Tiger Claws

by John Speed

  “Get dressed, uncle,” Basant whispers. “We must go quickly.” The man scowls at him; he has found his inner turban and he begins to wrap his long hair. Hurry, hurry, you old oaf, Basant thinks, the harem soon will wake. On the man’s chest Basant sees a patchwork of livid scars. One runs the length of his body, from his left shoulder to his right hip.

  The man puts on his robe; it hangs down nearly to his ankles, Bijapuri-style. He gathers his underwear, turban, and belt and rolls them into a tight ball, then stands and pushes them roughly at Basant. He is used to having others care for him. Basant takes the bundle while the man searches for his cloak.

  The princess stirs but doesn’t wake—her hair falls back from the fine features of her round face, and she hugs a pillow to her perfect breasts. Basant watches her, fascinated.

  Suddenly he yelps at a sharpness in his side. The man has crept up beside him and now prods him with his knife—still sheathed, but to Basant the point of the sheath is as unpleasant as the point of a dagger.

  “Let’s go.” The man pokes him again. “No, wait,” he says. He pivots Basant roughly by the arm, turning to face him. He is short, not much taller than Basant, and his black eyes are empty and terrifying, like a tiger’s eyes. “Let’s get one thing straight. You take me to the Delhi Gate. Understand? No tricks. And no tunnels!”

  “No tunnels, uncle? How shall I keep you hidden?”

  “I know all about the tunnels. And about the well. You get me? No tricks. No tunnels. No well. Understood?”

  “But what well, uncle?” But even Basant can hear that this response is unconvincing.

  The man lets out a long hiss. “The Delhi Gate. Now.”

  Again the point probes Basant’s ribs. “But uncle, how shall I take you there safely?”

  “I’ll tell you how, hijra.” The cruelty of the term is not lost on Basant. “We’ll go to your rooms. You have rooms nearby, don’t you? I’ll put on clothes like a eunuch and we’ll walk right out, our heads held high. Understood? Like men, except …” He chuckles at his own wit.

  Swiftly Basant considers his options and finds none. With a last glance at his princess, he draws back the drape and walks swiftly to a shadowy corner. The man follows him step for step.

  Basant looks for the next shadow, and the next, tracing a zigzag path that leads to the eunuchs’ apartments. He becomes almost confident. There are no guards at the doorways; once the emperor has retired, only his Tartar women guard his bedroom; guards above suspicion and beyond attack. Sentries patrol only the perimeter, but they face outward, and are easy to avoid by sticking to the shadows and creeping silently along the walls.

  They come to the mezzanine overlooking the enormous water tank at the foot of the stairs. Only the edge of the tank is in shadow; the walkway is lit by the lamps in niches along the walls of the Fish Building.

  Basant is disgusted to have to live in a place called the Fish Building; he is sure it has been named that just to insult the eunuchs who live there. It is well known the nautch girls call the eunuchs “fish.”

  They step swiftly along the edge of the mezzanine. Basant now sees his door and hurries toward it. Too quickly. His foot strikes a night bucket some fool has left at the tank’s edge. He stumbles. The bucket clatters as it rolls; it falls, clanging twice with a sound like a broken gong that fills the night. The echo takes forever to fade.

  Basant fears he will die, and wants to. Then he feels a rough hand grab his robes; his collar bites his neck, strangling him so he gasps for air. The princess’s lover drags him along the edge of the tank. If there are any more buckets here, Basant thinks, this will be a good way to find them. But the man moves furiously, carelessly. “Where? Where?” he whispers through clenched teeth. Basant points miserably toward his door.

  The man shuts the door, his teeth clenched so tightly that it’s clear he restrains his fury only with enormous effort. “You were drunk and you stepped out to pee. Understand?” They hear the soft knock at the door.

  Sharp steel whispers as the dark man draws his blade. Then he presses against the wall: when the door opens, he’ll be hidden behind it.

  Basant cracks open one side of his double door. “Evening, Basant,” says Muhedin, the sentry captain. “Everything all right?”

  “Certainly, captain.” Basant can scarcely believe his voice works. “I was a little drunk and went to pee, and …”

  “Mind if I come in and have a look around?”

