The Feast of Roses (47 page)

Mahabat Khan lifted his balding head to the rain and opened his mouth to drink the sweet water. When he captured Prince Khurram, he would be celebrated as a hero. Jahangir would give him his place in court again, next to Sharif. They would be friends and companions again, as they once were. He dreamed thus in his saddle, his horse stumbling through the wet and dark night. The same lightning that flashed to show Khurram’s party lit the skies above Mahabat. He saw his army clearly defined in that light, soaked and miserable, cold from the constant dampness, their lungs clogged, coughs racking their thin bodies. Mahabat let his mind wander again. Sharif and he had written letters to each other, fewer as the years had passed, for Mahabat had burned with jealousy at all Sharif’s accounts. The garden parties, the festivals, the imperial weighings on birth days. He had seen all of these in tremendous detail, reading through Sharif’s casual sentences. The Amirul-umra had kept his place in court because he could, and did, keep his mouth shut. Mahabat knew he would not have been this complacent at Mehrunnisa’s
jharoka
audiences, at the effortless way in which she, from behind the veil, nudged and bullied the nobles and princes into doing what she wanted. Reading Sharif’s letters, Mahabat had often thought he was better at Kabul, away from the temptation to fight with Mehrunnisa, rather than at court resisting it every minute of every day. But his place was with the Emperor. And surely, he could return now?

Mahabat’s horse trudged through the rain. He kept his head bowed, seeing glory for himself in the dark wetness. The shivers that beset his body, the ache in his thighs from so long in the saddle, the constant hunger for sleep, none of these mattered.

His army followed the path Prince Khurram had taken; they stumbled upon the dead elephant drowning in the rains upon the hillside, then came to the edge of the empire. Here the tracks from Khurram’s entourage moved into Golconda. Mahabat and his army rode around the perimeter looking for further marks, hoping that the original tracks were false, and that Khurram had moved off the road in another direction. But no, he had gone into the enemy kingdom with his wife, his children, and his army.

Mahabat stayed at the border for two more days, and then turned back to Burhanpur, dragging the ever-complaining Prince Parviz with him. It
was
a victory of sorts. Khurram would not be a threat anymore—and so he wrote to Mehrunnisa and Jahangir in a letter sent by runner immediately upon his arrival at Burhanpur. And there, between the lines, he implored to return to court to give a personal accounting of his campaign.

A few months later, Khurram sent his father a letter begging pardon. He did not want to live in exile anymore, though the Golconda king had been welcoming, even generous, to an old enemy. But Golconda was not home; the empire was.

From Lahore, Mehrunnisa set harsh terms for his surrender.

Khurram had to send a million rupees to the imperial treasury. Two of his sons were to be escorted to the imperial court as security against further rebellion. Khurram had to give up any claims on the forts of Asir and Rohtas. The prince agreed and took his family to Nasik on the Arabian Sea. He was officially in exile, although still on the empire’s soil.

News of Mahabat’s defeat of Prince Khurram spread all over the empire. Mahabat Khan was fifty-five years old and had routed a prince about half his age. He was a brave soldier. Once, when Jahangir had first come to the throne, people could not take the Emperor’s name without saying Mahabat and Sharif’s too in the same breath. Mehrunnisa had changed all that. Now Jahangir was synonymous only with his twentieth and most powerful wife.

•  •  •

A gray, ghostly dawn chiseled at the edges of night on the eastern horizon over Lahore. In this thin light, the city sweepers began their work, washing down the cobbled stones with water, using thick jute brooms to swirl the dirt away. Milkmen brought their cows to doorsteps to rouse sleepy maids, and they gushed sweet, frothing, warm milk into earthenware jugs. An hour later, the lamplighters would arrive to douse and clean the streetlamps.

The many palaces of Lahore Fort slumbered densely in the cool of the early morning. Lights flickered here and there, in verandah arches, in niches set in the sandstone walls, at the western entrance to the fort, the Hathi Pol, and along the ramparts.

In one palace, the sesame oil lamps had been lit early the previous evening and still burned fervently, fed through the long and tiring night.

