Far Pavilions (134 page)

But then Anjuli had never really understood Shushila. She was not analytical, and she had quite simply loved Shu-shu from the day that she first took the waling little girl into her arms and was given charge of the child because its mother was disgusted with it for being a daughter and did not wish to be troubled with it. And to Anjuli love was not something to be loaned and taken back again, or proffered in the hope of reward. It was a gift – a part of one's heart, freely bestowed, and with it as a matter of course went loyalty; the two were indivisible.

She had never been blind to Shushila's faults. But she put the larger part of these down to the spoiling and silliness of the Zenana women, and the remainder to the little girl's nervous temperament and unstable health, and therefore did not hold Shu-shu to blame for them; or realize that in them lay the seeds of darker things that could one day come to flower.

The unbalanced passion that the Rana had so unexpectedly aroused in his youthful bride had set those seeds sprouting, and now they grew at a frightening pace, turning almost overnight into monstrous growths, as certain weeds and toadstools will do in the first downpour of the monsoon rains. In the face of this new and absorbing passion, all the love and care and sympathy that Anjuli had lavished upon her little half-sister for years went for nothing, swept away on an ugly tide of jealousy.

The Rana, and all those who had supported him in his endeavours to avoid taking ‘the half-caste’ to wife, and who now – together with the Zenana women, the eunuchs and the palace servants – resented her elevation to the rank of Rani and were jealous of her influence over the senior wife, combined to humiliate her, until between them Anjuli's life became a misery.

An order was given that in future ‘Kair-Bai’ must keep to her rooms and not be permitted to enter those of the Senior Rani unless expressly summoned; the rooms in question being two small, dark and windowless cells, with doors opening out onto an inner courtyard less than ten foot square and surrounded by high walls. Her jewels had been taken from her, together with the greater part of her trousseau, the shimmering saris of silk and gauze being replaced by cheap stuff such as only poor women wear.

It seemed that no weapon was too petty to use against the girl whom Shushila had insisted on bringing with her to Bhithor – and whose only crime was that she too was a wife of the Rana. Anjuli must also be hidden from his gaze, and such looks as she possessed (little enough in the general opinion, but then there was no accounting for men's tastes) must be spoiled by near starvation to a point where she would appear to be a gaunt and elderly woman. Her title was never to be used, and for fear that faithful old Geeta and her own two serving-women from Karidkote might show her too much consideration and loyalty, they were taken from her and she was given instead one Promila Devi, that same hard-faced creature whom Ash had seen bound and gagged in the
chattri.

Promila's role had resembled that of gaoler and spy rather than servant, and it was she who had reported that the two serving-women and the dai Geeta were still paying surreptitious visits to ‘the half-caste’ and smuggling extra food to her. All three had been soundly whipped, and after that even loyal old Geeta had not dared approach Anjuli's apartments again. Then Shushila had become pregnant, and for a time her joy and triumph were so great that she became again the Shu-shu of the old days, demanding her half-sister's attendance whenever she felt tired or out of sorts, and behaving as if there had never been any break in their relationship. But it did not last…

A few weeks later her pregnancy ended, following a violent attack of colic brought on by eating too many mangoes. ‘She was always greedy over mangoes,’ explained Anjuli. ‘My father had them sent up from the plains each year, picked while still green and packed in great
kiltas
among straw, and Shu-shu could never wait until they ripened properly; afterwards she would have terrible pains in her stomach and cry and scream and blame something else – bad
ghee
, or under-cooked rice. Never the mangoes.’

Now once again Shushila had gorged on her favourite fruit, and by doing so lost her longed-for child. She must have known that the fault was her own, but she could not bear to face it, and because this time the results of greed had been far worse than any passing stomach-ache, she did not put the blame on bad or poorly cooked food, but persuaded herself that some jealous person had tried to poison her. And who else, whispered her Bhithori women – fearful that suspicion might alight on one of them – than the co-wife, Kairi-Bai?

