The Mountain of Light

by Indu Sundaresan

  The door to his room opened so gently that he would not have heard it if he hadn’t been listening for it. A man came in, his bare feet making no noise on the thick rugs that covered the floor from wall to wall. Mackeson did not look up; he knew who it was and why he was here. With his gaze still fixed on his hands in his lap, Mackeson heard the small creak of hinges as his box was opened, a rustle when his clothing was moved, and a little thud when the lid was shut again and the latch locked.

  The man at the box then glanced toward the bed and turned slowly around, looking into each corner of the room. He found Mackeson, came up to him, and sat down on his haunches.

  Mackeson now pulled his cigarettes from the pocket of his shirt and offered one to the man, his hand moving out of the dark into the square of moonlight streaming in through the window.

  The man grunted, took a deep breath, and moved his own callused hand to accept the cigarette. When Mackeson lit the match and carried it to the man’s face, he saw that it was calm, his movements unhurried as he bent to accept the light, his eyes closed when he took that first drag.

  “Why did you do it, Multan Raj?” Mackeson asked quietly.

  “Can I tell you a story, Sahib? A short one, indulge me.” Multan Raj’s voice was suddenly hoarse, as though he spoke in great pain, the words tumbling out in a rush.

  “I have all the time in the world now.”

  “Many years ago, a man left his fields outside of Lahore and went to seek employment in the court of a great king, the Maharajah Ranjit Singh. For a long time he worked in the basest jobs, unworthy of his caste, but he did not mind, since they brought him into the service of a king who was a lion, a warrior, a just sovereign. Even the smallest job—like cleaning out the privies in the fort—was a pleasure to this man. And then, a few months later, the Maharajah went on campaign to Peshawar and this man was taken along as part of the entourage.” Multan Raj stopped, put the cigarette to his mouth, and took in a lungful of smoke, which set him coughing. He coughed lightly, in short bursts, allowing his frame to shake as little as possible. “I’m sorry, Sahib, there’s so little strength in these cigarettes of yours.”

  When Multan lowered his hand, Mackeson noticed that it was trembling, the glow from the butt skittering around in a small circle. “One night, while the Maharajah slept in his simple white tent, this man saw some hooligans sneak in under the flap. The sentries were all asleep, and these men were crafty and silent in their movements. He slithered in from the back himself and saw one of the men with his arm raised above Maharajah Ranjit Singh’s bed; in his hand he held a long, curved sword. The man leapt at the nearby table, found a dagger, unsheathed it, and threw it across the tent, where it plunged into the murderer’s heart. His dying cry woke the Maharajah and his sentries, and very soon all the other men had been captured and taken away. They were put to death outside the tent, immediately, with no trial, no attempt at mercy. The Maharajah had the dagger pulled out of the man’s heart, and he handed it, still bloodied, to the man who had saved his life.”

  “Your father,” Mackeson said. “When I saw that dagger I recognized it as something that could only have come out of Maharajah Ranjit Singh’s Toshakhana. The imperial treasury had another one like it, a twin.”

  “True,” Multan Raj said in a low, rumbling voice. He seemed to be having trouble speaking, as though his tongue had grown too big for his mouth. “The Maharajah was a just and kind man, and he asked my father what fascinated him most, what he would most like to do with his life, and my father replied that he wanted to be state treasurer one day. The Maharajah asked him if he knew the value of the dagger in his hand, from which blood still dripped onto the carpets. My father looked down upon it and said that he did not, how could he—he was just a poor peasant farmer. The very next day, Maharajah Ranjit Singh sent my father to the court jewelers, for them to teach him their trade, the valuing of stones, the setting of them, the melting of gold, the forming of it. Everything they knew. Then, after he had learned all he could, he was sent to work as a clerk in the Maharajah’s Toshakhana, and very soon a day came when—”

  “When he became treasurer of the vast wealth of the Maharajah Ranjit Singh,” Mackeson finished for him. He turned to the man next to him. “You are the son of Misr Makraj.”

  Multan Raj nodded. “I am, Sahib.”

