Shadow Princess

by Indu Sundaresan

  Four minutes later, the master called for the end of the game, and the boys gracefully pulled up their horses and waited again, panting, their gazes fixed upon the half-broken target, which was littered with arrows. To Najabat, leaning out from the shade of the tamarind, it seemed that one color predominated—purple, that of the arrows Antarah had carried in his quiver. Najabat could not see his son, for he had stopped on the other side of the target. The two fathers watched in silence as the archery master ran swiftly around his charges, emptying their quivers and counting the arrows left in them. When he reached Antarah, he held his quiver aloft; not one arrow remained.

  “Four minutes,” Prince Aurangzeb said. “So he shot an arrow an average of every four seconds, Mirza Najabat Khan. I did well in not making a wager with you. He has his father’s skill on the battlefield and will be formidable when he comes of age.”

  Shaking with relief and joy, Najabat bowed to Aurangzeb. “Thank you, your Highness . . . for everything. I am honored that you choose to ask me to serve under you, and if I am ever given that opportunity, I shall take it.” He knew, and his prince knew, that this was more than a mere promise to serve—Najabat Khan had declared his fealty to Aurangzeb because he admired him. If there was ever a question as to which prince he thought should wear the crown, it had been amply answered today.

  When Aurangzeb left and Najabat lifted himself from his bow, he found Antarah loping madly through the dust toward him. The boy flung himself upon his father and grasped him about the waist, hiding his face briefly in Najabat’s qaba. Najabat held him away so he could see that he was not injured in any way, and then he kissed him lightly on his sweaty forehead.

  “Oh, Papa,” Antarah said. “Did you see what I just did?”

  “Yes,” Najabat replied, and then, turning him toward another corner of the maidan, he pointed with a finger. “Look.”

  A woman stood under the trees holding her veil in place. They could barely see her through the thick dust that still floated above the maidan, but they did see her touch her heart and then her mouth, as though she had sent a kiss toward them across the length of the field.

  “Is she my mother?” Antarah asked, his young face serious, squinting to look better.

  “She could be anyone.”

  “Tell me,” Antarah said, facing his father.

  Najabat put an arm around his son’s shoulders and pulled him close. He put his lips on his head and said quietly, “Yes, she is. Beta, matters between your mother and me are . . . complicated, so difficult to explain, but I wanted you to know that she was here, that she wanted to be here because she loves you very much. Do you understand?”

  Antarah shook his head. “No.”

  His father sighed. “Perhaps when you are older, you will. Come, we must go home now.”

  • • •

  Princess Jahanara Begam stayed on at the edge of the field long after Najabat and Antarah had gone, long after the maidan had emptied and the horses had been led away. Her heart had finally stopped its crazy pounding, and she leaned against a tree trunk, exhausted, as though she had taken part in the competition herself. Pride washed over her at Antarah’s antics, at the elegant way he had ridden his horse, at the speed with which he had shot the arrows, at the impatience in his manner while he had waited for the master to take down the quiver from his back. She had seen the empty quiver long before he had and known that he had won. And when he realized this, he had leapt down from his horse and thundered across the ground to his father. At that moment, she had nearly called out to him. But then, almost as soon as he had reached Najabat, there had been that gift from him to her as he turned Antarah toward her. Perhaps he had told him who she was, and so the boy had looked long and hard at her. She put her face against the rough bark of the tree and closed her eyes. As the years passed, she had come closer and closer to Antarah—in the beginning she had kept the width of the Yamuna River between them, but she had started stepping nearer as time passed. Although he had whirled past her as he rode around the target, she had been but ten feet from him and had seen him clearly—that thin face, those determined eyes, that open mouth through which he had breathed, his intense concentration.

  “Your Highness,” Ishaq said by her side.

  She raised herself and dusted off her hands. “Yes, I know, we must go too now. How long before I can see him again, Ishaq?”

  “Who can say, your Highness? But I would advise not too soon, and not too often. People will talk, and it will affect the boy.”

