Amah’s news of Pavan’s death shrinks against the news in the streets that three thousand angry Indian men from four English regiments stationed in Lucknow set fire to the cantonment bungalows. These men were devoted to the Company for years but were nonetheless forced to come to Macchi Bhawan Fort to watch the hangings of their fellow men. Flames and volumes of smoke cause destruction before the men are put to flight and dispersed by advancing English sergeants. Some of the men are arrested, their resistance halted, their regiments disbanded. This time, Jai Lal goes ahead and recruits from the disbanded English regiments. He no longer keeps his Force hidden by training them in low numbers. The several thousand who’ve joined the Organization of Awadh Soldiers mill in and around the Chattar Manzil where the King once served pancakes to his actors. Many of the soldiers take up rooms there. Jai Lal orders them to show themselves in large numbers in the empty streets until Begam Sahiba has moved to the palace and Birjis has been crowned.
That night, old Kasim calls Amah from her restless sleep. “The messengers have come,” he says.
The messengers. At last. In the thick midnight air, Amah shakes jinns from her mind as she makes her way to Begam Sahiba’s candle-lit meeting room. Inside, Rasheed and Akbar, dressed like Delhi poets in English trousers and Indian kurtas, eat kebabs with yogurt. Begam Sahiba leans against the wall, wrapped in a shawl.
After all these months of waiting, Amah wishes to exclaim out loud, to ask what’s happened, to welcome them back, but the silence tells her not to. The messengers’ long faces greet Amah as they eat; their serious eyes tell her they have serious news. A mosquito whines at Amah’s ear, and she slaps at it. Jai Lal lurches into the room, his face covered in perspiration. He bows his head. “Huzoor,” he says.
Begam Sahiba begins to speak as soon as he enters. “Rasheed and Akbar have just come through Cawnpore. All of the English there have moved into a makeshift entrenchment. For safety. They fear violence because they’ve heard about resistance to the English in the whole of Awadh.”
“The English in Cawnpore are behaving with great caution,” Akbar says. “They are not taking chances.”
“The point is,” Begam Sahiba says, “a peaceful escape for the English here in Lucknow via Cawnpore might not be possible.”
It dawns on Amah. “And surely Sir Henry Lawrence knows about the English situation in Cawnpore. He must be communicating with them. Surely, this is the reason the English have moved into the Residency.” Her head swims.
“Of course he must be communicating with them. We’ve not seen that spy, Abhi, around for a long time,” Begam Sahiba says.
“Huzoor, Sir Henry Lawrence won’t go through there,” Jai Lal says.
“The countryside is hostile,” Rasheed agrees. “Travel is tricky. We had to lie low, take rest where we could find it, move very slowly. It is essential to be extremely careful at a time like this. They say Awadh is on fire in many places and full of volatile men. Those men are marching everywhere to fight the English. It’s become clearer that the Company has been trying to get rid of Indian rulers everywhere. There are men roaming around, dispossessed, and angry with the Company. Indian soldiers working for the English are fed up with being paid less, they have realized, than any Englishman. They are fed up with being scorned by new English officers who only speak English. In Delhi, they found out that the cartridges in use there had impure grease. Some Indian soldiers began a resistance. The English ordered other Indian soldiers loyal to the English to shoot them. Those loyal soldiers would not shoot Indians but joined them instead. They have taken over Delhi. Then there are some plain looters roaming around, stealing in Delhi, and in other places. Criminal opportunists. All sorts of men roaming. Marauders. There is talk of men coming here, too.”
“We have a few of them already. We don’t want any of those kind of men here,” Begam Sahiba says. “It would be impossible to tell who is who. Chaos.”
“Newspaper sales have been banned in Calcutta,” Rasheed says, giving his empty plate to a servant boy. “It is very hard to know what is going on.”
“Things are getting serious for the Company,” Begam Sahiba says.
“There are rumours everywhere about men who want to see the English ousted from every single town,” Rasheed says.
“We don’t need those kind of men,” Jai Lal repeats. “I need men who will listen to me.”
“Those men are just as dangerous as the English,” Begam Sahiba says. “Their behaviour just as undignified.”
“There are resistances all over Awadh,” Akbar says again with awe. “We heard it on the train. Indians are nervous. I tell you, there are angry men who want to come here, to Lucknow. To help get the English out.”
