Sary and the Maharajah's Emeralds

by Sharon Shipley

Asha regarded me oddly. “Sar-eee. I do not understand.”

  “Neither do I.”

  I squeezed Asha’s hand. “I meant nothing.” It did not stop me peeking through the ghoon ghat, however.

  The carnal lines of the full lips that had brushed my own were now pressed as if disavowing the spectacle as he bowed slightly to both the maharajah and the maharani.

  I tore my gaze away and watched the maharajah dig a finger in his ear. I winced and quickly switched back to the prince—or whatever the Hades he was called—as he effortlessly composed himself on a throne slightly below the maharajah’s, one pointed slipper in front, presenting an elegant line. The audience rippled with admiration.

  Mimicking Asha’s excitement, I turned. Murmurs rose, and with one intake of breath, the throng craned at the creaking groan of cartwheels.

  The maharajah’s small eyes slanted impatiently sideways at four men laboring to haul a garlanded cart toting a huge brass balance scale like one in a butcher shop, if ten times larger. From a sturdy post, large flat pans swung wildly, clanging, from thick metal chains. What on God’s green earth…?

  I watched, mystified, as the maharajah ponderously rose in quiveringly gelatinous stages, tottering in thunderous steps as aides, not without peril, lowered his immense bottom onto one of the pans.

  Chains creaked. The pan with the maharajah clanked to the floor, while the other shot up. Another cart groaned up, hauling five bulging velvet bags as large as hundred-pound rice sacks.

  Asha clapped her hands. Excited murmurs rose. I watched, perplexed, as bearers shoveled from the bags rattling heaps of glittering stones. Pink, violet, blood-red to almost black-garnet, faceted or smooth as quail eggs, the scarlet pebbles were tipped onto the empty balance while the maharajah jerkily rose inch by inch with each shovelful of jewels.

  “Sa—reee, look!”

  I assessed not one stone of this fiery pile was less than five carats.

  As the stones clattered higher and higher, the maharajah yawned…and as the saucers balanced, quivering under the strain, they added one last ruby. The balance swayed and settled.

  “You see!” Asha timidly patted me.

  More than you think, child.

  The audience applauded.

  The maharajah’s perilous way back to his throne was difficult to watch.

  The murmuring crowd groaned with satisfaction. After more ceremony, and after the dancing girls danced and the rest of the gifts were bestowed, everyone prepared to leave.

  “Come, before the sweets are demolished!” Indeed. Spectators flooded discreetly to the food pavilions.

  Asha insinuated her tiny body through the restrained stampede to a sumptuous array of food like a needle through cloth. A bangle with tiny bells caught my veil, pulling it aside. As I looked back, automatically smiling forgiveness, my gaze caught on the wretchedly handsome rajah—or prince or whatever he was.

  Flustered, I lost Asha but found her plastered to a buffet, inhaling hot breads, curries, and sweets. I threw both appetite and waistline to the fates, despite realizing it was vital on some important but vague level that I remain reasonably attractive. To Hades with that!

  Drowning disquiet, I selected coconut dumplings that looked like rows of tiny yellow turbans, with the unlovely name of modak. Plucking two modak, I moved on to towers of cherry-bright balls of gulab jamun, reluctantly turning to plainer trays of pani pori.

  I need meat. Seraglio fare leaned heavily to sweets, oily fried goods, rich vegetable curries, squares of potato dumplings, and peas. I moved on to spicy kachori balls, djhal muri and dahi vada with yoghurt sauce, and tureens of pork vindaloo and duck. Nibbling as I grazed, I felt the eyes of the “sisters of the veil” amazed and disapproving. Lovely! Grimacing a smile, I mugged while gulping a lentil ball.

  “Always did have a robust appetite,” I mumbled, stuffing another pearly globe of sweet sohan papdi in my mouth…and froze.

  I revolved, taking in the vast pavilion.

  What in the Sam Hill am I doing?

  You are stuffing your mouth, my imp suggested helpfully.

  I dropped the other pearly globe, smashing it underfoot in my heedless scanning of the crowd.

  Stupid, stupid! There may be no other time! Everyone is fixed on food and gossip. No one will notice! Go—Go!

