by Thalassa Ali
Safiya Sultana, too, gave a satisfied nod, and pointed to an empty place near her. “It is a pity that my brother has guests,” she rumbled. “He would have been pleased to see you looking so pretty.”
It had taken the whole afternoon for the little servant to finish her work, and even then, Akhtar had complained at the lack of time.
“To prepare a bride takes days and days,” she had mourned as she rubbed Safiya's special mixture of almond oil, rose water, chickpea flour, and spices onto Mariana's dry skin. “There is so much that I must do to make you beautiful.”
“I am not a bride,” Mariana had pointed out. “I am only letting you do this because you want to,” she added, more forcefully than she intended.
Now, as she sat her perfumed self down near Safiya, she was glad of Akhtar's work. Some of that meticulous plucking had been painful, but at least she would look less of a fright for tonight's meeting with Hassan. Her hair, oiled and hennaed, now fell down her back in a silky, auburn-tinted braid. Her hands and face had been smoothed, her eyes carefully outlined with antimony. Her skin, now smelling of rose water and saffron, felt sensuous and velvety under her finely embroidered silks.
She fingered the pretty necklace of rubies and pearls that Safiya had sent into her room while she was dressing. Presumably, after Hassan came, he would eat his dinner with all of them, and then he and Mariana would meet alone in some private corner, or perhaps in the small room where they had spoken earlier. After their previous conversation he would, naturally, agree the divorce was inevitable. She would thank him, and that would be that.
They had been married for twenty-four months. She had loved and protected his son all that time, but had never come to know Hassan. Now it was too late. She pictured him leaving her for the last time, his bare feet silent on the covered floor.
But she must stop imagining her losses and concentrate on her new, unmarried life. She would certainly be well prepared for her next meeting with Lady Macnaghten. That meeting, with all its implications for her future, would be very soon, tomorrow, perhaps. After all, once Hassan had agreed to end their marriage, his insistence that she remain in the city would no longer apply.
She would leave in the morning. She needed to know the state of her uncle's health, and she needed to confront the Vulture. He must be told in plain language that she refused to spy for him. From the tone of his letter, poor Uncle Adrian was clearly desperate at all Clerk's dangerous intriguing.
Around her, the ladies prattled on about a coming family wedding. The bride-to-be, a pretty, plump-faced child, sat near Mariana, smiling in the evening lamplight. A sliver of wood protruded from one side of her nose, holding open the wound where her n'hut was to enter. From time to time she touched her nose and nodded to herself.
The sun had set hours before. The lamps flickered, throwing shadows against the wall, softening the features of the ladies, who shifted in their places, murmuring among themselves, their hands turning for emphasis, fingers extended. From time to time, each one looked over at Mariana and smiled approvingly.
None of them seemed to know….
Safiya had spoken little all evening. Now, after what seemed to be hours, she yawned. Mariana's finery weighed on her shoulders; her earlobes ached, pulled down by her long ruby earrings. She glanced through a window at the neighboring houses. Their windows had gone dark. What time was it? Surely last night's dinner had not been as late as this
“Akhtar,” called Safiya Sultana, “bring the food.” She raised her voice. “Hassan must have been delayed, wherever he is,” she announced to the room. “Do not worry, my child,” she added, reaching out to pat Mariana's knee. “He will, Inshallah, come to see you tomorrow morning. And then, tomorrow evening, Akhtar will put the kajal on your eyes again, and dress you in something else equally good. As I remember, we gave you five sets of wedding clothes.”
Her disappointment must have been transparent. Annoyed with herself, Mariana smoothed her gold-colored silks with an impatient hand. “But Bhaji,” she began, “I do not think—”
“Hush, child.” Safiya raised a warning finger. “There is no need to speak.”
Later, after everyone but Mariana had enjoyed a lavish dinner and the food had been taken away, Safiya again turned to her. “Now, Mariam,” she said quietly, “there is something we must discuss. I do not wish to frighten our family ladies, but we must decide what preparations will be needed to protect this house in case of violence in the city. I am confiding in you because, of all of us, you are Saboor's protector. It occurs to me that you might have some ideas on the subject.”
