Empire of the Moghul: The Serpent's Tooth

by Alex Rutherford

  ‘I promise.’

  Fifteen minutes later, flanked by Sipihr and Malik Jiwan, and followed by his bodyguards and the Baluchi’s escort, Dara trotted out of the camp and was soon lost to view among the deeper shadows of the trees.

  ‘It’s Her Highness … she has an even higher fever.’ Nicholas, who was squatting on the ground cleaning the barrel of his musket, looked up to find one of Nadira’s attendants – an elderly woman called Selima who had been nursemaid to Sipihr – standing before him. Above her white cotton veil, her old eyes looked anxious.

  ‘How bad is she?’

  ‘During the night her cough grew worse and she began thrashing and crying out. Her clothes and even her bedding were wet with sweat. I tried to calm her but it was useless, and in a few more hours she became delirious. She no longer knows me or where she is. She thinks she’s back in the haram in Agra. She keeps asking for things I can’t bring her. I don’t know what to do …’

  Nicholas got to his feet. In truth, neither did he. When he’d promised Dara to keep Nadira safe he’d meant protecting her in the event of an attack … not from illness. They had no hakim with them. If she’d been a man he could at least have taken a look at her himself – he’d seen plenty of cases of fever among his soldiers on campaign – but if Nadira’s condition was really so serious, he’d have to try to get help from one of the settlements they’d passed. That would take time and it would also be risky, but he had no choice. In the meantime he must think what else might help. The leaves of the wormwood tree were said to be good for fever – on campaign he’d watched doctors pound the leaves and then pour boiling water over them to make tea. He’d also watched hakims make a paste of neem leaves to smear on the sufferer’s tongue.

  ‘Go back to your mistress. Give her plenty of water to drink and keep fanning her. I will send men to fetch assistance from one of the villages, also look for herbs that may help.’ Should he send a rider to find Dara, Nicholas wondered as Selima hurried off. But the prince had already been gone for three days and would surely soon be returning. Also, Dara’s description of the location of Malik Jiwan’s fort had been vague. He would be foolish to weaken the camp’s defences by sending out men on what might be a pointless quest. No, it was better to focus his attention on finding a doctor. Putting down his musket he went to look for two scouts – Amul and Raziq – he knew he could trust.

  Fours hours later, with the sun beginning to dip in the sky, Nicholas made his way back towards the camp with the long, pointed wormwood leaves he’d finally managed to find piled in the crown of his broad-brimmed hat, which he was carrying carefully in both hands. He’d no idea if wormwood tea really worked but it was worth a try. In his long experience of Hindustan it had often seemed to him that the best hope of fever sufferers was their own constitution. Nadira was still quite young, he reflected hopefully. Her own strength should carry her through. All the same, his spirits rose when, as he passed through the cordon of pickets stationed around the camp’s perimeter, he saw that one of the two scouts, the tall Punjabi, Amul, had returned and was waiting for him outside his tent.

  ‘So, Amul, you must have had good luck?’ called Nicholas. But as he came closer he saw the Punjabi’s grim expression. ‘What is it? How is Her Highness? Not worse … ?’

  Amul shook his head. ‘I don’t know anything about that. But I have something to tell you in private.’

  Pulling up the flap of his tent, Nicholas ducked inside and gestured to Amul to follow. With the light fast fading outside, Nicholas lit an oil lamp that sent inky shadows dancing over the tent’s hide walls and ceiling. Then he pulled the flap closed.

  ‘What is it, Amul?’

  ‘To avoid being seen, we were keeping among the trees flanking a road that we hoped would lead eventually to a settlement. We’d not been gone from here more than a couple of hours when we spotted a long caravan of horses, mules and camels making its way slowly westward. Knowing that such caravans often have hakims with them, we approached. We’d invented a story that we were on a hunting expedition and that one of our number had fallen ill. But before we could recount it, the elderly cafila bashee, the caravan leader, had a story of his own to tell us. He said that on the previous day his caravan had been passed by a group of soldiers taking two prisoners to Delhi. The soldiers stopped to buy camel meat and milk from the caravan and one of them boasted to the cafila bashee that the prisoners they were escorting were no ordinary men but the son and grandson of the emperor, being sent as a gift by the chieftain Malik Jiwan to Princes Aurangzeb and Murad. The cafila bashee said he saw the two princes with his own eyes, tied to their saddles with their hands bound behind their backs.’

