The Feast of Roses

by Indu Sundaresan

  Those of Khurram’s courtiers who had chosen to stay with him also fled for the imperial court now. They knew the prince was in trouble. He had no intention of returning to his father’s presence, where he once desperately begged to be allowed. Mehrunnisa, with Ghias’s estate added to her own large income, was now frighteningly wealthy and massively powerful with this heaping of favors upon her. And the courtiers knew that she disliked Khurram. They came to plead for their lives, to protest that they had not had any actual intentions to be complicit in Khusrau’s death. Khurram’s courtiers had a long journey ahead of them, for Mehrunnisa and Jahangir were on their way back to Kashmir.

  And while the imperial court was at Kashmir, trouble began to breed in Qandahar.

  • • •

  Ever since the first Persian siege on Qandahar in 1606, it had been quiet on the northwestern front. For the last ten years, there had been a Persian ambassador at the Mughal court, bringing with him lavish gifts and assurances of brotherly affection from Shah Abbas to Jahangir. So constant was Persian presence at court that permanent apartments, richly appointed, were built for the ambassadors.

  When Mehrunnisa and Jahangir were at Rawalpindi, on their way back from Kashmir, they first heard the news of another Persian invasion in Qandahar.

  The Qandahar problem went back two generations to the time of Humayun, father of Akbar and the second Mughal Emperor of India. When Humayun became Emperor, four years after his father conquered India, he found a country discontented with its conquerors and hoping to oust them. He was defeated by Sher Shah Sur in the battles at Chausa and Kanauj and expelled from India.

  The Emperor took refuge with Shah Tahmasp Safavi in Persia and with his help drove the Afghan king out of Qandahar. Using the city as a base, Humayun conquered Kabul and finally marched back into India victorious, to set up the empire again. Humayun and Shah Tahmasp had a tacit understanding that once India was conquered, Qandahar would be given to Persia. But this had not happened. Humayun did not give it away, Akbar did not give it away, and by Jahangir’s time, it had become part of the Mughal Empire.

  The 1606 siege, if it could even be called by that name, had been a simple raising of war standards and flags outside the city. Now there was no doubt about the Shah’s intentions. He wrote to Jahangir, reminding him of the promise once given by his grandfather. Jahangir wrote back, asking why the Shah was so interested in a petty village when he had a mighty empire himself. Both letters were written in phrases of honey and sugar, and neither the Shah nor Jahangir was fooled by the other. The Shah would invade Qandahar; Jahangir had to defend it.

  Another piece of gossip had found its way to the royal court, riding on the official news of the invasion of Qandahar. The Shah had ordered his eldest son killed by a slave. It was done in a terrible fashion, the prince was stabbed one rainy evening in the local bazaar, and his body lay in the slush of the streets for two days before it was dragged away to be buried. Why, Jahangir wondered, and how, could a father order his son’s death? The Shah was mad; this was why he was plaguing him now. Shah Abbas had to be stopped. And the only person who could command a victorious army was Prince Khurram. The Emperor wrote to his son in the Deccan yet again. He was to head north and handle the Qandahar problem. If he did, he would be forgiven.

  Khurram did not go. The monsoons had arrived in full flood; he could not possibly cart an entire army on this long journey and hope to arrive there with his cavalry and infantry in decent enough shape to meet the Shah’s men. He would stay here until the rains subsided.

  Jahangir sent him a bitter letter. Come to the royal court at once!

  This the prince would absolutely not do. His father was furious with him, and he was no fool to present himself to be burned in the flames of Jahangir’s wrath.

  Khurram was right about the Emperor’s temper. Jahangir was ailing, his asthma flared, headaches beset him; everything irritated him now. If the prince came to Jahangir’s court, his head would soon part company with his shoulders. This Jahangir was determined about. The empire was to belong to Shahryar.

  After all, a precedent had been set. If one king could order his son’s death, why not another?

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  The soothsayers named an auspicious day on which the treasure of gold and silver was to be brought out and, in accordance with the King’s command, to be handed over to Asaf Khan. . . . Itibar Khan who was bringing out the royal treasure, took it back to the fort and Asaf Khan went away empty-handed.

