A tall figure in a sherwani of gold-and-green brocade over green pajama trousers walked through the seated men to the steps of the throne. For a moment Anusha could not place him until the pale gold of his hair, falling on his shoulders, caught the light. He bowed his head, his cupped right hand lifting to his heart in the graceful gesture of obeisance. As he straightened she saw the green fire of an emerald in his earlobe.
‘Look,’ she whispered to Paravi. ‘Just look at him!’ In the costume of the court the major should have looked more ordinary, but he did not. The brocade and the silks, the severe lines of the long coat and the glitter of gems, made the pale hair and the broad shoulders and the golden skin seem more exotic, more strange.
‘I am doing so!’
The raja motioned impatiently to the servants and they lifted the cushions from the foot of the dais and arranged them on the right side of the throne where the munshi’s desk had stood. ‘You will join me,’ Kirat Jaswan said.
‘My lord. You do me honour.’ The Hindi was accurate, perfectly accented. The big Englishman sank down and crossed his legs beneath him with the ease of an Indian. The raja dropped his hand to his shoulder and leaned over to speak.
‘I cannot hear,’ Paravi complained. ‘But here is the food, they cannot both whisper and eat.’
Indeed, as a succession of small dishes were presented to the raja, and he offered them in turn to the angrezi, the two men straightened up and most of what they said could be heard. But, to Anusha’s frustration, it was all the most innocuous conversation.
She ate absently, her eyes on the fair hair beneath, the glimpses of the Englishman’s profile as he turned his head to answer her uncle. His voice held the easy rhythms of a man who had not only been taught Hindi well, but who used it, day in, day out. What had he said his name was? Herriard? A strange name—she tried it out silently.
Then the food was finally cleared away, the scented water and cloths presented for the washing of hands and the great silver hookah was brought, with an extra mouthpiece for the guest. Both men appeared to relax as the music began.
‘They are discussing something of importance now,’ Paravi said. ‘See how they use the mouthpieces to shield their lips so that no one can read them.’
‘Why should they be so concerned? It is only the court around us.’
‘There are spies,’ the rani said after a swift glance. She lifted her hand with apparent casualness to shield her own mouth. ‘The Maharaja of Altaphur will have men in the court and agents here amongst the servants.’
‘Altaphur is an enemy?’ Surprised, Anusha twisted to face her. ‘But my uncle considered his request to wed me and sent him a fine horse when I refused. He said nothing then about any enmity.’
‘It is safer to pretend to be friends with the tiger who lives at the bottom of one’s garden than to let him see you know about his teeth. My lord would not have allowed the match even if you had agreed, but he made it seem the refusal was a woman’s whim, not a ruler’s snub.’
‘But why is he an enemy?’
‘This is a small but rich state—there is much to covet here. And, as you said earlier, we are in a position that interests the East India Company so they will make concessions to whoever rules, perhaps.’ Paravi spoke as though she was just working this out, but Anusha sensed a deeper knowledge behind the words. She caught an edge of fear in the other woman’s voice. Much had been hidden from her, she realised. Even her friend had been wearing a mask. No one had trusted her with the truth. Or perhaps they just thought her not important enough: the niece with the English blood in her veins.
‘There will be war?’ The state had been at peace for almost seventy years. But the court poets and musicians told the stories of past battles and of terrible defeats as well as glorious victories, of the men riding out, dressed in their ochre funerary robes, knowing they were going to their deaths, and the women filing down to the great burning pyres to commit jauhar, ritual suicide, rather than fall into the hands of the conqueror. Anusha shuddered. She would choose to ride out to die in battle, not go to the pyre.
‘No, of course not,’ the rani said with a confidence that Anusha did not believe. ‘The Company will protect us if we are their allies.’
‘Yes.’ It was best to agree. Anusha looked down at the golden head, bent listening. Then the Englishman looked up to meet the raja’s eyes and she caught the intensity in his face as he spoke with sudden passion, his hand slashing out in a gesture she could not interpret.
The court was moving back to clear space for a nautch. The dancers entered amidst the music of the bells on the silver chains around their ankles. Then they began to move, perfectly together, their wide, vivid skirts swinging out like exploding fireworks. But the two men did not spare them a glance and Anusha felt a cold finger of apprehension trail down her spine.
She went to her bedchamber unsettled and restless, her mind churning with her anxieties over the threat from across the border and the humiliation of the bathhouse.
‘Anusha.’ Paravi came in, her face serious.
‘What is it?’ Anusha dropped the book she was thumbing through and pushed back the loose hair that spilled over her shoulders.
‘My lord wishes to speak with you privately, without his councillors. Come to my chamber.’
Anusha realised that there were no maids present—neither her own, nor any with the rani. She stood up from the low couch, slid her feet into sandals and followed Paravi while her mind whirled with speculation.
Her uncle was unattended, his face starkly under-lit by the little lamps flickering on a low table by his side. Anusha made her reverence and waited, wondering why Paravi had pulled her veil over her face.
‘Major Herriard here has come from your father,’ Kirat Jaswan said without preamble. ‘He is concerned for you.’
Her father? Her pulse jolted with something close to fear. What could he want with her? Then the raja’s wording struck her. ‘Here?’
The big man stepped out of the shadows and bowed, unsmiling. He was still in Indian dress. The lamplight caught the gleam of the emeralds in his ear lobes, the silver embroidery and buttons of his coat. He looked both exotic and utterly comfortable, as at home in this guise as he seemed in the scarlet uniform.
‘I thought you were from the Company,’ Anusha challenged him in Hindi. ‘Not my father’s servant.’
The raja hissed a word of reproof, but the Englishman answered her in the same language, his green eyes meeting hers with a bold, assessing stare. No man should look at an unveiled woman not of his family like that. ‘I come from both. The Company is concerned about the intentions of the Maharaja of Altaphur towards this state. And so is your father.’
‘I understand why they should be concerned about a threat to Kalatwah. But why is my father thinking about me after all these years?’ Her uncle did not reprove her for not veiling herself. It was as though he was suddenly treating her as an Englishwoman, she thought with a shiver of alarm. The rani had slipped back into the shadows.
‘Your father has never ceased to concern himself with your welfare,’ the man Herriard said. He sounded irritated with her and when she shook her head in instinctive denial he frowned. ‘He saw the offer of marriage from Altaphur as a threat, a way of pressuring the Company through you.’
Her father knew about that? Kept such a close watch over her? It took her a moment for the meaning to force its way through resentment and the unsettling atmosphere of conspiracy. ‘I would have been a hostage?’
‘Exactly.’
‘How dreadful, that I might inconvenience the Company and my father in that way.’
‘Anusha!’