The Betrayal of the Blood Lily

Chapter Eight

“What is she doing here?” Alex demanded, as Lady Frederick climbed out of the Resident of Hyderabad’s state palanquin.

The state palanquin, in which James rode with the new Special Envoy, was a testament to what raw money and talented craftsmanship could provide. The tasseled silk curtains, however, hid as much as they concealed. In this case, the presence of an extra individual in the palanquin.

For the duration of the ceremonial procession from the Residency to the Nizam’s fortress, Alex had trotted blithely along beside the palanquin, entirely unaware that the tasseled curtains concealed an additional passenger. Only the Resident and the new Special Envoy had been bidden to the Nizam’s durbar. It had never occurred to Alex — or, he imagined, the Nizam — that the Special Envoy’s wife might take it upon herself to attend as well.

Alex gritted his teeth in a way that boded ill for his dental health. One did not just drop by on a supreme ruler unannounced. Especially not a supreme ruler with a penchant for extemporaneous executions.

All around them, armed guards in steel helmets and gauntlets stood at attention, their bearded faces impassive. There had been more guards than usual in the Nizam’s palace, Alex had noticed, stationed in all of the courtyards through which they had passed on their way to the durbar at which Wellesley’s new Special Envoy was to be formally presented to the Nizam.

They had guards enough of their own. The Resident and Lord Frederick had made their way from the Residency complex on the other side of the river accompanied by no fewer than ten companies of infantry, along with five brightly bedecked elephants, a troop of cavalry, and two dozen riderless horses whose sole purpose was to show off brightly colored pennants. After a lifetime in Indian courts, James Kirkpatrick knew how to put on a show.

Would a show be enough to secure their safety in this new and dangerous political climate?

Alex had thought he had addressed his question to the Resident sotto voce. Unfortunately, the acoustics in the courtyard were excellent.

Lady Frederick swept towards him in a whisper of white satin, like moonlight on marble and just as cold. “And a good evening to you, too, Captain Reid. I had thought I might have trouble recognizing you after all this time, but your charm is unmistakable.”

“I’ve been busy,” he said stiffly. And he had been. Since returning two weeks ago, he had taken half his meals in the saddle or at his desk.

There was no reason he should feel guilty about neglecting his former charge. It wasn’t as though she was likely to lack for entertainment. Since their arrival, nearly every family in the Residency had felt it incumbent on themselves to throw a dinner or a card party or a Venetian breakfast for the new arrivals. Alex had avoided all the entertainments with impartial firmness, pleading the very real pressures of work.

And since when had she become his , just because he had been saddled with the task of getting her husband from Calcutta to Hyderabad? His obligation to Lady Frederick Staines had ended at the Residency gates, and that was that.

Or that should have been that. Over the past two weeks, Alex had found that he couldn’t quite purge Lady Frederick from his thoughts. Without seeing or consulting her, he had arranged for an Urdu tutor to be sent to her, hoping that would quell his conscience. It hadn’t. He still felt, for some inexplicable reason, obscurely responsible for her, a sensation that even consistent avoidance hadn’t managed to expunge entirely.

It wasn’t as though that were unusual, Alex rationalized to himself. George might have carted home stray dogs, but he was the one who had been left caring for them. This was exactly the same. Lady Penelope was just another stray who had been dumped into his care, like George’s pariah dogs or that one-eared kitten Lizzy had dragged home.

The analogy was an unfortunately apt one. Like Lizzy’s kitten, Lady Frederick seemed determined to sharpen her claws. On him.

“I’m sure you have been,” Lady Frederick agreed with deceptive complaisance. “There are so many things to keep one busy, aren’t there?”

Alex had the feeling he was being accused of something more than neglect, but he couldn’t imagine what. “Look,” he said, with a nod towards the archway. “Someone’s come to fetch us.”

It should, for courtesy’s sake, have been the Nizam’s chief minister, Mir Alam. Instead, it was a palace functionary so minor that Alex didn’t even know his name. From the expression on James’s face, he didn’t either. The Resident was not best pleased, but there was little he could do about. His own position was too precarious.

Fortunately, Lord Frederick didn’t know enough to realize that he had just been insulted. He strutted happily along behind their escort, slowing by the instinct of long practice in the light of those candles that made his gold watch fobs glitter to their best advantage. Like a peacock, decided Alex critically, brightly plumed from a distance, but inclined to peck when one got up close.

