The Far Pavilions (89 page)

He was at a loss to know why no hint of the two previous pregnancies had ever reached Karidkote, since one would have expected such a pleasant piece of news to be announced immediately, but the fact remained that she had twice miscarried in the early months. This, he imagined, might well have been due to grief and shock, as the first miscarriage had coincided with the deaths of her two waiting-women, and the second with that of the faithful old
dai,
Geeta: which hardly seemed like a concidence. But though he still suspected that there was some mystery connected with those deaths, one thing was quite clear: the Senior Rani was neither ill-treated nor unhappy.

Extraordinary as it might seem, the marriage that had begun so ominously for her had, if gossip was to be believed (and he personally was inclined to credit it), turned out to be an unqualified success, the little Rani having taken it into her head to fall wildly in love with her unprepossessing husband, while the Rana, for his part, had found the combination of exquisite beauty and extravagant adoration so refreshing to his jaded palate that he had actually lost interest in his catamites, and to please her had dismissed the two handsome and degenerate young men who had previously been his favourite companions. All of which made good hearing.

The Junior Rani, on the other hand, had been less fortunate. Unlike her sister she had not found favour with the Rana and he had refused to consummate the marriage, declaring openly that he would not deign to father a child by a half-caste. She had been banished to a wing of one of the smaller and seldom-used palaces outside the city, from where, after only a month, she had been recalled at the insistence of the Senior Rani. Later she had again left the Zenana Quarters – this time for the Pearl Palace – only to be recalled once more after some months of separation. Since when she had been permitted to remain in the Rung Mahal, and now lived quietly retired in her own suite of rooms.

Gobind was of the opinion that the Rana probably intended to divorce her, and to send her back to Karidkote as soon as her sister the Senior Rani became less dependent upon her, which could be expected to happen once there were little sons and daughters to occupy Shushila-Bai's attention. But this of course was only conjecture, for the Sahib must realize that it was almost impossible (and indeed extremely dangerous) for anyone in Gobind's position to ask leading questions about the Ranis of Bhithor, or to show too much interest in their welfare and their relations with the Rana. Therefore he could well be mistaken in this, as well as in other matters. But though a wife only in name, at least the Junior Rani appeared to be safe and in good health, and it was to be hoped that the same could soon be said for the Senior Rani.

Gobind trusted that the Sahib would write as soon as possible to Karidkote to set the Rao-Sahib's mind at rest. For the present there would appear to be no cause for anxiety, and but for the fact that the deaths of the
dai
and the waiting-women had been concealed from their relations he, Gobind, would have said that there was nothing wrong in Bhithor, or at least, not so far as the two Ranis were concerned. Nevertheless, he confessed that those deaths continued to trouble him: there was something not quite right about them – something unexplained.

‘What does he mean by that?’ asked Ash. ‘What sort of thing?’

Manilal shrugged and said slowly: ‘There are too many stories… moreover, no two of them agree, which is a strange thing. Like my master, I too am from Karidkote and therefore a stranger and suspect. I cannot ask too many questions or betray too much interest: I can only listen. But it is not difficult to guide the talk into certain channels without seeming to do so, and sitting among the palace servants or strolling in the bazaars of an evening, I have now and then dropped a little word that like a pebble in a pool has set ripples circling outwards… If these women did indeed die of a fever, why should there be any talk? Why should anyone trouble themselves over something that happens so often, and to so many? Yet these three deaths have not been forgotten, and those who speak of it do so in whispers; some saying that the serving-women died from this cause and others from that, but none agreeing except on one point – that no one knows the real cause.’

‘What do they say of the third woman, the
dai
Geeta?’ asked Ash, who remembered the old lady with gratitude.

