Shadow Princess

by Indu Sundaresan

  They went thus in a scattered procession and swung out into the wide expanse of the lake at the end of the canal. The snowstorm, if it could be called that, had subsided as inaudibly as it had come into a flutter of white in the sky. Even in that short time, the half hour it had taken for Najabat to row them to the lake, snow had piled on the mountains, whitening their peaks; the houses on the edge of the lake had mantles of white on their wood roofs; the branches of the trees were carved out against the darkness. Only the lake glimmered indigo and black, seemingly untouched by the late-season snow. And around them, lights glowed gold from the houses, boats, and piers.

  All the way down, they had been subdued themselves, as though not trusting their voices, with only the mellifluous and rhythmic dip of the oars to keep them company. At first, Jahanara had searched Najabat’s face with her intense gaze, and then, perhaps a blush had come over her skin—he could not tell—and she had turned to the banks of the canal to present him with her profile. Najabat had not taken his eyes off her, except to rest them upon the slender line of her neck, the unseen hands folded now in a fox fur muff in her lap, the sway of her shoulders as the shikara rocked. When they broke into the lake, the skies opened up above them, still gray with snow-bearing clouds. Their escort spread out into the waters, at enough of a distance now that the boats were mere specks.

  “Are we not to speak, your Highness?” Najabat said finally, resting his aching arms and allowing the shikara to drift.

  “I wonder,” she said, with a deep breath, “if I did right in coming here tonight.”

  “If you had not,” he said simply, “I would have had no way of contacting you again.”

  “And yet, it was for you to do so.”

  “I spoke at great length about my folly to your sister,” he said. “I listened too much, paid too little heed to my own feelings. . . . I was wrong.” He said more, all that he had told Roshanara, even his last words to her and how he had been mistaken in thinking her to have been Jahanara at the encampment.

  “So what now?” Princess Jahanara said. She removed her hands from the muff and laid them on the sides of the boat. “What are we to do?”

  He wiped his face and chin of the wet, melting snow. “I, a commander of five thousand horses in his Majesty’s service, have been a coward, your Highness. I have been afraid, uncertain of the Emperor’s temper if he were to find out. . . . But I was curious, I admit it readily.” He chuckled. “It is not every day that a royal princess commands an amir to her side, and when I began to think of the consequences of being discovered, it weakened my resolve. Now, if you will have me, I will not betray you again.”

  Najabat reached forward and took her warm hands into his own. She slipped her hands out of his clasp and held his instead, rubbing her fingers over his frigid skin.

  “This is not a game to me, Mirza Najabat Khan,” she said. “I have . . . given my heart to you. Perhaps it sounds foolish, perhaps I ought not to be talking like this either—”

  “I know,” he said. “I also know that my heart is yours until I die. If we were other people—more common, less important—we would have had the succor of the rituals of everyday life, a marriage and children. But as it stands, the Emperor will not allow you to be taken from his zenana to grace mine, and I understand his sentiments readily; they are no less than I feel myself. But if you will permit me to be your husband, and will let it be our secret . . .” He shook his head in disgust. “I am a soldier, your Highness, with no words within me for courting or poetry. I fear that I do not say what I want to well enough.”

  “So we are to live our separate lives,” she said carefully, and Najabat felt an ache in his chest at her words. “And meet every now and then.”

  He shrugged. “So it would seem Allah has ordained for us. Little snatches of happiness.”

  He picked up the oars again and began to row.

  “What will happen after my Bapa dies, Mirza Najabat?” she asked.

  “I do not know, your Highness,” he said frankly, glancing over his shoulder as the shikara glided through the water. “It depends on who will wear the crown.”

  “Dara,” she said decisively. “Why would you doubt that?”

