Empire of the Moghul: The Tainted Throne (10 page)

‘I’m sorry. Fatima Begam is sleeping,’ Mehrunissa whispered.

‘I can see that. When she wakes tell her I’ll come back later. I have a pressing business matter about a cargo of indigo to discuss.’ Sultana’s tone was cool and her expression unfriendly as she turned to leave.

Mehrunissa had grown used to the coldness, even hostility, of some of the inmates of the
haram,
and to their curiosity. She had overheard two elderly women speculating why the widow of the murdered Sher Afghan should have been made a lady-in-waiting. ‘She’s young and good looking enough. What is she doing here? You’d have thought they’d have married her off again,’ one had said.

It was a good question. What was she doing here? Mehrunissa wondered. On the opposite side of the chamber, Fatima Begam shifted position a little and started to snore.

‘The
khawajasara
has ordered everyone to the courtyard immediately,’ one of Fatima Begam’s maids, a thin, wiry little woman called Nadya, said. ‘Even you must come, madam,’ she added, bowing her head respectfully to her elderly mistress.

‘Why? What has happened?’ Fatima Begam didn’t look best pleased at having her early evening meal disrupted, Mehrunissa thought.

‘A concubine has been caught with one of the eunuchs. Some say he was more of a man than he pretended, others that they were just kissing. She is to be flogged.’

‘When I was young such a crime would have meant death.’ Fatima Begam’s normally mild face was disapproving. ‘What about the eunuch?’

‘He has already been taken down to the parade ground to die under the elephant’s foot.’

‘Good,’ said Fatima Begam. ‘That is as it should be.’

Following Fatima Begam, Mehrunissa saw that the courtyard was already packed with chattering women, some looking apprehensive while others were curious and trying to manoeuvre for a better view of the centre of the courtyard where five female
haram
guards were erecting a wooden frame like a small gallows. ‘Stand behind me,’ Fatima Begam ordered Mehrunissa, ‘and hold my handkerchief and scent bottle.’

One of the guards was now pushing with her strong bare arms against the punishment frame, testing its strength. She stepped back and nodded to another guard who put a short bronze horn to her lips and blew a shrill metallic blast. At the sound Mehrunissa saw the
khawajasara,
clad entirely in scarlet and walking with her customary slow, dignified pace, enter the courtyard from the right, the women parting to allow her through. Behind Mala, dragged along by two more female guards, was a plump young woman whose eyes were already streaming with tears and whose abject posture showed that she knew there would be no mercy. As the
khawajasara
approached the wooden frame she said, ‘Strip her. Let the flogging begin.’

The guards who had been holding the woman pushed her forward on to her knees and roughly pulled off her silk bodice and long, full muslin trousers, tearing the delicate fabric and sending pearls from the tasselled fastenings rolling across the courtyard. One came to rest against Mehrunissa’s foot. As the guards dragged her naked to the frame the woman began screaming, her body bucking and straining
and her full breasts swaying as she struggled, but she was no match for their muscular strength and they had soon bound her ankles to the bottom corners of the frame and her wrists to the upper corners with hide thongs. The woman’s hair was very long, falling to well beneath her buttocks. Drawing her dagger, one of the guards hacked it off just beneath the nape of her neck and let the shining mass fall in a coil to the ground. All around her, Mehrunissa caught a collective gasp. For a woman to forfeit her hair – one of her greatest beauties – was in itself a terrible, shaming thing.

Two of the female guards now stepped forward, stripped off their outer tunics and from the broad, studded leather belts round their waists pulled out short-handled whips with knotted cords. Taking their place on either side of the frame they raised their arms and began, first one, then the other, to lash the prisoner’s already trembling, quivering body. At each blow they called out the number – ‘one’, ‘two’, ‘three’ – and each time the hissing cords bit into her soft smooth flesh the woman screamed out until her cries became one continuous almost animal shriek. Desperately but futilely she tried to twist her body out of reach of the whips. Blood was soon running down her back and spine and between her buttocks and speckling the paving stones beneath her. All around her Mehrunissa realised the courtyard had fallen silent.

