“Thank you,” Mrs. Crespin told him.
But for his turban, he still wore European clothes. But his inseparable silver whistle hung at the coat of his gray lounge suit. He lifted the whistle. But she stayed him a moment, and said, “Will you tell me—what—will be done—with Major Crespin’s body?”
“I had not thought of that yet,” Rukh asserted. It was true. “But no disrespect shall be shown to what the flowers you have gathered protects.”
“May my husband’s body be burned?” she asked.
“You prefer it—to burial?”
“Much.”
Rukh’s dark eyes darkened. She preferred it to burial here in Rukh, he knew. But after an instant’s hesitation, he said quietly: “It shall be done. I promise you.”
“Thank you,” she said again, “I will go to him now.”
The Raja bowed, and lifted the silver whistle. Its long note pierced sharp and sweet through the evening.
“They will attend you,” he said when he’d given the soldiers who’d come a crisp order. And she turned and went with the men, the young ayah close behind her as they entered the door in the palace wall.