The Maharajah's Monkey (9 page)

What a throne! Like a curved golden shell, set with glittering gems. The throne dominated the enormous first-floor chamber, which was crowded with courtiers, open to the sun and rain on all sides. Birds fluttered in and out, graceful swooping things with scarlet tails and
ruffs. Above the chatter of the courtiers was the melodious twitter of these bulbul songbirds, India's nightingales. But the boy was apart from all the hullabaloo, ringed as he was by five bodyguards. I was told these men shadowed him day and night, on the watch for assassins. How small he looked among those burly men, bristling with knives and swords! Like a child at the dress-up box. A boy playing at king.

Rachel murmured, “He looks so sad and lonely.”

“I wouldn't be sad. Not if everyone had to grovel to
me
.” Waldo grinned.

As we approached, the boy opened his eyes and I saw what Rachel meant. He did look sad, somehow. There was a lost look in those bulging brown eyes. The Maharajah was dressed in the simplest white linen tunic and pajamas, though his chubby hands were be-ringed with glittering gems. Nothing save the huge diamond—the legendary Star of the East—glittering on a chain around his neck marked him out as the king. What an odd ruler.

I felt sorry for the young Maharajah. How many of the courtiers circling around him must be plotting to seize power for themselves? How many supposed friends were just waiting for their chance to plant a knife between his shoulder blades? The looks, the whispers, the courtiers bristling with swords. Easy to imagine the
dagger glinting in some shadowy corner. What a strange mixture of glamour and decay the Ran Bagh palace was.

“What is these, Charles?” the Maharajah asked, turning to his tutor. I had been told that he was learning English, but he spoke remarkably well.

“The travelers I told you about, Your Highness” Prinsep replied. “The archaeologists.”

“They make archaeologists young in England,” said a diminutive man standing by the throne. He peered at us doubtfully. Later I learned that this was the Dewan, the king's adviser and the real power behind the throne. He was bald as an egg and had a funny, crinkled face. But his green eyes were shrewd.

“No, these are their children.” Prinsep pointed to my father and aunt. “Here are the archaeologists.”

“A woman?” the Dewan gazed thunderstruck at my aunt, who, clad in puffy bloomer-style trousers, stood in front of my father, blocking him from sight. “She goes about in
that
?”

I suddenly realized what had struck me as strange about the palace. There were no women, anywhere, though coming up the stairs I'd heard the faint tinkle of laughter. Through a moon-shaped fretwork in the wall I glimpsed slanting, almond-shaped eyes watching me. A swirl of pink silk. Then more bell-like laughter and the eyes disappeared. Aunt Hilda had explained the vision to
me: in this palace, the ladies kept “purdah” and had to keep to their quarter of the palace which was called the Zenana. For all their silks, gold and baubles, they were but beautiful caged birds. Like the Maharajah, they were trapped.

Of course no Zenana could contain Aunt Hilda, who announced:

“I am the most famous explorer in England, Your Majesty. You've heard of Hilda Salter? … Modern enlightened thought holds women to be as good as men. We don't keep ladies locked away in Britain. All sorts of women are becoming doctors and so on. Many of them rather look up to me.”

I'm not sure how much of this speech the boy Maharajah understood, though he nodded politely. I saw his dewan whispering to him and then my aunt was introducing my father. Shortly after that, my aunt, never one to waste time, got down to business.

“Your Highness, your fame and goodness is known throughout the Empire. We have come here because we've heard of the exciting discovery in your grounds. We are dying to see Father Monserrate's famous diaries. What a thrilling find! We have heard they include a map to Shambala—perhaps the way to paradise on earth.”

The Maharajah held up a chubby, glittering hand. Instantly all chatting and laughter in the court was
stilled. The gesture was so unexpected it even silenced my aunt.

“NO,” he said.

“Pardon?” my aunt spluttered.

“Why should I allow you to see these things?”

“Er … I am a famous explorer; my brother Theo here is a renowned archaeologist.”

“You don't want look. You want take,” the boy king declared.

My father had stepped forward. I saw he was trembling as he attempted to speak. “Your Majesty …” he managed to mutter before the boy interrupted:

“Britishers are always stealing India's treasures.”

My aunt drew herself up to her full five feet: “Your Highness! We are not thieves.”

