The Far Pavilions - Mary Margaret Kaye [8]
‘There is some mischief afoot. One can smell it in the very air,’ said Akbar Khan. ‘It bodes no good for men of your blood, my friend, and I would not have our boy come to any harm. Let us go away from here, to somewhere where the air is cleaner. I do not like cities. They breed foulness as a dunghill breeds flies and maggots, and there is something breeding here that is worse than either.’
‘You mean revolt?’ said Hilary, undisturbed. ‘That is true of half India. And in my opinion the sooner it comes the better: we need an explosion to clear the air and blow those lethargic blockheads in Calcutta and Simla out of their complacency.’
‘True. But explosions can kill, and I would not have my boy pay for the errors of his countrymen.’
‘You mean my boy,’ corrected Hilary with a shade of asperity.
‘Ours, then. Though he is fonder of me than of you.’
‘Only because you spoil him.’
‘Not so. It is because I love him, and he knows it. He is the son of your body but of my heart; and I would not have him harmed when the storm breaks – as it will. Have you warned your English friends in the cantonment?’
Hilary said that he had done so many times, but that they did not want to believe it: and the trouble was that not only men in high places, the Members of Council in Calcutta and the civil servants in Simla, knew too little of the minds of those whom they governed, but many army officers were equally ignorant.
‘It was not so in the old days,’ said Akbar Khan regretfully. ‘But the generals are now old and fat and tired, and their officers are moved so frequently that they do not know the customs of their men, or notice that their sepoys are becoming restless. I do not like that tale from Barrackpore. It is true that only one sepoy rebelled, but when he shot down his officer and threatened to shoot the General-Sahib himself, his fellow sepoys watched in silence and did nothing to prevent it. Yet I think it was unwise to disband that regiment after they had hanged the offender, because now there are three hundred more masterless men to add to the disaffection of many others. Trouble will come of it, and I think very soon.’
‘I too. And when it does, my countrymen will be both shocked and enraged at such disloyalty and ingratitude. You will see.’
‘Perhaps – if we live through it,’ said Akbar Khan. ‘Wherefore I say, let us go to the hills.’
Hilary packed his boxes and left a number of them in the house of an acquaintance in the cantonment behind the Ridge. He had intended, before leaving Delhi, to write several letters that should have been written years ago. But once again he postponed doing so, for Akbar Khan was impatient to be gone and there would be plenty of time for such tedious business when they reached the peace and quiet of the hills. Besides, having neglected his correspondence for so long, a month or two would make no difference. Consoled by this thought, he shovelled a pile of unanswered letters, including half-a-dozen addressed to his late wife, into a cardboard box marked ‘Urgent’, and turned to more interesting tasks.
There is a book, published in the spring of 1856 (Unfamiliar Dialects of Hindustan, Vol. I, by Prof. H. F. Pelham-Martyn, B.A., D.SC., F.R.G.S., F.S.A., etc.), that is dedicated ‘To the dear memory of my wife Isobel’. The second volume of this work was not published until the autumn of the following year and bore a longer inscription: ‘For Ashton Hilary Akbar, hoping it may arouse his interest in a subject that has given endless pleasure to the author – H.F.P-M.’ But by that time both Hilary and Akbar Khan had been six months in their graves, and no one had troubled to inquire who Ashton Hilary Akbar might be.
The camp had moved northward in the direction of the Terai and the foothills of the Doon, and it was here, in early April when the temperature had begun to rise and the nights were no longer cool, that disaster overtook them.
A small party of pilgrims from Hardwar, who had been offered hospitality for a night, brought cholera