A Singular Hostage Part 30

Safiya Sultana turned to the young girl who had come to Mariana's room. "Zareen, go and bring me the oldest burqa burqa you can find. Ah, here is Bina with the fruit," she added in a warning tone, as the elderly maidservant shuffied through the door bearing a tray of oranges and guavas. you can find. Ah, here is Bina with the fruit," she added in a warning tone, as the elderly maidservant shuffied through the door bearing a tray of oranges and guavas.

All murmuring stopped. "Spies," hissed someone, under her breath.

Taking a guava and a sharp knife from the tray, Safiya Sultana cut out a wedge of rosy fiesh with practiced hands, dipped it into a little heap of salt on the tray, and handed it elaborately to the elderly lady beside her. "Eat this, Ammi-jan," she shouted into the old woman's ear.

The old lady took the fruit with a palsied hand, put it obediently into her mouth.

Safiya Sultana's face betrayed no anxiety. Mariana edged toward her on the fioor, hoping to absorb some of her calm.

"Leave the tray with us, Bina," Safiya told the maidservant, "and call Allahyar. Tell him to come up here at once. He is to stand outside the door for my instructions. Go, and close the door curtain on your way out."

She leaned over to Mariana. "Look at these women before you," she said quietly in her man's voice. "They are my family. Some are wise, some unwise, but all are good-hearted in their own way." She put a hand on Mariana's knee. "Together, we are about to undertake a journey as far from our own experience as the ocean voyage that brought you here. Some of our ladies will not believe that you can succeed in the escape I have in mind. Others will see the sense in it and will have confidence. In any event, our prayers and our hearts will be with you."

Mariana swallowed, trying not to think of the danger.

"I most certainly hope," Safiya Sultana added more loudly, frowning around the crowded room, "that none of you breathes a word of what we are about to do. Children, stand up."

Mariana watched a dozen children straighten reluctantly and stand in a solemn brown-skinned row.

Safiya Sultana regarded them sternly. "You must all leave the room now," she said. "Secrets can be difficult to keep. If you are not here, none of you can, by chance, betray your little brother."

Betray. Mariana s.h.i.+vered. Beside her, Safiya Sultana gave off a stout calm.

The whispering children rustled out, the larger ones carrying the smaller, leaving only Saboor. The ladies waited, moving only their eyes until a deep cough heard through the curtain revealed the presence of a man.

Safiya Sultana signaled for attention. The ladies leaned forward to listen over the patter of the rain.

"Who is there?" Safiya called out.

"It is I, Allahyar, Begum Sahib," replied a male voice.

"He is Lala-Ji's personal servant," one girl Mariana's age whispered to her.

"Allahyar," ordered Safiya Sultana, "you are to go to your uncle the storeroom keeper and get from him a small ball of opium."

Mariana blinked. Opium?

A slurred response came from behind the curtain.

"There is no use," Safiya Sultana said firmly over the drumming of the rain, "in trying to tell me that your uncle does not take opium. He has done so for thirty years."

The ladies smiled.

"Ji, Begum Sahib," said the male voice, after a pause.

"You will bring the opium here," Safiya Sultana went on, "and you will also bring a basket from the storeroom, the largest basket we have. You will then wait outside until a lady comes from this room and joins you. You will tell no one of these instructions. Do you understand me?"

"Ji, Sahib."

"Go, then."

Safiya Sultana studied Mariana as if she were seeking something. "My daughter," she said, her deep voice softening, "here is what you will do."

Mariana nodded. Unlike the malicious queens at the Citadel, Safiya had had treated her like a daughter. Overcome with grat.i.tude, Mariana felt a sudden urge to bury her head in Safiya Sultana's well-padded shoulder. treated her like a daughter. Overcome with grat.i.tude, Mariana felt a sudden urge to bury her head in Safiya Sultana's well-padded shoulder.

"I have sent for an old burqa," the Shaikh's sister added a little gruffiy, "the long veil that our Punjabi women wear out of doors. We shall put it over you, to conceal your face and hair, and your clothes.

"Wearing the burqa, you will go downstairs. After pa.s.sing through the kitchens, you will leave this house by the rear door. Allahyar, my brother's personal servant, will accompany you. He will walk a few paces in front of you. You will," she paused, her eyes moving from face to face, daring anyone to object, "be posing as Allahyar's wife."

"But what of Saboor?" Mariana heard herself ask.

