The Feast of Roses (44 page)

•  •  •

Following the rule of escheat, Ghias Beg’s estate, which was considerable, reverted back to the Emperor. The law of escheat was an old law—there was no personal property in the empire, nothing that did not belong to the Emperor. It kept prospective coups in check; where there was no private fortune, there could be no rebellion. If Jahangir decided, and he usually did so, he could donate the estate to the eldest son after making sure that the widow and other children had their allowances. The Emperor’s magnanimity toward the dead man’s family depended upon his relationship with the Emperor during his life. If it had been good, his family was well provided for, if not, they were given the barest sustenance.

So Ghias’s estate should devolve upon Abul Hasan, as the eldest surviving son. A few weeks after the minister’s death, Emperor Jahangir and Mehrunnisa lay in their apartments. Above them the
punkah
creaked steadily on slick hinges, back and forth, a long rope leading from it to the hands of the eunuch seated outside the room.

“Are you all right, Mehrunnisa?” Jahangir said, pulling her closer. He reached around her to touch her face, and felt the tears. Jahangir wiped the wetness from her skin and kissed her shoulder. A few stray jasmines, wilted now and brown with age, were caught in her hair. The Emperor pulled them out gently, without tugging at her hair, and threw them over the edge of the divan. In the light from the lantern the gray in Mehrunnisa’s hair glinted silver. Her hair was still thick, still to her waist, just as he liked it. But age had come to her as it had to him. Lines had formed on her face in two arched bows on either side of her mouth, they creased outward from her eyes and below them, they spread horizontally over her forehead. Jahangir knew every line, he watched her as she slept, waking early in the morning in the first glow of dawn before the
jharoka
to lean over his wife. He watched her while she read, when she was animated with laughter, when she was furious with anger—he never seemed to tire of this.

But he did not know what to say when she cried as she did now, with deep sobs from within her somewhere. He had worried when Mehrunnisa had refused to cry at Asmat’s death. And Mehrunnisa had not cried for a long time, her face hard, her eyes dry, until tonight. He was sad too at Ghias and Asmat’s deaths so close to each other.

He rubbed her arm in slow circles. Mehrunnisa’s breathing evened, and Jahangir turned on his back to look up at the
punkah.
He thought about Ghias’s estate, which had passed on to him. By law—well, by an unwritten law that he himself followed at all times—it should go to Abul. But Abul had made his feelings clear in Ghias’s tent, by brawling so shamefully with Mehrunnisa. She had not forgiven her brother; Jahangir could not do so.

Bitterness filled him. Runners from Burhanpur brought news that Khurram was playing at being Emperor in the Deccan. Jahangir had given him the title of Shah Jahan, King of the World, and now he acted as though he really was that, within his father’s dominions. Khurram was a
bidaulat,
a wretch, Jahangir thought. He moved closer to Mehrunnisa’s back and went to sleep. Heat hung inside the apartment, the
punkah
did little but spin the air around the room, but Jahangir could only close his eyes when some part of him was against her. They would each wake many times at night to find sweat thickly matted between their skins, but half-asleep they would wipe it away, find another position in which to lay their bodies, another place in which they made contact. An arm, a leg flung across, a shoulder lodged against a hip, even fingers touching, it did not matter, touch they had to.

•  •  •

The next morning, when Mehrunnisa came back to the palace from her
jharoka
appearance, she found Jahangir kneeling on his prayer rug facing toward Mecca.

“What is it, your Majesty?” she asked. “Did you not go to the
jharoka
?” She had left him on his way there.

He turned to her, stunned and in a daze. “A letter arrived . . . I could not go. Khusrau is dead.”

For a few minutes, Mehrunnisa was silent, then she held out her hand for the letter. Another death. How had Khusrau died? And why? He had been demented, but he had been healthy. Surely Khurram would not have dared . . . or had he? Jahangir gave her the letter he had been clutching to him, and she read it. Colic, she thought. Colic was a convenient excuse for unexplained death.

