Ghias sat motionless on the bench, his shoulders hunched, a dissatisfied look on his face.
• • •
THE NEXT DAY, Mehrunnisa went to the royal palace as usual to pay her respects to Ruqayya Sultan Begam. It seemed everyone knew of her pending engagement to Ali Quli. The guards at the zenana gate, tough Kashmiri ladies, smiled at her knowingly. The eunuchs giggled and called out Ali Quli’s name as she walked through the courtyard, and the slave girls smirked as she passed. Mehrunnisa ignored all the well-meant jibes and went swiftly to the Padshah Begam’s palace. Ruqayya was being attended to by three slave girls, who were massaging her body with perfumed oils.
“So, what do you think of your bridegroom?” Ruqayya demanded, lifting herself on an elbow.
“I have not seen him yet, your Majesty.”
“Of course not. No self-respecting girl sees her husband before the engagement. But tell me, what do you think of my choice?”
“Your choice, your Majesty?” Mehrunnisa lifted surprised eyes at the Empress.
“Yes.” Ruqayya laughed with abandon, her plump face round with glee. “Have I not made a good selection?”
“Yes, your Majesty,” she replied in a low voice. So the Empress was behind the decision. Why? And why had Ruqayya not told her of this earlier?
“It is high time you got married, my dear. Ali Quli is a little older than you are, but he will mold you into the perfect wife. And he is a soldier. Perhaps when he goes on campaign, he will leave you here with me,” Ruqayya said.
Now Mehrunnisa knew why Ruqayya had made such a choice. Her instincts, although charitable, were also somewhat selfish.
“I shall always be at your command, your Majesty.”
“Yes.” Ruqayya lay back and closed her eyes. She reached out for Mehrunnisa’s hand. “Now you shall always be with me. It is a good rishta, Mehrunnisa. The Emperor himself wants it.”
“I thought you . . .” Mehrunnisa started.
“What the Emperor wants, I want.” Ruqayya looked hard at her. “Are you unhappy? Is there someone else your heart fancies?”
“No, your Majesty. Of course not,” Mehrunnisa said quickly, turning away.
Ruqayya’s sharp gaze burned through her back. The Empress was very shrewd.
“Mehrunnisa,” Ruqayya said gently. “This is for the best.”
Mehrunnisa said nothing, busying herself with folding a veil that lay nearby. Ruqayya would never guess. It was unthinkable to the Empress that Mehrunnisa would want Prince Salim.
A few days later, Mah Banu, wife of the Khan-i-khanan Abdur Rahim, standing in as Ali Quli’s mother, came to Ghias Beg’s house with gifts for the bride and her family. Servants brought in brass trays loaded with silks, satins, and jewels of all kinds.
Mehrunnisa sat through the engagement ceremony in a stupor, a gold zari-embroidered pink veil covering her face. One look at her future husband had been enough. Ali Quli had come striding into the room full of battlefield bravado. He was a tall man, much taller than her father, but to see them side by side, one would think they were the same age. Ali Quli was only six years younger than Ghias. But there the resemblance ended. Ali Quli was every inch a soldier from his sunburned skin, unkempt beard, and harsh laugh to his callused hands more used to holding a mace or sword than a book of poems.
She watched her dreams slipping away as Ghias Beg solemnly promised to wed her to the brave soldier Ali Quli Khan Istajlu. All through the ceremony her father studiously kept his gaze from meeting hers.
• • •
PRINCE SALIM LIFTED his turban and wiped his forehead with a camphor-doused handkerchief. There was not even the slightest breeze. He put a hand up to shade his eyes and looked at the sun. Two o’clock—the middle of the afternoon. He closed his eyes wearily. Why had he allowed himself to be persuaded into this?
“We shall be there soon, your Highness.”
Salim turned to Jagat Gosini. “Why couldn’t you have chosen the evening? It is much cooler then.”
“Now is the best time, my lord. Her Majesty, Ruqayya Sultan Begam, will be taking her nap, and we can spend some time alone with our son.”
“All right,” Salim mumbled, dragging his feet. He had drunk too much wine in the morning as usual and was feeling queasy in the heat. His head ached. The attendants who followed the royal couple were talking too loudly; their laughter grated on his nerves.
