Shadow Princess

by Indu Sundaresan

  The corridor was now crowded with eunuchs and maids, holding the cloths of their turbans or their veils to their noses to keep from smelling the awful stench of burning flesh. The fire had spread through the curtains on the verandah arches—but the brick and sandstone walls of the fort quenched its ravage. Ishaq beg came tearing from his bed, knelt heavily by his unconscious princess, then lifted her in his arms to carry her away, his face streaming with tears.

  The two slaves lay where they had fallen—in a heap, charred to ashes on the stone floor.

  • • •

  The news spread swiftly on the heels of the imperial runners, and the Empire held its breath, waiting to hear more about the fate of the Begam Sahib. Every day, crowds of veiled women gathered in masses around the zenana’s main gates, begging for any bit of information about the woman who had been so generous to them in their times of need. They brought gifts for her—a gold medallion which was a treasured family heirloom, rough-hewn toy carts and soldiers that their sons had made, baskets of vegetables scrabbled out of the hard, unforgiving dirt of their gardens, water lilies from ponds, pink-fleshed guavas they had stolen from an amir’s estate.

  In Burhanpur, Prince Aurangzeb stared in disbelief at his father’s broken and unwieldy handwriting sprawled across the page; when he put the paper to his face, it seemed to reek of burning hair. I pray daily to Allah, his father had written, but she seems not to be any better for all of my prayers. Oh, Aurangzeb, what have we done to deserve this tragedy? Where have I gone wrong? Is it, as the Hindus say, a sin of my past life come to revisit me now? She lies before me even as I write, still and unmoving, her breath so shallow that I have to lay my ear upon her chest to assure myself that she is still alive. Dara and I take turns at her bedside, watching her through the nights. If I could give up my life for your sister, I would—the Empire is nothing compared to this sorrow.

  Aurangzeb covered his face with his hands and wept, and the sound of his harsh sobs was the first indication to the ladies of his zenana that something was amiss. His first wife, Dilras Begam, made a movement with her hand, and the music in the gallery above stilled abruptly.

  “What is it, my lord?”

  “Jahanara is unwell,” he said slowly, lifting a tear-streaked face to her.

  “A fever?” she asked, her features toughening from their normal prettiness. She was aware of her husband’s near obsession with his older sister, whom she considered cold and distant toward them all. Why, the gifts at the wedding had been paltry, and she, Dilras, was a descendant of the Shah of Persia—surely more was due to her position and status. Dilras overlooked, while in these unpleasant ruminations—made more so by a raging envy that Aurangzeb’s attention seemed not to be all her own—the fact that the Shah of Persia had conveniently forgotten the connection, and that the Mughal emperors were the highest royalty in the land and she had been fortunate to be connected to the imperial family.

  He handed her his father’s letter. “I have to find Mirza Najabat Khan.”

  He instructed his men and his household to prepare for the journey to Agra that very night, and they set out at the first glimmer of dawn, riding hard through the heated days, barely resting when darkness came. Aurangzeb had spent his last night at Burhanpur arguing with Dilras about the necessity of going to Agra and giving orders to his generals on the management of the armies and the need to be alert at all times against the threat from the Deccani kingdoms—this last he did perfunctorily, since he knew the men to be as able commanders as he; most of them had spent their lives here in this very quest. But the Deccan was his responsibility; after sending him here eight years ago to overthrow Raja Jhujhar, Emperor Shah Jahan had officially given him the viceroyalty of the Deccan, and Aurangzeb had made Burhanpur his headquarters.

  During the trip back to Agra, he had time to think. In recent months, there had been an upsurge of rebellion among his many generals, and he suspected that reports besmirching his character had found their way to his father. He had noticed that Shah Jahan had not asked him to come to Agra to see his sister, but he did not mind that so much, grateful that his father had at least seen fit to write to him and not have the report brought through the impersonal means of the runners who crisscrossed the Empire.

