by Joan Aiken
Another five minutes brought her to the region of Ziatur palace that was occupied by Mahtab Kour and her attendants. This part was central, and very old; traditionally always used by the reigning queen. Much of it was in very bad repair: flights of crumbling stone steps led downward into unguessable horrors of darkness; there were said to be huge underground cisterns where ancient crocodiles, now grown to vast size, were fed live goats daily by priests (and also performed, if necessary, the duty of crunching up any of the royal ladies who were discovered to be unfaithful to their lord). Great dim halls here contained worn stone statues of incalculable antiquity—Shiva the Creator, Ganesha, the elephant-headed god of wisdom, Kali, Shiva’s wife, horrific with a garland of skulls, red protruding tongue, and hand grasping a bloodstained sword; six-armed Bhairava, holding a trident, a sword, more skulls, his face smeared with somebody’s offering of food… These were Hindi gods, left over from some previous dynasty, but up here in the north all gods were respected and propitiated. There were Kafir deities too, Imra the Creator and Gish the war god. The citadel had changed hands many times through the centuries and the general feeling of the inmates was that it would be folly to offend any divinity.
Mahtab Kour must once have been very beautiful, but now all animation had left her face. Married to the Maharajah at twelve, she had been brought, in a curtained litter, six weeks’ journey from the Deccan, in the south, traveling only at night, never allowed to look between the curtains. Miserably homesick for her own family and place of birth, so far away, she had known from the beginning that there was hardly the slightest chance of her seeing any of her own relatives again, or ever leaving Ziatur; if she had proved infertile she might, perhaps, have been permitted to go on a pilgrimage to a queens’ praying at the Golden Temple in Amritsar, the holy town of the Sikhs—but, as it turned out, fortunately for her, she had presented the Maharajah with an heir, Mihal Shahzada, when she was fifteen. After that she had borne a succession of daughters and had soon sunk into disfavor. Now, past the age of thirty, her life was, to all intents, finished; not for years had the Maharajah bothered to come to her apartments, nor did she leave them; she had the soft white transparent pallor of a flower that has grown in darkness, and the slow, sad, languid movements of a creature who no longer cares what happens to her. The first three of her little daughters had long ago been dispatched in closed palanquins to be brides of distant rulers; and it was rumored that the last had been hurled as a newborn infant into the crocodile tank as a punishment to its mother for having given birth to yet another girl child. Mahtab occupied herself, as best she could, with elaborate embroidery, with eating—she had grown immensely fat—and with making pets of slave girls, whose favor waxed and dwindled with erratic unpredictability. Even her son Mihal very seldom came to see her any more. Miss Musson, intensely sorry for her, had attempted to interest her in learning to read, to draw and knit, in acquiring knowledge of other lands, of other cultures; but it was of no use; her spirit had wilted and died inside her. The Rani Sada, a vital, impatient, ambitious girl, coming from a warrior caste, not a decayed, inbred royal family, made no secret of her contempt for the older queen.
“Sat Sri Akal—greetings to Your Royal Highness,” Scylla hailed Mahtab, in as cheerful a tone as she could muster, walking rapidly into the queen’s apartment. And she curtsied, wondering how soon she could get away. “What service can I render you?”
Mahtab Kour opened obliquely. First she offered tea, sherbet, coffee, or almond-curd sweetmeats. These Scylla politely declined.
“Well, I will have a sweetmeat,” said Mahtab Kour, and did so. She was like a huge mass of unbaked dough, Scylla thought, lolling back on her pink and scarlet silk cushions, wrapped in brilliant gauzes, strung with jewels on her arms, ankles, neck, ears; a deep red ruby dangled on her forehead—and two profoundly sad eyes, the currants in the loaf, looked out uncomprehendingly and beseechingly from under the ruby.
“My little Persian girl Laili has a trouble in her ears, Mem Periseela. Will you look at them and try if you can heal them?”
“Certainly,” Scylla said, knowing with dismal premonition what she would see. Mahtab clapped her hands and the child was brought in—a pretty little black-eyed, olive-skinned creature, probably no more than seven or eight, one of the succession of slave favorites who came and went, treated as pets at first, then, presently, falling from grace, either because the queen found a newer distraction or because they came under the influence of the Rani Sada, who liked to have a spy or two in her rival’s retinue, even though that rival had long fallen from power.
