The Satapur Moonstone

by Sujata Massey

  All because she’d screamed at a spider. Feeling humble, she said, “I’ll do my best.”

  A few minutes later, Perveen was trudging along, her shoulder feeling the weight of the legal satchel holding her most necessary papers and the gifts for the royal family. The heavy rain made her clothes and boots heavy, so as she walked, her back and hips ached. She recalled Colin’s long stretches, and how his arm muscles had bulged when he’d done the yoga exercises. If only she had such strength and balance, walking on the wet, uneven terrain wouldn’t be so difficult.

  As she walked, keeping her eyes on the path ahead of her, she saw how many roots there were—how many holes and ridges and places to trip. So many depressions were filling up with water, it was hard to know how deep the water was until she stepped in. If she twisted her ankle, she’d become an impossible burden. The men who had jogged so surefootedly with the heavy palanquin weren’t singing anymore; she imagined it was because their songs were fast-paced and she was forcing them to walk slowly. Or maybe they hated the rain, too.

  She wondered if Colin had ever endured a failed palanquin ride. The ordeal of slogging through mud might be impossible with a wooden leg, but if he chose not to use it, his cane would also get stuck. Thinking of this made her step a little more quickly. Eventually, her journey would end.

  The dark rain cloud was both in front of them and behind, and rain continued falling in tiny, cold knife pricks. She imagined it was probably raining at the circuit house, and that Colin was worrying about her.

  When they came out of the trees, her boots were filled with mud. But the journey appeared to be almost done. Ahead lay what looked like a sentry’s tower.

  “We’re almost there!” Perveen said, pointing to it.

  “No,” Lakshman said. “That’s an old hunting tower.”

  “Should we wait there for the rain to stop?” she asked hopefully.

  Lakshman wiped water from his face before answering. “The Satapur royal family used to hunt here because it is a good place for tigers and leopards. We are not so far from the palace. We should go on.”

  Lakshman wanted to protect them all from predators and naturally wished to finish the job. She tried to form a picture in her mind of a bright, comfortable palace filled with lights and warmth. She had everything to look forward to, if she could just keep her feet moving.

  After some time, she saw, through a break in the trees, a faraway wall. The wall stretched on. It looked like a walled city, but she was afraid to hear it was another place they couldn’t stay.

  Lakshman smiled for the first time. “That is Satapur Palace! This the place where you wished to come.”

  She was too fatigued to answer, but his words made her legs move faster. As the fog cleared, she saw the wall was the facade of a giant gray stone palace punctuated with a series of towers topped by onion-shaped domes. The palace was so huge that it was surprising to see its massive arched entry protected by only two durwans. She guessed they were guards from their bloodred livery, although they were not standing at attention but squatting under the entry’s filigreed brass roof to shelter from the rain.

  It took fifteen minutes from first sight to reach the palace wall. With a wide smile, Perveen rushed the last hundred feet to get underneath the entryway roof. But she realized that her movement looked like an affront, because the durwans cried out and grabbed their bayonets.

  “Do not worry, brothers! She has come to visit the maharanis,” Lakshman said quickly. He had run up behind her.

  “It cannot be.” One of the guards spat sideways as he regarded their party. “Who are you?”

  Perveen realized that she was too bedraggled to look like anyone’s idea of a lady lawyer. And while she had not explicitly been summoned, she could reframe what the maharanis had asked of Colin. Firmly, she said, “Mr. Sandringham, the political agent, sent a letter about me. I am P. J. Mistry, Esquire. I came here at the maharanis’ request for assistance.”

  At the last word, the men looked at each other. Then they turned their backs to her and had a brief muttering. One of the men pushed open the door and went through it without a word.

  “I think he is going to ask the maharanis if your story is true,” Lakshman said to her. Perveen saw the worry on his face. After all, Colin had been turned away the last time he’d come. If Perveen was rejected, the hard journey would be for naught.

  The guard came back with a dour expression. He beckoned to Lakshman and spoke to him in a quick, sharp manner. When Lakshman came over to her, his expression was grim. “They say no. The maharani received the letter, but she said not to admit you.”

  “Does she not realize I’m a woman?” Perveen was horrified.

  “The guard says that she knows this now.”

  “Why is she refusing me, then?”

  He kept his eyes low. “I don’t wish to speak in disrespect.”

  “Speak! We have all traveled too far in terrible conditions to endure nonsense.”

  “The maharani looked out the window and told the guard you were too dirty to come inside.” He gave her a look of anger, and in it, she sensed all the times that he was not allowed to set foot inside a building because he was poor and the wrong caste.

  Perveen looked down and saw that the bottom half of her sari was brown from the spray of wet earth. The rest of the sari was plastered to her body, and rivulets of water ran down into her eyes. The fine clothes she’d packed into her case to wear at the palace would never be seen, just like the gifts she carried.

  The gifts! There was a risk, if she handed them over, that they would disappear with the guards. But she didn’t know what else to do. Perveen reached into her satchel and took out the two boxes wrapped in gold paper. “Bring these gifts to the maharanis and say they are from the lady who’s come to help with the maharaja. Please tell them I’m only in this dreadful condition because the palanquin broke. I apologize that I had to get out of it and walk.”