As they sat there, Hoshiyar knocked on the door and bowed. “Your Majesty, a runner has come from Burhanpur with a message from Matab Nuruddin Quli. He insists upon seeing you.”

“Later, Hoshiyar,” Mehrunnisa said.

“Now, your Majesty,” the eunuch said as he shifted on his feet. There was some important news.

Jahangir rose wearily from his knees and went to the reception hall. The runner, a young lad of eighteen or nineteen years, was sleekly muscled from his occupation. He was saturated in sweat; his
kurta
stuck to his chest, his pajamas to his shins. The boy quaked as he performed the
konish
and then knelt in front of the Emperor, proffering the letter above his head. He simply brought the mail to its destination, but Quli had been very specific in his instructions—the letter was to be placed in the Emperor’s hands.

“What is this?”

“Your Majesty,” the boy’s voice shook. “You are to read this.”

“Go to the imperial kitchens,” Jahangir said, placing his hand on the boy’s shoulder. “Get something to eat and drink. And rest before you leave again.”

The runner bent to the carpet and put his forehead on the floor. When he heard the sound of Jahangir’s footsteps fade away, he rose from his knees, his body trembling, and put his palm on his right shoulder. Still clutching the place where the Emperor had touched him, he found his way to the kitchens.

Jahangir walked back to his apartments, turning the letter over to look at Quli’s seal. The news would be unpalatable. But what could it be? He entered to see Mehrunnisa still on the floor. The Emperor slit open the letter and sat down next to her. They read it together. Khusrau had not died of colic; he had been murdered, his own brother’s hand had taken his life.

Jahangir shouted to Hoshiyar to bring him his writing materials, and sitting there, on the carpet, hardly able to hold the quill steady, he filled two pages of a letter to Khurram. His son was to order Khusrau’s body exhumed and sent to Allahabad, where he was to be buried next to his mother. And what of Khalifa and her two sons? Why were they still at Burhanpur? Send them to Lahore to live in the palaces of the fort there. Was there any truth in these dreadful accusations? Had Khurram really dared to kill his own brother? He had to leave Burhanpur
immediately,
upon receipt of this letter, and come to Agra to answer Quli’s charges.

Jahangir later commanded the new
diwan
to his presence and ordered that Khalifa and the boys were to have a large and steady income for the rest of their lives, and use of any of the imperial palaces whenever they wanted.

Mehrunnisa looked over Jahangir’s shoulder as he wrote. Stupid, stupid Khurram, she thought, to take away his brother’s life thus. Did he think he would be answerable to no one? Did he think he could flee from his father’s rage? Did he think his actions made the throne more secure for him?

•  •  •

Khurram read his father’s letter in Burhanpur. Most of his commanders had melted away from the fort, on their way now to visit Jahangir and tell him of their part in Khusrau’s death. The prince fretted for days, wondering how he was going to stand in front of his father and defend himself. He could not go to the Emperor. He had been witness to the punishment meted out to an insurgent Khusrau fifteen years ago, and that had been only for a simple rebellion—how would Jahangir react to murder?

So the prince wrote to the Emperor, explaining himself as best he could. He denied everything. Khusrau had died of colic pains, pure and simple. And he was unfortunately unable to leave the Deccan, Khurram said, the imperial armies had need of a commander.

The Emperor was furious. He wrote to Khurram again, demanding his presence at court, and if he did not come, the prince could consider himself without a family and without a father. Jahangir then gave all of Ghias Beg’s huge estate to Mehrunnisa. Abul would not have it, he decided, lest the minister chose to use that wealth to support that
bidaulat.
He also ordered that Mehrunnisa’s orchestra and drums be played at court after his own. She would not be visible, hidden behind the marble screen of the
zenana
balcony, but the nobles would have to acknowledge her presence nonetheless.

