Under the Jeweled Sky (11 page)

There was no need to be delicate here. The First Maharani loved to talk, asking question after question to satisfy her endless curiosity, and no subject was off limits. Sophie learned that Her Highness had been betrothed to the Maharaja since her infancy, but never met him to talk to until they were married. She thought nothing of asking how much money one's husband had, or about a woman's personal relations, or what undergarments one was wearing. Mrs. Ripperton was well used to this, and revealed to Sophie later that she had even lifted her skirt once to display her enormous petticoat, much to the ladies' delight. The Maharani had promptly instructed her
darzee
to make a dozen of them for Mrs. Ripperton in every shade, from scarlet to primrose, using her very best silks.

Today's conversation had begun with some polite enquiries about the nearby mission, the Maharani aware that Mrs. Ripperton was a keen volunteer there, and had then meandered to the general subject of religion, the women debating the pointlessness of the early missionaries who had attempted to convert India's masses to Christianity. It was, after all, a relatively new religion in comparison to their many more thousands of years of idolatry. Mrs. Ripperton joined in with gusto, debating the finer points of various Christian church rituals and listening with interest when the Maharani knocked her down.

“Hindu wisdom says that we are but dreams of dreaming, which no real person dreams,” explained the Maharani. “We are nothing, and the sooner we cease to have the horrible feeling of being something, the better. Everything is an illusion, and the sooner an illusion fades and we sink back into Brahma, the eternal place of nothingness, the sooner we shall escape this tormenting deceit called Life.”

“Then why not just commit suicide and be done with it?” Mrs. Ripperton said, cheerfully accepting a sweet from the silver salver offered by one of the ladies and taking a confident bite.

“Because then I would invite bad karma, and my life of good deeds would be entirely undone! Karma is very important. Live a good life. Be good. You never know when your time will come. I am not afraid of death. By living a good life, I am always ready, for one does not know when death will come, as it does, like a thief.”

“Calmer? Whatever do you mean, Your Highness?”

The Maharani said something to her ladies, inciting a fit of giggles, then returned to Mrs. Ripperton patiently. “To poison my imaginary body would only prolong the illusory agony, for I will be reborn in the form of my illusion, perhaps as a poisonous snake.”

“How very peculiar.”

“The deeds I do in this life will determine the destiny and the future incarnation of my soul. A man who steals honey may come back as a stinging insect. One who steals meat will appear as a vulture. The soul may crawl like a snake, bloom as a flower, or reign as a god, like the Maharaja himself.” One of the Maharani's ladies leaned into her ear and said something. The Maharani listened and smiled. “Yes,” she said. “A woman who dies in the lifetime of her husband goes at once to bliss, where she enjoys much blessedness and receives a crown.”

“What if His Highness…” Fiona searched for an appropriate expression for a dead king. “What if he
expires
before you do, Your Highness?”

“I will tell you,” she said. “Many years ago, my husband and I made an offering to the gods by fire, and that fire has been kept alive ever since. The first of us to die will have our funeral pyre lit with its sacred flame. It has the power to save the soul from rebirths.” She leaned back on her cushion and smiled. “You may call it an insurance policy, if you like.”

“I rather like the sound of all that,” Mrs. Ripperton said. “What about you, Sophie? What would you like to come back as?”

Sophie thought for a while and could conjure only one thing. “A bird,” she said tentatively. “A bird, so I could fly anywhere.”

“Ah!” said the Maharani. She spoke to her ladies again, and they all disappeared into deep conversation with no regard to their guests. Sophie sat and waited awkwardly, fiddling with her cup and saucer. The sweets did look awfully good, but she was afraid that if she accepted one, she might put it in her mouth and find it horrible, and that would be a problem indeed. She'd either have to spit it out, which was unthinkable, or eat it, which might turn out to be a great deal worse. Mrs. Ripperton finished the last morsel of her confection, mumbling of its deliciousness, then noticed where Sophie's eyes had fallen.

“Help yourself, dear! I have no idea what they are, but they're absolutely wonderful!” Sophie smiled nervously. “Oh, don't take any notice of them.” Mrs. Ripperton nodded toward the ladies, immersed in debate with the First Maharani. “They could go on for hours. Time is of no consequence here. As the Maharani says, ‘leave time for dogs and apes.' Rather good that, don't you think? We'll just sit here and listen or have a little natter between ourselves. It's perfectly all right. If you express an interest in her baubles, the Maharani might even show you some of her jewels. She has a box of pearls the size of ping-pong balls!”

