‘Go away. All of you,’ commanded the Yuveraj, imperiously dismissing his attendants with a wave of the royal hand. ‘I wish to speak to this boy alone.’
The dandy with the diamond earring leaned down to catch his arm and whisper urgently in his ear, but the Yuveraj pulled away and said loudly and angrily: ‘That is fool's talk, Biju Ram. Why should he do me an injury when he has already saved my life? Besides, he is not armed. Go away and don't be so stupid.’
The young man stepped back and bowed with a submissiveness that was sharply at variance with the sudden ugliness of his expression, and Ash was startled to receive a scowl of concentrated venom that seemed out of all proportion to the occasion. Evidently this Biju Ram did not relish being rebuked, and blamed him for being the cause of it; which was manifestly unfair considering he had not said a word – and had never wanted to come here in the first place.
The Yuveraj gestured impatiently and the men withdrew, leaving the two boys to take stock of each other. But Ash still did not speak, and it was the Yuveraj who broke the brief spell of silence that followed. He said abruptly: ‘I told my father how you saved my life, and he has said that I may have you for my servant. You will be well paid and I… I have no one to play with here. Only women and grown-ups. Will you stay?’
Ash had fully intended to refuse, but now he hesitated and said uncertainly: ‘There is my mother… I cannot leave her, and I do not think she…’
‘That is easily arranged. She can live here too and be a waiting-woman to my little sister, the princess. Are you fond of her, then?’
‘Of course,’ said Ash, astonished. ‘She is my mother.’
‘So. You are fortunate. I have no mother. She was the Rani, you know. The true Queen. But she died when I was born, so I do not remember her. Perhaps if she had not died… My sister Anjuli's mother died too, and they said that it was sorcery, or poison; but then she was a
feringhi
, and always sickly, so perhaps
That One
had no need to use spells or poison or to –’ He broke off, looking quickly over his shoulder and then rose abruptly and said ‘Come. Let us go out into the garden. There are too many ears here.’
He put the cockatoo back onto its perch and went out through a curtained doorway and past half-a-dozen salaaming retainers into a garden set about with walnut trees and fountains, where a little pavilion reflected itself in a pool full of lily pads and golden carp; Ash following at his heels. At the far side of the garden only a low stone parapet lay between the grass and a sheer drop of two hundred feet onto the floor of the plateau below, while on the other three sides rose the palace: tier upon tier of carved and fretted wood and stone, where a hundred windows looked down upon tree tops and city, and out towards the far horizon
Lalji sat down on the rim of the pool and began to throw pebbles at the carp, and presently he said: ‘Did you see who pushed the stone?’
‘What stone?’ asked Ash, surprised.
‘The one that would have fallen on me had you not checked my horse.’
‘Oh that. No one pushed it. It just fell.’
‘It was pushed,’ insisted Lalji in a harsh whisper. ‘Dunmaya, who is – who was my nurse, has always said that if
That One
bore a son she would find some way to make him the heir. And I – I am –’ He closed his lips together on the unspoken word, refusing to admit, even to another child, that he was afraid. But the word spoke itself in the quiver of his voice and the unsteadiness of the hands that flung pebbles into the quiet water, and Ash frowned, recalling the movement that had caught his eye before the coping stone slipped, and wondering for the first time why it should have slipped just then, and if it had indeed been a hand that thrust it down.
‘Biju Ram says that I am imagining things,’ confessed the Yuveraj in a small voice. ‘He says that no one would dare. Even
That One
would not. But when the stone fell I remembered what my nurse had said, and I thought… Dunmaya says that I must trust no one, but you saved me from the stone, and if you will stay with me perhaps I shall be safe.’
‘I don't understand,’ said Ash, puzzled. ‘Safe from what? You are the Yuveraj and you have servants and guards, and one day you will be Rajah.’
