Empire of the Moghul: The Tainted Throne

by Alex Rutherford

  ‘I came in the hope that my information will help you save yourself . . . that you will remember it was an Englishman who warned you and be grateful . . . that one day, when you become emperor, as I hope and trust you will, you will favour my country.’

  ‘What do you mean, save myself?’

  ‘Now the empress has set herself on this path she will not stop until she has provoked an open breach – perhaps even war – between yourself and your father.’ Seeing Khurram’s still sceptical expression, Roe shook his head in frustration. ‘Highness, reflect on what I have told you. I swear to you I’m not lying. Ignore my words and you will regret it.’

  For the first time Roe’s earnestness, the passionate conviction in his voice, penetrated the disbelief clouding Khurram’s mind. Mehrunissa . . . Could it really be she – not an ambitious courtier or disloyal officer – who had turned his father against him? If she had indeed become his enemy every perplexing thing that had happened would start to make sense. ‘I don’t know whether I believe you, but I will think about what you’ve said.’

  ‘That is all I ask, except for one favour. As I said, I will shortly be returning to England, but my page Nicholas Ballantyne wishes to remain in Hindustan. He is loyal and intelligent and would serve any master well. Will you take him into your household?’

  ‘To spy and report back to you in England?’

  For the first time Roe smiled. ‘No. I tried as hard as I could to persuade him to return to England. But it is no matter. If you will not take him, Majesty, I will ask one of my acquaintances at court.’

  Asaf Khan’s usually animated face was very still as he listened. After Khurram had finished, he took a moment to respond. ‘It’s hard to say this of my own sister but I believe the ambassador is right. Mehrunissa has turned against you. She plans one day to rule through Shahriyar and you stand in her way. As the ambassador said, people at court have begun to talk about her love of power.’

  Khurram struck the stone column against which he was leaning with his gauntleted hand. ‘How can my father be so blind? Doesn’t he know what’s being said?’

  ‘He does know but chooses to ignore it. Only a month ago, Mullah Shaikh Hassan used his sermon in the Friday mosque to criticise the emperor for allowing the empress to issue imperial decrees. He claimed a woman had no right to do so. He also criticised the emperor for drinking wine, blaming it for clouding your father’s mind and making him fall asleep while attending the meetings of the religious council, the ulama. Mehrunissa wanted the mullah flogged but for once the emperor resisted her and simply ignored the outburst. The mullahs aren’t the only ones to resent Mehrunissa. Some of the commanders – particularly the older ones like Yar Muhammad, the Governor of Gwalior – have complained to me that it is now her seal more often than his which is affixed to their orders, but they express their discontent privately. One of the few who said anything openly to the emperor found himself next day “promoted” to an outpost in the fever-ridden swamps of Bengal.’

  It was early evening. After Roe’s departure Khurram had waited in vain for a summons from his father to go to him in the fort. All day he had been turning Roe’s words over and over in his mind, each time finding them more credible. He had been about to call for his horse and ride up to the fort to demand to see Jahangir when he had thought of consulting Asaf Khan. He better than anyone should have an insight into what might be in his sister’s mind, and as Arjumand’s father he could surely be trusted.

  ‘In harming me Mehrunissa would harm Arjumand and our children. Doesn’t that mean anything to her?’

  ‘No. Having installed herself in Jahangir’s affections, she thinks first of her own interests and then those of her daughter. She will brook no rivals . . . whoever they are. You have been away from court. You could not perceive what I have been unable to ignore. She isolates the emperor. Though I command the Agra garrison, these days I rarely see him. Even when I do, Mehrunissa is always there. She issues my orders as she does those of the other commanders. Her seal dangles from them, stamped with the new title Jahangir has given her. My sister is no longer merely “Nur Mahal”, “The Light of the Palace” – your father has awarded her the title “Nur Jahan”, “The Light of the World”.’

  ‘What does Ghiyas Beg say?’

