Shadow Princess (2 page)

Empress Mumtaz Mahal, the Exalted One of the Palace—a title Emperor Shah Jahan had bestowed upon her a few years after they wed—let her hand lie in her elder daughter’s comforting hold. In another minute, the pains would begin again. As she struggled to give birth to her fourteenth child in nineteen years of marriage, she was grateful even for the fact of it, for she was married to a man more beloved to her than anyone else, Khurram. He had been Shah Jahan for many years now, but she still thought of him as Khurram—the name his grandfather Emperor Akbar had bestowed upon him at birth.

A roar filled her ears. Opium. She briefly considered it in the filigree silver bowl, sweet to the taste, mixed with dates, the juice of the tamarind, a sprinkling of crushed cashews and almonds, studded with raisins. She had already eaten five round balls, each the size of a
jamun
fruit, since her waters broke . . . when was that? But the opium, always effective before, had only just razed the edges of the pain this time; she was hesitant to take more. The midwives, with their constant chatter and advice, had said that it would not harm the child already formed inside her. Mumtaz did not believe them. Her belly began to throb again, and she screamed, frantic with worry that Khurram would hear; he was sure to be nearby, though he was not allowed to enter the birthing chamber. There were some rules even the Emperor of the Mughal Empire could not circumvent.

A gaggle of midwives flitted around the room, keeping their distance from the bed where their Empress lay. She could not bear their touch upon her so soon.

Jahanara’s fingers constricted, and Mumtaz, through her screaming, gasped, “Let me go,
beta.
”

The girl did in fright, covering her own face instead. When Mumtaz could rouse herself, she reached out blindly.

On her left side, a voice said, “I am here too, Mama. I will comfort you. If you do not want your hands held too tight, I will hold them lightly.”

The Empress sighed. She turned to her second daughter, Roshanara, and then back to Jahanara. How similar they were to each other, though, and she smiled within; they would hate that comparison. Jahan was seventeen years old, willowy and upright. She had a thin, sharply structured face, all planes and angles, brows that had been plucked to arch thickly above the bones surrounding her eyes, hair drawn back in this heat and plaited down her back. Roshan was a smoother version of her older sister, her skin more fair, her eyes colored with flecks of green, her face round. And yet, despite this outward physical sophistication, she was only fourteen years old, three years younger than Jahan in age—a lifetime in understanding. She should not have been here, but she had insisted and Mumtaz had given in, unable to argue once the labor began. After all, the girls would one day be mothers themselves; let them see and learn and know what a woman was to do in her life. Between the two of them, there was already a slender rivalry, so inconsequential now as almost not to exist. But, Mumtaz thought, she was here to control them, for they needed a mother’s hand; Khurram was of little help, he had too much love for one child and a bland indifference to the other.

When her belly strained with the next contraction, Mumtaz wondered why her thoughts were so clear. During the thirteen previous births, she had no memory of actually thinking anything. Those experiences had been simple, practically easy, an ache in her lower back, a sucking of opium, the child brought out splitting the room’s seams with its cries, each successive yell painting smiles on all of their faces. Laughter from outside as Khurram heard the news, his ear pressed against the wood of the door. Then there had been those early years when Khurram and she, and the children, had been sent in official exile to stumble around the Empire, pursued by his father Emperor Jahangir’s troops. Some of the births had taken place in tents, on the roadside. Even now, in these comparatively restful times, with the whole Empire in the palms of their hands, Mumtaz could hear the distant rumble of pursuing horse hooves and felt an overwhelming fear for their lives if they were caught.

Not all the children had lived. There had been a girl before Jahanara who had died when she was three years old, and Mumtaz had to struggle to remember her name . . . and her face. They were still in Emperor Jahangir’s good graces at that time, and so he had sent his condolences to his son and his daughter-in-law upon that child’s death. Some of the other children had been stillborn, mercifully so, not giving her the time to create an attachment with them. Some had died within a few days; some, like that oldest girl, had died of the smallpox or of a mysterious and stubborn fever just as they were beginning to crawl, or walk, or babble or talk. But she still had six children. Jahan and Roshan—the only two girls—here with her and four fine boys in the outer room with their father. And if this child lived also . . . She touched her belly gently, and for the first time came this thought—
if this child lived and she herself did not die,
there would be seven. And she still had some childbearing years left in her, and though Khurram and she had been married so many years, despite the burdens of the Empire, despite the women in his harem, he would visit her bed. And so there would be other children. In the end, this, and everything else, was in Allah’s hands.

