Far Pavilions (51 page)

The fever left him on the third day and he slept the clock round, awaking to find that it was again night and the lamp was still burning, though its flame was shielded from him by something that threw a black bar of shadow across the bed. He wondered why he had not turned it out, and was still puzzling over this trivial point when he discovered that his mouth was as dry as a desert and that he was very thirsty, but when he attempted to move, the pain that shot through him was so unexpected that it wrenched a groan from him. The bar of shadow that lay across the upper half of his bed moved instantly.

‘Lie still, child,’ said Mahdoo soothingly. ‘I am here… lie still, my son.’

The old man spoke in the voice of an adult addressing a child who has awakened from a nightmare, and Ash stared up at him, mystified by the tone and even more by Mahdoo's presence in his tent at such an hour.

‘What on earth,’ inquired Ash, ‘are you doing here, Cha-cha-ji?’

The sound of his own voice surprised him as much as Mahdoo's had done, for it was no more than a hoarse croak. But Mahdoo's expression altered surprisingly and he threw up his arms and said wildly: ‘Allah be praised! He knows me. Gul Baz – Gul Baz – send word to the Hakim that the Sahib is awake and in his right mind again. Go quickly. Praise be to Allah, the Merciful, the Compassionate –’

Tears rolled down the old man's cheeks and flashed in the lamplight, and Ash said weakly: ‘Don't be an owl, Cha-cha. Of course I know you. For heaven's sake stop playing the fool and give me something to drink.’

But it was Gobind Dass, hurriedly aroused from sleep, who finally gave him a drink. Presumably one with a drug in it, because Ash fell asleep again, and when he awoke for the third time it was late afternoon.

The tent-flaps had been thrown back and through the open door he could see the low sunlight and the long shadows, and far away across the dusty plain, the faint line of the distant hills, already tinged with rose. There was a man squatting by the tent door and idly throwing dice, left hand against right, and Ash, watching him, was thankful to see that Mulraj at least had managed to avoid crashing into the nullah. The fog had lifted from his brain at last and he could remember what happened; and lying there he attempted to assess the extent of his injuries and was relieved to discover that his legs were not broken, and that it was his left arm and shoulder that was bandaged and not the right – proof that he had managed to fall on his left shoulder after all. He could remember thinking as The Cardinal plunged over into the nullah that he could not afford to lose the use of his right arm and must throw himself to the left, and there was a crumb of comfort in the fact that he had evidently managed to do this.

Mulraj gave a grunt of satisfaction at the fall of the dice, and glancing over his shoulder, saw that Ash's eyes were open and lucid.

‘Ah!’ said Mulraj, gathering up the dice and coming to stand beside the bed. ‘So you are awake at last. It was time. How do you feel?’

‘Hungry,’ said Ash with the ghost of a grin.

‘That is a good sign. I will send at once for the Rao-Sahib's Hakim, and it may be that he will permit you to have a little mutton broth –or a bowl of warm milk.’

He laughed at Ash's grimace of disgust and would have turned away to call a servant, but Ash reached out with his uninjured arm, and clutching a fold of his coat, said: ‘The boy. Jhoti. Is he safe?’

Mulraj appeared to hesitate for a moment, and then said reassuringly that the child was well and Ash need not trouble his head about him. ‘All you have to think of now is yourself. You must get well quickly; we cannot move camp until you have regained your strength, and we have already been here for nearly a week.’

‘A
week
?’

‘You were without your senses for a full night and day, and for the best part of the next three you raved like a madman. And since then you have been sleeping like a babe.’

‘Good lord,’ said Ash blankly. ‘No wonder I'm hungry. What happened to the horses?’

‘Jhoti's horse, Bulbul, broke his neck.’

‘And mine?’

‘I shot him,’ said Mulraj briefly.

Ash made no comment, but Mulraj saw the betraying flicker of his eye-lids and said gently: ‘I'm sorry. But there was nothing else that I could do. He had broken both forelegs.’

‘It was my fault,’ said Ash slowly. ‘I should have known that I couldn't turn that horse of Jhoti's. It was too late…’

Another man might have uttered consoling denials, but Mulraj had taken a liking to Ash and so he did not lie. He nodded instead and said: ‘One makes these mistakes. But what is done is done, and there is no profit in bewailing what cannot be undone. Put it behind you, Pelham-Sahib, and give thanks to the gods that you are alive; for there was a time when we thought that you would surely die.’