‘They say it was given out that she fell by accident down a steep flight of stairs, or from a certain window, or from the rooftops of the Queen's Palace – for again the stories are all different. There are those who whisper that she was pushed and others who hold that she was dead before she fell – strangled or poisoned, or killed by a blow on the head, and afterwards flung down from a high place so that it would appear, to be an accident. Yet no one has put forward a reason why these things should have been done, or by whom – or upon whose orders. Therefore it may be that they are nothing more than the invention of babblers and scandalmongers who like to pretend to more knowledge than their neighbours. But it is curious… Curious that there should still be so much talk when two of the women have been dead for well over a year, and the
dai
for close on one.’

That was all the news from Bhithor, and apart from the death of old Geeta, it was better news than Ash had expected. But Manilal was not too sure that he would be allowed to come to Ahmadabad a second time –

The men who had stopped and searched him had found nothing on him except two empty medicine bottles and some money. But they had questioned him exhaustively as to what messages his master had charged him to deliver, to which he had replied, gabbling parrot-wise: ‘I require six more bottles of the medicine that was formerly in the larger bottle and two more of that in the smaller, here is the money in payment.’ Adding that he meant also to buy on his own account some chickens, the Rao-Sahib being fond of eggs, and perhaps some melons and a certain kind of sweetmeat, and…

When they put a stop to this by twisting his arm and demanding to know what further messsges the Hakim had sent, he wept copiously (it was one of his accomplishments) and asked
what
other messages? His master had strictly instructed him to take these bottles to the
dewai dukan
in Ahmadabad, and to say to the shopkeeper: ‘I require five bottles of…’ or was it
three
bottles?… there now – they had muddled him with their questions and put it out of his head, and the Hakim would be angry.

In the end they had given up and released him, deciding that he was much too foolish to remember more than one thing at a time. ‘Also,’ said Manilal thoughtfully, ‘I do not think that the Rana any longer distrusts the Hakim-Sahib, whose skill and medicines have afforded him much relief, for when the Hakim-Sahib said that he required a further supply of a certain
Angrezi dewai
and desired that I, knowing the
dewai
shop, should be sent to fetch it, there was no objection; though at first they would have had me buy fifty or a hundred bottles, but the Hakim-Sahib said that long before a fraction of that number had been used, the rest would be bad. Even so, the eight will last a long time, so as my master has done as the Sahib suggested in the matter of pigeons, he has charged me to acquire a pair of birds from the Sahib's friend to take back with me.’

This last referred to one of the many plans that had been discussed during Gobind's short visit. Sarji kept carrier-pigeons, and Ash had suggested that he ask for one or two of the birds for Gobind to take with him to Bhithor.

Gobind had refused to do anything so foolish, pointing out that to do this would merely give rise to the suspicion that he intended to send messages to someone outside the state. But he had agreed that something might be made of the idea, and it had been decided that as soon as he was settled in Bhithor he would show a great interest in birds and collect as many as possible – including pigeons, of which there were always great numbers in any Indian city.

Once the people had become accustomed to the sight of the Hakim from Karidkote feeding parrots and putting up nesting boxes and dovecotes, he would see if it was possible to find some way of smuggling in a pair of Sarji's carrier-pigeons.

Manilal's arrival had now solved that particular problem. And as Gobind, on his part, had established a reputation as a bird-lover, it only remained for Ash to acquire the pigeons; though in view of what he had just heard, it seemed to him unnecessary, as there was no great urgency about sending good news out of Bhithor – that could safely be left to the Rana and the Telegraph Office. But if Gobind thought it wise, Ash was not disposed to argue, and he had acquired the birds that same night, riding over to Sarji's estate by moonlight and returning with two pigeons in a small wire cage.

He had pledged Sarji to secrecy after telling him as little as possible and even that little was not strictly accurate), and Manual had left next morning, taking with him half-a-dozen bottles of Potter's Sovereign Specific for the Relief of Indigestion and two of Jobbling & Sons' best castor oil, together with an assortment of fruit and sweetmeats and a large wicker-work basket that appeared, on inspection, to contain live poultry: three hens and a cockerel – the fact that it also contained two pigeons being unnoticeable, owing to a cunningly contrived false bottom and the presence of the clucking fowls.

