Tiger Claws (29 page)

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Authors: John Speed

BOOK: Tiger Claws
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Tanaji slaps his thigh. “They ran away from rain? You must be joking.”
“Well a few days ago, it was really coming down. But you’re right—what kind of captain runs from a little drizzle?”
The men shake their heads. O’Neil, who has followed a little of this talk, however, thinks of the surging floods that have fallen on him nonstop for two days, and wonders what it would be like if, as Iron says, it was “really coming down.”
“So the whole garrison is at your house, Iron?” Bala asks.
“He rotates three or four men from the house back to the fort every day. There’s maybe half a dozen up there.” Lakshman sneers, as if to say that he would know how many men were left at that fort. Iron ignores him.
“So even if I still had the room to put you up, which I don’t,” Iron continues, “I asked myself if it was a good idea. Bijapuris and Poonis in the same place? I thought that it would be more peaceful to bring you here.
“The Bijapuris are living well on my food and drink. My drink especially; they do love their wine.” Iron shakes his head. “But I had this canopy set up for you, and food sent for you and the animals, and I’ve made arrangements with some villagers to look after you.”
Iron nudges Tanaji. “Of course the
shastri
ordered that there’s to be no toddy here. So don’t tell him that I gave you this.” He hands Tanaji a flask. Tanaji drinks and passes the flask around the circle. O’Neil splutters after a sip; only Shivaji passes it without drinking. Soon that flask is empty, and another, and the men’s faces glow as they speak. Iron’s people work like magic: bedmats roll out on the floor, dishes of hot dal appear in their hands.
“I owe this fool my life,” Iron says to Shivaji, nodding toward Tanaji, “and I owe your father for my good fortune. I don’t forget this. He was a great man, Shahu, a great man.”
Shivaji stands up. “I’m going to check on the horses.” He finds his cloak and steps out into the downpour.
 
 
Iron has provided well: Shivaji’s men have blankets enough, and food and drink in plenty, and the ponies are dry and comfortable.
Shivaji then picks his way across flooded walkways to the stone stairs of the main temple. The night air, full of rain, is getting cold. At the sides of the temple steps are two tall stone columns, shaped like huge combs with wide stone teeth. On each tooth sits a flaming oil lamp. The flames sputter as the rains splash into the oil, but still they burn. But just as he’s about to climb the steps, a small gray-haired woman appears, beckoning him to follow. She moves quickly, glancing behind her to be sure that Shivaji is keeping up.
She leads him past the windows of the low house that he assumes is the students’ quarters, empty now. Around the corner they come to a dark door at the end of the building.
Maya answers his knock, her eyes red from weeping.
“What’s wrong?” Shivaji asks.
“It’s my guru. She’s here.” Her tears brim up. “I thought she was dead. “Come,” she says, wiping her cheeks with her fingertips, “she wants to see you.”
 
