The Feast of Roses (46 page)

“What is going on?” he yelled. “Let me through. I am on my way to the Emperor.”

One of the soldiers shrugged. “The treasurer’s orders. The treasury is not to leave the fort.”

“What? Let down the drawbridge!”

The men looked away from him. Abul turned his horse around and rode wildly past the treasury, dodging the guards and carts. Itibar was waiting for him, standing alone in the center of the courtyard.

“What is this?” Abul shouted, jumping off his horse and running up to the man.

“The treasury will not leave the fort, Mirza Hasan,” Itibar said. “Prince Khurram is on his way to Agra.”

“So what?” Abul shook Itibar by the shoulders. When he stopped, the old man peeled Abul’s fingers away without difficulty. He was no longer smiling, no more the courteous treasurer.

“But . . . but . . . I have orders from the Emperor,” Abul spluttered. “He will have your head for this.”

“Doubtless his Majesty would have me beheaded if I let the treasury fall into the prince’s hands,” Itibar agreed. “But I should have an opportunity to defend it.”

“It will be better for the treasury to be away from Agra. Don’t you see, if the prince is on his way here, then it should be taken away.”

“I cannot agree with that,” Itibar replied. “The fort is invincible. The treasury will be safer here than on its way to the Emperor.” He turned to an attendant. “Send a message to the Emperor informing him of the prince’s movements. Assure him the treasury is still at Agra and it is being well guarded.”

Abul watched as the treasury was unloaded and taken back to the cellars and vaults. Itibar kindly provided Abul with an armed escort to his mansion. Abul could not even step out of his house without being followed by a guard. He was constantly watched, could send no message to Khurram. He knew then that Mehrunnisa had devised all of this. Abul had been fooled by the sister he thought a fool.

He had drawn Khurram out from the safety of his fort at Burhanpur on this mad errand. Mehrunnisa and Jahangir were on their way to Agra from Lahore. Outside the walls of his gardens, Abul could hear the imperial army being put through their training. Thousands of feet marched past his house, armors and mail clanked, and all the while, Khurram neared Agra.

“I
t’s no good, your Highness.”

“No one will offer us hospitality? Not one person?”

Raja Bikramjit, commander-in-chief of Khurram’s forces, shook his head. Both men turned to look down the deserted street of the village three miles from Agra. The shop fronts were shuttered and bolted, all the houses were locked from the inside. They had spent two hours first knocking on doors, then banging against them.
Koi hai
? Is someone there? It was as though the village had just emptied, as though people had fled from a plague. There was
nothing
outside, no dogs or cats or hens picking in the dust, no cows lounging fatly in the way of traffic. A thick silence stood around them.

“How did they hear of our arrival? We left Burhanpur in the greatest secrecy.”

Raja Bikramjit grimaced. “Bad news travels fast, your Highness.”

Like the prince’s, Bikramjit’s face had a thin coating of dirt. They were both a fine sight, Khurram thought, as were his men. They had sped through the breadth of the empire, pausing for two, sometimes three, hours a night. They had changed horses at the
sarais
for travelers, but the last few days they had traveled on the same mounts. As they had neared Agra, they had met with a wall of silence, backs turned upon them, eyes cold with hatred. Khurram had not paid much attention to this, he had been too tired to pay attention. But now as he stood in the village street, he knew that his father must be on his way to meet him.

“What shall we do?” Khurram asked. Where was the village well? They were near the main square, but if there was a well dug into the ground, it was cleverly hidden. “The soldiers need food and water. Shall we go to Agra?”

Bikramjit shook his head. “Agra is prepared for our arrival also.”

“Why didn’t I hear of this from Abul Hasan?” Khurram demanded.

“He is under house arrest, your Highness. Itibar Khan has locked up the treasury in the vaults.”

Khurram squinted into the darkness. Even the lamps were not lit on the street. The village had died rather than welcome him. He leaned against his saddle, thinking. They had to go on, he could not come this far and turn back. He could not return defeated to Arjumand. “We must march on to Agra and try to take the fort and the royal treasury.”

“I would not recommend it, your Highness. The soldiers are tired.”

“I cannot turn back now,” Khurram said stubbornly. He put one foot in the stirrup and dragged himself up into the saddle. “Command the soldiers to move on to Agra.”

•  •  •

But Itibar Khan had been hard at work. The battlements of the fort were strengthened with plaster and stone. The main gates were bricked up, there was no sign of wood anywhere. Cannons stood guard on the ramparts, gaping blackly at Khurram’s army, and soldiers in full armor stood behind.

Khurram and his men loaded their muskets and shot at the soldiers, but the cannons answered, extinguishing vast pockets of his army in flares of explosion. They uprooted a tree and used it as a battering ram, but the brick would not give way. Finally, late into the night, as fires burned in the fields beyond the fort, as the smell of charring human and horse flesh rose into the air, as most of his men lay broken, crying and dying on the earth, Khurram whipped his horse around and led the remaining army away.

