The Far Pavilions - Mary Margaret Kaye [17]
There were no lights at this hour, and roads, bungalows and gardens lay quiet in the dawn. But the smell of burning was suddenly stronger, and it was not the familiar smell of charcoal or dung fires, but the harsher smell of smouldering beams and thatch, of scorched earth and brickwork.
It was still too dark to make out more than the outline of trees and bungalows, and though the tripping tap of the donkey's hooves was now clearly audible on the harder surface of a made road, no one challenged them, and it seemed that the sentries too were asleep.
The Abuthnots' bungalow lay on the near side of the cantonment in a quiet, tree-shaded road, and Sita found it without much difficulty. Dismounting at the gate she lifted the boy down and began to pull at the knots of her bundle.
‘What are you doing?’ inquired Ash, interested. He hoped that she meant to produce something for him to eat, for he was hungry. But Sita was unpacking the sailor suit that she had meant to put on him in the house of Daya Ram's cousin, the grain merchant. It was not fitting that the ‘Burra-Sahib's’ son should be presented to his father's people in the dusty, travel-stained garments of a street-arab, and at least she would see that he was properly clothed. The suit would be crumpled but it was clean, and the shoes well polished; and surely the Memsahib would understand and forgive the lack of pressing?
Ash sighed resignedly and allowed himself to be hurried into the hated sailor suit without protest. He seemed to have grown a lot since he last wore it, for it was uncomfortably tight, and when it came to putting on the strapped European shoes he found it impossible to force his feet into them.
‘You are not trying, piara (dear),’ scolded Sita, almost in tears between weariness and vexation. ‘Push hard – harder.’
But it was no use, and she had to let him tread down the heels and wear them as though they had been slippers. The white sailor hat with its wide blue ribbon had not been improved by its long sojourn in the bundle, but she straightened it with an anxious hand and carefully adjusted the elastic band under his chin.
‘Now you are altogether a Sahib, Heart-of-my-heart,’ whispered Sita, kissing him. She wiped away a tear with the corner of her sari, and tying up his discarded clothing in her bundle, came to her feet and led him up the drive towards the house.
The garden was already silver-grey in the first pale wash of the dawn, and the Abuthnots' bungalow stood out clear-cut and distinct – and quiet. So quiet that as they approached it they heard a quick patter of paws on matting as a dark shape appeared out of the blackness of an open doorway, and scuttling down the verandah, loped away across the lawn. It was not a Sahib's dog, or even one of the pariah-dogs that haunted the cantonment bazaars, but a hyena, its high, humped shoulders and grotesquely stunted hind-quarters unmistakable in the growing light…
Sita stood still, her heart once again racing in panic. She could hear the receding rustle of leaves as the hyena vanished among the bushes, and the steady munching of the donkey by the gate. But there was still no sound from the house, or from the servants' quarters behind it, where surely someone should be awake and stirring. Where was the chowkidar, the night watchman who should have been guarding the bungalow? Her eye was caught by a small white object that lay on the gravel almost at her feet, and she stooped slowly and picked it up. It was a high-heeled satin shoe such as she had seen the memsahibs wear in the evenings for balls or burra khanas,* an incongruous object to find lying discarded on the front drive at that hour – or any hour.
Sita's frightened gaze darted over the lawns and flower-beds and she saw for the first time that there were other objects littering the garden: books, pieces of broken china, torn fragments of clothing, a stocking… She dropped the satin slipper,