‘What can she say except to want you back! Her eyes are inflamed with too much weeping. She would accept any course which would bring you back home as soon as possible. What is your own opinion?’

‘I . . . ,’ said Sher Singh hesitantly, ‘I have no opinion. I will do exactly what you people tell me to do. If it is true they know all about the affair, there seems no point in hiding anything any more.’

Sabhrai shut her eyes and rocked to and fro. After a while she asked, ‘Son! Have they been beating you?’

Sher Singh looked down at his feet. The memory of the first thrashing came back to him. ‘No, but they beat everyone who comes here. I can hear their cries every night.’

Sabhrai shut her eyes again and chanted as she rocked: ‘The Great Guru! The True . . . Are you afraid?’

‘Who is not afraid of a beating? Only those who get it know. It is easy to be brave at the expense of other people.’ He stroked Dyer’s head and tickled him between his front legs. ‘Then are you all agreed that I should make a statement? What do you advise me?’

‘I am an illiterate native woman, what advice can I give in these matters, son? I only ask the Guru to guide you. What He says is my advice.’

Sher Singh gave her time to tell him what the Guru had to say on the subject. Sabhrai simply closed her eyes and resumed rocking herself and chanting. ‘The True, the True, The Great Guru.’ Tears began running down her cheeks. Sher Singh put his hand on her knees: ‘Mother, what do you want me to do?’

She dried her tears and blew her nose. ‘Son, I spent last night at the Golden Temple asking the Guru for guidance. I do not know whether I got it right. In any case His orders were for me; not for you.’

‘What did He say, Mother? Why don’t you tell me?’

‘He said that my son had done wrong. But if he named the people who were with him he would be doing a greater wrong. He was no longer to be regarded as a Sikh and I was not to see his face again.’

She undid the knot in her headpiece in which she had tied the dust collected at the temple and pasted it on her son’s forehead with her palm. ‘May the Guru be with you in body and in spirit.’

Chapter XI