Empire of the Moghul: The Tainted Throne (33 page)

Khurram and Arjumand were sitting cross-legged before a low table spread with white cloth. The dishes of food laid
out before them – pheasant in a tamarind sauce, roasted lamb stuffed with dried fruits and breads still steaming from the tandoor – smelled appetising. Even so Khurram didn’t feel like eating and looking at Arjumand knew she felt the same. His account of his meeting with his father had shaken her.

‘You must eat something . . .’ he was starting to say, but got no further. One of Arjumand’s attendants had burst through the curtained doorway.

‘Forgive me, Highnesses, but an urgent message has come for you from Asaf Khan.’

‘My father?’ Arjumand turned startled eyes on Khurram, who leapt to his feet, almost knocking over some of the dishes in his haste, and seized the note from the attendant’s hand. Had Asaf Khan heard that Jahangir had relented, he wondered as he broke the seal and unfolded the letter. But as he took in the hastily scrawled words his blood seemed to turn to ice in his veins:
The emperor has commanded your immediate arrest. You must flee. The captain of the guard, who is my friend, showed me the written order. He will delay the despatch of horsemen to carry it out for a little while but dare not wait long. I pray that this note reaches you in time. Destroy it as soon as you’ve read it or its contents may destroy me and my friend the captain.
For a moment Khurram felt too stunned to say or do anything and just stared at the piece of paper as if he could somehow make the words vanish.

‘Khurram . . . what is it?’ Arjumand’s voice recalled him to himself. Acting now as instinctively as on the battlefield, he held the note in the flame of an oil lamp. Then, taking Arjumand by the hand, he pulled her to her feet. ‘My father has ordered my arrest. Fetch our children. We must leave at once.’

Arjumand’s eyes widened but the urgency in his voice told her there was no time for questions and she at once hurried towards the children’s rooms. Following her through the door and then out from the
haram
Khurram shouted to his bodyguards, ‘Saddle every horse we have.’ Fearing at any moment to hear the sound of soldiers at the gates, he ran to his room and, taking a key from around his neck, unlocked a painted chest. Grabbing a small casket of jewels and a bag of gold coins he shoved them into a leather satchel which he slung over his shoulder, then seized his sword and, buckling it round his waist, raced down to the main courtyard.

Arjumand was already waiting, a shawl thrown around her head. Beside her, Jahanara was gripping the hand of a bleary eyed Dara Shukoh and nurses held Roshanara and Shah Shuja. A groom had fitted saddle and bridle to the last of the horses and was bending beneath its belly to check the tightness of the girths. Once he had stood back, his task completed, Khurram shouted the order to leave and mounting a tall chestnut horse pulled Arjumand up to ride behind him. She held him round the waist as he kicked the horse forward, galloping through the gateway and out of his mansion. When would he see it again? Behind and riding with equal urgency were a dozen or so of his household. Dara Shukoh and Jahanara were being held on the pommels of their saddles by two of Khurram’s
qorchis
while Shah Shuja and Roshanara were in straw panniers slung from either side of the broad-chested bay horse of Khurram’s steward, Shah Gul.

Looking back over his shoulder, Khurram saw lights on the ramp leading from the fort. Could it be riders carrying torches? No, it was only the flickering flames from the braziers which normally lit the fort’s approaches. He strained
his ears for the sounds of pursuit. He was afraid not for himself but for his family. What would their fate be if he were imprisoned or executed? Then Arjumand gripped him more tightly as he heard a frantic barking and two large dogs ran from a shack by the road, leaping at Khurram’s horse until they too were left behind. Soon there was no other sound in the enshrouding darkness but the hoofbeats of his desperate little party galloping southward along the Jumna. However, he still didn’t feel safe. Bending low to his horse’s neck, his mind was focused on only one thing – to ensure that by the time the dawn rose he and his family were as far from Agra as possible.