Noticing Mrs. Ripperton's mouth empty, one of the ladies offered her the dish again. This time, Sophie reached forward too, but before she could make her choice…

“Try one of those, dear.” Mrs. Ripperton pointed at a tiny pastry affair with delicate layers, soaked in honeyed syrup, the top sprinkled with tiny pale green flecks. “They're a bit sticky, but quite scrumptious!”

Sophie picked one up, half inspected it and popped it into her mouth. In a flash of panic, she realized immediately that she should have bitten it in half, the sweet just a little too big, but it had looked as though it would disintegrate at the merest wisp of breeze, so in it had gone, whole. She sat for a moment, unsure of what to do, then raised her hand delicately to her mouth to conceal the unavoidable ugliness of her first chew. One of the ladies watched on and nudged her smiling companion. Sophie shrugged a small apology and nodded her approval at them, her mouth plunged into utter bliss, the pastry melting into a rich sensation of heavenly sweetness, layer upon layer of delicate taste explosions dancing on her tongue. She accepted another smaller one from the quickly outstretched dish and made a bungling attempt to express her appreciation in Hindi, much to the ladies' amusement. Then, unable to help herself, she half closed her eyes, a murmur of satisfaction on her lips as she ate the sweet and enjoyed the ladies' cheerful curiosity. One of them slid toward her, curling herself comfortably beside Sophie's chair. Without asking, she took Sophie's hand and opened it, examining her palm. Mrs. Ripperton smiled at Sophie.

“Isn't this fun?”

Sophie nodded, widening her eyes, her free hand at her mouth again as she cleared the last remnants. The lady-in-waiting traced Sophie's lines with her fingertip, turning now and then to whisper to her companions before smiling up at Sophie, finally patting her hand and returning it to her before sliding away. Sophie watched all this with intense fascination, the way they sat together, almost entwined, one hand resting on another's thigh, their saris spilling colorful silken folds that spread out about them. She turned to Mrs. Ripperton and smiled in a way that she hoped would make up for the bicycle rickshaw incident. Fiona had excelled herself. Not only was this the most fun Sophie had had in ages, but it was piqued by an extra frisson of excitement simply by knowing just how enraged her mother would be if she had any idea where she was at this precise moment, deep in the very seat of heathen evil. It felt like a kind of paradise, this secret place of women, fragranced with flowers, heady jasmine oil, and burning incense. She and Mrs. Ripperton would never tell a soul that they had been here, and Sophie hoped more than anything that she would be asked to come back and that she might be permitted to dispense with the chair and to lounge on fine rugs and silk cushions and lean in and hear the whispers that passed between them.

The First Maharani quieted her entourage with a wave of her perfumed hand and sat upright. All eyes turned to Sophie.

“You must be in love,” she said. One of her ladies leaned in and whispered something in her ear. The Maharani smiled. “A girl who wishes to become a bird must surely want to find her way to her lover, so that she may watch over him wherever he goes.” She leaned back on her cushion, her jewelry tinkling. “So tell us, little bird, are we correct?”

Sophie flushed scarlet. She felt her blood racing, the fine hairs at the back of her neck rising and standing on end as though Jag had reached out invisibly from a hidden shadow and touched her, a small shudder passing through her flesh.

“Sophie!” Mrs. Ripperton stared at her. “Have you been keeping secrets from your Aunt Fifi?”

“Of course not.” Sophie tried to compose herself while the First Maharani's ladies laughed like hyenas, congratulating each other on the accuracy of their prediction. “Don't be silly. It's just a bit embarrassing to be laughed at, that's all.”

“I'm afraid your ladies are incorrect,” Mrs. Ripperton said to the Maharani, patting Sophie's hand reassuringly. “Miss Schofield has yet to meet the love of her life. She was whisked away from England before she'd had a chance to set her cap at anybody, but I have no doubt that she'll be swept off her feet soon enough when she gets back. You never know, she might even meet somebody while she's out here! Perhaps we should ask Dr. Reeves to invite his two sons for Christmas. I've seen a photograph of the older one. He's a lawyer, and he's really quite a dish!”

“Dish?” the Maharani said. “What is this dish?”

Mrs. Ripperton explained the expression, the Maharani translating to her ladies. While the women of the
zenana
laughed along with Mrs. Ripperton, the First Maharani set her eyes upon Sophie and smiled a knowing smile.

“I have a good mind to tell the Maharaja that I am neither a nursemaid nor a veterinary,” said Dr. Schofield, irritably forking his curried mutton. “If it were up to me, I'd shoot the damn horse and her too while I'm at it. There's nothing wrong with her, you know, but here we all go again with her
waah! woo!
” He threw his hands up and jangled his fingers, mimicking the Second Maharani, who was now claiming to have a dicky heart and making sure that everybody knew about it. His wife ignored him, concentrating on her plate.

