The Far Pavilions - Mary Margaret Kaye [69]
As he did so, the first breath of the night wind blew in from across the river, and eddying about the cave, stirred up the dry silver sand and left it smooth again.
Ashton Hilary Akbar Pelham-Martyn shouldered his bundle and his burdens, and turning his back on the past, set out in the cold twilight to search for his own people.
7
‘It is for a Captain-Sahib. A Captain-Sahib of the Guides,’ said the bazaar letter-writer, peering at Hilary's last letter through a pair of scratched spectacles. ‘Yes, see – here it says “Mardan”. That is by Hoti Mardan, which is up Malakand way. Beyond Attock and the Indus, and across the Kabul River.’
‘The Guides,’ breathed Ash in an awed whisper. He would have made for Mardan long ago had he dared, but he knew that the Rani's men would expect him to go there and would lie in wait for him, for his friendship with Koda Dad's son had been no secret in the Hawa Mahal. But by now the watchers must surely have decided that he was too cunning to make such an obvious move, and they would have left to search elsewhere. Even if they had not, the situation itself had been drastically altered by the fact that he was no longer a friendless bazaar brat, hoping to find shelter with a sowar of the Guides, but a Sahib who could demand protection from his fellow Sahibs. Not only for himself, but for Zarin. And if necessary, for Koda Dad too.
‘The Guides,’ repeated Ash softly. And suddenly his eyes were bright with excitement and the grey despair that had filled his mind and heart for so many days began to shred away like mist at morning. His luck had changed at last.
‘It is the name of a pulton (regiment) that is stationed at Mardan,’ explained the letter-writer importantly, ‘and the Sahib's name is As-esh-taan. Captain Ash-tarn. As for the rest -’ he made as though to open the folded paper, but Ash snatched it back, explaining that it was only the Sahib's name and address that he needed, the rest was of no importance.
‘If it is a recommendation, it is better to know what has been said,’ advised the letter-writer sagely. ‘Then if harsh things have been written, one can tear it up and say that one has lost it. Or if it is a good recommendation, it may be sold for much money. Such things fetch good prices in the bazaars. Do you hope to take service with this Sahib, then?’
‘No, I – go on a visit to my cousin's wife's brother, who is his servant,’ improvised Ash glibly. ‘They told me the address, but I had forgotten it and I cannot read Angrezi.’
He paid over the half-anna that had been agreed upon and having made sure that he had memorized the name correctly, tucked the paper back among the folds of his turban and spent the other half-anna on a handful of roast chunna and a stick of peeled sugar-cane.
Ash had come a long way since the night he left the cave by the Jhelum River. It had not taken him long to discover how much farther and faster he could travel now that he was alone; or how right Sita had been when she had told him that he would be safer by himself, for he had heard of inquiries made in the villages and was aware that the hunt was still up. But since the men who hunted him knew that he would never leave his mother, they still looked for a hill-woman and a grey-eyed boy travelling together, and were not concerned with a single ragged urchin whose colouring, in the north-west of India where the Khyber hills lay along the horizon, was nothing out of the common.
He had not been questioned, but because he was afraid of doing anything that might draw attention to himself, he had not dared to ask for a translation of that paper in any of the smaller towns where such an inquiry might arouse interest. Only when he reached one large enough to boast half-a-dozen letter-writers had he felt safe enough to risk it; and now the name and address on it had turned out to be that of an officer of the Guides – Zarin's regiment. It was almost too good to be true.
Ash remembered that his mother had said she did not know what was written