Empire of the Moghul: The Serpent's Tooth (27 page)
Read Empire of the Moghul: The Serpent's Tooth Online
Authors: Alex Rutherford
Tags: #Historical, #Fiction
‘He understands neither me nor my ambitions and never has because he doesn’t want to.’ Aurangzeb shook his head.
‘But at least he’s sending you back as his viceroy in the Deccan.’ Roshanara moved a little closer and placed a comforting arm round her brother’s shoulder as they stood on a terrace of the Agra fort.
‘He’s only done it to save face – his face, not mine. He wasn’t interested in why the campaign failed – only in what people will say. I’m sure Dara has been stirring him up against me. Both of them should take care not to push me too far.’
‘You may well be right in suspecting Dara has influenced Father against you. While you were away, they spent a great deal of time together. I felt quite left out, Jahanara was so often with them.’
At the mention of his oldest sister Aurangzeb’s face softened. He had always been fond of Jahanara, Roshanara reflected. But it was time he realised that his eldest sister’s first loyalty was to Dara, not him, and that if he wanted a sisterly ally she, Roshanara, was willing and waiting. Perhaps he should know that the First Lady of the Empire might not be as perfect as he seemed to think.
‘Nicholas Ballantyne returned to Agra with you, didn’t he?’
‘Yes. He was wounded in the leg in the final stages of the retreat but has recovered. Why do you ask?’
‘Because of something that happened just before Murad left on campaign. Nicholas Ballantyne visited Jahanara in her mansion. Since then they have been exchanging letters, even while he was away fighting for you …’
‘That can’t be … Who told you that? How do you know?’ Aurangzeb looked stunned.
‘One of my former waiting women is in her employ and tells me what is going on. I tried to talk to Father about it, but you know what he’s like where Jahanara’s concerned, especially since the fire. But who knows the real purpose of their letters? I’m not saying there is anything truly improper, just that Nicholas doesn’t understand our ways and perhaps has been giving Jahanara information about your conduct of the campaign, and she’s been using that to help Dara turn Father against you.’
‘Jahanara wouldn’t do such a thing.’
‘Are you sure? Father is growing older. Perhaps she’s already looking ahead to a time when she might have to choose between her brothers. If she wants Dara to become the next emperor, she’ll do her best to help him. That doesn’t make her your enemy – I know how fond you are of her, as indeed I am – but love of position and of influence changes people and I believe it has changed her. After all, she’s not content to live in the
haram
as I and Gauharara do, but has her own palace and household, gives her own parties and entertainments. And her relationship with the Englishman is another symptom of her arrogance. She thinks she can ignore the conventions that bind the rest of us.’
‘Not just conventions but the tenets of her religion that condemn such immodesty,’ Aurangzeb said quietly.
‘Don’t be so angry with her. She loves you as a brother, I’m certain. It’s just that she perhaps favours Dara for the throne.’ Roshanara smiled, but won no answering smile from her brother. Instead he was staring at the ground. That he might hold second place to Dara in Jahanara’s heart was painful. If he’d ever thought about it at all, he’d assumed she loved them equally. Yet the more he pondered, the clearer it became that Roshanara was right. Didn’t Jahanara always take Dara’s part in their disagreements? Didn’t she sympathise with his philosophic musings? When it came down to it, mightn’t she prefer the weak rule of Dara with his lax and flexible views to the stricter and sterner regime he would impose?
Roshanara’s soft voice intruded into thoughts growing ever more bitter and suspicious. ‘If I gain further information about Jahanara’s relationship with the Englishman, what should I do?’
‘Speak to our father again and this time in such terms as to make sure he listens. And tell me … I need to know everything so that I’m prepared. Can I count on you for that? I’ll not stand for anyone – not even Jahanara – conspiring against me.’