Flattered, Mariana sat straight, her energy returning as she imagined the haveli surrounded by a yelling mob, and herself in charge of its defense. “The kitchen entrance should be blocked off,” she offered quickly, remembering the open passageway connecting the kitchen to the family courtyard. “The main doors are thick enough to hold, but the back door from the kitchen courtyard might be battered down. And we should protect the upper windows. If anyone were to scale the outer walls, they could easily climb in from there.” She pointed to the shuttered windows overlooking the narrow street outside.
Safiya nodded seriously. “The old elephant doors might prove useful in closing off the passageway to the kitchen entrance.” She opened a carved silver box, lifted out a tray with wells filled with intriguing pastes and nuts, and removed a piece of thick-looking leaf.
“I had not even considered the windows,” she said as she scooped out a little white paste and spread it onto her leaf. “We will have to talk more about it in the morning.” She sighed. “I am going to bed after I have this pan.”
Mariana looked about her at the quiet room, now emptying of its occupants. Hassan had not come, but still the evening had offered her some small pleasure. There had been restfulness in the company of these undemanding ladies, who smiled at her as they sat comfortably on the floor. She closed her eyes as Safiya chewed beside her, imagining the reception a bride from this family would receive from the ladies of Weddington village, with their stays and bonnets and stiff chairs. After her own experiences in Calcutta, she did not wish to imagine how they would treat the poor girl
She wrenched her thoughts to the present. Hassan would come in the morning. After she met him, she would ask for a palanquin to deliver her to Shalimar.
Before leaving, she would kiss Saboor, and pray that it was not for the last time
Perhaps, but only perhaps, she would be allowed to come back and visit him. First, Hassan must agree. Then she must gain Uncle Adrian and Aunt Claire's permission to return. The Vulture would, of course, withdraw his support once she refused to spy for him. Aunt Claire was bound to make a scene, and not without reason. One of the points of their long journey had, after all, been for Mariana to rescue her reputation, not to shred it further by paying unexplained visits to native families.
If she were forbidden to see Saboor again, she must somehow turn her attention away from Qamar Haveli and its occupants. Even with her heart breaking, she must think of her future in Afghanistan.
She must, above all, be charming to Lady Macnaghten, the Envoy's wife.
When Safiya lurched, groaning, to her feet, and started toward the corridor, Mariana gathered up her yards of embroidered silk and trailed disconsolately behind her.
Her visit to the walled city had been a failure, far too brief, and full of misunderstandings. She had not spoken even once with the mysterious Shaikh Waliullah. For all her desperate desire to learn from Safiya Sultana, she had not asked her a single question. Even tonight, with Safiya sitting right beside her, she had been so absorbed in waiting for Hassan that she had squandered a whole evening's opportunity to gain knowledge. Unable for some unfathomable reason to make a clean break from Hassan, she had bungled their parting, and left herself open to hopeless longing.
She had tried to disengage her heart from Saboor, but had found herself watching him every moment, wishing he would come to her and breathe into her ear, as
he had done for half his life.
She sighed as she reached the end of the corridor and pushed her door curtain aside. For all that he had been present at two of her conversations with Hassan, Saboor had not seemed to understand that she was leaving him. Perhaps it was just as well. One parting, after all, would be enough for both of them.
As she lay in a shadowed corner of Mariam Bibi's bedchamber, Akhtar tried to push away her disappointment at the evening's failure.
It was Hassan Sahib, and not she, who should have been here.
She pulled her quilt over her shoulders as silently as she could, knowing how little she was wanted. Of course Mariam Bibi's objections to sharing her bedroom with a servant had fallen upon deaf ears. “No one sleeps alone in this house,” Safiya had decreed after the evening meal. “Since Saboor has gone to his cousins’ room tonight, Akhtar will stay with you.”
The whole household had waited breathlessly for this evening. Akhtar, of course, had received her own instructions immediately after Mariam's arrival at Qamar Haveli.
