Shadow Princess (5 page)

He waited for the wink of the sun’s rays before he turned east and touched his palms together in the first movement of the
surya namaskar
—the salutation to the sun. Even as he performed the motions of his exercise, some four hundred miles away, Empress Mumtaz Mahal went to meet her death. Raja Jai Singh dreamed desultorily of a small
chattri
to cover his ashes when he died, here by the banks of the river, the
jalis
of the
chattri
filtering the cool breezes from the Yamuna. But it was not to be, for his Emperor wanted his land and his mansion for a loftier purpose—to house the remains of his beloved wife at Agra.

Jai Singh did not know then that his
haveli
would be demolished before the year was out, and in its place would rise a Luminous Tomb.

Even though the Incomparable Giver had conferred on us such great bounty, more than which cannot be imagined, through His grace and generosity, yet the person with whom we wanted to enjoy it has gone.

—From the
Padshah Nama
of Amina Qazwini, in
W. E. BEGLEY AND Z. A. DESAI
,
Taj Mahal: The Illumined Tomb

Burhanpur

Tuesday, June 23, 1631

24 Zi’l-Qa’da
A.H.
1040

T
he days wasted themselves in Burhanpur, in a daze, slowly moving into night and returning again. The town heard the gurgle of the
ghariyalis’
vessels filling with water to measure time, heard the men strike the brass disk hanging above their heads to announce the ends of the watches, saw light turn into darkness, but it was for all of them with a sense of unreality.

The shops in the main bazaar street were open, awnings held up on vertical poles to shelter from the sun, but business was not as usual. If money changed hands at all—for flour and rice, vegetables, copper pots, gold and silver—it was with a reluctance, as one hand hesitated in handing over the coins, the other grabbed a little too greedily at the first income of the past week. Even after their purchases, customers tarried outside the shops, trying to make conversation that did not sound stilted. They talked of the weather (it was hot, fiercely so), about the lack of dependable rain (and again about the weather), about the Emperor’s presence here at Burhanpur (such a blessing to them all). But of the death of Mumtaz Mahal they could not speak, struck dumb. The men in the streets, the few veiled women of a higher class who strayed for goods, the more common women who wandered with their heads bare to the gazes of all; they had none of them seen their Empress, but news from the fort palace that loomed over the bazaar seeped into every corner. And what they heard most of was their Emperor’s grief at this lady’s death. A day after she had died, after she had been buried on that small island in Zainabad Bagh, in the center of the Bagh’s pond, they heard that their Emperor had died also.

At that news, the shopkeepers pulled wooden shutters over their storefronts, locked them securely, and crept into their houses behind the shops as a mob of young men racketed through the street, shouting profanities and wrecking anything they could find. Three hours later, the dust settled only when the Ahadis, the Emperor’s personal bodyguards, thundered through the street on their horses, swords drawn to slice down a head here, an arm there. The rebellion—if it could be called that—of the miscreants ended then, as abruptly as it had begun. Burhanpur settled into a state of long-drawn-out waiting accompanied by a hush, a silence, a burgeoning fear.

Outside the fort at Burhanpur, the highest
amirs
of the Empire waited also, day and night. It was customary for the nobles to take turns of a week or more in guarding their sovereign—they would arrange themselves and their retinues in the courtyard just beyond the guard of the Ahadis, set up their sleeping and cooking tents, array their men in semicircular bands around the palaces and on the banks of the Tapti. But since Mumtaz had died, all the nobles in Burhanpur, most of them normally present at court, found themselves crowded in the courtyard. When night fell, small fires sprang to life, over which meats were roasted, water boiled, wine warmed. Their voices were subdued. A thickness hung around them. When one of them moved, on the sixth day after the Empress’s death, they all turned to him with some hope. He could do something. He was the Khan-i-khanan.

