Shadow Princess (8 page)

Only later, in fact, on that midafternoon in June of 1631, a few days after his mother had died, did Dara understand more of the situation in his childhood as he stood at the keel of the boat that rowed him over the clear waters of the Tapti to the other bank and to Zainabad Bagh, where his mother lay buried. It was the time of day, all over Hindustan, when not a creature stirred outside shelter. In Dara’s eyes, there was the hot, still dazzle of the sun hovering overhead. It had rained earlier, but the glisten of the water on the walls of the fort behind him and the roofs of the buildings in Zainabad Bagh in front of him had long since burned off in a quiet sizzle when the sun showed its face again. The heat picked up, the land dried under its fierce intensity, and people and animals fled to the safety of coolness and dark wherever they could find it—under trees, below rooftops, beneath cloth and canvas awnings, even in the cover of shadows cast by lounging cattle and camels.

Dara stood bareheaded in the boat and turned impatiently to the man rowing him across. “Can you not go any faster?”

“Yes, your Highness,” the man said, his muscles straining against the oars as they dipped cleanly into the water and then out again.

Their pace did not pick up even in the slightest. Dara had known that the boatman was rowing as strongly as his age and body would allow him to. The boatman would never use a negative with Dara or any other member of the royal family; his answer had been steeped in etiquette and in generations and centuries of servitude, and so he had said yes when, in fact, he
could
not physically have rowed any better or brought them to the other bank any quicker.

Dara tutted, thinking that he should not have wasted his breath in futile conversation with a menial. But he was anxious all of a sudden since his mother had died. Bapa would not see any of them, except for Jahanara, and each night she had returned to her own chambers from their father’s with a droop to her shoulders, with few words left in her mouth, and slept the nights away as though she would never again wake. Dara had waited by her side for two nights, watching the rise and fall of her chest as she breathed, waiting desperately to know what was happening with Bapa. Was he all right? he had asked, and in reply Jahan had waved her hand and brushed him away. He had stayed on in her rooms, unmindful of the clucking maids and even the shooing gestures of Satti Khanum, as Jahanara dressed and departed again to be with Shah Jahan. He had paced the hallways outside the royal apartments his father occupied, waiting for a summons or a sound from within. At times, he thought he had heard a fine keening wail, brokenhearted and reedy, which had sent a cold hand to clutch at him. Could that be his Bapa? Even here, on the outside, his legs trembled at that sound; how could Jahanara hear it up close, how could she bear it, what did she do to comfort their father? After that day, Dara spent the rest of his time in his own apartment, growing more and more restive. Now, the day after Mahabat Khan had been granted an audience with his Emperor, Prince Dara Shikoh was on his way to the other bank of the Tapti River to meet a woman who had sent him a summons for another audience. And he went, Dara thought, rubbing sweat from his forehead, because she would fill these silences that had surrounded him since his Mama had died. Nadira knew something, else she would not have sent a furtive message to him by a eunuch in the harem or insisted upon their meeting so far from the palaces at a time of day when few ventured abroad.

The boat docked, and Dara swung over the side and onto the wooden boards of the jetty before the boatman had had time to fasten the rope over a post and bring the boat’s rocking to a halt. He flew through the entrance to the garden. Guards raised their spears in threatening gestures and lowered them in one move when they recognized the slight, muscled figure of the man who swept past them. Their heads bowed to the ground, but Dara did not notice their salutations, just as he had not expected to be stopped.

In the Bagh, it was finally a little cool, and huge mango trees spread their many-armed branches over the paths, creating a permanent shade from the assault of the sun. As Dara ran, he could smell the sweet-sour aroma of the warm sap that ran down the sides of the fruit hanging from the trees, the branches so low that he had to duck his head in places. The Bagh was full of guards, lining the pathways, at the crossroads where one pathway met another, all clad in mourning white for his mother. A lone boat, bleached into paleness by the sun, drifted along its mooring rope on the pond, and Dara hauled it in toward him, shading his eyes as he did so in search of Nadira’s figure in the
baradari
on the island. He could not see her, but he knew that she was there. He climbed into the boat, waving off offers of help from the guards around, and rowed himself to the island. When he docked at the other end, hands came to help him, and Dara tripped as he swung his leg out over the side of the boat. Upright, he stayed standing where he was, on the rocks that lay strewn over the thin lip of the island. Now that he was finally here, his haste cooled and his breathing slowed. For a few steps away, under the stone awning of the
baradari,
lay his mother, a woman who in life had enchanted him, as she had so many others, a woman who in death he had not yet had the time to mourn.

