by M. M. Kaye
‘Do not cry, mother. There is nothing to cry for. I shall tell the Yuveraj that I would much rather stay here, and because I saved him from injury he will let me return. You will see. Besides, they cannot keep me there against my will.’
Secure in this belief, he hugged her reassuringly and followed the Yuveraj's servants through the city gate and up to the Hawa Mahal – the fortress palace of the Rajahs of Gulkote.
4
The Palace of the Winds was approached by a steep causeway paved with slabs of granite that had been worn into ruts and hollows by the passing of generations of men, elephants and horses. The stone felt cold to Ash's bare feet as he trudged up it in the wake of the Yuveraj's servants, and looking up at the towering walls of rock, he was suddenly afraid.
He did not want to live and work in a fortress. He wanted to stay in the city where his friends lived, and tend Duni Chand's horses and learn wisdom from Mohammed Sherif the head groom. The Hawa Mahal looked a grim and unfriendly place, and the Badshahi Darwaza, the King's Gate, by which one entered it, did nothing to mitigate that impression. The great iron-studded doors yawned onto darkness, and there were guards armed with tulwars and jezails lounging in the shadows beyond the stone lintel. The causeway passed under a fretted balcony from where the mouths of cannon gaped down at them, and the sunlight was cut off as though by a sword as they entered a long tunnel, honeycombed on either side by niches, guardrooms and galleries that sloped upwards through the heart of the rock.
The transition from warm sunlight to cold shadow, and the eerie echo under the black vault of the roof, served to intensify Ash's unease, and glancing back over his shoulder to where the great gateway framed a view of the city basking comfortably in the heat haze, he was tempted to run. It seemed to him, suddenly, as though he was entering a prison from which he would never be able to escape, and that if he did not run away now, at once, he would lose freedom and friends and happiness and spend his days penned up behind bars like the talking minah that hung in a cage outside the potter's shop. It was a new and troubling thought, and he shivered as though with cold. But it would obviously be no easy task to dodge past so many guards, and it would be humiliating to be caught and dragged into the palace by force. Besides, he was curious to see the inside of the Hawa Mahal: no one he knew had ever been inside it, and it would be something to boast about to his friends. But as for staying there and working for the Yuveraj, he would not even consider it, and if they thought that they could make him they were wrong. He would escape over the walls and go back to the city, and if they followed him, then he and his mother would both run away. The world was wide, and somewhere among the mountains lay their own valley – that safe place where they could live as they pleased.
The tunnel took a sharp turn to the right and came out into a small open courtyard where there were more guards and more ancient bronze cannon. On the far side of it another gateway led into a vast quadrangle where two of the Rajah's elephants rocked at their pickets in the shade of a chenar tree, and a dozen chattering women washed clothes in the green water of a stone tank. Beyond this lay the main bulk of the palace. A fantastic jumble of walls, battlements and wooden balconies, fretted windows, airy turrets and carved galleries – the larger part of it screened from the city below by the outer bastion.
No one knew how old the original fortress was, though legend said that it had defied the armies of Sikundar Dulkhan (Alexander the Great) when that young conqueror swooped down into India from the passes of the north. But a substantial part of the present citadel had been built in the early years of the fifteenth century, by a robber chieftain who required an impregnable stronghold from which he and his followers could sally out to raid the fertile lands beyond the river, and retreat to in time of trouble. In those days it had been known as the Kala Kila, the ‘Black Fort’, not on account of its colour – for it had been built of the same harsh grey stone that formed the towering outcrop of rock upon which it stood – but in reference to its reputation, which was of the darkest. Later, when the territory had fallen to a Rajput adventurer, it had been considerably enlarged, and his son, who built the walled city on the plain below and became the first Rajah of Gulkote, had transformed the Kala Kila into a vast, ornately decorated royal residence which on account of its lofty position he re-named the Hawa Mahal – the ‘Palace of the Winds’.
