Under the Jeweled Sky (12 page)

Jag worked through the day's heat with a heavy heart. He had seen so little of Sophie since the night in the water garden over two months ago: a few snatched minutes here and there, a rare hour when he could sneak away for long enough. He could think of nothing else, yearning for just one brief glimpse of her.

The staff who remained were faced with tasks enough for ten men each day. His father had put him to work from sunrise to sunset, leaving him little opportunity to slip away. There was always someone calling for him to do this or do that, and he had choked back angry tears when he had been discovered, time after time, and foiled in his attempt to escape. He had wanted to send word to her, to let her know that he was thinking of her, to tell her how he longed to be with her, but to send a message would be impossible. He would just have to wait, and he already knew that he would wait for the rest of his life if that was what it took. In the meantime, he was grateful for the exhausting work, his disquieted body tired and aching at the end of each long day. Without the hard labor, he doubted he would have been able to sleep at all. As it was, when he did fall asleep, his dreams were filled with her, and when he woke with the dawn, she would be his first thought and he would pray that she was thinking of him too.

His heart was spent. He had known it from the very moment he felt her soft lips upon his. It had felt like he was sinking into the ground, like a setting sun releasing all its color into the sky, his body no longer his own, but a part of the wide-open universe that surrounded them on that dark night under a shower of falling stars. He could not live without her. That much he knew. But what was he to do when he could not find a moment's peace? It plagued his every waking hour. The world was a different place now, this country a new dominion of endless possibilities where anything could happen. A free country that would never again allow the subjugation of its people. They were equals, all of them. She would be his, and he hers, if only he could find a way.

Jag washed the fatigue from his limbs, leaning over the stone trough set into the wall of the
pilkhana
, throwing water over his head, feeling his skin breathing in relief as the thick scent of elephants and straw dust came away. He dried himself with a cotton rag, put on clean clothes, and walked home, concentrating on the ground, deep in thought. Turning into the courtyard before the quarters in which they lived, he saw his father sitting cross-legged on the floor, his face set with a look of such distress that Jag found himself running to him, asking what the matter was. The way his father looked at him brought his heart to a standstill.

“Father?”

“My son.” His father remained seated and glared up at him gravely. “What have you done?”

“Father?”

“I will ask you again, my son, and you will think very carefully before you give me your answer. Do you understand?” Jag nodded. His father spoke more slowly, stressing each syllable, drawing each word out like a sword. “What have you done to shame your parents?” Jag looked at him in confusion, his mind at once a blank, yet filled with the deafening sound of his own blood. “Do you know how many years I have been in service to His Highness?”

“Twenty-six years, my father.”

His father nodded emptily at the ground. “Twenty-six years.”

“Yes, Father.”

“All so that you could have a good life, with food in your mouth, an education under your belt, and a fine employer to provide for us and protect us. And this is how you repay me?” Jag felt his insides turn over.

His father shook his head silently, breathing deeply for a while, as though it would do no good. He got up and went to the doorway of their home, pausing at the entrance, taking in the room before him: the spartan furniture, the small shelf that served as a shrine to his dead wife's memory, on which he placed fresh flowers every day and lit a small clay oil lamp at night. “You were born in this very room,” he said. “Your mother died on this very spot in order to give you life. She could have been saved if you had been sacrificed, but she refused.” His father looked to the floor. “She knew from the very beginning that you would be a son, and she foretold that you would grow up to be a great man. I wanted her to live. I wanted her by my side for the rest of our lives as we had promised each other. But she would not listen. It was the greatest gift she could bestow upon me, and the sole purpose of her life. A son. A son for whom she died. And
this
is how you repay her?”

Jag stared at his father, unable to speak. From somewhere deep inside of his father rose an unfamiliar voice, filled with rage. The veins in his neck swelled. His lips tightened. “Is it true, what I have heard? About you and the girl?” Jag felt the blood drain from his face. “Answer me before I shake the life out of you!” His father raised a hand in threat.