J
ahanara re-read Nicholas Ballantyne’s letter more slowly. If she’d hoped a second reading would bring any more comfort than the first she was disappointed. How could things have gone so wrong? She simply didn’t understand, however hard she tried. Shah Jahan’s dismissal of Aurangzeb back to the Deccan had been so peremptory that she’d had no opportunity even to see her brother, let alone talk to him and hear his side of the northern campaign. When she’d tried to raise the subject of Aurangzeb with her father he had refused to discuss him with a tight-lipped obstinacy that had both surprised and wounded her.
Dara thought she was wrong to worry about Aurangzeb. ‘He has a hot head but a cold heart. Firm treatment is the only thing he understands. I’ve told our father so.’ Dara had looked unusually stern as he’d spoken those words, but perhaps he’d never truly forgiven Aurangzeb’s accusations during their inspection of his mansion.
At least she had Nicholas Ballantyne to turn to. Just as he had honoured his promise to write to her about Murad he was again at her urging proving a candid and reliable informant, this time about Aurangzeb and the debacles in the Hindu Kush. He had replied quickly to the message she had sent to his lodgings within the Agra fort asking about Aurangzeb and the reason for the failure of his campaign. If only she could have found something in his letter to help her understand her brother better … Glancing down, her eyes fell again on the passage that had disturbed her most – Nicholas’s account of a skirmish early in the campaign.
Though this particular ambush – only one among many – was unexpected and made in greater strength than usual, our greater discipline and better weapons made our victory certain – at least I thought so. Your brother was in the heart of the fighting – he’s certainly no coward – and was about to charge with his bodyguard against a group of Kafir tribesmen firing down on us from a crest some two hundred yards away. He had ordered me to lead some of my French mercenaries to circle round to support him. We were ready to move, weapons unsheathed, hearts thumping and our horses pawing the ground. We expected him to give the signal at any moment but instead he did something that made us gasp with astonishment.
After gazing up into the sky for a few moments, Aurangzeb suddenly dismounted and pulled something from his saddle. As he lifted it clear, I saw it was a prayer mat. With his bodyguards forming a cordon around him, Aurangzeb laid the mat on the ground and kneeling down began to pray, leaning forward to touch his forehead to the mat, then sitting back on his heels again and again. Glancing up at the sky myself, I realised by the position of the sun that it was the hour of evening prayer.
By now musket balls and arrows were flying all around us. The captain of his guard was one of several killed or wounded as we continued to wait, but their screams had no effect on your brother. He went on praying calmly and without hurry. When he had finished, he rolled up his mat, replaced it on his saddle, remounted and gave the order to charge as if nothing had intervened. We still put the enemy to flight. That evening his mullahs, travelling as always with the army, their tents pitched close to his, commended his piety and his bravery, telling him that both would bring him victory. However, others – myself included if I am honest and Ashok Singh too – were disturbed. A commander who breaks off in the thick of the battle to pray is reckless as well as pious and courageous. However keen he is to ensure his own place in Paradise he has no right to be so careless of the earthly lives of his men.
From that time we suffered a number of desertions, particularly among troops not of your religion. I suspect your brother knew that he was losing the confidence of some of his men. In consequence he almost ceased asking his officers’ advice. His orders became ever more autocratic – even sometimes irrational – as he sought to impose his will and enforce his men’s loyalty. Ashok Singh did what he could to maintain the army’s morale but after his death – a matter of great personal sorrow to me; I cannot help worrying whether I could have done anything to save him – I think your brother doubted his ability to hold his army together through a long and dangerous campaign and that I believe was why he aborted the mission. He is unlike other commanders I have served, being austere and cold. It’s hard to tell what is in his mind and I suspect he would have it thus.
