The Satapur Moonstone Read online

  “Who is your friend who stayed here?” Chitra asked while beginning to unwind the sopping-wet sari Perveen was wearing.

  Perveen realized she might be identifying herself with someone who had disrespected the late maharaja. But she could not retreat from what she’d said without being dishonest. Stepping out of her petticoat, she admitted, “Her name is Vandana. I think she’s a distant relative to the royal family.”

  “Vandana is a common name. I don’t know of her.” Chitra’s eyes shifted to Perveen’s waist. “What is that wet string?”

  Perveen realized that the maid had noticed the thin white cord she always wore wound three times around and knotted in front and back of her sheer undershirt. “It’s called a kusti. In my religion, it is a kind of”—she struggled for the right word—“armor.”

  Chitra’s eyebrows rose. “There are old suits of armor in our palace vault. But that cord does not look very strong.”

  “The kusti protects Parsis from going down the wrong path. It reminds me that no matter how difficult things are, I must speak the truth and do what is right.” This was the core of Zoroastrianism. Many Zoroastrians said prayers three times a day while working the kusti through their hands. Perveen was not as observant as that but wearing a kusti had felt especially comforting on this journey. It provided guidance for an honest investigation and also linked her to her beloved family.

  Chitra nodded. “Such protection is very good,” she said, giving Perveen a hand as she stepped over the high edge of the long marble tub.

  The water was scalding hot. She inched herself down into it, feeling a mixture of triumph and relief. Her journey had almost collapsed along with the palanquin—but she had pressed on and made it. She’d been turned away at the palace gate, yet she’d convinced her way inside. An old Parsi saying her late grandfather had often uttered came to mind: The sword belongs to the one who uses it. He had explained the proverb meant a man who behaves with force will prevail. During her hard day, she’d seen the advice also applied to a woman. And if she acted with resolve, she’d certainly solve the dispute about the maharaja’s schooling.

  Perveen picked up a facecloth and scrubbed herself. The water turned brown, and she was glad when Chitra’s knock told her it was time to get out. She shivered in a towel, watching as the grimy water disappeared down the sparkling silver drain. Chitra scrubbed the tub to sparkling white and then refilled it. The process was tedious and took half an hour. Perveen got in again, and the second bath was lovely. When she climbed out, she had a strong desire to finish drying herself thoroughly and get into bed. But she couldn’t; there were two more ablutions to go. She would continue bathing, because if she disobeyed the royal instructions, Chitra would probably report it.

  As if sensing Perveen’s reluctance to keep bathing, Chitra offered her a succession of beauty pastes to apply to her face and hair while waiting for her next bath. Turmeric paste went on first, followed by a thin mask of buttermilk. For her hair, it was a shampoo of amla followed by coconut oil.

  The third tub of water was tepid, rather than hot; she guessed that the palace’s stored hot water must have been running out. Her fourth bath was cold.

  “Are you all right, memsahib?” Chitra inquired anxiously as Perveen jumped out of the tub moments after she’d rinsed off the final hair and skin treatments.

  “Yes. Are there any more towels?”

  This time, Chitra wrapped the largest, thickest towel Perveen had ever seen around her and began drying her. Perveen felt like a small child but was unable to stop the maid. Wrapping a second, slightly smaller towel around Perveen’s head, Chitra instructed her to get in the bed, which turned out to be warmed at the head and foot by brass bed warmers. Moving the top one to the side, she saw that it was engraved with a ring of millet surrounding two tigers. She had seen this emblem on the top of the letter from the dowager maharani, Putlabai, but the letter from Mirabai had been on unmarked paper. She wondered if that was significant.

  Perveen’s worries were overtaken by a need to rest. Cocooned in cotton, she napped until Chitra arrived forty-five minutes before dinner to help with her dress and hair. The lady’s maid had a device Perveen had never seen—a long brass clamp—that she pulled through Perveen’s hair, so it came out in waves. Chitra arranged Perveen’s long, wavy hair into a style that cascaded just past her shoulder blades. Alice would have snickered at such frippery, but Gulnaz would have sighed with admiration.

