A Singular Hostage Part 3

Who was he, really? The old man never allowed idle conversation during their meetings. When she asked where in India he had been born, he replied that she would be able to answer that question for herself when she became familiar with the various people of India. When she asked about his family, he had said that his family was of no consequence to her study of languages. When she inquired how he had come, genielike, to be in Simla where Uncle Adrian encountered him, he had said nothing at all.

She turned back to her desk and picked up the paper again. She, Mariana Givens, was about to translate a poem that looked like this, into English into English.

She yawned, stretching her arms over her head, then brought them sharply down, too late to prevent the tartan gown from tearing past repair.

Bother! She had meant to ask Muns.h.i.+ Sahib about the madman's message-"The path you will take," he had told her, "requires courage- courage-"

After the poisoned milk had done its work in the Maharajah's Citadel, word of Mumtaz Bano's death spread swiftly into the old city that pressed against the Citadel's walls, speeding from mouth to mouth through cobbled lanes until it reached Qamar Haveli, home to three generations of Shaikh Waliullah's immediate family and a score of his more distant relations.

Wailing arose at once in the upstairs ladies' quarters of the house, while downstairs the high carved doors swung open to admit the first somber-faced male visitors into the inner courtyards. As the day progressed, servants from neighboring houses crisscrossed the narrow streets, carrying vessels of food to the haveli haveli's back entrance, observing the tradition that no food is cooked in a house of mourning. Incense, painful to all, heavy in its a.s.sociations, made its way on the breeze over the roofs of nearby houses.

"Shaikh Waliullah's daughter-in-law has died," the incense proclaimed, with more finality than any human voice. "Mumtaz Bano, mother of the Maharajah's hostage child, is dead."

As the tall haveli doors opened, a horseman rode out, his weapons rattling at his sides, his horse's hooves echoing in the brick entranceway. Head down, he rode along curving lanes until he reached one of the twelve gates leading out of Lah.o.r.e City. Seeing him pa.s.s under the Kashmiri Gate, an ironmonger called out, "G.o.dspeed, O messenger of the Shaikh!" From his saddle Yusuf Bhatti saluted, but gave no reply.

He rode north, taking the ancient road leading to Peshawar, then to the Khyber Pa.s.s, then to Afghanistan, three hundred miles beyond. He rode wearily, coughing at the dust that rose from underfoot, his shoulders hunched beneath the burden of the news he carried. In three hours he stopped only twice, to ask for water at the villages he pa.s.sed. As he traveled, he scanned the crowded highway for a familiar figure riding south.

Near Gujranwala, Yusuf Bhatti found the man he sought. Pa.s.sing through a roadside village, he caught sight of Mumtaz Bano's husband mounting his horse near a fruit vendor's stall, an orange in his hand, his neat beard and long embroidered coat tarnished with the dust of hard travel.

His jaw tightening, Yusuf spurred his horse.

Ha.s.san Ali Khan's clever, good-natured face lit with pleasure as he leaned from his saddle to embrace his closest friend. "Yusuf, may you have a long life!" he cried. "I was thinking of you just now. What a journey this has-"

When Yusuf pulled mutely back, Ha.s.san's smile faded. He drew himself up and sat warily, his horse moving restlessly beneath him, his eyes locked on his friend's face.

Yusuf dropped his eyes.

After a moment Ha.s.san Ali Khan's shoulders sagged. He took a ragged breath. "Is it my father?" he asked.

"No, it is not Lala-Ji." Yusuf raised his head and looked into Ha.s.san's face. "It is not your father," he said, his eyes filling. "It is your wife."

"What? When?" Ha.s.san's voice sounded like dry leaves.

Yusuf looked away and wiped his eyes on his sleeve. "This morning."

A pair of donkeys pulling a cart loaded with bricks minced past, sidestepping the two riders. Seeing one man's gray face and the other man's tears, their driver spoke aloud to no one in particular. "So," he said, "in this world, ill news comes to both great and small."

A pa.s.sing merchant grunted his agreement.

"How?" Ha.s.san had squeezed his eyes shut.