He would not have agreed to his wife’s suggestion if the Emperor himself had not hinted that he was being remiss in his fatherly duties. Salim grimaced. The Emperor was not as quick to point out his responsibilities to his other two sons, Khusrau and Parviz, only to Khurram. For it was Khurram whom Akbar saw most often, since he spent most of his time in Ruqayya’s apartments.
Since Akbar’s near-fatal brush with colic two years earlier, the Emperor could hardly look at Salim without suspicion. And though Salim felt remorse every time he considered that his father might have died as a result of Humam’s overzealousness, discontent still plagued him. He still had an undeniable, deep yearning to feel the weight of the crown on his head. Salim tried to be with his father and learn from him, but between them hung the slivered threads of a shattered relationship, fragile as a broken cobweb. Between them also were Salim’s courtiers—Mahabat, Qutubuddin, Sayyid—men he had known since childhood, men he had known better than his own father. It was hard to resist them, or their influence.
Salim’s shoulders slouched as the entourage entered the silent courtyard outside Ruqayya’s apartments. He caught the flutter of white muslin through the corner of his eye and stopped short, lifting his head for a better look.
Ya Allah! Was he in Paradise? Words from the Holy Book came unbidden to his mind: “The believers shall find themselves reclining upon couches lined with brocade, the fruits of the garden nigh to gather; and will find therein maidens restraining their glances, untouched before them by any man or Jinn, lovely as rubies, beautiful as coral.”
She was all that and more. He stared at her, his gaze riveted, everything else fading around her. His attendants, chattering among themselves, fell silent, and glanced at him with curiosity. Jagat Gosini lifted a hand to Salim’s arm, but he was already moving forward, leaving her standing under the wide stone arch.
Salim tiptoed into the courtyard. He was afraid to make any sudden movement, afraid that she would fly away, and he would wake to find it all a dream.
The girl sat on the edge of a goldfish pond, her feet dangling in the water. It was a heat-smothered day, but the courtyard was cool. The stone floor was chilled by a running stream of water underneath, falling into pools dispersed artistically around the courtyard. Lotus flowers and lilies bloomed white and red in the reservoirs, and huge banyan trees provided shade. The hush was broken by the soothing drone of bees and the musical tinkle of water rushing through the channels.
Salim moved forward softly until he was by her side. He stood looking down at a glossy black head of hair and long eyelashes against a porcelain-smooth cheek. A pink rose lay against her nape, its stem lost in her hair. It perfumed the air around them.
“Who are you, beautiful lady?”
Menhrunnisa looked up, startled.
Salim fell headlong in love with a pair of surprised blue eyes.
Mehrunnisa rose hastily, splashing water on Salim. A deep flush spread over her face and neck as she stood before him, slim and proud, her back straight.
Salim looked her over from the top of her head to her feet, the nails painted red with henna and still wet from the pool. His gaze moved slowly up, skirting the pleats of her long ghagara, spangled with shimmering white stars, past her waist hidden under the folds of a white chiffon veil, over the curve of her shoulders. Blood rushed to his ears as he saw the pulse fluttering at the slender throat partially hidden under a shroud of hair.
“I beg pardon, your Highness,” Mehrunnisa said in a low voice, so low that Salim had to strain his ears to catch the words. The musical tones enchanted him even more.
He rea
ched for her hand, but she pulled away from him, turning her face as she did so.
“Don’t you know who I am?” he demanded.
“Yes, sire.”
“Your Highness.” Jagat Gosini came up to Salim, her face set in unyielding lines.
“Who is she?” Salim asked, still looking at Mehrunnisa. She had turned back to him now.
“The daughter of some lowly courtier, I believe,” Jagat Gosini said. “Who is your father, girl?”
The two women stared at each other, neither willing to break eye contact. Mehrunnisa smiled, a quick curving of her lips. “But your Highness knows who I am. We met once in these gardens.”
“Did we?” the princess said disdainfully. “I do not remember.”
“Ah, but you must remember, your Highness.” Mehrunnisa’s voice was brittle, each word enunciated carefully. Again that insult to her Bapa. Somewhere in her mind was the advice of caution, of not speaking rashly to Jagat Gosini. But anger overcame all that advice. “I look after Prince Khurram, Empress Ruqayya’s son.”
