Empire of the Moghul: The Tainted Throne (8 page)

And could she ever really understand? If she’d been born a man like her elder brother Asaf Khan, now an officer in the imperial army and on campaign over a thousand miles away to the south in the Deccan, or her younger brother Mir Khan, serving in the imperial garrison at Gwalior where the emperor’s son Prince Khusrau was confined, she would have seen so much more of the world, understood so much more . . . Perhaps too her father would never have abandoned her to die straight after her birth on his perilous journey from Persia to Agra, however reluctant he had been to do so and however pleased he had been when fate and a friendly merchant had allowed him to recover her. The thought that expediency had overcome his love for her – and she knew
both her parents loved her – was something that had remained with her. Together with her experiences in Bengal it had left her, she knew, with a cynical attitude to people and their motives. In a crisis the thoughts of few extended far beyond themselves.

Besides, a woman’s life, her life, was anyway so confined, whether here in her parents’ house or later in Sher Afghan’s
haram
in Gaur. Ever since she began to grow up she’d felt curious about so much . . . about her family’s homeland of Persia to the west and how the shah ruled that empire; whether the domes and minarets of Samarkand to the northeast really sparkled blue, green and gold as she’d heard tell. Her father – when she could prise him from his ledgers – tried to answer her questions but there was so much more she wanted to know. Reading helped quell her frustration. In Gaur the few manuscript volumes she had acquired had made life with Sher Afghan more bearable after the first disillusionment had set in. Yet at the same time they had fed her restlessness, her dissatisfaction. Everything – the accounts of travellers, even poems – stimulated her already vivid imagination, suggesting life was laden with possibilities far beyond loveless couplings in the commander’s
haram
in Gaur or the domestic pleasantness of her parents’ home.

Suddenly she heard a commotion in the square below. Walking swiftly across to the red and orange cotton screen that shielded the area of the roof bordering the square from passers-by, Mehrunissa peered down. A line of mounted imperial soldiers led by an officer and a banner-bearer was entering the square. As the soldiers dismounted her father’s grooms hurried outside to take the reins and moments later the tall, thin figure of Ghiyas Beg himself appeared. Briefly
inclining his head and touching his breast with his right hand, he led the officer inside. What did they want? she wondered.

The other soldiers began strolling around the square, talking and laughing and nibbling walnuts they had bought from the old vendor – his features as wrinkled as the nuts he sold – who habitually sat there. But however much she strained she couldn’t catch their words. As time passed and the officer remained with her father, Mehrunissa descended again to the women’s courtyard, sat down on her stool and picked up her book once more. The shadows were lengthening and two attendants were lighting oil lamps when Mehrunissa heard her father’s voice. Glancing up, she saw he looked agitated.

‘What is it, Father?’

He gestured to the attendants to withdraw then squatted beside her, long fingers twisting the gold-set amethyst ring that for as long as she could remember he had worn on the third finger of his left hand. She had never seen her father – normally so calm and controlled – like this. He hesitated briefly, then began in a voice that was not quite steady. ‘Do you remember the letter I wrote to you in Gaur? That I was surprised by the emperor’s goodness in sending imperial soldiers to escort you home . . . ?’

‘Yes.’

‘I was not being entirely frank with you . . . I did have an idea what the emperor’s motive might be.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Some years ago something happened here in Kabul – something to do with you. I never told you because I thought it better you shouldn’t know. Had events turned out
differently I alone would have taken the knowledge of it to my grave . . . When the emperor was still a prince, banished here to Kabul, he and I found much to discuss. Though I was only his father’s treasurer, I think he appreciated me as an educated man – even came to regard me as a friend. That was why one night I asked you, as my only daughter, to dance for him. My single thought was to pay him the greatest compliment within my power. But soon afterwards – perhaps even the next day, I’m not sure – he came to see me . . . Do you know what he wanted?’ Ghiyas Beg’s look was penetrating.

‘No.’

