I glanced around the table, but everyone was chatting happily in English. We might as well have been a group of the queen’s servants for all the attention they were paying to us. “We were told there would be an answer tonight.”
“Ma’am,” he said, and although he was using a polite form of address, I knew he was doing so in a belittling way, “that’s not how things work in England. An answer may come tomorrow, or the next day, or not at all, but when it does, the queen will send it by letter.” I’m sure he could read the shock on my face, because he added, “You didn’t think she was going to make an announcement here? In front of all these guests?”
“I did. That is what she told us she would do.”
“Ma’am, I was raised by these British at the Kanpur Free School. Nothing they say is to be believed. A squat woman wearing a crown—”
I gasped, and Arjun turned red.
“None of them can understand us. Do you think she can wave her fat hand and make this better? She doesn’t have that kind of power. Parliament is making the decisions.”
“She’s the queen,” Jhalkari protested.
“And everything she does must go through Parliament. Trust me,” he said. “I have lived with these people. I know their habits. They wear shoes in their houses and bathe once a week. They may look clean, but they are dirty on the inside, both morally and physically.”
“Are they blind as well?” I demanded. “Or can’t they see how you despise them?”
Azimullah smiled. You would have thought for all the world that we were talking about civil things, like the weather. “Oh, yes. They’re blind as well. That’s why, when I return, I will give Saheb my carefully considered opinion.”
Arjun didn’t bother hiding his disgust. “And what will that be?”
“That British men are weak and can easily be defeated. He simply needs to rise up.”
We didn’t speak again that evening. After all, Azimullah Khan didn’t know everything. Our circumstances were different, and the queen had liked us. But when the queen arrived at the banquet with Prince Albert on her arm and dinner was served, I began to wonder if she was really going to address the rani’s plight that evening. There were boiled potatoes, a green vegetable I’d never seen, steamed carrots in rich sauce, and great heaps of meat. And everyone seemed far more interested in eating than in why we’d come. The conversation turned from the weather, to food, to riding in Hyde Park. Then suddenly, the queen stood and everyone rose. A servant announced, “Her Majesty, The Queen will be retiring for the night.”
Arjun and I looked at each other. We rose from our seats and before we could utter a word in protest, the queen was gone. The other guards looked in our direction.
“Where is she going?” Jhalkari said. “What about Jhansi?”
Azimullah looked extremely satisfied with himself. “Jhansi is probably the furthest thing from her mind right now.”
“What do you mean?”
“Tomorrow is their Christmas Eve festival. There are parties to attend.”
Days passed. Then weeks. Finally, we left England in January. We had been given an audience with Queen Victoria, we had dined at her table, and a week after the Christmas holiday, we had been invited back to court to meet important members of her Parliament. But ultimately, Saheb’s ambassador was right. She had allowed us to travel all the way from Jhansi and then back again to India without any verdict. There would be no triumphant return. No great reward.
Jhansi was still lost. The British queen was more interested in India’s dogs than her people.
Chapter Twenty-Two
1855
In the short time that we’d been gone, everything had changed.
We rode through Jhansi in stunned silence. The Temple of Mahalakshmi, where we always fed the poor, was closed, its colorful windows boarded and covered with signs in English that read, THIS TEMPLE IS SHUT. And next to it, on a vast stretch of land enclosed by a crude wooden fence, the British had set up a butchery. These days, when I talk to Westerners, there is only one thing they know about India, and it is that we hold the cow sacred. Some have the misconception that we believe our ancestors come back as cows. This is absurd and couldn’t be further from the truth. We simply never slaughter any animal that gives milk, and the cow is especially sacred to us since babies will drink their milk if their mothers no longer have any to give. So of all the offensive things the British could do, this butchery was by far the worst. The slaughtering of cows was terrible, but to see it happening next to the most sacred place in Jhansi—it would have been more acceptable if the British had destroyed the temple completely.