Empire of the Moghul: Ruler of the World (43 page)

The musicians were putting down their instruments and bowing low before Akbar. It must be time for some other entertainment, thought Salim – fire-eaters or rope-climbers or perhaps a fight between wild beasts released into the same cage.

Akbar rose, and instantly a hush fell across the courtyard. ‘Tonight is the high point of our Nauruz celebrations. Though we have already exchanged many gifts of jewels, I have one priceless gem
I wish for a short while to share with you. Two months ago, the Turkish sultan sent me a dancing girl of rare skill and beauty from Italy, a land far from our own. I have called her Anarkali, “Pomegranate Blossom”.’ He turned to the attendant at his side. ‘Summon Anarkali.’

Even when Akbar had sat down, the silence continued as the guests waited, eyes bright with anticipation. Salim’s own curiosity was whetted and he decided to remain for a while longer. He had only seen portraits of European women before, presented to his father by travellers. He had of course heard of Italy from the Jesuits, some of whom had been born there, but had learned little of its luxuries – or its women – from their ascetic sectarian discourses.

Glancing at his father, Salim saw a well-pleased, even self-satisfied smile curve his lips as he listened to the excited buzz of anticipation from his courtiers while attendants spread yet more carpets over the fine kilims already covering the courtyard. As soon as they were finished, other servants carrying gilt incense burners suspended from chains on their wrists began running round and round the courtyard, pale fragrant smoke trailing behind them until they had created such a cloud that Salim could barely make out his father on his dais. Suddenly, at a signal from Akbar, further attendants darted forward and extinguished all the candles. No one spoke in the soft scented darkness. Then, just as abruptly, the candelabras were again ablaze and there in the centre of the courtyard, amid the remaining wisps of smoke, stood Anarkali, wreathed in a long veil of semi-transparent gauze which emphasised rather than concealed the outline of her full breasts and opulent hips. Her head beneath the circlet of pearls securing the veil was erect.

She raised her arms and began to sway. No music accompanied the sinuous motion of her body, only the clash of her heavy bracelets and anklets. Her movements became freer and wilder. She began tossing her head from side to side and then started to spin, breasts swaying and bare feet stamping on the dark red carpet as she turned. Salim watched mesmerised, like all the guests. First one man, then another, began beating on the table before him with his fist. The
noise grew thunderous as Anarkali whirled yet faster, arms outspread. Then with a cry she ripped the veil from her body.

There was a collective gasp. It was not just the perfection of her voluptuous body, naked except for her tight jewelled bodice and almost sheer muslin pantaloons. It was her hair. The colour of palest gold and falling to her waist, it flew out in a shimmering mass around her as she continued to whirl. Suddenly, dramatically, she stopped. She was smiling, fully aware of the sensation she had caused. Then, approaching the dais, she dropped slowly to her knees before Akbar and with two flicks of her head sent her glorious hair flying first forward over her breasts and then back. Arms outstretched towards the emperor, she leaned further and further backwards, arching her supple spine until her head touched the ground behind her.

In the flickering candlelight Salim was close enough to make out Anarkali’s features. Her face was oval with a cleft chin and a small straight nose, and above them the most beautiful eyes he had ever seen – somewhere between dark blue and violet. He also saw his father’s fond complacent gaze as it rested on his prized possession. Salim’s own pulses were pounding and his mouth was dry. He must have Anarkali, he would have her . . .

‘Highness, the risk . . . Anarkali is at present your father’s favourite concubine. Discovery would mean death beneath the elephant’s foot or worse for me and for her. In the seven years I have been superintendent of your father’s
haram
no one has ever asked such a thing of me.’ The
khawajasara
, a small, beak-nosed woman, looked terrified. Salim could see a vein beating in her right temple beneath her thinning grey hair, but he could also see how tempted she was.

‘Name your price. I’ll give you whatever you ask.’ Salim reached inside his tunic for a silk pouch hanging round his neck from a hide thong. Loosening it, he drew out a ruby. As he held it up to the light of an oil lamp burning in a niche in the small court behind the elephants’ stables to which he had summoned the
khawajasara
, the uncut gem glowed. ‘This is the pick of my jewels – a ruby of the first water worth one thousand gold
mohurs
. Do what I ask and
it is yours. You and your family will be wealthy for generations.’

‘But how can I, Highness?’ The
khawajasara
stared at the gem as if unable to tear her eyes away. ‘Only the emperor can enter the imperial
haram
.’

‘You are the superintendent and go to and from the
haram
all the time. You could smuggle Anarkali out disguised as your attendant. The guards will not suspect or challenge you.’

‘Highness, I’m not sure . .’ the
khawajasara
said miserably. ‘The emperor sends for her all the time . . .’

‘Three days from now my father departs on a long hunting expedition. Bring her to me the first night he is away and the ruby is yours.’ As Salim waited, he turned the gem so that its heart flashed like fire. The
khawajasara
bit her lip but then seemed to make up her mind.

‘Very well, I will do as you ask.’ Pulling her dark shawl over her head as she spoke, she immediately turned and hurried away, merging into the purple shadows, her bare feet padding away over the stone paving still warm from the day’s heat.