  ‘Where is Raziq?’

  ‘Riding on, hoping to catch up with the soldiers and confirm what the cafila bashee said, while I returned to report to you. If we strike camp at once we might be able to overtake the soldiers and free the princes. The cafila bashee said there were only about a hundred of them.’

  ‘We can’t. I promised the prince I’d take care of his wife. Unless she is any better we must stay here. I cannot divide our small force. Wait here …’ Nicholas ducked out of the tent again. He’d tried to warn Dara … he should have been more forceful. ‘Bring Selima to me,’ he ordered a qorchi and waited impatiently for the old woman to appear. When she did her face was haggard.

  ‘How is your mistress?’

  ‘Very bad.’ Selima was unveiled and tears were running down her lined face. ‘She still doesn’t know me, her coughing racks her body, her skin feels as if it was on fire and her pulses are faint and racing.’

  Nicholas remembered the wormwood leaves and bending down scooped a fistful from his hat, which he’d left on the ground outside his tent. ‘Make her some tea from these. It might help,’ he said gently But even as he spoke, Selima’s face sagged with disappointment.

  ‘You have found no hakims?’

  ‘No, I’m afraid not. If her condition worsens, tell me.’

  Selima gave him a look that said as clearly as words, ‘Why should I? What can you do to help?’ and walked stiffly away on ancient legs, the already shrivelling wormwood leaves in her cupped hands. Whatever happened to Nadira, recovery or death, let it be quick, Nicholas found himself praying. Otherwise what choice did he have but for the time being to abandon Dara?

  Beneath a cloudless sky of a hard metallic blue Nicholas galloped along the great trunk road leading to Delhi, avoiding the wandering cows, the children playing barefoot in the dust and the peasants trudging to their fields with their tools on their shoulders, as well as the occasional train of ox carts or camels belonging to some merchant. It was the rural India he loved but he had little time to enjoy its eternal charms. The last earth had barely been piled on Nadira’s simple grave and the last prayers recited before he had mounted up six days previously. Though a third scout he’d sent out had managed to locate a hakim, the man had been able to do nothing for Nadira, whose delirium had increased hour after hour and whose lung-bursting coughing and agonised shrieks for Dara had tormented Nicholas as he’d paced helplessly about by the screens surrounding the haram tents. Now she was at peace, and he was free to discover what had happened to Dara and Sipihr. Why had Malik Jiwan betrayed them despite the apparently great honour of the gift of the breast water, however strange that appeared to a European? Had Malik Jiwan seen the gift as disproportionate and desperate, indicating that he should join the winning side? Perhaps seeing the small number of Dara’s followers had played a part too. Or had he already been committed to Aurangzeb and Murad?

  Although the collapse of Shah Jahan’s power and with it Dara’s hopes had seemed swift, it was becoming clear that it had been long in the fermenting. By remaining in Agra and keeping Dara at his side, Shah Jahan had gradually lost touch with his provincial commanders and officials, leaving his other sons free to sow sedition, making promises and winning allies as they travelled across their provinces and to and from Agra. Unlike Dara, basking in his father’s favo
ur and taking his succession for granted, his brothers had known that to realise their ambitions they needed to act. Whatever the case, there might be little he could do to help Dara now … As the news of his capture had spread through the camp, even those who had remained loyal to him till now had begun to leave, slipping away quietly in ones and twos at first and then more openly in larger groups. In the end so few had remained that Nicholas had chosen to make his journey to Delhi alone. At least that way he would attract less notice.

