Shadow Princess (43 page)

“No!” she shouted. “No one must see. No one can see me like this.”

Behind them, Ishaq opened the door and slipped just inside, his face grim. “Do you wish for the prince to leave, your Highness?”

Aurangzeb turned in surprise. He rose and stood before Jahanara’s bed, his arms dangling loosely by his sides, his attitude utterly imperial. For a long while the two men—one a mere eunuch, really half a man, the other who had thoughts of being his sovereign—stared at each other.

“Can you make me leave, Ishaq?” Prince Aurangzeb’s voice was quiet.

“If necessary, your Highness,” Ishaq said bleakly. “It has been a scant two months since the burning, and her Highness is still grievously unwell. Your presence causes her discomfort, as perhaps it always has—and I beg pardon for pointing out what is, after all, the truth. You should have gained the Emperor’s full permission before coming here today and waited until the princess was ready to receive you. The servants told me of your presence, and I have come in haste only to find you upsetting my mistress.”

Much of this conversation passed in a blur for Jahanara, for her legs and back had begun pulsating again with little stabs of pain, and she felt the oozing of pus from the burns as the sheet below her became damp, as her breathing seemed to constrict. She shifted in her bed and said, “Go, Aurangzeb. Thank you for coming, but go now.”

He bent his head and touched her elbow softly, hoping she could feel that little dab. Her features were filled with pain; her gaze had wandered again to the windows and the lightening sky beyond, and her limbs had started to tremble. That was the last lucid sentence he heard from her.

“I do not approve,” he said finally, assuming the pompous tone he employed when talking of such matters, “of your . . . connection with an
amir
at court. I had thought it unbecoming then, and I still do now. You are a woman, Jahanara, and should have behaved with more modesty, for in your discretion lies the reputation of the male members of the imperial family.” Ishaq grasped his prince’s hand hard and began to drag him backward. His grip was secure, and Aurangzeb wondered about the courage of this man—did he not feel his head parting from his neck by daring to lay a hand on an imperial prince? Jahanara started to moan, so Aurangzeb cut short his diatribe and ended with “Remember, Jahan, I do this against my best instincts.”

She had already slipped into oblivion by the time Ishaq Beg pulled Aurangzeb out of her apartments and marched him, not too gently, to the outer doors of the
zenana.
When he came back, he found another man waiting in the antechamber to his princess’s rooms, seated cross-legged on the floor, his back against the wall, his face tranquil.

“Come,” Ishaq said, not marveling at Najabat Khan’s presence. “She is asleep and will be for a while now. In her being able to sleep lies her cure, for then she is unconscious of the pain, both physical and emotional. Her brother distressed her, but
you
I know she wants to see. I am only surprised that Prince Aurangzeb brought you to Agra with him and smuggled you into the
zenana.
But then, I am surprised by everything he does.”

Najabat Khan shrugged. “He truly cares for his sister, Ishaq, as much as you and I do—and though he does not approve of”—he hesitated for a moment—“us, and as much as he would like to be as beloved by her as I am, he is an honest man, at least with himself.”

Ishaq raised his eyebrows, his incredulity clearly evident. “You view the prince differently then,” he said at last. “Everyone must have his opinion, however wrong he may be.”

They entered the room together to find Jahanara deeply asleep, the sheet twisted around her legs and arms. Ishaq freed the fabric, bathed her bare limbs with cool water, and changed the thin muslin dressings. Before the dressings went on, he lathered her burns with an ointment of calendula and aloe. Another eunuch came to help him lift Jahanara from the bed to a divan while they stripped her sheets and laid out fresh ones. She slept all through, breathing a small sigh of comfort when her body felt the coolness of the new sheets. And all the while, Najabat Khan leaned against the doorjamb, watching the woman he loved.

“When will she eat?” he asked.

Ishaq shook his head, washing his hands in a basin of warm water. “I do not know, Mirza Najabat Khan. If we are lucky, she will take a little of a watered-down
kichri
or a tablespoon of stew. It is hard to say.”

“Thank you for allowing me to stay. I had no idea that she was so unwell and would never have known if I had not seen this for myself. Can I . . . be here longer?”

The eunuch turned his sharp gaze upon him. “Until midafternoon. Both the Emperor and Prince Dara spent the night in Princess Jahanara’s apartments—it will be at least that time before they return to her side. I, however, am always here.”

