teething toy made from markhor tusk which had been presented to him by another of the Bai's wives.

“Do not interrupt, Angrezi! I see trouble for my grandson, too—grief—he is hurt, and suffers. I think you do not mean to hurt him, lady, but still the thing happens, and by your agency.”

Rather uneasily, Scylla wondered if this hurt referred to the Bai's undisguised wish to add her to his zenana; she tried to withdraw her hand, but the old lady still clutched it in her muscular claw, peering at the salt in the black dish. “I think you had best not stay too long in my grandson's fortress, Angrezi girl; I think it may be you who bring trouble among us.”

“I am sorry for that, sahiba,” Scylla said simply.

“Now, here is a strange thing!” Khalzada shook the dish, peered again. “I shake it away, but still it re-forms! I see a great tree, a great twisted tree—it is not like a tree of our country. It is a sacred tree but far away, far in the north; it is a tree of great anger and power; there is a man woven in among its coils, like a beast in the embrace of a snake. You have a dark, troubled road ahead of you, Angrezi girl! Hai mai! I cannot read it all, and it is giving me a headache!” She peered up into Scylla's face and said, “Yet I can see no harm
there
. It is a fate laid on you by the gods. Truly, you are young and delicate to travel such a dark distance. Wait, and I will give you two things that will be of use to you.—Or no, come with me.”

Raising herself with surprising agility, she hobbled, still keeping hold of Scylla's fingers, into a windowless inner closet, where she rummaged under dusty gauze hangings to open a massive wooden chest. Inside it, Scylla was amazed to see a shimmer of blazing color: the chest was packed to the lid with silky glowing materials in brilliant scarlets, blues, greens, jeweled and tinseled and tasseled; in startling contrast to the old lady's well-worn, thick dun-colored apparel. Khalzada probed down, but with a careful and gentle hand, among this unexpected gorgeousness and pulled out two things. “Habiba!” she screeched, and Habiba, who had lingered in the other room, not certain if the old lady wished her to follow, came hurrying in with a propitiating smile.

“Explain to the Angrezi girl what these two gifts are for, Habiba!” And the old lady broke into a rapid string of directions.

“This,” said Habiba, putting it on Scylla's finger, “is a gold ring, looped with camel's hair. My grandmother-in-law wishes you to have it, so that you will not injure her grandson, whom she loves; it is the signet ring of the tribe that she came from, far to the north; for she was once a queen in the great plains where the Kafir Niham River runs into the Kunduz; this ring can render any action right or wrong, can give or take away, make or unmake laws—”

“But,” protested Scylla, “indeed, I am deeply grateful to the sahiba for this honor, but I intend no harm to her grandson, not the least in the world—why should the lady give her precious ring to me?”

To this the old lady snapped out some impatient retort which Habiba interpreted.

“She says do not interrupt, and that you
are
to have the ring; you must wear it always unless—until you can give it to a man whom you know that you can love until you die.”

The ring was tarnished and heavy, wound with coarse black hairs, but it still sat loosely on Scylla's middle finger; seeing which, Habiba pulled a handful of black sheep's wool from a yak-hide sack and wound the circlet thickly with the wool until it became a better fit.

Meanwhile Khalzada had rummaged in the chest again and came up with something that looked like a wizened thorn twig which had been dyed or dipped in red juice, and a little muslin bag of red powder. This she handed to Scylla, with a brief muttered injunction to Habiba—evidently directions as to the use of these articles—and then hobbled away back to Miss Musson in the outer room.

“What are they for?” inquired Scylla, eyeing the twig mistrustfully—it had an ominous resemblance to implements of witchcraft which she had sometimes seen employed back in Ziatur.

Carefully Habiba explained how the twig and the powder were to be used. “It is because our honored grandmother feels a kindness to you, lady. She wishes you to leave this place in peace, cherishing no resentment against us, and to reach the end of your journey in safety.”

“Please tell the respected lady that I thank her with all my heart,” said Scylla. “Assure her that I wish no ill to any in this castle, particularly to her grandson—and in token of my good intentions I give her—”

What offering would be suitable and appropriate, impressive enough to assure the old lady of her friendly feelings? Regretfully, but feeling that it was the only possible gift, Scylla slipped over her head the ribbon that supported her watch. The watch was an old silver one that had once belonged to her mother; it was prettily engraved with flowers on the back, and Miss Musson's brother had had her own name, Scylla, inscribed on the case. It had never kept very good time, however, and since their adventure in the quicksand had stopped, once and for all. Since then it had undergone so many other mishaps, immersion in rivers, being knocked against trees, scraped on rock faces even glazed completely with ice in blizzards, that Scylla had not the least expectation of its ever telling the time again. She was sorry to part with it nonetheless.

“Give Khalzada this charm,” she said, handing the watch on its draggled ribbon to Habiba.

She had expected Khalzada to express a fair degree of gratification upon receipt of this handsome and interesting gift, but, rather to her chagrin, the old woman merely looked cursorily inside the case, which Habiba snapped open for her, then nodded, as if she had expected something of the sort, and continued a dialogue with Miss Musson which the two of them seemed to be conducting in a kind of sign language.

Feeling slightly rebuffed, Scylla curtsied and, as Khalzada took no further notice of her, quitted the room and went down the dusty stairs again, to where she had left little Chet in the care of Sripana and the Bai's third wife, who had several small children of her own. The two women greeted her kindly with the usual beaming smiles. They could not get over their admiration of her silvery, curling hair, and every time she entered a room some of the ladies would come up to stroke and smooth it with cries of wonder.

