by John Speed
Karm shakes his head, but Basant pays no attention. He struggles to break the wax and pull the stopper, but his hands are numb and trembling. No good. He starts to place the glass between his teeth. Why not chew it open, he thinks, swallow it all, even the glass—what difference does it make?
Karm howls and grabs at his hand.
The vial flies off into the river.
Gone.
Basant’s mouth opens, lips quivering, teeth chattering, but no words come out this time, only a strangled groan. He falls to his knees in the water, half laughing, half sobbing. Then suddenly, vehemently, Basant thrusts his head beneath the water and tries to inhale.
Instead of holding him down, Basant feels Karm’s enormous hand pull him from the water. “Why?” Basant cries. “Why?”
Karm places his great hands on Basant’s shoulders, and lowers his heavy shaggy head as though he were about to kiss him. Basant feels his body being tilted backward into the water.
Basant thinks: This is my last breath!
The eunuch’s eyes dart in every direction: he sees the cold stars, the thumbnail moon, the firelight flickering through the trees, the haze of dawn along the river’s edge. He glances one last time at the dome of the tomb. On the plinth a shadow stares toward him. Somehow he knows it is Aurangzeb, come to watch him die. Watch then, he thinks, watch and be damned.
As Karm leans him backward into the water, Basant’s consciousness floats from his body, from the space behind his eyes to some great height where there is no cold.
I can see everything from here!
He sees the endless, sacred river flowing gently to the sea far away.
Life is wonderful!
He sees Aurangzeb staring from the plinth and traces each pathetic feature of the prince’s face—the weakness of his eyes, the fear that plays along his lips.
You are pitiful!
He watches a giant gently lower a trembling eunuch into the cold river.
How funny!
He sees one final time the brilliant horns of the crescent moon as it rises above the silvering sky.
I always loved you!
And suddenly he is back, trapped inside his horrible, choking body, gasping as his head is thrust into the water.
He sputters and churns and refuses to drown.
Through the water that laps over his eyes he sees the giant’s anguished, determined face. He feels the water bubble into his ears and the cold, stinging burn as it fills his lungs. Finally he feels the giant’s thumbs upon his windpipe like weights, and hears a crunching crack.
And then all is light.
CHAPTER 5
Tanaji sleeps in the manger.
Or rather he does not sleep. He barely fits: one rail digs into his thick shoulder, and his sandals hang in the air. But at least the manger is clean—uncomfortable, but not dirty like the fouled straw of the stable floor. A man my age needs a bed, Tanaji thinks; a man of my position should not sleep in dung.
This, thinks Tanaji, is what comes from keeping promises.
At first it was fun, watching young Shahu use his charm to beguile information from a merchant’s wife. Later Tanaji and Shahu would lie in wait by a roadside, knowing exactly when the caravan would pass, how much gold the merchant carried in his purse. But now—now Shahu must have more; he must sleep in the merchant’s bed, cuckold the husband and steal the wife’s jewels, while Tanaji, old uncle Tanaji, keeps watch in the stables.
Well, he thinks, maybe old uncle Tanaji has had enough.
He hunches some straw to form a pillow. Even through his turban, the straw scratches. Slowly his breathing attunes to the snores of the horses and his limbs grow heavy in the breath-warmed air.
Then Tanaji sits up with a start, his hand on the hilt of his katar. What woke him, he wonders. Then he realizes—the clip of horses’ hooves on the cobbled courtyard.
No, no, no! Tomorrow! he thinks. You’re not to come home until tomorrow!
In the pale light of the crescent moon he sees two riders: the merchant-husband followed by his servant. Except it isn’t the merchant after all: from the glitter of his jewels under the silver moon, Tanaji sees that it’s a nobleman, a Bijapuri from the look of him, man big as a mountain.
Gods help us, thinks Tanaji, it can’t be. Not him!
As the men dismount, Tanaji gathers his wits. Through the shadows, huddling in a crouch, he races to the nearby guesthouse. As the riders fuss with their horses, he silently opens the narrow door and steals inside.