Those of Khurram’s courtiers who had chosen to stay with him also fled for the imperial court now. They knew the prince was in trouble. He had no intention of returning to his father’s presence, where he once desperately begged to be allowed. Mehrunnisa, with Ghias’s estate added to her own large income, was now frighteningly wealthy and massively powerful with this heaping of favors upon her. And the courtiers knew that she disliked Khurram. They came to plead for their lives, to protest that they had not had any actual intentions to be complicit in Khusrau’s death. Khurram’s courtiers had a long journey ahead of them, for Mehrunnisa and Jahangir were on their way back to Kashmir.

And while the imperial court was at Kashmir, trouble began to breed in Qandahar.

•  •  •

Ever since the first Persian siege on Qandahar in 1606, it had been quiet on the northwestern front. For the last ten years, there had been a Persian ambassador at the Mughal court, bringing with him lavish gifts and assurances of brotherly affection from Shah Abbas to Jahangir. So constant was Persian presence at court that permanent apartments, richly appointed, were built for the ambassadors.

When Mehrunnisa and Jahangir were at Rawalpindi, on their way back from Kashmir, they first heard the news of another Persian invasion in Qandahar.

The Qandahar problem went back two generations to the time of Humayun, father of Akbar and the second Mughal Emperor of India. When Humayun became Emperor, four years after his father conquered India, he found a country discontented with its conquerors and hoping to oust them. He was defeated by Sher Shah Sur in the battles at Chausa and Kanauj and expelled from India.

The Emperor took refuge with Shah Tahmasp Safavi in Persia and with his help drove the Afghan king out of Qandahar. Using the city as a base, Humayun conquered Kabul and finally marched back into India victorious, to set up the empire again. Humayun and Shah Tahmasp had a tacit understanding that once India was conquered, Qandahar would be given to Persia. But this had not happened. Humayun did not give it away, Akbar did not give it away, and by Jahangir’s time, it had become part of the Mughal Empire.

The 1606 siege, if it could even be called by that name, had been a simple raising of war standards and flags outside the city. Now there was no doubt about the Shah’s intentions. He wrote to Jahangir, reminding him of the promise once given by his grandfather. Jahangir wrote back, asking why the Shah was so interested in a petty village when he had a mighty empire himself. Both letters were written in phrases of honey and sugar, and neither the Shah nor Jahangir was fooled by the other. The Shah would invade Qandahar; Jahangir had to defend it.

Another piece of gossip had found its way to the royal court, riding on the official news of the invasion of Qandahar. The Shah had ordered his eldest son killed by a slave. It was done in a terrible fashion, the prince was stabbed one rainy evening in the local bazaar, and his body lay in the slush of the streets for two days before it was dragged away to be buried. Why, Jahangir wondered, and how, could a father order his son’s death? The Shah was mad; this was why he was plaguing him now. Shah Abbas had to be stopped. And the only person who could command a victorious army was Prince Khurram. The Emperor wrote to his son in the Deccan yet again. He was to head north and handle the Qandahar problem. If he did, he would be forgiven.

Khurram did not go. The monsoons had arrived in full flood; he could not possibly cart an entire army on this long journey and hope to arrive there with his cavalry and infantry in decent enough shape to meet the Shah’s men. He would stay here until the rains subsided.

Jahangir sent him a bitter letter.
Come to the royal court at once!

This the prince would absolutely not do. His father was furious with him, and he was no fool to present himself to be burned in the flames of Jahangir’s wrath.

Khurram was right about the Emperor’s temper. Jahangir was ailing, his asthma flared, headaches beset him; everything irritated him now. If the prince came to Jahangir’s court, his head would soon part company with his shoulders. This Jahangir was determined about. The empire was to belong to Shahryar.

After all, a precedent had been set. If one king could order his son’s death, why not another?

