The Far Pavilions - Mary Margaret Kaye [426]
There were tears in her eyes now, and in her breathless, pleading voice, and Ash would have given anything in the world to take her in his arms and kiss them away. But he knew that he must not.
‘I would have left,’ sobbed Anjuli. ‘I would have gone at once with your friends, for I could not bear to see what I had been brought here to see, and had they not come I would have shut my eyes and ears to it. But then they – the Hakim-Sahib and your friend – told me why you were not with them, and what you had meant to do for me so that I should not burn to death but die quickly and without pain. You can do that for her.’
Ash took a quick step back and would have snatched his hands away, but now it was Anjuli who held him by the wrists and would not let him go.
‘Please – please, Ashok! It is not much to ask – only that you will do for her what you would have done for me. She could never endure pain, and when… when the flames… I cannot bear to think of it. You can save her from that, and then I will go with you gladly – gladly.’
Her voice broke on the word and Ash said huskily: ‘You don't know what you are asking. It isn't as easy as that. It would have been different with you, because – because I had meant to go with you; and Sarji and Gobind and Manilal would all have got safely away, for they would have been a long way from here when our time came. But now it would mean that we would all be here; and if the shot were heard and anyone saw where it had come from, we should all die a far worse death than Shushila's.’
‘But it will not be heard. Not above all that noise outside. And who will be looking this way? No one – no one, I tell you. Do this for me. On my knees, I beg of you –’
She let go his wrists, and before he could prevent it she was at his feet with the orange and scarlet turban that she wore touching the ground. Ash bent quickly and pulled her upright, and Sarji, from behind them, said tersely: ‘Let her have her way. We cannot carry her, so if she will not come with us unless you do as she asks, you have no choice.’
‘None,’ agreed Ash. ‘Very well, since I must, I will do it. But only if you four will go now. I will follow later, when it is done, and meet you in the valley.’
‘No!’ There was pure panic in Anjuli's voice, and she brushed past him and addressed Gobind, who averted his eyes from her unveiled face: ‘Hakim-Sahib, tell him that he must not stay here alone – it is madness. There would be no one to watch for other men who may come up here, or help to overpower them as you three did to these others. Tell him we must stay together.’
Gobind was silent for a moment. Then he nodded, though with obvious reluctance, and said to Ash: ‘I fear that the Rani-Sahiba is right. We must stay together, for one man alone, looking out through the chik into the sunlight and choosing his moment, could not guard his back or listen for steps on the stair at the same time.’
Sarji and Manilal murmured agreement, and Ash shrugged and capitulated. It was, after all, the least he could do for poor little Shu-shu, whom he had brought from her home in the north to this remote and medieval backwater among the arid hills and scorching sands of Rajputana, and handed over to an evil and dissolute husband whose unlamented end had proved to be her death-warrant. And perhaps the least that Juli too could do for her, because although it was only Shu-shu's hysterical refusal to be parted from her half-sister that had brought her to this pass, at the end the little Rani had done what she could to make amends. But for her intervention, Juli would even now be out there in the dust and the glare, walking behind her husband's bier towards the moment when a bullet from her lover's revolver would give her a swift and merciful death: and if he had been prepared to do that for Juli, it was not fair to refuse the same mercy to her little sister… Yet the very idea of doing so appalled him.
Because he loved Juli – because