Rebel Queen

by Michelle Moran

  The other women were crying. The men had tears in their eyes.

  “Ishan!” my sister shrieked. “Please! Just look at me.”

  But his face was averted. “Go away!” he cried.

  Then the fight went out of her. She went limp in my arms, repeating his name over and over like a mantra. I carried her back to our empty house, and she threatened to kill both the child and herself. I told her about Gopal and the letters. But it wasn’t enough.

  “You chose the rani over me,” she screamed, her entire body trembling, and I feared for the child she was carrying. “And then the British wanted me because I was pretty! It was for all those silks and juti you sent me!” Then a familiar sound appeared in her voice. “You didn’t save me,” she hissed. I realized it was Grandmother I was hearing. “You should have left me there to die with my bastard,” she said. “Leave me.”

  I did as she wanted and wandered outside to our peepal tree. Feelings of guilt and sorrow crashed over me in waves. Father had been killed by a British soldier; possibly the son of someone who had fought alongside him in Burma. I tried to imagine Avani’s despair when she heard that my father had been killed, and how the flames had felt searing her body as she climbed onto Father’s funeral pyre, and then the only thing I could focus on was my rage.

  I went back into the house, and Arjun could see my fury. He was sitting with several guards around our kitchen. “Shall we go outside?” he asked.

  “I just came from outside.”

  “Then let’s sit in your father’s workshop.”

  I didn’t want to go. But I followed Arjun there and the woodsy scent of teak immediately made me cry. Arjun took me in his arms and shut the door. We sat together on the jute mats and he held me while I wept. When I’d drained myself of every possible tear, he tenderly wiped my face with his hand.

  “What they’ve done to my family—”

  “It’s finished, Sita. It’s over,” he said. “The walls have crumbled and you’re asking why instead of trying to rebuild. Your sister is in the next room. She’s what’s left, and that’s no small thing. She’s carrying a child.”

  “Yes. A British—”

  “Baby,” he said before I could finish. “An innocent child. That’s the future.”

  I won’t pretend that his speech changed the way I felt about the British, but it comforted me over the next few weeks. And it clarified in my mind what I needed to do now. We could not rejoin the rani; I had to heal my sister. So we stayed in Barwa Sagar, and when I was too overwhelmed by sorrow to get out of bed or get dressed, Arjun would encourage me to go on.

  On a warm evening in May, after we’d been in Barwa Sagar for more than six weeks, Arjun took me into the courtyard and said quietly, “One of the guards met someone in the marketplace who has news of Jhansi. His name is Balaji and he was a silk merchant in Jhansi.”

  “Can I meet him?”

  Arjun returned with a well-dressed man in his fifties. He had white hair and a mustache, and I imagined he’d been very handsome in his youth. We stood outside in the courtyard, near the old peepal tree, and waited for him to say something. As a child, I had thought all trees grew this big. I put my hand on its solid trunk. Finally the man from Jhansi said, “I have heard that the British pursued the rani to Banda. She killed two British soldiers and shot a lieutenant. One of her soldiers was killed. But the rest of her party reached Kalpi.”

  “And the city of Jhansi?”

  “Burned.”

  “And the people?” Arjun asked.

  “Killed.”

  “But there were thousands of people!” I protested. Five thousand by the rani’s count.

  “Yes. The British lost one hundred men.”

  These are the actions demons take. Humans didn’t do this to one another. But Balaji’s gaze was unwavering, and I knew it was true. The British had taken five thousand lives in retaliation for an action a dozen men had perpetrated. I thought of the woman who had been desperate for us to take her child, the round face of the baby she’d been carrying, his dimpled cheeks and large, bright eyes. I buried my head in my hands.

  “The rani’s father was captured after the fall,” Balaji continued.

  We were all shocked. Arjun especially. “He didn’t make it to Kalpi?”

  “No. He reached Datia, but the people there turned him over—they didn’t have a choice. The British were hanging villagers from the trees for housing criminals. Even the suspicion of doing so was enough. They hanged him in Jokhan Bagh.”