  ‘Even he has no influence over her. As the comptroller of the imperial revenues, he knew the Badakpur estates were promised to you. When he asked Mehrunissa why they were instead being given to Shahriyar she told him it was no concern of his. My father is a mild man. I never thought to see him so angry.’ Asaf Khan fell silent, then asked, ‘What will you do?’

  ‘This must not continue. I will make my father see me, whether he wants to or not. I will make him understand that the empress has dripped poison in his ear and that I am still his loyal son. I have been away from court too long. When he sees me his love for me will revive.’

  ‘Be careful, Highness. Act with thought as well as passion. If you let your heart rule your head you will be the loser. Heed the ambassador’s warning. Beware Mehrunissa. She is as clever as she is fearless.’

  ‘Don’t worry, Asaf Khan. At last I know who my enemy is – and how formidable. I won’t allow emotion to run away with me any more than I would in battle. I have never been defeated in my campaigns for my father. I will not let his wife defeat me now.’

  ‘I’m sorry, Highness, the emperor left orders he was not to be disturbed.’

  ‘Majid Khan, I know you are a loyal servant to my father. As his vizier you should have his interests at heart, as well as the best interests of the empire. A misunderstanding has sprung up between myself and my father that was not of my making. If I could only have a few moments with him I am certain that I could convince him of my loyalty and heal the rift between us.’

  The vizier’s long, thin face was thoughtful as he gazed at a point over Khurram’s left shoulder. He knows I’m right, Khurram thought, but he’s wondering whether he dare defy the empress. He took Majid Khan by the arm, turning him slightly and forcing him to look into his eyes. ‘I’ve been waiting for three days now for my father to summon me. I’m no Khusrau. I’ve not plotted and schemed for my father’s throne. Surely you know that, Majid Khan. I swear on the heads of my beloved wife and children that all I seek is justice. Look . . .’ Khurram released the vizier and stepped back, pulling his curved dagger from his sash and pushing it into the hands of the startled Majid Khan. ‘Take it – and my sword.’

  ‘No, no, Highness.’ The vizier looked thoroughly embarrassed. ‘I don’t doubt your intentions.’ Then, looking around him as if fearful of being overheard even here in his private apartments in the fort, he lowered his voice and said, ‘Highness, every evening at dusk the emperor has taken to going to his dovecote on the battlements to watch his birds return. He takes no guards or attendants with him for fear of alarming the doves. The empress sometimes goes with him but tonight she is holding a special entertainment in the emperor’s quarters and will, I am sure, be supervising the details personally.’

  The sky was pinkening in the west as Khurram made his way to the battlements, choosing a steep, narrow staircase in the westernmost corner of the fort where as boys he and his brothers had once played at being attackers and defenders. The dust and cobwebs suggested that few people used it these days and he reached the battlements unchallenged, indeed unseen. About a hundred yards ahead he saw the conical dovecote and beyond it an arched door through which lay the wide staircase that he knew led down to the imperial courtyards. When he glanced around there wasn’t even a sentry in view.

  He went a little closer to the cote then drew back into the shadows and waited. In a courtyard below him he could hear attendants talking as they lit the torches and oil lamps. Then he saw a sudden glow against the darkening sky that meant that in the main courtyard by the Hall of Public Audience the great akash diya – a giant saucer filled with oil on top of a golden pole twenty feet high – had been lit. The sight cost him a pang. How familiar it al
l was, from the apricot glow of the lamps to the smell of incense drifting on the night air. This was his world, the place where he belonged. Then a tall bare-headed figure in flowing robes emerged through the arched door and moved towards the dovecote.

  ‘Father!’ Khurram ran towards Jahangir, whose right hand flew immediately to his dagger. In the half-light Khurram caught the gleam of honed steel. ‘Father . . . it’s me, Khurram.’ All his carefully rehearsed words vanished as he flung himself at his father’s feet. He expected to feel Jahangir’s hand on his head but there was nothing. He looked up to see the emperor’s face taut with anger.

  ‘How dare you leap out at me like an assassin?’ Jahangir’s voice was a little thick, as if he had been drinking.

  Stunned by his father’s rage, Khurram rose to his feet. ‘I am no assassin but your son. It is surely my right to see you.’

