The Far Pavilions - Mary Margaret Kaye [176]
But Ash was unable to check The Cardinal, and the bay and the roan together tore on and over the lip of the nullah, to end up in kicking, threshing turmoil among the stones and boulders ten feet below.
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Ash did not recover consciousness for some considerable time, which was just as well, because in addition to concussion and a large number of cuts and bruises, he had broken his collar-bone, cracked two ribs and dislocated a wrist; and under these circumstances, a jolting, three-mile journey in a bullock cart would have been almost as unpleasant as the subsequent setting of broken bones without the help of anaesthetics. Fortunately, however, he came through both ordeals without being aware of them.
Even more fortunately, Kaka-ji Rao's personal hakim was an expert bone-setter, for had Ash been left to the tender mercies of the Rajkumaries' doctor, whose services had been offered by Shushila-Bai, it it would have gone hard with him, the royal physician being an elderly and old-fashioned practitioner who pinned his faith to herbal remedies and the curative properties of earth-currents and incantations, combined with offerings to the gods and various concoctions made from the dung and urine of the cow.
Luckily Kaka-ji, though a devout Hindu, had little faith in such medicines when it came to mending broken bones, and he had tactfully declined his niece's offer and sent his own doctor, Gobind Dass, to deal with the matter. Gobind had done so with great success; he knew what he was about and few college-trained European doctors could have done better. Aided by Mahdoo, Gul Baz, and one of the Rajkumari Anjuli's women, Geeta, who was a notable dai (nurse), he brought his patient safely through the two days and nights of high fever that had followed on the period of coma – in itself no small feat, for the sick man tossed and raved and had to be held down by force for fear that he should do himself further injury.
Ash was conscious of very little during those days, but once – it was at night – he thought he heard someone say, ‘ Is he going to die?’ and opening his eyes saw a woman standing between him and the lamp. She was only a dark silhouette against the light, and he looked up into a face he could not see and muttered: ‘I'm sorry, Juli. I didn't mean to offend you. You see, I –’ But the words clotted on his tongue and he could not remember what it was he had meant to say; or to whom. And in any case the woman was no longer there, for he was looking at the unshaded lamp and he shut his eyes against the glare and sank back into blackness.
The fever left him on the third day and he slept the clock round, awaking to find that it was again night and the lamp was still burning, though its flame was shielded from him by something that threw a black bar of shadow across the bed. He wondered why he had not turned it out, and was still puzzling over this trivial point when he discovered that his mouth was as dry as a desert and that he was very thirsty, but when he attempted to move, the pain that shot through him was so unexpected that it wrenched a groan from him. The bar of shadow that lay across the upper half of his bed moved instantly.
‘Lie still, child,’ said Mahdoo soothingly. ‘I am here… lie still, my son.’
The old man spoke in the voice of an adult addressing a child who has awakened from a nightmare, and Ash stared up at him, mystified by the tone and even more by Mahdoo's presence in his tent at such an hour.
‘What on earth,’ inquired Ash, ‘are you doing here, Cha-cha-ji?’
The sound of his own voice surprised him as much as Mahdoo's had done, for it was no more than a hoarse croak. But Mahdoo's expression altered surprisingly and he threw up his arms and said wildly: ‘Allah be praised! He knows me. Gul Baz – Gul Baz – send word to the Hakim that the Sahib is awake and in his right mind again.