‘Nineteen’, ‘twenty’ called out the guards, their own bodies now glistening with a sheen of sweat. By the fifteenth blow the limp, bleeding figure dangling from the frame had ceased its terrible screaming and looked unconscious. ‘Enough,’ said the
khawajasara.
‘Take her naked as she is and throw her out into the streets. She will find her natural place in the
whorehouses of the bazaar.’ Then holding her staff of office out in front of her she made her way from the courtyard as a babble of voices broke out behind her.

Mehrunissa was trembling and she felt a little sick. She needed space and fresh air. Telling Fatima Begam that she felt unwell, she half ran to a fountain in the far corner of the swiftly emptying courtyard and sitting down on its marble rim splashed her face with water.

‘Are you all right, madam?’ She looked up to see Nadya.

‘Yes. It’s just that I’ve never witnessed anything like that. I didn’t know that punishments in the
haram
could be so brutal.’

‘She was lucky. Far more terrible things can happen than a flogging. Surely you’ve heard the story of Anarkali?’

Mehrunissa shook her head.

‘She was bricked up alive in the dungeons of the imperial palace at Lahore. They say if you pass by at night you can still hear her sobbing to be let out.’

‘What had she done to deserve such a death?’

‘She was the Emperor Akbar’s most prized concubine but took his son, our present emperor Jahangir, as her lover.’

Mehrunissa stared at the maid. Anarkali must be the name of the concubine whose embraces had caused Jahangir’s exile to Kabul. What a terrible price to pay for a few moments’ human frailty . . . ‘What actually happened, Nadya?’

The maid’s face lit up. It was clearly a tale she enjoyed telling. ‘Akbar’s passion for Anarkali was greater than for any other. She once told me that when they were alone he liked her to dance for him naked except for the jewels he gave her. One night at the time of the great Nauruz festival he gave a feast where he ordered Anarkali to perform before
him and his nobles. Akbar’s son Jahangir was one of the guests. He had never seen her before and her beauty so overcame him that he determined to have her even though she was his father’s. He bribed the woman who was then the
khawajasara
to bring Anarkali to him when Akbar was away from court.’

‘And they were discovered?’

‘Not at first, no. But as Jahangir’s lust for Anarkali grew, so also did his recklessness. The
khawajasara
became frightened and confessed everything to the emperor. Her reward was a quick rather than a slow death. Then the emperor ordered Anarkali and Jahangir to be brought before him. My uncle was one of Akbar’s bodyguards and saw everything. He told me Anarkali pleaded for her life, her face wet with kohl-streaked tears, but Akbar was deaf and blind to her. Even when Jahangir shouted that he, not Anarkali, was to blame the emperor told him to be silent. He ordered Anarkali to be walled up and left to starve to death.

‘As for the prince, my uncle said everyone was certain from the emperor’s expression that Akbar was going to order his execution. As soon as Anarkali had been dragged away a deep silence fell on the assembled courtiers. But whatever his original intentions, however violent his rage, at the last moment Akbar could not bring himself to have his own son killed. Instead he exiled him with only his milk-brother for company.’

Mehrunissa nodded. ‘I know. He was sent to Kabul while my father was treasurer there.’

‘But that wasn’t quite the end of Anarkali’s story, at least I don’t think it was . . .’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Within the
haram
it was whispered that Jahangir had persuaded his grandmother Hamida to ease Anarkali’s suffering and that somehow before the last bricks of her prison were in place Hamida found a way to get a phial of poison to her so she could escape the torments of a long and agonising death.’

Despite the warm early evening air Mehrunissa shivered. First the flogging and now this horrible story. ‘I should return to Fatima Begum,’ she said. As she walked with Nadya across the courtyard, where the wooden frame had now been taken down and the blood washed from the paving stones, her head was still full of the tragedy of Anarkali. Had Akbar been a harsh and callous man? That wasn’t how others spoke of him and was certainly not how her father remembered him. Ghiyas Beg had always praised the late emperor and the tolerance and justice with which he had governed. Perhaps in the heat of his anger Akbar had forgotten who he was and had lashed out as a man whose pride had been wounded rather than as an emperor who should be above inflicting such a vicious revenge on a weak woman with little power over her own destiny.

