Empire of the Moghul: Ruler of the World

by Alex Rutherford

  Salim’s resentful eyes returned again and again to the glittering figure of Akbar as the feast progressed. Musicians from Gwalior, famed for their skill, were coaxing soft, haunting sounds from their flutes and their stringed instruments, the big-bellied tanpura and the two-bowl rudra-vina. Every few minutes a qorchi ushered forward a courtier wishing to present a Nauruz gift to the emperor. The attendants were bringing yet more food – almonds and pistachios wrapped in gold and silver leaf, pale green grapes and wedges of orange-fleshed musk melon resting on crushed ice from the fort’s ice house where giant chunks carried by mules down the passes from the distant northern mountains were stored – and ewers of cool, scented sherbets. Salim looked up into the soft night sky and at the sliver of moon whose silvery light was far outshone by the mass of candles arranged around the courtyard. Sometimes these feasts could go on until dawn. He wondered how soon he would be able to slip away.

  The musicians were putting down their instruments and bowing low before Akbar. It must be time for some other entertainment, thought Salim – fire-eaters or rope-climbers or perhaps a fight between wild beasts released into the same cage.

  Akbar rose, and instantly a hush fell across the courtyard. ‘Tonight is the high point of our Nauruz celebrations. Though we have already exchanged many gifts of jewels, I have one priceless gem I wish for a short while to share with you. Two months ago, the Turkish sultan sent me a dancing girl of rare skill and beauty from Italy, a land far from our own. I have called her Anarkali, “Pomegranate Blossom”.’ He turned to the attendant at his side. ‘Summon Anarkali.’

  Even when Akbar had sat down, the silence continued as the guests waited, eyes bright with anticipation. Salim’s own curiosity was whetted and he decided to remain for a while longer. He had only seen portraits of European women before, presented to his father by travellers. He had of course heard of Italy from the Jesuits, some of whom had been born there, but had learned little of its luxuries – or its women – from their ascetic sectarian discourses.

  Glancing at his father, Salim saw a well-pleased, even self-satisfied smile curve his lips as he listened to the excited buzz of anticipation from his courtiers while attendants spread yet more carpets over the fine kilims already covering the courtyard. As soon as they were finished, other servants carrying gilt incense burners suspended from chains on their wrists began running round and round the courtyard, pale fragrant smoke trailing behind them until they had created such a cloud that Salim could barely make out his father on his dais. Suddenly, at a signal from Akbar, further attendants darted forward and extinguished all the candles. No one spoke in the soft scented darkness. Then, just as abruptly, the candelabras were again ablaze and there in the centre of the courtyard, amid the remaining wisps of smoke, stood Anarkali, wreathed in a long veil of semi-transparent gauze which emphasised rather than concealed the outline of her full breasts and opulent hips. Her head beneath the circlet of pearls securing the veil was erect.

  She raised her arms and began to sway. No music accompanied the sinuous motion of her body, only the clash of her heavy bracelets and anklets. Her movements became freer and wilder. She began tossing her head from side to side and then started to spin, breasts swaying and bare feet stamping on the dark red carpet as she turned. Salim watched mesmerised, like all the guests. First one man, then another, began beating on the table before him with his fist. The noise grew thunderous as Anarkali whirled yet faster, arms outspread. Then with a cry she ripped the veil from her body.

  There was a collective gasp. It was not just the perfection of her voluptuous body, naked except for her tight jewelled bodice and almost sheer muslin pantaloons. It was her hair. The colour of palest gold and falling to her waist, it flew out in a shimmering mass around her as she continued to whirl. Suddenly, dramatically, she stopped. She was smiling, fully aware of the sensation she had caused. Then, approaching the dais, she dropped slowly to her knees before Akbar and with two flicks of her head sent her glorious hair flying first forward over her breasts and then back. Arms outstretched towards the emperor, she leaned further and further backwards, arching her supple spine until her head touched the ground behind her.

  In the flickering candlelight Salim was close enough to make out Anarkali’s features. Her face was oval with a cleft chin and a small straight nose, and above them the most beautiful eyes he had ever seen – somewhere between dark blue and violet. He also saw his father’s fond complacent gaze as it rested on his prized possession. Salim’s own pulses were pounding and his mouth was dry. He must have Anarkali, he would have her . . .

