A Beggar at the Gate

by Thalassa Ali

  The men nodded, the clicking of their prayer beads mingling with the whispering of the fountain.

  “Now, Hassan,” offered the Shaikh, changing the subject, “I understand that your Afghan trader will be coming from Kabul soon.”

  “Yes,” put in another man, “your poet-trader friend, who brings perfumes—”

  “and cats—” added the pockmarked disciple.

  “—and saffron,” added a shy-looking man who had not spoken all afternoon.

  “—and occasionally some decent horses,” put in the irrepressible Malik Sahib. “I want to be the first to see Zulmai's horses. I missed a good Turkoman the last time he came.”

  An hour later the visitors had gone, and the Shaikh and Hassan were finally alone. The Shaikh's embroidered headdress now lay collapsed beside him on the dais. The skullcap the old man wore made his small, lined face appear more forceful than ever.

  “I have been meaning to speak to you, my boy, about this marriage business,” he began, leaning forward to lay a hand on his son's knee. “I know you still think of poor little Mumtaz Bano, may Allah Most Gracious rest her soul, and I know well that your new foreign wife is very unlike her and perhaps not to your taste. You should know that if you decide to take a third wife, I will not stand in your way.

  “Of course I never advise the keeping of more than one wife at a time,” he added, “but then Mariam is not of our people. You might perhaps make some arrangement by which she remains here, and continues to be a second mother to Saboor.”

  “With all the trouble and cruelty at court, who can think of wives and marriages?” Hassan sighed. “All I want is my Saboor. I ache to hold him in my arms.”

  “I, too, long to see him,” his father agreed. “It pains me to think my grandson is so far away, with only your English wife to love him.”

  “Inshallah, they both will return soon,” murmured Hassan.

  His father nodded. “Inshallah.”

  June 25, 1840

  Take Saboor downstairs, Dittoo,” Mariana called as she sat on her bed, her eyes on a large tin box that stood in a corner of her large, bright room. “Let him watch the dogs having their bath.”

  As Saboor's running footsteps faded, she opened the box and reached under her folded shawls. Worn and ragged at the edges, the letter from Shaikh Waliullah's house seemed full of portent, a talisman from another world. Soiled from having been carried across India, it had been folded, then sealed with wax into which had been stamped an imprint in Arabic letters. The Merciful, the imprint read.

  Knowing the message it contained, she would have preferred to slide it back into its hiding place unread, but it seemed wrong to not even look at a letter that had been hand-carried for twelve hundred miles.

  She turned the stained paper over and broke open the wax.

  She did not recognize the elegant right-to-left handwriting, but the firm signature at the bottom of the letter read Hassan Ali Khan. Holding her hair off her face, she bent over the paper and began to read, a little rustily, as she had not read Urdu since her old munshi's departure for Lahore, a month earlier.

  I trust that you and Saboor arrived safely in Calcutta, the missive began, and that your family is well. I am pleased to tell you that all of us at Qamar Haveli are in good condition, and that we send you our salaams.

  Qamar Haveli, the House of the Moon, with its upstairs ladies’ quarters, its filigreed balconies, its inner courtyards …

  Here in Lahore, the letter continued, the circumstances that caused us to send you and Saboor away have not changed much, but I am happy to say they are good enough to warrant your return. It is believed the Maharajah, who asks constantly for Saboor, will not live more than a month or two. His heir, the Prince, already preoccupied with other matters, is unlikely to concern himself with my son after he ascends the throne.

  I would come for you myself if it were possible, but I cannot leave Lahore at this critical time. However, as your people travel constantly throughout India, it should not be difficult for you and your escort to join one of their caravans.

  He was not coming. Mariana let the paper fall to her lap.

  Escort. Caravans. The words Hassan had used made her sound like an Oriental princess traveling in a cushioned litter, surrounded by a retinue of servants and retainers, instead of herself, crammed into a stifling palanquin with only Uncle Adrian, Aunt Claire, her hunched-over Dittoo, and a triple-jointed sweeperess to keep her company.