Dr. Schofield could barely remember when the joy had gone out of his wife. She had been pleasant company once, before Sophie was born. At least that was the way he preferred to remember it, although it all seemed such a long time ago now that he found himself suspicious of his own memories. They were not to be relied upon. He had purged the worst of them as the years slid by to disguise this stagnant marriage, while Veronica disappeared into her endless abyss of misery. It was nothing to do with them coming out to India, as she had claimed. Of that he was certain. She could be equally miserable anywhere, and he had found it exhausting. At least here, he had reasoned, she would be forced to put her head above the parapet and face the fact that she was not the only one. There were other people in this world too, people who should matter to her, but she gave neither him nor Sophie any companionship or succor.

Dr. Schofield had already decided that they would stay on in India. The trouble would be bound to die down in another month or two. Everybody had known that the business of partition would not be without its teething problems, but nobody had anticipated the scale of it. At first, people thought it would quickly blow over. They had all heard the news reports, but the Indians were fond of exaggeration, and the claims that hundreds of thousands of people had been slaughtered had undoubtedly been blown up out of all proportion. At least that had been the general opinion of the conversation between the palace officials, although as the weeks wore on, they seemed less convinced. Reports started to get through about whole trains arriving at their stations filled with nothing but dead bodies. There was fighting everywhere. Millions of people were on the move, searching for new borders that nobody could find, the partition lines making no sense, zigzagging through farms and open fields, ignoring the natural boundaries of the landscape.

Whatever was going on, the situation would be bound to settle eventually, and George Schofield had no intention of going back to the dreary grayness of their life in London.

• • •

Wartime India had been the happiest time of George Schofield's life. He had been posted to Kohima shortly before the Japanese invaded, attending to the sick and injured, bandaging wounds, hacking off gangrenous limbs with half-blunt instruments that had seen too many bones. The supplies had run out quickly and there was no way to get anything, or anyone, in or out, the city surrounded. He had wanted to run away from it all, such was his sense of helplessness, to just up in the middle of the night and desert the horrors, taking his chances through the lines. But those thoughts were quickly dismissed. They had all had them at one time or another. Yet there was something about the place that had got under his skin, just the way it did with some people.

When the war ended, the demobbing process had started while British servicemen were still on Indian soil, and a great many of the men failed to return home. The Ministry of Defense soon found itself on the receiving end of too many complaints from abandoned wives and quickly put an end to demobbing overseas, shipping the rest of the men home first so that if they wanted to abscond to the tropics and take up with an exotic lover, they would have to do so at their own expense. Had it not been for Sophie, George Schofield might have been sorely tempted to do just that. There were far worse places a man could live.

Perhaps, once they were done with the palace, he would open up a small practice somewhere scenic and popular with the British diehards. Plenty of people had elected to stay on. There were any number of enclaves dotted here and there around the country, places that were referred to as Little England or India's Sussex. If one were to look at a photograph, one could be forgiven for assuming it had been taken in the Lake District, or even in an Alpine village with cuckoo-clock chalets perched on evergreen hillsides, and the climate in some of these locations was said to be near perfect. Dr. Schofield had a few places loosely in mind, Simla perhaps, although it would be far too cold during the winter months, and they would be wise to stay away from the northern states, which seemed to be bearing the brunt of the discord. Somewhere in the south then, in the Nilgiris maybe. For certain, their funds would go a great deal further here than they would back in England. They could live very comfortably for the rest of their days if they so wished. Back home, servants would be out of the question, and they had quickly become used to the convenience of being waited upon.

India had been good for Sophie too. He had seen the change in her soon after they arrived. Perhaps it was from the sun that shone tirelessly upon one's face, or the feeling of space from the wide plains that opened up beyond the palace walls, the view stretching all the way down to the delta demarking the neighboring state. Sophie had begun to blossom in a way he had feared she never would when they were in England, the ready smile she wore lately filling him with joy and relief. He would watch her sometimes, purposefully walking through the grounds, always on her way somewhere. She had taken the palace to her heart, and it had brought her out of herself, out of the shell that she had retreated into. It had broken his heart to see her so young yet so unhappy, but how can you explain to your child that their time will come? That life will find them one way or another and that they too will make a place for themselves? There is no use in telling the young that they must be patient, for they have not yet lived long enough to know what patience means and that there is no escaping the ellipse of one's destiny. They had made poor parents, he and Veronica, with Sophie caught in the middle of their many faults and shortcomings. It was not the kind of family setting he would have wished for her, nor for himself for that matter. They would be better off staying here until she was ready to spread her wings. As far as he was concerned, the decision was already made, although he had yet to speak to his wife.