Sword of Empire Read online

  But, as with Christianity, these beliefs were a strange mixture of philosophical and ethical concepts and ideals, and odd superstitions.

  Sitraj and his family were kshattriyas; that is, they believed themselves to be the second highest form of human life, beneath only the Brahmins, who were the only people on earth entitled to offer prayers and sacrifices to the universal Supreme God, Brahman.

  A very simple mythology accounted for this. The Brahmins claimed to have been the people who had conquered India from the north, beyond the mountains. They had defeated the dark-skinned aboriginal inhabitants and driven them to the south or made them slaves, and slaves they had remained, the panchamas or outcastes.

  The caste system itself had developed slowly. According to legend, when the Brahmins had conquered India it had been a golden age. All Brahmins had been noble and brave and acceptable to the gods; all panchamas had been obedient and servile. As time went by, however, some of the Brahmins had abandoned the perpetual quest for righteousness, and thus lost their place in the ruling elite. They became the kshattriyas, or professional soldiers.

  These were still happy times when the Brahmins and kshattriyas ruled a prosperous and orderly world. Then came a further decline, with men seeking to make money rather than their peace with god. These men, who sank lower than the kshattriyas, were the vaishyas, or merchants. In this age men first began to know unhappiness — apart from the panchamas, who of course, had never known happiness.

  Alas, man had to decline yet one more stage, into misery because of sloth and veniality. Those who had so sunk became the shudras, or cultivators. This was the stage in which the world was at present, the Brahmins said.

  The caste system, Laura supposed, was not in itself very different to the class system in England, except for its rigidity. In England, a young kshattriya named Arthur Wellesley could rise virtually to the top of the Brahmin caste as the Duke of Wellington, or a Norfolk farmer and shudra, Tom Coke, could reach the very top of the tree of wealth and acceptance in the highest circles. This was not possible in India. A man remained within the caste to which he was born for his entire life, nor would he marry beneath him — although he could take a concubine from any caste — and if a woman did so, she took her husband’s caste and descended the social scale.

  Laura decided that, being a non-Hindu, she was regarded as being outside the caste system. Papa, after all, had been no more than a vaishya.

  Escape from the caste system could only be achieved through death and re-incarnation, until the state of moksha, when all earthly ambitions and lusts and fears were forgotten, was reached. Reaching such a blissful state was however no easy task. One was reborn according to one’s behaviour in one’s previous life. Thus one might begin as a snake and become a Brahmin, but even that did not guarantee moksha. For if the Brahmin’s life was not virtuous, he would he reborn further down the scale, and might even become a snake again.

  It was the same with the gods. The Hindu gods were everywhere, carved or painted, throughout the palace and, as Laura had noted on her first day, more often than not engaged in very human activities.

  Brahman himself, the Creator, was seen as a trinity, but the other partners were very different from Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit. Second of the gods was Vishnu, the preserver, the protector of the world. Like all the gods he was many-sided, and could manifest himself in any one of several avatars or incarnations, the most famous being Rama, the hero of the Ramayana, and Krishna, the divine cowherd.

  The third member of the trinity, and the most disturbing, was Shiva. Shiva was both destroyer and restorer, a supreme ascetic and yet the epitome of sensuality.

  *

  Apart from the strangeness of the religion, and the economic inequalities, Laura found life in Sittapore a continuous delight.

  Her every day could very well have been spent doing absolutely nothing, for there was no task for which she was responsible. But she had a naturally vigorous mind and nature, and gossiping with Sitraj’s other wives did not satisfy her. The wives were charm itself, and revealed not the slightest hint of jealousy at her sudden elevation above them; they seemed as delighted with the baby Prince and future Rajah as she was herself. But their conversation was simply banal.

