Beneath a Marble Sky (22 page)

He acted surprised at the notion, but his eyes gleamed mischievously. “An intriguing idea. If you moved into your Mother’s room, thereby gaining the keys to her closets, you could, in theory, journey to his house.”

I jumped to him, throwing my arms around his neck. I kissed his cheeks repeatedly, the gray bristles of his beard scratching my chin. “How soon?”

“Immediately,” he said, chuckling at my enthusiasm. “But so as not to arose suspicions, Isa should wait a few weeks to buy the house. Can you wait for your love to be reunited?”

“Of course! And in the meantime, we’ll do much better at hiding it.”

“You must, my child, because otherwise Khondamir will have Isa’s head. Even an emperor can do little to subdue an avenging husband.”

“I love you,” I said earnestly. “I owe you so much, and yet I’ll never be able to repay you.”

“Does an iris,” he asked, tracing such a flower on the wall, “seek to repay the sun which gave it life? No, the mere beauty of the iris is tenfold thanks enough, for each day the sun can see the wonder it created.”

I smiled at his ongoing attempts at poetry. “You improve.”

“Truly?”

I gave him one more kiss. “Let us leave, Father. There’s so much to do.”

“Indeed. But before we leave this oasis, cleanse your face of that smile and act as if I reproached you.”

Biting the inside of my lip until my happiness was contained, I followed him from the room. Outside, amid the multitudes of men and beasts, Isa oversaw the rise of the dome. When I spied him, I was again reminded of a hawk. His sharp face was so intent on his work that I half-expected him to soar above the dome and inspect his progress.

As much as I wanted my gaze to rest on Isa, I swung my head forward. I followed my father with adoration, for surely few such men walked the Earth.

A week later
, after Father had a pouch of precious gems delivered to Khondamir, I moved into Mother’s room with little fanfare. For a princess, I had surprisingly few possessions, but nonetheless Nizam carried my robes, scarves, jewelry and books into my new quarters and helped me to unpack. It was strange being within the red marble room and its stone lattice windows, for most of Mother’s clothes and other belongings were still present. A cashmere carpet with a rendering of dawn or dusk graced the floor. Silk pillows and folded pashmina blankets lay astride. Paintings within gilded frames were hung about the walls depicting Father upon his Peacock Throne, the Red Fort, bouquets of miniature roses. Mother’s favorite perfume—though perhaps my imagination was overindulgent—lingered in the air. After Nizam left, I tried on several of her most prized robes and found that they fit me quite well. Despite still missing her terribly, it felt reassuring to wear her clothes and walk about her room.

Father had told me of a false bottom in a drawer of Mother’s writing desk. After bolting my door, I easily located and opened the hidden compartment. I expected to find within a single key, but instead a handful of items revealed themselves. Foremost atop the orderly pile were several poems from Father, which I glanced at but left unviolated. Beneath the yellowed papers rested objects from our childhoods, including a boy’s first slippers, drawings of elephants and a ribbon-bound lock of my hair. I smiled at these treasures, my grin widening when my fingers embraced a clay incense burner that I’d once crafted for Mother. As a child, and indeed, still today, I lacked any semblance of artistic ability. In consequence the burner was so misshapen that I was unsure whether it was a turtle or a toad.

Brushing aside a tear I whispered “thank you,” adoring her for having placed such treasured memories in her safe. While I carefully rearranged the box’s contents, I found an unmarked and rusty key. I left the key there and replaced the drawer’s false bottom. Continuing to organize my room, I thought of Mother, hoping she could see my doings. If her eyes were somehow upon me, she was surely relishing my use of the secret tunnel to reach Isa.

I could scarcely wait, but forced myself to be patient as the days passed. I made certain to work on the opposite side of the Taj Mahal from Isa, for he had nearly jumped from his skin in excitement when I informed him of Father’s plan. Isa was even less able to hide his love than I, and so I avoided him like a rabid dog thereafter. Only through Father did I hear of my lover’s purchase of the home.

Though I pushed my men hard, they seemed to like me, for I treated them well and rewarded them justly. And Allah smiled at me, for only one of my workers died in the full cycle of the moon, the poor man crushed to a pulp when a stone block fell atop him. He was Hindu, and therefore we didn’t bury his body as if he were Muslim, but burned it.

I never thought the night would arrive when I could finally steal forth to Isa. Only when we were relatively certain of our safety did we agree to a meeting. Edgy, I barred the door to my room and lit a fat candle. Unlocking the closet door, I pushed dusty robes apart and stepped between them. Piled boxes blocked my path and I quietly moved them aside.

