A Beggar at the Gate (24 page)

How had she escaped death? Mariana looked after the soldiers, her pulse racing. Was it her amulet? She reached up and felt for the silver box with Safiya's Qur'anic verses folded inside. Perhaps it was working. Perhaps, after all, she would survive this horror….

Only the beggars will be safe.
Seeing the wisdom in that cruel statement, Mariana did not stand up again. Instead, she began to transform herself. She rubbed against the dust-stained wall, adding stripes of grit to her already filthy chador. Gagging at the smell, she pushed her hands into the foul, urine-smelling dirt at the bottom of the wall, forcing it under her fingernails and into the skin on the backs of her hands, rubbing it onto her face. She unlaced her English boots, hid them, then rubbed more dirt onto her feet and their bandages, wincing at the icy cold of the cobblestones under her bare toes. At last, filthy and terrified, she crawled to the haveli's front door. Making herself as small as possible inside the folds of her chador, she reached out a dirty hand, palm up. “Alms,” she croaked, “alms for the love of Allah.”

B
y the time Mariana's bearers abandoned her in the city, Hassan, Yusuf Bhatti, and the two Afghan traders had already spent long, cold hours inside the Hazuri Bagh.

They had arrived after midnight to find the ground outside the torchlit garden swarming with soldiers and pack animals and the side gate heavily guarded, but Yusuf and his companions had found no difficulty in entering. It had taken only a few rupees from Hassan to persuade the pickets to look the other way, allowing the four men to slip inside, pistols,
jezails,
muskets, and all.

Hassan had gone straight to the center pavilion, identified himself, and asked to speak to Prince Sher Singh, but to no avail.

“He is not here,” a bearded officer had said abruptly, turning him away at gunpoint from the marble steps.

“It is our fate, then,” Zulmai observed, “to deal with these assassins alone.”

As they crouched, waiting for morning, against the garden's boundary wall, Yusuf pointed toward the side gate where they had entered. “That will be the last of the Prince's guns,” he said, as a team of horses dragged a nine-pound cannon inside by the light of a dozen torches. “Fourteen artillery pieces. Sher Singh is taking no chances.”

Habibullah grinned as the horses hauled the piece into position before the massive Alamgiri Gate leading to the Citadel, encouraged by shouts and blows from a swarm of gunners. “It will be a fine thing to see those huge doors blown off their hinges.”

“Let us see how much resistance the Rani offers,” cautioned Zulmai, glancing over his shoulder to where Sher Singh's infantry waited in groups while their officers rode to and fro among them, shouting orders.

“Or who wins in the end,” Yusuf had agreed, nodding toward Hassan.

Now, by the morning light, shivering inside his heavy shawl, Yusuf glanced to where Hassan sat, his own shawl over his head, his breath visible in the raw air. Since midnight, he had spoken little. The man had much to worry about.

“There is the Prince,” Hassan now said sharply, pointing toward the pavilion. “On the verandah—the heavyset one in the shawl turban.”

The other three men followed his gaze in time to see a group of men disappear from sight down an invisible flight of stairs.

Habibullah laughed. “Your Prince is a confident man, to be showing himself so early.”

Zulmai rose to his feet in one swift motion and adjusted his ever-present
jezails.
“We have seen the target,” he said quietly. “Now we must find his assassins.”

HALF AN hour later, Yusuf sat tensely against a gnarled, strategically placed tree. He liked Zulmai's plan—that Yusuf and Hassan would search for the assassins on one side of the marble pavilion while Zulmai and Habibullah covered the other, but how was Yusuf to find and kill Sher Singh's assassins in this crowded garden, while at the same time protecting his inexperienced friend?

A wall similar to the Citadel's surrounded the garden. With a wide, flagstone walk along its top and its defensive stone battlements, it ought to have been the perfect hiding place for snipers. Even accounting for the trees, four marksmen would have had no trouble shooting any man in the garden or the pavilion from that height, but such a prize position was bound to be contested by the Rani's own troops, leaving no room for anyone else.

The assassins must, then, perform their deadly work from ground level in this busy garden.

“Stay here,” Yusuf told Hassan. He rose stiffly, brushed dust and leaves from his clothing, then marched purposefully across the garden, leaving his musket behind him, in Hassan's care.

Yusuf picked his way clumsily along the edge of a ruined walkway, his eyes traveling from the ground to the branches of the mango trees near the path and down again. Ahead of him, a mangy donkey loaded with ammunition let out a squealing bray. Dust blew in all directions.