  He looked at her in surprise. “I beg your pardon, Highness, but there is no such certainty. Prince Dara Shikoh has his Majesty’s favor, but the nobles at court . . . we all think of Prince Aurangzeb as being more qualified. He has courage, that young man, and an unwavering resolve. And he is polite, well mannered—all that a royal prince should be.” He stopped abruptly, sensing he had said too much. It was not the first time he had heard of Jahanara’s love for Dara, and he had hoped for it to be just a rumor, because Dara was impudent, irreverent, too flighty for them to consider as an Emperor. He was like a well-groomed horse, petted and cared for, and not put through its paces daily. Even Prince Shuja had gone to the Deccan to aid Mahabat Khan in the fight there—a battle they had lost, true, but his mettle had been tested at war. Princes who lived in the soft lap of the imperial court could not rule over an unruly Empire, with its fluid boundaries and its insurgencies within. And yet, though Aurangzeb was also still at court and untried as a soldier, he was vocal and he had tact. After the news of Dara’s insult of Sadullah Khan had spread through the court, Prince Aurangzeb had sent him a magnificently caparisoned elephant and four horses as a gift, supposedly for no reason, in actuality as an apology for his wayward older brother. The amirs had spoken of the gift also, though Sadullah Khan had merely acknowledged it and said nothing; it created an aura of goodwill around the young Aurangzeb. That, Najabat thought, and his brashness at the elephant fight nearly a year ago, when Dara had fled and Aurangzeb had faced the raging Sukhdar. The nobles had long memories, and, in the end, the Empire would come to rest only in the safekeeping of the man who had their support—it was a simple and inviolable rule for governing over such a large and unwieldy Empire.

  “I cannot agree with you,” Jahanara said finally. “Dara will be Emperor after Bapa. His Majesty himself thinks so.”

  “Why, your Highness?” Najabat asked gently.

  “It will go against all laws of nature to put a younger son on the throne while the eldest is willing and able to rule,” she said stubbornly, and then she had the grace to redden, for she never forgot that Shah Jahan was the third son, that he had caused Prince Khusrau’s death, that on the way to the throne that was now his, other brothers and cousins, older or not, had died.

  Najabat released the oars and clasped her hands to kiss them. “Then we will have to disagree with each other on this, Jahanara. It matters little to me. I would have insisted, I freely admit, that my wives have the same opinions as mine, but you are to do as you will. I only beg that you be careful, that if I give you information that comes from court, you will listen and use it to your advantage. In your well-being lies mine, my love.”

  It was the first time he had used her name and called out to her with words of love.

  But she only replied, “I am not used to being told what to do, Mirza Najabat.”

  “Then I will not speak further.”

  They had docked now at another pier, on the eastern bank of Dal Lake. A long row of lanterns, dusted with snow, their light muted, framed the outer edges of the dock and led the way up a path to a haveli, its windows picked out by the glow of diyas inside.

  “Where are we?”

  “At my house,” he said. “I have been bold, as you see, bringing you here without your permission.”

  She was silent for a long while, her eyes shining with laughter when she looked up at him. “Not today,” she said.

  He felt a pang of frustration. She was lovely and, to him, unreachable. Whatever she wanted, however, he would give her.

  “When then?” he asked.

  “Tomorrow.” She signaled into the dark night, and a shikara came up to dock by their side. Ishaq Beg helped her in.

  “You must learn to wait, Mirza Najabat Khan,” she said as the boat moved away toward the w
estern bank of the lake above which the Hari Parbat fort was illumined in streaks of light. “We have, after all, the rest of our lives.”

  • • •

  They met the next day as the sun pulled into the horizon, leaving skies wrought in russet red, ocher gold, and tangerine orange. It had been a long day for Jahanara, heavy with anticipation, her skin tingling, her every nerve on edge. She had thought of nothing, and no one, but Najabat. In the early morning a missive had come to her from her Bapa, a gilded farman rolled and reposing on a bed of green silk.

  “Take it away,” she had said to Ishaq. “There is no time today for matters of state. Take it away and tell Bapa I said so.” This last imperiously.

  “You should look at it, Highness,” Ishaq had said, eyes aglitter.

  “No. Order my bath, bring out my clothes and my jewels and my perfumes. Not today, Ishaq.”

  “Perhaps you would consider bathing in the garden, your Highness,” Ishaq said slyly. “The view is quite magnificent from there.”

