Jahangir was asleep when Mahabat Khan entered. He woke to his minister’s touch. “Mahabat,” he said, opening his eyes. Then he sprang up. “What are you doing here?” Mahabat’s Rajput soldiers stood around his divan. “What is the meaning of this?”
“Your Majesty, I have come to answer the charges against me.”
“Why could you not come during the day?” The Emperor sank back into the cushions.
“You must come with me to my camp, your Majesty,” Mahabat said. He still held his unsheathed dagger in his hand.
“It was not necessary to force your way here, Mahabat,” Jahangir replied. “I would willingly have granted you an audience.”
“Now, your Majesty,” Mahabat said. “Please rise or I shall have to help you do so.”
Jahangir rose from the divan. What was going on? Where were his Ahadis? How had they allowed Mahabat to come so far into the royal tent without resistance? And where was Mehrunnisa? At this thought, the Emperor shuddered. He hoped she was safe, that she would not fight with Mahabat—there was no telling what Mehrunnisa would do if she was in a rage.
He thought quickly. “I will not go unless I ride on my favorite Arabian.”
“As you wish, your Majesty,” Mahabat replied. He signaled to a royal attendant.
“My lord, the steed has been taken to the western bank. I could ride over to bring it,” the attendant said.
“No, that is not possible,” Mahabat said. He bowed to Jahangir. “Your Majesty, perhaps another horse could be found for you. Any of my soldiers would willingly give up his mount.”
“I want my Arabian steed,” Jahangir insisted. “I cannot ride out without the steed.”
“Please reconsider, your Majesty,” Mahabat said in desperation. Any moment now, the army on the western bank would be alerted of his presence. How long would his soldiers be able to stave off an attack? He had to get the Emperor to his own camp or he would not be safe.
They argued for the next ten minutes, and finally, with great reluctance, Jahangir gave in to his minister. The Emperor climbed into a howdah atop a royal elephant. Mahabat Khan’s Rajput soldiers formed a circle around the elephant, and the Ahadis watched as Jahangir was taken out of the camp. Jahangir looked around him, but he could see no sign of Mehrunnisa. Perhaps she had fled already? If she had, she would lead an army against Mahabat. He talked loudly, of trivial things, and mostly of Mahabat and his early friendship, the days they had spent together as children, the games they had played, their most successful hunts. Mahabat began to smile and laugh at the memories, and his expression softened. At least his mind was now elsewhere, Jahangir thought.
They reached Mahabat’s camp without incident. As he was helping Jahangir dismount, Mahabat remembered Mehrunnisa. He pushed the Emperor back into the howdah, and they left for the royal encampment. Jahangir complained, making his voice as querulous as possible; he knew Mahabat would not dare injure him, but he would Mehrunnisa. But Mahabat was firm too. He could not leave Jahangir even at his own camp, for it was possible that the Empress might have already rounded up an army to rescue the Emperor.
• • •
As Mahabat Khan was riding back to the royal camp, an old woman and her son approached the Rajput guards on the eastern bank of the Jhelum. One of the guards ran forward and pointed his spear at them. “Who are you?” he shouted.
“It is I, Saliha, and my son, Sharif,” the woman’s voice trembled.
“No one is to cross the Jhelum,” the guard said harshly. “Go back, old woman.”
“But I have to get to the other bank, Sahib,” the woman begged. “I sell fresh fruit for the zenana ladies’ breakfast.” She showed him a basket full of apples and pears.
The guard brought up his lantern to peer into her basket. As the light fell upon the woman’s face, he recoiled and stumbled back. She was ugly, with deep wrinkles on her skin, but more frightening were the purple and red sores on her forehead and cheek. Were those signs of the plague?
“Stay away from me, you wretch,” the guard yelled, raising his spear again.
“Let me go, Sahib,” the woman wheedled. “I have to earn my livelihood.”
The guard thought quickly. If this woman carried the plague, then she would infect all of them. It was better to allow her to go to the western bank, as far away as possible.
“Go then.” He stepped back further and called out to his comrades.
As the word passed through the Rajput soldiers that the woman was infected, they shrank back to allow them to cross the bridge. She hobbled across, leaning heavily on her son’s shoulder.
As soon as she was on the other side, the woman’s limp vanished, her back straightened, and she strode swiftly to the advance camp, dragging her son along with her.
