The Serpent's Tooth

by Alex Rutherford

  ‘Those of you who can, disengage and rally to me,’ Shah Jahan shouted over the hubbub of battle to the men who were within earshot. As they began to do so, he charged towards the Bijapuran general and his entourage who were now less than six hundred yards away. His horse was blowing hard and there was a thick scum of white sweat on its neck but it was willing and began to outdistance the rest of his men.

  In less than a minute he was among the Bijapuran group. His first blow bit deep into the unprotected left leg of one of the standard-bearers, catching him just above the knee and slicing through sinew and flesh to judder against the bone, almost jolting the weapon from Shah Jahan’s grasp. However, he held on to the hilt as the banner-bearer fell, dropping his golden standard into the dust. Another rider struck at Shah Jahan but the sword slid off his breastplate. Nevertheless, the force of the impact knocked the emperor back in his saddle. Within moments though, he had recovered his balance to see that he was in striking distance of the general. Putting all his weight into the stroke, he caught the man just beneath his glistening breastplate. Although he retained his seat on his horse, the general dropped his sword and doubled up clutching his belly. Quickly Shah Jahan aimed another thrust designed to finish him off, but as he did so he felt a crashing blow on his own head and his helmet falling. He put up a gauntleted hand in an attempt to steady it but his ears were buzzing, his thoughts scrambling and white stars and flashes appearing before his eyes and hampering his vision. He must get away from the conflict for a little to recover his senses.

  Instinctively he kicked his mount forward, urging it on with his hands and heels. The willing animal gathered speed but then the flaring lights and the ringing in his head intensified. Overcome, he fell forward on his horse’s neck …

  What was that plucking and pulling at him? He and Mumtaz were cocooned in the stars but something or someone was snatching at him, dragging him away from her. Mumtaz’s pale face held a look of horror and pleading. Then she seemed to recede into the velvet darkness. He couldn’t understand. Was she being pulled away from him and not him from her? It couldn’t be … he mustn’t let it happen. He tried to stretch out a hand, feeling a more distinct tug at his clothing. Someone was indeed clawing and probing at his body, pulling at his limbs, drawing him away from Mumtaz. ‘No, no,’ he muttered, jerking his head as he spoke. ‘Mumtaz, I will stay with you.’ Then he felt what could only be sharp-nailed fingers grasping at his throat.

  Eyes opening but still dazed, he saw a blurred but gaunt face with hollow cheeks and bright eyes only inches from his own. Its lips seemed half open in surprise, open enough to reveal the blackened stumps of teeth. Strands of long grey hair were falling from the plait in which it was tied back. Thumbs were digging into his throat, seeking his Adam’s apple. The apparition was definitely trying to strangle him. Instinctively Shah Jahan brought up his hands and knocked the bony fingers from his throat. Then he grasped at the devil’s face. It felt surprisingly warm as it fought back, foul and sour breath polluting his nostrils. He wrenched the head back, twisting it as he did so. There was a crack and the apparition ceased to struggle and slumped forward on to Shah Jahan, warm saliva dripping from its slack mouth on to his face. Although light, the figure had some weight.

  The pressure of it, together with the sensation of the spittle running down his cheek, cut into Shah Jahan’s brain, reviving him towards full consciousness. He pushed the body off him, his mind clearing and his eyes focusing. He sat up and looked about him. The sun was blazing from its midday zenith with dazzling ferocity. Except for the body he was alone in a coppice of leafless trees. Slowly, to his horror, Shah Jahan realised that the figure with its head twisted at an unnatural angle, tongue lolling and eyes staring, was a woman, an old woman what’s more. The edges of her tattered red sari were blowing in the breeze, exposing her bony ribcage and beneath it the slack skin crater where her stomach should have been. She must have been starving. He had killed her. Why? And why was he alone?

