The Feast of Roses (32 page)

A hand, soft as rose petals, touched his right shoulder and went down his back. Khurram whipped around, arms outstretched, but she had disappeared. He took a few tentative steps and brushed against a slender hip. Khurram touched the woman, let his hand linger over the curve of her waist, ran a finger under the tie of her
ghagara
’s skirts. She was wearing brocade, he could tell by the feel of it, its pattern was raised into the surface of the cloth in gray satin thread. She stayed perfectly still as his hands moved over her. Nalini . . . of the luscious mouth, of the daring eyes, of the body that threshed wildly beneath him. But tonight, Khurram was in the mood for something gentle, someone who gave rather than took.

He moved on in complete darkness, led only by his sense of touch and smell. As he had stood waiting for the blindfold, he had memorized almost every woman’s dress, and simply by its texture—whether silk, or satin, or velvet, or brocade, or cotton—for that would tell him who they were and whether he wanted them.

They came to caress him often, but in silence, and he followed where he heard their feet lead. Khurram played this game with the same ferocity and intensity with which he had fought the war in Mewar. With every stroke, his heartbeat raced. And yet there wasn’t one woman he wanted to leave with to his bedchamber. Until he came to the woman who stood against one of the pillars of the verandah.

When Khurram first clasped her wrist and pulled the palm of her hand to his mouth, she let him. Her skin was smooth, perfumed with an aroma that filled his nostrils. What was it, Khurram thought. Musk? No, something more forceful, with an underlying hint of camphor and incense from censers . . .
luban . . .
frankincense. Intrigued by this unusual choice of scent—the other women were bathed in flower scents—Khurram ran his tongue over her palm. He heard the woman take in a breath, and then gently, she tugged her hand away. For a moment, a fleeting moment, she touched his face, cupped her fingers around his chin, and then she turned to flee. Khurram ran behind her, listening hard for the sound of her feet on the cool marble stones. He bumped into a pillar, other hands came to hinder his progress, but he still pursued the woman with the delicious aroma.

When he caught up with her, he framed her against another pillar, his hands on either side of her waist. Khurram would not let her go now. If anyone could sate this hunger of his, it would be this woman. He touched her. Felt the smooth skin between her bodice and the top of her
ghagara.
Felt the cloth—it was
malmal,
the softest cotton woven in the imperial ateliers. Her shoulders were bare, and he ran his hand down from there to the edge of her velvet bodice. He put his face into the scoop of her neck, listened to the crazy beat of her heart, filled himself with the touch of her skin, the sound of her body, the smell of jasmines in her hair.

Then, the prince raised his head and caught hold of the woman’s hand. He fumbled for the white rose that was fastened in a buttonhole of his white
kurta
and gave it to her. “This one,” he said aloud. “She is to be the one for tonight.”

At the sound of his voice, the game was over. Eunuchs filed in carrying torches. They lit the oil lamps and filled the courtyard with light. Khurram, still holding on to the woman, used his other hand to pull off his blindfold.

Shock jolted through him. Ladli stood there. A slender, barely clad Ladli, her eyes gray and unreadable, the white rose in her hands. Khurram stepped back, still stunned. What was Ladli doing here, among the women of his harem? Why was she here? He moved away but could not take his gaze off her. He looked at what he had so recently touched, that slim waist, that neck, that thick swathe of ink-dark hair tied at her nape.

“Of course you cannot have Ladli, Khurram,” a frigid, distant voice said at his shoulder.

Khurram turned to see Arjumand by his side. She said no more, but she too was looking at her cousin, her eyes like stones. He nodded at once, and when Arjumand pointed to one of the other women, Khurram almost ran to grab her hand and drag her from the courtyard. The others went away too, one by one, until only Ladli was left standing against the pillar.

She was trembling, with jitters that seemed not to stop. She raised the rose to her mouth and held it there. Then she slid down to sit on the floor, knees pulled into her chest.

“Of course,” she said out loud to the empty courtyard.

