Tiger Claws

by John Speed

  “Tell me what’s troubling you, father?”

  “That you should call me that, for one thing. Have I ever been a father to you? When things were hard for you in Poona? I could have protected you from Jijabai! I could have taken your part!”

  “You did your best.”

  “No. I failed you. Just as I failed Lakshman. And Hanuman. And Shahu, too.”

  Everything she thinks to say seems empty. She should argue … she should comfort. Instead she merely sits beside him.

  “Maybe Dadaji had the right idea. When his time came, he shaved his head and became a sadhu. At least now he spends his time in penance, winning the favor of the gods instead of disappointing those he loves.”

  “But he was old, father, and his time had come. You have much to do. You must not chastise yourself. It is the gods that choose our ends. How shall we avoid the twists and turns of karma?”

  Tanaji thinks about this for a while, then shakes his head. “I fear Lakshman is ruined. When I look at him, I cringe.”

  “Many men bear battle scars, father.”

  “It’s not his face that’s scarred, but his soul. He’s so full of anger.”

  “It must have been hard for Lakshman, father.”

  “But see what I have done … Just made things worse! And now I abandon Shahu when he most needs my help! I was his lieutenant. Now out of cowardice and anger, I resigned when he most needs me. How he must despise me!”

  “I’m sure he doesn’t! And you wouldn’t have done this unless you thought he’d be better off with some other lieutenant.”

  “I thought only of myself. I never guessed that he would turn to Hanuman in my place. Now I’ve placed my other son in danger. There’s no way to fix it. I’ve made a mess. Each step I take brings misery.”

  She hears the choked sound of Tanaji weeping, and without thinking puts her arm across his shoulder. His back is broad and strong, but wracked with sobs. So they sit for a while, as they evening breeze stirs around them.

  “You’ve done much good. How you cared for Shahu and your twin sons! Surely you must place those good deeds in the balance of your thought. Do they not outweigh these small missteps?”

  He lifts his head to look at her. She feels, for a moment, that she should wipe away his tears, but she thinks this would just embarrass him.

  “Why do you act as though your life is at an end? Do you think your store of good deeds is empty? Even a dry well may fill again, father!”

  “You’re right,” he says after a long time. But then his face changes as another thought flits across his mind. “Your servant girl …”

  “Jyoti?” Maya says, smiling.

  “Nirmala won’t let her marry Hanuman. Says she’s too poor. How can he be happy with a poor wife?”

  “Maybe she can get money someplace. Maybe Shivaji …”

  “Nirmala ordered Shahu not to help her. She said it would be as though Hanuman were marrying Shivaji.”

  “Foolishness. That’s no reason at all.” Maya stands, and Tanaji gets up, afraid he’s disturbed her after her kind words. “I must go, father,” Maya bows. “I have not much time. Those girls take all my thought. You are a good man.”

  He stands and bows to her. She calls him “father,” with a voice so soft and warm, it seems the sun has risen. I might yet do some good, he thinks. I might. I might.

  What a dreadful place is India.

  Hot and dusty or wet and musty. Never comfortable. Never easy. Nothing the way it ought be: the food a horror, more spice than meat; the cities a disaster, filled with crushing mobs, all of them trying to rob you directly or indirectly; the roads no more than trails; the rich extravagantly wealthy; the poor near starving. The officials he has met are either pompous, self-aggrandizing buffoons, or servile, sniveling toadies—but all of them ready to do anything for baksheesh. The farangs are no better—the very worst of Europe has found its way to Hindustan.

  Who can understand the ways of fate? How odd that he should stumble into this lot, he thinks. These Marathis, Shivaji’s people, have a core of honesty and courage that sets them apart. Few of the farangs he’s spoken with even know of them, and those that do dismiss them, either lumping them in with the Bijapuris or calling them tribals and shaking their heads. “Stick to the Muslims,” most tell him. “That’s where the money is.”

  True, O’Neil had come to India to get rich. He won’t go home unless he has enough money to build a noble life. But he doesn’t much like the farangs here; the Portuguese shun him ever since the death of Da Gama; the Dutch shun him because he is a Catholic; and what few English there are, shun him because he’s Irish. The Indian Muslims ignore him altogether.