  Princess Jahanara Begam reached then for the farman and opened it. Her first surprise was to see the letter in Bapa’s hand; he usually let the court scribes earn their keep. Her second was that it was addressed to her.

  My darling Jahanara, forgive me if I intrude upon your time when we are here on a holiday, but the business of the Empire must be conducted as usual—there is no rest for kings, or indeed their offspring. Perhaps this is not truly the Empire’s business, but when a king writes to his daughter—a royal princess whose every word must be of as much importance as his own—it is no less than that. I have seen you admire the Nur Afza garden that my father commissioned, and so . . . it is yours now, my child. Change the name if you wish, do anything that takes your fancy, but if I may suggest—call it still Nur Afza, “Light Increasing,” for your presence there, my dearest daughter, can mean only an increase in the garden’s brilliance. The royal seal reposes with you; use it at the bottom of the letter so this might become an official order.

  “Why now, Ishaq?” Jahanara had asked, bemused, even as her eunuch brought her the inkwell, the block of ink, a gold cup of water, and the Uzuk in its velvet sack.

  “The princess went to your father last night, your Highness, upon her return from Shalimar,” he had murmured, watching as she laid the seal upon the paper and then taking the Uzuk from her and wiping it carefully.

  “And he gives me a gift the next day,” Jahanara had said.

  When the morning had slipped into the afternoon, Ishaq had an enormous copper bathtub brought into the blue-floored pavilion of the Nur Afza and set in the center. This early in the year, even at midday, there was yet a biting chill in the air; after all, it had snowed on the previous night. So Ishaq had placed coal braziers worked in silver and gold filigree around the edges, their gentle smoke perfumed with tiny sandalwood chips. Jahanara had undressed in this warm fug and stood patiently as slave girls massaged her body with oils flavored with frankincense and camphor. Then she had slipped into the steaming bathwater and lain there, the tiredness of her muscles creeping away, her limbs loose and rested by the end. She had not lifted even a finger in her bath—the servants had soaped her arms and legs with the froth of soap nuts, washed her hair in chamomile and kesu flowers, dried it over a brazier with the scent of the sandalwood threading its way through the strands. They had smoothed her hair, braided it, and pinned it to her head with pink and white pearls. More eunuchs had brought in outfits, holding each reverently—ghagaras dripping with diamonds and pearls, rubies and emeralds, cholis so thickly embroidered in zari that they were more gold than cloth, veils so delicate and gossamer that each could be pulled through a finger ring. They had laid out her jewels in velvet cases on the floor of the baradari, and Jahanara had chosen the set she wanted to wear by pointing at it—pearls and rubies, sprinkled with tiny diamonds, for her ears, her neck, in a long chain at the parting of her hair, bangles that rode up to her elbows. When the veil had cascaded over all this finery, she had turned to Ishaq Beg, suddenly anxious. “Will he like me?”

  The eunuch had bowed, words caught in his throat. He was but half a man, and yet he could barely talk when he looked at his mistress; her beauty, at this moment when she went to meet her lover, was of a quality he had never seen before. “Mirza Najabat Khan would be a fool not to, your Highness,” he had said. “May I accompany you?”

  “No.” She was already moving away, the fabric of her skirts swishing over the floor, her mind, her heart, her every sense already given to Najabat.

  Now this, Jahanara thought, as they stood in Najabat Khan’s house on the edge of the lake, watching the sun set. His hand, warm and sturdy, was at her waist. He was standing close to her, and she could almost hear the rapid beating of his heart. All of her confidence and bravado had melted into nothing by the time she had reached the pier and found him waiting there, and she had barely been able to look at him. Now she did, meeting his gaze, feeling the skin of her face heat as his eyes dropped to her mouth. She bit her lip. The past few times she had been with him, it was in the blue-black light of the night, his eyebrows shadowing his cheeks, his presence felt more than seen.

  “Come,” he said softly. “I do not wish to hurry you, my love, but we have so little time. When do you have to be back at the fort?”

  “By morning,” she said.

