The Twentieth Wife (55 page)

Azizuddin had no personal vanity at all, so the loss of his teeth didn’t bother him. Only women ought to think of how they looked, how they smelled, whether their conversation was pleasing and pleasant. For many years, Azizuddin had served his master with a shattered jaw until he quite got used to speaking out of the side of his mouth. And then, a physician from Transylvania, Honigberger, had come to the Maharajah’s court at Lahore. He was one of the many foreigners who had honed in on Ranjit Singh, having heard of his generous pay and his openness to odd men who could not make their way elsewhere. Honigberger had cured the king’s headaches with a pink powder, something none of the other
hakims
at court had been able to do, and so he’d toppled them to take their position. One day he’d said, in his diffident, half-finished Persian, to Azizuddin that he could make him new teeth that would fit as well as his old. Out of a pale wood? No, ivory—it would never break and he could chew on the toughest meats in the kingdom and make a mince of them in no time. And so, Azizuddin had gotten his teeth. They had wiped years off his face, and he took the teeth out when he wanted to opt for a disguise.

The streets of Lahore were clotted with the bluish gray smoke of cooking fires, making it hard to see, but a sure sense of direction led the horsemen through one alley and then another. Dogs barked at their passing, children squealed; at one point an urchin skipped across their path, his hair flying, just missing being clipped by Azizuddin’s horse’s hooves. The city fell away behind them as they approached the Masti Darwaza, the easternmost entry into Lahore Fort.

Here, the reception was kinder to Fakir Azizuddin. His Akalis drew in their horses as the giant, metal-studded doors
swung open, and he raced through the gateway. Before he could look back, the doors had swung shut. Azizuddin slowed his horse to a canter, rode across the courtyard of the Diwan-i-am, the Hall of Public Audience, and to the westernmost end. Here, he jumped down from the saddle and lobbed the reins to the waiting syces. He then turned right and north and went along a corridor to the northwesternmost corner of the fort, which housed the Shah Burj and the Naulakha buildings, both of which opened out into a square, red-sandstone-paved courtyard.

Just like the Shalimar Gardens, this fort had been built, some two hundred years ago, by the Mughal Emperor Shah Jahan. Now, the Mughal Empire had fallen to pieces, shrunken its boundaries to just the city of Delhi. And all the splendor of Lahore—the fort, the city, the gardens—belonged to Azizuddin’s king, Ranjit Singh, who was ruler of the Punjab Empire.

Fakir Azizuddin padded on light feet through the courtyard, past the fountain, and up the steps into the Sheesh Mahal, the northernmost part of the Shah Burj. Here, lamps were lit in every niche, and true to its name, the Sheesh Mahal—the Palace of Mirrors—glittered and hurled light back into every corner from its mirrored walls. Azizuddin passed into the riverside apartments and looked down and out toward the Ravi River. The Maharajah was a lone figure on a horse in the
maidan,
the expanse of mud that crept from the walls of the fort to the banks of the river. Azizuddin stood watching until Ranjit Singh glanced up at him and raised his hand.

In the quiet of the night, the Maharajah’s voice came clear and strong. “Come down, Azizuddin, you have news?”

“Yes, your Majesty,” Azizuddin shouted. Then, he turned and ran back out to the Hall of Public Audience and, from there, through the western gate and around
the walls of the fort, through the scrub to where his king waited for him.

•   •   •

The Shalimar Gardens were laid out in an elongated rectangle, south to north. There were three terraces—the highest one on the southern end, ten feet above the middle terrace, which was also ten feet above the lower terrace. This demarcation in height created the public and private spaces in the gardens. The upper terrace, which housed the pavilion of the Aiwan on its southernmost end, was for the women of the harem. The middle terrace, in the center of whose pool Shuja and Ibrahim had wrestled, was the semiprivate courtyard—here, again, while in residence, the Mughal emperors had met with the grandees of the Empire, or held amusements in the form of musical nights under the stars, and the orchestra would sit on the platform in the center of the pool, the Emperor himself on a marble throne which jutted out into the pool. The lower terrace was essentially the Hall of Public Audience. It had gateways leading into it from the northern, eastern, and western walls—the last of which Fakir Azizuddin had left through to go to Lahore Fort.