As Father had foretold, a stairway cut of rough stone confronted me. Holding my candle with one hand and clutching at the wall with the other, I descended. The stairway was circular and fell straight downward. It reeked of inattention. Dead spiders and ancient mice droppings littered the steps. Names lay etched in a section of the wall and I envisioned the traitors pausing here to leave their marks. How must it have felt to build this passage, knowing that after its completion your head would be cleaved from your body? I wondered if ghosts inhabited this realm, but decided that the men had died honorably and that their souls tasted no such torment.

The stairs ended and a passageway loomed ahead. The corridor was narrow, so much so that a large man might have to turn his shoulders sideways to move through. My candle was feeble in this black womb, illuminating only a dozen paces before me. I was gripped by a sudden fear of what would happen if my flame were to die. Surely I should have brought a lantern! The path, fortunately, was straight and true. Father had said it was designed so that the Emperor, if he lacked the time to find and light a candle, could follow it directly to the home.

I imagined passing beneath sleeping families and vast courtyards. At one point I saw a pair of beady eyes ahead, yet when I moved forward, the eyes slipped into a crack and vanished. The air was stale and I hurried on. How far must I go? More carvings appeared on the walls. These were curses, damning to endless deaths those who ventured here. Shuddering, I wondered if the curses were meant for my grandfather, or were designed to put fear into his pursuers.

Father had forewarned me about a trap, and as I came to it I paused. A stone block, knee-high and equally wide, occupied the middle of the corridor. Stepping on the stone sprang the trap. The floor immediately beneath it would collapse, then the walls, then the ceiling, crushing whoever had touched the block.

I carefully stepped over the trap, avoiding all touch with it. Knowing the passageway’s end must be near, I lengthened my strides. When I saw light ahead I let out a small cry. The faint glow brightened like the dawn. I came to another spiral staircase and I hurried up its steps. Isa must have heard me coming, for he called my name. Suddenly I was in his arms. We took the last steps together, emerging into an underground storage room.

“Follow me, Swallow.”

He led me up another set of stairs and abruptly we were within his home, a simple affair boasting only one large room. A smoke-stained hearth and iron pots occupied the far corner. Isa’s paintings of the Taj Mahal and his intricate designs hung about the walls. Present also were a drawing table and a chair. Otherwise the room was void of furniture, save carpets, blankets and plush cushions. Isa had closed the window shutters and locked the door.

He hugged and kissed me for a time. Finally withdrawing, he whispered, “Your great-grandfather, my love, built this home to resist flame and attack. Its stone walls are as thick as my chest.”

“So?” I asked, wondering why he’d speak of such unromantic things.

“So, Swallow, no one shall ever hear us here. Ever.”

My reflection smiled in his eyes. He kissed me and I found my body yearning for his. It had been far too long since the inn, since I touched him. Our clothes dropped and we explored each other, candles casting their light on us as we loved. His lips were in constant motion against my flesh, sampling me like he might a course of fine wines. My hands sought to draw us together, continuing to do so even as we descended upon blankets and pillows. Soon he was atop me. His weight was comforting, warming. I pulled him more tightly to me, watching as our shadows, flickering against the wall, mimicked our rhythmic motions, ultimately merging as one.

When our lovemaking was finished, I lay with my head on his thumping chest. He stroked my brow as I thought about the future, of what might be. “Isa,” I asked, “do you wish to have a child?”

“Only with you.”

I hugged him, as I longed for children more with each passing season. “It shall be perilous,” I foretold. “My pregnancy could endanger the Taj Mahal.”

He wrapped my hair about his fingers. “I don’t know, Swallow, which will prove more everlasting—the monument we create, or the child who might bless us. Our stone, of course, will endure for centuries. But a child…a child shall let us live forever.”

“How few men think such thoughts,” I replied. “Women in the harem who know nothing of politics and history ponder them each day, yet men seem to deem them trite.”

“But how can a child, in all his beauty, be trite?” he asked, tracing the curve of my hips.

My mouth froze, for to voice my thoughts might dampen his mood. Here was a man who any child would be lucky to call father. Yet Isa would never be known as such. “But, Isa,” I said gently, “this child, were we to have one, wouldn’t be yours publicly. You could never, never show your affection. You could be a father only here.”

A momentary sadness fell over him, but Isa, as I was coming to know, wasn’t a man to dwell on what he lacked. And so dawned his uneven smile. “A child…our child, my love, would be blessing enough. How could I ask anything more of Allah? Surely He’s granted me enough wishes already.”