So when she awoke again, in a few hours, it was to see Najabat Khan at her bedside, seated on a little stool, his hands resting on his knees.

“The day is full of surprises though it has just begun,” she whispered. “I don’t wish to be vain, but I have never wanted to appear before you like this. If you had stayed away, you would have remembered me as when we first met.”

He tilted his head, pretending to think. He had taken off his turban and pushed back the hair from his forehead. In all these past years of seeing and more often not seeing him, usually in some shade of semidarkness (for they still had to be cautious), she had not noticed the deep grooves of a more or less permanent frown above his eyebrows. His skin was a blistered brown, as though he had just arrived from a battlefield and a war fought in the arms of the afternoon sun. His silk
qaba
was white, the loose pajamas he wore below also white—both shot with thin lines of silver. He had been here for a while, she thought, noting the creases on his clothing. How long had she slept?

“Do you mean when Dara first brought us together all those years ago?” There was a teasing smile in his voice. “I did not see you then, Jahan, merely heard your voice. Little enough for a man to base all his love upon. I will remember holding your body in my arms under a waning moon, the scent of your mouth upon mine, the caress of your fingers.” He watched her struggle with shyness, a blush flooding her face and neck as she turned from him.

“Hush,” she said.

He took her hands in his large ones and kissed them. “You cannot be bashful with me; I will not allow it. Where is the woman who mocked me in the
chaugan
grounds and defeated me so soundly? Where is that bold woman who came in her
shikara
to take me with her down the canal and into the waters of the Dal, and insisted that I row? You did all of this when you barely knew me; now, when you are familiar with every thought in my head and know me to love you beyond every other being on this earth, you cannot turn your face away.”

She glanced upon their linked hands and stole her fingers around his, feeling his warmth and his vitality come into her. “It all seems so long ago. I wonder . . . if I will have any courage again. My body has been beaten, Najabat. It feels as though my soul has . . . died.”

He leaned over her and laid his face against the curve of her neck, an ache in his heart when he realized that she had grown emaciated in these past months, her collarbone jutting sharply against his cheek. He did not dare to gather her tightly into his arms as he wanted to but had to content himself with laying his hands around her slight figure so that she sensed his embrace even if she could not feel it. When he spoke, his voice was muffled. “You must get well, Jahan; you
will
get well. If I were allowed to be by your side always, then I would be here. The duty your father and Dara do for you—it is mine under the gaze of Allah, for I am your husband.”

She felt his warm tears against her skin and was glad for that sensation, glad to feel anything at all. “You cry for me?”

“Only because you are in pain and I can do so little about it.”

“The
hakims
have prepared some miraculous ointments, and the pain is so faint now I hardly feel it.”

“You lie,” he said. “Remember that I will always know if you lie.”

She laughed at that, a shrill, unused laugh that cracked its way from her throat. She did not need to ask anymore, of herself or of Najabat, if he would find her desirable and attractive—she knew he would because he had defied all the rules of the
zenana
to find his way here.

“Are we to thank Aurangzeb for this bounty?” she asked.

“He brought me along,” Najabat said simply. “I was the prince’s to command; if he had chosen, I could have been left behind in the Deccan. I would still have fled to you, and perhaps Ishaq would have taken pity on me and allowed me to creep into your apartments for a brief look before the imperial army captured me.” He shrugged. “This is much better.”

“Aurangzeb is a pretentious snob,” she said. “His ideas have not changed since he was twelve years old, and I sometimes think that he still speaks like a child—the same passion for his causes, the complete lack of forbearance for any other opinion.” She shook her head with a smile. “I must be better if I can muster the energy to be angry at him.”

“He came all the way from the Deccan to see you, Jahan. I saw his suffering on the journey,” Najabat said.

“So did Shuja and Murad.” She took a deep breath. “I am being intolerant myself, and I do not even know why.”

Ishaq Beg brought in a bowl of steaming stew—flour dumplings cooked in chicken broth, flavored with cumin, chilli powder, and salt, sprinkled with a few leaves of coriander. He left it by her side and went out, winking at his mistress and keeping his gaze stoically away from the
amir.

“He has always disapproved, you know,” Jahanara said. “But I understand that he writes to you.”

