Rebel Queen (25 page)

Jhalkari’s response was immediate. “I will go.”

Everyone turned to me, and I responded, “I will go as well.”

“They’d need escorts,” Moropant said. “At least a dozen men.”

“I will send Arjun,” the rani said. “Arjun attended an English boarding school. He understands English.”

“They can leave as soon as passage is arranged,” Major Erskine said eagerly. “Of course, they will all need training in British customs. But Dr. McEgan and his wife could see to that.”

Dr. McEgan was the British doctor who had confirmed for the rani that there had never been a plague in Jhansi. He was also the doctor the raja had angrily dismissed before his death.

There was new hope in the rani’s face. “What do you say?” she asked her father. “What about their reputations when they return?”

Suddenly, even Moropant seemed inspired. “If they can succeed where Umesh Chandra failed, I don’t see that it should matter if they’d traveled to the moon!”

Everyone laughed. There was no reason that this shouldn’t work. The ruler of England was a woman. So was the ruler of Jhansi. And now she was sending two female guards across the seas to plead her case.

“The lessons will begin at once,” the rani said.

T
he three weeks Jhalkari and I spent with Mrs. McEgan were extraordinary.

The rani arranged for our first meeting to take place after yoga. Even though I knew I should have been clearing my mind, I lay on my jute mat and couldn’t stop thinking of England. What would it be like to walk the streets of London? I tried to imagine the food and the sights, and couldn’t. The London of Shakespeare’s day was more than two hundred years in the past, so not even Shakespeare could prepare me for what we were about to see.

“And that’s why I’m here,” Mrs. McEgan said when she arrived at the Rani Mahal. She was dressed in the most extraordinary gown, with her stomach completely covered and her bosoms practically hanging out. Her waist appeared unusually small, and her entire dress was green, like the hat on her head and the trim on her boots. She peeled off her white gloves as soon as she entered the first-floor room the rani had prepared for us. And when she seated herself on one of the thirteen chairs that had been arranged in a circle for her arrival, she lowered herself with a slow and pretty grace I was sure I’d never possess. Like Jhalkari, I was wearing a red angarkha, with a pistol on my right and my sword on my left.

“So this is all of you?” She smiled, and I glanced at Arjun, to see what he made of this woman with her water-blue eyes and pale-as-butter skin. But like the nine other guards who would be traveling with us, he was averting his gaze, on account of Mrs. McEgan’s inappropriate dress. “Well, don’t sit there staring at the floor. Look at me!”

If the men had looked, they would have seen a young woman with honey-colored hair arranged in thick curls around her head. A
smile took up most of her pretty face. But no one obeyed. Not even Arjun, who spoke English. She looked at Jhalkari and me.

“The men are embarrassed,” I explained. “They won’t look at a woman whose chest . . .” I indicated her bosoms with my eyes. Her face turned red, the same way Major Ellis’s used to. She reached for a shawl and covered herself. One by one, the men looked up.

“I had no idea. The women in Jhansi all show off their waists.”

“Perhaps the glimpse of a woman’s waist for you is the same as the glimpse of a woman’s breasts is to us.”

“There’s going to be a good deal to learn,” she said, “isn’t there?”

We began with dress, and we discovered a great many things about the British we had never imagined. For one, it was extremely baffling to learn what they considered appropriate versus horribly inappropriate. Burping in public, perfectly fine in Jhansi, was considered uncouth by the British; something only drunks or small children did. Yet not bathing before going to a place of worship was perfectly fine, and in fact, some of the British didn’t bathe for weeks. Their food consisted of dead animals, which they speared with metal items called forks and knives. And almost nothing was eaten by hand. As for the women, according to Mrs. McEgan, they ate in front of whomever they pleased, laughed like she did, with their mouths wide open, and didn’t think twice about allowing a man to kiss their hands.

But the most extraordinary lessons of all featured court etiquette, and what should and should not be done before the queen. A woman’s neck and shoulders were to be bare at all times, even if there was rain or snow. Her gown’s train must be exactly three yards in length, so the queen could see it spread by the lords-in-waiting in the room. Dinner at six meant dinner at six fifteen, not a minute before and not a minute after. If we should be so fortunate as to be invited to a meal, ten courses would be served, with all of
the accompanying, confusing silverware. No noise in the dining room. No singing in the halls. And children were not to laugh or speak unless spoken to.

By the end of our first lesson, the queen’s court sounded like a prison, not a palace.

“You’ll feel differently as soon as you see it,” Mrs. McEgan promised. “There’s nothing like London anywhere in the world. ‘This blessed plot, this earth, this realm, this England.’”

I recognized Shakespeare’s
Richard II
and grinned.

Chapter Twenty

T
he setting sun gilded the walls of the palace and reflected from Arjun’s golden earrings. He looked the way I imagined Lord Krishna had when he was alive and enchanting the pretty
gopis
.

