My Lady of the Bog (18 page)

“People see a woman and a boy on the throne and are tempted to dream dreams they shouldn’t.”

“And why merely dream them?”

“Because they are
cowards
,” she said with a venomous contempt. “They know what they plan to do is a sin and so they extemporize, torn. They’re like a pack of dogs that know they mustn’t filch a
chap
ā
ti
⁴
. If kept at bay with a stick, they’ll behave. But turn your back on them for even half a moment and they will rush inside and snatch your supper. Then, as the saying goes, ‘The dog sits in the cook’s place.’

“Today,” she confessed, “I don’t know where we were going. We were supposedly visiting the shrine of a Saint, but,” she conceded,
“this
is not the way. The jackal your companion killed was, I fear, more our jailer than protector. So I prayed to the Goddess to come to our rescue. And the next moment . . .
you
appeared.”

There is something delightful in being viewed as an instrument of divine intervention, even as I marvelled at the ever-expanding ramifications of my vow. Not only did the Queen require protection from my brother, Jafir, from the Uzbeks, and from the impetuous Rana of Mewar, but apparently from her own ministers, too.

Regarding my brother, I said to her, “Know it will be difficult. To restrain Jafir is like trying to dam the sea. Reason means little to him, nor do others’ desires. He follows only his own sweet will.”

“Then what can I offer,” she asked, “to persuade you? Allegiance? Tribute? I’ll give you more than you and your men can bear.”

Alone with Mayura in the desert tent, motes of dust swarming the sunlight, I looked again at her fulsome lips, heavenly eyes, and the vivid silken cords of her throat—and I knew it wasn’t gold I wanted.

She knew it, too, for with an almost imperceptible flutter, she offered herself to me. I cannot describe exactly how she did this, except to say she lifted and exposed her throat, tossing back her wild jet hair, and made a sound that is, indubitably, the syllable of surrender.

I covered her. She gasped, then gave herself without withholding one scintilla of her being. My tongue unlocked the vault of her throat: it was filled with nectar, and in her body’s clinging weight and heat, I could feel the truth and fullness of her submission.

I thought I might take her then and there and moved to rip away her bodice, but she stopped my hand, saying, “Nay. For now, take this.” And she opened her fist.

I thought at first it was a chunk of ice brought down from the Himalayas. In the heat, it was a welcome prize. Then it caught the light and ice became fire! Only then did I see it was a crystal or, more precisely, the largest and most astonishing diamond I have ever had the wonder to behold. “It’s . . .
enormous
. It must be worth . . .”

“Half the daily expenditures of the world . . .”

I tried to envision such a sum. Take all the gold, coin and kind that changes hands in the course of a day, halve it, and you had the approximate value of the object in her hand.

She tendered it. I have handled gems; even so, I was shocked by its weight and water.

“This seals my surrender.” Again, she took the dust of my feet. “Be true to me,” she said as we parted. “And I swear to God I will be true to you.”

Though our vow was one of lovers, it wasn’t love of which she spoke.

1.
durbar
: royal court

2.
ser
: a measure equal to about one kilo

3.
misqal:
a measure equal to approximately ten carats

4.
chap
ā
ti:
a flat, unleavened bread

Chapter 24

T
here comes a point while reading a book when it naturally absorbs you: you merge with it like ink in a blotter. You forget you are reading and begin to live and breathe the tale. Only later, looking up at the dismal subway relentlessly hurtling itself toward Brooklyn, do you realize that, for the past ten minutes, you haven’t been on a train at all but in a rooming house in wartime London, or, in my case, soul kissing a Rajasthani queen.

This moment of absorption, like the precise instant of falling asleep, cannot be apprehended, as its very nature is a forgetting. So, too, for me, this merging happened. I slipped into Sikandar’s world, losing consciousness—for a time at least—of whom and what and where I was as I wandered the roads and breathed the bloody and ebullient air of fourteenth-century R
ā
jput
ā
na.