  “Actually, it’s not too convenient, uncle. I’m afraid I had a bit of an accident. It happens to us mukhunni sometimes: just a splash of urine, but so unpleasant …” Basant tries to give a laugh.

  “Is anyone there with you, Basant?”

  Of course there is, Basant wants to say. Can’t you hear him breathing? Can’t you smell the garlic? “No, uncle,” Basant replies.

  “The thing is, someone thinks they saw two persons out there, Basant. Someone thinks they both came in here.”

  Basant can’t breathe. Perhaps, if he played it right, he could manage to have Muhedin kill this awful smelly man. A thief, uncle! Sneaking into the palace, uncle! He made me bring him here! See his ugly dagger! And Basant was good at lying. But as he considers this, he feels a sharp jab beneath his arm; not blunt like before; the tip of that nasty, incessant dagger, now unsheathed and sharp as a needle. Basant wonders how long he has been silent … did it seem unnatural? “No, uncle, I’m fine, all by myself, just a fat old eunuch nobody cares for … .”

  “But we must come in, Basant. Regulations.” Basant hears “we,” and peers through the crack until he sees a second guard behind Muhedin. Good, he thinks. “Oh, two of you,” he says pointedly, glancing at the man as if to say, You are finished now.

  He opens one of the doors, the one that will hide the smelly man—Basant doesn’t wish to die too soon, after all. Outside, Muhedin is smiling pleasantly; but a skinny guard with a drawn sword stands behind him. Basant bows and steps aside, waving them through.

  As Muhedin steps across the threshold, a rough hand thrusts out to push him across the room. He sprawls to the floor.

  He looks up to see Muhedin’s startled face. Before the captain can even reach his sword, the dark man sweeps his knife. The blade glides through the captain’s neck, making a wet slapping noise, like a cleaver cutting cabbage. As Basant watches from the floor, a necklace appears around the front of his neck, like a thin scarlet thread. Then the captain’s head flops backward, and a deep red river erupts from his exposed neck. The captain’s legs buckle, and he falls to his knees: it seems as though he is praying. A shudder runs through his body and he falls over, convulsing, his heart still pumping dark buckets of blood.

  From first step to shuddering death has taken less than a second.

  His weapon still raised, the man now lunges through the door and lurches back, the hand of the other guard locked in his grasp.

  The man yanks the hand so hard that the guard’s head heaves back, chin toward the ceiling. The man thrusts his knife through the soft spot under the guard’s chin and drives the point into his brain.

  The guard’s head snaps forward, and Basant sees his astonished eyes, and his mouth still open, and his tongue pinioned on the blade, squirming on the blade like a pink slug on a skewer.

  Then with vicious force the man wrenches the blade back. The body crumbles next to the captain’s. Other than the sigh of the knife and the soft thuds of bodies falling, there has been not a sound.

  “I am Shaista Khan,” says the man, wiping his blade on the robes of the guard. “I must not be found here.”

  Basant feels liquid warmth at his feet and assumes that he has soiled himself, but then he sees that it is the puddle of Muhedin’s blood that seeps through his jeweled slippers. He swallows back bile.

  Shaista Khan glances up and down the mezzanine. Satisfied, he closes the door, quietly, carefully, and heaves the bolts. Then Shaista Khan arranges the bodies on the floor, forming a sort of dam to contain the blood and shit seeping f
rom them. With unexpected gentleness he moves Basant aside. He bends down, removing Basant’s jeweled slippers with his own hands, and tosses them amidst the bodies and blood. Taking a pillow from the bed, he uses it to mop the floor. Basant’s hands dangle at his side like dead things.

  “Change of plan,” Shaista Khan whispers. “Straight to the Delhi Gate. Dressed as we are. Right now.” Quietly he opens the door; quietly he looks for trouble. “Come. Now. The fools came alone.”

  He steps behind Basant, his hands on Basant’s waist. “I need you, eunuch. I’m lost here. Which way?” whispers Shaista Khan. Basant turns almost imperceptibly. Shaista Khan presses him in that direction, and so they go: Shaista Khan half-follows, half-guides him. Like two odd dancing partners, clinging to the shadows, at last they reach the Delhi Gate.

  CHAPTER 2

  Basant wakes, bathed in sweat.

