“Think rationally, Manu,” said her father. “You only have two hundred men—all of them are needed to guard this palace. You know what happens during times of rebellion. Pretenders to the throne crawl out of the earth like worms drawn by flood.”
I thought this was a very clever analogy, but I wondered if it would happen now. Weren’t we all fighting for the same cause? To rid India of the British?
“I could talk with the sepoys,” the rani said.
“Why should they trust you when you’re taking a British pension?” Moropant asked.
I could see the hurt on her face. “Then at the very least, we should tell them to flee. Get out of Jhansi, and take shelter in Sagar or Datia.”
“And you think they don’t know that?” Kahini said rudely.
“I think their plan is to wait it out,” Sundari countered. “Let’s send your Dewan to warn them,” she suggested. “As a gesture of goodwill, we can send some of your personal guards.”
And this was what the rani did. Forty men accompanied the Dewan to Town Fort.
We waited all day for word. By nightfall only the Dewan had returned. The rani’s guards had joined the rebellion.
The Dewan shook as he recounted the scene. “It was chaos, Your Highness. The women were in a panic and the children couldn’t be calmed. Captain Skene is not going to flee from Town Fort. After seeing your men joining forces with the rebels, he believes you’re setting a trap.”
No one slept more than a few hours that night. The Durgavasi stood guard in the rani’s chamber, and as soon as the sun rose, there was a commotion beyond the gates. We hurried to the window just in time to see two men walk past the guards and shout the rani’s name from the courtyard below.
“Rani Lakshmibai!” one of them cried.
The other one shouted, “Rani of Jhansi!”
Neither of them was carrying weapons, but they still looked threatening. The rani hurried to the window, and when the men caught sight of her face, they gestured wildly.
“Your Highness, you should probably step back,” I said.
“No, let them speak. What is it that you want?” she shouted down.
“We want to know which side you’re on! Do you stand with the British, or do you stand with us?”
Her response was very clever. “I stand with justice—for my people, for my son, and for my kingdom.”
The men exchanged looks. Then they decided she meant she stood with the rebels, and one of them raised his arm in the air, and shouted, “Har Har Mahadev!” In English, this would be like saying, By the Grace of God!
The other one took up the shout, and the pair left as quickly as they’d come. But their intrusion served as a warning to us: we now knew the rani could count on the guards outside the mahal the same way she could count on the British. Her only real defense was her Durgavasi and her remaining personal guards.
Nothing of any consequence happened the rest of that day, though we kept waiting for the sound of gunfire, or the din of voices to tell us that a mob was growing outside. But the marketplace was eerily silent. I wondered how the British were surviving in Town Fort. Did they think the prolonged silence meant they were safe? Had Captain Skene realized that the rebels had all the time in the world and it was the British for whom time was running out?
The next morning the rani requested breakfast to be served in her chamber while she discussed private matters with Sundari. There was no sign of the rebels who had forced their way inside the courtyard the day before. I sat with Moti in the Durbar Hall, hoping that it was going to be another quiet day, when raised voices echoed near the gates, followed by the sound of heavy boots on wooden stairs. Immediately, I reached for my bow, and Moti was on her feet, wielding her knife. I yelled for the rani to stay inside her chamber just as her father burst through the door.
“Are you determined to kill me?” he asked.
Immediately, I lowered my weapon. “I’m sorry, Shri Moropant.”
He pushed aside my apology with a wave. “Two British soldiers have been killed. One a captain, the other an ensign. They were delivering letters to the fortress when it happened.”
“It was sepoys who killed them?” I confirmed.
“Yes.”
The rani heard her father’s voice and emerged from her chamber. He told her the same thing he had just told us, then boots once again thumped their way up the stairs. I reached for an arrow, but it was Arjun. “I have a messenger from the fort, Your Highness. May I send him inside?”
“Of course.”
An Englishman appeared, dressed in the most ridiculous fashion I had ever seen. He was trying to imitate Indian dress, but his cotton churidars were too small, his juti too formal, and his pale skin contrasted starkly against the black fabric of his kurta. His face showed extreme fatigue, and something else I had never seen on a British soldier before—fear.
“Your Highness,” he began, then he collapsed at the rani’s feet. “My three companions have been killed!”
The rani looked at Arjun, who couldn’t confirm or deny the story.