Alone rider on a black horse galloped across the plain, a pall of red dust hanging behind him in the still, late afternoon air. As he approached the base of the ridge on which the fortress of Asirgarh stood, Khurram, watching from the sandstone battlements, saw the rider slow his pace only a little as he began to ascend the steep track winding up to the fortress. As he came nearer Khurram noticed that despite the heat the man was wearing a steel helmet and a metal-studded leather tunic. ‘Shall we shoot him down?’ asked Kamran Iqbal, who was standing beside him.

‘No. One rider can’t harm us. Let’s see what he wants,’ replied Khurram, not taking his eyes from the horseman, who had reached the flat lip of land immediately beneath the fortress and was urging his now-blowing mount once more into a gallop. When he was about fifty yards from the gatehouse he took a bag that had been hanging from his saddle and, wheeling his horse to such an abrupt halt that
it reared on its hind legs, whirled it above his head and flung it with all his strength towards the tall spiked gates of the fortress. ‘A present for the traitor Khurram, may he rot in hell,’ he shouted, then he turned his horse’s head and galloped back down the track, bending low over his mount’s neck and zigzagging slightly as if he expected the watching soldiers on the battlements to fire at him.

As the horseman descended swiftly to the plains below Khurram scanned the arid landscape, wondering whether his gesture in riding defiantly up to Asirgarh might be the prelude to an attack. But there was no sign of any other living thing except some vultures soaring on the air currents high above. ‘Send someone to retrieve that bag,’ he ordered, wiping a trickle of sweat from his face. It was early June and every day the heat grew more intense and the air heavier and more oppressive. Moments later he heard metal wheels grinding on each other in the gatehouse followed by a rattle of chains as the great grille protecting the wooden entrance gates began its shuddering ascent. Then a small door – barely four feet high – in the right-hand gate swung back. A tall, slim young man, his barley-coloured hair glinting in the sun, ducked through it and ran across to where the package had come to rest against a spiny bush. Thomas Roe had been right, Khurram thought, as Nicholas Ballantyne bent to retrieve the bundle. Over the past few months, the young Englishman had proved a loyal and resourceful
qorchi.
In the drama of his flight from Agra he had completely forgotten Roe’s request to take the young man into his service. However, Nicholas hadn’t. After seeing his master on to a ship bound for England from the port of Surat, he had made his way here to Asirgarh, on the northern rim of the Deccan plateau.

Khurram saw Nicholas suddenly recoil and almost drop the bag. Recovering himself, he gripped it in two hands and holding it well away from his body carried it carefully back up the ramp and into the fortress. Curious to know what the rider had left, Khurram hurried down the steep stone staircase to the main courtyard below. A group of soldiers was clustering around Nicholas and the stained jute bag on the ground at his feet. As Khurram approached, he caught a nauseous stench. ‘Open it,’ he ordered Nicholas. ‘Quickly.’

Taking his dagger Nicholas cut through the thick cord securing the bag and then tipped it up. A blotchy, putrescent object rolled out. For a moment Khurram thought it was a rotten melon until he smelled the full sickly sweet stench of death. One of the soldiers, a gangling youth, turned away and started to retch and Khurram felt bile rising in his own throat as he realised what he was looking at.

Squatting, he forced himself to examine the bloated suppurating thing that had once been the head of Jamal Khan, one of his trusted scouts. Some weeks ago he had despatched him to the Governor of Mandu with a message asking for the governor’s support in his breach with Jahangir. The scout’s left eye had been gouged out and a pair of maggots were wriggling in the bloodied socket. From the gaping mouth with its broken teeth, pus-filled gums and bursting purple lips protruded a piece of paper bearing what Khurram recognised as his seal. It could only be his letter to the Governor of Mandu.

‘Highness, there’s something else in the sack,’ he heard Nicholas say. Getting to his feet again he took the small leather pouch the
qorchi
was holding out, and desperately trying to
suppress his rising gorge he stepped back a pace or two to open it. Inside was a letter addressed to
The Traitor Khurram.

The letter was signed
Ali Khan, Governor of Mandu.

‘The note is nothing, merely a piece of insolence and bravado,’ Khurram said with more confidence than he felt. ‘Bury the head with due religious ceremony. It is all that we can do for Jamal Khan now.’

