• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

By Root 2854 0

which a central dais served as a throne for the ruler when he gave audience, received distinguished visitors or dispensed justice, and behind this stretched a solid wall of black marble with a polished surface that reflected the assembly as though in a mirror. The sides of the platform were enclosed by screens of pierced marble through which the ladies of the Zenana could watch the proceedings, but elsewhere the stonework had been plastered over with polished chunam and decorated in low relief with formal designs of beasts, birds and flowers that had once been brightly coloured, but had faded in the course of the slow centuries to pale ghosts of their former glory. Yet the Diwan-i-Am did not lack colour, since the Rana's courtiers, unlike his humbler subjects, were so gaily attired that a foreigner entering the hall might well have thought for a dazzled moment that he had walked into a flower-garden – or a fairground.

Turbans of scarlet and cerise, sulphur-yellow, sugar-pink and purple vied with achkans of every shade of blue and violet, turquoise, vermilion, grass-green and orange; while to add to the mass of colour, the centre aisle was kept clear by a double rank of crimson-turbaned retainers, gaudily uniformed in yellow muslin sashed with orange, and carrying huge, plumed fly-whisks made of horsehair that had been dyed a vivid shade of magenta.

There were more retainers on the raised platform, two of them standing behind the dais and plying fans of peacock feathers, and the remainder armed with naked tulwars – the long curved swords of Rajputana. And on the dais itself, cross-legged on a carpet sewn with pearls, ablaze with jewels and clad from top to toe in gold, sat the focal point of all this splendour: the Rana of Bhithor.

The warrior races of Rajputana are famous for their good-looks, and it is doubtful if any similar assembly of Western men could have matched the present one in the matter of physical beauty, distinction and panache. Even the grey-beards among them retained traces of the hawk-faced handsomeness they had possessed in youth, and held themselves as erect as though they sat in a saddle instead of cross-legged upon the ground. The white, tightly fitting jodhpurs and the sleek lines of flared, brocaded coats showed off each lean, broad-shouldered, slim-hipped figure to perfection, while the crisp folds of their brilliant turbans added inches to their height and made every man seem a giant. There were, of course, exceptions to the rule. Scattered here and there under the arched roof of the Diwan-i-Am were men who were fat or withered or ill-favoured, the most noticeable of these being their ruler himself.

The Rana's dress, jewels and diamond-hilted sword were magnificent. But his person did not do them credit, and Ash, gazing up at him from the bottom step of the stairs, was conscious of a violent sense of shock.

This – this misshapen baboon – was the bridegroom that Nandu had chosen for Juli. For Juli and Shushila… No, it could not be – there must be some mistake: the man on the dais could not possibly be in his late thirties. Why, he was old. Sixty, at least, if not seventy. Or if he was not, he certainly looked it, and Ash could only suppose that his way of life must have been singularly unsavoury to give him the appearance of old age before he was forty.

Discounting prejudice, the Rana was certainly an unprepossessing spectacle, and Ash could not have been the first person to be struck by his resemblance to a baboon. Anyone who had visited a zoo or been to Africa could hardly fail to notice it, and it was probably just as well that no citizens of Bhithor had ever done so and therefore did not realize how strikingly their ruler's facial structure, with its close-set eyes, abnormally long nose and wide, flaring nostrils, resembled a mandrill's an old, sly, vicious mandrill, with an evil temper. As if that were not enough, the thin, hatchet-shaped and almost chinless face was deeply scored with the tell-tale lines of debauchery and self-indulgence, and the close-set eyes were as watchful and unblinking