The Mountain of Light

by Indu Sundaresan

  And then, with some difficulty, he thought about Honoria, worrying the outer seam of his trousers with his fingers. Theirs had been a long betrothal, some ten years. It had been an even more peculiar courtship. Henry had met Honoria Marshall in Ireland, on his first home leave from India and his regiment in Dum Dum. John had still been in England, and Henry, John, and their sister Letitia had gone for a holiday on the Irish coast and stayed in a small village. There, walking along a windswept beach Lettice had seen Honoria and called out to her in delight. They were old schoolmates. They’d soon found out where Honoria was lodging, and from that day on the four of them had gone out together on walking trips and picnics when the weather permitted. A month later, Honoria had come to London. They had gone to a few balls together, and some nights at the opera and at the theater. Once, when Honoria had needed an escort back to her aunt’s house, Henry had accompanied her in the cab, but so also had Lettice—it wouldn’t have been correct for the two of them to have been alone with each other.

  In those seven days that Henry had seen Honoria, he had fallen in love with her. She was soft-spoken, she was kind, she was graceful, she walked well—everything a good Englishwoman should be. He thought of his lonely nights in Bengal, the sheer lack of unmarried, unattached Englishwomen in India, and fell in love with her.

  He had been twenty-five years old, still a lieutenant in the artillery, with a pay that was abysmally small to maintain a wife. Besides, a few years ago, when his older brothers and he had gone to India, they had decided to start a “Lawrence Fund” to support their mother, now that their father, who had lived and died a poor soldier in the King’s army, was gone. John was then sitting for his civil service examinations—Henry had been teaching him Bengali for this—and would soon after follow them to India. He was also going to contribute to the fund, deposited in their mother’s name in her bank every month, so she need never be put in the embarrassing position of asking them for money.

  Simply put, Henry could not afford a wife. John, when he came to India in a few months, had entered the Civil Service at Delhi, and had been made assistant magistrate and collector, lording over eight hundred square miles of district and half a million inhabitants. John was then nineteen years old and earned the princely sum of two thousand five hundred rupees a month—about three times Henry’s salary after six years of working in India. John could have married before he came out to India, merely on the promise of what he was about to make.

  Five years had passed, and Henry had gotten a promotion. Their mother was better set up by now, the fund had grown quite large, and her letters to Henry had contained the constant complaints of a lack of a daughter-in-law from him. She’d mentioned Lettice’s friend Honoria from time to time. And in reading her letters, all of Henry’s old love for Honoria had returned.

  It was Lettice, eventually, who had acted as a go-between and told Honoria of Henry’s love for her. Her next letter to her brother had told him that his feelings were reciprocated. Henry had written a first, and very formal, letter to Honoria proposing marriage, and she had accepted.

  She had begun gathering her trousseau soon after, and news from her was of her excitement, her deep love for him, her longing to see him—much as Henry had felt himself, and he’d slept with those letters under his pillow. But then, her mother had fallen ill and died and she could not leave her father so soon after her mother’s death. And then her father had begun ailing and while he was ill, she could not leave him. For a long while, Henry and Honoria had written to each other, filling pages with news of England, of India, of all his postings, of his work, of her father. Until the day the news came that her father had died and she could now, finally, come to India and marry him.

  Henry had sent her the money for the passage—that had been almost eight months ago. He was to have gone to Calcutta to meet her ship and married her right off the dock, so to speak, but the residency had intervened, and he could not, in good conscience, have taken personal leave at such a crucial time in Lahore’s history. So he’d gone on to Lahore, and made arrangements with one of John’s friends, Major Battersea, to meet Honoria at the boat, to keep her in their house in Calcutta, and to find a safe passage for her across the Northwest Provinces until she could come to Lahore. To be his wife.

  “Shall I ask for her to be escorted to Firozpur, Pat?” John said again.

  “Honoria has traveled alone, and far, to find me, John,” Henry said quietly. “The first thing she will do is stand up with me in front of God and take me as her husband. Then, if necessary, she can go to Firozpur.” He smiled. “I think she will stay here at Lahore, though, after all of her travels and adventures, we will seem very tame indeed.”