“We don’t want them here,” Begam Sahiba says sharply, “to help anyone. The English are in a corner. Three thousand people inside the Residency, cut off completely from the outside, and outnumbered. We can do it ourselves, but we will not behave in an unruly way. We will not behave like Englishmen who eat pigs and drink wine, who bite greased cartridges, who destroy Hindu and Muslim temples on the pretence of making roads, who wish to institute English schools, who build churches and send clergymen into the streets and alleys to preach the Christian religion, neglecting our places of worship. We will not stoop to such levels. We will ask for their surrender. Peacefully. That is the perfect symbol. Surrender at Lucknow: a symbolic act to the advantage of the whole of northern India. We do not have to indulge in misbehaviour.” She turns to Jai Lal. “We don’t need those foreign Indian marauders in Lucknow.”
“Huzoor,” Jai Lal says, his eyes on the ground. “I must tell you one thing. I have recruited a skilled contingent of newcomers from outside the city. Some from far away. We had to. So many Lakhnavis have left. However, these particular newcomers are ready to serve us. I have made certain of that.”
She stares at him, pulling her shawl around herself.
“I can assure you these particular men have the interests of Lucknow at heart,” Jai Lal says. “We have selected carefully. They’ve seen what the English have done in other places. They are in disbelief and shock about what has happened to His Majesty, that the English would simply take over the Kingdom of Awadh. They want to help, Huzoor. They have experience, make good soldiers. They know we’ll pay them well. We even have a Tamil who has come all the way from Madras to help. We have a solid Force. So tomorrow,” Jai Lal raises his hands, the muscles in his arms taut as he walks to the door, “I will ask the palace advisors to compose a letter, urging Sir Henry Lawrence to surrender. We will send it after the coronation, which all of my men are waiting for.”
“Everything is being packed up,” Begam Sahiba says.
“Huzoor, the coronation must happen as soon as possible. Then we will surround the Residency.” Jai Lal bows and vanishes into the night.
Amah also walks to the door, but she cannot leave. She asks, “Is there news from His Majesty?”
Begam Sahiba picks up the envelope with the letter the messengers brought. “The Queen Mother needs perfumes from Lucknow. She is keeping what fragrance she has to offer as a gift to Queen Victoria. She has an invitation for an audience with their Queen. She is sick with worry, having waited so very long to plead her son’s case. And London is terribly expensive. She wants to come home.”
“And my mother?” Amah asks tentatively. “Is there any news of the staff?”
“Oh, dear!” A rush of light enters Begam Sahiba’s eyes and she reaches out for Amah’s hands. “You didn’t ask. You’ve been waiting all this time. There is only one letter from His Majesty’s advisors, but she is well. The advisors in Calcutta pass on the news that everyone is well. Your medicines arrived, and she is well.”
“She is definitely well,” Rasheed says, and Akbar agrees, their faces flashing warmth upon Amah.
At the palace, Amah goes to her mother’s room. There are times that her heart swells all on its own, and it doesn’t let questions in her mind take over. She digs up the box, and, from the three rubies and five pearls she has left, she takes out a large ruby and goes to the kitchens to find a boy who will sell the ruby to Judea the jeweller in the morning.
The next day, Rasheed is dressed like a Hindu holy man in orange robes, and Akbar is disguised in pyjamas with very wide legs like upper-class youths like to wear. Their long faces are flushed with rest and good food. They get up quickly when Amah comes in. She gives them the small china vessel filled with rose water that she’s purchased for her mother, and offers them money for the trouble of taking such a fragile package all the way to Calcutta. “No need,” Rasheed says. “It’s a pleasing task. Your mother will be pleased.”
The Tamil who has come from Madras is a lanky, young, Hindu man named Malamud who doesn’t speak to anyone. Malamud is fast with a gun, fast on foot. Some of Jai Lal’s ignorant foreigners stare at Amah—they stare at Fatima, too—at any black, female guard with a rifle. But Malamud does not stare. Instead, he lowers his gaze respectfully and puts his hands together in greeting. The next day, while the palace continues to prepare for Begam Sahiba’s arrival, Amah watches him perform military drills at the Chattar Manzil and then quietly joins him. They both use rifles, spurning the old-fashioned muskets that are slower to load and fire. “You are ready for much more than military ceremonies and parades,” Malamud says at last, shaking his head at her accuracy.
