The Mountain of Light (11 page)

Emily trawled her fingers through George's thinning brush of hair. India had done this. When they left home, his hair had been a rich brown, now it was heavily woven through with strands of white. “I used to think that bringing my old room to India would make it England. So everyone told us, you remember, when we first embarked—take the comforts of home with you.”

He glanced up. “Who are you writing to? Mary?”

“Eleanor,” she said, falteringly, glad that he couldn't see the flush that crept up her neck. “Although by the time this letter gets to her, it will be May or June, and her garden will be in full bloom.”

George wrapped his arms around her leg, and she felt the warmth of his face seeping in through the thin cotton of her nightgown. She dabbed at her nape and her hand came away damp with sweat. In Greenwich, at Park Lodge, where George had been Commissioner of Greenwich Hospital, the garden would have gone into its quiet hibernation, now, in December. Frost would carve patterns on the thick glass of the casement windows; the branches of the birches would be rimmed with ice, trunks stripped of bark, lying about in paper curls of white; the grass would crackle with frozen dew. There had been other houses, other gardens, but the memory of the Park Lodge garden—where Emily had planted the rosebushes, the elms, the rhododendrons—was the one that came swooping clear to her when life in India troubled.

When their mother had died, Emily and Fanny, the only unmarried girls in the brood of fourteen, had left Eden Farm and gone to George. If George had been married, Emily and Fanny would have had to live by themselves—two mistresses in George's home were already one too many, but
three
 . . . unthinkable. Fanny was three years younger than Emily, George thirteen years older. And so they had muddled along now, for what, some twenty years almost, Emily thought with surprise—in this triangular marriage.

Outside, a horse coughed. In a sick horse, this was a painful whine, a hoarse and labored drawing in of breath. Emily said, “What's the matter with that animal?”

“Pneumonia, I think. He won't last long; there's no cure for it.”

Emily sank her chin into her chest and whispered into the lace collar of her nightgown. “I
hate
it here.”

George did not speak for a long time. They just listened to the tortured hacking of the horse and watched as the shadow of its neck and head flailed across the tent's walls.

“How long have we been in India?” George's voice was subdued.

“Two and a half years,” Emily said tiredly. “We arrived at Government House in Calcutta on March fourth, my birthday.”

“They weren't expecting us,” George said, with a dash of unexpected humor.

The then acting Governor-General of India, Sir Charles Metcalfe, had known that Lord Auckland and his sisters had arrived at the mouth of the Hooghly River, and had boarded a ferry on their way to Calcutta to relieve him of his duties. That by itself meant nothing—in India, a ferry ride of a few hours could become a journey of days, or the boat could capsize, or become stuck on the bank . . . or . . . So Metcalfe had gone on with his dinner party on the night of the fourth of March 1836. In the meantime, George, Emily, and Fanny had landed at the port at Calcutta to a small band playing an abbreviated and surprised welcome, and a convoy of horse-drawn buggies to rush them through the plummeting dusk of the crowded streets. After traveling through a vast park, they had confronted Government House, set on the banks of the river, with its Ionic pillars, its central dome, its twenty-seven acres . . . it was like a blessed piece of England, this mammoth house. Later, Emily would learn that it
was
England, more specifically, Kedleston Hall in Derbyshire, built according
to the same plan at the turn of the century by an ambitious Governor-General. They had climbed the steep steps leading up to the front door of Government House, gone through the reception area and into the dining room.

Metcalfe, caught at the head of the table with his wineglass rising to his mouth, had set it down carefully and hailed the travelers, who were still teetering on their land legs after so many months at sea. He had caught hold of George, Lord Auckland's arm, dragged him to his place peremptorily, sworn him in as the new Governor-General of India, demanded that one of the waiters move his plate—with the remains of the fish he had been eating—to another setting down the table, and sat down to enjoy his meal again.

“Happy birthday to me,” Emily said.