Jag hung his head in shame. “Yes, Father.”

He waited for the blow to land, but nothing came. Instead, when he lifted his head, he saw that his father's face had crumpled. His father wandered into the corner and looked silently around the small room, as though taking it all in.

“Then there is nothing to be done. There is talk around the palace. I refused to believe it. My son would never do such a thing. Who would do such a thing?” Jag's father turned to him in disbelief. “You have brought shame upon us. And now we will have to pay the price.”

“But Father…”

“I will request an audience with the head of household tomorrow.” He picked up a wilting bloom from his dead wife's shrine and held it in his hand. “I will tell him that we have done the Maharaja a great wrong and beg his forgiveness. Then we shall gather up our things and leave the palace with our heads hung in shame.”

“No!”

“We cannot live here, not now that you have brought this disgrace upon us. I shall pray that the gods forgive you. As for me, I am not sure that I ever will.”

“No! It is not like that!”

“Enough!” his father said. “I have spoken.”

“Listen to me!” Jag stood his ground. “There has been no wrongdoing. I love her as deeply as you loved my mother. How can that be wrong?”

“Love?” His father's anger exploded upon him. “How dare you speak of love! You know nothing! Love is meant only for those who are betrothed and married by the will of their parents and the blessing of the gods. That is what love is. It is about a lifetime of devotion to each other, to the sacrifice of your own life if that is what is demanded of you. Only when you have known the suffering I have known can you look a man in the eye and tell him you know what love is.”

“But I do know.”

“Enough!” Jag could not remember a time when he had seen his father enraged like this, his hands shaking. “You will never speak another word of this! Do you understand? And you will stay right here until it is settled. You are not to leave this room for one minute, or I swear I will bring the wrath of the gods down upon you. My own son!”

• • •

Mrs. Schofield slid a spoonful of sugar into the coffee she didn't want and feigned polite interest in the conversation that circled Mrs. Ripperton's sitting room. Any talk of politics was considered vulgar, as was the mention of the terrible massacres that had taken place up and down the country. With the newspapers and palace whispers filled with little else, this had the effect of obliterating any real sense of authentic exchange. Few topics remained on safe ground, so all conversation had to be carefully orchestrated and skillfully conducted away from anything that might cause one of the women to breach etiquette and fall from her perch. An unspoken discomfort filled the room now that they had all been relegated from ruling class to mere guests in this country, as though a collective sense of guilt was being pushed under the carpet, the lumps disguised with rigid smiles and wistful conversation about the old days.

The prison block remained a popular topic behind the dainty teacups. That women should be incarcerated like that for the rest of their lives was proof indeed of how much this country had yet to learn and how backward its people were. The subject was a welcome source of endless tattling, filled with high-minded opinions and much shaking of heads, yet there were some among the wives who privately could think of far worse things than to live in luxury in the exclusive domain of female company with nothing much to do all day but please oneself and order servants around while trying on fabulous jewels.

Mrs. Ripperton pressed a piece of shortbread upon Mrs. Schofield and steered the conversation toward the story she had picked up, sharing the report that the Maharaja's intended new bride suffered from a rare congenital disorder that had left her covered in hair from head to toe. Nobody had any idea where Mrs. Ripperton got her information from, but she was always the bearer of the latest interesting snippet of news. Anyone would have thought that she had the First Maharani's ear, although that couldn't possibly be the case. None of the wives would lower themselves to visiting the
zenana
. For one thing, they would be expected to stoop to a low curtsey and to call the Maharanis
Your
Highness
, and that would never do.

