Empire of the Moghul: The Serpent's Tooth

by Alex Rutherford

  Father and daughter were silent for a minute or two. Then Shah Jahan said, ‘There is some truth in what he writes. I was responsible for the deaths of my half-brothers, but they had to die for the safety of all of you – my children – and of the dynasty. They died so that my sons, full brothers, would never have to face the dangers I had to. I was never easy in my mind about their deaths. Now it seems it was all for nothing … the old cycle of blood, of father against son, of brother against brother, has begun again. I blame myself. I was complacent when I should have been vigilant. I believed the rivalries that have cursed the Moghuls for generations could never happen in my family.’

  ‘You couldn’t have foreseen Aurangzeb’s behaviour.’

  ‘You did – you tried to warn me about him!’

  ‘No. I was worried that you and he were drawing apart but I never dreamed his discontent would lead him to rebel against you or to kill Dara …’ Jahanara’s voice shook. Fighting to retain her composure, she turned back to the rest of Aurangzeb’s letter.

  But now I must raise practical matters. I have wished to be merciful and give you time to adjust to your new circumstances. I have tolerated your abusive and accusing letters as the outpourings of an old man whose mental and physical powers are fading and who cannot accept that the times have moved on and he is no longer emperor. I have also borne your continued refusal over these past months to give up your imperial jewels, but my patience is becoming exhausted. You will either send me what I ask – including Timur’s ring – or I will have them taken from you. I hope you will act with dignity, but the choice is yours.

  Hearing a movement, Jahanara looked up. Her father was on his knees before the leather-bound chest in which he kept his most precious possessions. Taking a key on a slender gold chain from round his neck, he opened the chest and then reaching inside began flinging out the contents – enamelled chains, necklaces of rubies, emeralds and diamonds and heavy gold bracelets. Out they all came to lie gleaming on the carpet.

  ‘Father, what are you doing?’

  ‘He has stolen my throne but some things will never be his … like Timur’s ring, which will go with me to my grave – or this!’ So saying he took out what he must have been searching for – a roll of dark green velvet. Clearing a space, he laid it down on the carpet and unrolled it to reveal a long, triple-stranded necklace of creamy, perfectly matched lustrous pearls. ‘My father gave me this when I won my first battle. It once belonged to my grandfather Akbar.’

  Getting to his feet with some difficulty, with the pearls trailing from his right hand, Shah Jahan walked to the corner of the room and knelt down again, this time next to a large inlaid marble carpet weight. Spreading the pearls out in front of him, he picked up the weight with both hands and began pounding the pearls, crushing some to a powder while others, freed from the silk cord on which they’d been strung, went rolling across the floor.

  ‘Father … Father, please don’t!’ But Shah Jahan paid no attention to Jahanara. There was something frightening about his cold, concentrated expression as he continued to crush the pearls, sending up clouds of filmy white dust. When he had finished, he looked up at her, chest heaving with effort and tears in his eyes.

  Roshanara stared into Jahanara’s face. ‘Timur’s ring must be found.’

  An hour earlier Jahanara had been surprised to hear a fanfare of trumpets, and hurrying outside had been in time to watch the painted elephant carrying her sister in a closed silver howdah that had once been her own make its slow way into the haram courtyard. Roshanara was magnificently dressed in stiff gold-embroidered maroon silk. Gems glittered on her fingers and round her neck while a filet of twisted gold set with rubies was wound through her hennaed hair, which beneath the dye would be as grey as Jahanara’s own. Now she knew what had brought Roshanara back to the Agra fort after all these months.

  ‘I’ve already told you that I don’t know what Father has done with it. He’s surrendered the rest of his jewels … isn’t that enough?’

  ‘No. Timur’s ring is our greatest family heirloom. Aurangzeb says that Father must be brought to his senses.’

  ‘Is that why he has dismissed Makhdumi Khan and sent his head eunuch to be the new governor?’

  ‘Yes. He thinks that Makhdumi Khan was over-indulgent towards our father, encouraging his arrogance and his obstinacy. Itibar Khan understands his duty better.’

  ‘By refusing to allow our father to leave his apartments to walk in the gardens? By further reducing the number of his attendants? By restricting the length of my visits to him?’

