A Beggar at the Gate (6 page)

The group had walked on together for some miles, chatting companionably to the courier as they went, commenting on the horsemen and the drivers of the donkey and bullock carts that shared the road, stopping to inspect fruit for sale. Joking and nudging each other as they walked, they had attracted the attention of more travelers along the way.

Some had joined them: a Hindu and his son on their way to buy a bull, a trader from Bareilly with some Surati chintz to sell in Lukhnow, a lone man with a tall walking stick who was to join a wedding party.

Always a cautious observer of others, the albino had let down his guard in that friendly group. Pushing away his usual unease, he had basked in the unfamiliar feeling of inclusion among men who did not comment on his appearance.

It was only when the group, at its ease and now numbering twenty-seven, was finishing dinner in a jungle clearing far from the road, that the courier had guessed the danger he was in. At the third unexplained glance between two of the men, he had suddenly understood that those friendly folk who picked their teeth and laughed with their heads thrown back were
thugs,
fearsome devils he had heard of since his childhood.

Moving only his eyes, he had counted the men in the clearing. Several members of the party were missing, but the wavy-haired man who had so casually flicked his scarf was there, talking amicably with the wedding guest. The long scarf was missing from his neck, but lying casually beside him on the ground lay a length of wet, tightly twisted cloth.

A chill drove down the albino's spine with such force that he had to fight to remain still. It was true, then. All five newcomers to the group, including himself, had been carrying money or saleable goods. All had been lured off the road to be strangled, then robbed.

The missing men, he now saw, had gone to dig graves for them all: the farmer and his son, the trader, the wedding guest, the albino himself.

The signal would be given at any moment, and then one of them would fling a cloth about his neck and jerk it tight

With no time to warn the others, he had stood up as casually as he was able, and managed to produce a yawn. “I will relieve myself,” he muttered, and started toward the road. “Hurry back,” called out a voice behind him as he strode away from the terrible spot. “We are making tea. It will be ready soon.”

The roads of India are unsafe after nightfall, but nowhere between Bareilly and Shahjahanpur had been as dangerous as that secluded place where the lonely albino had found companionship. Stumbling and panting in the darkness, he had followed the road for several miles before he felt safe enough to sleep, hidden beneath a thorn tree.

After so many weeks his terror had faded, but Ghulam Ali had not forgotten his luck on that night. His chin on his chest as he sat outside the Englishman's gate, he was thanking God for his escape when the foreign woman's bent-over manservant summoned him into the house.

The courier, who had never seen or spoken to a female member of Shaikh Waliullah's family, was reluctant to follow the servant who shambled in front of him toward the kitchen entrance. How, he wondered, had that great family descended to including foreigners among their women—females who showed themselves openly to men, even to servants like himself?

He had seen English people on his journey to Calcutta. They had sat upright on horses or in carriages, with sour expressions on their faces, the men dressed in dusty black, the women clad in shockingly tight, stiff clothes that revealed the curve of their breasts. Instead of the graceful veils worn by Indian women, these females had worn baskets on their heads, covered with drooping ribbons and bobbing flowers. Unlike his own endlessly inquisitive people who noticed everything around them, these foreigners seemed to ignore even fellow travelers on the road.

If they cared nothing for what happened around them, he had wondered, why were they here? How were they so powerful?

He found Hassan Ali Khan's foreign wife sitting on a cane chair in a bright verandah. Unwilling to look up at her, he made a long business of scuffing off his shoes in the corridor outside.

“
As-salaam-o-aleikum,
peace be upon you.” She addressed him properly in a firm voice, as if she knew exactly what she was saying. “What is your name?”

“It is Ghulam Ali,” he replied, more harshly than he had intended, his head bent, ashamed of his failure to greet her first.

“Ghulam Ali,” she repeated. Her chair creaked. Unable to stop himself, he raised his eyes.

Her hair was uncovered. Her throat, the same color as his own, was exposed to his gaze by the cut of her European clothes. Embarrassed, he looked hastily away.

