Rebel Queen (31 page)

They were taken to a villa called Bibighar, meaning House of the Ladies, a house for prostitutes. The British women would be used as prostitutes. And why not the children? Weren’t there soldiers who would enjoy a British boy? Or generals who might like a young British girl?

Azimullah Khan disagreed: he wanted all of the prisoners killed. When the men refused, he threatened them with death.

“The only thing I heard clearly above the gunfire,” Saheb wrote, “were shouts of ‘mummy,’ but the mothers couldn’t protect their children.
I
couldn’t protect them. Allah forgive me, Manu. I hope you will forgive me as well. Azimullah and Tatya Tope wish to drive the British from our land by whatever means necessary. You must know I would never have condoned this. But I’m afraid we’ll all suffer for their actions.”

I imagined the terror the children felt as they looked to their mothers, searching their eyes for signs of reassurance that never came.

The letter seemed to have no end of horror. Saheb reported that some of the women and children survived the shooting. But they were not allowed to live. A prostitute favored by Azimullah Khan
gathered several butchers, who carved up the survivors, removing their genitals and breasts.

None of us spoke when Arjun finished reading. Was it possible we lived in a world where such things could happen?

“Your Highness,” the messenger said, “I ask that you read the second letter as well.”

With trembling hands, the rani opened the envelope.

In it, Saheb detailed the British retaliation. When the Company’s soldiers reached the site of the massacre, they discovered that none of the British dead had been buried. Their mutilated bodies had been dragged into a well and the stench was unbearable. The hair of the victims had lodged itself in the trees, caught on shrubs, and still blew about in the wind. Several witnesses attested to the fact that three of the women and children had survived the massacre and the butchering by hiding beneath dead bodies. The next morning they were thrown into the well alive, alongside the corpses of their friends.

When the British commander, General Neill, heard of this, something in him must have broken. He began arresting every man he could, even men who had never been to the House of the Ladies. They were forced to clean the blood from the floors with their tongues. The Muslims who were arrested were sewn into pigskins and hung. The Hindus were executed by Dalits. The remaining prisoners were tied across the mouth of cannons that were then fired. This, we learned, was how Azimullah Khan’s soldiers had killed the men they had taken hostage. A nearby village protested the deaths of the innocent civilians at Kanpur as inhumane and was set on fire. Anyone who tried to flee was shot and killed.

“They’ve taken up a new cry,” the rani read. “ ‘Remember Kanpur!’ The British newspapers cover nothing else, Manu. They’re calling you the Rebel Queen, since it was under your rule that the
sepoys rebelled. Be ready for anything. Azimullah Khan and his general have given the British every excuse they need to wage war on India.”

The rani looked ill. “Is that it?”

The messenger looked tremendously sorry for himself. “No. The rebellion in Delhi has failed. Yesterday, Delhi was retaken by the British.”

Chapter Twenty-Five

1858

Be it known to all people belonging to, or residing in the Government District of Jhansi, that owing to the bad conduct of the sepoys in Kanpur, valuable lives have been lost, and property destroyed. But the strong and powerful British Government is sending thousands of European Soldiers to places that have been disturbed, and arrangements will be made to restore order in Jhansi.

Until our soldiers can reach Jhansi, the Rani will continue to rule in the name of the British Government and according to the customs of the British Government. I therefore call on all great and small to obey the Rani and to pay their taxes to her, for which they will receive credit.

The British Army has retaken the city of Delhi and has killed thousands of rebels. We will hang or shoot all rebels wherever they may be found.

The British government was sending soldiers. The rani’s advisers believed that this was the English government’s way of saying
that the Company had been wrong to remove her, that the rani would now rule again, only this time with the British government’s blessing.

“Nowhere does it say that,” Moropant corrected them. “
Until our soldiers can reach Jhansi
,” he read. “
Until
then.”

Men’s voices rose in the Durbar Hall. The rani drowned them all out by saying, “I will write and ask them to clarify my position. In one breath, they’re calling me the Rebel Queen. In another, I’m administering justice with their approval. So let them tell me where I stand.”