  It was a self-serving letter, he thought at times, as the sun beat down upon his bare head and the earth stretched brown and parched around him, unrelieved by greenery or shade. Bapa always seemed to think of himself first and others later—even in this period of grief, he was more concerned about how he might have brought this to happen and not about what Jahan was suffering.

  Aurangzeb’s entourage entered Agra at the end of April 1644, and he camped on the outskirts with his men and his zenana, knowing that a grown son, with his own household and servants, would not be received within the fort. Or perhaps he knew that he would not be welcome—no matter, Aurangzeb was here for Jahan. He sent word to his father of his arrival and settled down to wait for an appointment.

  In Bengal, Prince Shah Shuja moved more leisurely. He had been away from the imperial court for so many years that he felt the bonds with his father and his siblings fraying; his life was different now, and they were no longer children. He mourned the possible loss of beauty that Jahanara—a woman had so little else to offer—would suffer; it was a shame that this misfortune had occurred, but she did not need her looks anymore; she was old. He thought of all this in a very kind manner, for he was genuinely fond of Jahan . . . or, rather, had been very fond of Jahan. So he waited awhile for more news, and then he heard that both Aurangzeb and Murad were on their way, and he knew that politically it would be prudent for him to be at court also. Thinking thus now, he set out for Agra.

  Four hundred and fifty miles northwest from Agra, in the province of Multan, Prince Murad had also received the report of his sister’s scrape with death. He too was married, a father twice over, more master of his harem than his brother Aurangzeb, who was known to be dominated by his wife. Murad, married to Dilras’s younger sister, was continually appreciative that his father had chosen the more agreeable sister for his wife. So Murad gave his commands, saw that they were obeyed, amassed his men, and set out for Agra. He arrived around the same time Aurangzeb did but was granted his audience with Jahanara before his older brother. Perhaps it was simply luck that it happened so, or perhaps Aurangzeb’s missive had lost its way before being delivered, or perhaps both letters from the two sons had arrived at the same time, but the Emperor’s hand had more naturally stretched to Murad’s first and then, after a week, to Aurangzeb’s.

  Princess Jahanara knew little about her brothers’ movements and would not have cared if she had. Every day that she could open her eyes was a gift from Allah, and her every night was threaded with dreams of pain and terror, some real, some imagined. It would take her a long time to recover—two other women, slaves, had died; she herself could have died if the eunuchs had not risked their lives to save hers. So, she would not know until very late that her Bapa, acting upon pressure from Dara, would offend Aurangzeb. If she had been well, she would have advised caution . . . and Emperor Shah Jahan would have listened to her, as he always did.

  By the time she realized anything, it was too late. And this one little insult would sow the seeds for a turning point in the Empire’s history.

  Twenty-three

  Jahanara . . . was on the verge of death for four months, during which Shah Jahan made only the briefest of appearances at his daily durbar in the diwan-i-am and spent much of his time praying at her bedside. Her brothers returned from their various posts to be with her, and it was in this charged atmosphere that Aurangzeb was dismissed and humiliated.

  —BAMBER GASCOIGNE, The Great Moguls

  Agra

  Saturday, May 21, 1644

  14 Rabi’ al-awwal A.H. 1054

  For the first time in many days, Jahanara felt rested when she awoke. It was early yet, not quite day—the sky outside her window was clotted with twinkling stars, their light fa
ding as she watched. For the first time also, she had not cried out for the relief of opium when her eyes opened or felt the scorch of the burn on her back. For many days after the fire, she could smell her own flesh, putrid and puckered, and, to her mind, still smoldering as the pain blazed through her. She had no recollection anymore of the event itself; she remembered bidding her father good night, remembered exulting in the fineness of her figure, the smoothness of her skin. When she came to this thought, tears inevitably filled her eyes and blurred her vision.

