Empire of the Moghul: The Serpent's Tooth (15 page)

Pushing his opponent from him and rolling sideways, he gulped in air. His enemy – tall and heavily built – was writhing doubled up on the ground, clutching at a wound in his left side. Taking a few more deep breaths Shah Jahan got up and staggered across to him, pulled him over onto his stomach and thrust his head into the same puddle where just a moment ago he had been struggling for his own life. Straddling the man, he pushed his head down as hard as he could into the liquid mud. The Bijapuran threshed and bucked, trying to dislodge him, but he held on. For some moments the man’s feet kicked furiously but then his body grew limp. Standing, Shah Jahan retrieved his sword. Then he stood for a moment, back against the overturned cart, trying to gauge the progress of the battle.

‘Majesty, are you all right? I lost sight of you in the fighting.’ It was Ashok Singh, leaning from his saddle.

‘That new horse of mine tripped and fell.’

‘Give me your hand, Majesty. Pull yourself up behind me. Even if the fighting’s nearly over it’s still safer on horseback than on the ground.’ Ashok Singh was right, Shah Jahan thought, though most of the bodies sprawled on the earth were Bijapuran and resistance seemed to be over. As he watched, four yellow-clad soldiers emerged from a tent and threw down their weapons while a few yards away a Moghul cavalryman pinioned a Bijapuran whose sword was still drawn to the side of a baggage cart with the tip of his lance.

‘Majesty. We have taken a number of prisoners. Are your orders still the same?’

‘Yes. Execute them. But do it quickly and cleanly.’

Their death agony would be short, Shah Jahan thought, gazing at the carnage around him, unlike the death of Mumtaz and the long agony of his own grief. He felt no joy in the death of his foes, just an overwhelming weariness and gratitude that the fighting was over and he was victorious. At last he could return to Agra to raise his monument to love – his love of Mumtaz.

A
s he topped the crest of the low ridge, Shah Jahan signalled the column to halt and, shading his eyes, looked north towards Agra. The familiar sandstone walls of the fort glowed red in the noonday heat. In the centre of the plain extending from the bottom of the ridge to the outskirts of the city he could make out a long line of troops – some on horseback, others on elephants – coming to escort the Moghul emperor and his victorious army on the final mile of their journey home.

He would re-enter his fortress with fitting ceremony – drums would beat in the gatehouse and green banners flutter on the battlements – but he had ordered that there should be no throwing of flowers or showering of silver and gold coin, no processions of dancers and musicians, as there would have been if Mumtaz had still been at his side. Ever since Dara and Jahanara had accompanied her coffin back to Agra he had longed for the moment when he could follow. Now, the thought of riding alone up the fort’s familiar winding ramp to the imperial apartments, refurbished during his absence for an empress who would never see them, was inexpressibly painful.

Yet he must, it was his duty. His astrologers had named today as the most auspicious for his return for many weeks to come. Such things mattered to the people if not to him. Though he had lost his empress he must make it appear that an aura of good fortune still surrounded him and his dynasty. To reinforce the message he would ride slowly through the streets of the city to the fort accompanied by his sons. Dara Shukoh would arrive with the escort while Shah Shuja, Aurangzeb and Murad, dressed in the white of mourning as he still was and riding matched white horses with green trappings, were waiting just a few yards behind him, ready to take their place in the procession.

As soon as the ceremonials were over he would go by barge along the Jumna to inspect the progress on Mumtaz’s tomb. Ustad Ahmad’s reports had been buoyant. Narrowing his eyes, Shah Jahan looked beyond the fort and across the bend of the river, trying to identify the site, but it was masked by the dull apricot shimmer on the horizon.

‘Father, look, there’s Dara …’ Shah Shuja broke into his thoughts.

Peering down towards the bottom of the ridge, Shah Jahan saw a figure urging his horse up the path. The sight cheered him. God had taken Mumtaz but with four fine sons his dynasty would live on. He had much he should be grateful for.

The next morning Shah Jahan glanced up into the pale, almost colourless sky. According to the scientific instrument an Italian trader had brought to his court, today was the hottest of the year so far. The curious-looking device consisted of a glass bulb filled with water attached to a long tube, also of glass, on which a series of lines had been etched. According to the Italian, a man named Galileo had invented it and it was in common use in Europe. The trader had shown Aslan Beg how to use it. The complicated process fascinated Dara Shukoh, though he himself doubted the instrument’s utility. Wasn’t nearly every day on the plains of Hindustan hot?

Approaching the place where the brick core of the sandstone platform was taking shape and Ustad Ahmad was waiting for him, Shah Jahan coughed as the coarse dust hanging in the air caught at his throat. ‘Majesty, if you accompany me to that mound over there you will see better and the air will be clearer.’ Shah Jahan followed Ustad Ahmad across the hard-baked ground to a small hillock. His architect was right – the view was better from here. He could clearly distinguish the perimeter of the vast platform – 970 feet long and 364 feet wide according to Ustad Ahmad – on which the mausoleum would stand.

‘It still seems to me incredible that ground so close to the river can support the weight.’

Ustad Ahmad smiled. ‘Majesty, I’ve checked my calculations again and again and I am entirely certain, provided we strengthen the bank in the right way, that it will. I’ve already ordered the workers to dig shafts close to the riverbank, varying their depths to compensate for the slope, and then line them with bricks and a cement made of lime and sand and fill them with rubble and more cement. I’ve also ordered them to position piers on top of the shafts to support the platform.’

