The Maharani's Pearls

Contents

The Maharani’s Pearls

British Army Garrison, Northern India, when Bess Crawford was ten

“
B
ESS, FOR
G
OD’S
sake, what are you doing?”

It was my father’s batman—­his Army servant—­standing in the tent opening. I was sitting
cross-­legged on the dusty carpet, and the fortune-­teller had just finished spreading
out her cards.

“Simon, please! I want to hear what she has to say.”

“And your mother will have my head if I don’t bring you back to tea
now
.”

“Pretend you haven’t found me—­keep looking for another few minutes.
Please
?” I begged. “I know I must change before the Maharani arrives. It would never do
to appear for tea looking as if I’d just come from the bazaar. But there’s still plenty
of time.”

“You
will
have just come from the bazaar. She arrived early. And you’ll have fleas before you
leave, if not worse.” He pointed to the dog lying behind the fortune-­teller, busy
scratching its shoulder.

If the Maharani had just arrived, it would be at least another half hour before tea
was brought in.

“Simon—­”

“I’ll be cashiered, Bess.”

“Shhhh. It will only take another moment or two,” I begged, then I turned back to
the fortune-­teller and said in Hindi, “Continue. But hurry, please.”

She bent over the cards, frowning. “You will be in danger on the water,” she said
in that singsong voice that gave the impression she was in a trance. But she wasn’t.
It was part of the show one pays for when one has one’s fortune told. “And I see a
great conflict, not now, but to come.”

So far her guesses were on the mark. I was English, and there was always danger on
the water as we took ship to and from home. As for a great conflict, my father was
a British Army officer. War was his business, great or small.

Simon, still in the doorway, said again, in a voice that brooked no argument. “Elizabeth.”

I said to the fortune-­teller, “Quickly! Who will I marry? And will I be happy?”

But her face had changed as she studied the tattered cards spread across the space
between us.

“The life of someone you care for is in grave danger. My child, you must go now. Before
it is too late.”

Simon’s life, for not bringing me posthaste to tea? She must have understood what
he’d been saying to me. It wasn’t among his duties to play nanny to my father’s daughter,
but occasionally it was necessary for someone to look for me when I strayed to the
horse lines, the bazaar, the temples, and all the other far more exciting places than
our quiet garden, and lost track of the time. It certainly wasn’t going to be my governess.
Miss Stewart would have the vapors if she saw me now.

She didn’t care for India very much. I suspected she’d come out to find a husband,
and had taken a position as governess when she failed to meet a young man to her liking.
She wouldn’t be the first young Englishwoman to do so. When we left for England on
my father’s next leave, she would very likely go with us, and remain in London rather
than travel back with us.

I thanked the fortune-­teller, disappointed. I hadn’t expected truth and wisdom, but
I’d hoped for something I could write about to friends who had been sent back to school
in England. Half our native staff went to fortune-­tellers and believed in them. I
had it on the authority of my
ayah
, the nursery-­room maid, that this woman was the best.

I got up and walked to the tent opening, put out with Simon for spoiling my adventure.
I said crossly, “I thought you and I were friends.”

“So we are,” he said, clearing a path for me past the snake charmer and the man eating
fire. “But I have a duty to your father, and by extension, to your mother. You should
have guessed the Maharani would arrive early. She often does. You could have asked
me to take you to a fortune-­teller tomorrow.” He pushed aside a sacred cow meandering
through the crowded marketplace, and caught my arm before I could pause to watch the
man climbing a rope to nowhere.

“I
could
have asked,” I said, “but I knew very well you’d have said no. So I came on my own.”

Exasperated, he said, “Bess, you aren’t safe wandering about a village by yourself.
You’re an English girl, your father is an officer. You could be abducted, held for
ransom. Worse.”

“In the last village where we lived, yes, I know. But here everyone is friendly. I’m
not in any danger. Someone would come to my rescue. Besides, I brought my syce.” My
native groom was holding our horses on the outskirts of the village.