 
An old voice calls him, a voice so old that it’s hard to tell whether it’s a man or a woman. “Come here, darling one.”
On a tiger-skin rug that has been spread on the dirt floor sits the tiniest woman that Shivaji has ever seen; maybe the oldest woman he has ever seen; maybe the happiest woman he has ever seen.
She is smaller than Sambhuji, so that makes her smaller than a nine-year-old. Her hair is long and completely white, the thin skin of her face crosshatched with fine lines, her eyes penetrating and bright.
As he enters, she struggles to stand, taking Maya’s quickly offered hand to steady herself. Then she shuffles to Shivaji’s side like a child peering up at a giant.
“You brought my daughter back to me.” Though her teeth are stained and ground with age almost to stumps, her smile is bright. She must lean her head back just to see into Shivaji’s eyes. “Did you hear me calling you, my darling? I’ve been calling and calling. I’ve so wanted to see you. Sometimes I thought I would never live this long, to see this day, to see you both together, in my own room.” She looks over to Maya. “Now I can die.”
Though Maya’s eyes are full of tears they beam at the old woman. “This is Gungama. My guru. Did you know she would be here? I thought she had died long ago.”
“Sit right here, darling,” Gungama says, taking Shivaji’s hand and leading him to her tiger-skin rug.
“Not here, mother,” he protests. “A skin such as this is a guru’s place. I should sit elsewhere.”
She shushes him. “It is a king’s place, my darling.” She guides him onto the tiger skin, and then tugs at him until he sits.
“That’s better.” Gungama beams at Shivaji. She fusses with his turban, which he accepts with a mixture of tolerance and amusement. When she is satisfied, she steps back and sinks to her knees, looking into his eyes with clear delight. “I have sat you on tiger-skin. I have brought you incense and butter lamps burning bright. But I am too weak to wave these things before you as I should. So this will have to do.”
“Mother, I deserve none of this.”
“That, dear, is not for you to say. Not yet” She leans forward, and stretching out her back in a long and graceful curve that seems impossible for one so old, places her forehead on his feet.
“No, mother, no,” Shivaji protests. Maya watches in confusion, still sniffing her tears.
Then Gungama begins to moan. She begins to lean first to one side, then the other, and the moan continues longer and longer, until Maya realizes that Gungama is
singing
. The words are strange, a language she has
never heard before, and the tune is scarcely more than tiny variations in her guru’s croaking voice. The effect is fascinating, comforting, disturbing, beautiful.
Maya catches her breath, for the swaying song of Gungama is like the song of the heart of the earth, a song that seeps skyward from the dark oceans deep beneath the ground, a song that grates against the bones of the world to emerge in wisps through the soil, an ancient melody gathered by this tiny woman, placed before Shivaji’s feet like a flower.
At last Gungama opens her eyes. “One more thing to do before I die,” she says. She leans forward, balancing on her knees, and catching Shivaji’s head in her hands, presses her thumbs into the spot between his eyebrows. His face widens in shock, and he tries to pull away from those gnarled, tiny hands, but he cannot. She squeezes his face so hard his flesh pokes out between her fingers, she presses her yellowed thumbnails into his forehead so hard that a drop of blood oozes from beneath them.
Tears begin to well up in her old eyes when she sees that drop of blood, and she stops, leaning back on her heels. “Well, darling, that wasn’t too bad, I hope. It had to be done, you know, but it’s over now.”
“So,” she says, patting the floor, “Maya.” Maya hurries to her guru’s side. “What took you so long, darling?” she asks, turning to Shivaji, who is still rubbing his forehead. “I’ve been calling for you over these many weeks.”
“Mother, how would we hear your words? We’re so far away.”
She looks shocked. “Your ears must be made of stone. I called and called. I called even louder when my daughter here begged me for my help.”
“Whenever did I do that, mother?” Maya asks in surprise.
“About a month ago, I think.” The old woman’s beams, but seems puzzled that the incident isn’t obvious. “Shall I describe the scene? You, dear child, sitting on a low bed in the dark, wearing some nonsense that covered all your pretty face. And pressed against your sweet throat, child, a sword. And then a fire—flames everywhere. Oh yes, child, you were calling your poor old mother. You called her very hard.
“And so, what did I do, eh? I called him! Didn’t I, darling?” She nods to Shivaji. He nods his head noncommitally. “I called for you to help her—and you did! Things looked so difficult. Yes, darling, yes: you even broke your sword trying to help her! But everything,” she says brightly, “has worked out in the end. Just as it is supposed to. And now, look at us: we three. And in my room. What a sweet world we live in.”
