The Mountain of Light (41 page)

There's a frost and fire in Victoria Gouramma, almost as though she doesn't know how to control her moods. Cecilia, on the other hand, is always cheerful, ready with a smile. When we are in the drawing room, Victoria frets, sits at the piano, bangs out a few songs, paces restlessly around the room. Cecilia sits on the sofa for hours, head bent over her embroidery. Her white fingers flit across the silk, patient, until a pattern forms.

Once, I ask Victoria what she reads.

“Why, this,” she says, holding out a copy of Thornton's Old Testament. I've noticed that the book goes with her everywhere.

“What else? Have you read Byron? Walter Scott?”

“Who?” she says, wrinkling her nose. “Did they write sermons?”

What sort of education has she had that she can read only religious texts? It's a narrow mind that cannot appreciate Lord Byron's poetry (to say nothing of his personal life and his arduous love affairs, exciting to know of, if not to emulate) or Scott's romantic novels?

“I've read
Kenilworth,
” Cecilia says suddenly, raising shining eyes to mine. “I mean, I wasn't supposed to, it was banned by Lady Bowles, but that made me want to find a copy.”

She's read Walter Scott! “How did you get one then?”

“I bribed the maid, Hannah, to buy me a copy. I had to lie to Lady Bowles for a whole month after that when Hannah went out walking with her young man at night. Oh!” She clamps her hand over her mouth. She's certainly said more than she ought to.

Cecilia plays chess with me on most nights, after Mama
and Papa Login have gone to bed. We sneak like two children into the drawing room, light a lone candle. I am in my pajamas, she's in a wrap, her lovely hair loose about her shoulders. And, she invariably beats me . . . or do I let her?

•  •  •

August 22, 1854:
Queen Victoria submerges me with affection. I eat dinner at Buckingham Palace; we meet for picnics in the gardens. She sends me a matching pair of grays for my carriage, and when I ride in the park, everyone knows that the horses are a gift from her Majesty.

Prince Albert takes an interest in my education. I have the same music master as Albert Edward, the Prince of Wales. I tell him I want to learn German, his mother tongue, so he searches through London for a suitable tutor. He sends me a microscope; it's all black and plain, so Prince Albert suggests that I ought to have my own English coat of arms engraved upon it. Queen Victoria's husband works on fashioning a coat of arms for me himself; the court engravers hammer it into the microscope. I wish I could see Lord Dalhousie's face when he hears of this. Why does the Maharajah of the Punjab
need
an English coat of arms? Grumble. Rumble. Bumble. Laugh. I do, I mean, that last.

The royal party goes for Osborne House on the Isle of Wight soon, and I am invited to visit and stay with them. Cecilia slips a note into my hand as I'm leaving. “Read it,” she whispers. “Not now, not in front of Lady Login. Later.” London will have to miss me for a while!

•  •  •

September 17, 1854:
At Osborne House the Queen and Prince Albert are more relaxed, simply parents of their large brood. There's the sound of the young princes and princesses pounding
through the rooms, fighting, crying, making up. I carry Prince Leopold in my arms; he babbles for the “Maharajah” each time he sees me. He's sickly, engulfed by fussy nursemaids, and with me at least, he has some respite from them.

We go out to shoot, splash at the beach, play hide-and-seek and charades at night. There is a real Swiss cottage at the back, near the vegetable gardens, and the princesses have a kitchen in the cottage. They pull vegetables from the patch and cook and clean like ordinary women. The princes make fun of their sisters, and so I am the only one allowed into the kitchen while they work, and at the end of each afternoon, we solemnly present their efforts to their parents.

Sometimes, I think I am dreaming here at Osborne House. The Queen and Prince Albert treat me like a son, as a member of their family. But there's a little portion of my heart left in London with Cecilia.

I keep the note she wrote under my pillow, read it every morning as I drink my chocolate. There's nothing much in the letter, some discussion about a book she read recently, a chess move she thinks I botched. The envelope is faintly scented with violets, the same perfume she wears. It's the first time Cecilia has written anything on a piece of paper for me—I mean, we aren't engaged, don't have an understanding; it's a daring thing to do. Mama Login would be horrified. Cecilia says that she will miss me when I'm gone—or rather she says that she's going to learn some new chess moves so that she can beat me upon my return.

