The Twentieth Wife

by Indu Sundaresan

  “Will you hire them?”

  Ranjit Singh tapped his right thumb into the palm of his left hand, as he always did, unconsciously, when he was deep in thought, and Azizuddin heard this—the dull thwack of skin against skin.

  As the Maharajah’s foreign minister, Fakir Azizuddin had a motley bunch of spies embedded in all parts of the Punjab Empire. And it was his job, and so consequently the job of his spies, to ferret out all foreigners on Ranjit Singh’s land and send notice of them to the court. One such message had come a few months ago from Peshawar. That there were firangis looking for employ. And so Azizuddin had gone to Peshawar and found three tough, rough men. Paolo Avitabile, he of the huge height, was Italian. So also was Jean-Baptiste Ventura; and their friend, Jean-François Allard, was French. All the three men had been soldiers, adventurers, in Napoleon Bonaparte’s armies and had set out east in the early days when Napoleon had cast his gaze toward an Indian empire.

  They had halted at Persia and found positions in the Shah’s army. As a consequence, they all spoke fluent Persian but also—and this came as a surprise to Azizuddin—more than a smattering of Hindustani. Why they had left the Shah of Persia’s services, Azizuddin did not inquire. He did not care, and neither did Maharajah Ranjit Singh.

  Aziz had escorted the men to Lahore, introduced them to Ranjit Singh, watched and listened to all of their conversations with his sovereign. The men were not mere soldiers—they were leaders, and they came in search of generalships in the Punjab army; nothing else would do for them.

  “I’m going to send Avitabile to Peshawar, Aziz,” the Maharajah said. “It’s a city filled with dissidents, maybe he can cut them down to shape, create some order in that wild land.”

  “A good idea, your Majesty. Perhaps his very size will intimidate most of Peshawar. And the others?”

  Ranjit Singh clicked his tongue. “They will be useful also. Here, training the armies. Send an imperial order to them, will you? Avitabile goes to Peshawar; make him a governor, some title of authority, so he can actually be useful there. He should have control over the revenues also. And choose a regiment for Allard and Ventura—they begin tomorrow, at dawn. I want to see maneuvers from their men in ten days.”

  “Yes, your Majesty.” Azizuddin brushed his nape, easing the ache there. His shoulders hurt also from all the hunching, and being in the guise of the old man all day long. He twisted his head this way and that, wishing he weren’t so exhausted. Because there was something he wanted to say to Ranjit; it was important, or could be. But what? He sifted, in his weary head, through all the communications that had come to his desk that morning, before he left for the Shalimar Gardens. Something to do with . . . someone in Lahore. An errant handful of breeze waved the smoke of the tent peg fires under the minister’s nose. He inhaled, was reminded of the firangis who had sped down the maidan . . . and thought then of another firangi.

  The Maharajah had swung off his horse meanwhile and come up to him. He put his hand on Aziz’s shoulder. Standing thus, they were the same height. His voice was gentle. “Go home, my friend. I will see you tomorrow.”

  “Your Majesty!” Azizuddin clutched at his sovereign’s hand. “The Englishman, Elphinstone, is here in Lahore. He arrived two days ago.”

  The Maharajah of the Punjab was blind in one eye—his left one, from a childhood bout of smallpox, which had also pitted the skin on his face. When Aziz looked at his king, he saw a handsome, sharply cut face, the bottom half enveloped in an unkempt beard, the eyebrows thick but cleanly arched, the expanse of forehead smooth, as though nary a thought had ruffled it. Even the blind eye was not evident really. Both of the Maharajah’s eyes were a very pale shade of gray, the irises ringed in black, brilliant like polished silver. The blind eye was fixed in one direction, which gave Ranjit a mild squint, but this Aziz always forgot, because when his good eye gazed upon him, blazed upon him, he was drawn into the man who possessed it.

  “Why didn’t you tell me earlier?” Ranjit Singh’s voice was biting. His eye still flared at his minister, who now had his head bent miserably, the deep hues of a blush darkening his already brown skin.

  There were many reasons why, of course. He had known only this morning, and he had been at the Shalimar all day, and for a brief moment there, Azizuddin had not remembered who Elphinstone was. Not until now. He said, “I have no excuse, your Majesty.”

