The Mountain of Light

by Indu Sundaresan

  Paolo had been seventeen at that time, one year into his army service, already roughened and hardened into a man his parents had not recognized when he returned home on leave to Agerola. All of a sudden, the house he had grown up in with his four brothers and sisters had seemed small, confining, the roof too low, the doorframes no longer accommodating his sprouting figure. He had never gone back to Agerola again but had spent every subsequent leave, and his money, on books. He read day and night when not on the march or the drill grounds. And like Ventura and Allard, he had joined the imperial army under Napoleon Bonaparte, for that little man had fired something in all of their imaginations with his bold and published ambitions, his very presence, even his name, which came to represent all that was hallowed in military life.

  And eventually Ventura and Avitabile had met in the army, and each had risen through the ranks. And then, Napoleon was imprisoned at Elba, he escaped from Elba, he fought at Waterloo, he was defeated at Waterloo, he was sent to Saint Helena. They all knew that this was the final setback—that there was no escaping from Saint Helena and that, having once let Napoleon get away, the British were not about to make that mistake again.

  The imperial army disbanded, but not Napoleon’s most cherished ambition. For although he had fought at various battlefields and in various countries, even in Egypt, what Napoleon Bonaparte had most wanted was to be Emperor of India. Just that. Every other battle was in preparation for this one, last encounter that would make him king of India’s millions, and master of her treasures. He had heard of Maharajah Ranjit Singh, of course, and possibly knew that he might have to defeat him to make his dreams a reality. Bonaparte had also heard of the Persian Shah, who if he wanted to take the land route to India, would be inflexibly in the way—but he had thought of Persia as another country to conquer, that’s all.

  General Paolo Avitabile lifted himself off the divan and crawled on his hands and knees to the lantern and the dice that lay against its base. The two fours lay faceup. He picked them up, put them back into his pocket, and waved at his friends.

  “To home, to bed, mes amis,” he said. “Tomorrow the Auckland meets the Maharajah. And I have other people to see. The chère mademoiselle Emily.”

  “You’re going hunting, Avitabile,” Harlan said thoughtfully, chewing on a piece of straw.

  “I’ve already chased down my prey, Josiah.”

  The men left. In a few hours they would be up again, bathed and groomed, sharp as ever, with no trace of the night’s excess upon their faces or their persons. Avitabile, Ventura, and Allard were the hardest-working and most effective of the Maharajah’s generals. If the British did not dare to cross the Sutlej to invade the Punjab, or if the Afghan King Dost Mohammad was content not to push too hard against his southern boundaries to anger Ranjit Singh, it was due to these men.

  They were nothing loath to do this; they had talents, the Maharajah paid amply for them, and they were all, already, men of stupendous fortune, their beggarly soldier days long forgotten. As long as Ranjit Singh lived, he had their devotion. But he was ill, ailing, aged even, and all five men had begun thinking about what it would mean if their foreign king died and they were left unmoored in this alien land, after so many years.

  Why not reach out to the mighty British Empire, which had already pounced upon, and pinned down the Union Jack on so much of the map of India?

  • • •

  As the late-night revelers in both camps went to bed, lights were doused, and shimmering, blue-flamed night lanterns picked out the streets and the guardhouses. In the skies above, clouds came to blot out the stars in mammoth handfuls until, at dawn, only a single beam of the sun’s rays cut an opening in all that gray and sent a spear of gold cleaving into the middle of the Sutlej. The clouds also held the warmth in, smothering the land below, and when the skies opened and let loose their fury, it was a heated downpour that fell upon the banks of the river.

  Emily woke to the sound of the rain crashing upon the roof of her tent. One edge had caved in, and water streamed down the tent pole and puddled on the carpet. Chance sniffed around the pole, his long tongue lapping moisture from the pile. His fur was sprayed with wet, and when he came to push his nose into her lap, she said, “Away, Chance. Jimrud!”

  Her jemadar filled the doorway to the tent, his eyes bent downward. “You called, Ladyship?”

  “Take Chance to Bhushan.”