“Each of us must do her part by encouraging Mariam Bibi to remain with us,” Safiya Sultana had told Akhtar in the passageway, after calling her out of the sitting room. “It is you who will relax her. You will oil her and paint her with henna. It is you who will make her feel beautiful for my nephew. That is your duty. And stop pretending you do not understand what I mean,” she added, giving Akhtar a pointed look. “I saw you listening when Hassan Sahib told me of the British plan to dissolve his marriage.”
This morning, watching Mariam emerge shakily from her interview with Hassan, old Firoz had insisted that the moment had come, that the foreign lady was ripe for passion.
“Do you see that faraway look on her face?” she had whispered to Akhtar, pointing a gnarled finger at Mariam's back as the latter moved away. “She cannot help loving my Hassan, so tall, so handsome, the light of my eyes since his birth!”
Akhtar closed her eyes. Her task this afternoon had been so simple. She had needed only to take Mariam Bibi's best feature and make the very best of it. That feature, Akhtar knew, was her smile. Mariam had smiled only once during her stay, but in that moment Akhtar, who had previously thought Hassan Ali's wife awkwardly plain, had suddenly understood her beauty. Wide, feminine, and full of mischief, that smile had lent her face a joyful translucence, as if it were unexpectedly lit from within.
Akhtar's duty, then, had been to make Mariam Bibi happy enough to smile for her husband.
As she mixed rose water with powdered almonds and spices, she had concluded that the tiring arts she had learned from Firoz had brought her to this one great moment. Certain of her coming success, she had imagined Hassan Ali Khan arriving at the top of the stairs, and Mariam waiting for him in the sitting room, a queen among the other ladies. She pictured him sitting down beside his aunt, his eyes lowered to conceal his joy at the loveliness of his wife.
The dreams she had reported to Safiya Sultana, Akhtar had told herself, would be nothing compared to the honor of delivering Mariam Bibi to her husband, beautiful, smiling, and ready for his embraces.
She yawned, exhausted from the efforts of the day. Instructed by old Firoz, she had not only done her work, she had also talked, persuading Mariam of the advantages of remaining at Qamar Haveli. While washing Mariam's hair, she had told her of Safiya Sultana's greatness. She had related the stories she had heard of Safiya's wisdom, of her far-reaching knowledge, of her ability to help those in distress who were brought into her presence, and even some who were not. While scrubbing and painting Mariam's feet, she had described her own arrival at the haveli and the many kindnesses she had received. While removing the hair from Mariam's legs, she had recited one of Safiya's poems.
But there had been other information to convey. Nudged by Firoz, Akhtar had hinted at the pleasures this marriage offered Mariam, the passion Hassan Ali would surely ignite in her when they were alone, so different, Firoz had assured Akhtar, from the torments of her own experience.
Perhaps Mariam had not understood Akhtar's suggestions, for she had closed her eyes and turned her head away. But Firoz, who had taken the sheets from Mariam's marriage bed two years earlier, had whispered that Akhtar must go on with her counseling, for Bibi was still a virgin and needed her advice.
“It was not my Hassan Ali's doing that there was no blood on those sheets,” the old woman had declared later, glancing over her shoulder to make sure they were not overheard. “He would never leave his bride unsatisfied. But,” she had added with a shrug, “the foreigner was alone then, with no family members to encourage her, as our brides are encouraged. Perhaps she panicked. Perhaps he was kind. Inshallah,” she had added fiercely, “such a disaster will not take place again.”
But nothing had happened as it should have. First Mariam Bibi had allowed the removal of only part of her body hair, and not even the most important part. What, Akhtar had fretted as she put away her threads and her pastes, would old Firoz say if she knew? What would Hassan Ali think when he discovered his wife's unremoved pubic hair?
Second and worse, it seemed that the lady was still bent on divorce. When Akhtar had taken one of Mariam's slim hands to decorate it with fine henna arabesques, Mariam had jerked it away. “Not my hands,” she had said sharply, as if Akhtar's beautiful work were somehow distasteful or wrong. “My countrymen do not understand these things. You may decorate my feet as much as you like, since you have already mixed the paste. They will not show when I return to Shalimar.”
Return to Shalimar. Mariam's tone had been firm when she said those words, but Akhtar had noted with relief that her eyes had wavered.