Jahangir . . . surely he had been the most to blame? What did the story tell her about his character? That he could be reckless and impulsive and selfish but also that he was capable of great passion and had courage. He had tried to shield Anarkali and take the blame on himself. When that failed he had done what he could to save her from further suffering. Mehrunissa thought of his fine physique, the compelling look in his eyes that had prompted her to drop her veil as she danced for him. It was strange, but the story of his doomed desire for Anarkali hadn’t diminished him in her
eyes – almost the reverse. How exciting it could be to share life with a man like that, so full of virile energy and with so much power to wield.

Yet almost at once other more sober thoughts began to intrude. Weren’t there disturbing similarities between Anarkali’s story and her own? Jahangir had seen Anarkali only once and that had been enough to convince him he must have her and he had been ruthless in his pursuit of her. He had also seen her, Mehrunissa, only once and not so many months after Anarkali’s death and had wanted her as well. It wasn’t quite the same, she tried to convince herself. Jahangir had openly and honourably asked her father for her hand. When her father refused him, he had accepted it. Or had he?

Mehrunissa’s brain was now working feverishly. Unbidden she saw before her once again the blue-eyed man riding past her during the descent through the passes from Kabul. At the time, she’d asked Ladli’s nursemaid Farisha, a notorious and accomplished gossip, to find out who he was. Just two days later she had reported triumphantly that there was indeed a foreign soldier with blue eyes among the bodyguard – an Englishman whom the emperor had recently appointed. At the time that information had persuaded Mehrunissa she had been mistaken. Sher Afghan’s murderer was said to be Portuguese. Also, as she’d continued to tell herself, these foreigners often looked alike and she’d only seen her husband’s assassin for a few moments in dim light and in terrifying circumstances. Yet in her heart she had not been satisfied. How could she forget the look in those pale eyes as he had drawn his dagger across her husband’s throat or mistake them when she saw them again?

But now Mehrunissa wondered whether she might be coming closer to the truth. Jahangir had wanted Anarkali and had allowed nothing to stand in his way. If he desired her, Mehrunissa, why should he be any less ruthless? For a second time Mehrunissa shivered but now it was for herself rather than for the dead concubine. It excited her physically to think that Jahangir wanted her so much, but Anarkali’s fate showed that too intimate a contact with the imperial family could bring danger as well as reward . . .

Jahangir felt his opponent’s curved sword grate on the steel mesh of the mail coat protecting his thigh before sliding off to cut deep into his gilded leather saddle. Pulling hard on the reins of his black horse he aimed a slashing sword cut at his enemy’s arm as the man struggled to pull back his own weapon for another swing. However, he missed as the other rider reined in so hard that his grey horse reared up. One of the animal’s flailing front hooves caught Jahangir’s mount in the belly. The other struck Jahangir’s upper calf. It was a glancing blow but it turned his lower leg numb and his foot slipped from its stirrup.

As his horse swerved away whinnying in pain, Jahangir lost his balance but quickly recovered, steadied his mount and managed to get his foot back in the stirrup. Then the other man was upon him again. Jahangir ducked down on to the sweating neck of his black horse as his opponent’s sword hissed through the air just above the plume on his
helmet. Even if a rebel, the raja was a true warrior who had had the courage to pick him out in the charge, Jahangir just had time to think as he wheeled his horse again to face him. Both men dug their heels into their mounts’ flanks and simultaneously charged forward. This time Jahangir aimed his stroke at his enemy’s neck. First it caught the rim of a steel breastplate but then bit into flesh and sinew. At the same time Jahangir felt a stinging pain as the raja’s curved sword sliced through his long leather gauntlet into his own sword arm and blood began to flow. Turning quickly, he saw his opponent slowly collapse sideways from his saddle and then hit the dusty ground with a thud which dislodged the sword from his right hand.