“I’m a bodyguard. My duty is to protect, not to harm,” she tells him.
He is about her age, and, after watching her practise for some time, he suddenly opens up to her, talks to her like a cousin, as if he’s known her a long while. “Your name, where I come from, your name means ‘mother.’ Amma.”
“Where I come from it means, ‘companion.’”
“Suits you either way,” Malamud says, and smiles, his gaze lowered.
“What about your own mother?” Amah asks.
“Passed away now. My father, too, a long time ago. My mother made a living as an ayah. Took care of English children. That, too, was a long time ago. I miss them, have sad feelings about them. You?”
“My mother is in Calcutta. I have sad feelings about her, too.”
Malamud waits for some moments and then starts to practise again. She is thankful to him for understanding she doesn’t want to say more. A rush of wounded anger fills her. She is pleased that her mother is well, but she is also baffled by her silence. Could she not have sent a small note to her after all of this time? She wonders if her mother is still irritated with her. But she can’t know. At the best of times, her mother seems to deliberately hide away a part of herself from her daughter. A mixture of Ethiopian pride and Indian certainty in her mother’s ways. These qualities are good qualities, she thinks, continuing to practise, knowing she shouldn’t carry her mother like a burden in her mind.
Malamud’s been in conflict with the English in other parts of India. While they practise, he tells her stories. “The English are securing loyal troops from all over the country to stamp out the revolts.” He squints down the barrel of his gun, lining up the clay pots on the top of the wall. “There’s this man named Neill who has come up from Madras with his battalion. Brigadier General James Neill. He’s an old soldier from Scotland with white flowing hair and a moustache who believes his God has chosen him to punish any resistance he can find. Saintly Christian Crusader. More like Lucifer, or a whispering jinni in a smokeless fire than any saint you’ve heard of. He’s completely crazy.” Malamud picks off the clay pots and reloads his rifle.
“So,” he says. “I’m in Howrah, sitting at the back of the train with some villagers, all of us trying not to attract attention. The departure time comes and goes, and there’s this commotion on the platform. This man Neill wants to hold the train for his troops. The stationmaster tells him that, although he might be in charge of his battalion, he is not in charge of the railway, so Neill seizes the stationmaster, the engineer, and the stoker and arrests them—wishes out loud he could hang them—until finally his troops arrive and they get on board.”
“Pompous.”
“The same as ever,” Malamud says. He laughs, his black eyes warm before they turn flat, like mud. “But there’s more. This Brigadier General James Neill’s a real sportsman. He marches to Allahabad setting up executions all the way, with makeshift gallows, calling to his men to bag pandies for Brigadier General James Neill’s hangings. They overran villages, burned children alive, stabbed men who were planting carrots. He gets to Allahabad, and within a week he’s cleared the town of anyone who might stand up to him. Thousands dead. There were fellows who simply looked the wrong way when he was passing who got lynched. He killed everyone—men, women, little children mown down, picked off one by one while they were running away. The reign of terror, everyone was calling it. Horrible.”
Malamud puts down his rifle and lights one of his Madras beedies. He smokes for a while, the sharp, strange smell filling the air. “I skirted the area, ducked into ditches, and played dead plenty of times. I heard about it all from a mother who got away. But I saw enough. The air was thick with smoke over the fields, and wild animals ate the limbs they could reach of the hanging corpses.” He takes another draw on the beedi and crushes it against the wall. “Who knows what his plans are now. It’s important that man doesn’t get into Lucknow. Communications with hunters like him need to be interrupted. I’m waiting for Jai Lal’s consent to cut the telegraph wires.”
Amah bows low to Malamud and does not get up. “Welcome to Lucknow,” she says.
Inside Begam Sahiba’s garden, the grass is littered with wood. The palace carpenters are building cages to transport Shahzadi and the black swans to Qaisarbagh Palace. In the meeting room, the royal cousins, plump Nawab Mirza and little Sharif-un-nissa, take lunch with Begam Sahiba.
“Everyone in the royal family should know what’s going on—about my move, about our request for surrender,” Begam Sahiba says to Amah after they greet each other.
“We have already spread the news to almost everyone at the palace that you are coming,” Amah says.