‘He asked for you as his wife.’

Mehrunissa stood up so abruptly that her stool toppled sideways. ‘He wanted to marry me . . . ?’

‘Yes. But I had to tell him you were already betrothed to Sher Afghan – that I could not in all honour break that contract . . .’

Mehrunissa began to pace the courtyard, hands clasped. Her father had refused Jahangir . . . Instead of being the wife of the cold, brutish Sher Afghan in the fetid heat of Bengal she could have been a prince’s wife at the Moghul court, close to the heart of everything that mattered. Why? How could he? What could have motivated him to cut her off from so much? He would have benefited, as too would all the family . . .

‘You are angry with me and perhaps you are right to be. I know your marriage to Sher Afghan was unhappy, but I couldn’t have predicted that. I felt I had no choice except to act as I did. After all, the prince had been exiled by his father. He would have needed his father’s permission to marry you
and was unlikely to obtain it. At that time he was as likely to have been executed as to become emperor. To be associated with him by the emperor would not have been good for our family.’ Ghiyas Beg paused.

To Mehrunissa there seemed something self-contradictory in her father’s torrent of exculpation. Had her father refused Jahangir for honour or for expediency? But he was continuing.

‘Listen to what else I have to tell you and then perhaps you won’t judge me so harshly. The emperor has appointed me his Comptroller of Revenues and ordered me to Agra.’ Her father’s eyes were suddenly full of tears – something Mehrunissa had never seen before. ‘For the past twenty years and more – ever since we first came here – I’ve thought about the moment when my qualities would be recognised and I would be given some great appointment. I had given up hope and schooled myself to be content . . . But there is still more. The emperor writes that you are to be lady-in-waiting to one of the Emperor Akbar’s widows in the imperial
haram.
Daughter, I believe he has not forgotten you. Now that you are a widow and he is an emperor, he is free to do what he could not when he was only a prince and you were pledged to another man.’

Six days later, Mehrunissa lay back in her palanquin as the eight Gilzai tribesmen on whose broad shoulders the palanquin’s bamboo poles were resting carried her and her sleeping daughter Ladli swiftly down through the narrow rock-strewn Khoord pass on the first stage of the descent to the plains of Hindustan. The pink brocade curtains enclosing her
fluttered in the breeze allowing her glimpses of the steep, scree-covered slopes dotted with holly oak bushes. The bearers were keeping up an even rhythm, singing as they half ran. She hoped her father was right about Jahangir’s intentions. She wanted him to be but as she knew from experience men could be changeable. Sher Afghan had been an attentive husband, a tender lover in the first months of their marriage until he grew tired of her . . . Also she might no longer please Jahangir. Men liked young flesh. Then she had been a girl of sixteen; now she was a woman of twenty-four.

The crackle of musket fire and urgent cries of alarm from the back of the column broke into her thoughts. The palanquin began swaying violently as her bearers stopped singing and picked up speed. Putting a protective arm around Ladli she lifted a corner of one of the curtains and peered out but could see nothing but grey rocks and scree. All the time the yells and sounds of musketry grew louder and nearer. Then a rider galloped by from the rear of the column, so close that she could smell the sweat of his horse and the dust raised by its hooves stung her eyes and made her cough. He was shouting, ‘
Dacoits
are attacking the baggage train! Three men and two baggage camels are down. Get more troops back there quickly!’

Rubbing the dust from her eyes Mehrunissa looked back but a sharp bend in the track hid the baggage train from her view. These passes were notorious for the wild Afridi tribes who preyed on small groups of travellers, but to attack a party protected by an escort of imperial troops was surely reckless. They couldn’t know who they were taking on . . . or maybe they did. Perhaps the news that the wealthy Treasurer of Kabul was on the road had tempted them. The
shadows were lengthening. In an hour or two the sun would disappear below the peaks of the surrounding hills. Perhaps the attack on the baggage wagons in the rear was intended to hurry them deeper into the narrow Khoord Pass where a bigger ambush awaited in the dusk? The thought of the danger to herself and Ladli – and to her parents, travelling ahead of her in the column – chilled her for a moment, then she began to think. How would she defend herself and her daughter? She had no weapons. Ladli had awoken and she pulled the child closer to her. Sensing her mother’s tension Ladli started to whimper. ‘Hush,’ Mehrunissa said, keeping her voice bright. ‘Everything will be all right. Besides, crying never helped anyone.’