Mahabat Khan was the Commander in Chief of Shah Jahan’s armies, in some senses the most powerful man in the Empire after the Emperor himself. He was a soldier, and the Empire, through all the years of its existence, had been forged by the sword, dyed by the blood of fallen princes and commoners, wrought into existence by wars and not diplomacy, and so Mahabat had more authority than the Grand Vizier himself, who was merely the Prime Minister of the Empire.

He had tarried under the shade of the canvas awning of his square tent for six days, eating and drinking in the courtyard with the other nobles, as he awaited the summons from his Emperor. Now it finally came in the form of Ishaq Beg, Mir Saman, or Master of the Household, to Empress Mumtaz Mahal.

“His Majesty commands your presence, Mirza Mahabat Khan,” Ishaq Beg said, standing behind Mahabat, to his right. From the corner of his eye, Mahabat saw that Ishaq Beg’s back was a little too stiff, the tilt of his chin too arrogant. He had not the demeanor of a man who had just lost his employer—and so his employ—and his very means of existence. The Khan-i-khanan set his wine goblet down on the table by his side and nodded. He rose, and the entire assembly of nobles around him rose also, their gazes firmly upon him as though he could tell them already what he would find when he entered their Emperor’s presence.

Mahabat Khan rinsed his mouth with some water and waited while his servants combed back his hair, ran their hands over his shoulders and his
peshwaz,
straightening out creases and ironing wrinkles between their broad fingers.

Ishaq Beg stood back, and when Mahabat passed him, he raised his eyes in a sly, almost condescending glance. Mahabat worried about that look all the way into the fort, beyond the Ahadis who parted to let him through, the eunuchs slinking in the outer reaches of the
zenana,
the stolid Kashmiri women who guarded the Emperor’s most private moments. These women were told to shield their tongues as jealously as they did their Emperor; one slip, one misplaced word, one frivolity and their tongues would be cut out. They were rewarded richly for their services and punished without a thought if they failed even a little in rendering those services. As Mahabat Khan approached Shah Jahan’s apartments within the fort on the banks of the Tapti, he could feel the coolness wafting from the river’s fragrant waters through an open window. He paused when a Kashmiri guard barred his way with her spear.

•  •  •

Despite his standing in the Empire, Mahabat Khan did not make a murmur as the guards searched him. They shook the turban from his head and, deftly holding the aigrette in place, fingered the folds of cloth. They ruffled his hair—a sliver of a blade could bring harm; his clothes were agitated, his cummerbund examined, the soles of his bare feet (he had removed his footwear outside the main entrance) rubbed. Then they stood aside, and Mahabat wondered if they had not been too meticulous in their search, if the other nobles commanded to his Majesty’s presence were subjected to a similar indignity each time. But then he also remembered his long and checkered past with his Emperor and thought briefly that if their positions had been reversed, he would not have trusted himself either.

When he entered Shah Jahan’s chambers, Mahabat lingered, struck into blindness by the gloom around. The windows were all sealed with tightly woven
khus
mats, and silken drapes covered the edges to shut out all light. A breeze whirled around the room, caught and tossed about by the
punkahs
held by the fifteen slave girls standing in the corners and against the walls. There was a little light from a candle on a low table in the center, which flung shadows around. Mahabat took in all of this when his eyes had adjusted somewhat painfully from the glare of the outside. He heard the rustle of a woman’s skirts and saw the back length of a
ghagara
slip around the door to his right and a hand with glowing diamond rings pull the door shut, but not before she had hesitated for a while. The oldest princess, he thought, Jahanara Begam. Now they would all depend upon her, lean upon her slender shoulders for counsel, advice, strength. Who else was there? Satti Khanum, perhaps. But Satti, for all her intimacy with the members of the Emperor’s
zenana,
was in the end a retainer, and she would remain in that capacity. The Emperor’s own mother was dead; and he had not been close to his father’s other wives—especially Mehrunnisa, the last one—so which woman could help him carry his burdens other than this child of his?

