The Far Pavilions - Mary Margaret Kaye [12]
She stayed there for the best part of an hour, hushing the bewildered boy and begging him in whispers to stay still and make no noise; but though she heard no more hoof-beats on the Meerut road, the stillness of the morning lent clarity to a distant crackle of firing and the voices of men shouting under the walls of Delhi. Presently these too ceased or were absorbed into the work-a-day sounds of the awaking city and the normal noises of an Indian morning: the creak of a well-wheel, partridges calling out on the plains and sarus cranes by the river; the harsh cry of a peacock from the standing crops, and the chatter and chirrup of tree-rats, saht-bai and weaver-birds. A troop of brown monkeys settled in the branches of the peepul tree, and a faint breeze off the river stirred the tall elephant grass and made a dry monotonous rustling that blotted out all other sounds.
‘Is it a tiger?’ whispered Ash, who had sat up over more than one kill with Uncle Akbar and knew about tigers.
‘No – but we must not talk. We must be quiet,’ urged Sita. She could not have explained the panic that the yelling horsemen had aroused in her, or what exactly she was afraid of. But her heart was still beating at twice its normal speed and she knew that not even the cholera, or the terrible hours of their last night in camp, had frightened her as the sight of those men had done. Cholera, after all, she knew; and sickness and death and the ways of wild animals. But this was something else. Something inexplicable and terrifying…
A country cart drawn by a pair of lethargic bullocks jolted slowly down the road, and the homely, unhurried sound of its passing reassured her. The sun lipped the rim of the far horizon and suddenly it was day, and Sita's breathing slowed and steadied. She stood up cautiously, and peering through the parched grasses saw that the road lay empty in the bright sunlight. Nothing moved upon it – which was in itself unusual, for the Meerut road was normally a busy one and carried the main traffic from Rohilkund and Oude to Delhi. But Sita was unaware of this, and the silence encouraged her, though she was not anxious to follow too closely on the heels of those wild-eyed horsemen, and it seemed wiser to wait awhile. There was still a little food left, but they had finished the milk on the previous night and were both becoming increasingly thirsty.
‘Wait here,’ she told Ash. ‘I will go to the river to fetch water, and I shall not be long. Do not move from here, my heart. Stay still and you will be safe.’
Ash had obeyed her, for he had caught the infection of her panic and for the first time in his life had been frightened. Though he, like Sita, could not have told what he was afraid of.
It had been a long wait, for Sita made a detour and reached the river bank some way above the spot where the road ran on to the bridge of boats, which would have been the shortest way to the water. From here she could see across the sand bars and the wandering channels of the Jumna to the Calcutta Gate and the long line of the wall that stretched away past the Arsenal to the Water Bastion; and also hear, more clearly now, the noise of the city, which sounded from that distance like the hum of an overturned hive of angry bees, magnified a thousand times.
Mixed with that sound were the sharper ones of shots, now a lone one, now a staccato crackle of firing; and the sky above the roof tops was alive with birds – hawks, cawing flocks of crows, and startled pigeons, wheeling and swooping and rising sharply again as though disturbed by something in the streets below. Yes, there was something gravely wrong with Delhi that morning, and it would be better to keep away and not attempt to enter the city until she had some knowledge of what was happening there. It was a pity that there was so little food left, but there would be enough for the child. And