And here, Khurram thought, as he nudged his horse into a slower trot, was another example of magnificence. Karan rode behind him astride another horse, not as splendidly clothed as Khurram’s but one befitting a prince nonetheless. Khurram glanced at Karan and then looked up at the balconies. The women clapped, their expressions pretty with delight, and threw down jasmine flowers that floated starlike in the afternoon air around Khurram. He lifted his face to the gently falling flowers which settled like snow over his hands and his horse. The crowds cheered wildly, and he bowed to them from the saddle, over and over again.
When he reached the royal palaces, he saw his mother and various ladies of the harem gathered there to welcome him. He jumped off his horse and ran to Jagat Gosini. The Empress embraced her son.
“Welcome back, beta,” she said. “You have made us all proud.”
“Thank you, your Majesty. Where is my father?”
“He awaits you in the Diwan-i-am.”
Khurram hurried to the Emperor. The drums of the prince sounded in the hall, and he entered after the last note had died down. While all the courtiers bowed to him, he went down on his knees in front of Jahangir and kissed the ground. Jahangir rose from his seat and came down to Khurram.
“You have brought much happiness to all of us, Baba Khurram,” Jahangir said. He raised his voice to the assembled courtiers. “I declare that from this day, the prince shall be known as Shah Jahan.”
Khurram knelt again, clutched his father’s hand, and kissed it reverently. Jahangir had said nothing about a new title in his letters; Khurram had expected to be feted, a mighty prince returning victorious from war, but this . . . to be called Shah Jahan, King of the World. He grew dizzy with happiness. The title of Shah was one none but a reigning king had held since the time of his ancestor Timur the Lame. And he was just a prince. He started to cry, his heart full at such honor, and Jahangir raised him to his feet and wiped his tears away.
“Come, you must not cry,” the Emperor said, half-laughing, half-crying himself. “You are a warrior, Khurram. You have done what I was not able to.”
They stood together in the midst of the court, Khurram with his head on Jahangir’s shoulder until attendants came up behind them, bearing in their arms the nadiri, a coat of honor Jahangir had designed for himself and ordered that no one else in the empire could wear unless it was bestowed upon him by the Emperor. Jahangir lovingly wrapped the nadiri around his son and stuck a jeweled dagger in his cummerbund. He then ordered that a special chair be brought into court for Khurram. The chair was set just below the Emperor’s throne. It was a great privilege, for never before had anyone, royal or otherwise, sat in the Emperor’s presence at court.
Mehrunnisa watched the display of affection from the zenana balcony. She had not gone out to meet Khurram when he had arrived because Jagat Gosini had wanted to be there instead. Hoshiyar, already leaning to her ear, told her that their conversation had been short—an embrace, a few words, that was all. Arjumand sat next to her, her face pressed against the screen, alit with smiles. They both saw Khurram glance up at the balcony, but he could see little of them; the marble latticeworked screen hid them from view. Arjumand put her fingers through and waggled them, and Khurram raised his hand from his lap in response.
“He has made us all proud, Arju,” Mehrunnisa said.
Arjumand turned to her aunt, her face suddenly hard and unyielding. “I am proud of my husband, your Majesty.”
It was as if she had reached out and slapped Mehrunnisa. The women in the zenana balcony grew quiet.
“Why the disrespect, Arjumand?” Mehrunnisa said softly. “I am as proud of Khurram as you are. He is like a son to me. You must know this.”
Arjumand looked away and did not reply. Mehrunnisa let her be, and said something of no consequence to Hoshiyar, something meant to be humorous, and the ladies laughed dutifully. All of this escaped Ladli, who, like Arjumand, had her face glued to the screen. When she turned into the balcony, her eyes sparkled with laughter.
“He is so handsome, Arju,” she said, and went to sit next to her cousin. “You are very lucky. If only I could be so lucky too. Mama,” she turned to Mehrunnisa, “you must find me a husband like Khurram.”
And again there was that silence until Arjumand said to her aunt, “Yes, your Majesty, find Ladli someone like Khurram. Just like him. That will be best for everyone.”