37

‘Anyone would think there were no eggs to be had in Bhithor,’ sniffed Gul Baz, watching the Hakim's servant ride away. ‘And being a fool, he will certainly have been cheated over the price of those chickens.’

Gul Baz was glad to see the back of Manilal, and afraid that his visit might have the same depressing effect upon the Sahib's spirits that the Hakim's had done. But he need not have worried. Manilal's news had lifted a crushing load off Ash's mind, and his spirits soared. Juli was safe and well – and she had ‘not found favour with the Rana’.

The relief that those few words had brought him had been so great that hearing them he had, for a moment, felt light-headed. All the intolerable things he had imagined happening to her – the thought of what she might be called upon to endure, and the ugly pictures that would rise before his mind's eye whenever he could not sleep – none of them were true. She was safe from the Rana; and perhaps Gobind was right and once the child was born, Shu-shu would cease to cling to her sister and the Rana would divorce her and send her back tQ Karidkote. She would be free. Free to marry again…

Lying awake in the dark after returning with the pigeons, he had known that he could wait now; and without impatience, because the future that had looked so bleak and meaningless was suddenly filled with hope, and there was something to live for again.

‘Pandy seems to be in pretty high feather these days,’ remarked the Senior Subaltern a week later, glancing out of a mess window as Ash ran down the steps, vaulted onto his horse and rode off singing ‘Johnnie was a Lancer’. ‘What do you suppose has come over him?’

‘Whatever it is, it's an improvement,’ observed the Adjutant, looking up from a tattered copy of
The Bengal Gazette.
‘He hasn't exactly been a ray of sunshine up to now. Perhaps someone has left him a fortune.’

‘He doesn't need one,’ put in a married Captain a shade sourly.

‘Well, he hasn't been, because as a matter of fact I asked him that,’ confessed the first speaker ingenuously.

‘And what did he say?’ inquired the Adjutant, interested.

‘Snubbed me. Said he'd been given something a damn' sight better: a future. Which I imagine was his way of saying “If you ask a silly question you'll get a silly answer” – in other words, “mind your own business”.’

‘Did he, by Jove?’ said the Adjutant looking startled. ‘I'm not so sure about that. Sounds to me as though he may have heard something, though I'm blowed if I know how he could have done. We only got it an hour ago, and I know the C.O. hasn't passed it on yet.’

‘Passed on what?’

‘Well, I suppose there's really no reason why you shouldn't know, now that Pandy obviously does. He's to return to his own regiment. An order to that effect came by this morning's dâk. But I imagine that someone at Military Headquarters in 'Pindi blabbed in advance and one of his friends passed on the good news a week or so ago, which would account for his sudden rise in spirits.’

The Adjutant was mistaken. On the contrary, by the time Ash learned of his impending departure the entire mess and most of the rank and file of Roper's Horse had already heard the news, so that in fact he himself was among the last to hear of it. But as far as he was concerned it could not have come at a better time. A fortnight ago he would have received it with dismay, but now there was no longer any urgent reason for wishing to stay here; and coming at this moment, the news seemed to him an omen that his luck had changed at last.

As if to bear this out, the order for his recall ended with the welcome information that Lieutenant Pelham-Martyn was to take any leave due to him before, and not after, rejoining. This meant that he could take at least three months if he wished, as apart from an occasional weekend and a brief visit to Cutch, he had taken no leave since the summer of '76 when he had trekked to Kashmir with Wally – the two of them having decided to save up their leave against the day when Ash returned to the Frontier, when they could go on another trek together, this time to Spiti and across the high passes into Tibet.

‘How soon are you proposing to leave us, Pandy?’ inquired the Adjutant as Ash came through the outer office after seeing the Colonel.

‘As soon as it's convenient,’ said Ash promptly.