  ‘Highness, the risk . . . Anarkali is at present your father’s favourite concubine. Discovery would mean death beneath the elephant’s foot or worse for me and for her. In the seven years I have been superintendent of your father’s haram no one has ever asked such a thing of me.’ The khawajasara, a small, beak-nosed woman, looked terrified. Salim could see a vein beating in her right temple beneath her thinning grey hair, but he could also see how tempted she was.

  ‘Name your price. I’ll give you whatever you ask.’ Salim reached inside his tunic for a silk pouch hanging round his neck from a hide thong. Loosening it, he drew out a ruby. As he held it up to the light of an oil lamp burning in a niche in the small court behind the elephants’ stables to which he had summoned the khawajasara, the uncut gem glowed. ‘This is the pick of my jewels – a ruby of the first water worth one thousand gold mohurs. Do what I ask and it is yours. You and your family will be wealthy for generations.’

  ‘But how can I, Highness?’ The khawajasara stared at the gem as if unable to tear her eyes away. ‘Only the emperor can enter the imperial haram.’

  ‘You are the superintendent and go to and from the haram all the time. You could smuggle Anarkali out disguised as your attendant. The guards will not suspect or challenge you.’

  ‘Highness, I’m not sure . .’ the khawajasara said miserably. ‘The emperor sends for her all the time . . .’

  ‘Three days from now my father departs on a long hunting expedition. Bring her to me the first night he is away and the ruby is yours.’ As Salim waited, he turned the gem so that its heart flashed like fire. The khawajasara bit her lip but then seemed to make up her mind.

  ‘Very well, I will do as you ask.’ Pulling her dark shawl over her head as she spoke, she immediately turned and hurried away, merging into the purple shadows, her bare feet padding away over the stone paving still warm from the day’s heat.

  The time before Akbar’s departure passed slowly. Salim could think of little but Anarkali – those violet eyes, that golden hair. She was like a jewel herself but one made of soft, living flesh, not hard stone. He half expected his father to change his plans but at dawn on the third morning he watched Akbar, accompanied by Abul Fazl and a few of his inner circle, ride through the palace gates to the deep booming of the gatehouse drums. He was planning to be away for three weeks and fifty bullock carts loaded with tents, cooking pots, chests of clothes, bows, arrows and muskets followed the procession of guards, huntsmen and beaters, raising a cloud of white dust that spiralled into the air long after the procession had wound out of the city and into the plains.

  That night Salim waited in his apartments. The candles his attendants always lit at sunset – fetching the flame from the palace fire-pot, the agingir – were half melted and the palace had fallen still and quiet around him when, an hour after midnight, he at last heard a gentle knocking on the door.

  ‘Highness.’ It was one of his guards, face creased with the sleep from which he had just been roused. ‘Two women are here.’ Salim had told his men that he had summoned a girl from the bazaar. It was not the first time he had done so and they had not looked surprised.

  ‘Send them in.’

  Moments later, two heavily veiled women stood before him. The khawajasara at once uncovered her face and Salim saw sweat beading it. ‘All went as it should, Highness. No one questioned me.’

  ‘You’ve done well. Now le
ave us and return an hour before dawn.’

  ‘My reward, Highness . . .’

  Eyes fixed on the motionless figure of Anarkali, Salim pulled the pouch containing the ruby from his neck. ‘Take it.’

  He scarcely noticed as the khawajasara hastened from the room. Anarkali was wearing a plain black robe that was slightly too long for her so that the hem was coated with dust. The khawajasara had done well. Who would have guessed that such drab garments concealed his father’s favourite concubine, the cherished companion of his most intimate moments?

  ‘You sent for me, Highness?’ Anarkali spoke in Persian that was oddly cadenced, but her voice was low and soft.

  ‘Let me see your hair.’

  Anarkali slowly pulled off her veil and let it float to the floor. Her golden hair was concealed beneath a tight-fitting black cap. Her eyes, the colour of amethysts in the faint candlelight and fringed by lashes darkened with kohl, looked straight into his with frank curiosity as she raised her arms to take off the cap and her hair, pale gold like corn in the moonlight, tumbled around her. Her smile told Salim, just as it had when she had been dancing, that she understood her power over men. Her confidence was deeply arousing.