  Slowly, splintered memories – weapon clashes, battle cries both of encouragement and of pain – coalesced in his mind. He remembered his headlong charge towards the Bijapuran camp, the drumming of his horse’s hooves and after a while his attack on the enemy general, but what had happened next? Finally came a recollection of a blow to his head, a memory of falling forward … His horse must have carried him several miles from the battle. He could neither see nor hear signs of conflict, nor, he realised with dismay, of his horse. Scrutinising the surrounding sandy ground he did make out some hoof prints. After he had fallen his horse must have wandered off. But how did the old woman fit in? Looking more closely at her corpse he saw on the ground beside it one of his rings – a large carved emerald – and yes, there was one of the silver clasps that had held on his light cloak, now carefully folded beside her. That must be it – she had been looting his body and when she had felt him stir attempted to kill him.

  Clearly, the instinct to survive had overwhelmed any more feminine feelings of care and protection. That same instinct must account for her being alone. Had she left her village in search of food after the death of her family? Were they lying somewhere too weak to move? Or had they in fact abandoned her? Survival was truly paramount in the human mind. That was why she had tried to kill him … why he had killed her … why indeed, he reflected, he had had his half-brothers killed. Now he himself must strive to survive once more.

  Picking up his cloak from beside the woman’s body he wound it roughly round his bare head to protect it, aching as it was from the fierce sun. The glint from his breastplate might betray him to searching enemies as well as burdening him as he walked. He quickly unbuckled it and, after scraping out a small depression in the sand, buried it. Then he looked at what he had assumed were his horse’s hoof prints. His mount seemed to have come from the northwest before he fell from the saddle, after which it had headed off to the south. Should he follow it and try to recapture it or should he retrace his steps in the direction of the battle? He should go after the horse, he reasoned. It would probably have stopped quite soon. Besides, the outcome of the fighting had been highly uncertain. He might be returning to the scene of his column’s defeat and face capture or death.

  Slowly he began to pick his way southwards through the leafless trees, following the horse’s tracks, which became less and less distinct as the ground grew more flinty towards the edge of the coppice. How he wished he had spent more time with his scouts learning the secrets of tracking. Lifting his eyes from the faint hoof prints, he scanned the horizon in the hope of catching sight of his mount. Instead, he saw some riders perhaps a mile away, approaching from the north in a cloud of dust. He couldn’t tell whether they were friend or enemy and took cover behind the trunk of one of the larger trees, straining his eyes to pick out any identifying signs. He could not, and remained still behind the trunk as the squadron came closer. Then it divided. Half the men headed around one side of the coppice, the remainder around the other, both halves clearly bent on a thorough search. As they came even nearer, Shah Jahan shrank back against the tree trunk, trying to make himself as small and inconspicuous as he could. Suddenly to his intense relief he recognised the leading officer – a tall Rajput mounted on a black horse and wearing saffron robes beneath his steel breastplate. It was Ashok Singh. The troops were his own. He emerged from the shelter of the tree trunk and ran to the edge of the coppice.

  ‘Majesty, is that you? Are you wounded?’ Ashok Singh shouted, dropping from his saddle.

  ‘Yes – and no, at least not seriously. Praise God you have found me. I was knocked out and my horse carried me here, I think, before I collapsed from it.’

  ‘We found it wandering not too far away.’

  ‘Were we victorious in the battle?’

  ‘Yes, Majesty. We gained the upper hand in the fighting during which we lost sight of you and drove the Bijapurans from their camp, inflicting many casualties on them as they retreated.’

  ‘Is the pursuit still continui
ng?’

  ‘No. Our losses were also high. In your absence your generals thought it better to regroup and tend our wounded rather than maintain the chase. They feared another ambush of the type that overtook Ahmed Aziz and of course we needed to discover what had happened to you.’

  So the victory was by no means complete, thought Shah Jahan, but better a partial success than the setbacks he had suffered previously.

  Two hours later, once more wearing his breastplate, which one of his soldiers had retrieved from its hiding place, Shah Jahan mounted his horse. Nearby the pyre hastily constructed by his Rajputs from the coppice’s dead trees crackled and burned. By her dress the old woman had clearly been a Hindu and it had seemed only proper to accord her the rites of her faith. But with the flames licking around the cotton-wrapped corpse there was no need to linger. Let the old woman crumble to ash alone in the desert. The important thing now was to re-join the main body of his troops before demoralising rumours spread that the emperor had been injured, even killed. Casting a last look at the spiralling black smoke of the pyre, he urged his tired horse to a canter.