Mehrunnisa threw the basket of fruit on the side of the road and smiled at the man next to her. “See how easy that was, Shahryar?”
• • •
Mehrunnisa ran to Abul’s tent. At first, he would not let her in, then she spoke to him and he recognized his sister under the putrid sores on her face.
“Why are you dressed like this?” Abul asked as Mehrunnisa called for water to wash her face. She told him, rubbing the makeup from her skin with a vigorous hand.
“Call for the nobles, Abul. You are responsible for this, and now I have to make it right.”
Abul’s face grew hard. “How was I responsible, Mehrunnisa?”
She turned to him, dabbing at her face with the end of her veil. “You were in charge of the advance camp, Abul, and you have brought most of the imperial army over here with you. There were too few men left to guard the Emperor.”
The nobles staggered in, woken from their sleep. The old woman in rags, her ghagara and choli ripped in places, the skin on her hands a dark, crumpled brown, began to speak. Their mouths gaped. What was the Empress doing dressed like this? When they heard what Mehrunnisa had to say, they became serious, alert. They were not to try and go over to the other side, Mehrunnisa said. Mahabat had left two hundred Rajputs on the eastern end who would set fire to the bridge when they saw the army crossing.
The army was woken up. Lights blazed on the western bank of the Jhelum, and the shouts of the men carried across the dark waters as Mehrunnisa prepared the men for battle.
On the eastern shore, Jahangir stood watching the flurry of activity. He knew Mehrunnisa would lead the army herself if she got a chance. He sent her a letter with his signet ring, telling her not to prepare the regiments. Mahabat meant no harm. But Jahangir also knew that she would not listen. After the messenger crossed over to Mahabat’s camp, his men set fire to the bridge.
At the first light of day, a huge army led by Abul Hasan started from the advance camp toward the Jhelum. When they reached the bank, scouts were sent out to find fords along the river that were passable. After some searching, a ford was identified by the boat commander.
But the choice was a poor one; that ford was filled with deep and unexpected pits. The soldiers found the soft mud giving way no matter where they put their feet. And across the river, on the other bank, Mahabat’s men stood waiting for them, patiently, armed with spears and swords. Abul’s soldiers retreated, already exhausted before the fight, to flop on the warm stones on the western bank.
Mehrunnisa, seeing the imperial soldiers scatter from their formations, urged her elephant into the river from her howdah. Ladli, Arzani, and the child’s nurse were with her—she did not want to leave them in the camp alone, in case Mahabat’s men found their way there. Seeing Mehrunnisa’s elephant plunge into the Jhelum, the imperial soldiers rallied and tried to cross again. A few made it to the other side, only to be welcomed by a volley of arrows and spears from Mahabat’s soldiers. Other fords were found downstream, and small bands of the imperial army crossed on them to the eastern bank.
With her elephant in the water up to its stomach, Mehrunnisa looked around her. A few hundred yards away, Mutamid Khan stood on a little patch of dry land between two branches of
the river. Why were they not moving? Was this a picnic?
Mehrunnisa turned and shouted to Hoshiyar. “Hoshiyar, send a man to Mutamid and find out what he is doing. Tell him to go across.”
She watched as a eunuch swam to Mutamid. He bowed in her direction, and his men jumped into the river again. But the imperial army was too scattered to be effective. Here and there, a few men found their way to the eastern bank and were easily killed by Mahabat’s men. Abul’s horse was swept away by the current, and he seemed to give up; the other commanders plunged forward heedlessly and ended up killing half their men in the water before they could even get across.
“Mama,” Ladli said, pulling her down when an arrow whizzed past the howdah. “Do not do anything silly; let the men fight.”
Mehrunnisa thrust her daughter’s hand away. “But we must, beta. Keep Arzani on the floor.”
Ladli laid the child down and piled cushions on her. Arzani squirmed and started to wail. “Hush,” she said, looking at Arzani’s nurse in exasperation. This was her job, what was she doing, shaking like that? The nurse was hanging over the edge of the howdah, little whimpers coming from her mouth.
“Look after the child,” Ladli yelled, pulling the nurse from the howdah edge and placing her hands on the baby. “This is what you are paid to do.”
