The Weeping Ash (11 page)

Both princes were in the shaded courtyard, playing a game called bull and cows. Leaning out of the window, Scylla summoned them in a way that would have scandalized Miss Musson: placing two fingers in her mouth, she emitted an ear-piercing whistle. Cal had taught her this trick. Looking up, the boys saw her, laughed, and soon came clattering up the stone stairs. While they did so she had leisure to notice an open exercise book on the table with a drawing of a dragon, quite skillfully executed, and underneath the legend “
Mademoiselle Paget est un bête féroce
!
”

Clever little monkey, she thought, studying it; I wonder what will become of him? Perhaps the Maharajah will make him into an ambassador. For Ranji, son of a minor wife, had no hope of succeeding to his father's kingdom; that would go to Mihal Shahzada, the eldest son of Mahtab Kour. Unless, of course, the Rani Sada succeeded in regaining her power over Mihal's father…But in either case Ranji would never succeed.

The two princes came bounding into the room, and Scylla said severely:

“You are late, both of you!”

“But
you
were late yourself, mademoiselle,” pointed out Amur with perfect truth.

Both boys were slender, dark, and extremely handsome, like graceful wild creatures, deer or gazelle, Scylla frequently thought. They wore uniforms which had been sent up from Calcutta, white doeskin breeches, gold-laced tunics, gold spurs, which scratched the furniture shockingly, and turbans set with clusters of jewels which were a perpetual nuisance, dangling in their eyes and impeding their vision.

“
I
was kept in conversation with your father,” Scylla said, “but you should have been getting on with your translation in the meantime. And, Ranji,
bête
is feminine—
Mademoiselle Paget est
UNE bête féroce!
I have a mind to make you write it out fifty times.”

“Oh, pray do not, Mademoiselle Periseela! Look, we have got some sweets for you.” Ranji's look of pleading, laughing dismay was irresistible, and the sweets in the palace were usually delicious—made from cream, sugar, fruit juices, and nuts—but Scylla said firmly that it was too soon after her breakfast for sweets and that the boys were to translate at least a chapter from English into French before anybody touched so much as a single nut.

After some sighing and expostulation the two princes set to work. Scylla was making them translate
Tom Jones
—which she had discovered among the books of Mr. Winthrop Musson—and fortunately they found it quite amusing, frequently bursting into peals of laughter as they collaborated on a rough rendering. Meanwhile Scylla corrected their English essays and collated a sheaf of geometry exercises to take home to Cal, who, in a rather lackadaisical way, took charge of this side of their education, since Scylla was not mathematically minded.

“There are some Frenchmen come here to see Taba yesterday night,” Ranji presently looked up from
Tom Jones
to say. “They are telling my father that he should have a
Francese compo
—a French division—in his army. Maybe so that he can fight the English like Tippoo Sahib!”

“There: you see now how useful it is to be able to speak French,” Scylla pointed out in a schoolmistressy voice, but then spoiled the effect by adding, “And will he do so, do you suppose?”

“Mihal would like him to,” Amur began, but Ranji interrupted:

“Taba will not let Mihal have any say in the matter.”

“But your father is not very well,” Scylla said involuntarily—indeed the Maharajah had looked to her like a dying man. “If he should become really ill, then perhaps Mihal might have to take charge of the army.”

“What Taba is hoping for is that Kamaran Sahib will return with all the guns that he promised to bring from Feringistan—”

“Yes, double-barrel muskets that will kill at a thousand paces, fuses, brass cannon—they are far better than matchlocks—carbines, pistols, and cuirasses,” put in Ranji eagerly.

“Bows and arrows are better for a true Sikh,” pronounced Amur firmly, but his brother said:

“There is not much sense in being armed with bows and arrows, if your enemy has guns that will kill at a thousand yards.”

“But do you suppose that Kamaran Sahib ever will come back?” said Scylla.

