Tiger Claws

by John Speed

  “Give me time to think, madam,” Wali Khan says.

  “There is no time,” she answers. “You men! You act as though you have forgotten our most important problem!”

  “What is that, madam?” Whisper says.

  “The gold!” she answers. “The Kankonen gold! How shall anyone rule without a treasury?”

  As Afzul Khan strides along the dark corridor, he at last begins to think. Who knew that Shahji had allies in Agra? He’s played a double game the whole time, Afzul Khan realizes. Well, now we know. He’s always been a traitor. I alone understood the threat! I alone acted!

  Maybe I should kill her, he thinks. It would be easy enough. She’s only stolen her power from that boy of hers. And who better to help the boy to grow into manhood?

  The guards have heard him coming and pushed the crowds away. Afzul Khan glares at everyone. The wall is nearly finished now—the remaining opening would be filled by only one or two more bricks. For a moment he stands beside it, head bowed, nostrils flaring. Then he strikes.

  Inside the alcove that has become his tomb, Shahji kneels and prays for death. Soon, he prays with all his heart. Soon.

  He hears the crash and clatter. Despite his weariness, his eyes turn once more toward the wall. A half dozen bricks go flying through the air, crashing to the floor around him. Shahji ducks his head.

  Then the great bulk of Afzul Khan looms over him. Kill me, prays Shahji. He waits for the heavy foot to kick. Instead Afzul Khan unlocks his chains.

  Shahji pitches to the floor. Afzul Khan grabs him by the collar and tosses him through the broken opening. Shahji rolls over and sees the cowering faces of a line of people in the torchlight, and the dreadful face of the one-eyed man who threw the water flask.

  But the moment ends quickly. Shoved and dragged and thrown and carried, Shahji lurches toward the throne room. At last he falls at the dais steps, on the very spot he landed—when? A day ago? A week? A month?

  “As you requested, madam,” Afzul Khan growls out, gasping for breath. “Here is the traitor.”

  “Your wish, Lord Ambassador?” the queen asks.

  “I pray that you put him in my care, madam,” the ambassador answers.

  The sultana nods to her khaswajara. “You may take him to Shaista Khan’s residence,” Whisper says.

  “There he may stay, but no other place,” says the veiled queen.

  The ambassador bows. “As you say, madam.”

  Soon Shahji is hoisted to his feet by the two Mogul guards. Though he has no idea how he comes to be free, he doesn’t care. Somehow Shahji manages to walk from the hall like a man.

  “You got what you came for, Lord Ambassador,” the queen says. Her voice is strong behind her many veils. “You have the father.” She pauses. “The son, however, is a different story.”

  The ambassador straightens. “I have no instructions about the son, madam.” He looks at the mountain of velvet, but there is no face to read.

  “Then sir, leave with our blessing.” With these words, the ambassador takes his leave.

  For a moment silence blankets the room, and then the sultana speaks.

  “Shivaji,” she says. The word becomes a hiss that echoes through the room. “Who will rid me of that mountain rat?”

  At last a noble speaks. “I will,” answers Afzul Khan.

  Tension grows as the days pass. In the bazaar, a crowd of angry Bijapuris stone a Hindu merchant to death; no one is quite sure why, but everyone, at least the Muslims, seems certain he deserved it. The few Hindu shopkeepers in the great city board up their stalls.

  Lakshman buys the white knitted cap of a haji and begins to sit amidst the qwali singers at the tomb of Ibrahim Roza, the Sufi saint buried in the shadow of the massive dome of the Gol Gumbaz.

  The qwalis echo through the courtyard. The lead singer is a blind man with white, wandering eyes. His voice like a trumpet rings pure and strong over the drone of the tamboura and the thud of the tabla. The singers join the chorus as the blind man ends the verse. As Lakshman becomes familiar with the songs, he joins in. After a while, one of the singers slides over, making a space for Lakshman.

  From time to time Lakshman enters the tomb, placing his head under the grave cloth of the saint. The third time he does this, he kisses the stone over the saint’s feet like a devout Muslim. When he rises, he accepts the gift of flower petals scattered on the tomb, eating them one by one with closed eyes as a true believer might. The tomb attendants embrace him as a brother. They smell funny, Lakshman thinks.