Mrs. Schofield stifled an inward sigh. Among the many rumors doing the rounds of the palace and its six hundred staff, a whisper had circulated as far as the ADC's room that her daughter had been holding secret liaisons with a boy, the son of one of the Maharaja's personal bearers. Mrs. Ripperton had taken Mrs. Schofield aside to tell her what she had heard and to assure her that she had quashed it as nonsense. There was always some tongue-wagging going on in corners, disgruntled servants making trouble and spreading malicious lies, and Mrs. Ripperton had said that one of the maids had probably been behind it. Mrs. Schofield had received the report stiffly, holding her face in check while her blood boiled.

• • •

Dr. Schofield paced his study, the low afternoon sun slicing through the shutters, casting bright slats across the room, catching the sparkling airborne dust. Sophie sat miserably in the chair while he hauled her over the coals as his wife had demanded.

“How many times must we tell you not to fraternize with the staff?” Dr. Schofield pulled his tie from his collar in exasperation. “It really won't do, Sophie. You know that we have nothing against these people, but you must learn to keep yourself to yourself. What on earth were you doing there?”

“Nothing.” Sophie stared down at her hands clasped nervously in her lap. She felt sick, down to the pit of her stomach.

“There's no such thing as nothing, my girl, and you know what the servants are like. They're never happier than when they're going around spying on everyone and spreading poison about the
sahibs
. We're not the most popular people after all the trouble that's gone on, and now you've given them enough ammunition to make us look ridiculous.” Her father sighed heavily. “It really was a very irresponsible thing to do, darling. A girl of your age? You should know better.”

Mrs. Schofield took up the baton, this time shouting, cheeks flushed with fury. “Do you have any idea what would happen to any girl caught alone with a boy in this country?” This humiliation was simply the last straw. She had died a thousand deaths when Mrs. Ripperton told her, her skin still shrinking with the disgrace of it. She could have sworn that she detected a note of
schadenfreude
in the woman's voice. It seemed to her that Mrs. Ripperton had waited a long time for this, to make a mockery of her and her family, just as she always knew she would. They were all the same, the British women out here, spouting their high ideals while forgetting their own morals. Not only was Mrs. Ripperton a shameless glutton, she was a busybody too, and a ruthless gossip. Mrs. Schofield had no doubt that Mrs. Ripperton had probably been the source of the rumor in the first place. What she hadn't banked on was that the rumor might actually be true.

“We were only talking,” said Sophie.

“Talking?” her mother demanded. “What could you possibly have to say to a boy like that? You stupid,
stupid
girl! You are not to speak to him anymore, do you hear me? I will not have people ridiculing us or questioning my daughter's conduct. These people may be heathen, but no Indian girl would dare be caught alone in the company of a boy. Her whole family would be ruined.”

“I'm not Indian,” Sophie mumbled.

“More's the pity,” her father said, attempting to deflect his wife's anger. “Otherwise you might have exercised better judgment. Really, Sophie.” His tone softened. “What on earth are we to do with you?”

“You should have thought about that before you dragged us out here!” Mrs. Schofield snapped at him, venting her frustration. It was all very well for him. He was thoroughly occupied most days, being taken hither and thither, enjoying the high regard that doctors do, whereas her days stretched out interminably. She simply couldn't understand all this India business. It was a ghastly, disease-ridden place, its people either crawling through squalor or living like Croesus. As for the Maharaja, he was the most ridiculous figure she had ever seen, preening like a fat peacock, keeping a harem of sluts for his pleasure. She had glimpsed him on one occasion, during one of their barbarian festivals, looking like a spoiled, overfed tribesman in his gilded finery, riding atop a caparisoned elephant in his giant silver howdah. The pomposity of it all was grotesque, from the way he threw coins into the gutter for children to scrabble over in the filth, to the manner in which he transported his heathen wives in sheeted palanquins. It disgusted her. Some took to the place like a duck to water, of course, but they were the kind of people who didn't really belong anywhere else, lame or eccentric types who would have a hard time fitting in with polite society at home. Quite a few of them were clearly soft in the head, that blasted Ripperton woman included. And as for the ones who had
gone
native
, well, the less said about them the better.