The Far Pavilions - Mary Margaret Kaye [410]
True, Gobind would know what had happened; and so would Kaka-ji and Jhoti and some others. But Ash did not believe that Karidkote would take the matter up officially once the thing was done. The Ranis' family were, after all, devout Hindus, and it was difficult to expect them to regard a suttee in the same light as it appeared to foreigners. They would certainly have done what they could to prevent it, but having failed, they would see no profit in raising a scandal, particularly when in their heart of hearts they – and the majority of their co-religionists – must still regard the act in question as a meritorious one.
As for Koda Dad and Zarin, they too would keep silent, on the grounds that what Ashok chose to do was his own affair. And though the Guides and the military authorities in Peshawar and Rawalpindi would of course make inquiries, his past history would tell against him, since it would be argued that he had done this sort of thing before – disappeared for the best part of two years and been presumed dead – so that when he failed to report back to his Regiment he would once again be listed as ‘Absent Without Leave’, and after a time his name would be struck from the records and he would be written off as ‘Missing, believed dead.’
But Wally could be trusted to go on hoping and to badger senior army officers, importune officials of the Government, and write letters to The Times of India and The Pioneer, until someone would eventually have to take notice of the affair. And though it was unlikely that the true facts of Lieutenant Pelham-Martyn's disappearance would ever emerge, at least there would be no more suttees in Bhithor.
Ash watched the moonlight creep up the side of a house that backed on to the yard, and remembered a night among the ruins of Taxila, when he had talked for hours, telling Wally the incredible tale of his childhood, as he never been able to tell it to anyone else except Mrs Viccary. It was strange to think that of all his friends, Wally should be the only one who could not be told the truth now. With the others, it was different: for one thing, they had no built-in prejudice against a man taking his own life. They did not regard that as a sin, as Christians were taught to do. Nor did they hold that a man was master of his fate.
But to Wally – a practising Christian, and a dedicated soldier in love with his regiment – suicide would seem unforgivable: a sin not only against God, but the Guides, because at this particular time, when ‘wars and rumours of wars' were the talk of the North-West Frontier, it would be regarded as a form of cowardice comparable with ‘Desertion in the face of the enemy’. For if hostilities on a scale of the first conflict with Afghanistan broke out the Guides were going to need the services of every officer and every man, and since cowardice and ‘letting the side down’ were the two cardinal sins in Wally's lexicon, he would undoubtedly think that the needs of Queen and Country should take precedence over any purely personal attachment, however deep, and that if Ash was set on dying, then the proper and honourable course would have been for him to hurry back to Mardan and take up his duties, and hope to be killed in battle, leading his men.
But then Wally had never known Anjuli-Bai, Princess of Karidkote and Rani of Bhithor, so the letter addressed to him was, in consequence, a very brief one and would allow him to suppose (if or when he should hear that Ash was dead) that he had died at the hands of a mob, following an unsuccessful attempt to prevent the burning of a widow. That way he would still be able to think of his friend as a hero – and keep his illusions.
‘He'll grow out of them one day,’ thought Ash. ‘And no one else will talk: certainly not the Bhithoris. The Bhithoris will lie and evade and pervert the truth until even those who were there and saw it all won't be quite sure what happened – if anything. In the end it will probably be given out that the Ranis