  But in spite of their exotic imagery, Hassan's words contained no trace of the elusive beauty she had admired in Urdu poetry, and no suggestion that he remembered their sole, sandalwood-scented kiss. From its tone, her rescue of Saboor might have been part of some business transaction, although what she was supposed to have gained from her side of it, she could not imagine.

  She could not help feeling a small stab of disappointment. Shunned by everyone else in India, she had always assumed that Hassan, at least, had wanted her, that he would be hurt when she left him.

  Perhaps she had only imagined the powerful feeling that had seemed to pour out of him as they sat side by side in her tent the evening Lord Auckland's camp had left the Punjab.

  There was a rap at her door. “Let me in, child,” Aunt Claire hallooed from outside, jolting Mariana's thoughts from the past. “We have been invited to dine with Lord Auckland's sisters at Government House tomorrow evening. You must get out your gray silk with the lace edging. I want to see if the lace has yellowed.”

  Mariana pushed the letter hastily beneath her pillow and opened the door to find her aunt in the passage, a small leather box in her hand, flushed and happily transformed at the prospect of dinner at the Governor-General's grand residence.

  “Your uncle is feeling much better,” she announced as she entered. “I am certain we shall be able to go.” She held out the box. “I have brought my pearl necklace and eardrops for you to wear. Put them somewhere safe. Now, where are your gowns?”

  “How kind of you, Aunt Claire.” Unsure whether she wanted this unexpected generosity, Mariana tugged open the tin trunk that stood beside her wardrobe, shook out a gray watered-silk gown, and held it up.

  “The neck is still all right,” her aunt said, peering at its lace edging, “but this sleeve is turning. You must conceal it as best you can. I was right to insist on this color. The gray will make your eyes seem less green.” She shook her head. “Your eyes must have come from your father's side.Our eyes have always been a lovely, clear blue.

  “I am going to lie down,” she added. “I think the mango fool at lunch was too much in this heat. You should rest also. I want you to look pretty tomorrow evening. Sir William Macnaghten's wife is to be present.”

  “Lady Macnaghten?” Mariana stared at her aunt. “You must be joking. She has cut us dead in the bazaar three times this month. Why should Miss Emily invite us to meet such a conceited—”

  “I am not joking, and I do not like your manner of speaking. Lady Macnaghten,” Aunt Claire intoned, adopting her Senior Officer voice, “is to be escorted by her nephew, a successful young man to whom you are to be civil. He is to be one of our intelligence officers in Kabul.”

  “I am always civil, Aunt Claire,” Mariana protested to her aunt's retreating back. She would be polite to the nephew, a foppish-looking fellow with oddly long feet, whom she had seen only in the distance, but there was no chance at all that he would return her good manners. How like Aunt Claire to believe that Mariana could ingratiate herself to Calcutta society by being polite to people who were uniformly horrid.

  The door closed. Before her aunt could reappear, Mariana snatched Hassan's letter from beneath her pillow and slipped it back into its hiding place.

  It was no use telling Aunt Claire about it, for she would be horrified at the letter's existence. Aunt Claire always stopped short of learning the whole truth of things. She had never even inquired about the albino letter carrier, although she had seen him a dozen times since his arrival. Unlike Uncle Adrian, she
had only the vaguest idea of what had actually happened to Mariana in the Punjab.

  Uncle Adrian had waited a week after Mariana's arrival before demanding a complete account of her adventures in the Punjab. He now knew as much of her story as decency would allow. He had also questioned her about Maharajah Ranjit Singh's court and his army: questions that Mariana had been pleased to answer.

  “They have a strong, disciplined infantry, Uncle Adrian,” she had told him eagerly, delighted to speak of a subject dear to her heart, “and their artillery is formidable. At Gobindghar, the Maharajah's arsenal, there are seven hundred heavy guns, from nine- to thirty-two-pounders. But I do not think much of their cavalry: the horses are uneven in quality and the uniforms looked shabby, but they have a wonderful corps of racing camels, each carrying one man and one swivel gun. Did you know they all wear chain mail?”

  Her uncle had smiled. “And I am sure you have already written this to your father, the Would-be General.”