  “Ji, Ladyship.” He hesitated though, his gaunt, brown hands moving in distress upon the white shirtfront of his tunic, worrying the gilt buttons. “Bhushan is . . . um . . . occupied right now. He will be back in twenty minutes. Can the dog stay here until then? You know that only he can manage Chance.”

  Bhushan was, well, he was Chance’s butler. When they left England, Emily had refused to leave her dog behind. And at Calcutta, Chance had had three men hired exclusively to look after him. One cooked his meat, added spices to it, made a stew, and poured it over rice for his meals. Another bathed him every day, dried his fur, combed it smooth and shining. A third, Bhushan, entertained him, took him out to the pond at the end of the garden at Government House and allowed him to leap after the pale yellow and green frogs.

  “Where is he?”

  Jimrud blushed, his brown skin darkening even more. He mumbled, “He has gone to the river, Lady Sahib. With his lota. The rain . . . it will take him a while to return. A letter came this morning to the Lord Sahib, Ladyship, and he sent you a note. Here.” Jimrud shuffled into the room and laid the paper on the edge of Emily’s bed.

  Emily coughed and grabbed at the letter. What Jimrud was saying, in his discreet way, was that Bhushan had gone to use the public privies near the bank, and he would rather not have had to say that. She wouldn’t have allowed a manservant into her bedroom in England, but here, in India, he was one of the few people who actually spoke English, and besides, he was a native. He didn’t count as a man, and she didn’t care if the neckline of her nightgown fell open, or her silhouette showed through the flimsy cotton. Jimrud had no emotions toward her. He came, he obeyed, he rarely raised his eyes to her, he left. He was so perfect that at one point Major Bryne, who had been looking for a replacement for George’s butler, had tried to wrangle Jimrud away from Emily. Bryne’s argument was that a new jemadar could be found for Emily, and how wonderful it would be for the next Governor-General’s wife to find a personal manservant already trained and fluent in English. But Emily had held on to Jimrud’s arm tenaciously—and let George muddle his way with a new jemadar himself, and left all the training to Major Bryne. It was a small victory, but a victory nonetheless.

  She opened the letter. It was dated an hour before the rains had begun. George said that the Maharajah had canceled the official meeting because of the weather and that they would have to wait for the sun to smile upon them, but the Maharani had set up a welcome tent upriver, would the ladies of the Governor-General’s party favor her with a visit later this afternoon?

  Fanny had already gone out into the rain to inspect the Queen’s Buff regiment along with their nephew Bill, who was military secretary to George—he had come with them from England, because his mother had asked George to take him to India and keep him out of trouble for a while at least. Emily called for her maid Wright, dressed slowly, ate her breakfast, and thought about General Avitabile, who had wound through her dreams. Would he be there?

  And so, a few hours later, they set out on their horses with a small contingent of ladies from the camp—McNaghten’s wife; the chaplain’s wife, Mrs. Hurley; a sprinkling of other women who all made up the society at Calcutta. George’s aides-de-camp had their native wives, but they kept them hidden in zenanas of their own, tucked away, pensioned off when the actual wife came in from England. Mr. Taft was with them also, his red dispatch case slung over his saddle, his brain, doubtless, already classifying each item that the Maharani Jindan Kaur would present to Emily and Fanny. The soldiers of the Sixth Hussars followed behind.

  The rain had abated its fer
ocity, and now, as they picked through the sludgy ground into a grove of guava, it splashed silently over the lime-green leaves and slid across the curve of Emily’s bonnet and down her neck. She hunched above her reins, one knee wedged around the hump in the saddle, her boots grimy, her hands fiery inside her leather gloves.

  Fanny laughed. And in that silent wood, where the only sound came from the sucking of their horses’ hooves in the muck and the twitter of the parrots as they flew low, rustling the leaves and sending showers of water upon their unprotected heads, the laugh was a clean, pure noise. Glass cutting through the humid air.

  Emily turned to look at her sister. At Park Lodge, while Emily was in the garden, her gloves caked with dirt, a smear of soil upon her cheek where she had pushed her hair out of the way, the cool wind burnishing her skin into a healthy crimson, Fanny had lain on the sofa in the drawing room, her head stuffed with perpetual colds, her chest hollow, her voice hoarse with a cough. Fanny had always been a picture of balled-up handkerchiefs, a red nose, and complaints in a wheezing voice.