The island in the middle of the pond in Zainabad Bagh was little more than a gathered mound of mud carted over in boats and flung on a bedrock of boulders and gravel that the Emperor’s engineers had carefully designed. The foundation for this island was so solid that a tiny pavilion had been built upon it—that had been the original intent of the island for Mumtaz Mahal—as a place of repose where she could lie down on a blistering afternoon with the breeze swinging through the open arches. As time passed, she opened her
baradari
to her husband, and they had a quiet dinner here on some evenings, with the slaves stacked against the
baradari
’s pillars, or to her children when she brought them here to listen to music on moonlit nights or to the sounds of the dark—a partridge startled from its rest; a jackal’s brusque and childlike howl, intended to entice other animals to it for slaughter. And so, Dara, her favorite son, the one upon whose shoulder she had rested a light hand so often, had come here enough times to have accumulated memories only of Mumtaz Mahal.

He remained where he was, his head bowed in prayer. When he looked up, over the steps of the pavilion and into it, he saw Nadira kneeling in front of the smooth, flat slab of marble that was his mother’s gravestone. Whereas the rest of Zainabad Bagh was quiet, here, on the island, there was the melodic beat of the
imam
’s voice as he chanted verses from the Quran. Day and night, this sound rippled out over Mumtaz Mahal’s remains by the Emperor’s orders. Every man chosen for this task sat facing west, toward Mecca, his eyes lowered only to the Quran by his side, not daring to look at the sheet of icy white marble, even though there was nothing to be seen of the woman herself and she was long dead.

Dara recognized the
sura
the
imam
was chanting and joined in, and he saw Nadira’s lips move in a like fashion. When the
imam
continued on, Dara slipped off his thin sandals and climbed into the
baradari
to kneel alongside his cousin.

Nadira was nothing if not practical, and even in the sight and presence of the newly dead, as soon as Dara had settled himself and bowed to touch his head to the stone under which his mother rested, she said, “The Emperor wishes to give up his throne.”

He paused in the act of straightening his back and then continued until he was vertical. Nadira had spoken in a low voice, hovering somewhere over a whisper, but he knew that no one could hear them. Dara knew also that, although they had both come to Zainabad Bagh and met at Mumtaz Mahal’s grave as though by chance, even if they were seen, like this, close to each other, their knees and thighs touching, there was nothing in the least inappropriate. Nadira was his cousin, his uncle Parviz’s daughter, and Parviz had been their father’s half brother. A brother, Dara conceded realistically, who had done little good in his life and had conveniently drunk himself to his death before the Mughal throne became vacant again. Even this little fact was in Nadira’s favor, and in the past year and a half, during the time they had been at Burhanpur, Dara had discovered anew this cousin of theirs who had been born here and brought up here, a woman, a girl, who knew nothing of politics and whom he would not have thought possessed of much intelligence. Until now.

He did not question her statement. Here, finally, was a reason for the thick solitude and quiet that had surrounded them all in the past few days since his mother had died. Bapa was considering dispossessing himself of the crown of Hindustan, which he had fought so bitterly, and for so many years, to gain. Dara reached out and rubbed his palm over the stone in front of him. Had she meant so much to their Bapa then? He was old enough (and in a
zenana
full of women with little to do other than gossip he would not have needed to be very old) to understand the import of the child who mewled away in the wet nurse’s apartments in the palace—she had been the fourteenth child of his parents’ union, which meant that over the past nineteen years no other woman had captured his Bapa’s fancy and imprisoned his heart like his mother had. She
had
meant so much to him in life that, at her death, Emperor Shah Jahan was willing to throw away everything else he had and to live the rest of his days, aged beyond his time, in obscurity, with a son on the throne instead of him.