He had, of course, seen the Englishwoman as she came and went through the gate, alone on a horse or seated in a carriage beside the old woman they called her aunt, but she had always been well covered, and she had never looked him in the face as she did now, her green, catlike gaze full of curiosity, her fingers tense on the arms of her chair.

“How long did it take you to come from Lahore?” she inquired.

“Three months,” he replied, his eyes on the window.

“And what is the condition of the Punjab?”

“The country was in a bad state when I left it, with the Maharajah locked away, and his son poisoning him while he's trying to rule. The people are crying, wishing old Maharajah Ranjit Singh had not died, that his mad son had never come to power, that his grandson were not so cruel. The young Prince has had his father's favorite courtier killed. They dragged him from the Maharajah's bedroom by his hair and cut him to pieces with swords and knives.

“It will not be long before the Maharajah dies of the poison,” he concluded, still looking away from her, feeling her shocked stare.

“Prince Nau Nihal Singh is poisoning his
own father?”

Ghulam Ali shrugged, surprised that a foreign woman cared about such matters. “Rich, powerful people are like that,” he said, “but they say in the bazaar that if Saboor Baba were with him, Maharajah Kharrak Singh would never be locked away, eating poison.”

“And as long as Saboor Baba is with
me,”
Hassan's wife said tartly, “he will never again be the property of
any
maharajah. But do the people still speak of him after he has been gone for more than a year?”

“Of course they do.” Ghulam Ali could not keep the grandeur from his tone. “Who could forget the child whose very presence was enough to cure Maharajah Ranjit Singh of all his illnesses? They remember the Maharajah himself saying that Saboor Baba carries a light in his heart that brings health and good fortune. They have not forgotten that the old Maharajah died only months after Saboor Baba went away.”

The child must have heard his name, for he came at once, his embroidered slippers pattering on the corridor tile. He brushed past Ghulam Ali, trotted to Hassan Ali Khan's wife, and threw himself onto her lap, his teeth clenched, his small arms trembling with the strength of his embrace.

“An-nah!” he said fiercely.

Ghulam Ali shifted his feet and glanced up. “Am I to take your reply now?”

“Not now,” she said sharply.

Their conversation was clearly over. Ghulam Ali motioned with his head, indicating that he wished to leave her. When the Englishwoman nodded, he backed from the room and pushed his feet into his shoes.

She was a stranger in odd clothing, whose tone of voice he could barely interpret, but Ghulam Ali, the reader of others, would have sworn that although she was not his real mother, Hassan Ali's wife would not have hesitated to die for the curly-headed child in her lap.

MARIANA FELT the heat close around her as Saboor slid from her knees and followed Ghulam Ali down the passage. Outside, in the garden, a tired-looking man watered the front lawn from a full goatskin slung across his back.

How different the walled city and Citadel had seemed when described by Ghulam Ali. The albino's Lahore sounded crudely violent and dangerous, not at all like the place she had visited two years earlier, and that her old tutor had evoked with his poetry and his hints of escape and redemption.

Even if Lahore were unchanged, it would still seem vastly different to her on this journey. Neither a fugitive with a stolen baby nor an unwilling bride fighting for her life, she would be a normal Englishwoman traveling respectably with her uncle and aunt.

And that, she said to herself as she started for the stairs, would surely make all the difference.

June 26, 1840

B
efore we go to dinner,” Aunt Claire announced the following afternoon as she sat on the verandah drinking a glass of sherry, “there are things you should know, Mariana.”

“We have had more news concerning our journey up the country,” Uncle Adrian put in. “We now have a plan for our journey to Afghanistan.”

He cleared his throat noisily. Mariana, who knew that sound, studied him warily over the rim of her glass. “There is a reason why Lady Macnaghten has been invited to dine with us at Government House,” he began. “She is soon to depart Calcutta in order to join her husband in Kabul. Lord Auckland's sisters have suggested we join her and travel with her party.”

