The Far Pavilions - Mary Margaret Kaye [57]
The Princess Anjuli – ‘Kairi-Bai’, the little unripe mango – was barely six years old at that time, and had she been born in any Western country she would still have been considered a baby. But she had not only been born in the east, but in an eastern palace, and a too early experience of the plotting and intrigues of an Indian court had sharpened her wits and made her wise beyond her years.
Mindful of Ashok's warning and knowing him to be out of favour with her brother Lalji, Kairi no longer spoke to him or even glanced his way in public. But the system of secret signs and code words by which they could communicate under the eyes of the whole household without being detected served them well, and it was three days after the incident of the cobra that she ran to the Yuveraj's quarters and managed to convey an urgent signal to Ash. It was one that they were only to use in a dire emergency, and obeying it, Ash had slipped away at the earliest opportunity and made his way to the Queen's balcony, where Kairi had been waiting for him, white-faced and dissolved in tears.
‘It's your own fault,’ sobbed Kairi. ‘She said you threw away some sweets and saved him from a cobra. I truly didn't mean to listen but I was afraid she would be angry if she found me in her garden, and Mian Mittau had flown in there and I had to catch him – I had to. So when I heard her coming I hid in the bushes behind the pavilion and I heard… I heard what she said. Oh Ashok, she is bad! Bad and wicked. She meant to kill Lalji, and now she is angry with you about the cobra and because of some sweets. She said it showed that you know too much, so they must kill you quickly and she doesn't care how it is done, because it won't show by the time the kites and crows have finished with you, and who will mind about the death of a bazaar brat – that's you Ashok, she meant you. And she told them to throw you over the wall afterwards so that people will think you were climbing and fell off. It's true what I'm telling. They are going to kill you, Ashok. Oh what shall we do – what shall we do?’
Kairi threw herself at him wailing with terror, and Ash put his arms round her and mechanically rocked her to and fro while his thoughts scurried round in frantic circles. Yes, it was true… he was sure of that, for Juli could never have invented such a conversation. Janoo-Rani had always meant to kill Lalji and set her own son in his place, and to her certain knowledge he, Ashok, had stood in her way at least three times – four, if she was aware that it was also he who had found and thrown away those cakes. Had she known? He did not think anyone had seen him do that. But it made no difference now. She meant to see that he did not interfere again, and he would be a much easier target than Lalji, for no one would inquire too closely into the death or disappearance of such an unimportant person as the son of a serving-woman in the household of the neglected Kairi-Bai. He had never told Lalji of those cakes, or the truth about the halwa, and it was too late to tell him now. Particularly as Lalji had long ago persuaded himself that the falling slab of sandstone had been no more than an accident, and only two days ago had told Dunmaya that she was an evil-minded old trouble-maker who deserved to have her tongue cut out, because the old woman had voiced suspicions regarding the cobra. There was no help to be expected from the Yuveraj.
‘Juli was right,’ thought Ash despairingly. ‘It is my own fault for not telling Lalji about it and showing him what those cakes did to the fish years ago, and the sweets poisoning that crow.’ He hadn't any proof now; and even if he had it wouldn't help him because Lalji was so sure that the Rani was his friend, and he, Ashok, could not prove that she did it, or tell them what Juli had heard because they would say that she was only a baby and had made it up. But the Rani would know that she hadn't and perhaps kill