Shadow Princess (27 page)

Her heart emptied of feeling when she thought of Najabat Khan, of how she could have been with him tonight if he had wanted, if he had only come the other day . . . for this was all they could have now. Bapa would never let her marry, in fact—and her lip curled in distaste—he had hinted, no, said outright, that Roshan was in love with Mirza Najabat Khan. What was Roshan compared to
her
? Then an ache came to settle in her, tinged with a modicum of self-pity, but she brushed it away; she had deeply enjoyed herself tonight, forgotten her cares, and not been worried about being in love . . . and being hurt, or disappointed. Perhaps it was better this way.

By the time she slept, the whole harem had heard of Jahanara Begam’s visitor and that he had spent hours in her garden, on a divan, under a sky of stars that glittered like newly faceted stones. The news did not filter into Emperor Shah Jahan’s apartments—yet—because the women were afraid, because his reaction was wholly unpredictable. Jahanara was not a wife or a concubine but a daughter, one so powerful that her father might well forgive her for snatching a few moments of gratification—the only thing he could not give her himself. Most of the women knew better than to credit the rumors about Shah Jahan and Jahanara. But they talked through the night, waking each other with impulsively thought-of comments, putting together with greedy avidity the few facts they had been told. What they had not heard, their imaginations supplied—for there was only one act between a man and a woman in the dark.

•  •  •

Later that year, Emperor Shah Jahan sent Prince Shah Shuja to the Deccan, ostensibly to oversee the campaign there and attack the fortress at Parenda. He left in great state, at the head of an infantry fifty thousand strong and a matching cavalry with horses, elephants, and heavy artillery. The Deccan campaign was merely an excuse to send Shuja away, and they all—Dara, Jahanara, Shuja, Aurangzeb, and Roshanara—recognized that. Although Mahabat Khan, the Khan-i-khanan, who had been left at Burhanpur to continue the Deccan wars when the imperial family had returned a year ago to Agra, had sent numerous missives to his Emperor for assistance, promising victory if it arrived.

There were
amirs
enough at court who would have been glad to escort the imperial army to Burhanpur, but Emperor Shah Jahan had insisted that a prince must be at the lead, and who better than Shuja, newly married and settled in his personal life—it was now time for him to take on princely responsibilities.

“Dara does not want to go, Bapa?” Shuja had been bold enough to ask his father one day. They were walking to the morning
jharoka
together; it was Shuja’s day to accompany his father. Ever since that first
jharoka
after their mother had died, by tacit consent, one or another of them had always been at their father’s side—if Jahanara and Roshanara went, they stayed behind the curtain screening the balcony; if one of the sons went, they stood behind their father and listened as he was approached with appeals and given news.

Shah Jahan hesitated and then continued walking as he put an arm about his son’s shoulders. “
Beta,
you must do something. You are a man now, married, with a child on the way. In my grief for your Mama, I have been remiss in giving all of you duties in the Empire. My father sent me on campaign at a very early age, and I learned on the field what it was to be in charge of an army of men, to be accountable for their lives, to teach them to obey my every wish. This will be your first command, but with Mirza Mahabat Khan to guide you in warfare—and he is an able general—you will be victorious in sacking Parenda. If we are to make any forays into the Deccani kingdoms, Parenda must fall to us first.”

“I understand, Bapa,” Shuja said, shaking his head all the same in his ponderous way, “and am grateful for the honor.” He stood back as the eunuchs lifted the curtain and Emperor Shah Jahan stepped through onto the
jharoka
balcony. Today, the horizon glowed with an early dawn, and as the Naubat Khana played its music to announce Shah Jahan’s presence, the cries of “Padshah Salamat!” escalated around them. Shuja slipped in behind his father and, under cover of the noise, said, “Why is Dara not going?”

It seemed to him that his father had not heard what he said, for the Emperor was a long time in answering. As the Mir Arz, the Master of Ceremonies at the
jharoka
and in the imperial
durbar,
read out the petitions, Shah Jahan nodded his responses or lifted his hand. He turned sideways and said, “I thought that you would prefer to be sent.”

