The Twentieth Wife by Indu Sundaresan Read Free Book Online Page B

over the skirts of her ghagara. “She argues, too. I find her making moon eyes at Prince Salim, and she tells me she was lost.”
    He took her out of the palace and pointed to the gates. “Go—and don’t let me see you here again, or I will have your head.”
    Mehrunnisa stuck her tongue out at him and ran toward the gates. She looked back over her shoulder. Hoshiyar did not follow. He just stood there, and when she turned, he stuck his tongue back out at her.
    •   •   •
    “G OING TO SEE the Empress?”
    Mehrunnisa whirled around, her hairpins tinkling to the floor, some bouncing to camouflage themselves against the pattern of the Persian rug.
    “See what you have done!” she exclaimed, bending down togather the hairpins. But a few were hopelessly lost, lying on the rug to poke bare feet at some later time. She straightened up and looked into the mirror.
    Abul was leaning against the doorway, his arms folded across his chest. Abul was fifteen years old now, old enough not to tease her. But she knew he had a free afternoon, and she was his best target. Saliha ignored him. Khadija and Manija cried when he approached because he invariably pulled their hair or wrapped their ghagaras around their heads so they could not see, and he had to beat a hasty retreat before Maji or Bapa scolded him. So he came seeking her when his male friends did not take him away hunting or to the public houses—this last without Bapa’s knowledge, of course. Mehrunnisa forgot Maji’s injunctions about how a lady should behave and scowled at her brother’s image in the mirror.
    Abul shook his head with a silent tut-tut. “Your face will freeze like that, and no one will marry you. You haven’t answered my question yet.”
    “I am not going to, Abul,” Mehrunnisa said, composing her face again. Allah forbid that what Abul said might come true. “It’s none of your business. Go away and leave me to do my hair.”
    “Come out with me, Nisa. We can play polo with mallets in the garden—without the horses, of course.”
    She shook her head. “I cannot. I am going to the palace. Don’t bother me now, Abul, or I will tell Bapa you went to the nashakhana last night.”
    “And I will tell Bapa that you went with me three nights ago. Dressed as a man, with a khol-painted moustache, and got drunk on three sips of wine. That I had to carry you home early. That my friends still ask after the pale-faced youth who has such a weak stomach that ‘he’ puts even a baby to shame.”
    Mehrunnisa ran up to Abul and pulled him into the room. She peered outside the door. No one was passing. She pinched the armshe was still holding. “Are you crazy? No one can ever know that I went to the nashakhana with you. You forced me to, Abul.”
    Abul grinned. “I did not have to force you very much, Nisa. You wanted to come. Be thankful Khadija did not wake up and wonder why you weren’t in bed. Bapa would have beaten you for sure if he found out.”
    Mehrunnisa shuddered. What stupidity that had been. Tempting, but stupid. “You must never tell anyone. Promise me that. Promise.” She pinched his arm harder.
    Abul pulled away, rubbing his sore arm. “All right, baba. I won’t. But come with me tonight. We can dress you up again and jump over the wall like last time.”
    Mehrunnisa shook her head and went back to the mirror. “Once was enough. I just wanted to see what it would be like. Why do you go to that place anyway? All those men getting drunk and lolling over the divans, the serving girls wearing next to nothing sprawling all over them. . . .” She shuddered. “It was horrible. Don’t go there again, Abul. It’s not right.”
    Abul wrapped a finger around her hair and pulled it. “That is none of your business, Nisa. You asked to go there; I took you. Now don’t tell me what to do. The promise not to tell Bapa only holds so long as you keep your moralizing tongue in your mouth. Is that clear?”
    Mehrunnisa glared at him,