Somewhere, somewhere in this house Shahu is staying, and Tanaji must find him, and fast. Then get out, fast. For Khirki is a Muslim town, and if he finds them, a Muslim will be within his rights to kill Shahu, and the cheating wife. And Tanaji for good measure. But if the rider is Afzul Khan, as Tanaji fears, quick death would be the best of outcomes. By the thin light of the moon through a window, Tanaji sees Shahu’s form sprawled across the bed, naked, legs and arms intertwined with a woman’s. He kicks the bed. “Shahu! Wake up! He’s back!”
The pretty wife, not Shahu, blinks awake. Her arms are pinned under Shahu’s muscled shoulders and her face registers increasing panic until, with some effort, she tugs free. As she slides from the bed Tanaji catches a glimpse of warm skin, of firm breasts and a shapely belly. She hears the noise outside.
Shahu yawns and stretches. The woman scowls as she rushes to her own room, pretending to cover her creamy nakedness by hugging herself. “Get up!” Tanaji barks, no longer caring if anyone hears. Shahu looks up dazed. His clothes are scattered in a trail to the bed. Tanaji throws Shahu his pants. As he pulls them on, Tanaji scoops up everything he can find; they’ll sort things out later. Meanwhile Shahu unbolts the window shutter. Alert now, he grabs the clothes from Tanaji and tosses them outside.
“I’ll never make it,” Tanaji mutters, and Shahu laughs. Scowling, Tanaji slides out, scraping his belly, squeezing his shoulders. He feels with his toes, but he can’t find the ground, so he simply hopes for the best and drops. The fall is only a couple of feet. Through the window he can hear the angry cries of the husband. “Hurry, Shahu!” Tanaji whispers.
There’s a loud bang, and suddenly Shahu pitches headfirst through the bedroom window, somersaulting as he lands on the ground. “Come on!” he shouts, running barefoot into the night. Tanaji frowns and scoops up the clothes. He curses his short legs, and the pile of clothes he clutches to his chest; he’s slow enough without them. He turns to see the Bijapuri squeezing through the same window, his legs kicking in frustration.
Shahu reaches the courtyard wall. “Where?” he calls to Tanaji.
“Horses! Other side of the wall. There!” Tanaji is running so hard that the effort of shouting winds him. Shahu shuffles backward, waving for Tanaji to hurry, while looking for a place to crawl over the wall.
When he catches up, Shahu jerks the clothes from Tanaji’s arms and paws through them. Rising triumphantly, he waves a small cloth sack under Tanaji’s nose. “Great!” he grins, and then tosses the clothing over the wall.
He cups his hands together to give Tanaji a leg up. Tanaji is about to object—he should be helping Shahu, he thinks, but Shahu is the stronger man now. Shahu nearly tosses him over the wall. Tanaji reaches back to Shahu. He sees the Bijapuri charging at them.
Shahu scrambles over the wall; Tanaji barely has time to pull his hand back as the nobleman hacks at it with his sword. “Do you know who that is?” Tanaji shouts. Shahu laughs. Again he shakes the sack, letting Tanaji hear the heavy clunk of the gold coins.
The horses are around the back, where Tanaji hid them as a precaution against just this sort of escapade. Shahu hears the whinny of his Bedouin mare. He laughs again, and snatching shoes from the clothes scattered at his feet, runs toward the sound, hopping madly as he slips on his sandals.
Tanaji follows. In a moment he reaches his sturdy Marathi pony and heaves himself on the saddle. Shahu, already mounted on his tall Bedouin mare, grins at Tanaji, and spurs away. Tanaji gallops after him.
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They dash through Khirki, twisting through a narrow maze of alleys and walkways. At last they see the West Gate; beyond lies Poona, and in Poona they will be safe. The elephant door of Khirki’s West Gate is bolted shut; only the smaller horse door is open, but a guard sits beside it. Tanaji reins in his horse, thinking Shahu will do the same, but Shahu lowers his head and spurs forward with a great shout, galloping through the horse door like thread through a needle. The guard leaps to his feet.
Tanaji sizes up his options. Spurring his pony so fiercely it rears, he races to the gate. He is shorter than Shahu, but wider, so the cloth of his pant legs clips the sides of the door. The guard spins around just in time to see the pony about to run him down; he scrambles away as the pony’s hoofs splinter his spear into the dust.
