The Far Pavilions - Mary Margaret Kaye [67]
‘If you are my son, you will obey me – I do not ask you to do this. As your mother, I command you. Stay with me if you will until I go. It will not be long. But afterwards take the papers and the money and go quickly. Do not destroy them. If you love me, promise that you will not destroy them, but that you will use them and return to your own people. And if you will not do it for love's sake, then do it because I am… because I have been your mother. Promise me, Ashok?’
‘I – promise,’ whispered Ash. She could not be dying… it wasn't true. If only he could fetch help – a hakim. Or some hot food: that might revive her. Yet she looked so ill, and supposing he were to leave her and run to the nearest village, and be caught?
He dared not risk it; she was too weak to move and she would die slowly of thirst and starvation. Yet even if he did not go, they would both die, because sooner or later someone would find them here, for there was no other cover for more than a mile in any direction – only the flat, treeless plain and wide reaches of the river. He would never have taken refuge in such a place except that it was dusk when they fled from the serai, and not daring to keep to the highroad he had turned towards the open country. They had reached the rocks by the riverside an hour after moonrise and had been forced to stay there because Sita could go no further; yet, recognizing the danger of such an isolated spot, he had meant to leave it at first light and find some safer place of refuge. But now the sun was already shredding away the morning mists and he could see the foothills, and above them the snows were no longer pink and amber but sharply white. The day was here – and his mother was dying…
‘It isn't true. I won't let it be true!’ thought Ash frantically, his arms tight about her as though to hold her safe. But suddenly and hopelessly he knew that it was, and that she was leaving him. Grief and terror and desperation tore at his heart, and he hid his face against her shoulder and wept wildly, as a child weeps, shuddering and gasping. He felt Sita's frail hands patting him and soothing him, and her beloved voice against his ear, murmuring endearments and telling him that he must not cry for he was a man now – he must be brave and strong and outwit his enemies and grow up to be a Burra-Sahib Bahadur, like his father and old Khan Bahadur Akbar Khan for whom he had been named. Did he not remember Uncle Akbar who had taken him to see a tiger shot? He had been no more than a babe then, yet he had not been afraid and they had all been so proud of him. He must be as brave now, and remember that death came in the end for everyone – Rajah and Beggar, Brahmin and Untouchable, man and woman. All passed through the same door and were born again…
‘I do not die, piara. I rest only, and wait to be reborn. And in that next life, if the gods are kind, it may be that we shall meet again. Yes, surely we shall meet again… perhaps in that valley –’
She began to talk of it in a slow, halting whisper that struggled for breath, and presently, as his sobs quieted, she turned from that dear familiar tale to the old nursery rhyme with which she had been used to sing him to sleep – ‘Nini baba, nini, muckan, roti, cheeni,’ crooned Sita. ‘Roti muckan hogya; hamara… baba… sogya –’
Her voice died away so softly that it was a long time before Ash realized that he was alone.
The blue far-reaching shadows of the early morning shortened into the scanty shade of mid-day, and slowly lengthened again as the afternoon wore away and the sun moved down towards the far horizon.
There were partridges calling out on the plain now, and wild duck quacking on the river, and along the white banks of the Jhelum the mud turtles that had basked all day in the hot sunlight were slipping back into the water. It would be dusk soon, and he would have to go, thought Ash numbly. He had promised