The Mountain of Light (19 page)

She stood there, alone, arms wrapped tightly around herself. She heard the horse stretch the sound of its lengthy cough. A shot blasted through the sound, and through the white canvas of the tent, Emily saw the horse collapse on the dirt, and die.

The next day the Governor-General's party broke camp and crossed over the Sutlej into Punjab territory, to begin the leisurely waltz of asking and being refused.

Emily did not accompany them. She went back to Simla to await George and Fanny's return, before they could all head back to Calcutta. There, in the rented cottage, she watched snow dust the mountains, completed her sketches, wrote long letters to Eleanor, Robert, and Mary. Late at night, when Jimrud and her maids were asleep, alone by the flickering fire in the hearth, she thought of home, of England.

She did not think of Monsieur Avitabile.

September 1846

Eight years later

A
gigantic harvest moon rose over the ramparts of Lahore Fort, tangerine-hued in the just-darkened night sky. It was a hot moon—a great big ball of fire, with no illusion of coolness—as heated as the day had been. Henry Lawrence had seen the mercury rise trembling in the thermometer until, late in the afternoon, it had hit a hundred and ten degrees. As a consequence, it had been a quiet day, for which Henry was grateful.

He sat, legs splayed, on the floor of the northern end of Jahangir's Quadrangle, against the base of the flat-roofed building that hugged the outer, riverfront rim of the courtyard. The wall behind his back was warm, and heat seeped in through the thin cotton of his trousers. Reaching into the inner pocket of his khaki shirt, he took out a packet of
beedis
—native cigarettes. His fingers caught in the lacings of his shirt's collar and the packet fell to the ground, the
beedis
spilling in all directions. He picked one up, struck a match, cupped his fist around the flame although no breeze budged
the thick night air, lit the squat end of the
beedi
. Inhaled. The tobacco was harsh, unfiltered, and the smoke scraped down his throat to his lungs.

It had been many years since Henry had smoked the pallid, insipid cigarettes that came from England, not after his first taste of a
beedi
. That had happened in the middle of the jungles in the Northwest Provinces, where he had been sent as a revenue surveyor—difficult work that meant tramping through the wilderness of unmapped, uncharted territory, peopled with natives and villages who had never seen an Englishman before. Who could not understand that their land was now part of the British Empire. Or that land tax payments were due, every quarter, to a foreign lord, where once it had been at the whimsy of whichever raja or emperor had ruled over them—this king sitting far away in Delhi, or Agra, or Lahore.

It had been tough, exacting work. There were no hotels to be had, no
dak
bungalows (since the survey took place far from the
dak
—postal—routes), no chicken curries with gleaming white rice, certainly no tinned sausages and ham. Henry and his group—which was composed of him, a horse which he rode when it was amenable, three donkeys to carry the load of his tent and his belongings, four servants, two to guard, two to look after his needs—had traversed the hilly, shrub-clad land for months. Once in a very rare while, they would stumble upon another British civil servant, also with his survey papers, his native servants, his tent, donkeys, and horses. That night they would each break out their cigarettes and their brandy, drink a tot before a crackling fire, talk the hours away, glad to hear the sound of English spoken as it should be. The campfires were kept burning all through the night, and Henry's sleep would often be fractured by the frustrated roar of a tiger or the cry of a jackal.

Henry's cigarettes ran out in two months, and quaking with need, he watched his servant pull out a pouch of tobacco
flakes, a notebook with dried
tendu
leaves carefully interspersed between its pages, and a square of jute cloth. First, the man worried the frayed edges of the jute cloth, until his stumpy fingers delicately picked out a string of thread. Then, he laid out a rectangular piece of
tendu
leaf, filled it with the tobacco, and furled it on a diagonal into a cylinder. He rolled this several times between the palms of his hands, with a delicate touch, not crushing the leaf. The jute thread went twice around the base of the
beedi,
and the man twisted the ends before stubbing in the bigger edge to keep the tobacco from falling out. It was simple, it was easy.

Looking up at Henry's eager face, his servant offered it to him. “Here, Sahib.”

Henry took it gingerly, bent to have it lit, took a drag. “Is it safe?”

The man shrugged, lifting emaciated shoulders. “I have smoked these, Larens Sahib, since I was twelve years old.” The semblance of a smile cracked across his wizened face. “Safer than being here, surely.”

When he returned to what passed for civilization in India, Henry Lawrence could not put an English cigarette in his mouth; he had gone unfortunately native in the matter.

The
beedi
in Henry's hand burned down until the tip of glowing embers seared his fingers. He dropped it on the ground, moved his foot to stamp it out, and ran his hand through the abundant darkness of his hair. How many days had he been here in Lahore, as Resident? Some sixty-five, and it was, for an artillery soldier, a promotion beyond his best dreams. Such choice posts went only to the civil servants of the Indian Civil Service, and Henry Lawrence had come to India twenty-three years ago, at the age of sixteen, to join the Bengal Artillery in Dum Dum near Calcutta.

All his postings since then had been in the Northwest Provinces of British India, outside the boundaries of the Punjab Empire, the last one—as Assistant Agent—at Firozpur,
just south of the Sutlej River, which had been deemed by the Treaty of Amritsar in 1809 the southern bastion of the Empire, beyond which the British army redcoats would not travel.

And yet, here they were at Lahore, Henry thought with a dry irony. Maharajah Ranjit had been dead for some seven years. The Punjab Empire had disintegrated into a veritable bloodbath. Three, maybe four of Ranjit's descendants had since died by the sword of a brother, a cousin, a friend, and only one young boy was left to reign over the lands of the Punjab. He had been crowned king with the help of the British army, another irony. And that child's name was Maharajah Dalip Singh.

