Nizams Daughters mh-2

by Allan Mallinson

  Hervey was momentarily unsure whether the rajah’s undoubtedly fine command of English embraced the difference between ‘less’ and ‘fewer’. Henry Locke failed to register any distinction, and wondered merely — and with keen anticipation — what would be the precise, if reduced, number of maidens who might be sent to his chamber.

  The rajah was a figure of dignified restraint, and evidently of sensibility and cultivation, concluded Hervey — in spite of his apparent jesting. His face was clean-shaven and fine-featured, his sallow complexion clear, and his shoulder-length hair was pulled back with slides. Around his eyes were darker rings, like those of the elephants to which he was so devoted. Perhaps it was a natural coloration, but so marked were they that Hervey thought them of cosmetic making. He was not tall, nothing like as big as the bazaar Hindoos who thronged the streets, yet he was possessed of a stature which, if it did not actually command respect, then otherwise induced it. Indeed he possessed an air of tranquillity that was at once appealing, while all about the palace there were images of the elephant, in statuary and inlays, which spoke too of the measured dignity of his court. And now, as they neared the menagerie, a big, old bull with full if fissured and yellowed tusks, his skin scarred from many fights, trod slowly into their path from behind an acacia screen. His mahout, standing nearby, shrivelled and as ancient as his charge, made low namaste as the rajah approached, but did nothing to take the animal in hand.

  ‘That is Seejavi,’ whispered Selden. ‘He was one of the late rajah’s war elephants. Now he is allowed free roam of the palace. His mahout is with him only because he has always been. Seejavi may trample anything and anyone he pleases.’

  ‘And does he?’ asked Hervey.

  ‘How are we to know? No-one would admit evidence of Seejavi’s ill behaviour.’

  The rajah took a sugared favour from a silver tray which a khitmagar carried ready, and held it out in his palm — not at arm’s length, but close to, making him hostage to the elephant’s forbearance.

  ‘Your Highness,’ said Selden, more wearied than anxious, ‘I do urge more circumspection with Seejavi. He is old and may not always remember his place.’

  The rajah smiled, without turning, and took another favour from the tray. ‘An elephant not remember, Mr Selden? The notion is an intriguing one. Seejavi would never be disloyal, of that I am sure.’

  Selden made no reply.

  The next voice was female. ‘You are too trusting, father. Constancy is no more an animal virtue than it is a human one.’

  Both the appearing and appearance of the raj kumari was of some moment. Hitherto she had been hid by the acacia screen, a slender figure, of about Hervey’s age and not much less than his height, her skin lighter than the Madrasi women whose complexion he had admired at Fort George (so close in colour as they were to Jessye’s bay), though her hair was blacker and her eyes larger. She was, by any estimate, a beauty of considerable degree, and, after the formalities of presentation, both Hervey and Locke found themselves, temporarily, less than fluent in their replies to her questions — which she asked without any of the coyness or reservation they had been led to believe was the mark of Hindoo women.

  At first they walked side by side along the aviary, and neither Hervey nor Locke felt able to look but ahead. When, however, she went a little in advance of them in order to attract the attention of a favourite peacock, Hervey saw that she wore not the saree but something divided, allowing her to walk with singular grace. In consequence he almost failed to hear the rajah’s enquiry as to how he liked the aviary, and thereafter he was all attention as they processed back to the palace down an avenue of deodars. ‘My grandfather grew them from seeds brought from a great hunting expedition to Kumaon,’ said the rajah, with no little pride.

  The raj kumari herself had shown no dismay on seeing Locke’s face. She spoke with warm civility, unafraid to look at him fully as they talked of this and that brightly feathered species in the aviary. Hervey saw nothing but the same warmth as that of her father, nothing that suggested a need for the circumspection Selden had advocated.

