Shadow Princess (47 page)

You see, my dearest Jahan,
Najabat Khan wrote from the Deccan,

how perfidious the two princes are to announce themselves sovereign even before the Emperor is dead? My prince, Aurangzeb, is more discreet. We have started for Agra with an army, for he believes Prince Dara wishes him ill, and perhaps it is just a show of might on his part . . . how can I fault this? I am a soldier myself and recognize the value of the sword. Against my advice, Prince Aurangzeb has halted our march five days out of Burhanpur; he says that we left in a hurry and these past few days would have afforded all the
amirs
a chance to decide whether they want to offer their allegiance to him . . . or slip out of camp in the dark of the night to Prince Dara, whose army is said to be on its way to meet us.

Aurangzeb is assured that we will thrash Prince Dara’s army, the part that he sends here, and then we will move ahead to meet the rest near Agra so that we can release the Emperor and you from your captivity.

As they waited out the next two days, Prince Aurangzeb wrote again to every
amir
who had been sent in command of forces against him, asked for their loyalty, and promised them riches when he became Emperor. There was no hiding anymore the fact that he was on his way to depose his father, who had committed a grievous wrong in allowing Dara control of the Empire even before he was dead. Dara hated him, did Bapa not know that? Aurangzeb had always been a good and respectful son, but Bapa had always favored the weakling Dara—how could Shah Jahan even bear to think of handing his precious Empire into the hands of someone so incompetent?

And so he revealed his intentions fully and directly. Prince Aurangzeb was in rebellion, much as his father had been thirty years ago against
his
father, and there was only one way this would end—someone would die.

Dara’s two armies were routed over the next few days, and by the time Prince Aurangzeb arrived at Agra, only a skeleton of forces, mostly from the imperial bodyguards, the Ahadis, surrounded the fort.

Princess Jahanara received Najabat Khan’s letter around this time, and when he begged for an audience, she refused him one, furious that his faith in her brother was unshakable. Her own, in Dara, was wavering. For it was true what Najabat had said—Bapa and she had been held prisoner in the fort at Delhi, their movements restricted, Dara himself not available to respond to any questions. She had been fearful for the first time in her life and it was a real, palpable anxiety, because she did not know what was happening outside the
zenana
’s walls or how this was all going to end. She did write to Najabat Khan in Aurangzeb’s encampment outside the fort.
Leave him, my lord,
she said.

You did not listen to me all those years ago when I cautioned you against putting too much trust in my third brother, and now you and he are camped outside my father’s palaces awaiting his surrender. His surrender? From what? He is Emperor Shah Jahan—your king, your monarch, your master. Bapa has sent Aurangzeb a splendid sword, which he has called the “Alamgir,” the Conqueror of the Universe, as a token of his friendship. Why then does this worthless son of my father’s wait for the Emperor’s submission? A son cannot wear the crown upon his head while his father is still alive; every regulation, legal and moral, rebels against this, and yet it would seem this is what Aurangzeb wants. Does he? And where is Murad? Why is there no news of him?

Najabat Khan did not respond for a long while to this missive, knowing that he and his beloved princess were on two sides of an ever widening void. Everything she wrote in the letter was accurate—Aurangzeb’s intentions and their consequences. But he had sworn fidelity to the prince; he had vanquished Prince Dara’s army and sent him fleeing north, and . . . Najabat had taken Prince Murad prisoner and escorted him to the fort at Gwalior, which was the imperial penitentiary. He did not think Murad would leave there alive.

At Agra, on the thirty-first of July, 1658, some ten months after his father had fallen ill, Aurangzeb conducted a small ceremony in Princess Jahanara’s garden on the eastern bank of the Yamuna River and announced that he was now Emperor. For his title, he chose Alamgir—the same name as that of the sword his Bapa had presented him. Shah Jahan had been King of the World; Aurangzeb was now Emperor Alamgir—Conqueror of the Universe. Then, with Najabat Khan and a large army, he set off to pursue his oldest brother.