  Sometimes Lakshman sits apart, moving his lips, babbling any nonsense that comes into his head. Before long pilgrims approach him, cautiously kneeling to drop coins at his feet as though he too might be a saint. He reaches to touch their bent shoulders and says something, anything, and they look at him in gratitude, their eyes sometimes damp with tears. One day, the imam giving the lesson uses Lakshman as an example of true devotion.

  Lakshman tries to look wild and strange. With his scarred face, with his broken eye that now weeps almost constantly, he succeeds. He sleeps in an alcove near the tomb, and wakes to find warm food placed near his feet.

  When he gets bored, which is often, he goes to the bazaar. As he wanders through the marketplace, Lakshman hears the rumors: the Mogul guard camped just miles from the city gates; Shahji slowly coming back to health at the hand of the young ambassador; Afzul Khan readying a massive force to recover the stolen Bijapuri gold.

  Holding out a cup, mumbling nonsense to the passersby, Lakshman walks among the market stalls. Some people recognize him from the tomb. But most prefer to ignore beggars than to see them, so it’s easy for him to stand nearby unheeded as men discuss the latest news.

  One day a strange procession pushes down the streets of the marketplace: cruel-looking soldiers accompanying a line of ten covered palanquins, each alike with black lacquer and silver decorations. The air fills with the shouts of the soldiers, the protests of the people they shove aside, the indignant barking of pariah dogs and the lowing of the street cows, with the cries of the shopkeepers and rough-edged street singers’ songs.

  Lakshman follows. At last the bearers lower the palkis outside a fabric store. From each box a woman emerges, some middle-aged, some young, and each one veiled. Lakshman wanders closer, hearing “the wives of Afzul Khan.” At the shop door, the owner and his men bow as they pass inside.

  Lakshman pushes close. The last in line, a slender graceful woman, lifts her head, and Lakshman glimpses behind her veil the outline of her face. From beneath her robes she drops into his cup a golden hun.

  As the days pass, Lakshman thinks that he should write to Shivaji. He decides to wait until he has firm news of Afzul Khan. It does not occur to him to tell Shivaji of the rescue of his father.

  Meanwhile in the marketplace, the men talk of little except the stolen gold. It’s slowly dawning on everyone just how serious their situation is: without the gold, cash is growing short, credit strained.

  Guards and soldiers have not been paid. Some have begun to walk through the bazaar in packs, taking what they will. The nobles insist on buying things on credit. Supplies grow short. Prices rise.

  One day there is a riot over bread. The guardsmen simply watch as the mob runs down the street, looting any store that isn’t locked.

  The next day Lakshman hears a commotion at the mosque: a crowd of young men, all wearing white, chanting for Shivaji’s death. It gives him an unexpected satisfaction to join in. He screams so loud that he’s pushed to the head of the crowd. Death to Shivaji! Kill the thief! Death to Hindus! He shouts until his throat hurts. Others cluster near him, shaking their fists. He can hardly keep from laughing. But when the crowd marches out, Lakshman stays behind, relishing the silence of the quiet tomb.

  Later he hears that the mob burned down a Hindu temple, leaving a brahmin trapped in the flames to die.

  At prayers next morning, he lifts his head from the mosque floor to see a rich procession moving toward the tomb; Afz
ul Khan and all his captains bearing deep baskets of roses. One by one they enter the tomb and dump the flowers, shaking out the roses on the tomb of Ibrahim Roza.

  Afzul Khan barely manages to squeeze through the door. When he emerges he kisses the threshold, the doorjamb; he spreads the dust of the floor upon his heart. Tears stream down his heavy face. At last he lifts his head and shouts in a voice that rocks the quiet: “I shall crush the infidel beneath my heel!” He shouts this two more times. Then his captains join him, calling “Jai, jai Afzul Khan! Jai, jai Afzul Khan!”

  The fakir who sleeps in the next alcove slides over to Lakshman, saying, “His army is assembled. Tomorrow they set out for Poona. What men will do for gold!” The fakir shakes his head.

  Lakshman merely sighs. I really should send word to Shivaji, he thinks.

  It so happens that as Lakshman walks through the marketplace later that morning he sees again the line of ten black palkis. He feels a sudden urging, and follows them. The procession stops at Gold Street, and again the bearers help the wives of Afzul Khan to their feet. The last one, the small one, notices Lakshman again, and hesitates but then moves toward him.

