Our neighbor looked deeply uncomfortable. He tugged at his mustache, and his son looked at the ground. Finally, he said, “It’s not for me to say what another man should do. Ishan, why don’t you go take a look at the bird?”
My sister was still cradling the little bulbul in her hands, pressing him against her chest for warmth. Reluctantly, she offered the creature to Shivaji’s son, who took him to a small table below our kitchen window.
Anu stood next to him while he worked. He asked her to hold the bird steady while he wrapped a strip of linen around its body, immobilizing the bird’s broken wing. The two of them worked quietly together. I glanced at Shivaji and saw that he wore a thoughtful expression on his face.
That evening, I went to our puja room. I prayed before the statue of Durga, the goddess of female power and the slayer of demons. I asked for help not just in passing the trial, but also in saving the kind of fortune that would find my sister a respectable husband.
“Someone tender,” I prayed, “who will take care of her when Father has passed and I am away.”
I touched my forehead to the jute mats, then lit a second stick of incense and watched the smoke curl around the goddess’s body. Long before I was born, Father had taken great care to carve each of her ten arms wielding a different weapon; soon, I would be using most of those weapons in a trial that would determine not just my fate, but Anu’s.
A sniffling sound echoed from down the hall. When I rose to investigate, I found Anu on her bed, weeping.
“Why are you crying?” I asked.
She buried her face into her pillow.
“Anu?”
She turned and faced the wall. I sat on her bed and waited for her to speak.
“Nobody wants me,” she said at last.
“Who told you that?”
“You did. You’re going away.”
“Anu . . . I’m going away to try to give you a better life. Don’t you want to marry and have children?”
“I want to be with you.”
“But if I pass this trial, I’ll be living in the city as a soldier. I will never marry. I will never have children. Don’t you want more for yourself?”
“You’re going to leave me here with Dadi-ji.”
“And Pita-ji. Remember that.”
“He’s always busy.”
“Yes, but never too busy to read to you.”
She smiled a little. Then the fear came back into her face and she whispered, “Please don’t leave me here with her.”
“Anu, I’m not leaving forever. This will always be my home.”
And you should know that these were not empty words. I really did believe what I was saying.
Chapter Six
1851
Once, when I was five or six, one of the maharaja’s envoys passed through Barwa Sagar on his way to a much bigger city. When he crossed through our village, everyone came out to see his incredible procession. He arrived in a caravan of carts drawn by satin-draped camels and bullocks, and behind him swayed a long line of pony-traps whose riders were shielded from the midday sun by large silver umbrellas. The women of our village stood huddled together behind the latticed screens of our largest temple, watching in awe as the men in their heavily jeweled saddles rode by. Even Mother, who was not impressed by luxuries or gold, had wide eyes that day. “This is something you will never see again,” she told me.
Now I wondered what she would think if she knew that in a few days, an even larger procession from the city of Jhansi would arrive in Barwa Sagar for the sole purpose of deciding whether I had the skills to become the tenth member of the queen’s Durga Dal.
It should have been incredibly intimidating to know that whether I passed or failed, the entire village—and probably the surrounding villages as well—would learn about it as soon as it happened. But I was too busy practicing to feel nervous. If I failed, then there was little I could do. But if I passed, I would leave the next morning with the queen’s Dewan, or chief minister, for my new home in Jhansi Palace.
For the next two days, whenever I wasn’t training with Shivaji I was readying my weapons—polishing my father’s dagger to a sheen, restringing my bow. Of all the women who were vying for this position, I wouldn’t have the fanciest weaponry, but I knew I would have the skills. If my nerves didn’t get the best of me, I wasn’t going to fail that part of the trial.
At one point, as Grandmother watched me shoot arrows into a target Shivaji had set up beneath our tree, I heard her remark to Avani, “So she can shoot an arrow. Who’s taught her to be entertaining and charming?”
I knew I shouldn’t pay attention to anything Grandmother said. She wanted me to fail; was actively trying to make me doubt myself. Still, the next morning, as the orange blush of dawn crept over the courtyard, I asked Shivaji if Grandmother was right, if I needed to be charming.