  For the first few miles not a living thing crossed their path in the arid and featureless terrain, but then Shah Jahan noticed what looked like a small village – no more than six or seven shacks – away to their right. Perhaps there was a well not yet dry where they could water their horses. Signalling to his men, he turned his mount in the direction of the low mud-brick houses. As they approached, an old man staggered up from his charpoy beneath a withered banyan tree which had retained just a few of its leaves and stumbled forward on stick-thin legs that looked too weak to bear even his frail weight.

  ‘Food, gentlemen, food, I beg you …’ he cried out through cracked lips.

  Shah Jahan reined in his horse. The old man’s eyes stared unnaturally bright in sunken eye sockets above prominent cheekbones. ‘Are your stores exhausted? When did you last eat?’

  ‘Our grain was gone six weeks ago. A few days later our animals began to die. We ate their carcasses – skin and entrails too. We even ground their bones to make a kind of flour. We were lucky our well still had a little water. But other than that we’ve eaten nothing but dried leaves and two geckos we caught a few days ago.’

  ‘Where are the other villagers?’

  ‘They left three days since to seek food elsewhere but my wife was too weak and I’ve remained with her.’

  ‘Give him what food we have and any spare water bottles,’ Shah Jahan told Ashok Singh. ‘I hadn’t realised the extent of the famine.’

  ‘It is bad, Majesty. Around the walls of Burhanpur I have seen proud men fight over undigested grain one had extracted from animal dung. But it seems far worse in these outlying regions. Parents are said to be selling their children into servitude for a few coins in the hope that both they and the children may thereby live. There are even rumours of cannibalism among some of the hill people whose flocks of sheep and goats have perished.’

  As his Rajputs handed the man food and water Shah Jahan could not get the thought of people grinding bones for flour and even descending to cannibalism from his mind. Perhaps he shouldn’t be surprised. After all, it was only a few hours since he himself had killed the old woman. However, as he rode on another thought struck him. The man must have truly loved his wife to stay with her rather than desert her to seek his chances away from the village, just as he himself would have stayed with Mumtaz. If survival was a basic and selfish instinct shared with animals, man also had other more noble ones … like love.

  Chapter 4

  Supported by Satti al-Nisa and wearing a shift of sapphire silk, Mumtaz stepped carefully down the three white marble steps into the pool of rose oil-scented water. Despite her bulk – in a few weeks she would give birth – her every move was graceful, thought Shah Jahan, watching from the doorway into the hammam. The apricot glow of the candles accentuated the curves of her body. For a moment he allowed himself the luxury of just watching her as she lay back in the pool, resting her head against its side as attendants poured more water down two marble shoots carved in a fish-scale pattern to make the droplets ripple and dance. At least here within the encircling walls of Burhanpur he had created a haven for Mumtaz. Red lilies and sweet-scented champa flowers bloomed in the courtyards and the ancient fountains had been coaxed to new life.

  Yet beyond the walls lay an unforgiving landscape where men and beasts struggled beneath a pitiless sun that was daily sucking them and their land dry. In their temples his Hindu subjects were beseeching their gods to relieve their suffering – even making blood sacrifice to the many-armed Kali. Some were blaming the Moghul emperor for failing to aid his people. Last week two saddhus, bony ash-daubed bodies pale as ghosts, had walked up to the gates of Burhanpur, shaking their sticks and denouncing him. He had given orders they should not be molested and they had remained in the blistering heat for an hour. Before departing they had placed what looked like the body of a young child on the ground. When his soldiers investigated they found it was only a bundle of sticks wrapped in dirty cloth with a dried gourd for a head but the message was clear. Children were dying and he, the emperor, was to blame. He hadn’t told Mumtaz.

  As he stepped towards the pool, she heard his footsteps and turned her head, smiling. ‘I felt so tired tonight – I thought a bath would revive me.’

  He waited until the tall figure of Satti al-Nisa and the other women had withdrawn, then sat on the pool’s marble ledge. ‘The famine’s getting even worse. Every day I receive reports of whole villages emptying as people take their surviving livestock west to seek water. I’ve ordered the imperial granaries in the affected areas to be opened but there’s just not enough grain to go round – only enough to feed the people for a few weeks, not their flocks. Yet without their animals their future is bleak. In some places the Bijapuran rebels are raiding the grain stores.’