Mehrunnisa sat without moving, anger coming into her unbidden this time. She could not trust herself to speak. Ladli had begun to chatter again, leaning against her mother. She smoothed her daughter’s hair out of her eyes, and Ladli smiled briefly at her mother. Mehrunnisa’s hand trembled, and she moved it into her lap. Just like him, Arjumand had had the gall to say. When had the mouselike Arjumand acquired such courage? Had the bearing of three heirs suddenly placed iron in her blood? Who did she think she was? Khurram would marry Ladli, there was going to be no argument about that. And Arjumand was the last person who could have a say in this matter. Were she and Khurram stupid enough to think that the Emperor’s affections for his son were stronger than his love for Mehrunnisa?
Sweat dampened her armpits and Mehrunnisa shivered. She was startled as Ladli came forward to kiss her cheek, put her arms around her neck, and say, “Mama, the darbar is over. I am going with Arju to welcome Khurram. You must come too. He’s a hero!”
Ladli ran away, one edge of her ghagara tucked into her waist to keep her from tripping—she had not yet learned how to fly in the voluminous skirts with the ease of a woman. But Ladli was growing up. She was fifteen, the age when Arjumand herself was betrothed to Khurram, the age at which she could just as easily be betrothed to Khurram.
One chance, Mehrunnisa thought. She would ask Khurram again, and he would get only one chance to respond. His star may be on the rise now, but hers was firmly lodged in the skies and would not fade until Jahangir died. If Khurram said no again . . . there was no way she would allow the crown to adorn his head.
• • •
After the last spin, when the slave’s hand left his arm and she melted away with a whisper of skirts on the marble floor, Khurram stood quiet, swaying on his feet. His eyes were shut under the blindfold, the cloth of which covered his ears too, but he could still hear if he strained to do so. The prince stumbled and someone giggled to his right, and then the sound was snuffed out. Khurram breathed evenly through his nose and mouth, waiting for the weakness to leave his legs, waiting for his center of balance to return.
It was some weeks after his court appearance, and Khurram was playing ankh michauli—blindman’s bluff—with the ladies of his harem. This was one of his rewards from Arjumand. Tonight, she was fatigued, lethargic from symptoms that presaged another pregnancy. Arjumand was fertile like volcanic earth, Khurram thought; he merely had to look at her and a child would grow within. And when she tired from carrying the child—if indeed it was a child inside her—she let him take one of the harem women to his bed. But only every now and then.
Night had long settled over the courtyard in Khurram’s apartments, and a bright moon rose to cover the marble slabs with a coating of pale lilac. The verandah arches were in deep darkness, and no lamps had been lit. This was on the prince’s orders; if he was going to be blindfolded, the women should have no light to escape from him. Before the cool cloth was tied over his eyes, Khurram stood in the shadowed yard, looking long and hard at the slaves and concubines around him. They were all clad in white, glimmering silks, brilliant zari embroidered into their bodices and ghagaras, wrists bare of bangles, diamonds glittering in their ears. They wore no anklets and their feet were bare, so they could flit about him without noise. The blindfold covered his eyes, and then someone twirled him around in circles and let him go until he no longer knew which direction he faced or who was in front of him.
A hand, soft as rose petals, touched his right shoulder and went down his back. Khurram whipped around, arms outstretched, but she had disappeared. He took a few tentative steps
and brushed against a slender hip. Khurram touched the woman, let his hand linger over the curve of her waist, ran a finger under the tie of her ghagara’s skirts. She was wearing brocade, he could tell by the feel of it, its pattern was raised into the surface of the cloth in gray satin thread. She stayed perfectly still as his hands moved over her. Nalini . . . of the luscious mouth, of the daring eyes, of the body that threshed wildly beneath him. But tonight, Khurram was in the mood for something gentle, someone who gave rather than took.
He moved on in complete darkness, led only by his sense of touch and smell. As he had stood waiting for the blindfold, he had memorized almost every woman’s dress, and simply by its texture—whether silk, or satin, or velvet, or brocade, or cotton—for that would tell him who they were and whether he wanted them.