  ‘You have no rights.’ Jahangir pushed his dagger back into its scabbard.

  ‘It seems not. Since I reached Agra three days ago I have begged you again and again to see me. Why didn’t you answer me?’

  ‘Because I didn’t wish to see you, just as I didn’t order you to abandon your command in the Deccan. In your arrogance you behave just as you please.’

  ‘I came to Agra to discover what I have done to offend you. I can’t carry on when every imperial messenger delivers some fresh snub from you. Why have you sent Shahriyar against the Persians? Why have you given him my lands?’

  ‘It is not for you to question me.’

  ‘If you will not allow me to ask questions at least permit me to tell you what I believe the answers to be. I think that someone has turned you against me.’

  ‘Who?’

  Khurram hesitated, but only briefly. ‘Mehrunissa.’

  Jahangir took a step closer and Khurram was shocked to see how greatly his father had changed during the eighteen months he had been away. His eyes were bloodshot and the skin on his once firm jaw hung slackly. ‘The empress is jealous of the love that you have – once had – for me,’ he forced himself to continue. ‘She fears my influence with you and seeks to replace me in your affections with Shahriyar who has no mind of his own. When he becomes her son-in-law her control over him will be as absolute as her control over her daughter . . . and over you!’

  ‘Enough! Have you lost your senses? It was the empress who begged me to let you marry Arjumand Banu and to give you your first independent command. It isn’t that she fears you but that you resent her influence and her love for me. My father was a great man but one of his mistakes was to make too much of you when you were a boy. You have grown up believing it is your right to be my heir.’

  ‘No, but you encouraged me to think it. You gave me the title Shah Jahan and the right to pitch the scarlet tent.’

  ‘But I did not name you as the next Moghul emperor. It is for me to decide which of my sons succeeds me. I have heard of your arrogant conduct in the Deccan, how you were already behaving as if the throne was yours . . .’

  ‘From whom?’

  ‘I told you before not to question me. Doesn’t your conduct in riding to Agra and forcing yourself into my presence confirm everything I feared about your pride, your heedless, reckless ambition?’ Jahangir’s whole body was trembling. As Khurram looked at him it was as if his father had become a stranger. He had hoped to revive the love he had once had for him but his presence only seemed to be enraging him. A helpless, hopeless feeling that he had never experienced in battle was descending on him but he decided to make one last appeal.

  ‘I came because I wanted to tell you to your face that I am your loyal son. That is all.’ Had his words struck home? Jahangir’s expression seemed to soften a little. ‘I am also the father of sons.’ Khurram tried to press home his advantage. ‘In the years to come they may do things that don’t please me but I hope I will always love them and strive to be fair to them. That is all I ask, Father – justice. You must—’ But to his dismay he heard footsteps and then a qorchi holding a flaring torch in his right hand because it was now almost dark appeared through the arched door.

  ‘Majesty, the empress says that the musicians are ready.’

  ‘Tell her I will be there shortly.’

  As soon as the youth had left Jahangir spoke. ‘I will consider what you have said. Now go, and do not come to the fort again until I send for you.’ Then he turned and disappeared through the doorway. Khurram stood for a moment listening to the cooing of the doves. He would go home and wait as his father had ordered. After all, what else could he do?

  ‘You look troubled. Did one of your doves fail to return?’ Mehrunissa said.

  ‘You know my every mood. No, it’s not my birds that have upset me. Khurram came to me while I was on the battlements.’

  ‘Khurram? How dare he!’

  ‘That is what I said to him.’

  ‘What did he want?’

  ‘To ask why I hadn’t sent for him and to know in what way he had displeased me.’

  Mehrunissa frowned. An attendant came into the room, doubtless to ask whether she wished the musicians on the terrace outside to begin, and she waved the woman away. She hadn’t anticipated that Khurram would find a way of making a direct appeal to his father. Her intention had been that in a further few days – the longer the better to make the humiliation of Khurram all the greater – Jahangir should summon him to the Hall of Public Audience and before all the court censure him for abandoning his campaign in the Deccan and order him back there. In such a forum there would have been no opportunity for Khurram to say the things that had clearly touched Jahangir. But she had underestimated the prince.