Yusuf hesitated, then told him the truth. "They are saying she choked on some food. We do not like the story."

"We do not like the story?" The reins shook in Ha.s.san's fingers. "Do they think someone has killed killed her? her? Killed Killed my Mumtaz Bano?" my Mumtaz Bano?"

"We have no proof," he said, "but we think there was jealousy in the Jasmine Tower. One of the wives-"

"What of Saboor?" Ha.s.san interrupted. "Where is my son?"

"Saboor is still at the Citadel." Yusuf spoke gruffiy to cover the additional pain he knew this news would cause. "The people there have refused to release him without the Maharajah's permission, and the Maharajah has already gone south to meet the British. Those at the Citadel say they have sent a message to his camp."

"I know the court people. They will never dare give this news to the Maharajah, for fear of being blamed." Ha.s.san brushed his fingers across his face. "My baby is alone there. Oh, Allah!"

Yusuf's sword clanked as he leaned toward his friend. "I will ride to the Maharajah's camp myself. I will leave now. I will ask for Saboor to be sent home."

Ha.s.san raised his head and looked into the distance. "Home," he repeated. "Oh, Yusuf, why did I take Saboor to see the Maharajah last year? Why was I so proud of my son that I ignored the risk?"

"Why blame yourself?" Yusuf asked. "None of this tragedy is your doing. How could you have foreseen the Maharajah's pa.s.sion for Saboor, or that he would order him to live at the Citadel?"

"That moment has never left me. I see it daily: Saboor on the Maharajah's lap, turning his head to look at the bright colors and the jewelry, the old Maharajah peering at him out of his one good eye, stroking him and crooning to him. 'This baby has a light in his heart,' the Maharajah said to everyone, 'a bright, sweet light. This child will stay with me and bring me health and good fortune.' My Saboor was only six months old."

He sighed. "My poor Mumtaz Bano-forced to leave us and live with the Maharajah's wives. They terrified her, with their falseness and their cruel ways. Now they have killed her. I failed her, Yusuf, I failed them both." He dropped his head into his hands.

Yusuf sat silently. Poor Ha.s.san. Over the past year he had tried many times, with increasing desperation, to retrieve his wife and son from the Jasmine Tower. Ha.s.san was a skilled courtier and well connected, but the Maharajah, as his health weakened, had refused to give up Saboor. Instead, he had clung to the child as if to life itself.

"Saboor and the Koh-i-noor diamond are my most treasured belongings," the Maharajah had said countless times.

Yusuf reached for his friend's shoulder, but Ha.s.san straightened with an impatient jerk, and reached for his horse's reins.

"We must hurry home to Lah.o.r.e," he said. "We must not miss Mumtaz's burial."

THEY had been riding in silence for nearly an hour. Yusuf s.h.i.+fted in the saddle. What was Ha.s.san feeling? What did he see at this terrible time? Did the villages in the distance s.h.i.+mmer before his eyes? Did the road rise and fall like a live thing before him? Aching to embrace his grieving friend, Yusuf glanced sideways, but saw only Ha.s.san's shuttered face.

Saboor must be miserable at the Citadel, although that particular misery would most likely end soon, when the order came for him to join the royal camp sixty miles south of Lah.o.r.e. But who knew what would happen to the child there, alone and unprotected?

Yusuf slapped at a fiy. If Ha.s.san's father, with all his spiritual abilities, had been powerless to protect his own daughter-in-law, it was doubtful that he could help his grandson. People were saying that Shaikh Waliullah should have saved Ha.s.san's wife with magic. People talked all kinds of nonsense. Like the Maharajah, they too claimed Ha.s.san's baby son had powers, that five minutes of Saboor's infant company could lift a man's darkest mood.

Ha.s.san's grim voice broke the long silence between them. "I hate the Maharajah," he said quietly. His eyes were half-closed, his face wan above his beard.

Yusuf stared at his hands. A great soldier and statesman, Maharajah Ranjit Singh was loved by most, if not all, of his subjects. A soldier himself, Yusuf had admired the old one-eyed Maharajah all his life.