  Only among these Marathis has he found a sense of comradeship or honor, or most important, a place to laugh.

  For their part, the Marathis seem to enjoy him. Sometimes he feels like a trained monkey. When he walks down the market in his high leather boots, a gawking crowd forms. Children sneak in to watch him bathe, even adults huddle nearby, staring with wide eyes at his pale, freckled chest and its mat of copper hair.

  So O’Neil now finds himself in Welhe, making granadas. It’s strange that these simple items are considered to be some sort of farang magic, thinks O’Neil. The Hindis, who have embraced the cannon and the matchlock so completely, have some sort of terror of granadas. They’re simple enough to make: hollow balls of bronze, packed with Chinese powder and bits of steel and a paper fuse.

  But O’Neil has no bronze, so he’s using balls of fired clay, which he has heard will work if the walls are thick enough, and steel is scarce, so he packs the Chinese powder with sharp gravel. He’s tried a few, lighting the fuse and watching it burn down before heaving it as far as he can, praying that the damn thing won’t blow up in his hand.

  They will do.

  O’Neil sits cross-legged beneath a mango tree far from the encampment, about a hundred unglazed balls sitting empty near his knees. He looks up to see Hanuman walking cautiously toward him. O’Neil laughs. If he’s crazy enough to come there, he’s welcome.

  “How is it going?” Hanuman asks, taking a place across from O’Neil.

  “Sure, good,” O’Neil answers.

  Hanuman watches fascinated as O’Neil scoops powder mixture into a clay ball, cuts a length of fuse, and packs the ball with a wad of cotton. As he starts to melt wax on the opening, using a butter lamp, O’Neil shakes his head and chuckles. “We maybe die together, Hanuman.” Hanuman tries to laugh. When the granada is complete, O’Neil tosses it casually to Hanuman, who catches it in his lap, eyes full of terror.

  “Not banging, Hanuman,” O’Neil tells him. “Must make fire for banging, or strong hit.”

  “How long until you are done, Onil?”

  “Maybe sundown,” O’Neil answers.

  “Need any help?”

  “I think men maybe very scared of granadas, Hanuman. Maybe too scared for helping?”

  “Maybe,” Hanuman laughs nervously.

  “Bijapuris come soon, Hanuman?” O’Neil asks, as he starts another.

  “Maybe.”

  “Can make many granadas, Hanuman. Who will throw?”

  Hanuman shakes his head. “You can teach us how to throw, farang?”

  “Sure,” O’Neil answers. “Some men maybe die. You understand?”

  Hanuman nods, his face tight, and it seems to O’Neil that he’s working up the nerve to ask a hard question. At last Hanuman proves him right. “You have a wife, Onil?”

  “Wife dead. Why? Maybe you have a sister?”

  Hanuman looks shocked. O’Neil tries to restrain his amusement. From what he knows of these people, he can imagine how shocking the idea of O’Neil and Hanuman’s sister must be.

  “No sister, no sister!” Hanuman says, laughing as he realizes that O’Neil is teasing him. Hanuman looks O’Neil over, as though considering how much to reveal. He’s going to tell me a secret, O’Neil realizes. I’m a damned farang, and it makes no difference what you tell a damn
ed farang. I’m lower than a barber, and men will tell their barbers anything.

  Soon Hanuman says: “I have a woman I like, but I cannot marry her. My mother does not like her, I think. Maybe you know her, Onil. She is Jyoti, the servant of that nautch girl, Maya.”

  O’Neil tosses a newly finished bomb to Hanuman. “I know that one. Why servant girl, Hanuman? Why not nautch girl? She is pretty, eh?”

  Hanuman seems amused. “She’s a nautch girl, Onil. Not suitable, you understand? Also, her family. She is a something, you understand?”

  O’Neil isn’t sure what sort of something the nautch girl would be that would make her even more unsuitable. An orphan, maybe? He seems to remember that Maya is an orphan. Then a thought occurs to him; he remembers the sword that nautch girl gave to Shivaji, the Solingen blade with the six-pointed stars engraved on the steel. “That nautch girl, that Maya. Her father is a farang?”