‘Oh, I fancy it's convenient now. We haven't got much on at the moment, so it will be up to you to decide. And there's no need for you to look so damned pleased about it, either!’

Ash laughed and said: ‘Was I looking pleased? I'm sorry. It's not that I'm glad to leave. I've had some good times here, but – Well, you might say I've been serving a sentence for the last four years: “doing a stretch”. Now it's over and I can go back to my own regiment and my old friends and to my own part of the world again, and I can't help feeling pleased about it. No reflection on Roper's Horse. They're a fine lot.’

‘Don't mention it,’ said the Adjutant graciously. ‘Though I take it we are not to be compared with the Guides. Ah well, I expect I should feel the same, in your shoes. Strange how absurdly attached one becomes to one's own particular crowd. I suppose you won't be selling that horse of yours?’

‘Dagobaz? Not likely!’

‘I was afraid not. Well, even if we don't exactly break our hearts over losing you, Pandy, we're going to miss that black devil. He'd have won every race you entered him for, next season; and we'd have cleaned out every bookmaker in the Province. How do you propose to get him to Mardan?’

‘Take him up by train. He won't like it, but I can always doss down with him if necessary. He'll have his own syce, anyway.’

‘If you'll take my advice,’ said the Adjutant, ‘you'll nip down and see the station-master this evening. It's not all that easy to reserve a truck, and if you plan to leave fairly soon, you'd better make sure that you can get one. Otherwise you may find yourself being held up for a good deal longer than you expect.’

‘Thanks for the tip,’ said Ash gratefully, and took himself off then and there to the railway station, where he discovered that the Adjutant had been right. If he meant to travel on the same train as Dagobaz, it did not look as though he would be able to leave Ahmadabad within the next ten or fifteen days. And even that would entail a judicious amount of bribery and corruption.

‘Arranging accommodation for quadruped is veree difficult affair and will occupy much time, for it will mean much booking ahead,’ explained the Eurasian station-master. ‘You see, Mr Martyn, there are too many trains, all of different gauges. Now if I obtain a horse-van for you on thee Bombay-and-Baroda line, this is veree fine. But then that is only small part of your journey, and what, I am asking, will occur when you arrive at Bombay Central and find that none is available on thee G.I.P. railway, to which you will there transfer yourself? Or when you must change again at Aligarh onto thee East Indian Railway Line, which is again different gauge, and there is likewise no van? I am fearing veree greatly, sir, that you will endure many vexatious delays if you leave hastily and before all these bookings are pukka.’

Ash had hoped to leave within a day or two, but he accepted the station-master's verdict with good grace. There was, he decided, no tearing hurry. The delay would give him more time in which to dispose of the rest of his stable, and allow Wally more time to arrange matters at his end. There was no point in trying to rush things, and anyway, another week or so in Ahmadabad would be no great hardship.

He returned to the bungalow in high spirits, and that night he wrote several letters before he went to bed. A long one to Wally, full of plans for their leave, a brief one to Zarin, sending messages to Koda Dad whom he said he hoped to see again before long, and another to Mahdoo, telling him the good news and urging him to stay where he was until further notice and to be prepared to come to Mardan in two to three months' time – Gul Baz, who would also be going on leave, would come and fetch him when the time was ripe.

‘The old one will be pleased,’ beamed Gul Baz, collecting the finished letters. ‘I will see that Gokal takes these at once to the dâk-
khana
(post office) so that they go out with the morning dâk and there is no delay.’

Wally's telegraphed reply arrived a few days later. It read:
Unable get

leave before end May owing unforeseen circumstances can meet you Lahore thirtieth three rousing cheers writing.

Coming on top of the station-master's gloomy assessment of the time needed to complete travelling arrangements for Dagobaz, this was not as disappointing as it might have been, for at most it meant delaying his departure for a few more weeks – unless he left as soon as possible and made straight for Mardan, from where he could reach Koda Dad's village in a day and put in the extra time there until Wally's leave was due.

