We both grinned involuntarily. I was close to hysterical—it had been so long since anything approached being comical.
“Have I—” I swallowed the grin before I shattered like the plate. “Do I know you? Have I seen you somewhere?”
I was stammering. I did not trust my memory. I saw faces in my head. Yet perhaps this man resembled slightly he who wronged me. The “greasy man,” as I thought of him. Not in looks. The voice. Not even that. Maybe the downward slanted eyes, only his were large and almond-shaped, like dark amber with the sun shining through. Not small and piggy like the other’s.
I pulled back. I dropped the broom as one large hand encircled my wrist, drawing me to him. He gently clasped my face with elegant bronzed fingers, from my cheek to my chin, searching my eyes, thumbing my lips. Then, dropping his head to mine, he kissed me thoroughly. I was conscious of the garlic I had eaten for lunch.
My body responded, however, telling me it had been a long while.
I smelt of garlic. However, so did he. Garlic, tobacco, spirits, and fragrance. His body felt good, and I cupped myself into his strong supple frame that smelled of crisp linen and man. His arms felt—safe.
I pressed him away to breathe. What was I doing! He abruptly moved me against the wall amid brooms and mops, drawing the curtain, denying Madhuri’s interested eyes and bending his glossy pirate’s head to my pale tousled one.
He plucked a bean from my hair.
“Should be pearls,” he whispered, grinning his crooked smile.
I could only stare dumbly.
That first kiss was an electric current, however. My knees knocked. I would have fallen had he not had a firm clasp of my waist.
“I did not mean to upset you with my warning. I was not tormenting. I wanted to find your mettle.”
I flared again. “I have”—I pulled back sharply—“mettle and metal in my person.”
He looked at me appraisingly. “Very good. You will need it.” He stroked my hair from my forehead. He nuzzled my ear, speaking, “Courage, Bach cha.”
I ducked, slipping from his embrace, armed now with a copper saucepan but not quite ready to hurl it.
“Leave me be. Have not all of you done enough?”
“I rescued you,” he informed me. “I placed myself in harm’s way.” He said it without pride or reproach.
I cocked my head. His voice was that of an educated Englishman. Formal—a toff. He used full verbs, not contractions. I looked from his bare chest, between two slices of the spoiled white linen, into his face, so out of place in this grubby scullery among scraps of decaying garbage that attracted flies and rodents and apparently handsome males.
I did not want to feel.
Yet I wanted this man to kiss me again and take away the real world, where bewilderment reigned, if even for the moment.
The saucepan clattered to the floor. I could feel the tickle of impending tears. “Should I bow? Curtsey? Prostate myself in grateful thanks?” My voice cracked. “Be damned!”
He backed. Slowly his gaze traveled my disgusting rags. “Cleanse yourself, for Lord Shiva’s sake.” Then he melted away, leaving me standing there befuddled.
“That’s the pot calling the kettle black!” I yelled belatedly. A puzzled crease formed between those black brows as he turned back. Meaningfully I flicked his shirt, cocking a hip and elbow in uneasy defiance.
“The pot calling…?”
He looked down where I pointed. “The kettle black. Oh!” He threw his head back, laughing. Then in a confusing change of attitude, he abruptly said, “Enough! This is serious, Bach cha.”
“Stop calling me Bach cha!”
“If you behave as a child you will be called one. Now! You will pleasure the maharajah if he so chooses. As he so wishes. You are to have another chance. Do not waste it. I can do no more.”
He pushed me aside, leaving me with the broom, the wet rags, and dirty dishes.
To me, it appeared he fled—and left me with the ghost of the brush of his lips on my mouth and an ache where it should not be.
Chapter Six
Seraglio
Two eunuchs, Tweedledee and Tweedledum, one placid as a cow, the other grim with invisible lips, came for me where I slept in a kitchen alcove. Do they order them by the yard? asked my imp. One nudged his block of a chin, stumping after me like a squat footstool. My heart froze in my throat. They would take me back to the maharajah…he was right.
Madhuri, with a knowing look, made no protest but gave me a small nod and smile that reached her sad, drooping eyes.