  “I think maybe yes. But I think her father is dead now.”

  “Ahcha,” O’Neil answers. What does that make her? he wonders. Makes her an outcaste, I suppose, not a fit companion for a Hindu. And then an image occurs to him unbidden: Maya walking back from her bath, her hair flowing unbraided in the breeze, her skin shining in the sunlight.

  And a thought strikes him—one both practical and pleasant. He thinks about voicing it aloud, but on second thought, he holds his tongue. He’s managed fine without a woman so far. But as he tries to work, his mind seems intent on conjuring up images he has until now kept at bay, and the woman he imagines is one fair and slender, with burning, gold-flecked eyes.

  CHAPTER 24

  Outside it is bright afternoon, but in this part of the Bijapur palace, it might be midnight. Some of the people waiting in the line cough from the smoke of the torches. Just ahead, someone has overturned a narrow wooden box, because the opening grows smaller and higher every hour, and many of those in line are now too short to see.

  Of course, those who get the best view also get the worst smells. For manacled as he is, the prisoner has few options. His pants are stained with urine and excrement. Once an hour, the hourglass sands run out. A weary old mason ambles forward with a wet lump of mortar, a well-worn trowel, and a single brick. The corridor echoes the scraping of the mortar and the ringing of trowel as he taps the brick in place.

  When they see the mighty Hindu general kneeling in his own excrement, what do they think? That ruin may come to anyone? That in the end, even the greatest warrior must soil himself like a baby?

  A one-eyed man lingers while the others peer into the shadows and move on. When others stay too long, the guards scowl and poke them away, but this man has been free with his baksheesh and they leave him alone.

  At one point the corridor echoes with the bang of an opening door, and the clack of thick heels on stone. A huge, heavy-set noble stomps down the hall, a little boy scurrying ahead of him. Bright rings glitter on his heavy fingers. He scoops up the boy and lifts him so he can look. The boy giggles. After a moment the man sets him down, and glances inside himself, taking a moment to spit into the cell before he leads the boy away. The guards bow until they hear the palace door slam shut.

  The next time the hourglass is turned, the guards push everyone aside; they even hold the mason back. At their nod, the one-eyed man steps onto the overturned box and tosses a brass flask into the cell; it clatters across the stone floor and rests against the prisoner’s knees. This moment has cost him twenty rupees.

  Shahji looks up at the one-eyed man. For a moment he seems to recognize the face. But no, the general thinks, for he knows no one with a face scarred so, with one eye ruined so. He considers mouthing some word of a thanks. But how will he reach that flask, just inches from his knee, and even if he could, how would he open it, and even if he opened it, how would he drink? Thirsty as he is, the gesture seems to him most cruel.

  Shahji prays to all the gods that he might die, but from his lips what comes is only a long and incoherent moan.

  The sultana still sits upon the throne, still hidden beneath a mountain of green velvet, but the faces of the nobles turn her way no longer. Instead they cluster around the towering form of Afzul Khan as he holds forth, standing with his back to the queen. “This is what comes of pandering to infidels!” Afzul Khan cries, his neck swollen with rage. “We must only crush them! We must grind their idols into dust!”

  He is only starting to warm to his subject, however, when the major domo calls out: “His excellency Ali Rashid, ambassador and messenger of Prince Aurangzeb, Viceroy of the Deccan!”

  A young man dressed in black robes shot with silver walks confidently forward. Ambassador Rashid moves to the dais, and makes a sweeping bow.

  “Your highness,” he says in a clear voice that carries easily through the hall, “I bring you greetings.” He holds out a roll of parchment heavy with ribbons and seals. “Madam, sadly the urgent nature of my mission prohibits the exchange of pleasantries. I beg you read this letter straightaway.” He holds out the parchment until Wali Khan, with that special care that men of size are apt to use, picks his way down to receive it.

  Soon all is quiet except the ticking of the Persian clock. Wali Khan breaks the seals and unrolls the parchment. Slowly, his fat lips moving, he reads it silently. Then he shuts his eyes and stands as still as stone.

  “Read it,” comes the sultana’s muffled voice.