“The Awadh Force is showing itself in large groups on the road below Residency Hill. Come and eat.”
Amah fidgets and does not move from the doorway. “Has Jai Lal completed the arrangements for the coronation?” she asks.
“Yes, Amah. We are only waiting on the food preparations to be completed. You being hungry now is not going to solve anything. Come and eat.”
Amah stares at the food. Finally, she sits down with the royal cousins to eat a little of the sweet rice dish with saffron and raisins, prepared for this special occasion of their visit. Everyone watches the carpenters finish the new cage for Shahzadi that will be carried to the palace.
A servant boy arrives. “They are hanging the soldiers who set the cantonment fire,” he says.
Amah gets up at once. “I am going to the palace to make sure the food preparations are complete.”
It is late in the afternoon when Sai finds Amah in Qaisarbagh’s kitchens still arguing with the cooks. Alarmed at the shortage of stores fit for a ceremony, they nonetheless have started to listen as Amah insists that the stores are sufficient, even if it will make for plain fare, and that the cooks must continue to prepare immediately.
“Amah, listen,” Sai interrupts and leads her away from the chefs. “Sharif-un-nissa and Nawab Mirza have been arrested,” he says, “by the Kotwal. On orders from his English superiors. Your friend, that Red Man, was with him. The cousins were in the crowd. We were all watching the hangings. Nawab Mirza and Sharif-un-nissa were angry and shouting along with many of us. Suddenly, there were Englishmen in front of us, surrounding the cousins. We pushed forward hard, but many men came into the crowd on horseback to disperse us. The Kotwal made sure everyone heard that the cousins will be held inside the Residency. Held for conspiracy-mongering.”
Whispers rise and fall like butterflies in gardens with broken statues. The air is stamped with hanged men, pointed guns, crumbling stucco. Dogs lie watching in the shade, adjusting their chins on their paws, their ears back, their noses dry.
“We need someone loyal inside, to find out what’s happening to the cousins,” Amah says to Begam Sahiba when she tells her the news. “We need to know what’s happening immediately. If they come to any harm…. I’m going to Gulbadan. To find a spy.”
Begam Sahiba calls after her, insistently, “It has just become more important than ever to have a peaceful surrender!”
At the kotha, Amah finds Gulbadan and several courtesans gathered in the courtyard. The newest resident is among them—the young woman with the long plait who no longer harbours dark shadows but has changed her fate, grown strong with training. The women have all just bathed, and Sai pours water into basins to cool their feet. Amah relays the news about the cousins and asks if Gulbadan can help find a spy. “There must be a way to get inside,” she says.
“Shall I try?” Sai asks.
“Sir Henry Lawrence will hang you by the neck if you are caught trying.” Amah is surprised. Her friend is too gentle for such a task.
“Yes. But I think I can do it.”
“We will be involved immediately with them,” Gulbadan says.
“We aren’t already?” Amah asks impatiently. She watches Sai, thinks about his offer. “You could continue to milk the goats they’ve taken into the Residency—you could be there for the goats. There are plenty of other servants who’ve gone inside to make money. You could find Mrs. Gunning, milk her goats, and, when you can, look out for the cousins, see if they are safe. That is all. We could arrange to meet at specific times. You let us know how the cousins fare, and where they are being kept.”
If he is careful, Amah thinks, Sai might actually be a good person to find a way to slip inside and slip back out. Sai, who slipped in and out of the cantonment, milking goats. He slipped into town to pick up mustard seed, slipped back into the cantonment to check the health of the oldest goat and contemplate the sharp verandah gossip, slipped away to the kotha to make ice for mango and lime drinks, and, when the end of the month came and each English woman slipped him a rupee for his work, he gave the money to Gulbadan, and slipped into the Gomti for a long swim followed by a full afternoon’s rest, slipping under a cool sheet in his room.
“I’ll do it,” Sai says.
Gulbadan cocks her head, hesitant. “Perhaps it will help with your weak constitution.”
Lean, Sai stretches out his arms, and then, rising on one leg, he exhales slowly while he extends one arm to the sky, curls into his chest, bows low to them all, and slips away.