  And she cried again this morning because she had the blessing of a lessening of the pain, and because she knew that the fire had disfigured her. With a shaking hand, she drew the sheet away. Her fingers encountered ridges along the fronts and backs of her thighs, creases against her spine, a raised fold of flesh along the right side of her waist. She turned her face into her pillow and cried with great, heaving moans. The blemishes would never go, even years from now, if she lived that long; patches of discoloration on her body would show the mark of the fire as surely as if it still burned her. She had been proud of herself, thinking as she walked that being thirty years of age was no great difficulty for a royal princess who had her beauty, her immense wealth, the love of her father and her brothers—would it be enough to have just the latter two now? Would she still be revered and respected as she had been? Though who at court would ever see her in this state? She had never presented herself before the amirs and would never do so in the future; any flaws she suffered would be just a myth to the men and to the rest of the Empire. But she had lost something here, something that crushed her vanity, the only weapon a woman had, and had most certainly lost Najabat Khan’s love. He would not find it difficult to replace her, she thought miserably; even if the women of his zenana were not to his liking, there were others, always others, concubines and slaves. And he was a virile, demanding man who would give her his love in words and tokens of affection but would be too disgusted to caress her again.

  “Jahan, are you awake?”

  She turned her face to the door and hurriedly wiped away the tears. Aurangzeb came running into the room on his bare feet and knelt by her side. The imperial hakims had warned them to keep her room as hygienic as possible to avoid infection, and his face and hands dripped with water from a recent washing.

  “You are crying,” he said accusatorily, touching her damp pillow with the back of his hand. “Why? I’m here now and will look after you for as long as you want me.”

  “Aurangzeb,” she said in exasperation. “You appear like an apparition. I thought you hundreds of miles away in the Deccan, and you open the door and bound in without notice. Where is Bapa? Does he know you are here? Does he even know you are in Agra?”

  Aurangzeb grimaced, an ugliness twisting his mouth. He had been a fine figure at sixteen, stocky (he seemed to have stopped growing at fourteen), with a hooked and curved nose, a wide forehead, high cheekbones. All that was unfinished about him at that age had come to completion now, at twenty-six. He had always been restless, she thought, as he moved around on his knees, shifting his weight from one thigh to the other, his hands smoothing her sheet. His knuckles brushed against her hip, and she cried out.

  “Don’t touch me.”

  “Sorry.” He bent to kiss the edge of the mattress, afraid to touch her again, then he raised himself on his elbows and searched her face. “There are no signs of the fire on your neck and above,” he said.

  “I did not know,” she replied. “They have not allowed me a mirror.”

  “I will be your mirror then, Jahan,” he said eagerly, moving as though to divest her of the sheet. “Would you like me to see?”

  “No!” she shouted. “No one must see. No one can see me like this.”

  Behind them, Ishaq opened the door and slipped just inside, his face grim. “Do you wish for the prince to leave, your Highness?”

  Aurangzeb turned in surprise. He rose and stood before Jahanara’s bed, his arms dangling loosely by his sides, his attitude utterly imperial. For a long while the two men—one a mere eunuch, really half a man, the other who had thoughts of being his sovereign—stared at each other.

  “Can you make me leave, Ishaq?” Prince Aurangzeb’s voice was quiet.

  “If necessary, your Highness,” Ishaq said bleakly. “It has been a scant two months since the burning, and her Highness is still grievously unwell. Your presence causes her discomfort, as perhaps it always has—and I beg pardon for pointing out what is, after all, the truth. You should have gained the Emperor’s full permission before coming here today and waited until the princess was ready to receive you. The servants told me of your presence, and I have come in haste only to find you upsetting my mistress.”

  Much of this conversation passed in a blur for Jahanara, for her legs and back had begun pulsating again with little stabs of pain, and she felt the oozing of pus from the burns as the sheet below her became damp, as her breathing seemed to constrict. She shifted in her bed and said, “Go, Aurangzeb. Thank you for coming, but go now.”

  He bent his head and touched her elbow softly, hoping she could feel that little dab. Her features were filled with pain; her gaze had wandered again to the windows and the lightening sky beyond, and her limbs had started to tremble. That was the last lucid sentence he heard from her.

