The Feast of Roses

by Indu Sundaresan

  Khusrau’s uncle, his mother’s brother, was Raja Man Singh, a Rajput warrior who had been much respected by Akbar, so much so that the Emperor had given him charge of the most important campaign in Mewar and the governorship of Bengal. When Khusrau was seventeen, his marriage was arranged with the daughter of another influential noble at court, Mirza Aziz Koka. With two such men as his advisors, Khusrau could do little wrong. But in the end, it was their voices that misled him. When Jahangir was yet a prince, Raja Man Singh and Mirza Koka encouraged Khusrau to rebel and try to gain the throne for himself. But the two nobles underestimated not only their authority in the empire but also Jahangir’s influence over the court and Emperor Akbar.

  It was at this time that Khusrau’s mother, Man Bai, died of an overdose of opium. She had watched bewildered as her son fought with his father, as her pleadings made no impression on him. In the end, weakened by this struggle, she killed herself. And so Khusrau, at eighteen, knew that he was responsible for the death of his mother.

  Jahangir became Emperor of Mughal India and crushed his son’s two supporters. Mirza Koka was stripped of his titles and lands, and Raja Man Singh was eventually relieved of his governorship of Bengal. Khusrau was merely imprisoned. But Khusrau had rebelled again . . . and again, fleeing his confinement, trying to muster an army to fight his father, even, at one point, attempting to assassinate Jahangir. The Emperor would not allow his son to be put to death, so Khusrau was blinded instead. Later, physicians were summoned to restore his sight, and they did so, but only partially in one eye.

  Here was Khusrau then, at twenty-four, half-blind and deranged, roaming the gardens of his palace, still plotting the overthrow of his father, but weak in supporters. He had a son, Prince Bulaqi, a potential contender for the empire, but then Khusrau’s other brothers were in line before him.

  Prince Parviz was born of Sahib Jamal, Jahangir’s third wife. Jahangir married her in the same year he married Jagat Gosini. Parviz had early on succumbed to the scourge that afflicted so many members of the imperial family—drink. Of the four royal princes, he was the only one away from court, preferring to stay in the Deccan under the guardianship of the Khani-khanan Abdur Rahim, ostensibly directing the interminable campaign in the south. If Parviz wanted the throne, he had not enough strength to either ask for it or demand it. It was easier for him to rise every day to the soft touch of the women of his zenana, much easier to drown his nights in wine.

  Prince Shahryar had been born of a royal concubine the year Jahangir ascended the throne. He was only six years old, still a child, still untried. Shahryar played with his nurses, went swimming in the Yamuna River, and ate what he pleased, and all these made him contented. What more could a child want?

  And so came Khurram, Jahangir’s third son, born of Jagat Gosini, brought up by Ruqayya. His name was given by his grandfather, Emperor Akbar, for that was what his birth was. “Joyous.” Khurram was, almost universally, beloved of everyone. Unlike his older brother Khusrau, Khurram had the simple advantage of pleasing his grandfather and not displeasing his father. The prince also knew that all this beneficence was just by chance. Had he been offered riches like Khusrau, or wine like Parviz, or just simpleminded nurses like Shahryar, he, too, would have been languishing like them. Somewhere, the fates had been kind to him.

  Khurram had been with Ruqayya in the zenana until he had reached manhood and was taken out of the women’s palaces and brought up in the men’s quarters of the fort. He was well aware of the intricacies of harem life, of how the women fought, slyly and with diplomacy befitting the greatest monarch, for even a toehold in their world. He had watched Ruqayya bend other wills to hers, and seen how she had been instrumental in influencing his grandfather.

  The prince knew that Mehrunnisa’s voice was growing stronger in his father’s zenana, far surpassing even Jagat Gosini’s. He was twenty years old, his father only forty-two. If the crown were to shift heads today, it would come to Khurram. But in ten, or maybe even twenty years, when his father actually died, loyalties could migrate like sands in a dust storm, obliterating all traces of onetime affiliations. And at that time, if Mehrunnisa’s rise to power now were any indication, she would be the person who decided where the crown would be vested.

  So this prince, the best of the four sons of Emperor Jahangir, aware of his own importance, and aware too that this importance was only fleeting if he did not work to keep it, decided to go in search of Mehrunnisa.

