1637: The Peacock Throne

by Eric Flint

  Mom had been into antiques. He had no idea how much it had cost. The wood itself was very fine teak, and it seemed as if every inch of it including the tabletop was covered with intricate carvings of geometric designs. It was probably—literally—worth a fortune. So were each of the chairs.

  Worth a fortune to most people. Monique was right about that much, at least: to a princess of one of the two or three largest, richest and most powerful empires in the history of the world?

  Pocket change.

  “Okay, I can see that,” he said. He looked around the table and issued a soft, dry chuckle. “What the hell? She’s trusting us, isn’t she?”

  He frowned again. “She could trust Bobby and Ricky just as much.” He gave Monique a slightly—very slightly—apologetic glance. “Okay, probably your father too. Besides—and I can’t believe I’m saying this—I just got done being royally pissed off at Gervais”—he looked from Bertram to Monique—“and you two.”

  “Need to know,” said Rodney, shrugging. “Which none of them do because none of them need to. And before you get all upset about keeping secrets from Gervais, Bertram, and Monique the way they did from us, it’s not treason for the head of the Mission to keep his subordinates in the dark for security reasons. So it ain’t the same, not including them in the…what do we call it? ‘Conspiracy’ seems a little…I don’t know. Underhanded.”

  Priscilla shrugged. “That’s because it is.” She shook her head. “It is what it is. Which is, yeah, a conspiracy—but it’s in a very good cause.”

  She looked around the table. “And by ‘good cause’ I don’t just mean keeping a woman—Salim, too—whom we all like and admire alive and doing well. It goes way deeper than that. Jahanara and Salim already have a lot of trust and confidence in us, and they listen to us. A year from now, we’ll have even more influence on them.”

  She took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “Which, I don’t know about anybody else, but I damn well plan to use. I want the Mughal empire—hell, all of this subcontinent—to start changing. I’ve gotten attached to it, being honest. But it needs to change.”

  She took another deep breath. “Starting with a man and a woman who love each other being able to get married, for Pete’s sake. Starting with a family being able to settle an inheritance without brothers having to murder each other.” Her voice got a bit shrill. “And not executing people by having them stomped on by elephants!”

  “What she says,” said Monique. She laughed again, more loudly than before. “And who do you think is most likely to get some of those changes made? Or at least get started. My money’s on the most capable—ruthless, too, when she needs to be—member of this whole damn dynasty.”

  John shook his head. “They don’t allow women to rule here.”

  His wife laughed. “What difference does it make what these men allow? You will recall Nur Jahan? The woman who, in her heyday, was the empress of India in all but name. Jahanara…”

  She said the next words softly. “I think that young woman—she’s still only twenty-three years old—can do nearly anything she sets her mind to.”

  “And she’s got a pretty impressive boyfriend too,” said Bertram stoutly.

  John ignored Bertram and focused on Ilsa. “But what about our baby? If Pris and Rodney are on Hajj, who’s gonna look after you?”

  Ilsa’s smile made her even more radiant. “My mother had six children without a single issue, and your mother gave birth to you on the way to the hospital, John. I’ve had no issues so far, and if something should happen, I have every confidence in the physicians Pris has trained.”

  “If they’re so great, let them take care of Jahanara,” John mumbled weakly, knowing he’d already lost the argument.

  Her gaze softened the words that followed: “Were you not listening before? Allowing them to treat her places Jahanara, and therefore us, in way too much danger. It is far safer this way.”

  John bit his lip, worry for his wife warring with pride in her strength and wisdom. Ultimately, it was her health, and therefore, her choice. Not trusting his voice, John just nodded.

  Chapter 53

  Red Fort

  Harem precincts

  “You have no right to do this to me, Janni!” Roshanara wailed, setting Dara’s son to crying.

  Jahanara ignored both her sister’s histrionics and her familiarity. “I have every right, Roshanara Begum. I am senior of the bloodline, and have arranged everything.”