  The next revelation was equally shocking: in Kalpi, Saheb’s brother, Rao Saheb, wrested control of the soldiers from the rani, leaving only two hundred and fifty horsemen to defend the borders of Kalpi. Rao Saheb went west with the rest of the men. Witnesses said they saw the rani in a fit of rage, cursing Rao’s cowardice. In the hundred-and-eighteen-degree heat, water was scarce and the supplies at Fort Kalpi dwindled. The fort was captured, but the rani and her people escaped and found Rao Saheb. The rani was reported to have said, “When people remember this war they will remember you, Rao Saheb, and when they do, they will think to themselves: coward.”

  The rani suggested the soldiers, eleven thousand men in all, should take nearby Gwalior Fort, which is the largest and most significant fortress in central India. The British did not yet occupy the fortress. Its twenty-three-year-old ruler, Maharaja Scindia, was still on his throne. He was, however, supporting the English with weapons and food.

  I imagined exactly how the rani had laid it out: as soon as they arrived, the soldiers could persuade the maharaja to house them for just a few days. Then, once they were safely inside, they could give him the chance to join the rebels in the fight against the British or flee. I could hear the rani’s voice in my head, pronouncing Maharaja Scindia a traitor.

  “So have they gone to Gwalior?” Arjun asked with a note of hope in his voice. “With Gwalior as a base, victory is possible.”

  Balaji actually smiled. “Last night. And now I am making my way to Delhi to start over. I have family here in Barwa Sagar. As soon as we pack their belongings, we are leaving.”

  The rani was a full day’s journey north of us, preparing to storm the Fortress of Gwalior. I had sworn an oath of loyalty to her and Arjun had done the same. “I don’t know what to do,” I admitted. “I can’t think clearly anymore.” I sat on the grass and drew my knees up to my chest. The guards were watching us from the porch. I’m sure they knew what we were talking about: a decision had to be made. We either needed to ride for Gwalior or commit to remaining in Barwa Sagar for the rest of the war. It would be so simple to just stay put. I tried to listen to the voice inside of me, but there were so many other voices drowning it out. I closed my eyes. “The rani has three Durgavasi and your men, who else can she trust?”

  Arjun didn’t say anything. He just listened.

  “But if I leave, what do I do with Anu? We could come back for her. . . .” I rose. “We’re going to Gwalior.” It was what my father would have wanted me to do. And what Shivaji had trained me for. “If we don’t go, we’ll spend the rest of our lives on our knees. I’d rather die on my feet.”

  He gripped my hand.

  The guards began packing as soon as we told them. Anu didn’t say anything. “I’ll leave you enough money so that you’ll always be provided for,” I assured her.

  “My life is finished.”

  “You’re carrying life,” I said. I looked down at her stomach, its gentle curve the same as the vessel we used to bring water from the well. “Nothing is finished unless you want it to be.”

  I didn’t wait for her response. I went to my room and began to pack. But by the next time Balaji appeared, a week had passed, and none of us expected the news he brought this time.

  Instead of joining or fleeing, the Maharaja of Gwalior had chosen to make war against the rebels. He planned to capture the rani and make a
gift of her to the British, so they would shower him with gifts and his crown would be secure. Yet when his eight thousand soldiers heard the rani’s troops shouting, “Har Har Mahadev!” they responded by raising their arms and echoing their cry. They marched peacefully to join the rani. They all sat down to have a meal together on the banks of the Morar River.

  We were all incredulous.

  Gwalior belonged to the rani. She had taken it peacefully, and it was the heart of India.

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  When I said farewell to my sister, I was bidding a stranger good-bye. I understood what I hadn’t before: love can be like the seasons, turning a green leaf into something frail and yellow. Anu didn’t come out to see us leave, and by dawn, Barwa Sagar was behind us. I’d only return there once more in my life, to collect my sister and bring her to a place where no one knew her story. I had become a Durgavasi not only to save myself from prostitution, but to save Anu from that fate. And although life had nevertheless delivered her into the hands of the British to be used as a common veshya, I felt I could still save her. Nothing mattered to me more than this. But first the people who had done this to her had to be driven from India.