Seventy-five yards from the pavilion, hard by the boundary wall, he found what he sought: a man crouched behind a pile of broken stones, his back to Sher Singh's cannon, nearly invisible in his ragged, dust-covered clothing, a long-barreled
jezail
across his knees.

Yusuf did not stop walking. Instead, careful not to attract the man's attention, he continued following the wall, searching for the other assassin. For all he knew, these men, like themselves, had chosen to work in pairs. If they had, the other was watching him

But for all his searching he found no second sniper.

“I have seen one of them,” he told Hassan a little while later. “Stay here. I am going back to kill him.”

“What can I do? How can I help?” Hassan was on his feet in an instant, his musket in his hand.

Yusuf smiled grimly. “You can stay under this tree and protect the weapons. Shoot anyone who tries to take them. I will cut the first man's throat, for the garden is quiet where he is sitting and I do not want another assassin to hear my shot, but after this, without a gun, I'll be as useless as if I had stayed at home in bed.”

A short while later, his
tulwar
at his side, and his heavy, triangular-bladed dagger tucked into his sash, he studied the sniper from his hiding place behind a simbal tree.

The man had not moved. He still squatted close to the boundary wall, his back to Yusuf, his pile of stones protecting him against retaliatory fire from the pavilion. Beneath his coarsely tied turban, greasy hair hung to his shoulders.

Broken stones littered the ground between the two men, complicating a running charge. Careful not to create unease in the assassin, Yusuf kept his eyes averted as he moved quietly closer, and sheltered himself behind a thornbush, thirty feet away. Yusuf fingered the curved
tulwar
at his side, gauging the blow that would sever the head from those hunched shoulders, then loosened his grip on the sword and reached for his dagger instead. With so much obstruction at the man's neck, the sword might fail to do its work. It would be safer to seize the sniper by his beard and slit his throat.

Like his enemy, Yusuf waited. His head ached and his eyes burned from lack of sleep but he made no move until a great, thudding roar came from the direction of the Citadel gate, blotting out all the other sounds around him. Without waiting to confirm the cause of the din, he launched himself at the crouching man.

He had not counted upon the assassin's curiosity. Too late to stop, he saw the man turn toward the sound of the guns, then start with surprise as he caught sight of Yusuf running at him full tilt, his dagger ready in his fist.

The assassin reached rapidly into his clothes and withdrew his own wicked blade, but the
jezail
across his knees stopped him from turning his body to meet Yusuf straight on.

Yusuf struck the assassin on the shoulder, sending them sprawling together on the stony ground. Before the assassin could scramble away, Yusuf caught his arm, raised it, and plunged his dagger deep into the man's side.

The assassin's body jerked. A high, whistling sound came from him as he tried to breathe, but he did not drop his long Khyber knife. He made a fearful effort to rise, his fingers tightening on the knife's haft.

Yusuf was no butcher, but he did what he had to do. Setting his knee on the arm holding the man's knife, he pulled back the turbaned head and drew his dagger blade across the man's throat.

As he did so, a second shattering roar came from the entrance to the Citadel. This time he looked up, and saw that the gate had indeed been blown open, and that the Rani's generals had been prepared. As the Prince's storming party poured into the opening, they had been caught in a barrage of cannon fire at point-blank range. When the smoke cleared, more than a hundred of Sher Singh's soldiers lay dead and dying in the gateway, among broken carts and shattered pieces of the great wooden doors.

“We may lose this battle,” Hassan announced when Yusuf reappeared and flung down the sniper's weapons. “Is the assassin dead?”

“He is dead. Have you seen Zulmai?”

“No.”

Yusuf ran tense fingers over his face. “I am certain there is another sniper on this side of the garden.” He glanced toward the Citadel. “Look,” he added, “they're going make a second—”

Another cannonade arose from the gate. Again, once the smoke lifted, a hundred more dead and dying bodies clogged the entrance.

Yusuf made up his mind. “Come. Bring your musket,” he barked, dragging Hassan to his feet. “With the battle going so poorly, the Prince will want to see the damage for himself. Any moment now he will come out onto the verandah and make a target of himself. There is no time to lose. We must find our second sniper.”

As they started off, a crackling sound came from the high walls on either side of the Alamgiri Gate. The Rani's troops were now pouring deadly musket fire down upon the Prince's infantry who were massed along the wall, desperately seeking cover from the cannons inside the gate. In a panic, the Prince's men broke ranks. Bloody, shouting, tripping over their dead and wounded, they surged past their own silent guns and made for the side gate where they had entered the garden.

