Shivaji’s house was much finer than ours. His wife had brought with her a large dowry fortune, and many of the items had been hers from childhood. We walked through a hall painted with images of Lord Krishna as a baby, and I wondered if one of Shivaji’s other sons was an artist. Then I heard a familiar voice call my name, and as we entered the common room, a pair of arms wrapped themselves around me.
“Anu!” I pulled back and was shocked by the change I saw in my sister. She was a woman, with a woman’s features and a woman’s body. She bent to touch my feet, and when she stood I saw that new curves filled out the blue and yellow sari I had sent to her. She wore gold around her wrists like my mother had and their resemblance was so strong that for several moments, I was too startled to say anything. “You’re a woman.”
She giggled. “How long are you staying?”
“A day. The rani needs me to travel. I came to say good-bye.”
Her smile vanished. “Where are you going?”
“To England, to petition the queen. The rani is sending me and another Durgavasi. She sent a lawyer several months back, but the queen refused to hear his petition.”
My father and Shivaji seated themselves on a pair of low cushions across from my sister and I did the same. It was only later that I realized I had chosen to sit with the men versus the married women.
“I’ve never been farther than Burma,” Shivaji said as he folded his legs. “But if I was offered the opportunity to go to England . . . It’s almost two months at sea, is that right?”
“Yes. We will arrive in the middle of December and experience their largest festival. Christmas.” I told them the story Mrs. McEgan told us, of Lord Jesus and his virgin mother. “The rani has told us to honor everything they do in this festival, so long as it pleases Lord Brahma.”
I looked over at my sister, who was staring at me the way you might stare at a stranger. Perhaps I really was a stranger to her now. The thought made me sad.
“Tell me about life as Ishan’s wife,” I said.
Anu blushed, and I knew she was in love. “He is at the animal hospital right now. Sometimes, he brings home wounded birds. We’ve raised three, and watched them fly away.”
“He’s a good man,” I said. “It must be his father’s influence.” I smiled at Shivaji, who returned the gesture, then asked me what life was like as the rani’s Durgavasi. “Different now that the British have Jhansi.”
“It’s unthinkable,” Shivaji said. “Queen Victoria and her Parliament are just as greedy as the Company, wanting more land, more valuable goods, more trading routes. You will need a very persuasive argument when you go. What will it be?”
“That the young queen is a woman the same as the rani, and understands a woman’s struggle to rule. Why would one queen wish to rob another, when so few of them remain?”
Shivaji stared at me. “Is that it? You are traveling such a distance to remind the British queen that she is a woman?”
My face felt hot. It did seem ridiculous hearing his words. “No. We are going to appeal to her humanity.” Because what other peaceful option was there?
Shivaji didn’t look persuaded.
“They say she’s wise,” I said, feigning confidence. “She’ll understand that diplomacy is the best solution.”
The day after we returned from visiting our families, we departed for England. The rani and the other Durgavasi surrounded our horses to bid us farewell. The rani gave a short speech describing her pride in our mission, and she was full of praise for what Jhalkari and I were about to do. No other women in all of India had undertaken the journey Jhalkari and I were about to take—none that we knew of. So you can imagine our feelings as we made our way by horse, then cart, then horse again, to the port where our ship would sail for another country.
“I’ve never seen anything like it,” Jhalkari kept saying, in every city we passed. And everything was new not only to us, but to everyone in our group. In one city, the women wore what looked to us to be long black shrouds. Even their faces were covered in black. In another, the men were dressed entirely in white. The buildings, the food, even the animals we encountered as we made our way from Jhansi to Madras, were completely unfamiliar. We might as well have been traveling across different continents.
When we reached Madras, Arjun looked over at me, and we both stared at the expanse of water before us. Neither of us had seen the ocean before, and the brightly colored sails of the small fishing boats framed against the blue sky were beautiful. “I wish my father could see this,” I said to Arjun.
We dismounted and stood on the shore, watching as boats bobbed and swayed on the sea. The wind tasted like salt instead of earth, and Major Wilkes, the British officer who would be escorting us to England, put his nose in the air and smiled. He was a little older than the rani, twenty-nine or thirty. He was making this trip to England to bring his fiancée back with him to India. “Home.” He sighed.