Same thing.

•  •  •

September 20, 1854:
The Queen grants me the rights, position, and order of preference of a European prince. Now I will always,
always
enter the dining room first, no matter how many other dukes, earls, and archbishops are present.

Lord Dalhousie must be sweating out this ridiculous partiality in the Calcutta heat. He said once, to Lord Login, that no matter how much favor the Queen shows me, if I returned to India, I would still have to leave my shoes at the door to his offices. Like any ordinary
chaprasi
.

But let him just come back to England, and he'll have to follow
me
everywhere. Like a commoner.

•  •  •

October 7, 1854:
Back at Mivart's, with Cecilia. I cannot tell if she's happy to see me; she looks the same, talks the same. We still steal into the drawing room when the Logins are asleep, to play chess, or to read to each other. Sometimes, we talk, and she tells me of her childhood, her parents, how much she misses them.

I speak of my father, of Lahore, of a full moon in starry skies, of the gold of ripening wheat in the fields and the heat before the monsoons.

“You've lived so much in so little time,” she says.

It's true. Compared to her restful life, mine has been anything but. I think I'm in love. I
know
I'm in love.

Victoria Gouramma has moved from the guardianship of Lady Hartford to a Mrs. Drummond, because Hartford felt that she was a bad influence on her own daughters. There's a rumor about town that the Princess Gouramma sneaked out at night to meet with the stable boy. So, she's gone to Mrs. Drummond, who has no children.

I don't know what to think of this news. Don't know if it's true, and I don't care. Because Cecilia fills my thoughts.

Lady Login says that Cecilia's portion is very small; she has no income. But I have one. The India Office will pay me fifty thousand pounds each year.

My land agent comes with details of a property in Suffolk, called Elveden Hall. Seventeen thousand acres, stocked for
hunting and shooting, a lake in front of the house. I buy it, without seeing it. It has possibilities, my agent says, and that's enough for me.

If I cannot be the Maharajah of the Punjab, at least I can be the Squire of Elveden.

•  •  •

October 26, 1854:
The Queen commissions Franz Xaver Winterhalter to paint my portrait as a special gift to herself. The sittings will take place in the White Drawing Room at Buckingham Palace. I will wear my pearls, my court dress, and the locket with her Majesty's picture.

•  •  •

November 1, 1854:
Two sittings already for the Winterhalter portrait. Last week, Schoefft's painting
The Court at Lahore
comes up for sale. I buy it, unseen, for an ungodly sum. It is ten by sixteen feet, crowded with the important personages of my father's court, all stroked in by Schoefft's masterful brush without care for whether they would actually have been there. It is, then, a fictional piece, but one of true artistry. When I build a grand staircase at Elveden, this painting will hang over it.

Breakfast is a dull meal; Papa and Mama Login are buried behind their newspapers, and Cecilia is lying down with a headache.

When Lord Login rises to leave, wiping his mouth, I say, “Papa, Mama, a word with you please?”

“Now, Maharajah?” Lord Login asks, taking his watch out of his vest pocket. “I have an appointment at the India Office in less than an hour.” He smiles. “Matters about you, of course.”

Lady Login frowns. “Can you stay, John? I think Duleep would prefer if we were both here.”

“Oh, it doesn't matter,” I say airily. “One of you will do just fine. You'll both know in any case—the whole world will know soon.”

Lord Login lingers, held to the table by his wife's hand. “Perhaps I should stay,” he says, uneasy now. A pleading look at Lady Login. “Lena?”

“Go.” A thin smile. “As Duleep says, I will tell you all. If it is good news, and what I hope it is to be, then we will celebrate this evening at dinner. Will you be back at all during the day, John?”

“Not until teatime. Keep the Maharajah occupied until then.” He waves and leaves the room, glancing back uneasily as he does.

I pull a chair closer to Lady Login's so that the remains of the breakfast no longer span the space between us.

