Far Pavilions (67 page)

There were other and nearer caves, but it was difficult to judge how deep they were, and a shallow one would offer no protection against such a storm as this. But one that had been worth blocking in with a mud wall was likely to run far back into the hillside, and that narrow doorway would keep out the worst of the dust – if only they could reach it in time, for Ash was sharply aware that if the storm overtook them before they did so they would never find their way to it, the air already being so thick with dust and flying fragments of dry grass and leaves that they seemed to be riding through a fog.

Had the ground been less level they might never have reached it; boulders would certainly have brought one or both of their horses down, and bushes would have slowed them, but mercifully there were neither, and the only difficulty had been preventing their horses from racing past it and on up the valley. But Ash, who was in the lead, reined in with a violence that forced Baj Raj back on his haunches, and was out of the saddle and leaping at the mare as it shot past, Anjuli tugging on the reins with all her strength.

The mare swerved wildly and came to a sliding, slithering stop, and Anjuli tumbled from the saddle, and picking herself up, ran to catch Baj Raj, who was trotting in an aimless circle stumbling over his reins, and led him through the empty doorway into the darkness beyond, to be followed a moment later by Ash with the mare.

There was not enough light to see how big the cave was, but judging by the hollow sound of the horses' hooves it was a large one; and they had reached it in time – but only just in time. The storm had been so close on their heels that even as they turned to face the entrance, a dark curtain appeared to be drawn across it and the daylight was blotted out as a churning, choking, maelstrom of dust whirled down the valley, driven by a wind that shrieked as though the Valkyries rode it, or witches from the Brocken.

The noise of the gale filled the quiet cave with sound and made the darkness reverberate with a hollow, high-pitched drone that seemed to come from all points of the compass at once, and dust poured in through the doorway until the close air within was suddenly so thick with it that breathing became difficult, and Anjuli began to cough and choke.

She heard Ash calling something, but the words were lost in the howl of the wind and the echoes that they awoke in the recesses of the cave. Then his hand closed upon her arm and he was shouting into her ear: ‘Take your coat off and put it over your head. And get back into the cave – as far as you can.’ He brushed away the silky hair that was getting into his mouth, and added: ‘Carefully now, Larla; don't go falling over anything.’

The old endearment had slipped out unconsciously, and he did not know that he had used it, for he had other things on his mind; notably the horses, who were backing and snorting in an effort to escape from the stifling dust, and might panic at any moment and lash out in the darkness, injuring each other if not Juli or himself. And if the horses went lame it was going to mean a long walk back to camp – if there was still a camp. He did not want to think of what might be happening there, and in any case there was no point in worrying about a situation that was completely beyond his control. But at least he should be able to do something about Baj Raj and the mare.

He had given his handkerchief to Juli, so there was nothing for it but to remove his shirt and tear it into strips; and he did so – using his teeth to start it tearing and tying the first strip over his nose and mouth as a filter. It was easier to breathe after that, and he kept his eyes shut against the dust and did the rest by touch, soothing the horses and knotting up their reins out of harm's way, and finally fastening a loop of cloth between each animal's forelegs, just above the fetlock, in the time-honoured fashion of the Indian villager who slips a similar loop of grass rope on his pony so that it can only hobble, and lets it out to graze in the sure knowledge that it cannot stray too far or come to much harm.

That done, he turned his attention to exploring the cave in order to see if it went far enough back to allow them all to get out of this stifling smother and into cleaner air.

The wind was blowing slantwise down the valley and slightly away from the cave, and the overhang of rock helped in some small way to deflect it. But there was no way of blocking the entrance, and the dust fumed in through it like steam from a boiling kettle. The further away they could get from it the better for all of them, and Ash moved back cautiously into the darkness, feeling his way along one wall.

He had gone perhaps twenty yards when his hand touched something that was unmistakably metal, and further investigation showed that someone, presumably the long-ago occupant who had closed in the cave mouth with those mud bricks, had driven several short iron staples into the rock wall; though for what purpose was not clear. The staples were spaced in a long slanting line, and there were five of them, and may well have been others higher up the wall and out of reach. But at least four were at a reasonable level, and Ash blessed the unknown man who had put them there, for though they were corroded by rust and one snapped off in his hand, the others would serve his purpose, as the air in this part of the cave was more breathable than that by the open doorway.

He groped his way back to the horses and returned with Baj Raj, who was jerking his head wildly from side to side in an effort to escape the dust, and had to be coaxed to follow. But once out of the worst of the smother, and with his reins hitched to a staple in the wall, he stopped shivering and stood quietly, and Ash went back for the mare, and having tethered her in the same manner, wiped the caked dust from his eyes and opened them a fraction to see if there were any signs that the storm was abating. But the doorway still showed barely lighter than the surrounding blackness of the cave, and outside the wind still howled past with the racket of an express train whistling in a tunnel.

It looked, thought Ash, as though it was going to be a long business, and he wished that he had paid more attention when the headmen of villages in their line of march had spoken of hot winds and dust-storms and other vagaries of the Rajputana weather. But having learned that the season of such storms was still well ahead, he had not troubled to ask questions about them, imagining that that was something that could safely be left until later and need not concern the Karidkote camp until the wedding ceremonies were over and they were free to start north again. But he regretted now that he had not asked them earlier, for he had no idea how long a dust-storm could be expected to last. Hours? – or only minutes?

