The Feast of Roses

by Indu Sundaresan

  “And I am no better than I was a week ago. You saw me miss the shot just now. So it has been almost every day. I stand here, the gun raised to my shoulder, following the path of the pigeon, missing most times. If I cannot hit a clay pigeon, what chance do I have against a live one?”

  “One day you will hit the clay pigeon, Mehrunnisa. The day after that the live one. But it won’t happen unless you try. Unless you keep trying. Think of how much we have gone through these last few years, when every day was an effort, when we fell into disfavor with the Emperor, when it seemed we would never rise again to our former positions of glory. Today, we are much more. You are an Empress, married to the most powerful man in the empire. A man on whose life our lives depend. I did not think this would happen when I came to India from Persia. All I had expected was notice from Emperor Akbar, perhaps a small position at court. Mostly, an opportunity to feed my family.”

  “And everything has come through you, Bapa. I had hoped that once I became Empress I could do more for our family. But you were diwan before I married the Emperor. I have done nothing.”

  Ghias laughed and picked up another jamun. “Nothing? A new title for your brother Abul. A larger mansab for me. These are nothing? I have seen the Emperor after his other marriages. With no other wife has he been so enticed, so much in love.” This time his laugh bordered on the edge of embarrassment. “Look, I speak to you of the Emperor’s love, such talk as a father should not have with his daughter. I must know of this and that is enough. You must know too, Mehrunnisa. Do you not know that Emperor Jahangir loves you?”

  “Yes,” she said. “But . . . he has not come to me . . . I am lonely, Bapa.”

  Her words hung in the air, as forlorn as what they said, and a deep ache came over Ghias.

  The cicadas chirped, first one, then all of them, in a grand cacophony of an orchestra. Ghias wanted to reach out to Mehrunnisa again, to tell her everything was going to be all right, to tell her she could come home so she would no longer be alone. But he hesitated, knowing that she was now a grown woman, and his love, her mother’s love, was no longer enough for her. In the four years that Mehrunnisa had been a widow, a thin skin of hardness had come over her. He had wanted, had insisted, that she come to live with him—where else would his child live but with her father? But she had gone to the imperial zenana to serve Dowager Empress Ruqayya. She had earned money sewing and designing clothes; she had kept away from them, and he had let her be. For it was what he had taught her, not to beg favors of anyone with an open palm. Mehrunnisa would not come home now, this was her home, here, by the side of the Emperor. It was just a quarrel, surely, a simple mistaking of intents. Surely. Yes, this had to be so. He brought her to him then, let her cry into his shoulder, and her tears soaked into his cotton qaba.

  He said quietly, “You may never be as good as Empress Jagat Gosini at the hunt, but you will be almost as good as her. I know you can do this. You must not think otherwise. Even when I almost abandoned you as a baby, you yelled loud enough to be found again. Do you remember that story?”

  After a long while, Mehrunnisa said, “Tell me again.”

  So he did, reliving the winter sandstorm at Qandahar when Asmat had lain down to have Mehrunnisa. He remembered how he had sat in the shelter of a rock, the sand whirling around him, laced with cold, how the wind had stopped for a moment and he had heard her first cry. A few weeks later, even as they had been on their way to India, he had thought it best to give her away. She had been feeble, not taking to the goat’s milk, Asmat could not feed her, and a wet nurse cost money they did not have . . . problems had come to ambush him. So he had left her wrapped in his shawl under a tree, a village in sight, praying with all his heart. Allah, let someone find my daughter and give her a good home. Let them be kind, Allah. Someone had found her and brought her back to him. It had not happened that simply, but it had happened.

  When Ghias Beg finished the story, Mehrunnisa picked up his hand and kissed it. She asked, “How do you know it was your daughter who was returned to you, Bapa? Maybe it was another baby, born to some poor peasant in the countryside.”

  The diwan shook his head vigorously. “But you have your grandfather’s blue eyes. You have his smile. You have your brother Abul’s stubborn spine.”

  “And of you, do I have nothing of you?”

  “My wisdom.”

  She laughed then, the sound spilling over the silence of the shikar grounds. “And of Maji?”

  Ghias thought of his wife. “Maji gave you her gentleness, her soft speech, her kindness.”

