One day the queen of Raipur was sitting in the hall with her sons and the old saint lady, and they were talking about the Lord, and a longing came over her so strongly that she shut her eyes and prayed.
O true Guru Ji, she said inside herself. Come. Let us see you.
She was still saying it when a maid called Rajeshwari came running in, out of breath.
The minister is at the door, she said. He says: we told you not to make friends with Guru Gobind Singh Ji. Now the king of Ramgarh and the king of Jaswar and the king of Kahlur are all moving this way, and maybe others with them. What are your orders?
The queen sat very still.
Then Kutrol Bai came running in as well. The army commander is here, she said. The prime minister. The defence minister. Troops are standing ready. One company has already gone out. Everybody is waiting for you to say the word.
Are you sure it is the enemy? said the queen.
Listen, they said. Listen to the drums.
You could hear them now, far off, coming from the border.
What is that sound? said the queen.
That, said Kutrol Bai, is the signal they beat when they have crossed into somebody's country. It means they are already inside.
And then the old saint lady said: Wait.
She turned her head and listened properly, the way you listen for one voice in a crowd, and she waited a long moment before she spoke.
That is not an enemy, she said. That is my beloved true Guru Ji's own drum, the one they beat when he is travelling.
And listen to the tune it is playing. That tune means he is coming into a friendly country.
I do not understand drums, said the queen slowly. But I notice that my heart is not frightened. My heart is happy.
If you are certain, she said, I will tell the troops to stand still. Better than doing something stupid in a hurry.
Then the drums stopped.
And the trumpets started, in a raga nobody in that country had the right to play except one person, and the old lady knew it at once.
Do not be afraid, she said. Nobody else has that raga.
Then the words came in from outside, carried from mouth to mouth up through the palace: Magnificent Guru Gobind Singh Ji has arrived.
Bhai Sahib says those words worked like magic. The queen went straight into a kind of trance. Both the princes lit up like lamps. Maids kept hurrying in with more news and then stopping dead in the doorway, because of what the room felt like.
And then the queen stood up and went out.
Let people laugh at me, she said. Let them be angry if they want to be angry. I am going out to the road to meet the beloved of the Lord, and I am leaving my veils behind me, and I will lie down in the dust of that road because it has turned holy.
She walked out through the verandah with her face shining. The old saint lady held her left hand. Her son walked at her right.
Her ministers and generals watched their queen go past them towards the very army they had been begging her to fight, and they moved aside like pieces on a board, not understanding any of it.
He has won us, somebody said, without shooting one arrow.
Out on the road, Guru Ji's company was coming.
The queen went forward until she was standing in the road they were riding down, and she looked up, and her heart came up so high into her that she could hardly see.
She looked up again.
And now he was close. And the green horse, which was used to going fast, was slowing down, and slowing down, as though the beating of all those waiting hearts were pulling on its reins.
Then the queen of Raipur, whose neck the whole kingdom bowed to, went down and bowed it herself.