Far Pavilions (21 page)

The Corps of Guides were back once more in their barracks after months of hard campaigning and harder fighting in the Yusafzai country, and eighteen months of active service had aged Zarin so that he was barely recognizable as the gay youth who had ridden away so light-heartedly from Gulkote. He had grown taller and broader, and acquired an impressive moustache in place of the budding growth that Ash remembered. But he was still the same Zarin, and he had been delighted to see Ashok.

‘My father sent word that you had left Gulkote, and I knew that you would come here one day,’ said Zarin, embracing him. ‘You will have to wait until you are full grown before you can enlist as a sowar, but I will speak to my eldest brother, who is now a Jemadar since the battle on the road to Ambeyla, and he will find you work. Is your mother here?’

‘She is dead,’ said Ash flatly. He found that he could not speak of her even to such an old friend as Zarin. But Zarin appeared to understand: he asked no question and said only, ‘I am sorry. She was a good mother to you, and I think it must be hard to lose even a bad one, for each of us has only the one to lose.’

‘It seems that I have had two,’ said Ash bleakly. And squatting down tiredly to warm himself at Zarin's fire, he told the tale of his escape from the Hawa Mahal and of the things that he had learned from Sita in the cave by the river, producing at last, in proof of the latter, a sheet of paper that bore the address of a dead officer of the Guides.

Zarin could not read the writing, but he too had been startled into belief by the sight of the money, for the coins spoke for themselves and did not need any translation. There were over two hundred of them, of which less than fifty were silver rupees and the rest sovereigns and gold mohurs; and that Sita should have concealed this small fortune for so many years seemed to prove that there must be at least some truth in her story.

‘I think we had better show this to my brother,’ said Zarin, looking doubtfully at the paper that Ash had thrust into his hand. ‘Perhaps he will be able to advise you, for I cannot. It is too dark a matter for me.’

Zarin's brother, the Jemadar, had no such doubts. There was only one course to take. Ashton-Sahib being dead, the whole affair must now be laid before Colonel Browne-Sahib, the Commandant, who would know how to deal with it. He himself, Awal Shah, would accompany the boy Ashok to the Colonel-Sahib's quarters immediately, because if there was any truth in this extraordinary story, the sooner both money and papers were placed in safe hands the better.

‘As for you, Zarin, you will say nothing of this to anyone. For if the Rani of Gulkote desires the boy's death, she will revenge herself on those who helped him to escape, and if she should hear that he is with us, she will suspect that our father had a hand in the matter. So it is better for all our sakes that the trail should be lost. I will go now to the Commandant-Sahib, and you, Ashok, will follow me, walking a little behind so that we are not seen to be together, and waiting outside until you are sent for. Come.’

The Jemadar stuffed the evidence into his pocket and strode out into the late sunlight, and Ash followed at a discreet distance and spent the next half hour perched on the edge of a culvert, tossing pebbles into the ditch below, and keeping a watchful eye on the Commandant's windows while the shadows lengthened on the dusty cantonment road and the sharp spring evening filled with the scent of woodsmoke and dung fires.

It was, though he did not know it, his last hour of independence. The last, for many years, of peace and freedom and idleness, and perhaps if he had realized that he might have broken his promise to Sita and run away while there was still time. Though even if he had escaped the Rani's assassins it is doubtful that he would have got very far, for Colonel Sam Browne, v.c, the Officiating Commandant of the Corps of Guides, having read the unfinished letter that Professor Pelham-Martyn had started to write to his brother-in-law William Ashton, was now engaged in removing the seals from a packet – that had been wrapped in oiled silk almost exactly seven years ago. It was already too late for Hilary's son to run away.

Three weeks later Ash was in Bombay, dressed in a hot and uncomfortable suit of European clothes and shod with even more uncomfortable European boots,
en route
for the land of his fathers.

His passage had been arranged and paid for by the officers of his uncle's Regiment, all of whom, after flatly refusing to believe that this beggar-brat could possibly be the nephew of poor William, had eventually been convinced by the evidence in the packet (which included a daguerreotype of Isobel, whose likeness to her son was startling, and another of Ash seated on Sita's lap and taken in Delhi on his fourth birthday – both sitters having been unhesitatingly identified by Zarin), together with a searching verbal and physical examination of the claimant. Once converted, William's friends could not do enough for the nephew of an officer who had served with the Corps since Hodson built the fort at Mardan, and whom everyone had liked. Though his nephew was not in the least grateful for their efforts on his behalf.

