But as she neared the entrance to the clinic, shouts and shrieks of pain sent her from a brisk walk into a run; she picked up her skirts in both hands, the better to lengthen her stride, exposing ankles and even calves to the applause of a couple of drunken louts she didn’t recognize. One was cuffed over the side of his head by a fellow with a barrowload of potatoes for sale as she sprinted past.
“Shoaw sum r’spect, ye buggerin’ swine!” said the peddler as another shriek sent her into a full-out run. “That there’s a doctor, not ‘un’a yer tuppeny whoors!” Yes, it was going to be a busy day at the Fleet. Perhaps she should not have asked Ganesh to remove unspecified obstacles, since it seemed that he had removed the ones between new patients and her!
Tom brought her home just after ten that night, limp as a rag, yet strangely elated. How could she not be elated? She had saved the hand of a man who would otherwise have lost it, she had delivered three healthy babies in rapid succession, one presented breech that she had somehow managed to turn in the womb before labor was too far along, and one set of twins. All the patients recovering in her ward were doing well. Although the work had come in the door steadily from the moment she arrived to when they closed their doors, for once nothing had gone horribly, or even mildly, wrong. It had been a day full of small triumphs, not disasters.
Tom descended from his perch up on the driver’s box and handed her out with a sober propriety that would have had anyone who knew him and his usual truculent manner with a fare gaping in astonishment. “You look done in, Miss Maya,” he said, as she smiled at him, grateful for the support of his hand tonight. “You go get some rest.”
“I will, Tom, I promise,” she said. But not just now… There were too many things to do first, not the least of which was to check to see if there were any messages or letters for her. Her other clients, the ladies who paid her so very well, tended to make appointments for a given afternoon on the evening before. Unless, of course, there was an emergency, in which case she would find a frantic message waiting for her, or even a messenger waiting to guide her to the emergency.
There were no messages, but there was a letter, waiting on the tray beside the door. She frowned at it for a moment, not recognizing the handwriting. As she was about to open it, Gupta appeared at the end of the hall. He had such an odd expression on his face that she put the letter back down on the tray. It could wait.
“Gupta, is there something wrong?” she asked, hurrying toward him, her weariness forgotten.
“No, mem sahib—” He hesitated. “But I have great need to speak with you. There are things I must tell you; things it is time that you should hear.” None of this made any sense to her. “Gupta, it is very late, and I am very tired—” she began.
But Gupta shook his head stubbornly. “I have seen a thing, and heard a thing, and there is much I must tell you. And tomorrow may be too late.”
That, coupled with his expression, made her shake off her tiredness with an effort. “Then take me where you will, and I will listen,” she replied.
She wasn’t particularly surprised when he took her to the conservatory. Incense burned before the statue of Ganesh, and there were many candles burning among the plants. She settled into her usual chair; he sat cross-legged on the floor. She felt a little uncomfortable, looming above his head on her ersatz throne, but there was no way she could join him on a floor cushion, not in her confining Western clothing and corsets.
She waited for him to speak in his own time. There was no point in trying to hurry him, for he would not be hurried. He didn’t force her to wait very long, however, just long enough for him to gather his thoughts and begin, as a storyteller would.
“There were, on a time, two sisters,” he said gravely. “Both were beautiful, both were gifted with more than the common measure of the power to speak and act with the Unseen. The younger, who wept not at all at her birth and had eyes that hinted of hidden things, was named Shivani. The elder, who laughed at her birth and had dancing sparks of happiness in her eyes, they called Surya, the Fire.”
“My mother?” Maya asked, with a feeling that something solid had dropped from beneath her, leaving her dangling in midair. She clutched the arms of her chair and breathed in the incense, a tightness in her chest. “My mother has a sister? But what happened to her?”
Why was I never told? Why did I never see her? How could she have deserted Mother if she was Mother’s twin?
Gupta nodded. “As sisters should, they loved one another, despite such different natures. Your mother chose to study the powers of the day, her sister studied those of the night, as all expected, and still, despite that they now saw so little of one another, they were as sisters should be. But as time passed, Shivani withdrew into herself, kept her own counsel, and went ever more often to a certain temple and sect of the goddess Kali. At length, she treated Surya as she would a stranger, and your mother gathered about her these seven friends, to ease her loneliness.”
Here Gupta waved his hand around the conservatory, where all seven of Maya’s pets, some warring against their own need for slumber, sat watching her, wide-eyed.
“Still, there was no thought of enmity between them—until your mother met Sahib Witherspoon, your father.” Gupta shook his gray head, with an ironic smile. “He had come to the temple where she served—came humbly, and not as the arrogant sahib of the all-wise English—to ask of the ways of our healing. He would learn, so he said. And he did learn; I was there, and I saw it all. He learned—and so did your mother. She taught healing, and she learned to love.”
“So did he,” Maya whispered softly, knowing how very much her father had loved her mother.
Gupta’s nostrils flared. “Did I say he did not?” he demanded with annoyance. “But he was not my concern. She was my concern; I was her appointed guardian. I cared not what some English sahib felt or thought or did or did not do—not then—not then—”
He sighed deeply. “I was more than appointed guardian; I was your mother’s friend. Never did she treat me as a servant, often did she confide to me her inmost thoughts. So she told me of her love, and of his. Then I feared for her, tried to dissuade her. Yet she would not be moved, and implored my help in convincing her father to allow a marriage.” He shook his head. “Impossible, of course. There were hard words, then threats, then Surya was locked away. And it was my hand, my hand, that set her free, to fly to your father and make the marriage of his people.” He smiled with great irony. “She did not go dowerless; she took what was hers by right, the gems and jewelry that formed her marriage portion, her seven friends, and her power. But it was for none of these that Sahib Witherspoon welcomed her into his arms and heart—I had seen that he would have her were she the lowest Untouchable. I, too, loved Surya as a daughter and a friend, and that was why it was my hand that turned the key in the lock that night.”
Although much of this was new information, it was nothing she hadn’t already guessed, and Gupta had yet to reveal what he had seen that led to this confession. “So her family cast her off,” Maya prompted.
“As you know. What you do not know is that Shivani, her sister, was wild with anger. That Shivani, her sister, withdrew from her family into the heart of that temple of Kali. And that Shivani, her sister, vowed that neither the blood she shared with Surya, nor the power that Surya possessed, would remain in the barbarian hands of an unclean English sahib.”