"I have told no one, not even you, Yusuf, what I have suffered over this past year," Ha.s.san went on, keeping his voice low, even though the road was nearly deserted. "I have worked for the Maharajah, traveled to distant cities for him, collected his taxes, argued with his enemies; and all this time I, myself, have hated him more than all his enemies together." His fist tightened on his knee. "All this time I have thought that if I said it aloud, if I let myself speak my hatred, I would go mad. He has torn my very soul from me, but I cannot fight him for fear of causing my family more harm. Today that harm has come, in spite of all my inner struggle." He looked hollow-eyed at his friend. "Allah help me, Yusuf, I never thought I could feel such hatred toward anyone."

Yusuf tugged on one of his ears, then the other. "In that case, Ha.s.san," he said, "G.o.d help us both."

Two hours later they reached Lah.o.r.e.

It is sympathy that breaks reserve. At the first sorrowful greeting from a gentle-eyed Hindu blacksmith near the Masti Gate, Ha.s.san's face crumpled. Yusuf urged his own horse ahead, allowing Ha.s.san to follow him, however blindly, to his father's house.

At the periphery of the city, they pa.s.sed rope makers and coppersmiths. Nearer to the center, they made their way past cloth sellers, acknowledging as they pa.s.sed the grave salutes of all who knew their story. They maneuvered their horses through the congested streets, past spice sellers and goldsmiths, diamond merchants and weavers of the softest silk. At length they reached Wazir Khan's Mosque, home to the most precious of goods: incense, perfumes, and illuminated books.

Opposite the mosque stood the Waliullah family's ancestral home.

The tall doors of the haveli stood open. Male members of the Shaikh's family stood outside greeting visitors. All were ushered inside, each visitor directed, either to the Shaikh's presence or to the main courtyard, depending upon his degree of intimacy with the family. Palanquins with tightly closed side doors pa.s.sed through on their way to the ladies' quarters. A crowd of onlookers craned to see each new arrival.

"Stand back," cried a voice from the crowd, as the two hors.e.m.e.n approached the gate. "Ha.s.san Sahib has come!"

The crowd moved aside, staring, to let them pa.s.s.

"May Allah Most Merciful grant you patience," shouted someone. The crowd lent its voice in agreement.

"May the lady's soul rest in peace," said another voice.

"Yes, yes, may she rest in peace," answered the people at the door.

Their horses' hooves echoed hollowly as Ha.s.san and Yusuf rode into the haveli's high, vaulted entrance. They dismounted and made their way past cl.u.s.ters of men, then through a gate with a carved wooden lintel. There, in his small courtyard in front of a decorated portico, Shaikh Waliullah had already risen from the padded platform where he sat daily among his close companions. He opened his arms to receive his son.

Yusuf stood at the back of the crowd. He had his instructions.

Immediately after Mumtaz Bano's burial he was to ride out of the city again, and head south to the Maharajah's camp. Once there, he must find a way to persuade the Maharajah to return the infant Saboor to his grieving family.

He grimaced at the prospect. A soldier, quick with a tulwar tulwar but clumsy with words, Yusuf had no golden, persuasive tongue like the courtier Ha.s.san, but the work must be done, and there was no one else to do it. but clumsy with words, Yusuf had no golden, persuasive tongue like the courtier Ha.s.san, but the work must be done, and there was no one else to do it.

He must not fail.

AT the Maharajah's camp two days later, Yusuf made poor headway as he rode along a crowded avenue. "Move out, move out," he bellowed, fighting impatience as he forced a path for his horse through the throng of merchants and hangers-on. He pushed by a cl.u.s.ter of silk-clad riders who scowled and whispered as he pa.s.sed. Dandified fools, let them talk.

