Empire of the Moghul: The Tainted Throne (11 page)

Jahangir leapt from his saddle and half running, half limping because of his damaged calf propelled himself towards the fallen man. Although crimson blood was streaming from the wound in his neck into his thick, curly black beard and down on to his breastplate, he was still trying to struggle to his feet.

‘Surrender,’ Jahangir demanded.

‘And end my life in your dungeons? Never. I will die here on the red earth that has been my family’s for so many generations – so many more than yours have claimed our land.’ As the words mingled with blood bubbling through his lips he used his remaining reserves of strength to pull a long serrated-bladed dagger from a scabbard inside his riding boot. Before he could even draw his arm back to make his thrust Jahangir’s sword cut into his neck once more, this time just above his Adam’s apple, almost severing his head from his torso. He fell back, his pumping blood crimsoning
the dust. His body twitched once or twice and then he lay still.

Jahangir stood over the lifeless corpse. His own blood was still running from the wound in his forearm down his hand into the fingers of his gauntlet where it was collecting, warm and sticky. Sensation was quickly returning to his calf but the sensation was pain. Pulling his face cloth from around his neck with his uninjured hand he dabbed roughly at the calf wound, where the flailing hoof had penetrated not only the skin but also the layer of creamy fat beneath, exposing the purple-red of his muscle.

He could easily have been killed, losing his life and his throne before he had even begun to fulfil his ambitions. Why against all the advice of his counsellors had he decided to lead in person the campaign against the Raja of Mirzapur who now lay sprawled dead before him? Why had he himself led the charge against the raja’s forces, outdistancing his bodyguard just as he had done in the battle against Khusrau? The raja had after all been no real threat to his throne, merely a recalcitrant vassal, the ruler of a small state on the borders of the Rajasthani desert who had refused to pay his annual tribute to the imperial treasury. Part of the answer was the one that he had repeated to his counsellors – to show that he would brook no defiance from any of his subordinates however mighty or humble and that he would rely on no one else to deal out punishments to rebels.

However, he could admit to himself that there was an additional reason for leading the expedition in person. It was a distraction from his thoughts of Mehrunissa, removing him from Agra and the almost irresistible temptation to call her to him despite the Sufi’s prohibition. Feeling suddenly
faint from heat and loss of blood Jahangir called to his men for water. Then the world began to spin before him.

A few minutes later he came back to consciousness to find himself lying on a blanket on the ground while two serious-faced
hakims
bent over him as they worked to staunch and bind his wounds beneath the desert sun. With returning consciousness came a sudden thought. Now the raja was dead and the campaign over he would be easily back in Agra in time for the New Year’s celebrations. Surely they would provide an opportunity for him at least to meet Mehrunissa once more without breaking the Sufi’s strictures to take no specific initiative to do so. Despite the sharp prick of pain as one of the
hakims
’ needles went through the skin of his forearm, as the man began to stitch the two sides of his wound together Jahangir could not suppress a smile.

‘Well, what do you think of the Agra fort?’ Mehrunissa asked her niece as they sat in Ghiyas Beg’s apartments. How beautiful Arjumand Banu was, she was thinking. She hadn’t seen her since she was a young child in Kabul. She was fourteen now but had none of the clumsy awkwardness of many girls of her age. Her face was a delicate oval, the brows finely arched, and her thick dark hair fell almost to her waist. Her looks came from her Persian mother who had died when she was only four but her eyes, like her father’s, Asaf Khan’s, were black.

‘I’ve never seen anything like it – so many attendants, so many courtyards and fountains, so many jewels. As we entered the fort they beat drums in the gatehouse in my
father’s honour.’ Arjumand was still sparkling with the novelty of it all.

Mehrunissa smiled. How she wished she were that age again . . . ‘Ever since Akbar’s reign, the drums have been sounded to honour the arrival of a victorious commander. I was very proud to hear them as well.’

Some weeks previously Mehrunissa’s father had written joyfully that her elder brother Asaf Khan had so distinguished himself while fighting away to the south in the Deccan that the emperor had summoned him to Agra to command the garrison here. Asaf Khan had reached the city two weeks ago. It had taken Mehrunissa this long to obtain leave first from Fatima Begam and then from the officious
khawajasara
to visit Ghiyas Beg’s apartments and she was eager to see her brother.

‘Where is your father? I’ve only permission to remain here until sunset.’

‘He is with the emperor discussing plans for some new fortifications but he promised he would come as soon as he could.’

Mehrunissa could hear her mother singing to Ladli in a room just off the courtyard. The child had adjusted quickly to her absence and though she knew she should be glad it still hurt a little to realise that her daughter didn’t really miss her. Her family was thriving. Ghiyas Beg’s duties as Imperial Treasurer were keeping him very busy, so her mother told her, while Asaf Khan was clearly high in Jahangir’s favour. It was only she, Mehrunissa, who was the failure. She had still heard nothing from the emperor and the monotony of serving Fatima Begam was growing daily more irksome.

‘What is it, Aunt? You look sad.’

‘It’s nothing. I was just thinking what a very long time it’s been since we were all together.’

‘And the emperor’s women? His wives and concubines, what are they like?’ Arjumand persisted.

