The Feast of Roses (14 page)

“Why are you here, Khurram?” Mehrunnisa said suddenly. She had stopped Jahangir in midsentence, and more surprising than that, he had let her. Now his father was alert too.

“Your Majesty, I come to bid you welcome into my father’s harem.”

He said this without thinking. It was a phrase of politeness, of etiquette, but it was not enough.

“Just that, Khurram?” She said this softly, now leaning back against the Emperor. Khurram did not know how to react to this. She was telling him that the Emperor and she were one, that if he had anything to say to her, it would be best said in Jahangir’s presence. But how could he even start what he wanted to say? That he came to make his bid for the throne before his father had any idea of relinquishing it. That he had no design of displacing Jahangir but merely securing his own place for the future. How could an intention such as this not be misconstrued?

“Your Majesty,” Khurram said, thinking for the right words, words that would please and not offend, “you are new to his Majesty’s harem. I offer my compliments at your place here. Would you wish to command anything of me, I will be a willing servant.”

Jahangir laughed. “Well said, Khurram. Your flattery does us all proud.”

“I do not flatter, your Majesty,” Khurram said in a flurry. “The word has unpleasant connotations. No, I merely speak of my affection for my new mother.”

Jahangir opened his mouth to reply, but Mehrunnisa put a hand on his arm and he stopped. “He speaks well, your Majesty,” she said. “Here is a son we can all be truly proud of. Go now, we must rest. We shall remember this courtesy, Khurram.
I
will remember it.”

Prince Khurram rose from the grass and bowed to them. As he walked away, he was aware that they were still looking at him, but when he turned, Mehrunnisa had rested her head on Jahangir’s chest and had her eyes closed. Khurram muttered to himself, cursing the
bhang
he had drunk, which had made his language too flowery and indistinct. But then again, how to ask without seeming greedy? More to the point,
what
to ask for?

Under the mango tree, Mehrunnisa and Jahangir slept for an hour, still sitting as they had. When Mehrunnisa woke, she knew the Emperor was awake too, although he did not move; the beat of his heart under her ear was less steady, not the regular beat of sleep.

“He comes to be nice, Mehrunnisa,” Jahangir said. “But he wished to know if you will nurture his dreams.”

“Should I do so, your Majesty?”

“I am not dead yet, Mehrunnisa.”

She looked up and put a hand over the Emperor’s mouth. “You must not even say this. Where would I be if you are gone? What could I do without you?”

He smiled at her. “I have many years left. But I can remember wanting the throne for a long time. I believed my father greatly unjust in not giving it to me. More importantly, I feared that Murad and Daniyal would lay claim to it, even though I was the eldest born son.”

“Khurram is the most likely to succeed you, your Majesty. The other three . . . they are nothing compared to him,” Mehrunnisa said.

“True, in Khurram I have my heir.” Jahangir’s voice hardened as he spoke. He was still bitter about Khusrau, a son he had once loved dearly, who had betrayed him in rebellion, whom he could not seem to forgive. Khusrau reminded him too much of himself, of when he had rebelled against Akbar and caused him pain, and Jahangir did not want that wash of guilt. Parviz was a drunkard, a weakling, not cut from the cloth of kings. He too reminded Jahangir of himself in many ways—his drinking, for one. Jahangir had eaten opium since he was very young, lost many an hour in cups of wine. Mehrunnisa checked this when she could, when he allowed her to, but it still seduced him beyond all reason at times. And at those times, he was too much like Parviz.

“So shall I talk with Prince Khurram, your Majesty?”

Jahangir kissed her on the head. The colored water had dried in the heat of the day, leaving little flakes of maroon and red scattered over her hair. As long as he lived, Mehrunnisa would get what she wanted—she only had to ask. But when he was no longer here, things would be different. She would just be a Dowager Empress, with no son to lay claims upon, no right to occupy the front of the
zenana
screen at court. No voice in anything. But through Khurram . . . if his support for Khurram came through her, she would have some authority. For it would seem to his son that Mehrunnisa had strengthened the affections of his father. And Jahangir wanted Khurram to be Emperor after him—he was the only one of his sons who would cherish this empire and look after its people.

