I folded the letter and hurried off to find Jhalkari. She was in the new Durgavas, a small chamber barely large enough to fit ten beds. She was speaking with Mandar, and I summoned both of them to a corner of the room.
“You have to see this.”
Both women read the letter and shook their heads.
“It doesn’t make sense. Gopal reads everything. Why would he continue flirting with Kahini if he knows she has a lover?” Mandar took the letter and read it again. Then she said, “Return it to Gopal. See what he does.”
Jhalkari’s eyes brightened. “He’ll be beside himself.”
Mandar agreed. “He won’t even tell her you opened it.”
“Or maybe he won’t give it to her at all,” Jhalkari said. “Look, there he is.” Outside the window, the Master of the Letters was searching his kurta, patting every possible fold. “He knows he’s lost it. Go,” Jhalkari suggested. “We’ll watch.”
I approached Gopal with the letter, and his eyes darted madly from my hands to my face.
“You have it,” he said accusingly. He reached out and tried to snatch it. “Give it to me!” he shouted, so that several servants stopped what they were doing to see what was happening.
“You gave me an extra letter,” I said evenly.
“Did you read it?”
“Yes.” I watched his face. A twitch formed under his left eye.
“You can never tell Kahini!”
“What are you covering up for her?” I asked, and let him take the letter from my hand. “She isn’t in love with you; another man is writing to her. She’s in love with someone else.”
“You have no idea—”
I shook my head and started to walk away.
“Wait!” he called after me. “You won’t say anything?”
I didn’t respond.
After our move to the Rani Mahal, nothing seemed to make sense anymore, especially to Anand, who had already lost one home, and then had to lose another. For three nights he screamed, and there was nothing the rani could do to calm his terrors. “He’s only voicing what all of us feel,” Kashi whispered from her bed next to mine. Jhalkari was on the other side of me. There wasn’t even any room for our own puja tables. Now, we all shared one altar near the door.
I’m sure there are a great many people who believe that when the rani lost her kingdom, she immediately began plotting all of the ways in which she could fight to win it back. But since I was there with her from the very first day she held a durbar in the Rani Mahal, I can tell you that nothing was further from the truth. The very last thing the rani wanted was war. She believed, the very same way you or I believe that the sun will rise tomorrow, that the Company would someday grant one of her appeals. If I could tell you the number of appeals she wrote, arguing in her best English each of the most logical points you would have argued if you had been in her place, then the rest of my memoirs would be spent doing so. It was like Arjun said to me the first night we spent in the new palace. “I don’t know what’s more depressing. Watching the rani believe that British law will triumph, or listening to her father explain there is no alternative to war.”
But then, just as the rani and her son seemed to be making their peace with the sudden change, even worse news came. A servant announced the arrival of Major Ellis outside the Durbar Hall.
“Your Highness, the honorable Major Ellis is here.”
The servants still called the rani, “Your Highness,” and she still held a durbar, even though there was no longer a kingdom to administer.
“He may enter.”
The major stepped into the hall and blinked several times as he took in his surroundings. Just as she had in the Panch Mahal, the rani was sitting on her gold and emerald throne, which the governor-general had finally agreed she could take. She was surrounded by a half circle made up of her Durgavasi. Each of us sat on large red cushions that matched both the walls and ceiling of the chamber. To the rani’s left, on thickly padded chairs, sat all of her important advisers, just as they always had when she had been the Rani of Jhansi. Her father was there, along with the generals Gul Mohammed and Raghunath Singh. She wasn’t presiding over the Panch Mahal, but in her blue silk sari and silver bangles, she still appeared regal.
The major bowed very, very low, and addressed her as a queen. “Your Highness, I come with news.”
“You always come with news, Major Ellis, and it never seems to be to my liking. What is it today?”
“The Queen of England and her Parliament are interested in this land as well.”
The rani looked at her father, but neither seemed to understand what this could mean.
The major explained. “Parliament has become very interested in the British East India Company’s holdings here.”