  She let her eunuch lead her from the maidan and allowed him to help her onto her horse. The waiting eunuchs formed a tight guard around her as they picked their way through the scrub to the palaces at the fort. When they reached her apartments, she lay down on a divan, the soft swish of the punkahs feeding cool air into the rooms, and relived every moment of the game. Tomorrow night, she would see Najabat again, and they would talk of their son. In a few months, perhaps more, there would be another snatched opportunity to see Antarah. In the meantime, she had her duties as the Begam Sahib—and this was more than most women were given. Perhaps one day she would be close enough to her son to reach out and touch his hand and hold it within hers. She was his mother, and though she did not think he would ever address her with that title, it was enough for her that she had given birth to him, given him life, and still watched over him. And this she would do for as long as she was alive.

  And so she dreamt of the future. Not knowing that, very soon, death would come pounding at her door.

  Twenty-two

  It happened one night while engaged in such-like dances that the thin rainment steeped in perfumed oils of the princess’s favourite dancing-woman caught fire, and from the great love she bore to her, the princess came to her aid, and thus was burnt herself on the chest. . . . I was admitted on familiar terms to this house, and I was in the deep confidence of the principal ladies and eunuchs in her service.

  —WILLIAM IRVINE (trans.) Storia do Mogor, or Mogul India, by Niccolao Manucci 1653–1708

  Agra

  Sunday, March 26, 1644

  17 Muharram A.H. 1054

  How many years have I been Emperor, Jahan?”

  Princess Jahanara looked up from the book and closed it over her finger to mark her place. “Sixteen, Bapa,” she said. “You know this number well.”

  “Yes,” Emperor Shah Jahan said drowsily, adjusting the pillows behind his back so that he could be more comfortable.

  It was the middle of the second pahr of the night, around eleven o’clock, and they heard the night watchman’s footsteps echo over the stone platform below the Emperor’s apartments. The windows had been thrown open to capture what little coolness the night afforded, for even this early in the year, after a relatively cool winter, Agra steamed, presaging a torrid summer. Parrots cawed outside, disturbed from their sleep by the watchman; a dog barked somewhere in the distance; the city of Agra slowly ground to a halt as the nobles returned to their homes on the banks of the Yamuna. It had been a busy day for both of them; the Emperor had been engrossed in his state duties and Jahanara in listening to and sifting through the various petitions that had come to the zenana—dowries for the marriages of orphan girls, a destitute woman divorced by her husband because he had taken a younger wife, another sold into slavery by her parents. Toward all of them she had opened her hand and her purse and written out nishans—royal edicts—that would be implicitly obeyed, perhaps more than the show of money. She heard these stories every day, more than once a day, and each time she gave thanks to Allah that she had been born a princess, that her father was the sovereign of the richest Empire in the world.

  “You have a birthday coming up soon. I will have a surprise for you, my dear,” Emperor Shah Jahan said.

  Jahanara was sitting on the plush red Persian carpets on the floor beside her father’s low bed, leaning her back near where his pillows rested. From here, she could see him only if she turned her head fully. It was how he liked her to read to him,
so that he could look over her shoulder at the pages, read along if he wanted, although his eyes had weakened so much in the past few years that he almost never attempted to study a page anymore but had the Mir Tozak at court, or the eunuchs in the zenana, read out every piece of paper that came to his attention.

  “What is it, Bapa?” she asked, smiling, tilting her head back so that her bright eyes looked up at him.

  “It will not be much of a surprise if I tell you, beta,” he said firmly. “You will just have to wait and see.”