“I will meet your family someday. Maybe not soon, but I will. I want to see what sort of man produced a daughter like you,” he said.

The rani was allowing us a week to visit our families before we left for England. I was excited, but also sad that Arjun wouldn’t be coming with me. I had thought the rani might allow him to escort me home.

“Yes. My father would enjoy your passion for literature,” I told him. “You two have much in common.”

“Be safe,” he said with unusual tenderness.

We were standing outside of the Rani Mahal. It was September, and the monsoon had turned the courtyard to mud. In one of the rain pools, I could see our reflection, the ripples pushing our images together.

“I will.”

A
t home, my father was overjoyed to see his little peacock. But the house wasn’t the same with Anu living in her husband’s home next door. I took my father’s pen and wrote, “Do you see her often?”

“Nearly every week. She couldn’t be happier. But what about you?”

I wanted to answer him honestly, but didn’t know how. Was I excited for my journey? Afraid? Nervous? I struggled to choose a single emotion. Finally, I wrote, “It’s been very difficult to see the British flag in Jhansi.”

“The British have better weapons and superior training,” my father replied, and I could see from his handwriting how angry he was. “What is the rani planning to do?”

“She is sending a delegation to England to petition the queen.” I met my father’s gaze, and suddenly, he understood.

“You’re going.”

“Yes. With another Durgavasi and ten of the rani’s guards, including her captain. It will take two months to travel there. We’ll be there for a month, and then it will take another two months to return. I want to tell Anu and say good-bye. I’ll be back in the new year.”

My father reached out and covered my hand with his. Tears welled in his eyes.

W
e stood at the doorstep of Shivaji’s house and my father knocked, although most people usually just called through the open window.

Shivaji answered the door. I bent to touch his feet, and when I came up, he was wearing a great smile.

“Sita!” he exclaimed. “Amisha,” he called to his wife, “it’s Sita! What are you doing here? Did you just arrive? Come inside!”

Shivaji’s house was much finer than ours. His wife had brought with her a large dowry fortune, and many of the items had been hers from childhood. We walked through a hall painted with images of Lord Krishna as a baby, and I wondered if one of Shivaji’s other sons was an artist. Then I heard a familiar voice call my name, and as we entered the common room, a pair of arms wrapped themselves around me.

“Anu!” I pulled back and was shocked by the change I saw in my sister. She was a woman, with a woman’s features and a woman’s body. She bent to touch my feet, and when she stood I saw that new curves filled out the blue and yellow sari I had sent to her. She wore gold around her wrists like my mother had and their resemblance was so strong that for several moments, I was too startled to say anything. “You’re a woman.”

She giggled. “How long are you staying?”

“A day. The rani needs me to travel. I came to say good-bye.”

Her smile vanished. “Where are you going?”

“To England, to petition the queen. The rani is sending me and another Durgavasi. She sent a lawyer several months back, but the queen refused to hear his petition.”

My father and Shivaji seated themselves on a pair of low cushions across from my sister and I did the same. It was only later that I realized I had chosen to sit with the men versus the married women.

“I’ve never been farther than Burma,” Shivaji said as he folded his legs. “But if I was offered the opportunity to go to England . . . It’s almost two months at sea, is that right?”

“Yes. We will arrive in the middle of December and experience
their largest festival. Christmas.” I told them the story Mrs. McEgan told us, of Lord Jesus and his virgin mother. “The rani has told us to honor everything they do in this festival, so long as it pleases Lord Brahma.”

I looked over at my sister, who was staring at me the way you might stare at a stranger. Perhaps I really was a stranger to her now. The thought made me sad.

“Tell me about life as Ishan’s wife,” I said.

Anu blushed, and I knew she was in love. “He is at the animal hospital right now. Sometimes, he brings home wounded birds. We’ve raised three, and watched them fly away.”

“He’s a good man,” I said. “It must be his father’s influence.” I smiled at Shivaji, who returned the gesture, then asked me what life was like as the rani’s Durgavasi. “Different now that the British have Jhansi.”

“It’s unthinkable,” Shivaji said. “Queen Victoria and her Parliament are just as greedy as the Company, wanting more land, more valuable goods, more trading routes. You will need a very persuasive argument when you go. What will it be?”

“That the young queen is a woman the same as the rani, and understands a woman’s struggle to rule. Why would one queen wish to rob another, when so few of them remain?”

Shivaji stared at me. “Is that it? You are traveling such a distance to remind the British queen that she is a woman?”

My face felt hot. It did seem ridiculous hearing his words. “No. We are going to appeal to her humanity.” Because what other peaceful option was there?

Shivaji didn’t look persuaded.

“They say she’s wise,” I said, feigning confidence. “She’ll understand that diplomacy is the best solution.”