“Do not worry, child,” Firoz had assured Akhtar over the afternoon meal. “My Hassan Ali will change Mariam's mind for her. All will be well when he arrives this evening and they see each other by lamplight. Yes, indeed,” she had added, nodding emphatically. “The evening will tell.”
But Hassan had not come, and the awakening desire Akhtar had carefully nurtured all day would have to be revived before he came again.
Akhtar shifted miserably under her quilt. Near to weeping with disappointment, she had put away Mariam's lovely gold clothes and taken from the small trunk the garment that Mariam insisted upon wearing to bed: a voluminous embroidered dress that fell from her shoulders to her feet.
Mariam now sat, her back against the wall, reading a letter by the light of a small oil lamp, the paper smoothed out on her upraised knees. Like her clothes, the letter in Mariam's hands looked foreign. How, Akhtar wondered, could Bibi be looking at those strange markings with such perfect, worried understanding?
Curtain rings clicked quietly.
On the bed, Mariam looked up, startled, the paper fluttering in her hands as Hassan closed the curtain behind him and entered her room, bringing with him the heady scent of pure amber.
Akhtar held her breath. Intent upon his wife, Hassan had not seen her or sensed her presence. She rose silently upon one elbow.
“I am late,” he said simply, then sat on the edge of the bed, the lamp's flame casting a warm light on his clothes. Her letter on her knees, Mariam Bibi watched him warily, her loosened hair falling over her shoulders in auburn waves.
“You missed dinner,” she said, a little tremulously.
Had Hassan known Akhtar was present, he would not then have reached forward, gold gleaming dully on one wrist, and laid his hands on his wife's feet.
Mariam Bibi resisted him at first. She pressed herself against the wall behind her as he ran his fingers over the contours of her carefully painted toes, her high arches and her narrow ankles, bereft now of their fine hair.
“Oh, sacred bird,” he murmured, his eyes on hers, “Be my guide in the way of my desires, For the journey I propose is a long one, And I am new to traveling.”
“New?” Bibi breathed. “But you have already—”
“For all that you behave like one,” he interrupted softly, “you are no spy.”
Ashamed to have seen Hassan
Ali Khan lean forward and cover his wife's mouth with his own, Akhtar rose silently, her back turned to protect the lady's self-respect, but as she padded barefoot toward the doorway, she heard him sigh.
Unable to stop herself, she glanced over her shoulder.
Mariam Bibi's eyes had lost their focus. Her mouth began to open as Hassan put his hands on her knees, and pushed them a little way apart.
It was a small gesture: a suggestion, not a command, but it was enough. As Akhtar moved the curtain carefully aside and slipped from the room, she knew that Mariam Bibi had abandoned the world and entered the dwelling-place of the senses.
Akhtar spent the rest of the night in the passageway. It was cold there, and she caught a chill without the quilt she had abandoned in the corner of the bedchamber, but the sounds she had hoped for came from behind the curtain, whispers, rustling, then a small sob. There had also, as she had feared, been a gasp of surprise from Hassan, but to her relief, it had been followed by muffled laughter.
She smiled to herself as she shivered on the tiled floor. She would forget neither this moment of triumph, nor the verse Hassan had murmured to his wife as she listened, an ear to the closed curtain.
Tomorrow morning when the dawn prayer was finished and she gave Safiya Sultana the good news, she would finally lay her treasure at the king's door.
January 15, 1841
Mariana awoke to the sound of the call to prayer. Her eyes half-open, she watched the door curtain sway to a stop, then hang silently on its rings.
He was gone.
Akhtar's corner, of course, was empty. The second bed had not been slept in. Its padded quilt was still covered, as it had been last night, with carefully arranged packets of clothing from Mariana's native trousseau.
The events of last night had really happened. Smears of dried blood marked the bedsheet. Mariana's nightdress, too, was stained. Her unused bolster had fallen to the floor. She closed her eyes, remembering the pillow she had slept on: warm, human, a man's chest. Beneath the amber he wore, Hassan's skin had smelled hot, as if it had been scorched.