Mehrunissa shook her head. ‘I haven’t seen them. They live in a separate area of the
haram
where the emperor eats and sleeps. I live where the women, like my mistress, are nearly all old.’

Arjumand looked disappointed. ‘That’s not how I imagined the imperial
haram.
’

‘Neither did I—’ At that moment Mehrunissa heard footsteps in the corridor, then Asaf Khan strode in.

‘Sister! The attendants told me I would find you here.’ Before she had quite risen from her seat he had enfolded her in his arms, almost lifting her from the floor. He was as tall as their father but broader and square jawed. He was smiling at her. ‘You’ve changed. You were just a girl when I last saw you – not much older than Arjumand, and a lot more gawky. But look at you now . . .’

‘It’s good to see you too, Asaf Khan. When I last saw you, you were only a young officer with spots and spindly legs,’ she countered. ‘Now you command the Agra garrison.’

Asaf Khan shrugged. ‘The emperor has been good to me. I hope our brother is as fortunate. If I can I will get Mir Khan transferred here from Gwalior so that the family can really be together. It would please our parents, especially our mother . . . But more news. The emperor has invited our family to attend the Royal Meena Bazaar in the Agra fort next month.’

‘What is it?’ Arjumand turned puzzled eyes on her father but Mehrunissa answered.

‘The bazaar is part of the Nauruz – the eighteen-day New Year celebration the Emperor Akbar introduced to mark the sun entering into Aries. Fatima Begam is always complaining that two weeks before it starts all you can hear in the
haram
is the sound of workmen hammering and banging as they erect the pavilion in the fort’s gardens.’

‘And the Royal Meena Bazaar?’

‘One of the festival’s most important events. It’s like a real bazaar except the only customers are royalty and nobility. It takes place at night in the fort gardens. The courtiers’ wives and daughters – women like us – spread out trinkets and swathes of silk on tables and play the part of traders, bantering and bargaining with their would-be purchasers – royal matrons and princesses and, of course, the emperor and his sons. The festival is so intimate that all the women go unveiled.’

‘Father, I can go, can’t I?’ Arjumand was suddenly looking anxious.

‘Of course. Now, I must leave you again. I’ve more military business to attend to but I’ll be back soon.’

After Asaf Khan had left, Mehrunissa sat with Arjumand Banu trying to answer the girl’s eager questions. But her mind was elsewhere. Fatima Begam had told her all about the bazaar but she had not been approving and had said things Mehrunissa certainly couldn’t tell her niece. ‘The Meena Bazaar is a meat market – no more, no less. Akbar started it because he wanted a chance to select new bedfellows. If any unmarried woman caught his eye he would order the
khawajasara
to prepare her for his pleasure.’ Looking at the frown on the old woman’s usually genial face, Mehrunissa guessed that long ago something had happened
at the bazaar to offend her. Perhaps she had resented Akbar’s promiscuous sexual appetites. Deep down Mehrunissa felt as excited as Arjumand – the bazaar was one place she could be sure of seeing the emperor. But would Fatima Begam allow her to attend?

As the evening candles were being lit in Fatima Begam’s claustrophobic apartments a week later Mehrunissa had her answer. Ever since she’d told her of the invitation the old lady had equivocated. Now, even though Mehrunissa had dressed herself in her finest clothes and put on her best jewels, Fatima Begam had assumed a stubborn expression Mehrunissa knew well.

‘I have decided. You are a widow. It would not be seemly for you to attend the bazaar. And I am too old for such things. Read some Persian poetry to me instead. That will be pleasanter for us both than all that noise and vulgarity.’

Biting her lip, Mehrunissa picked up a volume of poems and with fingers trembling with frustration slowly undid the silver clasps on the rosewood covers.

The great courtyard of the Agra fort had been transformed, thought Khurram as, to three trumpet bursts, he and his elder brother Parvez entered it behind their father Jahangir, all three dressed in cloth of gold. Candles burning in globes of coloured glass suspended from the branches of trees and bushes and from artificial trees of silver and gold cast moving jewel-bright shadows – red, blue, yellow, green – in the soft breeze. Around the walls he could see the velvet-draped
stalls heaped with trinkets and the women waiting behind them. It looked as splendid as in his grandfather’s time. He could vividly recall Akbar’s pleasure in the whole Nauruz festival. ‘Being wealthy is good – indeed it is a necessity. But showing that you are wealthy is even more important for a monarch.’

Akbar had understood the meaning of magnificence. Some of Khurram’s earliest memories were of sitting by his grandfather’s side in a glittering howdah as they rode through the streets of Agra. Akbar had always believed in showing himself to his people and they had loved him for it. Akbar had been like the sun and some of his radiance had fallen on himself, Khurram thought. Yet his father Jahangir who, sparkling with diamonds, was now moving among his nobles had been kept in the shadows. Even as a child Khurram had sensed tensions all around him – between his father and his grandfather and between his father and his eldest half-brother Khusrau who, instead of being here to share in the first Nauruz of their father’s reign, was incarcerated in a dungeon in Gwalior. Khusrau had been a fool as well as disloyal, Khurram thought, following his father towards a dais draped in silver cloth that had been erected in the centre of the courtyard beneath a canopy of the same material, which shimmered in the light of the torches burning on either side of it.