The Serpent's Tooth

by Alex Rutherford

  ‘Fire on those riders! Don’t let any get away!’ Shah Jahan shouted to Ashok Singh. His outrage at the Bijapurans’ treatment of the townswomen immediately overwhelming his promise to hold himself back from the action, he kicked his horse forward. Before he could get far, however, he heard a disciplined volley from the band of musketeers he had ordered to be stationed near the walls in anticipation of just such a Bijapuran sortie. Their firing emptied several saddles. It was a reduced enemy squadron which closed up as best it could and kicked on, heads bent low over their horses’ necks in the hope of safety, leaving their fallen comrades like the trampled women and children to care for themselves.

  Shah Jahan had reined in briefly to see the effect of the musket shots. Now as he pushed on again his bodyguard and Ashok Singh’s Rajputs were around him. Together they were gaining fast on the Bijapurans when about a dozen of the hindmost wheeled their horses to turn back and attack their pursuers – clearly prepared to sacrifice themselves to save their comrades. Sacrifice themselves they certainly would, but no one else would escape either, thought Shah Jahan grimly as, drawing his sword, he prepared to meet the rebels, now only yards away.

  The first of them – no more than a youth – crashed into the front rank of Shah Jahan’s bodyguard. He got in only one stroke of his sword, cutting into the muscular arm of a bearded Rajput, before being swallowed up by the charge of Shah Jahan’s men and knocked from his horse to die crushed beneath their onrushing hooves. His fellows fared little better. Only one succeeded in unhorsing a member of the bodyguard before he was himself spitted by a Rajput lance and carried out of his saddle. Soon Shah Jahan’s riders were beyond the melee and gathering speed once more, leaving crumpled bodies and riderless horses in their wake. Within five minutes they were up again with the remainder of the Bijapuran horsemen who were galloping along the rutted riverbed. Suddenly, as if as one and clearly in response to a shouted order, the whole Bijapuran column, still over fifty strong, reined in and threw down their weapons.

  ‘Take care. Don’t approach them too closely in case it’s another trick,’ shouted Shah Jahan.

  A tall Bijapuran horseman wearing a cloak of gold cloth rode through their ranks, dismounted and prostrated himself. ‘We surrender, Majesty. We accept your offer to let us live.’

  ‘What?’ shouted Shah Jahan. ‘You expect my offer to stand after you have ridden down women and children and caused the death of some of my own men? You had the chance to live but you forfeited it by your brutal behaviour. You and your officers will die. Your men will be sold into slavery.’

  ‘Majesty, I implore you …’

  ‘There is no point in pleading. Accept your fate with dignity. Death comes to us all sooner or late. Yours will not be pointless but will serve as a deterrent to anyone else contemplating invasion or rebellion.’

  An hour later Shah Jahan watched as his men laid the first stones of the tower he had ordered to be built to display the severed heads of those he had had executed, already piled nearby in a bloody heap around which hordes of blue-bodied flies were buzzing. His warrior ancestors had built such towers in their homelands on the Asian steppes and Akbar too had followed the practice early in his reign when he had faced stubborn enemies. Looking skyward, he saw vultures already circling, eager to feast on eyes and the soft flesh of cheeks and lips as soon as they felt it safe to do so. This bloodstained, reeking monument would signal to the Bijapurans as nothing else could the futility of their continued resistance to his authority and the unflinching harshness of their punishment should they persist.

  As he rode back through the gateway into Burhanpur a few days later, Shah Jahan saw Aslan Beg waiting for him in the sunlit courtyard, a letter in his hand. ‘Majesty, a rider brought this yesterday. It is from the Lady Jahanara. I thought you would wish to see it immediately.’

  Shah Jahan broke the seal at once.

  Father, I wanted you to know as soon as possible that we have reached Agra safely after ten weeks of travel and that my mother’s body has been laid in a temporary grave on the banks of the Jumna exactly as you wished. As we approached the city, wailing crowds lined the highway, covering their heads with dust and weeping. So has it been throughout the journey, as if the indigo of grief had descended on our land. I will write later at greater length.

