Shadow Princess

by Indu Sundaresan

  Mahabat Khan was the Commander in Chief of Shah Jahan’s armies, in some senses the most powerful man in the Empire after the Emperor himself. He was a soldier, and the Empire, through all the years of its existence, had been forged by the sword, dyed by the blood of fallen princes and commoners, wrought into existence by wars and not diplomacy, and so Mahabat had more authority than the Grand Vizier himself, who was merely the Prime Minister of the Empire.

  He had tarried under the shade of the canvas awning of his square tent for six days, eating and drinking in the courtyard with the other nobles, as he awaited the summons from his Emperor. Now it finally came in the form of Ishaq Beg, Mir Saman, or Master of the Household, to Empress Mumtaz Mahal.

  “His Majesty commands your presence, Mirza Mahabat Khan,” Ishaq Beg said, standing behind Mahabat, to his right. From the corner of his eye, Mahabat saw that Ishaq Beg’s back was a little too stiff, the tilt of his chin too arrogant. He had not the demeanor of a man who had just lost his employer—and so his employ—and his very means of existence. The Khan-i-khanan set his wine goblet down on the table by his side and nodded. He rose, and the entire assembly of nobles around him rose also, their gazes firmly upon him as though he could tell them already what he would find when he entered their Emperor’s presence.

  Mahabat Khan rinsed his mouth with some water and waited while his servants combed back his hair, ran their hands over his shoulders and his peshwaz, straightening out creases and ironing wrinkles between their broad fingers.

  Ishaq Beg stood back, and when Mahabat passed him, he raised his eyes in a sly, almost condescending glance. Mahabat worried about that look all the way into the fort, beyond the Ahadis who parted to let him through, the eunuchs slinking in the outer reaches of the zenana, the stolid Kashmiri women who guarded the Emperor’s most private moments. These women were told to shield their tongues as jealously as they did their Emperor; one slip, one misplaced word, one frivolity and their tongues would be cut out. They were rewarded richly for their services and punished without a thought if they failed even a little in rendering those services. As Mahabat Khan approached Shah Jahan’s apartments within the fort on the banks of the Tapti, he could feel the coolness wafting from the river’s fragrant waters through an open window. He paused when a Kashmiri guard barred his way with her spear.

  • • •

  Despite his standing in the Empire, Mahabat Khan did not make a murmur as the guards searched him. They shook the turban from his head and, deftly holding the aigrette in place, fingered the folds of cloth. They ruffled his hair—a sliver of a blade could bring harm; his clothes were agitated, his cummerbund examined, the soles of his bare feet (he had removed his footwear outside the main entrance) rubbed. Then they stood aside, and Mahabat wondered if they had not been too meticulous in their search, if the other nobles commanded to his Majesty’s presence were subjected to a similar indignity each time. But then he also remembered his long and checkered past with his Emperor and thought briefly that if their positions had been reversed, he would not have trusted himself either.

  When he entered Shah Jahan’s chambers, Mahabat lingered, struck into blindness by the gloom around. The windows were all sealed with tightly woven khus mats, and silken drapes covered the edges to shut out all light. A breeze whirled around the room, caught and tossed about by the punkahs held by the fifteen slave girls standing in the corners and against the walls. There was a little light from a candle on a low table in the center, which flung shadows around. Mahabat took in all of this when his eyes had adjusted somewhat painfully from the glare of the outside. He heard the rustle of a woman’s skirts and saw the back length of a ghagara slip around the door to his right and a hand with glowing diamond rings pull the door shut, but not before she had hesitated for a while. The oldest princess, he thought, Jahanara Begam. Now they would all depend upon her, lean upon her slender shoulders for counsel, advice, strength. Who else was there? Satti Khanum, perhaps. But Satti, for all her intimacy with the members of the Emperor’s zenana, was in the end a retainer, and she would remain in that capacity. The Emperor’s own mother was dead; and he had not been close to his father’s other wives—especially Mehrunnisa, the last one—so which woman could help him carry his burdens other than this child of his?

