Caste

But Ajeet laughed, saying: "Let Hunsa have the iron; he, too, will know of its heat."

"Put it again in the fire," declared Sookdee, "for it is an ordeal in which only the guilty is punished; but the ball must be of the same heat."

And once more the shot was returned to the charcoal.

Gulab Begum pushed her way rapidly to where the jamadars stood; but Sookdee objected, saying: "When men appeal to Bhowanee it is not proper that women should be of the ceremony; it will indeed anger our mother goddess."

"Thou art a fool, Sookdee," Bootea declared. "The hand of your chief is in pain though he shows it not in his face. Shall a brave man suffer because you are without feeling!"

She turned to the Chief. "Here I have cocoanut oil and a bandage of soft muslin. Hold to me your hand, Ajeet."

"It is not needed, Gulab, star-flower," the Chief declared proudly.

The Gulab had poured from a ram's horn cool soothing cocoanut oil upon the burns, and then she wrapped about the hand a bandage of shimmering muslin, bound in a wide strip of silk-like plantain leaf, saying: "This will keep the oil cool to your wound, Chief; it will not let it dry out to increase the heat."

There was another band of muslin passed around the leaf, and as the Gulab turned away, she said: "Think you, Sookdee, that Bhowanee will be offended because of mercy. Some day, Jamadar, fire will be put upon your face, when the head has been lopped from your body, to hide the features of a decoit that it may not bear witness against the tribe."

"You have delayed the ordeal," Sookdee answered surlily, "and because of that Bhowanee will have anger."

The blacksmith, though pumping with both hands at his pair of bellows, had felt the impress of the two silver coins in his loin cloth, and, true to the bribe from Hunsa, had adroitly doctored his fire by dusting sand here and there so that the shot had lost, instead of gained heat. Now he cried out: "This kabob of the cannon is cooked, and my arms are tired whilst you have talked."

Rising he seized his tongs asking, "Who now will have it placed upon his palm?"

"Put it here," Sookdee said, as he laid a pipal leaf of twice the thickness he had given Ajeet upon the palm of Hunsa.

Then Hunsa, having repeated the appeal to Bhowanee, strode toward the goal, and reaching it, cast the iron shot to the ground, holding up his hand in triumph. His was the hand of a gorilla, thick skinned, rough and hard like that of a workman, and now it showed no sign of a burning.

"What say you, Ajeet Singh?" Sookdee asked.

"As to the ordeal," the Chief answered, "according to our faith Bhowanee has spoken. But know you this, though the scar is in my palm, in my heart is no treachery. As to Hunsa, the ordeal has cleared him in your minds, and perhaps it is true. We will go forth to the decoity and what is to be will be. We are but servants of Bhowanee, and if we make vow to sacrifice a buffalo at her temple perhaps she will keep us in her protection."

Ajeet knew that he had been tricked somehow, but to dispute the ordeal, the judgment of the black goddess, would be like an apostacy-it would turn every Bagree against him-it would be a shatterment of their tenets. So he said nothing but accepted mutely the decree.

But Bootea's sharp eyes had been busy. She had watched the blacksmith, to whom Ajeet had paid little attention. In the faces of Hunsa and Sookdee she had caught flitting expressions of treachery. She knew that Ajeet had been guiltless of treason to the others, for she had been close to him. Besides she had, when roused, an imperious temper. The Bagree women were allowed greater freedom than other women of Hindustan, even greater freedom than the Mahratta females who, though they appeared in public unveiled, in the homes were treated as children, almost as slaves. The Bagree women at times even led gangs of decoits. Her anger had been roused by Sookdee earlier, and now rising from where she sat, she strode imperiously forward till she faced the jamadars:

"Your Chief is too proud to deny this trick that you, Sookdee and Hunsa, and that accursed labourer of another caste, the blacksmith, that shoer of Mahratta horses whom Hunsa has bribed, have put upon him in the name of Bhowanee."

Sookdee stared in affrighted silence, and Hunsa's bellow of rage was stilled by Ajeet, who whirling upon him, the jade-handled knife in his grip, commanded: "Still your clamour! The Gulab has but seen the truth. I, also, know that, but a soldier may not speak as may one of his women-kind."

There was a sudden hush. A tremor of apprehension had vibrated from Bagree to Bagree; the jamadars felt it. A spark, one lunge with a knife, and they would be at each other's throats; the men of Alwar against the men of Karowlee; even caste against caste, for the Bagrees from Alwar were of the Solunkee caste, while the Karowlee men were of Kolee caste.