At the Chattar Manzil, Jai Lal tells his men that Begam Sahiba’s arrival at the palace and the coronation, too, are imminent. They wait for Sai to come out with news about where the cousins are being kept, in case there is trouble and the Awadh Force must rescue them. His letter to Sir Henry Lawrence requesting surrender is ready. His men are ready to surround the Residency.
The constant waiting hangs heavily in the air like a vendor’s left-over cold kebabs sit heavily inside Amah. Finally, a boy brings word to her that Sai has come out from the Residency.
The thick sky breaks, and the first drops of monsoon rain hit Amah’s hair, and run behind her ears and down her neck as she makes her way to the kotha. Enormous, warm drops splash her face and her shoulders, and then the water pours from the sky. The river Gomti is filled with Muslims carrying out ablutions in the pouring rain. Parsees gather water to pound with poppy seeds for their green fish curries. The river swells with Hindu ashes, nawab song, glittering late evening sun, and old English dreams.
In Chowk, the streets fill quickly with water, and the vegetable sellers pick up their baskets and stack them onto carts. But the rain stops short this first day of monsoons and Amah waits only for a short time at the courtesans’ shop until the water subsides and the sun comes out, the day suddenly so hot again that she forgets it’s just rained. Near the kotha’s stairs in the busy street, she spots her baby cousin Hasan. He talks to a tall, bony-faced man. The man’s white, muslin clothes and cap are freshly laundered. They stand at a drink vendor’s cart near some other foreign men Amah doesn’t know.
“Tasleem. You quit your job taking care of English horses,” Amah says, looking down at Hasan as she passes him. “You have a new pastime, I see.”
Hasan keeps his face turned away. “Salaam,” he says.
Abhi is among the foreign men. “Hasan, don’t be a fool,” Amah hisses. “That man works for the English. He is not someone you should be talking to. The English will be using their spies to divide us. He will only be trying to turn those men against us in order to try to keep the English strong—”
“A message from your master?” Abhi interrupts, pushing forward out of the crowd and flashing his red-stained smile. He holds in his hand a pair of new slippers embroidered with gold-and-silver thread. “Do you have any messages for me?”
“Not yet,” Amah replies.
“No invitation to join her Awadh Force?”
“No invitation of any kind. Begam Sahiba—Begam Hazrat Mahal—is making all the preparations for the right kind of tamasha,” Amah says.
“For Lucknow?”
“She is the city’s highest patron.”
He cocks his head at her, holds up a bent finger, and says, “You are not so smart, black slave, trying to frighten me by mentioning patrons.”
She stands there breathing. He smiles, mocking her. His clothes smell of sandalwood and betrayal. He waves the new slippers.
“I await news of your Queen’s success. Send me word through Hasan.”
***
Gulbadan’s brother steps aside so that Amah can climb the stairs to the kotha. “My petition against their Settlement did not … I’ve lost my land,” he says, shrugging in a sad sort of way. “I’ll stay with my sister, become a Lakhnavi.”
“Gulbadan will be glad you are staying,” she calls back to him. “Find your place here.”
She finds Sai in the courtyard where he’s swept stray bougainvillea and the dead heads from marigolds into a large pile for some boys to take away. Freshly bathed, he hums, wearing a lungi and shirt, waiting for Amah under a peepul tree with its green, heart-shaped leaves that flutter in the still air. They greet each other. She kneels beside him and brings out a milksweet a Chowk vendor gave her. “We must not know each other in the streets,” she says.
He takes the sweet. “Which day do you plan to attack?”
“What attack?” Amah asks.
“The Residency. I will plan my next exit from the Residency a few hours beforehand to let you know the cousins’ exact whereabouts. It will be up to the Awadh Force to make sure no one mistakenly attacks their location.”
“It will not be an attack on the Residency but a demand to surrender. All we want is the cousins’ location in case there is trouble. How are they?”
“Everyone is on rations. A little meat. Rice. But the cousins are being treated well,” Sai says.
“What about the English?”
“The men are on the first floor. I can’t be seen there. I only see them going up and down the stairs.”
“You don’t know what they are doing then?”