He turned and still holding the governor’s note made his way to Arjumand’s rooms on the fort’s upper storey. Through the open door he saw that she was sitting by a casement, their new son Aurangzeb in her arms. For a moment he stopped and watched them. The child was doing well, though he would never forget the day, two months after they had left Agra and a full month before the baby was due, that Arjumand had gone into labour as their party was struggling up into the Vindhya mountains where, fed by the heavy monsoon rains, small streams had become hazardous torrents and the dripping branches of the trees provided the only shelter for their tents when they made camp.

With no
hakim,
and no midwife, only the two nursemaids who had accompanied them, Arjumand had given birth in
the curtained bullock cart. Standing in the rain, listening helplessly to her screams – willing them to stop but at the same time afraid of what it might mean if they suddenly did – he had never felt so powerless. Why had his life, which had started so well with the favour of his grandfather and then his father, marriage to a woman he loved and who loved him, and then his victorious campaigns, suffered such a reversal of fortunes? Were the fates testing him, he had wondered, arms clasped around himself for comfort, to see if his ambition would crumble at a setback? No, he had determined, dropping his arms to his sides and drawing himself to his full height as Arjumand’s screams had seemed to reach their crescendo, his misfortunes would merely make him more resolute. Moments later Arjumand’s cries had abated and been joined by the lusty yelling of a child.

Now, though, as he stood in the shadow of the doorway watching her with their son, the anxiety for them that never left him for long gripped him again. Leading an army into battle held few fears for him but protecting his family when everything seemed to be turning against him was another thing. He had hoped his army in the Deccan would remain loyal to him, but immediately after his family’s flight and long before he could reach his forces Jahangir had sent imperial post riders ordering the abandonment of the campaign against Malik Ambar and recalling the army to Agra. Some of Khurram’s officers – men like Kamran Iqbal – had disobeyed the order and sought him out at Asirgarh. Many more – conscious of where their own advantage lay as well as afraid of Jahangir’s retribution – had dutifully returned to Agra where they had taken the public oath of loyalty to the emperor Jahangir had demanded of them.

Now had come this new blow – the killing of Jamal Khan. No man could withstand torture. Jamal Khan had indeed known some of his plans but he prayed that not too many of his supporters had been compromised by his forced confession. So far none of the important rulers and governors he had tried to attract to his banner had responded. Doubtless they preferred to wait and see which way the wind would blow and this would stand them in good stead if the news of his letters to them did indeed reach Jahangir. But it would make them even less likely to provide him with aid, even covertly.

He tried to look cheerful as he entered Arjumand’s room but she knew him too well. Hearing his approach she looked up, but seeing his tense expression her smile faded.

‘Khurram, what is it?’

He didn’t answer at first but bent to kiss her then walked over to the casement to gaze again into the dry, shimmering landscape. Behind him he heard Arjumand call an attendant to take Aurangzeb. Then he felt her arms gently take hold of him and turn him to face her.

‘Please, Khurram, whatever it is you must tell me.’

‘You remember that I sent Jamal Khan to the Governor of Mandu as my emissary? Well, I have had my answer. No doubt hoping my father would reward him, the governor had him tortured to reveal what he knew of our plans and then killed. He has had the temerity to return his head to me, together with a contemptuous note. He must believe my father has entirely cast me off and that I have no chance of rehabilitation or he’d never have dared do such things. And he’s probably right. During all the months we’ve been here I’ve not received one word from my father though I’ve sent him letters protesting my innocence.’

‘But at least he hasn’t yet sent an army after you. That must mean something.’

‘Not necessarily. Like everyone else – like all those I’m trying to persuade to support me who don’t answer – he may be simply waiting, letting time and his ability to offer rewards and threaten punishments, which I cannot match, fight his battles for him. My men are already starting to drift away. At the last count I had barely two thousand . . . Who knows how many I’ll have in a month’s time, two months’ time? We can’t continue like this. How can I fulfil those ambitions to which my birth and abilities entitle me?’