A Beggar at the Gate (19 page)

A
khtar did not find an opportunity to speak to Safiya Sultana alone until after the ladies had finished their meal and dispersed to doze in the bedrooms or against bolsters in the sitting room. After carrying in the cotton-filled quilts that would cover the ladies as they slept, she crept to the private room where, each afternoon, Safiya wrote poetry and prepared cures for various illnesses. Afraid to interrupt such important work, the serving girl hung back in the shadow of the doorway, listening to Safiya's voice rise and fall as she composed aloud.

“No,” Safiya rumbled to herself, “each line should end with
ke saat
—”

Pen in hand, she looked up from her string bed to see Akhtar standing nervously by the doorway.

“Bhaji,” the girl whispered, “I have had two dreams. The first was of a woman and an open gate and roses, and the second was of dust and—”

“Come in, child,” Safiya said quickly, laying her pen on a square of cloth beside her, “and close the curtain behind you.”

In the end, one recitation was not enough. Safiya did not let Akhtar stop until she had retold each dream three times, omitting no detail. Then Safiya closed her eyes briefly and recited something under her breath.

“You were right to tell me about your dreams,” she said, opening her eyes and preparing to stand. “If you see anything else, you are to come to me at once. And Akhtar,” she added, frowning, “come again tomorrow at this time. Now that you have had important dreams, I will give you something to recite. And from now on, make certain you do not miss any of your prayers.”

WHY, MARIANA asked herself, had Safiya's beggar prince seemed so much like Hassan?

This was no time to be thinking of a stranger with a crooked nose and a tired brown gaze who passed all his time at the Sikh court and imagined her to be the unpaid guardian of his child. She had serious work to do, and she must begin it soon. After all, she did not have much time to learn the secrets of this household. This first afternoon was already slipping away, and Mariana had not even uncovered the mystery of Shaikh Waliullah's cure for snakebite. It was maddening to see him through the latticework shutters, surrounded by his silent followers, while the afternoon shadows lengthened in the courtyard behind him.

Someone coughed in the verandah outside. More people had come: two women, a new distraction for Safiya. Mariana felt a twinge of resentment as Safiya motioned them to enter.

The older one had already taken off her burqa, revealing the lively round-cheeked face of a countrywoman. She carried a child in one arm, an infant of a few months. The other woman stood, shrouded and unmoving inside her burqa's folds until the first woman lifted away the fabric, revealing a lank-haired girl whose shoulders drooped so badly that she seemed about to collapse onto the floor.

Horrified at the girl's despair, Mariana looked away.

Saboor seemed to come from nowhere. He burst from a knot of children and rushed headlong toward the two visitors, his curls bouncing, determination on his face. At the doorway, he gripped the hem of the girl's kameez. “An-nah,” he cried as he tugged the girl into the room. “Come and help!”

While the women and other children made way silently for the new arrivals, Safiya caught hold of a fat little girl with a thick braid. “Rifhat,” she ordered, “go and fetch a bolster and a
rezai.”
She pointed to a corner of the room. “Put them there.”

As soon as she reached the corner, the younger woman dropped to the sheeted floor. Without removing her burqa, she lay down and drew her knees to her chin.

Saboor sat down beside her. “An-nah,” he repeated, flapping his hands, as the fat girl arrived, puffing, the bolster and quilt in her arms. “Come!”

Mariana hesitated. What did Saboor want her to do? Why was he stroking the girl's shoulder with a small, kindly hand? How could she herself be of use when she had no idea what was wrong, when the girl's sadness repelled her as if it had an evil life of its own?

In the corner, the older woman put the infant down, lifted the girl's head and pushed the bolster under it, then covered her legs with the
rezai.
She leaned over, fussed with the girl's clothing, then picked up the baby and arranged it beside her.

A moment later the quiet room was filled with the sound of a baby's noisy sucking.

“Go to my room, Akhtar,” Safiya ordered, “and bring jasmine oil and cotton wool.”

When the servant returned, Safiya signaled to Mariana. “Come here,” she said.

It was an order, not an invitation. When Mariana approached, Safiya handed her a little tuft of cotton fluff and a tiny glass vial. “Roll the cotton into a ball like this, put a little oil on it, and then tuck it into the fold of that girl's left ear. Like this.” She uncovered her own ear and pointed. “That is the first thing to do in such cases.”

From the corner, a beaming Saboor patted the floor beside him. Aware that Safiya was watching, Mariana went reluctantly over and sat down, careful to avoid contact with the supine girl.

An ugly, sweetish smell came from her, as if she had not bathed for weeks. The hand holding the baby to her breast looked grubby.

Was this, Mariana wondered, a test of some kind? If so, whatever her revulsion, she must somehow pass muster. She held her breath, leaned experimentally forward, and saw that the girl's eyes were tightly closed. Hoping she was asleep, Mariana took a strand of unwashed hair and held it gingerly aside.

