The Mountain of Light (42 page)

The cracked whiplash of her voice stings my hand, burns it. I draw back, my heart pounding. I've never heard her speak like this to me, and I've known her for a very long while. She drags herself upright, leans over the table's edge, turns away from me. I stand also, hover near her. What am I to do? What is happening to her? Is she ill? Unwell?

“Are you all right?” I ask urgently.

She shakes her head violently, her breathing ragged. And then, suddenly, she calms down. She sits down again, motions me to my chair. Tears cut lines across her face. She wipes her skin and smoothes down her hair. Her voice is quiet. “I'm sorry, Maharajah. That was unpardonable of me. It's just that”—here she raises her eyes and holds my gaze firmly—“it is so unexpected. I have not noticed your paying any special attention to Cecilia.”

“I haven't, Lady Login,” I say with dignity. “I would not dream of doing such a thing until I had your permission to court her. As far as I know, the affection is all on my side.”

She breathes audibly, a sigh of relief, I think. “That's all right then. Cecilia is, as you know, our ward, and it falls to us to look after her, take care of her, and when the time comes for her marriage, make sure that she is married respectably and into a good home.”

I bristle. “And am I not a good match for Cecilia, Lady Login? I would not ever mention a woman's prospects or her income, but it is common talk here in England when it's a question of marriage. Cecilia has hardly very much to call her own. My income, my standing in London society, my familiarity with the Queen and Prince Albert—these are unsurpassed by any other man. What possible objection could you have to me?
Do
you have an objection to me?”

“Duleep,” she says dimly, a hand over her heart. “You misunderstand me. I only meant that Lord Login and I are
responsible for Cecilia. She is a charming girl, and I can see why you are so taken with her. But she's young, Maharajah, too young to be thinking of marriage.”

“She's fifteen years old; surely that's not considered young? Or at least not too young to be engaged?”

Lady Login deliberately brushes crumbs off the table. “I've never been partial to a long betrothal. Even in cases where there has not been an income to support an actual marriage.”

“Not true in
this
case,” I say somberly. I wonder what Lady Login is actually saying and what she means. There's a weight on my heart, and my thoughts are all jumbled. Nothing makes sense anymore.

We are quiet for a long while. There's a clink of china as Lady Login moves the cups and plates around; rearranges the knives, forks, and spoons; lifts the lid from the teapot and swishes the cold chocolate around. I sit still, gazing at the floor.

“Can I ask a favor?”

“Anything,” I say.

“I will talk with Lord Login about this. But you must not say anything to Cecilia. Write to her, once a month or so, don't mention marriage. If your affections grow over the next two years, we can reconsider this matter.”

It's a middle ground, of sorts. We shake hands, depart to our own rooms. I have to rub my feelings from my face and head to Buckingham Palace. Winterhalter's portrait will give future generations a glimpse of my face; it cannot be written over with the crushed disappointment I feel.

Lady Login and I have signed a treaty. And though there are no powerful chieftains who witness it, no stiff-necked, stuffed-shirt civil servants who sign it, I intend to stand by it. Only . . . with Cecilia living in our household, I wonder how Mama will effect the letter-writing rule.

•  •  •

November 2, 1854:
I know how today. Cecilia left early in the morning for the home estates in Perthshire. Without my knowledge, Lady Login rustled up a governess and sent her there with this woman. For two years, I think she said. I can write her a letter once a month—about chess, the rides in the park, a book I have read, but not about marriage.

I have another sitting with Winterhalter today. I didn't sleep last night.

My heart hurts and I don't know how to heal it.

Ever since I came to England, it's been like this: if my skin is dark-hued; if my mouth can form English the way it is meant to be spoken in polite society; if my jewels are indeed of a fabulous value; if I will ever take off my turban and reveal my shorn head and become a true Englishman. And now, more of the same. If Lord and Lady Login can so easily adopt a blackamoor as their son, shower him with love (and no, I have not been mistaken in this; I know them too well), why then do they recoil at his marrying into their family?

My father was the Lion of the Punjab. Today, I'm a mere, mewling kitten.