  This time, however, Lakshman speaks to her. “I must tell you something! I’ve had a vision!”

  “What vision, fakir?” says the whisper from behind the golden veils.

  “I saw your husband at the mosque. I saw Afzul Khan,” he croaks. “He prayed to the saint for victory, but when he rose … he had no head! Just a bloody stump between his shoulders where his head should be!”

  “Oh, Allah!” she cries, clutching her veiled cheeks.

  “If he does this terrible thing, he shall die. Do you hear? He shall die!”

  “Angels of grace!” she whispers.

  Lakshman strides off into the crowd.

  The next morning, things are not peaceful in Afzul Khan’s harem.

  In anticipation of his departure to battle, Afzul Khan had taken a strong vajikarana, and all night long his lingam had been swollen and his balls boiling.

  But he had no pleasure.

  His wives, horrified by the tale of the one-eyed fakir and his vision, had wailed and wept in their beds. Just when he’d calmed one wife enough to mount her, he’d hear another start to cry. Thrust as he might, she’d be too upset to give him any pleasure.

  From room to room, from bed to bed he’d gone, his lingam ready to explode. Finally he’d stormed off to his room and slammed the door. Then at last he found relief.

  He brought all his wives in the garden. Dewdrops cling to every rose; birds sing. The women stand in dressing gowns, eyes red with weeping.

  Afzul Khan stomps into the garden, dressed for battle. Weapons hang from his belt, spurs protrude from his black boots, and his broad curved sword slaps against his leg. The older wives gulp and lift their tear-stained faces, while the younger ones weep aloud.

  Afzul Khan comes to his first wife. He stands by her—feet wide apart, jaw clenched, neck bulging. “I am not satisfied!” he shouts. He waits. She struggles not to sob. The birds stop singing, and only the babble of a nearby fountain breaks the silence.

  “I am not satisfied, wife!” he screams, bending down so his face looks into hers. His wife lifts her damp eyes, but she knows better than to answer. “I am not satisfied!”

  He moves down the line from woman to woman, his face a mask of rage. “I am not satisfied!” he yells at each, until the fifth wife bursts into sobs.

  “But husband,” she cries. “We don’t want you to die!”

  At this, Afzul Khan wheels around. The fifth wife’s eyes reach scarcely to his breastplate. “You think that I will die?” he whispers.

  The fifth wife can say nothing. She falls to her knees. Soon all his wives are wailing. Afzul Khan strides down the line, turning each wife’s face with a gauntlet-covered hand and staring fiercely into her eyes.

  When he reaches the tenth wife, the wife who spoke to Lakshman, she looks at him as though her heart would break, a look so searching and so deep that Afzul Khan drops his hand. “Husband,” she whispers, her voice raw, “I could not bear to see you dead.” She lifts her hand, but he pulls away so quickly that the heavy sword slaps against his leg.

  “Is this so?” he asks softly. “You could not bear to see me dead?” She nods. He moves back to the ninth wife, and the eighth. “Is this so? Is this so?” They nod, silently. Down the line he walks, asking; down the line they nod, one by one, too anguished even to speak. “Even you?” he asks, when he reaches his first wife. “Even you?”

  “Husband, you know I could not bear this!” she cries.

  Afzul Khan bows his head. “So be it,” he says softly. Then he turns. His broad sword flashes from its scabbard in a whirl.

  One by one he mows them down, slashing through neck after neck, killing the next before the last has slumped to the ground.

  By the time he’s reached the middle of the line, the ones that still breathe have begun to scream. On the ground behind him, heads fall with mouths still gasping, dark blood pumps from hearts still beating. Green grass, white robes, black hair, red blood. The sword rips through their necks like stalks of wheat.

  By the time he’s reached his tenth wife, she starts to back away, begging. Afzul Khan points his sword to her, and blood drips from the blade. “Come back, you!” he calls, his voice hoarse. “Come back and die!”

  Without thinking she begins to run, running and turning, running backward, and her little feet get tangled in her robes. She falls and creeps upon the ground. “No!”