Lalji gave a short, mirthless laugh. ‘That was true a little while ago. But now my father has another son. The child of
That One
– the
Nautch
-girl. Dunmaya says she will not rest until she has put him in my place, for she desires the
gadi
(throne) for her own son, and she holds my father in the hollow of her hand – so.’ He clenched his first until the knuckles showed white, and relaxing it, stared down at the pebble that he held, his small face drawn into harsh unchildlike lines. ‘I am his son. His eldest son. But he would do anything to please her, and -’
His voice trailed away and was lost in the soft splashing of the fountains. And quite suddenly Ash remembered another voice, someone he had almost forgotten, who had said to him long, long ago in another life and another tongue: ‘The worst thing in the world is injustice. That means being unfair, This was unfair, and so it must not be allowed. Something should be done about it.
‘All right. I'll stay,’ said Ash, heroically abandoning his happy-go-lucky life in the city and the pleasant future he had planned for himself as head-syce in charge of Duni Chand's horses. The careless years were over.
That evening he sent a message to Sita, who dug up the money and the small sealed packet she had hidden in their room, and tying their scanty possessions into a bundle, set out for the Hawa Mahal; and on the following morning Ash was told to consider himself a member of the Yuveraj's household with a salary of no less than five silver rupees a month, while Sita had been given employment as an extra waiting-woman to the dead
Feringhi
-Rani's little daughter, the Princess Anjuli.
By palace standards, the living quarters allotted to them were humble ones: three small and windowless rooms, one of which was a kitchen. But compared with their single room in the city it seemed to them the height of luxury, and the absence of windows was more than compensated for by the fact that all three doors opened onto a small private courtyard that was protected by an eight-foot wall and shaded by a pine tree. Sita was delighted with it and soon began to look upon it as home, though it grieved her that Ashok could not sleep there. But Ash's duties, which in the main consisted of being in attendance on the Yuveraj for a few hours each day, also required him to sleep in an ante-chamber adjoining the royal bedroom at night.
No one could have described such work as arduous, yet Ash soon came to regard it as irksome to a degree. This was partly due to the temper and vagaries of his youthful master, but mostly on account of the young dandy, Biju Ram, who for some reason had taken a strong dislike to him. Lalji's nickname for Biju Ram was
‘Bichchhu’
(scorpion) or more familiarly,
‘Bichchhu-ji’
though it was a name that no one else dared use to his face, for it was all too apt – the dandy being a venomous creature who could turn and sting at the slightest provocation.
In Ash's case no provocation seemed necessary, since Biju Ram appeared to take a positive delight in baiting him. His attentions soon became the bane of the boy's existence, for he lost no opportunity of holding him up to ridicule by making him the butt of endless practical jokes that seemed solely designed to inflict pain and humiliation; and as these tricks were usually lewd as well as cruel, Lalji would snigger at them, and the watching courtiers would break into peals of sycophantic laughter.
Lalji's moods were often ugly and always unpredictable - understandably so, for until the coming of the
Nautch
-girl he had been the spoiled darling of the palace, petted and indulged by his doting father and the adoring Zenana women, and flattered by courtiers and servants alike. His first step-mother, the charming, gentle
Feringhi
-Rani, had grieved for the motherless child, and taking him to her heart, had loved him as though he were her own son. But as neither she nor anyone else had ever attempted to discipline him, it was hardly surprising that the chubby, lovable baby should have grown into a spoilt and overbearing boy, totally unfitted to deal with the changed atmosphere in the palace when the new favourite bore a son and the
Feringhi
-Rani died. For now the little Yuveraj was suddenly of less importance; and even his servants became noticeably less servile, while courtiers who had once flattered and fawned on him hastened to ingratiate themselves with the new power behind the throne.
His rooms and his retinue began to look shabby and neglected, not all his imperious orders were now obeyed, and the continual warnings of his devoted nurse – old Dunmaya, who had been his mother's nurse also and accompanied the Senior Rani to Gulkote when that lady came there as a bride – did nothing to soothe his distress or improve the situation. Dunmaya would have laid down her life for the boy, and her fears for him were probably justified; but the voicing of them, and her constant criticism of his father's growing neglect, only served to increase his unhappiness, and drove him at times to near hysteria. He could not understand what was happening, and it made him frightened rather than angry. But because pride prevented him from showing fear, he took refuge in rage, and those who served him suffered accordingly.