Simon shook his head in disgust. “Much good he would be.”

I looked up at my companion. He was tall, and my mother said he was still growing.
He’d come to us a recalcitrant, stubborn boy, having lied about his age to join the
British Army, and nearly found himself in a cell before he’d been here six months.
My father, seeing more in the rebellious boy than others had, made him his servant
and set about taming him. Simon, he soon discovered, had come from a very good family
and had been well educated. What had sent him haring off to become a soldier I didn’t
know, but I’d grown so accustomed to having him underfoot and keeping an eye on me
when my father was busy that he was now almost a member of the family. In fact I could
barely remember a time when he wasn’t there. Sometimes I saw my father treating Simon
as the son he’d never had. I wanted to be jealous, but I liked Simon too much to feel
anything but relief that he hadn’t been court-­martialed and shot before my father
took an interest in him. He’d saved me from countless escapades that might have incurred
the wrath of my mother and he sometimes had been my co-­conspirator in mischief as
well.

But not today.

Simon had left his own mount with my syce, and as he gave me a foot up to my saddle,
he told the groom what he thought of him for allowing me to come to the village without
a proper escort.

The syce listened soberly, but when Simon’s back was turned, gave me a sheepish smile
that said he forgave me for getting him into trouble.

We trotted back to the cantonment, Simon smuggled me in through the kitchen, and my
ayah
, my nurse, was waiting, scolding me as she led me to my room. My clothes were laid
out on the bed, and I bathed my face and hands, put them on quickly, and stood still
while the
ayah
brushed out my long hair, bringing out the red-­gold strands that kept it from being
a mousy light brown.

She stood back to take a long look at me. “You’ll do,” she told me in Hindi. “Now
quickly before the governess woman comes to find you.”

I hurried down the passage, took a deep breath at the door to what would have been
called a small drawing room in England, and tapped lightly before opening it.

“There you are,” my mother said brightly, and I knew then she’d had to send Simon
to find me—­he hadn’t come on his own.

The Maharani smiled at me as I curtsied. “Come and embrace me, child. Are you feverish?
Your cheeks are pink.”

I’d been hurrying, but I couldn’t tell her that. “A touch of sun. I went riding this
morning.”

“Without your bonnet? My dear, you must remember you aren’t used to this sun.”

She was an old friend of my father’s, her husband one of the strongest supporters
of the British presence in his state. Forward thinking and intelligent, the Maharajah
had tried to modernize his lands and introduce prosperity to his ­people, measures
not always popular with his fellow princes or some members of his own family.

Tea was brought in and the conversation became general. But I could sense that before
I’d arrived, the Maharani and my mother had been talking about something they didn’t
wish me to overhear. There was a tension in both women that was unusual.

I’d always thought the Maharani was beautiful. Slim and attractive, her dark eyes
lined with kohl to make them even more exotic, she wore silks woven with gold and
silver threads, and the ends of her saris were almost stiff with heavy, shimmering
embroidery. The pearls she wore were legendary—­long ropes that must weigh on her
neck, and the most perfect I’d ever seen in size and quality. On her fingers were
huge stones set in gold. Burmese rubies caught the light, along with first water diamonds,
sapphires, and even a large square-­cut emerald. But she wasn’t at all stuffy. She
sat in my mother’s parlor as comfortably as if she were on the silk and jewel-­encrusted
cushions in a room three times this size.

As I took my place beside her, I realized she’d dismissed her servants—­they were
probably having their own tea in my mother’s sitting room—­and that was another sign
that the two women had been holding a very private conversation.

My father came in soon afterward. Tall and handsome in his uniform, he bent over the
Maharani’s hand and kissed her fingertips. She laughed up at him, and patted the seat
on the other side of her. “Come and tell me what you have been doing.”

My father, a major at this stage in his career, entertained her with humorous stories,
and she laughed and clapped her hands in delight.

