CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
The night sky above the courtyard was afire, an overturned jewel box strewn about an ivory moon. They passed through a gateway of carved columns and ornate brackets, into a smaller plaza. The mosque was left behind: around them low were empty pavilions, several stories high, decorated with whimsical carvings, railings, cornices. Now they were alone in the abandoned palace, surrounded by silence and moonlight. Only then did she speak, her voice opening through the stillness.
"I promised to think of you, and I have, more than you can know. Tonight I want to share this with you. The private palace of the Great Akman. The most beautiful place in all India." She paused and pointed to a wide marble pond in the middle of the plaza. In its center was a platform, surrounded by a railing and joined to the banks by delicate bridges. “They say when Akman's court musician, the revered Tansen, sat there and sang a raga for the rainy season, the clouds themselves would come to listen, and bless the earth with their tears. Once all this was covered by one magnificent canopy. Tonight we have only the stars."
"How did you arrange this?" He still was lost in astonishment.
"Don't ask me to tell you now. Can we just share this moment?"
She took his arm and motioned ahead. There, glistening in the moonlight, were the open arcades of a palace pavilion. I've prepared something especially for us." She guided him through a wide-open archway and into a large arcade, illuminated by a single oil lamp atop a stone table. In front of them, on the walls, were brilliantly colored renderings of elephants, horses, birds. She picked up the lamp and led him past the paintings and into the next room, a vast red chamber whose floor was a fragrant standing pool of water. In the flickering light he could see a marble stairway leading to a red sandstone platform projecting out over the water, supported by square stone columns topped by ornate brackets.
"This is where Akman spent the hot summer nights. Up there, on the platform, above a cooling pool of rosewater. From there he would summon his women to come to him from the zenana."
Hawksworth dipped his fingers into the water and brought it to his lips. It was like perfume. He turned to he and she smiled.
"Yes, the Sufis still keep rosewater here, in memory of Akman." She urged him forward, up the stairs. "Come and together we'll try to imagine how it must have felt to be the Great Moghul of India."
As they emerged onto the platform, the vaulted ceiling above them glowed a ruby red from the lamp. Under their feet was a thick carpet, strewn with small velvet bolsters. At the farthest edge was a large sleeping couch, fashioned from red marble, its dark velvet canopy held aloft by four finely worked stone columns. The covering of the couch was a patterned blue velvet, bordered in gold lace.
"Just for tonight I've made this room like it was when Akman slept here, with his chosen from the zenana." She slipped the gauze wrap from her shoulders. He looked at her dark hair, secured with a transparent scarf and a strand of pearls, and realized it contrasted perfectly with the green emerald brooch that swung gently against her forehead. She wore a necklace of pearl strands and about each upper arm was a band ringed with pearl drops. Her eyes and eyebrows were painted dark with kohl and her lips were a brilliant red
Without a word she took a garland of yellow flowers from the bed and gently slipped it over his head. Next to the couch was a round rosewood table holding several small brass vials of perfume and incense. "Tonight this room is like a bridal chamber. For us."
A second garland of flowers lay on the bed next to the one she had taken. Without thinking, he reached and took it and slipped it around her neck. Then he drew his fingertips slowly down her arm, sending a small shiver through them both. Seeing her in the lamplight, he realized again how he had ached for her.
"A wedding? For us?"
"Not a wedding. Can we just call it a new beginning? The end of one journey and the beginning of another."
Hawksworth heard a sudden rustling behind him and then a sound. He turned and searched the gloom, where two eyes peered out of the darkness, reflecting the lamplight. He was reaching for his pistol when she stopped his arm.
"That's one of the little green parrots who live here. They've never been harmed, and they've never been caged. So they're unafraid." She turned and called to it. "If they're caught and imprisoned, their spirit dies and their beauty starts to fade."
The bird ruffled its wings again and flew to the top of the bolster beside Shirin. Hawksworth watched her for a moment, still incredulous, then settled himself on the carpet next to a chalice of wine that sat waiting. She reached and touched his arm. "I never asked you what your lovers call you. You're so important, nobody in India knows your first name, just your titles."
"My only other name is Brian." He found her touch had already begun to stir him.
"Brian. Will you tell me everything about you, what you like and what you don't?" She began to pour the wine for them. "Did I ever tell you what I like most about you?"
"In Surat you said you liked the fact I was a European. Who always had to be master of worldly things."
"Well, I've thought about you a lot since then." Her expression grew pensive. "I've decided it's not so simple. There's a directness about you, and an openness, an honesty, that's very appealing."
"That's European. We're not very good at intrigue. What we're thinking always shows on our face."
She laughed. "And I think I know what you're thinking right now. But let me finish. I feel I must tell you this. There's something else about you that may also be European, but think it's just your special quality. You're always ready to watch and learn from what you see. Looking for new things and new ideas. Is that also European?"
"I think it probably is."
"It's rare here. Most Indians think everything they have and everything they do is absolutely perfect, exactly the way it is. They might take something foreign and use it, or copy it but they always have to appear disdainful of anything not Indian."
"You're right. I'm always being told everything here is better." He reached for her. "Sometimes it's even true."