T
he day after we returned from visiting our families, we departed for England. The rani and the other Durgavasi surrounded our horses to bid us farewell. The rani gave a short speech describing her pride in our mission, and she was full of praise for what Jhalkari and I were about to do. No other women in all of India had undertaken the journey Jhalkari and I were about to take—none that we knew of. So you can imagine our feelings as we made our way by horse, then cart, then horse again, to the port where our ship would sail for another country.

“I’ve never seen anything like it,” Jhalkari kept saying, in every city we passed. And everything was new not only to us, but to everyone in our group. In one city, the women wore what looked to us to be long black shrouds. Even their faces were covered in black. In another, the men were dressed entirely in white. The buildings, the food, even the animals we encountered as we made our way from Jhansi to Madras, were completely unfamiliar. We might as well have been traveling across different continents.

When we reached Madras, Arjun looked over at me, and we both stared at the expanse of water before us. Neither of us had seen the ocean before, and the brightly colored sails of the small fishing boats framed against the blue sky were beautiful. “I wish my father could see this,” I said to Arjun.

We dismounted and stood on the shore, watching as boats bobbed and swayed on the sea. The wind tasted like salt instead of earth, and Major Wilkes, the British officer who would be escorting us to England, put his nose in the air and smiled. He was a little older than the rani, twenty-nine or thirty. He was making this trip to England to bring his fiancée back with him to India. “Home.” He sighed.

He helped us unpack the horses, then several of his men appeared to escort us onto a towering white steamer. None of us had been on a boat, and as soon as we stepped onto the wooden plank, the steamer gave a giant lurch to the side and we were all forced to grab on to the rails.

“We’re going to sail to England in
this
?” Jhalkari cried.

Although I’m sure Major Wilkes didn’t speak a word of Marathi, he understood what she said, because he laughed. “No. We’ll be sailing to Suez in this. Then we’ll be traveling overland to Alexandria and taking another steamer to England. You’ll go on to London by carriage.”

We boarded the steamer and stood in the largest hall of the passenger ship and stared. From ceiling to floor, the walls were paneled in richly carved wood. Plush carpeting covered the floors, and in one corner, a heavy silver mirror reflected the light of a gilded candelabrum. Upholstered couches were arranged around small inlaid tables, where several English men sat puffing on long cigars. I watched the smoke curl up over their heads and make its way out of the shuttered windows. The shutters were made of teak, and the trays on each of the tables were pure silver. The rani had spent a fortune sending us to England. She saw it as an investment.

Arjun stepped toward one of the windows to get a better view, and Major Wilkes cleared his throat. “I’m sorry,” he said. “This room isn’t for you.”

We all turned.

Major Wilkes glanced at the other men sitting in the room, since they were all watching us now. “This room is only for the British,” he explained. Then he apologized, “I didn’t make the rules.”

“But you will enforce them,” I said.

“There’s nothing I can do.”

Arjun looked at me, and we explained to the others what the major said. Several of the men protested. “If we’re not allowed with the British,” Jhalkari said, “where are we staying?”

Major Wilkes led us through a series of halls to the very back of the ship. Four rooms were to be ours: two for the men, one for Jhalkari and myself, and a fourth one for eating and talking together. They were the most beautiful chambers our group had seen outside of the Panch Mahal. The major let us choose which rooms were to be which, and then we began to unpack.

When Jhalkari shut the door, I said, “It doesn’t seem real. An entire room just for us!”

“I feel like the rani,” she admitted.

We explored everything, from the silver door handles, to the small tidy beds, to the wooden night tables with their mahogany bookends. The beds were on opposite sides of the room, and I chose the one closest to the window. I lay back on the mattress and looked out at the vast expanse of sea. I began to wonder if traveling such a long distance was actually safe. I was about to turn twenty-one years old, and the only thing I knew about ships was that they had a habit of finding themselves in uncharted waters—in English fiction anyway. I glanced at Jhalkari, who was still standing, arms crossed, looking out over the water.

“Do you think travel by boat is safe?” I asked.

“The rani wouldn’t have invested so much money if it wasn’t.”

But what if a great storm swelled up and we were in its midst? Might we be cast on the shores of some unknown land, like Viola in
Twelfth Night
? Or worse, on some uninhabited island like Miranda in
The Tempest
? There was a knock on the door, and Arjun appeared with two other guards.

“Would you like to tour the ship?”

We went from bow to stern, and Arjun described the construction of the steamer drawing only on what he had read in the rani’s vast library. When we reached the stern, the five of us watched as the shore faded into the distance. When it was nothing more than a smudge on the horizon, Arjun said, “ ‘No one knows for certain whether the vessel will sink or reach the harbor. Cautious people say, “I’ll do nothing until I can be sure.” Merchants know better. If you do nothing, you lose. Don’t be one of those merchants who won’t risk the ocean.’ ”