  ‘Yes. It is all on Aurangzeb’s orders.’

  ‘It is vindictiveness and spite towards an old man – his own father.’

  ‘Aurangzeb won’t relent until he has the ring. You know how stubborn he can be.’

  ‘Father is stubborn as well, and he has cause to be. Can’t you and Aurangzeb understand how much the ring means to him? Aurangzeb has taken everything else – the peacock throne on which he now sits in the Red Fort in Delhi, the imperial treasuries, all the Moghul palaces and estates. Can’t he show enough greatness of spirit to be content? He pretends to be an emperor but he behaves like a dacoit preying on the weak and vulnerable.’

  ‘I have no voice in the matter. I came to the fort to see you because Aurangzeb asked me to. He believes you could make Father see reason if you wanted to. If you help him in this matter he will make your life more comfortable. Of course, if you refuse …’

  ‘Tell Aurangzeb I will try to persuade Father to give up the ring but not because of his promises or his threats. I will do it for Father’s sake. Every time Aurangzeb demands the ring Father becomes so agitated that I fear for him. I want him to live the remainder of his years quietly and peacefully with no further harassment – just as you should!’

  Roshanara said nothing.

  ‘All these months I’ve waited for some word from you,’ Jahanara continued, her emotions rising. ‘Even if you didn’t wish to visit us, would it have hurt you to write a few words to me or to Father? You must have known how he would react to Dara’s death. Did you know Aurangzeb was planning to send Dara’s head to him? Imagine how he felt when he lifted it out of the bag and saw what it was … Couldn’t you have stopped Aurangzeb doing such a cruel thing, or didn’t you care?’

  ‘I didn’t know what Aurangzeb meant to do,’ Roshanara said slowly. ‘Believe me, if I had I would have tried to dissuade him. But don’t ask me to feel too sorry for Dara. Aurangzeb did what he had to for the sake of the empire.’

  ‘Aurangzeb did what was good for him as he’s always done – just as you’ve always done what was best for you. Why have you really come in your silks and jewels? To make me jealous? Do you think I envy your position as First Lady of the Empire, doing the bidding of a brother with blood on his hands? I just wonder at the woman you’ve become – no conscience, no charity, no compassion – as hard as those diamonds on your fingers.’

  ‘I have nothing to be ashamed of. If my presence is distasteful to you I will leave, though I have some news for you.’

  ‘What news?’

  ‘Our nephew Suleiman has been captured.’

  Jahanara’s thoughts flew instantly to Shah Jahan. He would be grief-stricken. ‘How? What happened?’

  ‘After Dara’s arrest, Suleiman’s army deserted him. He himself tried to flee north but he was betrayed and handed over to one of Aurangzeb’s generals. He was brought to Delhi in chains and appeared before our brother in the Hall of Private Audience. I observed everything from the women’s gallery.’

  ‘What sentence did Aurangzeb pronounce?’ Jahanara’s voice was a whisper.

  ‘He was merciful. He has ordered Suleiman to be sent to the Gwalior fort.’

  ‘To be fed pousta like Murad?’

  Roshanara didn’t answer. Then she said quietly. ‘There is something else you should know. Murad is dead.’

  ‘From the opium?’

  ‘No. The brother of Ali Naqi, the official murd
ered by Murad, petitioned Aurangzeb claiming he and his family had the right to compensation in blood or in money for his death. Aurangzeb acknowledged the justice of his case. He offered him gold but the man refused, insisting on a life for a life.’

  ‘And Aurangzeb agreed, of course,’ said Jahanara. How convenient to be able to get rid of a rival all in the name of the law. Perhaps he had even encouraged Ali Naqi’s brother to come forward …

  ‘Aurangzeb had no choice. He asked the man to forgive him for allowing brotherly sentiment to override duty and had Murad publicly beheaded. Afterwards, he rewarded the man for his determination to see his brother avenged and his refusal to be bought off. As Aurangzeb said, many would have been tempted by the gold.’

  Jahanara’s mind was numb. As if from far away she heard Roshanara say, ‘But now I must leave. Send word to me about the ring.’ Then with a rustle of silk her sister was gone.