  Yes, she certainly had described the Sikh forces to her gentle, vicar father. Military strategy had long been their private interest, and now it was all she could write about, since she had no life outside the house, and hesitated to describe her forbidden adventures in the native part of the city.

  She glanced up as myna birds screeched outside her window. Dear Papa was getting old. Would she ever again sit in his book-filled study, pink-faced with pleasure, knowing she had his full attention as she argued the fine points of famous battles—Marathon, the defeat of the Athenians at Syracuse, Alexander's triumph at Arbela …

  She had, of course, written him and her mother the truth, knowing as she did that she was dashing her mother's dream that she would “marry well” in India, and hurting her father, whose good opinion meant everything to her. But she had told them all of it, without softening the facts.

  Their letters in reply had been painful to read, but both had said the one thing Mariana had longed to hear—that they loved her still.

  Whatever horrors you may have committed, her mother had written, you are still our daughter.

  The time will come, my brave, foolhardy Mariana, her father had written, when you must return that poor baby to his family. After you do it, we will be here in Sussex, waiting for you.

  Her married sister had also written. Stiff and censorious at first, Charlotte had later confided that she found the story romantic, although I should prefer it to have happened to someone else!

  Mariana leaned out through the window, her elbows on the sill. Perhaps things would be all right. Perhaps she would one day write home to say that she was, by some miracle, to marry Harry Fitzgerald. Perhaps then she would have fair-haired babies who would be hers to keep

  Outside, a groom led Uncle Adrian's gentlest horse up the drive to the shade of a tree, then lifted a solemn Saboor onto the horse's back. Mariana sighed. With her teacher and her horse-groom gone from Calcutta, only one person remained who knew her story—her faithful, rumpled Dittoo. Each day was lonelier without her old munshi; each afternoon when Uncle Adrian's quiet Bengali groom helped her mount into her sidesaddle, she missed Yar Mohammad, the tall, bony-faced dreamer of dreams who had served her since the day she first stole Saboor eighteen months before.

  As she watched child, horse, and man move off down the drive, a very different picture intruded on her thoughts—the interior of her tent and Saboor's elegant father beside her on the Persian carpet, leaning on a bolster, his face turned from hers, the shawl on his chest rising and falling as he breathed.

  Dreams were like clouds; amorphous and fleeting, they altered even as one watched them. But her memory of the Punjab, brought back by the arrival of the letter, was sharp-edged and brightly colored, too real and too fixed to be a dream. It was all true. It had all happened. Saboor, riding up the drive, was proof of that. The small, white scars of snakebite on Mariana's wrist were also proof, as was the albino courier who sat on his charpai outside the compound wall, waiting for her reply to the letter he had carried so far.

  It was time they met.

  WHEN THE message came that he was to meet Hassan Ali Khan's foreign wife, the albino had been sitting deep in thought, while small green parakeets flew in and out of the tree above his head.

  With his odd appearance and abrasive manner, Ghulam Ali had never made friends easily, but he never complained. Since his childhood, he had made a point of keeping to himself. He had suffered loneliness throughout his life, of course, but loneliness could mean safety to a man who feared the attentions of others.

  Most men feared snakes or scorpions. The albino, who had felt its punishment, feared the taunting mob.

  Since his earliest years he had suffered at the hands of others. He had been called frightful to look upon, possessed by the devil, a man whose very appearance betrayed the sins of his mother. He had been bloodied, stoned, chased from his house, driven out by people who blamed him for ill luck, for sudden floods, for cholera and smallpox.

  In his thirty-two years, he had become hard, cynical, and afraid. He had also become a perceptive observer of others, anticipating their moods, interpreting their looks and gestures. His hands and feet at the ready to fight or run, he was never without the knife he had stolen when he was ten. But the worst moments of his life had taken place on this last journey from Shaikh Waliullah's house, on the road between Bareilly and Shahjahanpur, when a group of travelers had offered him friendship.

  The men, numbering about twenty, had been unremarkable in their appearance. None, as far as he had seen, had been armed. All had been cheerful. The only unusual thing about them had been their friendliness.