  We met no resistance on the way to Gwalior. Around noon, we stopped outside a village to roast chapatis over a small brushwood fire. Then we dusted off our clothes and took to the roads again. When the fortress finally reared into view, all twelve of us reined in our horses and stopped. The sun was setting, casting the turreted fortifications in a rich amber light, and nothing had ever looked more magnificent to me, not even the Fortress of Jhansi.

  Built on a plateau at least a hundred meters high, the fortress was so beautiful that it was hard to believe we weren’t staring at a painting. The tile work was blazing in the setting sun with such magnificence the entire fortress was blue and gold. We rode our horses up to the gates. The guards stumbled outside to inspect us, and it was obvious that all four had been drinking.

  “What do we have here?” one of the guards asked.

  Arjun introduced us but he was forced to repeat himself several times before they understood that we were there to rejoin the rani.

  “The Rebel Queen!” one said at last, and all of them laughed, as if this was funny. “Why didn’t you say so?”

  “Disgraceful,” Arjun muttered under his breath.

  They opened the gates, and the guard who appeared the drunkest led us across the gardens toward the entrance. I could hear music and laughter inside, and I exchanged a look with Arjun. “Are they celebrating?”

  The man turned, shocked by my voice. “Are you a man or a woman?”

  “I’m one of the rani’s Durgavasi,” I said.

  He used one side of his face to smile, as if he was a puppet and his master was too lazy to raise both sides. “Really?”

  “Yes. She fought with the rani in Jhansi and has come to fight alongside her again,” Arjun said.

  For a very brief moment the guard sobered. “Well, there’s no fighting here. Haven’t you heard? They’ve opened the treasury. We are all rich! There’s been a ceremony,” he continued. “Saheb has been crowned Peshwa, and Rao Saheb has been made his viceroy.”

  They held a ceremony declaring Saheb Peshwa when all of India was falling apart? When General Rose and his army would arrive any day?

  The guard began whistling a merry tune, and we fell into line silently behind him.

  People were feasting and dancing in the halls, congratulating one another as if they were part of a wedding baraat. It took our guard twenty minutes to find the rani. No one knew where she was. Several people suggested the Durbar Hall on the first floor. When she wasn’t there, I was told to go upstairs and look through the women’s rooms. I checked each chamber. I even went to the roof terraces. Then someone said the rani was on a fourth-floor balcony.

  “The fourth floor is the rajanivesana,” the guard said, looking doubtful because the raja’s apartments were there.

  But I knew the rani. “That’s where she is,” I said. She’d be with Mandar, Kashi, and Anand.

  We trudged the four flights up to the apartments, and we heard her before we saw her, shouting about waste and something else I couldn’t make out over the music and singing.

  The guard stopped at the door leading to the raja’s apartments. “Is this all you need me for?” he said. I imagined he was eager to get back to his drinking.

  “That’s it.” Arjun’s voice was clipped.

  As soon as she saw us, the rani was overwhelmed with joy. I hugged Mandar and Kashi. Even Anand wanted a warm embrace. Then I saw the Nawab of Banda, sitting cross-legged on the floor. He pressed his hands together in namaste, and we joined him at the rani’s invitation. As soon as we were seated she wanted to know everything, what had happened in Barwa Sagar, if we had heard about Jhansi, how we had reached Gwalior without being seen. She was very sorry to hear about my losses. She didn’t say anything about her own father, and I certainly didn’t ask.

  Fireworks began exploding in the warm night air.

  “I’ve warned them that General Rose is coming,” she said. “But Rao Saheb wants the celebrations to last two weeks.”

  “These men ignored the rani’s advice in Kalpi,” the Nawab of Banda said. “If they haven’t learned from her by now, I doubt they ever will.”

  There was a knock on the door. Kashi answered and a well-dressed man appeared. It was Saheb. A feather sprang jauntily from one side of his bejeweled turban, making him look as if he were about to grow wings, and thick clusters of pearls hung around his neck.