He skirted a line of carts piled high with blood oranges. He should find food, but he was too angry and disappointed to eat. In his haste to cover the distance between Lah.o.r.e and the Maharajah's camp he had bypa.s.sed the small, walled city of Kasur. Now his inquiries had yielded bad news: the Maharajah's Chief Minister, Faqeer Azizuddin, childhood friend of Shaikh Waliullah and Ha.s.san's patron at court, had been at Kasur when Yusuf pa.s.sed by. No one but Faqeer Azizuddin would be able to gain Yusuf an interview with the Maharajah. No one knew when the minister was to return.

Faqeer Azizuddin had been their best hope.

Yusuf turned toward the Maharajah's horse lines. His mount, at least, should eat and rest. If only he and Ha.s.san could rescue the child themselves after Ha.s.san's duties at the funeral were done ... Yusuf had thought of it, without hope, all the way from Lah.o.r.e. No one entered the Citadel's gates unnoticed. Even if they could, by stealth, reach the inner gardens, how would they gain entry to the women's quarters? The Jasmine Tower, home to the Maharajah's Queens, was walled off from the rest of the palace grounds. Armed sentries guarded its single, low door. Only Allah knew how many eunuchs were within, protecting the inhabitants of the Maharajah's harem.

No, Ha.s.san's baby would be rescued with cleverness, not force.

A naked Hindu mendicant strode along the margin of the camp's main avenue, a begging bowl in one hand, his body covered with ashes. Yusuf glanced at the man, then away.

He had never seen Ha.s.san's wife. Ha.s.san, her distant cousin, had not seen Mumtaz Bano himself until after the marriage papers had been signed, the blessing given. Only then would the figured mirror have been produced and held at an angle, to show the groom, indirectly, the face of the bride who sat beside him, her head bowed modestly under her scarlet wedding veil. Whatever Ha.s.san had seen that day, it did not matter now.

Yusuf rubbed his eyes. He would make himself eat, and then, putting his trust in Allah, he would go on to his next task.

Leaving the Maharajah's camp behind him, he would continue south across the Sutlej River and travel deep into British territory, searching out the British camp as it made its way north toward the border. There, among the British tents, he was to find a man who, like Faqeer Azizuddin, had been a childhood friend of the Shaikh. This man, like the Faqeer, must be told in person of the tragedy at the Jasmine Tower.

With luck, on his return journey, Yusuf would not miss the Faqeer a second time.

Dense clouds obscured a quarter moon as Yusuf rode south on a borrowed mount, ignoring the discomfort of traveling without rest. As darkness descended, he followed a pitted track past ragged trees and empty fields to where a fortified mud village stood on its mound of earth, presenting eyeless walls to the outside world. Directed by a boy driving a bony cow, he presented himself, dusty and famished, at the headman's house.

After dining on chapatties chapatties and boiled lentils cooked over a dung fire, he lay down to sleep on a string bed in the headman's courtyard. and boiled lentils cooked over a dung fire, he lay down to sleep on a string bed in the headman's courtyard.

Looking into the blackness, he listened to the grunting of the animals.

How was Ha.s.san bearing this loss? He, like Yusuf, must be lying awake tonight.

Within hours of her death, Mumtaz Bano had been buried beside Ha.s.san's mother, who had died when Ha.s.san was only nineteen. Nine years ago, Yusuf had been among the men carrying the body of Shaikh Waliullah's wife out through the carved haveli door, wrapped in its winding sheet and decked with fiowers, while behind him, the family women wailed. Two days ago, the same friends and Waliullah family members had borne Mumtaz Bano on their shoulders as the sound of the final prayers rose and fell behind them.

What would happen to Ha.s.san's poor baby? How long could Saboor survive alone at the Citadel?

"Allah-hu-Akbar," he said aloud, consoling himself. "Allah-hu-Akbar." G.o.d is Great. If G.o.d were willing, help for the child would arrive in time.

THE only real garden in the Lah.o.r.e Citadel was the Queens' Garden.

Twenty years before, at the desire of the Maharajah's second wife, the garden, a square s.p.a.ce adjacent to the ladies' tower, had been returned to the graceful formality of its Moghul days. It had been a symmetrical Persian garden then, divided into four squares, with a marble fountain at its heart. In each cypress-shaded square, paths led to a smaller fountain between plantings of jasmine, gardenias, oranges, and roses, whose perfume was carried by the breeze from one end of the garden to the other.

