Rebel Queen

by Michelle Moran

  Thousands of people lined the roads to watch our procession to our new home, and they were utterly silent. For the British who were watching, it must have seemed eerie. The only sounds in the streets were the birds in the trees and our horses’ hooves.

  The Rani Mahal was one of the raja’s old palaces. It was a two-storied building, nestled like an exotic yellow bird in the midst of a bazaar. When we arrived, the heavy iron gates were thrown open. Then we entered, single file. The flat-roofed building was sixty years old, with a quadrangular courtyard in the center and two small fountains trickling in the sun. Everyone dismounted, and four stable boys took our horses to a building outside the Rani Mahal, since there was no stable.

  Inside, there were six corridors leading to six grand halls and a few smaller rooms. Nearly all of the rooms were painted red, and someone with a passion for flowers had decorated the walls with them. The arches were adorned with images of peacocks and rosettes, and stone sculptures from the Gupta period stared down at us from brightly painted niches. Both the queen’s chamber and the Durbar Hall were on the second floor. Both had wood-paneled ceilings and windows overlooking the streets below.

  “There isn’t room up here for a Durgavas,” Sundari remarked.

  “Take one of the rooms downstairs and turn it into a Durgavas,” the rani said. “Arjun, the same goes for my guard—put them next door.”

  I glanced at Arjun. Only a wall would be separating us at night, and I felt the heat rise in my cheeks. If anyone noticed they didn’t say anything.

  It took all afternoon to organize the palace. We sat on cushions in the Durbar Hall and took turns entertaining Anand while servants attempted to bring order to the chaos. Some time before the sun set, Gopal arrived to deliver our mail.

  “That’s it? One letter?” Kahini complained.

  “I’m sorry.” Gopal looked flustered. After all, he’d lost his privileged place in the Panch Mahal as well. “That’s all there was for you.”

  “You’re certain?”

  “Yes.”

  Gopal delivered two letters to me, and immediately, I realized his mistake. A better person would have spoken up immediately, but I took the letter that was addressed to Kahini and slipped it into my angarkha. For the next two hours I wondered if I had the nerve to read it. But as soon as the time was right, I went downstairs and sat on a small marble bench in the courtyard. There were so many people entering and leaving the palace that no one paid any attention to me. I unfolded the letter as quickly as I could, before I could change my mind about it. I’m not sure what I expected to find, but it certainly wasn’t this:

  My love, I’m sorry to hear that life has been so difficult for you. There is talk that the sepoys are growing angrier. Is there any sign of revolt? Should I come? Are you in any danger?

  —S

  I folded the letter and hurried off to find Jhalkari. She was in the new Durgavas, a small chamber barely large enough to fit ten beds. She was speaking with Mandar, and I summoned both of them to a corner of the room.

  “You have to see this.”

  Both women read the letter and shook their heads.

  “It doesn’t make sense. Gopal reads everything. Why would he continue flirting with Kahini if he knows she has a lover?” Mandar took the letter and read it again. Then she said, “Return it to Gopal. See what he does.”

  Jhalkari’s eyes brightened. “He’ll be beside himself.”

  Mandar agreed. “He won’t even tell her you opened it.”

  “Or maybe he won’t give it to her at all,” Jhalkari said. “Look, there he is.” Outside the window, the Master of the Letters was searching his kurta, patting every possible fold. “He knows he’s lost it. Go,” Jhalkari suggested. “We’ll watch.”

  I approached Gopal with the letter, and his eyes darted madly from my hands to my face.

  “You have it,” he said accusingly. He reached out and tried to snatch it. “Give it to me!” he shouted, so that several servants stopped what they were doing to see what was happening.

  “You gave me an extra letter,” I said evenly.

  “Did you read it?”

  “Yes.” I watched his face. A twitch formed under his left eye.

  “You can never tell Kahini!”

  “What are you covering up for her?” I asked, and let him take the letter from my hand. “She isn’t in love with you; another man is writing to her. She’s in love with someone else.”

