The Far Pavilions - Mary Margaret Kaye [28]
Sita scraped a shallow cavity low down in the wall in the darkest corner of the room, and thrusting the packet into it, covered its hiding place, as she had covered the money, with clay and cow-dung; and having done so, felt that a crushing weight had been lifted off her shoulders and that Ashok was now truly hers.
The boy's grey eyes and ruddy complexion caused no comment in Gulkote, for many of the Rajah's subjects had come from Kashmir, Kulu and the Hindu Kush, and Sita herself was a hill-woman. Ash fraternized with their sons and grandsons and was soon indistinguishable, except to the eye of love, from a hundred other bad little bazaar boys who shouted, frolicked and fought in the streets of Gulkote; and Sita was content. She still believed what the sepoys had told her: that all the English were dead and the rule of the Company broken for ever. Delhi was far away, and beyond the borders of Gulkote lay the Punjab, which had remained relatively quiet; and though an occasional rumour of troubles would drift through the bazaars, these were always vague, garbled and months out of date, and mostly concerned with disasters to the British…
None told of the army that had been hurriedly assembled at Ambala. Of the long march of the Guides – five hundred and eighty miles in twenty-two days of high summer from Mardan to Delhi – to take part in the siege of that city, of the death of Nicholson, or the surrender of the last Mogul and the slaying of his sons by William Hodson of Hodson's Horse; or that Lucknow was still besieged, and that the great rising that had begun with the revolt of the 3rd Cavalry in Meerut was by no means over.
The Shaitan-ke-Hawa – the ‘Devil's Wind’ – was still blowing strongly through India, but while thousands died, here in sheltered Gulkote the days were slow and peaceful.
Ash had been five years old that October, and it was not until the autumn of the following year of 1858 that Sita learned, through a wandering sadhu,* something of what had been happening in the outside world. Delhi and Lucknow re-captured, the Nana Sahib a fugitive, and the valiant Rani of Jhansi killed in battle, dressed as a man and fighting to the last. The Company's rule had been broken, but the feringhis, said the sadhu, were back in power, stronger than ever and engaged in brutal reprisals against those who had fought them in the great rising. And though the Company was no more, its rule had been replaced by that of the white Rani – Victoria – and all Hind was now a possession of the British Crown, with a British Viceroy and British troops governing the land.
Sita had tried to persuade herself that the man was mistaken, or lying. For if his story was true, she would have to take Ashok back to his people, which by now was a prospect she could no longer face. It could not be true… or it might not be. She would wait, and do nothing until she was sure. There was no need to do anything yet…
She had waited all winter, and in spring there had been news that confirmed everything the sadhu had said; but still Sita took no action. Ashok was hers, and she would not, could not, give him up. There had been a time when she could have done so, but that was before she had begun to look on him as her son by right, and see him accepted as such. Besides, it was not as though she were depriving a mother or father of their right: he had lost both, and if anyone had a right to him, surely it was herself? Had she not loved him and cared for him from his birth? Taken him from his mother's womb and fed him at her own breast? He knew no other mother and believed himself to be her child, and she would be robbing no one – no one. He was no longer Ash-Baba, but her son, Ashok, and she would burn the papers that lay hidden in the wall and say nothing, and no one would ever know.
So they remained in Gulkote and were happy. But Sita did not burn Hilary's papers, for when it came to the point her fear of what the ‘Burra-Sahib's’ ghost might do was greater than her fear