‘But by good fortune, I had had no chance to touch her food or drink at that time,’ said Anjuli, ‘as Shu-shu and her ladies had gone to spend three days at the Pearl Palace on the lake-side, and I had not been asked to go with her. Nor had Geeta, so it was not possible to accuse us. But the two who had been my serving-maids were not so fortunate, for they had been of the party and had helped to pick and wash the mangoes, which came from a grove in the palace grounds. Also both of them were from Karidkote, having come to Bhithor in my service, wherefore the Bhithori women, perhaps fearing that the Rana would blame them for allowing his wife to eat unripe mangoes at such a time, and hoping to deflect his anger, banded together to accuse the foreigners.’

Shushila had been frantic with pain and grief and disappointment, and in her frenzy she had listened to the traducers and had the two women poisoned. ‘This, Promila told me,’ said Anjuli. ‘Though it was given out that they had died of a fever, and I strove to believe it was true; I
made
myself believe it. It was so much easier for me to believe that Promila was lying than that Shu-shu could do such a terrible thing.’

Anjuli herself had been banished to one of the smaller houses in the royal park where she had lived in virtual imprisonment, deprived of all comforts and compelled to cook her own scanty food, while the story had been spread about that she had insisted on remaining there for fear of contracting the fever from which her women had died.

By the late autumn, Shushila was again pregnant. But this time her triumph was marred by her fear of losing a second child, for the early stages of this second pregnancy were accompanied by headaches and morning-sickness, and she felt queasy and frightened – and much in need of comfort, which her husband was incapable of supplying. The Rana's strange penchant for his beautiful wife had still not burned out, but he had never had any patience with ill-health in others, and preferred to keep away when Shushila was not feeling well, and this had added another terror to her fear of losing the child: the terror that she might also lose his favour. Tormented by sickness and anxiety, she turned as she had always done to her half-sister, and Anjuli was brought back to the city palace and once again expected to take up her role of comforter and protector as though nothing had happened.

She had done her best, for she still believed that it was the Rana who was responsible for everything that had happened to her, and that even if Shushila was not entirely ignorant of it, she would not dare to take her older sister's part too openly for fear that it might enrage him and merely drive him into acting even more harshly in future. Geeta too was back in favour once more, her recent disgrace apparently forgotten. But the old lady had not appreciated the favour shown her; she had not forgotten the accusations of attempted poisoning that had followed the disastrous outcome of the mango-colic, and as her long experience as a
dai
warned her that Shushila-Bai's new pregnancy was likely to be a short one, she was in deadly terror of being commanded to prescribe a remedy to cure the Rani's headaches or relieve the racking bouts of sickness. When, inevitably, the command came, she took what precautions she could to protect both herself and Anjuli.

‘She told me that I must pretend to be gravely displeased with her,’ said Anjuli, ‘and to let it be known that I would not speak to her or have any dealings with her, so that afterwards no one could say that we had plotted together. She warned me also that I must never touch anything that my sister was given to eat or drink, and I obeyed her, for by this time I too had learned to be afraid.’

For her own protection, Geeta refused to make use of any herbs or drugs from her own store of medicaments, but demanded fresh ones and saw to it that these were pounded and prepared by other women; and always in full view of the Zenana. But it did her no good.

As she had foreseen, there was a second miscarriage. And as before, Shushila raved and wept and cast about for someone to blame, while the Bhithori women, looking for a scapegoat, talked of poison and the Evil-eye. But though they would probably have liked to accuse ‘the half-caste’ and thereby curry favour with the Rana by giving him an excuse to be rid of her, Geeta and Anjuli had played their part too well for that. Their enmity had been accepted as truth and sniggered over too often for any
volte face
to be possible now. Therefore only Geeta was blamed.

Despite all her precautions, the old
dai
had been accused of causing this second miscarriage by the use of the potions she had prescribed, and that night she had been killed by Promila Devi and one of the eunuchs, and her frail body taken up to a rooftop overlooking one of the flagged court-yards and thrown down so it would appear that she had fallen to her death by accident. ‘Though this I did not learn until much later,’ said Anjuli. ‘At the time, I heard only that she had fallen, and that it was an accident. And I believed it, for even Promila said so…’

On the following morning ‘the half-caste’ had been sent away again: ostensibly at her own request. She was told that ‘permission had been granted for her to retire for a time to the Pearl Palace’, and she had in fact been taken there – but to what amounted to solitary confinement in a single underground room.