“You must bathe now, Mehrunnisa, else the colors will stick to your skin for days,” Jahangir said. He snapped his fingers, and Hoshiyar Khan came running up from behind one of the pillars in a far verandah. “Prepare our baths, Hoshiyar.”

“Yes, your Majesty.”

They followed Hoshiyar into the palaces at a more leisurely pace. As they parted to go to their own apartments, Jahangir said, “Khurram would be the best person to give the throne to, Mehrunnisa. But he is still raw, much a child. He needs to be groomed, he needs advice. I can think of no person better than you for this, my dear.”

Mehrunnisa smiled. “Thank you, your Majesty.” Then she went away to her apartments on feet still unsteady from the effects of the
bhang.
In a few hours they would meet again, bathed and fresh, the colors of the
gulag
still glowing on their skins. Mehrunnisa chose a
ghagara
and
choli
that matched the colors of her skin so perfectly that it seemed as though she were clad in a skin of green. More
bhang
flowed, but Mehrunnisa did not drink any. She was thinking about Khurram.

She knew her limitations, or was being fast made aware of them. Power—to speak at court, to change the dictates of a society that demanded obeisance from a woman, to rule over the
zenana
and its inmates—was a very fragile thing indeed. It would be hers as long as Jahangir gave it to her. But with Khurram by her side, more was possible. Courtiers and nobles already whispered about the succession—like Khurram, they had a vested interest in it too. Where the crown was involved, speculations would be rife about whose head it would adorn next, no matter if it had rested on the current head only for a few short years.

Among the courtiers were some who looked upon Mehrunnisa with dislike, especially the Rajput soldiers who found their loyalties in Empress Jagat Gosini’s household. But they would support Khurram; he was Jagat Gosini’s son, so there was a natural inclination to do so. More important, if he were to become the next emperor, they would be fools not to have supported him early on.

If Khurram came to Mehrunnisa’s side and she advocated his cause, these nobles would be forced to come to her too. This was logical thinking, with the hard head of a diplomat. There was another reason to play the role of Khurram’s advisor. Jagat Gosini would be furious, and Mehrunnisa wanted to keep her unsettled in anger, for the Empress would be more dangerous with a cool mind.

Poor Khurram, Mehrunnisa thought as she listened to the imperial orchestra, the
bhang
glass untouched by her side. He had no idea just how important he was to her. And he would never know. Let him think that he needed her more, and at this moment, bareheaded with just the title of a prince, he did. She was planning for the future.

But she did not want to do this alone, relying solely upon a prince in whom she had no faith yet. There were others whom she could call to her side. Bapa and Abul. Even if Khurram were to mislead her, these two other men, her father and her brother, could always be trusted. Their blood was hers.

•  •  •

And so a few weeks later, when spring had shed its first freshness and was lingering on the edge of summer, a palanquin stopped in the outer courtyard of Ghias Beg’s house on the banks of the Yamuna.

The servants were all aflutter, shouting orders, the men averting their faces from the daughter of the house who had so suddenly, with the imperial turban on her head, a new title to her name, become unreachable. Her Majesty was here.
Quick, get the horses out to the stables; find the guards something to eat; run to tell the master.

Mehrunnisa ran into the house veiled, charmed by this attention, even from old servants who had scolded and petted her when she was young. She had asked for this meeting. It was easier for her to come to her father’s house than to have Abul and Bapa come into the
zenana.
For them to be in the family home would not cause talk. But Khurram’s presence was quite another thing. Abul was already there, the prince was not. They waited for him in the reception hall, talking of the family. Mehrunnisa saw Asmat flit by the open door anxiously. Her mother was not happy about this—covertness made her nervous.