  So Murad was dead … At least he had been spared the torments of pousta. But what about the captive Suleiman, perhaps even at this moment already on the long path to destruction by poppy … Her thoughts cleared. Nothing could be done for Murad, but she could still help her nephew. Timur’s ring must be traded for Aurangzeb’s promise not to harm him. Knowing her father as she did, she was certain he wouldn’t hesitate.

  Chapter 24

  Agra Fort, January 1666

  ‘Aurangzeb has refused me. I thought he would. He writes that his campaigns in the south are costly and he can’t afford expensive building projects. He dismisses the idea as an old man’s fantasy and tells me not to raise the question again …’

  Jahanara sighed. Though in her heart she’d known it was unlikely, she’d still hoped that Aurangzeb might be swayed. It had long been her father’s dream to construct a black marble counterpart of the Taj across the Jumna as his own tomb.

  ‘You mustn’t be sad, Father – not on your birthday.’ Jahanara had dressed carefully in her best silks and jewels and sent special instructions to the kitchens for the preparation of her father’s favourite dishes, even though she knew he’d not eat much. His appetite was growing smaller and smaller. Shah Jahan, though, would not be distracted.

  ‘Aurangzeb’s right, of course. I am old. No other Moghul emperor survived to this great age of mine. Akbar, the oldest, was over ten years younger than me when he died.’

  ‘Seventy-four is not so old, Father …’ But even as she spoke Jahanara thought how weary he looked – and how frail. As he neared his birthday Shah Jahan’s strong constitution had begun to weaken and the slow but irreversible decline into deep old age to set in. In the last few weeks he had scarcely ventured from his comfortable apartments overlooking the right-hand bend in the Jumna beneath the fort and beyond that the Taj Mahal.

  How handsome and strong her father had once been as he rode out at the head of his army, but now his once muscular warrior’s frame was wasting away. Time had been unkind to him, as it was to most men, but in his case perhaps not as cruel as his own flesh and blood. In the seven years of Shah Jahan’s imprisonment Aurangzeb had not visited him once nor written a single spontaneous letter. Any important news had continued to come from Roshanara … It was from her sister that she and her father had finally learned of Shah Shuja’s disappearance on the eastern fringes of the empire. In his eagerness to escape Suleiman’s approaching army the prince had ventured into the swamplands ruled by wild Arakan pirates and never been seen again. Of the four brothers who had once been so close, only one had survived … Aurangzeb.

  ‘I was born under the sign of Libra …’ Shah Jahan was continuing. Jahanara guessed what was coming next. She had heard him say it many times before. ‘The conjunction of the planets at the moment of my birth was the same as at the birth of Timur. My grandfather named me Khurram, “joyous”. He said I was “a riband in the cap of royalty and more resplendent than the sun.”’ Shah Jahan looked up at her from the divan where he was resting and such a smile lit his face that for a moment the years rolled back to reveal the man he had once been. She was glad that he could take such pleasure in the past. The present sometimes seemed so bleak, even though Aurangzeb had honoured his promise to make their confinement more comfortable. Their apartments were well furnished and they had enough servants. But what could compensate for their loss of liberty? Often she found her father looking across the Jumna towards the Taj Mahal. It was his dearest wish to be allowed to visit Mumtaz’s tomb and walk in the gardens he himself had planted, but Aurangzeb had repeatedly refused to allow him to leave the fort.

  ‘Father, tell me that story again – the one about how my great-grandfather led you through the streets of Agra on the back of a baby elephant to the imperial mosque school to begin your education. I always enjoy hearing it …’

  It wasn’t a lie. She enjoyed the stories of his boyhood only a little less than he did telling them. Now, as she listened to his soft, low voice, she saw before her a young boy – exactly four years, four months and four days old as tradition demanded – with Akbar by the side of his gorgeously caparisoned elephant, looking excitedly around him as the crowds cheered and flung rose petals … She pictured the beturbaned scholars, Hindus as well as Muslims, grouped at the entrance to the school, waiting to take the child inside so he could begin his education as an imperial prince.