Ash had obeyed his foster-mother's last commands and handed over to the Sahib-log the papers and the money she had given him. Having done so, he would have preferred to live in the lines with Zarin and Awal Shah, and earn his living as a stable boy or a grass-cutter until he was old enough to join the Regiment. But this had not been permitted. Why couldn't people leave him alone? thought Ash resentfully. Why, always and everywhere, must there be dictatorial people who gave him unpalatable orders, restricted his liberty and over-rode his wishes – and others, who at a word from an evil and ambitious woman, were even prepared to hunt him across Hind and take his life, though they had no quarrel with him and he had done them no harm? It wasn't fair!

He had been happy in the bazaars of Gulkote and he had not wanted to leave the city and move to the Hawa Mahal. But he had been given no choice. And now it seemed that he must leave his friends and his homeland and go to his father's country; and once again there was no choice – and no appeal. He had walked into a trap as surely as on the day that he had entered the Hawa Mahal, and it was too late to try and escape from it, for the doors were already closing behind him. Perhaps when he grew up he would be allowed to do as he pleased – though in a world filled with oppression, assassins and interfering busy-bodies, he began to think it unlikely. But at least the Sahibs had promised that when the years of servitude in
Belait
were over, he would be permitted to return to Hind.

Colonel Sam Browne, the Commandant, told him that telegrams had been sent to his father's people, who would send him to school and turn him into a Sahib. Also that if he worked hard and did well in examinations (whatever those were) he would obtain a commission in the army and return to Mardan as an officer of the Guides; and it was that hope, rather than his promise to Sita or his fear of the Rani's men, that prevented Ash from making a break for freedom. That, and the fact that he was to travel to England in the care of a Sahib who was taking home two Indian servants; which meant that he would not be entirely alone and friendless. This last had been largely due to a chance remark of Jemadar Awal Shah's.

‘It is a pity,’ said Awal Shah to his Commanding Officer, ‘that the boy will forget the speech and the ways of this land, for a Sahib who can think and talk as one of us, and pass as either a Pathan or a Punjabi without question, would have made his mark in our Regiment. But in
Belait
he will forget and become as other Sahibs; which will be a great loss.’

The Commandant had been much struck by this observation, for although every Englishman in the service of the Government of India was expected to become fluent in one or more of India's languages, very few learned to speak well enough to pass as a native of the country. And those few were for the most part half-castes whose mixed blood debarred them from employment in the higher ranks of the army or the Civil Service – even so gifted a soldier as Colonel George Skinner of Skinner's Horse, the famed ‘Sikundar Sahib’, having been refused a commission in the Bengal Army because his mother was an Indian lady. But it was plain that William Ashton's nephew was a native of India in all but blood, and one of the few who could go deeper than the skin. As such he might one day prove of inestimable value in a country where accurate information often meant the difference between survival and disaster, and Awal Shah was right: such potentially valuable material ought not to be wasted.

The Commandant brooded over the problem, and eventually hit upon an admirable solution. Colonel Ronald Anderson, the District Commissioner, whose retirement had been enforced by ill-health, would be leaving for England on the following Thursday, taking with him his Pathan bearer, Ala Yar, and his
khansamah
(cook) Mahdoo, whose home was in the hills beyond Abbottabad, both of whom had been in his service for over twenty years. Anderson had been a friend of both John Nicholson and Sir Henry Lawrence, and had in his youth spent several years in Afghanistan on the staff of the ill-fated Macnaghton. He spoke half-a-dozen dialects and had an exhaustive knowledge and a deep love for the North-West Frontier Province and the land beyond its borders, and he would be an ideal person to keep an eye on young Ashton during the long voyage home, and for as many school holidays as the Pelham-Martyns would permit – always supposing he could be persuaded to accept such a task. The Commandant of the Guides Corps had wasted no time, but calling for his horse had ridden off that same day to lay the whole matter before Colonel Anderson. And the retiring Commissioner, intrigued by the story, had instantly consented.