  “This is very nice,” Perveen said. “Usually I wear my hair pinned up.”

  Chitra gave a half smile. “In the old days, my maharani had many splendid hairstyles. Now she is a widow and very simple. I wish you to look special because tonight you will dine in the zenana. It is inside the old palace, the place where ladies lived for more than one hundred years.”

  Perveen was eager to meet everyone, but she could guess the two maharanis might not be candid if they were in the same room. “Will the maharani Mirabai and the children take their evening meal there?”

  Carefully, Chitra moved the hot iron to a side table far across the room. When she returned, she answered Perveen’s question. “I don’t know if the choti-rani and the children will dine with you. But because you are a visitor, and the rajmata is the head of the palace family, you must pay respects to her first. Now, where is the jewelry you will wear?”

  “I don’t have much. A pearl necklace and earrings and bangles that match.” Perveen had reasoned none of her jewelry could compare to a princess’s, so she’d chosen to be simple.

  Just as Chitra finished clasping a pearl choker around Perveen’s neck, a knock sounded. Aditya, the buffoon, was waiting. He’d changed his costume to a dark green paisley kurta pajama. On his head, he wore a small orange pagri set at a rakish angle. A diamond the size of a grape glinted from the turban’s edge. But the most dramatic ornament of all was alive: a small gray monkey dressed in a matching green jacket sat on his shoulder, peering at her.

  “Who is this?” Perveen exclaimed in delight.

  “He is called Bandar.” Aditya chucked the monkey under the chin with his finger.

  “Yes, I can see he’s a monkey. A bonnet macaque.” She tried not to sound impatient. “Does this bandar have a personal name?”

  “It’s Bandar,” he repeated. “At this palace, we call things as they are.”

  Just as Aditya was called Yerda or Buffoon—rather than by his name. He played a role at the palace that couldn’t be forgotten.

  “Does your monkey do tricks?” she asked.

  “Oh yes! You will have to see. But mainly he is my little friend.”

  As if to emphasize his master’s words, Bandar nestled closely into Aditya’s shoulder and peered at Perveen.

  She smiled at the monkey and was heartened to see him smile back.

  The walk from the new palace to the old meant crossing the same courtyard she’d hurried through before. The water had been ankle deep on her way in but had now run off into gutters, and the rain was lighter. Nevertheless, a bearer walked alongside her, shielding her with an umbrella. Another servant hurried alongside the buffoon but was unable to get an umbrella fully over the tall man’s turban.

  As they entered the old limestone palace, the buffoon flicked his wrist. The men nodded at him and walked away.

  “How many servants are here? I fear I won’t be able to keep them straight.” The only one who’d spoken to her was Chitra.

  “Rajmata has about twenty working in the old palace, which is more difficult to clean. Choti-Rani has fourteen in the modern palace. The children have two ayahs, a groom to help with riding, and their tutor. And outside guards . . .” He trailed off as he looked at her suspiciously. “What does it matter to you?”

  “I noticed the palace seems very well cared for,” she said hastily, although it wasn’t the whole truth. She had expected at least one hundred servants for a royal dwelling.

/>   “And how do you know about the standards for palaces?” he asked with a chuckle.

  “I don’t know very much. I’ve only been to Kensington Palace. It’s the smaller palace in London,” she added, in case he didn’t recognize the name. Perveen and some other students from women’s colleges in Oxford and Cambridge had been invited to meet the Countess of Athlone, but the lady had only briefly greeted the cluster and continued on to more important business.

  “I know George V.” He wrinkled his large nose. “His beard is too thin!”

  Perveen was startled. “You’ve met the King of England?”

  “At the Delhi Durbar in 1911.”

  She’d seen a film of the royal durbar that had occurred a decade earlier. George V and Queen Mary had visited throughout India, and the climax had been a giant assembly of princes in Delhi. More than two hundred maharajas had attended.

  “Our maharaja had a twelve-gun salute,” he said with pride. “And afterward, we went hunting with His Majesty in Nepal. I was just a teenager, but the maharaja insisted that I come along.”