  Laura preferred the company of her mother-in-law. Bilkis would tell her about the great days of the Marathas, about how the legendary Sivaji had more than a hundred years before resisted even the mighty Aurangzeb, the Mughal Emperor who had referred to himself simply as The Great Mughal, until he had at last been forced to surrender. Siraji had been taken to Agra, the Mughal capital, officially as a guest, but in reality as a prisoner. Realising this, he had feigned illness, and as a supposedly dying man had distributed alms to the Hindus in the city, as he was required to do. These alms had consisted of huge baskets of fruit, which had first to be carried in to Sivaji for his blessing.

  One day the baskets had been carried in and out as usual, and the Mughal guards had not realised that one had contained, beneath the fruit, Sivaji, and the other his son Simbaji who had been sharing his captivity. Thus they had escaped, to resume their war of independence.

  Bilkis clapped her hands with joy every time she told this tale.

  The Mughals never succeeded in bringing Sivaji’s successors to submission, and when Sivaji’s line had grown feeble, the chief ministers, or peshwas, had taken over, founding their own dynasty on the lines of the old Japanese shogunates.

  But in time even the peshwas had grown feeble, and had been defeated in war by the British and French East India Companies. Then the Maratha empire had split apart, and the largest part had been that ruled by the House of Scindhia, and known simply as Scindhia. Bilkis’s eyes would gleam when she spoke of the power of her ancestors, and of the French mercenaries they had employed to maintain their independence, famous soldiers such as Benoit de Boigne and Perron, of whom even Laura had heard.

  *

  Laura took to exploring the city of Sittapore, accompanied always by Miljah and by several guards bearing parasols to keep the sun from her head and face. The people seemed amazed to see her in their midst, but were clearly delighted. She visited them in their homes and, as her Hindustani daily improved, spoke with them and their children.

  ‘Is it not possible to have a school here?’ she asked Sitraj.

  ‘A school?’ He frowned. ‘What for?’

  ‘Well...to teach the children.’

  ‘Teach them what?’

  ‘How to read and write, and count. How to better themselves.’

  ‘A man learns what is necessary from his mother and father,’ Sitraj pointed out. ‘You would not expect the child of a shudra to be taught to read and write any more than you would expect our son to be taught how to milk a cow or plough a field. Wholesale education means anarchy.’ He smiled at her. ‘As so often happens in Europe.’

  Laura didn’t know if he was right or not, but she loved him too much to dispute the matter.

  *

  There were no English books in Sittapore, and Laura had brought only her Bible with her, so she settled down to learn Sanskrit, so that she would at least be able to read the old religious books. Sitraj was delighted, and gave her an edition of the Hindu love manual, the Kama Sutra, as well as its Persian equivalent, The Perfumed Garden. She had never read anything like these, had in fact no idea that books like that had ever been written in any language.

  But consternation and embarrassment were soon replaced by interest and amusement, especially when she and Sitraj would read them in bed together and then try one of the different love positions.

  ‘You are a delight,’ he would tell her. ‘I sometimes cannot believe that I was fortunate enough to meet you.’

  ‘I suppose you have tried all these positions with Bibi and Chandra and Indra.’

  ‘Yes, I have.’ He smiled. ‘But none was so delightful as you.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because none has golden hair, and a white body, and such shy eagerne
ss.’

  He reached for her again.

  *

  But although the nights spent with Sitraj were marvellous, Laura found that even with her studies, the days still dragged. Her ‘sisters’ did nothing but drink tea and tell each other interminable stories, most of them obscene and accompanied by gales of laughter, and wait for the summons to their master’s bed.

  They would not even play any games which required thought, finding them far too enervating. They preferred to lounge on their divans while their hair was brushed and combed and plaited by their maids, or to splash about naked in the bathing pool, chasing each other through the water with a good deal of erotic horseplay. Laura was alarmed by this at first, but soon found herself joining in the fun — it all helped to prepare them for Sitraj’s bed.

  Above all, they were totally uninterested in the running of their little country, and never paid the slightest attention to any problems Sitraj might be having. If Sitraj had a fault it was his arch-conservatism; and he was quite put out when he found Laura discussing modernising the sewage system with Prithviraj Dal.

