The World Beyond (27 page)

She sat down on the parapet. Just two nights previously she had been so happy. She was going to meet her parents soon and she was in the arms of the man she loved. How she hated him now. How could she have been so gullible? When she had walked away from him in Dilkusha, he had stood there for a long time, looking lost and hurt, his eyes glittering. They looked beautiful – his eyes. Intense, hurt, beseeching, forlorn – all at the same time. She had quickly looked away, not wanting to be hypnotised by them. Otherwise her heart would have melted and she would have gone running back to him.

No, she would never go back to him again, never. How could he have protected her on the one hand and shot at her own people on the other? And how dare he propose to her, knowing all the while that he had been lying to her? She would never trust him again. ‘I hate you, Salim,’ she muttered through gritted teeth as her eyes filled with angry tears. ‘Oh, how I hate you.’

Oh Lord, was this night ever going to end? It seemed like one long nightmare. First Salim’s betrayal, then the news about Sudha, Mother’s illness and now this. She suddenly found herself longing for the warmth and security of Kaiserbagh Palace. And as suddenly she felt ashamed – she was now beginning to fathom what her people must have been through in the last few months, while she herself was cosseted in the palace. What must they have endured? And she couldn’t even make it through a single night.

‘What do you think you’re doing?’

Rachael started at the voice. It was Christopher. ‘I can’t go any further,’ she moaned. ‘Pray leave me alone. You go.’

‘Are you insane? You’ll get yourself killed,’ said Christopher.

‘That soldier died because of me,’ she screamed hysterically. ‘Can’t you see? If he wasn’t shielding me, the bullet would have hit me. I ought to be the one dead, not him.’

‘Calm down, Rachael,’ said Christopher, offering her his hip flask. Rachael did not say anything, merely raised her brows.

‘Take a sip. It’ll calm you down,’ Christopher replied.

Rachael hesitated, then took a small sip. Then another.

Christopher held out his hand and whispered, ‘You can’t give up so easily. Not now, when we’re almost there.’

She nodded quietly as he pulled her to her feet. She followed him, dragging her feet, her skirts and boots caked in mud, and wet hair clinging to her forehead. She must look a sight. Never before had she felt more miserable.

It was almost two months since Rachael and her parents had arrived at Alambagh. Rachael sat on the cold kitchen floor, her forehead etched with lines of concentration, as she rolled out a piece of dough.

‘Pray tell me if this will do?’ she asked as she pointed to the piece of dough on the rolling board. It didn’t look circular at all. More like a kite torn at the edges.

Ayah looked at it and stifling a grin answered, ‘Yes, it’ll do, baba.’

Rachael sighed and pushed back her hair with the back of her hand, peppering her hair with flour as she did so. She had never been to a kitchen before arriving at Alambagh. Nor had she realised how difficult it was to make a simple chapatti. She watched Ayah in fascination as she rolled them out effortlessly, one after the other.

Looking up, she smiled at Mother as she entered the kitchen. She had burnt with the fever for a whole week after their arrival at Alambagh. Rachael had been beside her day and night – and just when they had begun to despair and thought they had lost her, she made a miraculous recovery. Rachael watched her now as she looked at the chapattis, then at the daal bubbling in the pot, and screwed up her nose. ‘Brutus wouldn’t even sniff at this food,’ she said. Rachael shook her head. Mother was still the same. Nothing could ever change her.

‘Mother, at least we have Ayah to make these chapattis,’ she said. ‘Can you imagine what we would have done if she wasn’t here?’

Yes, they were fortunate indeed to have Ayah with them. Neither she nor Mother would have known what to do with the flour. They would have had to starve for sure, for food was rationed in Alambagh. Flour and daal was all they got on most days. Sometimes, if they were lucky, they got some meat and maybe even some peas and vegetables. But those occasions were rare and it was more bones than meat. The shortage was due to the refusal of most Indian traders to sell anything to the English, even at exorbitant rates. There were some who did not mind dealing with them, but they were afraid of being regarded as traitors for trading with the enemy.

Rachael looked at Mother again as she sat huddled on the stool, sipping a cup of tea, cupping her hands around the cup to keep them warm. Poor Mother. Papa had always surrounded her with servants and luxuries. It was a trying time for her.