  “For your jokes?” Perveen asked.

  He gave a wistful smile. “I was special to him.”

  Perveen heard love in Aditya’s voice and decided not to ask him why the late maharaja had been considered important enough for the British to recognize him by firing off twelve blasts. From what she’d heard, smaller states typically received nine-gun salutes. If Satapur was so important to the British, why had they allowed contact to lapse as long as it had? She also saw another reason Mirabai might want to send her son to England. She probably hoped that experience would give him the kind of insider status that his father must have enjoyed.

  “The zenana durbar hall,” Aditya announced, gesturing at a wide arch leading into a gigantic, high-ceilinged room. Perveen stepped into it, her eyes drawn to the tall marble walls and columns inlaid with precious stones set in mosaic designs and illuminated by candles glowing in sconces. There was a long mahogany table with perhaps thirty chairs around it and five place settings at one end. Despite the room’s grandeur, there was an unpleasant smell of dampness and decay that made her want to hold her nose.

  “I’m too early.” Perveen’s watch read five minutes after eight o’clock: one and a half hours earlier than typical dinnertime in Bombay.

  He dropped his voice. “Don’t you see? Rajmata is already here.”

  12

  A Royal Feast

  Perveen followed his gaze and saw a tiny woman nestled into a mahogany chair far too tall for her. The maharani’s chair had a cushioned back embroidered with the same crest she’d seen on the Satapur coat of arms: two tigers standing on their hind legs facing each other, while encircled by sheaves of millet grain. The emblem was several feet over the woman’s gray head. Yet despite Maharani Putlabai’s short stature, her face and body were very round, reminding Perveen of a laddu sweet.

  “Come!” The elderly woman’s voice was not at all sweet. “I have been here a long time. In the old days, people waited for the royal family. Today, the royal family must wait.”

  “I am very sorry, Rajmata!” Aditya’s voice turned singsong. “The rain spirits held fast to our feet.”

  Perveen eyed the dowager maharani, who was dressed for mourning in a white raw silk sari. She knew from the documents she’d read at the circuit house that the dowager maharani was sixty, which meant she potentially had many more years of life. The dowager maharani had a single gold bangle on each wrist. They glowed in the light of a dozen candelabras spaced along the table.

  The rajmata was looking closely at her. Perveen wasn’t sure how grand her show of obeisance should be, but remembering the preparation for Kensington Palace, she bent her head and curtsied.

  “Rajmata, my name is Perveen Mistry. I am a lawyer the government asked to respond to your letter of concern. Thank you very much for admitting me.”

  Maharani Putlabai continued to peer at her. “Are you a Muslim?”

  Perveen sensed the apprehension in the queen’s question. In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, Maratha warlords had fought long and hard against the Mughal invaders who’d taken most of the subcontinent. Could the dowager maharani, who had been born generations later, still harbor a grudge? Uneasily, Perveen said, “No, I am a Parsi. Because my family’s ancient history is in Persia, my first name is also common for Muslim girls.”

  “A Parsi! That is why your sari is so gaudy. Sit down.” The lady stretched her finger toward a chair to her right.

  Gaudy! The colorful Shanghai-embroidered birds and vines on the lustrous sari were considered tasteful in Perveen’s community. Nervously, she proceeded forward, almost tripping on her way to the oversized mahogany chair.

  Aditya also took a chair along the opposite side of the table but several spaces away from the gold-edged Limoges china place settings. As he did, the monkey ran down his arm, stopping on the table to survey the scene.

  Maharani Putlabai angrily clapped her hands at the monkey, and he leapt down to the floor. Perveen was glad the monkey was off the table, but she was surprised that the buffoon was allowed to sit with them. The court jester seemed to be more of a courtier than a servant.

  “Our esteemed guest is a solicitor from Bombay,” Aditya told the dowager maharani in an unctuous tone.

  “And how does a solicitor from Bombay come to me with my moonstone pendant?”

