The Feast of Roses (18 page)

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“Runners have come from Surat, your Majesty.”

“What news?” Mehrunnisa asked eagerly, reaching for the mailbag.

She unrolled the letter and read it in silence. The English had successfully repulsed and then defeated the Portuguese thrice in the last few months. It was unheard of; the Portuguese had reigned supreme over the waters of the Arabian Sea for over a century, and now this captain, Thomas Best, had defeated them. Was this letter an exaggeration? Mehrunnisa smoothed out the paper on her knee. It was signed by Muqarrab Khan himself, the governor of Gujrat. He would not lie, surely. Muqarrab was now a Christian, influenced by the Portuguese into their religion and their needs, which they had told him were one, for they alone knew how to please this new God Muqarrab had agreed to serve.

“Where is the Emperor?”

“In his
Ibadat Khana,
your Majesty. The Jesuit fathers are in conference with him,” Hoshiyar replied.

“Send a message requesting an audience immediately.” Mehrunnisa put the letter back into the bag and rose to go to her husband. The
Ibadat Khana
was the House of Worship built within the palace complex of the Agra Fort. The first
Ibadat Khana
—and the idea for it—belonged to Emperor Akbar in Fatehpur Sikri. It was not a temple but an octagonal hall, the ceiling slotted with glass to allow light, and everything within it an unblemished white marble—the pillars, the floor, even the sun coming into the hall. And here Akbar had invited the religious elite of the various religions of India to sit in his presence and argue the merits of their own faiths. There were Jain and Buddhist monks, the Jesuit fathers brought from Goa, Hindu priests, every Muslim sect in the land, and the Zoroastrians.

A balcony ran around the top of the
Ibadat Khana,
fenced off by a marble screen reaching to the ceiling. Here the women of the
zenana
came to listen to the philosophies in the hall below. They were always silent, knew that the men in the hall thought the finer points of most religions to be their exclusive purview and a woman’s job was merely to follow the dictates of her husband’s or her father’s or even her son’s creed. Questions were not admitted—indeed, the men below did not even know there were women listening, or if they did, they allowed it by ignoring it.

Mehrunnisa climbed the steps to the balcony and pressed her face against the screen. It was night, the room was but dimly lit with small torches in sconces on the walls. The men argued—some loud and forceful, some more timid but still so persistent that they repeated their sentences over and over again until they had been heard. The Jesuit fathers, Pinheiro and Xavier, were there too.

They had suddenly grown small, Mehrunnisa thought. They had tried, for many years, to convince first Akbar and then Jahangir of the finer points of Christianity. But for both the Emperors, there were too many flaws. Monogamy could not be accepted. How could a monarch marry only one wife? An empire ran on politics, and if God dictated a king’s behavior, He did so through the king, and then, the king was only obeying God in accepting more than one wife. This, quite apart from the fact that the empire benefited from the numerous unions. There were other perplexities. What was a virgin birth? How could that even exist?

Mehrunnisa and Jahangir had talked of the arguments from the various religious leaders. Even Hinduism was incomprehensible. Widows could not marry again, the soul was reincarnated, and most terrible, the practice of Sati, where a woman killed herself in her husband’s funeral pyre. But there were Hindu queens in the
zenana;
they had their beliefs and knew better than to argue with Jahangir about them. It was enough—actually, more than generous—that he allowed them their faith within the walls of his harem.

Mehrunnisa watched as Father Pinheiro bent to Father Xavier. They talked under cover of the noise in the room. Had they heard about Best? If they had heard of the new Englishman in India, it was unlikely they would know of the defeat of their fleet in the Arabian Sea. Hoshiyar came into the
Ibadat Khana
now, and the Emperor rose from his divan in the center of the room.

“I must retire from this discussion,” Jahangir said as the leaders dropped into silence and bowed to their Emperor. “But please do continue if you wish.”