“No!” At once the girl flung up an arm and struck Mariana's hand away, then curled her body into a tight ball around her child.

Mortified, Mariana glanced over at Safiya, but found her deep in conversation with the gap-toothed aunt.

“Speak,” advised the countrywoman as Mariana searched for her fallen cotton ball. “Say something to her.”

At a loss, Mariana could think only of a Persian poem she had learned a year earlier.

“And heart bowed down beneath a secret pain,”
she whispered,
“Oh stricken heart, joy shall return again, Peace to the love-tossed brain—oh weep no more.”

She stopped. These women spoke Punjabi. Why had she chosen a Persian poem that they could never understand? And why had she chosen one that reminded her so powerfully of her own sadnesses, of her father growing old so far away, of her coming loss of Saboor, of her hopeless dream of marrying Harry Fitzgerald and having fair-haired babies of her own?

Tears stung her eyes. When would her losses end? When would she have her own people to love?

No one was paying attention to them. Safiya was still talking to the aunt while the ladies formed into groups for some activity involving baskets of tiny yellow limes.

Saboor stopped patting the girl and came to lean his small, comforting weight against Mariana. She went on reciting, her head bowed, while tears dripped from her chin.

The older woman nudged her. “Look,” she said, pointing. The girl, too, was crying. Her thin shoulders shook. The hand that had been clenched against the baby's small body was now open. Mariana dashed away her own tears, lifted the girl's hair out of the way, and pushed the cotton ball into place before she had time to protest.

The older woman lifted the baby and handed it, a brown parcel with a tiny, crumpled face, to Mariana. “Safiya Sultana Begum knows everything about cures,” she confided. “It is said that she can even cure cholera.”

“Well done, Mariam,” intoned Safiya Sultana as the woman took the infant back and put it without ceremony to the girl's other breast. “You have done the first part of the work. The next part is for me to do.” She frowned toward the verandah doorway.

A female servant stood yawning outside, papers in her hand. “There are two letters here for Mariam Bibi,” she announced.

E
at,” Safiya ordered, holding out a spoonful of something brown and aromatic that looked like minced meat. “You have not even tried the
keema.”

Mariana pushed away her banana leaf. “I am sorry, Safiya Bhaji,” she said, hiding her shaking hands in her sleeves, “but I can have no more.”

She had done her best with the evening meal. Under Safiya's tutelage, she had used small pieces of bread to scoop up curried vegetables and a yellow mush that tasted of earth and unfamiliar spices, but her thoughts had not been on the savory native food in front of her, so different from the insipid fare at Shalimar. All she had been able to think of were the two letters that crinkled in the waistband of her drawstring trousers.

She had read Uncle Adrian's letter first.

Frowning with worry, Mariana had laid that letter aside, and opened the second.

What had she done? What had she agreed to when she had nodded so gravely to the Vulture on her way out of the garden two days before?

An hour after the evening meal, she lay under a heavy quilt, staring at the lamplit ceiling of a quiet room off the corridor's end, Saboor asleep beside her.

Her arm tightened about his body. Only one, perhaps two days remained before she must leave for Shalimar. How had the time passed so swiftly?

Nothing on earth would persuade her to spy on the Waliullah family, or help the Vulture with his dangerous intrigues. But when she did refuse him, how would he punish her?

He is not a nice man,
Lady Macnaghten had said. Mariana had not needed to be told that, but what was Clerk capable of? Would he tell cruel lies to Lady Macnaghten and spoil their budding friendship? Could he ruin the little time remaining in Uncle Adrian's career?

Fear closed over her. She had no sense of what was happening outside Qamar Haveli. Should she tell the Waliullahs about the Vulture and his faintly menacing letter? But what should she tell them? Would they despise her for involving herself in his scheming, whatever it was? If she did not warn the family, would she put them in danger? And what was wrong with Uncle Adrian?

She tried to imagine her next move, but it was late, and her eyes were closing. Still wearing her yellow clothes from the morning, too weary to think, she reached over and turned off the oil lamp.

“I HAVE been waiting for you,” Safiya said the next morning, when Mariana and Saboor emerged, hand in hand, from their room. “Now, Saboor, you must find Khadija and ask her to get your breakfast.”

Motioning for Mariana to follow, Safiya marched into her room and wrenched the curtain shut behind them.

“I watched you and Saboor working with that melancholic young mother yesterday,” she commenced, with a satisfied nod. “You both did well. You are not a healer as he is, of course, but the girl needed you all the same. I prepared something for her to drink every morning, and sent them off after the
fajr
prayer. But that is not why I have called you here.”