A
man arrived in the Durbar Hall claiming he was a messenger from the rani’s secret admirer. He said these last words in English, leading me to believe the man whose message he was carrying had to be British. At this, the rani’s cheeks turned very pink.

“Hand my Durgavasi the letter,” she said, and the old man gave me a thick note sealed in a large blue envelope. I sliced the paper open with my finger. The first line read, “For the Rani of Jhansi, from Major Ellis.” I handed her the letter, and she read the contents and passed it to her father, who said, “It’s settled then.”

“The British have no intention of keeping me on the throne of Jhansi,” the rani said, and I could hear the pain in her voice. “The warrant for my arrest still stands.” She lowered her head as if something heavy was pressing it down. “They have no intention of coming peacefully. Major Ellis warns us to look at Lucknow as an example of what’s to happen here.”

Lucknow was burned to the ground; its women raped, its men and children slaughtered. The rani covered her eyes with her hand. This treachery by the British was too much. Then I glanced at
Kahini and wondered what the rani would think if she knew how deep the treachery spread.

It took several moments for her to recover, but when her voice was steady she went on. “We will issue our own proclamation now. Let it read that men and rajas of all faiths must come together to rebel. The British are not coming peaceably.”

Calls were made for volunteers, and in Jhansi alone fourteen thousand men came forward to be trained as soldiers. And if you have ever poured water into an anthill and watched the ants scurry to save themselves, this is how our city looked over the next few weeks. Both day and night, you could hear the rumbling of carts as they passed through the streets. People were moving families, guns, food, anything you could think of. Temples and treasuries were emptied, and the money used to buy weapons. I was there when two hundred pounds of gunpowder arrived from Gwalior, a neighboring kingdom that was too cowardly to stand against the British, but too greedy to resist selling us their ammunitions and arms. A magazine was constructed down the road from the palace in order to house so much gunpowder and ammunition. Meanwhile, guns, swords, arrows, and knives began filling up the armory. Six new cannons appeared, along with eight gunners from Kalpi, a neighboring city where the British had chosen one girl from every house to be used as a comfort woman. The men brought with them the knowledge of manufacturing brass balls, and the production went on all day and all night.

The rani also reached out to farmers, telling them to burn their fields, poison their wells, and chop down any tree that grew on their land. There would be nothing for the British when they arrived, not even water. The farmers themselves would have to survive on whatever they could stockpile or hide.

As a carryover from our days in the Rani Mahal, Arjun and his
guards spent their evenings with us in the queen’s room, and no one protested.

“I heard the British left their wounded soldiers to die while they plundered the temples in Nagpur,” Mandar said. She moved closer to the brazier. It was the first night we’d needed a fire. “Nagpur is only a three-day ride south.” Meaning it wouldn’t be long before they were doing the same in Jhansi. I thought of Barwa Sagar and what might happen there, but Barwa Sagar was a tiny village. Surely the British had no business in such a place.

“These British soldiers have no allegiance to anything but money,” Moropant swore.

“The governor-general, Lord Caning, has condemned their behavior,” the rani said, looking into the burning coals. “The British papers are saying that Queen Victoria is critical as well.”

“Are you hoping for a change of heart? Because this fire began when the Company first came to India. It’s just taken two hundred and fifty years for the flames to start spreading.”

But I didn’t want to hear any more talk of flames. I rose from my cushion and went outside. Frost covered the ground, gleaming under the cold moonlight. I shivered, and behind me Arjun asked, “Do you ever wonder how many more nights we have to look up at the moon like this?”

“Yes.”

“I wanted to marry you, Sita.”

I turned to stare at him in the moonlight. Although it was pointless to cry, tears blurred my vision. “A woman lives and dies a Durgavasi.”

“You don’t think the rani might have made an exception for you and me?”

That was exactly what the rani might have done. And now it was too late. The reality was so unbearable that I couldn’t look it in the
face or I’d be crushed under its weight. I allowed Arjun to wrap his arms around me, and inhaled his scent of charcoal and cedar. He whispered, “If we live through this, I want you to marry me.”

