𝙎𝒕𝓮𝓮𝓵 𝓘𝓷 𝓢𝒾𝓵𝓀

Borne

''Step down slowly, my lady...the ground is uneven...here... hold onto my arm,''said Laxmibai hoping that her independent-minded mistress would take heed, given that she was now three-months pregnant.  Under the unseasonal weather, the land lay  sunburnt and barren. 

'I am neither sick nor old, Laxmibai,' Jijabai smiled affectionately at her maid, but took the proferred help, given the sudden cramp resulting from the long palanquin-ride to Junnar. 'Please see that the bearers have clean water to drink and mangoes to eat, before we move on'. 

'Ma...' nearly knocked off her feet, Jijabai was engulfed in a whirlwind of boyish delight emanating from her young son Shambu, who due to courtly circumstances stayed with her husband, a Maratha official serving the Nizam.

Shahjee was both eager to see his wife and at the same time irked by the halting progress of her retinue.  They were after all in enemy territory, that of the Bhonsales - his in-laws -who had not taken kindly to his marriage with their beloved daughter Jijabai, in light of a bitter feud.

Wiping the sweat beading her forehead, she also managed to brush away the sudden tears in her eyes: the long separation from her young son and her beloved husband, and the  heartache of familial divisions. As daughter, daughter-in-law, wife and mother, she knew how to weave it all into the caress of a silken shawl, scissoring off the threads of her own feelings.

Dusk brought a scatter of rain-drops, soon wafted away on the sigh of a fleeting breeze.

Shahajee and Shambu were well on their way, leaving the hoof-beats of their horses  stamped on her heart.  Jijabai made her way  to  the house of Shahjee's trusted friend, where she would rest  awhile. And there unexpectedly, turned up her father, whose seething rage against his son-in-law was swiftly soothed by his darling daughter, truly a sight for his sore eyes.

Father and daughter reminisced long through the night, the past cherished in the presence of their moments tonight; what the future held was in the flicker of lamp-light and sooty shadow. Her father eventually nodded off to sleep, strands of  hair like steel threads from his turban.

'The sun will rise soon!' Jijabai's amber eyes gleamed, as she felt the new life stir within her.  

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