The Mountain of Light (27 page)

Henry took out his handkerchief and dabbed the sweat from Dalip's forehead. In response, he got a brilliant, distracted smile. He cursed the sixty-odd days he had wasted in not getting to know this child, and the loss was his, Henry knew. For there was something endearing about this boy who had been born just shortly before his powerful father died, and had been a babe in the nursery all the while that his half brothers ascended the throne and were, one by one, cut down from it in a deluge of blood. No one would even have thought of, dreamed of, this child eventually wearing the imperial turban on his head. And even that turban wobbled; Henry was here, the British were here to stay.

There may be other compensations for Dalip, Henry thought, and he said, “Dalip, are you going to marry Princess Roshni?”

“Uh-huh.” The Maharajah did not take his attention from the game.

“Really?” Henry persisted. “Why?”

Now Dalip did sit back to gaze at his guardian, perfectly
serious when he replied, “I'm betrothed to her, that's why, Henry.”

“But . . . you're so young.” What he meant to say was that there was, must be at least, a twelve-year age difference between them. And what could it have meant to this girl, who at twenty had to consider an eight-year-old child as a husband?

“Oh, Henry,” Dalip said, wise beyond his years, “I will grow up, you know. I won't marry her until I'm at least sixteen, or eighteen.”

“And will she wait?”

Dalip smiled, a dimple deepening his chin. “She can marry no one else now. If she doesn't wait—whatever
that
means—she will die unmarried. After all, I am—”

“The Maharajah of the Punjab,” Henry cut in with a smile. “I know.” Then, more serious. “I know.”

Dalip jumped up from his place on the floor and, to Henry's surprise, flung himself into his arms, his small hands clasped tight around Henry's neck. Henry held him, felt the soft, flushed cheek against his, the thud of the boy's beating heart, and felt a pang of warmth stifle his chest, as though this young, foreign Maharajah was one of his own sons, born of his flesh. The feeling overwhelmed him. He hadn't expected to fall in love in Lahore. Twice.

Dalip's voice, muffled by Henry's hair, echoed in his ear. “Whoever that other Henry Lawrence is, he cannot be anywhere as nice as you are.”

He drew back, his dark eyes bright and beautiful, just like his mother's. “I'm glad you're here.” Then, he wrenched his arms away and ran out of the pavilion into the bright sunshine, and all the way back to his own apartments in the Lahore Fort.

•  •  •

The festival of Diwali came to Lahore that year on the night of the new moon. For days, gigantic gunnysacks with cheaply made terra-cotta lamps—
diyas
—had been toted into the fort and set up on the long line of the ramparts by the attendants. A day before, the servants had put oil in each of the lamps and strung into the oil a single cotton wick. The kitchens were busy all day and night with huge cauldrons bubbling over with sweets and savories, and trays of them had been sent by Dalip Singh to the British contingent until Henry, gorging himself to a stomachache, had to beg his young Maharajah to stop being so generous—it was near killing him. So Dalip sent him fine silks, daggers, turban ornaments, diamond buttons, anything else he thought was appropriate, including five Thoroughbreds from Ranjit Singh's stables—feisty horses with such elegant lines that Henry put his old nag into retirement.

The Howard brothers promptly noted everything on a list and made arrangements for the items to be transported on to Calcutta. They were disappointed when Henry sent an order to Dalip—no more gifts.
Bas
. Enough.

Two hours before sunset, attendants roamed the fort, thick cords of jute slung over their shoulders, one end smoldering and smoking, and used these long-burning matches to light all the lamps. Henry stood on the ramparts overlooking the walled city, and marveled at the houses, the gardens, the trees, the streets all lit up in pinpoints of light. When he looked up at the clear night sky, bejeweled with millions of stars, it seemed a poor imitation of the ground below. The earth was alive, gilded with illumination, and for this one night, the sky had been put to bed, put to shame.

