Shadow Princess (24 page)

Aurangzeb felt the same, and it was an emotion that surprised him. If he had been asked whether he loved his father, he would have replied, and correctly, that there was no other option available to a dutiful son, but he had never thought of love as being anything but an obligation, and, for the first time in his fifteen years, he was proved wrong. Though only momentarily. Then the heat came to plague him again, his headache returned, the scene before him whitened to a haze. He rubbed the constricting collar of his
qaba
and wished for the coolness of the courtyard outside his apartments, where he could read for a while or listen to the petitions for charity that found their way to him. And then the trumpets from the Naubat Khana announced the arrival of Sukhdar and Surat Sundar, the two imperial elephants, the stars of the afternoon’s show. Their
mahouts
sat balanced and proud upon their irritable charges, goaded them with their
ankhs
to kneel before the Emperor, to raise their trunks to their foreheads in an imitation of the
taslim
.

The cool tang of fresh buffalo milk came to Aurangzeb’s nose—the elephants had recently been bathed in this in preparation for their fight. Their hides were a thick, rubbery gray and cleaned meticulously. Their feet were already dusty, though; even the short trip from the stables to the
maidan
had muddied them to their knees. They both wore a minimum of finery, thick chains of gold with large rings crisscrossed over their backs and around their stomachs and necks; the chains had large, hooplike rings to make it easier to string in a tether if one was needed during the fight. The
ankhs
that the
mahouts
held were also of solid gold, gleaming in the sunlight. The men themselves wore a somber white, clad only in
dhotis
that covered their waists and were tucked between their legs; their chests were bare. A flutter of white at the edge of the field caught Prince Aurangzeb’s eye, and he saw there the
mahouts’
wives, in a place reserved specially for them among all of these men. The sport was so deadly that the women had shed their colors, broken the bangles on their wrists, and wiped the partings in their hair of the vermilion powder that signified marriage. If the
mahouts
survived, a feast would be waiting to celebrate their resurrection from the dead. If they died, Bapa would pay their families a hundred times their monthly salaries and continue to pay the widows pensions for the rest of their lives. This was why the
mahouts
did what they did—for the love of money, for the love of the animals themselves, and for the excitement.

Aurangzeb’s headache disappeared as quickly as it had come, and he felt his heart pound madly. He noticed Dara pulling his horse back as Sukhdar roared. A low mud wall had been built along the diameter of the
maidan,
and the fight would begin when the elephants were given the signal and crashed through the mud wall to confront each other. Shuja, Aurangzeb could not see, for by now his gaze was focused on the two mammoth beasts, snorting and pawing at the ground. How superb they were, though so ungainly, so without line or structure. He edged closer into the field, and one of the imperial guards put his spear across his path. “Please stand back, your Highness.”

Aurangzeb heard Murad’s childish voice shout, in an abrupt and deep lull in the racket, “Let the fight begin!” for it was the youngest prince’s privilege to do so. The elephants seemed to have heard the signal also; they shook their massive heads, and, without the provocation of the
ankhs,
Sukhdar and Surat Sundar rumbled through the mud wall as though it had been a mere chiffon curtain and smashed their heads into each other. The wall disintegrated in a fine mist of dirt, which billowed outward and then dissipated, and Aurangzeb saw the elephants tilt their heads this way and that and charge at each other again, their
mahouts
clinging on. They were well matched, he thought, raising his voice to join the clamor of the crowd, as the elephants returned to each other again and again. Surat Sundar’s
mahout
fell off the elephant and disappeared in the dust with an awkward flailing of limbs. From the white-clad women, a thin, keening wail rose and swept across to Aurangzeb’s ear.

Frightened, shaken, and without a guide now, Surat Sundar turned to flee, plowing his way through the tightly packed hordes, but paths widened to admit him and closed behind him as the men watched what Sukhdar would do. He looked around, howled his anger, and charged toward the four glittering princes on horseback.

As the infantrymen of the imperial army, clad in full armor, their shields held aloft, struggled to maintain their places, the crowd of men pushed them away. Everyone flew out of the elephant’s way, and all of a sudden, one lone man found himself confronting Sukhdar.

