The Feast of Roses (4 page)

As Mehrunnisa kissed Ruqayya’s hand and rose to leave, she said, “It was good to be with you again, Mehrunnisa.”

Mehrunnisa bowed to the Dowager Empress. At the door she turned. “I now have a new title, your Majesty, I am no longer Mehrunnisa.”

“Be careful, Mehrunnisa. Be careful of how you talk to me. Remember what I have done for you.”

Jahangir’s newest Empress shook her head. Two months ago, Ruqayya’s words would have cowed her, but things were no longer as they once were. “I will never forget the debt I owe you. But I am now Nur Jahan. Perhaps I will allow you to call me by my old name. But I am no longer Mehrunnisa.
You
must not forget that.”

E
ven as Mehrunnisa and Ruqayya sat talking through the night, a man neared the inside doorway of the Hathi Pol, the Elephant Gate on the western side of the Agra Fort. He stood for a moment watching the two guards leaning in sleep against spears dug into the hard ground—stringless puppets silhouetted against the looming sandstone walls. The man coughed and the guards sprang awake. One stumbled back to level his spear at the man’s chest, the honed tip a few inches from the
zari
-embroidered front of his coat. “Identify yourself.”

The man raised both his hands. His well-oiled hair, long to his nape, caught a midnight glint in the light of the lamps. “Mahabat Khan,” he said simply, letting his voice and his name do the rest.

The guard let his spear fall, then bowed deeply. “Mirza Mahabat Khan, I beg your pardon, I did not recognize you,” he said, tripping over his words in distress. “But how . . . I would have thought you had left the fort by now . . .”

Mahabat shook his head gently, with the indulgence of a man not accustomed to interrogation. “Such solicitousness on behalf of the Emperor is commendable. But you must know whom you question. Open the door for me.”

“Of course, of course, Mirza Khan. I beg your pardon. I only meant . . .” He rushed to the side door near the huge gates and pushed it open. The rest of the guard’s explanation was lost as Mahabat Khan let himself out of the fort. He walked away with carefully measured steps, the soles of his leather boots crunching on the dirt path.

Mahabat’s hand rested lightly on the dagger tucked into his cummerbund. His eyes wove through the shadows in the streets, skimming over the snoring drunks in the corners, waiting for a twitch that signaled danger. The stench of arrack and old wine ambushed him. As Mahabat passed, the pariah dogs sniffed and growled, nostrils quivering. But no one, man or beast, came to threaten him. No voice raised itself in intimidation, no hand commanded the thick string of pearls around his neck or the marble-sized ruby in his turban. It was as though they all knew that Mahabat Khan was Emperor Jahangir’s favorite minister, his trusted confidant. Mahabat walked through the streets, his steps leading him to Muhammad Sharif’s house.

The mansion lay well back from the main street in Agra, along the Yamuna, in the shade of ancient mango trees. Its roof was flat, the front surrounded by a deep verandah of peach-colored limewashed pillars. Mahabat climbed the front steps and knocked on the heavy wooden door, plated with embellished silver leaf. A servant boy, who usually slept on the floor with his back against the door, opened the latches and peered around the door. He bowed when he saw the minister.

“Please come in,
huzoor.
” He lurched back to allow Mahabat in. “I will inform the master that you are here.”

“No need to do that,” Mahabat said. “Tell me where he is.” As he spoke, the low dull throb of a
tabla
came to him from within the house. There was no music in accompaniment, just the sound of the drums.

“The inner courtyard,” the boy replied.

“Asleep?”

“No, sire.”

So Sharif could not sleep either. Mahabat slipped off his boots and found his way through the maze of corridors and courtyards to the private sanctum. Sharif’s wives were not there with him, or the slave boy would have mentioned this, and Sharif would have come out to meet Mahabat. He entered the courtyard, stopped, and then leaned against a pillar looking at Sharif.

The Grand Vizier of the Mughal Empire was lying back on a divan, head pillowed on a cushion, arms resting on his chest. His short, stocky legs barely reached the end of the divan. Everything in his posture suggested repose and ease, even sloth. His eyelids were hooded, he looked indolent, but Mahabat knew that this was merely a pose with Sharif.