He went back to Jahangir's Quadrangle and sat there alone after dinner, smoking a
beedi,
his eyes closed as his hand went unerringly to his mouth for a drag and then fell down. Through his closed lids he could see the radiance of the
diyas
all around the pathways, picking out the square
outlines of the pool's platform, the pool itself, the arches in the buildings, the straight lines of their eaves. Then, the fireworks began. Shower after shower of pale blue, purple, pink, and green light in the sky, appearing one moment, disappearing the next, leaving the aroma of spent gunpowder hanging in a pall over the city, until the lights of the
diyas
were dimmed.

It was then the girl came into the courtyard, as she had the first time, from the southern end, and stood looking down its length at Henry Lawrence.

He rose from his place, sent his half-smoked
beedi
skittering across the stone, and waited for her to come up to him. The pale white skirts of her full
ghagara
murmured over the pathway; her back was erect, as though a hand touched the small of it; and Henry could see, through the sheer white veil, the diamonds glittering on the short
choli
she wore, which left her waist and her arms bare.

He bowed his head to her.

“So, Henny Larens,” she said. “You are well, I hear. The fever has passed?”

A small breeze sighed through the courtyard and set the flames of the hundreds of
diyas
wavering, casting scurrying shadows over the hexagonal bricks. The breeze brushed against her face and molded the veil against its outlines. She reached up to pull the fabric free.

“Don't,” Henry said, his hand in the air, falling to his side helplessly. “Please, let me look at you . . . and thank you for all you've done.”

There was a flash of teeth as her lips parted. “You talk, and I listen. You don't need to look at me for this.”

“But you don't know how disconcerting it is to have a conversation with someone you cannot properly see—whose face does not . . . change for you as you talk, tell them things.” She smiled again, and Henry said, “Ah, I see you
do
understand this.”

“The veil has always been an advantage for a woman, for the very reason you mention. Not for us perhaps, the naked face of the Englishwoman, every thought visible, every mystery revealed. But”—she looked up at him—“this is what you are used to. We . . . I, am foreign to you.”

Henry gestured toward the stairs of the pavilion, and they went up halfway and sat on the same step. He looked down at his hands, and then at hers, clasped around her knees, the wrists slung with diamond bangles, the skin decorated with henna for Diwali. They were small hands, but powerful enough to lift him and bind his shoulder, and Henry, though a thin man, was not a light man.

“You could never be foreign to me,” he said simply. “I would not have lived if it hadn't been for you. I've had this mysterious fever, these chills, before, but coupled with the torn shoulder, they would have been the end of me. Kingsley couldn't—”

“I'm sure your doctor is an able man, but there are some ailments that have no real diagnosis, no specific treatment. It's a matter of just trying everything.” She laughed, a low, opulent sound. “I told your brother that.”

He smiled, exhilarated at her nearness, happy even that she had come after so many messages sent to the
zenana
for just one meeting. His heart banged painfully in his chest, as though he was going to ask for her to be his . . . And yet it was just a simple conversation. Nothing more.

“I'm surprised that John listened,” he said carefully, keeping a quaver out of his voice, concentrating on his words, and the sound of them. “He's not very good at that, never has been, although he's one of the most fair, most upright men I know.”

“And he loves you very much, Henny Larens,” she said softly, “that was why he agreed to let me take care of you.” She picked at the embroidery on her
ghagara,
and with each movement, the bangles on her wrists tinkled with music. “I
hear your betrothed comes to Lahore soon, to marry you. This is true?”

He nodded.

“You are old, no, to be married?”

Henry grinned. Any other woman would not so bluntly have stated the obvious. He
was
old, and looked every one of his thirty-nine years, and some more—the fevers had robbed him of the plushness of youth. His skin was thin, the bones on his face protruded, his forehead jutted out, and under his shirts his shoulders were knobby. Only his hair had been, mercifully, left alone, as thick as in his adolescence, as dark as the day it had turned that color from an original sandy brown.

“It is a betrothal of long standing.”