“Here.” Mehrunnisa thrust a loaded musket into Ladli’s hands and fit an arrow into her bow. The two women brought up the ends of their veils and knotted the cloth behind their necks, wearing their veils like masks. As the elephant lumbered slowly to the eastern bank, Ladli and Mehrunnisa loaded the musket and the bow over and over again and shot at Mahabat’s army. Suddenly, an arrow came hurtling through and pierced the nurse in her arm. She began blubbering incoherently, prayers and moans mixed with her wails. Arzani began to cry too, and their voices mingled with the shouts from the men, the trumpeting of the elephants, the booms of musket shots.
Mehrunnisa put her bow down, tore her veil off her face, and used the cloth as a tourniquet, tying it tight around the nurse’s arm.
“Keep quiet,” she commanded. “It’s only a scratch.”
She turned back to the battle and found that Ladli had not been able to keep the Rajput soldiers away with just her musket. A few floated dead in the waters of the Jhelum, but most of them were already close to the imperial elephant. Mehrunnisa let a few more arrows fly. The Rajputs surrounded her elephant, treading water. “Please surrender, your Majesty!”
Mehrunnisa hesitated. Ladli’s face was flushed, and gunpowder smudged her fingers and cheeks. Arzani cried again. She pushed the cushions off herself and leaned over the edge of the howdah, her hair falling in curls over her eyes.
Mehrunnisa threw down the bow and grabbed the waist of her grand-daughter’s ghagara. She turned to Ladli, whose eyes flickered to her mother just briefly, the Rajput soldiers held steadily in the musket’s sight. “Whatever you wish, Mama,” she said quietly.
With Arzani struggling in her grasp, the nurse still sobbing softly in one corner, Mehrunnisa called out, “We surrender.”
One of the soldiers climbed up the trunk of the elephant, knocked the mahout into the water, and guided it toward Mahabat’s camp.
But the fighting went on all day. By evening, as the sun was setting, the waters of the Jhelum ran red with blood. Bodies of the imperial soldiers lay in the shallow ends of the banks or against sandbars in the middle of the river. Horses and elephants caught in mud struggled in fear and pain, their neighs and trumpets added to human cries, until a benevolent shot from Mahabat’s soldiers cut those short. Two thousand imperial soldiers had died trying to cross the Jhelum, another two thousand had been massacred by Mahabat.
Abul had fled from the Jhelum long before the end of the battle. He had watched Mehrunnisa goad her elephant into the waters, and then he had mounted his horse and ridden away to his estates nearby, without lifting his matchlock once to his shoulder. Mahabat Khan went in pursuit of Abul and brought him back in chains. Now he had Jahangir, Mehrunnisa, Shahryar, Ladli, and Khusrau’s son Bulaqi as his prisoners.
He took them to Kabul, as originally planned. On the way, Mahabat finally realized what he had done. All he had wanted was a moment to talk with Jahangir, and now he had overthrown the Mughal government. If only Mehrunnisa had not decided to fight his soldiers, he thought. If only she had stayed in the zenana apartments as a woman should. He would have had the time to beg an audience with his Emperor, and all would be right. And now . . .
Now Mahabat Khan was the Mughal government. Unwillingly and unwittingly, as matters had spiraled out of his control, Mahabat Khan had effected a coup.
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
But Nur Jahan Begum was beginning to recover her courage. She recruited large number of men every day and was conferring with the secret enemies of Mahabat Khan with the object of devising the best means of destroying him . . .
—B. NARAIN, trans, and S. SHARMA, ed.,
A Dutch Chronicle of Mughal India
At Kabul, the court went about its normal business. Mahabat kept Mehrunnisa away from Jahangir as much as possible, determined that she would not interfere in the administration of the empire. He did not allow her to sit at the jharoka, insisted that the Emperor agree to all of his decisions, and acted the despot as much as he could. But his heart was not entirely in this. All Mahabat wanted was for Jahangir to forgive him for imagined faults. But the Emperor, ailing now and sick in his bed most of the time, would not even listen to Mahabat. He turned his face away when the minister entered his apartments, looked at the walls, would not pay any attention to him. Jahangir signed the farmans presented to him and asked for Mehrunnisa.
“She is busy, your Majesty,” Mahabat said.
Jahangir threw a cushion in his direction. It missed and went tumbling onto the carpets. “I want to see the Empress.”
