Gulaba was in Anandpur doing a spy's work, day and night, because it was his job and he was afraid.
But the place was working on him.
He kept noticing things. On one side, the paid soldiers of a treacherous king. On the other, a whole town of people who seemed to like each other. On one side, men smiling at you and hating you underneath.
When there was kirtan he found excuses to be near the hall. When they sang on the bank of the Satluj, he and his wife stood behind the trees and listened where nobody could see.
Then one day a funeral went past.
A great crowd of Sikhs was carrying a body, soldiers were firing shots in salute, and the musicians were playing a slow tune of respect.
Gulaba asked one of the Sikhs who the man had been. Some great person, he assumed. A commander, or somebody rich.
He was a labourer, said the Sikh. He earned his food honestly with his hands, and the rest of the time he remembered the Lord.
The king's men had wanted him to give up his faith. He would not. So they gave him poison, and he drank it and said, this must be the Lord's will. Then they threw his body out into the forest.
And a Sikh found out where it was, and went, and picked that body up onto his own shoulder, and carried it here.
That is who is being carried past you, said the Sikh. The whole sangat has come out for him, for how he served people and how he loved Guru Ji.
Gulaba stood watching a poor labourer honoured like that.
And what came into his head was this. We changed our religion to save these bodies of ours, and how long are these bodies going to last anyway? And how low have we sunk, that we have come into the town of the Lord's own one in order to trick him?
Not long after, at daybreak, they got a shock.
There on the riverbank, on a flat bit of ground, stood the one with the plume himself. Not in his court, and not surrounded by anybody. Wearing sandals, a short shirt, a small turban.
Guru Ji sleeps very little, a Sikh told them when they asked. He often comes out early like this. He always reaches the assembly on time.
While they stood there something small was struggling in the water and about to drown.
And Guru Ji said: that is a creature made by my beloved Lord, and this water does not know what it is doing to it.
Then he went straight into the river and brought it out.
Guru Ji was fond of gardens, and had several made at Anandpur, one right by the river. Saffron roots came down from Kashmir every year and were planted so carefully that they flowered.
Gulaba and his wife looked at those gardens and thought: our hands will never touch his feet. But perhaps they could do something for that ground.
So Gulaba's wife got to know the wife of Guru Ji's own gardener, and little by little, the two of them worked their way in until they were allowed to help in Guru Ji's garden.
And then they did something with their flower beds.
They planted the seedlings in a pattern, so that when everything came up and bloomed, the flowers themselves spelled out words.
LORD IS THE ONE SAVIOUR OF ALL MANKIND. WE SHOULD NOT FORGET HIM.
In another bed they planted it so that the blossom made the shape of a woman standing.
One day Guru Gobind Singh Ji came into the garden with his sons, and everything was out in flower, and there it was, written in gold mohur blossom in the middle of his own garden by two people who had arrived in his town as spies.
He looked at it.
He smiled.
And he did not say one word about it, which if you think about it is the kindest thing he could have done.
After that they were in the garden all the time. The senior gardener, Bhai Kesra Singh Ji, took them under his wing, and they learned Punjabi, and to read the Scripture, and did seva.
Bhai Sahib says a repentant heart living on Guru Ji's own land did not need lessons.
It only needed to be there, and to watch what people did all day.