“Then you've known her for a while.” There was no inflection in her voice; it was flatly said, a comment as much as a question.

Henry told her, and all of a sudden felt the words tumble from his mouth about the whole courtship—how he had met Honoria, when he had professed his love for her, how she hadn't been able to come to India before, and for ten years. Why he did this, spoke so intimately to a woman he had barely seen, barely knew—he couldn't understand. But he felt a comfort in her presence as he had when he was ill and fevered. For the first time in India, he felt a sense of contentment that had nothing to do with his work.

She stayed silent. He asked, “Have I said too much?”

“No,” she said slowly, “you hardly talked when you were unwell, you were so quiet, such an ideal patient. I worried that you had never learned to speak of what was in your soul to anyone . . . a wife, a sister, a mother . . . and all this held tight in a man's chest can only implode one day. Troubles when voiced are carried away on the wind; they have no place upon which to perch.”

“I have three brothers in India,” Henry said.

She shook her head and laughed. “They're men. I'm glad
your wife comes, Henny Larens. Will you marry her here, in Lahore?”

“Yes.”

“Then”—she hesitated—“if she has no place to stay . . . until you are married, that is, she is welcome to be with me in the
zenana
.”

The night sky lit up around them again in a burst of fireworks. It was impossible to talk with all that noise, the screams from a delighted city, the fainter sounds of gunshots in the distance. Earlier in the month, Henry and his contingent had seriously debated on whether they ought to allow Diwali to be observed—whether there wouldn't be an opportunity for rebellion under cover of all the sound and smog created by the gunpowder. But it would have been impolitic to stop the city from celebrating a tradition that went back thousands of years, and putting a stop to it would have probably created its own form of rebellion. So they had said nothing, even participated in paying for the fireworks set off from the ramparts of the fort, and looking up at the sky and hearing those gunshots, Henry hoped very much that it was just some miscreants shooting into the air, and not at someone else. He would find out in the morning.

“I think,” Henry said, when he could speak, and rolls of acrid smoke drifted over the courtyard and draped themselves in folds around them, “Honoria would like that very much.”

She rose then, and Henry rose with her. “Let me see you out,” he said.

A tilt of her head, and that mocking voice. “I know my way around the fort very well, Henny Larens.”

He watched her walk away through the haze. He would have only memories of her that he could hold in a part of his heart—nothing more. Even had he not been engaged to marry Honoria, nothing could have come out of this. Perhaps a hundred years ago in India, it would have been reasonable,
acceptable, for an Englishman to have a native wife . . . and to know that he could never return to England with her. The ADCs at the Governor-General's office were notorious for their Indian “wives” even now, until the English missus came along.

She stopped, swung around, and came running up the pathway again, wrestling with her arm all the while. When she had reached him, she held out her hand and said, “I almost forgot.”

In her palm was a gold armlet, a diamond on either side of the main diamond, which was as big as a robin's egg, oval, ablaze with radiance.

“It's yours,” she said.

He took the Kohinoor and slipped it into the pocket of his trousers but kept a hold of her hand. “Thank you,” he said, “for everything.” And then, he said, “Why?”

“You're a good man. At least, I think so.”

She bent her head for a brief moment, carried his hand to her cheek and held it there. Henry felt the heat of her skin and the flutter of a pulse. Then, she turned, picked up the skirts of her
ghagara,
and went out into the night.

•  •  •

Honoria came to Lahore two days later, having traveled by the
dak
roads from Calcutta through the Upper Provinces. Major Battersea, who had made all the arrangements, had written to the Postmaster General outlining her route—where she would stop each night, where she would eat her meals, how many guards she needed along the way, how many torchbearers to light the way at night, how the horses would be paid for. He had tried to get her to stay on at Calcutta until Henry was free to come to her, but she wouldn't listen. So, alone in a country that was new to her, she got into
the
dak
palki,
essentially a palanquin on wheels drawn by horses, and lumbered over thirteen hundred miles to the man she was to marry.