The Far Pavilions - Mary Margaret Kaye [247]
Mulraj had eyed the dust-cloud and made a swift calculation, and sacrificing convention and the proprieties, had taken Shushila up behind him and set off at full gallop, leaving Kaka-ji to follow with her riderless horse. The escort, still in ignorance of the approaching storm and seeing Mulraj racing towards them with the Rajkumari clinging to his waist like a monkey, had leapt up, expecting him to stop, and when he flashed past them, heading for the camp, they had barely waited for Kaka-ji's explanations before riding in pursuit, taking the waiting-woman with them.
Kaka-ji had not accompanied them. He had made them take Shushila's horse and his own, and had elected to stay behind with the ruth, whose driver, realizing that it could not possibly reach the camp ahead of the storm, was making hurried preparations to shelter his bullocks in a cleft among the rocks. ‘We will wait here for my niece and the Sahib, who will shortly return and be dismayed if they find us all gone,’ said Kaka-ji, peering anxiously in the direction of the hills. ‘It is not fitting that the Rajkumari should be seen to return alone on horseback, accompanied only by the Sahib, and they cannot be long.’
But the minutes had passed and there was still no sign of the missing riders. Old Budoo, the driver, had backed the ruth as far as it would go between the rocks, and unyoking his bullocks had edged them past and tethered them in the cramped space behind it, after which he pulled out the rugs, shawls and bolsters that had cushioned the Rajkumaries and their women against jolting, and fastened them to form a rough-and-ready screen against the dust and sand that was roaring down on them. The smell of it was already in the air and now they could hear it; but still Kaka-ji waited, hoping to see horses galloping towards him. It was only when the bow-wave of dust struck the far side of the hillock of rock where they refuged that he allowed Budoo to drag him into the ruth; and there, deafened and half stifled, the two old men had crouched together while the storm raged outside.
Kaka-ji's account of his own sufferings was vivid in the extreme, and he had enjoyed telling it. But he too was uncertain how long the storm had lasted, and when it had passed and all was quiet again, he and Budoo had both fallen asleep and had not woken until the sky was beginning to pale. They had intended, he said, to set out in search of his niece and the Sahib, for whose safety he entertained the gravest fears, imagining that they would have been caught out in the open with no form of shelter; but they had barely started when they had heard the Sahib shouting aloud.
He had seen no reason to doubt Ash's story and he had not thought to question his niece, for having experienced all the discomforts of the storm himself, he was convinced that nothing of an improper nature could possibly have occurred between them. Not even the lustiest of men and the most ardent of young women would be likely to think of such things – let alone put them into practice – while fighting for breath with a cloth over the head, and eyes, mouth and nostrils full of grit. In Kaka-ji's opinion, a dust-storm was a more efficient guarantee of proper behaviour than a dozen duennas, though this did not prevent him from impressing on Anjuli that she must on no account let anyone suspect that she had not spent the night in the ruth. Not even Shu-shu.
‘For you are shortly to be wedded,’ said Kaka-ji, ‘and it is most unseemly for a bride to go apart with any man,