The Mountain of Light

by Indu Sundaresan

  His name was Dr. Brydon and though he’d spoken of the horrors of the slaughter, he had also given some hope to Henry—his brother George had been taken prisoner, not killed. Of the sixteen thousand, apart from Dr. Brydon, another four or five men had been taken prisoner.

  The young Maharajah had been wandering about the pavilion, picking up Henry’s inkpot, rifling through his papers, leaning against his desk to watch him, or simply skipping. He was a child; keeping quiet was not something he had learned yet. But at this point in the story he asked Henry, “Your brother George was taken prisoner? Did you go in to rescue him?”

  Henry smiled grimly. “It was a while before anyone could take action; the news of the carnage shattered all of us. And Lord Auckland was a few months from the end of his term as Governor-General; he did not want to make the decision to invade Afghanistan again, not after all this had happened.”

  “But you did,” Dalip Singh said.

  “We did. The new Governor-General supported the plan, thanks be to God, and the British armies succeeded in retaking Kabul and freeing the prisoners.”

  “Who’s on the throne of Afghanistan now, Captain Henry?” This came in a mocking tone.

  So the child had known all of this before, Henry thought. He looked at him with admiration.

  “Dost Mohammad,” Henry said. “There was no one left, no one powerful enough to be accepted by the Afghanis, to be our ally, and to rule over the people. Dost Mohammad,” he said again, laughter shaking his thin frame, “whom we set out to depose in the first instance.”

  “I’m bored,” Dalip Singh said suddenly, and Henry waited for a juggler to appear from behind the pillars of the pavilion.

  When that didn’t happen, he put out a hand to the boy. “Enough of a history lesson, your Majesty. But I hope you learned that if you persist, everything will give way before you. Come, let’s play cricket.”

  “What’s that?” Dalip asked, running out to the edge of the pavilion.

  “You don’t know? You’re in for a treat.”

  • • •

  A few days later, the Maharajah sent his men into Henry’s courtyard when he was away and had a slim, rectangular strip of grass carved out from the lawns. The men hammered at the dirt until it was glass-smooth and shiny. The cricket pitch thus came into being, and every afternoon as his strength increased, Henry taught the boy to bowl, to bat, to watch the trajectory of the ball as it left the bowler’s hand and came pounding down the pitch toward him. If the ball went over the edge of the fort, toward the Ravi River, short though that distance was, it was a six—worth six runs. The four was hitting the face of a pavilion on any side of the courtyard. Dalip ordered uniforms sewn overnight, in white silk, embedded with diamond buttons, with even his turban white. When he came every day in his pristine clothes, Henry expressed surprise at how clean they were—hadn’t Dalip leapt for the ball and fallen on the wet grass just yesterday?

  The answer came equally surprised and exaggeratedly wide-eyed from the boy. This was a new uniform. He wore new cricket whites every day. What else did Henry expect from him? After all, he was the Maharajah of the Punjab.

  A regular cricket team came into being, with John, Edwardes, Nicholson, and the Maharajah’s attendants as fielders. Henry had a new cricket set brought in from the Army & Navy stores in Calcutta, and he had to convince Dalip Singh not to embellish the handles of the bat, or the wickets, with precious stones.

  Henry oversaw Dalip’s studies also, making him bring his tutors to the pavilion and correcting his spelling, grammar, and his handwriting in Urdu, Punjabi, Hindustani, and Persian. He taught him a smattering of English and every morning, much to his amusement, was greeted with “Good morning, I trust you had a restful night. It looks like it’s going to be a fine day, isn’t it, old chap?”

  Dalip didn’t mention his mother, Maharani Jindan Kaur, at all. Ever since Ranjit Singh’s death she had fought, ferociously, to put her son on the throne, but she had forgotten to be the child’s mother. She didn’t put him to bed at night, wake him in the morning with a kiss, bind his minor scratches. In the fort, she stayed in her harem apartments; Dalip in his own quarters. Since Henry had come to Lahore, the Maharani had been a niggling burr in his side. He heard complaints from her daily—orders of precedence, the number of guards around her apartments, the food from the kitchens, the use of her jewelry, the need to dip into the Toshakhana . . . they were endless. Eventually, he found her embroiled in a plot to poison him and the other British soldiers in the fort. That evening, he sent her away to the fortress at Sheikhpura, northwest of Lahore. He waited with a pounding heart for Dalip to say something to him about it. But the Maharajah said nothing.

  For a moment, Henry felt a blasting ache in his chest. What had the fates done to this boy? His mother could not scheme, plot, avenge, and be his mother at the same time. And Dalip, who had lost his father before he even came to know him, was put in the care of strangers.

  Another letter came from Lettice one day, when Henry was hunched over papers at his desk and Dalip was sitting on the ground, leaning against Henry’s legs, laying out a cricket team on the floor with clay figures that one of his servants had made for him. The letter began, as the previous one had, with “My dearest Henry and Honoria,” because his sister assumed that Honoria would be with Henry by now, and that they would be married—she didn’t know about the delay at Aden. Henry read on, flipping page after page, his bewilderment growing, until he turned the last page and saw that it was signed by an Adele. Adele who? He searched through his head among all their friends, acquaintances, cousins, near and distant, and could find no one of that name who was intimate enough with him—and Honoria—to actually write to him. Then, he started laughing, and retied the letter.

  Dalip looked up, curious. “Tell me,” he said, “what does our sister say, Henry?”

  “Our sister,” Henry said, chuckling, “did not write this letter. In fact, it isn’t even to me, but to another Henry Lawrence in the Bengal army. He’s also a captain, it would seem, and . . . he also seems to have married a woman named Honoria.”

  A frown creased Dalip’s forehead. “But you are not married, Henry.”

  “No, but I will be soon.”

  Dalip clapped his hands. “How wonderful, who is she, this Honoria? When does she come to marry you? Will it be here, in Lahore? I will throw you splendid parties to celebrate.”

  Henry put a hand on his charge’s shoulder as he attempted to rise and rush off to make wedding arrangements. “No, stay, Dalip. My . . . Honoria is on her way; she left Calcutta a few months ago. When she gets here, I think we both will want a quiet ceremony. You can come, though, and stand up beside me if you want.”

  “I can? John will not mind?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  For a while, Dalip rearranged his cricket pieces on the floor as Henry wrote a note to the other Henry Lawrence, explaining his mistake and apologizing for having opened his letter. This done, he looked down at the Maharajah, who had his cheeks puffed out, his brow furrowed, as his little hands moved the pieces around with an under-the-breath running commentary. Here comes the bowler, here the batter swings, the ball flies into the wicket keeper’s gloves with a thwack, they all turn to the umpire. “Howz that?” No, the umpire shakes his head, his eyes stony, not to be swayed by any amount of pleading . . . and so on.

  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 her
e 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.”