The Far Pavilions (65 page)

‘You will get it,’ promised Ash grimly. ‘His name is Ashok. He was once in the service of the late Yuveraj of Gulkote, and you of all people should remember him well.’

‘But – he is dead,’ breathed Biju Ram. ‘He could not… This is a trick. A clumsy plot. You have been deceived by an impostor. That boy died many years ago.’

‘Did the men you sent to hunt him down tell you so? If so, they lied. No doubt because they feared to return and admit that they had failed. No,
Bichchhu-ji'
– Biju Ram jerked like a startled horse at the old nickname – ‘your men lost him, and though his mother died, he lived; and now he has come back to accuse you of the murder of his friend Hira Lal, whose pearl you stole; and of the attempted murder of the boy, Jhoti; and of myself, whom you would have shot. There is also the matter of the death of Lalji, for though I cannot know if it was your hand that thrust him from the battlements, I am very sure that you contrived it – you and his step-mother, who between you hastened the death of my mother, Sita, by hounding us back and forth across the Punjab until she died from exhaustion.’

‘Us?…
your
mother –?’

‘Mine,
Bichchhu
. Do you not recognize me? Look closer. Have I changed so much? You have not. I knew you again the moment I saw you – that first night in Jhoti's tent; as I knew the pearl too the instant it fell from the hidden pocket you had made for it in a coat that had torn in my hands.’

‘But… but you are a Sahib,’ whispered Biju Ram through dry lips, ‘a Sahib –’

‘Who was once Ashok,’ said Ash softly.

Biju Ram stared and stared. His eyes seemed to stand out from his head, and great beads of sweat that had nothing to do with the warmth of the hot night formed on his forehead and glittered in the moonlight. ‘No, it is not true’ – the words were barely more than a breath of sound – ‘it cannot be… it is not possible… I do not believe…’ But the muttered denials were contradicted by a dawning recognition on his face, and suddenly he said loudly: ‘If it is true, there should be a scar, the mark of a branding –’

‘It is still there,’ said Ash, and pulled open his shirt to show the silvery-white ghost of a half-circle, still faintly visible against his brown, suntanned skin. A mark made long ago by the mouth of an old-fashioned blunderbuss.

He heard Biju Ram's involuntary ‘
Wah
!’ and glanced down at the scar; which was unwise. He should have known better than to look aside from a man who had not been nicknamed ‘the scorpion’ for nothing and would not have ventured out unarmed. The heavy silver-mounted stick lay just out of Biju Ram's reach, but he carried a particularly deadly knife in a slit pocket in his
achkan
, and as Ash looked down he whipped it out and struck with the speed of his namesake.

The blow only missed its mark because Ash too could move swiftly; and though he had momentarily lowered his gaze he was aware of the quick movement and dodged instinctively, flinging himself to one side so that the thrust went harmlessly past his left shoulder. The force of it sent Biju Ram plunging forward, and Ash had only to put out a foot to trip him up and send him sprawling full length in the dust.

As he lay there, winded and gasping, Ash turned to snatch up the fallen knife and was tempted to plunge it between those heaving shoulders and be done with it. And had he indeed been of Zarin's blood he would have done so, for the sons of old Koda Dad had no pettifogging scruples in the matter of dealing with an enemy. But now, quite suddenly, Ash's ancestry and those tedious years at a public school betrayed him, for he could not bring himself to strike: not because to do so would have been murder, but for a more trivial reason – because he and his forebears had been taught that it is ‘not cricket’ to stab a man in the back or strike a fallen one; or to attack an unarmed man. It was the unseen presence of Uncle Matthew and a score of pastors and masters that stayed his hand and made him stand back and urge Biju Ram to get up and fight.

But it seemed that Biju Ram had no stomach for fighting, for when his breath returned to him and he began to scramble to his knees, the sight of Ash standing there, knife in hand, made him shrink back with a scream, and he fell on his face again to grovel in the dust and babble incoherent pleas for mercy.

The spectacle was not an edifying one, and though Ash had always known Biju Ram to be a vile creature, it had not occurred to him that the sadistic ogre of his childhood might be a coward at heart. It was a shock to discover that
Bichchhu's
pleasure in inflicting pain was only equalled by his aversion to enduring it himself, and that he could go to pieces so completely when faced with a taste of his own medicine. Deprived of supporters and a weapon, the ogre had suddenly become a thing of straw.