  John’s face lightened. For the first time Henry realized that he had been afraid—no, perhaps apprehensive was more apt—of the woman who had taken care of Henry, that he might have fallen in love with her. A statement came to Henry’s mind that he almost spoke out loud—Jan Larens sab janta—John Lawrence knows everything. The natives in Delhi had said this of the nineteen-year-old John, nosy, fussy, in the throes of ambition and inquisitiveness in his first job.

  He asked John, for the fourth time, “Who was she?”

  “Princess Roshni,” he said. “She insisted upon looking after you, and she did a damned good job of it too.”

  As his brother turned to leave, Henry’s voice stopped him again. “Bring the Maharajah to see me tomorrow, will you please?”

  • • •

  The time that had been set for the meeting was nine o’clock, again in Jahangir’s Quadrangle. Maharajah Dalip Singh came with sixty-five attendants. They entered from the southern doorway, which gave out onto the pavilion and the throne jharoka, the balcony of the Diwan-i-am beyond.

  Henry, who had been expecting to see the boy alone, or perhaps with just one or two men as an escort who would drop him off and leave them, hadn’t bothered to gather an entourage around him. Both Edwardes and John had made some noises about being there, about this being an official visit, but from the very beginning Henry was determined that this was not to be so. The boy was a child; he was a grown man in the somewhat loose capacity of the boy’s guardian—if any true understanding was to be reached between them, other people were unnecessary.

  Now, leaning against one of the pillars of the pavilion in which he spent his day, Henry began to wish he had asked for the British contingent to be present.

  The sixty-five men entered first, all dressed splendidly in robes of state and the parade ground. There were the cavalrymen in red, short jackets, blue trousers with red stripes running down the sides, and red turbans. The lancers were distinguished only by their French gray jackets, all else the same as the cavalry, and they held their lances beautifully, one hand grasping on top of, another below, the vamplate. The infantry had red jackets, white trousers, and black belts. The Gurkhas had green jackets and caps. The gunners had black waistcoats, white trousers, and crossbelts adorned with cartridges.

  Henry straightened and came to attention. He stepped from the shade of the pavilion into the sunshine and began to walk toward them, wondering whether he was to meet the Maharajah halfway, or wait for him to approach, or go up to him. He decided that the best would be for them both to come up to the center of the marble platform in the middle of the pool. But to do that, he had to maneuver around the gardens to his right, where lay the only path across the pool. Unlike most other charbaghs, this one did not have four bisecting pathways leading to it.

  The soldiers watched stoically as Henry rushed to his right and then up to the marble platform. He stood there, panting; even that effort had been too much. Then, he felt foolish, for the Maharajah would have to come to his right to get to the platform, so in the end, Henry strolled back under the watchful gaze of the soldiers and stood in the open piece of yard just under the stairs.

  The courtiers came in next. They had long sherwani coats with mandarin collars; under them they wore white silk pajamas tight around their ankles an
d shins, with jewel-studded cummerbunds, flashy daggers, well-groomed beards wrapped in sheer gold gauze.

  One of them stepped forward and announced, “Maharajah Dalip Singh hazir hai!” Hail to the Maharajah Dalip Singh.

  The men all bowed their heads, and through the open archway appeared a slight figure, his clothing an exact, miniature replica of that of his courtiers, the diamond on his aigrette brilliant, his short dagger encrusted with emeralds. Henry could barely see any gold in the hilt or the scabbard. The boy had upturned Jodhpuri slippers on his feet, embroidered with gold and silver, the details picked out in rubies and diamonds.

  And Henry stood there alone.

  The courtiers shifted about on their feet—they had not expected this and didn’t know what the etiquette was now. Dalip Singh bounded down the stairs, tripped and fell on the third one down, and was up before anyone could reach out a hand to him. He threw off his slippers and, barefoot, came running down to stand next to Henry.

  A smile, dazzling, eager, lit up his eyes. He put a hand into Henry’s and said in Persian, “I have wanted to meet you so much, Henry Lawrence. The Sikh Durbar has talked much of your kindness to my people.”

