Far Pavilions by M. M. Kaye Read Free Book Online Page A

sighed resignedly and allowed himself to be hurried into the hated sailor suit without protest. He seemed to have grown a lot since he last wore it, for it was uncomfortably tight, and when it came to putting on the strapped European shoes he found it impossible to force his feet into them.
    ‘You are not trying,
piara
(dear),’ scolded Sita, almost in tears between weariness and vexation. ‘Push hard – harder.’
    But it was no use, and she had to let him tread down the heels and wear them as though they had been slippers. The white sailor hat with its wide blue ribbon had not been improved by its long sojourn in the bundle, but she straightened it with an anxious hand and carefully adjusted the elastic band under his chin.
    ‘Now you are altogether a Sahib, Heart-of-my-heart,’ whispered Sita, kissing him. She wiped away a tear with the corner of her sari, and tying up his discarded clothing in her bundle, came to her feet and led him up the drive towards the house.
    The garden was already silver-grey in the first pale wash of the dawn, and the Abuthnots' bungalow stood out clear-cut and distinct – and quiet. So quiet that as they approached it they heard a quick patter of paws on matting as a dark shape appeared out of the blackness of an open doorway, and scuttling down the verandah, loped away across the lawn. It was not a Sahib's dog, or even one of the pariah-dogs that haunted the cantonment bazaars, but a hyena, its high, humped shoulders and grotesquely stunted hind-quarters unmistakable in the growing light…
    Sita stood still, her heart once again racing in panic. She could hear the receding rustle of leaves as the hyena vanished among the bushes, and the steady munching of the donkey by the gate. But there was still no sound from the house, or from the servants' quarters behind it, where surely someone should be awake and stirring. Where was the
chowkidar
, the night watchman who should have been guarding the bungalow? Her eye was caught by a small white object that lay on the gravel almost at her feet, and she stooped slowly and picked it up. It was a high-heeled satin shoe such as she had seen the memsahibs wear in the evenings for balls or
burra khanas
, * an incongruous object to find lying discarded on the front drive at that hour – or any hour.
    Sita's frightened gaze darted over the lawns and flower-beds and she saw for the first time that there were other objects littering the garden: books, pieces of broken china, torn fragments of clothing, a stocking… She dropped the satin slipper, and turning, ran back to the gate dragging Ash with her, and thrust him into the shadows of the pepper tree.
    ‘Stay there,
piara
,’ ordered Sita in a voice that Ash had never heard her use before. ‘Get back – get down into the shadows and do not make a noise. I will see first who is in the bungalow, and then I will come back for you. As you love me, make no sound.’
    ‘Will you bring something to eat?’ asked Ash, anxiously, adding with a sigh: ‘I'm
so
hungry.’
    ‘Yes, yes. I will find something. I promise you. Only stay quiet.’
    Leaving him, she went across the garden, and gathering all her courage, stole up the verandah steps and into the silent house. There was no one there. The dark, empty rooms were littered with broken furniture and the debris left by men who had looted anything of value and wantonly destroyed anything and everything else. The servants' quarters too were deserted, and there had evidently been an attempt to set fire to the bungalow, but the flames had not caught, and behind the broken door of the larder there was still a quantity of food that no one had bothered to steal, perhaps because the caste of the looters prevented them from touching such stuff.
    Under other circumstances Sita might have had similar qualms. But now she filled the torn half of a tablecloth with as much as she could conveniently carry. There was bread and cold curry, a bowl of
dal
and the remains of a