  Wearily, Afzul Khan shuts his eyes. Then as calm as a man about to strike a snake, he walks over and thrusts the broad blade of his long sword into her belly, thrusts it through so hard it cuts the bones, thrusts it till it penetrates the soil beneath her back. Blood bubbles from her mouth, and when he pulls away his sword, blood fountains from the wound.

  With the folds of her white skirt, while her mouth still moves and her wide eyes stare, he wipes the gore from his blade. Then he sheathes his sword, and without a look behind him, walks to the garden door. “Bury them in a row,” he tells his khaswajara. “Except the last. Bury her where she fell. She at least showed some courage.”

  Afzul Khan strides from the garden, ready now for battle.

  CHAPTER 25

  Bala knocks on Sai Bai’s door, and when there is no answer, he pushes the door open and steps in. The shutters are closed, and the room in shadows. Shivaji sits by Sai Bai’s low bed, holding her hand. Her face, once round, now is gaunt, her eyes enormous, dark-rimmed. Beautiful eyes, thinks Bala, but then he realizes that they are wide with pain.

  A servant girl tucks a crisp white sheet tight around her mistress; nearby in a wooden bowl, sits a dark wad of bandage oozing blood. The servant takes up the bowl and as she passes Bala, a smell rises from the bowl, sick and sweet. Bala knows that smell; anyone who has seen death knows it. It will linger in his nostrils for a long, long while.

  Shivaji looks up, his face full of anguish. “What is it?”

  “Word from Lakshman, lord.”

  Shivaji glances at Sai Bai. “Go,” she says. “I’ll be all right.” She even tries to smile. Shivaji rises, pressing on her hand all the while. It takes a while for him to let her go. Her wide eyes never leave him.

  When Shivaji shuts the door, Bala asks, “Still bleeding?”

  “Much less than yesterday, I think.”

  “Good,” Bala says. But they know this might be a sign of a body giving up. For a moment he considers placing a hand on Shivaji’s arm, but he does not. It would not be seemly to touch Lord Shivaji so.

  The bright sun bathes the busy courtyard, and Shivaji blinks as though unaccustomed to the light. Bala notices how worn his face appears. Bala hands a wrinkled paper to Shivaji. “This came a few minutes ago, lord, brought by an Afghan trader. A one-eyed fakir paid him a gold hun to bring it. He gave Lakshman’s code word, ‘vengeance.’”

  Shivaji unfolds the note.

  Shahji freed. Afzul Kh
an setting out for Poona. 100 elephants. 500 cannon. 2000 horses. 15000 men.

  “Is this all?” Shivaji cries. He says each word aloud once more. “All that time in Bijapur, and this is all?”

  “Fifteen thousand men, lord,” Bala says, as shakes his bald head. “How many men have we in Welhe?”

  “Two thousand, maybe three. Perhaps another thousand in Poona. A couple of hundred more in Pratapghad or on their way. Maybe a thousand ponies.”

  The thought occurs to Bala that there are many signs of coming death: a blood-filled cloth in a wooden bowl, for instance; or a thousand ponies and four thousand untrained men. They sit in silence for a moment. Around them the bustle of living carries on: men carrying baskets on their heads, women singing as they wash clothing at the well, birds flitting to the ground to peck at unseen seeds, a bony cow poking through a pile of garbage. “What shall I do, Bala?”

  This is not what Bala wants to hear. He wants the plan laid out for him, he wants to act upon it. He does not want uncertainty. “If you need guidance, ask the goddess.”

  At that moment, a young sentry, running hard and out of breath, dashes through the courtyard calling to Shivaji. “A dozen Mogul soldiers at the city gates, lord, asking for you!” the sentry sputters. “We didn’t know if we should let them in.”

  Shivaji glances at Bala. “Escort them here.”

  Soon, a pair of sentries on ponies come through the compound gates, followed by two rows of soldiers riding on proud Bedouins, pennants fluttering from the tips of long lances.

  The captain of the Moguls rides forward. “We seek Lord Shivaji of Poona,” he says, enunciating each word.

  “I am he,” Shivaji answers.

  Hanging from the captain’s belt is an elaborate silver tube, which he hands to Shivaji. “I bring this message from my master, Lord Ali Rashid, who sends you greetings and begs that you read it at your ease. He bids me to await your answer, if you have one.”