  “Do I have anything of me, Bapa?” They played this game each time he told her the story. Of late he seemed to tell her the story more often, marveling at how far they had come. He would say that he had had four gold mohurs tucked into his cummerbund the day she was born. The day he gave her away, his cummerbund was empty. The moment she came back, their hearts were full, their lives brimming with wealth.

  “You have in you the ability to be anything you want, beta.”

  She drew back to glance at her father. Ghias had never ended the story this way before. For the first time, he told her she could do what she wanted.

  “Your Majesty,” the Mir Shikar said. They both turned to see him standing there, holding a loaded matchlock.

  Mehrunnisa rose from the carpet. Her tears were gone, and in the half-light from the torches dug into the ground, she knew her face would show nothing. “I must practice now, Bapa.”

  “Do so,” he said. He put out a hand to her. She clasped his elbow and helped him up. “But in moderation. Don’t tire yourself out too much, Mehrunnisa.”

  Suddenly, by his saying so, she was tired. A wave of nausea came to slap her in the stomach, and she felt the jamuns rise up her throat. Her limbs were loose and heavy, moving with slowness. She took the matchlock from the Mir Shikar and hauled it up to her shoulder again. When the Mir Shikar shouted out his order, the servant set fire to the round wedge of palas wood used for night practice. She watched as he moved his arm, first below his waist, then above his head, clutching the burning pigeon in his mail-clad hand. The pigeon shot out into the night, smearing the darkness with a streak of gold. It spun in circles. Mehrunnisa traced its path, and as it went downward, she pressed the trigger. The shot bolted from the matchlock, the recoil almost knocking her off her feet, but she kept her eye on the ball of fire. It seemed to be suspended for a moment, and then it exploded, sending shards of burning wood in all directions—a thousand pieces of gold.

  Mehrunnisa looked back with a delighted smile to see if Ghias Beg had been watching. He had. She saw him raise his hand in a wave, and his voice came across the dusty grounds. “Now hit ten more in a row, beta. Then you will truly have reason to celebrate.”

  • • •

  The next day, as court matters were being wrapped up in the Diwan-i-am, the Hall of Public Audience, Ghias Beg came forward and performed the taslim in front of the Emperor. He did this four times, not lifting his gaze until the last.

  “Mirza Ghias Beg?” Jahangir said from his throne.

  “Your Majesty,” Ghias said, “I beg pardon, but may I beg a private audience? It is not a court matter.” He was uncomfortably aware of the curious glances from the other nobles in the hall. Mahabat Khan and Muhammad Sharif were a few feet from him. They too were attentive, clad in the etiquette of the court, but their eyes questioned. Ghias had spoken in a low voice, as near to the throne as he dared to be. He had not known how else to approach Jahangir other than at court. He was the Emperor’s father-in-law, but so new at his position that he did not realize he could have sent a message directly to Jahangir.

  “Of course,” the Emperor said immediately, rising as he spoke. “You can accompany me to the zenana and talk as we walk.”

  They went back through the arched corridors leading to the harem quarters. Ghias Beg walked a few steps behind Jahangir; the servants were ordered a few more paces away. They walked in silence for a while, Ghias worrying with the
words in his head. How was he to say what he wanted to say? Suddenly, Jahangir stopped and turned to his minister.

  “How is Mehrunnisa? I hear you visited her at the shooting ranges yesterday. Does she keep well? She looked tired after the hunt.”

  “She is well, your Majesty. But . . .”

  “But what? Tell me, Ghias Beg, does something ail her? Do the servants bother her?”

  “It is not the servants, your Majesty,” Ghias Beg said carefully. He paused. How did a father plead his Emperor to return to his daughter?

  “It must be the servants,” Jahangir said firmly. “If I am not at her apartments, they do not perhaps listen to her orders.”

  “That can be easily remedied, your Majesty.”

  “Yes.” Jahangir turned to one of the maids dawdling in the corridor. “Send a message to Nur Jahan Begam that I will visit her this evening.”

