The Far Pavilions by M. M. Kaye
Dagobaz bowed his head to nuzzle Ash's shoulder as though in affectionate agreement, and Ash rubbed his cheek against the velvet nose and said with a catch in his voice: ‘Be good to him, Sarji. Don't let him…’ He broke off abruptly, aware of a constriction in his throat, and for the next few minutes busied himself with the remaining straps. When he spoke again his voice was curt and unemotional:
‘There, that's done. I've left you the carbine, Sarji. I shan't need it, but you and the others may, so you must take it with you. You know what to do, don't you? There's no need to go over it again. We have been good friends, you and I, and I'm sorry that I let you get involved in this affair and brough you into danger – and that it had to end like this. I should never have let you come, but then I'd hoped that… Oh well, it doesn't matter now. But be careful, Sarji – be very careful. For if anything were to happen to you -’
‘It won't,’ said Sarji quickly. ‘Do not worry, I will be careful, I promse you. Here, you had better take my whip. It may come in useful to clear a way through the crowds. You have the revolver?’
‘Yes, open the yard door for me, will you? Goodbye, Sarji. Good luck… and thank you.’
They embraced as brothers do, and then Sarji went ahead with the lamp, and unbarring the door, held it open while Ash led Dagobaz out onto the street. ‘It will be light soon,’ said Sarji, holding the stirrup while Ash mounted. ‘The stars are already pale and the dawn is not far off. I wish…’
He broke off with a sharp sigh, and Ash leant from the saddle to grip his shoulder for a brief moment, then touching Dagobaz with his heel, he rode away without looking back.
It had not proved as easy as he had thought to reach Gobind's house, for the eerie clamour seemed to have drawn half the population of Bhithor to the Rung Mahal, and not only the square in front of the palace but every street and alleyway leading to it was packed to suffocation. But somehow he had managed to force a way through, using Sarji's whip mercilessly on the surrounding heads and shoulders, and urging Dagobaz onward a foot at a time while the crowd shouted and cursed and gave way before him.
The door of Gobind's house was barred, and anyone deputed to keep watch on it must have been swept up and carried along with the crowd minutes ago, as Ash himself would have been had he not come on horseback. But being mounted gave him another advantage, for by standing up in his stirrups he could just reach a first-floor window that had been left open because of the heat of the night. There was no light in the room behind it – or, as far as he could see, in any part of the house. But when he hammered on the lattice with the butt of the whip, Manilal's round, pale face appeared in the opening.
‘What is it? Who is it?’
Ash thrust the two letters at him by way of reply, and without speaking wrenched Dagobaz round and began to force his way back down the street against the moving torrent of people. Ten minutes later he was clear of them and riding hard through dark and almost deserted alleyways towards the Mori Gate. Here there were lights again: oil lamps, lanterns and cressets. And more people, though not too many; one or two guards and nightwatchmen, and a few small groups of country folk from outlying villages, who had evidently been camping out under the great archway and were now busy preparing an early meal before setting off to join the crowds about the palace.
The glare from the cressets and the wavering gleam of half-a-dozen little cow-dung fires made the sandstone walls glow like burnished copper, and by contrast the landscape that lay beyond the gateway appeared as a square of blackness – for the charcoal-seller had not lied about the opening of the gates: they stood wide and unguarded, so that the spirit of the dead ruler might pass through if it so wished…
Legend had it that the gate most favoured on these occasions was the Thakur Gate, because of its proximity to the city temple. But until now no one, not even the priests, had ever claimed to see a spirit pass. Tonight, however, all those who had the good fortune to be near the Mori Gate were to declare that they had actually seen this happen: that the Rana himself, clad all in gold and mounted on a coal-black horse whose hooves made no sound, had swept past them as silently and swiftly as a sudden gust of wind, and vanished into thin air.