As they herded me, I noted my surroundings this time, coming from the kitchens, even though opulent and staggering, seemed different from before, though I had only the sketchiest notion of the vast palace’s outlay. After a half hour of parading through colonnaded corridors and gardens, and after the unlocking of an unusually stout, padlocked, barred entry, I heard the twittering of many birds as we entered an atrium beneath candy-bright canopies lofting in the torrid air. The twittering, which reached a crescendo when I stepped inside, ceased as the eyes of many women turned to watch me with bird-like interest.
Involuntarily, I scanned twenty-foot walls for an overhanging tree or a breach of some sort and saw none. Still, I was freer.
I’ve come up in the world.
The garden was alive with beautiful women of exotic plumage, chattering like a swell of gulls swooping over a sea of words.
The dungeon cell and palace kitchens had left my hair dull and dun and my skin mottled from steam, hands chapped, legs bruised, and bare feet calloused from the flagstones. No wonder these lovely creatures stared.
I recognized the place as a seraglio, or hareem, where women dwelt—some as young as twelve, I surmised, and achingly lovely as only the young can be. I moved hesitantly among them. They parted like the Red Sea, holding their fragile silks close. Older women eyed me with amusement or, if from rural areas, indifference. They’d seen worse, and been spared the poverty and premature aging by the lottery of their birth-beauty. A few followed with dead eyes from cold slabs of faces, and these bothered me the most, but most smiled, with lovely almond eyes of acceptance.
Then I saw little Asha.
Chapter Seven
Dangerous Games
Asha crouched beside me, my mascot, my champion, my friend as days passed. Asha’s tittle-tattle wasn’t malicious but more to school me. “Watch out for Chandrakanta,” she whispered. “She will take your combs.” Or, “Lakshmi will say you cheat at Parcheesi!”
That’s tolerable. I will not be lingering, I vowed. Asha innocently explained which city lay outside the walls, and in what state, though it brought me no closer to remembering or being able to plan an effective escape.
And just how will you manage that? my imp sneered.
“Never mind. I’ll find a way. Give me time. Let me think!”
I timed the eunuchs prowling the perimeter walls, playing up to one slightly more amenable, which was like wooing a stone. His eyes didn’t flicker below my forehead.
Asha clung. Having her follow me was the last thing I wanted, fearing she’d draw attention, or wish to flee with me. There I was wrong but could not ken it then. Ferreting chances of escape was solitary work.
I studied her little monkey face, despairing as I repeated, “Meri Hindi kucch khaas nahi hai! My Hindi is bad!”
However, I learned, “Can you help me? Kya aap meri madad hain?” Not knowing with what. I needed help with everything.
Little Asha shyly told me her name meant either Wish, Hope, or Desire, possibly all three, and introduced me to the pitfalls of being enclosed with females all fighting over the same shiny object, mainly the maharajah’s affection and—his seed.
I shuddered as I covertly studied them.
Most were supple, lovely, with huge slanted eyes as black as olives. Skin tones ranged from a russet peach, to hickory, to even a Chinese girl as pale as yellow roses.
I stood out like a hulking sunflower in a field o
f poppies, or so I imagined.
“From what country are you?” an older woman named Damayanti demanded.
“I—I don’t remember.”
Damayanti looked disenchanted.
Another poked my chest, giggling, “Choochii!” mimicking a large bosom with cupped hands. I crossed my arms. True, I was larger than most with their silk saris riding their jiggly little bumps.
“What chudai khana did they drag you from?”
I turned at the sound of spite in any language from a sloe-eyed lovely marred by a resentful face. Asha retorted something sharp. Apparently, being in a chudai khana was no place good.
“Oww! She pinched me,” I hissed as the beauty swept by. “Chudai khana?” I queried.
“A…a place where men go to women…for… for…” and Asha made a universal gesture to indicate what took place there.
“Oh.” I subsided. Then, hotly, “And what makes this place any different than a tarted-up brothel?”
Asha cocked her head. “Bro-thel?”
“Oh, never mind!” I said crossly, eyeing a monkey as it stole a date and scampered over the wall. I sighed. “So easy if one is a monkey.”