Prince Aurangzeb felt his heart stop and his hands grow cold around his reins. Dara had fled along with the crowd. Sadullah Khan, the Grand Vizier of the Empire, had yanked at Prince Murad’s reins and pulled him to the side, and where Shuja was, Aurangzeb did not know. He was alone in all that din, voices wailing and crying, and he clearly heard Jahanara and his father shout out his name, telling him to flee. He looked up and saw them both leaning over the balcony of the Shah Burj. Aurangzeb bent down to snatch a spear from a passing soldier and flung it with all of his strength at Sukhdar. It hit the elephant between the eyes, and three inches of the spear’s pointed tip pierced the animal’s tough hide. Sukhdar bawled in pain, and with his mighty trunk he whacked at Aurangzeb, thudded into his horse instead, and sent the animal flying a few feet. Aurangzeb was flung off the horse. He rose shakily to his feet and stood in the field, his fingers scrambling for the dagger in his cummerbund, but he knew even then that it was little defense against the mammoth animal.

Sukhdar rushed in again, and Aurangzeb saw Shuja ride toward the animal, yelling all the while until it stopped in distraction. That brief moment was enough. The elephant keepers, who had come armed with their
chakris
for just such a possibility, lit the two ends of their bamboo canes, which were filled with gunpowder. The canes swung around on their central axes, held up on poles, spitting fire and light, the gunpowder booming as it caught flame. Raja Jai Singh came to Shuja’s aid now, peeling away from the crowd, his spear ready. He flung the spear to wound Sukhdar and jabbed at the enraged beast with his sword. The elephant tossed him to the ground and lifted a massive foot to crush him where he lay. Just then, Surat Sundar returned, butting Sukhdar from the back with a tremendous force, and his crushing foot came down a few inches from Jai Singh’s head. The two elephants turned on each other, and Aurangzeb pushed his way through to haul the Raja out of the field and into the crowd.

“Thank you, your Highness,” Jai Singh muttered, his face pale, his right arm swinging awkwardly by his side.

“I must thank you instead,” Aurangzeb said. “I will remember that you saved my life. Now”—he touched Jai Singh on his shoulder—“Wazir Khan should look at that arm.”

“Later,” the Raja said. “After we are done here.”

The fight went on for twenty more minutes until the unseated
mahouts
came to collect their charges, to part them with fireworks and torches, to calm them by leading them to the waters of the Yamuna and plunging them in until their blood cooled.

In the quiet that came afterward, Emperor Shah Jahan yelled from the balcony at Aurangzeb. “What madness was this,
beta
? To stand in the path of an elephant and court death? You should have fled as the others did.”

Prince Aurangzeb turned stiffly to his father, bowed, and said in a voice that had not lost its quaver, “Bapa, death comes even to Emperors. There is no shame in that. The shame lies in what my brothers did.”

Only a few people at the base of the Shah Burj heard this statement. Dara did, and he flushed at the implication that he was a coward. Shuja bristled, because he
had
come to Aurangzeb’s aid. Both Sadullah Khan and Raja Jai Singh mulled over what their prince had said, and when they raised their glances to that slight, boyish figure staring up at his father, they were thoughtful.

Long after the
maidan
had been cleared, during the brief twilight that swung over Agra, Jahanara stood by one of the pillars of the Shah Burj, her arms around it. Below, she heard the sweep of brooms as workers cleared the ground strewn with broken paper flags, cummerbunds wrenched off during the melee, plantain leaves that had held the
kabab
skewers. By morning, when her father appeared for his
jharoka,
it would all be pristine again. Her brow was furrowed with a frown. What
had
Aurangzeb meant by those words? She had seen the two ministers, even Raja Jai Singh, clutching his useless arm, his face wrought with pain, look at him with . . . admiration.

“Your Highness.” Ishaq Beg came up behind her and waited.

“Yes,” she said. “I know. Is everything ready?”

He inclined his head and let her pass. Jahanara went back to her apartments slowly. Aurangzeb had said that death came even to emperors—as though he thought of himself thus. As though he already was one, even before his father had been buried.