  ‘Since I saw you dance I’ve thought of nothing but you. I desire you.’

  ‘If your father finds out he will be very angry with me.’

  ‘I will tell him you were blameless – that it was all my doing. But you don’t have to stay if you don’t want to . . .’

  ‘Your ardour flatters me. What woman in my situation would refuse a prince?’

  Without waiting for Salim to say anything else Anarkali quickly undid the fastenings at the shoulder and waist of her ugly robe, and wriggled from it like a beautiful snake sloughing off its skin. Her flesh had a soft pearl-like sheen and her full, blue-veined breasts, tipped with pink, swayed a little as she came towards him. She took his hands and placed them on her silky, slender waist. Then, pressing herself yet closer so he could feel the hard tips of her nipples through his silk tunic, she ran his hands down over the rich swell of her hips and buttocks. Her skin felt just as he had imagined, warm and yielding. An uncontrollable shudder of virility ran through him and stepping back from her he began pulling off his own clothes, tearing the delicate fabric of his tunic in his haste.

  ‘You have a warrior’s body like your father, and are as quickly aroused . . .’

  Salim barely heard her. He could think of nothing except burying himself in that glorious body. Taking Anarkali’s hand he pulled her down on to a divan, kicking brocade cushions out of the way. Winding his hands in her long shining mass of hair, he kissed her mouth, then the velvet hollow between her breasts. He could scarcely believe the perfection of her from her delicate collarbones to the lush flesh of her rounded thighs. Sensing his urgency, she was already spreading her legs and arching her back. Her body beneath his felt slippery with sweat. ‘Highness,’ she was whispering, ‘now . . . I am ready . . .’ As Salim entered her and began to thrust, triumph and exultation surged through him – but it was not only the pleasure of taking a beautiful woman. It was taking a woman who belonged to his father.

  Salim couldn’t sleep. The night seemed intolerably close and hot and the punkah swinging slowly back and forth over his bed barely disturbed the heavy air. Yet he knew what was really keeping him from sleep was his longing for Anarkali. The khawajasara had brought the Venetian to him on two subsequent nights before his father’s return to Lahore but since then he had not seen her.

  Why did she fascinate him so much? It was a hard question to answer, but he knew it was more than her beauty, more than the fact that she was his father’s concubine, though both added spice. There was a spirit, a self-reliance about her, perhaps the result of her strange, turbulent life. She had told him how, when she was a young girl, pirates had attacked the ship on which she was sailing off the coast of north Africa with her merchant father, whose throat they had slit. They had taken her captive and she had been sold in the slave markets of Istanbul to a Turkish brothel owner who had had her instructed in the arts of love-making. Carefully preserving her virginity, he had sold her at the age of fifteen for a great price to a nobleman who had presented her to the Sultan. That had been four years ago.

  When Salim asked whether she still thought of her homeland, Anarkali had shrugged. ‘It seems long ago. I cry when I think of my poor father’s fate but had we stayed in Venice who knows what my life would have been – probably a loveless marriage to some rich old man of my father’s choosing. He already had such a plan. Now I live in luxury. I have jewels that would amaze the wealthiest Venetian noblewomen.’ For a moment a shadow had crossed her face, but then she had smiled at him. ‘And tonight a young prince strong as a stallion shares my bed – how could I be sad?’

  Such smoothly flattering words came easily to Anarkali, thought Salim as sleep continued to elude him. All during their love-making she had praised his vigour and the pleasure he gave her, told him he was the greatest lover she had ever had. That everything she said must be artificial, that she probably had no real feelings for him at all, didn’t dim his passion for her. That was how she had been trained and how she had survived. But perhaps at this very moment she was whispering the same words to Akbar . . .

  Salim sat up. He had come to a decision. He would have Anarkali again. There must be a way and he would find it.