  As he read, Shah Jahan felt a familiar dark desolation steal over him, dissipating his pleasure at his military success. When he and Mumtaz had left Agra he had never imagined that their life together was almost over. With her by his side he had looked to the future and the fulfilment of his ambitions to expand his empire with confidence, but now, whatever triumphs he achieved as an emperor, what could they mean to him as a man when so much joy and warmth had been taken from him? What consolation could he find in building a cold tomb? He had promised Mumtaz he would not give way to despair, but was that a promise he could keep?

  Chapter 6

  ‘Welcome to Burhanpur, Ustad Ahmad.’

  ‘I am honoured you sent for me, Majesty. I came as quickly as I could.’

  Shah Jahan scrutinised the tall, slenderly built man bowing low before him, hoping that at last he had found an architect who could help give expression to the vision of Mumtaz’s tomb that had begun crystallizing in his mind but was still incomplete. ‘My father-in-law Asaf Khan wrote to me that you have designed buildings of great beauty for Shah Abbas. The task I have for you is greater than any the Persian shah can have set – to design a mausoleum for my wife of such unique beauty that later generations will still hail it as a wonder of our age. The thought doesn’t intimidate you?’

  ‘No. It’s a challenge no true artist could resist.’

  Clearly Ustad Ahmad was not a modest man, but that was a good thing, Shah Jahan thought. Others he’d consulted – like his master builder – had been over-eager to please, praising everything he himself had suggested and contributing few ideas themselves. He waved the architect to sit at the long low table. ‘What thoughts do you have for me?’

  ‘I think you are familiar with the way the Persians design their gardens?’

  ‘I’ve seen paintings and drawings. I know they call them pairidaeza.’

  ‘Exactly, Majesty, “gardens of Paradise”, with two bisecting watercourses running north to south and east to west to represent the sacred rivers of Paradise. Such should be the setting for the tomb of her late Majesty.’

  ‘But I have already written to you saying that I wished the tomb to be built in the centre of a garden. Do you have nothing new to suggest?’ Shah Jahan couldn’t keep irritation from his voice but Ustad Ahmad didn’t seem abashed.

  ‘I do, Majesty. I believe the tomb should not sit in the centre of the garden – instead it should overlook it, dominating the eye. The land you have purchased on the banks of the Jumna is perfect for what I have in mind.’

  Shah Jahan looked at Ustad Ahmad, trying to picture what he meant. Ashok Singh had suggested he acquire the site which was immediately downstream of an almost right-angled bend in the Jumna river, from his father, the Raja of Amber, because it was so close to the fort – barely a mile and a half away – that the tomb would not only be visible from the battlements but could be visited by boat. The architect continued. ‘I propose building the tomb on a raised platform on the riverbank with the gardens laid out below.’

  ‘But can the bank take the weight? My builders say the soil is sandy and light and the force of the river may cause erosion.’

  ‘The bend in the Jumna reduces the thrust of the current at that point. Besides, there are ways of reinforcing the bank to support the buildings.’

  ‘Buildings? You’re suggesting more than one?’

  ‘Yes. Let me show you, Majesty.’ Ustad Ahmad took a large folded paper from his battered green leather satchel, opened it and spread it on the table. ‘I have drawn everything on a grid so you can see clearly the layout I’m proposing. The mausoleum would stand on two platforms – a large one surmounted by a smaller plinth for the tomb itself.�
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  ‘What are these structures you’ve marked on either side of the tomb?’

  ‘To the west a three-domed mosque and to the east a similar structure to be a resthouse for pilgrims but also the jabab – the echo – of the mosque, enhancing the symmetry which is so important to my design. And look, Majesty, to complete the effect, at the far end of the north—south waterway, directly opposite the tomb, I propose a southern gatehouse. As they enter, visitors will see the mausoleum rise before them as if floating against the limitless backdrop of the sky.’

  Shah Jahan scanned Ustad Ahmad’s drawing – he had indeed created an image of perfect balance. Yet everything would depend on the design of the tomb itself, which was marked only by a circle. ‘What about the mausoleum?’