“Keep an eye on . . . ,” James murmured, tipping his head in Lady Frederick’s direction, before following along behind Lord Frederick into the durbar hall.

Typical, thought Alex. Simply bloody typical. Once again, he was the one left holding the leash.

Resigning himself to the inevitable, Alex extended an arm. “Shall we?”

Lady Frederick eyed his arm as she might a dead snake. “I don’t need a keeper.”

“That’s what you said before you jumped into the river.”

“I doubt there are any bodies of water in the durbar hall,” retorted Lady Frederick, marching along ahead of him. Alex was reminded more than ever of Lizzy’s cat. Had Lady Frederick had a tail, it would have been sticking straight up in the air.

“That doesn’t mean there aren’t treacherous depths.”

Lady Frederick looked up at him sideways. “Do you have treachery on the mind, Captain Reid?”

“I’m not the one I’m worried about,” he said frankly.

Lady Frederick regarded him scornfully. “I shouldn’t think you would be. After all, you know exactly what you’re planning.”

Exactly what did she think he was planning? Other than making sure she left the palace alive? Even without mysterious marigolds roaming about, there was Tajalli’s father, plumping for the restoration of the French force in Hyderabad; the new Nizam, providing a target for schemers and fortune hunters across the realm; and Mir Alam, rotten with old grudges and new leprosy. Or was that old leprosy and new grudges? Either way, the combination was about as conducive to civil peace as a Montague and Capulet reunion dinner.

“What do you think I’m planning?” Alex demanded, but he had lost his opportunity. The durbar hall opened up before them and he had the rare opportunity of seeing Lady Frederick well and truly speechless.

Even Alex, who had attended the durbar time and time again, had to admit it was an impressive sight. The Nizam preferred to hold his durbars by dark. It was a practical measure, avoiding the heat of the day, but the resultant forest of candles created an artificial wonder-land of the durbar hall, turning the proceedings into a page from a Deccani manuscript, too brilliant to be real. The hall was an architectural fantasy, the walls covered with trompe l’oeil scenes, so that parrots seemed suspended in flight above the heads of the courtiers and peacocks opened their mouth in eternal cry from beneath wide-leafed trees where the mango were perpetually in season.

Next to the lifelike guise of the paintings, the courtiers themselves seemed no more than an artist’s illusion, a piece of Eastern decadence for a European collector to marvel at. The light of the thousand candles in their tall silver stands oscillated off their rich silks and jewels, flirting with creamy shadows along the long ropes of pearls hanging around the necks of the nobles, shimmering along priceless lengths of gold brocade, cascading off diamond-set turban ornaments, and setting ruby armbands smoldering like the acquisitive glint in a merchant’s eye.

It wasn’t the jewels that held Lady Frederick’s attention, but the guards who stood sentry along the sides of the durbar hall, long, steel-tipped staffs propped against their soldiers. Their uniforms were similar to those worn by Madras sepoys, a long red coat over a pair of baggy trousers. They were all women.

“The Zuffir Plutun,” said Alex, with a nod towards the lady guards.

“The Victorious Brigade,” Lady Frederick translated, looking thoughtfully at the guards, as though she suspected them of being an optical illusion.

“Did you think I had made them up?”

Lady Frederick adopted her most inscrutable expression. Alex took that as a yes.

A cupbearer presented Alex with a small agate cup of coffee, tongue-scaldingly hot from the brazier that the Nizam kept burning in the center of the durbar. Slightly uncertainly, the cupbearer offered a twin of his cup to Lady Frederick. Looking as nonchalant as though she had been drinking at durbars all her life, Lady Frederick lifted the cup to her lips.

Alex curled his fingers around the polished surface, which was deceptively cool. “You might want to — ”

Lady Frederick knocked back the contents.

“ — sip that,” finished Alex, as Lady Frederick’s face turned an interesting color of puce.

Her throat worked convulsively as she swallowed the burning liquid, grounds and all.

“I’m fine,” she said hoarsely, giving him a look that dared him to contradict her.

Alex blew lightly at the surface of his own cup before taking a very small sip. “The Nizam likes his coffee hot,” he said helpfully.

Lady Frederick gave him a look of death. “I know.”

“Would you like another cup?” Alex made as though to summon the cupbearer. Never let it be said that he hadn’t behaved like a gentleman.

“Not to drink,” said Lady Frederick, in a tone that left no doubt as to where she would have liked to pour it.