  Henry shook the little hand in his and held the boy at arm’s length. “You are splendid yourself, your Highness. The pleasure is all mine. But we should speak Urdu, or Punjabi?”

  “You know both also then? All right, either one. But I’m to be addressed as your Majesty, you know, I am the Maharajah of the Punjab.”

  Every missive from the Governor-General’s office in Calcutta had been to remind Henry, in subtle terms or blatant, that none of the native princes were to be accorded the right to be addressed as Majesty—that belonged to their Queen in England; the highest honor to be paid to a native ruler was his Highness.

  However, there was no one around to hear or see Henry’s infraction, so he said gravely, “As you wish, your Majesty.”

  Dalip Singh turned and clapped his plump hands together. “Away!” he shouted at the men in the entrance. “Captain Henry and I have many things to discuss. We wish to be left alone.”

  Mir Kheema, Dalip’s butler, came forward and bowed. “Your Majesty, this is not possible. You will need us with you. The translator—”

  “Away! We do not need a translator. Now. Please.” The heron’s feather in his turban bobbed in the sunlight. Henry grinned; this child was indeed a king.

  When the entourage had dispersed, Maharajah Dalip Singh put his hand into Henry’s again, trustingly, and they walked together into the cool, dark shade of the pavilion. Dalip Singh sat on Henry’s desk, Henry on the chair, and they gazed at each other for a long while.

  “Oh,” Dalip said, “I almost forgot.” He dug into the pocket of his gold brocade sherwani, brought out a bunch of green grapes, and set it on the table. “This is for you. I thought that I should not visit you empty-handed. My father never did.”

  Henry reached out for the fruit, and when he held it in his hands, it was surprisingly heavy. Not grapes after all, but thirty-six emeralds fashioned into grapes, the stones smooth and unmarred, each with a green fire within; the top layer of stones were about the size of jamun fruit, the second layer smaller, the size of cherries, and so on until the tiny, last stone, which was the size of a dewdrop. In the light that streamed in through the latticework screen behind, the emeralds glowed. Little gold links connected the gems loosely so that they draped over the palm of his hand just like real fruit.

  “It’s exquisite,” he said, in a hushed voice. “Thank you, but I cannot keep it.”

  Dalip shrugged, lifting his small shoulders. He swung his feet against the wood of the desk. “I know. You’ll have to give it to your Company’s Toshakhana. I hear”—his voice was bland—“that you’ve been going through the items of my Toshakhana?”

  “Yes.”

  “Well, this is from my personal collection, not from the state jewels. Although”—here was a wicked gleam in his eyes—“that is also my personal collection. I am”—he puffed out his chest—“the Maharajah of the Punjab.”

  Henry Lawrence sat back in his chair and stared at the boy, a pang in his heart. Wars he understood, the making of them, the conquest of a people, the division of the spoils after. And there had been a war—the Anglo-Sikh War—that had brought him here to Lahore. But the terms of the treaty were so . . . nebulous. The British government had promised Punjab that once their young Maharajah reached his majority, at sixteen years of age, they would retire from the land. Somehow, this insistence upon cataloging the Toshakhana didn’t seem the right step in that direction; it implied only the path to full annexation. But this Henry could not say to the Maharajah; he wondered if the boy even understood this much.

  Dalip Singh had a child’s round face, curved cheeks, bright eyes, a rosebud mouth that was ever ready to smile. His hair, long no doubt, since the Sikhs did not cut their hair, would be braided and tucked under his turban. Tiny wisps curled out on his nape. The collar of his sherwani lay tight against his neck, and its sleeves closed about his chubby wrists. He had a little stomach that strained against his pearl and silver zari-embroidered cummerbund.

  “What are you studying now, your Majesty?” Henry asked.

  Dalip made a clicking sound with his mouth. “Captain Henry, you are here as a representative of your wonderful Queen, and I am the Maharajah of the Punjab.” Henry grinned at this insistence, and Dalip said sharply, “It’s true!”

  “True enough, your Majesty, but repeating it will not make it truer.”

  “What I mean to say is that I’m not here to talk about my education. Tell me instead about your Afghan War. You lost, didn’t you?”

