Tiger Claws (3 page)

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Authors: John Speed

BOOK: Tiger Claws
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Basant feels liquid warmth at his feet and assumes that he has soiled himself, but then he sees that it is the puddle of Muhedin’s blood that seeps through his jeweled slippers. He swallows back bile.
Shaista Khan glances up and down the mezzanine. Satisfied, he closes the door, quietly, carefully, and heaves the bolts. Then Shaista Khan arranges the bodies on the floor, forming a sort of dam to contain the blood and shit seeping from them. With unexpected gentleness he moves Basant aside. He bends down, removing Basant’s jeweled slippers with his own hands, and tosses them amidst the bodies and blood. Taking a pillow from the bed, he uses it to mop the floor. Basant’s hands dangle at his side like dead things.
“Change of plan,” Shaista Khan whispers. “Straight to the Delhi Gate. Dressed as we are. Right now.” Quietly he opens the door; quietly he looks for trouble. “Come. Now. The fools came alone.”
He steps behind Basant, his hands on Basant’s waist. “I need you, eunuch. I’m lost here. Which way?” whispers Shaista Khan. Basant turns almost imperceptibly. Shaista Khan presses him in that direction, and so they go: Shaista Khan half-follows, half-guides him. Like two odd dancing partners, clinging to the shadows, at last they reach the Delhi Gate.
 