  I choked down another sohan papdi and pulled at my veil, hiding my telltale hair. The crowd was lulled and dulled by food and that peculiar weighing ceremony, yet opportunity fled like a thief. Knotting a bag made out of the hem of my sari, I tossed in mostly breads, recognizing from somewhere in my prudent past that it was needful to be prepared. A shame to leave so many sticky treats—I eyed the pork vindaloo. Aware of a few noticing my odd behavior, I stopped…

  The crowd perversely pressed closer. I forced my way through, craning for the nearest exit, already planning my escape.

  I would nip across greenswards, hide in foliage, and sneak past sentries until I stumbled on an unguarded gate. I looked up at the freedom of the sky, now a water coloring of evening flowing into India’s inky darkness. Soon, I promised, I can easily melt into India’s shambolic street scene. Let the devil take the hindmost. There, I’ll surely figure out who the Hades I am; recognize someone. Something!

  In my agony to be gone, seconds dragged like an errant child yanking my skirts as I swam, like a fish upstream, through the chattering throng massed about the tables.

  There—ahead, past that knot of elderly aunties. I could taste freedom.

  “Sar-eeee?”

  I heard my name with the shock of ice down my neck.

  “You don’t need to take food!” Asha looked reproving. It would have been comical on one so young if I weren’t so distracted. “What are you doing? They will feed you!”

  The broad open arch just ahead. I can almost touch the wall hanging… Asha raced alongside, looking back, worried. “Sar-ree! What is wrong?”

  I studied the innocent with the schoolmarm frown. Beyond Asha, I saw the rajah staring blank-faced at me, and a sentry forcing his way through the crowd. “Asha! Let go!” I hissed. The sentry knocked the aunties aside. I screamed inwardly, “Let go, you wretched girl!”

  You are creating quite a little drama, nagged my imp.

  Giving an exasperated yank, I edged outside. “Asha!” I looked at her helplessly.

  More turbans bobbed toward us, cutting through the crowd.

  I pulled her away when guards, looking back for instructions, finally surrounded us.

  “Go, Asha.” I looked meaningfully at the guards. “You’d best go.”

  So much for discretion. Haven’t thought this out, have you? You will now, my girl, I heard my imp nag.

  “But—Sar-eee!” Asha reluctantly backed up an inch, refusing to abandon me even then.

  ****

  On the dais, the maharajah stared sullenly at the disturbed mob. His birthday was spoiled. What was this outrageous disturbance? All eyes should be on him.

  The maharani wasn’t certain of the cause, but the pale, unattractive foreign girl was in distress, and her esteemed husband was about to hurl thunder and lightning her way. So far he hadn’t seen the cause of the ripples.

  She smiled. Looking in a calculating way at her husband, the maharani gestured to the servants to bring the next course.

  The maharajah’s understanding had almost arrived as to what was occurring—when arrived in front of him a steaming plate of honey-roasted duck. Fanning herself, the maharani looked on, amused, watching her husband tuck in. It wasn’t often she got her own back.

  Her brother-in-law shared a quiet smile. She nodded at Sary. He bowed from the waist and gestured. The guards, noting the rajah’s careless wave, released Sary, stiff with uncertainty.

  ****

  Deep in the seraglio, a discreet note on foolscap, penned in block print in black print, affixed with a splotch of red wax, lay on my pillow when we all returned, bedraggled and abounding with gossip and excitement of the day. It advised: Is this w
hat you seek? Next time will not be so agreeable. Take heed of your actions.

  I paced like a caged tiger. Time stretched like a scarf knitted by inexpert knitters, not knowing quite when to quit. Little did I guess my days were to become even more knotted and incomprehensible.

  Chapter Ten

  Broken-Winged Butterfly

  They came as before, amid the hareem’s intense speculation, old Padmavati and her handmaidens. A cold snake of bitterness coiled deep in my belly. In the past weeks I had been dulled by the sameness of stodgy fare, gossip, routine, and spiteful childlike squabbles over trifles, high drama here but irksome for me yet as I endlessly stalked the perimeter without seeming to, trying to spy out any breach. The seraglio or hareem provided an exquisite view of a large artificial lake to one end, through sheltered colonnades where one strolled in cooling breezes, a respite from the heat. Some of the ladies even swam or waded, affording me also an artificial sense of freedom, tantalizing and adding to my frustration.