  He’s in his servant’s tent. Tiny streams of light leak through pin-sized holes in the old fabric punctuating the brown darkness. Outside the muezzin sings the call to morning prayer. Haridas, his servant, is already gone.

  Fears descend on him like biting insects. Though it seems to him he has not slept, through patches of the tent the sun now shines so bright that the air is filled with light. Basant hears the muffled sounds of life going on outside: the calls and chatter, the clangs and rattles of a typical day.

  He creeps to the entry, opens the flap, and blinks at the brightness. He realizes he is barefoot; and in a sudden memory remembers Shaista Khan tossing his blood-soaked slippers on the broken bodies in his rooms. He passes his hand across his brow hoping to drive that image from his mind.

  He steps behind the tent and takes the silver quill from his turban. He eases it into the scar in his groin and pees copiously into an open ditch that acts as sewer. But even as he sighs with relief, the dark image of dead men in his room closes over him like sudden night.

  Haridas, his servant, walks toward him, his freshly shaved head bare in the morning sunlight, his old face lined, but bright and eager.

  “I have brought you clean clothes, son,” he says. “Bathe quickly and put them on.” He motions Basant to a bathing area near his tent. The alley is alive with people, mostly low-level servants and servants of servants, and they stare at Basant as he passes. What is a eunuch of the first rank doing here? they wonder, glancing over their shoulders at him as they pass by.

  “Where did you get these clothes?” Basant asks.

  “From your rooms, son,” Haridas replies.

  “My rooms? You went to my rooms?” Basant licks his lips. “Was anything … amiss?” he asks, as casually as he can manage.

  Basant’s reedy voice seems unusually tense; Haridas sees the panic in his eyes. He sits next to Basant, the clothes in a neat pile on his lap, and pats the eunuch’s shoulder. “When I woke, I saw you would need new clothing for the audience today. So I went to fetch some clothes for you.”

  “Didn’t the guards try to stop you?” Basant asks.

  “I am well known in the Fish House, son. It is my great honor to be known as your servant, and people accord me the respect due the servant of a eunuch of the first rank, and so the guards recognized me.”

  “But did no one ask your business?” Haridas shakes his head no. “Did no one challenge you?” Again, no. “Guards around my rooms?” Haridas frowns uncertainly. “No bodies? No blood?” Basant blurts out at last.

  Haridas sighs, as if suddenly relieved. “You are making a joke with me, son. You will have your fun with your old servant.”

  Basant holds his head in his hands and begins to laugh. Or perhaps to cry. He can no longer tell the difference. Haridas looks on, confused, his shaved head cocked at a quizzical angle, uncertain about what he should do. At last Basant stands, passes his plump palm over his face, and draws a deep breath. “I need to bathe.”

  Twenty buckets of cold water later, Basant feels clean and sweet. His fresh clothes gleam in the morning sun, his gems catch fire in its light. The palace shines like a jeweled casket in the bright sun, the walls glisten like wet pearls: the jasper and carnelian embedded in the flesh-white marble flash as he passes; the carvings in the marble sparkle.

  Basant’s hands tremble as he walks. Behind each column, a guard stands waiting to arrest him. Of that he is sure. He reasons with himself: here in the public palace, no one knows him; he is just another eunuch. See? No one even glances his way. But Basant is certain they mean only to give him false comfort before they pounce like tigers.

  The call of muezzin from the Moti Masjid throws Basant into turmoil. Not now! he thinks. I have no time to pray! But even so Basant stops where he is: touching his ears, touching his knees, bowing in the dusty street. He is too frightened to say his prayers, and too frightened not to pretend to.

  Then the air erupts with the harsh roar of war horns, the clash of cymbals, the booming of elephant drums, a thunderclap of sound.

  It is Dara arriving. The prince spent the night with his armies across the river, and now marches to his father’s audience in full pomp.

  Basant scurries toward the Diwan-i-Am. Not only will he lose face if he is late for Dara’s arrival, but he wants to see!

  Sights and sounds assault him with such immense profusion that all his worry evaporates. Musicians by the hundreds spill through the immense Delhi gate, shoving forward in enthusiastic confusion, and the blare of their music echoes and crescendos through the courtyard.

