Read Online Shadow of the Moon by M. M. Kaye - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: M. M. Kaye
Ads: Link
air many days before then. Have a care to my husband and return swiftly.â
So Sabrina moved from the Casa de los Pavos Reales to the pink stucco palace in Lucknow city, and watched Marcos and Wali Dad ride away under the flaming glory of the gold-mohur trees in Juanitaâs garden, her eyes misted with tears.
Marcos, turning in his saddle for a last look as he rode under the arch of the gateway, saw her standing among the hard, fretted shadows of the garden, an incongruous little figure with her white skin and soft blonde curls in that flamboyant oriental setting, and wished with all his heart that he were not leaving her. But it would not be for long â¦
With his departure it was as if the shining world of beauty and contentment in which Sabrina had walked had shattered like some fragile and iridescent soap bubble at the touch of a rough hand. She missed him with an intensity that grew rather than diminished as the days wore on. She missed, too, the cool stately rooms of Pavos Reales and the quiet of the vast park-like grounds that surrounded it.
The Gulab Mahal - the âRose Palaceâ - was full of noise, and the rooms with their walls painted and carved or inlaid with vari-coloured marbles and shining pieces of mother-of-pearl, and their windows screened with stone tracery, were stiflingly hot. Below the innumerable carved balconies lay paved courtyards and gardens thick with mango and orange and gold-mohur trees, while beyond and all about the high wall that hemmed them in pressed the teeming city with its crowded bazaars and gilded mosques, green gardens and fantastic palaces.
The noise of the city beat about the pink walls of the Rose Palace night and day, filling the small, hot, stifling rooms with sound, as the unguents and essences used by Aziza Begum and the zenana women filled them with the heavy scent of sandalwood and attar-of-roses, and the cooking-pots of the kitchen courtyards filled them with the smell of the boiling
ghee
, curry and asafoetida.
Even the nights brought only a diminution of the noise; never silence. Tom-toms throbbed in the crowded mazes of the city, beating in counterpoint to the piping of flutes and the tinkle of sitars, the barking of pariah dogs, the crying of children, the clatter of armed horsemen riding through the narrow streets, or the drunken shouts of revellers returning from some debauch at the Kingâs palace.
With the passing of each slow day the heat became greater, and during the hours of daylight the walls and the roofs of the houses and the stone paving of the courtyards would steadily absorb the fierce rays of the sun, so that when night fell it seemed as though every stone and brick in the city gave off the stored heat in waves, as from the open door of a potterâs kiln.
Sabrina found it possible to sleep a little during the day, for a hot, dry wind frequently blew during the day-time, and then the doors and windows would be opened and hung with curious thick matted curtains made of woven roots, which were kept soaked with water. The hot winds blowing through the damp roots cooled the rooms and filled them with a not unpleasant aromatic odour. But often the wind did not blow; and always it died at sunset.
Sabrinaâs thin body felt hot and dry and shrivelled with heat, and she began to long for the cool pine-scented air of the hills as a man parched with thirst longs for a draught of cold water, and to regret that she had not gone to the hills with Emily in March as Marcos had wished her to do. But she would never again go to the hills with Emily. Marcos had been absent just over three weeks, and May was half-way over when a brief letter arrived fromSir Ebenezer Barton. Emily was dead. She had suffered a return of the fever, wrote Sir Ebenezer, and had died two days later. Her distant relative, Mrs Grantham, had been with her. Sir Ebenezerâs handwriting, normally so clear and firm, wavered like that of an old man far gone in
So Sabrina moved from the Casa de los Pavos Reales to the pink stucco palace in Lucknow city, and watched Marcos and Wali Dad ride away under the flaming glory of the gold-mohur trees in Juanitaâs garden, her eyes misted with tears.
Marcos, turning in his saddle for a last look as he rode under the arch of the gateway, saw her standing among the hard, fretted shadows of the garden, an incongruous little figure with her white skin and soft blonde curls in that flamboyant oriental setting, and wished with all his heart that he were not leaving her. But it would not be for long â¦
With his departure it was as if the shining world of beauty and contentment in which Sabrina had walked had shattered like some fragile and iridescent soap bubble at the touch of a rough hand. She missed him with an intensity that grew rather than diminished as the days wore on. She missed, too, the cool stately rooms of Pavos Reales and the quiet of the vast park-like grounds that surrounded it.
The Gulab Mahal - the âRose Palaceâ - was full of noise, and the rooms with their walls painted and carved or inlaid with vari-coloured marbles and shining pieces of mother-of-pearl, and their windows screened with stone tracery, were stiflingly hot. Below the innumerable carved balconies lay paved courtyards and gardens thick with mango and orange and gold-mohur trees, while beyond and all about the high wall that hemmed them in pressed the teeming city with its crowded bazaars and gilded mosques, green gardens and fantastic palaces.
The noise of the city beat about the pink walls of the Rose Palace night and day, filling the small, hot, stifling rooms with sound, as the unguents and essences used by Aziza Begum and the zenana women filled them with the heavy scent of sandalwood and attar-of-roses, and the cooking-pots of the kitchen courtyards filled them with the smell of the boiling
ghee
, curry and asafoetida.
Even the nights brought only a diminution of the noise; never silence. Tom-toms throbbed in the crowded mazes of the city, beating in counterpoint to the piping of flutes and the tinkle of sitars, the barking of pariah dogs, the crying of children, the clatter of armed horsemen riding through the narrow streets, or the drunken shouts of revellers returning from some debauch at the Kingâs palace.
With the passing of each slow day the heat became greater, and during the hours of daylight the walls and the roofs of the houses and the stone paving of the courtyards would steadily absorb the fierce rays of the sun, so that when night fell it seemed as though every stone and brick in the city gave off the stored heat in waves, as from the open door of a potterâs kiln.
Sabrina found it possible to sleep a little during the day, for a hot, dry wind frequently blew during the day-time, and then the doors and windows would be opened and hung with curious thick matted curtains made of woven roots, which were kept soaked with water. The hot winds blowing through the damp roots cooled the rooms and filled them with a not unpleasant aromatic odour. But often the wind did not blow; and always it died at sunset.
Sabrinaâs thin body felt hot and dry and shrivelled with heat, and she began to long for the cool pine-scented air of the hills as a man parched with thirst longs for a draught of cold water, and to regret that she had not gone to the hills with Emily in March as Marcos had wished her to do. But she would never again go to the hills with Emily. Marcos had been absent just over three weeks, and May was half-way over when a brief letter arrived fromSir Ebenezer Barton. Emily was dead. She had suffered a return of the fever, wrote Sir Ebenezer, and had died two days later. Her distant relative, Mrs Grantham, had been with her. Sir Ebenezerâs handwriting, normally so clear and firm, wavered like that of an old man far gone in
Similar Books
