The Henna Artist(41)
A bearer entered with a silver tea service. The porcelain was decorated in a pattern similar to Parvati’s. On a plate rimmed in gold were paper-thin tea biscuits, their centers embedded with slivers of pistachios and spikes of lavender. The bearer poured the tea. With a tap of her manicured fingernail, the maharani indicated that her tea should be placed next to her cards. She did not, however, pick up her cup.
“My late husband was very fond of tea. I knew him to take five, six cups a day with heaps of sugar. All that sugar should have made him a sweet man.” She paused. “It didn’t.”
Her Highness’s bluntness was unexpected, but curiously, I found it agreeable. Perhaps all royals were eccentric, I reasoned, and, for once, allowed my back to rest against the sofa cushion. I took a leisurely sip of tea, which was creamy, sweet and scented with cardamom and cinnamon.
“He was selfish to the end,” Her Highness continued. “To his concubines he gave sixty-five children because, well, who cares about the illegitimate? To his five wives, myself included, he took great care to give none. Do you know why?” She was holding a card between her forefinger and middle finger in midair the way a man held a cigarette, waiting for a response.
I inclined my head politely.
“His astrologer advised him not to trust his blood heirs. So instead of having a legitimate son, he adopted a boy from a Rajput family, who is now our maharaja.” She slapped her card on the table, facedown. “I live in a palace with a maharaja who is not my natural son and a maharani who is my stepdaughter-in-law.”
It wasn’t the first time I had heard of an Indian palace adopting a crown prince on the advice of an astrologer. In some royal families, it was common practice.
She palmed her teacup briefly, but left it on the table. “The current maharaja loves his third wife. Latika is beautifully turned out, expensively educated, smart. The son she gave him should have been the crown prince.”
She covered a queen with the jack she’d taken from the deck.
“The only problem was that he also heeded the advice of his astrologer, who warned that his natural son would overthrow him. So the maharaja sent his son to England, to boarding school, without telling his wife. He left that to his chief adviser. Maharani Latika hasn’t eaten or slept since her son was taken away. She will not talk. She has not gotten out of bed.”
Shaking her head, she said, “Her boy is only eight, the same age your assistant prefers to be. But she is not allowed to see him.”
I understood the trauma mothers suffered when they lost their children to fever or malnutrition. I’d seen it often enough working with my saas. But to have a child taken away without your knowledge must have been another kind of torture.
Maharani Indira had reached the bottom of her deck. “The citizens of Jaipur may think we maharanis have power, but that couldn’t be farther from the truth.”
She picked up the pile of rejected cards and began to turn them over one by one.
“Now we come to you, Lakshmi Shastri. While the young queen is not my natural daughter-in-law, she is my responsibility. Her spirits must be restored so she can resume her royal functions. And she needs to be a fit wife for the maharaja once again.” She lifted an eyebrow. “She has no choice but to accept her fate and that of her son. Que sera, sera.” The Maharani Indira stilled her hands. “At least she has experienced motherhood.”
The woman sitting in front of me had known grief, too. If it hadn’t been improper, I would have offered her the cashew nut sweet in my carrier, which I’d prepared this morning with cardamom to ease sadness.
I waited a moment. “How can I be of service, Your Highness?”
“Make the Maharani Latika whole again. Lift her sorrow, which Samir all but guarantees you can do.”
Samir’s confidence in me was heartening. But the thought of failing with a noblewoman—such a public figure—sent a shiver through me.
I wet my lips. “Your Highness, healing takes time. As do my applications. I will need to see the Maharani Latika first to determine how I might help and how long it might take. I’m honored Mr. Singh has such faith in me, but please allow me to assess the situation first.”
She studied me, her look stern. I met her gaze, waited.
After a few minutes, she gathered the cards from the table, as if coming to a decision. “Assess away,” she commanded, her voice brisk again. “And come see me when you’re done.”
I was relieved that my task here was to soothe a troubled woman, as I had done many times before. Success would be sweet, would spread my reputation beyond the city walls. Defeat, however, would be fatal. My business would never recover from such a humiliation. I would need to use every herb from my saas’s repertoire to heal the young queen.
Despite the rich tea, my mouth was dry. “It will be my pleasure, Your Highness.”
Satisfied, she nodded once. She looked at the attendant, who came forward. “Take Mrs. Shastri to Her Highness.” Then she touched her teacup again and said to him, “And tell Chef never to serve me cold tea again! How dare he do that to a maharani?”
I rose from the couch, my legs unsteady, and bent to touch her feet.
* * *
When I was a girl and my father was too hungover to teach school, my mother would worry aloud: What will we eat when he loses his job? Books? I sought refuge from her anxieties at old man Munchi’s hut, painting on his peepal leaf skeletons. I could lose myself—drawing the pattern of a milkmaid’s chunni or the tiny feathers of a myna bird. It calmed me. Later, when Hari berated me for not giving him children, I would retreat once again into my art, but I would draw in my mind, imagining the paintbrush in my hand, even as he punched my stomach or kicked my back. Concentrating on details, like the ladybug crawling up my arm or the paisley pattern of my sari, and ignoring everything else, crowded out anxiety, pain and worry.