The Far Pavilions - Mary Margaret Kaye [505]
It was in the end this last statement that persuaded her, because she knew in her heart that it was true, and knowing it she pleaded no longer but said only: ‘Then I will send my heart with you – it is already in your keeping. Bring it back to me soon, and in safety.’
Ash had assured her that she need have no fears for him. But though he could make light of the danger in words, his body betrayed him: his love-making that night had been different from other nights in that it conveyed a disturbing sense of desperation… almost as though he were trying to make the very most of every moment for fear that there would be no tomorrow. So might a man lie with his love on the eve of some hazardous venture: a great battle, or a long and dangerous journey from which he might never return…
On the following night when all the household were safely asleep and the moon had not yet risen, Ash slipped quietly out by the back gate of Fatima Begum's garden and set his face towards the hills. And less than twelve hours later he was across the Border and had vanished into Afghanistan: dropping out of sight as completely as a pebble that falls into a deep pool.
51
That summer of 1878, the famine that had taken such a terrible toll in the south crept northward into the Punjab. For once again, for the third year in succession, the monsoon had failed; and when at last the rain fell it was not in the steady downpour that the thirsty land needed, but in fitful and capricious gusts that did little more than turn the surface dust to mud, leaving the earth beneath still iron-hard.
There were other things, apart from the failure of the crops and the fear of war, that made this an evil year, for dissension and disease were rife.
In Hardwar, where the sacred River Ganges enters the plains and vast numbers of pilgrims from all parts of India gather to bathe in its hallowed waters, cholera had struck during the annual festival and thousands died within a matter of hours. The news that Russia had attacked Turkey, and of her victories in the field, had encouraged a number of Indian journalists (always impressed by success and military might) to fill columns in the vernacular press with a spate of inflammatory words in praise of the victors, and when the Government took no notice they became bolder and began to advocate that India join forces with Russia for the overthrow of the Raj, and to urge their countrymen to assassinate British officers. At which point the Government decided that such stuff endangered the ‘safety of the state’ and passed the Vernacular Press Act, designed to curb the mischief-making proclivities of news-sheets that were not printed in English. But the Act caused as much disaffection as the rabble-rousing articles and incitements to murder had done; and rumour took the place of the printed word.
There were a great many rumours in circulation that year and few were encouraging, except possibly to those who favoured a war with Afghanistan. Some told of Russian armies advancing on the Oxus River in numbers that grew as the tale was passed from mouth to mouth. An army of fifty thousand… of sixty thousand. No, eighty thousand…
‘I have been reliably informed,’ wrote Major Cavagnari in a letter to Simla, ‘that the Russian force at present advancing on the Oxus consists of a total of fifteen thousand four hundred men, divided into three columns: two of which are seventeen hundred strong, and one of twelve thousand. Also that a Russian Mission, consisting of General Stolietoff and six other officers with an escort of twenty-two Cossacks, left Tashkent late in May in advance of the troops. It is believed that the Amir's family and friends, who fear that the Russo-Turkish affair may lead to hostilities between Russia and Great Britain, have been