The chuckle welled up in Alex’s throat before he had time to clamp it down again. He turned it into a cough, but not quite quickly enough.

A reluctant grin curled the corner of Lady Frederick’s lips. She had a coffee ground stuck between her two front teeth, giving her a charmingly gapped-tooth expression.

Alex held out his cup. “You can have mine, if you like,” he said. “It ought to be cool by now. At least, cooler,” he amended.

Lady Frederick started to reach for it, and then drew back her hand, as thought she had thought better of it. “No. Thank you.”

Alex glanced down at his cup, but he didn’t see anything suspect about it. There were no drowned flies floating on the surface, or even particularly large coffee grounds impersonating dead flies. It was a perfectly potable cup of Turkish coffee. More potable, Alex suspected, than the beverages pretending to that name being served in London. On the other hand, had he just bolted a cup of boiling coffee, he wouldn’t be too keen on the beverage either.

At the front of the diwan khaneh , the Nizam’s master of ceremonies, Mama Champa, was leading Lord Frederick up to the dais, her gilt-edged white robe and pink choli making Lord Frederick’s English evening dress seem even more drab in contrast. In addition to being the Nizam’s master of ceremonies, she was also a commanding officer of the Zuffir Plutun. The little push she gave Lord Frederick had enough force behind it to send him staggering to his knees before the ruler. Which, of course, was exactly where Mama Champa had wanted him.

Tall blue poles had been placed to either side of the Nizam, the blue lights lending an unhealthy tint to his already sallow complexion. Even the jewels and silks with which he had decked himself couldn’t hide the unhealthy hang of his jowls, the lines of dissipation in his face that made him look old beyond his years. Alex thought wistfully of the old Nizam, a dignified old warrior with a knack for political maneuvering and a taste for mechanical curiosities. The old Nizam had looked better at seventy than Sikunder Jah looked at thirty-five.

The old Nizam also hadn’t had Mir Alam hanging over his shoulder like death in a morality tale.

Mir Alam looked like hell, Alex thought dispassionately. He had always been slightly built, but now, besieged by disease, his narrow frame seemed to have caved in upon itself like a crone’s clawed hand. The fair complexion of which he had been so proud, token of his Persian ancestry, was blotched with open sores that turned his once-pleasant-featured face into something resembling a blob of raw meat, rendered even more hideous by the cavern in the center of his face where his nose used to be, collapsed in upon itself from the disease that was eating him from the inside out.

But even in those days when his body had been whole, there had been something unsettling about him, a cold-blooded lack of fellow feeling so profound as to be somehow inhuman. All ambition and no heart , James’s assistant, Henry Russell, had said with a shudder, adding that he’d sooner be sewed into a sack with a cobra than rely on Mir Alam’s mercy. Jack, who had a sneaking fondness for literature, had come up with an even more apt epitaph for Mir Alam. The Deccani Iago , Jack had called him, back before — well, before.

No need to let himself be distracted by Jack. Alex forced himself to concentrate on Mir Alam, Mir Alam who sat like a serpent poised to strike, the pipe of a golden hookah coiling snakelike from his mouth.

Alex recognized that hookah. It had, until very recently, belonged to the former First Minister, Aristu Jah, who seldom went anywhere without it. It had been a source of endless speculation among the younger wags of the court whether he brought it to bed with him, and if so, what role it played.

The hookah ought, by rights, to have been with Aristu Jah’s widow, not dangling from Mir Alam’s lips.

That did not bode well.

Alex could hear Lord Frederick’s startled grunt as Mama Champa shoved him down into the proper prostrate position. A few courtiers snickered behind their hands. The snickers turned to snorts as Lord Frederick bumbled his way through the elegant Persian oration James had crafted for him, blithely butchering vowels and changing minor words. Not that it mattered, reflected Alex cynically. The Nizam wasn’t listening anyway. Alex saw his eyes wandering off to the cane screen that concealed his current concubines.

At James’s prompting, Lord Frederick proffered the ceremonial gift that James had so carefully chosen. Passing off the present to a waiting functionary, the Nizam handed him in return a jeweled turban ornament, a cluster of emeralds and sapphires in the shape of peacock feathers. Lord Frederick promptly tried to stick it in his cravat, clearly believing it to be a sort of outré stickpin. Another friendly push from Mama Champa bowled him into the proper salaam, and then, thank the stars, the interview was over.

Only it wasn’t.