She had heard tell of this personage, but neither she nor Cal had ever met him, since he had left Ziatur three years ago, before they began to frequent the palace. The princes, who revered him, said that he was a Yagistani—American, like Miss Musson, who knew him somewhat but rather disapproved of him. For several years he had been in charge of the Maharajah's armed forces. His real name, Scylla understood, was Cameron, Colonel Cameron. Nobody seemed to know about Kamaran Sahib's origins, whether he had previously been an officer in the British, French, or Russian armies. He had traveled, Miss Musson reported, widely; he had sailed around the world; he seemed to have no wife, children, or attachments. He was a very frivolous man, she said severely. Winthrop Musson had been fond of him and thought him a clever, cultivated fellow; the princes revered him as a kind of demigod.

“But of course he will come back,” predicted Amur confidently, breaking in on Scylla's train of thought, “for Kamaran Sahib always did what he promised; and furthermore Taba had a message last month from Karachi to say he had arrived there with a load of carbines.”

At this moment a messenger arrived to ask if the Mem Periseela would visit Mahtab Kour on her way out. Scylla, consulting the watch that hung on a ribbon around her neck, saw that the boys' hour was up. Hastily setting them another assignment, she bade the relieved pair good-bye, urged them not to eat too many sweets, and followed her guide along a dark, narrow corridor, up and down innumerable stairways, and across several courtyards, until they came to the queen mother's suite. Once, when halfway across a wide antechamber, feeling rather than observing a presence above her, Scylla paused momentarily and glanced up; a screened, curtained gallery ran transversely over the room she had just entered. Leaning over the fretted balustrade was a girl, richly dressed, hung with ropes of jewels, a girl whose extreme, indeed dazzling beauty did not in the least disguise a look of concentrated malignity on her face. The two pairs of eyes met for a moment; then, with a whisk of curtains, the angry beauty withdrew from view. It was the Rani Sada. But what in the world makes her so angry with
me
? thought Scylla, rather startled, since only an hour before she had been experiencing profound feelings of sympathy for the other girl. Possibly Sada had been expecting somebody else… Just the same, the odd little encounter left a shiver of unease in her bones, a sense of decided disquiet.

Another five minutes brought her to the region of Ziatur palace that was occupied by Mahtab Kour and her attendants. This part was central, and very old; traditionally always used by the reigning queen. Much of it was in very bad repair: flights of crumbling stone steps led downward into unguessable horrors of darkness; there were said to be huge underground cisterns where ancient crocodiles, now grown to vast size, were fed live goats daily by priests (and also performed, if necessary, the duty of crunching up any of the royal ladies who were discovered to be unfaithful to their lord). Great dim halls here contained worn stone statues of incalculable antiquity—Shiva the Creator, Ganesha, the elephant-headed god of wisdom, Kali, Shiva's wife, horrific with a garland of skulls, red protruding tongue, and hand grasping a bloodstained sword; six-armed Bhairava, holding a trident, a sword, more skulls, his face smeared with somebody's offering of food… These were Hindi gods, left over from some previous dynasty, but up here in the north all gods were respected and propitiated. There were Kafir deities too, Imra the Creator and Gish the war god. The citadel had changed hands many times through the centuries and the general feeling of the inmates was that it would be folly to offend any divinity.

Mahtab Kour must once have been very beautiful, but now all animation had left her face. Married to the Maharajah at twelve, she had been brought, in a curtained litter, six weeks' journey from the Deccan, in the south, traveling only at night, never allowed to look between the curtains. Miserably homesick for her own family and place of birth, so far away, she had known from the beginning that there was hardly the slightest chance of her seeing any of her own relatives again, or ever leaving Ziatur; if she had proved infertile she might, perhaps, have been permitted to go on a pilgrimage to a queens' praying at the Golden Temple in Amritsar, the holy town of the Sikhs—but, as it turned out, fortunately for her, she had presented the Maharajah with an heir, Mihal Shahzada, when she was fifteen. After that she had borne a succession of daughters and had soon sunk into disfavor. Now, past the age of thirty, her life was, to all intents, finished; not for years had the Maharajah bothered to come to her apartments, nor did she leave them; she had the soft white transparent pallor of a flower that has grown in darkness, and the slow, sad, languid movements of a creature who no longer cares what happens to her. The first three of her little daughters had long ago been dispatched in closed palanquins to be brides of distant rulers; and it was rumored that the last had been hurled as a newborn infant into the crocodile tank as a punishment to its mother for having given birth to yet another girl child. Mahtab occupied herself, as best she could, with elaborate embroidery, with eating—she had grown immensely fat—and with making pets of slave girls, whose favor waxed and dwindled with erratic unpredictability. Even her son Mihal very seldom came to see her any more. Miss Musson, intensely sorry for her, had attempted to interest her in learning to read, to draw and knit, in acquiring knowledge of other lands, of other cultures; but it was of no use; her spirit had wilted and died inside her. The Rani Sada, a vital, impatient, ambitious girl, coming from a warrior caste, not a decayed, inbred royal family, made no secret of her contempt for the older queen.