  He placed a finger on her mouth and tugged the lower lip free from her teeth. When she began to smile, he dipped his head and kissed her. The hand on her waist was joined by the other, and he turned her fully into his arms. She raised her hands to clasp around his neck, breathing in his scent, feeling loved and wanted. When he led her to the divan in the room, she did not resist, following where he went hungrily. The back of her choli was threaded through cherry-size pearls, and she waited, her eyes sparkling with laughter, as he undid them one by one, kneeling at the back. Doing them up had taken her slave girls close to an hour; under Najabat’s impatient hands, the choli slipped off her shoulders in ten excruciatingly long minutes.

  “Are you afraid?” he asked, his face pressed against her body.

  “Not anymore. This I have wanted for a very long time,” she said simply, bending to kiss his forehead. When he gathered hold of her again, she saw that he was trembling, and soon she forgot everything around her—the deepening gold from the diyas’ light, the shimmer of silk under them, the warm room, the skies turning blue and then indigo. This was indeed love, she thought, this bliss in a lover’s arms, the taste of his skin, the touch of his lips upon her, the oblivion of lust.

  • • •

  The imperial party returned to the Indo-Gangetic plains in September, even as the air in the valley of Srinagar cooled in anticipation of the coming winter and the green of the trees turned to the yellows, ambers, browns, and reds of autumn. The scenery, the stay itself had been restful for all of them, and the normal business of the court was conducted even so far a distance from Lahore and Agra. The passes were open, and every day, runners sprinted through in both directions, into the mountains and down to the plains, bringing news from every corner—minor rebellions quashed, sons and daughters born to vassal kings and governors, and Mahabat Khan’s death far south in the Deccan.

  This last was the one piece of news that had jolted the amirs and the Emperor alike—they had not even known that the Khan-i-khanan was ailing, and now there was the information of his death. The law of escheat required all of the Mughal general’s vast property to revert to his Emperor—and it did, nominally, before Shah Jahan graciously bequeathed the whole upon Mahabat Khan’s heirs. He kept, however, Mahabat Khan’s stable of elephants, fine, rigorous animals so cherished that they had been brought up on a diet of lotus leaves and pods and Persian melons. More troublesome was to find an adequate Commander in Chief for the Mughal imperial forces, a man who could be respected, followed, supported by the nobles, and Shah Jahan gave the post to Abul Hasan, his father-in-law and grandfather to his children. Abul had little experience in war, more in the fiel
d of cunning, for it was he who had captured the throne for Shah Jahan, and this was payback. Abul’s rank was elevated to seven thousand horses, his personal income raised, and his wealth now made him richer than any other man in the Empire except for the Emperor himself and the royal princes. And, of course, Jahanara.

  A month after they had settled back in Agra, Prince Aurangzeb celebrated his sixteenth birthday. There was no weighing this time, but Emperor Shah Jahan gave him his first rank at court and made him a commander of ten thousand horses. A few months later, he was sent to conquer the rebellious Bundela king in the south. Just as he had predicted, Aurangzeb was banished from court, never to return again as a cherished son (which he had never been), unless . . . he came to don the crown to the Empire. But, as matters stood with Dara—treasured and valued Dara—the only way Aurangeb could rule the Empire would be to wrench the crown from his father’s head and murder his brother. That, he thought gloomily as he rode away, he could not even dream of doing.

  When he departed, there was only one other brother besides Dara still at court—Murad, who was ten years old, still a child, very much, actually, a child, who had none of Aurangzeb’s fiery and impossible ambitions. So Aurangzeb left behind two brothers and two sisters—one who had promised to be his ally in all things political for purely personal reasons; one who was staunchly Dara’s ally in all things political and personal for no reason at all, or so it seemed to Aurangzeb. But Jahanara did not care what Aurangzeb thought; she had other things on her mind.

  She was pregnant.

  Eighteen

  To prevent dissensions among the three generals, who were practically of equal rank, Shahjahan appointed Prince Aurangzib to the supreme command . . . but Aurangzib’s post . . . was more nominal than real . . . and if he gained any experience it was that of an onlooker. He had nothing to do with the practical side of it.