The Far Pavilions - Mary Margaret Kaye [160]
‘At this moment I would rather have a hot bath and dry clothes,’ said Ash with a laugh. ‘And if anyone deserves praise it is Anjuli-Bai, for keeping her head and getting her younger sister out, instead of screaming and struggling to escape herself, when she must have known that the ruth was filling up with water. Where the devil is my syce? Ohé, Kulu Ram!’
‘Here Sahib,’ said a voice at his elbow: the horse's hooves had made no sound on the sandy ground. Ash took the reins and swung himself into the saddle, and having saluted Mulraj, touched the horse with his heel and cantered off between the clumps of pampas grass and the thorny kikar trees to where the lights of the camp made an orange glow in the night sky.
He turned in early, and the next day had been a busy one, for he had ridden off at dawn with Jhoti, Mulraj and Tarak Nath, a member of the camp's panchayat, and an armed escort of half-a-dozen sowars, to reconnoitre the next ford. The boy had been an unexpected addition to the party, having apparently teased Mulraj into bringing him. But as he proved to be an excellent rider, and was obviously eager to please and be pleased, he was no trouble to anyone. And it occurred to Ash that it would be no bad thing to get him away from his attendants and out into the fresh air, on horseback, as often as possible, for a day in the open had plainly done the little prince a world of good, and he already looked a different being from the pallid and anxious-eyed child of their first meeting.
The ford had proved impassable, and as it had been necessary to find out, by personal inspection, which of two alternative crossing places would save the most time and cause the least inconvenience, the sun was setting and the day almost over by the time they returned to the camp. Ash had intended to ask for an early start on the following morning, but this has been frustrated by Shushila-Bai, the younger princess, who sent word that she was suffering from shock and sickness and did not intend to move anywhere at all for at least two or three days – if not longer.
Her decision was not so tiresome as it would have been two days earlier, for food stocks were high and the river provided an unlimited supply of water. And as it happened, Ash himself was by no means averse to remaining in one place for a few days, for there were both black-buck and chinkara out on the plain, and he had seen snipe on a jheel near by and any amount of partridge in the scrubland. It would, he thought, be pleasant to go out shooting with Mulraj instead of shepherding this flock across country.
Having been informed that the Rajkumari Shushila was indisposed, he was surprised when a second messenger arrived with a politely worded request that he would pay the Maharajah's sisters the honour of visiting them. And as the messenger on this occasion had been no less a person than the brides' uncle, affectionately known throughout the camp as ‘Kaka-ji Rao’*, it had been impossible for him to refuse, even though the hour was late and he would have preferred bed to social conversation. However, there being no help for it, he duly changed into mess dress, and almost as an after-thought, slipped the broken half of the mother-of-pearl fish into his pocket before accompanying the Rao-Sahib through the lamp-lit camp.
The ‘durbar tent’ in which the princesses received guests was large and comfortable, and lined throughout with a rust-red cloth embroidered in gay colours and lavishly decorated with tiny circles of looking-glass that winked and glittered as the material billowed to the night breeze