The Weeping Ash (12 page)

“Oh, hardly that, Your Majesty,” Scylla answered with considerable caution, wondering what was coming next. “Sometimes—when the Maharajah is feeling tired or indisposed—he amuses himself by chatting with me for a few minutes. But I doubt very much if he pays heed to anything I say. He likes to practice his French—that is all.”

Behind her, in a sibilant whisper, could be heard the comment of one of the attendants:

“It certainly
must
be her wit that our master admires—if indeed he does. For who could find anything to admire in that pink and white face of a pig, with the nose that turns upward and the mouth like a doorway—it is enough to make you die of laughing just to look at her!”

The whisperer spoke Urdu, not Punjabi; glancing around, Scylla saw that she was Huneefa, the big dark-skinned ayah whom Mahtab had brought with her from the south, many years before. Huneefa was a great friend of Nuruddin, the palace physician (the witch doctor, as Miss Musson indignantly called him), and without doubt would retail to him the fact that his treatment had been disparaged by the Feringi maiden.

Abruptly, Mahtab Kour ordered her women to go into the next room. “No—
all
of you—how do I know which of you is a tattletale, a spy who will carry reports of what I say to the ears of my enemy?”

Scowling with annoyance—particularly Huneefa—they left. Mahtab Kour went on in a low tone:

“That female viper from the Punjab—she who stole my place in my lord's affections—I will not speak her name aloud for fear even the word should poison me—I have heard that, since she, too, lost my lord's favor, she has committed an even more atrocious wickedness and is laying her nets, casting her wiles, in order to entrap my darling son Mihal. Even to speak of such betrayal is like arsenic on the tongue—but I have heard it, and I believe it.”

Scylla had heard it too—not in the bazaars but from her brother Cal, who had several times commented laconically that the Rani Sada and Prince Mihal seemed to be becoming as thick as thieves.

“And not surprising when you think about it,” he said.

“His own
father's mistress
?” Scylla had indeed been somewhat scandalized.

“Why not? They are much of an age, and she is pretty as a tiger lily. And also she is as shrewd as she can hold together—Rani Sada knows which side her chupattis are buttered on! What do you suppose would happen to her when the Maharajah dies—which, from the look of him, he is bound to do within the next year or so? Unless Sada had taken care to ingratiate herself with the next ruler, what would you give for her chances? Mihal used to be fond of his mother—quite a mother's boy—and Mahtab Kour would probably part with all her rubies for a chance to stick a dagger between Sada's ribs. But Mihal has an eye for a pretty girl; he's easily beguiled, and Sada knows that; she is taking her precautions in advance.”

Now Mahtab Kour went on vehemently. “The very gods would hide their faces for shame at what that creature does—but she is shameless! She is my lord's
wife
—for it is true, indeed, he had the karewa, the betrothal ceremony, performed when she returned from Amritsar, and though that is not so important as the chadar dalna, the marriage, it means that her child by my lord is legitimate—and now she betrays him! With his own son! It is profanation of her vows! It is treason!”

“But,” said Scylla, very uneasily, “even if indeed it is so—”

“Without a shadow of a doubt it is so. She brings infamy to the name of my lord's family!”

“Why are you telling me about it?” said Scylla bluntly.

“Because I wish you to bring this news to my lord!”

“The Maharajah? Oh no—impossible! I—I could not transgress on his privacy to tell him a thing like that.”

Scylla had a very poor opinion of Prince Mihal. She had hardly met him, except when he called at the bungalow, for it was not considered suitable that an unmarried Feringi lady should consort with the heir; but he and Cal were cronies to a degree that sometimes caused Miss Musson to say, “I wonder if it is wise for your brother to see quite so much of that young man?” And even Scylla, not usually a prey to anxiety or sisterly misgivings, could not feel that Mihal Shahzada was the best of companions, or likely to be a good influence. He gambled insatiably; he was addicted to wine and French brandy, which he had imported at vast expense, from Calcutta; he smoked opium and hasheesh; and he could be idly and viciously cruel as the whim took him; Scylla had once arrived in the middle entrance court to find that he and some companions had set a pariah dog on fire and were laughing uproariously and laying bets on the length of its survival, as the shrieking bundle of flame dashed crazily around and around the yard; Scylla's anger on that occasion had been so intense—luckily Miss Musson had been with her and the combined insistence of the two Feringi ladies had finally persuaded one of the soldiers to pick up his curved sword and chop off the animal's head—that ever after that day Mihal Shahzada addressed her mockingly as the “Mem Dog-Lover,” and she felt quite certain that he had not forgiven her for spoiling his sport.