Ash jeered and taunted, stirred the grovelling figure with a scornful foot and used every insult that he could lay his tongue to. But to no effect. Biju Ram refused to stand up, for instinct told him that once he rose to his feet the Sahib would attack him; and the Sahib not only held the knife, but was, by some terrifying wizardry, Ashok – Ashok returned from the dead. What were a few insults compared to that? A combination of superstitious awe and the fear of death kept Biju Ram flat on his face and deaf to abuse, until at last Ash turned away in disgust and told him roughly to get up and go back to camp.

‘And tomorrow,’ said Ash, ‘you and your friends will make an excuse to part company with us. I do not care what excuse you use provided you leave, or where you go as long as it is not to Bhithor or back to Karidkote. But if I ever hear that you have been seen in either of these states I shall go straight to the authorities and tell everything that I know, and they will have you hanged or transported. And if they should not, then I shall deal with you myself and kill you with my own hands. That is an oath! Now go – and quickly, before I change my mind and break your fat neck here and now, you lying, thieving, crawling murderer. Up and run, son of a swine. Go –
go
!’

His voice shot up and cracked with a rage which was directed at himself as much as the grovelling creature whom he had intended to kill, because he knew that this was no occasion for mercy; yet it seemed that he was not yet emancipated from the tradition of those hated schooldays and was still adrift in Limbo, neither wholly of the East nor of the West, and therefore still unable to react to any situation with an undivided heart.

Biju Ram stumbled to his feet, and with his gaze riveted to the knife in Ash's hand, began to back away cautiously, a step at a time. Evidently he found it difficult to believe that he was to be allowed to go free, and did not dare turn his back for fear that the knife would be driven home between his shoulder blades.

He had taken no more than three steps when he trod on the discarded walking-stick and tripped and almost fell, and Ash said scornfully: ‘Take it up,
Bichchhu
. You will feel braver with a stick in your hand.’

Biju Ram obeyed, groping for it with his left hand while his eyes still watched the knife; and apparently Ash was right, for when he straightened up a measure of confidence seemed to have returned to him. He began to speak in a voice that was once again smooth and obsequious, addressing Ash as
‘Huzoor’
*
and thanking him for his clemency, and assuring him that his orders would be obeyed to the letter. Tomorrow, with the dawn, he would take his departure from the camp – though the
Huzoor
misjudged him, for at no time had he ever intended harm to anyone. It was all a terrible mistake – a misunderstanding – and had he only known…

Still talking he continued to back away, and having edged crab-wise past a clump of grass and put at least ten paces between himself and Ash, he paused and said with a shrug of the shoulders: ‘But of what use are words? I am the
Huzoor's
servant, and I will obey his orders and go. Farewell, Sahib –’ He bowed deeply, bringing his hands together in the traditional manner.

The gesture was so familiar that the fact that he still held the stick appeared unimportant, and for the second time that night Ash was caught off guard. For the stick was not all it seemed: it happened to be the work of a gunsmith who specialized in lethal toys for the rich, and it had been acquired by the late ruler of Karidkote, whose widow, shortly before her death, had given it to Biju Ram as a reward for unspecified services. But as Ash did not know this he was unprepared for what followed.

Biju Ram had been holding the stick in his left hand, and as he brought his two hands together the right twisted the silver-mounted top; and when he straightened up from his bow he held a slim-barrelled pistol.

The explosion shattered the moonlit silence with a brilliant flash of orange and a crack of sound, but though the range was a mere matter of six or seven yards, the events of the past quarter of an hour had so shaken Biju Ram that not only were his hands unsteady, but in the agitation of the moment he had forgotten that this particular weapon tended to throw to the left, and omitted to make allowances for it. As a result, the bullet that had been intended for Ash's heart did no more than scorch his shirtsleeve and flick a fragment of skin from his arm as it passed harmlessly by to be lost on the plain.

‘
You bastard!
’ said Ash viciously and in English; and flung the knife.

Rage does not make for good marksmanship and Ash's aim was no better than Biju Ram's had been – the knife point missed the throat and grazed a collar bone that was so well protected by fat that the blade came nowhere near reaching it. But as the knife fell to the ground and a small trickle of blood ran down from the wound, Biju Ram dropped the pistol and began to scream on a thin high-pitched note of pure terror.

