The Far Pavilions - Mary Margaret Kaye [386]
In the present circumstances, Ash would have welcomed any form of acknowledgement, however curt, for the sake of his own peace of mind. But as Mr Pettigrew had pointed out, it did not follow that because he had received none, no action was being taken, but on the contrary probably showed that it was being taken, and that there was no time to spare for sending unnecessary messages.
Sarji's land lay some twenty-odd miles to the north of Ahmadabad, on the west bank of the Sabarmutti, and the morning was far advanced before Ash reached his friend's house. The servants, who knew him well, informed him that their master had been up since dawn overseeing the accouchement of a valuable brood mare, and had only recently returned. The Sirdar was at the moment breaking his fast, but if the Sahib would have the goodness to wait? Dagobaz, whose black satin coat was now sandy-grey and rough with dust, allowed himself to be led away by one of Sarji's grooms while Ash, after being given water to wash with, was politely ushered through a swaying bead curtain into a side room, and served with food and drink.
He was not invited to share Sarji's meal, and did not expect to be. For though Sarji was broad-minded, and capable when in camp or away from his home of relaxing a great many rules, here on his own ground and under the eye of his family priest it was a different matter. Among his own people a greater strictness was expected, and as his caste forbade him from sitting down to eat with one who ranked as an outcaste, his Angrezi friend must eat alone – and from cups and dishes that were kept solely for his own use.
Sarji was a close friend, but the rules of caste were strict and not to be lightly broken, but Ash could never avoid a pang that was part hurt and part surprise whenever he encountered those rules in action. The fact that he understood them far better than the vast majority of his fellow feringhis never diminished that automatic sense of shock at being made to feel a pariah – someone with whom even a close friend could not sit down to eat and drink without risking ostracism, because that simple, human act defiled the doer, and until the defilement was cleansed no one would willingly associate with him.
Drinking iced sherbet and eating vegetable curry, kachoris and kela halwa in that cool, ground-floor room in Sarji's house, Ash wondered if the family priest was aware that Sarji had often broken this particular taboo when they were out together. Somehow, he doubted it. When the dishes had been removed and he was alone again, he lit a cigarette and sat blowing smoke-rings at the ceiling and thinking.
He was remembering something that Sarji's shikari Bukta, who had guided Gobind and Manilal to Bhithor, had told him one day when they were out shooting, when he, Ash, had been speaking of that journey. Bukta had mentioned the existence of another and shorter way into the valley of Bhithor: a secret way that avoided the forts and the frontier posts and came out a mere koss from the city itself, and that he had been shown many years ago by a friend, a Bhithori, who claimed to have discovered it and had used it for the purpose of smuggling stolen goods in and out of the Rana's territory.
‘Horses, mostly,’ Bukta had said with a reminiscent grin. ‘One could safely ask a good price in Gujerat or Baroda for a horse that had been stolen in Bhithor, as its owner would never think to look for it here because no one else (or so my friend said) knew of this path. In those days, being young, I had little respect for the law and would often help him – with much profit to myself. But he died, and I became respectable. Yet though it is now many years since I followed his secret path, it is still clear in my mind, and I know that I could find my way along it as easily as though I had only used