  In another part of the harem palaces, Empress Jagat Gosini pondered on her upcoming meeting with Mahabat Khan. She had not stopped fighting yet, but then, she did not know yet of her son’s impending betrayal.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  The Conqueror of the World was the slave of a woman—his consort, Nur Mahal, or Mehrunnisa, as she was afterwards styled. Her father . . . and her brother . . . had a large share in the administration of affairs; while her niece . . . was the wife of Sultan Khurram. . . . All these personages were atthis time in close alliance . . .”

  —WILLIAM FOSTER, ed.,

  The Embassy of Sir Thomas Roe to India

  By 1570, Emperor Akbar had finished constructing the Lal Qila, the Red Fort, on the banks of the languid Yamuna at Agra. A year later, he would begin construction of an entire city at Sikri, calling it Fatehpur Sikri after the conquest of Gujrat. Fatehpur Sikri sat on the banks of a large freshwater lake, sixteen miles from Agra, near no other source of water. It was built as homage to a Sufi saint to whom Emperor Akbar had gone in pilgrimage, praying for an heir to his empire. The saint promised him three sons. Ten months later, Jahangir was born at Sikri. Akbar had two more sons. But it was Emperor Jahangir who ascended the throne.

  Fifteen years after Akbar’s court moved from Agra to Fatehpur Sikri, the city was abandoned as the Emperor went to Lahore to take command of the campaign against the king of Uzbekistan. He never came back, and neither did the current imperial court. So by 1611, the city lay in the searing heat of the Indo-Gangetic plains, its red sandstone buildings dulled to a blush, its courtyards empty of human voices, its gardens wilted under the fierce sun, dust cloaking its many windows. The paths were filled in, no longer deeply rutted by horses, elephants, camels, and bullock carts.

  It was here, as the sun, hued in orange and tangerine, dipped into the even lines of the earth, that one lone figure rode through the deserted bazaar street toward the Diwan-i-khas, the Hall of Private Audience of Fatehpur Sikri. Lining the grimy path, the trees grew stunted, their branches reaching flat into the sky, their leaves shriveled. Mahabat Khan could see glimpses of the lake as he rode, his horse kicking up dry brown dust clouds. Its waters were blue, silver-streaked in the twilight, but the plains had already come to claim its edges, muddying the lake. In a few years, it would dry up, evaporated into oblivion by the sun. And Fatehpur Sikri, that monument to a great emperor’s whimsy, would be left standing at the brink of nothing.

  Once this had been a thriving city, the seat of the imperial court. Once, the many palaces had echoed with the laughter of the harem ladies, incense from sandalwood sticks had swirled between the pillars, marble floors had been piled with Persian rugs, oil lamps had lit shadowed niches, and illicit lovers had met in the dark shade of the tamarind trees. The sixteen-mile road between Agra and Fatehpur Sikri had been one long bazaar street with sarais for weary travelers, shops, and houses. Here Emperor Jahangir and Mahabat had been children together, growing up in the imperial zenana under the watchful eyes of the many women. They had hunted together, played together, sat at their books with the same mulla. Theirs had been a strong friendship forged through boyhood fights and reconciliations, acts of bravery and mischief. Later, Mahabat, Sharif, and Koka had convinced Jahangir to rebel against Emperor Akbar, telling him that the one sure way to control the empire was to have possession of the royal treasury at Agra. Jahangir had listened, as he had always listened to them, desperately hungry for the empire that would be his anyway at Akbar’s death. Through all those trials, they had stood b
y him, with him, knowing there was no turning back. One misstep and Emperor Akbar would have their heads adorned on stakes on the ramparts of Agra Fort.

  The sandstone minarets of the Diwan-i-khas came into view, and Mahabat led his horse to the front courtyard, looking around as he did so. Fatehpur Sikri was a ghost city, some said even inhabited by ghosts, drifting around its courtyards and palaces, murmuring snatches of songs of days gone by. But Mahabat was here to meet no ghost. He felt excitement sing through him, as though this were a rendezvous of the heart—some other noble’s wife or daughter, where half the lust would come from its being publicly denied. He jumped down from the horse and tossed his reins to the ground.

  He ran across the courtyard, his boots flapping lightly on the stones, up the steps to the entrance. He paused for a moment, letting his eyes adjust to the cool gloom. A lamp flickered in a corner niche. Mahabat looked up at the exquisitely carved marble pillar in the center of the room, which held up the balcony in which Akbar used to sit while giving audience to a few select nobles. Even in decay, the Diwan-i-khas glowed with Akbar’s vision.

