When Parimal had left the room, Elokeshi threw off her covers. What's happened? she said, sleepily blinking her eyes.

Nothing, said Neel. I just have to write a note. Stay where you are. It won't take long.

Neel dipped his quill in an inkpot and scrawled a few words, but only to change his mind and start again. His hands became a little unsteady as he wrote out a line expressing his pleasure at the prospect of welcoming Mr Benjamin Burnham on the Raskhali budgerow. He stopped, took a deep breath and added: 'Your arrival is indeed a happy coincidence, and it would have pleased my father, the late Raja, who was, as you know, a great believer in signs and omens…'

Some twenty-five years before, when his trading house was still in its infancy, Mr Benjamin Burnham had come to see the old Raja with an eye to leasing one of his properties as an office: he needed a Dufter but was short on capital, he said, and would have to defer the payment of the rent. Unbeknownst to Mr Burnham, while he was presenting his case, a white mouse had appeared under his chair – hidden from the trader, but perfectly visible to the zemindar, it sat still until the Englishman had had his say. A mouse being the familiar of Ganesh-thakur, god of opportunities and remover of obstacles, the old zemindar had taken the visitation to be an indication of divine will: not only had he allowed Mr Burnham to defer his rent for a year, he had also imposed the condition that the Raskhali estate be allowed to invest in the fledgling agency – the Raja was a shrewd judge of people, and in Benjamin Burnham he had recognized a coming man. Of what the Englishman's business would consist, the Raja made no inquiry: he was a zemindar after all, not a bania in a bazar, sitting cross-legged on a countertop.

It was on decisions like these that the Halders had built their fortunes over the last century and a half. In the era of the Mughals, they had ingratiated themselves with the dynasty's representatives; at the time of the East India Company's arrival, they had extended a wary welcome to the newcomers; when the British went to war against the Muslim rulers of Bengal, they had lent money to one side and sepoys to the other, waiting to see which would prevail. After the British proved victorious, they had proved as adept at the learning of English as they had previously been in the acquisition of Persian and Urdu. When it was to their advantage, they were glad to shape their lives to the world of the English; yet they were vigilant always to prevent too deep an intersection between the two circles. The inner determinations of the white mercantile community, and its private accountings of profit and opportunity, they continued to regard with aristocratic contempt – and never more so than where it concerned men like Benjamin Burnham, whom they knew to have been born into the commercial classes. The transactions of investing money with him and accepting the returns represented no challenge to their standing; but to display an interest in where the profits came from and how they had been accumulated would have been well below their place. The old Raja knew nothing more about Mr Burnham than that he was a shipowner, and there he was content to let the matter rest. Each year, from the time of their first meeting onwards, the zemindar gave a sum of money to Mr Burnham to augment the consignments of his agency: every year he got back a much larger sum. He would laughingly refer to these payments as his tribute from the 'Faghfoor of Maha-chin' – the Emperor of Greater China.

That his money was accepted by the Englishman was the Raja's singular fortune – for in eastern India, opium was the exclusive monopoly of the British, produced and packaged entirely under the supervision of the East India Company; except for a small group of Parsis, few native-born Indians had access to the trade or its profits. As a result, when it came to be known that the Halders of Raskhali had entered into a partnership with an English trader, a great number of friends, relatives and creditors had begged to be allowed to share in the family's good fortune. By dint of much pleading and cajolery they persuaded the old zemindar to add their money to the sums that he annually deposited with Mr Burnham: for this privilege they were content to pay the Halder estate a ten-per-cent dasturi on the profits; so great were the returns that this commission seemed perfectly reasonable. Little did they know of the perils of the consignment trade and how the risks were borne by those who provided the capital. Year after year, with British and American traders growing ever more skilled in evading Chinese laws, the market for opium expanded, and the Raja and his associates made handsome profits on their investments.

But money, if not mastered, can bring ruin as well as riches, and for the Halders the new stream of wealth was to prove more a curse than a blessing. As a family, their experience lay in the managing of kings and courts, peasants and dependants: although rich in land and property, they had never possessed much by way of coinage; what there was of it, they disdained to handle themselves, preferring to entrust it to a legion of agents, gomustas and poor relatives. When the old zemindar's coffers began to swell, he tried to convert his silver into immovable wealth of the kind he best understood – land, houses, elephants, horses, carriages and, of course, a budgerow more splendid than any other craft then sailing on the river. But with the new properties there came a great number of dependants who had all to be fed and maintained; much of the new land proved to be uncultivable, and the new houses quickly became an additional drain since the Raja would not suffer them to be rented. Learning of the zemindar's new source of wealth, his mistresses – of whom he had exactly as many as there were days in the week, so as to be able to spend each night in a different bed – grew more exigent, vying with each other in asking for gifts, baubles, houses, and jobs for their relatives. Always a doting lover, the old zemindar gave in to most of their demands, with the result that his debts increased until all the silver Mr Burnham earned for him was being channelled directly to his creditors. Having no more capital of his own to give to Mr Burnham, the Raja came increasingly to depend on the commissions paid by those who entrusted him to be their go-between: this being the case, he had also to expand the circle of investors, signing a great many promissory notes – or hundees as they were known in the bazar.

As was the custom in the family, the heir to the title was excluded from the estate's financial dealings; being studious by inclination and dutiful by nature, Neel had not sought to question his father about the running of the zemindary. It was only in the final days of his life that the old zemindar informed his son that the family's financial survival depended on their dealings with Mr Benjamin Burnham; the more they invested with him the better, for their silver would come back doubled in value. He explained that in order to make the best of this arrangement, he had told Mr Burnham that this year he would like to venture the equivalent of one lakh sicca rupees. Knowing that it would take time to raise such a large amount, Mr Burnham had kindly offered to forward a part of the sum from his own funds: the understanding was that the money would be made good by the Halders if it wasn't covered by the profits from that summer's opium sales. But there was nothing to worry about, the old zemindar had said: in the past two decades there had never been a single year when their money had not come back with a large increase. This was not a debt, he had said, it was a gift.

A few days later the old zemindar had died, and with his passing everything seemed to change. That year, 1837, was the first in which Burnham Bros. failed to generate profits for its clients. In the past, when the opium ships returned from China, at the end of the trading season, Mr Burnham had always come in person to the Raskhali Rajbari – the Halders' principal seat in Calcutta. It was the custom for the Englishman to bring auspicious gifts, like areca-nuts and saffron, as well as bills and bullion. But in the first year of Neel's incumbency there was neither a visit nor any promise of money: instead the new Raja received a letter informing him that the China trade had been severely affected by the sudden decline in the value of American bills of exchange; its losses aside, Burnham Bros. was now facing severe difficulties in remitting funds from England to India. At the end of the letter there was a polite note requesting the Raskhali estate to make good on its debts.