  “We are laborers on our way to dig a canal near Shahjahanpur,” offered one of them, a man whose stomach protruded over his loincloth. “Where are you going?”

  Surprised, the courier had stopped walking. “To Calcutta,” he had replied, in his usual gruff tone. “I am taking a letter there.”

  “Ah, a courier. But it is a long way to Calcutta. Your letter must be important.”

  Unwilling to reveal his affairs to strangers, the albino had grunted and continued on his way, but the men, walking as fast as he, had kept pace.

  “So many people carry weapons on the road,” a young, curly-headed man had remarked. “It seems everyone is afraid of attack. I saw a man yesterday with a long chora knife and two swords. These people worry me. I have nothing but this rumal. ” Smiling, he flicked his long cotton scarf with his fingers, but his smile faded instantly at a warning glance from the first man.

  The group had walked on together for some miles, chatting companionably to the courier as they went, commenting on the horsemen and the drivers of the donkey and bullock carts that shared the road, stopping to inspect fruit for sale. Joking and nudging each other as they walked, they had attracted the attention of more travelers along the way.

  Some had joined them: a Hindu and his son on their way to buy a bull, a trader from Bareilly with some Surati chintz to sell in Lukhnow, a lone man with a tall walking stick who was to join a wedding party.

  Always a cautious observer of others, the albino had let down his guard in that friendly group. Pushing away his usual unease, he had basked in the unfamiliar feeling of inclusion among men who did not comment on his appearance.

  It was only when the group, at its ease and now numbering twenty-seven, was finishing dinner in a jungle clearing far from the road, that the courier had guessed the danger he was in. At the third unexplained glance between two of the men, he had suddenly understood that those friendly folk who picked their teeth and laughed with their heads thrown back were thugs, fearsome devils he had heard of since his childhood.

  Moving only his eyes, he had counted the men in the clearing. Several members of the party were missing, but the wavy-haired man who had so casually flicked his scarf was there, talking amicably with the wedding guest. The long scarf was missing from his neck, but lying casually beside him on the ground lay a length of wet, tightly twisted cloth.

  A chil
l drove down the albino's spine with such force that he had to fight to remain still. It was true, then. All five newcomers to the group, including himself, had been carrying money or saleable goods. All had been lured off the road to be strangled, then robbed.

  The missing men, he now saw, had gone to dig graves for them all: the farmer and his son, the trader, the wedding guest, the albino himself.

  The signal would be given at any moment, and then one of them would fling a cloth about his neck and jerk it tight

  With no time to warn the others, he had stood up as casually as he was able, and managed to produce a yawn. “I will relieve myself,” he muttered, and started toward the road. “Hurry back,” called out a voice behind him as he strode away from the terrible spot. “We are making tea. It will be ready soon.”

  The roads of India are unsafe after nightfall, but nowhere between Bareilly and Shahjahanpur had been as dangerous as that secluded place where the lonely albino had found companionship. Stumbling and panting in the darkness, he had followed the road for several miles before he felt safe enough to sleep, hidden beneath a thorn tree.

  After so many weeks his terror had faded, but Ghulam Ali had not forgotten his luck on that night. His chin on his chest as he sat outside the Englishman's gate, he was thanking God for his escape when the foreign woman's bent-over manservant summoned him into the house.

  The courier, who had never seen or spoken to a female member of Shaikh Waliullah's family, was reluctant to follow the servant who shambled in front of him toward the kitchen entrance. How, he wondered, had that great family descended to including foreigners among their women—females who showed themselves openly to men, even to servants like himself?

  He had seen English people on his journey to Calcutta. They had sat upright on horses or in carriages, with sour expressions on their faces, the men dressed in dusty black, the women clad in shockingly tight, stiff clothes that revealed the curve of their breasts. Instead of the graceful veils worn by Indian women, these females had worn baskets on their heads, covered with drooping ribbons and bobbing flowers. Unlike his own endlessly inquisitive people who noticed everything around them, these foreigners seemed to ignore even fellow travelers on the road.