  The tamasha that evening was a regalement such that Hervey and Locke might never forget — as, indeed, was the rajah’s intention. The brilliance of the hundreds of candles and scented oil lamps, reflected by the white marble in the great dining chamber, seemed no less than the midday sun. The guests sat on cushions at a low table covered by a richly embroidered white cloth, on which were laid dishes of pomegranates, grapes and jujubes. To Hervey was accorded the honour of sitting on the rajah’s right, while Locke was seated to the raj kumari’s left, she herself being next to her father. Selden, who sat at the angle of the table, but in view of their host, had correctly predicted this arrangement, explaining to them that, unlike in other native, even princely, households, the raj kumari did not take a retiring role. Her mother, the ranee, had died within a year of labour — a conception for which there had been many years’ unanswered prayers — and the rajah had placed the overseeing of the palace in her trust from an early age, while he had withdrawn increasingly to his menagerie and his library. He had even shown less pleasure in the chase of late, though this was, thought Selden, because he disliked leaving the palace, fearing perhaps that on his return he would find it no longer in his hands, the possession instead of the nizam or one of his acolytes. Throughout his life, and his father’s before him, Haidarabad had laid claim to Chintal, a claim which, had not the late Maratha war diverted him, the nizam might by now have made good.

  But this evening the rajah was in good spirits. Musicians in a gallery at the other end of the chamber played lively ragas, and there was laughter among the two dozen courtiers enjoying his hospitality. A welldrilled troop of khitmagars brought more fruit to the table: oranges, peeled and dusted with ginger, fingerlengths of tender young sugar cane, and mangoes whose soft, peach-coloured flesh and abundant juice especially became the evening’s sensuality.

  ‘I am informed, Captain Hervey,’ said the rajah, casting an eye over the procession, ‘that in England you would not begin a feast with sweet things, that you must earn sweetness, so to speak, by progression through much sourness — as in life itself. But in India we have no such coyness in our pleasures. We have each earned title to indulgence in this incarnation through preparation in earlier ones.’

  Hervey was as much engaged by the elegance of the rajah’s phrasing as he was intrigued by his theology. ‘You know, sir,’ he replied, with considerable delicacy, ‘that our religion holds these things differently.’

  ‘And I shall look forward keenly to our being able to speak on these matters, for you are the son of a sadhu, a priest, I am informed — whereas Mr Selden, there,’ he nodded, smiling, ‘is as much an atheist as was my tutor.’

  ‘Your tutor an atheist, sir? Mr Selden informed me that he was a fellow of Cambridge.’

  ‘Oh, indeed — both. He was sent down along with Coleridge for his opinions. Do you like Coleridge’s poetry, Captain Hervey?’

  ‘Very much, sir,’ replied the latter, hoping to conceal his surprise at hearing of Coleridge here.

  ‘I am much diverted by the notion of his enlisting in the cavalry afterwards. It was not your regiment, was it, by some chance?’

  ‘No, sir,’ said Hervey, even more surprised. ‘His was the Fifteenth Light Dragoons, and mine the Sixth. He was, by his own admission, a very indifferent equestrian!’

  ‘It is as well, Captain Hervey, otherwise we should have been deprived of some sublime poetry.’

  ‘Just so, sir,’ agreed the other, but with a resigned smile, for the rajah evidently held the two to be incompatible occupations.

  However, the rajah did not press the matter, returning instead to the subject of his gardens and menagerie, and the plans he had for their enlargement. The khitmagars entered once more in procession. ‘These will delight you especially, Captain Hervey,’ he smiled, as one of them proffered a salver. ‘Mandaliya. I have a cook from Bengal who makes it as no other I know. There
is nothing else of worth in Bengal, I assure you, Captain Hervey!’ he added with an even broader smile.

  ‘He takes the entrails from only the youngest of lambs and then fills them with marrow and a mixture of spices known only to him, and then he roasts them over charcoal. They are the very apotheosis of taste, are they not?’

  Hervey agreed readily, and he would have indulged himself liberally had he not a concern for how many such dishes he would have to savour before the feast was ended. He glanced across at Selden and saw him eating modestly, and then at Locke, who was attending to each dish as if it were his last.

  ‘Why are you come to India, Captain Hervey?’ asked the rajah suddenly, though without trace of anything but approval.

  He sighed inwardly. He had no wish to deceive this generous and civilized man. ‘I believe you will have heard of Sir Arthur Wellesley?’ he began.

  ‘The Duke of Wellington?’ replied the rajah.

