The Mountain of Light (9 page)

Maharajah Ranjit Singh had arrived at the river a month ago, the English two days ago. A fog of dust hung over the British encampment, surrounding it and some hundred feet skyward, blurring the sharp December blue of the sky, the
outlines of the tents, its thickness added to by the campfires, which sent their smoke straight up in pockets of white and gray. It would take a few days to settle, once the horses were tethered and comfortable, the tents were fully upright, the business of living begun. There wasn't even the murmur of a breeze, and so the British side of the Sutlej was like an oil painting left to molder in a stable, covered with dust, its outlines indistinct.

Jindan had waited for these last two days to make the long trek through the Maharajah's camp and come to the riverside, hoping that she would be able to take a measure of these English people, even from this far. But she wanted something more. So she said, “Fakir Azizuddin, make arrangements for the ladies of the Governor-General to come see me, will you?”

“When, your Majesty?” He had managed to speak fast enough to cover his surprise, not much hesitation there, but his voice came out in a revealing squeak.

She grinned, and when she spoke it was in the coarse Urdu of the camp soldiers, deliberately reminding him of her so-common origins. “In a couple of days. At my convenience, not theirs.”

The girl by the Maharani's side turned again to Aziz and stuck her tongue out at him. So there, Fakir Azizuddin, she seemed to be saying. Aziz knew that the very young could be very stupid, that this girl didn't know just how important he was, or she would be more afraid of him. And then he saw the small gold disc suspended on a gold chain around her neck. The medallion, more like a gold sovereign, was the size of a small dinner plate against her stomach, and on it was impressed the coat of arms of the Punjab Empire—two curving daggers, a double-edged sword, a quoit in the center. So, this girl had the Maharajah's favor, he thought. Ranjit Singh had a propensity for taking into his fort, his harem, anyone who came to him for help, or could claim any kinship to him. The Maharajah also loved children, and so he had adopted
a boy, Sher Singh, from a distant branch of his family, and a few years ago brought this girl, Roshni, who was Sher Singh's much younger sister, into the safety and shelter of his
zenana
quarters.

Aziz formed the sound of her name with his mouth, exaggerating a little.
Rosh-ni. I know who you are.

She mimed back.
So what?
And then.
Ha-ha
.

He watched the agility of her expressions, the flash in those light blue eyes, the pantomime, and smiled to himself. He could see why the Maharajah was taken with this brilliant child; she was an entertaining minx. With a very apt name. Roshni. Light. Illumination.

Maharani Jindan Kaur swung around and began walking back to her tent. The Maharajah's foreign minister flushed, bowed, scuttled out of her way, and followed her through the streets, cursing himself. Until that last sentence, they had spoken Persian, a language she was less than fluent in but something she had taught herself, so it had come out stilted, without finesse. But the Urdu of the camps was something she had grown up with, it slid off her tongue easily, and it was a slap in his face for his surprise that the queen of the Punjab would want to meet her counterpart in the British embassy. See, Fakir Azizuddin, she had seemed to be saying, there's a reason there are no other queens here at the Sutlej. I might have grown up among soldiers, but I am now your sovereign's wife, and have your king's love . . . not to mention his child.

As they passed, men turned their faces from her, women raised their hands to foreheads in the salaam, the blacksmith stilled the pounding on his anvil, the cries of the bazaar died down. And Jindan, veiled and covered, carried Prince Dalip Singh and showed him to his people. They saw his face, they marveled at his plumpness, the cast of black in his hair, the tiny fingers that curled around the chiffon of his mother's veil, and they wiped the audacity from their expressions.
There were no sneers, no sniggers, just an awe that the bundle in the woman's arms, finally, and deliberately, made her queen.

If he had been asked, Fakir Azizuddin would have advised against this ramble through the long camp to stand on the embankment and stare at the British on the other side. At the very least, she ought to have had an entourage around her, a gaggle of veiled ladies, a sprinkling of soldiers, a clearing of the paths, a shouting of discouragement toward anyone who dared to raise their eyes toward the Maharani. Oh, and a maid to hold the child. Why would a queen carry her own son like this? It made no sense to Aziz. There were rumors eddying around that she even nursed the child herself. These were all actions of a low-class woman who had no one to do such things for her; Aziz would have thought that, if anything, she would intentionally be more regal than the other ranis of the Maharajah, to put lie to who she was and where she came from.