  “You have no idea—”

  I shook my head and started to walk away.

  “Wait!” he called after me. “You won’t say anything?”

  I didn’t respond.

  After our move to the Rani Mahal, nothing seemed to make sense anymore, especially to Anand, who had already lost one home, and then had to lose another. For three nights he screamed, and there was nothing the rani could do to calm his terrors. “He’s only voicing what all of us feel,” Kashi whispered from her bed next to mine. Jhalkari was on the other side of me. There wasn’t even any room for our own puja tables. Now, we all shared one altar near the door.

  I’m sure there are a great many people who believe that when the rani lost her kingdom, she immediately began plotting all of the ways in which she could fight to win it back. But since I was there with her from the very first day she held a durbar in the Rani Mahal, I can tell you that nothing was further from the truth. The very last thing the rani wanted was war. She believed, the very same way you or I believe that the sun will rise tomorrow, that the Company would someday grant one of her appeals. If I could tell you the number of appeals she wrote, arguing in her best English each of the most logical points you would have argued if you had been in her place, then the rest of my memoirs would be spent doing so. It was like Arjun said to me the first night we spent in the new palace. “I don’t know what’s more depressing. Watching the rani believe that British law will triumph, or listening to her father explain there is no alternative to war.”

  But then, just as the rani and her son seemed to be making their peace with the sudden change, even worse news came. A servant announced the arrival of Major Ellis outside the Durbar Hall.

  “Your Highness, the honorable Major Ellis is here.”

  The servants still called the rani, “Your Highness,” and she still held a durbar, even though there was no longer a kingdom to administer.

  “He may enter.”

  The major stepped into the hall and blinked several times as he took in his surroundings. Just as she had in the Panch Mahal, the rani was sitting on her gold and emerald throne, which the governor-general had finally agreed she could take. She was surrounded by a half circle made up of her Durgavasi. Each of us sat on large red cushions that matched both the walls and ceiling of the chamber. To the rani’s left, on thickly padded chairs, sat all of her important advisers, just as they always had when she had been the Rani of Jhansi. Her father was there, along with the generals Gul Mohammed and Raghunath Singh. She wasn’t presiding over the Panch Mahal, but in her blue silk sari and silver bangles, she still appeared regal.

  The major bowed very, very low, and addressed her as a queen. “Your Highness, I come with news.”

  “You always come with news, Major Ellis, and it never seems to be to my liking. What is it today?”

  “The Queen of England and her Parliament are interested in this land as well.”

  The rani looked at her father, but neither seemed to understand what this could mean.

  The major explained. “Parliament has become very interested in the British East India Company’s holdings here.”

  The rani shook her head and her small silver earrings caught the light, reminding me of a pair of fish dangling from two hooks. “Explain clearly what you mean,” she said bluntly.

  “I mean the governor-general may no longer have the power to hear your appeals. You may need to appeal di
rectly to the Queen of England and her Parliament.” He paused. “Also, the governor-general has transferred me to the state of Panna, effective June first.”

  “That’s in seven days!” Moropant said.

  “Yes. The man who’s coming to replace me is Major Erskine. I have already spoken with him. He understands your situation. He is coming tomorrow.”

  “To my kingdom? Without my knowledge?” But it wasn’t her kingdom anymore.

  “Your Highness, I’m sorry. If I could change it, I hope you know that I would.”

  The rani began to smooth her sari. “Tell me what I should do.”

  “When Major Erskine comes, don’t let one of the sepoys take him on a tour of Jhansi; assign the job to one of your guards. Let him see the kingdom through your people’s eyes.”

  The rani assigned Arjun the task of showing Major Erskine the city of Jhansi. She could have done it herself, but imagine the heartache of that. Here is the library where I read my books, here is the temple where my late son was blessed, and there is the lake where I erected a necropolis in honor of my husband. . . .

  So Arjun introduced Major Erskine to Jhansi, and when they returned that evening to the Durbar Hall, the chamber was lit with heavy bronze lamps and the rani was dressed in her most beautiful sari. Blue silk fell in waves around her feet, and the pearls around her neck were luminous.

  “Well?” she said in English when the major arrived.

  He bowed very low, and made the gesture of namaste first to her, then to her father, who was next to her on a thick red cushion.

  “Jhansi is truly the jewel of India, Your Highness.”

  The rani sat back against her throne, and I could see she was satisfied with his answer.

  “And what did you like best in Jhansi?” she asked.

  He thought, and while he did, I studied his features. He was not at all like Major Ellis. His eyes and hair were dark. His face was also long and thin, like the sharp faces you see carved out above church doors. “I would say that of all the sights in Jhansi, Your Highness, I was most impressed when I visited your temples. I asked Captain Arjun about your elephant-headed god, and he explained to me that you believe there is only one god.”

  The rani raised her brows.

  “Hindus represent god using many faces to remind worshipers that there is divinity in all things: rivers, trees, elephants, monkeys.” The major smiled. “Inspiring.”

  “Will it inspire the Queen of England to restore my kingdom?”

  Erskine’s smile vanished. He quickly recovered himself. “I don’t know, Your Highness.”

  She sat forward. “The governor-general claims that my son will only inherit my husband’s property when he ‘comes of age.’ I want this property. And I want to be relieved of Jhansi’s debts. The governor-general says I owe thirty-six thousand rupees to him for debts this kingdom had when he took over. That is grossly unfair. What should I do?”

  “Send a lawyer to England,” he said immediately.

  “To England?” I could see that this wasn’t the answer she’d expected.

  “Yes. Send a lawyer to the queen herself, and appeal this annexation.”

  “Send Umesh Chandra,” Kahini suggested. “He’s Bengali.”

  Bengalis are known for being worldly and well educated. If anyone could make an impression on the queen, it would be a Bengali. The rani agreed.

  But sixty thousand rupees and two months later, word came from across the seas that Umesh Chandra had failed. Everyone was gathered in the Durbar Hall, from the rani’s advisers to her father, Moropant, and as the rani read the letter aloud, her father’s face changed from hopeful to enraged.

  I have done everything I can, Your Highness, but the Queen of England has not agreed to give me an audience. I’m afraid this trip has been for naught. We are beneath her consideration.

  “Beneath her consideration?” Moropant shouted. “Beneath her consideration?”

  “Your Highness,” Major Erskine said. “The queen rarely acknowledges a first attempt.”

  The rani nodded for him to continue.

  “I am a foreigner to this country, but it seems that the women of your Durga Dal are highly educated and extremely independent. Send two of them to England. The queen won’t refuse to see such an unusual delegation.”

  The rani’s advisers began talking all at once. It is one thing to establish an army of women in your own kingdom, but to send them across the seas to a foreign land—well, that is something else. Men who traveled outside of India were rarely welcomed back to their villages, often because they returned with radical ideas. They were considered tainted by their travels, as no one knew what sort of evils they’d be bringing back with them. So what Major Erskine was proposing was not just radical, it was very possibly dangerous.

  I could see this conflict on the rani’s face. “You say the queen would absolutely grant an audience to my women?”

  “If they had traveled across the ocean from Jhansi? Yes,” Erskine said.

  “I would go myself. But there are pretenders to my throne who would not hesitate to claim the rights to my property if I did.” She looked at her father.

  “It’s forty-five days to England by boat,” he said. “A thousand things could change by the time anyone reached her shores.”

  “Have you forgotten what the raja said to me before he died?”

  “Within reason,” her father said. “Is this reasonable?”

  “I will send Sita and Jhalkari. If they agree to go.”

  Everyone in the Durbar Hall looked to us, and a knot formed in my stomach that was so tight I was sure that if I pressed on it, I would actually feel it. It’s one thing to read about foreign lands, and another thing to go there. I thought about my father and Anu, who would be sick with worry imagining me on a voyage. I wondered how the rest of Barwa Sagar would feel. Would I ever be welcomed back home? It would depend almost entirely on the British queen’s response.

