Suddenly, I felt foolish. Why shouldn’t Arjun know some English when it was spoken all around him?
When I reached Gopal’s chamber, a servant opened the door and escorted me inside. The walls were paneled in rich mango wood, so that in the light of the oil lamps, the entire chamber gleamed like a woman’s newly washed hair. Every few steps, there were heavy bronze lanterns on elaborate pedestals, and they were lit as well. Books were arranged on shelves that stretched from ceiling to floor, and at the far end of the chamber, Gopal sat hunched behind a desk. He looked up and I made a formal bow and the gesture of namaste, and then offered him the letters. “The rani asked that I deliver these to you at once.”
“This is Kahini’s job,” he snapped. He looked over my shoulder, as if I was contriving to hide her somehow. “Will you be replacing Kahini now?” he demanded.
“I don’t believe so. Perhaps Kahini is occupied,” I guessed. “So I was asked.”
“Occupied with what?”
Gopal continued staring at me, and finally I said, “I don’t know, and I don’t much care. I have delivered the letters to you as the rani requested. Is there anything I should deliver to her?”
Gopal glowered at me. “No.”
I was not invited to the rani’s chamber during her lying-in again.
W hen the news came a week later that the rani was in labor, Sundari took me aside and asked what had happened between us. “Why hasn’t the rani asked to see you again since you’ve returned? What happened the last time you saw her?”
“I don’t know what you mean,” I said, although, of course, I knew exactly. But Sundari kept staring at me. I hesitated. “I may have said something that led the rani to believe that I was overstepping my bounds.”
Sundari sighed. “Tell me.”
Reluctantly, I repeated the conversation. Then I waited for her to make a pronouncement.
“You may be the quickest girl the Durga Dal has seen in quite some time, but you can’t follow even the simplest warning. At court, there is no telling whom you can trust. Your closest adviser may be plotting your overthrow. How do you sort your friends from your enemies? By keeping family close, Sita. Kahini is related to the raja. Yet you think you can walk into the rani’s chamber and criticize her family. Who are you? A girl fresh from the village, who’s never visited a physician in her life.”
If Sundari had reached out and slapped my face, I would have felt less pain. The truth of her words stung like a physical blow. “I won’t say another word about Kahini,” I swore. “Or anyone else.”
“I hope you get that chance. She’s about to give birth; if it’s a son, she might be in a forgiving mood.”
As it happened, the gods smiled on Jhansi. The rani did give birth to a son, and without so much as a whimper, according to the servants who were inside the birthing chamber.
The celebrations that followed were beyond anything I had ever seen.
It may have been the coldest part of December, but for an entire week the city was filled with rejoicing people. They gathered in the streets to congratulate one another, as if someone in their own family had just been delivered of a boy. Sweets were distributed in the temples, and bells rang from morning until night, so that even though the weather appeared brooding, the city was cheerful.
Inside the palace, the tables, columns, door lintels, and windows were all garlanded with bright bunches of winter flowers from the raja’s gardens. Loose rose petals were strewn across the courtyards, and jasmine oil burned continuously. The perfume of the flowers mingled with the scents of rich curries and roasted meats coming from the kitchens, and everyone in the palace was served two heavy meals a day, with thick lassi for drinking, and sweets for dessert. There were so many sweets prepared daily—puran puri, shira, anarasa—that it was impossible to taste them all.
Per custom, the rani was confined to her bed for a month, wrapped up like a moth in the silk cocoon of her chamber, with the windows shut and no visitors permitted except her closest servants and Dr. Bhagwat. Even Kahini was forbidden from visiting. Sundari said she was following every child-birthing ritual: the walls of her chamber had been whitewashed, and she was wearing a sacred pavitram ring made of kusha grass for an auspicious recovery.
Because we knew the rani was happy, we all had great fun in her absence, and everyone placed bets on what the child would be named. Eleven days after the child was born, a priest arrived for the naming ceremony. His name was to be Damodar. Rao would be added to signify his nobility.