A long channel cut through the gardens in the middle from the south to the north, and thus had Emperor Shah Jahan brought his water feature into every terrace. Where the water descended from one terrace to the next, there were miniature cascades over marble walls littered with niches in which to light lamps on dark nights, and the water then flowed into the central pool in each terrace, and on its way down through the channel.

Wafa Begam had taken her husband and Ibrahim into the upper terrace to sleep. Their beds were made under the stars, close to the pool in the center. A few coal braziers were set around the quadrangle formed by the water channels. Dried
neem
leaves curled and charred in the fire of the braziers, sending pungent clouds of smoke into the air to keep away mosquitoes and insects.

A lamp, its flame shaded by glass and a wooden cap, squatted by her side. Wafa leaned against Shuja’s bed, seated on the marble floor, and ate her evening meal. Every now and then, she tilted the plate toward the light so as to better see what she was eating, but it all looked the same. A mass of curry, the
naan
soggy in the gravy, the vegetables wilted in the heat, the taste unmemorable. Still, she ate it, licked her fingers, and wiped her plate clean. Then, she rose to wash her hands in the cool waters of the pool and came back to kneel by her sleeping husband’s bed. She rested her elbows on the edge of the cot, her hands clasped under her chin, and watched the rise and fall of breath in his chest.

When he stirred, uneasy, she laid her face against his arm and waited for his breathing to even again. She stayed like that for a long while. Across the courtyard was Ibrahim’s bed, which he had insisted on dragging to the far end. He lay on his side, faced away, trying to put as much physical distance as he could between them and him, still fretting about being in the courtyard of Shah Shuja’s
zenana
.

Wafa placed a gentle kiss on Shuja’s forehead and then took the lantern with her to the water channel and sat down on the sun-warmed stone. She undid the long row of diamond buttons that held her pajamas around her ankles, folded up the cloth around her shins, and put her feet in the tepid, swirling water. The servants had all retired for the night—or rather, she had sent them away, but she still looked long and hard around the courtyard, stopping at the shadows on the walls to see if they moved, listening above the noise of the water for sounds that were unnatural, man-made. Nothing. She reached into the bodice of her blouse and took out a sweat-smeared, crumpled piece of paper, which she held up to the lamplight.

It was another letter from Maharajah Ranjit Singh. It had pretty beginnings, a flowery middle, a complimentary end, but in essence it was—as so many others had been—a demand for the Kohinoor diamond.

She had promised it to the Maharajah herself, with her own mouth, so the letter said. And it was true, Wafa thought, chewing on her lower lip. Shuja had asked her to buy his freedom with the Kohinoor, and when Wafa first came to the Punjab, five years ago, she had figuratively dangled the diamond in front of Ranjit Singh. And he, ravenous, had wanted it. But, she had said, drawing it away from his avaricious grasp, she would be honored to gift the Kohinoor to the Maharajah, if only . . . she were happy enough to do so. With her husband languishing in jail in Kashmir, such joy was beyond her now.

When Wafa came to the Punjab, Shuja himself had fled east from Peshawar to Kashmir, which was also, then, part of Afghanistan. Here, he had hoped to gather an army and push back at his brother Mahmud, west into Peshawar again and then into Kabul. Instead, the wily governor of Kashmir—who had long chafed against Afghan rule—had thrown Shuja into prison and declared himself independent of Afghanistan.

Where is the Kohinoor diamond? Ranjit Singh had asked. Wafa, who had the diamond tucked into the sleeve of her blouse, had said that it was with her husband, in his prison cell, and only freeing him would free the diamond.

So Maharajah Ranjit Singh had sent an army thundering into Kashmir, annexed it to his Punjab Empire, and brought Shah Shuja to Lahore to reunite him with his wife. Shuja and his belongings were extensively searched during that journey to Lahore, and no Kohinoor came to light. This was when the Maharajah had realized the trick that had been played on him—but, no matter, a grateful Wafa, content in her husband’s arms, would soon give him the diamond.

For good measure, while his armies were up north, Ranjit
Singh had conquered and annexed Peshawar also and sent Shah Mahmud back to a whittled Afghanistan that contained now only the lands around Kabul.

The light from the lantern dimmed, the glass encrusted with a swarm of moths that lit upon it and dashed away. The cicadas, which had begun their sharp chirping when the sun set, had increased their sounds. It was to this lullaby that Wafa slept, if she slept at all. She put down the letter and flicked a finger against the lantern, dislodging the moths for a few, brief seconds.

