Read Online Far Pavilions by M. M. Kaye - Free Book Online Page A
Authors: M. M. Kaye
Tags: Romance
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underline the dangers of using the roadways that ran between towns and the larger villages, and the wisdom of keeping instead to the cattle tracks of the Mofussil and the little lost villages where life pursued a slow, centuries-old course, and news from the outside world seldom penetrated.
Now and again a ripple from the far-off storm would lap against even such remote fastnesses as these, and they would hear stories of wounded and starving Sahib-log hiding in the jungle or among the rocks, and creeping out to beg food from the meanest passer-by. Once, following a rumour of successful risings throughout Oude and Rohilkund, there had been a tale of mutiny and massacre in Ferozepore and far-off Sialkot, and it was this last that made Sita finally abandon a nebulous plan that she had briefly entertained, of taking Ash-Baba to Mardan where his mother's brother would be stationed with the Guides. For if the regiments in Ferozepore and Sialkot had also mutinied, then what hope would there be for the British in any cantonment town anywhere? If there were still any left alive (which seemed doubtful) they would all soon be dead: all except Ash-Baba, who was now her son Ashok.
Sita never again referred to him as anything but ‘my son’, and Ash accepted the relationship without question. Within a week he had forgotten that it had begun as a game, or that he had ever called her anything but ‘mother’.
As they journeyed further north, skirting the folds of the Sawaliks, the rumours of rising and unrest became fewer, and the talk was only of crops and the harvest and the local problems and gossip of small rural communities whose horizons are bounded by their own fields. The blazing days of June ended in a torrential downpour of rain as the monsoon swept across the parched plains of India, turning the fields to bogs and every ditch and nullah into a river, and reducing each day's journey to a minimum. It was no longer possible to sleep out in the open and shelter had to be found – and paid for.
Sita begrudged the money, for it was a sacred charge and not to be expended lightly. It belonged to Ash-Baba and must be kept for him until he was grown. There was also the danger of appearing too affluent and thereby inviting attack and robbery, so it must be spent in the smallest coins only and to the accompaniment of hard bargaining. She bought, too, a yard of coarse, country-made
puttoo
(tweed) to keep the rain from Ash, though she was well aware that he would have preferred to dispense with this protection and go bare-headed as well as unshod. Ash's paternal grandmother had been a Scotswoman from the west coast of Argyll, and possibly it was her blood in his veins that made him take a particular pleasure in the feel of rain on his face, though it may well have been no more than any child's partiality for splashing through mud and puddles.
Constant exposure to the monsoon had succeeded in washing away most of the dye from his skin, and he was once again a colour that would have been familiar to Hilary and Akbar Khan. But though Sita was aware of this she did not renew the dye, since by now they were close to the foothills of the Himalayas, and hill-folk being fairer-skinned than the men of the south (many of them having light-coloured eyes, blue, grey or hazel, and hair that is as often red or brown as black), her son Ashok aroused no comment and was, indeed, somewhat swarthier than many of the pale-skinned Hindu children with whom he played in the villages by the way. Her fears for his safety were gradually diminishing and she no longer lived in terror that he might betray himself by some unguarded mention of the ‘Burra-Sahib’ and the old days, because he appeared to have forgotten them.
But Ash had not forgotten: it was just that he did not wish to think or speak of the past. He was, in many ways, a precocious child, for children ripen early in the East, being reckoned men and women at an age when their brothers and sisters in
Now and again a ripple from the far-off storm would lap against even such remote fastnesses as these, and they would hear stories of wounded and starving Sahib-log hiding in the jungle or among the rocks, and creeping out to beg food from the meanest passer-by. Once, following a rumour of successful risings throughout Oude and Rohilkund, there had been a tale of mutiny and massacre in Ferozepore and far-off Sialkot, and it was this last that made Sita finally abandon a nebulous plan that she had briefly entertained, of taking Ash-Baba to Mardan where his mother's brother would be stationed with the Guides. For if the regiments in Ferozepore and Sialkot had also mutinied, then what hope would there be for the British in any cantonment town anywhere? If there were still any left alive (which seemed doubtful) they would all soon be dead: all except Ash-Baba, who was now her son Ashok.
Sita never again referred to him as anything but ‘my son’, and Ash accepted the relationship without question. Within a week he had forgotten that it had begun as a game, or that he had ever called her anything but ‘mother’.
As they journeyed further north, skirting the folds of the Sawaliks, the rumours of rising and unrest became fewer, and the talk was only of crops and the harvest and the local problems and gossip of small rural communities whose horizons are bounded by their own fields. The blazing days of June ended in a torrential downpour of rain as the monsoon swept across the parched plains of India, turning the fields to bogs and every ditch and nullah into a river, and reducing each day's journey to a minimum. It was no longer possible to sleep out in the open and shelter had to be found – and paid for.
Sita begrudged the money, for it was a sacred charge and not to be expended lightly. It belonged to Ash-Baba and must be kept for him until he was grown. There was also the danger of appearing too affluent and thereby inviting attack and robbery, so it must be spent in the smallest coins only and to the accompaniment of hard bargaining. She bought, too, a yard of coarse, country-made
puttoo
(tweed) to keep the rain from Ash, though she was well aware that he would have preferred to dispense with this protection and go bare-headed as well as unshod. Ash's paternal grandmother had been a Scotswoman from the west coast of Argyll, and possibly it was her blood in his veins that made him take a particular pleasure in the feel of rain on his face, though it may well have been no more than any child's partiality for splashing through mud and puddles.
Constant exposure to the monsoon had succeeded in washing away most of the dye from his skin, and he was once again a colour that would have been familiar to Hilary and Akbar Khan. But though Sita was aware of this she did not renew the dye, since by now they were close to the foothills of the Himalayas, and hill-folk being fairer-skinned than the men of the south (many of them having light-coloured eyes, blue, grey or hazel, and hair that is as often red or brown as black), her son Ashok aroused no comment and was, indeed, somewhat swarthier than many of the pale-skinned Hindu children with whom he played in the villages by the way. Her fears for his safety were gradually diminishing and she no longer lived in terror that he might betray himself by some unguarded mention of the ‘Burra-Sahib’ and the old days, because he appeared to have forgotten them.
But Ash had not forgotten: it was just that he did not wish to think or speak of the past. He was, in many ways, a precocious child, for children ripen early in the East, being reckoned men and women at an age when their brothers and sisters in
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