"Won't you let me tell you the rest?" She took his hand and held it. "I also think you have more concern for those around you than most Indians do. You respect the dignity of others, regardless of their station, something you'll seldom see here, particularly among the high castes. And there's a kindness about you too. I feel it when you're with me." She laughed again. "You know, it's a tragic thing about Muslim men. They claim to honor women; they write poems to their beauty; but I don't think they could ever truly love a woman. They believe she's a willful thing whom it's their duty to contain."
She paused, then continued. "But you're so very different. It's hard to comprehend you sometimes. You love your European music, but now I think you're starting to understand and love the music of India. I even heard you're learning the sitar. You're sensitive to all beauty, almost the way Samad is. It makes me feel very comfortable with you. But you're also a lot like Prince Jadar. You're not afraid of risks. You guide your own destiny. Instead of just accepting whatever happens, the way most Indians do." She smiled and traced her fingers down his chest. "That part makes you very exciting."
She hesitated again. "And do you know what I like least about you? It's the feringhi clothes you wear."
He burst into laughter. "Tell me why."
"They're so . . . undignified. When I first saw you, that night you came to Mukarrab Khan's palace, I couldn't believe you could be anyone of importance. Then the next morning, at the observatory, you looked like a nobleman. Tonight, you're dressed like a feringhi again."
"I like boots and a leather jerkin. When I'm wearing a fancy doublet and hose, then I feel I have to be false, false as the clothes. And when I dress like a Moghul, I always wonder if people think I'm trying to be something I'm not."
"All right." She smiled resignedly. "But perhaps sometime tonight you'll at least take off your leather jerkin. I would enjoy seeing you."
He looked at her in wonderment. "I still don't
understand you at all. You once said you thought I was powerful. But you seem to be pretty powerful yourself. Nobody I know could force Mukarrab Khan or Nadir Sharif to do anything. Yet you made the governor divorce you, and then you made the prime minister deceive half of Agra to arrange this. You're so many different things."
"Don't forget. Sometimes I'm also a woman."
She rose and began to slowly draw out the long cinch holding the waist of her wrap. Her halter seemed to trouble her as she tried to loosen it. She laughed at her own awkwardness, and then it too came away. She was left with only her jewels and the long scarf over her hair, which she did not remove. Then she turned to him.
"Do you still remember our last night in Surat?"
"Do you?" He looked at her in the dim lamplight. The line of her body was flawless, with gently rounded breasts, perfect thighs, legs lithe yet strong.
"I remember what I felt when I kissed you."
He laughed and moved to take her in his arms. "But I thought I was the one who kissed you."
"Maybe we should try it once more and decide." With a mischievous look she caught his arms and wrapped herself around him. As he touched her lips, she turned abruptly and the world suddenly seemed to twist crazily around them, sending his head spinning. In shock he opened his mouth to speak and it was flooded with the essence of rose.
The pool beneath the platform had broken their fall. He came up gasping and found her lips.
She tasted of another world. Sweet, fragrant. He enclosed her slowly in his arms, clasping her lean body gently at first; then feeling more and more of her warmth he pressed her to him, both of them still gasping. They seemed to float, weightless, serene in the darkness. Awkwardly he began pulling away his wet jerkin.
"You're just as I imagined." Her hands traveled across his chest, lightly caressing his skin, while the lamp flickered against the paintings on the walls above them. "There's a strength about you, a roughness." She nuzzled his chest with her face. "Tonight will you let me be your poet?"
"Tonight you can be anything you want."
"I want to sing of you—a man I adore—of the desire I feel for you. After we know each other fully, the great longing will be gone. The most intense moment we can ever share will be past. The ache of wanting."
"What you just said reminds me of something John Donne once wrote."
"Who is he?"
"One of our English poets and songwriters. But he had a slightly different idea." He hesitated, then smiled. "To tell the truth, I think I may like his better."
She lifted herself up in the water, rose petals patterned across her body. "Then tell me what he said."
"It's the only poem of his I can still remember, but only the first verse. For some reason I'll never forget it. I sometimes think of it when I think of you. Let me say it in English first and then try to translate.
"I wonder, by my troth, what thou and I
Did, till we lov'd? Were we not wean'd till then?
But suck'd on country pleasures, childishly?
Or snorted we in the Seven Sleepers' den?
'Twas so; but this, all pleasures fancies be;
If ever any beauty I did see,
Which I desir'd, and got, 'twas but a dream of thee."
She listened to the hard English rhythm and then to his translation, awkward and halting. Then she was silent for a moment, floating her hand across the surface of the pond.
"You know, I also wonder now what I did before I met you. Before I held you."
She slipped her hands about his neck, and as she did he drew her up out of the water and cradled her against him. Then he lifted her, her body still strewn with rose petals, and carried her slowly up the marble stairs to the couch of Akman. He felt her cling to him like no woman ever had, and as he placed her on the bed, she took his face in her hands and kissed him for a long moment. Then he heard her whisper.
"Tonight we will know just each other. And there will be nothing else."
And they gave each to each until there was nothing more to give because each was the other. Together, complete.
The Moghul Page 41