Sary and the Maharajah's Emeralds

by Sharon Shipley

  Asha remembered me. Asha knew where I was. Hope flared for a time. I could wear the cloth as a sort of scarf. It seemed more extravagant than the bedraggled silk sari ever was.

  Despite this, days dragged with the slowness of a sloth. Fear bubbled from a deep well of dark imagination—is this a cell for the condemned only? How will I be executed? Each footfall tortured. Perversely, I—Sary—My name is Sary!—dredged up a hundred gruesome ways. Trampled by elephants—left to grow old, half-mad, with a shriveled face and stringy hair, thin and gray.

  A bowl slid through.

  I studied the red rice and beans, sickened at my relief, flinging myself at the door and scattering the food.

  “Please! Wait! Talk to me! Who are you! My name is Sary!”

  ****

  The striking rajah, so out of place, his white satin clothes glowing in the dank surroundings, brushed the bowing jailor off, waiting impatiently until he was gone, his strong face unreadable. He gripped the grille. Sighing, he slapped his palm against the wall.

  I heard new footfalls, strong and measured, but receding.

  “Please. Take me out of here. Please stay—talk to me…” My voice floated after the unseen person.

  ****

  The plate of sweets flew past his ear, clanging off the wall, spraying jelly.

  “I do whatsoever I wish! When so ever I desire! And for whatever reason and for how long I might fancy!”

  The rajah stepped out of range of his brother’s flying spittle as the ruler’s face seemed to swell to bursting like an overripe eggplant. “In case it escaped your mind, this royal personage was meanly, outrageously, traitorously treated! As do you also, if you…if you suppose otherwise!” He watched his handsome brother through mean little eyes.

  The rajah in turn studied the mottled butter-yellow face with the alarming eggplant-colored splotches, surprised his brother recalled the woman at all. He had shut up so many and forgotten them, if they were lucky.

  He mused. His brother’s latest bout of addiction left him even more paranoid—with what substance, he could not hazard a guess—but not, apparently, forgetful.

  If he did not watch it, he might suffer a stroke. That was not necessarily a bad thing. “Does not one need to be a citizen of Bharatpur to be a traitor?” He asked as if he could not have cared less. The rajah grinned roguishly, as one man to another, popping a grape and spitting seeds carelessly. “Let’s see if I can hit that vase,” he drawled.

  His brother would not dissemble, however, continuing, “A blatant assault. And by a female assassin!”

  “Assassin? Oh, surely!” The rajah scoffed. “A trifling attack by a woman? Some would call it love-play.” He winked broadly, feeling the fool in a play. “In what dank hole have you shoved her, anyway?” he asked with a wink and a nudge hoping to gain more information.

  His brother glowered, his little eyes suspicious below eyebrows sprouting like caterpillars. “Why the interest?” He sulked. “It was a while ago, now.” Suspicion pinched his face into an oily little ball, like a fistful of suet.

  As the rajah had suspected, the maharajah had forgotten her until now.

  It seemed the days of jollying his brother were fleeting, buried under narcotic dreams and blind indulgences. The rajah went inward, recalling all the times he had defended this man he now watched with distaste. “You like it when they fight. Especially if they are young. Very young,” the rajah added heavily.

  The mottled face puckered in a grin, preening as he stroked his wispy goatee. “True enough.”

  The rajah dug an elbow at him, sharing the jest. “Right you are! She is beneath your notice. The wench learned her lesson and may yet be used.” He laughed carelessly. “But not if she’s kept in a wretched hole much longer, I’d wager.” He idly yawned, popping another grape. “Ah, well. I would imagine she is properly subdued, either way.”

  The maharajah sneered, “Pah! Kahe ko kha raha hai chut ki chapati aur lund ka beja!”

  The rajah answered, “I regret my idle curiosity and questions bore you, brother dear, as you proclaim.” He stretched and put on his best jaded expression while his brother surveyed him like a mongoose scrutinizes a cobra.

  “You would betray me, too.”

  “Brother! Such a dramatic word—betray! You wound me.” He nodded a bow. “You are supreme. The woman is but a weak-minded, silly female. Her strength is in those strong loins you so admire. Eh?”