  He was quite happy, however, to show Laura the emerald mine, and watch her gasp at the enormous wealth that lay in the hillside close by the town. Her engagement present had already been made up into a ring, and he also made her a present of a matching emerald necklace. Wearing the two she supposed she was carrying several thousand pounds about with her, and in addition he loaded her with gold bangles for her ankles and arms. He even asked if she would like to have her nose pierced for a ring, but this she declined. He did not argue about it.

  *

  Sitraj played polo at least once a week, and Laura invariably went to watch, even if the game terrified her.

  She had seen it played in Bombay, as the young sahibs had quickly picked it up from the Indians, but never had she seen such reckless speed combined with superb timing as on the field below Sittapore. Usually the teams, composed of army officers, were captained respectively by Sitraj and Batraj, when the Prince was in residence. Laura would sit with her hands to her throat as her husband hurled himself around the field on his pony. Many were the tumbles, but Sitraj always landed on his feet, laughing as he remounted.

  When she asked him if there were ever any serious injuries, or even deaths on the polo field, he laughed. ‘Of course. But a game without risk is not worth playing.’

  *

  As she became more at home, and grew to feel that she was being accepted by the people of Sittapore, the only blight on Laura’s total happiness was her cousin-in-law Batraj.

  Batraj was the only man, apart from servants, who actually lived in the palace — although his apartments were far from hers — and whom, therefore, she saw with any regularity, apart from her husband. But where the servants all bowed as she approached and tried to be as self-effacing as possible, Batraj was more than likely to stop and engage her in conversation.

  He was never other than totally polite, and he was always interesting, and yet she felt ill at ease with him. She was certain he desired her as much as Sitraj, and then asked herself what was so unusual about that. Every man in Bombay had desired her. What made the knowledge different in Sittapore was the constant presence of erotic statues in every niche and corner. She found it difficult to carry on a normal, polite conversation with Batraj when both he and she were looking at an erected male penis, not six feet away. Also there could be no doubt that he had also read both the Kama Sutra and The Perfumed Garden!

  He travelled a great deal, but where he went, or what he actually did, remained a mystery: Sitraj said no more than, ‘he is my ambassador.’ But when Batraj came back his eyes almost seemed to be mocking her, and he looked at her more boldly than ever.

  So she would remind herself that although he was a prince, she was Rani of Sittapore. She was beyond his reach.

  *

  She did once ask Sitraj about his father’s death, but he would not go into details.

  ‘My father died very suddenly,’ he said. ‘It must have been a heart attack.’

  ‘I heard there was a rumour of poison.’

  ‘There are always rumours of poison when someone dies suddenly,’ he pointed out.

  ‘Your father and his brother-in-law had quarrelled, had they not?’

  ‘They had a difference of opinion,’ Sitraj said carefully. ‘Over our relationship with the Company. My father stood for closer ties, my uncle did not. But my father was Rajah, and it was his decision which mattered.’

  ‘Do you and Batraj differ in your policy towards the Company?’

  ‘Batraj is his father’s son, as I am mine.’ Sitraj smiled. ‘But in this case also, I am Rajah.’

  *

  Laura had expected to be pregnant again soon after she returned to Sitraj’s bed, but this did not happen. When she became concerned about it, he merely smiled as usual, and said, ‘Perhaps we need a change of air. Would you like to visit Bombay?’

  ‘Oh, could we?’ she squealed in delight.

  He laughed at her enthusiasm. ‘Why not? We will go as soon as the monsoon is over.’

  *

  They made the journey south in November, and Laura wondered if they might possibly stay over Christmas.

  She had been a little put out when Sitraj had decided against taking little Sivitraj. The baby was now eight months old, and Laura had never been separated from him.

  ‘The journey is an arduous one,’ Sitraj pointed out.

  ‘Certainly for a baby. And he is my heir. He will remain with his grandmother. She will take good care of him.’

  Laura knew he was right. It was a wrench which soon dissipated, however, in the excitement of returning to her home town in all her glory as Rani of Sittapore.

