A Beggar at the Gate

by Thalassa Ali

  “Hmm.” Mariana could not agree to such an obvious untruth. Lady Macnaghten, stiff, awkward rider that she was, had been quite mad to ride Ali Baba, and he had simply taken advantage of her. But one thing was clear—the woman had nerve: first to have ridden the Arab, and second to have defended him, however wrongly, against the villagers. Courage was the last virtue Mariana had expected to find in Lady Macnaghten.

  “Mr. Clerk advised me this morning not to ride such a difficult horse. My husband, too, begged me never to do it.” Lady Macnaghten pushed her hair from her face and sighed tragically. “I only wanted to give him a little exercise.”

  Mariana nodded silently. She had done more than that. She had worn him quite out.

  “I am afraid of what they will say.” Lady Macnaghten's voice trembled. “I fear they will all laugh at me.”

  “Laugh at you? There's no one at camp but us.”

  “Mr. Clerk will laugh at me. He's not a nice man, you know.

  He'll tell the other officers, and they'll tell more people. You do not know how much I dread being talked about.”

  Speechless at the irony of that remark, Mariana could only look away.

  “What am I to do?” Lady Macnaghten went on, poking dispiritedly at her ruined habit. “How can I return to camp like this?” She swallowed. “I have been unkind to you,” she whispered. “I thought you had—but you hadn't. My husband told me all about your wedding night. I do not know what to do about Charles, after he did that awful—” She looked away. “He has done it before. That is how I knew.”

  Mariana did not reply. Instead she nudged Ali Baba closer, and brushed the dust from Lady Macnaghten's riding clothes. She knocked the dents from the top hat and set it on Lady Macnaghten's head.

  “Why,” Lady Macnaghten added, her eyes still averted, “are you being good to me after I have been so cruel?”

  She had been cruel, but now she was bruised, frightened, and as disheveled as Mariana had ever been. And she had had the nerve to ride an impossible horse against everyone's advice, and to stand up to native villagers in spite of her fear.

  Without answering, Mariana took out her pocket-handkerchief and carefully wiped the dust and the tears of shame from Lady Macnaghten's face.

  So,” Yusuf Bhatti asked that same afternoon as he and Hassan returned from Batala for the second time that week, “now that Sher Singh is preparing to attack Lahore, is there a chance that the Rani will soften her position and allow him to rule?”

  “No chance at all. She has been buying every general she can find with cash and treasure. Sher Singh is doing the same, of course. Between them, they have entirely corrupted our magnificent army.” Hassan slapped dust from his clothes. “The sirdars are choosing sides now, each man desperate to be in the winning camp.” He sighed. “I suppose one cannot blame people for trying to save themselves when their very lives and fortunes are at stake.

  “I tell you, Yusuf,” he added as they edged their way past a file of heavily loaded camels, “more than anything, I fear the double-dealing of the British. From what I can tell, their Political Agent is deeply involved in the dispute between the Rani and Sher Singh. He has been making promises and giving encouragement to both sides. Few people see it, Yusuf, but I believe the British are the real enemy of the Punjab.”

  “I hate to mention this, but have you considered your wife's position?” Yusuf paused, choosing his words carefully. “Is it possible that the same Political Agent has ordered her to—”

  “No,” Hassan snapped. “She is no spy. But then there is—”

  He looked away from his friend, his shoulders sagging.

  Yusuf sighed. The woman had been in Lahore for only two days, and he could see that she was already giving Hassan trouble. The poor fellow had no luck with females. It should have been enough that his first wife died

  Like the Shaikh's talkative follower who had broached the subject on that June afternoon, Yusuf believed Hassan should marry again. Ever since the Englishwoman's departure two years earlier, Yusuf had done his best to hammer sense into his friend. Prevented by delicacy from inquiring into Hassan's private feelings about the woman, he had nonetheless offered his advice, first suggesting, then encouraging, and finally ordering Hassan to take himself another, Punjabi wife.

  “Our women are beautiful,” he had insisted. “They are the envy of India. A good Punjabi wife will give you six, seven more sons.”

  But Hassan had remained immovable. “Yusuf,” he had said finally, “our family men do not keep two wives.”