A slave girl, clad in thin muslin skirts, bodice, and veil, swayed to the rhythm of the
tabla
’s beat. The
tabla
player sat behind one of the courtyard pillars, out of sight, the sound of his drums filling the heavy air. Slow, insistent, compelling. The girl was slim, not particularly pretty, her nose spread over her face. But what nature denied her, cosmetics embellished to something akin to beauty. Her eyes were outlined with kohl, giving them depth and breadth, her lips were reddened with carmine, henna flowers tattooed her hands and feet. Her body hardly seemed to move, yet the cadence of the drums filled her gestures. The sound surged around Mahabat. His breath wedged in his chest as her hand touched the front of her bodice, her fingers undoing one wood button, then another, then a third, sliding against raw blue silk. She turned away from the Grand Vizier, and as she did, she saw Mahabat.

She stilled, then, her hips still swaying lightly, her gaze holding his, she pulled off the flimsy piece of muslin that covered her breasts, slipping her arms out of the sleeves. Young as she was, she had been taught her skills well. Mahabat laughed out loud, his voice hoarse with relief from the building tension. Under the bodice, the girl wore yet another piece of muslin barely covering her breasts. He could see it; Sharif, more intent on watching the girl’s baring back, could not. Mahabat clapped his hands. “Well done! You had me wondering too.” He looked at Sharif. Sweat dotted his forehead and shone on his upper lip, drenching the quill-thin line of hair he liked to call a moustache. Sharif’s nostrils flared at the interruption, and when his eyes swung to the cause of it, they were already glazed with the anger that was quick to come to him. Then he saw Mahabat, and his face settled into smooth lines.

“Mahabat,” Sharif’s tone was reproachful. “In another minute—”

“You would have seen nothing, my friend,” Mahabat said. He went up to the girl and turned her around, his hand warm on her shoulder.

Then he dug into his cummerbund and flipped her three gold
mohurs,
the coins arcing through the air. Her hands flew, swift with practice, palms enclosing the coins, one after another. She bowed to the two men.

Muhammad Sharif waved her away. “Do not go too far.” He turned to his friend. “And what brings you here?”

Mahabat Khan crossed over the marble tiles of the courtyard and sat down on the divan next to Sharif. A goblet of wine appeared at his elbow. He dismissed the attendant with a hand, then nodded in the direction of the
tabla
player. The music stopped as the servants bowed their way out on soft feet. Mahabat picked up the goblet and stared into the wine.

“Is this new Empress cause for concern, Sharif?”

Surprise and amusement lit in quick succession over Sharif’s face. “A woman? Cause for concern? Surely you jest, Mahabat.”

“You saw what happened at this morning’s
jharoka.
She stood in front of us, brazenly, like a woman of the streets. You saw this, and you do not think we need to worry?”

Muhammad Sharif lifted himself on an elbow. “Ah, you are upset because her Majesty denied one of your petitioners. Her presence at the
jharoka
was surprising, that is all, most likely the result of a night of pleasure for the Emperor, Mahabat. It will not happen again.”

“I am not upset about anything, Sharif,” the minister said, bitterness in his voice, though, for he was uneasy. If not for that low, soft word in Jahangir’s ear, Mahabat would not be thinking thus. “What you do not see is that this marriage is different. Emperor Jahangir married her for love.” His mouth twisted. Women had their uses for Mahabat, true, but love was not an emotion he would bestow upon them. “This Empress has no royal blood in her.”

“She is the daughter of the
diwan
of the empire, Mahabat. Ghias Beg is responsible for even
our
salaries as part of his duties as a treasurer. He is well liked, and for the most part, known to be an honorable man.”

What Sharif said was true. Ghias Beg had come to India as a penniless noble fleeing his Persian homeland. Emperor Akbar had taken him into his court, and when Akbar died, Jahangir made him treasurer of the empire. The Emperor’s new wife was Ghias Beg’s fourth child, born on his journey from Persia to India thirty-four years ago. To Mahabat, she was an old woman; he barely glanced at any woman over thirty. It was like marrying a mother, or an aunt. Yet the Emperor was enamored.

“What
is
her attraction?” Sharif asked, echoing Mahabat’s thoughts.

In reply the minister reached into an inner pocket of his
qaba
and pulled out a scroll of paper. Untying the red satin thread that held it together, he unrolled it and laid it in front of Sharif, watching as the Grand Vizier caught his breath and expelled it audibly. The portrait was done in watercolors. The background was of shimmering gold, real gold flakes. The woman in the picture sat with her head turned in half-profile, looking into a jeweled mirror held high in hands as delicate as closed lily buds. Her wrists were slung with jade bangles. She wore a small
choli
covering her breasts and a full-skirted
ghagara,
her waist bare between the two. Her bare back was swathed with the cascading darkness of her hair. But it was her face, her expression, that caught their attention. Her eyes were a lovely blue in the mirror’s reflection, deepening to almost indigo.