The last words reminded Ash of something, and he frowned in an effort to remember what it was, and then said abruptly: ‘Was there a woman in here one night?’

‘Surely. The
dai.
She is one of the Rajkumaries' women and she has come every night; and will come for many more, being skilled in massage and the healing of torn ligaments and strained muscles. You owe her much – and the Hakim Gobind even more.’

‘Oh,’ said Ash, disappointed. And closed his eyes against the low sunlight.

Considering all things, he made a remarkably quick recovery; for which his constitution as much as Gobind's ministrations could take the credit. Those two hard years in the mountains beyond the North-West Frontier had paid dividends at last, for they had toughened him as nothing else could have done. The unorthodox nursing and insanitary conditions that prevailed in the camp – the dust and the flies, the cheerful disregard for even the most elementary rules of hygiene and the total lack of peace and quiet, all or any of which would have horrified a Western doctor. – seemed almost luxurious to Ash when compared to the horrors and hardships that he had seen injured men endure in tribal territory. He considered himself lucky – and rightly so, because as Kaka-ji took care to point out, he could easily have been dead; or at the very least, crippled for life.

‘Of all fool-hardy things to do!’ scolded Kaka-ji severely. ‘Would it not have been far better to let one horse die than to kill both, and but for a miracle, yourself as well? But then you young men are all alike – you do not think. Nevertheless, it was bravely done, Sahib, and I for one would willingly exchange all the caution and wisdom that the years have brought me for a little of such rashness and valour.’

Kaka-ji Rao was by no means Ash's only visitor. There were others, members of the camp's
panchayat
such as Tarak Nath and Jabar Singh, and old Maldeo Rai who was Kaka-ji's third cousin: too many others, according to Mahdoo and Gul Baz, who disapproved of this stream of callers and did their best to keep them at bay. Gobind too had advocated quiet, but changed his mind when he saw that his patient was less restless when listening to gossip about Karidkote, or to any talk that kept him abreast of the day-today doings of the camp.

Ash's most frequent visitor was Jhoti. The boy would sit cross-legged on the floor, chatting away by the hour, and it was from him that Ash received confirmation of something that had occurred to him only as a vague suspicion. That Biju Ram, who for so many years had enjoyed the protection of Janoo-Rani – and during that time amassed a comfortable fortune in bribes, gifts and payments for unspecified services – had fallen on evil days.

It seemed that after the
Nautch
-girl's death, those who had stood highest in her favour had suddenly found themselves relegated by her son, Nandu, to positions of comparative unimportance and deprived of all their former influence, together with most of the perquisites of power, which had infuriated Biju Ram, who had grown vain and over-confident in the Rani's shadow. He had apparently been foolish enough to show his resentment, and the result had been an open quarrel, in the course of which Biju Ram had been threatened with arrest and the confiscation of all his property, and only saved himself by appealing to Colonel Pycroft, the British Resident, to intercede for him.

Colonel Pycroft had spoken to Nandu, who had said a great many rude things about his dead mother's stool-pigeon, but eventually agreed to accept a grovelling apology and a large fine, and forget the matter. But it was clear that Biju Ram had no confidence in Nandu doing any such thing, and when Nandu, barely a week after accepting that humiliating public apology, had refused permission for his Heir Apparent to accompany the bridal party to Bhithor, Biju Ram had instantly set about inciting the boy to revolt and planning Jhoti's escape – and his own.

For Ash had been right about that too. The idea had been Biju Ram's, and he and two of his friends, both of whom had been adherents of the late Rani and were now out of favour, had planned the escape and carried it through. ‘He
said
it was because he was sorry for me,’ said Jhoti, ‘– and because he and Mohun and Pran Krishna had always been loyal to my mother, and they knew she would have wished me to go to Shu-shu's wedding. But of course it was not that at all.’

‘No? What then?’ asked Ash, regarding his youthful visitor with increasing respect. Jhoti might be young, but he was obviously not gullible.