Beautiful, priggish Lady Macnaghten, of all people! Mariana shook her head vigorously. “She will never agree. She hates us.”

“Oh, I don't know.” Aunt Claire signaled to a servant to collect the glasses. “Perhaps she is not as—”

“As the Envoy's wife,” Uncle Adrian continued, as if neither of them had spoken, “she is entitled to a large baggage train and an army escort, which we are not. And we shall be useful to her. Lady Macnaghten had expected to travel alone except for her nephew, which would of course be daring, even unsuitable. It will be to her advantage to have additional European women in her party.

“Her plan is to send her baggage ahead by land, and then journey as far as Allahabad by steamer. At Allahabad she will rejoin her baggage and march the rest of the way to Afghanistan under armed escort. As the journey is immensely long, she expects to stop several times on the way. One of her resting places will be Lahore, where, due to her husband's seniority, she has already been invited by the Sikh government to set up her camp in the Shalimar Garden.”

Mariana sat up. “Shalimar! How lovely. But why talk about it, Uncle Adrian, when we know she will refuse?”

“She
cannot
refuse.” Uncle Adrian smiled. “Lady Macnaghten will never cross the Governor-General's sisters while her husband is angling for the Governorship of Bombay.

“There will be other advantages to traveling in her party,” he added. “The steamer will save us months of travel. The British Resident at Ludhiana is expected to escort her to Lahore, where she will spend several weeks. He will make all her arrangements there, and he can do the same for us. The Eden sisters have already asked him to supervise the dissolution of your native marriage.

“A few days in Lahore will be sufficient to free you from all your connections there. After we have rested, our party will be joined by a second detachment of troops, who will escort us through the Khyber Pass and on to Kabul.”

Mariana sighed. “I know we must do it, but—”

“We must.” Her uncle reached out and patted her on the knee. “Miss Emily will broach the subject to Lady Macnaghten this evening. Whatever she may pretend, Lady Macnaghten is well aware that your connection with the Shaikh's family is quite innocent.

“I only hope,” he added, “that awful nephew of hers stays out of our way.”

“TURN ROUND, Mariana. I must look at you before we leave,” Aunt Claire said breathlessly that evening, after pushing her way into Mariana's room half an hour before the carriage was to be ready.

She watched through narrowed eyes as Mariana turned a full circle in the middle of her room, already too hot in her gray watered silk. “Yes, you look all right,” she said, nodding. “Thank goodness my pearl ropes aren't any longer.”

Her own gold satin, less fortunately, matched the yellow of her face. Like Uncle Adrian, Aunt Claire had suffered her share of fevers.

“You must remember to reduce your smile, Mariana,” she cautioned as she leaned over to inspect her own teeth in the looking glass. “A great, beaming smile is pleasant at
home,
to be sure, but when one is out in
society,
one should make an effort to be fashionable.” She gave a satisfied nod. “I am pleased to see that your shoulders do not look as
square
as usual. In fact, your only real difficulty this evening is your hair, although I see you have managed to tidy it up more than usual. Please prevent it from falling out of its pins while we're having dinner.”

Her yellow face and obvious discomfort from the heat notwith standing, Aunt Claire looked radiant. Being invited to Government House meant everything to her. Perhaps, under Miss Emily's sharp, blue eyes, Lady Macnaghten would be civil to foolish, uncomprehending Aunt Claire

Two hours later, the huge, tasseled velvet fan in the Government House dining room swung creakily back and forth on its pulleys, sending an intermittent breeze over Mariana, and causing the candles in front of her to gutter every time it passed over them.

Only at Government House were things done this well. For all Aunt Claire's scolding of the
punkah-wallah
who worked the fan by pulling on a rope, the table candles at Uncle Adrian's house were invariably blown out the very instant the diners sat down.