The Bedouin’s long strides easily outpace Tanaji’s pony with its stubby legs. With each mile, Shahu’s mare moves farther into the distance, and with each mile, Tanaji’s irritation grows.
Seven miles beyond Khirki he finds Shahu waiting for him by a tall tree near a crossroad. The soft light of dawn filters through the mists, and warms the damp air, painting the horizon with a gleaming silver glow. They have seen no pursuit: no sound of hooves, no clouds of dust. And once they pass these crossroads, any pursuers can’t know which way they went.
Tanaji rides up, scowling. “What were you thinking, Shahu! We could have been killed! What the hell were you doing? That was Afzul Khan!”
“What if it was, uncle? He’s only a man, and he has things to steal.”
“You don’t trifle with men like Afzul Khan! What would your father say?”
“How would I know?” Shahu answers. “My father made his choices. Now I make mine.”
Tanaji says no more. They turn their horses down the southern road, toward Poona, toward home. The safety of this road, the gentle pace of his pony’s stubby legs, the soft light of morning and the scent of flowers and smoke on the breeze combine to calm Tanaji, and to clear his mind.
Promise or no promise, Tanaji again decides that he has finally had it with Shahu. It galls him that Shahu has not only changed his clothes, but has even wound his turban in the tight, complex folds that he prefers. How did he manage that? Tanaji wonders.
Shahu looks fresh, as if their escape had been some fine adventure.
Tanaji looks like he slept in a stable.
What the hell am I doing? he wonders.
By the time they reach the fords of the Godavari, the sun has reached its zenith. Tanaji spurs his pony into the shallows. He looks back to see Shahu’s tall Bedouin mare crabbing skittishly along the bank. Shahu reins the mare skillfully, but she won’t be calmed. Shahu shortens up her reins, pressing her flanks hard as the mare snorts and whistles.
In the midst of this commotion, Tanaji sees one of Shahu’s saddlebags splash into the water, where the current catches it and tumbles it downstream. Alarmed, Tanaji clumsily fishes the bag from the river.
It’s the cloth sack Tanaji retrieved from the bedroom, the sack that Shahu waved, laughing with triumph. Tanaji slogs back to Shahu. “Isn’t this your money?” he shouts. “Didn’t you even notice when it fell?” He shakes the dripping bag under Shahu’s nose.
Shahu, trying to calm his horse, answers in a soft voice. “Hold it for me, please, uncle. You’re right—I must be more careful.”
“You’ll never grow up so long as I’m around!” Tanaji slumps back to his pony and ties the wet cloth saddlebag to the horn of his wooden saddle. As he spurs his pony up the steps of the temple ghats on the far bank, he makes up his mind. He is tired of adventures, tired of escapes. Tired of his promise. Enough, he decides, is enough.
He’s just about to speak his mind when he turns and looks back. Shahu, dressed in white silk, framed against the misty shadows of the mango trees on the far bank, sits handsome and proud on his elegant mare. The river light glints and sparkles like jewels. Then a flock of river cranes bursts from the water; they soar past like white-winged asparas.
Tanaji is not a man with words to tell his feelings. Seeing this he remembers Shahu’s stories, the ancient tales where gods are born as men and live among us. And like river cranes rising effortlessly into a cloudless sky, Tanaji’s resolution begins to dissolve. This is what always happens: He loves Shahu so much that he can’t bear to be parted from him, even if it seems right that he should go.
Once they get to the far bank, they find a quiet grove near a deserted temple. Hobbling their horses and letting them graze, Shahu and Tanaji open their packs and eat, and before long both fall asleep.
Later as they ride west into the glaring sun. Tanaji considers how the gods mock men’s intentions. Look at him, he thinks, eyeing Shahu on his prancing mare. I promised his father I’d raise him in the ways of peace. But he was his father’s son: once Shahu tasted danger, he craved more, as a drunkard craves wine though it kills him. He is reckless and rash, thinks Tanaji. He’s a thief and a fool, and despite Tanaji’s efforts, he’s going to end up hanging from a tree, his hands cut off and strung around his neck as a warning to others. My promise ruined him, Tanaji thinks.
He spurs his pony to catch up. “We’ve got to hurry if we want to make Ahmednagar by sundown.”
“We’re not going to Ahmednagar,” Shahu answers. “We’re going to that old dharmsala in Pimpalgaon.”
