Far Pavilions (43 page)

‘I addressed them,’ wrote Ash, describing the scene in a letter to Wally, ‘and after that we managed to get things straightened out all right.’ Which is probably as good a description as any, though it hardly conveyed the impact that his words and personality had on the noisy gathering in the Karidkote camp. No Sahib of their acquaintance had ever possessed such a fluent and picturesque command of their language as this young Sahib – or been able to compress so much authority and sound commonsense into half-a-dozen trenchantly phrased sentences. The few
Angrezi-log
whom they had previously come across were either polite officials, earnestly striving to understand a point of view that was alien to them, or, on occasions, some less polite Sahib on survey or
shikar
, who lost his temper and shouted at them when crossed. Pelham-Sahib had done none of these things. He had spoken to them in the manner of an experienced
sirdar
(headman), wise in the ways of his fellow men and the customs of the district, and used to being obeyed. Ash, it will be seen, had learned much from the regimental durbars.

The camp listened and approved: this was someone who understood them and whom they could understand. By the time the tents were struck on the following morning and they were ready to move on, the townsmen's accounts had been paid, a majority of the disputes settled, and Ash had managed to meet and exchange courtesies with most of the senior members of the bridal party; though he had not had time to sort them out, and retained only a confused impression of scores of faces momentarily concealed by hands pressed palm to palm in the traditional Hindu gesture of greeting. Later he must get to know them all, but at the moment the most important thing was to get the camp on the move. The District Officer's advice on that head had been sound, and Ash resolved to hurry them forward with as much speed as they could make, and if possible avoid stopping for more than one or two nights in any one place, so that they did not repeat the mistake of wearing out their welcome as they had done at Deenagunj. Close on eight thousand humans and more than half as many baggage animals were worse than a plague of locusts, and it was clear that without planning and forethought their effect upon the country they passed through could be quite as devastating, and equally disastrous.

He found little attention to spare for individuals on that first day's march, for he rode up and down the long column, taking note of its numbers and composition and estimating their capacity for speed, thereby unconsciously enacting one of the roles that he had mentioned to Wally – that of sheep-dog. This was easy enough to do, for progress was slow. The mile-long column moved at a foot's pace, plodding through the dust at the same leisurely pace as the elephants and stopping at frequent intervals to rest, talk or argue, to wait for stragglers or draw water from the wayside wells. At least a third of the elephants were baggage animals, while the remainder, with the exception of four state elephants, carried a large number of the Karidkote forces and a weird assortment of weapons that included the heavy iron cannons of the artillery.

The four state elephants bore magnificent howdahs of beaten gold and silver in which the Rajkumaries
*
and their ladies, together with their younger brother and certain senior members of the bridal party, would ride in procession on the day of the wedding, and it had also been expected that the brides would travel in them on the journey. But the slow, rolling stride of the great beasts made the howdahs sway, and the youngest bride (who was also the most important one, being the Maharajah's full sister) complained that it made her feel ill, and demanded that both she and her sister, from whom she refused to be parted, be transferred to a
ruth
– a bullock-drawn cart with a domed roof and embroidered curtains.

‘Her Highness is very nervous,’ explained the chief eunuch, apologizing to Ash for the delay caused by this alteration in the travelling arrangements. ‘She has never before been outside the Zenana walls, and she pines for her home, and is greatly afraid.’

They covered less than nine miles that first day – scarcely three as the crow flies, for their road wound and twisted downwards between low, scrub-covered hills that were barely more than folds in the ground. It was clear that they might often do less, and Ash, poring over the large-scale survey map that evening and calculating their weekly advance at an average of fifty to sixty miles, realized that at this rate it was going to be many months before he saw Rawalpindi again. The thought did not depress him, for this nomadic open-air life with its constant change of scene was going to be very much to his taste, and he found it exhilarating to be free from supervision and senior officers, in sole charge of several thousand people and answerable to no one.