  She nodded, removed her finger from the pages of the book, and shut it. Bapa was in a talkative mood tonight, as he often was these days, reminiscing about her mother at times, about matters of state at times. They had read all the books in the imperial libraries, poetry and prose, more than once. He had even read the biography she had written on Khwaja Muinuddin Chisti, in which she had spoken of the months she had spent at Ajmer waiting for the birth of her child (though not mentioning it specifically), and the tranquillity the saint’s dargah had brought to her in those turbulent times, when, although alone, she was never far from the thoughts of her father and her brother. And so Emperor Shah Jahan had learned of what his daughter had done not from her but from her words on paper. She knew that on festival days, when they celebrated the Nauroz in February, or Diwali, or Id, he sent caravans of gifts to Mirza Najabat Khan in the name of his son, Antarah. On one occasion, when Jahanara had not been at the Diwan-i-am, the boy had been presented to his Emperor by his father. It had all been very correct and official—just as Shah Jahan noticed and granted royal favor to the progeny of his other amirs, so too he had done for Najabat Khan. But her heart had gladdened when she heard of it, and she thought that, as close as they were, as close as a father and a daughter could be, this one secret they would never talk about. It was enough for Jahanara that it was acknowledged.

  Upon their return from Kashmir last year, Najabat Khan had also been recalled to the plains and sent to serve under Prince Aurangzeb in the Deccan. He had been asked where he would like to be—at court with Dara, in Multan with Murad, in Bengal with Shuja, or in the Deccan with Aurangzeb. Married and settled into family life, each of the three younger sons had a command and a governorship so that they would not be idle and foster thoughts of rebellion. Dara alone stayed at the imperial court, and so high was the esteem in which he was held that a gold gaddi had been set in the durbar hall just below the Emperor’s throne. It was the first time a royal prince, indeed anyone, had sat in a Mughal Emperor’s presence through the long hours at the Diwan-i-am. Emperor Jahangir had set such a place for Shah Jahan once, while he was still in favor with his father, but it had been a token gesture—Shah Jahan had remained standing, albeit near the chair that proclaimed him the heir apparent.

  But despite Jahanara’s pleas that he should stay on in Agra, Najabat had left for the Deccan.

  “I am a soldier, Jahan,” he had said, “and the ceremonies at court can satisfy me for only so long. I must be in the midst of a battle.”

  “Why not go to Bengal or Multan then?” she had asked.

  “Because Prince Aurangzeb is the most able of all the Emperor’s sons. I know”—he held up his hand—“you disagree, but I must choose what is best for me.”

  And so he had gone and taken Antarah with him. Her son was nearly nine years old and had long ago graduated from his father’s zenana apartments to the mardana—the male quarters of the household—and Najabat told her that he was bold, fearless, with a quick tongue, almost like a girl in that last part.

  She held these little pieces of information near her heart, the only luxury she allowed herself; she had not asked to see him when he went to the Deccan. Her place was here, by her father’s side.

  “What is this you are wearing?” Emperor Shah Jahan asked, lifting the thin chiffon of her clothing. She wore seven layers of the fabric, in muted browns and greens, so that, together, they covered her shoulders and flowed down to her knees like the waters of the Yamuna outside. Underneath she wore a choli, more a wisp of gold cloth than anything, tied around her back with strings, and there was very little covering her legs.

  “I devised this myself, Bapa,” she said. “Do you like it? It keeps me cool in the day’s heat.”

  “You are too exposed, Jahan,” he grumbled. “But I am an old man, what do I know of women’s wear? Your Mama would never have shown herself to me in this way.”

  “And I am not Mama.” She rose to put the book away on a little sandalwood table and smoothed the silk sheet over her father, tucking it in under his arms. When she bent down to kiss him on his forehead, he said, “You are a good child.”

  “I know,” she said. “Sleep well, Bapa.”