He could barely keep upright in his saddle; a bullet had winged its way through the skin of his arm, and a tourniquet of cotton was tied around to staunch the flow of blood. Khurram was exhausted, as were his men, holding onto their horses’ necks as they pounded away from the fort. They went into hiding north of Agra. The fort at Delhi would be next assaulted. Khurram would not flee to the Deccan without something to show for his journey. But he did not know that his father’s entourage, along with the bulk of the imperial army, had already arrived at Delhi.

•  •  •

Abul was brought into Mehrunnisa’s apartments in shackles, chains binding his wrists together and swinging down to encircle his ankles.

“What is this, Mehrunnisa?” he yelled. “What is this outrage? Why am I treated like a criminal?”

Mehrunnisa was making
paan.
She did not look up at her brother, and Abul did not come nearer. When he moved the first time, Hoshiyar’s firm hand descended upon his nape in an unfriendly manner. “Stay here, Mirza Hasan.”

She sat on her divan, the silver plates of betel leaves, betel nuts, lime, raisins, and sultanas in front of her. Mehrunnisa dipped a heart-shaped betel leaf into a bowl of water, rinsed it, wiped it dry, and piled the center with the contents of the plates. Then she meticulously folded it into a square parcel, tightly bound, and kept the folding in place with a clove stuck in.

Abul shivered in his place. His wrists were on fire, the iron cuffs chafing against his skin. What was Mehrunnisa going to do to him?

“Mehrunnisa,” he said pleadingly, and this time she looked up. There was no expression on her face, no anger or hatred, nothing. She opened her mouth, put the
paan
in and chewed, and she did not take her eyes away from her brother. It was Abul whose gaze dropped.

“Who told Khurram about the moving of the treasury, Hoshiyar?”

Abul’s head whipped up. “I did not, Mehrunnisa. You have to believe me.”

“How did he know then?”

“I do not know.” Abul said this without flinching. He started to tremble again though, setting the chains clanking.

“Take those off, Hoshiyar,” Mehrunnisa said, leaning back on the cushions. She cleared the plates away and put them on the carpets. “Come here and sit, Abul.”

Abul massaged his wrists, bent down and rubbed his ankles, and hobbled over to sit by his sister. “Do you believe me? Mehrunnisa, Khurram is on his way to sack Delhi. You must let the Emperor know.”

Mehrunnisa raised an eyebrow at him. “Is this true?”

“Yes. I heard of it yesterday.”

“Then will you command one of the armies against Khurram, Abul?”

He did not hesitate for even a second. As soon as she finished her question, Abul Hasan said yes. He looked her in the eye when he said this. He thought she believed him.

Mehrunnisa sent him away. He stumbled out of the room. No harm was done, she thought, in bringing him to her like a prisoner. Now she knew that Abul would never be at her side, only at Khurram’s. He would battle his son-in-law, though, and if Abul gave any sign of fleeing to Khurram, she would leave orders with the commanders that he must be killed before he was even halfway there. The prince was on his way to Delhi, Abul had told her this as though it were something new, something to take away her suspicions of him. But Mehrunnisa already knew, of course. Not just what his plans were, but where he was right now.

She called Shahryar away from Qandahar. Abul would command yet another army. Who would lead the third? Khurram had two men with him whom Mehrunnisa would have dearly liked to see at the helm of the imperial army—Raja Bikramjit and the Khan-i-khanan. She thought for a while and then remembered the man who had stood up against her time and again in those early days of her marriage. The man who had boldly gone to Jahangir to complain about her. He had shown courage and, in some ways, a loyalty to the Emperor few other men had.

Mehrunnisa wrote a letter to Mahabat Khan at Kabul, offering him release from the governorship there if he would come and join the imperial army. She wrote as though she asked a request, but it was a command. There was no question of Mahabat having a choice. So Mahabat Khan accepted. Actually, he desperately grabbed at the chance. He had spent ten years away from the imperial court and had aged twenty in that time. There had been nothing to spend his energy on, his duties in Kabul had been light. But here finally was the opportunity to return.

The three imperial armies headed by Mahabat, Shahryar, and Abul met Khurram’s army south of Delhi. The conclusion was preordained—there was no way Khurram’s men could stand up to the might of the imperial forces. The prince fled to his home in the Deccan by nightfall, and Raja Bikramjit was dead. His head was cut off, stuffed with grass and hay, and hung on an upturned spear on the ramparts of the Delhi Fort. The Raja’s family had had in their possession, through many generations, a pair of perfectly matched pearls the size of small cherries. These Bikramjit had worn in his ears. When his head adorned the spear, it was without its ears, which had been sliced off for the family heirlooms.