“Show the mem your ears, Laili!” ordered Mahtab, and the child, whimpering with pain, allowed Scylla to turn her head from side to side. It was instantly plain what the trouble was: her ears must have been pierced with a dirty implement, probably some old brass pin, and the small wounds had become hideously infected.
“Why did you not tell me about this days ago?” asked Scylla, trying, as always, to keep any hint of impatience and anger from her voice.
“Dr. Nuruddin said the child had a demon in her ears and that if we prayed and made offering to the goddess Durga the demon would infallibly be cast out. I have prayed and offered a kid, but the demon must be a very strong one; it has refused to go.”
“Dr. Nuruddin is—” Scylla checked herself.
“Now I thought perhaps you could put your ointment on and drive the devil away,” said Mahtab hopefully.
“Ointment will not help in this case, Highness,” Scylla said. “The child is badly sick—see how languid are her eyes, how hot her forehead. The devil is inside her now, not just in her ears. Will you not allow me to have her carried out, to the Mem Musson’s hospital? She needs much medicine and careful nursing.”
But this, of course, was quite out of the question. First, Mahtab could not possibly part with the child; and secondly, it was unthinkable that a palace slave girl, even so small a one as Laili, should be allowed out through the streets of the town. Scylla accordingly did what she could—washed off the paste of dung and ground-up owl’s feathers which had been applied to Laili’s ears (on the theory that, as owls have sharp hearing, their feathers must be good for aural afflictions); then, muttering objurgations against Dr. Nuruddin, she applied some healing balm.
“Poor little thing—I fear she may die, as my little Zindan did when the monkey bit her,” Mahtab said with a kind of fretful resignation. “It is plain the gods do not look kindly on me; all my favorites come to harm. Perhaps it is just as well that my dear son Mihal does not visit me any more—he, too, might incur the gods’ displeasure. Huneefa, Lehna, Lakshmi!” she called. “Take the child away; the sight of her is distressing to me. Carry her far off where I cannot hear her crying.”
When this had been done and Scylla was on the point of taking her leave, Mahtab came to the real reason for her summons.
“Mem Periseela—it has been said to me that you are greatly favored with the confidence of the Maharajah—that he listens with respect to the things you tell him.”
“Oh, hardly that, Your Majesty,” Scylla answered with considerable caution, wondering what was coming next. “Sometimes—when the Maharajah is feeling tired or indisposed—he amuses himself by chatting with me for a few minutes. But I doubt very much if he pays heed to anything I say. He likes to practice his French—that is all.”
Behind her, in a sibilant whisper, could be heard the comment of one of the attendants:
“It certainly must be her wit that our master admires—if indeed he does. For who could find anything to admire in that pink and white face of a pig, with the nose that turns upward and the mouth like a doorway—it is enough to make you die of laughing just to look at her!”
The whisperer spoke Urdu, not Punjabi; glancing around, Scylla saw that she was Huneefa, the big dark-skinned ayah whom Mahtab had brought with her from the south, many years before. Huneefa was a great friend of Nuruddin, the pa
lace physician (the witch doctor, as Miss Musson indignantly called him), and without doubt would retail to him the fact that his treatment had been disparaged by the Feringi maiden.
Abruptly, Mahtab Kour ordered her women to go into the next room. “No—all of you—how do I know which of you is a tattletale, a spy who will carry reports of what I say to the ears of my enemy?”
Scowling with annoyance—particularly Huneefa—they left. Mahtab Kour went on in a low tone:
“That female viper from the Punjab—she who stole my place in my lord’s affections—I will not speak her name aloud for fear even the word should poison me—I have heard that, since she, too, lost my lord’s favor, she has committed an even more atrocious wickedness and is laying her nets, casting her wiles, in order to entrap my darling son Mihal. Even to speak of such betrayal is like arsenic on the tongue—but I have heard it, and I believe it.”
Scylla had heard it too—not in the bazaars but from her brother Cal, who had several times commented laconically that the Rani Sada and Prince Mihal seemed to be becoming as thick as thieves.