“Jahan, you are of an age to marry soon,” she said faintly when the contraction had passed.

“I am?” And then, softly, “I am.” Those two words were fraught with longing, and Mumtaz watched her child. So she had felt too at her age, well before her age, with none of the patience Jahan had. “We will speak of it when you are feeling better, Mama.”

“Your Bapa and I have been talking,” Mumtaz said, the words rushing from her mouth, determined to use this precious, snatched moment of calm. She had realized the truth of what was to happen to her, suddenly and with clarity. Her only anxiety was that she would not be able to see Khurram before . . . and she wanted to see his face, touch him, hear his voice. But she had her duties to her children too. She beckoned with a tired hand. “Come closer.”

She had meant this for Jahan, but Roshanara also crowded over her. “There is an
amir
at court, of a good family who have been servants of the Empire for generations. They hail from Persia, descended from the Shah, though their ancestral lands are in Badakhshan. Your Bapa and I will not force you into a marriage you do not want, Jahan, but—”

“You know that I will want what you do, Mama,” Jahanara said. “Why all this now? We will have plenty of time later, save your energy for the child.”

Empress Mumtaz Mahal closed her eyes, exhausted, and lay unmoving on the bed for so long that the two girls gazed at each other in trepidation. Roshanara bent to her mother’s ear and whispered, “What is his name, Mama?”

“Najabat Khan.”

Neither of the girls knew anything about Mirza Najabat Khan. They had been at court only a few times in the
zenana
balcony behind their father’s throne, not paying attention to the names of the nobles presented to the Emperor, mesmerized instead by the glittering gold and silver standards, the absolute quiet in a room thronging with men, the rows of turbaned heads bent in deference to their Bapa.

Mumtaz took a deep breath as pain bit into her lower back again. “Jahan, call for your father.”

Jahanara rose; orders from her mother were obeyed almost before they left her lips. When she realized what was being asked, she dithered. “Bapa cannot come here, Mama.”

“He has not until now,” Mumtaz said. “But I want him.”

The midwives grabbed veils and drew them over their heads, falling into submissive attitudes even before the Emperor had stepped into the room. Someone clucked, in disapproval, and Mumtaz, though she heard the sound, paid little heed to it.

“Tell him to come.”

Jahanara bowed to her mother. “He will be here, Mama, as soon as I can open the door.”

“Go, Roshan,” Mumtaz said to her younger daughter. “I want to be alone with your Bapa now.”

Roshanara went from her mother’s bedside, her mouth pursed with discontent, and sat down with the slave girls, who had made a space along the wall for her. When Jahanara put her hand on the latch, the metal chill against her skin, she heard the midwife mutter, “The head is showing, your Majesty. It will not be long.”

•  •  •

Princess Jahanara Begam rested against the door and rubbed the back of her aching neck. Her mother had labored for thirty hours, and now finally the child’s head was crowning. At first, this confinement had been like so many others at which Jahanara had been present. The slave girls had laughed and called out for the birth of a son. The sage primary midwife sat in one corner (holding her own court among the lesser midwives), nodding at the jokes, her fingers busy with her knitting so that they would remain supple when she was needed. Aside from the opium, Mumtaz had wanted to eat only apples. Jahanara had patiently sliced and fed them to her mother. These were early apples from the valleys of Kashmir, exquisitely tiny and well formed, the size of cherries. Their aroma filled the room in this fiery month of June—in the middle of the flat plains and miles from the cool mountains of Kashmir—and all of their senses slavered. Jahanara had seen saliva drip from the primary midwife’s mouth. But the fruits were for the Empress, and no one, not even her children, princesses of royal blood and birth, had a right to them. And then, in the past few hours, something had changed. Not the fact that Mumtaz had labored too long but that she had struggled too hard, her eyes vacant during the contractions, her conversation impeccably lucid in between. As though she would never find the time to speak again.