  —B. NARAIN, trans, and S. SHARMA, ed.,

  A Dutch Chronicle of Mughal India

  Winter came slowly to the Srinagar valley in 1623. The poplar trees turned a fiery orange and deep maroon along the edges of Dal Lake. Reeds and rushes yellowed and stooped toward the lily pads. The last pumpkins ripened and sprawled over the eastern edge of Dal Lake in their floating gardens, which were large chunks of soil cut away from the banks and tethered to the bottom. The sun rode lower in the sky, in an arc barely skimming over the mighty foreheads of the Himalayas. A chill caught the air, and little fires burned in the bazaars, fanned by the wind. As November approached, the streets grew deserted, shops closed earlier; at the first hint of darkness, shopkeepers and patrons hurried home to warm dinners and cups of chai.

  The Hari Parbat hill surged upward almost apologetically from the western bank of Dal Lake, a tiny anthill compared to its stupendous neighbors. But the view from the hill was magnificent nonetheless. The lake stretched blue and green below, the wooden houses of Srinagar arranged around it, the majestic Himalayas cutting into the heavens above and in jagged reflection in the waters below. It was here Emperor Akbar had built a fort with walls curving up and down the hillside, and wood and stone palaces. December came and the snows fell, covering the pass into the Srinagar valley with ten-foot-deep piles of snow. The city was now cut off from the outside and would be until the roads were cleared. This did not happen normally, the residents merely waited in their snowbound, still world until the spring thaw, but in the winter of 1623 things were not normal. Emperor Jahangir had decided to stay on in Kashmir and not travel back to Agra.

  Mehrunnisa stood at the window to the balcony in her apartments in Hari Parbat Fort. It was snowing outside, a light and flaky snow, settling amply, though, on the smooth surface of the lake, and drifting over the steeply sloped roofs of the houses. She put her face against the cold glass pane of the window. Behind her, the room was lushly covered with thick carpets, edge to edge, without an inch of the stone floor showing. It was warm too, the air heated by coal braziers dispersed around the room. Mehrunnisa turned to her daughter.

  Ladli was sitting on a divan, her feet pulled under her. A minute later, she shifted and leaned back, but even that was uncomfortable, so she sat up again and rubbed at the bottom of her spine.

  “Shall I do that for you, beta?” Mehrunnisa asked.

  Ladli patted the divan. Mehrunnisa went and sat next to her. She put her hand on Ladli’s back and massaged the muscles there. Ladli put her head on Mehrunnisa’s shoulder. “That feels better, Mama.”

  Mehrunnisa touched Ladli’s stomach lightly. “It will be a boy, I know. He gives you so much trouble already.”

  “I do not want a boy, Mama. She will be a girl.”

  “Why?” Mehrunnisa asked, smiling.

  Ladli raised her head. “So there will be no question of her fighting for the throne. I will not have a child for the empire.”

  Mehrunnisa got up and moved away. “This is stupid thinking, Ladli. What use will a girl be? You must have an heir.”

  Ladli poked at the coals in the brazier near her with a pair of silver tongs. The embers hissed and crackled in response. She reached into a brocade bag and spread the sandalwood shavings over the coals. The bits of wood caught fire, and an aromatic, swirling smoke journeyed around the room. “What use will a girl be, Mama?” Her tone was wry. “You and I were girls once. Were we worthless?”

  Mehrunnisa sighed and sat down again, this t
ime near the little table in a corner. Farmans lay piled on it, their parchment gleaming softly in the lamplight. She had to read through them and decide which ones to sign, which to throw away. “You know what I mean, beta,” she said, leaning against the wall behind her. “When Shahryar becomes Emperor, he must have a son to give the empire to.”

  “It will NOT be a boy!” Ladli sat up on the edge of her divan, her face contorted. Little drops of sweat gathered on her forehead, and she wiped them with the back of her hand.

  Mehrunnisa looked at her daughter from across the room. Impending motherhood had brought a fretfulness to her. As her body grew, her emotions plumped up too, skittering out wildly with every sentence. But she was still lovely. Her skin glowed golden and clear, her eyes had lost their constant sadness, and she moved with a grace Mehrunnisa had not seen in many women in this stage. The child brought happiness to Ladli, and an undeniable contentment to her mother. Now the marriage to Shahryar had some value, Mehrunnisa thought, now, finally, she had done right by Ladli.