 
Basant wakes, bathed in sweat.
He’s in his servant’s tent. Tiny streams of light leak through pin-sized holes in the old fabric punctuating the brown darkness. Outside the muezzin sings the call to morning prayer. Haridas, his servant, is already gone.
Fears descend on him like biting insects. Though it seems to him he has not slept, through patches of the tent the sun now shines so bright that the air is filled with light. Basant hears the muffled sounds of life going on outside: the calls and chatter, the clangs and rattles of a typical day.
He creeps to the entry, opens the flap, and blinks at the brightness. He realizes he is barefoot; and in a sudden memory remembers Shaista Khan tossing his blood-soaked slippers on the broken bodies in his rooms. He passes his hand across his brow hoping to drive that image from his mind.
He steps behind the tent and takes the silver quill from his turban. He eases it into the scar in his groin and pees copiously into an open ditch that acts as sewer. But even as he sighs with relief, the dark image of dead men in his room closes over him like sudden night.
Haridas, his servant, walks toward him, his freshly shaved head bare in the morning sunlight, his old face lined, but bright and eager.
“I have brought you clean clothes, son,” he says. “Bathe quickly and put them on.” He motions Basant to a bathing area near his tent. The alley is alive with people, mostly low-level servants and servants of servants, and they stare at Basant as he passes. What is a eunuch of the first
rank doing here? they wonder, glancing over their shoulders at him as they pass by.
“Where did you get these clothes?” Basant asks.
“From your rooms, son,” Haridas replies.
“My rooms? You went to my rooms?” Basant licks his lips. “Was anything … amiss?” he asks, as casually as he can manage.
Basant’s reedy voice seems unusually tense; Haridas sees the panic in his eyes. He sits next to Basant, the clothes in a neat pile on his lap, and pats the eunuch’s shoulder. “When I woke, I saw you would need new clothing for the audience today. So I went to fetch some clothes for you.”
“Didn’t the guards try to stop you?” Basant asks.
“I am well known in the Fish House, son. It is my great honor to be known as your servant, and people accord me the respect due the servant of a eunuch of the first rank, and so the guards recognized me.”
“But did no one ask your business?” Haridas shakes his head no. “Did no one challenge you?” Again, no. “Guards around my rooms?” Haridas frowns uncertainly. “No bodies? No blood?” Basant blurts out at last.
Haridas sighs, as if suddenly relieved. “You are making a joke with me, son. You will have your fun with your old servant.”
Basant holds his head in his hands and begins to laugh. Or perhaps to cry. He can no longer tell the difference. Haridas looks on, confused, his shaved head cocked at a quizzical angle, uncertain about what he should do. At last Basant stands, passes his plump palm over his face, and draws a deep breath. “I need to bathe.”
Twenty buckets of cold water later, Basant feels clean and sweet. His fresh clothes gleam in the morning sun, his gems catch fire in its light. The palace shines like a jeweled casket in the bright sun, the walls glisten like wet pearls: the jasper and carnelian embedded in the flesh-white marble flash as he passes; the carvings in the marble sparkle.
Basant’s hands tremble as he walks. Behind each column, a guard stands waiting to arrest him. Of that he is sure. He reasons with himself: here in the public palace, no one knows him; he is just another eunuch. See? No one even glances his way. But Basant is certain they mean only to give him false comfort before they pounce like tigers.
The call of muezzin from the Moti Masjid throws Basant into turmoil. Not now! he thinks. I have no time to pray! But even so Basant stops where he is: touching his ears, touching his knees, bowing in the dusty street. He is too frightened to say his prayers, and too frightened not to pretend to.
Then the air erupts with the harsh roar of war horns, the clash of cymbals, the booming of elephant drums, a thunderclap of sound.
It is Dara arriving. The prince spent the night with his armies across the river, and now marches to his father’s audience in full pomp.
Basant scurries toward the Diwan-i-Am. Not only will he lose face if he is late for Dara’s arrival, but he wants to see!
Sights and sounds assault him with such immense profusion that all his worry evaporates. Musicians by the hundreds spill through the immense Delhi gate, shoving forward in enthusiastic confusion, and the blare of their music echoes and crescendos through the courtyard.
Nobles and bureaucrats and a group of newly honored merchants (who have just received grants of land) crowd into the immense arched courtyard Diwan-i-Am. Though the hall is designed to accommodate thousands, today there is scarcely any space to be found. The crowd pushes forward so that people drop from the edges of the dais in a constant human waterfall.
Finally the musicians blast their instruments mightily as they shove haphazard toward the end of the courtyard. Behind them come row after row of riflemen, with matchlocks gleaming, with turbans piled ridiculously high (it is their regimental pride to wear those sensational turbans); then come five hundred horsemen, their energetic stallions prancing and pawing, crabbing sideways as they look for somewhere to stand.
The courtyard is jammed with commoners and townspeople who have come to see the spectacle; they press forward in a scramble to find a place, and their crush increases the chaos. By contrast, the nobles stand serenely on a platform near the throne clapping at Dara’s arrival. In the blare of the trumpets and drums, no one hears them.
Mounted by fierce riders from the mountains and deserts of Rajputana, the war camels now enter in stately ranks through the gates, small cannons gleaming on their humps.
One by one, the elephants enter as the cheers increase and the drums beat louder. Painted and caparisoned, stately and terrifying, heavy brass war spikes fixed to their brilliant tusks, the elephants are daunting, enormous; they lumber slowly, unconcerned by the noise and chaos.
At last Basant glimpses Dara, son of the emperor, the heir to the Peacock Throne, resplendent on a gold and red velvet howdah on the back of a giant Ceylon elephant. Dara’s golden turban laced with rubies glitters in the brilliant sun, and his face is no less radiant.
The common folk in the courtyard rush toward his elephant like bees
to a flower: they call and wave in a frenzy as the music crescendos even louder. Dara is another Akbar, another Timur!
Dara scatters gold from his howdah, and the people roar and paw through the dust to catch the coins, and call out Lord! and King! But Dara in his splendor seems not to hear. His face is resolute, calm. He motions his mahout to guide the elephant forward.
Basant has been screaming Dara’s name with the rest, though he has been unconscious of doing so. As the elephant moves with glacial pomp toward the hall, and bends its knees before the steps of the dais, the music stops and the crowd grows quiet. In the sudden silence, Dara slips gracefully from the howdah’s height to land with a bouncy spring, like an athlete. With stately dignity he approaches his golden chair at the foot of his father’s throne. The nobles on the dais, a sea of bobbing heads and faces, sweep their hands across the ground and motion toward him, heads bowed.
Dara slides through the crowd. His Rajput bodyguards push along beside him, clearing a path for the prince, but he pretends not to notice and instead walks closer to the crowding nobles, touching a hand, a face. He moves with easy grace through the tumult of faces. When he reaches his golden chair, lifting his hands in acknowledgment of the nobles’ presence, he sits gracefully and shuts his eyes, as if in contemplation.
Basant glances back. A number of horses move toward the dais. Basant admires the richness of their jeweled headpieces and bright silver bridles, manes braided with gems. The riders, he supposes, are Dara’s generals and advisers; but these were not the ones that Dara typically brings to an audience.
Basant recognizes few of the faces.
Then he sees one he knows.
No, he tells himself. But it’s true.
A compact man briskly mounts the dais. Basant recognizes not his face, but his walk: he moves like a coiled spring. His dress is simpler than the others but no less elegant: few jewels but large ones, simple cloth but expensive. From his silk sash hangs a sword in a plain leather scabbard, its handle of ivory, not gold, and the ivory is dark with use.
And there’s that dagger, a dagger and a sheath, and Basant knows the feel of both.
The general notices Basant as he passes, and seems about to nod, then shakes his head as if realizing his error. But Basant’s blood has frozen at the sight of him: Shaista Khan, the general; Shaista Khan, the seducer; Shaista Khan, the murderer.
 