“They are on the watch for spies like me. An English officer shot a punkah-wallah who’d been told to fetch writing utensils from a room. Someone thought he was spying. I try to keep to the same routine. I milk Mrs. Gunning’s goats in the yard, then I go up to the second floor where the women and children stay. Crowded into rooms. They are desperate for lavender to bathe in, and they wish they’d brought more clothes. Some of them have larger supplies of laudanum than they do clothes. Mrs. Gunning is so happy to have me there, to bring them milk. She is paying me well. I would like to bring them lavender. I carry up milk, and then I go down the stairs and out to the yard. Mrs. Gunning arranged for some bedding for me in the yard where the other servants sleep. Enormous payments are being offered to those who are brave enough to come inside. To cook, to clean.”
“They know about the Awadh Force? Have you heard anything?”
“They have seen Jai Lal’s men in the streets. They realize they are outnumbered. Every moment, the ladies want to know what is happening. They are in a great state about what will happen next. They wait on their husbands, and it’s clear that the word surrender is already not far from a memsahib’s lips. They are always anxious to get news from the men downstairs. I must be careful. I tell you, everyone is on the lookout for spies.”
“Abhi? Have you seen him inside?”
Sai shrugs. “There are spies slipping in and out. Both ways. The English are desperate for news. Mrs. Gunning’s sweeper told me something is going on in Cawnpore. They are paying lakhs of rupees for news.”
“The English have moved into some sort of makeshift entrenchment in Cawnpore, worried about violence,” Amah says. “Red Man? Have you seen him?”
“I think they are all there.”
Sai goes to his garden of marigolds, and Amah follows him. He smooths some of the red, sandy earth with the palm of his hand, and draws with his finger. “Second floor. This is where the women and children stay, and downstairs, here, the men’s quarters. And over here on the east side of the second floor there’s an inner room. The library. That is where the cousins are detained.”
Amah gets up. “I’ll tell Jai Lal. Let’s meet again this evening. I’ll find out exactly when Jai Lal’s confrontation will take place.”
Amah walks home. Whispers in the streets make her look up. The telegraph wires are all cut.
That evening, Amah meets Sai again at the kotha. A small group of Lakhnavi men sit in the courtyard waiting for a performance. There are one or two noblemen, but the rest of the men are young merchants she doesn’t recognize. Sai fills their cups with water.
Amah waits in the shadows, watching the fireflies dance in the fluttering leaves of the peepul tree, and in the depths of the courtyard. They light its dark corners with continuous little fireworks.
“There must be English spies everywhere,” she says when Sai has completed his work and they have greeted each other. “These people should not see you here. Begam Sahiba will move to Qaisarbagh tomorrow. We will crown Birjis the next day, before Jai Lal’s Force moves to the Residency the day after that. In three days’ time. If there is trouble, we may have to get the cousins out swiftly, safely. Have their captors moved them at all? I mean, do they seem to stay in the same place?”
“Yes, so far as I know they’ve only been in the library.”
“We have to know for certain that the cousins will be in the same place. You tell me, and I’ll tell Jai Lal. Jai Lal will tell the men who will be stationed outside the Residency. Can you get in and back out again in three days?”
“I think so. Usually it is quiet at midday, and I can get out,” Sai says. “Meet me here in three days, in the early afternoon. But be careful with your plans … be careful for the cousins, Amah. The English hangman is never far away.”
“You be careful, too. We should not meet so obviously like this again,” she says. “And you should ask Gulbadan if you can avoid the courtesans’ performances.”
***
Under the canopied trees between Qaisarbagh and Begam Sahiba’s home, Amah meets Malamud who is smoking by a vendor’s stand. The rich, oily smell of freshly ground coffee mixes with the aroma from his beedi, the smell of dry leaves burning. He greets Amah and offers her coffee.
“Tasleem,” she says. “I cannot stay. Coffee will make me jumpy.”
“Everyone is inside the Residency now,” he says. “There must be more than three thousand. Completely cut off. All the Europeans everywhere, even English refugees are coming in from surrounding areas—women and children with only the clothes on their backs. We mustn’t let them come to harm. We must have a peaceful surrender.”
Bougainvillea and jackfruit flowers caress Lucknow’s garden walls, and water with lime loosens tight throats. The back garden at Qaisarbagh Palace is dotted with candles in red-clay dishes waiting to be set alight for the coronation. Amah stands in the garden, thinking of Sai, of the drawing he made of the English quarters, of lentils and rice rations, of bleating goats and laudanum. She thinks of a glittering tamasha for Birjis, the jangling of anklets, of people embracing and rebuilding, a band practising a twenty-one gun coronation salute—a reminder of a good past when that salute was a gift to His Majesty from the English Queen.