  He was much embarrassed by his presuming the rajah’s ignorance. ‘I am very sorry, sir; I had no reason to suppose that the duke’s elevation to the peerage would have been of interest in Chintal.’

  ‘But indeed it is,’ replied the rajah. ‘The duke rid India of the Maratha plague — Sindhia and Barjee Rao, and the other devils. I met him once, in the company of his then more illustrious brother. I was gratified to see him made a marquess, and then duke. Are you acquainted with him?’

  ‘Not intimately, sir. I am recently appointed aide-decamp, a very junior capacity, and am sent here to learn the employment of the lance. We suffered from it at the hands of the French, and the duke intends forming lancer regiments forthwith.’

  ‘Indeed,’ was all that the rajah would say by reply, although after a while he appeared to remember his own lancers. ‘My sowars would be able to instruct you most ably,’ he said, nodding.

  ‘I am grateful, sir. I believe I have also heard that the nizam’s cavalry have lances.’ Hervey wished at once he had not said it — a clumsy stratagem.

  The rajah, after the briefest flicker of consternation, recovered his composure. ‘You may know that we are to receive the nizam in Chintalpore in a month’s time,’ he said, dipping his fingers in a bowl of scented water.

  ‘Mr Selden so informed me, sir.’

  ‘We hope to show him some sport.’ And he embarked on a lengthy praise of Chintal’s hunting promise.

  The musicians were by now less animated in their playing. A leisurely tala weaved its way in and out of the conversations around the rajah’s table, a perfect accompaniment to the sweet confections now brought by the khitmagars — sweeter even than the madhuparka in the Venetian glasses.

  ‘But on the matter of the Duke of Wellington’s bidding,’ said the rajah at length, and seemingly absently, ‘there may be some quality that the duke seeks in numbers: the nizam’s cavalry has the most lancers in all India.’

  ‘So I am informed, sir. But in terms of how well the weapon itself is handled, and how handily are the rissalahs trained, I understand the Company’s irregulars too have much to teach.’

  The rajah nodded. ‘And in our own modest way, Chintal may boast of a handy rissalah. Indeed, you saw some upon your arrival today, did you not? Though they stood at the gates of the palace for ceremony.’

  ‘And, may I say, sir, their bearing does them great credit. I should much like to see them at exercise.’

  ‘Then you shall, Captain Hervey,’ replied the rajah. ‘You are our guest: I would not suspend any pleasure of yours that it is in my power to prolong.’

  One of those pleasures was the fine claret which the rajah kept. But Hervey was abstemious, for not only was its taste ill-matched to the harlequin dishes paraded before them, he was uncertain of the potency of the madhuparka. He could afford no indiscretion which might suggest his mission were any more than he had declared, especially having once aroused, if not the rajah’s suspicion, then certainly his curiosity. The same was not the case with Locke, however, whose robust spirits seemed wholly pleasing nevertheless to the raj kumari.

  The rajah spoke of hunting again: Hervey would not leave Chintal without a tigerskin, he promised, as bowls filled with boiled rice, dyed with saffron and much spiced, were placed before them. They talked of tiger and leopard and the wild boar, and the differing dangers and pleasures in the pursuit of each. And much satisfaction the rajah seemed to gain from Hervey’s keen anticipation.

  A light soup followed, and then all was cleared, bowls of hot water scented with lotus flowers were brought, and the rajah began speaking of his stables, of the merits and otherwise of the Arab and the Turkoman when compared with the native breeds — the Kathiawar, Marwari and Waziri. And the air was then filled with yet more, and different, scents as perfumed dishes of curds were laid before them, and the musicians once again became lively, an insistent tabla presaging a turn in the course of the evening. The rajah’s guests ate greedily, even after so much, and when the curds were gone a whole army of khitmagars crowded in to sweep away the residue of the feast so that the entertainment might begin.

  The raj kumari herself had arranged their evening’s diversions, explained the rajah. First came an elaborate nautch in which twelve tall, extravagantly dressed girls moved about the wide floor of the banquet chamber with a grace the like of which Hervey had never seen, as if floating — bending this way and that like tall grass in a breeze. From neck to ankle, they were aflash with mirrors, bracelets and rings, and in each bare navel shone an emerald.

