Authors: Lucinda Riley
I stopped myself from reaching my eyes to the heavens to give thanks. It was no surprise that Jameera hadn’t put up a fight to keep me. She needed a far more malleable companion than me.
“Then if all of us are agreed, Anahita, arrangements will be made by the Maharani of Cooch Behar for you to travel there.”
“Thank you, Your Highness,” I said, bowing my head again. “When will I leave?” I couldn’t stop myself from adding.
“As soon as the arrangements have been made.”
My mother and I backed out of the room. As soon as we were out of sight, she put her arms around me. Tipping my chin up toward her, she stared into my eyes.
“This is what you want?” she asked me.
“More than anything, Maaji.”
A
nd this, my darling child, as the astrologer had predicted, really did begin a new chapter in my life. An aide-de-camp had been sent to accompany me from Jaipur to Cooch Behar. As I disembarked from the train, which was set on a single-track railway that had been built to access Cooch Behar, the most northeasterly of Indian provinces, I glanced up and saw the outline of the great Himalayan mountains in the distance scalloped against the sky. With a porter carrying the battered suitcase which once had been my father’s, I was told a horse-drawn tonga had been sent to meet me.
Before I had left Jaipur, I had read what I could about Indira’s faraway province. It’s hard for anyone who has never been to India to imagine how one country can encompass such a vast number of differing climates and landscapes. India is a land of contrasts, each individual state containing a myriad of different cultures, languages and people. Even though we are so often lumped together as one country, everything about our great nation is dramatic and varied.
As the driver helped me aboard, my clothes instantly stuck to my damp skin. The climate here was hot and humid, so unlike the dry, suffocating heat of Jaipur.
As we drove through the town, I saw the houses were basic, built of bamboo and thatch, their roofs covered with abundant plumes of hibiscus. They were perched on stilts to protect them from the great monsoon floods. No one wasted money here building the solid stone houses of Jaipur, which could last two or three hundred years. In Cooch Behar, their owners were all too aware there might be yet another flood or earthquake that would sweep their homes away without trace.
As the horse clip-clopped along the dusty red roads, I stared eagerly out of the window for my first glimpse of the palace. We were some way out of town by the time I saw it. It looked enormous, with two great wings leading off a huge dome in the center. We began to drive through the park, its lush manicured lawns stretching away on
every side. I heard the trumpet of elephants from the
pilkhana
and saw a lake which ran the entire length of the palace.
Even then, to my untrained eye, I didn’t think the palace looked very traditionally Indian, and I was to find out later that it had been designed by an English architect. From the outside, at least, the dull-colored brick and the lack of delicate Indian latticework at the windows made it look austere in contrast to the Moon Palace in Jaipur.
I’ve always found the contrast in the atmosphere between the outside and the inside of India’s palaces curious; to the onlooker, they seem deserted, because almost all activity takes place within the many shaded courtyards designed especially to shield their occupants from the searing Indian sun. As I write this, it occurs to me that perhaps this is also an apt metaphor for human beings; often, their silent, serene outer skin doesn’t betray the liveliness of spirit that exists inside.
And this was certainly the case when I arrived at Cooch Behar Palace. As my tonga came to a standstill and the door was opened for me to dismount, I realized I had not seen a single soul since we had entered the park.
As the driver unloaded my small trunk, I heard a voice behind me.
“Surprise!”
Indira sprang like a monkey onto my back, hooking her slim, brown arms around my neck.
“Ouch!” I said as she managed to catch my hair in her bracelet. She immediately jumped off and swung me around to face her.
“You’re here! I told you I’d make it happen!”
“Yes, I’m here,” I said, feeling exhausted from the long journey, and suddenly shy and awkward after so many weeks away from her.
I looked immediately for signs of the sickness that had been described so vividly in her mother’s letter. But her eyes sparkled; her thick, black hair shone blue as the sun touched it; and her wiry frame seemed no thinner than the last time I had seen it.
“I thought you were very ill,” I chastised her. “I’ve hardly slept with worry for you since I heard.”
