“You chose the rani over me,” she screamed, her entire body trembling, and I feared for the child she was carrying. “And then the British wanted me because I was pretty! It was for all those silks and juti you sent me!” Then a familiar sound appeared in her voice. “You didn’t save me,” she hissed. I realized it was Grandmother I was hearing. “You should have left me there to die with my bastard,” she said. “Leave me.”
I did as she wanted and wandered outside to our peepal tree. Feelings of guilt and sorrow crashed over me in waves. Father had been killed by a British soldier; possibly the son of someone who had fought alongside him in Burma. I tried to imagine Avani’s despair when she heard that my father had been killed, and how the flames had felt searing her body as she climbed onto Father’s funeral pyre, and then the only thing I could focus on was my rage.
I went back into the house, and Arjun could see my fury. He was sitting with several guards around our kitchen. “Shall we go outside?” he asked.
“I just came from outside.”
“Then let’s sit in your father’s workshop.”
I didn’t want to go. But I followed Arjun there and the woodsy scent of teak immediately made me cry. Arjun took me in his arms and shut the door. We sat together on the jute mats and he held me while I wept. When I’d drained myself of every possible tear, he tenderly wiped my face with his hand.
“What they’ve done to my family—”
“It’s finished, Sita. It’s over,” he said. “The walls have crumbled and you’re asking why instead of trying to rebuild. Your sister is in the next room. She’s what’s left, and that’s no small thing. She’s carrying a child.”
“Yes. A British—”
“Baby,” he said before I could finish. “An innocent child. That’s the future.”
I won’t pretend that his speech changed the way I felt about the British, but it comforted me over the next few weeks. And it clarified in my mind what I needed to do now. We could not rejoin the rani; I had to heal my sister. So we stayed in Barwa Sagar, and when I was too overwhelmed by sorrow to get out of bed or get dressed, Arjun would encourage me to go on.
On a warm evening in May, after we’d been in Barwa Sagar for more than six weeks, Arjun took me into the courtyard and said quietly, “One of the guards met someone in the marketplace who has news of Jhansi. His name is Balaji and he was a silk merchant in Jhansi.”
“Can I meet him?”
Arjun returned with a well-dressed man in his fifties. He had white hair and a mustache, and I imagined he’d been very handsome in his youth. We stood outside in the courtyard, near the old peepal tree, and waited for him to say something. As a child, I had thought all trees grew this big. I put my hand on its solid trunk. Finally the man from Jhansi said, “I have heard that the British pursued the rani to Banda. She killed two British soldiers and shot a lieutenant. One of her soldiers was killed. But the rest of her party reached Kalpi.”
“And the city of Jhansi?”
“Burned.”
“And the people?” Arjun asked.
“Killed.”
“But there were thousands of people!” I protested. Five thousand by the rani’s count.
“Yes. The British lost one hundred men.”
These are the actions demons take. Humans didn’t do this to one another. But Balaji’s gaze was unwavering, and I knew it was true. The British had taken five thousand lives in retaliation for an action a dozen men had perpetrated. I thought of the woman who had been desperate for us to take her child, the round face of the baby she’d been carrying, his dimpled cheeks and large, bright eyes. I buried my head in my hands.
“The rani’s father was captured after the fall,” Balaji continued.
We were all shocked. Arjun especially. “He didn’t make it to Kalpi?”
“No. He reached Datia, but the people there turned him over—they didn’t have a choice. The British were hanging villagers from the trees for housing criminals. Even the suspicion of doing so was enough. They hanged him in Jokhan Bagh.”
The next revelation was equally shocking: in Kalpi, Saheb’s brother, Rao Saheb, wrested control of the soldiers from the rani, leaving only two hundred and fifty horsemen to defend the borders of Kalpi. Rao Saheb went west with the rest of the men. Witnesses said they saw the rani in a fit of rage, cursing Rao’s cowardice. In the hundred-and-eighteen-degree heat, water was scarce and the supplies at Fort Kalpi dwindled. The fort was captured, but the rani and her people escaped and found Rao Saheb. The rani was reported to have said, “When people remember this war they will remember you, Rao Saheb, and when they do, they will think to themselves: coward.”
The rani suggested the soldiers, eleven thousand men in all, should take nearby Gwalior Fort, which is the largest and most significant fortress in central India. The British did not yet occupy the fortress. Its twenty-three-year-old ruler, Maharaja Scindia, was still on his throne. He was, however, supporting the English with weapons and food.