  Ranjit Singh began to pace the maidan, hands clasped behind his back. He kicked at pebbles and sent them skittering through the dust. He slapped his hands against his thighs. He tapped his thumb into the palm of his other hand. Azizuddin watched him, his own brain flocking with thoughts.

  “Aziz,” the Maharajah called.

  He went sprinting over the field.

  “Tell me again about this Elphinstone. He took an embassy from the English East India Company to Shah Shuja’s court?”

  Azizuddin nodded. This was something he knew, also something the Maharajah knew—because his recall was prodigious—but it was always useful to refresh both of their memories. Quickly, and succinctly, Fakir Azizuddin spoke into Ranjit’s ear while the king stood courteously by, motionless and listening.

  Some eight years ago, in 1809, Mountstuart Elphinstone had traveled through the Punjab Empire on his way to Afghanistan. Peshawar was still part of Afghan lands, and Shah Shuja had come to that city to meet Elphinstone from Kabul—a monstrous mistake, because it was then Shuja’s half brother Mahmud had occupied Kabul and taken the throne from Shuja. The British had been worried about Napoleon’s possible invasion of—and so their holdings in—India, and the embassy had been to seek Shuja’s assurance that he would repel Bonaparte. That treaty was never signed; before it could be, Shuja himself had been deposed, and the British had retreated back to India. Both of the comings and goings through the Punjab, Maharajah Ranjit Singh had allowed, seemingly distant, but in truth, very much interested. He had been content to watch and wait.

  An ousted Shuja was of no importance to the British, they had let him be for the last eight years, and yet . . . here was this Elphinstone back in the Punjab.

  By an 1806 Treaty of Lahore, Ranjit Singh had agreed with the English East India Company that the lands north of the Sutlej River belonged to him, and those south of the river to the British in India. However, the Maharajah not only gave them free rein to travel through his Empire but also made sure that his bazaars and merchants provided them with the means to do so at low prices and with immaculate hospitality.

  Why? Azizuddin had asked him once, and the Maharajah had replied that it was always a good policy to keep enemies well fed, contented, and close to the heart.

  So, Elphinstone’s presence at Lahore was not a surprise. What was unusual was that he had sneaked into the city. And that he had been the man who met Shuja in Afghanistan.

  The Maharajah spoke first. “Napoleon Bonaparte has been defeated? And so, our tent-pegging firangis came here for a job?”

  Azizuddin bobbed his head. “At Waterloo. He will not escape again; they’ve taken him to some island in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean. The British will not make the Elba mistake again.”

  “Who then?”

  “The Russians, your Majesty,” Azizuddin said slowly. “Rumor is that the Russian envoy in Kabul is very friendly with Shah Mahmud. Yes”—he nodded more furiously, sure now of himself—“the British fear a Russian invasion of India.”

  An almost full moon had risen over the cusp of the horizon, and sent its hoary light across the maidan. In the plummy dark, Azizuddin had not been able to see the Akali guards on the periphery of the field, although he had known they were there. Ranjit Singh had not been king of the Punjab Empire for so long, and with so much success, by wandering alone even in his own lands. Now, the silver glow glittered over the rings of the quoits, marking each Akali as an obvious target for anyone who would care to raise a musket in their direction—although few would and live to tell of it.

  The Maharajah put back his well-shaped head and laug
hed up at the moon. The sound reverberated around the maidan, echoed off the walls of the fort. “Our British friends are very nervous people. They worried about Bonaparte invading India, but to do so, he would have had to defeat me. Now they worry about the Russians? I’m still the Maharajah of the Punjab.”

  Azizuddin smiled. It was true. Ranjit Singh was only thirty-seven years old. Allah willing, he would live for many more years, and he, who had halted the rapacious East India Company south of the Sutlej, would not give up his empire for another foreign invader, whether he was French, or Russian, or anybody else.

  “Elphinstone, your Majesty,” he said.

  The Maharajah sobered, combing through the hair of his beard with long fingers. “Ah, yes, the problem of Elphinstone. Double the guard around the Shalimar Gardens. If the British want to steal Shuja from me and put him on the Afghan throne instead of Mahmud, they will have to ask me first. That’s why they want him, don’t they, Aziz?”