  “And before you think to ask me or Dara for relief from it, we fully endorse the marriage,” Nadira said, handing her son off to one of his milk mothers. The servant took the squalling child and retreated.

  “But, she should be marrying him, not me!” Roshanara cried, gesturing at Jahanara. Her face was a bitter fist, as if she’d devoured a lemon whole. Perhaps Shaista Khan could make her happy, but Jahanara sincerely doubted anything could. Some people were bent on bitterness.

  “I wanted you trampled for your treasons,” Smidha snarled from behind and to Jahanara’s right.

  “Silence, you—you…witch! You have no right to speak here!”

  Smidha continued remorselessly, “You should be grateful to your sister. To have a third opportunity to properly serve the family, despite your history of treason! And to be well-married in the bargain? I should think you would be overjoyed at the opportunity to live.”

  Nadira and Jahanara both sat stone-faced. Their very lack of expression indicated their complete agreement.

  Seeing no one would silence Jahanara’s advisor, Roshanara fell forward on her hands and knees, then, and started to blubber.

  Letting her sister’s noises wash past her in a wave that did not touch her, Jahanara reflected on the fine works the Das brothers had accomplished on her behalf. The merchant had not only negotiated the bride price, he’d preserved the very particular wording of her offer: be awarded the very highest of ranks in both sowar and zat, and marry an imperial princess for your service to the throne. Jahanara would have married Shaista herself, had he arrived in a timely fashion instead of delaying in search of some advantage. Such a marriage was completely out of the question now, even if her uncle had made all speed to ride to Dara’s aid. No, her pregnancy had narrowed options, but then she’d made allowances for Shaista failing to show proper support for Dara. Rarely had anyone been so glad of any such precaution taken in dynastic politics as Jahanara had been since the moment her menses stopped.

  “Such a child!” Smidha threw up her hands. “Gauharara is twice the lady you are, and she’s not even ten!”

  “Are you done, sister?” Jahanara said the words softly.

  “I—I—I can’t, Janni.”

  “Oh, stop it! You know you can. And stop trying to play on my affections by using my nickname. We both know you detest me.”

  Roshanara sniffled, wiped her nose, peeked out at her sister with one red-rimmed eye. “I do not detest you, not really. I—I—fear you. No one should have been able to pull such a monumental victory from Aurangzeb’s grasp. He was emperor for nearly fifty years in the times your pet sorcerers come from!”

  Momentarily stunned that Roshanara should be the one to fully recognize just how Jahanara had made the rest of the family dance to her will, Jahanara slowly shook her head.

  “Do this and you will have nothing to fear from me, ever again.”

  Roshanara sat up, blinked a few times.

  Jahanara let the statement sink in for a moment before continuing, “Shaista Khan is older, certainly, and from all accounts, most generous with his wives. You will have all that you do here, and be treasured by him as befits your station. Better still, you will get away from me and from the shadows cast by your previous bad acts.”

  “But”—Roshanara wiped at her face—“Father was always against princesses of the family marrying.”

  Jahanara knew she had her sister’s tacit agreement then. A legitimate appeal to tradition from Roshanara was like a tiger asking for tea—fanciful in the ex
treme.

  “He is no longer amongst us,” Jahanara said. She left out adding the words because you helped his assassins, which very much wanted to leap from her lips.

  “But what does Dara say about this?”

  “He mentioned execution, but I was able to convince him this was the better alternative,” Nadira said. “Smidha was not joking. You could have very easily been staked out for the elephants to crush. Or beheaded, at least.”

  That penetrated the last of Roshanara’s reticence. And well it should have. Dara had wanted much the same fate for Shaista Khan, truth be told. The only thing that had stayed the emperor’s hand—well, aside from the problem of having to fight another battle—was the death of Asaf Khan. He’d even said, huffily, “I wouldn’t have put it past the crafty old lion to have died just to advance his son’s designs. I can’t very well have him executed for attending to his father in Asaf Khan’s last days and hours.”

  Jahanara had not offered an opinion on that, just let Nadira carry the argument.

