Rebel Queen

by Michelle Moran

  But the most extraordinary lessons of all featured court etiquette, and what should and should not be done before the queen. A woman’s neck and shoulders were to be bare at all times, even if there was rain or snow. Her gown’s train must be exactly three yards in length, so the queen could see it spread by the lords-in-waiting in the room. Dinner at six meant dinner at six fifteen, not a minute before and not a minute after. If we should be so fortunate as to be invited to a meal, ten courses would be served, with all of the accompanying, confusing silverware. No noise in the dining room. No singing in the halls. And children were not to laugh or speak unless spoken to.

  By the end of our first lesson, the queen’s court sounded like a prison, not a palace.

  “You’ll feel differently as soon as you see it,” Mrs. McEgan promised. “There’s nothing like London anywhere in the world. ‘This blessed plot, this earth, this realm, this England.’”

  I recognized Shakespeare’s Richard II and grinned.

  Chapter Twenty

  The setting sun gilded the walls of the palace and reflected from Arjun’s golden earrings. He looked the way I imagined Lord Krishna had when he was alive and enchanting the pretty gopis.

  “I will meet your family someday. Maybe not soon, but I will. I want to see what sort of man produced a daughter like you,” he said.

  The rani was allowing us a week to visit our families before we left for England. I was excited, but also sad that Arjun wouldn’t be coming with me. I had thought the rani might allow him to escort me home.

  “Yes. My father would enjoy your passion for literature,” I told him. “You two have much in common.”

  “Be safe,” he said with unusual tenderness.

  We were standing outside of the Rani Mahal. It was September, and the monsoon had turned the courtyard to mud. In one of the rain pools, I could see our reflection, the ripples pushing our images together.

  “I will.”

  At home, my father was overjoyed to see his little peacock. But the house wasn’t the same with Anu living in her husband’s home next door. I took my father’s pen and wrote, “Do you see her often?”

  “Nearly every week. She couldn’t be happier. But what about you?”

  I wanted to answer him honestly, but didn’t know how. Was I excited for my journey? Afraid? Nervous? I struggled to choose a single emotion. Finally, I wrote, “It’s been very difficult to see the British flag in Jhansi.”

  “The British have better weapons and superior training,” my father replied, and I could see from his handwriting how angry he was. “What is the rani planning to do?”

  “She is sending a delegation to England to petition the queen.” I met my father’s gaze, and suddenly, he understood.

  “You’re going.”

  “Yes. With another Durgavasi and ten of the rani’s guards, including her captain. It will take two months to travel there. We’ll be there for a month, and then it will take another two months to return. I want to tell Anu and say good-bye. I’ll be back in the new year.”

  My father reached out and covered my hand with his. Tears welled in his eyes.

  We stood at the doorstep of Shivaji’s house and my father knocked, although most people usually just called through the open window.

  Shivaji answered the door. I bent to touch his feet, and when I came up, he was wearing a great smile.

  “Sita!” he exclaimed. “Amisha,” he called to his wife, “it’s Sita! What are you doing here? Did you just arrive? Come inside!”

  Shivaji’s house was much finer than ours. His wife had brought with her a large dowry fortune, and many of the items had been hers from childhood. We walked through a hall painted with images of Lord Krishna as a baby, and I wondered if one of Shivaji’s other sons was an artist. Then I heard a familiar voice call my name, and as we entered the common room, a pair of arms wrapped themselves around me.

  “Anu!” I pulled back and was shocked by the change I saw in my sister. She was a woman, with a woman’s features and a woman’s body. She bent to touch my feet, and when she stood I saw that new curves filled out the blue and yellow sari I had sent to her. She wore gold around her wrists like my mother had and their resemblance was so strong that for several moments, I was too startled to say anything. “You’re a woman.”

  She giggled. “How long are you staying?”

  “A day. The rani needs me to travel. I came to say good-bye.”

  Her smile vanished. “Where are you going?”

  “To England, to petition the queen. The rani is sending me and another Durgavasi. She sent a lawyer several months back, but the queen refused to hear his petition.”

  My father and Shivaji seated themselves on a pair of low cushions across from my sister and I did the same. It was only later that I realized I had chosen to sit with the men versus the married women.

  “I’ve never been farther than Burma,” Shivaji said as he folded his legs. “But if I was offered the opportunity to go to England . . . It’s almost two months at sea, is that right?”

  “Yes. We will arrive in the middle of December and experience their largest festival. Christmas.” I told them the story Mrs. McEgan told us, of Lord Jesus and his virgin mother. “The rani has told us to honor everything they do in this festival, so long as it pleases Lord Brahma.”

  I looked over at my sister, who was staring at me the way you might stare at a stranger. Perhaps I really was a stranger to her now. The thought made me sad.

  “Tell me about life as Ishan’s wife,” I said.

  Anu blushed, and I knew she was in love. “He is at the animal hospital right now. Sometimes, he brings home wounded birds. We’ve raised three, and watched them fly away.”

  “He’s a good man,” I said. “It must be his father’s influence.” I smiled at Shivaji, who returned the gesture, then asked me what life was like as the rani’s Durgavasi. “Different now that the British have Jhansi.”