“Look there.” Hassan caught Yusuf by the sleeve as half a dozen soldiers flew past them.

Between the trees, oblivious to the panic surrounding him, a beardless man crept toward the center pavilion. Like the first assassin, he wore a coarsely tied turban, and carried several weapons.

He came to a stop no more than twenty yards from Yusuf and Hassan, and squatted on the far side of an old mango tree, a corner of his shawl just visible to the two men.

“He looks even younger than Habibullah,” Yusuf muttered.

Soldiers hurried by, obstructing Yusuf's line of sight.

“Come,” Yusuf ordered. With Hassan following, he made his way through the mob of escaping soldiers.

“We cannot shoot him now, with all this commotion,” he whispered, as he and Hassan paused in the shelter of another tree, “but when we are near enough, I'll let you take the first shot. Aim carefully, and do not shoot until I say so. We must not alarm him, and we
must not
miss.”

When Hassan nodded, Yusuf patted him on the shoulder. “You can do it, my friend,” he murmured.

They were ten yards from the sniper when Prince Sher Singh appeared with his armed guard, framed in a scalloped archway on the pavilion's verandah, his bearded face puckered with worry.

The sniper raised his
jezail.

“Now,” Yusuf ordered quietly.
“Shoot him now.”
He closed one eye and controlled his breathing as he raised his own musket and took aim at the boy assassin's head.

Hassan did not fire.

“Now,”
Yusuf ordered again, knowing even as he did so that Hassan would not fire, that he could never shoot a child, even to save the future of the Punjab.

Yusuf pulled the trigger.

The boy's
jezail
leapt in his hands an instant before Yusuf's shot struck home, but he must have sensed some impending danger, for his own shot went wild. He missed his mark, but as he rolled, bleeding, into the dust under the mango tree, confusion erupted in the pavilion.

Someone had been wounded.

“Get down!” Yusuf shouted, reaching for his friend, but he was too late. Before he could get them to safety, a dozen musket barrels lifted, aimed at them, and fired.

I
t was well past noon. The sun had dropped behind the high, decorated gate of Wazir Khan's Mosque an hour before, robbing the little square of its warmth.

Throughout the day, as the sun moved and the shadows in the square changed their shapes, Mariana had crouched, waiting for death, outside Shaikh Waliullah's door.

Only once had she moved from her post. Late in the morning, during a lull in the violence, she had crept around the corner of the house, past the small, boarded shop built into the corner, and into the lightless alley leading to the haveli's back door. There, she had relieved herself into the fetid channel running along one side of the alley, then crawled back and folded herself down once again, becoming as small and invisible as she could.

The day had been a nightmare of slaughter and misery, with gangs of soldiers smashing their way into the dwellings along the sides of the mosque, all of them easy to plunder, for the city had not seen this kind of violence for forty years. Time and again, while the torn pages of illuminated manuscripts blew about their feet, the soldiers dragged men out of their houses and beat them until they agreed to turn over their small treasures. Her face pressed against her upraised knees, Mariana had stopped her ears while the poor souls who pleaded that they had no riches and no gold were executed on the spot, and their headless bodies left on the bloody cobblestones where they had fallen.

At intervals the soldiers swarmed away, carrying their pillaged goods and bloodstained
tulwars,
but as soon as they were gone, another mob of them charged in from a different direction, waving weapons and shouting curses, and the little square erupted into violence once more.

With each new arrival, Mariana expected to die, but each time the soldiers had carried out their ugly work without taking notice of her.

During all those hours, the tall haveli doors had remained so tightly locked against her that they might have been the gates of Paradise, and she the worst of sinners.

The afternoon air, now filled with the smell of blood, rotted roses, and rare, spoiled perfumes, had turned cold. She shivered. Like the prince in Safiya's story, she had surely earned her banishment. Like him, she had forgotten charity, for what could be more uncharitable than suspicion?

She had not appreciated the Waliullah family's generosity or the love Hassan had offered her. Instead, proud and mistrusting, she had lost them both. As debased and filthy as the beggar prince, she too was exiled from the perfumed garden of her beloved.

How arrogant she had been when she had arrived at Qamar Haveli

She had misjudged Hassan and underestimated his family. How could she have imagined that the Shaikh would teach her his magical snakebite cure, or explain his ability to read minds, all in the space of a day or two? What had made her think she could master Safiya's healing arts and the source of her stout inner calm at the same time?