  Wali Khan’s face voice is tight. “‘To our much loved servant, the sultana of Bijapur, greetings.’”

  “Servant!” bellows Afzul Khan. “He says that? Servant?”

  “Let him read, general,” says the queen.

  “That is not right!” Afzul Khan protests, turning his angry eyes to the messenger.

  The ambassador lifts his head proudly. “I am the embassy of the Great Mogul and my person is inviolate,” he says softly. The messenger is weaponless, but his soldiers place their hands upon their sword hilts. Afzul Khan glares at him, nostrils flaring.

  Wali Khan continues. “‘It has come to our notice that Bijapur has imprisoned Shahji, the father of our ally, Lord Shivaji of Poona.’”

  An angry murmur stirs through the crowd of nobles. They look to Afzul Khan, but the general stands mute. He appears baffled: eyes wide, mouth working, speechless. He may be brave and full of bluster—but he has no skills, the nobles now realize, to respond to the subtle thrusts of a Mogul ambassador.

  Desperately nobles shift their gaze to the dais. Surely the sultana can answer. Or Wali Kahn, or Whisper. Even Afzul Khan turns around to look.

  “Fetch him,” comes the sultana’s muffled voice.

  The nobles explode into anguished cries, but Wali Khan looks to his guards and lifts his chin. Without a word, the guards begin to move. “No!” shouts Afzul Khan, glaring at Wali Khan. His eyeballs seem about to burst from their sockets. “No!” he says again, this time quietly. “No, I will do it.”

  He turns and stomps from the hall. The nobles watch him go. The wiser ones, sensing the unexpected shift in the mantle of command, bow appreciatively toward the silver throne.

  “Lord Ambassador, how kind of you to bring us this letter,” pipes Whisper, his voice barely perceptible. “We might have thought to receive it from the hands of our dear friend, Shaista Khan. Is he not well?”

  “Prince Dara requested General Shaista’s presence. Viceroy Aurangzeb, concerned for General Shahji’s safety, sent me. I am an unworthy substitute, I fear. My main advantage was proximity.” The ambassador waves his hand, the vague, unconcerned gesture of a man born to nobility. “I was so anxious to come, I fear I even outpaced the small honor guard the viceroy sent with me. No matter, they shall be here presently.”

  “We shall be glad to welcome them, Lord Ambassador,” Whisper says. “The guesthouse of Shaista Khan—”

  “They are too many for that guesthouse, I would think.”

  “How many are there, Lord Ambassador?” Whisper asks.

  “Some five thousand, with horse and elephant, Lord Khaswaja
ra,” the ambassador says. “Imperial guards detailed by the viceroy. I am most honored to be favored by their company.”

  Whisper’s eyes grow wide, but he recovers himself. “It is no less honor than you deserve, I’m sure.” The ambassador inclines his head, his point driven home.

  “Bijapur welcomes you, lord. We are pleased to hear that Shaista Khan is well,” comes the sultana’s voice, softened by her many veils. She lifts a covered hand, and Wali Khan and Whisper step close to her. “What shall I do?” whispers the muffled voice.

  Wali Khan looks fiercely toward the face that he has never seen. “You must free him, madam.”

  “It will be seen as weakness, madam,” Whisper answers. “Afzul Khan will seize upon the act to depose you.”

  “He would not dare!” the queen gasps.

  “He’ll declare himself regent to the heir. Any hope you have of power will be lost,” Whisper insists.

  “What if you do not free him, madam?” Wali Khan whispers. “What of Aurangzeb’s imperial guard? They are enough to rescue Shahji, maybe even enough to capture you, madam. If we fall upon them, Aurangzeb will send armies to invade us. It will be war, madam.”

  “War must come, madam,” Whisper replies. “We’ve known that for years.”

  “But who will lead your armies, madam?” Wali Khan protests. “Shahji? I think not. Afzul Khan? Give him the army and he will depose you! You must release Shahji, madam—you have no choice!”

  “If I release Shahji, then I hand over the regency. There must be some way to contain Afzul Khan,” the sultana says, sounding desperate. “You are my advisers! How shall I do this?”

  Whisper shakes his head. “I know not, madam.”