A Beggar at the Gate (3 page)

The houses along Chowringhee Road stood up squarely, each in its large, walled compound. As she always did, Mariana studied the brass nameplate on each gate. All save two were English.

They had arrived at number 65. The scarlet-turbaned
durwan
waved his bamboo pole. Four men in loincloths appeared and pushed open the wrought-iron gate, and the carriage with its matched horses swung through.

In the echoing entrance hall, Aunt Claire handed her bonnet and parasol to a servant. “I must look in on your uncle,” she said over her shoulder as she puffed her way up the stairs.

Mariana waited, listening anxiously at the foot of the stairs. Worse than the punishing heat of Calcutta, its mosquitoes, its gossip, or even the squalor and starvation of many of the natives, were the illnesses whose sudden descent could wipe out entire families in a matter of hours.

She did not think she could bear her life without Uncle Adrian, who now lay, ill with fever, in an upstairs room. Unlike most of the English, her uncle knew something of the Indian life she craved to understand. An avid student of military strategy since her childhood, she had always cared more for her uncle's stories than for her aunt's silks, laces, and gossip. It had been Uncle Adrian who had introduced Mariana to her
munshi,
the old man who had taught her both Persian and Urdu, the court language of India.

Unlike his wife, Uncle Adrian had forgiven Mariana's sins.

A sound came from the dining room, followed by a high-pitched hiccupping giggle. Forgetting her worry, Mariana tore off her bonnet and rushed through the archway in time to see a small figure in white erupt from under the table and race through the pantry door, his clothes flying.

“Come here, Saboor, you nuisance, you pest!” Her hair falling from its pins, she burst into the pantry, and found a curly-haired child dancing with excitement, half-hidden behind a china cupboard.

Half a dozen men sat on the kitchen floor, eating rice heaped on freshly cut banana leaves. They looked up, chewing.

“Saboor, my little cabbage, my little cauliflower!” she cried as she scooped the child into her arms.

He wriggled and bounced as she kissed him, his broad face alight. “An-nah, put me down, put me down,” he shrieked. “I want to run and
run!”

As she followed his galloping three-year-old figure through the doorway, her aunt's voice rang in the hallway. “Mariana, come upstairs. There is something we must tell you.”

M
ariana had heard that demanding tone before. She climbed the stairs reluctantly, in no hurry to hear what Aunt Claire had to say, for it almost certainly had to do with Saboor, who now sat on the pantry floor, eating his lunch.

The Battle of Saboor at 65 Chowringhee Road, joined by Mariana and her aunt on Mariana and Saboor's first day in Calcutta, was now in its seventh month, but the child still lived in the house, not in the servants’ quarters, still ate breakfast with her, and she still sang him to sleep in her bedchamber. Confident of victory in the upcoming skirmish, she now squared her shoulders and turned toward her uncle's bedroom. She had, after all, protected her little hostage in the past from more dangerous opponents than one poor, snobbish, unhappy kinswoman.

Out of habit, she leaned cautiously forward before entering the room, trying to divine the course of the conversation she was about to join, but heard only the raucous cawing of crows outside her uncle's bedroom window.

“Come in, Mariana, and shut the door.” Still wearing her creased church gown, Aunt Claire fanned herself in an upright chair beside an open window, while Uncle Adrian smiled from his bed, his usually ruddy face now yellowed and drawn.

“We wanted to tell you of this earlier,” Aunt Claire began in her usual ringing tone as Mariana lowered herself into a seat beside the bed, “but with your uncle's illness there has been no time.”

Mariana nodded. Perhaps this conversation would not concern Saboor after all.

“Your uncle,” Aunt Claire announced, “has been posted to Afghanistan.”

“Afghanistan?” Mariana sat straight. “But I thought he was going home to Sussex.”

“Well, he is not. The British Envoy in Kabul has particularly asked for him.”

“It is quite flattering, really,” Uncle Adrian put in from his pillows. “We shall be leaving in a month or two.”

“But I thought you hated travel, Aunt Claire. I thought—”

“It does not matter what you thought, and in any case, it is all decided. We are at last to be rid of that native child, and you are to be divorced.” Aunt Claire closed her fan with a snap. “On our way to Kabul, we shall stop at Lahore, end your marriage, leave the child with his family, and travel on. It's as simple as that.”

Rid of Saboor? But she was not ready to lose him. Mariana's hand flew to her mouth.

“Think, child,” her aunt was saying. “That baby is small now, but in no time at all he'll be a full-grown native
man.
What on earth will you do with him then? This brings us, of course, to my next point. In his same dispatch from Kabul, the Envoy has revealed something unexpected about
you.”