  Jhalkari’s response was immediate. “I will go.”

  Everyone turned to me, and I responded, “I will go as well.”

  “They’d need escorts,” Moropant said. “At least a dozen men.”

  “I will send Arjun,” the rani said. “Arjun attended an English boarding school. He understands English.”

  “They can leave as soon as passage is arranged,” Major Erskine said eagerly. “Of course, they will all need training in British customs. But Dr. McEgan and his wife could see to that.”

  Dr. McEgan was the British doctor who had confirmed for the rani that there had never been a plague in Jhansi. He was also the doctor the raja had angrily dismissed before his death.

  There was new hope in the rani’s face. “What do you say?” she asked her father. “What about their reputations when they return?”

  Suddenly, even Moropant seemed inspired. “If they can succeed where Umesh Chandra failed, I don’t see that it should matter if they’d traveled to the moon!”

  Everyone laughed. There was no reason that this shouldn’t work. The ruler of England was a woman. So was the ruler of Jhansi. And now she was sending two female guards across the seas to plead her case.

  “The lessons will begin at once,” the rani said.

  The three weeks Jhalkari and I spent with Mrs. McEgan were extraordinary.

  The rani arranged for our first meeting to take place after yoga. Even though I knew I should have been clearing my mind, I lay on my jute mat and couldn’t stop thinking of England. What would it be like to walk the streets of London? I tried to imagine the food and the sights, and couldn’t. The London of Shakespeare’s day was more than two hundred years in the past, so not even Shakespeare could prepare me for what we were about to see.

  “And that’s why I’m here,” Mrs. McEgan said when she arrived at the Rani Mahal. She was dressed in the most extraordinary gown, with h
er stomach completely covered and her bosoms practically hanging out. Her waist appeared unusually small, and her entire dress was green, like the hat on her head and the trim on her boots. She peeled off her white gloves as soon as she entered the first-floor room the rani had prepared for us. And when she seated herself on one of the thirteen chairs that had been arranged in a circle for her arrival, she lowered herself with a slow and pretty grace I was sure I’d never possess. Like Jhalkari, I was wearing a red angarkha, with a pistol on my right and my sword on my left.

  “So this is all of you?” She smiled, and I glanced at Arjun, to see what he made of this woman with her water-blue eyes and pale-as-butter skin. But like the nine other guards who would be traveling with us, he was averting his gaze, on account of Mrs. McEgan’s inappropriate dress. “Well, don’t sit there staring at the floor. Look at me!”

  If the men had looked, they would have seen a young woman with honey-colored hair arranged in thick curls around her head. A smile took up most of her pretty face. But no one obeyed. Not even Arjun, who spoke English. She looked at Jhalkari and me.

  “The men are embarrassed,” I explained. “They won’t look at a woman whose chest . . .” I indicated her bosoms with my eyes. Her face turned red, the same way Major Ellis’s used to. She reached for a shawl and covered herself. One by one, the men looked up.

  “I had no idea. The women in Jhansi all show off their waists.”

  “Perhaps the glimpse of a woman’s waist for you is the same as the glimpse of a woman’s breasts is to us.”

  “There’s going to be a good deal to learn,” she said, “isn’t there?”

  We began with dress, and we discovered a great many things about the British we had never imagined. For one, it was extremely baffling to learn what they considered appropriate versus horribly inappropriate. Burping in public, perfectly fine in Jhansi, was considered uncouth by the British; something only drunks or small children did. Yet not bathing before going to a place of worship was perfectly fine, and in fact, some of the British didn’t bathe for weeks. Their food consisted of dead animals, which they speared with metal items called forks and knives. And almost nothing was eaten by hand. As for the women, according to Mrs. McEgan, they ate in front of whomever they pleased, laughed like she did, with their mouths wide open, and didn’t think twice about allowing a man to kiss their hands.