Instead of seeing her folly, she had felt slighted when the busy Waliullah household had offered her no long hours alone with either Safiya or the Shaikh. Blind to Hassan's feelings, she had not even bothered to ask why he refused to divorce her.

Walking away from the haveli yesterday afternoon, she had blamed the family for the failure of her visit

She hugged herself under her thin wrappings and wiped her running nose on her foul chador. It would do her no good to think of those things when she was so miserable. She badly needed food and water, but most of all, she needed a way to warm herself.

Her half-bare, bandaged feet ached miserably against the cobble stones. Surely, if she was forced to pass the night in the square, she would die of the cold

A corpse lay half-hidden by a small dome near the center of the square. From where she sat, Mariana could see that its shoulders were wrapped in a woolen shawl. Clenching her chattering teeth, she looked cautiously about her. No live person was visible in the square. She took in a deep breath, rose, sidled over to the dome, and bent over the dead man.

He had been so badly beaten about the head and face that no one could have recognized him. Averting her eyes from the ants crawling on his blood-encrusted features, she loosened a corner of the shawl and gave it a sharp tug, but it did not come loose. Much of the fabric seemed to have bunched beneath his body. Growing bolder, she nudged his corpse with a filthy, painted foot and tugged again.

She was no nearer to having the shawl, but she had gone too far to turn back. She sat down on the stones and braced both her feet against the dead man's stiffening shoulder. Grimacing with distaste, she wrested the fabric from under him.

Back again in her place against the wall, she examined her prize. It was not a rich shawl, but it was thick enough, and it had only two bloodstains. She spread it gratefully over her chador and wrapped its end about her toes, then leaned back against the brick wall of the house, her eyes closing.

“Peace, sister!”

She started. Whoever this was, he must have witnessed her thieving. She looked nervously about her, but could see no one.

“Sister, I am here.” The cracked voice came from close by.

A tiny, misshapen person stood half-hidden by the corner of the building. He raised a hand and beckoned to her.

He was no soldier. Such a small creature could scarcely do her harm, crippled as he was. Glad to see a live human being among all the carnage, Mariana gathered herself and stood, careful not to drop her stolen shawl.

Standing, he came only to her shoulder. His spine was so severely curved that his head, covered with a length of cotton, seemed to have been put on sideways, but his clothes were neat and clean. “I am the Keeper of Shoes for Wazir Khan's Mosque,” he told her, gesturing toward the tall gateway with its Arabic inscriptions that fronted the square. “I have spent the day hidden inside an empty student quarter in the courtyard. I have only ventured out now that it is mealtime and the soldiers have gone to raid the food bazaars.”

“Will they come back?”

“Yes, I fear they will.” The little man looked sideways into her face. “If Prince Sher Singh had prevailed in the Hazuri Bagh, he would have entered the city by now, and the pillage would have finished, but he has not.”

The hunchback gave no sign of disgust at her condition. Instead, his long face held only concern. He pointed to the square with its fallen bodies and broken glass. “You should not be out here with all this evil-doing, sister. You must take shelter as I have, in one of the empty quarters in the courtyard of the mosque. Allah Most Gracious would not forbid you, a woman, to seek safety in His house. There is water in the courtyard tank,” he added gently, glancing at her filthy hands. “I will take you there.”

Water.
She could only nod, weak with relief. Her chador drawn carefully across her face, she allowed him to lead her toward the high, tiled entrance to the mosque.

“I do not want to stay away from Qamar Haveli too long,” she told him as they began to mount the gateway stairs. “I am waiting for someone to open the doors.”

“Ah, Qamar Haveli, the home of Shaikh Waliullah … I entered that house once, when I was a child.”

His sigh echoed in the decorated archway behind Mariana. She did not answer him, for she had stepped into the mosque's broad, open courtyard and seen the brimming water tank at its center.

She licked her lips. “Is there a cup to drink from?” she asked, hiding her unclean hands behind her.

The hunchback shrugged. “I am a poor man,” he replied.

She would have to wash before she drank from her hands. After laying her shawls carefully down beside her, she lowered the dirty sheet from her head and face, knelt, and dipped her fingers into the tank.

The water was very cold, but she did not mind. She dug the filth from under her fingernails, scrubbed the dirt from her arms, and splashed water onto her face. Then, she moved to the far side of the tank, knelt again, cupped her palms, and drank.

Satisfied, her chador still loose on her shoulders, she sat back, and found the little hunchback staring at her across the water, his mouth ajar.