  Nobles and bureaucrats and a group of newly honored merchants (who have just received grants of land) crowd into the immense arched courtyard Diwan-i-Am. Though the hall is designed to accommodate thousands, today there is scarcely any space to be found. The crowd pushes forward so that people drop from the edges of the dais in a constant human waterfall.

  Finally the musicians blast their instruments mightily as they shove haphazard toward the end of the courtyard. Behind them come row after row of riflemen, with matchlocks gleaming, with turbans piled ridiculously high (it is their regimental pride to wear those sensational turbans); then come five hundred horsemen, their energetic stallions prancing and pawing, crabbing sideways as they look for somewhere to stand.

  The courtyard is jammed with commoners and townspeople who have come to see the spectacle; they press forward in a scramble to find a place, and their crush increases the chaos. By contrast, the nobles stand serenely on a platform near the throne clapping at Dara’s arrival. In the blare of the trumpets and drums, no one hears them.

  Mounted by fierce riders from the mountains and deserts of Rajputana, the war camels now enter in stately ranks through the gates, small cannons gleaming on their humps.

  One by one, the elephants enter as the cheers increase and the drums beat louder. Painted and caparisoned, stately and terrifying, heavy brass war spikes fixed to their brilliant tusks, the elephants are daunting, enormous; they lumber slowly, unconcerned by the noise and chaos.

  At last Basant glimpses Dara, son of the emperor, the heir to the Peacock Throne, resplendent on a gold and red velvet howdah on the back of a giant Ceylon elephant. Dara’s golden turban laced with rubies glitters in the brilliant sun, and his face is no less radiant.

  The common folk in the courtyard rush toward his elephant like bees to a flower: they call and wave in a frenzy as the music crescendos even louder. Dara is another Akbar, another Timur!

  Dara scatters gold from his howdah, and the people roar and paw through the dust to catch the coins, and call out Lord! and King! But Dara in his splendor seems not to hear. His face is resolute, calm. He motions his mahout to guide the elephant forward.

  Basant has been screaming Dara’s name with the rest, though he has been unconscious of doing so. As the elephant moves with glacial pomp toward the hall, and bends its knees before the steps of the dais, the music stops and the crowd grows quiet. In the sudden silence, Dara slips gracefully from the howdah’s height to land with a bouncy spring, like an athlete. With stately dignity he approaches his golden chair at the foot o
f his father’s throne. The nobles on the dais, a sea of bobbing heads and faces, sweep their hands across the ground and motion toward him, heads bowed.

  Dara slides through the crowd. His Rajput bodyguards push along beside him, clearing a path for the prince, but he pretends not to notice and instead walks closer to the crowding nobles, touching a hand, a face. He moves with easy grace through the tumult of faces. When he reaches his golden chair, lifting his hands in acknowledgment of the nobles’ presence, he sits gracefully and shuts his eyes, as if in contemplation.

  Basant glances back. A number of horses move toward the dais. Basant admires the richness of their jeweled headpieces and bright silver bridles, manes braided with gems. The riders, he supposes, are Dara’s generals and advisers; but these were not the ones that Dara typically brings to an audience.

  Basant recognizes few of the faces.

  Then he sees one he knows.

  No, he tells himself. But it’s true.

  A compact man briskly mounts the dais. Basant recognizes not his face, but his walk: he moves like a coiled spring. His dress is simpler than the others but no less elegant: few jewels but large ones, simple cloth but expensive. From his silk sash hangs a sword in a plain leather scabbard, its handle of ivory, not gold, and the ivory is dark with use.

  And there’s that dagger, a dagger and a sheath, and Basant knows the feel of both.

  The general notices Basant as he passes, and seems about to nod, then shakes his head as if realizing his error. But Basant’s blood has frozen at the sight of him: Shaista Khan, the general; Shaista Khan, the seducer; Shaista Khan, the murderer.

  Another assault of trumpets and drums blares from the Drum House of Delhi Gate. Basant’s head jerks up, startled out of his panic.

  Three lone horsemen ride toward the dais. Two are mounted on elaborately liveried stallions. Their silk jama robes flutter in the morning breeze, jeweled headpieces and sword hilts glitter in the sun. They dismount and wait for the third rider to come.