  And so Multan Raj had sought a job as his personal bearer, Mackeson thought; his other man had not disappeared into the Lahore night—he had been made to disappear so that a vacancy would occur. Multan Raj had come into Mackeson’s employ three years ago, before the Second Sikh War, but even that early, the servants of Maharajah Ranjit Singh had known that their empire was shattered, and that the British would take over their lands. The whole thing had been a plan, in readiness just for the moment when Lord Dalhousie proclaimed in Lahore that he would send the Kohinoor to England.

  “Why did you return the diamond, then? You could have gone away. I suspected . . . but didn’t realize fully until just yesterday, in Cairo. You could have taken the Kohinoor back with you to the Punjab.”

  Multan Raj grunted again; this time it was meant to be a small laugh. “And left you with the burden of explaining where the diamond was, and how you lost it to your own servant, Sahib? A man you have trusted for three years? That . . . would not have been right. My father, who had custody of the immense treasury, never once thought of dipping his hand into it; he was upright and honest, loyal to the king, for whom he had love, and respect. He taught me no less.”

  In the years that Multan Raj had attended to him, Mackeson had also felt affection for the man, so quiet, so steadily intent upon serving his master, so careful of his needs. But he had really not paid too much attention beyond once asking him if he minded crossing the black waters and going to England with him. He had not thought of how sophisticated this man was, he who had said he was a farmer’s son. Or how patient he had been, infiltrating Mackeson’s household well in advance, not knowing when he would be needed.

  But . . . something was awry here.

  “Multan,” he said, “you’re sitting in my presence; I’ve never seen you do this before.” He had meant this to be a joke, an amusement for both of them. Mackeson had no intention of persecuting Multan Raj, nor even telling Captain Ramsay of how he had gotten the diamond back—the incident was over, finished, brought to an end. He would travel to England with the stone, be rid of it finally, and return to his regiment in India as though this had never happened. And, in making the joke, he meant to say all of this to Multan Raj without actually voicing the words.

  Colonel Mackeson rose and stepped into the light of the moon. “Come, man, stand up!”

  Multan Raj put his hands out in front of him and rose awkwardly, his hands on his knees, on his thighs, embraced tightly around his waist as he straightened, half bent over. Shivers racked his thin frame as he moved into the light to stand beside Mackeson. When he unclasped his hand and held it out to his master, Mackeson saw that the dagger was held loosely in his fingers, and there was blood trickling from it.

  His gaze went to the front of Multan Raj’s dhoti and kurta, and there, about level with his stomach, was the black smear of blood, spreading outward. Multan Raj had stabbed himself as he sat down beside Mackeson and had talked all the while that he had been slowly dying.

  Multan Raj folded his hands together in a namaste to his master, bowed his head, and then crashed onto the floor.

  • • •

  Colonel Mackeson cremated his servant’s remains the next day, by the old lighthouse, having received special permission to do so. The still-warm ashes he cast upon the waters of the Mediterranean, and wished that he was on the southern side of Egypt, so that at least the waters of the Red Sea would link Multan Raj more directly to the land of his birth.

  Then, he went aboard the SS Oriental. A few weeks later, the Oriental docked at Southampton, and two days after that, Colonel Mackeson presented the Kohinoor to the Court of Directors of the East India Company
. They invited him to accompany them to Buckingham Palace to present the diamond to the Queen.

  He declined, saying he had to return to India as soon as he could. The SS Oriental would leave for Alexandria in a few short days.

  Diary of a Maharajah

  May 1854

  Four years later

  L——’s [Login’s] talk to you about the Koh-i-noor being a present from Duleep to the Queen is arrant humbug. He knew as well as I did that it was nothing of the sort; and if I had been within a thousand miles of him he would not have dared to utter such a piece of trickery. Those “beautiful eyes,” with which Duleep has taken captive the court, are his mother’s eyes, those with which she captivated and controlled the old Lion of the Punjab.

  —J. G. A. Baird, ed., Private Letters of the Marquess of Dalhousie

  Paris, 1893: He gropes with the catch of the grungy window, his fingers bloated with dropsy. When the latch gives way, he pushes open the panes, leans over, and breathes deeply into the cool spring air. It’s a few minutes before dawn, but the street below is abustle with carts and horses, the cries of the cheese seller, the newspaper boy hawking his wares in the semidark. A glitter of copper as a sou exchanges hands. A vivid spot of purple from the flower seller’s basket.