"The Maharajah's men may be watching the rear door," Safiya Sultana warned. "Saboor, therefore, will not be with you as you pa.s.s out of the house. He will instead be lowered from that window."

She pointed across a tiled veranda to a window that gave onto the street below. "In a basket."

The women all tried to speak at once. Safiya Sultana held up a commanding palm.

"Do we not," she asked the room in general, "lower a basket to Vikram Anand, the sweetmeat seller below, when we wish to entertain ourselves with his jalebees jalebees, his luddoos luddoos, and his gulab jamons gulab jamons? And has not that same sweetmeat shop stood below our window for the past three generations?"

A thin lady near Mariana smiled as the room subsided. "Of course, Vikram's best customer is Safiya herself," she whispered.

"I have confidence that Vikram will help us," Safiya told Mariana. "He is known in the city for his charity and his level head."

Mariana stared at the rain outside the window where Safiya had pointed. How did Safiya Sultana know what people in the city said about a sweetmeat seller?

Safiya nodded. "Allahyar will take Saboor from the basket. You will follow him as he carries the child toward the Delhi Gate. You will then follow him through the gate and onto the road. There, you will be overtaken by one of our own palanquins."

The gap-toothed aunt lifted her hands. "Where is she to go?" Safiya Sultana frowned.

"She should go to Kasur, to Ha.s.san, of course," contributed another woman. "He is her husband. Where else should she go?"

A wave of a.s.sent spread through the crowd.

"But Shalimar is right here." Her heart thumping, Mariana shook her head. "Kasur is miles and miles away. Surely I must must take Saboor to the British camp." take Saboor to the British camp."

Instead of answering, Safiya Sultana signaled to the shy girl. "Aalia, bring me a pen and ink, and some paper."

Turning to Mariana, she smiled grimly. "The world is a strange place, Mariam, and the will of Allah Most Gracious is not for us to know. Wherever else you may wish to travel, this time you will journey, G.o.d willing, to Ha.s.san's camp at Kasur."

Mariam. The solicitor at the Citadel had called her Mariam. Mariana started to give the correct p.r.o.nunciation of her name, but saw that Safiya Sultana was now busy writing letters.

The burqa arrived. Zareen gathered up the yards of cotton cloth that made up the burqa, and fitted its embroidered cap carefully over Mariana's head.

The dusty folds fell to her feet, causing her such a fit of sneezing that she did not hear what was being said through the curtain. Sniffing, she looked through the grill of cotton cutwork before her face, and saw that it offered a narrow, impaired field of vision. So this was what the women were able to see when they were out of doors. Could they see enough to avoid accidents? There was no side vision whatever. She moved her head experimentally to and fro, and saw the ladies nod their approval.

"Now," someone said, "no one will know she is foreign."

Inside her cotton tent, Mariana sneezed again. No one would even know she was female female, she thought.

She looked for Saboor. He now slept in the lap of one of his aunts, his body limp, a rim of something brown and sticky around his mouth.

Safiya Sultana pushed herself to her feet, the sheaf of letters in her hand, and took a book covered in heavy silk wrappings from the carved corner cupboard. She stood before Mariana, swaying slightly, her eyes half-closed, murmuring something. Finished, she took a deep breath and blew three times in Mariana's direction.

"Take these," she said. Reaching under the burqa, she pushed papers into Mariana's hand. "These are letters to our relations who live between here and Kasur. They will keep you and Saboor, and they will furnish you with fresh bearers. Come, then."

Seizing Mariana's arm through the folds of cotton, she led her to the door, and held out the book, still in its wrappings. "Kiss the Qur'an Sharif," she commanded.

Mariana did not at all wish to kiss someone else's holy book, but Safiya Sultana pressed it against her lips through the cotton veil, then held it up, allowing her to pa.s.s under it on her way out of the room. Mariana would have preferred Safiya to embrace her, but there was no time for that. There was no time to be afraid, or even to bid the ladies good-bye.

"May Allah Most Gracious guide you." Safiya Sultana's deep voice followed Mariana along the tiled veranda.

Through her peephole Mariana made out the slight figure of a man with orange hair, the same servant who had guided her to the Shaikh the first time she had come. He nodded and started for the narrow stairway that led down to the great kitchens below. The stairway was dark. She felt her way carefully down, holding the dusty burqa away from her feet.