  And here they were.

  Jahanara shook her head.

  May God grant that the two of them come to love one another. Or, if He should deem it appropriate, kill one another. Either would serve the rest of us equally well. God, I’d be satisfied if they just stay out of the way.

  Agra

  Mission House

  “Everything?” asked Rodney. “All of the saltpeter, too?”

  Bobby nodded. “That’s what Jadu Das tells us.”

  “But he said—”

  Bobby waved his hand dismissively. “As the man says, that was then, this is now. ‘Now’ being after he sweet-talked Jahanara into giving him a big—huge, he calls it—consignment of her own goods.”

  Ricky was grinning. “Which, of course—seeing as how we already had enough of our goods to fill the Lønsom Vind and then some—would require adding another of her ships to the flotilla going to Jeddah.”

  “To Jeddah and beyonnnnd,” added Bobby, who was now grinning himself. “That’s one of the new ships we’re about—the ones modeled on USE designs that Jahanara has been building in Surat. She’s even going to let one of them accompany the Lønsom Vind all the way home. And we get one fourth of her hold capacity.”

  “I thought those were all warships,” said John, thinking the youngest men of the Mission had matured on their trip east. “And are you telling us she’s already got three built?”

  “The third one’s still a few weeks away from being completed—but it’ll be finished by the time we get to Surat.” Ricky shrugged. “And, yes, they’re warships, by seventeenth-century values of ‘warship.’ They all double as troop carriers—or cargo haulers—although they don’t carry as much as a pure merchant ship could. But that’s enough for our purposes. Except for the saltpeter, everything we’re bringing back is high value, low volume.”

  “I’ll be damned. That woman is…” John started to lean back and then stopped, wincing. Sitting straight up on cushions put some strain on a spine accustomed to chairs with backrests, but the pain his sutures still caused was worse.

  “Efficient,” he finished, through teeth that were a bit clenched.

  His wife had something of a smirk on her face. Seeing it, John’s lips twisted. “Hey, thanks for the sympathy, dear.”

  Ilsa shook her head. “I wasn’t smiling at you in particular, I was smiling at all of you. Men. It doesn’t seem to matter what century you were born in, either.”

  Priscilla was smiling also. “A Begum Sahib’s place is in the kitchen, right?” She shook her own head. “When are you dimwits going to finally figure out that if Jahanara had this era’s idea of the proper genital equipment as well as being the oldest of the siblings, she’d have become the emperor the moment her father died. And not one of her brothers would have dared to contest the issue. Well, maybe Aurangzeb would have. He’s a damn sight more gifted than the rest of the bunch and certainly stubborn enough.”

  Another headshake. “Back up-time, they called Margaret Thatcher the ‘Iron Lady.’ Ha! They had no idea what the term really means.”

  “Okay, okay,” grumbled John. “You’ve made your point. You don’t need to rub it in.” Gingerly, he reached back and poked the edges of his worst wound. “Ouch.”

  A servant came into the chamber. “You told me to tell you when you needed to start getting ready for the wedding. For the women, that is now. Not yet for the men.”

  John grimaced. “Even in a litter, that trip’s going to hurt. Dammit, do I really need to go to—”

  “Yes.” That came from everybody. Except the servant, of course. She kept properly silent, although she might have hid a smirk.

  Ilsa, Priscilla and Monique all rose to their feet. “Stop bitching,” said Pris. “At least you don’t have to spend hours and hours getting all hennaed up.”

  She didn’t sound all that aggrieved, though. None of the men could prove it, but they all suspected the women of the Mission—up-time and down-time both—enjoyed the excuse to put on the elaborate makeup and skin decorations that were Indian custom for such occasions.

  None of them said anything, of course. They weren’t that dimwitted.

  Red Fort

  “And they make jokes about hillbilly marriages,” Priscilla said to Rodney, in a half whisper. “I don’t know about your family history, but none of mine ever had a girl marrying her uncle.”