•  •  •

Music drifted through Princess Jahanara’s apartments, sweet and dulcet, a
sitar,
a pair of castanets, the low throb of a
tabla,
accompanying a woman’s rich, throaty voice. The princess had hosted a dinner for her victorious brother Aurangzeb on the night of the elephant fight and invited all of her other brothers, their wives, Roshanara, and their father. The dinner cleared, they sat now around the room on silk-upholstered divans, silent and uneasy. The orchestra was behind a screen, with only the singer’s shape lightly visible, backlit by oil
diyas
. The walls of Jahanara’s apartments had been carved plentifully with square niches, and in each a lone lamp burned, its wick vertical and steady. The floors were carpeted, wall to wall, with thin layers of jute matting overlaid with cotton mattresses and then rugs from Isfahan. Flimsy curtains, seemingly made more of air than of fabric, screened the arches that fronted the Yamuna River. They hung still, their folds quiescent, not even the shadow of a breeze to incite them into movement.

They had eaten well from a menu of Jahanara’s choice, cooked earlier by the imperial chefs in the kitchen attached to the harem—golden curries of lamb and goat, warm from the fires and still simmering as they were set before them; carrots and cucumbers in salads dressed with lime juice and peanut oil, sprinkled with browned cumin seeds; chicken
biryani
steamed in an earthenware pot with a string of kneaded dough to seal the lid and keep the rice moist until it came to rest upon their tongues; the best Kashmiri wines from the cool cellars below the fort’s walls spiced with cardamom, star anise, and cloves. For dessert they had a simple wheat-flour
halva,
cooked in
ghee
and sugar syrup, clad in raisins and fried cashews. The dancing girls came in when dessert was being served, and after they left, Jahanara signaled to the eunuchs to deposit the gold platters with the makings of
paan
—betel leaves and nuts, slivers of pure beaten silver, sugar cubes, and cloves to bind the betel leaves into a parcel.

“Ask them to leave,” Emperor Shah Jahan said.

And that was enough for all the servants. They bowed and slipped out of the apartments, and then only the Emperor and his children were left. The singer lowered her voice when Jahanara raised her hand. She was part of Jahanara’s personal orchestra, a woman who had been with the princess for five years now, who knew all of her mistress’s various moods and just what song or verse would soothe them.

“What is it, Bapa?” Jahanara asked gently. They were all agitated and edgy, and it was not from the fright of the afternoon’s elephant fight. Dara had glowered through the meal, eating with a stolid intensity, barely even acknowledging his father’s presence. Nadira sat by his side, placid as ever, calling attention to herself only when she put a hand up to her nose to ward off the aromas from the food or openly sucked on a wedge of dried mango. She was pregnant, she had said, and Jahanara had heard the news with gladness and a little envy. A child would bring them all together, and a male child would be an heir to the Empire. Shuja and his wife were taciturn, as was Aurangzeb, but in his silence was a pride they could not miss. His right cheek flamed from a cut; his back was bruised, and so he wore only a thin cotton
kurta;
and there was a bandage on his ankle where his leg had been twisted when he was thrown off his horse.

Only Murad chatted on, reliving the fight with every word, unconscious of the mood of the room. Roshanara, seated by Aurangzeb, carried on a one-sided conversation in an undertone, answered only by grunts. But she did not seem to mind her brother’s rudeness, Jahanara thought; instead a glow of something—triumph perhaps—filled her face.

Bapa sat with his head bowed. Between dinner and dessert he had called for the
zenana
’s scribe, an elderly woman, and given her orders that would be transmitted to the imperial court’s writers the next morning. In three days, they would observe Aurangzeb’s fifteenth birthday, and the celebrations were to be grand—if Jahanara could have spoken, she would have said that they would befit a king. He was to be given the same privileges Bapa had as Emperor on the occasion of his birthday—an imperial weighing. Massive gold-beam balance scales, eight feet in height, were to be rolled into the Diwan-i-am, and Aurangzeb would step onto one scale pan, and the other would be weighted down, alternately, with bags of silver rupees, milk, flour, sugar,
ghee
, dried fruits, silks, and clothing. He would then distribute these items himself to the poor outside, doling out alms as if he were the master of those men gathered with their arms outstretched for their king’s bounty. Bapa would give him a
khilat,
a robe of honor, studded with jewels, all to be made in the space of three days, with a hundred seamstresses employed in the task of piecing together this precious coat. He would also give him a gold dagger and five thousand rupees in gold
mohurs
. For Shuja, for his bravery in this incident, there would be another
khilat
and a dagger.