“Where did you hear this?” he said at last, thoughts humming in his head. What did this mean? Who would be his regent? For Prince Muhammad Dara Shikoh knew that he was the heir to the Mughal throne and that, if this news were indeed true, in a few days he could find himself Emperor at sixteen years of age.

“Aurangzeb,” Nadira said.

“How does he . . .” Dara shook his head. “He probably listened at the door when the Khan-i-khanan was granted an audience in the fort. Bapa would not have called Mirza Mahabat Khan for counsel—he rarely does such a thing—he would have informed him of this decision . . . which means,” Dara said more to himself than to Nadira, “that he has made up his mind.”

“No one but you can be Emperor,” Nadira said softly. She was not looking at him, though her head was turned toward him and slanted to one side, her eyes cast down upon his hands.

Of the four princes, Dara was the one who had been granted his mother’s beauty, her spectacular physical attractiveness, her height and erect carriage. He was also a poet at heart, and his interests lay more in thinking and philosophy than in the saddle or on the battlefield. But, as with most things, Dara was equally accomplished in either. He could ride a horse with such grace that it seemed as though the animal, finely tuned to every twitch of the reins in his hands, was but an extension of him. His childhood masters, great generals themselves, had been awed by the fluidity with which he wielded his sword, his mace, his spear, surpassing their expectations of him. At study, the
mullas
found him steady and with an unshakable concentration. He asked questions of them about Islam and Hinduism and Buddhism that they could not answer, or did not dare to think about; his grasp of languages was stellar—he seemed to do anything he set his mind to effortlessly. And in that lay Prince Dara Shikoh’s only fault. He was well aware of his talents, and so he was lazy, indolent, uncaring, and unnecessarily disrespectful to others, even his teachers.

Dara glanced down at Nadira when she spoke. She had uncovered her face, and her veil lay on the floor beside them. It was woven of a thin white muslin, and the cloth had a sheen to it. Dara picked up the veil and wrapped it around Nadira’s shoulders. At his touch, she seemed to tremble, and he looked at her more fully.

“How old are you?”

If Nadira realized this to be a strange question—they were cousins and had been in close contact with each other for the past few months in the imperial
zenana
—she did not show it.

“Fifteen,” she said. “A year younger than you, Dara.”

It was the first time also that she had used his name; thus far, when they had talked or played board games together, she had always begun and continued conversations without any form of address. The sun had lurched lower into the sky, and its rays now slanted into the
baradari,
and in this illuminating light, Dara saw Nadira as though for the first time. He had watched her take off her veil with a sense of shock, although he had seen her face many times before. Here, in public, with the
imam
at the other end of the
baradari
and the guards outside, the gesture had seemed indecent and exciting, as though he was being offered a glimpse of something sacred and forbidden. He saw the long lashes resting against cheeks that were glowing with red, a blush, because of him and his presence. He saw her hair curl against tiny ears in which were two small diamonds—her inheritance did not allow for the immense riches they all took so carelessly for granted. He even noticed her hands resting on her knees, the fingers long, the nails oval, the entire tips—nails and skin—colored a faint orange. Like the others, Nadira was in mourning and had not colored her hands with henna since the Empress’s death. What would Mama have thought of Nadira as a bride for him? He had to marry, all Emperors were obliged to beget heirs for the Empire, and here was a woman whom they all knew, whom they would not be wrenching away from another kingdom and another home—whose loyalty could never be questioned. Who had no living and powerful relatives to invoke rebellions. And yet, Nadira had little to offer. She would bring no magnificent dowry to the marriage, no alliances with powerful kings, no fealty sworn to the Mughal throne. Dara knew, as he stood at the cusp of becoming the sixth Emperor of Hindustan, that Nadira Begam, daughter of the poor, dead Prince Parviz, could never be an Emperor’s wife. Rulers could not choose where they married or marry for anything akin to love.