It was here that the present Rajah lived in dilapidated splendour in a maze of rooms furnished with Persian carpets, dusty hangings shimmering with gold embroidery, and ornaments of jade or beaten silver, set with rubies and raw turquoise. Here too, in the Queen's rooms of the Zenana Quarters beyond the pierced wooden screens that separated the Hall of Audience from a garden full of fruit trees and roses, lived Janoo-Bai the Rani – her rival, the Feringhi-Rani, having died of a fever (though some said of poison) during the previous summer. And in a rabbit-warren of rooms that took up a whole wing of the palace, the little Yuveraj, known more familiarly by his ‘milk-name’ of Lalji, spent his days among the crowd of attendants, petty officials and hangers-on who had been assigned to his service by his father.
Led into his presence through a bewildering number of passages and antechambers, Ash found the heir of Gulkote seated cross-legged on a velvet cushion and engaged in teasing a ruffled cockatoo who looked to be as sour and out of temper as its tormentor. The glittering ceremonial dress of the previous day had been exchanged for tight muslin trousers and a plain linen achkan,* and in it he looked a good deal younger than he had appeared when mounted on a white stallion in the midst of the procession. Then, he had seemed every inch a prince – and the inches had been considerably increased by a sky-blue turban adorned by a tall aigrette and a flashing clasp of diamonds. But now he was only a small boy. A plump, pasty-faced child who could easily have been taken for two years younger than Ash instead of two years older, and who was not so much cross as frightened.
It was this last that dispelled Ash's awe and put him at his ease, because he too had on occasions taken refuge from fear in a show of ill-temper, and therefore recognized an emotion that was probably hidden from any of the bored adults in the room. It gave him a sudden fellow-feeling for this boy who would one day be Rajah of Gulkote. And an equally sudden urge to take his part against these undiscerning grown-ups who bowed so deferentially and spoke so soothingly in false, flattering voices, while their faces remained cold and sly.
They were not, thought Ash, eyeing them warily, a friendly-looking lot. They were all too fat and sleek and too pleased with themselves, and one of them, a richly dressed young dandy with a handsome dissolute face, who wore a single diamond earring dangling from one ear, was ostentatiously holding a scented handkerchief to his nose as though he feared that this brat from the city might have brought an odour of poverty and the stables with him. Ash looked away and made his bow before royalty, bending low with both hands to his forehead as the custom demanded, but now his gaze was both friendly and interested, and seeing this, the face of the Yuveraj lost some of its ill-temper.
‘Go away. All of you,’ commanded the Yuveraj, imperiously dismissing his attendants with a wave of the royal hand. ‘I wish to speak to this boy alone.’
The dandy with the diamond earring leaned down to catch his arm and whisper urgently in his ear, but the Yuveraj pulled away and said loudly and angrily: ‘That is fool's talk, Biju Ram. Why should he do me an injury when he has already saved my life? Besides, he is not armed. Go away and don't be so stupid.’
The young man stepped back and bowed with a submissiveness that was sharply at variance with the sudden ugliness of his expression, and Ash was startled to receive a scowl of concentrated venom that seemed out of all proportion to the occasion. Evidently this Biju Ram did not relish being rebuked, and blamed him for being the cause of it; which was manifestly unfair considering he had not said a word – and had never wanted to come here in the first place.
The Yuveraj gestured impatiently and the men withdrew, leaving the two boys to take stock of
each other. But Ash still did not speak, and it was the Yuveraj who broke the brief spell of silence that followed. He said abruptly: ‘I told my father how you saved my life, and he has said that I may have you for my servant. You will be well paid and I… I have no one to play with here. Only women and grown-ups. Will you stay?’
Ash had fully intended to refuse, but now he hesitated and said uncertainly: ‘There is my mother… I cannot leave her, and I do not think she…’
‘That is easily arranged. She can live here too and be a waiting-woman to my little sister, the princess. Are you fond of her, then?’
‘Of course,’ said Ash, astonished. ‘She is my mother.’
‘So. You are fortunate. I have no mother. She was the Rani, you know. The true Queen. But she died when I was born, so I do not remember her. Perhaps if she had not died… My sister Anjuli's mother died too, and they said that it was sorcery, or poison; but then she was a feringhi, and always sickly, so perhaps That One had no need to use spells or poison or to –’ He broke off, looking quickly over his shoulder and then rose abruptly and said ‘Come. Let us go out into the garden. There are too many ears here.’
