“Please!” the woman begged. “He doesn’t need much milk. He eats food—”
Priyala began weeping openly, and Arjun looked away. I knew he felt as useless as I did.
When the rani opened the door, she and Jhalkari both had red eyes. “Arjun, Sita. I wish to see the two of you alone,” the rani said.
Jhalkari smiled sadly at me as we passed.
For several moments the rani didn’t speak. When she did, her voice was rough, as if she’d been talking very loudly for many hours. “We are leaving Jhansi tonight through the Bhandir Gate. My father and four hundred of his men will be with me. Anand, Kashi, Mandar, and Priyala will be with me as well. And all of Arjun’s guards. We’re going to wait until the British have entered Jhansi and chaos reigns. Then we’ll dress as soldiers from Orchha,” she said.
It was a very clever ruse, since the kingdom of Orchha had sent soldiers to help the British, and they would look exactly like any of the rani’s men.
The rani gave a blue velvet satchel to Arjun. “I want you to take this,” she said. “It will be enough to free Sita’s sister from the British. Neither of you are coming with me to Kalpi.”
We both raised our voices to protest, but the rani cut us off with a firm shake of her head.
“Choose ten men to take with you, and when she’s free, find me if you can. If not, use whatever remains in this bag and flee. Find a city far away from here and marry. Have children. And never let the British find you.”
She waved us away before we could say anything, and for the next hour, she called on the people who were most important to her, so that she could make her good-byes.
Arjun and I sat in the hall with Jhalkari and waited to be called on. No one said anything. When I tried to make conversation with Jhalkari, to ask her what sort of diversion she planned and how she would still make it to Kalpi, she rebuffed my attempts. I didn’t understand why she was being so stubborn. Did she not trust me anymore? I kept stealing glances in her direction, hoping she’d change her mind, but her face remained a locked box. She was planning something and didn’t want me to be a part of it.
By midnight, we had all dressed ourselves as soldiers from Orchha, putting on loose churidars and dirty kurtas. From the look and smell of our garments, I guessed they came from the bodies of dead men. The rani carried a long cloth and all of her weapons, but nothing else. If she had jewels hidden under her kurta, I didn’t see them. Outside, our horses waited, with none of their usual tack. The queen’s mare, Sarangi, had been stripped of her finery. An old cloth had replaced her saddle. Kashi brought Anand, and the rani tied him tightly behind her, then covered him with her woolen cloak. He didn’t speak a word, either to complain or cry, and I wondered what he would be like as an adult if he survived this.
I patted Sher’s flank. The constant sound of gunfire made him skittish. He pawed at the ground, eager to be gone. Kashi, Mandar, and Priyala fell into formation behind the rani. Then Jhalkari appeared. As soon as I saw her, I understood what she meant to do.
“Jhalkari, you have a husband!” I cried. “What are you doing?”
She was dressed in a blue angarkha, with pearls around her neck and a ruby ring in her nose. Only someone who truly knew Lakshmibai would be able to say it wasn’t her. She was going to create a distraction at another gate and pretend to be the rani. But as soon as they discovered the ruse, the British would have her executed.
I started weeping. Jhalkari wrapped her arms around me, and I cried into her chest. “Why are you doing this?”
“So the rani can fight again at Kalpi. Can you think of another way?”
But in my heart, I couldn’t. I separated myself from Jhalkari and had to look away.
Arjun mounted his horse and I mounted Sher. Then we rode toward Bhandir Gate. My heart ached. At the gate soldiers stopped us. “We’re the troops from Orchha,” General Singh said. He used a Bundelkhandi accent.
An Englishman looked directly at the rani, and saw only an exhausted soldier. “Move on then!”
We rode out of Jhansi as quickly as we could.
When I looked back, the entire city was on fire.
We hadn’t ridden for long when word that we were being pursued made it to the front of our procession. We stopped on the side of a farmer’s field. “We must split up,” Arjun persuaded the rani. “Our group is too slow. You ride ahead; take only my guards and the Durgavasi. You’ll make it to Kalpi faster.”
“The soldiers know she is in military clothes. We must change,” I said. “We could pass as peasants.”
We could hear the sound of distant gunfire; Arjun looked skeptical.