  The guard nodded quickly. She guessed that he understood what it was like to stand in the rain for hours. He went through the gate again, and she hoped for the best.

  The rain poured down. The waiting seemed interminable. How many people were looking at the moonstone and the gloves? Perhaps the gifts were being laughed at as inferior; she would still be sent away to humiliate the Indian Civil Service.

  But they needed her—didn’t they understand? The letters from the maharanis had been filled with demands.

  When the durwan returned, he no longer had the boxes. However, he was accompanied by a handsome, clean-shaven man in his early twenties wearing a red silk sherwani coat and coordinating tight-legged pajamas. Under the wide brim of his umbrella, the man had a thin, clever face that seemed oddly familiar.

  The dashing man crooked a finger toward Perveen.

  She hesitated. She knew she should not follow an unknown man’s beckoning, but the circumstances were strange. Perveen moved forward, keeping her back straight, pretending she was striding down the halls of the High Court with her father.

  She folded her hands in namaste, and the man reciprocated.

  “Mistry-memsahib, I have arranged everything,” he said in a warm voice that was the opposite of the guards’. “I have spoken to the maharani. She will allow you to come in.”

  11

  Entrée to the Palace

  “Are you the children’s tutor?” Perveen asked in a haze of gratitude as she walked through the gate alongside the gentleman who’d allowed her in.

  “Ha-ha!” Her rescuer gave her a look of delight. “Do I look eighty years old?”

  Belatedly remembering what Colin had said about the tutor, she felt embarrassed. “Not at all, sir.”

  He broke into gales of laughter. At the end, gasping, he said, “I am just twenty-four. And it makes me laugh to hear you call me ‘sir,’ when I am the buffoon.”

  “Buffoon?�
�� she repeated, not understanding.

  Extending his long, gold-embroidered scarf to one side, he made a grandiloquent bow. “My name is Aditya. Everyone calls me Aditya-yerda, though, or Buffoon.”

  “Crazy Aditya?” she translated aloud. It seemed like an inappropriate title for such a sharp-looking young man.

  “I don’t take offense at Yerda,” he answered with a wink. “Since turning fifteen, I have entertained the maharaja and his guests with jokes and stories. Come this way.”

  They were standing on a veranda facing a stone courtyard being pounded with rain. It seemed they were going to have to travel straight across. But out of the veranda’s recesses, a bearer appeared with another large umbrella and began walking alongside Perveen.

  Thus protected, she followed Aditya across onto another covered stone veranda, and then through a door into a dark, damp-smelling hallway. Tall doorways and ornate mosaics set into marble walls were the only things that felt palatial; without light and furniture, the hallway was depressing. She turned her attention back to the buffoon.

  “I think you have a most unusual and historic profession!” Perveen said, thinking back to the deck of cards she’d scrutinized at the circuit house. Aditya’s costume was more refined than the tight red harlequin suit shown on the joker card, but his position was similar to the one it depicted.

  “These days there’s very little to laugh about, but I am still here. It’s because I’m the only one Rajmata trusts,” he added with satirical gravity.

  “Rajmata.” She remembered Vandana speaking the same word. “Does that mean mother of the ruler?”

  “Yes. But the lady we still call Rajmata is old—the dowager maharani. She did not like having her title changed. The younger one we call the choti-rani or rani-sahib.”

  “Thank you for explaining that to me.” It was interesting that Mirabai was called the little queen even though her own son was the maharaja. Perveen imagined the whole palace was behaving with deference to her mother-in-law. Did the younger queen feel belittled by the title?

  She also wondered who was in charge of the palace decorations. She’d anticipated this palace would be the grandest place she’d ever visited, but while the hallway had fine stone mosaics and elegant brass filigree work near the ceiling, there was little furniture: just a few heavy carved chairs and a locked cabinet. Looking up, she saw a row of grand Belgian crystal chandeliers, but none of them were lit.

  “Rajmata wanted you to stay near her in the old palace, but Choti-Rani said you must stay in the new because it has electricity and piped water.”

  “So we are inside the original old palace?” She imagined the new one was better maintained.

  “No, this is the new structure that was made for the late Maharaja Mahendra Rao’s marriage to the choti-rani. We already passed through from the old palace.”

  She could imagine her sister-in-law’s shock if she could see the condition of the palace. “And . . . I’m staying here?”

  “Upstairs in the very best guest quarters. Right down this hallway, you will find a stairway.”

  Climbing the wide marble stairs, which were slippery with moisture, she hoped she would remember the way out.

  “I said you must be very comfortable—or you would give the government a bad report about the palace.” Aditya looked at her as if assessing what she would do.

  “It is quite elegant here.” She felt her breathing become labored as the dark rise of stairs stretched ahead. “When are lights used?”

  “Electric light is only turned on after dark, for the rooms which are being used.” He shrugged. “It was different in the late maharaja’s time. But he knew how the crops were growing and how much revenue he would have.”

  “The maharanis aren’t being told that?” Perveen stopped on the stairway landing to catch her breath.