In the tale, we were returning to camp, cantering over the high desert plain, filled with both excitement and apprehension. We passed an ancient hilltop fort, deserted save for a pair of kites riding the thermals high overhead. Then, with the waning day, our war party reached the river border, where we stopped at a little village to water both our horses and ourselves.

And as I dismounted, there came that time that always does when, subtly sated by the tale, you sigh and raise your eyes from its pages. But, oddly, when I did just that, all I saw was the tan desert plain stretching off in all directions.

At first, I was amused (if somewhat surprised), though as seconds passed and the illusion persisted, my amusement morphed into astonishment, then dread, and finally into that disorienting panic you feel when you
know
that you’re dreaming and command yourself to wake, but the spell of sleep will not release.

I looked about. There were men and horses all around me, grayed with dust from head to toe. I could smell their funk, feel the heat of the tropical sun on my back and the cool river water between my toes.

Then to my wonder, my panic dispersed and I was flooded by a delicious sensation of youth: an emotional glow and physical well-being I hadn’t felt in years. Tired as I was, I could run a mile if I had to, and to feel that strength and possess it in its fullness was sublime. God, I’d forgotten what it felt like to be nineteen!

Again, I looked about. Everything was the way it was in the book, only more
specific
. My companion’s tunic was split at the shoulder; another man’s face bore a strawberry stain. And the dust! We were covered in it, as though we’d rolled in a vat of flour!

A toothless old gent wearing a loincloth approached me now and touched my feet. He begged me to follow, leading me to a scrap of carpet beneath the shade of a banyan tree. At my approach, the villagers folded their hands in respectful greeting. My shadow shot a trembling plume in the air. And it was only then the penny dropped and I realized that I
was
Sikandar! It was
his
youth and vigor that flowed in my veins.

Yet more intoxicating than the strength of his body was the nobility of his soul. It existed beside my less innocent nature without either seemingly affecting the other—the way fire and water in a painted landscape lie side by side, yet never dry or wet each other.

The entire village was gathered round, gawking. The women wore saris without
cholis
, exactly the way that Vidya had described; the men’s loins were wrapped in diaper-like rags. They gave off an odor of dried sweat and bitter lemon. A naked brown toddler staggered forward and, reaching out, touched the glittering hilt of my sword. Sikandar (and I) lifted him up and the child broke into high-pitched laughter. Then his little brown digit twitched and shivered, and he peed in my/Sikandar’s face as everyone else burst out laughing.

I was appalled. But my alter ego joined right in as if the event were the very epitome of hilarity, the incarnation of mirth. And, alongside my dismay, I could feel his amusement—fresh and foolish, frank and free.

For instead of dropping the child in the dirt, he, in whose body I was apparently residing, threw the still-micturating urchin into the air so that the child shrieked with wild abandon and his golden stream arced in the sun, anointing us all. Sikandar (whom I was beginning to fear was a fool, noble heart or no) regarded this drenching as a ritual bath, equivalent to a dip in the River Ganges. To his way of thinking, the god in the child, delighted by our victory, was bestowing his blessings by pouring this rare oblation on our head! And I saw that for one who thinks in this manner, it’s very easy to be happy.

I waited for someone to throw us a towel, but towels, apparently, were not yet invented or, none at least, were forthcoming (though I will admit if I hadn’t known what the vile liquid was, I’d have found its cooling effects rather pleasing).

Then again, Sikandar’s loving acceptance of the boy was politically astute, for it won the villagers’ trust. Within minutes, we were brought bowls of rice and buffalo milk, sugared and spiced with pistachios, cardamom and raisins. Maybe it was my youthful appetite, but it tasted heavenly: like rich rice pudding, only better. After eating, we listened to the villagers’ petitions. Those who were ill, Sikandar had examined by his physician who prescribed herbs, compresses, baths and massage. In several cases, I recognized the patient’s symptoms and wanted to scream, “No, that girl needs penicillin!” but it was, of course, the year thirteen-something.