She put her hands on her tiny hips and rolled her eyes at me. “Well, I was,” she said. “In fact, I was so sick that I couldn’t eat for weeks. Ma sent for endless doctors to try and find out what was wrong with me. The doctors agreed that I must be pining for something. Or some
one
. And then, once Ma had agreed that you must come, I got out of my bed and suddenly felt hungry and well. Isn’t it a miracle?” Indira waved
her hands expressively to the heavens. “Since then, I’ve been eating like a horse.” Her gaze fell on me and her eyes became serious. “I’ve missed you so much, Anni; I think I might well have died if you hadn’t come.”
I was overwhelmed by the ruse she had employed to guarantee I would come to her. Naturally mistrustful, especially when it came to royal families and princesses, my feelings must have shown in my eyes.
“Anni, you doubted me, didn’t you?”
I bowed my head silently and then looked up at her, reaching my hands toward hers and clasping them. “Yes, I am sorry to say that I did. But, my dear friend, I will never doubt you again.”
• • •
My first few weeks at Cooch Behar Palace with Indira were full of new and wonderful experiences. Palace life and my daily routine could not have been more different from what I’d been used to in Jaipur. I had been warned endlessly by the women of my old zenana that the Maharani of Cooch Behar did not run her female court in a seemly Hindu fashion. Not only did she not adhere to purdah inside the palace walls, but Ayesha had traveled across the water away from India with her family many times. This, in the strictest interpretation of Hindu religion, meant that the entire royal family had broken caste.
The Jaipur ladies had also told me with a grave expression in their eyes that the Maharani seemed more Western than Indian. And that her palace was constantly filled with foreign guests, including European aristocrats and American actors. I had nodded equally gravely in return as I listened to their litany of criticisms. They couldn’t know that these descriptions filled me with unimaginable excitement.
As I discovered subsequently, almost all of what they’d said seemed to be true. The Maharani ran her palace and her family in a truly modern way. Every morning, Indira and I would rise at dawn to head for the stables, where two perfectly groomed and saddled horses would be waiting for us. At first, I was playing catch-up with Indira, who proved to be a superb horsewoman. I remember feeling alive and free galloping at breakneck speed across the park, laughing and whooping as the wind brushed my cheeks, and happier than I had ever been.
It took many weeks for me to out-gallop her, but when eventually I did, Indira shouted with pleasure at my triumph.
After breakfast, on weekdays, we would enter a large room where we took lessons with a private tutor. Indira had the attention span of a gnat and it took all my powers of persuasion to make her concentrate on her work. I’d watch her looking longingly outside, waiting for the moment when she would be released to visit her precious elephant, Pretty, to take a short ride on her back, or to play tennis on the beautifully laid-out court.
As for me, I relished the opportunity to continue to expand my education. Our British tutor was a professor of English, who encouraged me in my long-standing love of books. In retrospect, I believe he was as glad to have me in his classroom as I was to be there. My English vocabulary improved enormously and I did my best, as I’d been asked to by the Maharani, to speak to her daughter in the language as much as I possibly could.
The Maharani had also employed an English governess to care for her youngest daughter’s needs. Miss Reid was a sweet-natured woman who clearly despaired of ever turning her wild charge into a lady.
On countless occasions, Indira would disobey her pleas not to be late for luncheon, or to sit quietly with a book in the schoolroom afterward. The moment Miss Reid’s back was turned, Indira would wink at me, and we would be off on another adventure outside.
One of my very favorite parts of the palace was the vast library, containing priceless first editions written by famous novelists from around the world. The glass cabinets in which the books stood remained locked at all times; they were simply an impressive ornament, another decoration, and I doubted any one of the titles had ever been taken down and read during all the years they’d been there. I had often glanced at the shelves, my fingers itching to take one out and hold it. I’d had to make do with the tattered copies of
Wuthering Heights
,
Oliver Twist
and Shakespeare’s
Hamlet
that my English tutor had brought with him from England. During the long, peaceful afternoons I had read and reread them time and again.