Najabat smiled. “His letters about you are almost as welcome as yours are. They tell me more, certainly, more than you care to reveal. I have taken some trouble to cultivate Ishaq, as you see, or he would not leave to me this most precious task of feeding you.”

“I am not hungry.” Her eyebrows met in stubbornness in the center of her forehead.

“Of course you are.” He lifted her head and fed her the stew, spoonful by spoonful, until she had finished almost the whole thing and the spoon clattered into the emptiness of the bowl. He wiped her mouth with the sleeve of his
qaba
and then bent his head to kiss her.

“I brought someone along,” he said.

Her voice was faint. “I have wished to see him for so many years . . .”

Najabat went to the door, and Antarah stepped into the room. Jahanara felt her heart flood with love. She was already very tired from this meeting with Najabat, first apprehensive, then so immensely joyful that her heart had swelled to bursting within her. This, the extravagance of seeing her son up close for the first time, under such circumstances, was almost too much. But she welcomed it. He was a solemn little creature, she thought, already so much like the man he would become. The sturdiness she had seen from across the Yamuna River and the lean lines of his body at the archery grounds were apparent now in his nicely muscled arms and legs, slim waist, robust shoulders, clear skin, and bright eyes. He had gleaming black hair, smooth and long beyond his ears—the curls of childhood had vanished. He came forward fearlessly, though he must have been afraid, Jahanara thought, for it was the first time he was being introduced to her, and this very first time he had to see her thus—ravaged by a fire.

Antarah bowed in the
chahar taslim,
rising from it with his right hand on his forehead. “Your Highness, this is a pleasure indeed.”

“How correctly he speaks, Najabat,” Jahanara said. “Did you teach him?”

Najabat nodded, watching their son with a smile.

“Do you know who I am?” she asked.

The boy bit his lower lip and rushed to kneel by her side. He cried manfully, trying to hide his tears on the sheet covering her, ending by wiping his eyes and laying a small kiss on the edge of the sheet. “Will you become well again, your Highness?”

She caressed his head, exhausted by the day’s events. “I will now, Antarah,” she said. “Being able to see you . . . is one of many blessings in my life from Allah. Go, my love, I tire now. Go, and remember me with affection if you can.”

Najabat and Antarah rose to leave, but from the door Najabat returned for a brief moment. He set his lips against her forehead and watched her slip into sleep again. Before she did so fully, he said, “Call for me again, Jahan, when you are well. I will wait, no matter how long it takes.”

•  •  •

A few days later, Jahanara suffered a relapse—her burns became infected, her breathing slowed almost to nothing, and when she opened her eyes she did not recognize anyone in the room. Prince Aurangzeb sent his father a purse of five hundred gold rupees every day, begging him to slip it under his sister’s pillow for the night and to distribute it among the poor in the morning. Emperor Shah Jahan did so himself, adding to the purse to bring the amount to a thousand rupees.
Hakims
traveled long distances to reach Agra with their potions and prophecies, each hoping to be the one who would effect a cure and gain renown as the savior of the princess. The Emperor listened tirelessly to each of them, afraid that if he dismissed any one too summarily he might indeed be taking away his beloved child’s right to live. The days passed thus until a
fakir
in the streets spoke softly through song of being the one who would bring about a treatment, and word of him filtered into the imperial palaces. Remembering the first
fakir,
who had so fortuitously given him two apples for his wife in the midst of a broiling summer, Shah Jahan summoned this man into the
zenana
and ordered him to make good on his promises.

The man brought a variety of herbs from the filthy sack he carried on his back—the thick, broad leaves of aloe vera, the stems and bark of witch hazel, the skin of a young plantain. He fanned these out on the marble floor of a courtyard in the Anguri Bagh in front of his Emperor, who sat on the steps leading to the pavilions that looked over the Yamuna and watched him. He asked for milk, honey, and an egg, and servants scurried to do his bidding. Buffaloes attached to the imperial kitchens were freshly milked, and the milk, still frothing and warm, was poured into a gold jar, its neck tied with a clean piece of muslin. Eunuchs rooted for the newest egg they could find, one that had just dropped from the hen, and cradled it in silk cloth as they brought it to the courtyard. The honey came from the imperial apiaries, golden, liquid, and fragrant with the jasmines that had created the nectar. With a lot of grunting and some chanting, the fakir broke the egg, carefully decanted the yellow from the white, and used the latter in his concoction along with the rest of the ingredients.