Shadow Princess (57 page)

In these past five years, whether in the dungeons under the Hari Parbat Fort in Kashmir, or here in the golden cage of the Shalimar, it had always been Shuja who had been doubtful, or pessimistic. Wafa, with her laughter, her joy, her belief that everything would go her way or no way at all, had a spark of hope lighting her from within. Oh, she had cried before, in distress, or frustration, or hatred, but she had never swerved from their purpose—Shuja would be freed and one day he would return to Afghanistan to be king.

Shah Shuja swiped at the tears that ran in thin lines around the edges of his face and hoped that his wife wouldn’t notice them. “Sweat in my eyes,” he said hoarsely.

She nodded, wrapped her arms around his, brought his palm back to her face again, and buried her nose in it.

What had happened last night had devastated them. Only because it was so unexpected, something they were so little prepared for. The shock was not of the unanticipated but of the fact that they ought to have known better.

At first, when the voice had come out of the darkness, Shuja had propelled Wafa behind him, his eyes roving around, wondering where it had come from and who had spoken.

And then, one of the peasants hired by Elphinstone to help them escape had stepped forward and, with great deliberateness, stripped the turban cloth from the lower half of his face. In the distorted play of light—the silver from the moonlight, the dimness of the walls, the dull white glow of the turbans—for just a moment, Shuja had strained to see the man’s face and, for another moment, hadn’t recognized him.

He had whipped around to Ibrahim, who said quietly, “It’s the old gardener, your Majesty. We’ve been hoodwinked.”

Shuja had felt a strain around his chest then.
All
of this had been a trick? Nothing but a ruse to bring them out of the Shalimar Gardens with the Kohinoor? And, who was this man who had played at being a gardener in their midst?

He’d raised his chin with a pointed, silent question.

The man had bowed. “I am Fakir Azizuddin.”

Ah, Shuja had thought, the Maharajah’s foreign minister—this was no ordinary minion but one of his most powerful courtiers. At his side, he’d felt Wafa shaking and he’d put an arm around her, turned his back upon Azizuddin so that he could hug his wife. When he lifted her face to his, he had realized that she was laughing, not crying.

“What?” he had whispered.

“Let me handle this,” she’d said. “I’ll talk to the fakir.”

He had turned to face Fakir Azizuddin.

“Your Majesty,” the other man had said, “we could make this very easy, dignified for all of us, if you will only permit yourselves to be searched. After that, you are free to return to the Shalimar Gardens. With the Kohinoor in his possession, the Maharajah will be delighted to outline some very lavish terms for you; he has already spoken to me of an annuity, and a substantial lump sum.”

“What about me, Fakir Azizuddin?” Wafa Begam had said in a strong voice, stepping out from behind her husband. The light was faint, Wafa’s veil was swathed around her head; all Azizuddin could see was a shape, nose, the bones above the eyes, the jut of cheekbones—and he’d seen much more before of Shuja’s favorite wife in his guise as a gardener—yet etiquette demanded, so he’d bent his gaze to the ground.

“You too, your Majesty.” His voice had been deferential, but trailed into something very like indecision.

Wafa Begam had pounced on that uncertainty and cut Maharajah Ranjit Singh’s famous and powerful foreign minister into tiny pieces and strewed his carcass around. “You don’t have a woman on staff, do you? I refuse to be searched by a man—you wouldn’t dare do this to me.” She had straightened her back, become queenly, regal, her pale hands fluttering in the semidarkness. “In fact, I refuse to submit to a search by any woman.” Easy to say because there wasn’t any woman around, unless Azizuddin counted the
chai
lady, even now packing up her belongings and getting ready to close for the night, since her tea had been spilled by the guard.

With that, Wafa Begam had strolled past all of them—a line opened in the middle of the group of silent soldiers guarding the southern gateway into the upper terrace—and went back inside the Shalimar Gardens.

Shah Shuja had begun to laugh, mirth shaking his frame.
He still hadn’t said a word to Azizuddin, and Ibrahim hadn’t spoken either.

The minister had bowed to the erstwhile ruler of Afghanistan, and gestured toward the entrance to the gardens. He didn’t want to search them at all, because he was sure that Wafa Begam had the Kohinoor.

While the night had eaten up the rest of the hours, there were two groups of people awake, one on either side of the Shalimar’s walls. Inside, Shuja and Wafa knew that this small victory meant nothing, that this was the beginning of the end for them.

