The Mountain of Light (10 page)

The Maharani put the baby up on her shoulder and tapped on his back until he burped and then, sated, his eyes closed again and his breathing evened.

“He sleeps a lot,” Maharajah Ranjit Singh said.

She laughed, rubbing her face against the child's side. “All babies do.”

“I wouldn't know,” he said, suddenly grave. “I was too busy conquering kingdoms and kings when my other sons were younger.”

If the initial stroke hadn't left him immobile in a chair, he would not have seen Jindan, or noticed her. It was during those first long days, when he had chafed at his inability to move his hand, his leg, his mouth, his face, when the words came garbled and nonsensical out of his mouth even though his brain was on fire with what he wanted to say, that he had insisted upon being taken to the Shah Burj tower every afternoon. He refused to take a nap, it seemed too much like
defeat, especially since he lay looking up at the night sky, worrying about what had happened to him, and what would happen to his empire with the British clustering over the southern doorstep at the Sutlej. True, he had signed a treaty with them to stay away, but that was many decades ago. A few Afghani spies had also been caught within the Punjab from the north. Ranjit Singh knew that he was the one who held the Empire together. And word of his stroke had already filtered out, so the scouts came snuffling around to find out the truth.

One afternoon, he had asked to be left at the Shah Burj, leaning from his chair against the marble latticework
jali,
his forehead resting against the carving, which left its imprint upon his skin because he couldn't move away easily by himself. Looking over the trees, the fields of rice and wheat, the crows leaving black footprints on the sky, he had seen the girl bend into the river, plunge in a goatskin bag, fill it, cap it, and lift it over her head and shoulders onto her back. The wet bag had sprinkled water into the air around her, each drop creating a tiny rainbow, until she had seemed to be suspended in light. Her clothing was shabby, her
ghagara
wet up to her knees, frayed at the edges, her
choli
faded from so many washes that it was a dull shade of gray. He had watched, imprisoned as he was, as she staggered when the weight of the bag first settled on her shoulders.

She'd righted herself painfully and begun the long, shambling trek back to the fort.

Ranjit Singh still hadn't seen her face, but something in that measured determination of a girl who was hardly strong enough to carry a
bhisti 
's load had captured his heart. He'd asked Fakir Azizuddin to send for her. She had come to stand in front of him, a little shy, mostly frightened. Carrying water was men's work. But her father was too ill, and had been in his bed for some days now—money had to be made, and there was only one way she knew how to make it. Her speech was
crude, not appealing, and she was prickly with resentment. The Maharajah had offered her some learning, some lessons.

“What would I do with it?” she had asked, her hand churning in a contemptuous movement.

“Bah,” he had shouted. “What everyone else does with it. I wouldn't know; ask Fakir Azizuddin. He was the one who grew up interred in books and the alphabet.” He had turned to his astonished foreign minister. “Tell her. I will pension off your father; you'll never need to work for a living again. Tell her.”

Fakir Azizuddin had stammered out something meaningless. He had taken the girl into the harem, asked for her to be bathed and dressed and sent to the tutors.

A month later, the Maharajah of the Punjab had fallen in love with the child of a
bhisti
. She had talked to him, sung to him, looked at him with such devotion that he couldn't bring himself to part with her. And so, he had married her.

Jindan Kaur laid the sleeping child in his cradle. In that clean, frugal room, the baby's bed was made of a gleaming gold, embedded with diamonds that twinkled, the sheets were of silk, the canopy had studded on the inside a thousand jewels of every color with silk-tasseled fringes. She had been willing to accede to the Maharajah's love for white and minimalism, as long as she could put her son in a bed of gold. She then came up to Ranjit Singh, knelt by his chair, and wrapped her arms around him.

He could hear the thud of her heart, smell the faint aroma of roses from her perfume, feel the caress of her fingers upon his neck. They stayed like that until the sun set, and darkness came tumbling down upon the tent, and the cradle with the child glowed in multicolored points of light, and one luminous fragment of light smoldered from the heart of the Kohinoor on the sleeve of her
choli
.

“I'm sorry,” he said.