“Madam, you are most welcome to my palace. But not to my treasures.”

“I assure you, my interest in these old papers is purely scholarly,” my aunt protested.

“I believe you, madam. But even your great Queen Empress is …” he waved his hands around and then paused a moment for a whispered discussion with the Dewan. When he began again the Maharajah was grinning. “Even Queen Victoria is light-fingered. She has stolen India's greatest gem, the Koh-i-noor diamond, from my brother Maharajah.”

My aunt was momentarily speechless. Perhaps to make up for his charge's rudeness, the Dewan stepped forward, smiling. With a few gracious phrases he invited us all on a great shikar, or tiger hunt. We would start off for the jungle, tomorrow morning, at the very crack of dawn.

With that we were shown out of the court.

Gazing back at the palace we had left, I saw it was really the most splendid building, sprouting fairytale turrets, domes and minarets. Look a little closer and you could see the marks of woodworm, devouring the mighty wooden edifice from the inside. It might be a metaphor for the whole court, I mused. Glittering on the outside, but eaten up by greed and suspicion.

What a relief to be away from the court. Here in the glorious grounds, we could enjoy the plash of fountains and the screech of peacocks. Feast our eyes on vast banyan trees that sent misshapen limbs into the grounds, twittering birds and chattering monkeys. Instead of the birch trees and cedars that you would find in an English park there were mango trees—plump with juicy golden fruit—peepul and burning orange Flame of the Forest. The sweet scent of jasmine was everywhere. Truly we felt we had been transported into the pages of some exotic tale.

As we stood in the shade of the banyan tree growing
over our lodge, Mr. Prinsep said, consolingly: “Do not fret about the journals. Most people would give their right hand to go on one of the Maharajah's tiger hunts.”

“I have use for both my hands, thank you,” Aunt Hilda snapped. She paused a moment, letting Mr. Prinsep feel the full force of her anger. “I'll tell you one thing for free, Mr. Prinsep, I consider your tinpot Maharajah most precocious. Not to say disrespectful!

“I will have that journal. Even if I have to break into the treasure vaults to get it.” With that Aunt Hilda turned her back on us and strode into the lodge. We all followed a little nervously, for my aunt in a mood is as dangerous as a rogue lion. As we entered the corridor I stopped and gasped.

There was an oil painting on the wall in front of me of an Indian reclining on a tiger skin, a rifle lying on his lap, a thick rope of pearls around his neck. He had a mustache almost as full as Champlon, this man. Something about the face under all that hair pulled me up short. That plump, pleasure-loving mouth, thin cheeks, sallow skin, was all familiar. Above all, the expression in the bulging eyes, reminded me of someone. The artist had captured exactly the look in the man's eyes.

I had seen him somewhere very recently. Cleanshaven, but most definitely the same man.

“Who's that?” I turned on Prinsep urgently.

“I thought they'd got rid of all the paintings of him,” he replied.

“Yes, but who is it?”

“That rotter Malharrao, of course. The old Maharajah.”

As we traveled toward the jungle in search of tigers the next morning, my mind was still buzzing with my discovery. Of course I hadn't been able to keep it to myself. I instantly told the others I'd recognized Malharrao as the supposed “footman” disembarking from the steamer at Bombay. My aunt believed me, as did my friends. But I could tell Prinsep was skeptical. I felt frustrated with him, for the implications were huge.

It looked very much as if Malharrao—the wicked, former Maharajah of Baroda—had kidnapped Champlon and brought him to India. Why, I had no idea. I also had no real clue as to the identity of the two invalids in wheelchairs with the traveling party. I had my suspicions, though. Sick suspicions that were curdling in my stomach.

Could those two sick invalids be a pair of brothers we had met before? Rich, evil and ruthless, they were the perfect candidates to have sprung Malharrao from jail.
But what did they want with him? Why, if it was indeed the Baker Brothers, were they in India? Where did the thieving monkey fit into all this? It was all most perplexing. I had questions, questions, questions—but so few answers.

In England I would have been able to make a better go of understanding it all, but India was so very
foreign
. The sights and smells of the palace bewildered me, the heaving mob of people outside the gates even more. The very air was different; hot and musky, filled with stinging particles of dust. With the royal party I was cocooned in luxury, swaddled in silk and ivory and fed fifteen-course meals. Outside the palace gates there was danger, rebellion, poverty. Yet it wasn't as if we were so safe within the palace. Yesterday I had cannoned into a man lurking outside my door. His gold teeth glinted as he accepted my apologies, but the expression in his eyes made me shiver. Who was he? A bodyguard? A spy? I had no idea. There were so many undercurrents I was grasping to understand. High intrigue involving the fate of kingdoms and princes, and something more tantalizing in the background, something my fingers would clutch and then it would all slip away.

What could the plotters want with Champlon? What did he have to offer them? Then there were those threatening letters to me—oh, why couldn't life be simpler?

“Kit! You're talking to yourself.” Rachel prodded me in the side, while, sitting in the palanquin opposite me, Waldo grinned slyly.

“Oops, sorry.”

“Planning to solve the world's problems?” Waldo asked. “All by your little self?”

Scowling slightly, I ignored him and glanced through the silk curtain that draped our golden palanquin. It was strange to be riding an elephant, but the beast had made good progress across Baroda. Through paddy fields and coconut groves, through villages of squat mud huts, till we plunged into jungle. Here the sights were so wonderful my worries fell away. We were engulfed by a canopy of trees, swarming with creepers and thick with the cries of exotic birds: racket-tailed drongo, paradise flycatcher, black-headed cuckoo shrike. The only sound I recognized was the reassuring tap-tap of woodpeckers.

As our beasts swayed under us, I spied a herd of antelope with the delicate legs of ballerinas. They watched us from the edge of the clearing, their curling horns quivering, appearing too graceful to survive this jungle. Then, in a startled rush, they fled. Monkeys crashed through the branches overhead and once I thought I saw a flash of yellow and black spotted hide, a cheetah perhaps or leopard.

Finally we arrived at a tangled gully from which a
bank sloped down to a water hole. At the moment it was a dried-out pit, only a little moist mud at the very bottom to show how it must swell during the monsoon rains. On the other side of the gully a screen of creepers draped the trees and bushes like enormous fronds of clinging seaweed. We were surrounded by the screech of parakeets, the whisper and crackle of prowling creatures: tigers, panthers, boar, black buck.

My father had been traveling with the Maharajah and my aunt on the other elephant. Now his head emerged, blinking, from his palanquin. “There's nowhere to picnic,” he called, panic stricken at the idea of crouching in snake-infested grass.

“Nonsense.” The Maharajah waved his hand airily: “We will sit on God's earth.”

It was all right for the Maharajah. His servants produced a charming gold chair for him to sit on. The rest of our party, which included Mrs. Spragg and her bodyguard, had to make do with rugs. The swaying motion of the elephant ride had obviously been a bit much for some of my friends: Isaac and the Minchin were both delicate shades of green.

The Maharajah dismounted and placed one arm round his favorite elephant, Sonali. A beast the size of an omnibus, with great baggy eyes, surrounded by rolls of wrinkled flesh, she looked at you so sadly you could
have sworn she
understood
. The Maharajah stroked her flank lovingly, as he fed her slices of mango.

“Sonali, my little one,” he murmured to her, as he scratched her wrinkled hide. We watched a little nervously, for one swish of the elephant's trunk would send us flying on to the forest floor. Her feet could crunch your skull like a teacup. The Maharajah turned and saw us watching him anxiously.

“Don't fear.” He smiled. “Sonali does not hurt a mosquito … Go on, stroke her.”

This was a royal command. Waldo came forward, but I was quicker.

Which is how I came to stroke a real live elephant. Her skin felt scabby and rough, it was a little like patting an old leather bag. A beast that weighed over 7,000 pounds, but was gentle as a lamb. She curled her trunk with pleasure, as my friends and I patted her sides. She seemed to be smiling at us.

While the mahout tended to the beasts, the small army of servants that accompanies the Maharajah everywhere, even to the middle of the jungle, got to work. They unpacked a vast array of hampers: inside were silver tureens breathing steam, tiffin tins, jars of pickles and chutneys; bottles of fresh candy-colored sherbet. My mouth watered at the sight of the sumptuous spread. Even a picnic with a Maharajah was an
impossibly grand affair.