  Rodney smiled, although he kept it on the thin side. “Hey, they do it in Europe too, y’know. If she hadn’t run off, the archduchess of Austria, Maria Anna, would have married her uncle, Duke Maximilian—and even as it was, she ran off to marry her first cousin Fernando.”

  His wife made a face, but, like her husband, she kept the expression on the subtle side. In the interests of diplomacy, you might say. She wore a water-silk veil that concealed her face from anything more than a few feet, but it paid to be careful.

  Not that anyone would be likely to notice. An imperial wedding ceremony like the one they were attending was what anyone would call a gala affair. Nobody was paying any attention to what a couple of peculiar westerners were saying or doing—and if they had paid them any attention, it would have simply been because of Rodney’s size and the couple’s proximity to the emperor. Even so, the vast mustering field of Red Fort had been made over into a confection of silk pavilions populated by bejewelled and perfumed nobility, so there were plenty of distracting views.

  “Royals will be royals, I guess,” she murmured. “Being fair about it, the Mughals are more broad-minded than most European monarchs. Jahangir’s wife—Shah Jahan’s mother—was a Rajput princess. A Hindu, to boot. Certainly more broad-minded even than folks seemed to be about religion back in our time.”

  Rodney nodded. “Akbar the Great did the same thing. In fact, she was Jahangir’s own mother. Yeah, I grant you they’re not snotty that way—and won’t be, so long as Dara Shikoh stays in power. If Aurangzeb ever takes the Peacock Throne, though…”

  He winced, and made no effort to hide it. “Be a different story altogether, then. He’s what you could call a Saudi type of Muslim. Intolerant as all hell.”

  “And here comes the bride,” murmured Pris. “At long last.”

  Rodney smiled again, this time making no effort at all to keep it subdued. No reason to: everyone else was smiling widely also. That much, at least, was exactly what would have happened at a West Virginia wedding when the bride made her entrance to the pavilion.

  “Could be anyone under those veils,” Priscilla said, startling Rodney.

  “But it is Roshanara, right? She couldn’t pull some stunt or something, right?”

  “Oh, it’s her, and she’ll be gone as soon as this performance is over. But I can’t help feeling that, like a bad rash, she’s sure to be back.”

  Rodney coughed to cover a laugh.

  “Are we there yet?” said Pris, merciless in the face of her husband’s self-control. “My feet are starting to hurt.”

  “Not hardly, dear. Roya
ls will be royals, remember?”

  Chapter 54

  Red Fort

  Agra

  “Aurangzeb had agreed to accept your offer to become the governor of the Deccan,” said Nur Jahan.

  Dara Shikoh leaned forward, his hands planted on his thighs. “What was his demeanor? Sullen? Resentful?”

  Nur shook her head. “He had none, Sultan Al’Azam. None that was visible, at any rate. You have not had any direct dealings with your brother in some time now. He has become…” She paused, searching for the right term.

  “More mature?” suggested Dara.

  Nur took a slow breath and then seemed to shrug a little, as if to resign herself to whatever might follow. “I was going to say ‘imperial.’”

  Dara stared at her for a few seconds, and then leaned back. Jahanara was relieved to see no signs of anger or impetuousness showing. Dara’s moods fluctuated a great deal—far more than an emperor could afford. In a way, Nur’s statement had been a subtle warning to him. They could not afford to underestimate Aurangzeb. Yes, they had beaten him—because the youngster had been rash. But he learned from his experiences and maintained self-discipline.

  Not for the first time, Jahanara was reminded of what an asset Nur Jahan could be to a ruler who listened to her. No woman in the history of the Mughal empire had ever wielded as much power as she had, in her prime. The last of Jahangir’s wives had been a co-emperor in all but name. She’d often held court with him jointly, and when he was ill she’d hold court on her own. Coinage had even been struck in her name—which had never been done before or since in Mughal history. A very scandalous situation! But what Nur had demonstrated was that scandal was not all-powerful, not when the person who generated the scandal had enough power of his own—or her own.