  “Mirza Mahabat Khan.”

  The words were spoken softly from one end of the room, echoing through its silent walls. Mahabat turned to the sound. She was wearing white. A white muslin veil covering her face, a white ghagara sweeping through the dust of the floor, silver bangles that slid down her arm in a tinkle. In the murky light, she looked like a ghost. She moved noiselessly through the doorway and into the room. Mahabat put his right hand to his forehead and bent in front of her, bowing from his waist in a konish.

  “Your Majesty.”

  “Thank you for coming to Fatehpur Sikri,” Empress Jagat Gosini said.

  “Thank you, your Majesty. I remember well that I asked for the meeting.”

  “As I had once before, all those years ago, Mahabat.”

  “Yes.” Mahabat tried to look at her face, to read her expression, but the veil was too thick. “Why Fatehpur Sikri, your Majesty?” he asked. “Wouldn’t it have been easier to meet at Agra in one of the imperial gardens?”

  She moved, her hands fluttering under the veil. “No place at Agra is safe anymore. Mehrunnisa’s spies are everywhere. It would seem even everything I do is reported to her. I chose Fatehpur Sikri because it is so far away. I asked the Emperor for permission to pay my respects at the Shaikh’s tomb.”

  Jagat Gosini moved to the center of the room and sat down against the main pillar. Mahabat watched her, then went to the other end to lean against a wall. The Empress was truly royal, he thought. Only a queen would sit in the dust and dirt of many years and not care that it would soil her clothes.

  Outside, his horse snickered, and Mahabat swung sharply to the sound, listening. He tiptoed to the doorway again and looked out. Nothing. The courtyard was washed with the liquid blue of twilight, hard to see in, but there was nothing.

  “Something has to be done, Mahabat.”

  “Were you followed here, your Majesty?” he asked in a low voice.

  “No, Mahabat.”

  “And your servants, where are they?”

  “At the Shaikh’s tomb, in prayer. Sit down, Mirza Khan.”

  Mahabat came back into the Diwan-i-khas and slid down the wall to his haunches, his hands resting loosely on his knees. His ears strained for sounds from outside. True, he had ridden in on another horse, not his own, but it stood there in the courtyard, groomed and fed, too well cared for to be looked after only by spirits. Anyone passing by . . .

  “Do not worry. Who would come here? My servants can be trusted, Mahabat. No one else has a reason to be at Fatehpur Sikri today.”

  He finally turned his attention to her. “What is it the new Empress has?” he asked. “Is she beautiful?” At this there was an inward smile. He had seen the portrait, he knew of Mehrunnisa’s beauty; or rather the painter’s brush had caught something that was sure to be flattering to both Jahangir and Mehrunnisa. But the painting was long returned to the imperial atelier. He could only remember now that he had thought Mehrunnisa to be exquisite.

  “She is considered to be so, Mahabat. She is old, you know, and time takes with it all charm.”

  Mahabat nodded. One woman would not praise another, especially when they both had the same to offer the Emperor. He bent his head in acknowledgement and in apology. “She sits at the jharoka, your Majesty.”

  Again he said the wrong thing, and Mahabat could sense a stiffness in the Empress. Her voice was cold, cutting. “She rejected one of your applicants the first day.”

  Mahabat waved a hand. “That was a small matter. The man was a cousin, or so he asserted. Lately, many have come to be cousins, with relationships distant and diffused. I allow it—it is one of the doubtful privileges of my position. It was not that she denied my cousin but that she denied me, your Majesty. The Emperor has never said no to me before. And he did that day at her behest.”

  “And this was what I warned you of all those years ago when I said she would be deadly for us. Not just to me in my position as Padshah Begam but to you in court.”

  “I still do not understand it,” Mahabat said. “Her husband caused the death of Qutubuddin Koka, whom the Emperor loved as a brother. Such bonds are not lightly broken. Yet, he seems to have forgotten Koka’s death.”

  “We tried to remind him, you and I,” the Empress said. “But it did not work, did it? For you did not do your part well enough, Mahabat.”