The gold, of course, was pure invention. But then it must be remembered that the spectators were simple folk and saw only what they expected to see. To them, a Rana would naturally be splendidly dressed. It is also possible that a combination of torch-light and the glow from those small cooking fires, falling on Ash's light-brown clothing (and aided by the haze of smoke), could have lent it a fleeting illusion of splendour. But for the rest, the clatter of Dagobaz's hooves had been drowned by the mourning of the gongs, and in order to avoid any risk of being stopped, Ash had taken him through the gateway at full gallop, where once beyond the range of the firelight and the flares, horse and rider had instantly been lost to view.
All unaware that he had destroyed one legend and created another that would be told and re-told for as long as superstition survived or men believed in ghosts, Ash rode away from the city along the dust-laden north road.
For a moment or two the transition from light to darkness made the countryside seem an inky waste and the grey ribbon of the road barely visible for more than a few yards ahead. Then his eyes adjusted to the change and he realized that the dawn was already at hand and the near hills sharply distinct against a brightening sky in which the stars no longer blazed and glittered, but showed as pale as the petals of faded jasmine blossoms.
The little wind that is the forerunner of morning had begun to breathe across the fields, rustling the standing crops and lending an illusion of coolness to the air, and already it was possible to make out objects twenty and thirty yards distant: a boulder, a shrub, a kikar tree or a feathery tuft of pampas grass; and further off still, a herd of black-buck trotting sedately away across the plain after a night spent foraging in the cultivated land, and the lean grey shape of a wolf loping steadily towards the hills.
Dagobaz had always revelled in early morning gallops over open country, and of late he had spent too many hours shut up in a shed in the charcoal-seller's yard. In addition to which that frightening and inexplicable booming had set every nerve in his body on edge, and even out here he could still hear it, fainter now, for the breeze was carrying it away down the valley, but still all too audible. He redoubled his efforts to escape it, and as they were now beyond the crop-lands, swerved from the road and took to the rougher ground, his rider making no effort to restrain him.
The wolf glanced over its shoulder and broke into a canter, imagining itself pursued, while further to the left the black-buck herd took fright and went bounding away across the shadowy plain. And for a brief space Ash forgot what lay ahead and was suddenly caught by the familiar intoxication of speed and of being at one with his horse. A tremendous, all-possessing excitement that seemed to hold him rigid, his hands motionless on the reins, his thighs clamped to the saddle. What did it matter if he died today or tomorrow? He had lived. He was alive now – joyously and intensely alive – if this was the last morning he would ever see, what better way to spend it?
The black stallion's body and his own were one, and his blood sang in rhythm with the pounding hooves as the air fled past them and the ground flowed away beneath them as smoothly as a river. The sound of the gongs dwindled away until it was no louder than the sough of wind under a door, and ahead a water channel cut a wide dark furrow across the plain. Dagobaz took it in his stride and raced on towards a wicked barrier of thorn bushes. Gathering himself together he rose to it smoothly, cleared it with ease, and landing on the far side as lightly as a bird was off again without a check.
Quails, partridges and an occasional sandgrouse whirred up and scattered before him, and a young cobra, rudely disturbed, reared up hissing from the grass and struck out furiously at the flying hooves. But Dagobaz ignored them all and swept on, nostrils wide and mane and tail streaming out on the wind, racing to meet the morning…
‘You beauty,’ croon
‘Thou wast their rock, their fortress and their might!
Thou, Lord, their Captain in the well fought fight.
Thou, in the darkness drear, their one true light –
Alleluia…! Alleluia…!’
He laughed aloud, realizing that he had without thinking been singing one of the rousing hymns that he had so often heard Wally sing in his bath of an early morning – and on many other occasions when they had ridden together galloping neck and neck across the plains around Rawalpindi – it being one of Wally's favourite descriptions of a particularly fine day that it was ‘A day for singing hymns on‘. But the laugh froze in his throat, for suddenly he heard a far-away voice, faint but clearly audible above the pounding hoof-beats, chanting in answer to him: ‘Al-le-lu-ia!’