  The architect produced a silk-wrapped bundle from his bag. ‘Before I show you this let me explain my thoughts. I recently visited the Emperor Humayun’s tomb in Delhi. What if, I wondered, the late empress’s mausoleum was, like Humayun’s, built to an octagonal plan but fuller of light, better befitting the memory of a woman? I experimented over and again with the proportions and concluded that the base should be a cube with its vertical corners chamfered to produce the octagon. The sarcophagus itself would lie in the middle of a central octagonal chamber surrounded by eight interconnecting chambers on each of two levels. The exterior façades would consist of two storeys of arched recesses. But enough words, Majesty. Allow me to show you what I mean.’

  Ustad Ahmad opened his parcel and took out some wooden blocks which he began carefully arranging into an octagonal structure. ‘Look, Majesty – on each of the four main sides would be iwans, entrance arches, whose top border would rise above the rest of the façade. The height from the ground to the top of the dome would be two hundred and forty feet.’

  ‘And the dome itself?’

  ‘I suggest a double one. Again, allow me to demonstrate.’ From his pocket this time, Ustad Ahmad took out two pieces of polished alabaster. ‘In the Emperor Humayun’s tomb inner and outer domes rest on a low drum. What I propose here is an inner dome rising eighty feet from the ground and a swelling outer dome shaped somewhat like a guava, topped by a golden finial.’ As he was talking Ustad Ahmad balanced the inner dome on the model’s octagonal walls then carefully slid the elongated outer dome over it. ‘Finally I suggest placing four chattris, domed kiosks, used in so many of the palaces of your Hindu allies, around the main dome, like pearls surrounding the central gem in a ring.’

  Shah Jahan stared at the model in front of him. It was perfect. How had this man understood his wishes so well when he had been unable to articulate them properly even to himself? Ustad Ahmad was looking hard at him, perhaps uncertain how to interpret his silence.

  ‘I’m appointing you my architect to oversee the creation of the empress’s mausoleum. Return to Agra immediately. Whatever you require – money, materials, labour – you shall have it.’

  ‘Majesty, I have one further question. What material should we build in? Sandstone?’

  ‘For the subsidiary buildings perhaps, but the mausoleum itself is to be of the purest white marble – I have already told the Raja of Amber that I will purchase the entire output of his quarries at Makrana and asked him to arrange the safe transport of the marble the two hundred miles to Agra.’

  For the first time Ustad Ahmad looked startled. ‘No one has ever built anything on this scale in marble … the cost will be …’

  ‘Do not concern yourself with the cost. You promised me a heaven on earth and that should be your sole concern.’

  That night Shah Jahan fell into a deeper sleep than for many months, anxiety over how best to fulfil Mumtaz’s dying wish quietened by Ustad Ahmad’s sublime design. In his dreams he stood beneath the great southern gateway, gazing at the shimmering mausoleum. As the hours passed he remained there transfixed, watching the white marble flush pink in the dawn light, glitter diamond bright beneath the hot midday sun and soften to violet as dusk descended and shadows shrouded the pearl-like dome. Then, through the velvet darkness, a lantern glowed and a woman appeared in the moonlit doorway. He couldn’t see her face but he knew it was Mumtaz …

  Slowly he walked through the gardens, breathing the heavy scent of white-petalled champa flowers and following the marble channel through which water rippled silver towards the tomb. As he passed, each of a row of marble fountains burst into life, sending jewel-bright droplets into the air. All the time his eyes were fixed on Mumtaz waiting in the entrance. He tried desperately to walk more quickly but his legs wouldn’t obey him, even when she raised her arms in silent entreaty. Her face was still in shadow but jewels glittered around her neck, waist and wrists. Just a few more steps and he would be with her, but suddenly the figure shimmered and dissolved before him.

  In anguish he climbed the stairs to the pale tomb and touched the milk-smooth marble, expecting it to feel cold. Instead the translucent stone was silken and warm as human flesh – Mumtaz’s flesh. An erotic longing possessed him and he pressed his lips to the stone. The mausoleum was Mumtaz herself. He would adorn it with the gems she loved in life. Emeralds and rubies, amethysts and corals, would shine against the white marble as they had glowed on her body. He stretched out his arms to embrace the tomb but suddenly there was nothing but the gloom of his bedchamber.