  And then, they had stepped onto the docks at Calcutta. Here, with the thermometer nudging the low one hundreds, Emily lay flattened in a public corridor at Government House in a cane chair, her stays loosened, her fingers ink-stained, letters strewn in her lap, hoping to snag the little crosscurrent of breeze that sneaked in through the front door and out the back. And Fanny? She had returned to her nubile, hopping youth. The heat never seemed to bother her. While their skins had taken on the yellow pallor of the interminably long Indian summers, Fanny’s was brown and lush. She woke in the early mornings, rode out with Bill or another officer, brought home a veritable menagerie of animals she had found wounded; she wrote letters, she visited rajas, she knitted and embroidered and painted.

  Even now, her bonnet traveled down her back, held at her throat with two strings, and her black hair glittered with drops of rain. In India, Fanny had become Emily. There was nothing she wouldn’t try. She had gone out camping in the Rajkot hills, shot at a tiger, and come back to camp with her face peppered with gunpowder. At the parties at Government House, she tried all the dances on the floor, she drank wine and did not water it down; her face had opened up, her smile had brightened.

  Fanny held up her hand, the sleeves of her gown puckered to the elbow, and pulled down a branch of the guava tree nearest to her. Emily ducked, but it was too late, and water tumbled upon them both. “Isn’t this glorious?” Fanny shouted.

  “Fanny, stop,” Emily said. “You haven’t even bothered to change after your outing this morning. We’re going to get to the Maharani’s tent looking like beggars.”

  “I haven’t?” Fanny said in surprise, looking down at her morning gown. There was a small rend in the muslin at the hem, a smudge of grime along her thigh. “Well, the Maharani commanded us without notice; she’ll have to take us as we are. I’m sure she only wants to see us, not our clothes. I haven’t had the luxury of bathing and preparing for this all morning, Em, wallowing in the roses that General Avitabile sends to fill my tent.”

  “Hush,” Emily said, glancing back quickly. But the pathway had narrowed, and the other women, a little way away, were talking among themselves; just for the moment, Emily and Fanny were alone in this sea of green light and humidity.

  And then Fanny said, a curious gleam in her eye, “Why didn’t you accept our ponderous friend Melbourne, Emily? He asked you, didn’t he? Lady Cowper said he had and she should know; he’s ludicrously fond of his sister.” And slyly, “Just as George is with you.”

  Emily reddened. “Lady Cowper talked to you about it? It was none of your business.”

  “Ah,” Fanny said, throwing back her head and laughing, “but it was, my dear. If you married that old stodge, I would have George to myself. I was immensely interested. And you wouldn’t tell me anything, so I had to go searching for the other woman in Melbourne’s life. You know, you could have been the wife of the Prime Minister of England today; imagine that, being received by the Queen”—she waved her hand in a slow circle—“none of this trucking through the rain and mud to meet a native woman who styles herself as such. None of this being commanded by one of them.”

  “We haven’t been commanded,” Emily said automatically.

  But Fanny wouldn’t stop. “But we have been, my dear. Else we wouldn’t be in this forest, me wet, you miserable, both of us thinking about that comely Monsieur Avitabile, with his fluid French ways, the masses of roses he grows in his greenhouses in Peshawar.”

  “He wouldn’t have done, you know,” Emily said finally. Her horse had come to a halt, its nose bowed doggedly into the earth. She urged it on, prodded its sides, rattled her reins, until Fanny’s cool hand, in its lace fingerless glove, came on its head and she said, “Chalo.”

  They were riding in a single line now, the path had narrowed even more, and the branches of the trees came quickening down upon them. Emily was in front, Fanny’s mare a short hand span behind.

  “Melbourne?” Fanny asked.

  Emily sighed. “Yes, Melbourne.” When she thought at all about it, this last proposal of marriage when she was thirty-five years old, it wasn’t with a tumbling regret.