  Sophia comes in. In her arms she cradles two spears of baguettes, a wheel of cheese, a pat of butter, a bunch of hyacinths from the woman below.

  “Papa.” Her smooth cheek touches his; the felt on her hat is cool on his skin; she smells of the morning.

  She bustles around, lays the table with two white plates, a fork and a knife, a cup and a saucer on a shimmering veil embroidered with zari that once belonged to his mother; now it’s a tablecloth.

  Bamba Sophia Jindan, his oldest daughter, lights the lamp under the small stove, sets water to boil, makes his tea the way he likes it—with a crushed stick of cinnamon, no milk, a sprinkling of sugar. She stirs the coals in the fireplace; they’re all almost ashes, but she coaxes some warmth from them.

  They sit by the window in the light of the sun. Sophia breaks golden crusts from the bread, hacks at the cheese and lays a quivering slice on his plate, butters the still-warm bread. The soft inside of the bread holds the imprints of her fingers.

  “Read to me, child,” he says.

  The room comes at eight hundred francs a year, on the sixth floor of a house on rue de la Trémoille, in a neighborhood that is of a fading nobility. Once, he paid that much for a night at a hotel in Paris, in London . . . anywhere in the world. This is an artist’s loft, and the walls are scrawled with sketches and paintings, imposed one upon another. He has looked at them for hours, forcing his gaze to blur and soften, to sharpen, to bring into focus one scene, or another. On the mantelpiece are stacks of books, spines forward, brushed with soot from the fire below. Sophia runs her fingers over them and picks out one slender volume. The leather is old, burnished red, frayed and pitted, its gold embossing dulled.

  “This one,” she says, flipping open the cover.

  In her father’s hand are the words “My very first trip to England—this is the diary of a Maharajah.”

  He feels his heart stop, start again and gallop in his chest. He pushes his chair back from the table and it hits the windowsill. The jolt runs down his back. Why not? he thinks. His children have known him only as the man who pushes his bulk against the British Empire, the Crown, the Queen.

  “I’ve never heard you speak,” she says slowly, “of that time.” So much has happened since. Who were you then, Papa?

  “You will now, my dear.”

  “How old were you, Papa? When you wrote in this diary?”

  “Sixteen.”

  Sophia is twenty-four. She knows how young sixteen can be.

  She sits across the table. He lets his bearded chin rest on his chest. A man plays his violin on the street corner, and people throw sous into his case. But he hears only his daughter’s voice, young and strong, carefully articulated.

  • • •

  May 19, 1854: Oh, England! My first glimpse of this scepter’d isle, this other Eden, this blessed plot, is as the SS Liverpool trundles toward the dock. A low band of mist curls over the water and threads through the trees. It is dim, it is gray; but it is, finally, after all these years of wanting, England!

  The long arm of the pier is dotted with gaslights—each rimmed in spray, suspended midair, seemingly without support. There’s no one else on the deck except for the crew, heavy-footed on the boards, shouting unintelligibly. The Liverpool calls out in a short, clean blast from the foghorn that cuts away into the thick beyond. The ship’s engines strain and groan as she brakes to a crawl. On the pier, a man waves his lantern in a slow circle. There’s a sharp bump, and I feel a frisson of vibration through my fingers resting on the deck railing.

  Ropes of all sizes spiral out—from the Liverpool, from below; one comes snaking through the air and lies at my feet in a glistening, frayed heap, stinking faintly of the ocean, seaweed, fish, putrefied flesh.

  A sailor, the stripes on his hat a gleaming white, his face a smudge, sticks an elbow in my direction. “Yer gotta move, Maharajah Dew-leep Sing.”

  If he speaks English, I barely understand what he says. This is not the language I began learning eight years ago from Henry Lawrence in Lahore. And, he’s mispronounced my name. As usual.

  “Da-lip Singh,” I say, but my voice is overpowered by another hoot from the Liverpool  ’s horn. The man cups a palm behind his ear and grins. He winds the rope around a hook on the deck, gives it a final tug, bares his teeth, and disappears in a thump of footsteps. The Liverpool is at rest, though her engines still murmur. The paddle wheels drip water.

