The Far Pavilions - Mary Margaret Kaye [213]
Unless he could persuade Juli to run away with him, the wedding would take place. And once she was married to the Rana he would never be able to see her or speak to her again, for she would vanish into the sealed and secret world of the Women's Quarters, and be lost to him as surely as though she were dead. He would not even be able to write to her or to receive any news of her, unless, perhaps, through Kaka-ji – though that was highly unlikely, as Kaka-ji would not consider it proper to discuss the Rana's wife with another man, and the only information he would be likely to pass on would be the kind that would be unbearable to hear. That Anjuli-Bai had become a mother. Or was dead…
The thought of either was so intolerable that Ash flinched involuntarily as though ducking a blow, and the mongoose that had finally crept out across the sand to investigate this strange creature who sat so still, whisked away with a chatter of rage and vanished into the shadows.
Ash did not see it go, but the sound reminded him briefly of another mongoose: Tuku. It surprised him a little to find that after all these years he should still remember that name; and remember, too, the look of satisfied malice on Biju Ram's face, and the feel of Tuku's small body lying lifeless between his hands. But the memory of that day only served to bring his thoughts back to Juli, for it was she, ‘ Kairi-Bai’, who had filled the void left by Tuku's death.
There were very few memories of the Hawa Mahal, now that he came to think of it, that did not include her; for though his attitude towards her had been a mixture of irritation and lordly condescension, she had come to be an integral part of his days, and but for her he would never have left the palace alive. Yes, he owed a great debt to Juli; and he had done nothing to repay her – unless possibly by forgetting his promise to come back for her, for honesty forced him to the conclusion that it might have been better for her if she had never seen him again and been able to think of him as dead. He remembered now that even as a child she had never questioned her fate but accepted it as inevitable – the decree of the gods – and had he not returned she would have come to terms with it, and at the very least have enjoyed a certain amount of comfort and security as the wife of a ruling prince. But what would her life be like if she ran away with a feringhi – a mere junior officer in the Guides – and just how far would they be allowed to run? That, after all, was the crux of the matter…
‘Not very far, I imagine,’ decided Ash grimly.
There was no blinking the fact that everyone in the camp, and in all India for that matter, would regard such an elopement as indefensible: a shameless and dishonourable betrayal that insulted Bhithor and brought black disgrace on both Karidkote and the Raj.
The British would take an equally strong view, though from a somewhat different angle. They would dismiss Juli's part in it with a careless shrug: ‘What else can you expect from some illiterate little bint in purdah?’ But there would be no mercy for Captain Ashton Pelham-Martyn, who had betrayed his trust and ‘let his side down' by running off with a woman (and a ‘native woman’, at that) whom he had been charged with escorting across India and delivering safely into the care of her future husband.
‘I would be cashiered,’ thought Ash.
A year ago he had fully expected to face a Court Martial for his part in the affair of Dilasah Khan and the stolen carbines, and he knew that this had only been avoided by the narrowest of margins. But were he to run away with Juli there would be no question of avoiding it again. He would be court-martialled and dismissed from the army in disgrace: ‘Her Majesty having no further use for his services.’
He would never