They came to caress him often, but in silence, and he followed where he heard their feet lead. Khurram played this game with the same ferocity and intensity with which he had fought the war in Mewar. With every stroke, his heartbeat raced. And yet there wasn’t one woman he wanted to leave with to his bedchamber. Until he came to the woman who stood against one of the pillars of the verandah.
When Khurram first clasped her wrist and pulled the palm of her hand to his mouth, she let him. Her skin was smooth, perfumed with an aroma that filled his nostrils. What was it, Khurram thought. Musk? No, something more forceful, with an underlying hint of camphor and incense from censers . . . luban . . . frankincense. Intrigued by this unusual choice of scent—the other women were bathed in flower scents—Khurram ran his tongue over her palm. He heard the woman take in a breath, and then gently, she tugged her hand away. For a moment, a fleeting moment, she touched his face, cupped her fingers around his chin, and then she turned to flee. Khurram ran behind her, listening hard for the sound of her feet on the cool marble stones. He bumped into a pillar, other hands came to hinder his progress, but he still pursued the woman with the delicious aroma.
When he caught up with her, he framed her against another pillar, his hands on either side of her waist. Khurram would not let her go now. If anyone could sate this hunger of his, it would be this woman. He touched her. Felt the smooth skin between her bodice and the top of her ghagara. Felt the cloth—it was malmal, the softest cotton woven in the imperial ateliers. Her shoulders were bare, and he ran his hand down from there to the edge of her velvet bodice. He put his face into the scoop of her neck, listened to the crazy beat of her heart, filled himself with the touch of her skin, the sound of her body, the smell of jasmines in her hair.
Then, the prince raised his head and caught hold of the woman’s hand. He fumbled for the white rose that was fastened in a buttonhole of his white kurta and gave it to her. “This one,” he said aloud. “She is to be the one for tonight.”
At the sound of his voice, the game was over. Eunuchs filed in carrying torches. They lit the oil lamps and filled the courtyard with light. Khurram, still holding on to the woman, used his other hand to pull off his blindfold.
Shock jolted through him. Ladli stood there. A slender, barely clad Ladli, her eyes gray and unreadable, the white rose in her hands. Khurram stepped back, still stunned. What was Ladli doing here, among the women of his harem? Why was she here? He moved away but could not take his gaze off her. He looked at what he had so recently touched, that slim waist, that neck, that thick swathe of ink-dark hair tied at her nape.
“Of course you cannot have Ladli, Khurram,” a frigid, distant voice said at his shoulder.
Khurram turned to see Arjumand by his side. She said no more, but she too was looking at her cousin, her eyes like stones. He nodded at once, and when Arjumand pointed to one of the other women, Khurram almost ran to grab her hand and drag her from the courtyard. The others went away too, one by one, until only Ladli was left standing against the pillar.
She was trembling, with jitters that seemed not to stop. She raised the rose to her mouth and held it there. Then she slid down to sit on the floor, knees pulled into her chest.
“Of course,” she said out loud to the empty courtyard.
• • •
As the weeks passed, Mehrunnisa waited for an opportunity to talk with Khurram. She had learned the value of patience, the value of waiting for the right moment to speak. Khurram and she met, of course, at various places and for various reasons. She called a meeting of their junta; it was awkward and uncomfortable, but they met nonetheless. Mehrunnisa told the three men what she had done about the Portuguese problem. Khurram stubbornly insisted that she could have been more diplomatic—why lay siege on Daman? The empire had always been tolerant of the Portuguese, and after all, they were just reacting to the favor being shown to the English merchants.
“What do you think, Abul?” Mehrunnisa snapped at her brother.
“Do not fight,” Ghias said from his divan. “You are not children anymore. Listen to what his Highness has to say, Mehrunnisa.”
Khurram did have more to say, of course. “Your Majesty,” his tone bordered on the edge of insolence, “the English have only thus far promised us protection. Where is this protection? And where is this great ambassador who is yet to set foot on Indian soil? Why provoke the Portuguese before we know for sure that the English are on our side?”