“
Sat Sri Akal
—greetings to Your Royal Highness,” Scylla hailed Mahtab, in as cheerful a tone as she could muster, walking rapidly into the queen's apartment. And she curtsied, wondering how soon she could get away. “What service can I render you?”

Mahtab Kour opened obliquely. First she offered tea, sherbet, coffee, or almond-curd sweetmeats. These Scylla politely declined.

“Well, I will have a sweetmeat,” said Mahtab Kour, and did so. She was like a huge mass of unbaked dough, Scylla thought, lolling back on her pink and scarlet silk cushions, wrapped in brilliant gauzes, strung with jewels on her arms, ankles, neck, ears; a deep red ruby dangled on her forehead—and two profoundly sad eyes, the currants in the loaf, looked out uncomprehendingly and beseechingly from under the ruby.

“My little Persian girl Laili has a trouble in her ears, Mem Periseela. Will you look at them and try if you can heal them?”

“Certainly,” Scylla said, knowing with dismal premonition what she would see. Mahtab clapped her hands and the child was brought in—a pretty little black-eyed, olive-skinned creature, probably no more than seven or eight, one of the succession of slave favorites who came and went, treated as pets at first, then, presently, falling from grace, either because the queen found a newer distraction or because they came under the influence of the Rani Sada, who liked to have a spy or two in her rival's retinue, even though that rival had long fallen from power.

“Show the mem your ears, Laili!” ordered Mahtab, and the child, whimpering with pain, allowed Scylla to turn her head from side to side. It was instantly plain what the trouble was: her ears must have been pierced with a dirty implement, probably some old brass pin, and the small wounds had become hideously infected.

“Why did you not tell me about this days ago?” asked Scylla, trying, as always, to keep any hint of impatience and anger from her voice.

“Dr. Nuruddin said the child had a demon in her ears and that if we prayed and made offering to the goddess Durga the demon would infallibly be cast out. I have prayed and offered a kid, but the demon must be a very strong one; it has refused to go.”

“Dr. Nuruddin is—” Scylla checked herself.

“Now I thought perhaps you could put your ointment on and drive the devil away,” said Mahtab hopefully.

“Ointment will not help in this case, Highness,” Scylla said. “The child is badly sick—see how languid are her eyes, how hot her forehead. The devil is
inside
her now, not just in her ears. Will you not allow me to have her carried out, to the Mem Musson's hospital? She needs much medicine and careful nursing.”

But this, of course, was quite out of the question. First, Mahtab could not possibly part with the child; and secondly, it was unthinkable that a palace slave girl, even so small a one as Laili, should be allowed out through the streets of the town. Scylla accordingly did what she could—washed off the paste of dung and ground-up owl's feathers which had been applied to Laili's ears (on the theory that, as owls have sharp hearing, their feathers must be good for aural afflictions); then, muttering objurgations against Dr. Nuruddin, she applied some healing balm.

“Poor little thing—I fear she may die, as my little Zindan did when the monkey bit her,” Mahtab said with a kind of fretful resignation. “It is plain the gods do not look kindly on me; all my favorites come to harm. Perhaps it is just as well that my dear son Mihal does not visit me any more—he, too, might incur the gods' displeasure. Huneefa, Lehna, Lakshmi!” she called. “Take the child away; the sight of her is distressing to me. Carry her far off where I cannot hear her crying.”

When this had been done and Scylla was on the point of taking her leave, Mahtab came to the real reason for her summons.

“Mem Periseela—it has been said to me that you are greatly favored with the confidence of the Maharajah—that he listens with respect to the things you tell him.”