The Far Pavilions - Mary Margaret Kaye [68]
He stood up slowly and with difficulty, for he had crouched all day by Sita's body, holding her stiffening, work-worn hand in his. His muscles were cramped and his mind dazed with grief and shock. He could not remember when he had last eaten, but he did not feel hungry, only very thirsty.
The river was bright with the sunset as he knelt on the wet sand and scooped up the water and drank greedily, and afterwards splashed handfuls of it over his aching head and hot, dry eyes. He had not cried again after Sita died; and he did not cry now, for the boy who had wept so bitterly in the dawn was dead too. He was not yet twelve years old, but he would never be a child again. He had grown up in the short space of a single afternoon and left his childhood behind him for ever. For it was not only his mother whom he had lost that day, but his identity. There was no such person – there never had been – as Ashok, son of Sita who had been the wife of Daya Ram, syce. There was only a boy whose parents were dead and who did not even know his own name or where to find his own kin. An English boy – a feringhi. He was a foreigner, and this was not even his own land…
The coldness of the water helped to clear his head and he began to wonder what he should do now. He could not go away and leave his mother lying there, for an ugly memory from the almost forgotten past came back to him, and he shivered uncontrollably, recalling a hot night that had been made hideous by the sound of jackals and hyenas quarrelling in the moonlight.
Out on the quiet surface of the river something moved. It was only a piece of driftwood, floating down on the current, but as he watched it slide past him, Ash remembered that his people – no, his mother Sita's people – burnt their dead and cast the ashes into the rivers so that they might be carried at last to the sea.
He could not make a pyre for Sita for there was no fuel. But there was the river. The cool, deep, slow-flowing river that had risen among her own hills, and that would take her gently and carry her to the sea. The setting sun flamed on it with a dazzling brilliance that was brighter than fire, and he turned from it and went back to the shallow cave among the rocks, and wrapping Sita's wasted body in her blanket as though to keep her warm, carried her down to the river and waded through the shallows until the water took her weight. She was stiff already, and so painfully light that the task was easier than he supposed. And when he released her at last she floated away from him, borne up by the blanket.
The current drew her out and down-stream, and he stood waist-deep in the water, straining his eyes to watch her go until at last her small shape was lost in the sun dazzle and he could see it no more. And when the brightness faded and the river turned from gold to opal, she had gone.
Ash turned and waded back to the shore, his legs numbed with cold and his teeth clenched together to keep them from chattering. He was hungry now, but he could not bring himself to eat the paste that he had made for Sita and that she had been unable to swallow, and he threw it away. He would have to find something to eat soon or he would not have the strength to go very far, and he had promised her… He lifted the sealed packet and the little wash-leather bags that were heavy with gold and silver coins, and weighed them in his hands, wishing he could leave them and knowing that he must not. They were his and he would have to take them. Removing only a single rupee for his immediate needs, he wrapped them again in the length of cloth and tied it about his waist as Sita had done, concealing it under his ragged garments. The folded sheet of paper with the faded, spidery writing that he could not read he hid in his turban, and now there was nothing left in the shallow cave to show that anyone had ever been there… Nothing but the footmarks and a slight depression in the sand where Sita had lain down to sleep on the previous night and where she had died in the dawn. He touched it very