The Far Pavilions - Mary Margaret Kaye [64]
Lalji too had been angry, and he had sent out search parties to arrest the boy and bring him back under guard. But when they failed to find any trace of the runaways he had lost interest, and said that they were well rid of Ashok – a view that the Rani might have endorsed had it not been for the British. But the Rani had not forgotten the unwelcome visit of Colonel Frederick Byng of the Political Department, whom her husband had been compelled to receive with honour, and she had also heard tales of ruling princes who had been deposed by the British Raj for murdering their relatives or rivals. If the boy Ashok were to hear one day that the heir of Gulkote had met with a fatal accident, he might carry tales to those in authority, and then perhaps there would be inquiries; and who knew what might not come to light as a result of officious questioning and inquisitiveness? The boy must not be allowed to live, because as long as he remained alive he was both a danger to her and a stumbling block in the way of her son's advancement. ‘At whatever cost, he must be found,’ ordered Janoo-Rani. ‘He and his mother both, for he will have told her all he knows, and until they are dead we dare not move against the Yuveraj…’
Ash obtained work with a blacksmith in a village near the Grand Trunk Road, and with it the use of a ramshackle godown (storeroom) behind the forge for himself and Sita. The work was arduous and poorly paid and the room small and windowless and devoid of any furniture. But it was a beginning, and they spent the last of Hira Lal's bounty on a second-hand string bed, a cheap quilt and a set of cooking pots. Sita hid what money remained from the sale of the horse in a hole under her bed, and when Ash was out, dug a second hole in the wall for the sealed packet and the wash-leather bags that she had brought away from her quarters in the Hawa Mahal. She made no attempt to find work for herself, which was unlike her, but seemed content to sit in the sun outside the door of their room, cook their scanty meals and listen of an evening to the tale of Ashok's doings. She had never asked much of life, and she did not regret the Hawa Mahal; she had seen too little of her boy there and knew that he had been unhappy.
Ash was certainly happier now than he had ever been in the service of the Yuveraj, and his meagre wages were at least put into his hand in solid coin; which was more than they had been in the Palace of the Winds. He felt that he was at last a man, and though he had not abandoned his grandiose plans for the future, he would have been content to remain in the village for a year or two. But early in the new year two men had arrived at the village inquiring for a hill-woman and a boy – a grey-eyed boy who, they said, might be disguised as a girl. The pair were wanted for the theft of certain jewellery, the property of the State of Gulkote, and there was a reward of five hundred rupees for their capture and fifty for information that would lead to their arrest…
The men had arrived late one evening, and fortunately for Ash had been given lodging for the night in the house of the tehsildar,* whose young son happened to be a friend of his. This boy had overheard their conversation with his father, and there being no other couple answering to that description in the village, he had crept out into the darkness and woken Ash, who slept on the ground outside Sita's door. Half an hour later the pair were hurrying down a field path in the uncertain starlight, making for the main road where Ash hoped to beg a lift from a passing bullock cart,