The Game - Laurie R. King [87]
“I’ll keep an eye on her,” I promised.
“It’s just that he’s . . . persuasive.”
“I see.”
Gay glanced down at the end of her holder, where the stub was nearly burnt out, and plucked it out with her long fingernails, allowing it to fall onto the ornate tiles. “Suddenly I’m not hungry. I think I’ll go back to my rooms. Have a nice ride in the morning.”
Shortly thereafter we were ushered in to dinner. “Casual dress” extended to the procession, as well, which was more of a general drift in the direction of a doorway than an arm-in-arm procession. But the place we were taken belied any informality.
This had been, I thought, New Fort’s durbar hall, where traditionally the king met with visiting dignitaries whom he wished not only to entertain, but to intimidate. The Fort’s was immense, and if the adjoining room had felt like an underwater grotto, this was like standing inside the world’s largest emerald. Flashes of green and blue quivered in the air, the mosaic so lush the hand wanted to brush the walls, the tongue to taste it. Where the stone was not inlaid, it was covered either with gold leaf or high mirrors, tossing back the colours and the light of two dozen elephant-sized crystal chandeliers that hung from a golden ceiling forty feet above our heads. The floors were thick with silken carpets, and an orchestra, half hidden behind the inlaid marble purdah screens of the upper level, began a Mozart concerto as we rinsed our hands in rose-scented water poured from long-necked silver jars.
The meal itself was extreme, a bizarrely overdone ordeal-by-food, the kind of meal forced on unwelcome courtiers for the bitter amusement of bored kings. Dish after dish, each richer than the last, European alternating with Indian to the benefit of neither, all ornately arranged on the heavy gold plates, half of them giving offence to one guest or another—beef appeared twice, in this Hindu land, and slips of prosciutto ham so the Moslems (or in my case, Jew) wouldn’t feel neglected. Lobster flaked with silver leaf and whole grilled songbird served on platters made of their brilliant feathers, saffron-infused snakes’ eggs and curried peacocks’ tongues, roast kid stuffed with raisins and pistachios, and a score of other dishes beat upon our senses. Whatever wasn’t swimming in honey or ghee was drenched with cream, and long before the final courses, all my neighbours had been reduced to picking at their plates, and most of them looked somewhat green, particularly when the dizzying odour of sandalwood wafted in clouds from the upper levels.
When at long last the final glistening blancmange had passed from our plates and the music that had accompanied the banquet ceased, we staggered from our places like so many pardoned criminals, only to have the announcement come that there would be dancing on the terrace. The man at my side, an English popular novelist, groaned, and muttered something about the maharaja having given up sleep. Sunny, the peacock tongues clearly wreaking havoc with her sense of well-being, tried to summon her customary enthusiasm.
“It might be nice, to work off some of that food,” she said gamely.
I suspected that the maharaja’s rather sadistic sense of humour would not permit a gentle glide across the floor, and indeed, the band instantly set off on one of the more vigorous modern dance-steps. I shook my head.
“Perhaps we’d best go and see how your mother is,” I suggested in a firm voice. The relief with which Sunny seized on this escape would have been funny, if the very idea of laughter hadn’t been so physically repugnant.
We found a servant to lead us to the Goodheart rooms, where Sunny did not argue overmuch with her mother’s prescription