Maharajah Ranjit Singh had two other sons who were in
line for the throne, Kharak Singh and Sher Singh, grown men both, with children and wives. Dalip Singh was only three months old.

Jindan knew this, although they had never talked about the succession, for it would mean that Ranjit Singh was dead. She nodded and kissed his mottled cheek.

He felt a tightness in his stomach at the touch of her lips. How much longer could he live? Which was why he had allowed Lord Auckland to come to the Punjab to meet him.

“What does he want, this Auckland?” Jindan asked softly.

“My help in invading Afghanistan.”

“And will you give it to him?”

She heard the roll of laughter in the Maharajah's chest. “Of course not. But with this”—he moved his right hand ineffectually to gesture at his wasted body—“I thought it best to hear him out, pull it along, and then not say no, but not do anything.”

“He wants to put Shah Shuja on the throne of Afghanistan?”

“Yes,” Ranjit said, grinning. “How do you know?”

She moved her shoulders. “Who else is there? Who else would listen to the British? Shuja's been in Ludhiana as their guest, under their protection, panting for this opportunity.”

Ranjit Singh stroked her brow, which was creased with worry. She was wondering what this meant for her, for her son, their son.

She shifted, fretful. “You're too generous with them, your Majesty. The British embassy is now twenty-five thousand men”—when he raised his right eyebrow, she waved—“Azizuddin told me. Well, I asked. He said that you're taking care of everything for them—that thousands of hens go for their pots every morning along with flour and rice, spices; that their bazaars only sell what you send and that the shopkeepers have been told to sell anything and take nothing, and all their bills come to you. Is it even necessary?”

He touched the diamond on her arm, his fingers shutting out the glow for a brief moment, before he let the light seep in again. “My purse is bottomless, Jindan. My treasury is even larger. So, why not? But, there's always an underlying purpose to this . . . generosity. When I refuse to send my army into Afghanistan, because I consider it to be a futile attempt, the British will not be able to accuse me of a lack of charity.”

“You're really saving the Punjab,” she said slowly.

“If it comes to that, yes. On the day the Governor-General crosses the Sutlej to come for his first official visit, he will be greeted by my soldiers in formation. My hand may be open, but it also holds the sword.” He nodded. “It has always held the sword, but now it has learned to temper aggression with money, diplomacy.”

She squatted on the floor beside her husband and leaned her head against his knee. Ranjit Singh hadn't said this time, although he'd said it before, that taking care of the guest was the host's first duty. It was something the British had not learned in India. This entire diplomatic dance had been taking place for about a year now. Fakir Azizuddin had led a contingent from Ranjit Singh's court first to Calcutta to meet Lord Auckland and then, this past summer, to Simla, where the Governor-General had halted in his up-country tour. When the political secretary, McNaghten, had come at the head of his own group from the Governor-General to the Maharajah's court in Adeenagar soon after, it had been the same. They were met at the Punjab border, escorted by Ranjit Singh's cavalry and infantry, no food or drink that passed their lips had been paid for by the British. When they returned to Simla again, they were burdened with gifts from the Punjab.

The reception of Fakir Azizuddin's embassy at Simla had not been quite as enthusiastic. They had set up an encampment on the lower slopes of the valley, and an hour later a thunderstorm had come booming in over all of them. The
tents had been shattered, the downpours dug deep gouges into the hillsides, and it had rained for two days and two nights. At the end of the storm had come a polite note from Lord Auckland's office asking if they were all right, and of course, Azizuddin had written back saying that the bond between the British and the Punjab had created a shelter for them from the storm. In reality, he had rented a mansion in Simla within the first hour of the storm, after the tents collapsed. When the Maharajah had heard of this, he'd sent for the state treasurer, Misr Makraj, and had him count out sovereigns into Azizuddin's hands until his palms curved around a pile of shimmering gold.

Maharani Jindan Kaur sighed. She didn't think that the British were a threat to the Punjab. Wanting to see Emily and Fanny Eden was just . . . curiosity; if nothing else, asserting her right as the Maharajah's wife, as the mother of his child.