  “Thank you, your Majesty.” Ghias bowed and backed out of the corridor. It had been so easy to ask this favor without even asking for it. He had fretted all night about his daughter. She had been unhappy when he had seen her. She had pretended otherwise, but she had cried, and Mehrunnisa cried so little, unlike other women, whose tears were at a rush to come for demands and wants and fears. Or if she did, Ghias never saw that sorrow. Not when she had had the miscarriages, not when Ali Quli had died . . . although that last, it had been a freedom of sorts. And so, in the morning, after a night spent thinking these things, Ghias had decided he would speak to the Emperor.

  When he left, Jahangir went down the marble steps into one of the courtyards. The slaves, eunuchs, and concubines lounging under the shade of the mango trees rose to melt away. He waited until they had all gone and then sat down at the edge of a pond. The carp in the pond came to nibble at his shadow, greedy and waiting to be fed. He waved a hand over the water and watched as they skittered in the direction of his hand, mouths open and gulping.

  Here was a chance to see Mehrunnisa again. Again and at last. In this last week, he had not known how to go back to her. Every morning he woke to an empty bed by his side, an emptiness around him. And his days were then filled with state duties, visits to Empress Jagat Gosini’s apartments at night to take part in interminable entertainments and cups of wine. His head ached from wanting to be with Mehrunnisa. Jahangir had his eunuchs tell him every detail of her days, he knew she went to the jharoka balcony on the two mornings he had not gone, that she spent the rest of the day in the shooting ranges. He listened to all of this with a calm face, but inside a hunger rioted.

  Jahangir removed his imperial turban and laid it on the stone edge of the pool. The afternoon sun stood guard over him, reflecting off the slabs of marble in the courtyard. He would have to wait till the evening to see Mehrunnisa. Why had he said evening, why not right now? Surely, twenty minutes would have been enough for her to prepare herself.

  Once, Mahabat, Sharif, and even Jagat Gosini had tried to keep him from Mehrunnisa, to keep him from seeing her, from marrying her, citing her family’s disloyalty to the throne, her husband’s perfidy, saying that for sure she would harbor resentment against him. All these reminders had returned in the past week, borne on a breeze of slyness. Mahabat’s and Sharif’s voices had taken on a strength that had waned after Mehrunnisa’s first jharoka, and Jagat Gosini had solicitously showed him the imperial farmans she had signed with the royal seal. But they had not been able to see that their Emperor was grieving. It was Mahabat’s and Sharif’s behavior that was unsettling. What was it they feared? A rise in status in her family? Mehrunnisa’s voice at the jharoka? But why?

  He sat there for a long time, his head uncovered, his hair soaking up the heat of the sun. After his evening prayers and the final audience at court, Jahangir bathed and dressed in a hurry, shouting orders at his servants. He went to Mehrunnisa’s apartments and she was there, waiting for him, serious. She had done nothing to apologize for. As Emperor, he could not apologize either. There was no fault in either of them.

  He carried with him an embroidered bag of velvet as a gift. Earlier in the afternoon, he had sent for this most precious piece of metal in the empire. Jahangir put the bag in her hand and enclosed her fingers over it.

  “What is it?” she asked.

  He said nothing at first, a curious light of excitement in his eyes. Then, “What you have wanted, Mehrunnisa.”

  “I have you.”

  Again he was quiet, watching her. “Without it you do not have me completely.”

  Could it be . . . no, but this was so soon, so sudden . . . Mehrunnisa glanced down at the bag in her hand. Whatever was inside was heavy, tiny but heavy. Through the cloth she felt its smooth and round edge. She laid the bag against her chest, and the coolness of the metal seeped through the weave.

  “Thank you,” she said, numb of all other feeling, without any other words to speak of her enormous gratitude. With this piece of metal, she owned the empire. Possessed power over every corner of its lands, all of its people, why, even the earth on which it rested and the sky above it.

  Jahangir stayed the night in Mehrunnisa’s apartments. They slept wrapped around each other, frightened by what had happened this last week. A fight . . . a non-fight . . . a misunderstanding. How easy it was for this to happen, how easy to inflate a small incident out of all proportion, to bring a wedge between them.