As Lord Auckland was away from Calcutta, this was to be a small, “family” dinner: just Miss Emily and Miss Fanny Eden, a pair of their favorite bachelor generals, Lady Macnaghten and her nephew, Mariana, and Mariana's aunt and uncle. Mariana had been seated with the other assembled diners near one end of a table for twenty, while behind each dining chair a turbaned serving man stood at attention, and behind him, two assistants. Including the head serving man and the cook's assistants, who rushed in and out of the kitchen carrying the dishes, there were thirty-one servants attending to eight people.

“I cannot think how I shall manage,” Lady Macnaghten was saying in a fluting voice from her seat beside the older of the generals, as she puffed out the fashionable sleeves of her cream satin gown. “My husband tells me that the officers in Kabul are expecting balls as soon as I arrive, but as there still are very few ladies, I cannot think how I am to arrange the dancing.”

She seemed to have survived the shock of finding herself at dinner with the most notorious family in Calcutta, although the strategy of pretending that the notorious family was not there had begun to wear thin.

“Perhaps the gentlemen will take turns dancing,” Miss Emily offered from the head of the table, while her sister nodded from her seat beside the second general. “I understand there are some
very
charming officers in Kabul.”

Mariana, who was thinking hopefully of Fitzgerald, arranged her face to show no feeling as Lady Macnaghten's eyes flicked past her behind the silver candelabra for the fourth time in ten minutes.

The nephew, a sour-faced young man in expensive-looking clothes, waved a languid hand. “
I
see no difficulty in finding ladies to join in the dancing,” he drawled. “Kabul is full of native women. I understand some of them are quite pretty. I am sure they can be taught to dance at a moment's notice.”

“Well, really, Charles,” Lady Macnaghten said brightly, “I scarcely think
that
will be necessary. ”

“We understand, Lady Macnaghten,” put in Miss Emily firmly, “that you expect to travel to Kabul quite soon.”

“Oh, yes.” Lady Macnaghten gave a tinkling laugh. “My husband says he cannot live without me a moment longer.” She was blushing.

Miss Emily's eyebrows rose.

“And how soon will that be?” asked the portlier of the two generals hastily.

“I expect to leave next month, although one can never tell how long it will take to make the arrangements. I have been waiting nearly a year for a dozen new bonnets and a pair of chandeliers, and I
cannot
leave without them, but I am told they are on the
Vigilant,
which is expected at any time.”

Aunt Claire looked eagerly from Miss Emily and Miss Fanny to Lady Macnaghten and back, as if unaware of any awkwardness.

Why, Mariana wondered, as she accepted a servant's offer of fricassee of duck, had Lady Macnaghten made that indelicate remark, and how had she contrived
not
to turn yellow like poor Aunt Claire? How had she maintained all that thick, glossy black hair, now so elegantly folded and pinned above the perfect neckline of her satin gown? Even the Eden sisters, with their fine gowns and their hair done up by English ladies’ maids, were not so well turned out.

“I,” put in Uncle Adrian, “will be leaving for Kabul within the next month or two.”

“Ah,” Lady Macnaghten breathed, her response sounding more like a sigh than an answer.

“Since we are to travel at nearly the same time,” he continued, “perhaps we should combine our forces.”

Lady Macnaghten's knife slid from her fingers and landed on her plate with a clatter. “Oh, but that would be impossible,” she cried. “Impossible, am I not correct, Miss Emily? It would be most
improper
for me to travel with—”

“My wife and I,” persisted Uncle Adrian, ignoring the interruption, “will be traveling with her niece.”

“Her
niece?
” Lady Macnaghten's mouth fell open. Dropping both her good manners and her elaborate pretense that Mariana was not present, she pointed her fork across the table. “Do you mean
that
girl?”

“Yes, I believe he does,” Miss Emily put in smoothly. She fixed her blue gaze on Lady Macnaghten. “And as Mr. Lamb and his wife will have their own staff and arrangements for the journey,” she said, “there will be no impediment to their joining you, will there?

“No,” Miss Emily said, beaming with satisfaction as she answered her own question. “There will be no impediment at
all.”