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‘I could not carry clothes, I had to run away very quickly,’ Anusha explained.
That provoked tutting and shaking of heads. Then one of the younger women stood up. ‘She is of my size. It is not right that she is with a man and has to dress as a youth.’
‘I cannot ride as a woman,’ Anusha protested as the speaker left the hut.
‘But when you are not travelling, then he should look on you as a woman,’ one of the others said. ‘If he looks at all. It is only fitting. Padma will have something.’
When Padma returned, her arms were full of cloth. ‘You must wear this tonight,’ she said, shaking out a deep-blue kurta, lehenga and red trousers. There were sandals as well, and a gauzy red veil and a long blue scarf.
Anusha looked at their faces. They were poor. These were probably Padma’s best clothes out of very few, perhaps they were her wedding clothes. She had no gift to reciprocate with, only gem stones, and they were of no use to villagers miles from anywhere and who would probably be cheated if they tried to sell them.
‘That is very kind and these are beautiful,’ she said as she ran her hand over the intricate metallic embroidery around the hems. ‘When I reach my father’s house I will have them returned to you with a gift from my heart in thanks.’
‘Then we will bring water and you may wash,’
Vahini announced, her words sending some of the younger women scurrying out. ‘And you can tell us all about yourself. How many years do you have?’
Washing and changing was obviously going to be a public performance. Anusha put a brave face on it—to be clean she was prepared to answer any number of questions.
* * *
The women gathered together around the cooking hearths, the firelight flickering across their faces, gleaming off nose rings, bangles and the flash of a smile. Behind, in one of the huts, a child whimpered in its sleep and someone got up to go to it. Others moved back and forth, bringing water, chopping vegetables, carrying food to the men who sat before the headman’s hut.
She felt soothed and yet also emotional. The way these women lived was so distant from her own mother’s privileged, cultured life, but they had gathered her to them like a long-lost daughter. It had been like talking to Mata again. They had asked about her suitors, told her about marriage settlements for the younger women, laughed about their husbands, teased her gently about Nick.
Paravi was a good friend and yet she could not talk to her as she had to her mother. And of course, these women, kind and motherly as they were, were not the same. Mata had died a year ago of a sudden fever. One day she had been there, strong, intelligent, passionate. The next, gone. In the last few hours before she had sunk into unconsciousness, she had held Anusha’s hand, her speech rambling and faint.
‘Love, Anusha,’ she had muttered. ‘It is life. It is the only thing. Even if it breaks your heart. Love...’
Sometimes love sounded wonderful, worth pain, worth loss. And sometimes it seemed too dangerous, too much of a risk. Oh, Mata, I wish you were here to talk to.
Anusha found her vision was blurred, blinked to clear it and realised she was looking at Nick, sitting cross-legged on a mat beside the headman at the centre of the male group. They were all smoking thin black cheroots that she suspected had come from his saddlebags and discussing something with much animation, but also careful attention so that each gave his opinion.
Nick said something, straight-faced, and there was a gale of laughter, echoed by the boys who were hiding behind the hut, watching their elders. Someone called out to them and they ran off.
At last the food was laid out, the cheroots stubbed into the dust and the men began to eat. Only then did the women gather round their own fire and begin their meal. Careful of her borrowed clothes, Anusha sat where she could watch Nick from beneath the hem of her veil as she lifted it to eat. He was so at ease, so relaxed, that it was hard to remember that he was one of the Company, a foreign soldier and the ally of the father who had rejected her.
‘He is a fine man, that one,’ someone said, low-voiced, and the women moved their heads in the sinuous shake of agreement that the angrezi never seemed to master. Except Nick—he could do it, she realised. ‘He moves like one of us,’ the woman added as if reading her mind. ‘He is a warrior.’
‘Yes,’ Anusha agreed. ‘He is a brave and skilful fighter.’ And a wise one, she thought, recalling the way he had eluded the maharaja’s troops.
‘Perhaps your father would give you to him,’ another voice suggested. ‘He would make you fine sons.’