THE kitchens were hot and smelled of heating fat and half-cooked spices. Women squatted on the fioor, away from the fiery heat of the wood stoves, slicing onions and crus.h.i.+ng a yellow ball of paste between two stones. Through an open door, Mariana could see rain splas.h.i.+ng onto a small brick courtyard. This was the way out that Safiya had described.

Allahyar signaled. Mariana stepped into the courtyard after him, and within moments was drenched to the skin.

Across the courtyard, a low door led into a narrow cobbled alley with an overfiowing gutter running along one of its sides. Had she been able to extricate her hands from the sodden burqa Mariana could have touched the houses on both sides of the alley at once.

Icy water ran down inside her fitted cap and dripped from her cutwork peephole. As she watched, Allahyar strode past an armed man loitering halfway down the alley. Was he one of the Maharajah's men? As she hurried to catch up with Allahyar, Mariana failed to see a loose cobblestone. Falling, she reached forward to save herself, and instantly doubled into a ball as her trapped hands forced the heavy burqa to drag her head downward.

The gutter beside her stank. One side of the burqa had fallen into the running water and was now drenched in filth. As she scrabbled for the papers she had dropped, a pair of hands grasped Mariana's arm through the soaked cloth. Allahyar's disgusted face pa.s.sed close to hers as he hauled her to her feet, then disappeared as he moved off.

The bustling, familiar British camp had never seemed so distant, but Mariana no longer cared. If Safiya Sultana had carried out the other part of her plan, Saboor waited, drugged and helpless, in a sweetmeat shop below Safiya's veranda window, while other armed men patrolled the city lanes, ready to pounce on him and carry him away to the Citadel.

She must hurry. Ignoring the wet and the cold and the stench of sewage, she toiled along the alley and past the armed man, hugging the wall opposite the gutter, her whole being intent on escape. Reaching the alley's end at last, she shuffied out onto a wider cobbled lane, and found herself beside a small shop that had been built into a corner of the Waliullah haveli's wall.

"I would not mind having you beside me in battle," Papa had said once. What would he think of her now?

VIKRAM Anand, maker and seller of sweetmeats, was accustomed to seeing a basket lowered from the upper windows of Qamar Haveli. The ladies upstairs enjoyed his cooking, none more than Safiya Sultana herself, who sent for his wares by this simple method at least once a week. He had it on authority that this important lady had described his jalebees as the best in the city. He was, therefore, unsurprised when a basket appeared from above and dangled near his elbow.

He pushed aside a bowl of fiour and wiped his hands on his clothes.

"Oh, Vikram," called a deep, familiar voice from above. "Do not sit idle when there is work to do. Take our basket and do the necessary."

Vikram leaned from his sheltering overhang and pulled the soaking basket toward him. It was heavy. He pulled the sides apart and peered inside. There, with rain lying like tears on his face, lay Saboor Baba, the child sought by all of Lah.o.r.e.

There was no mistaking the child's ident.i.ty. Vikram knew of every betrothal, wedding, and birth in the city. Hadn't he himself made the luddoos, each covered in a gossamer sheet of silver, that had gone to all the great houses, announcing the birth of this very child?

Had anyone seen? Glancing anxiously about, he reached into his shop for a banana leaf, and quickly covered the laden basket, hiding its dangerous contents from view. Working as rapidly as he could with the wet rope, he untied the basket and put it hastily behind him, out of sight. That done, he arranged himself once more in his usual place, and breathed deeply.

It was said in the city that Shaikh Waliullah's grandson brought the Maharajah luck. Perhaps that explained the curious desperation the child's disappearance had brought out in the old man. How many times since Saboor Baba's vanis.h.i.+ng had the Maharajah sent high of?cials into the streets to investigate his disappearance, to ask the same questions each time they came?

Vikram stirred his vat of boiling milk. Even after everyone knew that the child had somehow found his way home to the haveli, these visits had not stopped. Only this morning, a showily dressed eunuch had come, asking for the child.

Vikram had been unwilling to answer then. Now he knew the truth. A daring escape was to be made. He nodded to himself. One glance had told him the baby in the basket was drugged. For that, he was grateful. There was no knowing how long they would have to wait. He frowned with pride as he stirred his milk, feeling the weight of the Waliullah family's trust upon his thin shoulders.