  It was a slight, but he let it pass. “Who could have known? There were so many things wrong with her family; they were disgraced, they could not have possibly gained favor with his Majesty. Nothing but this marriage could have changed their circumstances. There were serious obstacles to love. If it is love.”

  A silence stretched between them as the Empress looked down at her hands, twisting an end of her veil in spirals between fingers that had suddenly become rigid. Again, he had displeased her. But why? She could not possibly be offended by his question, Mahabat thought. They both knew that love was a word to be used in poetry, in verses of lauding, and had little place in royal affairs.

  “Perhaps you have never fallen in love?”

  Mahabat smiled. “I love my wives, your Majesty. And the slave girls and other women.”

  Jagat Gosini leaned forward. “And they? Do they love you, Mirza Khan?”

  “Of course.” This he said with finality. “They have no one else, your Majesty.”

  The Empress laughed, and Mahabat flinched. It was an unpleasant sound, reminding him that just as he had met with the wives of other nobles, perhaps his own women had met with—were even now meeting with—other men. Even this brief thought of his harem’s supposed infidelity enraged him.

  So he said, “I hear the imperial seal reposes with Empress Nur Jahan.”

  His voice cut short Jagat Gosini’s laughter, and an edgy silence descended.

  “Well done, Mahabat,” she said softly. “It would seem we both have reason to dislike Mehrunnisa. She has to be stopped.”

  “I know,” Mahabat replied. “And she has to be stopped now, or soon. The past is the past, unhelpful to us unless it can be used against her. We tried at every turn to stop the Emperor from marrying her, but it happened nonetheless.”

  “You did not try hard enough, Mahabat.” The Empress’s voice was caustic.

  He did not respond to that. He had tried, but without faith in Jagat Gosini’s fears, and so without much enthusiasm, for Mahabat had not cared what Mehrunnisa did within the harem’s walls. The jharoka . . . that was an entirely different matter.

  “I can do nothing within the harem, your Majesty,” he said.

  “Let me handle that, Mahabat. Your place is at court.”

  But she had not “handled” anything. Mahabat had heard of the hunt and Empress Jagat Gosini’s success in it, yet, after that, so soon after that, in a few weeks, she had lost the imperial seal. Jagat Gosini had once warned him about Mehrunnisa, and now, finally, Mahabat found himself listening to her. But s
he had nothing else—Hoshiyar was gone from her side also. So why had he even bothered with this meeting, inviting the danger of being discovered like this, in the deserted Diwan-i-khas of Fatehpur Sikri, so close to a member of the zenana? One word of this in Emperor Jahangir’s ear, and, long friendship or not, Mahabat could very well lose his head.

  However, there was one thing Jagat Gosini had that Mehrunnisa did not. “The nobles at court speak often of Prince Khurram’s prospects, your Majesty,” he said.

  She smiled, and her voice filled with love. “He is a good child, Mahabat. And one day, when he becomes Emperor, he will need good advisors.”

  “And he is yours.”

  “Yes, after so many years, my son is finally mine. No matter what Mehrunnisa does now, once Khurram is on the throne, she will have no might.”

  “You are mother of the next Emperor, your Majesty. No one can take that away from you. She will never provide a rival.”

  Mahabat’s horse shifted about on its feet, metal shoes clicking agitatedly against the stones in the courtyard. He jumped up to look out of the window of the Diwan-i-khas, painfully aware that dark as it was in here, it was darker yet outside, and his turban was framed by the dull light of the room. He could not see his horse. And again, he heard nothing, no footsteps, no sound of anything living, human or animal. And then, a shadow moved in the courtyard.

  Mahabat yelled out, “Who is it? Who goes there?”

  But the person, the thing, whatever it was, just melted into the dark of one of the arches. Mahabat’s horse whinnied, shaking its head.

  “What is it?” Jagat Gosini came up to him. He turned to her and looked into her face for the first time, albeit through the veil. She was frightened. It showed in her eyes.

  “We must leave now, your Majesty,” he said, flying across the room to blow out the oil lamp. He waited until his eyes grew used to the sudden darkness, then he held out a hand to her. They went out of the Diwan-i-khas, Mahabat holding the Empress behind him to hide her—her clothes were white, and they glowed in the dark. They ran across the courtyard, through the palaces, stumbling and tripping over untended roots of trees and vicious vines until they came to the Jami Masjid, the principal mosque of Fatehpur Sikri.