  “Yes, your Majesty.”

  “Double the guard now. Before first light.”

  Azizuddin bowed, his hand touching his forehead in a taslim. He turned to leave, and Ranjit Singh’s voice, lazy, casual, came to him. “Besides, Shuja still has to give me the Kohinoor. He’s not going anywhere until he does so.”

  • • •

  There was only one gateway, one entrance from the outside into the upper terrace of the Shalimar Gardens, set in the middle of the southern wall. The south entrance was also surrounded by the soldiers of the Maharajah. Though the guard was to protect every inch of the exterior walls of the Shalimar, after three years, the rotation had slackened.

  And so, every night around the first hour of the next day, the guard outside the Khwabagh, Wafa Begam’s sleeping quarters on the western side of the upper terrace, took a long hike through the scrub toward the fire that burned in the distance.

  An old woman, toothless and haggard, had set up her chai shop here for the soldiers—this far, because she wasn’t allowed to come any closer. Her “shop” consisted merely of two stones dragged together to hold a fire, a terra-cotta vessel atop, in which the water boiled, tea leaves she threw into the simmer, a brass pot of day-old milk, a mound of sugar tied into a knot at the end of her sari’s pallu. For one cup of chai, she charged the men one anna. When they had drunk their chai, she wiped the cups out with a dirty rag and set them to dry in the heated dark. If she had been closer to the river, she would have washed out the cups. All night long, she stirred the chai and doled out cups, and when morning came, she packed up her things and went home to sleep. She had a young and comely daughter, who took over the chai duty during the day in the bazaar on the outskirts of Lahore, but she would not send that child to the deserted land around the Shalimar Gardens, to be at the mercy of these foulmouthed soldiers. She came herself.

  The guard, a thin, swarthy man, came to squat by the woman and grunted. He held a shining anna piece in his grubby hand, but he was one of those who liked to toy with her, not paying for his cup of tea until he had drunk at least three. He sat facing her, with his back to the Shalimar. She ladled out the muddy liquid, put the cup on the ground, and prodded it toward him with her knuckles.

  He picked it up with both his hands and drank noisily. “It’s awful today, Maji.” He called her Mother, as did the other soldiers, because she was old, not out of respect.

  She shrugged. Awful today, awful yesterday, it was all the same to her. This was the only chai shop for miles, and in the middle of the night, they would take what they got. At least, the chai was hot.

  Her attention was caught by a movement on the Shalimar’s walls, near the upper terrace. The moon had risen, and the walls stood starkly black. Something snaked up into the lighter sky beyond the walls, once, twice, a third time, until a figure showed, its arm raised to catch the rope. Then, the figure disappeared for a while, as the old woman watched intently. It came back, hesitated for a moment, and then a man swung over the edge of the wall and began to let himself down with the rope.

  The old woman grinned, showing a gaping mouth; she had only two teeth left in her upper and lower jaws.

  The guard eyed her suspiciously. “What’s so funny? What did you put in the chai?”

  “Drink it,” she snapped. “And give me my money.”

  He leaned over and knocked her on the side of her head. As she lay in the dirt, arms around her breasts, crooning in pain, he helped himself to another cup of chai. He took a sip and spat it out. Then another, which he also spat out, as if to show her how easily he wasted the chai. The third he drank. The woman sat up, massaging her head, and watched as another man stood briefly in the light of the moon above the garden’s walls and then began climbing down. His kurta was a patch of white against the murky walls, moving surely and speedily.

  The guard deliberately drank his chai, and then he stood up, lodged his toe under the lip of the vessel on the fire, and upended it. The old woman sat there, rocking and moaning, her eyes flashing with hatred. A smile gathered around her mouth. She let him go, with the anna coin folded into the cloth of his turban, and saw him pick his way through the land, gaze downward, stepping carefully to avoid snakes and scorpions.

  By the time the guard had kicked at the chai urn, the second man had descended to the ground.

  • • •

  Shah Shuja jumped the last three yards, landing on the balls of his feet, the shock sending a jar of pain through his sore legs. He flitted closer to the wall. “Where is she?” he hissed into the gloom.