“And not surprising when you think about it,” he said.
“His own father’s mistress?” Scylla had indeed been somewhat scandalized.
“Why not? They are much of an age, and she is pretty as a tiger lily. And also she is as shrewd as she can hold together—Rani Sada knows which side her chupattis are buttered on! What do you suppose would happen to her when the Maharajah dies—which, from the look of him, he is bound to do within the next year or so? Unless Sada had taken care to ingratiate herself with the next ruler, what would you give for her chances? Mihal used to be fond of his mother—quite a mother’s boy—and Mahtab Kour would probably part with all her rubies for a chance to stick a dagger between Sada’s ribs. But Mihal has an eye for a pretty girl; he’s easily beguiled, and Sada knows that; she is taking her precautions in advance.”
Now Mahtab Kour went on vehemently. “The very gods would hide their faces for shame at what that creature does—but she is shameless! She is my lord’s wife—for it is true, indeed, he had the karewa, the betrothal ceremony, performed when she returned from Amritsar, and though that is not so important as the chadar dalna, the marriage, it means that her child by my lord is legitimate—and now she betrays him! With his own son! It is profanation of her vows! It is treason!”
“But,” said Scylla, very uneasily, “even if indeed it is so—”
“Without a shadow of a doubt it is so. She brings infamy to the name of my lord’s family!”
“Why are you telling me about it?” said Scylla bluntly.
“Because I wish you to bring this news to my lord!”
“The Maharajah? Oh no—impossible! I—I could not transgress on his privacy to tell him a thing like that.”
Scylla had a very poor opinion of Prince Mihal. She had hardly met him, except when he called at the bungalow, for it was not considered suitable that an unmarried Feringi lady should consort with the heir; but he and Cal were cronies to a degree that sometimes caused Miss Musson to say, “I wonder if it is wise for your brother to see quite so much of that young man?” And even Scylla, not usually a prey to anxiety or sisterly misgivings, could not feel that Mihal Shahzada was the best of companions, or likely to be a good influence. He gambled insatiably; he was addicted to wine and French brandy, which he had imported at vast expense, from Calcutta; he smoked opium and hasheesh; and he could be idly and viciously cruel as the whim took him; Scylla had once arrived in the middle entrance court to find that he and some companions had set a pariah dog on fire and were laughing uproariously and laying bets on the length of its survival, as the shrieking bundle of flame dashed crazily around and around the yard; Scylla’s anger on that occasion had been so intense—luckily Miss Musson had been with her and the combined insistence of the two Feringi ladies had finally persuaded one of the soldiers to pick up his curved sword and chop off the animal’s head—that ever after that day Mihal Shahzada addressed her mockingly as the “Mem Dog-Lover,” and she felt quite certain that he had not forgiven her for spoiling his sport.
If he and Sada had indeed become allies, that might account for the malignant look that Sada had given her from the upper gallery. More especially if she thought that Scylla was being employed by Mahtab Kour to pass on information to the Maharajah.
Scylla did not point out the usual fate of talebearers. She said:
“Truly, Your Majesty, I could not tell the Maharajah a thing like that! Besides—do you not suppose he may know it already? Surely nothing is hidden from him?”
“This, assuredly, he does not know. For if he did, his wrath would be terrible. Bring the news to him, sahiba, I beg of you.”
Scylla, however, replied firmly that she could not undertake to do so. “I could not bear him such tidings, Majesty. Besides, if His Excellency does talk to me—and sometimes weeks go by when we do not meet—the subjects he wishes to discuss are European wars, and whether the English will permit Ranjit Singh to capture Lahore.”
“Men’s talk!” said Mahtab impatiently. “But it is known that you talked with him today. Of what did you speak?”
Scylla marveled, as always, at the speed with which gossip traveled in the palace. It seemed to her highly improbable that, considering how difficult it was to keep anything hidden, the Maharajah did not know of his son’s intrigue. Perhaps he felt too old and sick to care.
She replied, “We were talking about the battle at Cape St. Vincent, lady.”
“Oh!” the queen exclaimed with a grimace of impatience. “If only I had his ear!”
