The Far Pavilions - Mary Margaret Kaye [60]
‘I'm sorry,’ apologized Ash, flushing. ‘I didn't think.’
‘That has always been your besetting sin, my son,’ growled Koda Dad. ‘You act first and think afterwards: how many times have I not said so? Well, think now if there is a safe place from where we may lower you over the wall on the northern side, because there the ground below is more broken and there are bushes and goat tracks among the rocks. But it will not be easy, for I know of no place on that side where you could not be seen by a man looking out from the wall or a window.’
‘There is one,’ said Ash slowly. ‘A balcony…’
So for the first time he went to the Queen's balcony by night, to leave it for the last time; clinging to the end of a rope that Koda Dad Khan and Hira Lal lowered down the forty-foot drop on to the tumbled rocks, where thorn bushes made black patches of shadow in the clear October moonlight, and the wandering goat tracks wound steeply downwards towards the milky levels of the plateau.
He had said goodbye to Kairi earlier that day after Sita had left, and had not expected to see her again. But she had been waiting for him in the Queen's balcony, a small, forlorn shadow in the moon-flooded night.
‘They don't know I'm here,’ she explained hurriedly, forestalling criticism. ‘They think I'm asleep. I left a bundle in my bed in case anyone looked, but they were b-both snoring when I went out and they didn't hear me. Truly they didn't. I wanted to give you a present, because you are my bracelet-brother, and because you are going away. Here – this is for you, Ashok. To – to bring you luck.’
She thrust out a thin, square little palm and the moonlight glinted on a small sliver of mother-of-pearl carved in the semblance of a fish. It was, Ash knew, the only thing she had to give: the sole trinket she possessed and her dearest and greatest treasure. Seen in these terms it was perhaps the most lavish present that anyone could or would ever offer him, and he took it reluctantly, awed by the value of the gift.
‘Juli, you shouldn't. I haven't anything to give you.’ He was suddenly ashamed that he should have nothing to offer in return. ‘I haven't anything at all,’ he said bitterly.
‘You've got the fish now,’ consoled Kairi.
‘Yes, I have the fish.’
He looked down at it and found that he could not see it clearly because there were tears in his eyes. But men did not cry. On a sudden inspiration he broke the little slip of mother-of-pearl in two, lengthways, and gave her back half of it. ‘There. Now we have each got a luck-charm. And one day, when I come back, we'll stick them together again and –’
‘Enough,’ interrupted Koda Dad roughly. ‘Go back to bed, Kairi-baba. If they find you gone and raise an outcry we shall all be ruined; and the boy must leave at once, for he has a long way to go before moonset. Say goodbye to him now, and go.’
Kairi's small face puckered woefully and the tears that streamed down it drowned the words that she was trying to say, and Ash, embarrassed, said hastily, ‘Don't cry, Juli, I'll come back one day, I promise.’
He hugged her briefly and pushing her towards Hira Lal, who was standing silent in the shadows, said urgently: ‘See that she gets back safely, won't you, Hira Lal? Her women mustn't know that she has been out tonight, for the Rani might hear of it, and then when it is found that I have gone -’
‘Yes, yes, boy. I know. I will see to it. Now go.’
Hira Lal moved out into the moonlight, and as he did so the grey silk of his achkan became one with the night sky, and his face and hands took on the neutral tint of the stonework, so that for