Life in Alambagh was arduous. Food was scarce, water was scarcer. Soaps were a luxury. Baths had become a weekly occasion. And she was loath to admit that she smelt. But at least she had a change of clothes. Unlike some of the soldiers, who did not have any attire, other than the shirt on their back.

There had been days when they’d hear the sound of firing incessantly. Bullets and muskets would whizz over their heads every few minutes. But now they could relax. It was over a week since the firing had stopped. The handful of soldiers in Alambagh did not pose a threat to the natives. They knew a colossal army would soon be marching in from Cawnpore and were now preparing for the onslaught.

‘You know, it is so peaceful here, unlike the Residency. The firing over there was relentless,’ said Mother, taking another sip of her tea. ‘Every day about fifteen Englishmen or women would die. It was painful.’

‘What about the natives?’ Rachael asked. ‘The ones who were still faithful and were with you in the Residency?’

‘Oh, we didn’t bother counting them. Their deaths didn’t make much of a difference.’

Rachael stared at Mother aghast. How could she be so callous? She would have spat on her if she wasn’t her mother. ‘They fought against their own people for you and you say their deaths were inconsequential?’

‘Ah well!’ said Mother as she finished her tea. She got up and walked over to the open window. As she did so, a bullet whizzed past her, missed Rachael’s head by half an inch and hit the wall behind. The three women turned pallid. They looked at each other, then at the dent in the wall, too terrified to scream.

‘Hai Ram!’ screeched Ayah when she finally found her voice. ‘I die here one day, for sure.’

‘Don’t worry, Ayah,’ said Rachael. ‘It’ll soon be over.’ She tried to sound calm, but was visibly rattled.

Later that night she tossed and turned in bed, unable to sleep. She kept thinking of how the bullet almost killed her that day. She wondered how the children at the orphanage were. Were they safe? Did they have enough hands and supplies to keep them going? Did they also face such dangers every day? It had never occurred to her, while she was cocooned in the palace, what dangers her own people faced daily. What it was like to live in constant fear of being shot.

She threw her blanket aside and made her way towards the hall. It had been used for dining and entertaining by the king – now it served as a makeshift hospital. She winced as the sound of groans greeted her. ‘Not sleepy?’ she bent down and whispered to Benjamin, a young soldier who had been wounded in the defence of the Residency.

‘I’m freezing,’ he replied.

‘Let me see if I can find another blanket for you,’ said Rachael.

She looked across the hall at Mrs Wilson as she dexterously cleaned a soldier’s wound and bandaged it. She had never expected such efficiency from her. But then adversity sometimes brought out the best in some people and she was one of them.

Smiling reassuringly at Edmund, Rachael administered some tincture of opium to reduce his pain. Injured during their march from Dilkusha to Alambagh, he had been in agony since his right arm had been amputated that afternoon. She then wrapped an extra blanket around Benjamin and looked around. Most of the other patients were asleep. And Mrs Wilson was tending to the handful that were still awake.

Rachael sank against the door as she took in the dirt, the squalor, the rows of injured men and women, the fetid smell. She could not take it anymore. Tears began rolling down her cheeks. She left the hall hastily and stood in the corridor looking at the full moon. She remembered how Salim had looked at her in the moonlight once and remarked that her skin glowed like ivory. Oh, dear Lord. Why could she not stop thinking about him? Oh, how she hated him! For making her cry like no one else ever had. But most of all she hated him for making her continue to love him, despite everything. Yes, she still loved him. She could not lie to herself anymore. She was in love with a man she ought to hate. And she despised herself for loving him so. Why couldn’t she have fallen in love with someone like Christopher? Life would have been so much simpler.

Wiping her cheeks with the back of her hand, she slowly made her way back to her room. The last couple of months had been harrowing. Her emotions had swung like a yo-yo and now she felt drained. Would it ever end? Would life ever get back to normal again?

Chapter Twenty-Eight

S
ALIM

A cold wind was blowing from the Himalayas down to the plains of Lucknow. It was a moonless January night in 1858. The Kaiserbagh Palace was plunged in darkness, the strong breeze having blown out most of the candles.

‘There’s bad news from everywhere,’ Salim heard Nayansukh say as he warmed his hands over the coal brazier. ‘Emperor Bahadur Shah Zafar has been defeated. Delhi has been recaptured. Nana Sahib’s also been beaten.’