And there the slim girl form of Bootea stood outlined, a delicate bit of statuary, like something of marble that had come from the hand of Praxiteles, the white muslin sari in its gentle clinging folds showing against the now darkening wall of bamboo jungle. There was something about the Gulab, magnetic, omnipotent, that subdued men, that enslaved them; an indescribable subtlety of gentle strength, like the bronze-blue temper in steel. And her eyes-no one can describe the compelling eyes of the world, the awful eyes that in their fierce magnetism act on a man like bhang on a Ghazi or, like the eyes of Christ, smother him in love and goodness. The karait of India has a dull red eye without pupil, of which it is the belief that if a man gaze into it for a time he will go mad. To say that Bootea's eyes were beautiful was to say nothing, and to describe their compelling force was impossible.

So as they rested on the sullen eyes of Sookdee he quivered; and the others stood in silence as Ajeet took Bootea by the arm saying, "Come, my lotus flower," led her to the tent.

There the jamadar put his sinewy arms about the slender girl, and bent his handsome face to implant a kiss on her red lips, but she thrust his arms from her and drew back saying, "No, Ajeet!"

"Why, lotus-why, Gulab? Often from thy lips I have heard that there is no love in thy heart for any man even for me, but is it not a lie, the curious lie of a woman who resents a master?"

Ajeet in a mingling of awe and anger had dropped into the formal "thou" pronoun instead of the familiar "you."

"No, Ajeet, it is the truth; I do not tell lies."

"But out there thou denounced those sons of depraved parents in defence of Ajeet; thou bound up his hand as a mother dresses the wounds of a child in her love-even mocked Bhowanee and the ordeal; then sayest thou there is no love in thy heart for Ajeet."

"There is not; just the tie such as is between us, that is all. I never learned love-I was but a pawn, a prize. Seest that, Ajeet?" and Bootea laid a finger upon the iron bracelet on her arm-the badge of a widow.

Ajeet Singh sneered: "A metal lie, a-"

"Stop!" The girl's voice was almost a scream of expostulation. "To speak of that means death, thou fool. And thou hast sworn-"

Ajeet's face had blanched. Then a surge of anger re-flushed it.

"Gulab," he said presently, "take care that the love thou say'st is dead-but which is not, for it never dies in the heart of a woman, it is but a smouldering fire-take care that it springs not into flame at the words of some other man, the touch of his hands, or the light of his eyes, because then, by Bhowanee, I will kill thee."

The Gulab stamped a foot upon the earth floor of the tent: "Coward! now I hate thee! Only the weak, the cowards, threaten women. When thou art brave and strong I do not hate if I do not love. 'Tis thou, Ajeet, who art to take care."

Outside Guru Lal was casting holy oil upon the troubled waters of a disputed ordeal. The wily old priest knew well how omens and ordeals could be manipulated. Besides, unity among the Bagree leaders, leading to much loot, would bring him tribute for the gods.

"It may be," he was saying to Sookdee, "that the blacksmith, who is not of our tribe, nor of our nine castes, but is of the Sumar caste, has sought to put shame upon our gods by a trick. At best he was a surly rascal of little thought. It may be that the iron shot was made too hot for the hand of the Chief. An ordeal is a fair test when its observance is equal between men; it is then that the goddess judges and gives the verdict-her way is always just. Have not we many times read wrongly her omens, and have misjudged the signs, and have suffered. And Ajeet acted like one who is not guilty."

"And think you, Guru, that Ajeet will give you a present of rupees for this talk that is like the braying of an ass?" Hunsa growled.

But Sookdee objected, saying: "Guru Lal is a holy man of age, and his blood runs without heat, therefore if he speaks, the words are not a matter for passion, but to be considered. We will go upon a decoity, which is our duty, and leave the ordeal and all else in the hands of Bhowanee."

CHAPTER VII

Perhaps it was the customs official that told Dewan Sewlal about the Akbar Ka Diwa, the Lamp of Akbar, the ruby that was so called because of its gorgeous blood-red fire, as being in the iron box of the merchant.

This ruby had been an eye in one of the two gorgeous jewelled peacocks that surmounted the "Peacock Throne" at Delhi in the time of Akbar to the time when the Persian conqueror, Nadir Shah, sacked Delhi and took the Peacock Throne and the Kohinoor, and everything else of value back to Persia. But he didn't get the...