  “Choti-Rani has asked, but the palace minister doesn’t have answers. So everyone worries.” His glance seemed to show both frustration and contempt. “Please enjoy yourself here. In the new palace, there will be no birds flying through your room at night, and no snakes in the bath,” he added with a cackle.

  She looked behind her, belatedly remembering her luggage. “I have a trunk. The men who followed my guide took turns carrying it.”

  “Your bearers have given it to our staff.” He had finished climbing the tall stairway without losing breath.

  They faced a long hallway with tall, unscreened windows on one side with a view of the courtyard, and dozens of doors on the other. It reminded her of a hotel, except that each doorway was made of well-polished, patterned brass with multiple locks. The doors were exquisite, and Aditya explained that using brass rather than wood was both a show of wealth and protection against invaders.

  She was eager to explore this new world, but the palanquin bearers were still on her mind. “Will my bearers be fed and sheltered?”

  Aditya’s eyebrows went up. “You are kind to think of them. Remarkable, even!”

  “They did so much,” she said, wondering whether he was being sarcastic. “Right now, I could still be in the jungle in a broken palanquin. Because of them, I made it.”

  “Do not worry!” He sounded bemused. “I will make sure they stay in the visiting servants’ quarters until your departure. What is this about the palanquin breaking?”

  She was too embarrassed to tell the story of her fright at the spider. “One of the carrying rails split. The rest of the team will come with it once it’s repaired.”

  “The tiny bamboo bridge over the Satapur River has held the weight of many men,” Aditya said with a chuckle. “Tell me, what kind of palanquin breaks under the weight of a lady?”

  “I was told the palanquin broke for another reason two days before my ride,” she said sharply, because she guessed he was commenting on her sturdy figure. “The carriers made a repair, but it didn’t hold fast.”

  “I see. With luck, the clouds will clear tomorrow, and they will come.” He smiled warmly at her. “Tell me any problems or questions you have. I will help.”

  “That is most kind.” They had walked to the end of the long hallway and turned right to face another seemingly endless row of doors.

  Perveen asked, “Where are we now?”

  “We are still walking through the section for lady guests. In past times, during party seasons, hundreds of people would come. Ladies stayed here.”

  “Is it a zenana?”

  “Of sorts. But I am in rooms with the maharanis without them minding.” Aditya cast a sidelong glance at her. He had almond-shaped eyes that reminded her of Vandana’s, although his had a golden-brown flecking that was different. “What have you come to ask them about?”

  Perveen imagined that a court jester was most certainly a gossip, so she was careful with her answer. “The government asked me to listen to whatever the maharanis tell me. I was sent because they would not meet with Sandringham-sahib, the current political agent for the state.”

  “May your ears hear the truth!” he said as he stopped before a door with a lamp lit next to it. “And what happens when you leave?”

  “I’ll tell their tale to the government.”

  “So you are really a storyteller, just like me!” he said as he turned the doorknob. “Are you paid in rupees or jewels?”

  “With a regular salary—” She broke off as she saw the room to which he’d brought her. The vast chamber was floored in black and cream marble tiles set in a diamond pattern, with scattered rugs made from the skins of tigers and leopards. Milky glass panels framed by gilded woodwork ornamented twenty-foot walls. The only addition to the spectacular walls was a large tinted photographic portrait of a serious-looking man with a broad mustache and a rakishly tilted pagri. The heavy ropes of pearls around the gentleman’s neck, and the fact that the portrait was draped with a garland of jasmine, made it obvious that he was the late Maharaja
Mahendra Rao.

  “This room is lovely!” Perveen continued her inspection, knowing she would send letters to her family and Alice all about it. The guest room’s furniture was ornately carved ebony. This included a wide four-poster bed dressed in silk quilts; a very tall, mirrored almirah; and a washstand that was carved with designs of snakes and flowers. She could hear the sound of water running like a waterfall in the distance and looked toward an arched doorway, where a young maid stood gaping at her.

  “Your maid is called Chitra,” Aditya said. “She is making a bath for you because Choti-Rani asked for you to bathe four times.”

  “Why four?”

  He winked and said, “In the palace, it is not our right to ask such things.”

  She nodded. Aditya was candid and would probably be her closest ally during this visit. She felt almost regretful when the men arrived with her luggage and he took it upon himself to leave.

  “Your bath is ready, memsahib,” Chitra said in deferential Marathi. “I will unpack your clothing.”

  “Thank you. I do hope the clothes inside aren’t wet.” Perveen went to the trunk and opened it with the key she’d kept in her satchel. The tissue on top was damp, but everything underneath was dry.

  “I shall iron everything for you!” Chitra said enthusiastically, as if the clothes had revealed the guest was not as vulgar as her appearance might indicate. “Memsahib, which sari will you select for the evening meal?”

  “I’ve never eaten at a palace,” she confessed. “How fancy will this dinner be?”

  “Not very. The maharanis are widows, so their dress is quite simple. I think this will do.” Chitra pointed at a blue silk sari with Chinese embroidery. It was a classic gara that had been part of Gulnaz’s wedding trousseau, the very best sari Perveen had brought.

  “Very well.” Perveen swallowed, hoping there would not be any occasions more formal. “My friend said that in the old days, things were very gay here.”