The Far Pavilions - Mary Margaret Kaye [452]
He would, he said, be as quick as he could, but it was unlikely that he would return much before sundown on the following day, and if he were later than that they were not to worry – and taking the tired pony he led it away through the tangled thickets and the tall grass. Ash accompanied him as far as the open ground and watched him mount and ride off into the dusty evening sunlight towards Ahmadabad, and only when he could see him no more did he turn and walk slowly back to the ruined tomb.
The thickets that hid it were alive with birds that had spent the heat of the day resting in the shade, while overhead, flights of parrots streamed out from the ruin, making for the distant river. The pigeons, following their example, wheeled up and up before setting off in the same direction, and a peacock woke from its afternoon siesta and paraded up and down between the tall clumps of grass.
But there was no movement from inside the tomb, and finding it empty, Ash suffered a crippling moment of panic, until a movement above him made him look up and he saw that Anjuli had not run away: there was a stairway in the thickness of the wall, and she had climbed it and was standing high above him, outlined against the sky and gazing out across the tree-tops to where the hills rose up along the northern horizon; and something in her face told him that she was not thinking of the country on the far side of them or of the beloved little sister who had died there, but of other hills – the true Hills, the high Himalayas with their vast forests and glittering snow peaks thrusting up into the diamond air of the north.
He had made no noise, but she turned quickly and looked down at him, and once again he was made sharply aware of the toll that Bhithor had taken from her…
The girl that he had known and loved and whose picture he had carried in his heart for three long years had gone, and in her place was a stranger. A thin, haggard woman with great haunted eyes and a startling streak of whiteness in her black hair, who looked as though she had endured torture and famine and suffered a long term of imprisonment, shut away from the sunlight and fresh air. There was something else too: something less definable. A curious sense of loss. A deadness. Adversity and sorrow had not broken Anjuli, but they had numbed her.
Ash too was aware of a deadening of his senses. He loved her still: she was Juli, and he could no more stop loving her than he could stop breathing. But now, as they looked at each other, he was not seeing her face only, but the faces of three men: Sarji and Gobind and Manilal, who had lost their lives so that he and she could escape together. The tragedy of those deaths was an open wound in his mind, and for the moment love seemed a trivial thing in comparison with the cruel sacrifice that had been exacted from his friends.
He found the stairway in the wall, and climbing it, joined her on the flat strip of roof that circled the ruined dome. Below them the thorn trees and thickets and the tall grass that had grown up around the tomb were full of shadows and the tomb itself was very dark, but up here the evening sun was bright among the tree-tops and the countryside basked in the dusty golden light of an Indian evening. Out on the plain every stick and stone and blade of grass threw a long blue shadow on the ground, and soon the parrots and the pigeons would be returning to their nests and dusk would sweep down, bringing the stars and another night. And tomorrow – tomorrow or the next day – Bukta would return; and after that the lying would begin…
Anjuli had returned to her silent contemplation of the hills along the far horizon, and when at length Ash reached out and touched her, she flinched and took a swift step backward, putting up her hands as though to fend him off. His hand dropped and his brows drew together as he stared at her, frowning, and said harshly: ‘What did you think I meant