The Lady of Cawnpore

India, 1857. Following the massacre at Cawnpore, Emily and her sister Lucy are captured and held at the Bibighar, the house of the Indian mistress of the British Nabob. Saved by an Indian sepoy, Emily goes to live with him as his Indian wife, haunted for the rest of her life by the terrible scenes she has witnessed.

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India, 1857: Following the massacre at Cawnpore, Emily and her sister Lucy are captured and held at the Bibighar, the house of the Indian mistress of the British Nabob. Kept in squalid conditions for over two weeks, Emily is forced to watch the murder of her sister Lucy and the two hundred women and children who had been held with them. Saved by an Indian sepoy, Emily goes to live with him as his Indian wife, and, though safe from harm, is haunted for the rest of her life by the terrible scene she has witnessed. Years later, in 1919, a young British doctor called Jenny Garland encounters an elderly woman living - through choice - in terrible poverty in the slums of the Cawnpore Bazaar. She is known locally as the Begum, a term of great respect among Indian people, but as friendship grows between them, Jenny discovers that the older woman has a secret, and that they share a history neither of them could ever have imagined.