And then, he saw the melting faces of the soldiers and their womenfolk, watched them bow in the
taslim
or the
konish,
touch their hearts at the sight of the child, his prince. The diamond shone in the sunlight, like a star plucked out of the night sky, but the infant seemed more brilliant than a rock that could feed the world's millions. Aziz shook his head in disbelief and in admiration.

When Jindan had reached the outside of the tents that formed the royal enclosure, she waited. He said, “It shall be as you say, your Majesty.”

She inclined her head,
now
she was imperious, and went inside.

•  •  •

Jindan Kaur had asked for, and got, the rooms beside the Maharajah's, a privilege a few of his wives had had, in his
youth, perhaps, but not for a long while now. The tent, spare and white, with no embellishments in gold and silver
zari,
no beaten gold pillars holding up the awnings, no abundant Persian and Turkish carpets of thick, knotted wool, was, even so, large and contained canvas partitions that divided one space from another. It had high doorways, tall ceilings, windows of a fine white mesh that kept out insects and filtered in the sweet air birthed above the Sutlej's waters. The floors were covered with crudely woven
dhurries
in white; the furniture was simple, white cotton divans with cushions and bolsters, a sleek wooden chair in every room for Ranjit Singh.

The Maharani paused at the entrance to the main sitting room, staying just beyond the doorway, unseen by the occupants of the room. When the Maharajah met with the British delegation, his own person would be modest, as always, but the courtiers would be dressed in their dazzling silks, would glitter with jewels—
there
would be all of the pomp and the enormous wealth of the Punjab Empire. For show, Jindan, Ranjit Singh had said. I myself need none of it. Jindan smiled, looking around her at all that pristine white. In an empire where dust and mud ruled, where the rains fell sparingly and sometimes not at all, where the green of verdure flourished only around the hearts of rivers and streams, white was a luxury that only a king could command. Not so humble after all.

Roshni, sticking to her as usual, beckoned Jindan's head down, and the Maharani felt the child's warm, moist breath tickle her ear. “Shall I go?”

“Wait in my room, Roshan.”

The girl reached on tiptoe and kissed Jindan's arm, somewhere above the Kohinoor, and then she fled, the sound of her footsteps sucked into the pile of the
dhurries
on the floor.

Jindan leaned against the wooden doorframe and listened as the Granthi read out passages from the Guru Granth Sahib to his Maharajah. In the last few years, as he had grown older
and two strokes had frozen the left part of his body, Ranjit had asked for a learned man at his court, a different one each time, to sing out hymns from the scripture at all times of the day, whenever he had felt the need for it. She moved slowly until she filled the doorway and watched her husband in his chair, the Granthi seated on a stool next to a wooden table on which the holy book lay. Ranjit's right hand cupped his face, and when she appeared, he moved that hand so that his face moved also and his bright eye gazed at her. He smiled, a half smile that curved the right part of his mouth, left the other side immobile.

She felt a painful swelling in her breasts; it was time for another feed, but the baby slept on, his fist tucked under his chin, all crumpled up in his mother's arms. She tickled him gently on his ribs, and he opened his glittering eyes and screwed up his mouth in a lusty cry.

Maharani Jindan Kaur held him close, her fingers already undoing the buttons of her
choli,
as she vanished in a swirl of skirts, the child's cry loud and then dying into contentment as his mouth found her breast.

•  •  •

In the sitting room, Maharajah Ranjit Singh cleared his throat. The Granthi heard him but finished the verse he was reciting and waited, his head bowed, looking down upon his hands.

“Enough for now,” Ranjit said.

“Tomorrow, your Majesty?” the man asked.

“Maybe not. Fakir Azizuddin will send word. Thank you.”