•  •  •

As the weeks passed, Mehrunnisa waited for an opportunity to talk with Khurram. She had learned the value of patience, the value of waiting for the right moment to speak. Khurram and she met, of course, at various places and for various reasons. She called a meeting of their
junta;
it was awkward and uncomfortable, but they met nonetheless. Mehrunnisa told the three men what she had done about the Portuguese problem. Khurram stubbornly insisted that she could have been more diplomatic—why lay siege on Daman? The empire had always been tolerant of the Portuguese, and after all, they were just reacting to the favor being shown to the English merchants.

“What do you think, Abul?” Mehrunnisa snapped at her brother.

“Do not fight,” Ghias said from his divan. “You are not children anymore. Listen to what his Highness has to say, Mehrunnisa.”

Khurram did have more to say, of course. “Your Majesty,” his tone bordered on the edge of insolence, “the English have only thus far promised us protection. Where is this protection? And where is this great ambassador who is yet to set foot on Indian soil? Why provoke the Portuguese before we know for sure that the English are on our side?”

“They burned four ships, Khurram. If that is not an invitation for retaliation, what else is?” Mehrunnisa leaned forward and put her face a few inches from Khurram’s. “Are we to sit by idly while the Portuguese do what they want? Should there be no response from the court and the Emperor to this affront?”

He looked away. “I did not know about the ships, your Majesty.”

Abul and Ghias both said, “Mehrunnisa is right.”

“Yes,” Khurram mumbled, redness creeping up his neck. “Perhaps so.”

There was no
perhaps
about it, Mehrunnisa thought. They argued next about why she had not consulted with them before taking this step. Because she had consulted with the Emperor. That kept them quiet until the meeting broke up. Ghias stayed back. He was worried about all this fighting. Mehrunnisa should watch her tongue. But she did not listen to her father. Once she had. When she was younger, before she was an empress, even when she was just newly an empress. But too many years had passed. In the beginning of her reign, the three men had been necessary for reasons other than the kinship that bound them. Now, it was no longer so.

Besides, Ghias had grown old. He was too tolerant, and he could not know what lay at stake for her. As his life ended, hers would begin. She had to plan for the future where Jahangir no longer existed. This the Emperor himself told her. Jahangir knew too that he was nine years older than Mehrunnisa, that he would likely not live as long as her, that she would probably outlast him for many years. If he was not here to look after her, he wanted to know, before he died, that she would be well looked after. Hence, he encouraged the courting of Khurram for Ladli—that child was the only connection Mehrunnisa would have to the royal family once Jahangir passed away.

To Mehrunnisa and Jahangir, these conversations late at night were not morbid. They were simply facts of life. Every time the Emperor built a
sarai
for tired travelers, a mosque, commissioned even the building of a church, or added a palace to the fort at Agra or Lahore, he was aware of his mortality. He would go, but hundreds and hundreds of years later, these pieces of stone would speak of his life.

During the time that Mehrunnisa waited to speak with Khurram, her temper rose and ebbed almost every day. Empress Jagat Gosini was feted along with her son, an irony that made Mehrunnisa deeply angry. Ruqayya was his mother,
she
was the one who had brought him up, lavished her love upon him. But Ruqayya was at Agra, still despondent about the
Rahimi,
and refused to travel with them to Ajmer. So Jagat Gosini preened about with the pride of a rain-foretelling peacock, her feathers fanned, dancing in Mehrunnisa’s face.

The irritations were numerous. One evening, at the entertainment, Jahangir leaned over Jagat Gosini, caught Mehrunnisa’s chin, and kissed her on the mouth. It was a slow kiss, a kiss of love.

She put her arms around his neck and said, “Your breath smells sweet, your Majesty.”

Jagat Gosini sat between them. She had turned her face away but could not help watching as they hung over her lap.

Jahangir turned to her. “What do you think, Jagat?”

“My lord, only a woman who has had an opportunity to smell another man’s mouth could tell you that your breath smells sweet. I have had no such experience and can only say that it always smells sweet,” Jagat Gosini said.