  ‘There is an old sandstone pavilion hidden away in thick undergrowth on the bank of the Ravi river. It’s only half a mile from here. I sometimes rest in its shade while out snipe hunting. Look . . .’ Salim scratched a map with charcoal on a piece of paper. ‘Bring Anarkali to me there tonight while my father is with the members of the ulama. He will hardly call for her to dance before his mullahs.’

  ‘Your meeting must be brief. Anarkali cannot be long gone from the haram while the emperor is here. And, Highness . . . this must be the last time. I cannot keep taking such risks . . . the danger is too great for us all.’ The khawajasara’s sharp nose was almost twitching with anxiety.

  Salim nodded, though in his heart he had no intention of allowing it to be the last time. He would find other ways to outwit Akbar. ‘Take this. And mind you do not fail me.’ He pressed a bag of gold coins into her hand. ‘I will be waiting for you.’

  That night, as velvet shadows stole along the riverbank, Salim pushed his way through the dry rustling reeds towards the pavilion. It must have been beautiful once. Slender columns and a shattered dome lay on the dry earth and, as he lit an oil lamp, the carving on a tumbled block of stone seemed to come to life. It was of a Hindu goddess or dancing girl, naked except for her jewels, voluptuous limbs moving in some joyful dance. It made him think of Anarkali’s sleek, full body and the many positions it could assume, and his pulses quickened.

  He sat down with his back against a piece of masonry and waited, listening to the rippling of the Ravi. Some small creature – a mouse perhaps – skittered over his boot-clad feet and he slapped at a mosquito as he felt its sharp bite on the side of his neck. Glancing up he saw the moon had risen. It was nearly full, casting a warm, apricot glow over the night sky, and it meant that time was passing. He strained his ears, hoping to hear a soft footfall along the riverbank, but there was nothing. Perhaps something had happened, or the khawajasara’s courage had finally deserted her, but he wouldn’t give up yet, Salim thought. He continued to sit there, enjoying the beauty of the night and anticipating the moment when he would again bury his face beween those soft breasts. Even if the khawajasara had changed her mind about bringing Anarkali to him tonight he knew he could talk her round . . .

  Then beyond the thick reed beds he made out a flickering light – a torch perhaps – and smiled. It was a little reckless of the khawajasara – surely there was enough moonlight to guide her steps – but she had never been to the pavilion before and was perhaps afraid of getting lost. Salim rose and peered harder in the direction of the light. He would go to find them. But as he picked his way out of the ruins
and began pushing through the surrounding undergrowth he suddenly saw the light of several torches moving towards him. Almost simultaneously he caught the sound of male voices and of swift-moving feet crashing through the dry reeds.

  What was happening? Had he been betrayed . . .? Feeling for the dagger in his sash, Salim turned, ready to sprint off into the darkness, but found a familiar figure blocking his way.

  ‘Highness, your father requests that you return at once to the palace.’ Abul Fazl’s small eyes glittered like jet in the light of the torch held by one of the guards who had just arrived behind him.

  Shocked, Salim stood motionless. For once Abul Fazl wasn’t bothering to disguise his feelings and Salim had never seen him so joyously triumphant. He struggled to find words to express his hatred and contempt for this man but it was Abul Fazl who spoke again.

  ‘Highness, do you remember something you once said to me? I believe it was “I see you for what you are, and the day when my father sees it as well will be a good one.” Now it seems it will be the other way round. Your father is about to see you for what you are . . .’

  ‘Summon the whore.’ High on his throne, dressed in robes of such deep purple they were almost black, Akbar’s face as he looked down on his assembled courtiers was mask-like. Not by the flicker of a muscle did he acknowledge the presence of Salim, standing bare-headed below the dais and still dressed in the clothes in which he had gone to his rendezvous with Anarkali.

  ‘Father, let me speak . . .’

  ‘How dare you address me as Father when your actions show nothing but contempt for our relationship. Be silent or I will have you silenced.’ Akbar’s voice was full of pent-up fury.

  A few minutes later, through the double doors of the audience chamber, Anarkali appeared, pushed into the room by two bulky female haram guards. Her hands were bound and her yellow hair streamed over her shoulders. Her face was white except where kohl had mingled with her tears to leave dark tracks. Salim could see how violently she was trembling as she advanced slowly towards Akbar and threw herself on her knees before him.