  Her parents had by now long left, and according to their letters were moving in the best society in England. Mountstuart Elphinstone was still there, however, and after the elephants and outriders had paraded through the streets of the city in front of gaping crowds, he welcomed them to Government House, where they would be staying: how proud Mama and Papa would be, Laura thought. But Elphinstone himself was leaving the following year.

  ‘Well, I’ve been in India thirty years,’ he pointed out.

  ‘You must have many memories,’ Laura ventured.

  ‘Oh, indeed, Your Highness. I was with Wellesley at Aswari, and then there was that business with the Peshwa ten years ago...oh, indeed. I shall be sorry to go, in some ways. But there are other places to see, Greece, Italy...and of course, dear old England.’

  ‘I have never set foot in England,’ Laura said thoughtfully, wondering if she ever would. Perhaps Sitraj could be persuaded...How marvellous to arrive in England as Rani of Sittapore! Perhaps she might even be presented to the King!

  ‘Who is to be your successor, Sir?’ Sitraj asked, more practical.

  ‘Ah...Sir John Malcolm,’ Elphinstone said, a trifle diffidently.

  Sitraj raised his eyebrows, and Laura could understand his surprise. Sir John Malcolm was a very well-known figure in India. It was related that when, as a young boy, he had been taken before the Directors of the East India Company by his recently-bankrupt father in an endeavour to find him a place, and had been condescendingly asked by one of the great men, ‘Well, little fellow, what would you do if you came face to face with Haidar Ali?’ (for the great Rajah of Mysore was causing the Company all manner of trouble), Malcolm had replied without hesitation and in his strong Scottish accent, ‘Cut off his heid!’

  Throughout his career he had fought brilliantly whenever given the opportunity, had tumbled in and out of debt with great regularity, acted as British Ambassador to Persia, and applied for government posts, invariably without success until now.

  It was also remembered that he had been a fair man, more so than some of his contemporaries. When Sir Arthur Wellesley, as the Duke of Wellington then was, had projected the destruction of the castle of Gwalior after his victory at Aswari, Malcolm had protested that it was the family home of the Scind
hia, and that to destroy it would be an act of brigandage. His stand had not endeared him to the future Commander-in-Chief of the British Army, but he had won his point.

  Sitraj remembered this.

  ‘I do not think we could ask for anyone better, after yourself, of course, Elphinstone.’

  ‘Do you know, I agree with you. But we are also to have a new Governor-General next year. Amherst has resigned. As to who will replace him, I have no idea, although I have a notion John Malcolm will probably throw his hat into the ring.’

  ‘Better and better,’ Sitraj agreed.

  *

  It was a tremendous pleasure to descend on the bazaar, followed by a train of servants, Miljah always at her elbow, with someone to hold a parasol over her, and others to carry the baskets which she filled with whatever caught her fancy.

  The native stallholders remembered her, and welcomed her as one of them, while the English people she met were forced to bow to her or salute her. She felt it was the greatest triumph of her life.

  It was an equal pleasure to sit in the Governor’s box and watch Sitraj playing polo with the British Army, outriding them all and outplaying them as well with the ferocity and accuracy of his shooting.

  Polo matches are leisurely affairs for the spectators, and she had ample time to look over the stand and the crowds, the English ladies all beautifully dressed, their husbands explaining the finer points of the game even if they themselves were indifferent horsemen, the Indian spectators a kaleidoscope of soft colours as they swayed with excitement.

  Then she saw Guy Bartlett, seated below her in the stand. Beside him was a small dark girl, somewhat plain, Laura thought, but with abundant hair and a good figure.

  She also observed that he now wore the insignia of a full lieutenant.

  ‘Who is that lady with Lieutenant Bartlett, Your Excellency?’ she asked Elphinstone.

  ‘Ah, that would be Miss Partridge. Daughter of the Colonel of the Regiment, you know. Young Bartlett and Prudence are seen quite a lot together, have been for some time.’

  Laura remembered Prudence Partridge, all teeth and puppy fat. She seemed to have changed.