The Serpent's tooth

Chapter 24

Agra Fort, January 1666

‘Aurangzeb has refused me. I thought he would. He writes that his campaigns in the south are costly and he can’t afford expensive building projects. He dismisses the idea as an old man’s fantasy and tells me not to raise the question again …’

Jahanara sighed. Though in her heart she’d known it was unlikely, she’d still hoped that Aurangzeb might be swayed. It had long been her father’s dream to construct a black marble counterpart of the Taj across the Jumna as his own tomb.

‘You mustn’t be sad, Father — not on your birthday.’ Jahanara had dressed carefully in her best silks and jewels and sent special instructions to the kitchens for the preparation of her father’s favourite dishes, even though she knew he’d not eat much. His appetite was growing smaller and smaller. Shah Jahan, though, would not be distracted.

‘Aurangzeb’s right, of course. I am old. No other Moghul emperor survived to this great age of mine. Akbar, the oldest, was over ten years younger than me when he died.’

‘Seventy-four is not so old, Father …’ But even as she spoke Jahanara thought how weary he looked — and how frail. As he neared his birthday Shah Jahan’s strong constitution had begun to weaken and the slow but irreversible decline into deep old age to set in. In the last few weeks he had scarcely ventured from his comfortable apartments overlooking the right-hand bend in the Jumna beneath the fort and beyond that the Taj Mahal.

How handsome and strong her father had once been as he rode out at the head of his army, but now his once muscular warrior’s frame was wasting away. Time had been unkind to him, as it was to most men, but in his case perhaps not as cruel as his own flesh and blood. In the seven years of Shah Jahan’s imprisonment Aurangzeb had not visited him once nor written a single spontaneous letter. Any important news had continued to come from Roshanara … It was from her sister that she and her father had finally learned of Shah Shuja’s disappearance on the eastern fringes of the empire. In his eagerness to escape Suleiman’s approaching army the prince had ventured into the swamplands ruled by wild Arakan pirates and never been seen again. Of the four brothers who had once been so close, only one had survived … Aurangzeb.

‘I was born under the sign of Libra …’ Shah Jahan was continuing. Jahanara guessed what was coming next. She had heard him say it many times before. ‘The conjunction of the planets at the moment of my birth was the same as at the birth of Timur. My grandfather named me Khurram, “joyous”. He said I was “a riband in the cap of royalty and more resplendent than the sun.”’ Shah Jahan looked up at her from the divan where he was resting and such a smile lit his face that for a moment the years rolled back to reveal the man he had once been. She was glad that he could take such pleasure in the past. The present sometimes seemed so bleak, even though Aurangzeb had honoured his promise to make their confinement more comfortable. Their apartments were well furnished and they had enough servants. But what could compensate for their loss of liberty? Often she found her father looking across the Jumna towards the Taj Mahal. It was his dearest wish to be allowed to visit Mumtaz’s tomb and walk in the gardens he himself had planted, but Aurangzeb had repeatedly refused to allow him to leave the fort.

‘Father, tell me that story again — the one about how my great-grandfather led you through the streets of Agra on the back of a baby elephant to the imperial mosque school to begin your education. I always enjoy hearing it …’

It wasn’t a lie. She enjoyed the stories of his boyhood only a little less than he did telling them. Now, as she listened to his soft, low voice, she saw before her a young boy — exactly four years, four months and four days old as tradition demanded — with Akbar by the side of his gorgeously caparisoned elephant, looking excitedly around him as the crowds cheered and flung rose petals … She pictured the beturbaned scholars, Hindus as well as Muslims, grouped at the entrance to the school, waiting to take the child inside so he could begin his education as an imperial prince.

But when Shah Jahan was still only about halfway through his tale, Jahanara saw his eyes closing and his head beginning to nod forward. He slept so much these days. Rising quietly from her stool so as not to disturb him, she walked to the casement. At first her legs felt a little stiff, but then she herself was getting older — in April she would be fifty-two. Her hair, though still thick, was growing white as the snows of Kashmir she hadn’t seen for so many years. Yet what did it matter how she looked? There were few to see her now …

From the casement she watched a young boy leading a camel down to the Jumna to drink and other children running along the riverbank and shouting. The sight gave her pleasure, yet their high spirits and simple joy in each other’s company cost her a pang. How narrow and constrained her own existence seemed in comparison. Yet her youth had been full of life and of people — her mother and six brothers and sisters, the endless bustle and activity of the court, their journeyings, the attendants who had become friends, like Satti al-Nisa, now at rest in her tomb in the grounds of the Taj Mahal … and of course there was Nicholas Ballantyne.