A man who sits all day frying sweetmeats on one fire and boiling down milk on the other has patience, but Vikram Anand needed to wait only a short time before an orange-haired man appeared, standing beneath the dripping canopy in front of his stall. Allahyar was well known to Vikram. He came several times a month to collect sweets for the men's side of the household. Often he stopped to pa.s.s the time of day, enjoying a moment to watch the life of the city pa.s.s by the little shop.

"Have you," asked Allahyar cautiously, without preamble, "a package for me?"

Vikram noticed for the first time the female in a filthy burqa who stood behind Allahyar. Confused, he looked silently at his hands. Do the necessary Do the necessary, Safiya Sultana's voice had said.

Allahyar's eyes darted to a pus.h.i.+ng crowd by the main entrance to the haveli, not thirty feet away. "Perhaps the lady Safiya Sultana has sent something for me?" he asked.

Vikram Anand made up his mind. "Ah, yes, the lady Safiya Sultana has has sent something. Shall I give it to you in the basket?" The tense face before him relaxed slightly. "No, I do not want the basket." sent something. Shall I give it to you in the basket?" The tense face before him relaxed slightly. "No, I do not want the basket."

Vikram reached behind him and lifted the banana leaf from Saboor's sleeping form. Allahyar's face creased into a smile.

"I am to tell you," he told the sweetmeat seller, as he hoisted the sleeping baby out of the basket and onto his shoulder, "that in consideration of your trouble, there is something for you in the basket."

After Allahyar strode off, the woman shuffiing after him, Vikram Anand felt in the bottom of the basket. His fingers found a coin. It was a gold Mohur.

Nodding gravely, he tucked the treasure into his clothes. The Waliullah family had a sense of occasion that separated them from the other families of Lah.o.r.e. A few copper coins would have been enough, considering the small work he had done. But that would have devalued the child. To put the coin on Saboor's body where it could be seen would have devalued Vikram. By hiding the gold coin under the child, Safiya Sultana had, in one gesture, complimented Vikram and demonstrated her family's love for their baby.

"Oh, Vikram, are you expecting to keep my basket?" called a deep voice two stories above him.

He should have known someone was watching.

By the time the Maharajah'sarmedmenforced their way into Qamar Haveli, Yar Mohammad the groom had been waiting in a doorway opposite Vikram's sweet shop for nearly three hours.

"Move out, move out!" An unsatisfactory meal of dry bread forgotten in his hand, Yar Mohammad had watched the soaking horses clatter past, their riders' shouts interrupting his thoughts. He had watched their leader pound on the haveli door, demanding admittance for his men and for a carved palanquin carried by bearers wearing scarlet loincloths and turbans.

These armed men, he knew, could be on no errand of mercy. He remembered the previous afternoon at the British camp, when he had hurried from the horse lines to Shafi Sahib's neat tent.

"I have seen something," he'd said as he entered, his eyes roving to a new feature of Shafi Sahib's tent, a string bed in one corner where a man lay, breathing heavily, his face covered in a poultice of boiled leaves.

"Speak," Shafi Sahib had replied from where he sat on his own bed near the door. His prayer beads dangling from his fingers, he had gestured toward the figure on the bed. "You may speak in front of him. That is Ahmad, Saboor's servant."

Yar Mohammad willed himself not to stare at the injured man who, if he lived, would forever wear the mark of shame on his face. He imagined himself in the man's place, with rough hands holding him down on his stomach, and other hands jerking his head back by the hair while the swordsman prepared to bring down his heavy sword. Who could not have respect for such a man who would sacrifice so much?

"I have seen a great dust cloud enter the city and surround Shaikh Waliullah's haveli," Yar Mohammad began.

Shafi Sahib's beads ceased their clicking. "Go on."

"After that, the vision became unclear. Something seemed to come from the haveli and pa.s.s out through the cloud. I am almost sure there was a snake somewhere nearby, but all I can say for certain is that I saw the dust cloud."

Shafi Sahib frowned at the wall of his tent, his eyes moving as if he were looking at something Yar Mohammad could not see. Yar Mohammad allowed himself a glance toward the man in the corner. Faced with such a punishment, would he, like Saboor's servant, have refused to speak?

"As you know," Shafi Sahib said, "a cloud of dust signifies an emergency." He closed his eyes and rubbed his forehead. "As it happens, Shaikh Waliullah is to be absent from his house all tomorrow morning. I suggest you go into the city at dawn, and keep watch outside the haveli door until Shaikh Sahib returns."

Yar Mohammad stiffened. "Will there be danger?"