  Emperor Shah Jahan watched as she blew out the lamps in his apartments, turned to glance at him in the sudden darkness, and then let herself out the door, shutting it gently behind her. The aroma of jacaranda lingered in her wake. He twisted to his side and tucked a hand under his cheek. Tomorrow, he would give orders for the diamond and emerald necklace he was planning on giving her for her birthday, and when it came, he would put it around her neck himself. The surprise was to be a drama set to music of Amir Khusrau’s poems that he had ordered the court musicians to write and perform. Khusrau, a thirteenth-century poet, had been an ardent devotee of the Sufi saint Nizamuddin Auliya, and his grave lay within the same courtyard as the saint’s—it was said that he had wasted away at Nizamuddin’s burial site and had died soon after. During her pilgrimage to the saint’s tomb, Jahanara had always stopped to offer prayers to Khusrau also, and they both knew his poems verse by verse, line by line. He had been blessed by Allah, Emperor Shah Jahan thought, in a wife whom he had loved, in a child who was now his entire life. He slept. Five minutes later, his world exploded.

  • • •

  As Jahanara returned to her apartments, shadows detached themselves from the walls outside her father’s rooms and followed her. Two slave girls and two eunuchs. She did not need protection inside the fort at Agra, but these servants were ever present to tend to her every need, listen for and obey her every command, pick up anything she dropped, carry her if she was tired. They were, in that, very much like her own shadow, trailing at a discreet distance so that she barely saw them or heard them, and she had stopped paying heed to their presence many years ago.

  A row of oil diyas lit the way down the long corridor she was passing through—they were set in the center like a chain of gold, their light pooling in bright circles, the rest of the corridor in semidarkness. It was a warm, still night, and the flames stood vertical and unwavering.

  She could hear the sound of her bare feet on the cool marble, the tinkle of her anklets muffled in the chiffon that her father had derided as too transparent. She looked down upon herself and smiled. It was true, she thought, for her skin glimmered even through the cloth, her legs sleek and muscular, her arms long and smooth, her stomach flat, and her waist slender. She would be thirty years old in six days, but she did not look it—sixteen, perhaps twenty, but she felt more comfortable in her body and herself than she had at those ages. In Mughal India, she was considered past the age of desirability—there were creatures in the zenana who had been banished to its farthest quarters because of this, no longer presented to her Bapa as choices for a night.

  But they were poor individuals, much like the women who came to appeal to her; they had no names or titles to speak of, no wealth to rely upon. There were only a few women in the Empire to whom age would be of little matter, and Princess Jahanara Begam was the first of those.

  She had found a single gray hair at her temple the day before and had hurriedly brushed it into the darker, denser hair around her face. A few more strands and she would have to dye the whole to retain her youthful appearance. She had wondered then if Najabat would still find her pleasing when she grew old, and now, as she went down the corridor, the palace sleeping around her, she laughed out loud. It was a rich sound that echoed off the walls and made the slave
s pause in their stride. Jahanara had not stopped, though; she went on, and in doing so put a much greater distance between her and them—those few steps would be her undoing.

  A breeze came in through the arches that faced the river, opulent and sweet, filled with the essence of the blooming rath-ki-rani flowers in the gardens. Jahanara turned her head and involuntarily moved to the middle of the corridor. The soft wind swept over the diyas’ flames, and they reached out greedily to lick at the first layer of chiffon she was wearing.

  For a few seconds no one noticed that her clothes were ablaze. Jahanara sensed rapid warmth at her legs, gazed disbelievingly at the flames sucking their way upward, and raised her hands to fend them off. Her sleeves caught fire; an immense heat seared through the skin on her back when her long, thick plait of hair was set ablaze.

  The two slave girls came pounding down the length of the corridor, threw themselves upon their mistress, and flapped wildly at the flames. Their clothing began to burn. Still, they persisted. By the time the eunuchs reached them, the two girls were human infernos, more likely to harm Jahanara than to save her. The men flung the girls away and dragged drapes down to smother the fire on their princess.

  “Bapa!” she screamed. Just once, before she felt the flames singe through her choli and blister the skin under her breasts. She felt the weight of one of the eunuchs as he pitched himself onto her, shouting for help all the while. Her skin came away in patches upon his clothing, and smoke smoldered from her hair and her hands. Her eyes grew heavy; the intense pain from the burning came to smother her chest and cease the beating of her heart. She found it difficult to breathe and closed her eyes as darkness fell upon her.