“I will be meeting the Governor-General's women,” she said.

“I will also,” Ranjit Singh said. “They are very free and open with their women, these British. I hear General Avitabile is . . . interested in the older one. I don't see—”

“And this Lord Auckland does not mind?”

“She's his sister, my dear, perhaps he's looking for a way to get rid of her.”

“Ah,” Jindan said, and then her frown cleared. “They're both his
sisters
? What man travels with his sisters to India? Where are his wives? What kind of a man does not have a wife?” There was a genuine perplexity in her questions. In India, everyone married. It was as simple as that. There was no question of falling in love, of course, unless you were fortunate enough to do so after you were married, as Jindan herself had, but every man had a woman—someone, somewhere, anyhow—who fitted into his life.

The Maharajah's mouth deepened into its lopsided smile. “I will ask him.”

Prince Dalip Singh gurgled in his sleep. Jindan rose, ran to the cradle, and placed a soothing touch on her child's brow. Ranjit Singh could hear a hiss of breath from his son, and a chomping of his gums before he settled down again. He watched his young wife, saw the intent look on her face as she gazed down upon the boy, and felt a pang in his heart. He had had two strokes already, and another one would finish him off—this was Honigberger's studied opinion. He had one useless heir in Kharak Singh, weak of face, weak of character, with a marked weakness for wine and the women of his harem. He had another son, and Kharak had a son with an ambitious mother, and they would all fight one another for the throne, and perhaps one of them would hold it long enough for the Punjab Empire to survive. There was already an intense jealousy among his sons and their wives, that he had allowed Jindan to wear the Kohinoor. Since he had taken it from Shuja, no one, other than Misr Makraj, who was treasurer, had been allowed to touch it. But he liked seeing the massive diamond upon the arm of the woman who had attempted to carry a water bag up from the Ravi, who wore with such grace a stone whose value was, even now, to her unimaginable and impossible. Who had, after all these years when he had considered himself old, desiccated, given him a son. A new boy. A new life.

He smiled to himself. If there was a curse upon the diamond, that no man could keep it and retain his kingdom, he had shattered the curse, looked upon it and spat at it, stomped it into the ground. The Lion of the Punjab had kept the Kohinoor within his mammoth paws for twenty years. The smile faded from his mouth and he grew grave. He had built his empire and he meant for it to endure. Would it?

And what of that child in the cradle? What would become of him? Would he be a pawn in someone's game? Would this young wife of his, who had given him such immense joy at a time when he most needed it, would she survive also?

•  •  •

The lamp spluttered, and a thin spiral of smoke curled its way upward. Emily Eden laid down her pen on the blotting paper and scrubbed her forehead tiredly. The flame wavered once, and again, and extinguished itself with a sigh. The outlines of the tent disappeared, and then reemerged, lit faintly from the glow of torches in the camp outside. The roses in the silver vases on her desk seemed to come abloom in the dark, heavy-scented, padding the air with their aroma. Emily touched the supple petals, bent in to breathe the perfume, thought of the man who had sent them to her.

“Not asleep?”

She moved quickly, straightened from the flowers, yanked the top page from her desk and burrowed it under other papers. When he had reached her, he sat down heavily upon the carpets, near her chair.

“Not on the floor, dear. Jimrud swept, but snakes . . .” and scorpions, insects and spiders, in fact, all of India on many, varied legs would ooze into a darkened tent, gnaw at the furniture, leave malodorous droppings.

“I don't care,” George said, his body slackening. A blurred tangerine glow trickled through the white canvas. Her desk lay flush along the wall, in front of a window. Their mother had given it to Emily for her tenth birthday, the first substantial gift she had received in her young life. At sixteen, she'd moved into an attic bedroom by herself and tucked it under the steep slope of the roof, knocking her head each time she rose. When they came to India, they had been told to take
everything
with them—servants, furniture, clothing, shoes, books, pens, paper, knitting, wool. Once they got here, she realized that things were not quite so dire, but she was still glad for the desk—its amber-hued oak, its scarred legs—because it tethered her to home, to England.