W
inter came slowly to the Srinagar valley in 1623. The poplar trees turned a fiery orange and deep maroon along the edges of Dal Lake. Reeds and rushes yellowed and stooped toward the lily pads. The last pumpkins ripened and sprawled over the eastern edge of Dal Lake in their floating gardens, which were large chunks of soil cut away from the banks and tethered to the bottom. The sun rode lower in the sky, in an arc barely skimming over the mighty foreheads of the Himalayas. A chill caught the air, and little fires burned in the bazaars, fanned by the wind. As November approached, the streets grew deserted, shops closed earlier; at the first hint of darkness, shopkeepers and patrons hurried home to warm dinners and cups of
chai.

The Hari Parbat hill surged upward almost apologetically from the western bank of Dal Lake, a tiny anthill compared to its stupendous neighbors. But the view from the hill was magnificent nonetheless. The lake stretched blue and green below, the wooden houses of Srinagar arranged around it, the majestic Himalayas cutting into the heavens above and in jagged reflection in the waters below. It was here Emperor Akbar had built a fort with walls curving up and down the hillside, and wood and stone palaces. December came and the snows fell, covering the pass into the Srinagar valley with ten-foot-deep piles of snow. The city was now cut off from the outside and would be until the roads were cleared. This did not happen normally, the residents merely waited in their snowbound, still world until the spring thaw, but in the winter of 1623 things were not normal. Emperor Jahangir had decided to stay on in Kashmir and not travel back to Agra.

Mehrunnisa stood at the window to the balcony in her apartments in Hari Parbat Fort. It was snowing outside, a light and flaky snow, settling amply, though, on the smooth surface of the lake, and drifting over the steeply sloped roofs of the houses. She put her face against the cold glass pane of the window. Behind her, the room was lushly covered with thick carpets, edge to edge, without an inch of the stone floor showing. It was warm too, the air heated by coal braziers dispersed around the room. Mehrunnisa turned to her daughter.

Ladli was sitting on a divan, her feet pulled under her. A minute later, she shifted and leaned back, but even that was uncomfortable, so she sat up again and rubbed at the bottom of her spine.

“Shall I do that for you,
beta
?” Mehrunnisa asked.

Ladli patted the divan. Mehrunnisa went and sat next to her. She put her hand on Ladli’s back and massaged the muscles there. Ladli put her head on Mehrunnisa’s shoulder. “That feels better, Mama.”

Mehrunnisa touched Ladli’s stomach lightly. “It will be a boy, I know. He gives you so much trouble already.”

“I do not want a boy, Mama. She will be a girl.”

“Why?” Mehrunnisa asked, smiling.

Ladli raised her head. “So there will be no question of her fighting for the throne. I will not have a child for the empire.”

Mehrunnisa got up and moved away. “This is stupid thinking, Ladli. What use will a girl be? You
must
have an heir.”

Ladli poked at the coals in the brazier near her with a pair of silver tongs. The embers hissed and crackled in response. She reached into a brocade bag and spread the sandalwood shavings over the coals. The bits of wood caught fire, and an aromatic, swirling smoke journeyed around the room. “What use will a girl be, Mama?” Her tone was wry. “You and I were girls once. Were we worthless?”

Mehrunnisa sighed and sat down again, this time near the little table in a corner.
Farmans
lay piled on it, their parchment gleaming softly in the lamplight. She had to read through them and decide which ones to sign, which to throw away. “You know what I mean,
beta,
” she said, leaning against the wall behind her. “When Shahryar becomes Emperor, he must have a son to give the empire to.”

“It will NOT be a boy!” Ladli sat up on the edge of her divan, her face contorted. Little drops of sweat gathered on her forehead, and she wiped them with the back of her hand.

Mehrunnisa looked at her daughter from across the room. Impending motherhood had brought a fretfulness to her. As her body grew, her emotions plumped up too, skittering out wildly with every sentence. But she was still lovely. Her skin glowed golden and clear, her eyes had lost their constant sadness, and she moved with a grace Mehrunnisa had not seen in many women in this stage. The child brought happiness to Ladli, and an undeniable contentment to her mother. Now the marriage to Shahryar had some value, Mehrunnisa thought, now, finally, she had done right by Ladli.