And then Khurram came in. He was shy at first, accepting homage from Ghias and Abul, giving it in his turn to his father’s wife. They all waited for Mehrunnisa to speak. It was up to her to tell them why they had been summoned in secrecy. But when Mehrunnisa started to talk, it was about commonplace things.

“William Hawkins has left the court to return to his own country,” Mehrunnisa said. “He was fatigued here, the heat too much for him. What thin skins these
firangis
have.”

So they talked of William Hawkins, a merchant who had styled himself as an ambassador from England and had wanted Jahangir to sign on trading privileges for the English. The three men knew that Mehrunnisa and the Emperor had flirted around the treaty, but lightly, and enough to keep the merchant in India. He had amused them, amused all of them with his fluent court-ready Turki, but his manners were coarse. He swore colorfully, he did not perform the
taslim
in court as many times as he should have, his voice was at times gruff. But on the whole he had been entertaining. When he wanted to leave, Jahangir had offered him an income and a house in Agra for as long as he wanted to live here. He was even given a
mansab
of four hundred horses and the title of an English Khan. But Hawkins wanted to leave, frustrated and no longer hopeful that Jahangir would sign a treaty. So he was let go, kindly and with many gifts.

“What of the Jesuits, your Majesty?” Khurram said.

“What of them, Khurram?”

The Portuguese Jesuits had been in India for many years now, well before the first Mughal conquest of India. They were here to proselytize, or so they claimed. Their churches’ steeples rose in Agra, the money and the land for the building given to them by the Emperor. Their priests had converted three of Jahangir’s nephews to Catholicism, gaining a foothold into the royal family, but they would not advance further. And as Catholics, the nephews could not hope to raise their eyes to the crown of the empire. Despite all these outward signs of God, the Portuguese Jesuits manned the Arabian Sea routes, providing protection for the pilgrim ships traveling to Mecca and Medina, charging taxes and levies for that protection.

“The cost of trade is too high,” Khurram said hesitantly. “But who else is there? Why is it that the empire cannot provide safety for its own ships? Why do we have to rely upon others?”

“The English, perhaps?” Abul said. He had known William Hawkins well during his stay at Agra. And Hawkins had been full of stories of English power at sea—bragging about the defeat of the Spanish Armada twenty-five years ago. But twenty-five years was a long time back. What was it they could do
now,
and in waters foreign to their own, where different winds blew, and the earth took altered shapes?

But they had all heard the stories of yet another Englishman, one who had barely touched the empire’s soil, a man called Henry Middleton. He was on his way back to England too, and he carried Hawkins with him. But when Middleton had first arrived, he had been allowed to unload his goods for trade at the dock at Surat and then been unceremoniously driven down the Tapti River into the Arabian Sea. Enraged, Middleton had assaulted—there was no other word for it—Indian vessels he had met in the Gulf of Aden on his way out to England, forcing a heavy ransom or trade in some very unfavorable terms. The ships had come limping back to port at Surat, riding lightly on the water, void of their cargoes but full of tales of bitterness against the English. Among those ships was the
Rahimi,
which could carry, with a full cargo, fifteen hundred passengers. In the royal palaces, the insult to the
Rahimi
was the greatest affront to the empire—Ruqayya owned this magnificent ship and had complained bitterly about her loss of income. Middleton undid all of Hawkins’s efforts at diplomacy.

Mehrunnisa said, “Do not judge this Middleton too harshly. He was provoked, robbed of his own belongings here by Muqarrab Khan.”

“John, Mehrunnisa,” Ghias Beg spoke for the first time. He had watched his daughter quietly all this while, admiring her knowledge.

She turned to him. “I know, Bapa. Muqarrab has converted to Catholicism; he calls himself John now. He did what he did to Middleton because of the Portuguese. They do not want the English here.”

“Why?” Ghias asked, and when Abul and Khurram motioned to speak, he held a hand up for their silence.