Many other afternoons were spent resting in the beautiful, airy bedroom I shared with Indira. I lay on my bed staring at the azure-blue walls, adorned with hand-painted Himalayan daisies, and thanked the gods profusely for bringing me here. Indira, probably because she expended so much nervous energy while she was awake, would fall asleep immediately, whereas I would mull over the happenings of the day so far.
As dusk approached, the palace would come back to life. This was the moment of the day I loved more than any other; the sense of anticipation of the evening to come suffused us all. There were always numerous exotic guests from all over the world for dinner. Indira and I used to watch as the servants laid the table in the enormous dining room with solid-gold place settings, heavy knives and forks inlaid with gems, and huge vases full of magnificent flowers. Incense was wafted through the downstairs rooms in a silver
dhuan
by a servant.
On my first night at the palace, after we’d eaten our supper and taken a bath, the next ritual had begun. When Indira had told me where we were going, I had been shocked.
“We are to watch your mother dressing and preparing for the evening? Why?” I had asked.
“I don’t know, she just likes us all gathered there,” Indira had shrugged.
On the way across the vast, domed Durbar Hall, which formed the centerpiece of the palace and had an entrance high enough to allow a full-grown elephant to carry a maharaja in a howdah through it, I had thought about how much I would dislike having an audience as
I
dressed.
When we had entered the Maharani’s private rooms, I had hardly been able to believe the gaggle of people gathered in her boudoir. Maids, relatives, visiting friends and us children filled the room. And there, in the center of the hubbub, sitting at her exquisitely carved mother-of-pearl dressing table, was the Maharani herself.
Indira had pulled me straight through the throng and over toward her mother.
“Anni’s here, Ma, she’s here!” she had trumpeted in delight.
“I can see that.” The Maharani had smiled fondly at us both. “And I hope now, my Indira, that your health and appetite will return fully to you.” She had glanced at me, and we had shared a look of mutual understanding and amusement. “Welcome, Anni, I hope you’ll be very happy here at the palace with us.”
“Thank you,” I had replied, “I am sure that I will.”
That first night, I confess I could hardly pay attention to what she said. I was transfixed by her face, her eyes rimmed in kohl, her lips turning red as she carefully painted them with a brush from a small tin of pigment. The scent of the Maharani’s favorite French perfume had filled the air as she managed to get ready at the same time as
holding court with her entourage, expertly switching among Hindi, English and Bengali—the local language—depending on whom she was speaking to.
“Come on,” Indira had said, “I’ll show you the rest of Ma’s rooms.” She’d pulled me into the bathroom, which contained a Western-style tub—we girls sat on a rough wooden bench and had water poured unceremoniously from great silver urns all over us—and in her high-ceilinged white and gold bedroom sat an enormous marble bed. Along the entire length of her rooms stretched a shady veranda which opened onto a courtyard full of jacaranda trees, hibiscus and jasmine.
My son, if there was ever a real-life fairy-tale queen, one who was young, beautiful and kind and who lived in a sumptuous palace, Ayesha, the Maharani of Cooch Behar, was that person. And I fell completely under her spell, just like everyone else.
Later, when the Maharani—breathtaking in an exquisitely embroidered emerald sari—was finally ready to greet her guests, Indira and I returned to our room, where Miss Reid chivvied us into our nightgowns and into bed.
“Don’t you think Ma is the most beautiful woman in the world?” Indira had asked me.
“Yes, the most beautiful,” I’d replied without hesitation.
“And the best part of it all,” she had said as she yawned sleepily, “is that my parents are so in love with each other. My father adores her. And he is the most handsome man in the world. I can’t wait for you to meet him.”
A hand snaked out in the shadows toward me and I offered mine in return. “Good night, dearest Anni,” she had said with a contented sigh. “I’m so glad you are here.”
I
realized one morning when I received a letter from my mother that I’d been in Cooch Behar for nearly two months. Of course, initially, it had been agreed that I would stay with Indira only for a few weeks. I’m ashamed to say that I’d allowed myself to get completely swept up in my new life and had lost all sense of time. In her letter, my mother asked me when I was returning. The sudden realization that my life here was only temporary struck me like a thunderbolt.