Over the next few months, Dara was constantly on the move—Lahore, Multan, Sindh, Cutch, back to Gujarat, Ajmer, Ahmadabad, back again to Sindh, hoping to get some refuge, finally, from the Shah of Persia. Aurangzeb’s men hounded him through the Empire, a step or just a few behind him at all times—so assiduously had Aurangzeb cultivated the friendships and the loyalties of the grandees of the Empire, so detested was Dara himself. Finally, in 1659, a year after Aurangzeb had proclaimed himself Emperor of Hindustan, Dara was betrayed to the imperial forces by a tribal chieftain who had ostensibly been helping him escape.

He was brought to Delhi, paraded through the streets seated backward on a donkey, and his head was sliced off the next morning . . . and sent in a silver box to Emperor Shah Jahan and Jahanara at the Agra fort.

Shuja was killed a year later, and in 1662, Aurangzeb put the imprisoned Murad out of his misery by hanging him. Now only his sisters were left. Roshanara had come to live in his harem, but Jahanara had refused even to speak to him these past three years. He went to see her at Agra, bareheaded, holding his imperial turban in his hands.

•  •  •

“What is it, Aurangzeb?” Jahanara asked dully. “What murder have you come to boast of now?”

It was a few days after Murad’s death, and when Jahanara had received the news, she had stared dumbly at the messenger, Ishaq Beg, unable to comprehend for a moment who he was talking about. Then she remembered that little boy who had wrapped his arms around her waist and muffled his sobs in the silk of her
ghagara
on the day they had buried their mother in Burhanpur. She thought of the innocent trust that he had always had in all of them, that Aurangzeb had used to his advantage. She was fatigued now, almost every day, her heart toughened against hurt, and it had been almost torn asunder on the day she opened the box from Aurangzeb and saw Dara’s bloody head inside. She had not been able to hide the bloodstains on her hands from her father, and so Bapa had known also. Aurangzeb had left them at the fort at Agra, confined within its walls. The first month after he had had the
khutba
read in his name, he had written to her and begged her to come and be with him.

Jahanara leaned against the warm teak of the door to her apartments and set her ear to the wood, listening for a sound from the other side. But Aurangzeb was silent. She had not responded to his many pleadings—what did they mean, anyway? How could she leave Bapa and go out? Who would look after him? And if he were to be allowed out with her, what
amir
at court would profess loyalty to his vicious son? She realized that Aurangzeb never meant to see his father again or consent to his showing himself in public—it would be fatal for the sovereignty Aurangzeb had just set up for himself.

“Jahan,” Emperor Aurangzeb said in an injured voice, beating his fist lightly against the door. “You hurt me with such words. Do you think if Dara or Shuja or Murad were alive, they would allow me to be king? My head would have rolled in the courtyard—I have done nothing but protect my interests.”

“You were always selfish,” Jahanara said bitterly, “always thinking about yourself.”

“This Empire,” Aurangzeb said, “is rightfully mine. Bapa had allowed it to become rife with a rot, the singing, the dancing girls, the rivers of wine. People do not even heed the call for prayer, do you know? I stop whatever imperial activity I am engrossed in and kneel to pray; I intend to set an example for the citizens of the Empire by my actions. Allah has ordained that my head feel the weight of the crown, Jahan. If I were not convinced of this, I would have given up this battle a long time ago and retired from court life to meditate and pray.”

Jahanara slid down the length of the door and sat on the floor, her hands clasped in front of her. It was the first time since that war of succession that she had deigned to talk with her brother—the only brother she had now, she thought sadly. Once they had been a splendid family. Dara, with his height and striking handsomeness; Shuja, with his habit of looking toward her for approval; Murad, with his serious intent—they had all been good men. Jahanara did not think she could say that of Aurangzeb.