George agreed. “It was a frightful introduction to India.” Disoriented, his mind filled with the flash-by images of the Calcutta docks, the sweating trumpeters of the band, the ramshackle slums of the native quarter, he had stared at the eighty-five guests his predecessor had amassed in the dining room for a casual night—as Metcalfe had said, nothing special. George loathed making speeches, and he'd wondered what kind of a crowd a formal event demanded if this was just a few friends to dinner. He had swallowed air, he'd stumbled through the words, he'd toasted the King, his voice had failed, he'd collapsed into his chair and been watched as each forkful of tough goat meat went to his mouth and he chewed.

“Poor George,” Emily said softly, kissing the top of his head.

Things didn't get better, because the Governor-General of India was the representative of the Crown and the East India Company. He had to stand up to talk at every occasion, stiff and uneasy with a stultifying formality to his language; he had to be seen everywhere, his frock coat cut at the right angles, his hair brushed, his collar pristine, his boots shining. That was usually in the evenings. In the mornings, at Government
House in Calcutta, where his offices were downstairs in the front, George was buried under the weight of papers that came in the red dispatch boxes from every corner of British India. He had a staff of seventy people, most of whom were snappy, blindingly rich young men—younger sons of earls and dukes all eager for their India experience and with little else to do back home—who were his ADCs, his aides-de-camp.

Government House was an open house. Emily had privacy only in her bedroom upstairs; once she opened the door, she was likely to find almost anyone around: ladies come for a visit, the native servants creeping about, the ADCs running down hallways. She had a personal staff of thirty servants, including one whose job was only to pick up her handkerchief, if she dropped it.

“It's a difficult life,” Emily said quietly, “but no one who had come to India before told us it would be easy.”

“And we came for the money,” George said, surprising even himself by the honesty. When Emily moved in her chair in protest, he said, “It's true, Em. Macaulay was only a member of the Governor-General's council, remember, and he came back home with a purse of twenty thousand pounds, enough for him and his sister to live on for the rest of their lives. I make that amount every year. When we return, we will be rich. This is why we came to India. Why
I
came to India. Fanny and you were very good to accompany me. I wouldn't have known what to do without you.”

Emily gave a half laugh, embarrassed. Well, it
was
true, but they'd never talked about it before. And how could they have let George come here alone, without them? It was their duty, no matter how frightful the prospect had been.

“Go to bed,” she said. “Or do you want to sleep here tonight?”

“No,” he said, rising. A sheet of paper fell onto the carpet from the pocket of his nightshirt and lay there, glowing white
on the dark of the wool. “Oh, this came today.” He held it out. “Runjeet's wife wants to meet you. And Fanny, I suppose.”

Emily flipped open the letter and held it up to the faint light that glowed around them. “It's in Persian. Did McNaghten translate? But, this wife, George”—a small frown gathered on her forehead—“she's common, isn't she? The daughter of a cleaner or some such?”

This also was the unfortunate part of India to Emily. Even among the British inhabitants of the country, there was no telling who came from where. Some of them had money; some had the advantage of a long enough residence in India that their origins were forgotten; some were simply people Emily, Fanny, and George would not have met or talked with in England. Here, the social order was in a dreadful jumble.

George put his hands around her face and bent down until their breaths mingled. “You've got to see her, Em. Every raja's wife is common, by our standards anyway. And this royalty in India is common also—they're not usually born to the title, they snatch it from their brothers, fathers, and friends. It doesn't matter. I want Runjeet to help us in Afghanistan. So, you've got to see his . . . er . . . wife, or whatever she is. She'll probably give you a heap of jewels as a gift, you know how ridiculously generous Runjeet has been.”

“What are we giving them?”

“Wait.” He ran out of the tent and came back with a rectangular package enfolded in newspaper. Emily tore open the wrappings and gazed upon the portrait she had painted of Queen Victoria in her coronation robes. She had taken the face from a newspaper clipping, the gown from a very bad description, the jewels from her imagination, because they had been in India when Victoria was crowned sovereign of England; in fact, news of the king's death and the new queen had come to them only in October, four months later. George
had had the portrait framed in gold, embedded with rubies and diamonds, and shells.