I glanced toward Mecca and prayed that my womb, as Khondamir so often complained, wasn’t barren. While I was a woman who needed more than motherhood in life, I also yearned to love a child. A child would be a gift to myself, to Isa and to my father. For as surely as the stars rose each night, Father would know that my child was Isa’s. And this knowledge would please him. After all, he was the shepherd of our love.

“I’ll have to think of a plan,” I said. “Khondamir, who hasn’t fathered a child in two decades of trying, must be convinced that I carry his seed.”

“But why would he believe you?”

I smirked at him, my spirits rising as I thought of our daughter, then our son. “You may be a master of stone, Isa, and the most astounding man I’ve met, but you know nothing of the guile of women. How do you think we flourish in this world where men decide what we can and cannot do? Because of your rules?” I laughed at the notion, recalling how Mother and my great-grandmother had led Hindustan in all but title. “Khondamir, trust me, shall think himself the father. I am uncertain how I’ll do it, but when my honeyed talk is done, he’ll boast to anyone with an ear of his deed.”

Isa chuckled. “Am I equally malleable?”

“Like butter.”

He rolled on top of me, pinning my arms to the blankets. “And now?”

“Just like a man,” I said, trying to push him off. “What you lack in cunning you compensate for in muscle.”

I resisted none of his kisses, or his efforts to again make love. Afterward, he continued to stroke my skin, as if he had found a pelt and was experiencing his first sense of touch. Though he had the singing voice of an ox, he hummed contentedly. He aimed to sing me to sleep, but as the night aged, I pondered the road ahead. If Allah were to grace me with a child, then I must fool Khondamir as completely as I’d boasted.

“Good night, my love,” I mumbled, pretending to dim. His humming quieted, which is what I wanted, for it interfered with my thinking.

“Good night, Swallow.”

One by one the candles flickered out. It was as black as ink in that room, but I was never more comfortable. I was warm, content, and with the man I loved. Inhaling the scent of his sweat, listening to his calm breaths, I thought about how to best my husband. When a solution finally offered itself, I rose silently, kissed Isa’s brow, and started the long journey back to my room in the Red Fort. It would soon be dawn, and I was always an early riser. Tongues might wag if a servant’s knock on my door went unanswered.

As I stepped over the trap, and finally came to the staircase, I perfected my plan the way a chef might concoct delicacies for his lord. It was a simple ruse, one that would never fool Aurangzeb. Luckily, only Khondamir needed deceiving. Let him think himself the father, and the rest could debate the truth.

So many secrets, I thought. They encircle me like moths about a flame.

Were I to know how many more secrets awaited me, and how many deaths they’d produce, I might have returned to Isa and stolen away from Agra. But if I had, no one would have been present to oppose my brother. And devils like Aurangzeb needed enemies.

H
owever much
I loathed neglecting my duties at the Taj Mahal, it was essential to fool Khondamir as quickly as possible. I went to my husband’s home the very next afternoon. Riding one of Father’s stallions, I held the reins in my right hand and a cotton bag in my left. Inside the bag was a pair of bull’s testicles wrapped within a palm leaf.

Khondamir’s trading increasingly took him beyond Agra, and I’d become an infrequent visitor to his home. His servants therefore greeted me with equal parts surprise and kindness. Though still embarrassed before them, since they thought me a thief, I handed them smoked yams, for which they thanked me profusely.

Today, Khondamir worked at one of Agra’s bazaars, overseeing the sale of his wares. Convinced his workers cheated him, he often spied on their activities. Sometimes he even hired a beautiful woman to toy with his men, hoping, for instance, that they would give her a bargain on a silver bracelet. After a few such underlings were whipped senseless, others rarely strayed from the approved prices.

Khondamir’s quarters had withered in my absence. For a man with so many rupees, he spent precious little on decorations. To better his room, I gathered wildflowers from his orchard and propped them up in simple Chinese vases. After sprinkling perfume about his floor, I lit incense and piled cushions and blankets on his sleeping carpet. Then I met with the cook and handed him my bag. He was hardly surprised by what I asked, acceding to my wish.

The tiles in Khondamir’s washing room needed replacing, but the floor and walls were clean. A servant girl brought me three buckets of warm water. She was a pretty child of less than fourteen and I considered whether Khondamir had bedded her. After all, men such as him never hired unattractive women as servants. And surely older and more versed servants could better meet household needs.

After soaking myself under a bucket of water, I scrubbed vigorously with a hemp cloth. How good it felt to clean the day’s grime from me. I had heard that Europeans never bathed and was repulsed by the notion, certain that they must reek like animals. Before slipping into a sleeping robe, I rubbed ambergris, a perfume created from the oils of giant whales, against my body. I also chewed cloves to sweeten my breath.