“My son!”
Mehrunnisa turned toward Ruqayya’s apartments, the windows shaded under the banyan. “Yes, forgive me. Your son, of course. It’s only that he calls the Empress ‘ma.’ ”
Salim watched this interchange in bewilderment, looking from Mehrunnisa to Jagat Gosini. An admiration rose in him for this beautiful woman who sparred so brilliantly with his wife. She had courage. Few people dared to talk with his second wife in this manner. Who was she? How had he not seen her before?
He said quietly to Jagat Gosini, “Leave us, my dear. I wish to talk with her.”
Jagat Gosini flushed and drew herself up. “We must go to our son now, your Highness.”
“Go. I will meet you later.”
But the princess stood where she was.
Salim nodded with a sigh, realizing what he had just said to her. He watched as Mehrunnisa bowed to both of them and turned to leave. “What is your name?”
Mehrunnisa shook her head and walked away from them.
Salim took a step toward her, then stopped, torn between her and Jagat Gosini. He would find her again. Every woman in the royal zenana was accounted for. If she was not a member of the harem, the guards would know who she was and where she came from. A petal from the rose in her hair lay on the ground. Salim bent and picked it up, cradling it in the palm of his hand as though it were a precious jewel.
The petal fell from Salim’s hand into the pool. He watched as a goldfish came to nibble at it curiously.
“We must go in, your Highness.” Jagat Gosini’s voice was quiet.
Salim turned to her. “Was it wise to argue like that with the daughter of a lowly nobleman, Jagat? You are a royal princess; you should know better.”
“Why do you defend her? Who is she to you? You do not even know her name,” she cried, her voice trembling with outrage.
Salim rubbed his jaw, watching his wife’s distraught face. “This is interesting, my dear. I wonder why you are so upset with a woman you don’t even know. Come, let us go see Khurram.”
Khurram was not delighted to see his parents. He had been waked from his afternoon nap to be paraded in front of near strangers, and as a consequence he was irritable and noisy. Salim sat in Ruqayya’s apartments in a stupor, thinking only of Mehrunnisa. He did not notice his wife glancing at him thoughtfully from time to time.
Finally, in the evening, he went back to his own apartments. And there he found out her name from Hoshiyar Khan. He said it aloud to himself, elongating the “r” sensually. Mehrunnisa, he thought. Surely she was the Sun of Women. What woman could outshine her beauty?
That evening, Jagat Gosini surpassed herself in providing entertainment for her lord. The best nautch girls were sent for, and they danced superbly, swaying and undulating seductively in front of the prince. Driven to a frenzy by his one glimpse of Mehrunnisa, Salim groped and grabbed at the girls, thinking one, then the other, to be the angel of the morning. All the while Jagat Gosini watched, filled his cup with proper wifely concern, and made sure that the prince’s hukkah had enough opium. By midnight, Salim was so muddled he could not even recall Mehrunnisa’s face.
An hour later, he toppled over from the divan and sprawled out on the floor, asleep before he hit the rug. The music stopped, the lamps were extinguished, and a cool cotton sheet was brought to cover the sleeping prince.
Princess Jagat Gosini stopped at the door of the reception hall and held up her lantern. She was still furious with Mehrunnisa. The girl had belittled her, behaved beyond her station in life. What was she trying to do now? Wasn’t it enough that she had the care of Khurram? Did she want Salim too? Dread, cold as a winter night, crept over her when she thought of how Salim had looked at Mehrunnisa. He had been oblivious to everything else around him. The princess shivered. Nothing would come of this meeting today, she promised herself.
She turned and went out, plunging the room in darkness.
FIVE
When his eyes seemed to devour her, she, as by accident, dropt her veil; and shone upon him, at once, with all her charms. The confusion, which she could well feign, on the occasion, heightened the beauty of her face.
—Alexander Dow, The History of Hindostan
A BREEZE WHISPERED THROUGH THE garden, rustling long-fingered leaves on the mango trees. The muslin curtains on the window rippled inward gently, letting a shaft of moonlight into the room. Somewhere in the distance, a hyena howled at the white orb suspended in the midnight sky.