“Sir William Macnaghten mentioned
me
in a government dispatch?”

“He did,” Aunt Claire replied, in the grand tone she reserved for government matters. “Several days ago, immediately after your uncle's new appointment to Afghanistan, he was summoned to Government House, but to his surprise it was
not
to discuss either Afghanistan or the Honorable East India Company. Instead, Lord Auckland's two sisters told him privately—and in
strictest
confidence—that there was something you have
not
revealed to us about that horrid native ‘marriage’ of yours.”

There was something odd about her aunt and uncle's faces. Suspicion dawned in Mariana. “What have I not revealed, Aunt Claire?”

“That you are still, shall I say, chaste. That you are married in name only.”

“What?”
Mariana, who had never spoken aloud about such matters, looked hastily away from her uncle. “And the Governor-General and his sisters know this?”

“Of course they do,” Aunt Claire rejoined impatiently. “Sir William has just finished telling them.”

“But how does he—”

“As you no doubt remember,” Uncle Adrian put in gently, “every Government of India officer who was present at Lahore that evening was forced to attend your ‘wedding,’ including Lord Auckland. The next morning, Sir William Macnaghten kindly offered to fetch you from Shaikh Waliullah's house and take you back to the English camp, but when he arrived in the walled city, he found that you had vanished upon some silly native errand.”

“It was
not
silly,” Mariana protested, stung. “The Maharajah's armed men came for Saboor, and they had to let him down from a window in the rain, and—”

“Never mind about the child,” snapped Aunt Claire.

“When Sir William inquired as to your whereabouts,” Uncle Adrian went on, his eyes averted from Mariana's, “the Shaikh indicated that events of the previous night had not unfolded as expected. Sir William then asked one or two questions of his own, and divined the truth of the matter.

“He wrote in his dispatch that he had put the whole story from his mind, but thought of it after he requested my appointment to Kabul.”

Aunt Claire glared at Mariana. “Why did you not tell us this yourself?”

Mariana found her handkerchief and mopped her face. Saboor's
grandfather
knew what had happened that night? Who had told
him.?
Did they all tell each other
everything?

“I do not understand,” she said stiffly, “how Sir William could even
mention
such a delicate—”

“Don't be a goose, Mariana,” interrupted Aunt Claire. “You had no reason to hide this information. We cannot think how you managed it, but we have all agreed that saving yourself on your marriage night was the first sensible thing you have done since you came to India.”

“If it is true,” added Uncle Adrian, “then it may be possible to salvage some small part of your reputation. While you behaved foolishly, even provocatively, toward the natives, you may not have been entirely unchaste.”

“Not entirely unchaste?”
Mariana sprang, hot-faced, from her chair.
“If it is true?”

“Sit down at once. There is more.” Aunt Claire leaned back in her chair. “The Eden ladies have told your uncle that they want to apologize.” She peered at Mariana over her fan. “To
you.

“They said that on the way to the Punjab, you had wanted to marry a certain Lieutenant Fitzgerald of the Horse Artillery, and that they had forced you to sever that friendship. They said that all this occurred just over eighteen months ago. They implied that you took the loss badly, and that the disappointment you felt may have affected your judgment and led to your later entanglement with Saboor's father.”

Affected her judgment
indeed.
Mariana glowered at her aunt as she subsided into her seat.

“The ladies said that they forced the parting after hearing that Fitzgerald had jilted a young lady here in Calcutta. They now understand that the story was false, and that Fitzgerald had, in fact, behaved very well.” Aunt Claire paused dramatically. “Why did you tell us none of this?”

Mariana averted her face. It caused her too much pain even to think of Fitzgerald. What was the use of talking about him?

Fitzgerald's smile had been crooked and knowing. His uniform coat had smelled deliciously musty. At first, the Governor-General's sisters had put no obstacle in the way of her infatuation. Nodding like two bonneted birds, the two spinsters had watched her blossom, watched her follow her young horse-gunner with her eyes until the lies that had traveled all the way from Calcutta reached the Punjab. Then, abruptly, they had changed their minds. With no thought of Mariana's feelings or of Fitzgerald's, they had issued instructions that the two were to be separated.

The loss of him had been agony.

Four weeks later, Lord Auckland's much-desired treaty of alliance with the Punjab had been signed and celebrated with Mariana's unexpected native wedding. The next day, Harry Fitzgerald and all the other officers she might have married had marched off with their great army to Afghanistan and victory, leaving her behind them in disgrace.