“Oh, I do, Bapa,” Shuja replied. It was the only thing he could say, for no one dared to protest the Emperor’s orders—even if, and Prince Shah Shuja’s mouth twisted deprecatingly—even if he was a royal prince and son of the Emperor. Having grown up in the imperial court, Shuja knew that the Empire’s beating heart lay where the Emperor was, and being sent away from court, even for glory on the battlefield, meant a loosening foothold in the Empire’s core. He had three brothers, and they could well steal their father’s affections from him, and when he returned (if he came back at all to court for more than a brief visit), what would be his standing with the nobles? His entire circle of influence would diminish, be restricted to the generals and soldiers with whom he associated. In his heart, as did the others, Shah Shuja wanted to be Emperor, and in sending him away, and keeping Dara by his side, Emperor Shah Jahan was clearly marking his preference for heir—to Shuja and to the Empire.

“Dara is needed here,
beta,
” his father said to him now, turning toward him and presenting his back to the assembly beyond the
jharoka
balcony. There was compassion in the Emperor’s eyes, and to Shuja it seemed as though his father was warning him against having ambitions beyond his reach. Dara was the heir to the Empire—the rest of them would be given high ranks, enormous salaries, mansions and palaces around the land,
jagirs
and districts to administer, but before the Friday noon prayers, only one man’s name would be taken in the
khutba
by the muezzins of the mosques—only Dara would be proclaimed as Emperor for all of the Empire’s residents.

“I see, Bapa,” Shuja said, and kept silent through the rest of the
jharoka.
When he returned to his apartments, he told his wife of his plans and ordered his effects to be packed. And a month later, when the army had been readied, he departed from Agra.

As he left, Princess Roshanara touched her brother Prince Aurangzeb’s arm and said, “Shuja will never come back to court, will he, Aurangzeb?”

The young prince frowned. “Not unless he returns as Emperor. But he does not seem to care about this very much.”

“But you do,” Roshanara said quickly. “He is the first of us to leave so that Dara and Jahan can reign supreme by Bapa’s side. Your turn is next.”

He laughed. “I will go, and willingly, Roshan. What use is an Emperor who lolls around at court, who has not shed blood in wars, who has not the allegiance of the greatest warriors in the Empire? I will go, and I will return.”

“You will need help here then.” It was said in an undertone, and she drifted out of the room before he could respond, but Prince Aurangzeb had heard, all too clearly, that his second sister was offering him her loyalty. She did not like Jahanara, and Jahan clearly supported Dara, so Roshanara found another brother to back. He did not mind this, Aurangzeb thought, as he had taught himself to be tolerant of almost everything—he would take Roshan’s help, but his love was for Jahan.

It is not without reason that the kingdom of which Lahor is the capital is named the Penje-ab, or the Region of the Five Waters. . . . Alexander is here well known by the name of Sekander Filifous, or Alexander the son of Phillip. . . . The river on which the city was built, one of the five, is as considerable as our Loire.

—
ARCHIBALD CONSTABLE
(ed.)
AND IRVING BROCK
(trans.),
Travels in the Mogul Empire, by François Bernier
A.D.
1656–1668

Agra

Monday, January 23, 1634

23 Rajab
A.H
. 1043

T
hey departed from Agra for the long journey to Kashmir, which would lead them along the way to the city of Lahore—Emperor Shah Jahan’s first visit to both places as sovereign.

The trip took the royal entourage through Delhi, where they halted briefly for a short pilgrimage to Emperor Humayun’s tomb, and then on west and north to Lahore, some three hundred and seventy-five miles away—fifteen days of hard riding by an army unencumbered by chattel and women; a month for them as they marched steadily, day by day in procession, their numbers a mile wide at its widest.