As the moon flooded the courtyard of Jahangir's Quadrangle with its flaming glow, Henry gathered the
beedis
strewn over the floor. He took off his boots. His bare feet slapped against the stone of the pathway that led to a square pool in the center of the courtyard, with its marble platform.

Once, not so long ago, this courtyard had been part of the most private quarters at Lahore Fort. Lord Auckland, author of that devastating war in Afghanistan, a past Governor-General, had come to Lahore Fort as a guest of Ranjit Singh. But he wouldn't have been permitted into Jahangir's Quadrangle, then part of the
zenana
—harem—space. Auckland would have been received in the courtyard just south, the Diwan-i-Am, the Hall of Public Audience, perhaps in the adjoining Shah Burj, which was still part of the
zenana,
but Maharajah Ranjit Singh had used it as his own, not allowed his women there.

Henry rubbed his right side as he walked, dulling the pain there. Three days ago, while he was riding through the local bazaar outside the fort, a piece of brick had come flying out of nowhere and glanced off his shoulder. The soldiers accompanying him, and his private secretary, Herbert Edwardes, had scurried around, shouted, pounded into
zenana
apartments in
the buildings overhanging the narrow street in search of the miscreant. They had found only gaggles of sloe-eyed, bold women, veils over their noses and mouths, ogling children, men belligerent at having been disturbed in their rest, or their
chai,
or their gossip.

“I saw nothing,” they all variously said, when questioned in Punjabi, Urdu, Hindustani, and Persian. “But the Resident Sahib must take care, eh?”

Another warning, a very mild one, that the British were not wanted.

Although the child Dalip Singh had been proclaimed Maharajah of the Punjab, it was harshly evident that the British ruled instead.

Henry breathed in the silvered air, filled with the aroma of night blooms of the
rath-ki-rani
. After twenty-three years in India, England was a distant dream, even, the few times he had gone back, an unfamiliar country. Cold, damp, the skies knitted close with clouds, clinging moss on flagstones. He thought at times that if and when he died, it would be here in the Punjab, in this heated land with its churning passions, its strange tongues—not so unfamiliar anymore; he spoke all of them fluently—its luscious landscapes with open skies, rivers, streams, gullies, the abundantly fertile fields.

Henry lit another
beedi
and squatted on the marble floor of the platform in the center of the pool. Maharajah Ranjit Singh had owned the fort at Lahore, as the conqueror of the city, but it had its origins and its embellishments from some two or three hundred years in the past. Jahangir's Quadrangle was attributed to Emperor Jahangir of the Mughal Empire, who had ruled in the early 1600s. Immediately west was Shah Jahan's Quadrangle, also part of the riverfront residences, and beyond another series of courtyards and rooms, including the Shah Burj, which Henry had not seen yet. When he had been appointed Resident at Lahore, he had stopped his men from evacuating the women of Ranjit Singh's harem
from the rest of the apartments. For his own use, he had kept Jahangir's and Shah Jahan's Quadrangles.

The last Mughal king lay moldering in Delhi, for forty years Maharajah Ranjit Singh had occupied the fort at Lahore, and now, the Punjab Empire was also dead.

When he thought of that—the death of the Punjab Empire—Henry smiled grimly into his fist, even as his mouth closed over the
beedi
. He
knew
this to be true; he was here in Lahore to make it happen. They might all talk of the British helping the Punjab rise and ride again as a northwestern power in India, with Dalip as Maharajah, or talk of the British army retreating when Dalip hit his majority. But it wouldn't happen. Why would it? There was talk of Dalhousie being made Governor-General of India; and Lord Dalhousie would annex the Punjab, throw Dalip Singh into prison, and trample over everyone's hearts until hatred and revenge bloomed. Henry and Dalhousie had an antagonistic relationship; there were childhood slights, and a vast, yawning gap of misunderstanding as adults between them. Somehow, John, Henry's brother, was a jewel to Dalhousie; Henry, not so much of one. As long as one of the Lawrence brothers is liked, Henry thought, we'll all do well in India.

Through the dense hush came the low melody of a song. A girl came into the courtyard from the south, through the archways that led into the Diwan-i-am, and flitted down the steps, two kid goats following her, their bleats insistent, their long ears flapping. She moved gently across the stone, the skirts of her
ghagara
swishing, the moonlight picking out the sparkle of a hundred diamonds strewn over her clothing. She wore a veil, also studded with diamonds, but it only covered her head to her hairline and then flowed behind her like a glittering cloud. The goats leapt at the bushes and began nibbling, the girl sang on. Henry strained to hear the words—in Persian—and he
caught “my lover,” “in the light of the moon,” “a meeting,” “a parting,” and wondered if he had heard it before.

The cool whites of a
rath-ki-rani
bush's flowers covered the southwestern end of the courtyard, and the girl raked in the blooms with one hand and filled a basket hanging by her side. She shooed the goats away. “Go chew on something else, something useless.” They bounced around, as though they understood what she was saying.

On the platform, in the middle of the courtyard's pool, Henry sat perfectly still, mesmerized. Who was she? Where had she come from? She had to be one of the Maharajah's entourage, but she was too young to have been Ranjit Singh's wife, surely?

The girl turned then and saw Henry. The moon was now high in the sky, a small pearl among the stars, nothing like its early, immense self, and drenched them all with a silver light that was as clear as a vivid day. From where he sat, Henry could see the girl's face, the consternation upon it, the lovely mouth opening in an “oh.” She set down her basket, unhurriedly, and just as deliberately put up her hands to frame her face. It was a pantomime of surprise, and Henry felt mirth bubble up in him.

He rose, and as he did, a door opened on the western end of the courtyard and a man came through, an oil lantern held out in front of him, its loop of golden light reaching only up his arm and no further. “Pat?”