“The Eden ladies wish to make amends,” Aunt Claire announced. “Now that this new information has emerged, they believe they can help you. They have quite generously offered to let it drop in certain circles that your behavior in Lahore was not as shocking as people suppose. They are willing to suggest that you have been wronged.”

“That is, of course, the great benefit of my appointment to Kabul,” Uncle Adrian added seriously. “It may be that we, and particularly you, my dear, will be able to make a fresh start there. I understand that Kabul has every chance of becoming a delightful station for our officers, with its superior climate and its wonderful fruit.” He nodded with satisfaction. “Fortunately for all of us, among Muslim natives an unconsummated marriage is easily dissolved.”

Aunt Claire cleared her throat. “Of course, this brings up the question of your future. Once we are in Kabul, it may be possible to arrange someone for you. A widower, perhaps.”

A doddering old man with children older than herself? Mariana opened her mouth to speak, then closed it.

“But then,” her aunt went on eagerly, “one never knows what might occur. After all, Kabul is full of unattached men, including Lieutenant Fitzgerald.”

“No one will marry me, Aunt Claire, and Fitzgerald hates me after what happened.”

“But my dear girl, your news must be well-known there already. You know how gossip travels. For all we know, the lieutenant may be waiting breathlessly for your arrival. After all, he has had his own experience with unfair gossip and scandal. But if he does not marry you, someone else may. You should have children of your own.” She sighed wistfully. “You have
no idea
how happy that will make you.

“But of course,” she added, “if nothing takes place in Kabul, we shall take you home to England when we leave here permanently.”

Uncle Adrian nodded. “Your aunt is right, Mariana. Whatever happens will be better than this. You shall, thank God, be free of your native connections before the end of the cold weather.”

And free of Saboor. Mariana stared numbly at her uncle.

BACK IN her room, she wiped her hands on her skirt and raked back her hair. She had more on her mind than her uncle's mortifying news and surprising plans, more than the tiny flame of hope her aunt had caused her to feel for her own future, for outside her window, beyond the shutters, past the champa tree with its yellow showers of bloom, past the compound wall, a man waited to see her: a courier who had come twelve hundred miles to deliver a letter into her hands.

He had arrived at night, and had made such a noise banging the gate with a stick, that the
durwan,
woken from sleep, had taken him to task for disturbing the English sahibs. But this courier was not a man to be stopped. He had insisted that he had orders to deliver something immediately to the lady who kept a native child with herself inside the house.

In the end, Mariana's own manservant, Dittoo, had been summoned to resolve the issue. Recognizing the courier's clothing and speech as Punjabi, and understanding that he must have come all the way from the house of Shaikh Waliullah, Dittoo had gone to fetch an unused
charpai,
and instructed the man to wait on it until the morning. Instead, the courier had announced his hunger, forcing a nervous Dittoo to take the risk of stealing bread, butter, and a mango from the pantry.

When he had eaten, the courier had once again demanded to see Mariana, who, like her aunt and uncle, had slept through the drama at the gate. Unprepared, she had started up at the sight of Dittoo outside her bedroom door at four o'clock in the morning, a lamp in his hand, rumpled and close to tears.

“There is a courier outside,” her manservant had whispered hoarsely. “He has brought a letter from Lahore. He says he will give it into your hands only.”

She had sat up and reached for her dressing gown. “You are sure?” she had asked, knowing as she spoke that he was.

The lamp had jerked in Dittoo's hand, sending moving shadows onto the wall. “He is very ugly, Bibi,” he said, his face bunching. “He is an albino. I told him I could not bring such a strange-looking man into the house in the middle of the night. I said he must wait until the morning, but he is insisting, and his voice is becoming loud.

“I begged him to give me the letter,” he had added, “but he said he would kill me first.” He had drawn his hunched form as straight as he was able. “He says he has not traveled all this distance to give the letter to a servant.”

Mariana had crept down the stairs after Dittoo and followed him to the side verandah, where she quickly took in the shadowy form of a burly man in a thick, Punjabi-style turban. The man's beard was as pale as corn silk. She had blinked in surprise at the sight of his scabbed and blistered feet on the tiled verandah floor. Although they clearly belonged to him, they were as white as her own.

She had returned the man's greeting, but said no more. She had not even asked his name. Instead, she had taken the sealed letter from his outstretched hand and turned away toward the stairs. Reaching her room, she had slid the letter into the bottom of one of her tin storage boxes and crawled onto her bed.

For two days she had avoided reading it. For two days the albino had sat on the string bed outside the gate, waiting to collect her reply before starting on his long journey home.