At that thought, Jahanara picked up the skirts of her
ghagara
and fled down the dim corridor in search of her father, and when she reached the end, someone put a hand across, halting her progress. She stopped, breathing hard from the running.

“What is it, Aurangzeb? Why are you awake? You should be in bed, this is women’s work.”

Her brother’s figure detached itself from the shadows. At thirteen he was already almost at her height. Aurangzeb was as thin she was, but whereas her gait and her carriage were assured, he was at that awkward, dangling age with his torso not grown into his long arms and legs.

“Is Mama all right, Jahan? Can I go and see her?”

Jahanara drew back from him, outraged. “Mama has asked for Bapa—I’m on my way to get him, and even he should not be in her apartments now. How can you think
you
would be allowed?”

He shook his head absentmindedly, as though he had not heard her. “Why would I not be allowed? You are. What is wrong? Is the child born? Why is it taking so long?”

He still had his hand on her arm, and Jahanara shook him off with an impatient gesture. In the semidarkness of this outer corridor of the palaces at Burhanpur, Prince Aurangzeb’s mouth twisted for a brief moment with pain. It was not as though they all did not like him, Jahanara thought. Aurangzeb was one of them; they shared the same father and mother—and this in itself was so unusual in these times, when Bapa could have had numerous wives and concubines—nothing diluted their ancestry. But a minor sliver of irritation lay between them and Aurangzeb. It was . . . his intensity, his supreme confidence (so misplaced in her mind; he was a child, had done nothing yet, and would probably do nothing in the future), his insistence on what he thought was right and what wrong.

She said, as forcefully as she could, “Don’t be foolish enough to enter the birthing chamber, Aurangzeb. Remember that you are a royal prince and must follow convention.”

Her brother had turned to the doors at the far end of the corridor, but at Jahanara’s words he paused. She left him and ran to her father, knowing that nothing but the casual mention of propriety (which to Aurangzeb was akin to something holy and held in reverence) would have stopped him. She ran swiftly, her heart surging in her chest, not seeing the eunuchs on guard along the way who bowed to her. Where was Bapa? Where was he? She burst into her father’s apartments and shook him awake.

“Mama wants you,” she said, sobbing now. “Go to her. She is dying.”

•  •  •

By the time Emperor Shah Jahan entered the apartments, Mumtaz had given birth to their fourteenth child and was asleep. Jahanara and he had stood outside for twenty minutes, their hands linked, listening to the Empress’s cries, and then the wail of the child. The Matron of the Harem, Satti Khanum, had put her head out when they knocked and said, “Her Majesty is fine, your Majesty. Silly child”—this to Princess Jahanara—“to rouse your father from sleep with fears such as these.”

“I want to see her, Satti,” Shah Jahan had said.

“Soon, not now. You cannot watch the birth itself. Stay outside, your Majesty, I will call for you.”

And so they had been left at the door, leaning with their ears flattened against the wood. They had heard the child bawl, a sigh from Mumtaz, a quietness as she slept. And then Satti had opened the door for her Emperor.

The baby, a girl, was in a gold and silver cradle in one corner of the room. The women around—midwives and slaves—melted away to make themselves inconspicuous as Shah Jahan bent perfunctorily over the child. She was awake, and her vivid blue eyes looked out at him from the folds of silk swathed around her little body.

“Did her Majesty give the child a name before she slept?” Shah Jahan asked.

“She suggested—” Roshanara came flying to her father’s side and clasped his arm around the wrist. “She suggested Goharara, Bapa. Do you like the name?”

“Whatever your mother wants is what will be, my dear. Go.” He nudged her away. “I must be alone with her.”

He went to the bed and sat down on a low stool someone had set there for him, his knees raised level with his chest, his hands on his thighs. For a long time, as the dark of night wore out and the light of day came to claim its share of time, he gazed at his wife, noted the rise of her chest as she breathed, marveled at the sheer beauty of her features. He would never tire of this simple act. He placed a broad hand on her brow, but she did not stir. Her skin was too warm, he thought, and snapped his fingers once, without turning around. A slave brought a bowl of water scented with the attar of roses and a soft towel, which he dipped into the water and laid on her forehead.