The revels surrounding Holi were observed with wild abandon. Kama, the Hindu god of Pleasure, presided. He carried a bow made of sugarcane, its string a line of honey bees. His arrows were flowers which, in this season of floral abundance, was perfect symbolism. The flower arrows were said to be tipped with passion, and those touched by them were lost in love forever.
It was the custom at Holi for the celebrants to smear each other with colored powder which was made from crushed flowers. By evening the air was tinted with the reds and purples, pinks and yellows of the freely tossed powder. Some people mixed water and musk with the colors, filling hollow bamboos, which they then squirted at each other. People sang and danced and ate special sweetmeats, some of which were laced with opium and hashish, accounting for the most rowdy, abandoned behavior.
Yasaman could hear the celebration going on in the city all
day. She was fully recovered physically from her miscarriage, and had been for several weeks now. Tomorrow she would begin the long journey that would take her from her home, from everyone and everything she had ever known. She was bitter and angry when word came to her that her brother Salim would pay her a visit.
“I do not want to see him, Mama Begum,” she told Rugaiya. “How can I face him and not desire to kill him? He has taken everything I hold dear from me. My husband is dead! I have lost our child from the shock of Jamal’s murder, and now I must go forth from India, from you and Papa.
I hate Salim!
”
“Listen to me, Yasaman,” Rugaiya Begum told her daughter. “If you give in to your anger, you will allow Salim the very thing you seek to deny him. A victory over you. He would sooner see you dead than happy in another man’s arms. Escape him! He will be forever forced to live his life without you, knowing that you have found happiness with others, knowing that given the choice, you left India.
Left him
. It will not kill him immediately, but it will rub him like an open canker for as long as he lives. This is a far better vengeance than any other that we could think of, my child.”
“Come with me!” Yasaman begged Rugaiya Begum.
“I cannot, Yasaman. I am too old for adventure now. Besides, your father needs me as he has never needed me before. Akbar and I have lived our entire lives together. As a small boy, I am told, he was present at my birth. If the child my mother bore was a girl, she was to be his first wife. Your father saw me born into this world. I must be here to see him out of it. It is only right. I have been his wife longer than I have been anything else.” Rugaiya Begum smoothed Yasaman’s dark hair gently. “Your father has given me everything I hold dear—his love and his daughter to raise. I should be a poor wife if I left him now. The others will not care for him as I can.”
Yasaman wept softly in her mother’s arms. “I cannot bear the thought of my life without you, Mama Begum,” she said. “This, too, I owe my brother, may God damn his black soul to eternal night! Do not make me receive him, I beg of you!”
“Yasaman! Yasaman! You cannot allow your own feelings to prevent you from doing your duty,” Rugaiya Begum gently scolded. “Your father, Adali, Father Cullen, and I have worked diligently to make certain that your escape is assured. If you
refuse to see your brother, he will become suspicious, my child. Do not destroy yourself, Yasaman, by foolish actions. Be strong! Always remember that you are the Mughal’s daughter. Within you runs the blood of many mighty conquerors. Do not deny it!”
Yasaman sighed deeply. Then she drew away from her mother, saying, “I must see him alone lest he become apprehensive.” When Rugaiya Begum looked worried, Yasaman reassured her, “I am not the child my brother tried to seduce almost two years ago, Mama Begum. No matter his lust, he will not press me right now, I am certain.”
I must trust to her judgment, Rugaiya Begum thought. Tomorrow I will send her on a journey that will take her half a world away from me, and I will never see this child of my heart again. I can protect her no longer. “Very well, my daughter,” she told Yasaman. “Do what you think is best in this matter. I will, however, be here to greet Salim when he comes, else he think my absence odd.”
And when Salim arrived that evening, Rugaiya Begum salaamed politely. “Welcome, my nephew,” she said.
“Aunt! It is good to see you again,” he answered, and kissed her cheek affectionately. “How is Yasaman?”
“Ask her yourself, dear boy,” Rugaiya Begum told him. “She is in the garden enjoying the roses and the pristine beauty of the summer moonlight. I will leave you together. As for me, I am an old woman now. I want nothing more of this night than my comfortable bed.” She chuckled. “Do not keep your sister too long, Salim. She has a long journey to begin tomorrow morning, but once it is completed, a door is shut and another is opened to Yasaman. That is life, is it not?” She kissed his cheek and, with a smile, left him.