‘I was there for almost a year,’ whispered Anjuli, ‘and in all that time I only saw two persons: the woman Promila, who was my gaoler, and a
mehtarani
(female sweeper and disposer of filth) who was forbidden to speak to me. Nor did I see the sunlight or the sky, or have enough to eat. I was always hungry – so hungry that I would eat every crumb of the food that was given me, even when it was so rancid and foul that it made me ill. And for all those months I was forced to wear the same clothes that I had been wearing when I was taken from the Zenana, because I was given no others; and no water in which I might wash the ones I wore, which became ragged, and stank… as did my hair also, and my whole body. Only when the rains broke was I able to clean myself a little, for then the gutters overflowed and flooded the courtyards, and the water came into my cell and lay inches deep on the floor, so that I was able to bathe in it. But when the rains ended it dried up; and – and the winter was very cold…’

She shivered violently, as though she were still cold, and Ash heard her teeth chatter.

By the beginning of February, Anjuli had lost all count of time; and now at last she began to give up hope, and for the first time to have doubts about Shushila and to wonder if her half-sister had forgotten her or preferred not to know what had become of her. Surely she could have done something to help? But then there was bad blood in Shu-shu: her mother had contrived the deaths of her own husband and a co-wife, his fourth bride, while her brother Nandu had been guilty of matricide. Was it possible that Shushila too was capable of evil? Anjuli could not bring herself to believe it, for after all Jhoti too was the
Nautch
-girl's child; though it was true that he favoured his father. Yet the doubts persisted, creeping back to torment her however hard she strove to drive them away…

No news from the outside world ever penetrated to her cell, for Promila Devi seldom spoke to her, and the
mehtarani
never. She was therefore unaware that her half-sister had again conceived, or that this time there was every hope of a happy conclusion: there had been no recurrence of the headaches and sickness, and when the child quickened the Zenana confidently predicted a safe delivery, while priests and soothsayers hastened to assure the Rana that all the omens pointed to a son. Nor did Promila make any mention of the Rana's illness and the failure of his doctors to effect a cure, or that the Senior Rani had sent for her uncle's Hakim, Gobind Dass, to treat him.

It was only when Anjuli was suddenly brought back to her rooms in the city palace that she learned these things, and wondered if she did not owe her release to Gobind's imminent arrival rather than to any change of heart on the part of the Rana. Her uncle's personal physician would certainly be charged to inquire as to the health and welfare of both Ranis, and to send news of them to Karidkote; so it would obviously look better if the Junior Rani was known to be in the Women's Quarters of the Rung Mahal with her sister, rather than alone in the Pearl Palace.

Whatever the reason she had come back again to the city palace, where she had been given clean clothes to wear and proper food to eat. But she was still not permitted to leave her own room except to walk in the small enclosed courtyard that faced it – a paved space no bigger than a fair-sized carpet and walled in by the backs of other buildings. But after the long months of semi-darkness in the Pearl Palace, it had seemed almost like Paradise to her, particularly as she saw far less of Promila, for she had been given a second serving-maid, a young and unskilled village-girl, afflicted with a hare-lip and so painfully shy that she conveyed the impression of being half-witted. Anjuli would try and coax her to talk, but Nimi never had much to say for herself, and when Promila was present she would tiptoe around like a terrified mouse, dumb with fear and unable to do more than nod or shake her head when spoken to.

Apart from Promila, Nimi and the inevitable
mehtarani,
no other woman ever entered the little courtyard, but Anjuli could hear their shrill voices and laughter on the far side of the surrounding walls, or, of an evening, from the rooftops where they gathered to gossip and enjoy the evening air. It was through listening to them that she learned of the Rana's illness and the arrival of her uncle's Hakim, Gobind Dass, and was seized by a wild hope that he might somehow be able to arrange for her escape.