A willowy girl little more than a child, with a jewel hanging from a diadem between her eyes, seeing my distress, spoke gently. “You will see the maharajah soon. Chinta mat karo! Do not worry! He will surely want you. You are…”
“Different?” I snapped, feeling like a proper grump. Oh, yes, very, I thought mutinously. I caught Asha’s sweet face, usually half-hidden under her ghoon ghat, or her large earrings, or with a loop of ebon hair hiding the small burn scar, and uncharitably wondered what she was doing here. Little insignificant Asha.
“You want to leave? To escape?” Asha stared with dismay when I confided.
I sighed and surveyed the seraglio. “Indeed,” I breathed. Yet a traitorous part of me saw the wretchedly handsome man from the kitchens everywhere from the corner of my eye, and felt the strength and warmth of his lips on mine when I least expected it.
****
The ladies of the seraglio occupied themselves with hairdressing, body painting, armfuls of bangles, spats, and endless games. Boredom manifested itself in gorging, fighting over stolen combs, cutthroat Parcheesi, Ganifa, or Raja Rani, where players using slips of paper guessed who was named.
Restless as a cricket on a spring night, I viewed the girls’ roughhousing, longing to join them for once—just to run. Kho Kho meant chasing from one side to the other, where one hoydenish team, saris tucked up, knelt in a line cheering, “Go Aaditi!” Get up, Kushi!” “Don’t be crybaby, Lakshmi!”
Or so I translated. I entered a simpler game called gilli danda, where girls ran with sticks flicking the gilli with what was apparently the danda, soon laughing as if I were one of them.
“We used to play that when we were children,” Asha said wistful.
You still are a child. I studied Asha. And you will forever stay that way until you are a toothless crone with no life beyond this gilded cage. I vowed I would not be among them, running about with a stick to pass the hours.
Treacherously, between searches for weak, untended spots, my thoughts increasingly winged back to a dreary scullery—and the devastating gypsy and his strong, muscular arms, lithe body, and full lips pressing mine, wondering if I would ever behold him again. By accident, of course.
As I meandered, smiling prettily, innocently, I observed patterns and cliques, even attempting to enter a game like Mah Jong to listen to gossip, now I understood a few words, but it came to nothing. The rules were thick as sticky rice.
Surely, some had trysts or secret places, even outside the walls. But with whom? A sentry? Some eunuchs were handsome, and if one were lonely enough, an unlikely liaison might be compelling. They must have a way out.
Chapter Eight
Maharajah’s Birthday
My chance came unexpectedly. At dawn, ladies abandoned games to feverishly apply cosmetics and try on parades of saris, jettisoning what they didn’t like as if they were dust rags. Hot eyes gleamed, and even though my Hindi was on a child’s level, I caught the spicy chitchat until eunuchs herded us off, keeping us close together in case any foolhardy male would attempt to sweep away with a bit of sari-clad crumpet.
The passage through the palace, with me gaping in wonder at the fairytale splendor, ivory and marble whatzits, jewels, tapestries, swags, fringes, mosaics, and ceramic urns taller than myself, eventually numbed, and we came onto a pavilion of billowing white silk canopies snapping in the humid breeze while shielding us from a cobalt hot sky.
“You will like this, Sa—ree! Wait and see,” Asha chirped happily as we filed to floor cushions across from a dais with three throne-like chairs, one of them enormous.
I hid behind my ghoon ghat, the silky half-veil tossed over the face at the approach of a male not a close relative—which in my case was every male in the known universe.
Chapter Nine
Weight in Rubies
Across from us were ranged women in descending order according to their age, it appeared. They resembled Easter eggs in a gilded carton. “The wives!” Asha whispered, overloud. “And there’s the maharani!”
I directed my eyes toward the dais. The young, enchanting maharani looked up once. Her elongated dark eyes were as opaque as stones.
The throne chair, big enough for an elephant, was still empty.
“He will come soon! He is a very great man!” Asha giggled behind her veil.
Not missing Asha’s childish joke, I felt the earth move.
Asha nudged. “You may look now.” I sucked in, shutting my eyes.