  ‘They are come from Maharashtra for the delectation of the nizam when he visits,’ explained the rajah. ‘I am pleased to see you approve, Captain Hervey.’

  How could he not approve? ‘I do not think I ever beheld a more beautiful sight, Your Highness!’

  Henry Locke was altogether transported, and even Selden seemed rapt. The nautch girls danced for a quarter of an hour without respite, leisurely in all their movements, mistresses of time as well as of their sinewy muscles; until, though it was grown very warm, their spirited climax of much shaking and turning brought to a sudden end the now frantic raga — and with it the prostration of the dancers. There was great applause and calls of approval, and the dancers stood as one and bowed low to their audience. That they did not smile only added to their allure. Truly, he confided again, he had never seen anything so exquisite!

  The entertainment next took a less elevated form. A half-naked, wiry little man entered carrying a basket and a caged mongoose. ‘A vulgar thing of the bazaar, Captain Hervey,’ smiled the rajah indulgently, ‘to fascinate the indigent of the country and visitor alike. You may now write home to tell of your seeing a snake-charmer.’

  He was puzzled by the rajah’s need to explain, but thought it kindly meant. The wiry little man placed the basket not a dozen paces before them, and the cage to one side, then sat on the floor, crossing his legs. He took a pipe from the waist of his dhoti, removed the lid of the basket and began to play. The mongoose at once began jumping up and down excitedly, urinating as it did so — to the amusement of the guests — and soon from the basket came the head of a snake, drawn, it seemed, by the pipe’s lugubrious melody. It was not, to Hervey’s mind, of any great size, but it was no rat snake, for its spreading hood was unmistakable.

  ‘The cobra di capello, Captain Hervey,’ said the rajah; ‘prettily named is it not? — by the Portuguese when they built their missions on the Malabar coast.’

  Hervey recalled it well enough from his schoolroom lessons in natural history.

  The rajah sensed that he had expected to see a more impressive reptile, and sounded a note of warning. ‘Be assured, Captain Hervey, that the cobra, if its fangs could pierce the skin, has enough venom to kill an elephant.’

  Hervey looked suitably warned. Indeed, he looked mildly alarmed.

  ‘Do not concern yourself though,’ smiled the rajah. ‘The cobra’s mouth is sewn together.’

  The raj kumari leaned Hervey’s way a little. ‘To see the largest — the king of cobras — Captain Herve
y,’ she began conspiratorially, ‘you must go into the forest. There it is called the hamadryad. You must understand why?’

  He did. But Locke looked puzzled, leaving Hervey to whisper as best he could, ‘Wood nymph — Greeks — dies with the tree? Remember?’

  Locke nodded in faint but indifferent recollection of his Shrewsbury classicals.

  Once the rajah was satisfied that Hervey understood the principles of the art before him, he waved for the little man to cease his playing. The cobra descended at once into the basket, and the mongoose, which had not let up its jumping and turning throughout the performance, settled quietly on the floor of its cage.

  ‘My groom would be delighted by the mongoose, Your Highness,’ said Hervey, smiling. ‘He is inordinately fond of ferrets, an animal very akin to this.’

  ‘Is he here in Chintalpore with you?’ asked the rajah.

  ‘No, sir: he remained in Guntoor with my charger. But I am assured he will soon arrive.’

  ‘I am very glad of it, for I hope that you will avail yourself of our hospitality for some time yet,’ for, declared the rajah, he was in constant want of conversation since the demise of his tutor some years past.

  And then curiously, as if to be done with every vestige of the grace and dignity that the Maharashtri nautch had given the evening, there came a raucous chorus of voices the like of which Hervey had never heard, accompanied by cymbals and tambours in a fearful cacophony. The voices wore sarees of the gaudiest colours imaginable, festooned with bangles, necklaces and ankle bells. They were taller even than the nautch girls, and older. Some, indeed, were counted in riper years. They were as thin as laths, without any of the voluptuousness of the nautch. And their singing — if such it could rightly be called — was incomprehensible, their husky voices rhythmically repeating words that Hervey sensed had little meaning. They were to the nautch, indeed, as sackcloth was to silk.