Halfway through the following day he belatedly recalled that the Maharajah's young brother had arrived, but on inquiring if he might pay his respects to the little prince, he was told that His Highness was unwell (the result, it was reported, of eating too many sweetmeats) and that it would be better to wait a day or two. The Sahib would be informed as soon as the child was feeling fully recovered. In the meantime, as a special mark of favour, he had been asked to meet the prince's sisters.

The brides' tent was the largest in the camp, and as it was always the first to be pitched, the remainder formed a series of circles about it, those in the inner ring being occupied by ladies-in-waiting, serving women and eunuchs, and the next by high officials, palace guards, and the little prince and his personal servants. By rights, Ash's tent should have been included in the latter circle, but he preferred a quieter and less central position, and had arranged for it to be pitched on the outskirts of the camp, which on this particular evening was some considerable distance from the brides' pavilion. He had been escorted to the meeting by two officers of the guard and an elderly gentleman who had been introduced to him on the previous evening as the Rao Sahib, a brother of the late Maharajah and uncle to the two princesses.

The custom of purdah – the veiling and seclusion of women – was adopted by Hindu India from Mohammedan conquerors and does not go far back into the roots of the country, so the fact that Ash was permitted to meet his two charges was not really surprising. As a Sahib and a foreigner, and more particularly as the representative of the Raj whose duty it was to see to their safety and comfort on the journey, he merited special treatment and was therefore accorded the honour of speaking with them; a privilege that would not have been accorded to any other man who was not a near relative. The interview, however, had been a brief one, and by no means private, having been conducted in the presence of their uncle and a second elderly kinsman, Maldeo Rai, as well as their duenna and distant cousin Unpora-Bai, several waiting women, a eunuch and half-a-dozen children. The decencies were preserved by the fact that the brides' faces, and that of Unpora-Bai, were partially covered by the fringed and embroidered saris that they held in such a way that only their eyes and a small segment of forehead were visible. But as the saris were of the finest silk gauze from Benares, this was more a token gesture than anything else, and Ash was able to gain a fairly accurate idea of their looks.

‘You were quite right about them,’ he wrote to Wally in a lengthy postscript to the letter describing his arrival in camp, ‘they are as pretty as pictures. Or the younger one is, anyway. She's not yet fourteen, and just like that miniature of Shah Jehan's Empress, the lady of the Taj. I managed to get a good look at her because one of the children tried to catch her attention by tugging at her sari, and twitched it out of her hand. She's the prettiest thing you ever saw, and it's thankful I am that you can't see her, you susceptible Celt, for you'd fall in love with her on the spot and there would be no holding you. You'd be rhyming heart, part and cupid's dart all the way from here to Bhithor, and I'm not sure I could endure it. Thank God I'm a soured and unimpressionable misanthropist! The other sister kept a bit in the background and is quite old, at least eighteen, which in this country is practically on the shelf, and I can't think what they were about not to marry her off years ago; except that I gather she is only the daughter of some secondary wife, or possibly a concubine of the late Maharajah's, and from what I could see of her I wouldn't say she was exactly the Indian idea of a beauty. Or mine either, for that matter. Much too tall and with one of those rather square faces. I prefer oval ones, myself. But her eyes are magnificent – “like the fishpools in Heshbon by the gate of Beth-Rabbin” – not black like her sister's but the colour of peat-water, with little gold flecks in them. Don't you wish you were in my shoes?’

Ash might choose to describe himself as soured and unimpressionable, but the fact that the Karidkote princesses were far from unattractive undoubtedly added a fillip to the situation; though as he was unlikely to see very much of them their personal appearance, one way or another, was a matter of little importance. Nevertheless, the thought that he was escorting two charming young creatures to their wedding instead of the ‘pair of dowds’ that he had visualized made the whole affair seem more romantic. It even lent a redeeming touch of glamour to the din and dirt and inconvenience of the enormous camp, and he strolled back to his tent humming the old nursery rhyme that tells of a lady who rode to Banbury Cross ‘with rings on her fingers and bells on her toes’, and mentally recalling the names of legendary beauties whose stories are chronicled in Tod's
Rajasthan
: Huma-yan's wife, the fourteen-year-old Hamedu; lovely Padmini, ‘the fairest of all flesh on earth’, whose fatal beauty had led to the first and most terrible Sack of Chitor; Mumtaz Mahal, ‘Splendour of the Palace’, to whose memory her grieving husband had raised that wonder in white marble, the Taj Mahal. Perhaps Wally was right after all, and all princesses were beautiful.