Jahanara touched her scarred cheek. In those terrible weeks after the fire Aurangzeb had hurried back from the Deccan to be at her bedside. Could that tender affectionate brother have become the remote, self-contained man conjured by Nicholas? Yet now that she thought back she realised how little Aurangzeb had ever revealed of himself, his feelings and ambitions, even during the hours they’d spent together at that time. If he was indeed a man such as Nicholas described, what had made him become so? Did some seam of bitterness run through him like a vein of marble or of granite, cold and unyielding, hidden until you dug deep enough? As the eldest of her parents’ children – and as a sister who loved him – it was her duty to try to find out … She owed it to her mother who, had she lived, would surely have penetrated her son’s reserve.
Sitting down cross-legged at her desk she took her pen and began to write again to Nicholas.
Thank you for your letter, even if it has caused me great heartache. How can a woman living such a protected life as I understand fully what is in men’s hearts – their thoughts and feelings, their true desires. What you have said raises so many questions that I cannot rest until I know more. Please, I must see you. Come to me here in my palace tomorrow evening, as you did before.
Heating a stick of wax over a candle she let the red tallow trickle in a little pool on to the bottom of the letter. Then, taking her mother’s ivory seal, she pressed it firmly into the wax. She would have given the letter to her steward but his daughter had just given birth to his first grandson in the town and he had gone to visit her. This time she would have to entrust the errand to someone else.
‘Nasreen!’ she called to her attendant. ‘Come quickly. I have a task for you.’
As he often did, her father had ordered that he was not to be disturbed that evening, but the piece of smooth ivory-coloured paper in her hand gave Roshanara the confidence she needed.
‘I have information for my father that cannot wait,’ she told the captain of the Turkish female guards who protected the main entrance to the emperor’s apartments from the imperial
haram
. The Turk – broad-shouldered and muscular as a man in her tightly belted leather jerkin – hesitated a moment then bowed her close-cropped head. At her signal the guards flung open the silver-clad doors to admit Roshanara into a long torchlit corridor at the far end of which was a second set of doors, also flanked by Turkish
haram
guards.
Accompanied by the captain of the guard, Roshanara took her time as she made her way towards them, the hem of her turquoise silk robe rustling as it brushed the ground. After all, she’d already waited long enough … indeed she’d even begun to think that Nasreen would never obtain any useful information, but finally her patience had been rewarded. She had something to dislodge Jahanara from her patronising pedestal and prove to her father that he should not have treated her so roughly when she had first voiced her suspicions. She paused while the captain of the guard tapped on the second set of doors and informed the
haram
eunuch who appeared that the Princess Roshanara had urgent business with her father.
A few moments later she was in his familiar apartments overlooking the Jumna. Shah Jahan was on the terrace where he often stood at night, gazing across the river at Mumtaz’s mausoleum by the light of an almost full moon.
‘What is it, Roshanara?’ He looked tired, but there was no reproach in his voice for disturbing him so late.
‘I thought you should see this, Father.’ She held out the piece of paper.
‘What is it?’
‘A letter from Jahanara to Nicholas Ballantyne. Yesterday Jahanara asked her attendant Nasreen – the one I spoke about to you before – to take it secretly to Nicholas’s lodgings. However, anxious that her mistress seemed to be conducting a clandestine correspondence with this man and afraid that she might be blamed for helping, she brought it to me unopened. At first I wasn’t sure what to do. Then I remembered that when I told you Nicholas had visited my sister in her mansion you said I’d been right to tell you … I opened the letter, hoping and believing I would find it was nothing, but I confess the contents shocked me. I knew it was my duty to bring the letter to you at once.’
‘What does Jahanara say?’
‘You should read it yourself, Father. Here.’
Shah Jahan took the letter and moved closer to a torch burning in a sconce. The flickering orange light danced across the page as he read. At first he couldn’t believe what he was reading, the words jumping before his eyes, jumbled up and making no sense. He took a deep breath to steady himself and looked again. This time his daughter’s elegant script – written in the pale blue ink she always used – stood out only too clearly, though the hand in which he was holding the letter was beginning to tremble.
How can a woman living such a protected life as I understand fully what is in men’s hearts – their thoughts and feelings, their true desires … Please, I must see you …