  As the sandstone walls of the city finally took substance on the horizon, Nicholas reined in, contemplating what might be happening there. Would Aurangzeb and Murad really harm their brother? Before he could discover the truth, he needed to disguise himself further. He’d already exchanged his usual breeches and leather jerkin for loose-fitting dun-coloured cotton pantaloons and a long tunic with a broad purple sash into which he’d tucked his pistols and a dagger. Now he tugged on a round felt cap that Amul had given him, tucking his hair inside, and pulled his dusty cotton neckcloth higher to cover the lower part of his face.

  Two hours later, having left his tired horse at a caravanserai just outside the city, Nicholas joined what seemed an unusually large crowd of people passing through the main gate. Both the gatehouse and the adjacent walls were hung with flags of Moghul green silk – in normal times a sign that the emperor was in residence, but who were they honouring today? The emperor’s usurping sons? Several hundred yards beyond the gate Nicholas turned into the broad thoroughfare leading north to Delhi’s new Red Fort. This seemed the direction in which nearly everyone was heading, jostling one another in their haste to get ahead, as if anxious not to miss something. Perhaps today was a festival. Nicholas allowed himself to be carried along with the throng until it finally disgorged into a great paved square in front of the fort, whose massive sandstone walls rose up about two hundred yards away on the opposite side. Peering over a mass of heads, Nicholas saw that a large raised platform of roughly hewn wood had been erected immediately beneath an ornate carved balcony jutting from the wall of the fort – the place where Shah Jahan stood to address his people when he was in the city. Soldiers surrounded the platform.

  Nicholas pushed his way forward, trying to get a better view. Above the noise of the crowd he thought he could hear solemn steady drum beats. Others heard them too and he caught fragments of conversation. ‘They’re coming …’ an old man said, craning his skinny neck, ‘it won’t be long now.’ Who was coming? And why? Aurangzeb and Murad, perhaps, making a triumphal tour of the city their troops had occupied? That would explain the flags on the gatehouse. The drumbeats were growing louder and then he saw a column of foot soldiers, long staves in their hands, enter the square from a street to the left of the fort. Wielding their staves, they began forcing a way through the crowds to clear a passage across the square to the platform. They acted so roughly that a few scuffles broke out, but soon they had made a path five or six yards wide and then stationed themselves, arms linked, on either side of it.

  People were now looking expectantly towards the entrance to the street from which the soldiers had just emerged, and a great hubbub rose as a squadron of mounted troops riding two abreast entered the square. The two leading riders had drums tied to either side of their saddles and were striking them in turn: first one, then the other, and then both together. The anticipation of whatever was about to happen seemed too much for the crowds. Nicholas found himself being pushed forward again. He heard a scream as someone fell, and was trampled on by those behind as the great wave of people continued to press onwards, unstoppable as the tide.

  Then, as suddenly as the rush had started, it ceased. A hush descended, to be followed by a strange sound like a great, collective sigh. Then Nicholas saw the cause … A single elephant was making its way into the square – no gorgeously caparisoned beast from the imperial hati mahal with jewelled headplate and gilded tusks but a broken-down, scarred old animal with a ripped ear led by a shaggy-headed man wearing a simple dhoti. But like everyone else, Nicholas was looking not at the elephant but at the two wretched figures riding in a rough wooden howdah on its back – Dara and Sipihr, dressed in rags, with garlands of what looked like rotting flowers round their necks. Dara was sitting very straight, looking to neither right nor left, but his son was slumped forward. Nicholas gazed in horror and instinctively tried to push forward towards the captives, but people were thirty deep at least ahead of him and a tall, red-turbaned man directly in front turned round and swore into his face. Nicholas ignored the stream of spittle-flecked abuse. All he could think of was that Aurangzeb and Murad were parading their brother and nephew through the streets of Delhi as if they were common criminals. But then Nicholas realised something else. If the traitors had hoped the populace would welcome such a spectacle they had misjudged. Cries of disgust were rising from all around him and some people were picking up stones and lumps of animal dung and hurling them at the soldiers, who stood their ground as the elephant continued its slow progress towards the wooden platform where it finally halted.