She was inside her apartments, ten inches of wood between her and Aurangzeb. He might be Emperor, she thought with tired irony, but he still could not command a meeting with her, even though she was his prisoner and had defied his orders and his demands by remaining by the side of their father, whom he seemed to detest. Where did that hatred come from? And then, because she was a reasonable woman, Jahanara remembered all of their persecutions of Aurangzeb. The major ones—his being stripped of his governorships more than once, and the petty ones, when she had refused to meet him, or not responded to his letters, or made fun of him.

Ishaq Beg strode up and down the corridor, his gaze purposeful, his hand on a dagger tucked into his cummerbund, as if he expected his Emperor to come rushing through the door at any moment to take his mistress’s life. She shook her head and smiled at him. Then, since Aurangzeb doubtless listened still beyond the door, she said, “What are you going to do, Ishaq? He probably has the entire army waiting behind him. Well, he would not bring an army to subdue a mere woman, but a few guards at least. Aurangzeb has become fastidious; he was not that in his youth, but now he would not soil his hands by killing me himself. Someone will be delegated to do it.”

“He will have to kill me first, your Highness,” Ishaq said, and Jahanara was touched by his devotion.

“Come back to court life, Jahan. I beg this of you,” Aurangzeb said softly. “Let me at least see you and take you with me. Is it right that my sister must live thus?”

“Your father does,” she replied in a harsh voice. “Have you no feelings for him?”

Emperor Shah Jahan coughed from the Shah Burj of the Agra fort, where his bed had been laid out for him, and the sound of that cough traveled through the corridor to Jahanara’s ears. She rose from the door.

“I have to go now, Aurangzeb, Bapa needs me.”

His voice was muffled. “I need you too, Jahan.”

“I think,” she said deliberately, “that you have never wanted or believed in anyone but yourself. I sometimes wonder how you could have turned out so differently from us. We had the same upbringing, and while I once could have said that there was something of the familiar in you . . . I can no longer. Go, Aurangzeb, I will not leave Bapa’s side for the rest of his life.”

“Then,” he said, knocking against the wood one last time, “you must stay there until he dies.”

Though Jahanara grieved overmuch inwardly at the gloom that enveloped the citadel, yet she did not permit the windy tempests of the heart to blow her about and uproot the moorings of her personality. . . . She had a woman’s body but a man’s mind. Though defeated, never did she own that the reverses had galled her.

—
MUNI LAL
,
Shah Jahan

Agra

Tuesday, March 20, 1663

10 Sha’baan
A.H
. 1073

A
n errant thunderstorm at twilight left smoky clouds and tangerine skies over Agra. Then darkness came to cover it all, and already-muted sounds dulled into silence. Lamps flickered here and there, uncertain and subdued, remnants of a capital city left to die. A few people walked the streets, aimless, wandering. For the last six years, Agra had been quiet, ever since Emperor Aurangzeb had moved his court to Delhi and the city of Shahjahanabad, which his father had built. The bazaars were empty, custom slow and hesitant. Even the Taj Ganj, with its magnificent
sarais,
which Shah Jahan had envisioned as a thrumming, thriving place, filled with people eager to see his wife’s tomb, was hushed.

In the fort, the corridors were deserted, dust lying over the many windows, the gardens untended, flowers wilting for lack of water. Princess Jahanara stood in her apartments, looking out at the languid Yamuna below. These were the rooms her Bapa had constructed for her in the Anguri Bagh, with their smoothly curved Bangala roofs, their vast verandahs filled with marble latticework screens that filtered coolness from the waters of the river and swept it into every corner.

March already, she thought, of another year . . . how many since they came to Agra after Bapa’s illness? Some five and a half. If she had been told that her life would have been thus, shut away in the palaces, a handful of attendants to minister to them and guard them, she would not have believed it. Even now, it was difficult to comprehend. That Aurangzeb had indeed been Emperor for so long, that Bapa had struggled to live . . . and had lived for so long, cursing the son who had brought this about. Tomorrow, they would celebrate Nauroz, the New Year, at the beginning of spring.