  Feeling a right fool, the rajah winked and waggled his brows. Sweat trickled his forehead. His brother had never gazed on him with such evil calculation. Tread easy. Is she worth it? Yes. For more reasons than he could sort out.

  The rajah twirled at his own head in a universal gesture of insanity. “All females are prone to hysteria and maidenly shyness. She was overwhelmed, the poor woman, never having seen a royal being such as you—much less your exalted company. Come, brother! Have pity.”

  The maharajah, stuck out his pillowy lips, eyeing him slantwise. “You think so?”

  “It was plain to see. The poor girl was dazzled, even frightened out of her—” He grinned, man to man. “Well. Obviously, not her knickers.”

  He waited to see which way the coin dropped.

  The maharajah, chewing his thumb, went inward and muttered slowly, with a silly grin, “S’pose so.”

  His face took on a sulky look, as though he were loath to dilute his umbrage, scrubbing his jowly cheek in remembrance. “Shyness was not what I felt!”

  The rajah pressed. “Most likely the female, under the rule of a sad recluse like the elderly Queen Victoria, never beheld such majesty. What can she know of our glorious heritage and customs? You were a shining light, dazzling her into making foolish blunders.”

  His brother observed him over a finger-smeared glass of honeyed chai, his eyes little black pellets, flat and as deadly as rat turds.

  He had gone too far. Shining light? Dazzling?

  “British? You said you did not know.”

  “I don’t have that knowledge,” he answered truthfully.

  “You want her for yourself!” His brother jabbed a fat finger.

  The rajah mused. The finger looked like a white slug.

  “Hardly, dear brother. I cannot keep up with all the juicy young cherries in the hareem as it is. While you…A bull! A stallion! A lion king of the bedroom! Eh?”

  The maharajah looked mulish but reluctantly pleased. “True. They all fear me.” The rajah knew the look well. He had won some small victory, but not all. He waited.

  “But you never visit the hareem. They told me,” the maharajah accused.

  The rajah didn’t answer.

  The maharajah pouted. “We shall see. Surprisingly, there is much truth in what you allege. Either way, she may not come under my full graces quite yet.” He sniffed, groping for his water pipe, which the rajah knew was laced with the tears of the poppy. Sticking the stem in his mouth, like a babe’s pacifier, was the last conscious thing his brother would do for the while. There would be no danger today.

  A plume of musky smoke masked his brother’s face and his intentions.

  Outside, the rajah blew out relief. All his other brothers were dead. He did not wish to join them.

  Chapter Four

  Pride Goeth

  My torment did not end there, but at another place altogether.

  They came for me.

  I straightened, as much as limbs bent from inactivity and pacing or crouching in a corner could manage. I lifted my chin and walked upright as the door grudgingly opened, holding my tattered sari, now an unrecognizable color, like a queen’s robes.

  My jailors, two men in turbans and rough breeches, waited. I did not wish to leave—I was wild to leave.

  Was this my last walk, my last day—hour?

  I swept hands over my sari, mangled as it was, glad I’d kept it clean if irredeemable, that my face, teeth, and hair were as fresh as I could make them, hating my bare dirty feet and cracked nails.

  Chapter Fi
ve

  Auntieji

  The old woman slapped the rajah’s hands as he plunked brashly down on a stool, so old and wobbly it gleamed from the many buttocks that had polished it over its decades, including his own. He scooped two fingers in a pot of dal and brought them to his mouth.

  “Owww! Hot!” He winced.

  “Of course hot! You great fool!”

  “Mujhey bhookh lagi hai, auntieji,” he mumbled past his fingers, looking ten years younger.

  “Naturally you are hungry. You always are, you great ox. Just a growing boy.” Raising her stir spoon questioningly, she continued, “Kyaa aap ko yeh accha lagta hai?”

  “Indeed, I don’t like your cooking, auntieji,” he answered her. “That is why I am always sampling, hoping even though you are old as grandmother’s goat, you might improve.”

  She grinned, toothless, and whacked her wooden spoon on his knuckles, sniffing dismissively. “It’s just lentils.”

  “Ahh, auntieji Madhuri, but you make them savory just by sticking your little finger in the pot.”