The garden of Rugaiya Begum’s small palace within the fort was completely enclosed by red sandstone walls. It was not a large garden. The pebbled pathways were set out in the shape of a cross, and in the center was a beautiful white marble fountain filled with white lotus and goldfish. There were several tall orchid trees and a number of rosebushes which were currently in full, fragrant bloom. The flower beds had been planted with night-blooming blossoms that gave off their sweetness after the heat of the day. Beautiful, exquisite frangipani, exotic queen of the night, and creamy jasmine flourished in the silvery moonlight.
Salim found his sister sitting by the lotus pool. Her cotton
sari was a pale purple in color and her dark hair was loose about her shoulders. He swallowed hard. It was far too soon for him to approach her, but she was the most desirable woman he had ever seen. In her simple garb and unadorned by any jewelry, she was more beautiful than any female he knew.
“Yasaman.” He finally found his voice.
She looked up and, for the briefest moment, the look in her turquoise eyes was unfathomable, but then she smiled at him. “Salim, my brother. It is good to see you again. I have been ill, you know.”
She was impossible to resist. Seating himself by her side, he put an arm about her. “I know, little monkey, and I wept with you,” he told her, his voice thick with sincerity.
Liar, she thought, but she looked up meltingly into his face. “I have missed you, my brother. I have no one now, you know. My husband is dead, and I have miscarried our child. I am alone, Salim.”
“You will never be alone as long as I am alive, Yasaman!” he vowed to her. “Must you return to Kashmir, my beloved sister?”
“Alas, yes, beloved brother. Jamal was good to me, and in my way, I cared for him. I will take his heart home to the land he so loved and bury it with honor. Afterward,” she sighed sadly, “I do not know what will happen to me. Father is dying, you realize. Yet I would remain in Kashmir with its lakes and mountains, its many flowers and fields of saffron. Do you remember the saffron fields, Salim?”
His arm about her tightened, and with his other hand he caressed her face. He did indeed remember the fields of saffron with a fragrance so wonderful that if he had died at the very moment the scent overwhelmed him, it would have been enough. “Yasaman,” he breathed, and his lips touched hers briefly. When she did not resist him, he pressed more firmly upon her mouth, thrilled when she parted her lips slightly for him. The hand that had brushed softly over her cheek now moved lower to fondle her full breasts. “Sweet little sister,” he murmured against her ear, his fingers squeezing her nipples almost painfully as he struggled to restrain himself. “You will never be alone, Yasaman. Remember the princes of ancient Egypt, little monkey? When you have fulfilled your obligations to Jamal Khan, you will return to me and we will find our own destiny together. If you love Kashmir so, I will build a garden for you there that only you and I may enter. I will call it
Shalimar, the garden of love. It will stand for all time as a testimony of Salim’s desire and devotion to Yasaman. Will that please you?”
“Yes,” she answered him with seeming shyness, casting her eyes down. “I believe that you have been correct all along, Salim, my brother. I believe our kismet is that we always be in each other’s thoughts.”
“And you will return to me next spring, sister?”
“I will return as soon as I have buried the heart of Jamal Khan in Kashmir, Salim. Father will need me first, dear brother,” she murmured, struggling to remain calm within his hateful embrace. He must never suspect how she really felt. How at this very moment a cold anger burned within her belly, so painful in its intensity that it was all she could do not to scream. He could never know how she longed to claw his face to bloody ribbons, and then with her bare fists beat what remained into a bleeding pulp.
“I have never loved anyone like I love you, Yasaman,” he told her passionately. “Our coming together will be like nothing that has ever happened in the history of man. I will even restrain my ardor for you until I have built you our Garden of Shalimar.”
It is there we will consummate our union and our children will rule India for a thousand generations to come, he thought silently, triumphantly.
“
Salim!
” She drew gently away from him, her voice softly chiding him. “You go much too quickly for me. I love you, too, my brother, but I am not certain I can come to terms with what this love between us means.”
The soft blush on her cheeks, her modest reticence, all combined to but arouse his unholy passions further. He caught her hand in his and held it against his swiftly beating heart. “I will convince you, my beloved Yasaman, that what we desire is good and right,” he declared with fervor. “How could the love we feel for one another be wrong?”