‘But of course you will return,’ said Zarin, reassuring the anxious Ash. ‘Only first it is necessary to acquire learning, and that, they say, must be done in
Belait
. Though I do not myself… Well, no matter. But it is even more necessary to remain alive, and it is certain that you are not safe in this country while there is a price upon your head. You cannot be sure that the Rani's spies have lost your trail, but we can at least be sure that they will not follow it across the sea, and that long before you return, both she and they will have forgotten you. I and my brother Awal Shah have been sworn to secrecy and cannot even send news of you to our father, for as letters may be opened and read by the curious, it is better that he should be kept in ignorance rather than risk betraying your whereabouts and your changed fortunes to those who wish you ill. But later, when the
gurrh-burrh
has died down, if the Colonel-Sahib thinks that it is safe to do so, I will write to you to
Belait
; and remember that you do not go there alone. Anderson-Sahib is a good man and one whom you may trust, and he and his servants will see to it that you do not wholly forget us while you learn to be a Sahib – and you will find that the years will go quickly, Ashok.’

Yet there Zarin had been wrong, for they had not gone quickly. They had crawled by so slowly that every week had seemed a month and every month a year. But he had been right about Colonel Anderson. The ex-District Commissioner had taken a liking to the boy, and during the long, tedious days of the voyage he had managed to teach Ash an astonishing amount of English, having impressed upon him that to be speechless in a foreign land would be a grave disadvantage and, moreover, humiliating to pride.

The point had been taken, and Ash, who had inherited his father's gift for languages, had applied himself with such diligence to the mastering of this new tongue that a year later you would never have known that he had spoken any other, for with the natural imitativeness of youth he had come to speak it with the exact drawl and inflection of upper-crust England – the voice of pedantic tutors and elderly Pelham-Martyns. Yet try as he would, he could not learn to think of himself as one of them, nor did they find it easy to accept him as such.

He was to remain a stranger in a strange land, and England would never be ‘Home’ to him, because home was Hindustan. He was still – and always would be – Sita's son; and there were endless things about this new life that were not only alien to him, but horrifying. Trivial things in the opinion of Englishmen, but to one brought up in the religion of his foster-mother's people, incredibly shocking. Such as the eating of pork and beef; the one an abomination and the other sacrilege unspeakable – the pig being an unclean animal and the cow a sacred one.

No less appalling was the European habit of using a toothbrush not once but many times, instead of a twig or a small stick that could be plucked daily and discarded after use; saliva, as everyone knows, being of all things the most polluting. Apparently the English did not know, and there were bitter battles before Ash could be brought to accept this and other practices that seemed to him barbaric.

That first year had been a difficult time for all concerned, not least for Ash's relatives, who were equally horrified by the habits and appearance of this young ‘heathen’ from the East. Rigidly conservative and possessing all the in-bred insularity of their race, they flinched from the prospect of displaying Hilary's son to the critical gaze of their friends and neighbours, and hastily revised their original plans, which had included sending their nephew to the famous public school that had been responsible for the education of seven generations of Pelham-Martyns. Instead, they engaged a resident tutor, together with the weekly attendance of an elderly cleric and a retired Oxford Don, to ‘lick him into shape’, and thankfully agreed to an arrangement whereby he should spend his holidays with Colonel Anderson.

Pelham Abbas, the seat of Hilary's elder brother, Sir Matthew Pelham-Martyn, Bart, was an imposing property consisting of a large, square Queen Anne house, built on the site of the earlier Tudor one that had been destroyed by Cromwell's men in 1644, and surrounded by terraced lawns, walled gardens, stables and greenhouses. There was also an ornamental lake, an extensive park in which Ash was permitted to ride, a trout stream, and on the far side of a belt of woodland in which Sir Matthew's gamekeeper raised pheasants, a home-farm consisting of some four hundred acres. The house itself was full of family portraits and Regency furniture, and the Pelham-Martyns, who had feared that their uncivilized young nephew might be over-awed by it, were disagreeably surprised to discover that he considered it cold and uncomfortable, and not to be compared in either size or magnificence to some Indian palace with an unpronounceable name in which, so he said, he had lived for ‘many years’.