Ash had been far too interested in the brides to spare more than a cursory glance at the remainder of the company, several of whom would have repaid a little more of his attention. And as the next day's march was to end on the outskirts of a town where there was a small garrison of British troops, he had ridden on ahead to speak to the officer in command, and seen little of anyone in the camp during that day, for the Garrison Commander had invited him to dine in mess.

Unlike Wally, his host that night appeared to think that a British officer landed with Ash's present task was greatly to be pitied, and had said as much over the port and cigars. ‘Can't say I envy you the job,’ said the Garrison Commander. ‘Thank God I'm never likely to be told off to do anything in that line! It must be nearly impossible to live in among that lot without putting your foot in it twenty times a day, and frankly, I can't think how you manage it.’

‘Manage what?’ inquired Ash, puzzled.

‘Coping with this caste business. It's no problem with Mussulmans, who don't seem to mind who they eat and drink with or give a damn who cooks or serves the stuff, and don't appear to have too many religious taboos. But caste Hindus can pose the most appalling problems, as I've learnt to my cost. They're so hedged about with complicated rules and customs and restrictions imposed upon them by their religion, that a stranger in their midst has to walk like Agag to avoid offending them – or at the very least, embarrassing them. I don't mind telling you that I find it a devil of a problem.’

The speaker had gone on to illustrate the pitfalls of the caste system with a long story about a sepoy who had been wounded in battle and left for dead, but recovering, had wandered for days in the jungle, famished, delirious and half mad with thirst, and eventually been found by a little girl who had been herding goats, and who had given him a drink of milk that had undoubtedly saved his life, for he had been at his last gasp. Not long afterwards he had come across some men of his own regiment who had carried him to the nearest hospital, where he had lain gravely ill for many months before being discharged and returning to duty. Several years later he had obtained leave to go to his home, and on arriving there had told his story. His father had immediately said that from his description of the child she could have been an ‘untouchable’, and if so, his son was defiled and must not stay in his own home, for his presence would pollute it. No arguments had been of any use, and not only his own family but the entire village recoiled from him as an outcaste and unclean. Only after costly ceremonies (for the performance of which the priests demanded every anna of his life's savings) was he declared ‘purified’ and allowed to enter his family home again.

‘And all this,’ said the Garrison Commander, summing up, ‘because the poor devil had once, when crazed with wounds and thirst and at his last gasp, accepted a cup of milk from the hands of a child who might possibly have been an “untouchable”. Apparently he ought to have preferred death to the remote possibility of defilement. Can you beat it? And I assure you that the story is true, because a cousin of mine had it from the sepoy himself. Just shows you what we're up against in this country. But I suppose you've found that out for yourself by now.’

Ash had found it out many years ago. But he refrained from saying so and merely said that he thought that in these matters a fanatical regard for the letter-of-the-law and an obsessive terror of pollution was, in general, confined to the priests (who benefited greatly from it) and to the middle classes, both upper and lower. The nobility tended to be less hag-ridden by it, while royalty, secure in the knowledge of their own superiority over men of lesser birth, usually felt free to stretch the rules to suit themselves – fortified no doubt by the knowledge that if they overstepped the mark they could well afford to pay the Brahmins to put them right again with the gods. ‘It isn't so much that they are more broad-minded,’ said Ash, ‘but they are firm believers in the Divine Right of Kings; which is not surprising when one thinks that a number of the princely houses claim to be descended from a god – or from the sun or the moon. If you believe that, you can't really feel that you are quite like other men, so you can afford to do things that people with less exalted ancestors wouldn't dare do. Not that the great are irreligious – far from it. They can be just as devout. But possibly less bigoted.’