Ladli wailed, the cry drawn from deep within her. The sound curled through the lushly appointed apartment, bounced off the mirrorwork-embellished walls, and flew out the open windows into the coming dawn. Blood flooded her face as she gripped her eyes shut, breath knocked out of her lungs, her lower body straining. Then she sank back on the divan. “Mama.”

“I am here,
beta.
” Mehrunnisa leaned over her daughter and rubbed her face gently.

Ladli clutched at her hand, grinding her fingers in a tight vise. “It hurts, Mama. It hurts.”

“I know,
beta,
” Mehrunnisa said. She put her head against Ladli’s, wishing she could take away this pain. Sweat drenched Ladli’s skin and lay her hair in strands across her skull. If it had cooled during the night, neither noticed, for the room was fetid with the smell of perspiration and the blood that soaked through the white satin sheets of the divan under Ladli. The birthing had started hours ago, so many hours ago now, Mehrunnisa thought. At first it had been almost easy, a deepening ache in Ladli’s lower back, and the happy anticipation of the child who was to come. They had talked and laughed,
who would he look like? How much hair would be on his head?
There was going to be a new life, one that would belong to them. In these early hours, Mehrunnisa felt the crushing weight of the past few months rise from her. Khurram was forgotten, the empire even forgotten, although the worrying letters from Burhanpur lay on her lap.

Ladli ate
ghee
-roasted cashews, pistachios, and sultanas by the handful, drank new milk from a water buffalo, all to help her keep her strength. Midwives flitted in and out of the chambers, and Hoshiyar stood in one corner, so proud and upright that he might have been the expectant father. Mehrunnisa remembered Ladli’s birth, how hurried and frightening that had been, how much she had ached with yearning to see her child after all those miscarriages. How fierce that want had been. Some of that yearning returned now, but it was pleasurably so, for a boy was to be born. A prince, a future Emperor.

And then Ladli’s pains started to come faster, nearer each other. Mehrunnisa put down the letters from Burhanpur and sat by her daughter. She shouted at the midwives huddling around the bottom of the divan. What was happening? It is all the process of birth, your Majesty, nothing to worry about. The night progressed, and Ladli screamed, over and over again, drowning out Jahangir’s coughs in the nearby apartment, until Mehrunnisa could only hear her voice, could not think of Burhanpur, or the hacking, terrible sound of her husband’s lungs.

Another contraction came ripping through, and Ladli jerked off the divan to sit upright, knees pulled against her chest. She shouted with pain, almost into Mehrunnisa’s ear, unwilling to let go of her mother’s hand.

Above her screams, Mehrunnisa yelled at the midwife, “Do something!”

The woman cowered but found voice enough to say, “It is not for me to do something, your Majesty. The princess has to push, the baby is stuck.” She reached between Ladli’s legs, her fingers slipping over the smooth black head showing there. Why would the child not come out? It should have been relatively simple at this stage. A few pushes and the baby should be out. But the head stayed where it was, and Ladli’s belly swelled and ebbed as her body strained to release the child.

Another plume of blood gushed out and blossomed on the sheets. The midwife, old and gray from this lifelong work, stupidly raised her bloodied hands in the air.

“I cannot get my fingers around the child, your Majesty,” she said, trembling at the fire in Mehrunnisa’s eyes. “Please ask the princess to remain seated, it will help bring him out.”

Mehrunnisa lunged over Ladli at the midwife, waving wildly to tell her to put away her hands, but it was too late. Ladli had seen the blood. She started to cry, in huge sobs. “Oh, Mama, I am going to die. Look, I am going to die.”

“Get her out,” Mehrunnisa said to Hoshiyar, and he unceremoniously dragged the midwife from the room. Another midwife took her place; she was younger, but with a wise face.

“What are we to do?” Mehrunnisa said to the midwife.

“The princess must sit, your Majesty. But in a moment . . .” She bent to prod and pull against Ladli, then with her hands still down, she looked up and nodded.

Mehrunnisa and Hoshiyar hoisted Ladli up and put a few cushions under her back. When the next contraction started to blight her face, Mehrunnisa put an arm around Ladli, leaned close to her ear, and said, “Now,
beta.
Try as hard as you can. I am here. So is Hoshiyar, nothing will happen to you. All right?”