Salim ran his hand up and down his arm as he paced his room. He looked at the dark gloomy shadows thrown by the crystal chandeliers and walked up to where Nayansukh and Ahmed sat. ‘What are these Englishmen made of? There were over forty thousand of us,
forty thousand.
Yet we couldn’t vanquish a handful of firangis from the Residency.’ He absent-mindedly rubbed the spot on his head where he had been hit during the fight in Sikanderbagh. ‘Since Delhi’s recapture, soldiers have been pouring into Lucknow. It’ll be a disgrace if we still can’t win.’

Ahmed wrapped his qaba tightly around his shoulders. ‘Salim mia, it’s true we’ve got all these men. But they’re also a problem. How do we feed these extra mouths? And if Her Majesty is unable to pay them, they go about looting and rioting.’

‘Hmm. Ammi has already sold all her jewellery to build the wall around the city. Raja Jia Lal has gone out to arrange for some funds. Let’s hope he—’

‘Just one,’ Ahmed said to Nayansukh as he held out a paan to him. ‘Even paan has to be rationed these days.’

Salim remembered the time RayChal had insisted on eating paan. He shook his head. Ya Ali. Everything reminded him of her these days.

‘Don’t worry, Salim bhai, we’ll defeat the firangis this time,’ said Nayansukh in a muffled voice, his mouth full of betel juice. ‘You’ve seen all the preparations. The digging of the mines …’

Yes, that was true. Since the firangis had left Lucknow two months back – well, most of them had left anyway, except for a small band of soldiers under the command of Outram in Alambagh – there had been frantic preparations in the city for the inevitable attack. The entire city had been converted into a battlefield. Mines had been dug in seven key locations including Chattar Manzil, Chaulakhi Palace and Kaiserbagh. Several military posts had been set up at Alamganj, supported by a second line of defence. There were loopholes in most of the houses, from where they could fire at the firangis. All the streets had been barricaded. Trenches had been dug across the roads in Aminabad, Hussainganj and Hazratganj. A deep moat had been dug around Kaiserbagh.

Hazrat Ammi personally supervised the work being done. Salim was amazed at her energy and zeal. Riding her elephant, she would be with the workers one moment then turn up at the talukdars’ homes the next. She’d chide them for their indifferent stance, then hold court in Chaulakhi or give an inspiring speech to the sepoys.

Ahmed cut into Salim’s thoughts. ‘When life gets back to normal again, Salim mia,’ he said, ‘one of the first things I’m going to have is mutton biryani and siwaiyaan with lots of balai.’ He gave a long sigh. ‘Just the thought of them makes my mouth water.’

Salim smiled briefly. ‘I doubt if life will ever be normal again.’ Yes, it had been a long time since he had smelt the pungent smell of garlic being peeled, of onions being fried and mutton roasting on the grill; the hissing sound of the flames as they licked the fat.

He looked out of the window. It was a dark, moonless night and he could see nothing. He could merely hear the footfall of the nightwatchman as he marched across the palace grounds and his familiar chant of ‘Stay awake’. They were awake all right.

He turned back to Nayansukh and Ahmed.

Nayansukh twirled the ends of his moustache and spoke solemnly. ‘Don’t worry, Salim bhai. They killed my brother-in-law, then my sister. We will avenge their deaths. We’ll throw these cow-eating firangis out of our country.’

‘Inshah Allah we will,’ Salim replied.

It was the middle of March, exactly two years since Abba Huzoor had left for Calcutta. Salim had not seen him since. He wondered how he was. He had been imprisoned in Fort William in Calcutta since the outbreak of the war in Lucknow in 1857. Imprisoned when he was in mourning over the death of his mother and brother. Once a sovereign, now a prisoner. The more Salim thought about it, the more frustrated he felt.

He let out a long sigh and tied his cummerbund. His thoughts flew to Rachael and his Adam’s apple moved. He remembered the first time he had met her in Bade Miyan’s shop and her hand had touched his hand, nay, his very soul. The first time he heard her playing the piano, her fingers doing Kathak on the keyboard and how he’d been enchanted by her music.

He thought of the first time he saw her in a sharara, a blue sharara that matched the glint in her blue eyes. He recalled the monsoons, the way she had swung around when he called her name, her wet hair flying, a few wet strands plastered to her cheek. And as the maid lit the chandeliers a hundred RayChals had stared back at him, lips quivering, raindrops glistening on her ivory skin.