Young as Ash was, something of all this was still apparent to him. But though understanding might help him to excuse much of Lalji's behaviour, it did not make it any easier to bear. Also he did not take kindly to the subservience that the Yuveraj, who had been used to it all his short life, expected from every member of his household; even from those who were elderly grey-beards and grandfathers. Ash had at first been properly impressed by the importance of the heir to the throne, and also with his own duties as this potentate's page, which, in the manner of childhood, he took half seriously and half as a game. Unfortunately, familiarity soon bred contempt and later boredom, and there were times when he hated Lalji and would have run away if it had not been for Sita. But he knew that Sita was happy here, and if he ran away she would have to come with him, not only because he could not leave her behind, but because he suspected that Lalji might treat her unkindly in revenge for his defection. Yet, it was, paradoxically, sympathy for Lalji as much as love for Sita that prevented him from running away.
The two boys had little in common and there were many factors that prevented them from becoming friends: caste, upbringing and environment; heredity and the social gulf that yawned between the heir to a throne and the son of a serving-woman. They were separated, too, by a wide difference in character and temperament; and to a certain extent by the difference in their ages, though this mattered less, for although Lalji was the senior by two years, Ash often felt himself to be the elder by years, and on that account bound to help and protect the weaker vessel from the forces of evil that even the most insensitive must feel stirring in the huge, rambling, ramshackle palace.
Ash had never been insensitive, and though at first he had dismissed Dunmaya's warnings as the babbling of a silly old woman, it had not taken him long to change his mind. The idle, aimless days might drift placidly by, but under that smooth surface ran hidden undercurrents of plot and counterplot, and the wind was not the only thing that whispered in the endless corridors and alcoves of the Hawa Mahal.
Bribery, intrigue and ambition haunted the dusty rooms and lurked behind every door, and even a child could not fail to become aware of it. Yet Ash had taken none of this very seriously until the day when a plate of the Yuveraj's favourite cakes had been found in the little pavilion by the pool in the Yuveraj's private garden…
Lalji had been chasing the tame gazelle, and it was Ash who had found them and idly crumbled one into the pool, where the fat carp gobbled it greedily. A few minutes later the fish were floating belly upwards among the lily pads, and Ash, staring at them with shocked, incredulous eyes, realized that they were dead – and what it was that had killed them.
Lalji had an official ‘taster’ and he normally ate nothing that his taster had not sampled first; but had he found those tempting cakes in the pavilion he would have grabbed and gobbled one as greedily as the carp. Ash snatched them up and carrying them quickly to the parapet at the far side of the garden, dropped them over, plate and all, into the void below. And as the cakes fell, wheeling down in the evening light, a crow swooped and caught one in his beak; and a moment later it too was falling into the gulf, a limp black bundle of feathers.
Ash had told no one of this incident, for though it might have seemed the natural thing to run with it to anyone who would listen, a too early acquaint-ance with danger had taught him caution, and he felt sure that this was something he had better keep to himself. If he told Lalji it would only add to the boy's fears and send old Dunmaya into a further frenzy of anxiety, and if any inquiries were made it was fairly certain that the real culprit would not be found, and equally certain that some innocent scapegoat would be made to suffer. Ash's experience of life in the palace had already taught him that justice was unlikely to be done if Janoo-Bai had anything to do with it, particularly since her position had recently been further strengthened by the birth of a second son.
It never once occurred to him that the scapegoat might have been himself, or that the cakes in the pavilion could have been intended for him and not, as he supposed, for the Yuveraj.
Ash therefore held his peace; for children can only take the world as they find it, and accept the fact that their elders are all-powerful, if not all-wise. He pushed the incident of the cakes into the back of his mind, and accepting servitude in the Hawa Mahal as a necessary evil that could not at present be avoided, resigned himself to enduring it until such time as the Yuveraj came of age and had no further use for his services. At least he now had plenty to eat and clean clothes to wear; though the promised pay had not materialized, owing to the rapaciousness of the
Nautch
-girl having reduced the Rajah's exchequer to a dangerously low ebb. But it proved a tedious existence, until the coming of Tuku, a little mongoose that had haunted Sita's courtyard and that Ash, in search of distraction, had tamed and trained.