At a slight gesture, Mir Alam’s servant removed the point of his hookah from his mouth. Bending slightly, so that his mouth was level with the Nizam’s ear, Mir Alam murmured something to his master. Whatever it was made the Nizam sit up a little straighter, scanning the room in a way that made more than one courtier take a hasty step back. Alex didn’t blame them; the Nizam’s tastes ran much towards Nero’s. Or was it Caligula’s? It was Jack who had been the bookish one.

Mir Alam whispered something else in the Nizam’s ear, redirecting his attention, with the sort of veiled impatience governesses use for their charges. Alex went as cold as a dead Roman emperor as the Nizam followed the swing of Mir Alam’s finger — straight to Lady Frederick, who was idly and unconcernedly running her tongue experimentally along the edge of her burned lip, as though testing the new scar tissue.

The Nizam gestured Lady Frederick forward with an imperious flick of his wrist.

Alex felt Lady Frederick stiffen beside him, looking from one side to the other as though to say, Who me? No fools, the courtiers on either side of them backed away, leaving Lady Frederick and Alex alone in a pool of harsh tallow light, while Mama Champa progressed purposefully in their direction.

“Just curtsy,” whispered Alex out of the side of his mouth, experiencing a powerful urge to strangle Mir Alam with his ill-gotten hookah. “Curtsy and try to look humble.”

Lady Frederick cast him a haughty look. “I have been to court, you know,” she whispered back, rising regally to her full height. “If I can manage Queen Charlotte, I can manage him.”

Alex rather doubted that, but it was too late to do anything about it. Lady Frederick was already on the move, striding to the front of the room with the careless confidence of an accomplished rider about to take a fence. Without any help from Mama Champa, she sank to the floor, prostrating herself before the Nizam’s feet. She was, perhaps, a little too prostrate, but no one seemed to mind, not least the courtiers clustered around Alex, who were rating the properties of her nether regions, or at least such as could be discerned beneath the concealing fabric of her dress.

As the Nizam considered the view, Mir Alam leaned forward and murmured something in his ear. It was like watching a puppet show. All that was needed were the strings.

Instructing Mama Champa to raise Lady Frederick to her feet, the Nizam slurred out a question in an indistinct voice that suggested that he had been hitting a hookah of his own before the durbar.

“Where is my nuzzar ?” piped up the translator, his voice reedy in the hushed silence. “Have you no gift for me?”

At the Nizam’s elbow, his Prime Minister’s eyes were bright sparks in the ruined mass of his face as he waited for the new English envoy’s wife to stammer her way into a gaffe, a gaffe that would embarrass the English embassy, a gaffe that could be trotted out as a bargaining chip by the Nizam’s chief minister on future occasions. It was like watching two baggage carts about to collide and knowing there was nothing one could do to stop it.

Just as Alex was on the verge of barging forward and interceding, faux pas or not, Lady Frederick took matters into her own hands.

She lifted her eyes to the Nizam in a skillful mimicry of humility. “I would not,” she said, in a voice that carried to the farthest reaches of the hall, “do you the dishonor of appearing before you empty handed.”

Mir Alam looked pointedly at her hands. They were, not to put too fine a point on it, empty.

Lady Frederick waited out the translator’s anxious murmur before striking a pose worthy of a nautch dancer, both hands extended palm up in the classic gesture of supplication.

“But what might so insignificant a creature as myself possibly offer that would be worthy of so great a ruler?”

The courtiers on either side of Alex had their own opinions on that matter, mostly of the sort better not overheard by the lady’s husband. Too skinny, opined the man on Alex’s left, comparing her figure unfavorable to that of Nur Bai’s, one of the city’s more expensive courtesans.

Lady Frederick had to speak very loudly to be heard over the assorted whispers and murmurings. “Not riches, for those you have in plenty. Nor wisdom, of which Your Majesty has more than I by far.”

The translator hurried to relay her words to the Nizam, while those courtiers who spoke some English spread their own mangled translations through the crowd.

Like an actress anticipating her cue, Lady Frederick stood poised, waiting for the din to die down.

It worked. Bit by bit, the chatter fell off, the translations ceased, and all eyes turned to the still, poised figure at the front of the room. In her unadorned white satin, she made the brocades of the courtiers look fussy and loud, turning priceless jewels into little more than trumpery bazaar ornaments. Bathed in blue light from the candles by the Nizam, she seemed to crackle with a cold energy, unearthly, uncanny, and more than a little imperious.

Alex couldn’t help but receive the distinct impression that she was enjoying every moment of it.

