—14—
The spring of the year I was fifteen, our family traveled to the desert to visit the maharaja.
My father had even been invited to participate in some gathering of influential Indian princes, military notables, and various forward-thinking Englishmen.
I didn’t pay much attention to the reason—I was beside myself that I would finally see the actual palace Gurdaya and Tanveer had so often told me about.
Their summer dwelling was Victorian, like most of the Nainital residences, but the Talwarpur Palace had been built in the Mughal tradition, with towers and courtyards, and I longed to see it for myself.
Magically, we were met by a gathering of elephants at the dusty train station, which was thrilling in itself.
They had painted legs and trunks, and their backs were draped with embroidered silks in bright colors, and they even had bells on their ankles that chimed as they bowed down to allow us to climb aboard their backs.
My mother and I rode together, high up in the air, with a view over the grassy fields and the river running along the road.
I spied a village, where women in bright saris came out to watch us pass.
I waved at a pair of girls close to my age, and they burst into grins and waved back happily.
It was hot, much hotter than it had been in Nainital, which, of course, was what had drawn both the maharani and my mother to the cool slopes of the lakeside town. A ripple of worry crossed my heart—would my mother be all right here?
The palace appeared suddenly when we climbed the slope of the hill. It rose imposingly in archways and towers, the color of the desert itself, pale rosy yellow. A shiver ran through me. “It’s beautiful!” I cried.
My mother squeezed my arm.
A gathering of servants helped us off the elephants in a courtyard shaded by neem trees.
A large fountain cooled the air with both sound and water, tree branches casting fingers and angles of shadow across the space.
Flowers climbed the walls in dazzling hues of pink and peach, and pots of fragrant blossoms filled the air with fragrance.
The maharaja, fully adorned in ceremonial dress and draped in jewels of enormous size, rubies and emeralds and diamonds on his turban and around his neck and on his fingers, met my father and his group with a cheerful welcome, observing ceremony I cared nothing for.
Instead, I patted the sketchbook in my deep pocket, imagining how I’d capture this splendor, and the dazzlement of the courtyard, the splashes of color, the winding shape of the vines, the alluring arches and tiles.
I loved the repetition of pattern and shape, the elegant complements of color, blue to green to yellow, with a splash of red here and there, a tiny line of black.
What a time I would have sketching here!
I was quite glad I’d brought my watercolors.
Now this was a true palace.
I was so absorbed that I did not see Gurdaya and Tanveer approach until they were right in front of me. And when I saw them, I halted, stunned to silence for a moment.
The Tanveer I’d seen at Christmas looked nothing like this boy, who had sprouted five inches. His face had shifted, too, in some subtle way, his cheekbones and chin catching up to his always aggressive nose, his brows thickening over the same large deep eyes.
He was not exactly handsome, but the changes wrought in his face made him compelling. Magnetic to look at. I stared, trying to define what it was.
“I know,” he said, acknowledging my stare. “I cannot get used to it, either. I bump my head a hundred times a day.”
He sounded just the same, my own Tanveer, and it eased something in my chest. “You look so different!” I said, and found I could after all look him in the eye. The sparkle was there, the place I could rest.
“It was my turn, I suppose.”
The previous year, the changes had been in my person—not height but shape, a girl out of a tomboy, with more hips than I wanted, and the promise of my mother’s figure, which caused more attention than I wished.
I’d learned in the intervening months to drape my body to make it appear straight, boyish.
“Welcome,” Gurdaya said, coming forward to greet me.
She was dressed more formally than I’d seen before, with jewels around her neck and hanging from her ears.
Heavy bracelets ringed her wrists, and her hair was covered in fine gauze, embroidered with flowers along the edges.
All of it showcased her beauty, the turquoise of her scarf bringing out the rosy richness of her complexion, her fingers long and graceful, the shimmer of hair at her face a deep black. “I’ve missed you!”
“Me, too!” I said, embracing her lightly. “How beautiful you are!”
She glanced toward the officials and princes milling around one another. “Like a lamb ready for the oven.”
