Far Pavilions (75 page)

‘I would have spoken long ago, Sahib, had I dreamt that you might suspect me. But such a thought did not enter my mind, so when my servant, Karam, confessed all and threw himself upon my mercy, and I learned that no grave harm had been done and no complaints raised, I foolishly agreed not to betray him – though you must not think that I did not punish him. I assure you I did, most severely. But he told me – and I believe him – that he never intended to steal the gun; only to borrow it so that he might shoot
kala hirren'
(black-buck) ‘who come out to graze at night; there being those in our camp who eat meat and will pay good money for it. He had meant to replace the gun before it was missed, but in the darkness he mistook the Sahib for a buck, and fired, and on discovering his mistake was overcome with terror, for he said that until you leapt upon him he thought that he had killed you; and when at length he escaped from you, having dropped the gun and left a piece of clothing in your hands, he said nothing of all this but gave out that he had been injured in a fall. I myself would never have learned of it had it not been that only the day before I had given him an old coat of mine, forgetting that I had left an earring in one of the pockets, and when I realized what I had done I asked him for it, and it was then that he confessed all. Sahib – you may imagine my horror!’

He paused as though in expectation of some comment, and when Ash offered none, sighed deeply and shook his head over the recollection of that moment. ‘I should have hauled him before you on the instant – know it,’‘confessed Biju Ram magnanimously. ‘But he begged me with tears to be merciful; and as you, Sahib, had made no report of the matter and by good fortune had been unharmed, I acceded to his request, and did not find it in my heart to denounce him. He promised, too, that he would find and return my earring, but had I known that he would search your tent for it, or that you had recognized the coat as mine and suspected me of being the culprit, I would have come to you at once and told you the truth, and you would have given me my earring and all would have been well. The fault was mine – admit it – was too lenient with my rascal of a servant, and for that I ask your pardon. But had you been in my place, and the offender one of your own men, would you not have done the same? I am sure of it! And now, Sahib, having told you all, I would beg leave to return to the camp. Tomorrow my
budmarsh
of a servant shall present himself before you to make full confession of his fault and receive whatever punishment you think fit. This I can promise you.’

‘Yes, I am sure you can,’ said Ash dryly. ‘And I can also be sure that he will repeat what you have told me, word for word; because he will not dare to do otherwise. Also I imagine that you will see that he is well rewarded for acting as scapegoat.’

‘The Sahib wrongs me,’ protested Biju Ram, injured. ‘I have spoken only the truth. Moreover, there are many who can bear witness that I did not leave my tent that night, and –’

‘And that on the following morning your face showed no signs of cuts or scratches,’ finished Ash. ‘Of course. Though I think I have heard otherwise. But no matter – even if that could be proved I am sure that you and your friends would have some plausible story to account for it. Very well then. Since it seems that you can produce so many witnesses to swear that you speak truth, let us pretend that it was not you but one of your servants who stole my gun and tried to shoot me with it while wearing, by chance, a cast-off garment that you had generously given him only a day before. But what of the earring? Have you witnesses to prove that it is indeed yours?’

The moonlight betrayed the sudden, startled widening of Biju Ram's eyes, and Ash saw it and knew that he had been right in thinking that no one else would know about that pearl and that it could never be worn. To have admitted possessing it would have been to invite blackmail, if not murder. For even after all these years there would still be men who would recognize it, and recall how its owner's disappearance had never been satisfactorily explained. Biju Ram could bribe or threaten any number of people into giving false evidence, but he would not risk producing the black pearl in public or attempting to bribe anyone – even the most venal of his fellow conspirators – into testifying to his ownership of that jewel.

There was a noticeable interval before he replied to the question, and becoming aware of this he essayed a smile and said: ‘The Sahib is pleased to jest. What need of witnesses? The trinket is mine, and surely the fact that I came here to search for it is proof enough, because had I myself not placed it for safe-keeping in an inner pocket of that coat, how could I have known it was there? – or what to look for? Besides, I doubt if even my servants would recognize it, as I have never worn it. It belonged to my father, who gave it to me as he lay dying, so it saddens me to see it, but I have carried it with me ever since in memory of him. I look upon it as a charm to remind me of a great and good man, and to keep me from harm.’

‘Very filial of you,’ commented Ash. ‘And very interesting too. I would have said that he was not nearly old enough to be your father, as there cannot have been more than five years between you, if that. But then perhaps he was a particularly precocious child.’

Biju Ram's smile became a little fixed, but his voice remained smooth and once again he spread out his hands in a deprecatory gesture: ‘You speak in riddles, Sahib, and I do not understand you. What can you know of my father?’

‘Nothing,’ said Ash. ‘But I used to know the man who owned that earring and always wore it. His name was Hira Lal.’

The sharp hiss of indrawn breath was harshly audible in the silence as Biju Ram stiffened and stood rigid, and once again his eyes were wide and revealing. But this time they reflected shock and disbelief, and the dawn of something that was half-way between rage and terror. He ran his tongue over his lips as though they had suddenly become dry, and when he spoke at last it was in a grating whisper that seemed forced from him against his will:

‘
No
,’ whispered Biju Ram. ‘No… it is not true. You could not… it is not possible…’ A shudder went through him, and he appeared to wrench himself awake from the grip of a nightmare. His voice shot up:

‘Some enemy has told you lies about me, Sahib. Do not believe them. There is no truth in this none. This man you speak of, this Mera no, Hira Lal, was it not? There must be many of that name in Karidkote. It is not an uncommon one, and it is possible that one of them has an earring somewhat similar to this one of mine. But is that any reason to accuse me of theft and falsehood? Sahib, you have been misled by someone who wishes to ruin me, and if you are a just man – and we know all Sahibs to be just – you will tell me the name of this perjurer so that I may confront him and make him admit that he lies. Who is it who accuses me?’ demanded Biju Ram in throbbing tones, ‘and of what am I accused? If you know his name, speak, Sahib. I demand justice!’

‘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…