  Perveen looked more closely at the maharani and saw that she wore a thin gold chain ornamented with the moonstone pendant. Perveen had missed seeing it straightaway because the milky-colored jewel rested against the white silk of the maharani’s sari.

  “That suits you very well! I’m so glad you like it.” She would give plentiful thanks to Vandana when they met again.

  “How did you get my pendant?” the rajmata asked again, as if refusing to be deterred.

  “It is from France,” Perveen added. She hoped she wouldn’t be forced to admit another person had purchased it and passed it on to her because she hadn’t thought ahead about gifts.

  “From France?” she said, raising eyebrows that were thick and surprisingly brown given her white hair. “My son always said it was the country he most wished to visit. But this is no French stone. It’s my very own Indian moonstone, given by my favorite aunt as one of my wedding presents.”

  Perveen was confused. “Are you saying that you already have a moonstone like the one I gifted you with?”

  “You are an idiot!” Straightening in her seat, the tiny lady glared at Perveen. “I know this is my pendant, the very one that’s been lost for at least sixteen years. Indian gold is eighteen or twenty-two karat purity, and European is just fourteen. This is twenty-two karats and for that reason, it’s clear this is an Indian pendant.”

  Perveen’s thoughts were in a jumble, and she felt herself begin to sweat. Had Vandana recalled that the dowager had lost her beloved pendant? She might have thought a replacement would be welcome, but the old lady’s aged brain was too confused. If only Vandana had told Perveen the history! The situation was awkward, because the maharani probably assumed Perveen had bought the pendant from a crook dealing in stolen goods. For a lawyer, this did not look good. And it was a huge distraction from the issue of the maharaja’s education.

  Taking a deep breath, Perveen acknowledged, “I don’t know much about gems, but it might be a moonstone that came from India. And many Indian royals have their gems put into fancy settings at French jewelers.”

  “You are a gem of a lawyer to have brought this!” the buffoon cut in with exaggerated courtesy. “Now it is our responsibility to gift you.”

  “Don’t speak for me!” thundered the dowager. “Why should I bestow gifts on a woman who lives in a thief’s pocket?”

  Perveen’s face flushed. “I don’t want anything. I cannot accept gifts as a government employee.”

  “Oh? That�
��s not what the last political agent said!”

  Perveen was confused for a moment before remembering Colin’s predecessor. “Do you speak of Mr. McLaughlin?”

  “Yes. He always chose a very fine gift from the palace treasury at each visit. He would have taken the maharaja’s crown if he could.”

  “Oh.” Perveen did not say it sounded like corruption, but she would take the matter up with Colin later. Were so many jewels given to the political agent perhaps the reason for the twelve-gun salute?

  The dowager maharani rearranged the pendant above her sari so it was placed dead center. “Now tell me about how a woman gets to be a solicitor.”

  As she moved her thoughts away from the botched gift giving, Perveen’s shoulders relaxed. There would be no surprises when she told her own story. “I studied law at the University of Oxford in England. I met the qualifications for becoming a solicitor, so I returned home and took up work in my father’s practice.”

  “England.” The dowager sounded pensive. “I don’t believe its schools are any better than ours in India. What do you think?”

  “I believe it depends on the institution,” Perveen answered. “There are excellent ones in both countries, and for certain subjects, it is better to study here. Do you wish to discuss your sentiment about your grandson’s education?”

  A servant dressed all in white, holding a silver tureen, stepped into the room, but the old lady flicked a hand at him, and he hastily reversed. Turning her attention back to Perveen, she said, “It is not a matter of sentiment but truth. My grandson should not go far away when his dharma is to rule here.”

  Her words were true to the letter Perveen had seen. But she needed more from the maharani than a polemic. “I read this opinion in your letter. Would you be kind enough to tell me about the intellectual requirements for a maharaja?”

  The dowager maharani cocked her head to one side, as if considering the question. In a strong voice, she said, “Knowledge of crops and of counting, and the ability to write a good proclamation and to hold one’s strength in public. The boy can learn all this from his tutor. Basu-sahib was excellent enough to teach my own husband and sons, so why not my grandson?”