  Yusuf had dropped the subject after that. There was no sense in arguing with the Waliullahs. Like all mystics, they were an impractical lot who relied upon dreams and visions when they ought to be making sense. It had been exactly like Shaikh Waliullah, God bless him, to force his son to wed a foreign woman because of a horse-groom's dream, and it was just like the son to stubbornly refuse to see the hopelessness of his marriage.

  What did Hassan see in that noisy, unmanageable woman, beyond her fondness for his son? Surely he had not come to love her….

  As they waited for her return, Yusuf had tried to forget what he had witnessed two years before: that same female writhing on the floor of her tent in the agonies of snakebite, her clothing bunching about her legs. It had covered him with shame then, to have seen the face of his friend's second wife. That he had seen more than her face was too horrible to dwell upon.

  To be sure, she had proved herself courageous by rescuing Saboor twice from serious danger, but in Yusuf's view nothing she had done warranted Hassan's chaining himself to her forever. If only there were some way to get him out of that mistaken alliance….

  “The British are trying to dissolve my marriage,” Hassan said abruptly.

  “What? How do you know?” Yusuf slapped at a fly on his horse's neck, concealing his satisfaction at this news.

  “Their Political Agent and her uncle brought my wife to Qamar Haveli yesterday. They tried to make my father agree to a divorce. The reasons they offered were perfect nonsense. When my father asked her straight out whether she wished to divorce me, she could not reply. When I spoke to her myself later on, she became confused.” He smiled bitterly. “I don't think she even remembered what they told her to say.”

  “But why would the British interfere with your family matters? Surely they have more serious work to do.”

  “Perhaps they wish to sever my wife's connection with Lahore before Sher Singh attacks. If so, then at least they are honorable enough to protect one of their women.”

  Yusuf nodded. “When will Sher Singh march on Lahore?”

  Hassan shrugged. “Soon, if things continue as they are. By the time this contest is finished, nothing will be left of the kingdom.”

  A hollow booming came from the direction of the city. Yusuf raised his head. “Artillery fire! What are those fools doing now?”

  As both horses lunged into a gallop, the two men leaned forward, their loose clothing flapping behind them.

  A messenger rode out through the Delhi Gate and waved to them. “Come quickly,” he shouted above the bustle of the crowded roadway. There is a great tamasha outside the Fort. They are blowing men from cannon!”

  On the plain below the Citadel's walls, a large body of infantry, some in flowing native dress, others in cast-off European coats and cross belts, had been marshaled to form three sides of a square. Inside the square, a trio of twelve-pound cannon had been set up to face the open side. Trussed and tied over the mouths of the guns were three men, one only a boy, scarcely old enough to have a beard.

  “Sons of foulness,” Yusuf cursed loudly as he and Hassan guided their mounts through a thick press of shouting onlookers, all striving for a better view. “Which sons of shame have done this?”

  “Lower your voice, Yusuf,” Hassan cautioned. “This is what the Rani does to please the British. She cannot give them the Koh-i-noor diamond, so she executes Afghans to please them.”

  The condemned men did not flinch. No
ne of the three faces showed fear, not even the boy's, but their bodies had already betrayed them. Yusuf could see that their hands and feet had gone rigid. The boy's shalwar was soaked from his groin to his ankles.

  “Look there.” Yusuf gestured. “They have caught your trader and his fat-faced assistant.”

  Across the firing ground, guarded by soldiers, a dozen more Afghans squatted in a row, their heads bared, their arms tied behind their backs. Some had narrow, hawk-like faces and some did not, but all had the same emotionless demeanor as the men on the guns. All save two were dressed in coarse, ragged clothing.

  Hassan followed his friend's gaze, then wheeled his horse.

  “You said you did not trust Zulmai and his friend,” Yusuf argued, as they began to circle the crowd. “Perhaps you were right.”

  Hassan stared in surprise. “Those men are human beings, Yusuf.”

  He kicked his horse into a gallop, and charged toward the prisoners, with Yusuf beside him. Someone shouted an order. The three cannon fired, almost in unison.