Mehrunnisa was suddenly ashamed, and then angry with herself for being ashamed. The Empress was reminding her, none too gently, that she had been married before and had had the opportunity to taste another man’s mouth. Jahangir laughed, but he had no jealousy.

And so time passed. The furor over Khurram’s victory died down as court duties began to occupy both Jahangir’s and Mehrunnisa’s time. It was Khurram’s twenty-sixth birthday in a few days. Mehrunnisa planned the festivities, intending that when Khurram was flush with pride at the favor shown to him, she would again ask him to take Ladli as a wife.

•  •  •

“Your Highness, please step into the scales,” the Mir Tozak said.

Khurram glanced at his father. Jahangir nodded.

Khurram bowed to the Emperor and went toward the golden scales in the middle of the
Diwan-i-am.
The scales hung by gold chains from a large wooden beam plated with gold and embedded with rubies. The crisscrossed legs of the scales were similarly decorated with a beaten gold plate, which had been hammered into the teak underneath with gold nails.

Khurram put a hand on an attendant’s shoulder to steady himself and climbed into the large golden disc. He glanced up at the screened
zenana
balcony as he sat down cross-legged and attendants brought bags of gold and silver to weigh down the other end of the scales. Khurram clutched the gold chain of his scale, felt the smoothness of the metal in his hands, and wanted to grab it to his chest. It was all solid gold, with a smidgen of copper to give it its burnished sheen. Above him, the rubies and pearls on the center beam glowed and blurred before his eyes. What happiness this was.

Emperor Akbar had begun the tradition of weighing himself—on his solar and lunar birthdays—against silks, gold, silver, copper, quicksilver, butter, grains, and anything else he deemed to be a luxury. The items were then distributed to the poor. It was Akbar’s way of blessing his empire.

Today, the court was packed with onlookers. The passes for this weighing ceremony had been much sought. Bribes had filled the pockets and deepened the smiles of the imperial eunuchs, slaves, and guards.

The weighing began. First, thick silk bags of gold
mohurs
were loaded on one plate of the scales, and on the opposite scale Khurram was lifted in the air until the scales were level with each other. Khurram was light, and the number of bags of gold, few. The months at Mewar without the comforts of a proper kitchen had eaten the flesh from his body.

“You are too thin, Khurram,” Jahangir said from his throne. “And thus do you deprive the needy of their gold.”

Everyone laughed. Khurram smiled too. He bowed from his scale to his father.

“If your Majesty permits, I will eat more and become more prosperous.”

The weighing went on for an hour. Khurram was weighed against silver, copper, gold, fruits, mustard oil, vegetables, and butter. The precious metals had been provided by the ladies of the harem, foremost among them the Dowager Empress Ruqayya, who was gratefully acknowledging Jahangir’s support in the affair of the
Rahimi.
Mehrunnisa had donated some gold too, and as each bag was put onto the scales, the Mir Tozak announced its origins. So Mehrunnisa’s name was taken often in the silent court, and the nobles glanced at each other. The
junta
was as strong as ever.

Mehrunnisa watched from behind the
zenana
screen as Khurram tried to get up after the weighing. He rose a couple of times, fell, and then a couple of courtiers grabbed him under his armpits and hauled him up. He swayed unsteadily as he performed the
taslim
to the Emperor again, his gaze blank. Mehrunnisa smiled. The prince was drunk. In the
zenana
earlier, when Khurram had come to pay his respects, Jahangir had offered him some wine and the prince had accepted. Of all the royal princes, Khurram had been the only one who had abstained from drink. But since the Mewar victory, Khurram drank wine as though it were sherbet. Earlier this morning he had consumed three cups in twenty minutes and walked out with firm feet and a mocking glance.
See, your Majesty, it does nothing to me.

This was the time to talk to Khurram, Mehrunnisa decided. When the
darbar
finished its business, she called for the prince in open court, her voice silencing the talk of the courtiers.