  The rajah swept up her gnarled hand and gave the wobbly veined back of it a loving kiss.

  The old woman jerked her hand away with a reproving twinkle and made to rap him on the head.

  He swerved aside and industriously began lifting large copper and brass lids, questing and sniffing. “What is sweet, now?”

  “What sweets are you after?” She raised corrugated brows to her grizzled hair parting. “My poor kitchen wenches?”

  “Too much like you, old hen. Cluck, cluck, scold.”

  The striking rajah, the prince, with the gleam of a boy intent on mischief, lifted another lid, spooning milky broth. “Khandvi! You always made the best khandvi, you old hag.”

  “Don’t we sweat and slave and work our poor fingers to the bone?” She displayed knobbled brown hands. “To make you and your well-fed brother satisfied.” She emphasized “well-fed” ever so slightly.

  It was enough. She felt her bony arthritic knees knock.

  The rajah’s eyes threw a glint like a spark from tinder. The old retainer knew when to quit. She did not wish to stir a riffle simmering in any pot she might own. She was as sure of his affections as one could be in her position, but still… She couldn’t let him get by without a final verbal switch on the rump. She grumped, “You are not too big to swat, young man.”

  “As you yearn to do, wrinkled old auntie.”

  They mutually grinned with a fondness breaching generations, status, and sex.

  In truth, she—the scold and his once-upon-a-time amah—was as close to a mother as the rajah ever had known. His birth mother had been a neurotic, lovesick woman, years younger than her age, who obsessed over the inattentions of his father, the old maharajah.

  “Oh, sit you down, and I’ll serve you proper. No more sticking your dirty fingers in my pots…”

  “Some of your rice pudding, then, auntieji,” he said humbly. His soft words did not match the cold rovings of his eyes, which, as she was very much aware, had occurred during their entire banter.

  What could he be looking for? Her crafty eyes reflected her inner question. Not my kitchen wenches, surely. There was only that scrawny, weak-as-skim-milk female.

  The rajah squinted past curdled air wavering over braziers and ovens. The steam was a virtual stew as the old lady stirred and ladled, still grumping as his gaze bored into dim corners, past curtains and stacks of firewood. He halted his gaze, veering back at a flick of a pale moving head, alien amidst bright saffron strings and hanging chilies.

  The old woman glanced up to see his broad back slipping behind a hempen curtain on his way to the scullery.

  “Haven’t you enough sweet laddoos at your disposal?” she groused. “Why pester my poor kitchen slavies, eh?”

  ****

  I knelt, almost upended in a basin as big as a washtub, the rim jamming my stomach, and I am certain my rump was clearly outlined in my dingy cotton shift for any wag passing. I complained under my breath, “Ooooph!”

  My project was to vigorously attack the pot’s dried-on fava bean residue, though my back ached, my hands were raw, nails broken to the quick, and my hair, stringed with dried bean scum, swung in my face like a metronome in time to my scrubbing.

  “Let them look,” I complained.

  Damnation! Dad-blast bean-eaters!

  On good days, I supposed this was a step up. I now had plenty to eat—when I had stomach for it after checking the mountains of teetering pots, littered plates, and smeared glasses.

  “Have you had enough?”

  I thought the voice was in my mind, so much did reality blend with the ramblings in my head, doggedly reapplying rags and bristle brushes.

  Ignore it.

  “Have you had enough?” A hint of humor in the words.

  I scrubbed harder, cursing. “Be quiet, drat you!”

  “Well? Have you?”

  Slowly, I dared look up. My face drained, I am sure, to as white as bean curd.

  The most devastatingly stunning man I had ever beheld lounged on a hundred-pound sack of rice. Not handsome exactly, in the ordinary sense, but thoroughly male. Curved hawkish nose, eyes heavily hooded and black, smoldering under jet brows taking off like wings. A pirate, or a gypsy.

  My second impression was clean—loose cotton pants of blinding white linen, knotted low on a taut, bare bronzed torso. A rough turquoise pendant dangled on a leather thong almost as far. I looked away—not before catching a glimpse of his satiny, copper-burnished chest. One strong wrist showed, from a carelessly rolled linen sleeve, a modern Swiss time-piece, the other wrist sporting a wide silver native cuff. A simple cotton turban topped his hair which, with the gloss of licorice, sprang with life, unruly.