“That old place? What for?”
“The Bijapuris are sending some sort of treasure to Surat. The caravan will stay there tonight.”
“Is that what the woman told you?” Tanaji takes Shahu’s silence for a yes. “Did she say what the treasure was?” This time he takes the silence for a no. “It’s not worth it, Shahu. What if it’s a trap?” Shahu rides on in silence. “So, what’s your plan?”
“Scout things out at the dharmsala. If anything looks promising, catch up with them on the road tomorrow.”
Tanaji sighs. “Let’s go into town, Shahu. Get a bed and a hot meal.”
Shahu turns. “She’s probably dead, uncle. Do you think she’s dead?”
“Probably. If it was Afzul Khan we saw, probably. He’s a killer.”
“Then it’s the least we can do, uncle.”
“That makes no sense!” Tanaji exclaims. But by that time Shahu has spurred his horse to an angry gallop, and is too far away to hear.
As the sun drops in the western sky, they see the green gates of the old dharmsala, and beyond, a glimpse of its quiet courtyard planted with roses, and grapes, and flowering trees. After riding all day, the dust has dried in Tanaji’s nostrils; his lips are chapped; his clothing sticks to his skin. The soft breeze, cool and perfumed with the smell of blossoms and water, refreshes him. He and Shahu coax their tired horses to a trot.
To their left they pass goats and sheep grazing in meadows of dry grass; to their right, green shoots of bakri, bright green against the dark earth. The farmers have blocked off their fields into small squares bounded by low walls of soil, lined by trenches for routing water from a wide pond. Outside their low mud huts, the farmers’ wives cook chapatis for the evening meal on iron griddles heated by small dung fires. Children, nearly naked, toss rocks and sticks into the branches of the tamarind trees, hoping to knock down the tasty seedpods.
Tanaji and Shahu ride into the dharmsala’s serene courtyard, refreshed by the fragrance of flowers and moist, shaded earth. The sun that blazed on their heads all day now drifts, huge and red, behind the cone-shaped hill.
Shahu stretches as he swings from his saddle; his muscled form bends like a young tree. His turban is still tightly wound despite a day’s riding. Though dusty, he still looks well groomed: his eyebrows trimmed and neat; his beard shaped and oiled; his cheeks carefully shaved where they peep over the edge of his beard. His tunic and jama robes of ivory-colored damask are simple in design but precise in detail, embroidered with thread of that same fine ivory color; his sandals shine. Even his hands are fine: long-boned fingers and well shaped nails, trimmed precisely. He has that cultivated look that men
of action detest, and women notice.
Tanaji grunts as the blood returns to his butt. Making a big show of ignoring Shahu, he loops the reins of each horse over his elbow, and leads them to a watering trough. Tanaji’s legs are bowed. His wife can’t stop him from dressing like a bachelor. His simple clothes and rolling walk give him an informal, affable air. As the horses drink, Tanaji dips his kerchief in the water and wipes it on his dusty neck.
When the horses have had their fill, he leads them to the dharmsala stables. Tanaji doesn’t like dharmsalas—he tries to avoid anything run by the government. But even though most are plain, even uncomfortable, merchants traveling with goods prefer dharmsalas to private inns because they provide safe lodging, guaranteed by the shah.
This dharmsala is one of Ahmednagar’s oldest. Once the new road was built, it became a quiet place, frequented only by merchants who appreciated its privacy and beauty. Though more comfortable than most dharmsalas, it still falls to its guests to provide for themselves.
When Tanaji enters the stables he finds a groom caring for some tired horses. The two men nod at each other, wary but polite. After a while they fall into the easy conversation of servants at work away from their masters. Tanaji notices three small dots in a line along the crease of the man’s elbow. Probably a caste mark, he thinks, but he doesn’t recognize the symbol.
Just as Tanaji is finishing up, Shahu appears in the courtyard, accompanied by the dharmsala’s caretaker: a small dark man in cotton jamas that probably were once white. He walks with an exaggerated limp from a short left leg. He talks as he bobs along, trying to keep pace with Shahu’s effortless strides. In front of the guesthouse sits a palanquin, and a bored guard rests against a nearby wall, a bare sword across his knees.
