The Far Pavilions - Mary Margaret Kaye [156]
‘It seems that the family has suffered many misfortunes of late years,’ said Mahdoo reflectively, and sucked again on his pipe: ‘The old Maharajah also met his death from a fall. I am told that he was out hawking when his horse bolted and fell into a nullah, breaking both their necks. They think the horse must have been stung by a bee. It was very sad for his new bride – did I tell you that he had recently taken another wife? – yes, indeed, his fourth, the first two being dead. They say she was young and very beautiful: the daughter of a rich zemindar…’ The hookah bubbled again and it seemed to Ash as though the sound was a malicious chuckle, laden with sly innuendo. ‘It is said,’ continued Mahdoo softly, ‘that the third Rani was greatly angered, and had threatened to kill herself. But there was no need, for her husband died and the new bride burned with him on his pyre.’
‘Suttee? But that has been forbidden,’ said Ash sharply. ‘It is against the law.’
‘Maybe, child. But the princes are still a law unto themselves, and in many states they do as they wish and no one hears until it is too late. The girl was in ashes long before anyone could interfere. It seems that the Senior Rani would have joined her on the pyre had her women not locked her in a room from which she could not escape, and sent a word to Political Sahib, who was on tour and could not be reached in time to prevent the Junior Rani from becoming a suttee.’
‘Very convenient for the Senior Rani – who I presume became the power behind the throne in Karidkote,’ observed Ash dryly.
‘I believe so,’ admitted Mahdoo. ‘Which is strange indeed, for they say she was once a dancing-girl from Kashmir. Yet for more than two years she was the true ruler of the state, and at least she died a Maharani.’
‘She is dead?’ exclaimed Ash, startled. Somehow it did not seem possible. He had never even seen Janoo-Rani, yet her presence had so dominated the Hawa Mahal that he found it difficult to believe that the violent, ruthless woman who had ruled the old Rajah and plotted Lalji's death – and his own – was no longer alive. It was as though the fortress-palace itself had fallen, for she had seemed indestructible… ‘Did they say how it happened, Cha-cha?’
Mahdoo's wise old eyes glinted in the faint glow from the hookah as he looked sideways at Ash, and he said softly: ‘She quarrelled with her eldest son, and soon afterwards she died – from eating poisoned grapes.’
Ash caught his breath in a harsh gasp: ‘You mean –? No. That I will not believe. Not his own mother!’
‘Have I said that he did it? Nahin, nahin,’ Mahdoo wagged a deprecatory hand. ‘There was of course a tálash (inquiry) and it was proved to be an accident; she herself had poisoned the grapes for the purpose of ridding the garden of a plague of crows, and she must in error have left a few of them on her own dish -’
The hookah chuckled slyly again, but Mahdoo had not finished: ‘Did I not tell you that the ruler of Karidkote has suffered much misfortune? First his elder brother and then his father; and two years later, his mother. And before that there were also one or two small brothers and another sister who died when they were babes in a year of sickness, when cholera killed many children – and not a few grown men and women too. The Maharajah now has only the one brother left – the little prince who is here in the camp. And only one full sister, the younger of the two Rajkumaries who are being sent far away to be wed, for the elder is only a half-sister, the child of his father's second wife, who they say was a foreigner.’
‘Juli!’ thought Ash: and was stunned by the thought. That tall, veiled woman whom he had seen in the brides' pavilion two nights ago was the Feringhi-Rani's neglected little daughter, Anjuli; the child whom the Nautch-girl had scornfully likened to an unripe mango, and who had been known thereafter to everyone in the Palace of the Winds as ‘Kairi-Bai’. It was Juli – and he