Scylla, however, was in no mood for female gossip. Feeling sad, confused, and apprehensive after the strange interview with Khalzada, she picked up the baby and, shaking her head politely at the welcoming, cushion-patting gestures of the Bai's ladies, strolled out into the castle courtyard to give Chet a little fresh air. She longed to get away from the castle, to be out on the mountainside; but, while Cal and Cameron could go galloping off over the wild-rose-and-juniper-studded hillsides at liberty with the Bai's sons, she and Miss Musson had been given firmly to understand that females stayed within the castle walls, unless some suitably escorted woolgathering or herb-picking party should be arranged. Any female who strayed outside was rounded up and gently led back again.

Today, however, there was plenty of action in the castle courtyard to entertain her. The Bai, it seemed, had not gone on the leopard hunt with his guests but had remained at home to receive tribute. Formally dressed in a leopard-skin mantle and a two-foot-high leopard-skin cap, he was seated on a throne of carved rock covered with a sheepskin. A procession filed past him in a ceremony which had evidently been going on for most of the day. Villagers approached one at a time, gave their names to the killadar, or steward, who stood at the Bai's right side, and presented their rent offerings, which were received with lengthy debate and consideration. The payments offered were of every possible kind: skins full of butter, rangy goats, skinny fowls, carefully tied bundles of firewood or sacks of charcoal, sometimes a shaggy pony, fat sheeps' tails which had been preserved in snow, packets of dried pepper, asafetida, very occasionally a few copper coins called zerubs, and one or two small lumps of turquoise. All these things were estimated by the killadar and his naib, or assistant; their value was calculated on a kind of abacus with brown clay beads strung on wires, a mark was made on a sheepskin, tally, and the tenants were informed whether the toll paid had been sufficient or whether there remained still more to pay.

Toward the end of the procession came a bearded, fur-capped man whose face was vaguely familiar; cudgeling her brains, Scylla was trying to remember where she had seen him before when, following him with hands tied behind her, and pulled along by two of the Bai's warriors, she was horrified to recognize the handsome scornful girl who had galloped her shaggy black horse across the river, who had worn her heron plume so proudly. She was the village bride—now dusty, disheveled, and tearstained; and the angry bearded man was her father, who addressed the Bai in a long, vehement harangue. The Bai appeared to listen to this dispassionately, then shook his head and made a dismissive, denying gesture with his right hand.

Scylla noticed that Cameron's Therbah servant had come quietly to stand by her, proof that the hunters must be on their way home, for the Therbah never stirred very far from his master's side, though he manifested a certain fondness and respect for Scylla.

“What are they saying, Therbah?” she whispered to him. “Can you understand what is happening?”

The bride's father now fell on his knees. He looked stricken to the heart. The girl still stood behind him held by her guards; she appeared to be almost in a state of trance, moving like a sleepwalker, hardly aware of her surroundings.

The Therbah explained.

“Bai, he say: no give permission for marriage. No bride price paid. Wife cost two horse, five cow, forty sheep, three hundred guest feast for seven day. Bai get half.”

“And it wasn't paid him? But surely”—Scylla was puzzled—“surely it is the husband's duty to pay the bride price? Where is he?”

She looked around for the handsome young man who had ridden that triumphant figure eight, firing his gun at the sky.

“Bai angry. Husband was not a man of this region. Husband say, no duty pay Mir Murad bride price. And Mir Murad, he say, no bride price, no marriage.”

The Bai now made another dismissive gesture, and the bearded father was hustled out of the courtyard, while his daughter was led toward the castle. To the last, the father still shouted, protested, and pleaded, as he was expelled from the gate; but the daughter seemed indifferent, almost calm; until suddenly, at the castle door, a kind of scuffle took place, in the course of which one of her guards dragged from her grasp a short straight knife which was tossed to the killadar's assistant amid head shakings, shrugs, and looks of disapproval from the Bai's retinue. At the loss of her knife, the girl's mask of indifference broke up; she let out a desperate cry and began to struggle frantically with her captors, who, however, easily overpowered her and dragged her inside.

Horrified by this scene, Scylla was wondering whether it would be of any avail to remonstrate or appeal to the Bai—when, perhaps fortunately, the gates opened again to admit the returned hunting party.

One of the Bai's sons proudly carried over his pommel the dangling body of a five-foot snow leopard, its beautiful silvery gray fur splashed with black rosettes, its jaws parted in the grinning rictus of death. Observing this, Mir Murad immediately clapped his hands, dismissing the last group of taxpaying vassals, and hurried to greet his sons and his guests, exclaiming over the dimensions of their prize and calling for koumiss in which to celebrate their triumph.

Cal, seeing his sister, crossed the court and came to speak to her—they had hardly been able to exchange more than a couple of words all day—and Cameron followed after a few moments.

Scylla at once began agitatedly pouring out to them the story of what had happened to the bride and asked Cameron if he could not intervene.

“It is so dreadful! Poor girl, what had
she
done? It was not her fault! What will become of her, Colonel Cameron?”

“I fear, Miss Paget,” he said reluctantly, “that in such cases—if the girl marries a man from another region, or if the father fails to pay his feudal lord the proper bride price—both of which faults seem to have been committed here—the usual penalty is for the girl herself to become the Bai's property.”

“Oh
no
! But what about her husband? What will
he
do?”

The two men exchanged a grim look.

“Now we know whose head it was,” Cal muttered.

“What do you mean?” Scylla demanded.

“No need to have said that, you young sapskull!” Cameron said in a sharp undertone.

But Scylla, given a clue by the direction of their glances, had hurried to the gate. Outside, on a flattish area before the hillside fell away, the Bai's warriors were accustomed to exercise their ponies daily in a kind of wild, disorganized polo game with no rules and any number of players, using a sheep's head or blown-up yak's bladder as a ball. Today, however, the object they were knocking about the stony ground was a human head; under the dust and filth Scylla had some difficulty in recognizing the features of the young bridegroom.