For a moment his heart stopped and he tried to check Dagobaz, because he thought it was Wally. Yet even as he pulled on the rein he realized that what he had heard was only the echo of his own voice thrown back at him from the far hillsides. The discovery sobered him a little; there were villages among those hills, and realizing that if he could hear that sound so clearly there might be others who had done so too, he sang no more. Yet some of the exhilaration that had caused him to do so remained, and instead of feeling sad or apprehensive he was conscious of a curious sense of excitement: the taut, ice-cold excitement of a soldier on the eve of a battle.
By the time Dagobaz slowed down they were far beyond the dark grove of Govidan, and all about them the great amphitheatre in its circle of hills lay bathed in a pearl-pale light that cast no shadows. The quiet stretch of the lake mirrored a sky that was already yellow with the dawn; and as the light brightened and partridges and peacocks awoke and began to call, the gongs in the city stopped beating, and Ash turned back towards the burning-ground.
He rode slowly now, drinking in the beauty of the early morning, the sight and the sound and the scent of it, like a man parched with thirst and slaking it with spring-water. Few people would have found much to admire in such scenery, and to the majority of Europeans the flat, featureless plain and the circle of barren hills would have appeared ugly and daunting. But though Ash had every reason to dislike Bhithor, the dawn sky and the cool pale light slowly flooding the land, the clamour of partridges and peacocks and the scent of dust and smoke and kikar blossoms were an integral part of the world that he had loved and was leaving, and he savoured them with a new sense of awareness and a deep feeling of gratitude for benefits received.
He rode with a slack rein, and Dagobaz, having worked off his suppressed energy, was content to keep to a walk for a time. There was no need to hurry, as it was unlikely that the Rana's body would arrive at the burning-ground much before mid-day. For though the funeral would take place as soon as possible because of the heat, the procession would take time to organize, and there were bound to be endless delays. On the other hand the crowds would get there early in order to secure good places, and already there were signs of activity in the grove. Pin-points of brightness, barely visible in the fast-growing light, betokened cow-dung fires, and gossamer veils of smoke crept out from among the tree-trunks, creating an illusion that the place was an island surrounded by shallow water.
As he came nearer Ash could glimpse the saffron-clad figures of priests moving to and fro, and looking towards the city he saw that there were horsemen on the road, riding at a gallop to judge by the dust cloud that rose up behind them and partly obscured the groups of pedestrians that followed in their wake. Presently the twin forts that crowned the hills to the left and right of the city caught the first rays of the sun and flamed red-gold against the cool aquamarine of the sky, and now from every corner of the plain pale smudges of dust told of parties of people converging on the burning-ground in carts and dhoolies, on horseback or on foot. It was clearly time to get to the grove, and obedient to the pressure of Ash's knee, Dagobaz quickened his pace.
Once among the trees on the eastern fringe of the grove, Ash dismounted and led his horse towards the ruins of an ancient chattri surmounted by a triple dome. There were several tunnel-like passages in the massive plinth, some of them leading directly to a central tank that was open to the sky, while others sloped sharply upward and had once contained stairways that led up to the broad terrace overlooking it. The stairs had fallen long ago, and nowadays no one visited the ruined chattri, but one of the passages was still in good repair, and as a temporary stable would be far cooler and more comfortable than the charcoal-seller's shed.
Ash tethered Dagobaz to a fallen block of masonry and fetched water from the tank in a canvas bucket that he had brought with him. He had also brought grain and a small bundle of bhoosa in a saddle-bag, for he knew that Sarji might not be able to collect the horse for another hour or two, and that after that there would be no stopping until they were clear of the valley and far along the trail through the hills. So it was necessary to supply Dagobaz with food and water now.
The water was green and stagnant, but that wild gallop across the dusty plain had made Dagobaz thirsty and he drank it gratefully. When he had finished, Ash fetched a second bucket-full and wedged it carefully between two blocks of sandstone so that it would not collapse. Dagobaz smelt it but did not drink, and ignoring the bhoosa, dropped a wet affectionate nose onto his master's shoulder, nuzzling him as though he sensed that there was something wrong.