Just then someone shouted an order to halt. Her bearers stopped so abruptly that Mehrunissa tumbled forward. She lost her grip on Ladli and banged her forehead on one of the curved bamboo hoops that formed the frame of the palanquin so hard that for a moment she was dazed. Collecting herself, she pushed Ladli to the floor of the palanquin. ‘Stay there!’ Next she craned her head right out of the curtains to see that ahead of her the entire column had stopped. Musketmen were dismounting and, weapons slung across their backs, were scrambling up the scree-covered slopes, dislodging grit and pebbles as they did so, towards some tumbled rocks that would provide them with cover. Then a detachment of imperial horsemen swept past her palanquin heading towards the rear of the column where the sounds of fighting were intensifying. The track was so narrow that they had to drop into single file as they passed her. The last of them was a young officer mounted on a black horse, face anxious and sword already drawn.

Should she break purdah and run with Ladli to her parents’ cart, Mehrunissa wondered, but then dismissed the idea. It would only expose them both to any marksmen in the rocks above. There was no point in making any move until the progress of the fighting was clearer. Instead she closed the curtains around the palanquin again. Time passed slowly in the semi-darkness. Conscious all the time of the sounds of muskets – sometimes seeming nearer, sometimes further away – and of curt shouted orders for soldiers to advance or fall back, as well as of the pain in her forehead, on which a large bump was now rising, she forced herself to sing Persian folk songs to Ladli.

At last the cries and shooting from the back of the column subsided, but what did that mean? Then she heard approaching hoofbeats, victorious whoops and answering cheers from bearers and soldiers near her palanquin. The raiders must have been beaten off . . . Looking out once more she watched the victorious imperial soldiers returning. Several, including the young officer she had seen, had the heads of those they had slain dangling by their hair from the pommels of their saddles, blood dripping from their roughly severed necks. But it was the last rider who caught her attention as he approached. He was oddly dressed in a short tight-fitting leather jacket and on his head, instead of a pointed Moghul helmet with a fringe of chain mail to protect the neck, was a plain round one. As he drew abreast of her, he turned his head. A pair of pale, cat-like blue eyes looked directly at her.

‘Madam, it is time. My name is Mala. I am His Imperial Majesty’s
khawajasara,
his superintendent of the imperial
haram,
and have come to escort you to the apartments of Fatima Begam whom you will serve.’ Mala was a tall, stately looking woman in late middle age. Her long ivory staff of office carved at the top in the shape of a lotus flower added to her dignity. Mehrunissa sensed a formidable personality behind the smile.

She returned her gaze to her parents, standing side by side in the courtyard of the spacious apartments within the walls of the Agra fort allocated to Ghiyas Beg’s household. Her mother was holding Ladli by the hand. Mehrunissa knelt and kissed her daughter. She had looked forward to this moment with enormous anticipation but now that it had come, three weeks after reaching Agra, she felt apprehensive, even reluctant. Parting from the child who had been such a consolation to her was hard, even though Ladli would
be in the care of her grandparents and nursemaid Farisha and would be allowed to visit her in the
haram.

Conscious that the
khawajasara
was watching, Mehrunissa forced herself to suppress her feelings, something her life with Sher Afghan had taught her to do well, and to keep a calm face. Giving Ladli one final hug she rose, turned to her parents and embraced them also. As she stepped back from them, Ghiyas Beg’s face was full of pride. ‘Our thoughts will be with you. Serve your mistress well,’ he said.