‘But aren’t labourers digging down on the riverbank too?’

‘Yes, Majesty. They’re excavating large holes in which they’re burying cement-filled ebony boxes to provide added reinforcement against the rise and fall of the Jumna.’

Shah Jahan nodded. Ustad Ahmad had thought of everything.

‘We now have twenty thousand workers. Those are their living quarters.’ The architect pointed to the south of the building site. ‘As well as their huts there are four caravanserais for the merchants whose camel and mule trains arrive daily and for the boatmen bringing materials by barge along the Jumna. They have named their city Mumtazabad in honour of the late empress. I hope that doesn’t offend you, Majesty.’

‘No, it’s fitting. But tell me, have you everything you need? Is enough sandstone arriving?’

‘Yes, we already have a good supply. While you were still in the south, I obtained Prince Dara’s permission to construct a road of packed earth ten miles long so that the teams of oxen can haul their carts laden with stone from the local quarries here more easily. Would you like to see the masons at work, Majesty? A group are over there beneath that cotton awning.’

A middle-aged man in a white dhoti with a red Hindu tilak mark on his forehead was bending over a large, square block of sandstone, watched by two youths who by their looks were clearly his sons. As Shah Jahan drew closer he saw that the mason was hammering a straight row of small nail-like wedges into the block. Suddenly aware of the emperor and his architect, the man jerked upright.

‘We didn’t mean to disturb you. Please continue,’ said Shah Jahan.

With a nervous look at his visitors the mason resumed his work, sweat beading on his muscular arms as he drove the line of wedges deeper into the stone. After several minutes he passed the hammer to one of his sons, who continued hitting the wedges until suddenly the sandstone split cleanly. Using a large length of wood, the younger man levered one of the pieces aside. The mason ran his fingers over the newly cut surface with a grunt of satisfaction, then took a fine chisel and began almost tenderly to smooth the edges.

‘The masons work the stone with their chisels and polish it with grit until the surface becomes as smooth as alabaster,’ explained Ustad Ahmad. ‘When each block is ready they will lift it into place and secure it with cement, iron dowels and clamps. You’ll not detect a crack between them.’

But Shah Jahan’s attention was on the mason, who was incising a triangle into the stone. ‘What are you doing?’

‘Making my mark. This is the greatest project of my life and I want to leave some sign that it was my work.’

‘Other masons have been doing the same, Majesty. I saw no reason to forbid it.’

‘And I don’t either. I’m pleased the craftsmen have such pride in their work. Here, take this.’ Shah Jahan handed some coins to the mason. ‘Thank you for your dedication and your skill.’ Then he turned away. ‘Ustad Ahmad, you’ve created a design of great beauty, but something is still lacking.’

‘Majesty?’ Ustad Ahmad looked more surprised than disturbed.

Ever since his dream of a bejewelled Mumtaz standing in the doorway of her tomb, Shah Jahan had been thinking how best to put his vision into effect. ‘I want more ornament for the tomb. I want gems inlaid into the marble. Few people know more about jewels than myself. I will select the best from my treasure houses. If there isn’t enough of any stone – green jade, perhaps, or dark blue lapis lazuli – I’ll import it from beyond my borders. When I have chosen the materials I will have some of my Hindu subjects who are, I know, skilled in the art they call
panchi kura
– the inlaying of stone – do the work. I may also employ European craftsmen – I remember two Italians who visited my father’s court when I was a boy. They brought pictures of the city of their birth – Florence, they called it – which looked like paintings but in fact were composed of tiny pieces of semi-precious stones.’

‘What patterns do you want inlaid into the marble, Majesty? Geometric designs, perhaps?’

‘No. Flowers, green leaves and curling tendrils that look as real as if they were truly growing over the mausoleum, so that my wife’s tomb becomes a living thing. I want some further decoration too. I wish other craftsmen to breathe life into the cold marble walls with relief carvings of tall irises and slender-stemmed tulips bending in the breeze as they do in Kashmir. I know it can be done.’

‘What do you think, Father? Have Dara and I chosen well from the Koran? It wasn’t easy.’ Jahanara spoke softly.

Shah Jahan nodded. Soon after returning to Agra he’d asked his two eldest children to suggest some wording. The verse was exactly right to inlay around the frame of the gateway, reminding visitors that they were entering both a spiritual place and an earthly heaven. ‘I’ll order Amanat Khan to lay out the words for the stonecutters to chisel out.’

‘He is a true artist. His calligraphy is so fluid.’

‘That’s why I summoned him from Shiraz.’ Shah Jahan looked down at the table on which stood a wooden model of the entire complex. The four white minarets – one at each corner of the marble plinth – were an inspired touch. In his excitement to convince him they would enhance the design, Ustad Ahmad had called them ‘ladders to heaven’. Just to look at the model gave Shah Jahan pleasure, but then his smile faded. ‘It will be many years, of course, before the tomb is ready to receive your mother’s body. Meanwhile I can do little except inspect progress and authorise the payment of the bills my treasurer keeps presenting.’

‘Would you like me to see to the bills? As First Lady of the Empire I should have some responsibilities.’

‘I gave you that title because it was your mother’s, not to make a drudge of you.’

‘It wouldn’t be any more onerous than dealing with the correspondence and petitions your steward sent me on your behalf while you were still in the Deccan. Anyway, it would provide me with an occupation. You’ve been giving Dara more tasks – why shouldn’t I do more too?’