“But—”

He put a finger to my lips. “You are going to survive. When the British come, we are both going to live to see the end.”

I
n February, dismal news came from neighboring kingdoms—stories of looting, destruction, and rape. And in the midst of all of this, there were the kingdoms of Scindia and Orchha, both providing soldiers to help the British.

When Holi came, the streets of Jhansi should have been filled with children throwing colors in celebration, but the skies were overcast and the city was silent. We were all sitting in the queen’s room eating roasted nuts. Anand held one up and said, “My real mommy used to make these for me.”

The look on the rani’s face would have pierced your heart. These nine words were crushing to her, and my first thought, of course, was that Kahini had done this. If not for her, the rajkumar might have lived and the kingdom of Jhansi might never have been annexed. There would have been no march to Delhi, no massacre at Kanpur, no retaliation by the British. I looked across the room and our eyes met. She didn’t flinch. She wasn’t even the first one to look away. And I thought again about telling the rani everything I knew. But who would she believe? Me, or her favorite cousin, the woman who had helped her keep the raja happy when he was alive?

G
eneral Hugh Rose and his army appeared outside of Jhansi on the twenty-first of March. The weather was crisp and every alarm
in Jhansi was sounding. A messenger arrived from the general with an offer of peace. Moropant took one look and rejected the offer. “Their peace includes the surrender and death of every male over the age of thirteen.”

Two days later, on the evening of the twenty-third, the British invaded the city of Jhansi and discovered that the wells were either poisoned or dry, and not a single crop remained to feed their army. Still, they made their way through the shuttered neighborhoods toward our fortress, toward the palace and temples and barracks inside. Seen from afar, the Fortress of Jhansi is simply a granite building on a low-lying hill. But in reality—with the sole exception of the southern face—it is impregnable. A sheer mountain wall rises to the west, and to the south, and the walls are protected by towers, one of which is capable of housing five cannons. No one remembers when the ramparts were built, but they extend from all eight gates around the city. Yet the British opened fire.

Although it may sound strange, we grew used to the sound of gunfire.

In the morning during yoga, at the temple when we prayed, even on the maidan, it became so common that you simply stopped hearing it. It was frightening, and children huddled closer to their parents or asked to be carried when they walked through the streets. But otherwise, nothing in the city changed: the bookseller was open, the vegetable carts still lined the streets, even the man who made roadside puris was there, hot oil popping from his metal pan and greasing his shirt.

On the fourth day of the assault, Sundari woke us an hour earlier than usual. When we arrived on the maidan, the rani was already there. A blue muretha was tied around her head. It matched her white and blue angarkha and blue churidars. As soon as we
were all assembled on the grass, she rose from her cushion. Her speech was very brief.

“Many of you have been with me for almost a decade. Some, like Sundari and Heera, even longer. No one has ever said that the life of a Durgavasi is easy. But no Durgavasi has been required to give up her life for a rani. The British cannons will arrive soon, and the real war will begin. So now you must decide whether you wish to ride into battle with me, or go home. I will not pass judgment on anyone who chooses to leave the Durga Dal today.”

The maidan was so silent that I could hear the horses whinnying in the nearby stables.

“If there is anyone who would like to leave, please do so now.”

We looked at one another and waited for the first person to rise. I thought perhaps Kahini might leave, or Moti, who was so sweet and so small, but they both remained seated.

“Do not make this choice lightly. I don’t know what I would choose if I was in your position. Particularly if I had a husband.” She looked at Jhalkari.

“We are staying with you,” Jhalkari said.

We raised our fists, and the rani briskly wiped the tears from her eyes.

It was decided that if the British broke through the fortress walls, Kashi’s only job would be to protect Anand. The rest of us were to protect the rani; her personal guards were to protect the women and children inside the Panch Mahal. I tried to imagine a scenario in which our fortress was breached, but I could not. The granite masonry was built to withstand any siege. We had six thousand soldiers; our spies told us the British had fifteen hundred. Our seven wells and food supplies were large enough to last us for two months. They had no access to fresh water.