And outside, Fakir Azizuddin pondered and paced. He had come back to the Shalimar with another set of guards, only to find the escape was already in progress. For a brief few seconds, a cold hand had wrapped around his heart. Mentioning Elphinstone to the Maharajah had been almost an afterthought; he hadn’t thought it important then. Even an hour ago, preparing the guard, during the trip through the scrub, a journey he had already made twice today, Aziz had doubted the wisdom of haste. But when Ranjit Singh gave an order, it was obeyed. As simple as that. And then, to see the two men in Elphinstone’s employ whistling a snatch of a violin concerto, the blows on their heads, bundling them out of the way before Ibrahim Khan came snaking down the rope . . . waiting for Wafa Begam to also descend . . . Azizuddin had thought himself brilliant in allowing it to happen so that he could corner them and snatch the Kohinoor and end all these years of futile waiting.

But then Wafa had walked away with the diamond, and Azizuddin knew that it was
she
who was brilliant. He was just a fool who had thought only to the edge of the pit, not beyond it, and so had fallen in.

The wily Wafa would have hidden the Kohinoor again by now. They had searched the gardens many times in the past few years, and it had never been discovered. He knew how
much his king wanted the diamond. And Azizuddin wanted to be the man who brought it to him. He had thought for a while longer, and then walked around the perimeter of the Shalimar Gardens, looking up at the walls as the light rose, giving a new set of orders to the guards.

•  •  •

“I’m hungry,” Wafa Begam said. All of their worries seemed to have leached away with the steam; the tiredness had left their bodies, and they both lay back on the edge of the pool, their feet in the water, looking up at the skylights.

Shuja ordered the steam to be stopped, and the hiss died down into a quiet nothingness. The light from the sun seemed to burn away the mist and created dark shadows in the shade, a golden transparency where it touched.

Perhaps things were not so bad after all, Shuja thought, his fingers entwined with his wife’s. He had one more thing left to give Ranjit Singh if he became too demanding. He didn’t know anymore if Elphinstone was truly in Lahore, if his offer to help was genuine, if the night’s adventures had been an elaborate ruse.

“Let’s go have breakfast,” he said, rising from the floor and helping Wafa up.

They went out into the middle terrace, paused for a moment at the pool. The fountains were silent now, and water lay without a ripple, placid, the tinted stones underneath the surface throwing rainbows of glittering color upon the face of the water.

When they ascended to the upper terrace, all was quiet. No smoke from the kitchen fires, no aroma of cooked chicken and lamb, no fragrance of freshly baked
naans
. Every morning, through the south entrance of the upper terrace, Maharajah Ranjit Singh sent in a mass of supplies—clucking hens driven in a cluster, fresh vegetables, spices in covered jars,
butter and
ghee
in urns. But today, the gates had been firmly shut. The Maharajah of the Punjab intended to starve them until Shah Shuja gave him the Kohinoor diamond.

•  •  •

For the next two days, Shuja, Ibrahim, and Wafa ate the ripening guavas in the trees, and then the unripe ones, their stomachs protesting. When the guavas were gone, they washed the green mangoes, cut them into slices, sprinkled on salt and chilli powder, ate them until their tongues became sour.

Desperate, Shuja sent the Maharajah his last jewel, a stone as big as his fist, hued in pale yellow, and said that it was the Kohinoor. A long eight hours passed on that third day as they waited. Ranjit Singh had never seen the Kohinoor; he did not know what it looked like, or how big it actually was, or anything about it at all.

A letter came from the king to Shah Shuja in which he thanked him for the
pukraj,
the wonderful topaz, he had sent him, but it wasn’t the Kohinoor, was it?

On the fourth day, a slew of gardeners came into the Shalimar and cut down every tree. They drained the pools, shut off the water source from the Hasli Canal, and the stones in the central pool of the middle terrace lay twinkling reproachfully at them in the harsh sun.

A few hours later, Wafa Begam picked her way over the stones in the pool, went to the fountain spout that was the third one from the northwest corner, toward the wrestling platform, bent down, and picked up the armlet hidden there.

She was weak, rabidly hungry, shaking from a want of water and food. Shuja took the armlet himself to Fakir Azizuddin, who waited at the northernmost end of the middle terrace, his face turned away from Wafa Begam. Shuja’s steps were halting, dragged on the ground.

Azizuddin examined the armlet and the enormous stone in the center, which caught fire in the light from the sun and shed its lovely glow over his dark face.

“Thank you, your Majesty,” he said.

Within the hour, servants had brought in covered dishes wrapped in red satin cloth and laid them out on a carpet in the Aiwan pavilion. Shuja, Wafa, and Ibrahim ate everything in sight, drank cups of wine, and fell onto the carpets sated and full.

The next day, they found all the entrances to the Shalimar thrown wide open, no guards around, the heated air from the plains rolling in. Freedom, Shah Shuja thought, as he watched the Englishman, Mountstuart Elphinstone, ride his horse into the lower terrace and bow his head. More horses were brought in; they jumped into the saddles and rode away south toward the Sutlej River. When they had crossed the river and entered the lands of British India, they were guided to a splendid
haveli
in Ludhiana.