She took a small leather bag from a shelf. “One of the maids has had a dream, two dreams in fact. In the first, a woman is greatly blessed; in the second, some emergency arises, and she is thrown into grave danger that threatens her soul as well as her life. I believe you are the woman of the maid's dream.”

What had they uncovered in that dream? Was it the Vulture's letter? Mariana glanced about her, wishing she were somewhere else.

“As these are the girl's first visions since she came to this house,” Safiya went on, “I am uncertain of their seriousness. But I have nonetheless taken a precaution.”

Reaching into the bag, she drew out a small silver box with a ring welded to its top, through which a thick black cord had been strung. “I awakened our silversmith in the night to prepare this. You must not take it off,” she warned as she lowered it over Mariana's head. “Inside it are verses from the Qur'an. Inshallah, it will keep you safe.”

The shiny little box was covered with carved arabesques. Mariana turned it in her hand, and saw that its sides had been carefully welded, so that it could not be opened.

“You are a brave girl,” Safiya said gruffly. “Who knows what Allah Most Gracious has in store for you, but whatever it is, you will, Inshallah, survive it.”

Her face was somber. “It is called a
taweez,”
she added. “Keep it inside your clothes. It is not for people to see. And now,” her face softened as she reached to reopen the curtain, “you should have yourself oiled and prepared for Hassan's return.”

“But, Safiya Bhaji—” was all Mariana had time to say before Safiya moved rapidly away, leaving her to stand, openmouthed, in the doorway.

What was Safiya up to? Surely Hassan or the Shaikh had told her about the divorce. Was she trying to interfere? As Mariana reached down and touched the papers in her waistband, she felt fear tighten about her.

She must not let any of this disturb her. Hassan would come in the evening. It would make no difference to her whether or not she had been oiled and plucked. She would show him her immovability on the subject of their divorce, he would be forced to agree, and that would be that. Then, tomorrow morning, having spent too little time in the haveli, she would take her painful leave of darling Saboor and bid Safiya and her ladies good-bye. When she returned to Shalimar, she would refuse, flatly, to speak alone with the Vulture.

“Memsahib,” whispered the bird-like servant at Mariana's shoulder, “if you will come with me…”

An hour later, Mariana sat on the sitting-room floor, her eyes closing, while the little servant massaged oil into her scalp with gentle, scarred fingers.

She imagined her family in Sussex, her mother cutting flowers in the vicarage garden, her father in his study, poring over his battle maps with their rows of neatly drawn artillery and dotted lines. If she married in Afghanistan, she might never see them again.

Where was Fitzgerald now? Was he skating with his fellow officers on the frozen Kabul River? Was he training his men, having them fire practice shots at distant targets outside the city? Whatever else Mariana's blond lieutenant was doing, he might also be waiting for her. After all, there were very few Englishwomen in Kabul, and all were married. Tainted by her history or not, she was all he could have.

“And now, Bibi, we must move there, so I can see to thread your eyebrows.” The servant girl nodded toward a string bed under one of the verandah windows.

Trying not to wince with pain as the girl pulled hair from one of her eyebrows with a twisted string, Mariana imagined Lady Macnaghten's face when she reappeared, newly beautified, at Shalimar. Of course there would be the difficulty of maintaining her carefully cultivated looks after they began to wear off, but who knew, perhaps Lady Macnaghten might lend her one of the quiet women from time to time.

The elderly maidservant who had brought the lunch trays puffed her way up the stairs. “Hassan Sahib has arrived,” she panted, gesturing for Mariana to get up. “He is coming upstairs any moment to meet with Mariam Bibi. He is only here for a short time.”

Mariana sat up, dislodging the girl's hands.
“Now?
But I cannot see Hassan now!”

Where was Safiya Sultana? Where was everyone else? Mariana looked about her for aid, but apart from the girl and the elderly maidservant, there was no one in the verandah but a very old lady who sat dozing against the wall. No sounds of conversation came from the sitting room.

“But my hair is covered in oil, and you have done only one of my eyebrows, and—”

“It is too late to worry about such things,” wheezed the old servant. “You must change your clothes and conceal your hair. Go, Akhtar,” she ordered the girl. “Bring fresh clothes for Mariam Bibi to wear. And find her another shawl. She cannot wear that yellow
jamawar.
She may get oil on it.”

She turned back to Mariana. “I will tie your hair into a knot at your neck. You can cover it with your veil.”

Clutching her new clothes, Mariana hurried to her own room. She pulled a brown shirt over her head, careful not to disturb the oily bun at the back of her neck, and tied on new brown trousers. After wrapping her veil over her head and shoulders as she had seen the ladies do, she emerged from her room.

Uncertain what to do next, she looked about her. Both servants pointed in unison to a small room near the stairway. Through its open doorway she could see a man's knee, and a hand resting on it.