They only waited until Jahangir left before commencing again. But to fill the Emperor’s absence, fifteen Ahadis, the personal bodyguards of the Emperor, filed into the room, daggers in their cummerbunds, spears in their hands, their faces unyielding. Here in the
Ibadat Khana,
if the Emperor were not present to stop it, blood would flow in the name of God—so excitable were the men. The Ahadis were there to maintain order; any man who threatened another, no matter who he was, how exalted his position, would be first thrown into prison, and then let out only to be banished from the
Ibadat Khana.
Raised voices were allowed, but hands could not be raised.

“Mehrunnisa.” Emperor Jahangir came up behind her. “Have you come to listen?”

“Your Majesty, I have received communication from Surat.” Mehrunnisa showed him the letter. “The English ships have defeated the Portuguese at sea, not once but thrice.”

He read it carefully. “So it is true. Muqarrab Khan writes to say that the empire should come to the aid of the Portuguese.” Jahangir shook his head. “This cannot be.”

“Do you think they know?”

They both leaned their foreheads against the screen and looked down. Father Xavier glanced up, but he could see nothing, so they did not move away.

“The Portuguese are too arrogant, Mehrunnisa, too sparse with their gifts now. They are my guests at Agra and have been accorded all the respect due to a guest. But they misuse this,” the Emperor said. He spoke softly, but even had he yelled, he would not have been heard in the noise that rose from the floor of the
Ibadat Khana.
He held up the letter again. “Muqarrab has given this Best a treaty to trade with Gujrat. Should we extend the territory?”

“So much favor, your Majesty? And so soon?” Mehrunnisa asked.

Jahangir laughed. “Let him think so at least. The treaty will not bind us to anything definite; we can follow Muqarrab’s admirable example and say quite a lot and still say nothing.”

“Yes,” Mehrunnisa said, “and an English ambassador should be commanded to court, your Majesty. Not one,” she inclined her head toward the hall, “who makes pretensions for being a man of God and deals in mortal things, but who is a noble, who can claim a high birth, and is more worthy of your notice. This may be a beginning . . .”

“We shall see if it is. At least we do not
need
either the Portuguese or the English in the Arabian Sea. We want them, but do not need them yet.” Jahangir put an arm around his wife’s shoulder and pulled her close. “I do remember about your ships, my dear. Have they come home from their first journey?”

She shook her head. “I have heard nothing.”

“They will, and soon.” He pulled away to look at her face. Mehrunnisa was not wearing her veil; there was no one to see her but Jahangir and Hoshiyar. The Emperor cupped his hands around her chin and kissed her gently, on her mouth, on her nose, and her closed eyelids. Then he enfolded her like this, with her head bent into his chest, with just her forehead touching his heart, and his arms about her neck. “How are you feeling, beloved?”

He spoke still more softly now; Hoshiyar, at the door to the balcony, would not hear them, and the shouts from the hall below resounded through the screen.

“Tired,” Mehrunnisa said. She smiled into the embroidered cloth of his
nadiri
coat. “Tired when I am reminded of it.”

“Does Hoshiyar know?”

She shook her head.

“Why?”

“I’m not sure why. Perhaps . . .” Her voice faltered. “It is the others I lost at this time. Perhaps it is that this child is, will be, so precious to history. I fear at times, mostly for his safety.”

Jahangir pulled her more completely into his arms. Now her face was flat against the silk-covered buttons of his
nadiri.
Mehrunnisa was tired, too tired to even stand on her feet, so she climbed onto Jahangir’s feet, balancing on the incline, as he held her even tighter. “You must never fear, Mehrunnisa. As long as I am here to look after you, everything I have, my army, my treasury, is for you to use. As for the child, you must tell Hoshiyar at least. But he must have guessed, surely?”

She smiled, blissfully wanting sleep. If Hoshiyar had guessed, he was being very discreet. He set down trays of cashews and sultanas by her side if she was hungry, but he had not yet brought the mixture of
ghee,
sugar, and almonds that was to fatten a woman at this time and, in doing so, fatten the child in her womb. As Jahangir and Mehrunnisa left the
Ibadat Khana
for the welcome quiet of the outside night, she slipped her hand into the Emperor’s. They walked back to her apartments.

