The Far Pavilions - Mary Margaret Kaye [280]
Ash let it be known that he himself would be the next messenger, and that he would be taking an armed escort of over a dozen picked men of the Karidkote State Forces, all of them crack shots. And though he had not actually done this – being unwilling to leave the camp to its own devices with the Rana and his councillors in their present mood and tempers running high among their angry guests – he had made a pretence of doing so by riding with the original messenger and the escort until they were well outside Bhithor.
He did not see the warning sun signals that blinked frantically behind him from a high rooftop in the city and the outer walls of the two guardian forts. But Mulraj did, and he grinned as he watched them, for his spies had not been idle and the code was a very simple one – far more so than that complicated business of dots and dashes that the Sahib had called ‘Morse' and tried to expound to him. The Bhithories had more sense than to waste time over such things, and like the Red Indians confined themselves to essentials. Their code was a model of simplicity, consisting of a single sustained flash for ‘Enemy’ or, alternatively, three long ones for ‘Friend, do not molest’, followed by short ones to indicate the numbers involved, up to a score; and if in excess of that, by a flurry of flashes. The addition of a side-to-side movement meant that the man or men in question were mounted, and not on foot, while several wide circular sweeps ordered ‘stop them!’. To which the reply was seldom more than a single answering flash that could be translated as ‘Message received and understood’. There were no other signals, Bhithor having found these more than adequate.
Mulraj watched the agitated flashes that commanded ‘friends, do not molest’, and his grin turned to a laugh, for he knew that Ash intended to turn back as soon as the border had been safely crossed – being reasonably certain that this time no plans would have been made to waylay the party, as the Rana would never risk attacking a well-armed band of men commanded by the Sahib himself, and by the time it was discovered that the Sahib was no longer with them, it would be too late to arrange yet another unfortunate accident.
All this had wasted a good many days. But they had not been spent in idleness. Those who did not possess tents had busied themselves constructing grass huts that would protect them from the burning sun and the night dews, and though wood was far from plentiful in Bhithor, Mulraj – visualizing a lengthy stay and anxious for the horses now that the hot weather had begun – had set men to work felling the broom-stick palms and the scarlet dak trees, and presently a score of stoutly built sheds arose, well thatched with palm-fronds and bundles of reeds from the lake.
Ash and his panchayat, for their part, had paid repeated visits to the city palace, where they conferred endlessly with the Diwan and one or other of the senior ministers, and occasionally with the Rana himself, in an effort to break the deadlock by persuading him to honour his bond or at least moderate his demands. They had also given a number of banquets for him and his courtiers, councillors and officials, and once, when the Rana had sent word that he was unable to attend because of a painful attack of boils (an affliction he was prone to), they had proffered the services of Gobind, in the hope that Kaka-ji's invaluable Hakim might be able to relieve the pain and thereby earn his good will.
Gobind had in fact not only succeeded in doing this, but had actually effected a cure, which was something that the Rana's own hakims had signally failed to do. But though the grateful patient had rewarded him with a handful of gold mohurs and presented Kaka-ji with a large ruby set in a gold thumb-ring, his attitude towards the marriage settlements had remained unchanged. For all the results that Ash and his colleagues achieved they might just as well have