When the man had left, after touching his forehead to the ground in front of the Guru Granth Sahib, and gathering the book reverently into his arms, Ranjit called for his servants. They carried his chair out, moving sideways through the
doorway, into the main area, and from there they went into the bedroom of the Maharani.

When the servants had departed, Jindan pulled the veil from over her head and the suckling child, and sat there smiling upon the Maharajah. The golden light from the waning sun slanted in from the windows, caressed her shining hair and that of her child, cast a honeyed warmth upon her bare skin.

Ranjit Singh sighed. He set his right hand down carefully upon the arm of his chair and moved his head with an effort until it rested against the back. He never tired of looking upon her, this girl he had plucked from the banks of the Ravi River one heated summer afternoon in Lahore, just outside the fort's walls. And, eventually, brought her into his harem as his wife. His gaze then drifted to Roshni, sitting on the floor near Jindan, her legs crossed in front of her, her head leaning against Jindan's shoulder. Every now and then, she put out a small hand to caress Dalip's head.

“Why do you do that yourself ?” His voice was rasping; speech was still troublesome, and he couldn't get as many words out as he wanted; his brain was always crammed with questions now that could find no answers.

But Jindan understood, as she had always seemed to. “This?” she said, glancing down upon the concentrated face of the baby, eyes now shut, mouth working busily. “I lost one, you know.”

He nodded, as much as that petrified left part of his neck would allow. There had been a child before this one; at five months along, Jindan had tripped over the wooden horse cart of one of the other children in the harem—not his own, one of the many others of the various women to whom he gave shelter, cousins and friends—and had collapsed sharply upon the ground. It had been such a simple fall; she had not twisted an ankle, or injured a bone, but she had been taken to her bed, and that night the bleeding had started.

Jindan began to speak and then turned to Roshni. “Roshan, child, leave the room. I want to speak to the Maharajah of matters that are not for your ears.”

Roshni twisted her nose. “Why, Ma?”

In his chair, Ranjit tipped forward as much as his shattered body would allow him to. He had hoped that Jindan would form friendships among at least some of the women in his harem; he knew that her life would be miserable if she didn't. But Jindan had become fond not of one of his other wives, or his cousins, but of this little girl who had come from Sher Singh's house in Amritsar almost on the same day as Jindan. In his, the Maharajah's
zenana,
Roshni was in the place of his child, because he had unofficially adopted her, much as he had adopted her brother Sher Singh and made him one of the heirs to his throne. But Jindan, who at eighteen was only six years older than Roshni, was Ranjit's wife. And so, Roshni called Jindan Ma.

“Go,” Jindan said again. This time when Roshni rose, muttering under her breath, she came up to the Maharajah and nestled against his chin and his beard. And then, she ran from the room.

Jindan smiled. “She's a good girl, even helpful with Dalip.”

“What were we speaking of just now?”

“I prayed that if I were given the chance for another child, I would not leave it to the care of others. Just that, your Majesty.”

He watched her for a long while with a feeling of peace that he never found elsewhere, not even in the saddle. While the strokes, one after another, had decimated the movement of most of his body, he could still ride a horse, and for that he was grateful. Just as he was grateful for this young woman who had come into his life to be his wife, to share his bed, and to give him another child.

Jindan Kaur was the daughter of one of the court's
bhistis
—
the water carriers. These were the men to be found in every town and city in India, hunched under the weight of their goatskin bags. Goats were skinned almost whole for their skins, the inside scoured, polished, and hammered into a smoothness, the outside left with short, brown and white fuzz, and then sewn into a bag with only one seam. Even that one seam had to have stitches that disappeared into the pelt, else water, with its invasive, fluid form would leak out. One end had a small copper mouth with a lid, the other a larger mouth. The
bhistis
filled their bags through the larger mouths and slung them over their shoulders with the smaller openings downward, near their hips. Jute cords, toughly woven, joined the two ends together and were strapped over their chests. When they sold water, they let open the smaller mouth into whatever container was offered to them, capped it, and then collected the money. Water had a surprising weight, and the
bhistis
were easily identified as the men who walked around bent down with a permanent stoop, even after they had put their bags away for the night.