  A cloud of black smoke obscured the scene in front of the gun barrels, then drifted toward the two horsemen, filling their eyes as they calmed their startled mounts.

  When the smoke lifted, Yusuf grunted in disgust.

  The area in front of the cannon had been sprayed with blood. Body parts littered the dirt. Prodded by their officers, a few reluctant soldiers tied their turban ends over their faces and moved to cut down the shredded remains that still hung from the gun barrels.

  Yusuf noticed a tall European in dusty black clothes standing at the front of the pushing crowd, observing the carnage with undisguised satisfaction. While Yusuf watched, the man glanced toward the waiting prisoners, caught the Afghan trader's eye, and started abruptly.

  “What is this?” Hassan had reined in his horse. He glared down upon the Punjabi officer guarding the trussed prisoners. “What have these men done? Who has ordered these executions?”

  From the corner of his eye, Yusuf watched the tall foreigner move closer, then hesitate, listening.

  The officer shrugged. “The Rani's orders,” he replied. “These men are unregistered criminals.”

  Beside Zulmai, young Habibullah looked up, hope lighting his face. Behind them both, the other prisoners knelt impassively on the ground.

  Hassan pointed to the two traders. “These men are no criminals. I know them personally. Let them go at once.”

  “They are spies for the Rani's enemies,” offered a soldier, pointing his gun barrel into Habibullah's face for emphasis.

  “No, they are spies for the British,” put in another.

  “Let them go,” Hassan repeated.

  The officer spat. “Pathans are vermin. They rob and beat people for nothing. They kill the English who travel through the passes to Afghanistan.” He gestured vaguely. “Even if these men have not yet committed such crimes, they will. They always do. Why should we wait? We may as well kill them now.”

  “Let them go, son of a pig!” Yusuf bellowed. “These men are not even Pathans. Can you not tell a Tajik when you see one?”

  “Wait, Yusuf,” Hassan murmured. He dismounted and approached the officer. “Come this way if you will,” he said politely, gesturing away from the soldiers and their prisoners. “We can speak over there.”

  As Hassan and the officer moved away, Yusuf looked among the crowd for the black-coated Englishman, but he was gone.

  A moment later, Hassan and the officer returned. While Yusuf watched, the officer jerked his head toward Zulmai and Habibullah. “You may leave now,” he grunted, then glowered his own startled men into silence before pointing toward the back of the crowd. “Your camel is over there. As for the rest of you,” he added, jerking his head, “go.”

  “But why are you setting them free? You have only killed six of them!” protested someone in the crowd.

  “Do not let them go! Kill them, kill them!” shouted the others.

  The officer waved his musket menacingly. “Disperse!” he thundered. “Disperse, before we kill you instead.”

  “DO NOT cut it,” said Zulmai sharply a little while later, his upper arms still tied behind his back. “That's my turban.”

  “So it is.” Yusuf sheathed his knife, then smiled crookedly at the sight of Hassan carefully untying the yards of coarse cotton fabric holding Zulmai's arms together.

  Habibullah had already kissed their hands. Zulmai had nodded his thanks, and the twelve other, ragged men had filed past, each one with his right hand pressed over his heart. Zulmai did not smile, but when his arms were free he nodded seriously.

  “O heart, when a time of sorrow overtakes thee,” he murmured, “It will vanish if thou hast a kind friend. Friends are commonplace in times of comfort, but in a time of trouble, one friend is enough.”

  Hassan smiled. “You flatter me, Zulmai, to be quoting Jami over such a small matter.”

  Later, as they rode toward the city, Yusuf glanced at Hassan's unadorned hands and let out his barking laugh. “I hope,” he said, “that you weren't too attached to those gold rings of yours.”

  January 14, 1841

  When Hassan Ali Khan's foreign wife had arrived at Qamar Haveli days earlier after a two-year absence, all the Waliullah women, even Safiya Sultana herself, had hurried to the windows to look down past the filigreed shutters and onto the scene in the courtyard below.