  “Look at yourself, Saheb!” said the rani. “Dressed for a baraat when this is a war! Look at your entire court!”

  “At least I have one!” He stomped back out without telling us why he’d come, slamming the door behind him.

  “He’s like a child,” the nawab said wonderingly.

  The celebrations went on for another nine days.

  Then, on the twelfth of June, just before midnight, there was an urgent knock on the rani’s door. A messenger was there: General Rose had reached Amin, one day’s journey to the south. The rani gave Kashi a blue velvet satchel similar to the one she’d given Arjun. “Tomorrow morning,” she said, “I want you to take Anand away from here.”

  Kashi looked stricken as the rani told her where to go and what to do if they should be discovered. Then she turned to me, and to my surprise, took my hands in hers. They felt cold, despite the summer’s heat.

  “I’m not leaving you,” I said, in case this was going to be her request.

  “I know. You’re too stubborn and foolish, like the man who wants to marry you. But if something should happen to me on the battlefield, Sita, I don’t want you to stay in Gwalior.”

  “Please don’t talk like this,” I whispered.

  “We all die. Some of us are fortunate enough to die fighting for justice.”

  “And I can’t think of a more just reason than this,” Mandar said quietly. “They are taking over India kingdom by kingdom.”

  Below, word was spreading about the British advance, and with the exception of a few pockets of drunken men, the singing had stopped.

  “Sita, promise me you’ll flee. With Arjun if he’s alive, by yourself if he isn’t,” the rani said. “I can’t prepare for this battle unless I have your promise.”

  I gave it to her. She exchanged a glance with Mandar; they seemed to have made a quiet pact between them that made me remember Jhalkari, and my heart ached deeply. I hope you have reached Svarga, I thought.

  On the seventeenth of June, scouts spotted General Rose’s army in the distance. We rode out to nearby Kotah-ki-Serai. There were fifty-eight cannons at the rani’s disposal; if Tatya Tope took charge of the front line at Kampu, Gul Mohammad took Kotah, and the Nawab of Banda took Katighati . . . the British would have nowhere to go.

  I won’t describe for y
ou the bloodshed and cruelty I saw that day. I don’t wish to remember it, and I don’t like to accept that I am capable of the acts I committed. I will only say that nothing in Jhansi prepared me for what I saw in Gwalior. We fought for hours in the brutal heat, and by the time the sun set there were patches of earth so slick with blood that our horses had trouble keeping upright.

  At the hottest part of the day the tide began to turn against us. General Rose overcame the gunners in Phoolbagh, seized their cannons, and there was chaos as our own cannons were used against us. Our soldiers attempted to flee, crossing the Sonerekha River and heading for Morar, but there were too many of them and so they became easy targets.

  “Don’t go by river!” Arjun yelled. But Mandar and the rani were already halfway across.

  Even today, I can’t accept what happened. Before Mandar’s horse could gain the banks, a bullet pierced her chest. I drew my bow, and my arrow found the man who shot her, but Mandar was already face down in the muddy waters of the Sonerekha when I reached her. The rani herself made it to the far side of the water when a British soldier raised his arm to slash her with his sword. And there was a moment—a brief but eternal moment—when anything was possible. I thought of weapons that didn’t exist with which I might have saved her. I thought of Lord Hanuman, our winged god, flying in to take her in his arms. I thought of pushing back time, forcing it to reverse, so that she never crossed the river in the first place. The pain of it was—and still is—that his blow struck her neck and cleaved our way of life: one moment the queen of Jhansi was healthy and alive. An instant later she was gone. One second, one, is all that separates life from death.

  Her hand went immediately to her neck, and before the British soldier could slash at her again, Arjun’s arrow pierced his heart.

  Even in the chaos of fleeing soldiers we were at her side at once. For a few brief moments, she opened her eyes. Then she slid from her saddle into Arjun’s arms. I pointed to a house in the distance, and he lifted her onto his horse. By the time we reached it, her face had gone pale.