The major had a comment about everything.
Then Arjun’s eyes grew wide and he took in his breath. I saw it at the same time: Buckingham Palace. It sprawled across our entire field of view, a majestic palace surrounded by sweeping gardens.
“I thought you might like to see this before we reached the hotel,” Major Wilkes said.
Everything I’d seen in Jhansi seemed small by comparison. We slowed briefly in front of the gates, and then the coaches took off toward Albemarle Street, where we stopped in front of a towering building with a sign that read BROWN’S HOTEL.
“This is where we’re staying?”
Wilkes smiled at me. “This is it.”
It was like a palace itself. A dozen men in black coats and white lapels appeared to take away our luggage. Outside, the air was crisp and smelled of trees. Wilkes said it was the evergreens used to decorate the outside of the hotel.
“Then these garlands aren’t normal?”
“No. They’re for Christmas. Like those holly berries over there.”
Inside, the evergreens gave the reception room a delightful smell. Everything was bright and cheerful. We were shown to our rooms, seven chambers on the same hall, and told that dinner would be served downstairs in the dining room. Everything felt new and large and strange. The British wore shoes indoors, even though our rooms—like all the other rooms—were carpeted, and even the bathroom had a working gas lamp. I desperately wished that Anu and my father could see all of this. They wouldn’t have believed it.
That evening, at a long table trimmed with fresh evergreens and flickering candles, Wilkes told us not to expect any word from the queen for several days. “Think of all the petitioners who want to see her.”
“But we’ve come from Jhansi. Who else has come all that way?” I said.
Still, there was nothing to do except wait. So over the next few days, we passed the time walking the wet streets of London, admiring the beautifully decorated shops and large Christmas wreaths on wooden doors of houses. One day we walked to the famous Hyde Park. The next day we made our way to Regent Street. We attracted attention wherever we went. Beneath our cloaks, it was impossible to tell we weren’t dressed like Englishmen, but the color of our skin stood out, and also our jewelry. Jhalkari and I were still wearing our nose rings. Arjun still had on his pair of gold hoops.
By the third day, we had all grown very anxious. What if the queen called on us in two months? Or if she didn’t care that we had come at all? But as we sat down to dinner in the common dining room alongside Major Wilkes and several hotel guests, a very well-dressed messenger arrived.
“From Buckingham Palace,” he announced to the room, and everyone held their breath. Then he unfolded the letter he was carrying and read it aloud.
We were being summoned to court the next day and were to be there at twelve o’clock!
We all let out a cheer. Even the other hotel guests smiled. By six the next morning we were already awake and starting to prepare. Major Wilkes had warned us to adopt Western dress. “The men must put on black suits and white ties, and the women need to dress as proper ladies.” When I had questioned what he meant by “proper ladies,” his cheeks had turned red. “I’m sorry, ma’am, but your waist—I’m afraid that no one has ever seen that body part in the queen’s chambers.”
That might have been true, but we ignored his advice and dressed as we had always intended—in silk saris and kurtas. Jhalkari braided my hair, then I did the same for her, and we both decorated our braids with golden choti, a series of long flowers wrought in twenty-four-karat gold and embellished with rubies and emeralds. When we were finished, we stood in front of the mirror and admired ourselves.
“I don’t even recognize us,” Jhalkari whispered.
It was true. We were a vision of gold and silk, Jhalkari in a sari of red and gold, myself in patterned yellow and purple. Strings of pearls glittered from our necks, and ruby earrings matched our ruby nose rings and thick ruby bracelets. Gold and ruby bells tinkled musically from our ankles. It was a measure of the rani’s trust that she had lent such jewels to us. Truthfully, none of it seemed real. Not our clothes, or our jewels, or the ornately carved mirror hanging from the paneled wall of our hotel.
Outside, waiting in the hall for Major Wilkes, Arjun and the other guards were all dressed as magnificently as maharajas, in gilded kurtas, heavy gold earrings, and elaborate pagris. If you have never seen a pagri, it is a turban adorned with a heavily jeweled sarpech, meant to resemble Krishna’s peacock feather. I gasped when I saw him. He was what Jane Austen would have imagined as “dashing.” None of us were dressed in our heavy cloaks, as apparently, this was not done when meeting the queen. We would have to brave the cold in our thin kurtas and silks.
“You look stunning,” Arjun said to Jhalkari and me.