The Far Pavilions - Mary Margaret Kaye [241]
The silence was so complete that he could hear the sound of his own breathing, and from somewhere in the outer cave the faint jingle of metal as one of the tethered horses moved restlessly. But it was not for an appreciable time that the significance of this dawned on him, and he realized that the wind had died, and that it must have done so some time ago, because he could not remember when he had last been aware of that vibrating drone. Not for at least an hour; and it was probably longer than that. In which case the sooner they made a start the better, for if they were going to return to the camp it would be wiser to do so under cover of darkness, and trust that in the general confusion their arrival would not be too public.
It was going to be bad enough, from Juli's point of view, to have been missing for several hours in the company of a single man. But the dust-storm would excuse that; and provided they returned as quickly as possible, scandal might be avoided by the mere fact that conditions had hardly been conducive to dalliance, and the camp itself likely to be in such a state of disarray that few people would have any time to waste on idle gossip and speculation. With luck, Juli would escape with no more than a scolding for riding too far ahead of her sister and uncle, and no one would ever suspect… A thought struck Ash with jarring suddenness, and he said sharply: ‘You can't go through with it, Juli. It's too dangerous. He's bound to know.’
‘Who will know?’ Anjuli's voice was muffled, as though she had been crying. ‘Know what?’
‘The Rana. He'll find out that you're not a virgin just as soon as he beds with you, and then there'll be the devil to pay. He isn't likely to forgive a thing like that, or take another man's leavings. He'll want to know who and when, and if you won't tell him he'll beat it out of you and send you back to your half-brother with your nose cut off, and without returning your dowry. And when your precious brother gets his hands on you, he'll either see to it that you die as painfully as possible, or he'll cut your feet off and let you live a cripple as a warning to other women. And what use are you going to be then to Shushila? You can't do it, Juli. You've burnt your boats now, and you can't go back.’
‘I must and I can,’ said Anjuli huskily. ‘He will not know, because…’ Her voice wavered and died, but she controlled herself with an effort: ‘Because there are… ways.’
‘What ways? You don't know what you are talking about. You couldn't possibly know –’
‘Harlot's tricks? But I do’ – he heard her swallow painfully. ‘You forget that I was brought up by servants in the Women's Quarters of a palace, and that a Rajah keeps many women besides his wives: concubines who know every art and trick that can please a man or fool him, and who talk freely of these things because they have little else to talk of, and because they think it only right that all women should be instructed in them…’ The young voice paused for a moment, and then went on again, very steadily: ‘I do not like to tell you this, but had I not known that when the time came I could deceive the Rana, I would not have taken you for my lover.’
The words fell like drops of ice water into the darkness, and as the little echoes reverberated softly round the cave they sent a thin cold trickle through Ash's heart, and he said harshly and with deliberate cruelty: ‘And I suppose you have thought too of what may happen to the child – my child – if you have one? Its legal father will be the Rana, and what if he chooses to bring it up to be another Nandu, or Lalji? Or appoints scorpions like Biju Ram to its service – perverts and panders who love to do evil? Have you thought of that?’
Anjuli said quietly: ‘It was the Nautch-girl and not my father who appointed Biju Ram to Lalji's household. And – and I believe that it is a child's mother who can, if she chooses, shape its early years and set its feet on a given path, for it is to her that it will look when it is small, and not to its father. If the gods grant me your child I will not fail him: