The Mountain of Light (22 page)

Henry drank the water thirstily, allowing it to flow down his chin and drench his shirt. In the heated courtyard, he felt a sense of blessed coolness. When he was done, he raised his cup to the man next to him.

Misr Makraj nodded, accepting the compliment. “At first, Shuja said he did not have the Kohinoor, that he had lost it while fleeing Peshawar. Then he said he had misplaced it. For a few months, he said he had searched very hard among his belongings for it. Your man Elphinstone came to Lahore to help Shuja escape, but there was nothing in the Punjab that my Maharajah did not know.”

“He didn't escape?”

“No, and then he sent a message to my master saying that he had miraculously found the diamond, praise be to Allah, and that he was ready to hand it over.”

Henry laughed, throwing his head back. The two Howards tilted their heads inquiringly, peered at him, and then bent back down toward their work. “He sent the topaz.”

“He sent the topaz back with Fakir Azizuddin, the foreign minister. We had none of us seen the Kohinoor before, and didn't know if it was blue or white or yellow, but the court jewelers said that it wasn't a diamond at all, but a
pukraj
. The Maharajah kept the topaz—”

Henry grinned. “Of course he would.”

Misr Makraj turned in surprise. “Of course; it was a silly trick to play on a great Maharajah. Shah Shuja should have sent him a fake stone, instead of a real one. So the Maharajah then cut off all his supplies again. He sent men to drain the ponds and fountains in Shalimar Bagh, and strip the trees of all fruit.”

“How long did Shah Shuja last?”

Misr Makraj held up fists and began unfolding fingers. “One . . . two . . . five . . . six . . . eight.”

Henry raised his eyebrows. “Eight days?”

“Eight hours, Henry Sahib.” He made a spitting sound with his mouth. “And this man was once Amir of Afghanistan. A mere eight hours, and when he asked for an emissary from the Maharajah's court, Fakir Azizuddin went again. This time he came back with the Kohinoor. It was brought to my king in a box lined with red velvet, a little depression made in the cloth so that it could be shown against it. It was just the Kohinoor by itself, one stone, and a couple of strings tied to its base so that it could be worn as an armlet. For a few years, my king wore it thus.”

Henry had heard, though not yet seen, that the Kohinoor was now in an arm ornament of three stones—the Kohinoor
itself, flanked by two smaller diamonds, with gold links to complete the armlet. It was in his notes from the Governor-General's office in Calcutta, and the last confirming entry had been in the hand of Lord Auckland.

“And then?”

“Then he had it put into a
sarpech
for his turban. It was set in gold and had a teardrop diamond depending from it. A very small stone, Henry Sahib, this other diamond was, only forty-five carats.” Here, Misr Makraj reached into his pocket and brought out the grimy piece of cloth for which he had gone into the Toshakhana. Henry watched as he opened the folds of the cloth. In his palm lay a flawless diamond, lightly faceted, about an inch and a half in length.

Only forty-five carats, Misr Makraj said, incredibly. The Kohinoor was said to be some four times the weight of this little diamond, able to feed the world's population for a whole day. This bauble would send many a man into a comfortable retirement and take care of a few more future generations.

“Beautiful, isn't it?” Misr Makraj asked, dreamily. “It takes a lot of competence to facet a diamond into a teardrop, but the Maharajah's jewelers always had skill.”

Henry nodded. He felt for his watch in his vest. He had to leave soon. Tomorrow, perhaps next week, he would be back again to document all the effects of the Toshakhana and he
had
to be here—this was not work he would entrust to the sole discretion of the Howards, although he would to the man next to him, who gazed at the diamond with such adoration, it was impossible to think he would ever imagine stealing it. Or anything else in the treasury.

“Shuja, as you know,” Misr Makraj continued, the stone glowing bright in his dark hand, “escaped eventually from Maharajah Ranjit Singh. He could not go back to Afghanistan, so he went instead to Ludhiana, well south of the Sutlej, into British territory.”

“He was our guest, true.”

Misr Makraj folded the cloth again and stood up. The corners of his mouth turned upward in a dry smile. “As much your guest as he had been ours, Henry Sahib. And then a pawn in your Afghan war.”

He walked away, his bare feet creeping over the dust. In the last four hours, he had become more and more bent, his shoulders falling, his back curved, the weight of what he was doing bearing down upon him. Misr Makraj set the teardrop diamond on the book of one of the clerks, who opened up the cloth eagerly and reached for his calipers.

“What about the Kohinoor, Misr Makraj?” Henry called.

The man put out his hands. “It was eventually set in an armlet with a gold chain, flanked by two smaller diamonds. This was early on, Henry Sahib; for the last twenty years of the Maharajah's life, this is how he wore his Kohinoor.”

“I mean,” Henry said deliberately, “where is the Kohinoor now?”

Misr Makraj lifted his shoulders and turned to his right.

“Where it should be,” said a voice from the entrance to the courtyard. “With his Majesty, Maharajah Dalip Singh.”

Henry rose to his feet slowly. The woman who stood there was veiled, her
ghagara
and
choli
a crimson red, like a splash of blood against the sandstone. The thin chiffon covering her face was almost transparent, but so heavily embroidered that nothing showed, except her hands, fretting away the edge of the fabric. She stood erect, with a queenly bearing, her skirts full and lush. Even through the veil Henry could see that she was slim, with a tiny waist, and tall enough for her head to almost hit the entrance archways—he had had to duck through, but then Henry Lawrence was a tall man even among the British.

He noticed Misr Makraj bowing, and the two Howards rising from their places.

“How did you get in here?”

She moved one hand out; it was an imperious gesture. “In
my palaces, Henry Lawrence, you ask me how I go anywhere and why?”

She had spoken Persian, and Henry had responded alike; the only difficulty she had was with his name. She called him
Henny Larens
.

“It is not allowed, your . . . er . . . your,” Henry stuttered and stopped, cursing under his breath. Who
was
she? One of the numerous widows of Maharajah Ranjit Singh? Not the Maharani Jindan Kaur; her voice was seared in his brain; he had heard her talk many times. When Ranjit Singh had died, he had been cremated, and five of his wives had chosen to commit Sati along with him on his funeral pyre. But he had had a quiverful of others—twenty-three that Henry knew of and, in his meticulous fashion, had documented, demanding from them proof of date of birth, their ancestry, the dates of their marriages to the Maharajah, whether they had had any children from him. This, after having been confronted with an astounding number of royal “widows” when he had first come to Lahore. The British government and the East India Company intended to grant pensions to these women—from the coffers of the Punjab Toshakhana, of course, after taking what they considered right, just, and the spoils of the conqueror.

“Not allowed.” She put as much mockery as she could into those two words. “
You
are not allowed to have the Kohinoor diamond.”

Henry turned helplessly to Misr Makraj, who was watching him with a gleam in his eyes. “Who is she, Misr Makraj?”

“A . . . princess, Henry Sahib,” he said quietly. “She is the sister of Maharajah Sher Singh.”

Henry turned again to the woman in the archway and saw her back stiffen, and her chin come up under the veil. Princess? Queen? These titles had been idly bandied about by the twenty-three remaining wives, and the hundred and thirty concubines Ranjit Singh had left behind. She was really nobody,
he thought. Sher Singh had been Ranjit Singh's adopted son, and had been assassinated at the behest of Dalip Singh's mother . . . or someone else; the histories, just a few years later, were so muddied with legend. And none of those alive who had witnessed the events spoke of them. Sher Singh's antecedents were murky also; some said he was truly Ranjit Singh's son, though born without the benefit of his parents being married; some said he was a cousin. And this girl was the sister of the man who had pretended to be the son of the Lion of the Punjab, a man who had sat on the throne for a few short days before someone had walked up to him in open court, pulled out a pistol, and shot him between the eyes.

“I'm sorry—” Henry began.

“Don't be,” she said harshly. “If you want the Kohinoor back, ask for me, Roshni. If you want to be sorry for me, don't be; I'm betrothed to Maharajah Dalip Singh.”

“Tomorrow then,” Henry said quickly. “In Jahangir's Quadrangle, at noon. Please come.”

He saw her pondering his words, shaking her head at first, and then she said, “All right.” She turned to go, and said over her shoulder, “You are here for protection, are you not, Henry Lawrence?”

“Yes,” he said. “And to be fair, you must believe that.”

She looked at him for a long while. “Why then, in all the time that you have been in Lahore, have you not made an attempt to meet with your charge? Have you seen Maharajah Dalip Singh?”

Henry felt blood warm his skin. He hadn't. The biggest part of his duties as Resident was the care of the young Maharajah, but thus far he had met only the members of the Sikh Durbar—the men who were advisors to the Maharajah's court—his mother and her lover, and the various other men who were in charge of arrangements at Lahore Fort. Henry had the city to deal with also, with all its myriad troubles—water, the lack of it; the hooligans who paraded abroad at
night. And then, he had the administration of the whole of the Punjab Empire—what was left of it, ponderous enough for a man not born to rule. He had spent the last two months writing copious letters to every man of note he had served with during all his years with the artillery, inviting them to Lahore to serve under him, giving them governorships of Peshawar and Multan and other places smaller, all with the injunction that their hand must not be too heavy, their wisdom sage indeed, and the people under their guardianship happy.

In all this—days and nights spent in all this—Henry had pushed away the care of the boy king toward his retainers. As long as he had heard reports that Dalip Singh was cheerful, riding his horse every day, learning from his Urdu and Persian masters, keeping his hawks and falcons—he had not bothered to contact him.

The girl, the woman, mocked him, as though she knew his thoughts. “The Maharajah must be your
first
charge, must he not, Henry Lawrence? What else does the Resident of Lahore really have to do?”

“I . . .” Henry began, and then stopped, abashed. She was right.

She went out through the archways, and to Henry it seemed as though the light in the courtyard had dimmed. She had said that she was betrothed to Maharajah Dalip Singh, and she was twenty years old at least—there was none of that adolescent gawkiness in her walk, her talk. And Dalip Singh was eight years old.

And Henry had finally recognized her as the girl he had seen last night in Jahangir's Quadrangle.

•  •  •

The next morning, at four o'clock, before night had slackened its grip over the city of Lahore, the crackle of gunshots resounded off the ramparts.

Henry, John, Edwardes, and the others scrambled from their cots, flung on trousers and shirts, grabbed guns, and sprinted toward the sound. They could see flashes of light beyond the walls, near the stables just outside the Diwan-i-am, the Hall of Public Audience.

“What's happening?” Edwardes yelled, his breathing harsh. He had been in the Bengal Artillery at Dum Dum with Henry; they had arrived in India together, bunked together, spent many a night drinking and exchanging stories. Whereas Henry's figure was slim, almost gaunt after a bout of malaria in a Burma campaign, Edwardes had steadily been putting on bulk. He kept up with the Lawrence brothers, but just barely.

They clattered down the steep set of stairs of the Hathi Pol, the Elephant Gate, and out into the night. To meet with chaos.

Handheld lanterns swung their beams in wild arcs as men dashed around. Fifty or so camels strained in their harnesses, cows bellowed in pain, curses puckered the air, and a small contingent of British soldiers fired into the fabric of the sky.

“Stop,” Henry roared. His eyes moved over the scene quickly—no one was dead, although a few cows had collapsed on the dirt, no one was actually shooting at someone else, and everyone was shouting. In a few moments, even this comparative peace would escalate into something worse. “John.” He whipped around to his brother. “Get to the back of this crowd, show yourself to the soldiers, and get them to stop shooting—they're frightening the animals. Lake”—this to another lieutenant—“to the right, calm down the natives, find out why. Nicholson, put on your uniform jacket, man, how will they know who you are otherwise?”

Henry pounded back up the stairs leading to the Hathi Pol, grabbed a torch from its holder, and held it aloft.

John, preparing to follow his brother's orders, stopped and turned back. “Put that down, Pat, for God's sake. You're a sitting target; some of these men have guns.”

“Only the British soldiers have guns,” Henry shouted back. “And no one will shoot at me. Go now.”

For ten minutes the racket continued; then slowly, the gunshots stopped, and the natives subsided, muttering under their breath. The only sounds heard for a while were the lowing of the cows, and the distressed snorting of the camels. Henry waited, his arm tiring as he held the light up.