The Far Pavilions - Mary Margaret Kaye [167]
‘No,’ breathed Anjuli, her eyes wide and enormous. ‘No, it cannot be true. I do not believe it. It is a trick.’
‘Why should I trick you? Ask me anything; something that only Ashok could know. And if I cannot answer –’
‘He could have told you,’ interrupted Anjuli breathlessly. ‘You could be repeating things that you learned from him. Yes, that is it!’
‘Is it? But why? There is nothing to be gained. Why should I trouble to tell you this if it were not true?’
‘But – but you are a Sahib. An Angrezi Sahib. How can you be Ashok? I knew his mother. He was the son of my waiting-woman, Sita.’
Ash put the lamp back on the table and sat down again on the camp bed. He said slowly: ‘So he always thought. But it was not so. And when she came to die, she told him that the woman who bore him was an Angrezi and the wife of an Angrezi, and that she, Sita, whose husband was his father's head syce, had been his foster-mother – his own having died at his birth. It was something that he – that I – did not wish to learn, for she had been, in every way but one, my real mother. But that did not make it any the less true, and truth is truth. I was, I am, Ashok. If you do not believe me you have only to send word to Koda Dad Khan, who lives now in his own village in the country of the Yusufzais, and whom you must surely remember. Or to his son, Zarin, who is a Jemadar of the Guides, in Mardan. They will tell you that what I say is true.’
‘Oh, no!’ whispered Anjuli. Her voice failed, and turning from him she leaned her head against the tent pole and wept as though her heart would break.
It was, perhaps, the one reaction he was not prepared for, and it not only disconcerted him but left him feeling embarrassed and helpless, and more than a little indignant.
What on earth had she to cry about? Girls! thought Ash – not for the first time – and began to wish that he had kept his mouth shut. He had meant to do so; though admittedly only after it had occurred to him that others besides Anjuli-Bai might be interested in the fate of Ashok, and that it had probably been a grave mistake to resurrect the memory of that long-forgotten little boy. But the fact that Juli had remembered him and his mother with so much affection for so many years had melted his resolution, and it had suddenly seemed cruel not to tell her the truth, and allow her to believe, if it was any comfort to her, that he had kept a promise that, to be honest, he had forgotten all about until now. He had presumed that she would be pleased. Or at least excited. Not appalled and tearful.
What did she expect? thought Ash resentfully. What else could he have done? Fobbed her off with some cock-and-bull story of a stranger who had given him that piece of pearl-shell? Or refused to tell her anything and sent her away with a flea in her ear – which is what she deserved for behaving in this embarrassing manner. He scowled at the haze of insects that by now were circling the lamp and tried to shut his ears to the sound of that stifled sobbing.
The clock on the table by his bed struck three, and the small, brisk chimes made him start violently, not because they reminded him of the lateness of the hour, but because, subconsciously, his nerves were on the stretch. He had not realized until then just how apprehensive he was, but that involuntary spasm of alarm was a reminder of the dangers of the present situation and the horrifying risk that Juli had taken in coming to see him. She had brushed it away lightly enough, but that did not make it any the less real; if she were missed, and found here, the consequences for them both did not bear thinking of.
For the second time that night Ash found himself thinking how easily he could be murdered (and Juli too, for that matter!) without anyone ever knowing, and his exasperation mounted. How like a woman