‘Oh, because of the quarrel. My brother Nandu doesn't like anyone to disagree with him, and though he might pretend to forgive Biju Ram, he wouldn't: not really. So of course Biju Ram thought it would be safer to leave Karidkote as soon as possible, and to stay away as long as he could. I suppose he is hoping that in the end Nandu's anger may cool, but I don't think it will. Pran and Mohun only came with me because just now Nandu does not like any of the people who my mother appointed, and so they feel safer here too; and they have brought away all the money they could, in case they can't ever go back. I wish I didn't have to. I think I shall stay behind in Bhithor with Kairi and Shu-shu. Or perhaps I shall run away again and become a robber chief, like Kale Khan.’

‘Kale Khan was caught and hanged,’ observed Ash dampingly.

He did not intend to encourage Jhoti in any further forms of rebellion; and in any case, he imagined that Biju Ram and his friends would be only too eager for Jhoti to extend his stay in Bhithor for as long as the Rana could be persuaded to have him. Unless, of course, news of Nandu's untimely demise was received even before they got there, in which case they would turn back at once and hurry homeward with the new Maharajah.

But Jhoti did not often talk of Karidkote. He much preferred to hear about life on the North-West Frontier; or better still, in England. He was an exhausting companion, for his thirst for knowledge forced Ash to talk a great deal at a time when talking was still something of an effort. But though Ash would have been only too pleased to do without Jhoti's endless questions, it was one way of keeping him out of mischief; and a disturbing conversation with Mulraj had made him uneasy on the boy's behalf…

Mulraj had not intended to broach the subject until Ash was feeling stronger and better able to deal with such matters, but his hand had been forced, since despite all his efforts to change the conversation, Ash had persisted in discussing the accident and speculating upon its causes.

‘I still can't make out,’ said Ash, frowning at the tent pole, ‘how that saddle came to fall off. I suppose it was Jhoti's fault for not fastening the girth properly. Unless Biju Ram or one of the syces did it for him. Who did? Do you know?’

Mulraj had not answered immediately, and Ash became aware that the older man had tried to avoid the whole subject. But he was tired of being treated as a feeble-minded invalid, so he scowled at Mulraj and repeated his question with a certain tartness, and Mulraj shrugged his shoulders, and bowing to the inevitable said: ‘The child says that he alone saddled the horse, because Biju Ram refused to help him and went away, thinking that he could not do it single-handed and would therefore be prevented from going off alone, or be compelled to wake one of the syces, who would in turn rouse some servant who could not be prevented from following him.’

‘Young idiot,’ observed Ash. ‘That'll teach him.’

‘Teach him what?’ inquired Mulraj dryly. ‘To see that the straps on the girth are properly fastened? Or to look first – and very carefully – at the underside of a saddle?’

‘What do you mean by that?’ demanded Ash, startled by something in Mulraj's face and voice rather than by the words themselves.

‘I mean that the straps were securely fastened, but the girth itself broke. It had worn thin… and in a mere matter of hours, too. For by pure chance I examined the saddle earlier in the day. Do you remember how the boy flew his hawk at a pigeon that you had not even seen, your mind being elsewhere, and how I, watching him gallop away, thought that his saddle looked a trifle loose and rode after him?’

‘Yes, now you mention it. You said something about not liking the look of it. But… Go on.’

‘By the time we recovered his hawk and the pigeon,’ continued Mulraj, ‘we had outdistanced the rest of you and were alone, so I myself adjusted the girth; and I tell you, Sahib, that save for the fact that it could with advantage have been tighter, there was nothing wrong with it then. Yet only a few hours later it had become so worn that it broke when the horse began to gallop.’

‘But that's impossible.’

‘You are right,’ agreed Mulraj grimly, ‘it is not possible. Yet it happened. And there can be only two explanations: either that it was not the same girth, but an old and rotten one that had been substituted for the other, or – which I myself think more likely – that while we ate and rested, someone had worked on it with a sharp knife, scraping it almost through, and so cunningly that it could be fastened without breaking or attracting notice, yet must part if too much strain were placed upon it… the strain, let us say, that would be occasioned by a bolting horse.’

Ash stared at him under frowning brows, and observed with some tartness that if it had broken while the boy was in the company of half-a-dozen others there wouldn't have been very much danger, and no one was to know that he would go off alone like that. Only Biju Ram, who for once was on the side of the angels and tried to stop him.