  Mahabat then became aware that he had been lost in musing and had not yet been noticed by his Emperor. He peered around the room, his eyes going from the slaves at the walls (to whom he paid little attention; they were akin to the furniture) to the bed in the center of the room, which was empty, the two steps leading to a raised indoor verandah with arches that looked out over the Tapti. And here, leaning against a pillar, he found Shah Jahan clad in the white of mourning. Mahabat padded over the length of the room, and, as he approached his Emperor, he stopped and performed the chahar taslim, bending with some difficulty from his waist, laying his right hand on the ground and raising it to his forehead four times. When he had completed the salutation, he straightened his back with a groan, which he hoped was inaudible. Then he waited again, his gaze to the ground. He could not speak until Shah Jahan chose to begin the conversation.

  When his Emperor’s voice came to his ears, Mahabat felt a deep sense of shock.

  “You are here, Mahabat,” Shah Jahan said, so hoarse as to be almost inarticulate.

  “Yes, your Majesty. At your command, always.” And now Mahabat looked up at the man seated on the stone steps and felt his heart stop. Even in the room’s dimness, he could see the ravages of six days of constant weeping and no eating. Shah Jahan’s frame had wasted away, the skin was carved tightly over the bones of his face, his eyelids were swollen and puffy, and his back was stooped. But what astounded Mahabat the most was the white on his head and his face—almost overnight, or so it seemed to him, the Emperor’s hair had grayed. Mahabat would not have thought it possible if he had not seen this for himself. He almost reached out a hand to Shah Jahan’s clasped ones, then stayed that comforting action. What was he thinking? He could not dare to touch his sovereign.

  He could not speak any words of solace either. What could he say? That the Empress would be missed by all of them, that she had indeed been the brightest light in Shah Jahan’s palace, that her loss was so great as to cause them all grief? Mumtaz Mahal had been the most precious jewel in Shah Jahan’s zenana, and it was not Mahabat’s place to comment, even in such an innocuous manner, about a member of the imperial harem. This much he had learned well. Many years ago—frustrated, without paying heed to any advice—Mahabat had cautioned Emperor Jahangir about the immense power he was granting his twentieth wife, Mehrunnisa. For his pains, he was trounced in a chess game by that Empress (and that still rankled) and sent to Kabul, a frozen fringe of the Empire, to serve as ‘governor.’ Mahabat Khan was a tired old man, now in his seventh decade, and no longer stupid. He kept quiet, his head bowed, his heart knocking against his rib cage.

  Finally, Shah Jahan spoke again. “I am going to give up the throne, Mahabat.”

  Caution was forgotten, etiquette damned.

  “You cannot, your Majesty,” Mahabat cried. “You are a young man yet, only thirty-nine years old. Your life stretches in front of you. This is the empire you have battled for and won; it is rightfully yours. Your grandfather Emperor Akbar considered you his heir. You . . .” Mahabat stopped speaking, but it was only to sob instead, an action that astounded him. He thought, through tears that he could not stop, that he was indeed growing old and feeble, but only because he should have anticipated talk such as this when he was summoned to Shah Jahan’s presence. He wiped his eyes and waited again, for a smile or some mockery from Shah Jahan. But his Emperor behaved as though he had not even noticed Mahabat’s reactions. Instead he was examining his thin fingers and considering Mahabat’s words carefully.

  “I have no wish to live, Mahabat, let alone reign anymore. What use is it to possess these lands and this wealth? When . . . she was alive, there was something to fight for, a reason to be Emperor. It was
so that she could forget all those years we were persecuted and chased over the lands, so we could rest our aching bodies on ground that did not move, so that we could get the respect due to us.” Emperor Shah Jahan raised his head, and for a moment, even among the ravages that grief had produced, Mahabat saw the arrogance and confidence that had made him a monarch. “Allah Himself ordained that I would be king,” Shah Jahan said. “My grandfather wanted me to rule after my father. My father . . . he was besotted and led astray by a devious woman who wanted to put another on the throne—you know this history well, Mahabat Khan, you were a part of it.”

