Empire of the Moghul: The Tainted Throne (25 page)

As for the Portuguese, Jahangir had seen the permits they sold to their passengers engraved with the images of their gods – a bearded young man called Jesus and a pale-faced virgin queen whose name was Mary. The Portuguese ships
were strong and their well-armed sailors put up a better resistance to the pirates, but the Portuguese in their trading settlement at Goa were growing ever more arrogant. Their priests were aggressively seeking converts among both the Hindu and the Muslim populations and even trying to persuade pilgrims waiting to take ship for Mecca that their beliefs were mistaken. The Portuguese were also asking increasing sums for the transport of pilgrims. The fact that the English king had sent an ambassador to court might make them moderate their demands.

‘Tell your master I will consider his proposals and that we will talk further,’ Jahangir said. He gave a brief nod to the trumpeter standing to the right of the dais and the man put his bronze instrument to his lips to sound the short blast signalling that the interview was over. As Jahangir rose, the ambassador again stuck out a leg and made his elaborate homage. When he straightened up again his red face was even redder and beneath the arms of his yellow brocade jacket were dark circles of sweat. Had he been nervous or was it just the unaccustomed heat of Hindustan?

‘Send in more wine,’ Jahangir ordered his
qorchi.
Roe’s face looked shiny with perspiration, the muscles slack – the result of the prodigious amount of alcohol he’d consumed over the past three hours. Jahangir had never met a man with such capacity, but wine didn’t seem to dull Roe’s wits – rather the reverse. The more he drank the more Jahangir enjoyed his conversation, relishing the information flowing from his willing lips. Roe was clearly an educated man though the writers he was fond of quoting – Roman and Greek philosophers, some
dead for nearly two thousand years, he said – were mostly unknown to Jahangir. During the four months he’d spent at court the ambassador’s Persian had improved and, though Jahangir might have expected the contrary, wine seemed to give him added fluency. Only yesterday Jahangir had listened to him make a spirited case to one of his own scholars that belief in the existence of the philosopher’s stone – a substance thought by some to have the power to change base metals into silver and gold and even to hold the secret of eternal life – was irrational nonsense. Jahangir, whose inclination was to be sceptical of anything which could not be proved, had agreed.

Spread out on the table before them was a book of maps created by a map-maker whose name according to Roe was Mercator, which he had presented to Jahangir soon after his arrival at court. Roe called the book an ‘Atlas’, explaining that was the name of the mythological man bearing the whole weight of the world upon his shoulders depicted on the cover. ‘I know, Majesty, that on your accession you took the title “Seizer of the World”, but see how much of the world there actually is,’ the ambassador had said a little slyly but making Jahangir laugh. Fascinated, he had kept going back to it, carefully turning the heavy pages to examine the outlines of lands he had never even heard of, all the while his brain teeming with questions for Roe, which was why he had invited him yet again to his private apartments.

‘According to what you yourself have told me, it seems that the Spanish, the Portuguese and the Dutch are better explorers even than the English? That man Magellan you were talking about the other day – the first whose ship sailed right around the world – he was Portuguese, wasn’t he?’

Roe tried to settle himself more comfortably. With his long
thin legs he found sitting cross-legged for long periods difficult. ‘Yes, Majesty. It is true that a few foreign adventurers were lucky in their voyagings, but our English sailors and ships are second to none. My countrymen have recently established the first settlement in the northern Americas at a place they have named Jamestown, after our great king.’ Roe’s unshakeable belief in the importance of his remote little island never failed to amuse Jahangir. The life the ambassador described with such enthusiasm, from the habits of ordinary people to the customs of the court, sounded primitive to Jahangir’s ears, though of course courtesy and his growing liking for Roe prevented him from saying as much.

‘If it is true what you say and if your country will indeed provide ships to carry our pilgrims I may grant you the trading concessions you wish, but there will be conditions.’

‘Of course, Majesty.’ Despite all the wine he had consumed, Roe’s eyes were suddenly intent. Over the months since the ambassador’s arrival, Jahangir had been sparing with promises though he had sent gifts to this King James of his, carefully chosen to be impressive but not of a magnificence to embarrass the English ruler, who so obviously lacked the wealth of the Moghuls. Though he himself had been pleased with a crystal box inlaid with gold, some of the other English gifts were already falling apart – the leathers were cracking, perhaps as a result of the heat, the gilt was peeling from the picture frames, and he had already had the musty-smelling lining of the coach replaced with fine green brocade from Gujarat. Yet Roe had brought what no other ambassador had – information about the wider world, like the maps, and descriptions of new plants and animals found in this ‘new world’ he was so fond of talking about. Soon after his arrival he had presented
Jahangir with a small cotton bag containing some hard, round vegetable tubers – ‘potatoes’, he called them – and claimed they were good to eat once baked or boiled.

The
qorchi
had returned. ‘Majesty. This wine – scented with rosewater – is a special gift from the empress. She asked me to say that she prepared it with her own hands.’

‘Excellent. Now, ambassador, let’s see how the potency of this wine compares with that whisky you brought me . . . and I want you to send for that
qorchi
of yours to sing me some more of those English songs . . .’

‘Majesty, the emperor is asleep.’

Mehrunissa looked up from the book she had been reading by the light of an oil lamp, though now that the early morning light was filtering in through the casement she no longer needed it. ‘And the ambassador?’

