The Far Pavilions - Mary Margaret Kaye [71]
‘I think we had better show this to my brother,’ said Zarin, looking doubtfully at the paper that Ash had thrust into his hand. ‘Perhaps he will be able to advise you, for I cannot. It is too dark a matter for me.’
Zarin's brother, the Jemadar, had no such doubts. There was only one course to take. Ashton-Sahib being dead, the whole affair must now be laid before Colonel Browne-Sahib, the Commandant, who would know how to deal with it. He himself, Awal Shah, would accompany the boy Ashok to the Colonel-Sahib's quarters immediately, because if there was any truth in this extraordinary story, the sooner both money and papers were placed in safe hands the better.
‘As for you, Zarin, you will say nothing of this to anyone. For if the Rani of Gulkote desires the boy's death, she will revenge herself on those who helped him to escape, and if she should hear that he is with us, she will suspect that our father had a hand in the matter. So it is better for all our sakes that the trail should be lost. I will go now to the Commandant-Sahib, and you, Ashok, will follow me, walking a little behind so that we are not seen to be together, and waiting outside until you are sent for. Come.’
The Jemadar stuffed the evidence into his pocket and strode out into the late sunlight, and Ash followed at a discreet distance and spent the next half hour perched on the edge of a culvert, tossing pebbles into the ditch below, and keeping a watchful eye on the Commandant's windows while the shadows lengthened on the dusty cantonment road and the sharp spring evening filled with the scent of woodsmoke and dung fires.
It was, though he did not know it, his last hour of independence. The last, for many years, of peace and freedom and idleness, and perhaps if he had realized that he might have broken his promise to Sita and run away while there was still time. Though even if he had escaped the Rani's assassins it is doubtful that he would have got very far, for Colonel Sam Browne, v.c, the Officiating Commandant of the Corps of Guides, having read the unfinished letter that Professor Pelham-Martyn had started to write to his brother-in-law William Ashton, was now engaged in removing the seals from a packet – that had been wrapped in oiled silk almost exactly seven years ago. It was already too late for Hilary's son to run away.
Three weeks later Ash was in Bombay, dressed in a hot and uncomfortable suit of European clothes and shod with even more uncomfortable European boots, en route for the land of his fathers.
His passage had been arranged and paid for by the officers of his uncle's Regiment, all of whom, after flatly refusing to believe that this beggar-brat could possibly be the nephew of poor William, had eventually been convinced by the evidence in the packet (which included a daguerreotype of Isobel, whose likeness to her son was startling, and another of Ash seated on Sita's lap and taken in Delhi on his fourth birthday – both sitters having been unhesitatingly identified by Zarin), together with a searching verbal and physical examination of the claimant. Once converted, William's friends could not do enough for the nephew of an officer who had served with the Corps since Hodson built the fort at Mardan, and whom everyone had liked. Though his nephew was not in the least grateful for their efforts on his behalf.
Ash had obeyed his foster-mother's last commands and handed over to the Sahib-log the papers and the money she had given him. Having done so, he would have preferred to live in the lines with Zarin and Awal Shah, and earn his living as a stable boy or a grass-cutter until he was old enough to join the Regiment. But this had not been permitted. Why couldn't people leave him alone? thought Ash resentfully. Why, always and everywhere, must there be dictatorial people who gave him unpalatable orders, restricted his liberty and over-rode his wishes – and others, who at a word from an evil and ambitious woman, were even prepared