The prospect was an alluring one, but on consideration he discarded it – largely because it occurred to him that in view of the reason for his four-year exile from the North-West Frontier Province, it would hardly be diplomatic to celebrate the lifting of the ban by spending the first few days of his leave on the wrong side of the Border. Besides, it would also entail a lot of extra travelling, as Lahore was the obvious starting-point for the trek he had in mind.

On both these counts his reasoning was sound; but the decision proved to be a vital one, though at the time he did not realize this. It was only long afterwards, on looking back, that he recognized how much had hung upon it. Had he chosen to leave for the Punjab at the first possible date, he would not have received Gobind's message, and if he had not had that… But in the event he elected to stay and having been given permission to take a month's local leave ‘pending departure' in addition to the three he had already put in for, he went off to shoot a lioness in the Gir Forest with Sarji and Sarji's wise, wizened, little
shikari,
Bukta, leaving Gul Baz to deal with packing up the bungalow.

The lioness they were after was a notorious man-eater who for two years had terrorized an area larger than the Isle of Wight, and was reported to have killed more than fifty people. A price had been put on her head and a score of sportsmen and
shikaris
had gone after her, but the man-eater had grown too cunning, and so far the only hunter to lay eyes on her had not lived to tell the tale.

That Ash succeeded where so many had failed was due in part to beginners' luck, but even more to the genius of Bukta, who – so Sarji averred – had more knowledge of
shikar
in his little finger than any other ten
shikaris
between the Gulfs of Kutch and Cambay. In recognition of this, and remembering his services to Gobind and Manilal, Ash had presented the little man with a Lee Enfield rifle, the first that Bukta had ever seen, and on which he had cast covetous eyes.

Bukta's delight in the rifle and its performance more than equalled Ash's satisfaction in bringing down the man-eater, though his pleasure in this success would have been keener if it had not been that on the very day before they were to leave for the forest, one of the pigeons that Manilal had taken with him to Bhithor returned.

Sarji had seen it come homing into the pigeon-loft above the stables, and had sent a servant to Ash's bungalow with a sealed packet containing the scrap of paper that had been fastened to its leg.

The message was a short one: Shushila had given birth to a daughter and mother and child were both well. That was all. But reading it, Ash was conscious of a sudden sinking of his heart. A daughter… a daughter instead of the longed-for son… Would a girl succeed in filling Shu-shu's heart and mind to the extent that a boy would have done? – enough to make her lose her dependence on Juli and allow her to go?

He tried to console himself with the reflection that, son or daughter, the baby was Shushila's first-born; and if it took after her it would be beautiful, so that once she got over the disappointment at its sex she was bound to love it dearly. Nevertheless a doubt remained: a small, lurking shadow in the back of his mind that spoilt some of his enjoyment in the tense, exciting, frightening days and nights in the Gir Forest that followed.

Returning in triumph to Ahmadabad with the scraped and salted hide of the man-eater, he encountered an
ekka
being driven at a rattling pace in the opposite direction, and was almost past it when he recognized one of the occupants and pulled up to hail him.

‘Red!’ yelled Ash. ‘Hi, Captain Red – belay there.’

The
ekka
came to a stop and Ash ranged alongside, demanding to know what Captain Stiggins was about, where he was off to, and why hadn't he sent word that he would be visiting Ahmadabad?

‘Bin seeing an agent. I'm on me way back to Malia. Didn't know I'd be a comin' 'ere until the last minute,’ said Captain Stiggins, answering the questions in strict rotation. He added that he had called at Ash's bungalow on the previous day and been told by Gul Baz that the Sahib was away on leave in the Gir Forest, pending his return to the North-West Frontier.

‘Then why didn't you wait? He must have told you that I was expected back today, and you know very well that there's always a bed for you any time you want it,’ said Ash indignantly.