“I have something to ask you also,” she says, drawing my hand into hers and patting it. “This is suitably serious, Maharajah; you must not smile so even before I have spoken.”

“Me first,” I say. “You must allow me to speak first.”

“No.” She half-laughs. “It's a message from the Queen. Will you listen, Duleep?”

“All right,” I say gently. She's anxious about something, wants to speak her mind, doesn't know how I'll take the news. I'm not worried, either about what she has to say or about my news. They will never refuse me, I know. I kiss her hand and sit back.

Lady Login looks down upon our clasped hands. “We think of you as our son. We're your guardians now; one day you'll be on your own, Duleep. But we'll always love you. You know that, don't you?”

“Oh, Mama.” The worry in her gaze frightens me. This
is
serious. “When have you given me reason to doubt it?”

She hesitates and then goes on, “I know how much the Kohinoor means to you. There have been days when we have
talked of nothing but the diamond. Do you remember your eleventh birthday?”

“When Lord Login presented me with the cache of jewels he had taken out of my father's Toshakhana for my own use?”

Her brow wrinkles. “Even on that birthday, glancing over your jewels”—here she lightly touches the pearls around my neck—“one of which you wear today as your birthright, you said to Lord Login . . . do you remember what you said?”

I am grave. “That I had been wearing the Kohinoor upon my arm on my tenth birthday and where was it now?”

A fleeting mask of compassion scurries across her face. “Lord Login made sure that you were given the best of the rest. The Kohinoor was always to belong to the Queen; it was written into the Treaty of Lahore. You do know that, don't you, Duleep?”

At that moment I know what she wants of me. The Kohinoor has returned to England again, after having been cut and polished in Amsterdam. But I have not seen it yet, and no one has mentioned it to me. Until now.

I lean over and kiss Lady Login's dry cheek. “The Kohinoor was taken from me by the annexation of the Punjab and the Treaty of Lahore when I was but a boy, with a very small will of my own. Then, I understood none of the treaty's terms, and her Majesty . . . was to me a faraway creature in a foreign land. What I wish for now, most of all, is to be able to give it to her myself, as a gift from the Maharajah of the Punjab to the Queen of England.”

Her eyes fill with tears that she does not bother to wipe away. She holds my hand against her face. “Duleep, you do Papa and me proud.”

For a few moments we sit there, our hearts full, and then Lady Login blows her nose in her handkerchief and looks up at me again. “Now what is your news?”

I fumble with my words. I have some good news, and something she will not want to hear. “I cannot marry Princess Victoria Gouramma.”

“Oh.” She sits back in her chair. “Have you given this thought, Maharajah? It is her Majesty's dearest wish. I know the princess seems gauche in certain instances, but sophistication can be acquired with time and a little education. And the two of you are Christian now; think of how eligible this match is.”

I shake my head. “I'm sorry, Mama. I truly am. I have some . . . affection for her, but I do not think she will be a good wife for me. Some other man, maybe.”

“Duleep, I thought, I wished for . . . I think we all wished for this.” Her expression clears all of a sudden and settles into tranquillity. “But this must be your decision, no matter what
we
wish for. Lord Login will agree with me here, just as he agreed when you wanted to dissolve your earlier betrothal. In this most important matter of marriage, your wishes must be paramount.”

I take a deep breath; this is exactly what I want to hear. “Then it makes it easier for me to say this: I have found another woman whom I admire and respect deeply.”

“Oh.” She puts an elbow on the table and cradles her chin in her hand; the uneasiness has returned. I shift a teacup away. Just then, a servant comes into the room and halts uncertainly at the door.

“Later, Tait,” we both say simultaneously.

“Who is she?” Lady Login asks. Her voice is faint. The room is quiet, and the clock in the corner ticks loudly through the seconds.

“Don't you have the slightest idea?”

“No,” she says slowly, “I had thought . . . it was to be about the princess, but someone else, this comes as a surprise.”

“A happy one, I hope.” I laugh, exhilarated at being able to say her name. “It's Cecilia Bowles.”

Lady Login shoves her chair back hurriedly. It catches on the carpet and tilts. I reach out, and she shouts, “Don't!”