  Ibrahim Khan limped up, trailing a foot; he had crushed an ankle during his fall from the rope and eaten up the yelp that had come bursting from him. His face was wan in the moonlight, his hair shining in a cloud of curls. “It’s a bad night to escape, your Majesty. Too much light. Are these people to be trusted?”

  They turned to the two men standing against the wall, their clothing blurred and indistinct in the shadows, the cloths of their turbans wrapped around the lower halves of their faces. One of them had pitched the rope to Shuja, and he had heard quiet grunts as he heaved upward. Since, neither of the men had spoken, or helped them descend.

  The letter tied around the rock that Wafa Begam had read and shown to her husband had come from Elphinstone. In it, he had offered to rescue them from the Shalimar Gardens, but it had to be tonight, in a few hours. Elphinstone had already spent too much time in Lahore, any longer and the Maharajah would begin to get inquisitive. Would his Majesty, Shah Shuja, trust that the British had his best interests at heart?

  For once, Wafa, more suspicious about almost anything than her husband, had not advised caution. “We must go tonight,” she said. Shuja, awakened from a dreamy sleep, the muscles of his arms, legs, and shoulders fiery raw from the wrestling, had shaken his head to clear the fog. All those years of plotting, scheming, wondering who would help them, how that help would appear . . . had come to this. An imperative in the middle of the night. Leave now. How? he had asked. But the letter only said in two hours, not how.

  They had woken Ibrahim, drawn him from his cot, doused his head in the waters of the central pool in the upper terrace, and whispered the news in his ear. Shuja and he had padded all around the upper and middle terraces in search of an escape route, or some indication that, suddenly, there was one. They did not descend into the lower terrace, where the Maharajah’s guards kept watch, and all their movements were stealthy, quiet, so that no noise filtered downward.

  Then that whistle had come again from beyond the walls, sweet and lucid, like the song of a bird. A violinist had accompanied Elphinstone’s embassy to Peshawar, and one spring evening, Shuja had invited this man’s music into his palace. The music had a strange yet beguiling sound for all of them—a violin concerto by a composer named Bach—and he had asked for it to be played often, and tried to get his own court musicians to imitate that sound.

  “Here,” Wafa had said, pulling them up the stairs to the top of the wall. They couldn’t see anything of the men below, but they heard
them throwing the rope and saw it a moment later, twisting temptingly just beyond reach. Both Shuja and Ibrahim had held back, too exhausted to make real sense of what was happening, and it was Wafa who had leaned over the parapet and caught the rope. She who had yanked it to one of the pillars and wrapped it around. But she could not tie the knot and sat there, trembling, her face drenched with tears. “Come, my lord. Are we going to stay here forever? Do you want to lose the Kohinoor to Ranjit Singh?”

  At that word, Shuja ran to her, knotted the rope, and tugged at it to check that it was secure.

  “Where is the diamond?” he asked.

  In response, she bent to kiss his hand, used his fingers to wipe away her tears. “Go, Ibrahim and you must go first. Even if they catch us doing this, I will be safe; they will not dare touch me. Go!”

  As she pushed him away, Shuja resisted. Go without her? What was she saying?

  She sensed his hesitation. “I will follow right after. After I get the Kohinoor, that is. Go now!” And with that she fled out of the pavilion. He heard her running down the stone pathway alongside the long water channel, and then heard the soft, successive thuds of her feet as she descended the stairs to the middle terrace.

  Shuja had never given a thought to where his wife had hidden the diamond; better not to know until he actually wanted it. If he had considered it at all, if he had been asked where, he would have thought it was somewhere in her harem quarters. But, to conceal it in the middle terrace, with the gardeners working there, the guards roaming around every now and then, in so public a place . . . why, it was brilliant. Galvanized into action, he shoved Ibrahim over the edge of the wall and listened as he made his way down. Just for a moment, before he went over himself, he tarried again. Where was Wafa? Why was she taking so long? Then, he swung over, wrapped his hands around the rope, and slid down the wall, his toes grabbing onto footholds in the dark, the rope ending far too soon, leaving him swaying above nothing.