“You are not what you pretend to be,” he declared as she turned hastily away to cover herself. “I knew this from the first time you spoke to me in court Urdu instead of the coarse Punjabi of a beggar. Who are you, then, and how have you come to ask for alms at the gate of Shaikh Waliullah?”

“I am no one—” she faltered.

“You are very fair, if you do not mind my saying so,” he went on. “Your white skin puts me in mind of Shaikh Waliullah's foreign daughter-in-law. They call her the Lioness, for it was she who rescued Saboor, the Shaikh's baby grandson, from Maharajah Ranjit Singh when the child was dying of grief and neglect. The Maharajah was still alive then, of course, and—”

“I must return to the haveli now.” Her face averted from the hunchback's gaze, Mariana snatched up her shawls. “Thank you for the water,” she called over her shoulder as she hurried across the mosque's courtyard.

But the little man would not be dismissed. “I will wait with you at the Shaikh's door,” he announced as he trotted beside her toward the entrance. “You must hear this most interesting story.”

He talked as they descended the staircase, recounting Mariana's own past adventures to her as if they were now a part of the city's history. From time to time she tried to interrupt, to change the subject, to ask if he, too, was cold, where he lived, if he had a family, but with no result.

“And then,” he added as they skirted the horrors in the square, “having seen her bravery and her love of the child, the Shaikh determined that the foreign Lioness should become his son's wife. The wedding took place at the Citadel. Muhammad Ahmad, the diamond merchant, prepared beautiful jewelry for the bride, clothes were stitched, and a bride gift was arranged. You may have seen the gift. It is a house with a yellow door, only one lane away from the Delhi Gate.” He shook his head. “But these stories do not always end happily.”

They had reached the haveli. Mariana prayed that the little man would cease talking and return to his hiding place in the mosque, but he went on, waving his small hands for emphasis.

“Before the
valeema
celebration could take place,” he continued, lowering himself painfully to the ground and signaling her to join him, “the Maharajah's armed men came and tried to take Saboor Baba away again. It was only because of the quick thinking of a Hindu sweetmeat seller that Saboor Baba and the foreign lady were saved.

“The Waliullahs sent them to Bengal for two full years, but they have now returned.” He nodded significantly as Mariana arranged herself on the stones a few feet away. “The family rejoiced at first, but now it seems that all is not well. The English people who brought Hassan's wife and Saboor Baba from Calcutta are seeking a divorce. They want the Lioness to go away with them when they leave.”

He bent forward and rested his weight on his elbows, his great shrouded hump giving him the look of an oddly shaped ghost. “Imagine the shame of it! But of course, they are foreigners. Who can understand these people?”

In spite of her cold and hunger, Mariana winced.

“It is said that she loves Saboor more than life, and that she wants to stay. Let us hope she does. It would give the family happiness.” He sighed gustily. “No family deserves happiness more than the Waliullahs.”

Mariana closed her eyes. Everyone in the city must know her story. The hunchback himself would learn soon enough that she had run away from Qamar Haveli.

She had never suffered in that house for wanting to divorce Hassan. Every man, woman, and child had known her purpose when she came to stay, but instead of trying to punish her, or even arguing their case, all had offered acceptance, and the hope that she would change her mind.

“I tell you,” the little man went on grandly, “there are great men in this city but the greatest is Shaikh Waliullah. He is known far and wide for his wisdom and his generosity.

“I have kept watch over the shoes outside Wazir Khan's Mosque since I was a child,” he went on, waving one hand while supporting his weight with the other. “In all that time, the Shaikh has never failed to treat me with consideration. Of course, he sees to my health, and his sister sends food to my house, but there is more to his generosity than that. When Shaikh Waliullah greets me, he speaks to my soul, not to my station as a keeper of shoes.” He raised a finger and waggled it in the air. “In this world, it is a rare man who respects the humanity of a hunchback.”

At last, he fell silent beside her. Mariana reached forward and wrapped her feet more closely in her stolen shawl. What a fool she had been

Throughout her stay at Qamar Haveli she had been carefully tutored, her own lessons included invisibly in each of Safiya's regular teaching sessions. Thinking back, Mariana remembered each one, and the significant, accompanying glance Safiya had sent her way, indicating that the lesson was intended for her.

She had broken each one of those carefully imparted rules.

First, she had ignored the importance of charity, forgetting that every beggar, indeed every creature on earth, represented an opportunity for the generous to gain God's blessings. While running away, she had failed to offer the beggars at Shalimar as much as a greeting. She had been rude to Charles Mott. She had abandoned her uncle in his desperate need.