Ladli muttered to herself, tucked her hair back into her plait, and subsided on the divan. She breathed heavily, as though she had run for a distance. “I do not want my child to be caught in all this fighting, Mama. I do not want you to use him for the throne.”

“You do not want to be mother to an Emperor, Ladli?” Mehrunnisa said, her gaze a hard, deep blue. Ladli shook her head and bent to wrap her arms around her stomach, the fingertips meeting at the bottom, as though she was carrying something heavy in front of her. “You do not want to sit in the
zenana
balcony at court and look out at your son’s back while the most powerful
amirs
and nobles pay their respects to him? Tell me,” the Empress leaned forward, hands on her knees, “tell me you do not want that. You can have what I do not, Ladli. A child who will wear the crown, whose name will live on for posterity to remember, and because of him your name will live on.”

Mehrunnisa rose and went to stand over her daughter. She looked down at her daughter’s dark head, with a little sliver of skin where her thick hair was parted. She touched her head, but Ladli moved away as fast as her ponderous body would allow her. Mehrunnisa turned and went to the pile of velvet cloaks in one corner of the apartment. Swathing two over her head and shoulders, she went out into the balcony.

It was as bright as daylight outside; the falling snow caught the light from the houses and the streetlamps and spread it thinly orange over all of Srinagar. The air was clear, washed with ice, with a sharp edge of cleanness to it. Mehrunnisa leaned out over the parapet and breathed deeply. Why was Ladli thinking like this? Everything she did, she did for her daughter. Surely she knew that? Shahryar was a fool, to be sure, but he had the empire’s blood in his veins, worth ten times any lode of gold. The child she was carrying would have that value too. Ladli did not remember, because she did not know, that they were but refugees to India. Ghias had come here with little in his pockets, and less on his back. And half of Ladli was given by her father, who was but a soldier and, before that, a table attendant to the Shah of Persia. Within her, she now bore a future Emperor. Why was she not grateful?

Mehrunnisa swept the snow off the edge of the parapet with a sharp gesture. It turned her palm cold and blue, and she rubbed her hand against her side. Ladli still blamed her for not asking Khurram. But she had asked, and Ladli did not know this, for Mehrunnisa would never tell her. Still . . . Ladli blamed her. What was Khurram’s worth now, in any case?

A few days ago, before the snow had started falling, Mehrunnisa had had another reason to be upset with Khurram. She had given one of her
jagirs
to Shahryar as a gift and had petitioned the
diwan
to turn over the papers to her son-in-law. Khurram had also sent a formal petition to the
diwan
for the same
jagir,
but of course, it had gone to Shahryar. However, Khurram, always in a hurry and sure that he would get the
jagir
of Dholpur, had sent his men there to set up offices. Khurram’s servants had met Shahryar’s servants, and a bloody fight had followed, in which four men had been killed. Mehrunnisa had demanded that Dholpur be returned to Shahryar, but she was sure Khurram would refuse, just as he had refused to go to Qandahar.

And as time passed in all their plentiful letter writing and demands, the fort at Qandahar fell to the Shah of Persia’s army. Although Jahangir had called it a petty village, it was of strategic importance to the empire for trade and defense. Now it had been cut away from the northwestern edge. Khurram, despite all his excuses, was quite clearly intent on staying on at Burhanpur, so Mehrunnisa ordered Shahryar to go instead. He was sent away in the autumn from Srinagar, with much fanfare, but even his mother-in-law had little hopes in his military prowess. Giving Shahryar the command of the imperial army was to tell the court that he was now the favored son. The most Shahryar would do, Mehrunnisa knew, would be to loll around the outskirts of Qandahar, send out a few halfhearted sorties, and then return home. But there was to be a child. The boy would be the next Emperor. He gave Mehrunnisa hope. There would be a boy,
please Allah,
wouldn’t there?