  Ladli muttered to herself, tucked her hair back into her plait, and subsided on the divan. She breathed heavily, as though she had run for a distance. “I do not want my child to be caught in all this fighting, Mama. I do not want you to use him for the throne.”

  “You do not want to be mother to an Emperor, Ladli?” Mehrunnisa said, her gaze a hard, deep blue. Ladli shook her head and bent to wrap her arms around her stomach, the fingertips meeting at the bottom, as though she was carrying something heavy in front of her. “You do not want to sit in the zenana balcony at court and look out at your son’s back while the most powerful amirs and nobles pay their respects to him? Tell me,” the Empress leaned forward, hands on her knees, “tell me you do not want that. You can have what I do not, Ladli. A child who will wear the crown, whose name will live on for posterity to remember, and because of him your name will live on.”

  Mehrunnisa rose and went to stand over her daughter. She looked down at her daughter’s dark head, with a little sliver of skin where her thick hair was parted. She touched her head, but Ladli moved away as fast as her ponderous body would allow her. Mehrunnisa turned and went to the pile of velvet cloaks in one corner of the apartment. Swathing two over her head and shoulders, she went out into the balcony.

  It was as bright as daylight outside; the falling snow caught the light from the houses and the streetlamps and spread it thinly orange over all of Srinagar. The air was clear, washed with ice, with a sharp edge of cleanness to it. Mehrunnisa leaned out over the parapet and breathed deeply. Why was Ladli thinking like this? Everything she did, she did for her daughter. Surely she knew that? Shahryar was a fool, to be sure, but he had the empire’s blood in his veins, worth ten times any lode of gold. The child she was carrying would have that value too. Ladli did not remember, because she did not know, that they were but refugees to India. Ghias had come here with little in his pockets, and less on his back. And half of Ladli was given by her father, who was but a soldier and, before that, a table attendant to the Shah of Persia. Within her, she now bore a future Emperor. Why was she not grateful?

  Mehrunnisa swept the snow off the edge of the parapet with a sharp gesture. It turned her palm cold and blue, and she rubbed her hand against her side. Ladli still blamed her for not asking Khurram. But she had asked, and Ladli did not know this, for Mehrunnisa would never tell her. Still . . . Ladli blamed her. What was Khurram’s worth now, in any case?

  A few days ago, before the snow had started falling, Mehrunnisa had had another reason to be upset with Khurram. She had given one of her jagirs to Shahryar as a gift and had petitioned the diwan to turn over the papers to her son-in-law. Khurram had also sent a formal petition to the diwan for the same jagir, but of course, it had gone to Shahryar. However, Khurram, always in a hurry and sure that he would get the jagir of Dholpur, had sent his men there to set up offices. Khurram’s servants had met Shahryar’s servants, and a bloody fight had followed, in which four men had been killed. Mehrunnisa had demanded that Dholpur be returned to Shahryar, but she was sure Khurram would refuse, just as he had refused to go to Qandahar.

  And as time passed in all their plentiful letter writing and demands, the fort at Qandahar fell to the Shah of Persia’s army. Although Jahangir had called it a petty village, it was of strategic importance to the empire for trade and defense. Now it had been cut away from the northwestern edge. Khurram, despite all his excuses, was quite clearly intent on staying on at Burhanpur, so Mehrunnisa ordered Shahryar to go instead. He was sent away in the autumn from Srinagar, with much fanfare, but even his mother-in-law had little hopes in his military prowess. Giving Shahryar the command of the imperial army was to tell the court that he was now the favored son. The most Shahryar would do, Mehrunnisa knew, would be to loll around the outskirts of Qandahar, send out a few halfhearted sorties, and then return home. But there was to be a child. The boy would be the next Emperor. He gave Mehrunnisa hope. There would be a boy, please Allah, wouldn’t there?