  But when Shah Jahan was still only about halfway through his tale, Jahanara saw his eyes closing and his head beginning to nod forward. He slept so much these days. Rising quietly from her stool so as not to disturb him, she walked to the casement. At first her legs felt a little stiff, but then she herself was getting older – in April she would be fifty-two. Her hair, though still thick, was growing white as the snows of Kashmir she hadn’t seen for so many years. Yet what did it matter how she looked? There were few to see her now …

  From the casement she watched a young boy leading a camel down to the Jumna to drink and other children running along the riverbank and shouting. The sight gave her pleasure, yet their high spirits and simple joy in each other’s company cost her a pang. How narrow and constrained her own existence seemed in comparison. Yet her youth had been full of life and of people – her mother and six brothers and sisters, the endless bustle and activity of the court, their journeyings, the attendants who had become friends, like Satti al-Nisa, now at rest in her tomb in the grounds of the Taj Mahal … and of course there was Nicholas Ballantyne.

  Some months before her death Satti al-Nisa had smuggled a letter from him into the fort. It had come all the way from England – a journey that, from the date, had taken over a year. It had said simply that he had reached home and was living quietly on his brother’s estates but that he missed the heat and colour of Hindustan and of course his friends at court. When she had read the letter her eyes had filled with tears. She’d been relieved that Nicholas had at last returned to his cold, rain-washed island but she’d often wondered whether he could ever find contentment there. The sadnesses of disappointment and unfulfilled hope were part of life, whether that of an imperial princess or an adventurer like Nicholas, just as they were of the most humble peasant.

  Jahanara woke with a start. The pale light of a late winter dawn was filtering into her apartment, throwing into relief the intricate sandstone carving around the casement. Getting up, she walked across to the window and looked out through the mists that so often shrouded the Jumna at this time of year. Suddenly a shiver ran through her, not of cold, even though the morning was a chill one, but of apprehension. She must go to her father, whose frailty had seemed to increase daily since his birthday two weeks before. Without pausing to question her intuition she called for her attendants and quickly began to dress.

  In less than a quarter of an hour, warmly clothed and with a soft Kashmiri shawl drawn across her face in place of a veil, Jahanara was hurrying to her father’s apartments. Two of the haram eunuchs led the way and two of her own female attendants followed. Reaching the ivory-clad doors to her father’s rooms the eunuchs knocked with the ebony staves
of office they carried, and then as the doors were opened from inside stood back for Jahanara to enter. ‘Has my father awoken yet?’ she asked his chief servant, an elderly silver-haired Pathan.

  ‘Yes, Highness,’ he began, and relief flooded into Jahanara as he continued, ‘He was awake about an hour ago when we looked in on him as we now regularly do. He told us he did not wish to rise but asked for a bed to be prepared beneath the domed pavilion just outside his room where he could rest longer.’

  ‘Is he in the pavilion now?’

  ‘Yes, Highness. It didn’t take us long to ready the bed. He was dozing when I passed by ten minutes ago.’

  ‘I will go to him.’ Still feeling an unaccountable unease, Jahanara crossed the richly carpeted room and went through the exterior doors out to the pavilion. Her father was lying on a divan propped against brocade cushions and bolsters and swathed in soft wool blankets and shawls against the early morning cool. A gentle breeze caught a lock of the silver hair protruding from beneath the chintz-patterned shawl framing his head. Jahanara bent and tucked the strand of hair back beneath the shawl. At first Shah Jahan, whose eyes were half closed, did not seem to notice either her touch or her presence. But slowly his eyes opened a little further and focused.

  ‘Jahanara, is that you?’

  ‘Yes, Father.’ Jahanara took his hand. How soft his skin felt. How little flesh there was on his palms and his long fingers.

  ‘Good. I am so glad.’

  For a moment or two neither said anything more. Watching Shah Jahan’s shallow, rapid breathing Jahanara realised her forebodings had not been misplaced. His condition had deteriorated even in the few hours since she had last seen him. Then her father put her fears into words. ‘I feel my life ebbing from me.’ Seeing tears well in Jahanara’s eyes he went on, ‘Do not weep. Every man has his time to die and sometimes I feel I have gone beyond my own. I have no pain, just a sense of the life force draining from me.’ Then his voice strengthened. ‘Before I go, lift me higher against the bolsters so I can see your mother’s tomb.’