Authors: Indu Sundaresan
So, hesitantly, Azizuddin said, “Your Majesty, you have been generous, almost too generous with Shah Shuja. Why not just . . . um . . . end his life? And take the Kohinoor? It has to be somewhere in the Shalimar Gardens; we would find it, upturn every slab of stone in the gardens if need be.”
Leili stepped sideways, carrying her rider out of pale light that flowed from the apartments above, and Azizuddin could no longer see his king. His voice, though, came in a slow and thoughtful rumble. “Aziz, there’s no use in taking life needlessly. I’ve never done so before; I don’t intend to do so now.”
No, Aziz thought, he never had. In all the wars, the conquests, the battles, the life of every loser had been spared. Other kings in similar situations would not have been—and had not been—this kind. And, after all, Shah Shuja and his family had come to the Punjab in search of refuge, and though they had been granted it, they hadn’t fulfilled the exact terms of their promise. The trophies they had sent were now stuffed into the Maharajah’s overflowing Toshakhana, the treasury house. So why this hankering for the Kohinoor? He asked Ranjit Singh.
“Because it belongs here, Aziz. With me, in India. The Kohinoor
is
India—take it away from the country and the light departs along with it. You know that it was mined here, that even Hindu mythology puts it in the hands of the mortals as a gift from the gods?”
Azizuddin nodded. “But,” he said, a twinkle in his eye.
Ranjit Singh laughed into the dark night, that same rich sound that had thrilled the young Aziz. “But, I want it. I want to own it. I want to be the man who had the Kohinoor in his possession. I want to be the one who breaks the curse upon it—that only a woman could own it and keep her life. Hmmm”—now he turned reflective—“maybe that is why Wafa Begam has been able to keep it from me for so long. What is she like?”
The question took Azizuddin by surprise. “Why,” he said, and then stumbled over his words, “she has beauty, a strong voice—I’ve heard it more than once; her husband relies upon her. She halted the wrestling match today. They might have killed each other by the end of it, if she hadn’t stopped it. She’s a woman, your Majesty. What other terms could I possibly describe her by?”
“Shabbily done, Azizuddin. I wish I could see her myself.”
“Would you want to, your Majesty?”
“No . . . perhaps. For the last five years she has sent me sweet letters with honeyed words, knowing full well that I want the Kohinoor, and yet she’s managed to keep it away from me. She has the saccharine tongue of a diplomat, Azizuddin. You’d do well to learn from this.”
Azizuddin nodded somberly. If it hadn’t been for his disguise as the old gardener, he himself would never have seen Shuja’s wife. For someone who had been brought up cloistered, who spent her whole life within the harem’s walls, she had a knife-edge brain.
His attention was distracted when a torch flared to life on the outer edge of the
maidan
. The sudden flame stabbed the dark night sky before it settled into a more steady blaze. The man holding it walked toward them and then bent to the ground and set his torch upon a wooden peg, which caught fire. He kept on, heading in their direction, until a line of
gold, from pegs hammered into the ground, created a blazing stroke upon the dry earth.
“What is—”
“You’ll see,” the Maharajah said. “Now!” he shouted.
At his voice, a man emerged from the darkness, astride a horse, riding hard toward the pegs. He had a spear in his outflung right hand, holding it well away from his body. As his horse charged, kicking up a blur of dust, he bent from his waist, his head level with the horse’s head, and aimed the shining tip of his spear at the first peg. The tip went through the peg, and he lifted it into the air as he rode away and disappeared beyond the perimeter of light. Before a bemused Azizuddin could see a soldier on the side pull the flaming peg off the spear, the sound of horses’ hooves thundered over the
maidan
and another man came into view.
In all, there were three men, and one by one, they sliced the pegs cleanly from the mud, not lessening the speed of their gallop, and riding away to divest their spears of the pegs before returning again. At the end of the demonstration, as each speared peg was extinguished, darkness pounced back over them. There was only the reek of spent fire, a bluish gray haze of smoke, and the tired canter of horses being led away.
It had been impeccably done. Tent pegging was not a sport for the faint of heart; it required tremendous concentration, a gimlet eye, an unshakable seat. Tumbling from the horse at that speed, spear in hand, or mistakenly plunging the spear into the earth and ricocheting from the saddle—either of these could mean death or a grievous maiming.
“Did they pass the test, your Majesty?” Azizuddin asked with a grin. He had identified the third man—Paolo Avitabile; difficult not to do so, Aziz thought, he was some seven feet tall, thickset, broad-shouldered, and when he rode his horse—although he rode it well—it looked like a dog between his legs.
“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 laughed 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?”