•  •  •

December 15, 1854:
Winterhalter is a big, gruff man. Half his words, I cannot understand. When frustrated, he stamps his feet and mutters into his mustache in German. Prince Albert obligingly translates the curses for us. The painter wears a tight, fitted coat, decorated with a hundred buttons. The Queen begs him to be more comfortable, take off his coat, paint in his shirtsleeves, but he always answers, “Nein, your Majesty. Zat would not be so gut.”

Somehow, with a paintbrush clenched between his teeth, dabs of paint on his face and his fingers, he still manages to keep that coat pristine.

My robes of state are stored in Buckingham Palace near the White Drawing Room, so all I have to do is arrive, get changed, and walk a short distance to the podium set up for me near one of the windows. Most days, there is a crowd sitting around, watching, talking in soft voices. When I take a break, they come up to be introduced and shake my hand.

The Queen is quieter than usual today. She wears a morning gown of some white satin, melds into the room thus, and her shining dark hair provides the only contrast.

“Do you like it, Maharajah?” she asks, stopping a little behind Winterhalter, who does not notice her approach.

He bows, and I do also. “It is wonderfully like me, your Majesty. Only Mr. Winterhalter has given me a few more inches”—I hold my hand above my head—“than I actually have.”

“You will grow,” Winterhalter growls.

“And if I don't, this is what people will remember most of your portrait,” I say.

“It's splendid,” the Queen says. “You have captured the Maharajah's beautiful eyes, Mr. Winterhalter.”

“What will the background be?” I ask, curious. Others come up to mill around her Majesty and listen, interested. Lady Login is here also; she usually is. We have not talked much at the hotel after that day. There isn't much to say. I haven't forgotten, but I've forgiven her. What I cannot forget are the Lahore days when they took on my guardianship, their generosity in befriending a near-orphaned boy.

“Humph,” Winterhalter says. “That I have not thought of. Maybe some minarets and domes. You know, Maharajah”—he curves the palms of his hands into appropriate shapes—“something like Lahore.”

I protest. “You've never been there.”

“Ah,” he says, “but I have seen Schoefft's painting; the one you have in your possession. It gives me ideas, and this”—he taps the canvas with his brush—“will be much better than that one. Now, pose, please. Not like that, toward the mirror. Just your face, not your body.”

In the reflection I watch as the Queen draws Lady Login to the side and they talk. About me? By now her Majesty must know that I don't want to marry Victoria Gouramma; perhaps she's heard about my interest in Cecilia also. She says nothing to me, about one or the other. If she's disappointed—I know that she also had wished for the marriage with Gouramma—her manner has not changed. She's the same. As kind as before.

The Queen summons a gentleman-in-waiting to her side; he bows, listens to what she has to say, and runs fleetly out of the room.

A half hour passes before I hear a rustle and clomping footsteps outside the room. The guards of the Tower of London come in, sleek and colorful in their livery. They hold out a tray to her Majesty. She beckons Prince Albert to her side and, turning, opens a casket and takes something out—what it is I cannot see from the other end of the room. They whisper together, and then, suddenly, the Queen comes running across the expanse of carpet, taps me on my arm, and before I can say anything, grabs my hand, puts something into my palm, and closes my fingers around it.

“Maharajah, here is the Kohinoor come from Amsterdam. What do you think of it?”

I unclench my fingers and gaze down, stupefied for a moment. And then I step off the podium and to the window, where the light is better. It snowed the day before, and the grounds of the palace are swathed in the gentle embrace of a winter's cold. The sun shows only a faint face in the gray-streaked sky, but the softly reflected daylight is luminous.
The stone in my hand draws the light inward, from the outside, and glows within its dazzling heart.

It is set again as my father had it—as an armlet with a smaller diamond on either side. But it is not the diamond I remember. The Kohinoor lies weightless upon my hand, its heft cut away in an effort to give it more brilliance, a rose cut, I have heard Prince Albert call it. Surely the job has been bungled? Where is the Mountain of Light? The diamond cutters have taken away too much—this is not a mountain anymore, but a hill, a hillock, a mere bump in the horizon.

My head is bent over the stone in my hand. I place it on my heart. It isn't the Kohinoor diamond anymore, and it's the last time I will hold this stone. It doesn't belong to me.