‘You'll be all right with Sarji,’ consoled Ash huskily. ‘He'll take care of you… you'll be all right.’ He put an arm about the black head and gave it a brief, hard hug, and then pushing it aside, turned on his heel and walked out of the shadowed archway into the brightness of the sunrise.
The fringes of the grove were still deserted, but near the centre the sound of bird-song gave place to the voices of men. Where the trees stopped behind the chattris that faced the open sweep of the burning-ground, groups of people could be seen hurrying to and fro: enterprising vendors of food and drink busily setting up their stalls under the shade of the branches, and already serving a handful of early customers. But as yet there did not appear to be many spectators, and although there were a score of priests and officials and a number of men in the uniform of the palace guard in the clearing, none showed any interest in Ash, since all were far too busy supervising the construction of the pyre and talking among themselves.
The chattri nearest to them was a larger and more elaborately decorated version of the far older one where he had left Dagobaz, being built in the form of a hollow square surrounding a vast tank. But here the stairways in the thickness of the outer wall were in excellent repair, and Ash climbed one, and reaching the broad stone terrace without being molested, took up a position in the angle between the outer parapet and the wall of a small pavilion that flanked a much larger central one consisting of three tiers of diminishing width, each tier composed of graceful pillared arches with the final one topped by a number of hump-backed domes.
Similar though smaller structures adorned the other three sides of the square, and below them, from the level of the terrace and facing inward, wide, shallow stone steps led down to the water's edge. The chattri had been built to face eastward into the sunrise and the clustered trees, but directly behind it lay the open ground, and today the western pavilions looked down onto a hastily constructed brick platform not thirty yards from the foot of the terrace wall, where half-a-dozen priests were constructing a pyre from logs of cedar and sandalwood strewn with aromatic spices.
The newly risen sun striped the ground with brilliant bars of light and long blue shadows, but as it moved up the sky the shadows shrank and changed their shapes and the dawn wind died; and suddenly the freshness was gone from the morning and the day was breathlessly hot. ‘There will be a breeze soon,’ thought Ash. But today there was no breeze. The leaves hung limp and still and the dust lay unstirred, and behind him the green, glassy surface
For the present it appeared to be untenanted; there was no flicker of movement from behind the split-cane chiks that faced towards the burning-ground, but by now there were many more people in the grove: a number of early arrivals from near-by villages, several ash-smeared Sadhus and a further influx of minor officials, puffed up with their own importance and issuing orders to the men who had brought the logs and to those whose task it would be to hold back the crowds and keep a way clear for the funeral procession.
It was as well for Ash that he had taken up his stand when he did, for before long what had begun as a trickle increased to a flood as the thousands from the city poured into the grove, turning the wide, dusty space and the long, narrow aisles between the trees into a sea of humanity that stretched back on either side of the road by which they had come.
Above this, men clustered as thick as swarming bees on the walls and terraces, the stairways, pavilions and rooftops of the surrounding chattris, and soon every branch of the nearer trees bore its load of determined spectators. The voice of that multitude was a corporate sound – a deep and deafening one that rose and fell like the purr of some giant cat. And still the wind did not blow…
The dust that fumed up under the restless feet of the crowd hung in the air like the smoke trails of the early morning fires, and with every passing minute the heat increased as the sun blazed down on the stone-built chattris and glittered blindingly on the quiet surface of the tanks. But the crowd were impervious to these discomforts. They were used to dust and heat and cramped conditions, and it was not often that they had the opportunity to witness such a notable ceremony as the one that would be enacted here today. If it involved a certain amount of discomfort, well, that was a small price to pay for something that all who were privileged to be present would talk of for years to come, and describe to generations yet unborn. For even here, in this remote corner of Rajasthan, there were few who were not becoming uneasily aware that in the India beyond their borders the old ways were changing and old customs dying out, and that if the Raj had its way, this might be the last suttee that anyone in Bhithor would ever see.