  “I know, your Majesty, and apologize for my role,” Mahabat said. After his near exile to Kabul as a so-called governor, he had come back to court, begging for an audience, and then Mahabat had surprised himself and almost everyone else he had known by effecting a coup and imprisoning Emperor Jahangir and the Empress. But he had been a weak leader—and that woman indeed had had crafty ways, for even under guard she had managed their escape. Then it was Mahabat’s turn to flee from the royal couple. He later agreed to hound out of the Empire the son who was giving them so much trouble. Long before he had become Emperor, Shah Jahan had forgiven Mahabat, but he was not above remembering or reminding him of it. Even in the typical, much convoluted, loyal-one-day-blithely-unfaithful-the-next history of Mughal nobles, Mahabat’s fortunes had swung so wildly, he himself could not believe he was still alive.

  “I was destined to be Emperor,” Shah Jahan continued, his voice much smoother now, and Mahabat realized this was the first time in days that his Emperor had talked to anyone. “I was fated to be a great ruler. But there are times, Mahabat, when there is a reason to step down and give up ambition. Without”—and he hesitated again, as he had before, not willing to call out his wife’s name in front of another man, a mere minister—“her.” Shah Jahan passed a hand over his eyes.

  Someone sneezed in the next chamber, and Mahabat’s head whipped to the door through which Jahanara (or so he thought) had left when he entered. She had shut the door, he had seen her do it, though now it was ajar by a few inches. But she had not made that sound—it was a man’s sneeze. One of the princes? Either them or one of the eunuchs, but no one other than the royal offspring would dare be caught listening at the entrance to the Emperor’s chambers. Which one? Mahabat thought. And then Shah Jahan said, “Which one of my sons do you think should rule in my stead, Mahabat Khan?” And he knew why he had been summoned to his Emperor.

  Dara was sixteen years old; Shuja fifteen; Aurangzeb thirteen; and Murad a laughable seven. Mahabat Khan had opinions about the Emperor’s sons that he kept to himself. Dara was a disrespectful puppy, too inclined to think only of himself; Shuja was merely a puppy—he followed and he could not lead; Aurangzeb was a leader, but he was inflexible and resistant to advice, dangerous qualities for a leader to have; and Murad was . . . well, Murad was nothing yet, unformed and little.

  Mahabat Khan did not think the Emperor had, yet, one son who could rule the Empire. What was Shah Jahan’s purpose in calling him here? To offer him a regency? How could a son rule when his father was still alive? It went against all Mughal law; to whom would the people bow their heads—the boy king or the Emperor who had willingly ousted himself?

  Mahabat Khan chose his words with care. “It is a difficult situation, your Majesty. I say, with all respect for your wishes, that your time to leave the throne has not come yet. You are our sovereign; in your happiness and well-being is ours. The Empire, as you well know, your Majesty, is a great responsibility also. There are millions of people who depend on you, who cannot live without the sight of your face in the mornings—as they wake to greet the sun so also they revere their Emperor. In these past few days, your absence from the jharoka appearances has caused unrest and distress among your subjects—”

  “If you were to choose, Mahabat”—Shah Jahan cut into his minister’s speech and forced a decision from him—“which of my sons should rule after me?”

  And so Mahabat Khan, Khan-i-khanan, aware of the partly open door to the next chamber and not knowing which of the four princes was behind it, responded the only way he could. “Your choice is mine, your Majesty.”

  It was an unsatisfactory answer. But after so many years of intrigue and rebellion, the Khan-i-khanan of the Mughal Empire knew that the grasp on the world’s richest throne was tenuous at best, and any one of Shah Jahan’s sons could feel the weight of the crown on his head, and so he was not going to part his sixty-five-year-old head from his equally old body by words from his own mouth.

  • • •

  Prince Aurangzeb waited until he had heard Mahabat Khan leave and then grasped at the door’s handle.

  His father’s voice, tired and barely heard, stayed his action. “Close the door and leave, Aurangzeb. You should be ashamed of yourself, listening at doors like a common spy. You are a royal prince.”