  The snowflakes settled on the top of Mehrunnisa’s head, clung to her eyelashes, and tucked themselves into the folds of her cloak. But she still stood in the balcony. Only her feet were cold, slowly numbing as the snow melted and seeped in through the leather of her shoes. She liked being outside in this impossibly white world covering all the sins and dirt of Srinagar. It was densely silent and peaceful. Here, she was no longer Empress, no longer anything, not even a mother or a soon-to-be grandmother. Here she was not even a wife, although as she stood, her head slanted to the doorway on her right where Jahangir slept. He coughed, and Mehrunnisa closed her eyes and listened. He would cough three times, one low, one so shallow as to come from his mouth, one from deep within his lungs. They had stayed on in Srinagar hoping that the Emperor’s asthma would leave in the clean and crisp air of the valley. It had abated somewhat, but as Mehrunnisa heard the dreaded cough from within, she knew that it would never go.

  Jahangir was a dying man. Maybe not for a few years more, but his body would not be able to put up with this punishment for much longer. Mehrunnisa saw this with a clarity and calmness that frightened her. Ever since that one terrible illness when Jahangir had almost died, Mehrunnisa had been preparing herself for his death. At that time, the thought had terrified her, but so many years had passed, and time had a way of making oft-pondered ideas if not appealing, at least bearable.

  The cold finally seeped into her bones and left her teeth chattering. She had thrown herself into the work; every farman went out with her signature, she took the jharoka audiences, she ran the empire while Jahangir rested. Mehrunnisa was the one who had sent Shahryar away. If Khurram refused to give up Dholpur, the jagir he had so officiously taken over, she would confiscate all his estates in the northern part of the empire. Let him rot in the south, she thought. Let his entire family, his wife, his sons, his father-in-law . . . but no, Abul was here with them. They were adrift from each other finally, thoroughly ashamed that Ghias had died while they had fought. But Abul had not left the imperial court to seek out Khurram.

  Huddled under the warm fur of her cloak, Mehrunnisa gripped her arms about her waist. Should she send Abul away? On what pretext, and how would the courtiers react? The nobles had been strained, skittish, in her jharoka audiences lately. This was due to many things—the Qandahar problem, the so-obvious switch in imperial favor from Khurram to Shahryar, Jahangir’s constant illnesses. They were unsure, Mehrunnisa was too, not really seeing Shahryar as Emperor or seeing him hold the throne for long. But now, with the child, if he could just rule for a little while . . . That, though, would come later. And whatever Mehrunnisa did about her brother Abul, she had to do this with the approval of the nobles at court. She thought then, her head hunched into her chest. An idea came as she stood there; Abul had to be pushed into the open.

  The sound of another series of coughs startled her. She listened, but now she heard a fourth cough, and this was loud and coarse. Mehrunnisa plowed through the drifting snow down the ba
lcony into Jahangir’s apartments.

  • • •

  “You want me to do what?” Abul’s voice was filled with disbelief.

  “Bring the treasury to Lahore,” Mehrunnisa repeated patiently. She put a hand to one of the palanquin’s pillars to steady herself. They sat close to each other in the enclosed space, their knees drawn up and touching. The curtains, of a sheer green silk, were closed. The sun filtered through them, filling the palanquin with a liquid green light.

  Abul looked at his sister. He had trouble sitting like this, his thighs ached, but he would not let her know that. The royal entourage was on its way to Lahore after the winter in Srinagar. It was spring, well, the snows had melted in patches from the ground, but it was still cold and slippery outside. At the last stop, Mehrunnisa had asked for him to ride with her. Abul had had to brace himself as the eight bearers had lifted the palanquin onto their shoulders and set off in a steady trot.

  “You want to move the entire treasury, Mehrunnisa? Do you know what that entails?” Abul rubbed his chin and felt the bristle of a spot of hair that his barber’s razor had not touched that morning. “And why?”

  Mehrunnisa’s eyes gleamed. “It will be safer where the Emperor is, Abul.”

  Abul shook his head. “Yes, but . . .”

  “You do not wish to do this?” Her voice was sharp.

  “No, of course, if this is the Emperor’s command, I will . . . but what does safer mean? Who would dare to lay siege on the treasury of the empire, Mehrunnisa? It is safe enough at Agra.”