  ‘Presumption is one of Khurram’s faults,’ she said.

  ‘He seemed genuinely distressed.’

  ‘Because he knows that his misdemeanours have been discovered. He was trying to rouse your sympathy.’

  ‘He claimed he had done nothing wrong . . . that an enemy was trying to alienate me from him.’

  ‘An enemy? Who?’

  ‘You.’ Jahangir raised his head and looked directly at her.

  ‘But why should I be his enemy?’

  ‘He claims that you crave power and fear he stands in your way.’

  Mehrunissa felt her heart begin to pound but forced her expression to stay calm, even a little scornful. ‘I hadn’t thought his ambition would drive him to such lengths. He knows the love I have for you, how I try to take some of the burden of government from you so that you may concentrate on the important matters of state. That is why he attacks you through me.’

  ‘But why should he do that?’

  ‘Don’t you see?’ Mehrunissa took Jahangir’s hands in hers. ‘If that is what he dares say to you, imagine what outrageous things he will be saying to others! By claiming that a woman rules you he is suggesting that you are no longer fit to rule. He has invented these accusations against me as a pretext for seizing the throne.’

  ‘But in that case why come to Agra, why come to me? He has an army in the Deccan that he could have mobilised against me.’

  ‘It’s all a part of his scheming.’ Mehrunissa released Jahangir’s hands and turned to pick up a glass bottle. She pulled out the stopper, poured some of its contents into a drinking cup and handed it to him. ‘Drink some of this. It will soothe you.’

  Jahangir took a swallow of wine in which he could tell from the slight bitterness opium pellets had been dissolved. It at once began to warm his stomach and after a few moments he took another, larger sip, enjoying the glow beginning to steal through his body. Sitting down on a divan and resting his back against a brocade bolster he stared into the contents of the cup, watching how the ruby liquid caught the light as he held it in his none too steady hands. ‘Go on . . .’

  ‘As I said, I think Khurram has plans to seize the throne. He didn’t make his move while in the Deccan because he wished to test opinion at court. Perhaps that is what he has been doing since he reached Agra – I know for a fact that he had an interview with Majid Khan
. He’s probably been using the opportunity to spread poison about both of us. The reason he sought you out may well have been so that he could say he had appealed to you but you would not listen. I’m sure that before too long his army will appear from the Deccan. With your other main forces away in the northwest with Shahriyar, you are vulnerable.’

  Jahangir drank some more wine but said nothing.

  ‘Khurram is cleverer than Khusrau at disguising his ambitions, but he wants the same thing.’ Mehrunissa came and sat close to Jahangir. ‘It is a terrible thing for a father when his sons are disloyal. It is a tragedy when families divide against one another when they should find strength in unity, but it is the way of the world. You have already had to face it once and now you must again.’ Her tone was sad. ‘Ambition can be a fine thing, but the thought of winning great honours can drive a man to dishonourable acts . . .’

  She was right, Jahangir thought. Hadn’t Shaikh Salim Chishti used almost the same words to him all those years ago? The Sufi had foreseen the disloyalty of Khusrau and Khurram and tried to warn him, just as Mehrunissa was trying to warn him now.

  ‘What should I do?’ Tears of self-pity were pricking his eyelids and he drained his cup.

  ‘Arrest Khurram.’

  Khurram and Arjumand were sitting cross-legged before a low table spread with white cloth. The dishes of food laid out before them – pheasant in a tamarind sauce, roasted lamb stuffed with dried fruits and breads still steaming from the tandoor – smelled appetising. Even so Khurram didn’t feel like eating and looking at Arjumand knew she felt the same. His account of his meeting with his father had shaken her.

  ‘You must eat something . . .’ he was starting to say, but got no further. One of Arjumand’s attendants had burst through the curtained doorway.

  ‘Forgive me, Highnesses, but an urgent message has come for you from Asaf Khan.’