  It has been only six weeks since we left Calcutta. The deepest waters I had seen before were those of the Ravi River at Lahore, and now I have traversed the Bay of Bengal, the Indian Ocean, the Arabian Sea, the Mediterranean, and the English Channel.

  I’m a long way from home, a long distance from the life I was to have. I am, finally, in the land where the Kohinoor is. It used to be mine. Once. No longer. It is now the Queen’s diamond.

  There’s a man on the pier below, chewing on a pipe; his white beard is speckled with dew, his chin is at a pugnacious tilt. He doesn’t like me? Why? Bah, what do I care?

  In a few days, he will still be here, and I will be meeting his Queen at Buckingham Palace. His Queen. And, now mine.

  Back to bed, before my guardians awake and find me gone.

  • • •

  Later: They shovel all of the Liverpool  ’s passengers onto the pier—all except us—riding down the gangplank in a joyous anticipation of home. My baggage has already descended, whisked through customs by the favor of Sir Charles Trevelyan at the Treasury. Dr. Login has requested that I be granted the same privilege accorded to other royal visitors. Some of the travelers flutter their handkerchiefs at us with promises to visit, but Mrs. Login, by my side, murmurs, “These shipboard friendships are not to be considered lasting, Maharajah. We must pick and choose—there is too much familiarity on deck which will not bear scrutiny on land.”

  At long last, around midday, as a fragile May sun sheds a golden twilight glow over the Liverpool, we too are ready to depart. But, what’s this? Where’s the reception committee? Am I not the Maharajah of the Punjab? Am I to walk down the lengthy pier on my own?

  I stumble down first, followed by Dr. and Mrs. Login and the rest of my entourage. I wear my altered robes of state—my silk trousers of an English style, though embroidered in zari along the seams; a long silk kurta, a zari-embroidered shawl, a yellow silk turban sitting lightly upon my head, hollow inside (the turban I meant, not my head! I’ve long since cut off all my long hair). The aigrette on my turban is a cluster of diamonds and rubies, a hundred and twenty gems in all, embedded in gold; the fringe is a string of dewdrop pearls. My father’s pearl necklace in three strings of marble-size pearls, all perfectly matched, weighs down my chest. I have dressed my part, but there’s no one to s
ee me.

  “It doesn’t matter, Duleep,” Dr. Login says. “You understand . . . here in England . . . But, wait . . .”

  Here in England, he means, only the Queen gets a grand reception. We pass through the buildings of the Royal Pier like any other visitors.

  Outside is a yellow curricle, with trim leather seats and shining wheels. A pair of well-matched roans snicker and twist their heads about.

  Mrs. Login touches my arm. “I knew you would not be able to resist a ride in the open air, and you have been good during the voyage, Maharajah, so I asked Dr. Login to get you this as a reward.”

  I laugh. “Come with me!” I say, and when she shakes her head and mutters about the brougham instead, I ask, “How can you deny me? Am I not like your son? Come, Mama Login.”

  She half-turns. “John!”

  Dr. Login smiles. He is paler now, not so burned as under an Indian sun. “But you wanted the Maharajah to have this surprise, Lena. Go with him. Go with Duleep.”

  He calls me by my name and not my title. Just as a father would. When Henry Lawrence was forced to leave the Punjab by Lord Dalhousie, John and Lena Login came in his stead. These two have taken me into their hearts, made me one of theirs, brought me to England. The Logins were made my guardians, but I think of us as a family.

  We speed down the long road, past the town, out of town. Houses and hostelries give way to farms set back from the road. The wind sears my eyes. We follow the curve of the sea for a bit and then fork in landward. Here, the topography changes to smoothly humpbacked hills and hillocks, cropped close with a verdant green, stands of massive oaks dotted on their surface. A handful of clouds scuttle across the vast blue sky. This is the England I have longed to visit. After two hours we stop by the shade of an elm. When the rest of the carriages catch up with us, I relinquish my reins and ride in the brougham. Bhajan Lal is miserable; he has to sit up front near the coachman. I holler to him along the way, putting my head and shoulders out of the window, and he answers feebly, the wind snatching his words and tumbling them into the grassy plains.