Forbidden Jewel of India

‘No!’

Nick looked up, unerringly at her, even though she was veiled and he could not know what she was wearing. Shaken, Anusha dropped the hem of her veil, her breath suddenly tight in her chest.

A warrior, brave and skilful. A handsome man, despite his unfamiliar looks and those uncanny green eyes. A kind man, for all his imperious orders. A man who showed respect equally to a raja and a humble villager. It felt like the bars of a lock sliding into place, each with a click in her brain. You learned early to pick locks in the zanana to find treasures and secrets. Was Nick Herriard a treasure, one that she wanted to hold, to possess?

‘He does not want a wife,’ she replied. It cannot be him. Which was a good thing, for however much she might desire that man—and the ache low in her belly and the tingling that went through her when he touched her told her that she did desire him—she feared him also.

He would deliver her to her father and then he would watch her like her father’s hunting hound, alert for any attempt to escape, for she had been foolish enough to let him glimpse her hopes and dreams. If she was foolish enough to fall in love with him, then she would make herself as vulnerable as her mother had done, for this man was so like her father: strong, independent, arrogant in his self-confidence. If he wanted something, he would go after it, if he no longer wanted it, then no sentiment would stop him rejecting it.

But even if he did desire her his duty to her father would keep him from acting on it. It cannot be him, she repeated to herself and shivered a little at the loneliness that crept upon her. She would be trapped in the alien world of the angrezi, amongst people who knew that her mother had not been married to her father and who would despise her for it, amongst people who expected her to wear those horrible clothes and follow their alien ways and she would never be free. Never belong.

The food was eaten, the dishes cleared. Anusha tried to help and was pressed back into her place, a guest. It would never have occurred to her to so much as hand a plate to a maid in the palace. Now she saw the thin, work-worn hands of the women who shared their food with her and felt ashamed to be waited on. ‘Please, let me do something.’

The woman nearest her smiled and went into her hut, came out with the fretful baby in her arms and offered it to Anusha. She cradled it cautiously and clucked her tongue at it. The small face wrinkled up, prepared to wail, then the child thought better of it and stared instead. Anusha stared back, then stroked its cheek with one finger. It wriggled its hand free of the wrappings and curled minute fingers around hers.

She began to croon to it, rocking it back and forth, soothed by the warm weight in her arms. All too soon its mother returned, smiling, and took her sleeping baby back to lay it in the hut and a pang went through her. Freedom and no husband meant no children, no baby of her own to cradle, no tiny hand curling trustfully into hers. Heat pricked at the back of her eyes and Anusha took a deep, shuddering breath. Where had that come from, that fierce desire for a child? Honesty gave her the answer—it had come with her awareness of Nick, her desire for him. Their children would be tall, golden-skinned, pale-eyed, brown-haired. They would be hostages to fortune, she reminded herself. Just as she had been.

The rhythm of drumbeats had her starting up, tense and ready to run, before she realised that it was the patter of hand drums from amidst the circle of men. Anusha relaxed back and the drumbeats settled into a pattern, a tala of sixteen beats. The other men began to clap on the correct beats: one, five, thirteen with a wave of the hand on the empty beat, nine.

The women shifted round in their places to watch, clapping too, and one of the men got up and began to dance, his bare feet slapping on the hard earth, his body twisting and swaying. Another man stood, then two more and the drumming became stronger as another musician joined in. Anusha realised it was Nick, his hands moving over the taut skins of the tabla as though he had known this music from birth.

‘Come,’ Vahini said. The women rose and began to dance too, out of sight of the men, their skirts whirling out into multi-coloured bells as they spun round. Anusha did not need a second invitation. Her lingering aches and pains, the tinge of melancholy over the baby, the unsettling desire for Nick—all vanished in the familiar intoxication of dance.

She looked up as she joined crossed hands with the woman opposite her, whirling round in the centre of the circle of clapping dancers. She leaned back and the stars spun above her in the deep-blue velvet of the heavens and the smoke curled up and somewhere, out beyond the village, a jackal howled, infinitely lonely.