For all the loveliness, quiet, and repose in the Shalimar, this was merely a luxurious prison. Guards were stationed outside its perimeter. Nothing was allowed in without being inspected. Every servant was in the employ of the Maharajah.

The night air cooled suddenly, and Wafa, born and brought up among the snow-clad mountains of Afghanistan, shivered in this little bit of chill. She lay back on the pathway and looked up at the skies. Ranjit Singh had been very patient with them for five years—two when she had been here in Lahore, and these past three more since Shuja had been rescued from Kashmir and brought to her. Wafa spread her fingers out over the stone. The Maharajah could have killed them at any time and no one would have said nay. It was . . . almost his right, as their jailer, to do so. She had no illusions about Ranjit’s generosity—the Kohinoor stayed his hand. If they died without telling him where it was, chances were that he would never find it, or that some minion would, and he would never possess it. So they kept their lives, because their hearts were tethered by a thin line of light to the diamond. A tiny fragment of light.

In the meantime, when the Maharajah was out of sorts, edgy, stopped their supplies of food or water, or sent them testy messages, Wafa had persuaded Shah Shuja to give up their other treasures. And so, they had sent him smaller
gemstones—diamonds, rubies, topazes; a gold- and jewel-encrusted
hukkah;
and finally, the entire state pavilion, a tent of the finest wool, embroidery in gold and silver thread on every inch of the fabric, a silver chair upon which Shuja had held court.

Wafa Begam rose from the pathway and walked up and down, leaving wet footprints on the sandstone that seemed to dry almost as soon as she made them. She glanced at her husband, and then at Ibrahim. As much as Ranjit Singh kept them alive for the sake of the Kohinoor, once he had it, their lives would be worth less than nothing.
Something
had to be done. What? Who would help them now? Whom could they turn to?

Her head jerked up when a thin whistle fractured the cacophony of the cicadas. The tune was familiar, one she had heard many years ago. A horse snorted outside the garden’s walls. Wafa ran to the sound. The thick brick walls rose above her, faced with two rows of blind arches, rosebud merlons on the top. It was hard to see anything. And then, she heard a whoosh through the air, and a rock came tumbling over the edge of the wall, fell onto the grass with a small thud.

Wafa waited, her heart pounding in her chest. What was this? An attack? She nudged the rock with her foot. A brown paper was tied around it with a string. She ran back to the lamp with the rock, undid the knot, and spread out the paper on the pathway. The letter that had thus crudely come into the garden was in a rough Persian.

When she looked up again, her eyes were shining and all worry had fled. Wafa went to Shuja’s bed and woke him with a kiss upon his forehead.

“Is it morning yet?” he asked.

“It might well be for us, my lord,” she said, holding out the letter to him.

•   •   •

Fakir Azizuddin pounded across the dry dirt of the
maidan
and came to a halt a few feet away from his king. The fort’s walls loomed behind them, and golden light spilled out in a shifting pattern from the Shah Burj, from where Azizuddin had been commanded down.

Ranjit Singh’s horse, Leili, snickered and bent her lovely head to nuzzle against Azizuddin’s shoulder. He felt the touch of her wet, warm muzzle on his neck and patted Leili absently. She sniffed and drew back, shaking her head this way and that as the Maharajah let go of his reins and said with a laugh, “You haven’t paid her enough attention, Azizuddin. She’s upset with you. I suppose you have nothing to give her in that getup of yours?” When the minister shook his head, Ranjit slid his hand into the pouch hanging from his cummerbund and threw chunks of brown sugar—
jaggery
—to him.

Azizuddin caught each piece deftly, his fingers nipping at the air, and held out an open palm to the horse. Leili’s rough tongue scraped the
jaggery
off his skin, and then she touched his head with hers.

The Maharajah of the Punjab rubbed Leili’s arched neck with his thick hands, gentle as though he held a child. He bent to whisper in her ear, to pat her flanks, and Azizuddin felt a flood of adoration choke his chest. It was like this no matter how many times he was in his sovereign’s presence, and as Ranjit Singh’s foreign minister, one of the few men he trusted implicitly, Azizuddin met with and saw him almost every day. Unless he was away from Lahore on the Maharajah’s business.