  ‘You are doing what you can.’

  ‘But I feel helpless. Despite my wealth and power what is needed is water, not gold. If the rains don’t come quickly many more will die.’

  ‘Not even you can defeat nature.’

  ‘I should be able to do better for my people and I can’t while this war distracts me … I must end it quickly.’

  ‘You’re being impatient again. I’d rather stay here a year, two years even, than see you hazard yourself for the sake of a short campaign.’

  In the candlelight Shah Jahan saw the earnestness in Mumtaz’s eyes. Leaning forward he stroked her cheek. ‘You’re right. I am impatient. I always have been. It’s not only that I want to deal decisively with my enemies and be free to turn my ambition elsewhere – I want to be able to take you back to the comfort and security of Agra. Long ago, when we first married, I vowed to protect you from dangers of all kinds and to give you the life of peace and luxury you deserved. But when my father turned against us I couldn’t keep that promise. Since we’ve been here in Burhanpur I’ve worried that I’ve failed you again and exposed you to unnecessary hazards. This is no place for you.’

  ‘It was my choice. I refused be parted from you, as I’ve always done …’ Mumtaz sat up, then, gripping the marble ledge, pulled herself upright. ‘Help me out.’ Standing before him she took his face between her hands and kissed his forehead. ‘The present is as it is. Again I made my choice, and again it was to be with you. As for the past, we survived it together. It is over, as I’ve told you so many times. Why keep tormenting yourself with unrectifiable regrets?’

  ‘You’re right. I must look ahead, but some things are hard to forget. By defeating my enemies quickly I can do what is best for those I love and win my subjects’ respect for me as their new emperor.’

  ‘You already have it. Your father himself gave you the title “Shah Jahan”, “Lord of the World”, and time and time again you proved your worthiness of it.’

  ‘That was a long time ago. Much has happened since then and my people don’t yet know me.’

  ‘You are as stubborn as our so
n Aurangzeb. Go if you must. But promise me one thing, at least – that before charging headlong into battle you will think what may be in your enemy’s mind … Others can be as clever and cunning as you. Each time I bid you farewell I need to believe you will come back to me.’

  ‘I promise to take care.’ He saw that Mumtaz was shivering despite the warm air. ‘You should put on dry clothes – I will summon your attendants.’

  He was about to ring the silver bell hanging from a green silk cord when Jahanara appeared through the cusped doorway, breathing hard as if she’d run quickly. ‘It’s Dara … a rider has just brought the news … He’ll be here tomorrow.’

  ‘You’re sure? He wasn’t due to reach Burhanpur for another two weeks,’ Shah Jahan said.

  ‘The messenger says Dara has been insisting on riding all day and much of the night.’

  Shah Jahan glanced at Mumtaz, whose face was glowing at the thought of seeing their son after so many months. ‘I’ll send troops at once to meet the party.’

  ‘Let Aurangzeb go with them so he can share in the glory of his brother’s return,’ Mumtaz said. ‘Young as he is, I know how much he envied Dara the opportunity of going to the Persian court.’

  Shah Jahan considered for a moment. ‘If we were at peace I’d agree, but the Bijapurans are impudent enough for anything. I’m not sending an escort for show but to ensure Dara and the rest of embassy reach Burhanpur safely. I think it best that Aurangzeb remains here.’

  Seated on his throne on the sandstone platform in the middle of the courtyard of the Burhanpur fort, Shah Jahan waited, hiding his impatience. There were few times when he wished himself an ordinary family man, free to behave as he pleased, but this was one of them. The neighing of horses and the clatter of hooves on flagstones from beyond the arched gateway had told him that Tuhin Roy, his envoy, and his party had arrived. He found it hard not to rush to greet his son but protocol demanded a formal ceremony. That was why his courtiers and commanders were standing in rows before him, while on a low dais to his right his three younger sons waited, dressed in brocade coats of Moghul green with ropes of pearls round their necks.