The Far Pavilions - Mary Margaret Kaye [189]
Biju Ram himself had changed so little that seeing him again at close quarters the years dwindled away until the gap that separated the past from the present seemed negligible, and it was only the other day that a boy named Ashok had been the favourite butt of his malicious wit, and the victim of a hundred cruel and humiliating practical jokes that had made Lalji laugh and the courtiers snigger. Surely he could not have forgotten? But though Biju Ram's eyes were as crafty as ever, there was still no trace of recognition in them, and if his fulsome compliments were anything to go by, he seemed to be genuinely grateful for Ash's part in the rescue of Jhoti. This was not surprising if he were indeed out of favour with the Maharajah and hoping to lead a rival party, for Jhoti alive might one day prove to be a trump card, while Jhoti dead could only mean disaster for the handful of men who had accompanied him when he fled from Karidkote.
It occurred to Ash that probably the strangest aspect of the whole situation was that he and Biju Ram should find themselves on the same side of the fence – any fence. But although he would have preferred to do without such an ally, there was no denying that Biju Ram's ambition, combined with fears for his own skin, might in the end be a better guarantee of Jhoti's safety than any protection that Mulraj or he himself could devise. All the same, the very sight of the man had been enough to tighten his nerves and send a shudder down his spine, and it was a relief to turn his thoughts to the prospects of seeing Juli again in a few hours' time.
That she would do her best to avoid the meeting he was certain. But then he was equally certain that she would not succeed: Shushila would see to that, for the younger girl plainly leaned heavily on her half-sister for support and was unlikely to make any move without her. He was therefore not surprised to see her enter with her sister a few moments after he himself had been carried there, though what did surprise him was that she made no attempt to avoid his gaze, but looked gravely back at him, and with an interest as great as his own.
She had returned his greeting without a trace of embarrassment, and as she bowed to him in the graceful, conventional gesture of namaste, palm pressed to palm and lifted to touch her forehead, the slight sideways inclination of her head and the shape of her hands – those firm, square hands that were so different from the slender hands of most Indian women – were suddenly so familiar that he could not understand why he had not recognized her at sight.
Anticipating this meeting, he had been afraid she would be cold to him, if not openly hostile, and he had wondered how he could deal with this and made various plans for doing so. But there was neither coldness nor animosity in the eyes that he had likened to the ‘fishpools of Heshbon’, and no fear, merely interest. Evidently Juli had accepted the fact that he was, or had been, Ashok, and was studying him closely in an effort to trace in the features of a strange Englishman the face of a little Hindu boy she had once known; and as the evening wore on he also discovered that she was listening not so much to what he said as to the sound of his voice: testing it, perhaps against her memory of that boy's voice talking to her in the Queen's balcony long ago.
Ash had very little recollection of what he said during the earlier part of that evening, and he was uneasily conscious of talking at random. But with Juli sitting barely a yard away he found it almost impossible to concentrate. She had always been a rather solemn little girl, unassuming and old beyond her years, and it was clear that she still retained much of that early gravity. It did not take much discernment to see that here was a woman whose life was narrow and busy, and who had lost the habit (if she had ever possessed it) of attaching any importance to her own feelings and desires because the needs of others pressed upon her and absorbed her to