The snowflakes settled on the top of Mehrunnisa’s head, clung to her eyelashes, and tucked themselves into the folds of her cloak. But she still stood in the balcony. Only her feet were cold, slowly numbing as the snow melted and seeped in through the leather of her shoes. She liked being outside in this impossibly white world covering all the sins and dirt of Srinagar. It was densely silent and peaceful. Here, she was no longer Empress, no longer anything, not even a mother or a soon-to-be grandmother. Here she was not even a wife, although as she stood, her head slanted to the doorway on her right where Jahangir slept. He coughed, and Mehrunnisa closed her eyes and listened. He would cough three times, one low, one so shallow as to come from his mouth, one from deep within his lungs. They had stayed on in Srinagar hoping that the Emperor’s asthma would leave in the clean and crisp air of the valley. It had abated somewhat, but as Mehrunnisa heard the dreaded cough from within, she knew that it would never go.

Jahangir was a dying man. Maybe not for a few years more, but his body would not be able to put up with this punishment for much longer. Mehrunnisa saw this with a clarity and calmness that frightened her. Ever since that one terrible illness when Jahangir had almost died, Mehrunnisa had been preparing herself for his death. At that time, the thought had terrified her, but so many years had passed, and time had a way of making oft-pondered ideas if not appealing, at least bearable.

The cold finally seeped into her bones and left her teeth chattering. She had thrown herself into the work; every
farman
went out with her signature, she took the
jharoka
audiences, she ran the empire while Jahangir rested. Mehrunnisa was the one who had sent Shahryar away. If Khurram refused to give up Dholpur, the
jagir
he had so officiously taken over, she would confiscate all his estates in the northern part of the empire. Let him rot in the south, she thought. Let his entire family, his wife, his sons, his father-in-law . . . but no, Abul was here with them. They were adrift from each other finally, thoroughly ashamed that Ghias had died while they had fought. But Abul had not left the imperial court to seek out Khurram.

Huddled under the warm fur of her cloak, Mehrunnisa gripped her arms about her waist. Should she send Abul away? On what pretext, and how would the courtiers react? The nobles had been strained, skittish, in her
jharoka
audiences lately. This was due to many things—the Qandahar problem, the so-obvious switch in imperial favor from Khurram to Shahryar, Jahangir’s constant illnesses. They were unsure, Mehrunnisa was too, not really seeing Shahryar as Emperor or seeing him hold the throne for long. But now, with the child, if he could just rule for a
little
while . . . That, though, would come later. And whatever Mehrunnisa did about her brother Abul, she had to do this with the approval of the nobles at court. She thought then, her head hunched into her chest. An idea came as she stood there; Abul had to be pushed into the open.

The sound of another series of coughs startled her. She listened, but now she heard a fourth cough, and this was loud and coarse. Mehrunnisa plowed through the drifting snow down the balcony into Jahangir’s apartments.

•  •  •

“You want me to do what?” Abul’s voice was filled with disbelief.

“Bring the treasury to Lahore,” Mehrunnisa repeated patiently. She put a hand to one of the palanquin’s pillars to steady herself. They sat close to each other in the enclosed space, their knees drawn up and touching. The curtains, of a sheer green silk, were closed. The sun filtered through them, filling the palanquin with a liquid green light.

Abul looked at his sister. He had trouble sitting like this, his thighs ached, but he would not let her know that. The royal entourage was on its way to Lahore after the winter in Srinagar. It was spring, well, the snows had melted in patches from the ground, but it was still cold and slippery outside. At the last stop, Mehrunnisa had asked for him to ride with her. Abul had had to brace himself as the eight bearers had lifted the palanquin onto their shoulders and set off in a steady trot.

“You want to move the
entire
treasury, Mehrunnisa? Do you know what that entails?” Abul rubbed his chin and felt the bristle of a spot of hair that his barber’s razor had not touched that morning. “And why?”

Mehrunnisa’s eyes gleamed. “It will be safer where the Emperor is, Abul.”

Abul shook his head. “Yes, but . . .”

“You do not wish to do this?” Her voice was sharp.