Mahabat then became aware that he had been lost in musing and had not yet been noticed by his Emperor. He peered around the room, his eyes going from the slaves at the walls (to whom he paid little attention; they were akin to the furniture) to the bed in the center of the room, which was empty, the two steps leading to a raised indoor verandah with arches that looked out over the Tapti. And here, leaning against a pillar, he found Shah Jahan clad in the white of mourning. Mahabat padded over the length of the room, and, as he approached his Emperor, he stopped and performed the
chahar taslim,
bending with some difficulty from his waist, laying his right hand on the ground and raising it to his forehead four times. When he had completed the salutation, he straightened his back with a groan, which he hoped was inaudible. Then he waited again, his gaze to the ground. He could not speak until Shah Jahan chose to begin the conversation.

When his Emperor’s voice came to his ears, Mahabat felt a deep sense of shock.

“You are here, Mahabat,” Shah Jahan said, so hoarse as to be almost inarticulate.

“Yes, your Majesty. At your command, always.” And now Mahabat looked up at the man seated on the stone steps and felt his heart stop. Even in the room’s dimness, he could see the ravages of six days of constant weeping and no eating. Shah Jahan’s frame had wasted away, the skin was carved tightly over the bones of his face, his eyelids were swollen and puffy, and his back was stooped. But what astounded Mahabat the most was the white on his head and his face—almost overnight, or so it seemed to him, the Emperor’s hair had grayed. Mahabat would not have thought it possible if he had not seen this for himself. He almost reached out a hand to Shah Jahan’s clasped ones, then stayed that comforting action. What was he thinking? He could not dare to touch his sovereign.

He could not speak any words of solace either. What could he say? That the Empress would be missed by all of them, that she had indeed been the brightest light in Shah Jahan’s palace, that her loss was so great as to cause them all grief? Mumtaz Mahal had been the most precious jewel in Shah Jahan’s
zenana,
and it was not Mahabat’s place to comment, even in such an innocuous manner, about a member of the imperial harem. This much he had learned well. Many years ago—frustrated, without paying heed to any advice—Mahabat had cautioned Emperor Jahangir about the immense power he was granting his twentieth wife, Mehrunnisa. For his pains, he was trounced in a chess game by that Empress (and that still rankled) and sent to Kabul, a frozen fringe of the Empire, to serve as ‘governor.’ Mahabat Khan was a tired old man, now in his seventh decade, and no longer stupid. He kept quiet, his head bowed, his heart knocking against his rib cage.

Finally, Shah Jahan spoke again. “I am going to give up the throne, Mahabat.”

Caution was forgotten, etiquette damned.

“You cannot, your Majesty,” Mahabat cried. “You are a young man yet, only thirty-nine years old. Your life stretches in front of you. This is the empire you have battled for and won; it is rightfully yours. Your grandfather Emperor Akbar considered you his heir. You . . .” Mahabat stopped speaking, but it was only to sob instead, an action that astounded him. He thought, through tears that he could not stop, that he was indeed growing old and feeble, but only because he should have anticipated talk such as this when he was summoned to Shah Jahan’s presence. He wiped his eyes and waited again, for a smile or some mockery from Shah Jahan. But his Emperor behaved as though he had not even noticed Mahabat’s reactions. Instead he was examining his thin fingers and considering Mahabat’s words carefully.

“I have no wish to live, Mahabat, let alone reign anymore. What use is it to possess these lands and this wealth? When . . .
she
was alive, there was something to fight for, a reason to be Emperor. It was so that she could forget all those years we were persecuted and chased over the lands, so we could rest our aching bodies on ground that did not move, so that we could get the respect due to us.” Emperor Shah Jahan raised his head, and for a moment, even among the ravages that grief had produced, Mahabat saw the arrogance and confidence that had made him a monarch. “Allah Himself ordained that I would be king,” Shah Jahan said. “My grandfather wanted me to rule after my father. My father . . . he was besotted and led astray by a devious woman who wanted to put another on the throne—you know this history well, Mahabat Khan, you were a part of it.”