Amah relays Begam Sahiba’s orders to a servant boy to watch the men Hasan is staying with in Star House—the city’s royal observatory with its grand old telescope that has now fallen into disrepair.
Members of the Awadh Force walk the streets while the noblemen who have remained in the city watch them guardedly from upstairs windows. They watch the sequin-curtained palanquins fill the canopied road from Begam Sahiba’s home to Qaisarbagh Palace. The procession winds all the way around the back of the palace to the front hall where Fatima and old Kasim lead the Begam’s servants out through the vast gardens, under archways with stucco fish, beside marble water tanks, through vast courtyards with Hindu umbrellas and lanterns to Begam Sahiba’s tall rooms with green shutters, orange curtains, and teak ceilings deep among the palace’s gardens where His Majesty once set scenes for the performance of one of his romantic musicals. Like other rooms at the palace, hers are airy, with marble floors, mango-wood furniture, gilded walls, and pottery ducts to remove the hot air. Outside, a delicate pavilion with curtained sides, made to look like a tent, stands in her garden—her new meeting room.
Palace residents stand in the gardens and watch. Even Aunt Laila, apart from the others, watches. Hundreds of the palace’s old animal handlers crowd the front hall—the handlers who crave menageries of antelope and cheetahs and aviaries of golden-green, silk-winged birds all eagerly surround Shahzadi’s cage when it is brought in, lifting it up, cheering the almost-grown tiger who stands in the middle of the cage with her diamond-shaped eyes and white whiskers, a tiger who sneezes twice and blinks at them all. They take Shahzadi’s cage carefully past the Mermaid Gateway, through the palace gardens, to Begam Sahiba’s quarters. The handlers pluck the black swans from their cage and put them down under a large neem tree where the swans make bugle-like calls while they stretch out their long, black necks. Cooks from the kitchens bring sizzling meat for the tiger, and Amah brings breadcrumbs soaked just this once in ghee for the new birds.
The black swans do not squawk like some of His Majesty’s wives squawk. “Why is she here? Why is she here with her son?”
Amah finds the wives where they wait for her at His Majesty’s Fairy House. They are dancers and royal princesses and East-Africans, plump and thin, tall and short—with children of their own who laugh and play in tapestried worlds, who don’t notice their mothers who look at Amah with hurt, questioning eyes. “She is only here to help,” Amah says. “Jai Lal thinks that it is right for Birjis to stand in for his father until the King returns. It is only for the moment. Begam Sahiba has spent a lot of her time and wealth to keep Lucknow protected. It is the right thing to do.” She turns and leaves their wounded eyes behind. There is nothing more to say to them.
Begam Sahiba offers a large donation to the kitchens, to keep them all going. Cooks run to purchase musk and saffron to fatten the chickens, and work speedily to make rich pulaus, with a broth from thirty seers of meat to stew the rice, for the boy Birjis who practises kite-fighting with the cooks’ sons, their kite-strings coated in gum and glass. The crown set with opals, his father’s favourite, is polished and waiting in the storerooms. Fifteen months since the King has left—and many more since Begam Sahiba and His Majesty divorced. All over the city, Malamud and the boys he hires distribute proclamations about the coronation. Thousands in the Organization of Awadh Soldiers wait for Birjis’ crowning, ready for the order to surround three thousand and more cocooned in the Residency—to nudge the English to surrender, to push past false treaties, and to deliver the royal cousins like golden butterflies.
Amah is in the kitchens urging the chefs to work quickly when she hears Fatima calling for her. Her cousin stumbles in, breathing heavily. “They are taking His Majesty’s possessions out of the storerooms,” Fatima says.
Amah listens to Fatima as they run through the palace gardens toward the front hall. “They pushed their way in with two cannon and most of them are carrying rifles. There are too many of them. They said that Sir Henry Lawrence wants to take the King’s property for safe-keeping, make sure it doesn’t come to harm. They say His Majesty will be told that the English are keeping it for his own protection.”
“What greedy lies. How could that man possibly expect us to believe anything anymore?”
“I was almost caught with the others,” Fatima continues, “but I slipped out before they saw me.”