The time before Akbar’s departure passed slowly. Salim could think of little but Anarkali – those violet eyes, that golden hair. She was like a jewel herself but one made of soft, living flesh, not hard stone. He half expected his father to change his plans but at dawn on the third morning he watched Akbar, accompanied by Abul Fazl and a few of his inner circle, ride through the palace gates to the deep booming of the gatehouse drums. He was planning to be away for three weeks and fifty bullock carts loaded with tents, cooking pots, chests of clothes, bows, arrows and muskets followed the procession of guards, huntsmen and beaters, raising a cloud of white dust that spiralled into the air long after the procession had wound out of the city and into the plains.

That night Salim waited in his apartments. The candles his attendants always lit at sunset – fetching the flame from the palace fire-pot, the
agingir
– were half melted and the palace had fallen still and quiet around him when, an hour after midnight, he at last heard a gentle knocking on the door.

‘Highness.’ It was one of his guards, face creased with the sleep from which he had just been roused. ‘Two women are here.’ Salim had told his men that he had summoned a girl from the bazaar. It was not the first time he had done so and they had not looked surprised.

‘Send them in.’

Moments later, two heavily veiled women stood before him. The
khawajasara
at once uncovered her face and Salim saw sweat beading it. ‘All went as it should, Highness. No one questioned me.’

‘You’ve done well. Now leave us and return an hour before dawn.’

‘My reward, Highness . . .’

Eyes fixed on the motionless figure of Anarkali, Salim pulled the pouch containing the ruby from his neck. ‘Take it.’

He scarcely noticed as the
khawajasara
hastened from the room. Anarkali was wearing a plain black robe that was slightly too long for her so that the hem was coated with dust. The
khawajasara
had done well. Who would have guessed that such drab garments concealed his father’s favourite concubine, the cherished companion of his most intimate moments?

‘You sent for me, Highness?’ Anarkali spoke in Persian that was oddly cadenced, but her voice was low and soft.

‘Let me see your hair.’

Anarkali slowly pulled off her veil and let it float to the floor. Her golden hair was concealed beneath a tight-fitting black cap. Her eyes, the colour of amethysts in the faint candlelight and fringed by lashes darkened with kohl, looked straight into his with frank curiosity as she raised her arms to take off the cap and her hair, pale gold like corn in the moonlight, tumbled around her. Her smile told Salim, just as it had when she had been dancing, that she understood her power over men. Her confidence was deeply arousing.

‘Since I saw you dance I’ve thought of nothing but you. I desire you.’

‘If your father finds out he will be very angry with me.’

‘I will tell him you were blameless – that it was all my doing. But you don’t have to stay if you don’t want to . . .’

‘Your ardour flatters me. What woman in my situation would refuse a prince?’

Without waiting for Salim to say anything else Anarkali quickly undid the fastenings at the shoulder and waist of her ugly robe, and wriggled from it like a beautiful snake sloughing off its skin. Her flesh had a soft pearl-like sheen and her full, blue-veined breasts, tipped with pink, swayed a little as she came towards him. She took his hands and placed them on her silky, slender waist. Then, pressing herself yet closer so he could feel the hard tips of her nipples through his silk tunic, she ran his hands down over the rich swell of her hips and buttocks. Her skin felt just as he had imagined, warm and yielding. An uncontrollable shudder of virility ran through him and stepping back from her he began pulling off his own clothes, tearing the delicate fabric of his tunic in his haste.

‘You have a warrior’s body like your father, and are as quickly aroused . . .’

Salim barely heard her. He could think of nothing except burying himself in that glorious body. Taking Anarkali’s hand he pulled her down on to a divan, kicking brocade cushions out of the way. Winding his hands in her long shining mass of hair, he kissed her mouth, then the velvet hollow between her breasts. He could scarcely believe the perfection of her from her delicate collarbones to the lush flesh of her rounded thighs. Sensing his urgency, she was already spreading her legs and arching her back. Her body beneath his felt slippery with sweat. ‘Highness,’ she was whispering, ‘now . . . I am ready . . .’ As Salim entered her and began to thrust, triumph and exultation surged through him – but it was not only the pleasure of taking a beautiful woman. It was taking a woman who belonged to his father.

Salim couldn’t sleep. The night seemed intolerably close and hot and the
punkah
swinging slowly back and forth over his bed barely disturbed the heavy air. Yet he knew what was really keeping him from sleep was his longing for Anarkali. The
khawajasara
had brought the Venetian to him on two subsequent nights before his father’s return to Lahore but since then he had not seen her.

Why did she fascinate him so much? It was a hard question to answer, but he knew it was more than her beauty, more than the fact that she was his father’s concubine, though both added spice. There was a spirit, a self-reliance about her, perhaps the result of her strange, turbulent life. She had told him how, when she was a young girl, pirates had attacked the ship on which she was sailing off the coast of north Africa with her merchant father, whose throat they had slit. They had taken her captive and she had been sold in the slave markets of Istanbul to a Turkish brothel owner who had had her instructed in the arts of love-making. Carefully preserving her virginity, he had sold her at the age of fifteen for a great price to a nobleman who had presented her to the Sultan. That had been four years ago.