  “It’s unthinkable,” Shivaji said. “Queen Victoria and her Parliament are just as greedy as the Company, wanting more land, more valuable goods, more trading routes. You will need a very persuasive argument when you go. What will it be?”

  “That the young queen is a woman the same as the rani, and understands a woman’s struggle to rule. Why would one queen wish to rob another, when so few of them remain?”

  Shivaji stared at me. “Is that it? You are traveling such a distance to remind the British queen that she is a woman?”

  My face felt hot. It did seem ridiculous hearing his words. “No. We are going to appeal to her humanity.” Because what other peaceful option was there?

  Shivaji didn’t look persuaded.

  “They say she’s wise,” I said, feigning confidence. “She’ll understand that diplomacy is the best solution.”

  The day after we returned from visiting our families, we departed for England. The rani and the other Durgavasi surrounded our horses to bid us farewell. The rani gave a short speech describing her pride in our mission, and she was full of praise for what Jhalkari and I were about to do. No other women in all of India had undertaken the journey Jhalkari and I were about to take—none that we knew of. So you can imagine our feelings as we made our way by horse, then cart, then horse again, to the port where our ship would sail for another country.

  “I’ve never seen anything like it,” Jhalkari kept saying, in every city we passed. And everything was new not only to us, but to everyone in our group. In one city, the women wore what looked to us to be long black shrouds. Even their faces were covered in black. In another, the men were dressed entirely in white. The buildings, the food, even the animals we encountered as we made our way from Jhansi to Madras, were completely unfamiliar. We might as well have been traveling across different continents.

  When we reached Madras, Arjun looked over at me, and we both stared at the expanse of water be
fore us. Neither of us had seen the ocean before, and the brightly colored sails of the small fishing boats framed against the blue sky were beautiful. “I wish my father could see this,” I said to Arjun.

  We dismounted and stood on the shore, watching as boats bobbed and swayed on the sea. The wind tasted like salt instead of earth, and Major Wilkes, the British officer who would be escorting us to England, put his nose in the air and smiled. He was a little older than the rani, twenty-nine or thirty. He was making this trip to England to bring his fiancée back with him to India. “Home.” He sighed.

  He helped us unpack the horses, then several of his men appeared to escort us onto a towering white steamer. None of us had been on a boat, and as soon as we stepped onto the wooden plank, the steamer gave a giant lurch to the side and we were all forced to grab on to the rails.

  “We’re going to sail to England in this?” Jhalkari cried.

  Although I’m sure Major Wilkes didn’t speak a word of Marathi, he understood what she said, because he laughed. “No. We’ll be sailing to Suez in this. Then we’ll be traveling overland to Alexandria and taking another steamer to England. You’ll go on to London by carriage.”

  We boarded the steamer and stood in the largest hall of the passenger ship and stared. From ceiling to floor, the walls were paneled in richly carved wood. Plush carpeting covered the floors, and in one corner, a heavy silver mirror reflected the light of a gilded candelabrum. Upholstered couches were arranged around small inlaid tables, where several English men sat puffing on long cigars. I watched the smoke curl up over their heads and make its way out of the shuttered windows. The shutters were made of teak, and the trays on each of the tables were pure silver. The rani had spent a fortune sending us to England. She saw it as an investment.

  Arjun stepped toward one of the windows to get a better view, and Major Wilkes cleared his throat. “I’m sorry,” he said. “This room isn’t for you.”

  We all turned.

  Major Wilkes glanced at the other men sitting in the room, since they were all watching us now. “This room is only for the British,” he explained. Then he apologized, “I didn’t make the rules.”

  “But you will enforce them,” I said.

  “There’s nothing I can do.”

  Arjun looked at me, and we explained to the others what the major said. Several of the men protested. “If we’re not allowed with the British,” Jhalkari said, “where are we staying?”

  Major Wilkes led us through a series of halls to the very back of the ship. Four rooms were to be ours: two for the men, one for Jhalkari and myself, and a fourth one for eating and talking together. They were the most beautiful chambers our group had seen outside of the Panch Mahal. The major let us choose which rooms were to be which, and then we began to unpack.

  When Jhalkari shut the door, I said, “It doesn’t seem real. An entire room just for us!”

  “I feel like the rani,” she admitted.

  We explored everything, from the silver door handles, to the small tidy beds, to the wooden night tables with their mahogany bookends. The beds were on opposite sides of the room, and I chose the one closest to the window. I lay back on the mattress and looked out at the vast expanse of sea. I began to wonder if traveling such a long distance was actually safe. I was about to turn twenty-one years old, and the only thing I knew about ships was that they had a habit of finding themselves in uncharted waters—in English fiction anyway. I glanced at Jhalkari, who was still standing, arms crossed, looking out over the water.

  “Do you think travel by boat is safe?” I asked.

  “The rani wouldn’t have invested so much money if it wasn’t.”