  Aurangzeb flushed, and his hand trembled. Bapa did not like him; he had never liked him, not since his birth. It was Dara who was his favorite, Dara who could do no wrong, who was the crown prince, who would rule the Empire. How had Bapa known that he was there? He glanced around and realized that light poured into this room from an open window, and in leaving the door connecting to his father’s chamber ajar, he had let some little light seep into the murk in there. But how had Bapa known he was there? Aurangzeb thought for a brief while, pushed the door open a little more, and his father said, “Go. I do not want to see you now.”

  At that, Aurangzeb stepped back into the room and shut the door gently. Blood rushed under his skin, and a fighting madness rose in him at the injustice of those words. His father could not possibly have known it was him. Emperor Shah Jahan had merely guessed which of the boys was at the door. But guessing was not definite knowledge. Let him think what he wanted; Aurangzeb could act better than anyone else he knew, and Shah Jahan would soon doubt his own thoughts, and . . . begin to cast suspicion upon the other sons. Perhaps even the much indulged Dara.

  He slipped out of the room and ran fleetly through the zenana apartments in search of Jahanara. He went to the series of rooms she now occupied, which had once belonged to their mother. Among so much else, Jahanara had now gained possession even of these rooms in the fort at Burhanpur, and this Aurangzeb did not mind, for he thought it her right. But one person minded, very much, and when he burst into the innermost chamber, fronting the river Tapti, Aurangzeb saw Roshanara seated on the divan in the outer verandah, her hand shading her face from the harsh sunlight.

  He stopped, panting. Her mouth drooped at the edges.

  “What is it now?” he asked. It was always something with Roshan, some disgruntlement, some anger, some spite at quite anything. In that they were alike, this much he recognized, but Aurangzeb was a man (well, a boy yet who would grow into manhood), and he would fight in battles, own lands, rule lands, perhaps even this Empire of theirs. “Where is Jahan?”

  “Why do you want her?” Roshan asked. “Am I not enough? What have you heard now?” For she also recognized a kinship between them. Dara and Jahanara were allied; she thought Aurangzeb and she should similarly be allied. To Shuja, older than Aurangzeb, she gave little importance; he was a nonentity.

  Aurangzeb walked across the room toward his second sister, mulling over in his head what he had heard of the conversation between Shah Jahan and Mahabat Khan. If Bapa were to leave the Empire to one of them now, it would be to Dara. Dara, who was sixteen, old enough to be king, though not old enough to rule the Empire—that would mean a regency. Would Mahabat Khan be made regent? But Mirza Mahabat Khan was more his friend. He sat down beside Roshanara and told her what he had just overheard.

  Her eyes gleamed with excitement. “One of us will be Emperor.”

  “Dara,” Aurangzeb said shortly. He made an exclamation of disgust. “It will always be Dara.”

  “And Jahan will rule beside him. She will be his Padshah Begam; she will rule over his harem, she will tell him what decisions
to take at court.”

  “There will be a regency; Dara is too young.”

  “If only you could be Emperor, Aurangzeb,” Roshan said.

  “Then you can be the head of my zenana?” he asked. “I am thirteen years old, Roshan. Why would Bapa even think of handing the Empire to me when Dara is there to take on those responsibilities? Where is Jahan?”

  Roshanara shrugged. “Somewhere, doing something, being Padshah Begam already. She does not need Dara to be head of the imperial harem; Bapa has as much as given her that title already, just six days after Mama’s death. If only you paid attention to what was actually happening around you, Aurangzeb, you would know.”

  “What has happened?”

  As Roshanara began to speak, the door to the apartments opened and a young girl drifted in. The slave girls in the room, out of earshot of Aurangzeb and Roshanara, bowed to her, and she acknowledged the salutations with a wave of a hand. Nadira Begam was fifteen years old, her skin as fresh as a flower at the break of dawn, her figure softly rounded in the hips and the breasts. She moved with an innate grace, her eyes clear and untroubled when she came to sit beside them. Nadira was their cousin, daughter of Shah Jahan’s brother Prince Parviz. She had been born at Burhanpur and had lived all of her life here, since her father had been governor here during their grandfather’s reign.