  So now I foolishly quarreled with Padmavati, more to be irritating than for any other reason. “Why me? No one raves about my beauty. I am not young and nubile as most! I have no special skills.” I felt my face grow red over what some of those special skills involved.

  After the first startled look, since she knew no English, she decided I was touched. “I don’t want to be made pretty!” I raged on. “Your beautifying routines put witches’ covens to shame!” I knocked a few pots off the table and stomped away to be returned by a eunuch to a stoic Padmavati with a blank expression on her face. I sat bolt upright with a grim expression and let them pommel me. I would not make it easy.

  Smoothing turmeric paste, called uptan, on their skin, they washed it off, leaving their flesh blooming with the peachy glow of a nectarine. They warmed coconut wax, rubbing it in their thick black hair, and combed until a gleaming satin shawl hung to their waist, then sat in the sun.

  I had fought those attempts to beautify me. The same treatments would leave my face yellow and my hair a greasy dun hanging in pathetic strings. Now I wished I had let them.

  High above, the maharani observed me from a cloistered walk. I thought she cast a sympathetic eye before moving on. I stood up abruptly, stung by that look, knocking over the cosmetic tray, sending bright powders and paints flying, hauled back by Padmavati’s steely fingers, and plunked on the stool—repeatedly, until the elder summoned the eunuch, who placed hands like sandbags on my shoulders.

  I clenched my mouth, twisting my face until Padmavati threatened with a wicked-looking hairbrush. “Chinta mat karo!”

  “You tell me not to worry!” I had learned some halting Hindi and now looked daggers at the older woman.

  Choice seems to be a luxury, my imp prodded as the eunuch eyed me speculatively. Holding me fast while I clenched my jaw, they rimmed my eyes again with thick kohl until I saw a green-eyed cat staring back from the mirror. They crimsoned my mouth and anointed knees, ears, and crooks of my elbows with jasmine. I felt lightheaded, as if the pungent fragrance soaked up all the oxygen.

  “Mujhey samajh mein nahi aataa?”

  “I do not understand,” I pleaded. “Please do not take me back to that loathsome creature you hold in such…” I floundered. “Such dumbfounding esteem.”

  I was near screaming as they floated over me another filmy sari, gossamer as dragonfly wings, expertly winding it about my trembling body.

  Why not a winding sheet and let me die?

  I stared at the copper mirror. The wide-eyed face looking back was as wavery green as I felt inside.

  I smiled grimly. Perhaps the maharajah will suffocate from the overpowering reek of my perfume… And I picked up a small sharp fruit knife.

  Looking down at the rest of me, I though what a pity it was, to waste all this finery. Gilt threads wove through diaphanous pink silk, and gold embroidery embellished a hem studded with rubies, pink pearls, and crystals that danced about my ankles.

  I gasped—ashamed I should think so well of myself.

  Padmavati casting a dark warning eye as though to say, “Don’t move!” and daubed the red dot between my dark painted brows.

  This is where I began. Tarted up, like a Christmas goose. I had gained nothing.

  Even so, I shrank when they brought out henna and traced designs on my hands—like they would for a bride. Padmavati fitted a pearl choker on me from chin to breastbone. “Pearls before swine” had never had so much meaning.

  Assessing me as if I were furniture they contemplated buying, they nodded, tucking in stray hairs, re-crimsoning lip paint I’d bitten off, and dabbing more perfumed oil. Padmavati, shaking her head, removed the fruit knife from my nerveless fingers.

  I stood, stoic, while the seraglio drifted by ogling, assessing, offering unwished for advice as they transformed me to semi-goddess.

  “Be compliant,” they whispered shyly.

  “Don’t look at him…close your eyes,” a soft voice offered with a hint of laughter.

  “Raise your hips—the baby will take!” An older inmate cackled in my ear.

  I swiveled as a heartbreakingly lovely girl tapped my shoulder. “But you are so old! The maharajah will never want you!” Genuinely concerned.

  “I’m only twenty-six!” Am I?

  “Your hair is yellow like dead grass!” This from a woman I thought was called Ravinder, who cheated me at the game of dehla pakad.

  Asha helpfully translated. I scarcely heard. I wanted to sink like rain into sun-cracked earth.

  I fixated on the ornamental knife on a copper tray holding fruit, stealing it back. I did not wish to leave this earth, yet I knew equally well I’d never again let the maharajah touch me. One way or another, my future was cast.