  Shah Jahan sat up and looked around him, dazed. Rising, he walked to the casement and peered into the darkness at the dim outline of the Tapti winding on its sluggish way, reminding him how far he was from Agra and Mumtaz, lying in her temporary grave. How weary he was of these empty barren lands that had robbed him of so much. Before Mumtaz’s death they had often talked about the visit they would make to the Vale of Kashmir when the fighting was over. They would never go there now – never wander its purple crocus fields or feel the cool wind blowing off its snow-dusted mountains or glide in a barge across its lily-strewn lakes. But as he gazed into the night he made Mumtaz – and himself – a vow. He would end this war quickly and return to Agra to oversee the construction of her tomb himself.

  From the protection of the awning of his scarlet command tent pitched on a small hill Shah Jahan surveyed the surrounding low-lying countryside. Heavy raindrops were splashing from a leaden monsoon sky into the already deep puddles around the tent. The drought had broken three weeks earlier and since then the much delayed rains had been almost incessant. Everywhere the ground had been baked so hard that at first it had been unable to absorb so much water so fast. In places flash floods had swept away humans and animals who only days earlier had been longing for water. Now green leaves had begun to sprout on the trees and shrubs. Small orange-pink jungle flowers were appearing and many more birds were singing, all part of the natural renewal of life and at odds with Shah Jahan’s sombre mood and continuing sense of final and irreplaceable loss.

  Eager to speed his departure from Burhanpur, despite the atrocious weather he had led a division of his army out into the water-logged and scarcely populated plains on receiving reliable reports that the last sizeable detachment of Bijapuran invaders had taken refuge in a forested area barely two days’ ride away. Now after much thought during another of the many sleepless nights he had suffered since Mumtaz died he had devised a plan of attack.

  ‘Send my officers to me,’ he shouted to an attendant. Soon they came splashing through the puddles to sit around him on low stools placed under the awning by his servants. Despite the rain Ashok Singh was colourfully and immaculately dressed as ever in a gold-trimmed maroon tunic and surcoat, his extravagant dark moustache brushed and perfumed, but several of the other commanders were mud-spattered. Standing slightly to one side was Aurangzeb. At his persistent urging Shah Jahan had allowed him to join the expedition instead of Shah Shuja, whom he had intended to bring had the boy not dislocated his shoulder playing polo while riding a half-broken pony against his groom’s advice.

  When all had arrived, Shah Jahan began. ‘I’ve decided how we will put an end to these invaders once and for all.
They descended on our lands like ravening animals and we will deal with them as such. Just as my ancestors on the steppes hunted game by driving them into a confined space, so we will encircle and trap our enemies leaving them no chance to flee. According to our scouts they’ve withdrawn into an area of thick jungle about five miles away to the south. Ashok Singh, I want you to select five thousand of our best horsemen and order each to take a musketman up behind him. They are to surround the jungle – our scouts tell me it is around six miles in circumference. Then, keeping no more than four yards apart from one another, they are to advance.’

  ‘You intend to take the Bijapurans unawares?’

  ‘At first yes, but as our noose tightens I want our enemies to know we’re coming. At a signal from me, as our men move through the trees and the length of our perimeter shortens, I want them to start shouting, even to blow trumpets and strike gongs. With noise on every side and realising they’re surrounded, the enemy won’t know which way to run and we will herd them together as we do wild animals in the hunt before we fall on them and slaughter them. Just in case any succeed in breaking through our cordon I want further horsemen backed up by musketmen and archers stationed round the jungle edge. Are my orders clear?’

  ‘Do we take prisoners, Majesty?’ Ashok Singh asked.

  ‘No, no prisoners.’ Seeing Ashok Singh’s look of surprise, Shah Jahan said, ‘You Rajputs expect no mercy in battle and fight to the death. But the Rajputs are honourable warriors. If they were ever my foes instead of my allies – as I hope will never be – I would spare any who asked for mercy. But these Bijapurans have brought nothing but havoc and bloodshed to my lands and cost my wife her life. They have spurned every opportunity to surrender and thus have forfeited any right to mercy – even if they beg for it.’