Near the archway into the front hall, Amah and Fatima crouch, panting, behind an oval garden of tall sunflowers. Inside the hall, there must be fifty men with rifles lined up in front of twenty palace guards who are being kept to one side while Kasim is being made to stand in front of one of two cannon as a threat to everyone else. The Englishman with the parrot eyes, who months ago ordered the inventory of the King’s possessions, holds a ledger as he stands near their second cannon with Red Man. Other Englishmen in blue uniforms roll barrels filled with the King’s treasures toward the front doors. They carry chests of precious stones. Two men carry out the King’s emerald-studded throne. Someone else carries out the Queen Mother’s crystal chess set, and yet another brings out Birjis’ opal crown. From their great oil paintings above, the nawabs have been watching the man with parrot eyes tick off ivory, gold coins, china, copper, and silver in his ledger. The front hall is full of palace guards who shout, their faces strange, unfamiliar.
Amah sees Kasim’s mouth moving but she can’t hear him. The hall is drowning in noise. Shouting in a large hallway is louder than thunder, rougher than stone breaking on marble; it is like warm blood filling your ears. Amah could call out anything and her voice would be lost in the noise. She could spill curses onto foreign men who ignore polite letters, let harsh words land squarely in their ears, slap their faces, leap inside them and go with them on boats across the ocean. She thinks she hears Mary, Mother of Jesus, Shiva, and Mohammed cry out, but their voices drown, too. White-haired Lal, the Queen Mother’s adviser, is suddenly crouching, trembling, between Fatima and Amah. Amah presses her arm firmly against Lal’s shaking arm. “I’m going to tell Jai Lal to gather the Force,” Amah says to Fatima, “to halt them in the street. You go with Lal to tell Begam Sahiba that we cannot wait a moment longer. We need to stop His Majesty’s possessions from getting to the Residency. Tell her, too, to get out of the palace by the back way. We need her present when Lakhnavis will surely want to know what is going on.”
Amah runs back through the palace grounds, out the back door, and onto the canopied road. At the Chattar Manzil, Jai Lal listens to Amah’s story, his face grave, and immediately calls to Malamud to go with some others to ready the Force and get them to cut off the procession with the King’s possessions.
Amah rides one of Jai Lal’s horses out to the road between the Chattar Manzil and the Residency. She finds Begam Sahiba veiled in lace and surrounded by palace guards who stand among the crowds of people watching the listing carriages flanked by men with rifles who already are moving up Residency Hill. The brass strips around the barrels in the carriages up ahead glint in the sun. Lucknow’s poetry glistens in the air, like Amah’s grandmother’s stories glisten and hover, like the upturned, perspiring faces of Lucknow’s people shine. The Awadh Force, thousands of men, begins to emerge, moving into the road, led by Malamud and Jai Lal. The English carriages move faster, up the hill, while the Force moves steadily forward.
Begam Sahiba mounts the horse Amah has dismounted. “Our problem is that we always expect people to be good rather than to be bad,” she calls to the women around her. “That has been our mistake. The Residency will be surrounded immediately to stop the theft of His Majesty’s possessions and to secure a swift surrender.”
Further away, Jai Lal yells something to his men. They look across the Gomti toward the burned and abandoned cantonment. The distant noise coming from across the river is confusing. Amah glances up at Begam Sahiba, her lace-covered face, and they listen carefully. Guns crack and pop—from somewhere near the silent cantonment, or from along the road to Faizabad? Lal’s men listen, the palace guards listen, everyone in the road listens. Old Lal slips beside Amah and begins to stutter. A strange, noisy crowd, like a wall of water, is getting closer.
The English carriages lurch ahead and disappear behind the earthen barricades at the Residency. Jai Lal’s face is mottled with rage as he yells orders for his Force to continue up the hill. As they get closer and closer to the Residency, clouds of yellow dust rise around the Baillie Guard Gate as it is barricaded and earthed up from the inside by hard-working, dust-covered labourers. The noise from the direction of Faizabad gets louder, a wall of water no one can fathom about to descend upon them all.
Women with trusting eyes come forward from the crowds and touch Begam Sahiba’s feet. Others bow. Lakhnavis whisper words of hope. Lakhnavis sing prayers of mercy into Lucknow’s skies, bowing again to kiss her ground, and caress with their hands the pulsing soul of home.