The Queen and Prince Albert are together. She bites her lower lip; her dark eyes shine with compassion. Lady Login twists the fabric of her gown into little spirals between white-knuckled fingers. The Tower guards remain at attention, their expressions impassive, waiting for me to make a move. What do they all think I will do?

I go to the Queen, clasp her hand as she had mine a few moments ago, and place the Kohinoor in it. “It gives me immense pleasure to give to my sovereign the greatest treasure from the Toshakhana of Lahore. Will you accept this gift from a grateful subject?”

She touches me lightly on the shoulder. “You are truly one of the gems of my court, Maharajah.”

“Will you wear it, your Majesty?” I ask. “I would like to see it on you.”

The Queen slides it around her bare arm, and it blazes there on her skin through the rest of that morning, set off perfectly by her white gown.

•  •  •

Paris, 1893:
Night comes to the rue de la Trémoille. The gas lamps on the street are lit and throw crowns of gold in tight little circles down its length. One of the streetlights is just outside the window, and Sophia reads the last few pages with the diary turned toward this.

Her father's face lies in a deep shadow. His fingers are interlaced on his stomach, a sparkle of diamonds and rubies in the rings.

“Did you see Cecilia Bowles again?”

“No.” His voice comes in a tired rumble. “Never again. I don't know who she married, if she married, if she cared at all for me.”

“And so you married Mama.”

She hears him sigh. “Bamba, yes, we gave you her name as your first. Sophia, so that you wouldn't feel out of place if you grew up and stayed in England. Jindan, for your grandmother.”

“Did you love Mama?”

He waits a long time before answering. He wants to be honest. “No,” he says finally. “I barely knew her when I married her. She was the daughter of a German merchant and his Egyptian mistress.” He laughs. “She was appropriate for me, you see. Bamba had been brought up in a missionary society in Cairo; she taught at the local orphanage. I asked the missionaries to find me a wife who was Christian . . . and who wasn't British. We married at the British embassy in Cairo. I took my vows in English; she took hers in Arabic. For a long time, she couldn't speak English.”

Now, it's Sophia's turn to be quiet. In the space of one day, a bit of a night, she has learned more about her father than she has known in the twenty-four years she has lived. Things haven't changed very much yet. Victor, her oldest brother, wants to marry an English girl he met at Cambridge. Her father's an earl. The Prince of Wales is pushing
for the match; the Queen says nothing, and so nothing's happened yet.

She rises, scrapes a match against the side of a matchbox, turns on the gas, lights the sconces on the walls. The flames flicker, the gas hisses, the room comes into focus.

Her father has been crying. Tears soak into his mustache and his beard, his eyes are red. Sophia bends, puts her arms around him. He rests his head against her cheek. His hair is long, tied into a ponytail at his nape. He has long since become a Sikh again.

“I'm taking the night train, Papa. By tomorrow evening, I'll be back in London, if the crossing is good.”

He wipes his face. “Sit, child. No, not there, all the way across the table, here, by my side. Let me look at you.”

She pulls up her chair, and they sit, knee to knee. He gazes at her face for a long while. There's a shade of pain, somewhere behind her dark eyes.

“Who is he?”

She doesn't flinch, but a glow of pink covers her skin. “David Waters Sutherland. He's a physician . . . in Lahore. I met him on his last home leave.”

“He's coming back again?”

She nods. “To see me. I think, Papa, that no one will care about David and me.” She smiles; it lights up her face. “He isn't the son of an earl. He's nobody. Just someone I want to marry, that's all.”

“And will you live in Lahore then, Sophia?”

“Yes.”

“They never let me go back to Lahore. I left when I was ten years old. You will find it changed.”

“I haven't been there before, Papa.”

The clock in the cathedral on the next street chimes out the hour. Ten o'clock. A theater down the street empties after a play. Women come out in silks and satins, vendors roast hot chestnuts over fires, men smoke cigarettes and cast the butts
on the cobblestones. A fight begins, and men push and shove against each other. There's blood on white shirtfronts, sweat on brows; bowlers roll on the ground.