She had not, however, a beauty classic of their time. She was too thin, her arms too slender, and not voluptuous enough. And her face was too strong, her cheekbones too pronounced. It was, Mahabat thought, almost a man’s face in its intensity, in its concentration of energy. It lacked softness. Yet something made their gazes linger.

Sharif slowly traced the curve of her face, his finger tarrying longer than necessary over her shoulder. His touch was light, as though the picture was newly finished, the paint not yet dry.

“This is the new Empress? Is it a true rendition?”

“I think so. Yes, it must be. This is how she looks under the veil,” Mahabat replied, watching his friend. Now things made some sense to him, why the Emperor had married her, what her physical charms were. The rumors of her beauty, almost elevating her to a goddess-like stature, had been based on truth. If this portrait was to be believed.

Sharif’s voice was quiet. “How did you get this?”

Mahabat did not look at his friend. “The less you know the better. Emperor Jahangir would not forgive me for . . . er . . . borrowing this portrait. But I wanted you to know, Sharif. I wanted you to see what she looked like.”

“You stole this portrait?”

Mahabat nodded. “Just now. I went to the painters’ atelier in the fort. I wanted to see too.”

Sharif watched as Mahabat rolled the portrait carefully and slipped it inside his
qaba.
“She is still just a woman.”

“I wonder,” Mahabat said, exhaustion crumpling his sunbrowned face. The stubble of his unshaven beard was flecked with white. Age had come to Mahabat too, in the graying of his hair, in the lines on his face, only it did not matter so much. For he was a man, and his importance was not based on his physical appearance or the ability to bear children. Mahabat had the advantage of Emperor Jahangir’s ear. Now Mehrunnisa, Jahangir’s twentieth wife, had it too. He leaned back onto the divan. “Do you remember that Empress Jagat Gosini did not want her in the imperial harem?”

They were silent, looking up at a low crescent moon still hanging over the horizon, stubbornly refusing to fade. Empress Jagat Gosini, Jahangir’s second wife, had met with Mahabat in secret, several times over, in the past few years, flaunting the rule that she not be seen by any man from the outside world. Mahabat had not actually seen her, although he had been close enough to touch her, to smell the essence of camellias in which she bathed, to see the flash of a smile under her veil. Every single meeting had been about Mehrunnisa.

“How many years have passed since the Emperor first saw her?” Sharif asked.

“The
first
time? Seventeen, I think,” Mahabat said. “She was seventeen then, not yet married to Ali Quli, although her betrothal had been finalized.”

Sharif rubbed his chin thoughtfully. “The Emperor tried to dissolve that betrothal. And did not succeed.”

“And years later, he tried to invalidate her marriage.”

And that was when Empress Jagat Gosini had come to Mahabat Khan for help. Mahabat, curious and intrigued at the summons, had responded. He had needed an ally in the imperial harem, for he knew that in fatigue or moments of weakness, a woman could get anything she wanted from a man. So Mahabat had gone to see what the Empress had had to say.

The command had been a simple one.
Make sure the Emperor forgets Mehrunnisa. He must not bring her into the royal harem.
Mahabat had almost smiled that first time, thinking Jagat Gosini absurd, thinking himself half-witted to have agreed to meet her, risking disfavor from Jahangir. And all this over a romantic alliance; Mahabat had thought he was being commanded for some other reason—a political one, or something related to court matters—something in which he could be of use. Then he had paid heed as grants of land had been bestowed on Ghias Beg, for he was Mehrunnisa’s father. He had seen Jahangir’s unwavering resolve to marry Mehrunnisa even after her husband had killed Koka.

Mahabat, Sharif, and Koka had grown up with Jahangir, brought into the imperial
zenana
to provide the young prince with male companionship. They had played together, slept in the same room, shared food from the same plate, untiring of this constant intimacy as only children can be. They were Jahangir’s closest friends, and when he had become Emperor he had rewarded them for their loyalty with governorships and ministries. Koka had wanted to go to Bengal as governor, and there, he had died at the hands of Mehrunnisa’s husband. To Sharif and Mahabat’s astonishment, it had only seemed to make Jahangir more determined to have her.