  Little Akhtar had stood with the other servants at a window with a lesser view, sharing the ladies’ pleasure as they watched a small child who resembled Hassan Ali Khan climb out of the palanquin, then gallop around the canvas baffle and into the arms of his waiting father. But it had been Hassan's foreign wife who interested the girl most. Revealed in a horse-groom's dream as a lioness, she had rescued Saboor twice from Maharajah Ranjit Singh, thus meriting the honor of becoming Shaikh Waliullah's daughter-in-law.

  While the ladies exclaimed over Saboor's beauty, his healthy energy, and his father's obvious joy at his return, Akhtar had wondered about the woman who had performed those feats of bravery and won the family's heart. Who was she, and what did she look like? Surely she must be tall and queenly, as elegant as her husband, someone whose superior character was written in her every gesture. …

  Akhtar had been stunned at the disheveled figure that emerged from the palanquin next—a figure so odd that Akhtar had thought she must be dreaming. The woman's boldly striped garment, shockingly tight at the bodice, had been so wide from the waist down that her legs might have been terribly deformed for all anyone could tell. A basket headdress obscured her face. Escaped hair tumbled carelessly onto her shoulders. She was the strangest creature Akhtar had ever seen, but when a foreign man in black dismounted and disappeared with her into the Shaikh's sitting room, it was plain that this woman was indeed Saboor Baba's legendary guardian.

  The ladies and the other servants had drifted away after that, to await the woman's arrival upstairs, but Akhtar had not left her post at the window. Anxious to see the extraordinary creature again, she had watched Shaikh Waliullah and two foreigners emerge from the sitting room, to be replaced shortly afterward by Hassan Ali Khan himself, who swept over the threshold in his long embroidered coat, the child Saboor in his arms.

  It had been Akhtar who had witnessed Hassan's foreign wife emerging from the Shaikh's sitting room. It had been she who had reported that, instead of climbing the stone stairs to the family quarters, the foreigner had reentered her palanquin and left the haveli.

  That unexpected and disappointing departure had been explained later, when Hassan Ali Khan brought his son upstairs and lowered himself to the sheet-covered floor beside his aunt while the other children, boys and girls, clustered, crooning, about Saboor.

  “The British are asking for our marriage to be dissolved,” Hassan had told his aunt quietly, overheard only by Akhtar, who should have removed herself from the room when he entered, but who had remained instead, wrapped to her eyes, for decency's sake, in a large veil. “They say Mariam agrees, bu
t I believe they are forcing her.”

  He gestured tiredly as Saboor rushed away with two older children. “Those people have been meddling in all our affairs. …”

  Safiya Sultana had laid a plump hand on his knee. “Do not worry, my dear,” she had said in her husky voice. “Allah is kind. Let her come here. Let us see what can be done.”

  When the same palanquin returned the following morning, the ladies crowded the windows once again. This time Hassan Ali Khan's wife did not depart. Instead, she disappeared into the doorway that led upstairs.

  Moments later, a rustling in the verandah announced her arrival.

  Akhtar stared openmouthed at the creature who stood uncertainly in the doorway on none-too-clean stocking feet, her skirts billowing about her, her bodice revealing the swell of her breasts, a headdress decorated with dusty ribbons dangling from her hand.

  Close up, she was startlingly unattractive. Her features appeared sharp and intense. The front of her hair was dry, and her skin looked chapped. Akhtar, who had been studying the beautification of ladies for months, found herself longing to do something about the woman's hands. But for all the foreigner's plainness, when Saboor Baba ran to her and she knelt in the doorway to embrace him, her face softened and took on a curious beauty.

  “Peace,” rumbled Safiya Sultana, approaching them, the silk-wrapped Qur'an in her hand, “and welcome to your home.”

  Hassan's wife jumped to her feet and saluted Safiya respectfully, the closed fingers of her right hand to her forehead, while Saboor darted ahead of her into the room. “Peace upon you, Bhaji,” she replied in slow, perfect Urdu. “Forgive me, I—”

  “There is nothing to forgive.” Holding the book high, Safiya Sultana motioned for her to walk under it. “Come,” she added as she tucked the book beneath her arm and moved to her usual place against one of the walls. “Sit with me.”

  As she poured a tumbler of water for the new arrival, Akhtar glanced up to see the woman sitting stiffly upright beside Safiya Sultana, as if her clothing would not allow her to rest.