The Far Pavilions - Mary Margaret Kaye [10]
He had not been frightened, because he had never yet had cause to be afraid of anything, and Uncle Akbar had taught him that a man must never show fear. Also he was, by temperament, an abnormally courageous child, and life in a camp that moved through jungles, deserts and unexplored mountain ranges had accustomed him to the ways of the wild animals. But he did not know why Sita wept and shivered and why she had not let him approach the ‘Burra-Sahib’, or understand what had happened to Uncle Akbar and the others. He knew that they were dead, for he had seen death before: tigers that he had been allowed to sit up for in a machan with Uncle Akbar and had seen shot. Kills that they had waited above; goats or young buffaloes that a tiger had struck down and partially eaten on the previous day. Black-buck and duck and partridge shot for the pot. These creatures had been dead. But surely Uncle Akbar could not be dead as they were dead? There must be something indestructible – something that remained of men who had walked and talked with one and told one stories, men whom one had loved and looked up to. But where had it gone? It was all very puzzling, and he did not understand.
Sita had dragged thorn branches from the boma that had once protected the camp, and piled them in a circle about his tent, heaping them high. And it was as well that she had, for towards midnight a pair of leopards had driven off the jackals and the hyenas to lay claim to the feast, and before dawn a tiger roared in the jungle beyond the sal trees, and daylight showed the print of his pugs within a yard of their flimsy barrier of thorn.
There had been no milk that morning, and little food. But Sita had given the child the remains of a chuppatti – the unleavened bread of India – and afterwards she made a bundle of their few belongings, and taking him by the hand led him away from the horror and desolation of the camp.
2
Sita could not have been more than twenty-five years old. But she looked twice that age, for hard work and yearly pregnancies, the bearing of five children and the bitter grief and disappointment of their loss, had combined to age her prematurely. She could neither read nor write and she was not clever, but she possessed courage, loyalty and a loving heart, and it never occurred to her to keep for herself the money Hilary had given her, or to disobey his orders. She had loved Hilary's son from the hour of his birth, and now Hilary had given the boy into her keeping and told her to take him back to his own people. There was no one else to care for Ash-Baba now but herself: he was her responsibility and she would not fail him.
She had no idea who his own people were, or how to find them, but this did not worry her over-much, for she remembered the number of the house in Delhi cantonment where Ash-Baba's father had left the greater part of his luggage, and also the name of the Colonel-Sahib who lived there. She would take the child to Delhi, to Abuthnot Sahib and his Memsahib, who would arrange everything, and as they would certainly need an ayah for the boy she, Sita, need not be parted from him. Delhi lay far to the southward but she never doubted that they would reach it in safety, though because the money she had taken from the tin box was more than she had ever seen in her life, she became afraid of attracting undue attention on the road, and dressed Ash in the oldest garments he possessed, warning him that he must on no account talk to strangers.
It was May before they came within sight of the city of the Moguls, for Ash was too heavy for her to carry except for short distances, and though he was a sturdy child he could not cover more than a few miles in one day. The weather too, though usually cool for that season of the year, was getting hotter, and the long, burning days made for slow travel. Ash had accepted their journey without