  “I do not approve,” he said finally, assuming the pompous tone he employed when talking of such matters, “of your . . . connection with an amir at court. I had thought it unbecoming then, and I still do now. You are a woman, Jahanara, and should have behaved with more modesty, for in your discretion lies the reputation of the male members of the imperial family.” Ishaq grasped his prince’s hand hard and began to drag him backward. His grip was secure, and Aurangzeb wondered about the courage of this man—did he not feel his head parting from his neck by daring to lay a hand on an imperial prince? Jahanara started to moan, so Aurangzeb cut short his diatribe and ended with “Remember, Jahan, I do this against my best instincts.”

  She had already slipped into oblivion by the time Ishaq Beg pulled Aurangzeb out of her apartments and marched him, not too gently, to the outer doors of the zenana. When he came back, he found another man waiting in the antechamber to his princess’s rooms, seated cross-legged on the floor, his back against the wall, his face tranquil.

  “Come,” Ishaq said, not marveling at Najabat Khan’s presence. “She is asleep and will be for a while now. In her being able to sleep lies her cure, for then she is unconscious of the pain, both physical and emotional. Her brother distressed her, but you I know she wants to see. I am only surprised that Prince Aurangzeb brought you to Agra with him and smuggled you into the zenana. But then, I am surprised by everything he does.”

  Najabat Khan shrugged. “He truly cares for his sister, Ishaq, as much as you and I do—and though he does not approve of”—he hesitated for a moment—“us, and as much as he would like to be as beloved by her as I am, he is an honest man, at least with himself.”

  Ishaq raised his eyebrows, his incredulity clearly evident. “You view the prince differently then,” he said at last. “Everyone must have his opinion, however wrong he may be.”

  They entered the room together to find Jahanara deeply asleep, the sheet twisted around her legs and arms. Ishaq freed the fabric, bathed her bare limbs with cool water, and changed the thin muslin dressings. Before the dressings went on, he lathered her burns with an ointment of calendula and aloe. Another eunuch came to help him lift Jahanara from the bed to a divan while they stripped her sheets and laid out fresh ones. She slept all through, breathing a small sigh of comfort when her body felt the coolness of the new sheets. And all the while, Najabat Khan leaned against the doorjamb, watching the woman he loved.

  “When will she eat?” he asked.

  Ishaq shook his head, washing his hands in a basin of warm water. “I do not know, Mirza Najabat Khan. If we are lucky, she will take a little of a watered-down kichri or a tablespoon of stew. It is hard to say.”


  “Thank you for allowing me to stay. I had no idea that she was so unwell and would never have known if I had not seen this for myself. Can I . . . be here longer?”

  The eunuch turned his sharp gaze upon him. “Until midafternoon. Both the Emperor and Prince Dara spent the night in Princess Jahanara’s apartments—it will be at least that time before they return to her side. I, however, am always here.”

  So when she awoke again, in a few hours, it was to see Najabat Khan at her bedside, seated on a little stool, his hands resting on his knees.

  “The day is full of surprises though it has just begun,” she whispered. “I don’t wish to be vain, but I have never wanted to appear before you like this. If you had stayed away, you would have remembered me as when we first met.”

  He tilted his head, pretending to think. He had taken off his turban and pushed back the hair from his forehead. In all these past years of seeing and more often not seeing him, usually in some shade of semidarkness (for they still had to be cautious), she had not noticed the deep grooves of a more or less permanent frown above his eyebrows. His skin was a blistered brown, as though he had just arrived from a battlefield and a war fought in the arms of the afternoon sun. His silk qaba was white, the loose pajamas he wore below also white—both shot with thin lines of silver. He had been here for a while, she thought, noting the creases on his clothing. How long had she slept?

  “Do you mean when Dara first brought us together all those years ago?” There was a teasing smile in his voice. “I did not see you then, Jahan, merely heard your voice. Little enough for a man to base all his love upon. I will remember holding your body in my arms under a waning moon, the scent of your mouth upon mine, the caress of your fingers.” He watched her struggle with shyness, a blush flooding her face and neck as she turned from him.