  There was no cunning in that ingenuous gaze. Henry did not wonder that this child was asking him a question about the war, because he was no ordinary eight-year-old; he was the Maharajah of the Punjab, and as such, he would have been schooled in the politics of his frontiers.

  Dalip put a hand on Henry’s arm, stopping his narrative even as he began. “Your Lord Auckland was Governor-General then? He was the one who gave the orders for the war?”

  Henry nodded. “It was his . . . fault, his responsibility.”

  “And why did you jump into it then?”

  Henry pondered this for a long while. “No reason at all; at least, in retrospect it seems so, but Lord Auckland must have found something else that was compelling.”

  “I’m thirsty,” Dalip said, his mouth screwed up into a pout.

  Henry rose from his chair. “I’ll find someone.”

  Just then, a servant came in with a gold tray and two golden goblets with a sweet, cool watermelon sherbet. Henry did not ask where the man had come from, or if he had been close enough to overhear the conversation. Dalip would not have been left alone, for all of his imperious posturing—there was no privacy for kings, but then again, nothing the king said would ever be repeated in public or in private.

  When the attendant had retreated, Dalip got down from the desk and came to lean against Henry’s chair, behind him, close enough so Henry could feel the Maharajah’s warm breath on his ear. And so, Henry began his tale.

  Long after Shah Shuja had been driven away from Afghanistan, Dost Mohammad had ascended the throne at Kabul. Russia had then sent an embassy to Dost Mohammad. The British, to counteract this Russian influence, had also sent their embassy, but it had seemed as though the Amir’s ear had bent more toward the Russian at court than toward the Englishman.

  There was still the whole of the Punjab Empire between Afghanistan and British India—for Russia to invade India, they would have to go through Persia, Afghanistan, and Punjab. But Lord Auckland had feared such an eventuality—the thing to do then was to depose Dost Mohammad and put on the throne a puppet king, who would protect British India from invasion.

  And then the Persians had begun knocking on the western borders of Afghanistan, and Dost Mohammad had actually turned to the English for assistance. This, Lord Auckland had ignored, and gone on with h
is plans to invade Afghanistan. He had come to Maharajah Ranjit Singh for help—troops, provisions, guns, and passage through the lands of the Punjab to Peshawar (in Punjab territory) and through the Khyber Pass from there to Kabul . . . and victory.

  Ranjit Singh had feted the Governor-General and his sisters, piled them with gifts, looked after the entire British encampment for a whole two months, and agreed only to the last—they would be given safe passage through his lands to Peshawar, but no guns, no provisions, no troops. The Maharajah had been too canny to indulge in a pointless war, and Shah Shuja, whom the British intended to put on the throne instead of Dost Mohammad, could never hold it—there was a reason why he had been driven out of the country in the first place.

  Sorry, Ranjit Singh had said, but he’d said it so nicely, with so much generosity, even paying their way all the way to Peshawar, it was difficult to be quarrelsome with the old, one-eyed king.

  “So you won Kabul then, and put Shah Shuja on the throne?” The little voice at Henry’s shoulder was filled with contempt.

  “Yes,” Henry said. “But the rumblings of a rebellion began soon after—the people of Afghanistan hated Shuja, and adored Dost Mohammad. And, they disliked seeing British regiments more or less permanently stationed in Kabul. Although we were supposed to stay only until Shuja had attained some stability in his land.”

  “Just as you have promised here, Captain Henry?”

  “Yes,” Henry said again, discomfort filling him.

  The Afghans had rebelled. Spectacularly. Key British officials had been cut down in the streets one after another; Shuja had been killed also. Dost Mohammad had been put back on the throne by the rebels. The message was clear—the British were no longer welcome in Afghanistan, they had to leave and they had to leave now. So in December of 1841, sixteen thousand British soldiers, their wives, children, and camp followers were driven out east toward the snow-clotted Khyber Pass, which would lead them to Peshawar, and shelter in the Punjab. The Afghanis had promised them safe passage . . . and did not keep their word. They’d massacred everyone, indiscriminately, until, a day before Christmas, only one man had staggered into Jalalabad, the British outpost on the Afghan side of the Khyber Pass.