In the hushed silence, Lady Frederick brought one hand to her breast. As one, the cream of Hyderabad stared, expectant, at Lady Frederick’s chest. When her hand came away, she held a single blossom from the nosegay at her bodice. It was a white bud, half-opened. It was also beginning to wilt from the heat of the room, the one false note in an otherwise masterly tableau.

Lifting it high enough for all the curious members of the durbar to see, Lady Frederick held the blossom out to the Nizam.

She spoke very slowly and clearly, allowing the translator time to follow. “Having found nothing else worthy of you, I offer you this humble flower, which I have carried close by my heart, in token of the warm regard I feel for Your Majesty and in the hopes that our friendship shall blossom like the rose.”

The only noise was the low tones of the translator behind the Nizam’s chair, hastily gabbling back Lady Frederick’s speech into the Nizam’s ear. The courtiers ceased their chatter, all eyes on the Nizam as they waited for his reaction. Only Lady Frederick appeared unperturbed, her arm unmoving as marble as she extended the flower to the Nizam.

The seconds ticked by, marked by the guttering of the candles and the crackle of the brazier. Alex could feel the sweat beginning to trickle down his neck.

Alex looked to Mir Alam, but the minister was staying his hand, watching with the same fixed attention as the other bystanders, his assumptions betrayed only by the slight smile that played around the corners of his mouth. He had rolled the dice; now he was waiting for them to fall.

As she held her pose for one minute, then another, and another, almost imperceptibly, Lady Frederick’s arm began to tremble.

What would she do if the Nizam refused her? What would they all do?

A sigh went through the room as the Nizam extended his hand to accept the token from Lady Frederick’s hand. The sigh savored more of disappointment than relief. It would have been much more amusing for all concerned had the new envoy’s wife been summarily savaged by lions.

Lady Frederick dropped her arm and sank into a deep European curtsy. Damp darkened the fabric beneath her sleeves in discrete circles, like shadows on the moon.

Balked of a bloodletting, the courtiers had begun to breathe again and to return to their own private intrigues when Mir Alam’s voice rustled through the renewed chatter like a snake in the grass.

Speaking as though for the Nizam’s ears alone, but pitching his voice high enough to carry, he said, “Does not the rose fade?”

Alex mentally damned Mir Alam and all his progeny to the tenth generation. From the look on Lady Frederick’s face, she was entertaining similar fantasies, many involving exceedingly pointy pitchforks and boiling pots of Turkish coffee.

Rising from her curtsy, Lady Frederick gave a brisk shake of her skirts, the only sign of nervousness she betrayed. Her smile was very fixed and very bright as she batted her eyelashes at the Nizam’s chief minister. “The petals may indeed fade, but the fragrance lingers on. Like the goodwill between our countries.”

It was a well-aimed barb, designed to remind all concerned that she had the might of England behind her, backed by infantry, elephants, and an expansionist Governor General who was prone to invading first and asking questions later.

The implications weren’t lost on Mir Alam, who closed his mouth tightly over whatever else he had been about to say and took a subtle step back from the Nizam’s chair, like a tennis player conceding a match. A match, but not the game. Whether she knew it or not, Lady Frederick had just made a powerful enemy.

Alex suppressed a groan. Just what they needed.

The Nizam, on the other hand, had already reached the limits of his boredom. As he turned to say something to a courtier behind him, Mama Champa waved Lady Frederick away from the dais, and gestured to her counterpart, Mama Barun, to begin herding courtiers towards the gardens for the nautch that was to follow the durbar. In gaily colored groupings, chattering like the parrots painted on the walls, the courtiers began to drift towards the gardens, already intent on the next intrigue, the next scandal, whatever it might be.

Only Mir Alam continued to watch Lady Frederick, the pipe of the hookah dangling like a snake from his lips.

Taking her arm, Alex hauled her away, manhandling her into the stream of courtiers heading out of the durbar hall.

“You would have done better to have stayed in the Residency,” he said softly, in English.

Neatly twisting her arm out of his grasp, Lady Frederick said flippantly, “I thought the Nizam was rather a dear, actually.”

“You have an odd definition of ‘dear,’ ” said Alex grimly. “He’s as mad as a hatter and he wields the power of life and death in this part of the world.”

“Our military escort — ”

“Is all outside. And Calcutta is a very long way away.”

Lady Frederick’s lips pursed as she considered. “I’m glad he liked my flower,” she said.