  At that moment, the drumming ceased and a tall, broad-shouldered figure appeared on the balcony above. Nicholas saw at once that it was Aurangzeb. The shouting ceased as suddenly everyone turned their attention to him. What was he about to do? Make a speech? Denounce Dara? But it seemed that Aurangzeb had no such intention. As he raised a hand, trumpets on the battlements above him sounded three shrill blasts. At the sign, two of the soldiers who had been standing around the platform stepped forward and pulled Dara roughly down from the elephant’s howdah. The crowd gasped as Dara fell to the ground. Nicholas lost sight of him for a moment then saw him as he struggled, hands bound, to his feet. The two soldiers took hold of him again, this time pushing him up the three steps of a wooden ladder on to the platform.

  Dara turned to face the crowds as they pressed against the barrier of the soldiers’ staves. At this distance he appeared haggard and his unkempt hair straggled in rat’s tails over his shoulders. Yet there was still pride and defiance in his posture, in the carriage of his head. His brothers had stripped away every external trapping of an imperial prince but they hadn’t managed to rob him of his dignity, thought Nicholas. Slowly Dara turned and looked directly up at Aurangzeb, standing motionless on the balcony above. Nicholas heard Dara call out something but couldn’t catch the words. Aurangzeb, though, clearly had. Immediately he signalled to the two soldiers standing next to Dara, who seized hold of him and, turning him back to face the crowd, pushed him to his knees.

  Then a gate in the fort wall to the platform’s right opened and a heavily built man appeared. He was wearing a leather apron that reached almost to the ground and in his hand gleamed a broad-bladed scimitar. Nicholas heard himself shout ‘No! … No!’ As the man mounted the platform, Dara began frantically struggling. Breaking free, he jumped from the platform and ran to the side of the elephant on which Sipihr was still sitting. He tried to reach up to his son but Aurangzeb’s soldiers seized him and threw him back on to the platform where the other two soldiers grabbed hold of him again. They pulled Dara on to his knees, then each took one of his arms and stretched it behind him so that his head was pushed forward. The executioner looked up at Aurangzeb, who gave him a nod. A terrible sound between a gasp and a groan rose from the crowd as the man swung his scimitar high in the air and brought it down in a single sweeping slash. Dara’s body slumped bloodily forward, but his head rolled across the platform and fell to the ground where a soldier quickly retrieved it.

  As people shoved and pushed for a better view, Nicholas looked up at the balcony. Aurangzeb had gone. Sipihr was now bent almost double and seemed to be weeping as his elephant was led onward into the fort, carrying him to whatever future his murderous uncles had in store for him.

  Chapter 21

  ‘Has there been any serious damage yet Father?’ As Jahanara was still speaking there was a distant boom. The daily bombardment of the fort usually ceased about now as night began to fall and the fi
rst cooking fires to glow in the rebel encampment just visible through the trees half a mile away across the Jumna. As had become his habit since the siege began, Shah Jahan spent much of the late afternoon on the battlements watching the exchange of cannon fire as the rebel gunners attacked the fort’s outer defences and his own artillery responded. Guessing she would find him here, Jahanara had just come from the haram to join him.

  Shah Jahan shook his head. ‘No. They’re still only using small cannon and targeting points along our defences at random. Only a concerted and prolonged attack by their biggest guns centred on a single point would breach these double walls. I remember my grandfather showing me the plans when he was rebuilding the fort – how proud he was of the walls’ solid construction and their height. I don’t suppose he ever imagined that one day a member of his own family would be assaulting them, any more than I ever thought to be under attack from my own sons …’

  ‘Why doesn’t Murad bring up his heavy guns? This siege has already lasted a month and what progress has he made? None!’

  ‘I agree. If Murad were serious he’d deploy all his firepower. But perhaps he isn’t. Maybe he’s no real intention of trying to batter his way into the fort.’

  ‘In that case why bombard us at all?’

  ‘My guess is that he wants to remind us of his presence and warn us against sallying from the fort. He knows that if he keeps us isolated we cannot contact supporters with the truth about the rebels’ actions, nor direct our remaining loyal forces. The only version of events that will reach the provinces will be their perverted one and I can scarcely blame the officials there if they believe it, or at least take no action to question it while the outcome of our struggle is uncertain.’