“Richard, you make soldiering seem so amusing. And all the while I know you are lying
to me in the politest possible way.”

He laughed as well, and then with a glance toward me, sitting quietly as I turned
the pages of the new book she’d brought me, gave her his view of what was happening
politically. None of us ever forgot the dreadful Sepoy Mutiny of 1857, even though
it was decades in the past. We never took our safety or the loyalty of the men who
served in the army or worked in our houses for granted. I’d been trained from childhood
to obey instantly if there was the least sign of trouble. The irrefutable fact was,
the British were outnumbered thousands to one, and we could as easily be murdered
in our beds as not, if anything went wrong.

It was one of the many reasons parents sent their children to England and safety,
to be educated and brought up far away from India. My parents, wiser than most, had
kept me with them.

The Maharani listened intently to what he was saying, and then suggested that my father
might like to accompany her on a walk in the gardens to see the roses. My mother understood
that this wasn’t an idle flirtation—­it was their only chance to speak freely without
being overheard.

When my father had escorted her through the double doors giving onto the verandah,
my mother said to me in a low voice, “It’s as well you know, my dear. That cousin
of the Maharajah’s has been causing a great deal of trouble again over some of the
reforms being put into place. His Highness has sent his wife to visit us as an opportunity
to tell Richard what’s happening. He’ll know how best to advise Colonel Haldane and
consider what we can do to help.”

“Will they be all right?” I asked anxiously. For I was very fond of the Maharani and
I liked her husband as well. He’d been educated in Britain, and his friends there
had called him Harry. His son, my age, and his daughter, a year or so older, had been
my playmates since I was in leading strings.

“I’m sure they’ll be fine,” my mother told me, but there was a tiny echo of doubt
in her voice.

I said, “Is there anything that Father can do? Or the colonel? To support the Maharajah?”
But that I knew could be a double-­edged sword, giving his enemies cause to claim
he lived in the pocket of the British. It had been difficult, persuading many of the
Indian princes to give up their feudal power for the greater good, relinquishing so
much authority to the British Crown. The Maharajah’s son, like his father, was to
be educated at Eton, leaving in August with his entourage. All of a sudden it dawned
on me that possibly he was being sent to where he would be safe.

“I daresay there will be something.” Again that tiny echo of doubt in her voice.

At that moment, my father returned with the Maharani, and they smiled as they came
through the door. But I’d seen, as they stepped onto the wide verandah, that they
hadn’t been smiling then.

The Maharani took her leave soon after. She often invited me to come and stay, but
this time there was no mention of it.

We followed the Maharani and her entourage out to where her motorcar waited. I remembered
that the first time I’d seen her, I was sadly disappointed that she hadn’t arrived
on an elephant. Now, as my father was handing her into the rear of the motorcar, I
looked at her guard, always handsomely dressed, plumes in their caps, sitting astride
lovely black horses. Behind them was an assortment of grooms, and as her driver set
out for the compound gates, I realized that I’d seen one of those grooms before. It
was in the village not an hour ago, and he’d been standing behind one of the stalls
near the fortune-­teller’s tent, talking to a man with a long scar on his face. But
what could he possibly have been doing there?

I touched my father’s arm. “That groom—­I’m sure I saw him today in the village. But
he wasn’t wearing the Maharani’s livery at the time.”

My father turned quickly. “Tell me.”

If I explained what I’d seen, it would mean confessing to my own escapade. But I could
hear the fortune-­teller’s voice again:
The life of someone you care for is in grave danger. My child, you must go now. Before
it is too late.

Had
she been telling my fortune at that point? Or warning me? Had she heard something?
Gossip flew about the marketplace like birds on the wing.

Had it been said in an entirely different tone of voice, not the singsong of a pretend
trance?

“The village fortune-­teller. I think she knew something. It was after Simon had come
into the tent, you see. Perhaps the warning was meant for him or even for both of
us. Please? Ask Simon.”

. . .
You must go now. Before it is too late.