  But what if a great storm swelled up and we were in its midst? Might we be cast on the shores of some unknown land, like Viola in Twelfth Night? Or worse, on some uninhabited island like Miranda in The Tempest? There was a knock on the door, and Arjun appeared with two other guards.

  “Would you like to tour the ship?”

  We went from bow to stern, and Arjun described the construction of the steamer drawing only on what he had read in the rani’s vast library. When we reached the stern, the five of us watched as the shore faded into the distance. When it was nothing more than a smudge on the horizon, Arjun said, “ ‘No one knows for certain whether the vessel will sink or reach the harbor. Cautious people say, “I’ll do nothing until I can be sure.” Merchants know better. If you do nothing, you lose. Don’t be one of those merchants who won’t risk the ocean.’ ”

  Jhalkari wrinkled her nose. “What are you saying?”

  “Rumi,” I told her. “We are the merchants now.”

  That evening, the twelve of us were told to gather in the common room. We sat around a long wooden table wondering what was going to happen, and when half a dozen waiters appeared with silver trays, Jhalkari and I looked at each other in horror.

  “They think we’re going to eat together!” I exclaimed. I rose from my seat to try to find Major Wilkes just as he was coming in the door.

  “They think we’re going to eat together,” I told him.

  He stared at me and I stared at him, then I realized he didn’t understand. “Women don’t eat in front of men,” I said. “It isn’t done.”

  “Ma’am,” he said very politely. “There will be many occasions in England when you’ll be expected to eat together. It’s a custom in England. You could take your food back to your room now,” he suggested. “But I’m afraid there will be times in London when you will either eat with everyone or go hungry.”

  “So come and eat,” Arjun said lightly.

  But I just couldn’t imagine doing this. Imagine farting on a stage for everyone to hear; it felt that shocking. Now imagine you’re told you’ll have to do it all the time!

  Jhalkari and I returned to the table, slowly, as I translated what Major Wilkes had said.

  “So what are they serving you?” the major asked. He’d said before that he couldn’t imagine how vegetarians survived without lamb, or cow, or pig for eating.

  The waiters removed the silver lids from the trays and steaming piles of strange foods were revealed.

  “Ah! Quiche,” he said, pointing to the tray of yellow and green cakes. “And there’s something you know. Broccoli and carrots. I’m not sure what that is”—he was looking at a soup—“but bon appétit,” he said, which didn’t sound like English.

  With that, he left.

  There was no bread to eat with, no lentils or chickpeas or anything with protein. We looked at each other and laughed.

  “This is what they eat?” one of the men said.

  “No, they have meat mostly. They don’t understand vegetarians,” Arjun explained. He started making a plate, then handed it to me.

  I flushed.

  “Eat,” he said. “No one here cares.”

  As everyone was trying out the tiny cakes, Jhalkari whispered to me, “I understand now.”

  I looked around the room, but the men were engaged in conversations about ships, as if they had all dined with women and taken multiple sea journeys throughout their lives. “You understand what?”

  “Arjun. He’s in love with you.”

  I glanced at Arjun and felt suddenly light-headed, though not from the motion of the ship.

  “Imagine what the rani will do for us if Queen Victoria restores her to the throne of Jhansi? She might retire us from the Durga Dal. You would have the freedom to marry.”

  “I don’t know. . . .” To find love at court and marry at twenty-one? It was an unbelievable dream.

  “Sita, if it can happen for me, it can happen for you.”

  “I don’t dare to hope for it,” I said.

  “Why not?”

  “Because I was never the one who was meant to marry. My sister—”

  “Has been married and her dowry fortune paid. Sita, what if
this is your chance?”

  I felt a lightness inside of me that almost made me dizzy. And though I knew I shouldn’t hope for it, secretly I did.

  In the mornings Arjun and I started practicing yoga. We sat on our blankets and watched as the sun rose over the ocean, sparkling over the cresting waves. In the afternoons, we read poetry together, and in the evenings, we gathered with the others to read the Puranas, our most holy Sanskrit texts. Suddenly, the impossible seemed less so.

  It was an enchanted time.

  Then, a day before we were set to reach England, Jhalkari came to me with shattering news. I could see from her face that something was wrong. I thought it might be the rocking of the boat, since it made us all sick at least once a day. But she requested that I sit with her in one of the small wooden chairs in our room, and then asked me when I had last spoken with Arjun.

  “This morning,” I said. “We practiced yoga.” I couldn’t imagine why her face was making so many contortions, or why it was taking her so long to speak. So finally I said, “Jhalkari, what is it?”

  She folded her hands in her lap. “We were just on the deck having a conversation about our futures—what he wanted for his life, what I wanted, what we would do if the queen granted our petition.”

  Already a knot was forming in my stomach.

  “When I asked him what he saw ahead of him, he said marriage.”

  I exhaled. That wasn’t bad news. If the queen granted our petition, the rani would certainly give us her permission to marry.

  But Jhalkari’s face was solemn. “Sita, I’m sorry, but when I asked him what sort of girl he might choose, he said one from the city.”

  I didn’t understand. “What city?”

  “Jhansi. He said, ‘I have my eye on someone from Jhansi.’ ”