It seemed to him that this one had been raging for close on an hour already, but on reflection he revised that estimate. He could not have taken more than ten minutes to tear up his shirt and find those providential staples, and to tether the horses. Say fifteen at most, and surely there could not be enough dust in all Rajputana, dry as it was, to sustain such a storm as this for more than a limited period? Unless, of course it was blowing in a circle – which was something else he did not know. But at least it could not last indefinitely; as soon as the wind expended its first violence and began to die down, the clouds of dust would sink back to earth and it would be over. Though not, at this rate, until the sun had set.

There was a watch in the pocket of Ash's riding breeches, but he had not looked at it since he left the camp, and as he could not see it now he had very little idea of what time it was. But it occurred to him that the storm alone might not account for the fact that he could barely make out the entrance to the cave. Once the sun had set, the interval of twilight was very short, for here night did not come slowly, as in the West, but hastily, on the heels of day. And if the sun was already down they were going to have to find their way back in the dark, across unfamiliar country and through a maze of hills.

‘Mulraj will send out men to search for us,’ thought Ash; though with more hope than confidence, because it seemed to him only too likely that the camp would have been thrown into such appalling chaos that Mulraj and the rest of them would have their hands full and be forced to wait until daylight before sending out search-parties, by which time, with any luck, he and Juli would have got back on their own. Meanwhile, for as long as the storm raged they would have to stay where they were and make the best of it.

He pulled down the strip of cambric that he had tied over his nose and mouth, and sniffing the air, found that it was a good deal better than he had expected. It would probably be better still further back in the cave – particularly if, as the echoes suggested, there were side caves leading out of this one, which the dust would not have entered – and at least it was pleasantly cool in here. The heat of the sun's rays had not been able to penetrate this far into the hillside, and after the burning heat outside, the drop in temperature was considerable; he hoped that Juli would not catch a chill, for she was wearing only a thin cotton
achkan
; and possibly nothing under it.

He called out to her, and once again the cave filled with echoes that fought with the weird drone of the wind as a dozen voices shouted from different points in the darkness, some close and some far away, their words lost in the clamour. The echoes faded but the noise of the wind remained, and Ash did not know if Juli had answered him or not, for her voice would have been drowned in the medley of sounds. But suddenly and unreasonably, half-a-dozen hideous possibilities sprang into his mind, and his heart contracted in a spasm of sheer terror. He had warned her to be careful, but suppose there was a pit in the floor of the cave? – a well, even? Or some deep fissure that went far down into the rock, into which she could have fallen? Or were there other caves heading out of this one in a chain of caverns and passages going back and back into the hillside, branching and twisting so that anyone groping through them would soon become hopelessly lost…? And supposing there were snakes…

Panic gripped him and he ran forward into the darkness, his hands outstretched, calling, ‘Juli, – Juli. Where are you? Are you all right? Answer me, Juli!’ And the echoes reverberated round him, mocking him; now fading, now rising above the deafening croon of the wind:
Juli
…
Juli
…
Juli
..

Once he thought he heard her answer; but he could not be sure where the sound had come from and he would, at that moment, have sold his soul for a light or a few seconds of silence. Straining to listen, he could hear nothing but the bagpipe drone of the wind and the maddening echoes of his own voice, and he stumbled on blindly, groping in the inky blackness and meeting only rock and rough earth, or emptiness.

He must have turned a corner into a side cave without knowing it, because all at once the volume of noise diminished as sharply as if a door had closed behind him, and the air was almost free from dust. He heard no new sound and the blackness was still as impenetrable; but suddenly he knew that it was from here that Juli had answered him, and that she was still here, for there was a faint fragrance of rose-petals in the stale, cool air. He turned towards it, and caught her in his arms.

Her arms and shoulders, her breasts and her slender waist were smooth and warm and naked against his own bare flesh, for having thrown the
achkan
over her head as a protection against the choking dust, she had pulled it away in order to call to him, and lost it somewhere in the darkness. The cheek that was pressed to his was wet with tears and she was breathing in hard gasps as though she had been running, for she had heard him shouting and had turned back to go to him, afraid that it had been a cry for help, because there had been so much urgency in the sound. But confused by the echoes she had lost her bearings and blundered round in the dark, bruising herself against unexpected outcrops of rock and sobbing and calling as she searched for him in the clamorous darkness.

They clung together for a long minute, not moving or speaking, and then Ash turned his head and kissed her.

24

If the dust-storm had not blown up so quickly… If they had noticed its approach earlier… If the cave had been smaller and they had been able to see; or hear…

Much later, Ash was to think of that and to wonder if it would have made any difference? Perhaps. Though not if old Uncle Akbar, after whom he had been named, had been right.

Uncle Akbar and Koda Dad had both assured him that all men are born into the world with their fate tied about their necks, and cannot escape it.

‘
What is written, is written.
’ How many times had he heard Koda Dad say that? And Akbar Khan had said it before him – once when Ash stood looking down at the dead body of a tiger, shot five minutes earlier from the machan where they had waited for hours; and again, on an equally memorable occasion, in the courtyard of Shah Jehan's great mosque in Delhi, where the crowd had been so great that two men had fallen from the gateway and been killed, and Ash had demanded explanations. But in the present instance, the question of predestination versus free-will was of purely academic interest; the fact remained that he had failed to notice the storm, and because the cave in which they had taken refuge had been very large and dark and full of noises, he had been seized by panic at the thought of Juli lost in it – breaking her neck by falling into some hideous underground cavern, or treading on a cobra in the dark.