  When Melbourne had come to her, his first wife had been dead for four years; it was the summer they had spent at Lady Cowper’s country house. Humming rumors had said that he was the next man to be prime minister; it would have been a good marriage. There was really nothing against it, nobody but herself to consult—Lady Cowper had encouraged it; George would have been mildly happy; and Fanny would have been ecstatic at, as she put it, having George to herself.

  “What was wrong with him?” Fanny asked.

  Emily turned to speak sideways into the air. “I don’t know. Nothing. Perhaps everything.” Her mouth twisted in a wry downturn. “I thought too, you know, of my . . . our . . . my life with George, and then the one I could possibly have with Melbourne. It wouldn’t have done.”

  “You’re too fastidious, Emily. It was his first wife you were thinking of and the glorious scandal, and that he stood by her despite it.”

  “Perhaps . . .” Emily had read Galt’s The Life of Lord Byron also, as had all of London, inquisitive about a man she’d met only once, but more curious about what had been his immense charm. For Lady Caroline Lamb had made an absolute ass of herself over Byron, and she had left her husband to do so; and her long-suffering husband, who had taken her back after the violent end of the affair, was none other than Lord Melbourne. Emily had not thought much of Lady Caroline Lamb, who was beautiful, though in an untidy way with those quantities of wispy hair, that constant look of openmouthed surprise, that flighty mind.

  “We are so unlike,” Emily said slowly. “That, I suppose, is what stopped me. I couldn’t imagine a man who had once been in love with her, to be in love with me.”

  “Were you in love with him?”

  “Perhaps . . .” Emily said again. “I could have been. Maybe . . .”

  “It didn’t stop him from becoming prime minister though,” Fanny said.

  “People forget.”

  A parrot shrieked, and they both looked up, startled.

  Fanny pointed her whip at the bird, and it moved on the branch, muttering, its head slanted to one side and then the other as it gazed at them with its beady eyes.

  “We should hurry, Miss Eden,” Mr. Taft called out from behind them. “We must not keep the Maharajah’s wife waiting.”

  They moved out from the shelter of the grove into open land. Here, the eye stretched into the vast distance, flat everywhere, a few rocks and boulders to break the monotony of the landscape. The rain had slackened into a gentle mist, speckling the waters of the Sutlej with tiny circles. Under the shade of her bonnet, Emily felt sweat gather in her hair, curve rivulets down the sides of her face. She mopped her skin with a handkerchief, and then tucked it back between the third and fourth buttons of her gown. She felt hot, and heavy, sluggish.

  For the past few days, since their arri
val at the river, during the setting up of the camp and the settling in, Avitabile had sent her baskets of roses and little notes. He didn’t say much of consequence—he, and she, had never said much, for what was there to say, after all? They had met a few times at Calcutta, they had talked, he had sent her roses then, as now, and he had remembered his promise of shawls and gowns from Kashmir, ordered them, supervised the work, had them packed carefully and delivered to their tent.

  Mr. Taft, worrying the face of his watch by looking at it too many times as he rode beside them, had been lingering outside, notebook in hand to take an inventory of the gift from Avitabile. Four shawls and four gowns of the finest wool and silk embroidery, perhaps six months of painstaking work by at least two embroiderers—everything had been registered, the price assessed after he had calculated the labor, the material, the cost of living in Kashmir. And then he had looked up at Emily, expressionless, his skeletal, white face immobile, only his pinched nostrils flaring in and out as he breathed. I’ll pay for them all, she had said. They are expensive, Miss Eden. All right, Emily had said, reaching for her purse, how much?

  They had reached a small makeshift pier on the southern bank of the Sutlej. Here, the river narrowed as two spits of sand and rock pushed their way inward on both sides. Through the haze of rain, Emily and Fanny saw a royal tent in red set up on the northern spit. It was a small tent, with crimson screens erected around, and the main tent pole flew the triangular flag of the Punjab Empire—amber yellow, embroidered in black with a double-edged sword, two other daggers curving left and right around it, the center of the sword encircled by something that looked very much like the quoits, the thin bands of steel that the Akalis used as their weapon.