  I’m afraid my mouth gaped.

  I sat hard on a stool, scrambling up and smoothing my bean-stained cotton to dirty knees, wiping clotted stringy hair from my face and sensing the red flooding back to my cheeks. What cared I what I looked like? I was me! He could take me as he found me.

  “It was you!” I accused. His presence was the last straw, the spoon that stirred the pot of confusion, pain, and isolation into boiling over. Perhaps something on my face made him step away, neither denying nor explaining.

  ****

  Looking past the grimy, sweat-streaked face framing those eyes reminded him of stormy seas. The foreign woman was a beautiful wild animal staring out from a hedge of wild hair, but charcoal smears could never spoil her beauty. He took in grubby toes and the now-tarnished pale hair knotted and hanging like loops of old rope, the thinner face with its high cheeks sharper now than when he’d first beheld her, her lips curved as an archer’s bow—untamed even after, or because of, her time in the cell.

  His brother apparently sought to humiliate rather than destroy. Uncommon. Increasingly unpredictable, his brother’s mind. The rajah smiled cautiously, as though soothing a half-tame animal.

  ****

  If he thought I was swooning over him, he would be wrong. He saw it too late in my eyes that I narrowed like an alley cat’s. He, smelling of tuberose or jasmine or some pungent fragrance, failed to impress. Did men smell of jasmine, I asked? His clean, polished nails and jackdaw black hair gleaming with oils only added fuel to my ill-banked fires.

  Brushing my knotted hair back with one hand, I reached into the pot with the other.

  I saw the irritating man’s eyes open wide as he jerked back, scrambling to rise from the sack of rice as he saw what I held.

  I gripped the wet rag dripping bean-juice scum and dirty water, and I hurled it, smacking his pristine shirt square in the chest, where it made a satisfying squelch sound.

  I stood back, hands on hips, my eyes sparking green flint. If you can’t stand the dirt, stay out of the kitchen, my eyes said.

  Then the revolting man made the mistake of laughing.

  I flung a greasy sea sponge next and picked up a hefty stone pestle. “This isn’t a zoo! Leave me be! What? Are you somebody impo
rtant?” I sashayed and swayed my hips. The effect was lost, in a stained, coarse, cottony thing. I could not seem to stop. All my anger seemed to boil up, rattling the lid, like one of Madhuri’s pots of lentils.

  He ducked, checking the splotch on the wall beside his head. I pranced back, curving a cat’s smile designed to curdle the strongest man’s will. Then, noting his enraged look at the stain ruining his crisp shirt, I disciplined my expression. Subdued—even contrite.

  Sort of.

  This never happens—I saw it on his face. He sprang up.

  I looked for a way past him. My back was to the washing tubs.

  Snatching a broom, I swished it at his legs. Distracted by the old woman, my latest scourge, looking on, he stopped my downward swing with one strong brown hand.

  He looked back.

  “Leave, auntieji!” He roared.

  She scuttled off.

  “You won’t take me back!”

  His eyes burned as if memorizing my face.

  “Take you—where? Where in God’s name would I if I wanted to?”

  “You! Me! That—cell! I didn’t mean to hit you.”

  Only once. In a pig’s eye!

  I back-peddled, clanging into the copper caldron. “But you shouldn’t—look so clean—waylay me! I have work! Madhuri!” I called to the old woman he called his auntieji. Madhuri would be a match for this peacock! But Madhuri, somewhere safe in the kitchen, didn’t respond beyond a “Harrumph!”

  “I’d like to take you to the whipping shed,” the handsome man threatened. “I would like to bend you over my knee for acting like a bach cha.” His face threatened such was imminent as he looked down at his spoiled shirt.

  “Bach cha? What is this Bach cha?”

  “Child!” He said in English with a decided posh accent.

  “Don’t you need to catch me first? For I will never”—I swatted the broom, reaching blindly for a dirty plate—“allow you…” I lifted my arm and stopped, dropping the plate. It broke into pieces at my stained feet. Madhuri cursed in the background at the sound of the smashed plate.