  The other women receded. Even little Asha seemed to suppose I was untouchable and therefore hazardous in some unspoken manner.

  As the afternoon wore on and I sweltered under the canopy, under the weight of jewels and heavy makeup, my fear gave way to tedium.

  They brought me naan and chai. I couldn’t eat. I would dearly regret that later.

  By the sun, it was nearly four.

  Still no one came.

  Chapter Eleven

  Secret Tunnels

  Fear gave way to annoyance when from the edge of my veil I noted a young woman sidle up as if she did not wish to attract attention. Preeta idly arranged an ornamental pin in her sleek hair, dropping it as if by accident at my feet.

  Irritably, I tucked in my toes.

  “You wish to leave, Saree?” Preeta hissed, as she rose from her crouch, watching me closely with her curious, almost yellow eyes. “To escape?” She continued after checking the hareem. “I see you do. I am your friend. I wish to help. Meet me at the big fountain.” She slanted her yellow eyes to a water feature across the way, fronting one of the twenty-foot walls.

  “Behind the shell,” she whispered. “Before they come for you. Hurry.” Preeta receded in the mingle of females. “I hear them coming,” she hissed, jabbing at the large scallop shell rearing up ten feet, across the vast seraglio, from which water cascaded into a reflecting pool filled with lotus. The pool’s wide rim was a popular gossiping spot. Many times, I rested there fanning and planning escape. It would be even more private behind the enormous shell, I supposed, but to what purpose? Is there a doorway leading outside? my imp sneered.

  Still, I sat frozen.

  Preeta, without another glance but giving a slight shrug, moved off in a leisurely way, as if she had never halted, but heading toward the shell.

  Padmavati and her “assassins” were nowhere. Women settling, their gossip now a drowsy drone as if boring even themselves, left cards and games scattered for servants to clear, among demolished sweets, languidly drifting to their quarters.

  I waited overlong. They will be here any second. Where is she? Then I spied Preeta’s tall, red-veiled head. I shot up and skirted the mass, suddenly desperate, keeping the red veil in view as a lifeline in a sea of women.

  I
saw Asha in passing and fiercely shook my head. Can’t worry about her now, at least until I see what Preeta offers. I gathered my sari, kept my head down, and edged behind a row of palms in planters to the scallop shell.

  ****

  Dusk swept up the last bit of daylight, dumping it beyond the walls, as I nipped behind the shell’s cool, damp shelter smelling of lime and faint mildew. Black and green mottled the unfinished backside. Carpeted in wet moss, it was home to thumb-size toads that hopped about my feet and lizards that darted into crevices. Clammy, but not unpleasant. The air was deliciously cool. Water pipes ran from the fountain’s back to the wall.

  Preeta perched on one such pipe, lighting a cigarette from an ornate lighter—forbidden. I hungered for the thing. Another surprise, eyeing a litter of water-soaked stubs. It wasn’t the first time she’d tarried here.

  “I cannot hide here forever!” I hadn’t realized how high my hopes had soared.

  Preeta’s unusual eyes—dark-ringed pale amber irises blackly rimmed with kohl—seemed ghostly in her olive face, but her mouth was large, sensuous, and alive. Preeta always gave me the shivers as she narrowed those yellow eyes assessing me from afar, running her tongue over full lips, or when I turned quickly to find her just staring at me.

  I shivered now.

  “How can you help? Are you—” I cut off my questions, nervous. Time would be better spent planning a battle of wits. I peered outside. Am I missed?

  Preeta narrowed those cat’s eyes, reassessing. “You wish to escape? To leave? I can help, chut marike!” Preeta spoke flatly.

  She just called you an idiot, said the little voice inside me.

  “Well, aren’t I?” I answered imp.

  Preeta rose, grinding out the rolled cigarette and showing sharp white teeth in what I assumed was a reassuring smile.

  “Come—come! Jaldi karo! Mere saath aaeeyé!”

  “Where?” I looked about with sinking heart. Preeta had gone as crazy as the rest of them.

  She pointed down. All I saw was a snarl of pipe, some as thick as my waist, and crusty valves, thrusting from the shell into an opening in the wall after crossing the three-foot gap in which we stood. “I will lead you. You want to leave the palace? Yes?”