 
Another assault of trumpets and drums blares from the Drum House of Delhi Gate. Basant’s head jerks up, startled out of his panic.
Three lone horsemen ride toward the dais. Two are mounted on elaborately liveried stallions. Their silk jama robes flutter in the morning breeze, jeweled headpieces and sword hilts glitter in the sun. They dismount and wait for the third rider to come.
The last man rides in calmly, more slowly than the other two, his eyes lowered as if lost in thought and unaware of the tumult around him. From time to time he strokes his graying beard as if he were in a room somewhere by himself, lost in thought, or in prayer.
At the steps of the dais he dismounts, cavalry style, kicking his leg in front of him, over his horse’s neck, one hand on his sword hilt.
His white horse, so fiery that it can scarcely be led away by the attendant, wears no fancy livery. Its rider too dresses simply: white cotton pants, white jama, white turban, plain shoes, a green belt with a simple wooden-handled sword such as any field soldier might carry.
It is Aurangzeb. Dara’s brother. The viceroy of the Deccan.
The Deccan is hot, volatile, an area that is always erupting into trouble. The Emperor Shah Jahan could not subdue it, Dara tried and failed; now it is Aurangzeb’s problem. And every day, Dara tells his father how Aurangzeb cannot keep the Deccan under control. Always it is up to Dara to bail out Aurangzeb when things go wrong. Or so he tells the emperor.
As Aurangzeb makes his careful way to stand beside his brother (for only Dara, the emperor’s favorite son, may sit in the Presence), the emperor emerges through the golden doors of the darshan platform. Musicians raise their silver trumpets. The nobles bow from the waist and sweep their hands across the marble floor, bobbing up and down three times as is customary.
And in the courtyard the commoners raise shrill shouts, and the soldiers and attendants begin to cheer as they catch sight of the King of the Earth, and the mahouts strike their beasts to make the elephants stand on two legs and lift their trunks and trumpet with thunderous joy; the whole courtyard an ocean of noise.
The emperor, leaning on the arm of his ancient
khaswajara,
steps to the edge of the darshan platform and turns his head to sweep the entire scene with his gaze. Lowering himself to his cushioned throne, he arranges the cushions to his satisfaction, spits his wad of pan into a jeweled spittoon held
by a eunuch, adjusts his clothes, and whispers to the
khaswajara,
smoke pouring from his lips.
The
khaswajara
is Basant’s boss, a dry and shriveled eunuch called Hing. Keeping his face down, he pushes toward the jali screen, in purdah with his mistress the Princess Roshanara, hoping Master Hing won’t notice. Like most old eunuchs, Master Hing’s eyes are failing, so Basant has little to fear. Past the sour-faced eunuch who guards the jali door, and he’s done it. Safe! Here with his princess.
Basant blinks until his eyes adjust to the dark purdah chamber: a wide, shallow space beside the throne room where harem women watch the goings-on at the Diwan-i-Am. Roshanara has dressed simply: a maroon sari of heavy silk, its dark surface dense with gold embroidery. A few dozen ruby-studded bangles clunk heavily when she moves her arm. A gauze veil is fastened around her head with a rope of pearls the size of chickpeas. Her thick, long hair is pulled tight and sleek against her head.
Her veil is so light, since she is hidden from public view by the intricately carved marble jali screen, that through it Basant can discern all of Roshanara’s elegant features, her moon-round face, her charming nose, her small, even teeth. She glows to see him, and extends her hand. Even her arm is shapely, thinks Basant, as he gently takes her hand, and allows himself to be pulled to her side, like a favorite pet. He nestles in the cushions and she tugs her skirts toward her, giving him room to sit close.
There are a few other women there; hostage wives mostly, hoping to catch a glimpse of a husband or a son while the audience goes on.
Roshanara leans over. “I can barely walk,” she informs him. “As if I rode a stallion all the night.” Her eyes flash, only for him. “Bareback,” she says with emphasis, her smooth teeth gleaming behind perfect lips. She giggles at him, then turns away and giggles some more. Basant feels his heart grow cold, but he says nothing; he just smiles and smiles. Through the jali he watches the throbbing mass of people jostle beneath velvet canopies.

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