And so he kept saying to Mahabat. I want the Empress. The minister tried to pacify Jahangir. He tried to tell him that Prince Khurram was the best choice of heir. Shahryar was a weakling; how could he rule?
While they were at Kabul, Parviz had died at Burhanpur, and Mahabat had found his loyalties shifting to Khurram, the prince he had hounded to the southern rim of the empire. Shahryar, the nashudani, the good-for-nothing prince he would not support, for he was Mehrunnisa’s son-in-law. But Khurram was a bidaulat, a wretch, Jahangir said. Bring the Empress to me.
But Mahabat was adamant. He refused to see Mehrunnisa too, although she commanded him many times. The only person Mahabat would see, on Mehrunnisa’s behalf, was her brother Abul. So Abul ferried phrases of curses and disrespect between the two, back and forth, for Mahabat would not allow Mehrunnisa out of her apartments.
She sweated there, literally, confined within four walls. If she ever stepped out, Mahabat said—and he sent his Rajput soldiers to make good his word—she must be heavily veiled. Not the flimsy covering of chiffon that showed her teeth and her smile or even the blue of her eyes, but a thick black cotton under which she would be faceless. She must not raise her voice in public; a Mughal woman’s voice must never be heard. What Mahabat once demanded of Jahangir all those years ago—that Mehrunnisa be subdued, that it must not be her hand that ruled the empire—he now made true. He made her pay for his ten years at Kabul, for the years he had aged while there.
So Mehrunnisa paced the carpets in her apartments threadbare, fury simmering inside her. Mahabat had taken from her every duty, little and big, and each day the irritation grew. On the other side of this anger was a deepening hurt. She missed Jahangir desperately, the bed beside her an ocean of emptiness every night. She fretted about him—was he well, had his cough come back, did he eat properly, was he smoking too much opium, drinking too much wine?
Mahabat allowed just one meeting, at which he was present.
Mehrunnisa stood at the door to Emperor Jahangir’s rooms, shock rendering her immobile and silent. Jahangir had suddenly grown old in the time she had not seen him. He could no longer breathe witho
ut gasping, and she could hear the air scraping against his tired lungs. He cried when he saw her, she did too, kneeling by his bed, his trembling hands cradling her face. They talked, heads close to one another, indifferent to Mahabat Khan standing at the door.
“Let me stay here, Mahabat. His Majesty is unwell,” Mehrunnisa said, despising the timbre of pleading in her tone.
“That is simply not possible, your Majesty.”
A eunuch came to lift her from her knees and take her out of the room. Mehrunnisa paused in front of Mahabat long enough to say in a quietly furious voice, “If his Majesty dies in your care, Mahabat, I will have your skin cut in strips from your body while you still live.”
He did not answer, merely turned away, eyebrows arched. But for a brief moment, Mehrunnisa saw a quiver of uncertainty around Mahabat’s lips.
Back in her rooms, she was only furious. No longer frustrated, or debilitated by Mahabat, or even apprehensive, but quite simply in a rage. Jahangir was dying, and she could not be with him. She would demolish Mahabat Khan. He did not allow her to step out of her apartments, so she would decimate him from within.
“Hoshiyar,” Mehrunnisa said.
The eunuch rose from his place at the door and came to her. He led her to her bed, and Mehrunnisa leaned into him. To the guards at the door, it seemed like her Majesty was too tired; she needed Hoshiyar’s help. They did not see—for Mehrunnisa’s back was to them—that with her head on the eunuch’s shoulder, her lips moved softly.
• • •
A week later, in the very middle of the night, as the city of Kabul lay hushed and silent, wreathed in dreams, the Ahadis, the imperial bodyguards, stormed the camp of Mahabat Khan’s Rajput soldiers.
Before the soldiers could even awaken or take a breath of air, throats were slashed, chests perforated, heads hammered against stones. The Ahadis proceeded to massacre them methodically. At the end of three hours, the soldiers’ cries had stilled, along with the life from their bodies. Those who were fortunate enough to keep their lives—having hidden in rice bins, or under piles of sheets and clothes, or inside trunks—were yanked out and sold as slaves in the Kabul markets, clad in iron chains and led away like cattle by their new owners.
The Feast of Roses Page 43