The Eye of the Horse. Jamila Gavin

      

       With gratitude to my parents for their memories; much love to Arthur, and to Geoff and Miriam for their endless support.

       The Collected Poems and Plays of Rabindranath Tagore published by Macmillan

      First published in Great Britain 1994 by Methuen Children’s Books

       This edition published 2018 by Egmont UK Limited

       The Yellow Building, 1 Nicholas Road, London W11 4AN

      Text copyright © 1994 Jamila Gavin

      The moral rights of the author have been asserted

      ISBN 978 1 4052 9279 5

       Ebook ISBN 978 0 7497 4743 5

      A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library

      All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher and the copyright owner.

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       Contents

       Cover

       Title Page

       Acknowledgements and Copyright

       Dedication

       Epigraph

1. The Omen

2. The Sacrifice

3. The Gardens of Treachery

4. Train Tracks

5. The Prisoner

6. Who Will You Marry?

       7. To the Borders of Death

       8. The Wild Child

       9. The Catch

       10. The Paper Round

       11. Voices

       12. Savage Soul

       13. Love or Duty?

       14. Sea Change

       15. Hanuman

       16. A Woman in the Jungle

       17. A Twist of Flowers

       18. A Boat on a Pond

       19. ‘La Paloma’

       20. Monsoon

       21. Promises to Keep

       About the Author

       To Miriam – The hub of the wheel holds all its parts together.

      Then they let loose a white horse. And it was decreed that, wheresoever this horse should wander, King Rama would follow, even to the ends of the earth, until he might be led to the only person who could forgive him.

       Ramayana

ONE

       The Omen

      ‘Hey, Bublu! I heard something!’

      The youngest boy, Sparrow, leaned over and shook the oldest boy.

      ‘Shut up, will you,’ groaned Bublu. It was hard enough to sleep at the best of times without being woken deliberately, what with the bitter winter cold and the fretful whimperings and nightmares, which racked them all on most nights.

      Bublu enshrouded himself more tightly in the thin cotton sheet. He tried to ease the agony of the hard stone floor beneath his body, by rolling himself half over the limbs of the other boys. There was a murmuring of grunts and muttered protests, as everyone readjusted themselves in the knotted huddle they had formed around the ashes of last night’s fire.

      But Bublu was awake now, and a few moments later, he too heard a noise. His body tensed automatically.

      ‘See! Didn’t I tell you?’ hissed Sparrow, his cold face pressed to Bublu’s ear. ‘You heard it, didn’t you! Is it them again? Are they coming to kill us?’ His voice almost broke out loud with panic.

      Bublu clamped his hand over the youngest boy’s mouth. ‘Shut up, won’t you!’ He whispered. ‘All that’s over now.’ Even so, he was fully alert and sat up swiftly in the darkness, his mind already assessing the escape routes. He and the boys had gone over them many times, working out all the possible strategies. They had explored every part of the deserted palace; all the rooms, chambers, passageways, stairways; the different levels of terraces and even the wild saplings and creepers, down which they could shin in an emergency.

      He listened, not