She arose, pulling away from him. “You must go, dear brother. It is very late. I must leave for Kashmir before sunrise.”
He caught her to him and, looking down at her, kissed her hard. “
Remember that
, and remember how deeply I love you until we meet again, beloved,” he whispered to her. Then, releasing her, he hurried back through the garden into the house.
Yasaman stood in stony silence, listening closely. She could
hear the low hum of voices as Salim bid the servants good-night. She heard the rumble of the doors to her mother’s palace closing, the heavy bolt being lifted into place with a thud. Only then did she lean over and vomit the contents of her stomach onto the ground. She wanted a bath, although all the washing in the world could not cleanse her of this feeling of defilement. It amazed her that she had been able to remain so docile and acquiescent while her brother had kissed and caressed her.
Her only regret was that he would never know how much he disgusted her; but Salim was so wrapped up in what he desired, it never occurred to him that others might not want what he did. By remaining calm while his mouth and hands had ravished her, she had convinced him that she would shortly be his. Yasaman wiped her mouth with the back of her hand and, leaving the garden, found her way to her mother’s private apartments.
Rugaiya Begum looked up anxiously as her daughter entered her bedchamber. “He is gone?”
Yasaman nodded. “Yes, he is gone. Gone believing that he has practically won me over, and that I shall return to him after I have closed the door on Jamal Khan. He has vowed to build a garden called Shalimar in Kashmir as a testimony of his love for me. How dare he!” She flung herself into Rugaiya Begum’s arms. “I let him kiss me and fondle my breasts, Mama Begum. But at least now he believes me truly within his grasp. I vomited after he left me.”
Rugaiya Begum held her daughter tightly, stroking her dark hair tenderly. In just a few short hours they would be separated forever, and she would never again hold her child in her arms. She would never again see Yasaman, or know the man who would one day capture her heart, or grow old with her grandchildren about her. She grappled with herself to hold back her tears. The situation was even harder for poor Yasaman. Yasaman must leave everyone and everything she had ever known. This was what Salim had brought them to. She would never forgive him for it. “I hate him, too, my child,” she admitted softly.
The two women stayed together for a time. Then Yasaman arose to bathe and dress for her journey. A young mute girl with a vague but passable resemblance to Yasaman had been found among the several thousand women of the Mughal’s household From a distance it would be assumed she was the princess. The caravan was under the charge of a loyal young
Kashmiri captain whose mission was to deliver the heart of Jamal Khan to Yusef Khan, his father, for burial. The mute slave girl would be given her freedom, a dowry large enough to overcome her disability, and be put into the care of Yusef Khan, who would be instructed to find her a good husband. These were the captain’s instructions.
Knowing nothing of why she was really being sent to Kashmir, and unable to speak even if she did know, the girl would be safe. So would the young captain, for he was not aware he should be accompanying Yasaman Kama Begum. His instructions were simply to take Jamal Khan’s heart and the young mute to Yusef Khan. As for Yusef Khan himself, he only knew his son’s heart was being sent home.
Indeed, by the time Salim discovered his sister was among the missing, there would only be two people in India who could tell him of Yasaman’s whereabouts: his father and Rugaiya Begum. Akbar might even be dead by that time, and nothing, even the threat of torture and death, would make Rugaiya Begum divulge her daughter’s sanctuary. Salim would not dare to attack his aunt, they all knew. She was his mother’s best friend and well loved within the household. Rugaiya Begum would live out her lonely old age in peace.
Yasaman’s caravan was to leave from outside the city and not from the emperor’s fort. It would depart several hours before the sunrise. Almost all of Yasaman’s possessions, including Balna and her charge, Hiraman, had been sent to the coast weeks ago to be put into the care of the factor of the O’Malley-Small Trading Company. This caravan would be a heavily armed, swiftly moving unit. The soldiers accompanying it were unquestioningly loyal to Akbar. Their captains had only been told that a young person of importance was to be taken quickly and safely to Cambay. Eventually, of course, Salim might hear of this, but then again he might not if the trip was an uneventful one, for this group of soldiers frequently discharged duties of this exact nature.