The central fountain had been set into a marble platform, where on pleasant days the Maharajah's ladies enjoyed themselves, screened from idle onlookers by a row of cypresses that cast their shade along the gravel walks. In warm weather the younger ladies played by the fountain, giggling and trying to push one another into the water, while their serving women waited on their pleasure in the shade of nearby trees.

It seemed that this morning was too cool for such games. The Maharajah's thirty-seven wives seemed satisfied to recline on carpets in the garden, leaning against bright-colored bolsters like resting b.u.t.terfiies, their loose garments falling into silken folds against their bodies.

The senior-most wife rested near the fountain, her hooded eyes expressionless, her two legs spread apart, each one kneaded rhythmically by a serving woman, while the other Queens positioned themselves close by, nudging one another discreetly out of the way, vying to be close to the center of infiuence.

The old Maharani grimaced. "Not so hard," she said sharply to one of her servants. The woman nodded and went on with her work. The Maharani closed her eyes, ignoring the compet.i.tion that boiled silently around her.

Crouching under a tree a little distance from the other serving women, a young servant girl glanced down at the disheveled baby who squatted at her side, his eyes pa.s.sing from queen to queen, as if he were searching for someone.

Was he looking for his mother? Reshma did not believe so. She was certain he had known the milk was poisoned. She was sure that when Mumtaz Bano took the cup, Saboor had understood that she was about to die. His screams in the garden, she now knew, had been screams of loss.

What then, or whom, did he seek? If only his color were not so poor. If only his cheeks were still plump.

"Look at Saat Kaur," said one queen, a tight-faced woman, jerking her chin without sympathy toward Reshma's own mistress, a grayeyed sixteen-year-old who sat apart from the others, a frail baby on her lap. "That boy of hers is certain to die soon. No child so weak and unhealthy can live for long."

The Maharani opened her eyes briefiy and gave the sick baby an incurious glance, but did not favor the speaker with a reply. Biting her lip, the woman subsided into silence. Near her in the crowd, a second, harsh-faced woman smiled bitterly.

Reshma s.h.i.+vered. How these queens hated one another! How they feared for their future!

Saat Kaur did not look up, although color stained the dewy cheeks that had first caught the Maharajah's eye. Yawning deliberately, the little queen lifted her baby, whose skin was as yellow as turmeric, put him down beside her, and turned her head toward the row of cypress trees. Reshma shrank into her loose clothes and tried to tuck Saboor behind her. Oh, please let Saat Kaur not see him....

The little queen narrowed her eyes, then started, her body stiffening. Reaching for a silver tray, she took a sugary sweetmeat. "Send the boy here, Reshma," she commanded.

Saboor ceased his searching from face to face and looked at the young Maharani. Trembling, Reshma pushed him forward.

Saat smiled and called softly to the child, the orange sweet glistening in her fingers. "Come here, take this."

Saboor hesitated, then trotted shyly to the young queen's side. As he stretched out his hand for the treat, she s.n.a.t.c.hed it away and slapped his fingers sharply.

"There," she said, her mouth curling downward at his tears. "That is what you get for making yourself a favorite of the Maharajah. Nothing Nothing is what you get." With a disdainful gesture, she dropped the sweet into the fountain where it sank and rested, still tempting, under the water. is what you get." With a disdainful gesture, she dropped the sweet into the fountain where it sank and rested, still tempting, under the water.

Her voice had a knife's edge. "Who gave you permission to spend hour after hour in the company of the Maharajah while his own son waits here, unnoticed?"

His cheeks wet with tears, Saboor gazed uncomprehendingly up into her face.

"And what is this 'light' you are said to have? I see no light," Saat Kaur added as he stumbled away. "Pah! I see only a dirty, foulsmelling boy whom no one loves." She gestured after the child with a finely painted hand. "Reshma, why do you keep bringing him here? He does not belong among royalty. Take him from my sight, and do not give him food. Why should we feed him?"