“I will tell him, and gladly, lady, that Your Majesty wishes to consult with him—if I should be so lucky as to speak with him again.”
Scylla would promise no more, and the rani had to be content with this.
“And Your Majesty will not think again, and allow me to take the little Laili off to the hospital?”
“No—no—certainly not!” snapped Mahtab Kour. “You have my leave to depart, Mem Periseela.”
Sighing, Scylla walked back through the great courtyard. Oh, to travel away from here, she thought impatiently, to leave this nest of petty intrigue and spite.
She longed to set out for Europe, to see England, her father’s country—London, Ranelagh, the Pantheon, Drury Lane, fashionably dressed ladies, Pall Mall, Sadler’s Wells. She had read about these things in the Calcutta Gazette and stray copies of the Gentleman’s Magazine. But three obstacles stood firmly in the way of her wishes. The first was Miss Musson—who had adopted the twins when they were orphaned, friendless, and poor, had given them a home, and treated them with uniform kindness and affection. Now, by helping with part of her work, Scylla was able, she felt, to repay some part of this kindness, and she did not see how she could possibly go off and leave the old woman alone in Ziatur, the only European resident in the town. The second obstacle was that of money. When General Paget, father of the twins, returned to England, with vague promises of presently sending for them, he had left Manuela, their mother, several thousand rupees and the house in Umballa, and had given an undertaking that more money would presently be dispatched from England. But the promised funds had never arrived, their mother had fallen ill from anxiety, the house had had to be sold, and presently Manuela had died… Scylla did not like to remember those days. The last of the money was spent, she and Cal were desperate, almost starving, when Miss Musson and her brother, who at that time were running a small mission hospital in Umballa, had adopted the two children. Winthrop Musson, a gentle, cultivated man, had taken a great liking to the quick-witted pair and had enjoyed teaching them, imparting some of his very considerable fund of learning. Cal and Scylla, starved of knowledge all their lives—for Manuela, a beautiful languid creature, a born courtesan, had never troubled to see that her children received an education, was interested in nothing but her lover, and when he left sank into melancholy�
�Cal and Scylla had mopped up all that Winthrop Musson could teach them like thirsty sponges. Musson had encouraged Cal’s budding gift for poetry and had been delighted with his progress and talent. When the Mussons moved to Ziatur, because Winthrop suffered from a lung complaint and it was thought better for him to go northward, to be near the hills—naturally the twins went along too. And now, here we are, stuck, Scylla sometimes thought. We may very likely remain here for the rest of our lives! The third obstacle to a removal, of course, was Cal himself, who liked the life in Ziatur very well. Clever, lazy, wholly unambitious, he was perfectly content to read in Winthrop Musson’s capacious library, amuse himself with Prince Mihal, go riding with his sister in the cool evening, and pay no attention, not the least in the world, to what happened in Europe, in France, in Spain, in the Mediterranean. To the news of the fall of the Bastille and the Terror in France, he had merely replied:
“How extremely shocking. What rhymes with ‘arable,’ Scylla?”
“Parable. Have you no interest in what goes on outside this place?”
“I am a poet,” he pointed out negligently. “A poet’s first study is himself.”
Miss Musson, Scylla believed, felt some concern over Cal and what would become of him, but Miss Musson felt that her primary duty was to her patients; and furthermore she had a rooted disapproval of interference and believed that people should be left alone to work out their own problems; only in extreme cases (like that of the burning dog) would she take hand.
When Scylla turned in at the entrance to Miss Musson’s house it was early still—barely ten. Going inside, Scylla found, as she had expected, that Cal still slept, in exactly the same position as when she had seen him last, motionless, fathoms deep in oblivion. He had an extraordinary capacity for sleep: ten, twelve, fourteen hours he could pass at a stretch, in a kind of trance, hardly seeming to breathe, impervious to heat, cold, or any amount of noise. When the twins had been younger, when Scylla needed her brother’s company for play or comfort, before and during their mother’s illness, or in the frightening months after her death, Cal’s gift for escaping from his difficulties in sleep had often filled her with a mixture of envy and exasperation. She could not rouse him, she knew; he would mutter some response, roll over, and flop into a new position of utter relaxation.