There was something inhuman in the sound of that screaming, while the spectacle of a grown man reduced to a frenzy of fear by the sight of his own blood trickling from a cut that would hardly have discommoded a child was so nauseating that Ash's rage turned to scorn, and instead of leaping at Biju Ram to knock him down and beat him to a pulp with his own stick, he stayed where he was and began to laugh – not at the absurdity of the sight, but because it seemed incredible to him that this miserable craven should ever have been able to terrorize anyone. Seeing him now, it was difficult to believe that so lily-livered a thing could have murdered Hira Lal, and Ash's laughter was, in its way, as ugly a sound as those womanish screams.

The blood drew a thin dark line down Biju Ram's pale chest, and he stopped screaming and bent his head in a ludicrous attempt to suck the wound. But the cut was too high to allow his mouth to reach it, and when he realized this he shrieked again and began to run to and fro like a chicken that has had its head cut off, stumbling among the grass clumps and the scattered stones in an aimless frenzy of terror, until at last he tripped and fell, and once again lay writhing on the ground.

‘I die!’ wept Biju Ram. ‘I die…’

‘You deserve to,’ said Ash unfeelingly. ‘But I am afraid that scratch is unlikely to do more than give you a stiff shoulder for a day or two, and as I still dislike the idea of killing anyone as spineless as you in cold blood, you can stop play-acting and get up and start back to the camp. It's getting late. Stand up,
Bichchhu-baba
. No one is going to hurt you.’

He laughed again, but either Biju Ram did not trust him or the shock of that second failure had finally broken his nerve, for he continued to writhe and weep.

‘Help me!’ moaned Biju Ram. ‘
Marf karo
' (have mercy), ‘
Marf karo
…!’

His voice died on a curious gasping wail, and Ash walked over to him, still laughing but moving warily in case this was merely a trap designed to lure him within range of another unsuspected weapon. But a glance at Biju Ram's grey, contorted, sweat-drenched face checked his laughter. There was something here that he did not understand. He had heard that there are people who cannot endure the sight of their own blood and are literally overcome by it, but the man on the ground, while patently in the grip of fear, was also suffering from genuine physical agony. His body arched and twisted convulsively, and Ash bent down and said roughly: ‘What is it,
Bichchhu
?’

‘
Zahr
…’ (poison), whispered Biju Ram. ‘The knife…’

Ash straightened up with a jerk and took a quick step backwards, suddenly enlightened. So that was why the man had shrieked and cowered. He had misjudged Biju Ram: it was not fear of pain that had made him grovel on the ground, but the fear of death – swift and horrible death. Nor had he been afraid of Ash. His fear had been for the knife in Ash's hand – his own knife with a blade that was steeped in poison to ensure that any wound it inflicted would prove fatal. No wonder he had watched it with such hypnotized terror, and shrieked in panic when he saw that small bright trickle of blood. The wound was indeed a small one and ‘no more than a scratch’. But, like Mercutio's it was enough: it would serve.

Biju Ram had been hoist with his own petard and there was nothing that Ash could do. It was already too late to try and suck the poison from the wound, and he had no antidote or any knowledge of what poison had been used. The camp was over a mile away, and even if it had been half that distance he could not have reached it and got back again in time to offer any help – if help were possible, which he doubted, for it was plain that the poison was a deadly one.

Biju Ram deserved to pay with his own life for the lives he had taken, or helped to take, and the irreparable harm that he had done. But even those who had most cause to hate him might have pitied him now. Yet Ash, watching him die, remembered Lalji's young, frightened face and haunted eyes – and a slab of sandstone that moved and slid as a boy in a blue satin coat rode under the Charbagh Gate in Gulkote bazaar. There were other memories too. Several carp floating belly upwards among the lily pads in a palace pool; a king cobra that had somehow found its way into the bedroom of the Yuveraj; Sita, dying of exhaustion under the rocks by the Jhelum River; Hira Lal, who had vanished in the jungle, and Jhoti – Jhoti who but for the grace of God would have died weeks ago, the innocent victim of another ‘accident’ arranged by Biju Ram.