If he and Sada had indeed become allies, that might account for the malignant look that Sada had given her from the upper gallery. More especially if she thought that Scylla was being employed by Mahtab Kour to pass on information to the Maharajah.

Scylla did not point out the usual fate of talebearers. She said:

“Truly, Your Majesty, I could not tell the Maharajah a thing like that! Besides—do you not suppose he may know it already? Surely nothing is hidden from him?”

“This, assuredly, he does not know. For if he did, his wrath would be terrible. Bring the news to him, sahiba, I beg of you.”

Scylla, however, replied firmly that she could not undertake to do so. “I could not bear him such tidings, Majesty. Besides, if His Excellency does talk to me—and sometimes weeks go by when we do not meet—the subjects he wishes to discuss are European wars, and whether the English will permit Ranjit Singh to capture Lahore.”

“Men's talk!” said Mahtab impatiently. “But it is known that you talked with him today. Of what did you speak?”

Scylla marveled, as always, at the speed with which gossip traveled in the palace. It seemed to her highly improbable that, considering how difficult it was to keep anything hidden, the Maharajah did not know of his son's intrigue. Perhaps he felt too old and sick to care.

She replied, “We were talking about the battle at Cape St. Vincent, lady.”

“Oh!” the queen exclaimed with a grimace of impatience. “If only I had his ear!”

“I will tell him, and gladly, lady, that Your Majesty wishes to consult with him—if I should be so lucky as to speak with him again.”

Scylla would promise no more, and the rani had to be content with this.

“And Your Majesty will not think again, and allow me to take the little Laili off to the hospital?”

“No—no—certainly not!” snapped Mahtab Kour. “You have my leave to depart, Mem Periseela.”

Sighing, Scylla walked back through the great courtyard. Oh, to travel away from here, she thought impatiently, to leave this nest of petty intrigue and spite.

She longed to set out for Europe, to see England, her father's country—London, Ranelagh, the Pantheon, Drury Lane, fashionably dressed ladies, Pall Mall, Sadler's Wells. She had read about these things in the Calcutta
Gazette
and stray copies of the
Gentleman's Magazine
. But three obstacles stood firmly in the way of her wishes. The first was Miss Musson—who had adopted the twins when they were orphaned, friendless, and poor, had given them a home, and treated them with uniform kindness and affection. Now, by helping with part of her work, Scylla was able, she felt, to repay some part of this kindness, and she did not see how she could possibly go off and leave the old woman alone in Ziatur, the only European resident in the town. The second obstacle was that of money. When General Paget, father of the twins, returned to England, with vague promises of presently sending for them, he had left Manuela, their mother, several thousand rupees and the house in Umballa, and had given an undertaking that more money would presently be dispatched from England. But the promised funds had never arrived, their mother had fallen ill from anxiety, the house had had to be sold, and presently Manuela had died… Scylla did not like to remember those days. The last of the money was spent, she and Cal were desperate, almost starving, when Miss Musson and her brother, who at that time were running a small mission hospital in Umballa, had adopted the two children. Winthrop Musson, a gentle, cultivated man, had taken a great liking to the quick-witted pair and had enjoyed teaching them, imparting some of his very considerable fund of learning. Cal and Scylla, starved of knowledge all their lives—for Manuela, a beautiful languid creature, a born courtesan, had never troubled to see that her children received an education, was interested in nothing but her lover, and when he left sank into melancholy—Cal and Scylla had mopped up all that Winthrop Musson could teach them like thirsty sponges. Musson had encouraged Cal's budding gift for poetry and had been delighted with his progress and talent. When the Mussons moved to Ziatur, because Winthrop suffered from a lung complaint and it was thought better for him to go northward, to be near the hills—naturally the twins went along too. And now, here we are, stuck, Scylla sometimes thought. We may very likely remain here for the rest of our lives! The third obstacle to a removal, of course, was Cal himself, who liked the life in Ziatur very well. Clever, lazy, wholly unambitious, he was perfectly content to read in Winthrop Musson's capacious library, amuse himself with Prince Mihal, go riding with his sister in the cool evening, and pay no attention, not the least in the world, to what happened in Europe, in France, in Spain, in the Mediterranean. To the news of the fall of the Bastille and the Terror in France, he had merely replied:

“How extremely shocking. What rhymes with ‘arable,' Scylla?”

“Parable. Have you
no
interest in what goes on outside this place?”

“I am a poet,” he pointed out negligently. “A poet's first study is himself.”

Miss Musson, Scylla believed, felt some concern over Cal and what would become of him, but Miss Musson felt that her primary duty was to her patients; and furthermore she had a rooted disapproval of interference and believed that people should be left alone to work out their own problems; only in extreme cases (like that of the burning dog) would she take hand.

When Scylla turned in at the entrance to Miss Musson's house it was early still—barely ten. Going inside, Scylla found, as she had expected, that Cal still slept, in exactly the same position as when she had seen him last, motionless, fathoms deep in oblivion. He had an extraordinary capacity for sleep: ten, twelve, fourteen hours he could pass at a stretch, in a kind of trance, hardly seeming to breathe, impervious to heat, cold, or any amount of noise. When the twins had been younger, when Scylla needed her brother's company for play or comfort, before and during their mother's illness, or in the frightening months after her death, Cal's gift for escaping from his difficulties in sleep had often filled her with a mixture of envy and exasperation. She could not rouse him, she knew; he would mutter some response, roll over, and flop into a new position of utter relaxation.

Now she was older, Scylla guessed that, as well as being his form of escape from the unwanted complications of life, Cal's ability to sleep for such lengthy periods had some connection with his poetic talent; he would surface from these long spells of oblivion crackling with new ideas and solutions to problems in his writing; often, indeed, after having woken up, he would be almost equally inaccessible because he would hurl himself into creation like a mongoose pursuing a cobra into a hole, feverishly anxious to capture all the elusive thoughts and images that had come to him in sleep, to pin them to ground before they could escape.

“Just a moment—pray don't distract me until I have this down—there's a love—” and then hours would go by while he rapidly scribbled down lines and then scratched them out again, his hand moving over the blotted page like a living entity with a mind and purpose of its own.

Adhering to Miss Musson's precept that people had best be left to resolve their own affairs in their own way, Scylla had long ago given up any attempts to wake Cal from sleep or to entice him away from his frenzied bouts of writing.

But this was their birthday after all.

She went into his shaded room, and, leaning over the charpoy, said loudly in his ear:

“Cal! Fiend, devil that you are! Brother! Cal! Wake up, it's your birthday!”

No response. She tried again, even louder. He moved a little, then his head flopped into the pillow, with a grunt of relief, as if he had encountered and dealt with some small, tiresome piece of business. She shook him vigorously; he smiled in his sleep and murmured, “Whoa, there, Kali! Gently, mare…”

Shrugging, Scylla let go her hold of his shoulders and walked back into the main room of the house, which ran clean through from front to back, so as to receive any breath of wind that blew.

“Missy and Cal Sahib go riding? Mem Musson left word to prepare a picnic. It is ready. I pack it up for Cal Sahib to carry?”

The khitmutgar indicated the birthday feast that Miss Musson had provided. Touched, Scylla regarded a cold chicken, a bottle of wine, a plate of fruit—shaddock, grapes, banana, pomegranate.

“Cal Sahib is fast asleep; I go by myself, Habib-ulla. Pack up the chicken and the fruit, but not the wine; it is too heavy for me; and order the syce to saddle Kali.”

“It is not correct—or at
all
wise—for Missy Sahib to go riding on her own,” objected the aged Habib-ulla. “And as for taking Kali—what will Cal Sahib say to that, when he wakes and finds out?”