Ladli nodded, looking only at her mother, and heaved inside. Through the pain and wrenching of her body, she could feel the child’s shoulders slip through, and then the torso, and then, finally and with relief, the legs.

The midwife expertly cut the umbilical cord and cleaned the child while Ladli lay back, breathing heavily.

Mehrunnisa turned to the midwife. “Is the child alive?”

“Yes, your Majesty,” the woman mumbled, still swabbing at the baby. She held it upside down, away from Mehrunnisa, and slapped it lightly on the back. A massive, healthy bawl filled the room. Hoshiyar shouted with laughter, his bushy moustache swinging up to his ears. Ladli clung to Mehrunnisa, one arm around the eunuch, tears flowing from her to wet her mother’s
choli.
They put their heads together and prayed, laughing and crying at the same time.

“Thank you, Allah,” Mehrunnisa said. “Thank you for that glorious sound.” Then, she said, “Bring him here, so we can see him.”

The midwife wrapped the child in the red cotton cloth offered by another slave, and held the child up. Her arms trembled. “It is a girl, your Majesty.”

For the next few minutes, no one spoke. Ladli, still sobbing with happiness, had not heard, but Mehrunnisa and Hoshiyar were still. The midwife shivered, holding in her arms the child no one reached out for yet. The baby was well swaddled, her dark and lush hair visible above the cloth, her cries stopped.

And so long moments passed. This was a trick, Mehrunnisa thought, she had misunderstood the midwife, or she had not seen the child properly . . . but no, the midwife would not dare make such a mistake, not when her life depended on it. It
was
a trick though; fate had tricked her out of a male grandchild.

“I want the child.” Ladli put her arms out.

Mehrunnisa watched as Ladli touched the child’s face with wonder, her fingers light and questing over a perfectly formed ear, over the sweep of hair still wet from the womb, the thinly traced eyebrows, the pink mouth, and a funnily stubborn chin. The baby’s eyes were a dark blue—she had Mehrunnisa’s eyes. One little hand, fingernails long, clutched the end of the cloth, and when Ladli uncurled the fingers, they wrapped around hers. She laughed with delight.

“Look, Mama,” she said, her face lit from inside with such joy that Mehrunnisa could not help laughing with her. As she did, tension drained from the room, let out through the windows into the now golden glow of the morning. Ladli unwrapped the child carefully, and then smiled again. “A beautiful little girl. I shall call her Arzani. What do you think, Mama?”

“A lovely name,
beta.
A lovely name.” Suddenly exhausted, Mehrunnisa kissed her daughter on the cheek and laid her lips against the soft skin of the baby’s feet. She then rose and went from the room, Hoshiyar following her out to Emperor Jahangir’s apartments.

Mehrunnisa crawled into bed next to her husband and put her head against his chest. With her ear so close to his lungs, she could hear his breath march in and out in loud, rhythmic rasps. But at least sleep had come to rest his body and his mind. Mehrunnisa did not sleep, though. So much hope had lain with that child. Every dream of hers, every wish for the empire, for her life . . . now none of those would come true.

For Shahryar too, of course. Shahryar had little importance on his own. He had gone to Qandahar and tried to regain the city, but the Shah of Persia now had a strong foot in it and was not shaken off. If the Emperor died now, or soon, no one would turn to the
nashudani.
Now there was no male heir to give Shahryar prestige.

“They are still young, Mehrunnisa.”

She looked up at Jahangir, her vision blurred. She knew it was stupid to cry for this, but the wanting had made her weak, she could not help herself.

He rubbed away the tears from her face. “There will be other children,” he said.

“How do you know?”

“The slaves came to me,” he said. “But there will be other children, and soon, a son for Ladli and Shahryar.”

“Yes, your Majesty.” Jahangir was right. Now her hopes must rest on future children.

“Did you read the letters from Burhanpur?” he asked.

Missives had come from the southern border of the empire, one after another. Most were filled with praises for Mahabat Khan’s victory over Prince Khurram. Even here, at Lahore, Hoshiyar bent time and again to fill Jahangir and Mehrunnisa’s ears with tales of what was being said of Mahabat Khan.