In her bed, Mehrunnisa lay awake, staring at the gray and black shadows on the ceiling. Khadija slept next to her, her back against Mehrunnisa’s shoulder, her presence comforting in the narrow bed. In the cobbled street beyond the gardens, there was the sound of a horse’s hooves. An owl hooted softly from its perch on the mango tree, its keen eyes searching the garden for mice.
Mehrunnisa’s thoughts crowded out the sounds and the smells of the summer night. For the first time, she had come face to face with Salim. There was an aura of royalty around him. It was there in his rich silk qaba embroidered with rubies, the thick rope of precious white pearls around his neck, the gorgeous aigrette with an emerald on his turban, the diamonds on his fingers and on the buckles of his shoes—all as glorious as the sun that shone upon them in the courtyard. And more than that, Mehrunnisa thought, was Salim’s princely bearing. His tone, his manner, had been gentle and polite.
The setting had been perfect; she couldn’t have planned it better herself. This was how she had dreamed Salim and she would meet. He had even looked at her with the wonder and awe she had imagined in her plans to captivate the prince.
Mehrunnisa sighed and turned over, trying to find a comfortable spot on the bed. She had finally captured Salim’s attention. But why now? After she was already committed to another man?
How different they were from each other. In her mind, since she was eight, she had painted Salim in splendid colors. He was kind. He was charming. He was passionate. And she thought he was all of those things, even in the brief meeting. For he had wanted to send Jagat Gosini away that he could talk with her. A feeling of triumph rose in Mehrunnisa because the arrogant princess had been insulted with quiet finesse by Salim. So he did not like her, either; that was another thing they had in common.
She had been thinking of Ali Quli when Salim came upon her. She could not imagine the life she was to have with him. A soldier’s wife, perhaps always alone at home, waiting for him to return from his campaigns, never knowing when he left whether he would live or die. Then—that brief moment when time seemed to stop, and she looked up at Salim.
As day broke over the city of Lahore, Mehrunnisa finally fell asleep, her dreams colored by Salim, his charming smile, and above all his royal majesty.
At home, preparations were being made for her wedding to Ali Quli. When there was an event in the house, custom came home; a nobleman had no need to go in search of it. Cloth merchants came with their wares, spreading out bolt af
ter bolt of silks, muslins, and brocades in reds and blues and greens. The next morning, Mehrunnisa sat with Asmat in the front room as the merchants whipped out fabric in clouds around them. “This one, Sahiba,” they said. “Your daughter will look like a princess in blue to match her eyes.” Asmat and Mehrunnisa smiled at each other under their veils; how did they know of the color of her eyes? From the servants?
Over the next few days jewelers came, too, velvet boxes bound tightly in white cloth, to lay out the gold and silver necklaces, anklets, headpieces, earrings, bangles. “Do you like this pattern, Sahiba? Or this one? Any design, only two days to make.” The bawarchis came to hire themselves for the three days with samples of their cooking: golden wheat halwas sprinkled with saffron and sugar; lamb and chicken pulavs scattered with sultanas; rust-colored gulab jamuns, plump with sugar syrup; rich brown goat-gravy curries; and slivers of roasted silver fish, marinated in lime and garlic.
Through all this, Mehrunnisa waited for Salim to call for her, never really believing that she would marry Ali Quli. After the first day passed, she told herself that it was only one day. Surely he had to find out who she was, whose daughter she was. The next day, each time the servants went to answer the front door, she expected to see a guard or a eunuch from the royal palace. Then she realized that of course he could not call for her. Etiquette must be followed. He would talk with Emperor Akbar, and Akbar would call for her Bapa, and Bapa must talk to her. So she waited for Ghias to come home from court each evening. How would Bapa approach the subject? Would he be ecstatic? Of course he would be ecstatic; his daughter would marry Prince Salim. It would be an unexpected honor for him, for all of them, through her.
The days passed thus, sluggishly, every minute straining to eternity. Bapa did not come home looking especially happy. No summons came from Salim. Her hopes died slowly, crushed and withering as time went by. The wedding preparations went on as usual. Miserable, she did not go to the imperial harem to visit the Empress.
Two weeks after the meeting with Salim, Ruqayya Sultan Begam sent an impatient summons.
The Twentieth Wife Page 9