The Far Pavilions - Mary Margaret Kaye [322]
In the camp he had been the only European, and because no one there spoke his language it had been possible for him to forget at times that he was a feringhi. But he would not be allowed to forget it in Karidkote; not now that there was a British Resident there, supported by a large staff of Europeans and possibly a guard of British troops. There would also be many old and orthodox Hindus who would strongly disapprove of his being treated with the casual familiarity that had been accorded to him on the march, and inevitably, his relations with Jhoti and Mulraj would suffer. The ease and camaraderie of the camp would be replaced by politeness, and there would, in all probability, be relief when he left – which was something he did not even like to think of.
No; much better to stay away and let them think of him with affection as someone they had known and liked, and hoped to see again some day. And then perhaps when he was old – when they were all old, and nothing mattered very much any longer because life was nearly over and the bad parts of it forgotten – he might go back for a short visit to talk over old days with any who might still remember him. And to make a last offering to the Dur Khaima.
Later, as the light began to fade and the dusk turn green about him, he reined in and turned to look back at the mountains that were already in shadow and sharply violet against the hyacinth of the darkening sky. One cluster of peaks still held a last gleam of the sunset: the crown of the Dur Khaima, rose-pink in the twilight… the far pavilions… The warm colour faded from them as he looked, and peak after peak turned from rose to lavender until at last only Tara Kilas, the ‘Star Tower’, held the light. Then suddenly that too had gone, and the whole long range lost its sharpness of outline and merged into a night that was brilliant with stars.
Memories crowded upon him, choking him; and almost without knowing it, he dismounted, and placing his palms together as he used to do long ago, he bowed his head and repeated the old prayer of the Queen's balcony that asks forgiveness for ‘three sins that are due to human limitations’.
‘… Thou art everywhere,’ murmured Ash, ‘but I worship thee here: Thou art without form, but I worship thee in these forms: Thou needest no praise, yet I offer thee these prayers and salutations…’
The first breath of the night wind sighed through the parched thorn bushes and brought him the scent of pine trees and wood-smoke, and mounting again, he turned his horse's head and rode slowly on to join Mahdoo and Gul Baz and Kulu Ram the syce, who had ridden on ahead and would by now have selected a camp site and set about preparing the evening meal.
Had they travelled as swiftly as they had done on the way up from Bhithor, they would have reached Rawalpindi in well under a week. But there was no longer, in Ash's opinion, any pressing need for haste; and as the temperature in the plains never fell below 110° in the daytime and 102° in the coolest part of the night, and Mahdoo was very tired and saddle-sore, they moved at a leisurely pace, rising at two o'clock in the morning to ride until just before the sun rose, when they would make camp and rest until the same hour on the following day.
In this way, averaging no more than twenty-five miles a day, they covered the last lap of their journey. And in the early dawn of the last day of May they came within sight of Rawalpindi, and found Wally waiting, as he had waited every morning for the past eight days, by the third mile-stone on the 'Pindi – Jhelum Road.
Ash had been away for eight months, during which time he had spoken English perhaps half-a-dozen times at most, and for the rest had talked, thought and dreamed in the language of his adoptive mother, Sita.
'Pindi in June is a place to be avoided. Heat and glare and dust combine to turn it into an inferno, and those whose duty keeps them tied to an office or to barracks and parade ground are liable to fall victim to a tedious variety of hot-weather