“Is it enough? We don't want to seem mean . . . and, Runjeet keeps his women in a harem, would he care to see our Queen thus?”

“She's our ruler, Emily.” His mouth drooped in distaste. “One day she might well rule over the Punjab. I don't care what the native rajas think. And, I thought of giving him this also, along with some guns and cannons.” From the lower pocket of his nightshirt, he pulled out a clatter of green stones, smoothly rounded, linked with tiny gold chains. Pure emeralds, fashioned into a cluster of grapes, so realistic that Emily's mouth had watered when she'd first seen them in Calcutta.

“It's beautiful,” Emily said. “But Runjeet has the Kohinoor, you know; these will seem like paltry gems to him.”

“Maybe he'll give us the Kohinoor in return.”

They were silent, listening as the unwell horse shifted about on its feet, trying to be comfortable.

“Imagine that,” Emily said softly, “you could be the Governor-General who sent the diamond to the Queen.”

George grunted. “Mr. Taft would snap it out of my hand before we even had a chance to look at it and bear it away to the Company's treasure house.”

George, Lord Auckland, had been appointed Governor-General of India by the King of England and the Prime Minister of England. And, though the British government could offer the highest post in India to any man it chose, the English East India Company, a private trading concern, still ruled over most of India. Every gift, every honor paid to the Governor-General, or the members of his council, had to pass through the hands of the Company.

Mr. Taft was merely a clerk in the Company's employ. But his job was to attach himself to the Governor-General's office, to follow him around, to catalog and list every offering
from a native king—and to send them all to fill the Company's coffers.

“True,” Emily said. “Nothing's really ours here, except what we pay for. Mr. Taft is most scrupulous about that. But, George, think of the glory—if you managed to get the Kohinoor away from Runjeet and gave it to her Majesty. No one would ever forget that . . . or you.”

He gave her a thin smile that vanished as quickly as it came. George had no illusions about himself or what he could do. He had thought for a very long while about this invasion of Afghanistan, hesitant to stir up too much trouble during his tenure as Governor-General, but McNaghten, his political secretary, was insistent . . . and it
would
be splendid to conquer Afghanistan, make it a vassal to British India . . . there could be no harm, surely? Nothing but success in this venture?

While Emily talked, George put a fastidious finger on the triangular edge of the paper jutting out from the others on her desk. He saw her writing, and rubbed out the blot of ink on the end of the last word. “This is to General Avitabile?”

She nodded.

“That Italian who is in Runjeet's employ? Why, Emily?”

She turned away. “He's been very kind. You know, after he came with Fakir Azizuddin to Calcutta, as part of Runjeet's first embassy, well, at that time, he promised me shawls, some gowns, embroidered in the finest wool from Kashmir. They came yesterday, a year and a half after I'd met him in Calcutta. It was good of him to remember after so long. I want to thank him . . .”

There was a whiteness around George's nostrils, and his cheeks had drawn into his bones. He did not look at her either. “He's been writing to you all the while.”

“Not
all
the while, some of the time,” Emily said. She glanced at his finely wrought face—that sharp, hooked nose, that slender jaw, those arched eyebrows—and thought that
her brother was, even at fifty-three, an attractive man. But he was a cold, dull creature, eminently suited for this position as Governor-General of India. George had the looks of a poet, maybe he was even as handsome as Lord Byron, who had wreaked havoc on the periphery of their lives, but he hadn't the heart of one. How would she explain this to him, about General Avitabile, a man she had seen only a year and a half ago but who had . . . taken her fancy. Emily flushed, buried her face into the gloom of the tent. She was forty-one years old and had never yet met a man she had been attracted to, until she met the giant Monsieur Avitabile.

“But you have no . . . understanding with this Avitabile. Do you?” George tapped his fingers on the desk and the letter. “You can't write to him, or any man. Do you, Em?” This last came with a plea.