He put the cockatoo back onto its perch and went out through a curtained doorway and past half-a-dozen salaaming retainers into a garden set about with walnut trees and fountains, where a little pavilion reflected itself in a pool full of lily pads and golden carp; Ash following at his heels. At the far side of the garden only a low stone parapet lay between the grass and a sheer drop of two hundred feet onto the floor of the plateau below, while on the other three sides rose the palace: tier upon tier of carved and fretted wood and stone, where a hundred windows looked down upon tree tops and city, and out towards the far horizon
Lalji sat down on the rim of the pool and began to throw pebbles at the carp, and presently he said: ‘Did you see who pushed the stone?’
‘What stone?’ asked Ash, surprised.
‘The one that would have fallen on me had you not checked my horse.’
‘Oh that. No one pushed it. It just fell.’
‘It was pushed,’ insisted Lalji in a harsh whisper. ‘Dunmaya, who is – who was my nurse, has always said that if That One bore a son she would find some way to make him the heir. And I – I am –’ He closed his lips together on the unspoken word, refusing to admit, even to another child, that he was afraid. But the word spoke itself in the quiver of his voice and the unsteadiness of the hands that flung pebbles into the quiet water, and Ash frowned, recalling the movement that had caught his eye before the coping stone slipped, and wondering for the first time why it should have slipped just then, and if it had indeed been a hand that thrust it down.
‘Biju Ram says that I am imagining things,’ confessed the Yuveraj in a small voice. ‘He says that no one would dare. Even That One would not. But when the stone fell I remembered what my nurse had said, and I thought… Dunmaya says that I must trust no one, but you saved me from the stone, and if you will stay with me perhaps I shall be safe.’
‘I don't understand,’ said Ash, puzzled. ‘Safe from what? You are the Yuveraj and you have servants and guards, and one day you will be Rajah.’
Lalji gave a short, mirthless laugh. ‘That was true a little while ago. But now my father has another son. The child of That One – the Nautch-girl. Dunmaya says she will not rest until she has put him in my place, for she desires the gadi (throne) for her own son, and she holds my father in the hollow of her hand – so.’ He clenched his first until the knuckles showed white, and relaxing it, stared down at the pebble that he held, his small face drawn into harsh unchildlike lines. ‘I am his son. His eldest son. But he would do anything to please her, and -’
His voice trailed away and was lost in the soft splashing of the fountains. And quite suddenly Ash remembered another voice, someone he had almost forgotten, who had said to him long, long ago in another life and another tongue: ‘The worst thing in the world is injustice. That means being unfair, This was unfair, and so it must not be allowed. Something should be done about it.
‘All right. I'll stay,’ said Ash, heroically abandoning his happy-go-lucky life in the city and the pleasant future he had planned for himself as head-syce in charge of Duni Chand's horses. The careless years were over.
That evening he sent a message to Sita, who dug up the money and the small sealed packet she had hidden in their room, and tying their scanty possessions into a bundle, set out for the Hawa Mahal; and on the following morning Ash was told to consider himself a member of the Yuveraj's household with a salary of no less than five silver rupees a month, while Sita had been given employment as an extra waiting-woman to the dead Feringhi-Rani's little daughter, the Princess Anjuli.
By palace standards, the living quarters allotted to them were humble ones: three small and windowless rooms, one of which was a kitchen. But compared with their single room in the city it seemed to them the height of luxury, and the absence of windows was more than compensated for by the fact that all three doors opened onto a small private courtyard that was protected by an eight-foot wall and shaded by a pine tree. Sita was delighted with it and soon began to look upon it as home, though it grieved her that Ashok could not sleep there. But Ash's duties, which in the main consisted of being in attendance on the Yuveraj for a few hours each day, also required him to sleep in an ante-chamber adjoining the royal bedroom at night.