Some months before her death Satti al-Nisa had smuggled a letter from him into the fort. It had come all the way from England — a journey that, from the date, had taken over a year. It had said simply that he had reached home and was living quietly on his brother’s estates but that he missed the heat and colour of Hindustan and of course his friends at court. When she had read the letter her eyes had filled with tears. She’d been relieved that Nicholas had at last returned to his cold, rain-washed island but she’d often wondered whether he could ever find contentment there. The sadnesses of disappointment and unfulfilled hope were part of life, whether that of an imperial princess or an adventurer like Nicholas, just as they were of the most humble peasant.

Jahanara woke with a start. The pale light of a late winter dawn was filtering into her apartment, throwing into relief the intricate sandstone carving around the casement. Getting up, she walked across to the window and looked out through the mists that so often shrouded the Jumna at this time of year. Suddenly a shiver ran through her, not of cold, even though the morning was a chill one, but of apprehension. She must go to her father, whose frailty had seemed to increase daily since his birthday two weeks before. Without pausing to question her intuition she called for her attendants and quickly began to dress.

In less than a quarter of an hour, warmly clothed and with a soft Kashmiri shawl drawn across her face in place of a veil, Jahanara was hurrying to her father’s apartments. Two of the haram eunuchs led the way and two of her own female attendants followed. Reaching the ivory-clad doors to her father’s rooms the eunuchs knocked with the ebony staves of office they carried, and then as the doors were opened from inside stood back for Jahanara to enter. ‘Has my father awoken yet?’ she asked his chief servant, an elderly silver-haired Pathan.

‘Yes, Highness,’ he began, and relief flooded into Jahanara as he continued, ‘He was awake about an hour ago when we looked in on him as we now regularly do. He told us he did not wish to rise but asked for a bed to be prepared beneath the domed pavilion just outside his room where he could rest longer.’

‘Is he in the pavilion now?’

‘Yes, Highness. It didn’t take us long to ready the bed. He was dozing when I passed by ten minutes ago.’

‘I will go to him.’ Still feeling an unaccountable unease, Jahanara crossed the richly carpeted room and went through the exterior doors out to the pavilion. Her father was lying on a divan propped against brocade cushions and bolsters and swathed in soft wool blankets and shawls against the early morning cool. A gentle breeze caught a lock of the silver hair protruding from beneath the chintz-patterned shawl framing his head. Jahanara bent and tucked the strand of hair back beneath the shawl. At first Shah Jahan, whose eyes were half closed, did not seem to notice either her touch or her presence. But slowly his eyes opened a little further and focused.

‘Jahanara, is that you?’

‘Yes, Father.’ Jahanara took his hand. How soft his skin felt. How little flesh there was on his palms and his long fingers.

‘Good. I am so glad.’

For a moment or two neither said anything more. Watching Shah Jahan’s shallow, rapid breathing Jahanara realised her forebodings had not been misplaced. His condition had deteriorated even in the few hours since she had last seen him. Then her father put her fears into words. ‘I feel my life ebbing from me.’ Seeing tears well in Jahanara’s eyes he went on, ‘Do not weep. Every man has his time to die and sometimes I feel I have gone beyond my own. I have no pain, just a sense of the life force draining from me.’ Then his voice strengthened. ‘Before I go, lift me higher against the bolsters so I can see your mother’s tomb.’

Struggling to contain her tears, Jahanara hoisted her father’s frail body up the bolsters and tucked more cushions behind his back.

‘Thank you. Now give me your hand again. I have things I must say.’

Taking his hand once more in her own, Jahanara realised the futility of trying to convince him that he was mistaken about his condition and so just nodded. ‘Go on. I am listening.’

‘It may not matter to him, but tell Aurangzeb that I forgive him … Above all beg him to do all he can to avoid conflict with and between his sons. Such animosities have plagued our dynasty since we first entered Hindustan. I wanted to end them … but to my lasting regret I failed.’

‘I will, Father,’ Jahanara said softly.

‘I hope I have not sinned too greatly. I know that I have done things that are wrong and done so more frequently than many men. But I believe that was because my ambition and my subsequent position gave me greater freedom than others and not because I was more wicked at heart. I have done what I have done out of love for my wife and my children and my dynasty.’

‘None of us can doubt your love, Father. God will forgive you for your sins. Here on earth the tomb you have built for our mother will prove an incomparable monument to your great love which will long outlast other memories of you.’ Jahanara heard her father’s breathing become irregular and he gasped for air as she clasped his hand more tightly. ‘Soon you will be in the gardens of Paradise with Mother.’

‘I see her,’ said Shah Jahan, fixing his eyes on the Taj Mahal standing proud above the Jumna mist. Slowly his pulses faded and his eyes glazed. The fifth Moghul emperor was dead and, as she realised this, his eldest daughter collapsed over his body, weeping warm tears for him, his wife and for all his children alive and dead, herself included.

After a minute or two, however, she lowered her father’s body back on the divan and stood up, composed herself and straightened her back. She must remember she was a Moghul. She had a duty to give her father the burial he deserved. If he could not have a black marble tomb of his own he would join his wife in the luminous white one he had raised as a monument to her and to their love.