An imperial
farman
was drawn up and sealed by Mehrunnisa in Jahangir’s name. It allowed the English very vague trading privileges in the empire, as obscure in language as Muqarrab Khan’s own treaty had been. Mehrunnisa used Muqarrab’s document as a model for her own and added a new command—a representative of King James was to be introduced in the Mughal court.

Thomas Best was nonetheless thrilled. It was the first imperial acknowledgement of English presence in India, four years after William Hawkins had set foot on Indian soil. He quickly wound up his business and set sail for England.

But this was the next morning’s achievement. Mehrunnisa did not think that night, either in her waking hours or in her dreams, of Thomas Best, of Khurram and Arjumand, or of Abul or her Bapa. Her time was given over to the child. What would he be like? Would he look like Ladli? And this was entirely possible, because Ladli had very little of her father in her. And what would Ladli think of this new brother? It was too early; there was no outward sight of the child, nor a quickening inside her. The symptoms, such as they were, came as a sudden fatigue that turned her arms and legs into liquid, or a hunger that seemed to eat up the skin of her stomach, or the bile that rose to her throat at the sight of
every
food—even water had its distinctive and disgusting taste—or that she could smell every aroma around her. Even Jahangir’s perfumes, ones he wore and then chose not to wear for Mehrunnisa’s sake, were irritating at times. If she could not smell the sandalwood of his bath, she could smell the soap used to wash the Emperor’s clothes, and the sun that had dried it, and turned away from both equally.

There was no doubt in her mind that there was going to be a child. Mehrunnisa did not want to tell anyone yet because she was afraid of the evil eye and the sharp tongue of jealousy. And there would be rage in the
zenana.
She knew of other attempts to make a woman miscarry, attempts that had succeeded. A push down the stairs, a potion in the wine cups, a chant to invite misfortune. She would protect her child from all of those. Jahangir would not think such deceit possible in the women of his harem. But Mehrunnisa knew that she had angered too many women here, taken away privileges they once considered their own, and not just Jagat Gosini, but others too.

But no matter, she thought. She would protect this child. Let them try to take him away from her.

•  •  •

A few nights later when the moon died into nothingness, Mehrunnisa opened her eyes. Her heart beat rapidly, and sweat spread thickly between her breasts. Something had woken her, what was it? A sound? Was someone in the apartments? No, it had been a dream, a strange and frightening dream where she was being chased by a faceless person. She stumbled and went down, hands came to touch her . . .

She rose from the mattress and went outside into the gardens. The eunuchs on guard were all asleep, leaning against the pillars in the verandah.
This
was like a dream, that they would be so careless as to close their eyes while guarding the Emperor. Mehrunnisa did not wake them but went down the steps into the lawn. The night was dark as ink. A breeze whispered through the leaves of the tamarind tree, and a form, white and ghostly, flitted from one bush to another. She stood in the center of the lawn, not afraid of the spirits, not knowing whether she was awake or asleep still and all this was just an extension of her subconscious.

Hoshiyar came up to her and touched her on the shoulder. Mehrunnisa turned. What was he doing here? Hoshiyar’s duties kept him by her side only during the day. Never before had he come at night.

“I cannot sleep, Hoshiyar.”

“Perhaps a walk around the gardens, your Majesty.”

She was glad to have his arm to lean on as they walked over the wet grass, the skirts of her
ghagara
gathering dampness. When they moved onto the bare earth around the grass, the ground was smooth, beaten into the consistency of soft cloth. At one point, the cotton of her
ghagara
caught on the branches of a shrub, and Hoshiyar carefully extricated it, but a little tear was left. Soon she was tired and said so. They made their way back to the verandah, not the one she had come from, but another one. This one was paved with flat stones of marble. As Mehrunnisa climbed the steps to the verandah, she noticed that the marble glowed even in this dark night, gleaming as though newly polished.