Princess Jahanara Begam journeyed in an open
howdah
set atop an imperial elephant. The
howdah
was a wooden structure with a gold and gilt roof, four pillars, a broad seat strewn with comfortable cushions and bolsters, thin muslin curtains enfolding the whole. The curtains were long and flitted up and down in the breeze, providing a glimpse of her face at times, or her hands, or the little child by her side, whose bright blue gaze caught every passing scene with interest. A bevy of eunuchs surrounded Jahanara’s elephant, and around them were old and decrepit
amirs
of the imperial court, some even from the first tier in front of the Emperor’s throne. Though the child’s delighted laughter filtered through the thick, heated air, not one man turned to look upward at the sound—they kept their horses in rein and their own heads forward, doggedly following the long road toward Lahore.

“Goharara,” Jahanara said, pulling the girl by the laces of her
choli.
“You will fall out, and then Bapa will cry when he sees how his child has been hurt.”

“Will he, Jahan?” Goharara Begam asked. “Where is he?” She leaned out farther. “I cannot see him. The dust rises so that Bapa’s
howdah
is masked from here. Why does he not travel with us?”

“Bapa is in conference with the
amirs, beta,
” Jahanara said. “And where did you learn to speak with all those words?”

“When you were not around, Jahan,” she said with a smile that brought two deepening dimples in her rounded cheeks.

That look, and those words, caught Jahanara’s heart, and she held her sister’s chubby hands in her own and then bent down to lay kisses upon them. They had all overlooked Goharara, she thought, in those early days after Mama died, and so she had been brought up by her wet nurses and her maids, women of some standing at court, true, but it had resulted in the princess thinking of one of the women as her mother. When she was a year old, she had called Jahanara “Mama,” once, and a wet nurse later told Jahanara that they had been telling the child her mother was away and would come to visit her. And so Jahanara had asked for her sister to come by her apartments to play while she read over the
farmans
her father sent into the harem for her approval and for affixing the imperial seal, or had sent her numerous gifts of gold and silver toys, or had seen her in passing as she moved from one of her duties to another. But they had all been neglectful of her—and this was easily done; Goharara Begam was a royal princess, she had caretakers aplenty, and her older sisters and brothers had their own concerns.

“Come,” Jahanara said, drawing the child upon her knee and holding her fast against the wriggling. “If you are quiet, I will tell you a story.”

“Laila and Majnu?” Goharara demanded.

Jahanara sighed. It was an inappropriate story for a child, that ballad sung upon the Yamuna River the night she had met her own lover in her gardens, but Goharara had grown up in the imperial
zenana,
where gossip and tales of love never ceased from the mouths of the many women—the slaves, the concubines, the servants—where talk was free and unrestrained, where every child reached adulthood with a full and complete knowledge of the complexities of life and, consequently, little understanding of anything. Among the many rhymes and folk songs that had been sung to put the little princess to sleep, this was one. So Jahanara began her story, using the word
love
with care, so that Goharara might comprehend it as affection, as only a feeling from the heart and from the head.

“He sings for her in the desert, Jahan,” Goharara said. “But he cannot find her again.”

Jahanara nodded. She had asked for the musician’s son many a time after that one night, but for her, there was no mystique anymore in this act of love. She understood now that her heart was given to Mirza Najabat Khan, and the other man was but a poor substitute, even though she knew him better. If she had been more common . . . But she was a royal princess, and he was not her equal in rank, in standing, and she had called for him for the one need that had nothing to do with her heart. Goharara grew limp in her arms and slept, a thumb in her mouth. Jahanara looked out through the netted curtains. The sun bleached the landscape to a salt white, laid calm over the stunted trees dotting the terrain where nothing moved in the afternoon. When they passed through a village on their route, children sat wide-eyed upon treetops or the roofs of the houses, watching their progress; women stopped as they drew water from wells; birds took flight from their path. She watched the rising of dust somewhere ahead in the long caravan of camels, elephants, horses, and oxen, and knew that a call to halt had been made, and sure enough, in ten minutes, sentries shouted out the summons and the words came floating back to Princess Jahanara.