“They burned four ships, Khurram. If that is not an invitation for retaliation, what else is?” Mehrunnisa leaned forward and put her face a few inches from Khurram’s. “Are we to sit by idly while the Portuguese do what they want? Should there be no response from the court and the Emperor to this affront?”
He looked away. “I did not know about the ships, your Majesty.”
Abul and Ghias both said, “Mehrunnisa is right.”
“Yes,” Khurram mumbled, redness creeping up his neck. “Perhaps so.”
There was no perhaps about it, Mehrunnisa thought. They argued next about why she had not consulted with them before taking this step. Because she had consulted with the Emperor. That kept them quiet until the meeting broke up. Ghias stayed back. He was worried about all this fighting. Mehrunnisa should watch her tongue. But she did not listen to her father. Once she had. When she was younger, before she was an empress, even when she was just newly an empress. But too many years had passed. In the beginning of her reign, the three men had been necessary for reasons other than the kinship that bound them. Now, it was no longer so.
Besides, Ghias had grown old. He was too tolerant, and he could not know what lay at stake for her. As his life ended, hers would begin. She had to plan for the future where Jahangir no longer existed. This the Emperor himself told her. Jahangir knew too that he was nine years older than Mehrunnisa, that he would likely not live as long as her, that she would probably outlast him for many years. If he was not here to look after her, he wanted to know, before he died, that she would be well looked after. Hence, he encouraged the courting of Khurram for Ladli—that child was the only connection Mehrunnisa would have to the royal family once Jahangir passed away.
To Mehrunnisa and Jahangir, these conversations late at night were not morbid. They were simply facts of life. Every time the Emperor built a sarai for tired travelers, a mosque, commissioned even the building of a church, or added a palace to the fort at Agra or Lahore, he was aware of his mortality. He would go, but hundreds and hundreds of years later, these pieces of stone would speak of his life.
During the time that Mehrunnisa waited to speak with Khurram, her temper rose and ebbed almost every day. Empress Jagat Gosini was feted along with her son, an irony that made Mehrunnisa deeply angry. Ruqayya was his mother, she was the one who had brought him up, lavished her love upon him. But Ruqayya was at Agra, still despondent about the Rahimi, and refused to travel with them to Ajmer. So Jagat Gosini preened about with the pride of a rain-foretelling peacock, her feathers fanned, dancing in Mehrunnisa’s face.
The irritations were numerous. One evening, at the entertainment, Jahangir leaned over Jagat Gosini, caught Mehrunnisa’s chin, and kissed her on the mouth. It was a slow kiss,
a kiss of love.
She put her arms around his neck and said, “Your breath smells sweet, your Majesty.”
Jagat Gosini sat between them. She had turned her face away but could not help watching as they hung over her lap.
Jahangir turned to her. “What do you think, Jagat?”
“My lord, only a woman who has had an opportunity to smell another man’s mouth could tell you that your breath smells sweet. I have had no such experience and can only say that it always smells sweet,” Jagat Gosini said.
Mehrunnisa was suddenly ashamed, and then angry with herself for being ashamed. The Empress was reminding her, none too gently, that she had been married before and had had the opportunity to taste another man’s mouth. Jahangir laughed, but he had no jealousy.
And so time passed. The furor over Khurram’s victory died down as court duties began to occupy both Jahangir’s and Mehrunnisa’s time. It was Khurram’s twenty-sixth birthday in a few days. Mehrunnisa planned the festivities, intending that when Khurram was flush with pride at the favor shown to him, she would again ask him to take Ladli as a wife.
• • •
“Your Highness, please step into the scales,” the Mir Tozak said.
Khurram glanced at his father. Jahangir nodded.
Khurram bowed to the Emperor and went toward the golden scales in the middle of the Diwan-i-am. The scales hung by gold chains from a large wooden beam plated with gold and embedded with rubies. The crisscrossed legs of the scales were similarly decorated with a beaten gold plate, which had been hammered into the teak underneath with gold nails.
The Feast of Roses Page 26