  Every night a sword was brought to the Emperor’s sleeping chamber, a different one each night, the scabbard encrusted with rubies and pearls, or pearls and emeralds. Jahangir slept with it by his side—this was a ritual his father had begun, that a Timurid Emperor never closed his eyes without protection, no matter how heavily guarded he was on the outside. And so this night, the sword found its way to Mehrunnisa’s chambers and lay within Jahangir’s reach by the bed.

  When the eunuchs returned from this errand, they talked in the zenana. Lamps that routinely waited to be extinguished only after news of Jahangir’s whereabouts were now put out, and the women went to bed knowing that somehow, with some sorcery, the newest Empress had once again managed to beguile the Emperor.

  And so Mehrunnisa’s star rose again.

  • • •

  Abul Hasan leaned against the wall, arms folded across his chest, watching his sister’s profile outlined against the window. The sun lit up circles around her, escaping through the pattern of the filigree work of the wooden shutters. She was reading an embellished scroll held up to the light. Abul waited for her to speak, as patiently as he could.

  “What is it?” he asked finally, with a note of fretfulness in his voice.

  Mehrunnisa looked up, her face aglow. “A royal farman.”

  “What has the Emperor given you this time?” He bent to pull it from her hands and frowned. “An order for a mansab to one of the courtiers. Why do you have it? What does it have to do with you?”

  “Everything, my dear Abul.” Mehrunnisa patted the divan. “Sit down.”

  He sat and then saw the little green Malacca velvet sack, embroidered with pearls. Even as she read, Mehrunnisa had her hand on the bag, her fingers rippling over the pearls. “What is that?”

  Mehrunnisa smiled. “So many questions, Abul. You ask too many questions. Tell me, what does it feel like to be allowed to enter the hallowed walls of the imperial zenana?”

  A week earlier, she had sent instructions to the guards to allow Abul in. Every mole on his face, every hair on his head, every bend of his limbs was described in detail. As Abul stood outside the gates, the Kashmiri guards and the Ahadis examined him minutely, and then sent a message to Hoshiyar Khan inside the zenana. Hoshiyar came and conducted his own thorough examination. The eunuch studied him carefully, asked a series of questions about his uncles and grandfather—where they lived at different times of their lives, which women they had married, who had given birth to those women. A thick shawl was brought to cover Abul’s head and the upper part of his body, and then Hoshiyar led Abul in this half-darkness, with only the vision of his own feet to guide him, throu
gh sandstone courtyards, gardens with lawns glittering with morning dew, and marble floors so sleek he slip-slid his way over them. A woman passed by once, silently, but her curiosity was vastly evident. She hesitated near him, the bottom edge of her silk ghagara’s skirts swishing to a halt. He saw the pleats settle into folds, saw the sun pick out the hundreds of ruby buttons nestled in the gold embroidery. She stood very close, and even in the sweating heat of the shawl, Abul could smell the jasmines in her hair, and something else, some undefinable, unreachable perfume. Hoshiyar had his fingers tight around Abul’s elbow, but his touch made Abul stop, and for this woman. Who was she, that she might command the direction of Hoshiyar’s steps? A few long moments passed. The woman and Hoshiyar Khan did not speak with words, and if otherwise, Abul had no idea of what they said. He thought she was looking at him as one did in the camel markets, scrutinizing the shape of the camel’s hump, the health of its legs, the grace of its stride. Abul did not dare to lift his shawl and look at her. He might be the brother of Nur Jahan Begam, but his head was still not worth too much.

  This was an enormous amount of fuss, Abul thought, and just to see his sister. He could remember her birth well, although he had been only four that winter evening in the desert outside Qandahar. He could remember his fear, fed by hunger and fatigue, as the storm howled about them, as his mother’s whimpers broke through the canvas of the tent into his ears. This was how Mehrunnisa had come into the world. In the beginning, he hated her for this, for being so demanding, for crying all the time, for creating worry for them all.

  Of when Bapa gave her away and brought her back, Abul had no memory, for it happened in the span of a few hours. Only later, at Agra and Lahore, as they followed Emperor Akbar’s court where he went, did he begin to notice her, to teach her gilli-danda, or laugh at her attempts to climb a tree, her ghagara tucked dhoti-like between her legs. They had grown apart from each other, of course, as a boy and a girl brought up in the same house do, stretching their love and liking for one another over years and miles.