The Far Pavilions - Mary Margaret Kaye [310]
Even standing beside her wizened groom, Shushila looked incredibly small and slight, like a child who has dressed up in its mother's finery. She was wearing scarlet as a bride should – red being the colour of rejoicing – and out of compliment to the groom, the traditional full-skirted dress of Bhithor, and all Rajasthan. The pigeon's blood rubies that circled her neck and wrists and decked her fingers caught the light of the flames and shone as though they were on fire, and though she kept her head bent and spoke her vows in a whisper, she performed her part in the ceremony without faltering: to the surprise (and no small relief) of her relatives and women, all of whom had fully expected a flood of tears if not a hysterical scene.
Ash could not help wondering if she would have behaved as well if she had been able to catch a glimpse of her bridegroom's face, or had any inkling of what that curtain of flower-buds concealed. But as custom decreed that a bridal pair must not look at each other until the wedding ceremony was over, and Shushila too wore a similar veil of flowers, it was not possible for her to see anything very much. The ‘marriage ring’ – a bracelet of iron – was placed on her arm, and the thread of happiness hung round her neck; and presently a corner of her sari was knotted to the end of her bridegroom's sash, and thus tied together they took the ‘seven steps’ round the fire: the satapadi that is the essential part of the whole ceremony, as without this the marriage is still revocable in law, while once the last step is taken it is established, and there can be no going back.
Shushila was now a wife and Rani of Bhithor, and her husband was addressing her in the words of the ancient Vedic hymn: ‘Become thou my partner as thou hast paced all the seven steps with me. Apart from thee I cannot live. Apart from me do thou not live. We shall share alike all goods and power combined. Over my house thou shalt bear full sway…’
His voice ceased and the newly wedded pair returned to the sacred circle to receive the blessing of their older relatives, and that done, seated themselves once more. The fire was fed again with wood and incense, the mantras chanted and the silver trays passed round, and the whole ceremony repeated. But this time with more haste and with a different bride.
Anjuli had been seated on the far side of her half-sister and concealed from Ash's view by the stout shape of Unpora-Bai. But now she in her turn was led forward into the circle. The moment that he had dreaded for so long was upon him, and he must watch Juli being married.
Almost unconsciously he braced his body as though to face a physical assault. But there had, after all, been no need to do so. Perhaps it was the absence of hope that made it possible for him to relax his tense muscles and sit motionless and detached, feeling nothing – or almost nothing. For although he would have said that the ceremony of the garlanding had extinguished the last infinitesimal flicker of hope, a spark had survived: the chance that spoilt, highly strung Shu-shu, over-driven by the delays of the last weeks and her terror of marriage to a stranger in a strange land, might baulk at the last moment and refuse to go through with the ceremony.
It was unthinkable that a devout Hindu bride should refuse to take those final binding steps around the sacred fire, and such a thing could have happened only rarely – if at all. But then Shu-shu, by Western standards, was only a child: an over-emotional child whose reactions were often unpredictable, and who might well be capable of creating a scandalous precedent by refusing to perform the satapadi. But she had