I squeezed her arm. “Not yet.”
She gave me a small smile. “Not yet.”
Tanveer offered me his arm. I reached for it, such an ordinary moment, but our eyes met, and I suddenly smelled something immensely delightful—forest and earth and something cool—that swept through my body and pooled in my belly.
I wanted, all at once, to touch his face, his mouth. I thought of kissing him.
Kissing him.
It could not have lasted more than a second or two, but I saw it strike him, too. The knowledge that things were different.
And then we looked away. We didn’t speak, but marched as we were meant to do, into the courtyard with the other youths. I was aware of his body next to mine, his ribs against the back of my hand, his leg moving beneath the fabric of his trousers.
The ceremonial moment passed, and he let go.
I joined the side of the English while he took his place on the side of the princes.
I dared not look for him, but pressed a hand to my stomach, trying to quell the strange sensation.
If he was no longer my friend, I could not bear the world, and yet this seemed to change everything.
It was many long moments before I looked back toward him, and saw him staring my way with the same aggrieved recognition.
Something had changed. Something wonderful and horrible.
Hours later, he found me. “You must come. I have something to show you.”
For a moment, I hesitated, a little wary with this new Tanveer. “What is it?”
“A surprise.” His grin, so familiar, flashed. The strangeness dissipated, and it was only my friend standing there in a plain white tunic and pajamas, his eyes glittering with excitement. “Very well.”
“Cover your head.” He gave me a thin peach scarf, embroidered in white along the edges. “It’s very hot today, and you are unused to it.”
So I did as I was told, and out in the sun, I was glad of the head covering.
I wished for looser dress. Although my outfit was not the fussy layers I’d seen on many other English females today, I still wore too many layers for the climate.
I felt my face getting hot. What could I get away with discarding after this?
In the deep shadows of the hallways it was cooler.
I followed Tanveer through a maze of turns, passing beneath archways and doorways leading mysterious places, and minor courtyards.
Everywhere servants swept the tiles or watered a pot of bougainvillea or stood sentinel over some unknown thing or another, all of them bowing deeply as we passed.
“You have many more servants here than in Nainital,” I whispered.
He merely shrugged. “It is my father’s palace.”
His father, the maharaja, who was royal in a way I had not quite perceived before.
It made me feel suddenly uncomfortable, for Tanveer, too, was royal, while I was not.
Seeing this world through that filter, I saw the wealth gleaming in every detail.
The inlaid walls and well-tended fountains; the armies of servants, even Gurdaya’s jewels and the maharani’s emeralds.
“What?” Tanveer said. “You’ve gone very quiet.”
“I did not quite understand how high ranking your father is.” I looked up at him, and it was so odd to look up! “And you, I suppose.”
He gave a little shake of his head. “He is but a nine-gun salute. Our lands are small.”
“In comparison,” I said with a lift of a brow.
“True.” He smiled. “But I am still myself, Elsie. And you are the granddaughter of an earl.”
Which was true but seemed quite immaterial, considering. “My father is a second son, and a bureaucrat.”
“And I am a second son, so unimportant. Even more so now that my father has taken yet another wife. Soon there will be a tribe of sons running through the palace.” He already had a passel of siblings from a collection of mistresses.
“Well,” I said, “When you put it like that, I suppose neither of us matters at all.”
He laughed at my droll humor, and we continued our long trek through the palace.
Up one direction, then down another, through a courtyard where a fountain poured water into a blue pool.
My greedy eyes filled up on all of it, on bright winding vines, on trees in pots casting lacy shadows on the ground, on elaborate tile work.
I paused to run my fingers over a post inlaid with triangular mirrors.
“It’s enchanting. Like an illustration in A Thousand and One Nights. ”
He looked around, nodding. “So it is. Will you draw?”
I rolled my eyes. “Of course.”
“Good. I think you will draw this, too.” He gestured toward a less splendid hallway, and we left the enclosure of the bright walls for a wooden door that led down a shaded path to an area of outbuildings. In the distance, I saw stables, and an elephant splashing in a shaded pool. “This way.”