No one could have described such work as arduous, yet Ash soon came to regard it as irksome to a degree. This was partly due to the temper and vagaries of his youthful master, but mostly on account of the young dandy, Biju Ram, who for some reason had taken a strong dislike to him. Lalji's nickname for Biju Ram was ‘Bichchhu’ (scorpion) or more familiarly, ‘Bichchhu-ji’ though it was a name that no one else dared use to his face, for it was all too apt – the dandy being a venomous creature who could turn and sting at the slightest provocation.
In Ash's case no provocation seemed necessary, since Biju Ram appeared to take a positive delight in baiting him. His attentions soon became the bane of the boy's existence, for he lost no opportunity of holding him up to ridicule by making him the butt of endless practical jokes that seemed solely designed to inflict pain and humiliation; and as these tricks were usually lewd as well as cruel, Lalji would snigger at them, and the watching courtiers would break into peals of sycophantic laughter.
Lalji's moods were often ugly and always unpredictable - understandably so, for until the coming of the Nautch-girl he had been the spoiled darling of the palace, petted and indulged by his doting father and the adoring Zenana women, and flattered by courtiers and servants alike. His first step-mother, the charming, gentle Feringhi-Rani, had grieved for the motherless child, and taking him to her heart, had loved him as though he were her own son. But as neither she nor anyone else had ever attempted to discipline him, it was hardly surprising that the chubby, lovable baby should have grown into a spoilt and overbearing boy, totally unfitted to deal with the changed atmosphere in the palace when the new favourite bore a son and the Feringhi-Rani died. For now the little Yuveraj was suddenly of less importance; and even his servants became noticeably less servile, while courtiers who had once flattered and fawned on him hastened to ingratiate themselves with the new power behind the throne.
His rooms and his retinue began to look shabby and neglected, not all his imperious orders were now obeyed, and the continual warnings of his devoted nurse – old Dunmaya, who had been his mother's nurse also and accompanied the Senior Rani to Gulkote when that lady came there as a bride – did nothing to soothe his distress or improve the situation. Dunmaya would have laid down her life for the boy, and her fears for him were probably justified; but the voicing of them, and her constant criticism of his father's growing neglect, only served to increase his unhappiness, and drove him at times to near hysteria. He could not understand what was happening, and it made him frightened rather than angry. But because pride prevented him from showing fear, he took refuge in rage, and those wh
o served him suffered accordingly.
Young as Ash was, something of all this was still apparent to him. But though understanding might help him to excuse much of Lalji's behaviour, it did not make it any easier to bear. Also he did not take kindly to the subservience that the Yuveraj, who had been used to it all his short life, expected from every member of his household; even from those who were elderly grey-beards and grandfathers. Ash had at first been properly impressed by the importance of the heir to the throne, and also with his own duties as this potentate's page, which, in the manner of childhood, he took half seriously and half as a game. Unfortunately, familiarity soon bred contempt and later boredom, and there were times when he hated Lalji and would have run away if it had not been for Sita. But he knew that Sita was happy here, and if he ran away she would have to come with him, not only because he could not leave her behind, but because he suspected that Lalji might treat her unkindly in revenge for his defection. Yet, it was, paradoxically, sympathy for Lalji as much as love for Sita that prevented him from running away.
The two boys had little in common and there were many factors that prevented them from becoming friends: caste, upbringing and environment; heredity and the social gulf that yawned between the heir to a throne and the son of a serving-woman. They were separated, too, by a wide difference in character and temperament; and to a certain extent by the difference in their ages, though this mattered less, for although Lalji was the senior by two years, Ash often felt himself to be the elder by years, and on that account bound to help and protect the weaker vessel from the forces of evil that even the most insensitive must feel stirring in the huge, rambling, ramshackle palace.
Ash had never been insensitive, and though at first he had dismissed Dunmaya's warnings as the babbling of a silly old woman, it had not taken him long to change his mind. The idle, aimless days might drift placidly by, but under that smooth surface ran hidden undercurrents of plot and counterplot, and the wind was not the only thing that whispered in the endless corridors and alcoves of the Hawa Mahal.