‘Also asleep, Majesty.’

‘Order attendants to carry the emperor back here to his apartments and send for the Englishman’s servants to take him to his quarters.’

This was by no means the first time Jahangir’s drinking bouts with Roe had lasted until dawn and Mehrunissa knew exactly what the
qorchi
meant when he said that her husband was asleep: the emperor had passed out. These sessions with Roe had been growing more frequent. Jahangir’s excuse was that they had so many interesting things to discuss, so many ideas to explore. Yesterday he had told her he wanted to explain to Roe about some of his experiments with new medicines, especially his discovery – using water in which the leaves of the plane tree had been fermented – of a salve to make wounds
heal faster. He had been testing the ointment on a
qorchi
who had been gored in the thigh by a stag while out hunting. But she knew from observing through a small
jali
screen a few hours earlier that Jahangir and Roe had soon turned to more frivolous matters, singing bawdy songs – Persian and English – that they had taught one another, and even attempting trials of strength which the far more powerfully built Jahangir invariably won.

They were more like a pair of boys than an emperor and the ambassador of a foreign ruler, but perhaps such carousing was common at the English court. It certainly had charms for Jahangir, perhaps as a contrast to the elaborate formality of his own court where he must behave as not so much a man as the image of power and wealth. When Roe had farted loud and long in his presence, Jahangir had laughed and clapped him on the shoulder. Though they drank so much these sessions were perhaps no bad thing. They relaxed Jahangir and, apart from the fact that on some nights they kept him from her bed, took nothing away from her. Indeed the reverse was true, since they allowed her to do more for him. She tended him when, head aching, he finally woke, rubbing his temples with aloe and sandalwood oils to drive away the pain.

Sometimes, still bleary eyed after the previous night’s carousing, he found it difficult to concentrate on the matters that made up so much of the business of his council meetings – the raising of taxes, the granting of titles and estates to his nobles, the sending of orders to the governors of his provinces. Even at the best of time such things bored him. However, she, who never missed a meeting, sitting intent behind the
jali
screen in the royal women’s gallery, absorbed everything and could remind him of the things he ought
to know. More and more frequently she offered to read the official documents he found so tedious and tell him the gist of their contents and he readily agreed, delighted to shift some of the burden from his shoulders to hers. Just as she had hoped he would, he now often sought her advice, even joking that he had little need of his vizier Majid Khan. The boundary between influence and power wasn’t so wide, and recently she had felt herself beginning to edge across it . . .

Her fears that Khurram might be the one to whom Jahangir turned had so far proved groundless. He had been delighted by the birth of a son, Dara Shukoh, to Khurram and Arjumand, but though he and Khurram were frequently together it was usually to go hunting or hawking or to test each other’s skill at archery or watch an elephant fight. Since his return from the Deccan the prince had shown no inclination to become involved in the minutiae of government that she found so fascinating and had such appetite for. Others were noticing her growing influence. Only last week half a dozen petitions addressed directly to her had arrived in the imperial
haram.
Soon she would ask Jahangir whether, to save him effort, she could start issuing edicts under her own name. She would use the carved emerald he had given her, inscribed with her title, Nur Mahal . . .

The doors opened and four attendants, legs bowing slightly with the strain, entered carrying a bamboo litter on which Jahangir was lying on his back, arms outflung. She could hear his heavy, rhythmic breathing.

‘Put the litter down over here, then leave us,’ Mehrunissa commanded, pointing to a dark corner of the chamber away from the bright sunlight that was now shafting in through the casement. As soon as they were alone she dipped a silk
handkerchief into a brass bowl of water, then went over to Jahangir and knelt down by his side. How deeply he was sleeping, she thought, looking at his face, which with the passing of the years was growing a little fuller fleshed but was still handsome. As she began to wipe his forehead, a tenderness for him swept through her. This man had given her – could give her – everything she had ever wanted.

He began to stir. Suddenly he opened his eyes and smiled a little ruefully. ‘I think I drank too much of that wine of yours again.’

‘Majesty . . . forgive me for waking you . . .’ Mehrunissa opened sleepy eyes to see Salla leaning over the couch where she had been dozing. The Armenian was breathing hard, as if she had run to her mistress’s apartments. Mehrunissa sat up, alarmed.

‘What’s happened? Is it the emperor?’ An hour earlier, Jahangir had left her to watch a contest between one of his prize fighting elephants – a great scarred beast called Avenger, veteran of many battles with a broken but still highly effective right tusk – and an even more massive elephant sent as a gift by the Governor of Gwalior. Normally she would have watched the fight as well – she enjoyed the spectacle of these mountainous animals pitting their strength against one another and trying to guess which would win – but she had felt a little weary and decided instead to rest.

‘It isn’t the emperor, Majesty.’

‘What then?

Salla held out a jewelled hairpin fashioned like a peacock, its enamelled tail feathers set with tiny emeralds and sapphires. It was one of Mehrunissa’s favourite pieces and she had been wearing it earlier that day as she had sat behind the
jali
screen set in the wall to one side of the imperial throne in the Hall of Public Audience, watching and listening as an emissary from the Governor of Lahore reported progress on improving the fortifications there. The pin must have slipped unnoticed from her hair, but surely Salla hadn’t disturbed her to report the finding of a trinket?