“Sar—eeee!”
“Okay, Asha!”
“Yes, he does affect us all. You see!”
Yes, I saw him, all right, in daylight. He had not improved. Six massive aides strained under a palanquin where he squatted cross-legged, looking like nothing more than a pumpkin beneath a turban, in turn, resembling a silk squash—a heap of slag inside a sumptuous tent circumnavigated by a sash that a row of waiting dancing girls could fit within. He sagged with sashes, badges, braid, and gilt, all held with an enameled brooch as big as my fist. A forest of white plumes swayed above his massive head, fastened with another jeweled trinket surmounting the turban like the top of a gilded teapot.
The supreme being of all Rajasthan heaved to his feet, aided by two enormous eunuchs, and stumped up to the dais. I watched in suspense as they, with trembling limbs, lowered him to the throne.
Eyes lost between rolls of fat like slabs of butter, the maharajah surveyed his fawners, even from my humble place, I imagined waves of perfumed heat as from a midden on a hot India summer day.
I softened. Poor man, to be so disgusting.
Even then, his pudgy hand, clotted with rings, pawed a platter of sweets the size of a small table, blindly stuffing in the entire handful as he raked the crowd with a gaze of serene malevolence.
I shivered despite the humidity as anthracite eyes slowly rolled over the lovelies, each more lithesome than the other, all arrayed in front of him like more sweets.
Asha sighed, contented. “It is good to be part of the hareem. Otherwise, I would miss this.” She waved her tiny hand. I struck it down. “Don’t! You will be noticed.”
“But I…?”Asha opened her lips, astonished. “But that is why we are here!” I did not catch the rest. Checked by the petal smoothness of Asha’s right cheek and the way her lips glistened as if smeared with honey, I looked from her to the maharajah.
Oh, the poor thing. Most assuredly, this monstrous tub of lard will want her even with her scar, eventually. I would almost take her place. The maharajah’s mouth enveloped a glob of something yellow and sucked his fingers.
Maybe not.
Even the maharani cast a sour sideways glance.
The pumpkin-like head pivoted. His eyes moved on, then rolled greasily back and, as marbles clicking at a roulette table, dropped and stared straight at me.
I shive
red, drawing the whisper of silk more across my face and ducking behind little Asha, no easy thing.
“What are we doing here?” I whispered faintly.
“Oh!” Asha chattered happily, explaining while I sorted through my sad vocabulary.
Anniversary? Celebration?
“Day of birth,” the child elaborated. “The maharajah’s birthday! We weigh him! The maharajah is worth his weight in pearls. Or diamonds!” She clapped tiny hands. “This year, rubies! Oh! How lovely it will be!”
The small one blushed and nudged me, and my world forever changed. “The rajah is here!”
I squinted, vexed that I was growing slightly nearsighted, and expecting a younger but still grossly heavy version as overindulged as the birthday boy.
Instead, my gypsy navigated the throng like a sleek yacht parting the seas. As filtered sun hit his arresting face, his walnut complexion changed to the russet of a ripe peach.
I scowled.
He was at once beautiful and masculine, his beard and mustache trimmed in a pattern unbecoming in the West, full lips pressed forbiddingly between. His eyes, darkly gleaming as obsidian, were heavy, hooded, drooping at the corners—“bedroom eyes” in some quarters.
I watched the striking figure stride, graceful as a jungle panther, to the dais. An iridescent peacock feather, fastened by a large pearl surrounded by emeralds, was the only color he wore. It swayed atop a satin turban. A wide pearl choker clasped his neck. More pearls swagged down his broad chest. Again, the simplicity of white against white was perfection.
I started, looking down at Asha’s small hand, shaking me.
“The maharajah’s brother! Next in line—his favorite. Mine too!”
Oh, yes, I knew him well. He who was last seen skulking around the scullery, groping any women he fancied. Ohh! Drat!
Miserably, I studied the man as he neared the dais. I despised him.
Oh, really? Is that why you keep watching? Is that why you crane your neck so?
“Oh, do shut up!” I spoke aloud.
Sary and the Maharajah's Emeralds Page 5
