Holder of the World - Bharati Mukherjee [105]
He restored the diamond to the crown of the world, the seat of the universe.
11
HOW COMFORTING a world that can be divided into halves. The Dar-ul-harb and Dar-ul-islam. Infidels and believers. She had come from softer versions of the Emperor’s world, of her lover’s world, of the factors’ world, that retained many of the attitudes of light and dark, fallen and saved, caste and outcaste, but failed to act on them quite so decisively. And so life had robbed her of easy consolations.
The only certainty had been her vision—a very clear vision, stronger than a wish or a dream—of peace. She’d trusted in her firangi status, and while it had gained her a hearing and allowed her to keep her ears, tongue and head (“How I was trembling!” Bhagmati told her in their tent that last night. “No man, no matter how powerful, may speak to the Grand Badshah like that!”), her message had failed.
The Emperor had sent attendants with chests of jewels. “For the Tigress who bested my General” came the message. She returned them, without regret. “For your white skin, for the luster of your spirit, for the one-in-a-lakh, I give you these pearls. I call you Precious-as-Pearl.”
She sent them back, too, with her gratitude. To accept would be to acknowledge his attempt to influence her.
This time, the return of the necklace of pearls was rejected, and they were re-presented with the indication that returned gifts were received as serious insults. Dutifully, she wore the necklace, acknowledging even to herself that no queen of England had ever seen its equal.
When the necklace had been satisfactorily adjusted, the attendant read the Emperor’s proclamation. “When the battle horns are sounded, His Imperial Majesty wishes you to view with him the destruction of the rat-worshiping idolater.” The invitation was forcefully delivered, her head was covered, her face veiled, and she was escorted by guards in polished armor to view the train of elephants dragging travois of cut stone and platform logs, and a hundred of the finest stonemasons of Agra and Aurangabad, who were to lay the foundations of a new city with walls and parapets around the Emperor’s battle tent.
In one rainy season, Hannah Legge had gone from woolen-clad English married woman on the Coromandel Coast to pregnant sari-wearing bibi of a raja; a murderer, a widow, a peacemaker turned prisoner of the most powerful man in India. Her only friend was her former servant, perhaps the only friend she’d ever had apart from the innocent days with Hester Manning, and the language they communicated in was more Bhagmati’s than hers.
She wasn’t Hannah anymore; she was Mukta, Bhagmati’s word for “pearl.” And she gave Bhagmati a new name: Hester, after the friend she had lost. The friend who had indirectly brought her to the Coromandel Coast.
The Emperor watched from his palanquin.
“The pearls are indeed most rare and perfect. I wear them out of respect,” she said.
“Angrezi eat the flesh of the shellfish, that is what I hear.”
“Yes, we do.”
“It is unclean. You may wear the pearls, but I ask you never to eat unclean food again.”
Against all of her instincts, she bowed her head. The Emperor was a builder of cities, a designer of human lives, a converter to Islam of everything in his path.
“Your Majesty, it is not too late. I beg you to reconsider—”
“The rat and his mice have already left their burrow.”
“Let me meet with him. Let me carry a message. I will tell him of your strength—”
He raised his hand and immediately her arm was seized by one of the attendants.
“Word has been sent,” he said. Then he smiled. “Word of my serious illness. Word of the panic of my troops. Word of our helplessness.” He raised his frail arm, opened his trembling hand as far as his fingers could unfurl, and took in the vista of elephants, the thousands of laborers, the soldiers still busy polishing and sharpening their steel. “Look, Precious-as-Pearl, do you see the panic?