After the infirmary came the court of judgment. My royal Siamese twin had a standard inside him, a wheel of law, and he referred everything back to this measure—though for a fellow who claimed to be a gentleman and a scholar, his sense of justice was swift and tough. There was no inquiry into the felon’s background. (Was he a substance abuser? Did he come from a broken home?) There was no chance to plea bargain, either. For a man who had raped a girl, Sikandar ordered emasculation and the sign of a vulva burned in his brow.

There were no lawyers, no appeals. No sooner was sentence passed, then the rapist was taken behind a thin wattle wall and a few minutes later, we heard a quick
thwhack
and a vicious sizzle, followed by a doglike yowl. Then ‘Abd al-Wali strode forth grinning, wiping his sword. The last I saw of the unfortunate felon, he was seated on a blanket, his wound coated with tar, the brand still smoking on his forehead.

Yet, tough as Sikandar was, he was merciful. Several delinquents prostrated themselves and I could feel the weight of their contrition move him. One, whom he might justly have killed, he had whipped. Another was fined; the third, a hungry boy who had stolen a melon, was let go along with the sternest of warnings, a small silver coin, a basket of fruit, and the solemn assurance that if Sikandar ever heard of him stealing again, even a single corn of barley, he would return and personally feed his person to the water tigers, limb by limb.

Then, after our horses were fed (not hay, but strange, congealed balls of grain), Sikandar was weighed against bags of wheat, rice, mangos and barley, and rolls of silk and cotton cloth—a fraction of the booty carried out of Indore—which was then distributed to all. He cracked open a barrel of toddy and gave the children milk sweets and halvah. With a single gem, he established a fund to feed the poor, “with special consideration given to widows, orphans and to those smitten by the fist of calamity.”

Finally, he ordered the planting of shade- and fruit-producing trees and the digging of wells and tanks for bathing, promising the villagers he would send an official to “dispense justice, regulate merchants, recruit artisans, collect taxes, provide alms for holy mendicants and reward loyal servants of the Shah.”

In return for his bounty, the villagers fed us, praised us, opened their huts and hovels to us, offered us their daughters’ hands in marriage and renamed their village Sikandarpur.

As we departed, the children ran after our horses for as far as their little legs would go. The men, already half-blind on toddy, smiled toothless grins, and the ladies beamed behind their new saris, except for a few young girls who were openly weeping and pulling their hair as, in the space of a couple of hours, they had fallen madly and hopelessly in love with ‘Abd al-Wali Mirza.

Soon we came to the infamous pillar. In the cinnamon sunset, the monument looked less horrific than fey, like something astonishing seen in a dream: a house made of human faces. Its odors were masked by night-blooming jasmine mixed with the smoke of the tribals’ dung fires. Still, a thin, fecal poison invested the air, and the moon tinged the heads with an unearthly splendor.

It would have been wiser—we decided, too late—to have passed by in daylight or have detoured around it altogether, for our men were superstitious, and the sight of the heads awoke in them terrors. We rode by in silence, averting our faces so as not to invite the Evil Eye. Once we had passed, Sikandar commanded the tower be razed, the heads returned to the widows of Indore, and the plaque dispatched to his father’s palace.

Chapter 25

I
t was Ghazil who greeted us on our return. I don’t know what I expected the distinguished counselor to be: his expression was even more pinched than I’d imagined.

Sikandar bent down before him and respectfully took the dust of his feet.

“No more of that,” Ghazil protested. “You are clearly your own master now.” He paused. “Though I will continue to advise you, if you so desire.”

We watched from out of the desert dusk the caravan approaching. Humped on the horses’ backs were the bent cylinders of silken
soumaks
, gold bars and silver plate, fist-sized bags of various gems, parcels of ambergris and aloes wrapped in purple paper. There were Alexandria candles, raisin wine and beakers of rosewater commingled with musk; even Shami apples, soap cakes and lemon loaves.

“What splendid plunder!” the old man crowed.

Sikandar corrected him. “Tribute,” he said, and reaching in his
kurta
, he withdrew the diamond and flipped it with a feigned indifference.

Ghazil caught and beheld it for a time in silence. “This must be worth . . .” But he never finished, lost as he was in the immensity of his calculations. After a moment, he said, “And you received this from . . . ?”