Her bright eyes flash from face to face. “And neither of you believes a single thing I’ve said.” She chuckles. “But what do I care? Now I can die.
“Let’s see: first, there’s the problem of your sword, the broken sword. That at least is easily remedied. Daughter, please give him yours. He broke his own in your service, I think it is the least you might do in return.”
Maya looks shocked. “I have no sword, mother,” she answers.
“Don’t be obtuse, daughter, of course you do. Haven’t you known all along that this moment would come?”
“But, mother, it’s …”
“It’s been waiting for him, child. Go and get it.”
Maya goes to her bedmat and brings her long bag. She opens it, and takes from it a shallow box of cheap wood nearly as long as the bag itself, tied with a wide ribbon of faded silk. She places it in front of Gungama, bowing her head to the floor. “I am your slave entirely, mother.”
“Sit up, child. You are very formal today. Show him what you’ve got in there.” Her eyes crinkle at Shivaji. “Now, I don’t pretend to know about such matters. So you just tell me exactly what you think, darling.”
Maya pulls on the faded bow until the knot gives way. She sets the ribbon aside as though it were very precious, and then tugs on the box’s lid. It resists as though it has been shut a long time. Maya lifts from it a long shape, wrapped in silk as though wearing a fine robe. “I’ve had this all my life,” she explains. “I think it was my father’s. I like to think that it was.”
Shivaji takes it and pushes aside the wrapper to reveal a rapier blade that glistens in the lamplight: not a whole sword, but the blade of a sword. Instead of a hilt there’s only a raw-looking tang, scratched and ugly compared to the limpid beauty of the blade.
“This is a
farang
blade,” he says, moving it easily, catching the light on its gleaming edge. “It’s exquisite. Your father’s, you say?”
“Child, have you not told him your tale?” Gungama asks.
“It is of no consequence, Mother,” Maya answers.
“This is a fine blade,” Shivaji says. He tests its lightness, its balance; runs his finger along its edges, flexes the point. Whorls and swirls of gray shine in the bright steel. “Can this really be steel?” he asks. “It’s so flexible. There’s no sign of rust.”
“So, it’s good?” Gungama asks.
“Very good,” Shivaji replies.
“And, child, don’t you think it should be his?”
Maya lowers her head to Shivaji. “Please take it, sir. You saved my life. Take this sword as a token of my gratitude.”
“And …,” Gungama says.
Maya looks up, surprised. She looks into her guru’s eyes, and lowers her head, suddenly embarassed. “And of … my affection,” she whispers.
Gungama’s gaze lingers on Maya and she smiles, as if remembering or imagining. Then she turns back to Shivaji. “So it can be repaired, dear? Good as new?”
“Yes, Mother,” Shivaji says. “All that’s missing is the hilts.”
Gungama claps her hands as though this is delightful news. “So what will you do with your new sword?” She pauses, but Shivaji doesn’t answer. “That blade is a token, darling. A sign. Now you must act.”
“But what am I to do, Mother?” Shivaji asks.
“Stop pretending you’re so thick-headed. Can’t you see that you are missing something obvious?”
“What? What am I missing?” But Gungama only looks at him as though he is teasing her. An expression of pity crosses her face. “You have forgotten why you are here, darling,” she says at last. She nods to Maya. From her bag Maya slips out a smaller one and lifts it for Shivaji to see: a net of gems; two or three dozen gold-set stones—diamonds the size of chickpeas, a hundred pearls of equal size—woven into a glittering mesh by threads of gold. She slips it over his hands, the stones glittering.
When he takes it, his hands dip involuntarily—it is that much heavier than he expects. “What is it?” he says at last. Whenever he moves his hands the gems glitter unexpectedly, catching the golden light.
“It is a wedding headdress. My mother had it.”
Shivaji lifts an eyebrow. “It’s exquisite.” He holds the headdress out, and she takes it with care.
For a moment their fingers touch.
Maya lifts a final treasure. It is a small golden coin. Or rather half a coin, for it has been sawn roughly down the center with a jagged, uneven cut. Its markings are in some strange language.
“What is this?” he asks. But Maya looks away and will not answer.
Gungama laughs. “You have more questions, darling?” Gungama waves her hand toward the sword in Shivaji’s lap, then over the headdress and coin. “You must wake up, darling boy. The world puts the answers at your feet.”
Shivaji suddenly reaches for his forehead; the thumbnail mark between his eyebrows has begun to throb. “What have you done to me?” he demands.

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