Khurram ran away to the Deccan, but of course he was not to be allowed to go away so easily. Mehrunnisa gave out gifts to all the nobles who had participated in the battle, and she left out Abul. He was to stay with her at court, though; she could not trust him anywhere but near her. She sent a message to Prince Parviz, pulling him out of his life of drink and sloth. He was to come to Delhi, and from there pursue Khurram in the Deccan.

Mehrunnisa gave Mahabat Khan charge of the campaign along with Parviz. The Emperor had taken to his bed with yet another illness; he could not rise to give the orders himself, but he listened when she talked with him. Jahangir suggested that they travel to Ajmer and wait for news of Mahabat Khan and Parviz’s pursuit of Khurram.

So the royal entourage moved to Ajmer. Once Mehrunnisa and Jahangir had come here to support Khurram’s siege on Mewar. Now they came here hoping to hear of his demise.

•  •  •

Khurram fought Parviz’s army outside of Burhanpur, or rather he fought Mahabat Khan’s command. He was easily defeated, and the prince fled again, heading south to the Tapti River. This time he took Arjumand and their sons with him. The party that left with him was sadly depleted—Mahabat, exercising his diplomatic skills to the utmost, had sent secret letters to the nobles of Khurram’s court, promising them amnesty from Jahangir’s wrath if they defected to the imperial side.

•  •  •

The rain spewed down steadily and in torrents. The crash of the downpour was thunderous; it blotted out every other sound. Lightning forked across the sky and lit up the caravan trudging slowly down the muddy hillside.

Khurram rode at the head of the procession, wiping the streaming rain from his face. He could not even look up; the water lashed into his eyes if he did, so he bent down over his horse’s neck, praying that it was surefooted. The horse plunged into the mud on its hind legs, lifting Khurram in the air, and then it painfully extricated itself from the sludge and moved on. Khurram looked back at the lead palanquin and wondered how Arjumand was doing. She must be drenched through also, he thought. The palanquin cover and curtains had been ripped to pieces in the monsoon winds, modesty was thrown away, and Arjumand clung to the skeleton frame of the conveyance, her veil bunched and wet around her neck. Khurram cursed under his breath. Here he was, a royal prince, forced to flee like a common fugitive. Suddenly someone shouted out aloud, and Khurram reined in his horse.

One of the elephants had dropped into the soft mud, the ground not being able to support its weight. The animal struggled wildly to extricate itself, trumpeting in fear as it sank deeper.

An attendant rode up to the prince. “We shall have to leave the animal, your Highness,” he said, leaning into Khurram’s ear.

“Do so, and quickly,” Khurram shouted, lifting his voice over the clamor of the rain. He watched as the baggage strapped onto the elephant’s back was unloaded and distributed to the other already sorely burdened horses and elephants. Khurram looked away into the wet darkness as a shot rang out. The elephant’s cry stopped in midtrumpet, and it fell back on the ground with a thud.

It was two days since Khurram and his party had forded the Tapti. The river was swollen with rain waters, and the crossing had almost been a disaster. Entire barges with their belongings had been rushed away down the angry Tapti; they had just barely made it to the other side. The monsoons had begun just as Khurram had left Burhanpur, but he could not have waited for the rains to subside, he had had no time. Even now, as they struggled toward the southern frontier of the Mughal Empire, the imperial army was but a two-day march behind them.

They moved forward again, the animals protesting against the extra weight and lack of food or rest. Khurram was determined, at all costs, not to be taken prisoner by the Emperor. He had witnessed Khusrau’s fate and knew his own would be worse. He raised his hand and pointed south. “Let us go!” he yelled.

Arjumand huddled in one corner of the palanquin, seeking shelter and warmth from the pouring rain. She was feeling nauseous. It was a familiar feeling, and the princess’s heart plummeted as she realized that she was pregnant again. What sort of a life would this child have, born to fugitive parents who were fleeing from the wrath of the Emperor? For that matter, what sort of a life would all her children have? At one time, it had seemed certain that Khurram would be Emperor, but now . . .

There were no more mishaps that night, and by afternoon, Khurram and Arjumand slipped over the southern border into the kingdom of Golconda. Once, Khurram thought, he had led an army to fight the Golconda king. Would he be given shelter here?

•  •  •

Behind Khurram, Mahabat Khan moved doggedly through the blinding rain. He had been drenching wet for three days now. His barge had turned over in the Tapti, throwing Parviz and him into the shallow end on the other side. They had clung to some tree roots until the rest of the army had been able to pull them out of the water. Mahabat was weary too. He was no longer young, no longer able to ride on campaign for the hours and days it took to achieve victory. But Jahangir had commanded this of him.