Empire of the Moghul: The Tainted Throne (37 page)

Arjumand had heard his frantic cries and was hauling herself out of the wagon, blood running from a cut on her chin. ‘Roshanara – where is she?’ she screamed.

Khurram pointed downstream. ‘Stay there. I’ll get her.’ But before he had even finished speaking Arjumand had flung herself into the river. She was a good swimmer – she had loved to swim in the pool in the
haram
of his mansion in Agra – but she would be no match for the strong current that was already bearing her away or the sharp rocks concealed beneath the surface.

Quickly Khurram made his decision. He struggled out of the water on the far bank where most of his force was now gathered and shouted for a horse and for men to follow him. Leaping on to the animal’s back, he rode downstream as fast as the thick mud would allow, scanning the churning water all the while. A few hundred yards ahead the river took a sharp bend to the left amid some trees. The current should slow at that point, and he could see long branches overhanging the water well into midstream. His heart leapt as he made out Arjumand clinging to a piece of wood and a hundred or so yards ahead of her the red shape – barely bigger than a doll – that was Roshanara. He must get to the bend in the river before they did . . .

Tree branches whipped at his face as he galloped towards the bend. Wheeling his horse to an abrupt stop, he jumped
from the saddle and hauled himself up into one of the trees overhanging the river. Clambering on to a thick smooth branch, about three feet above the water, he edged his way along it as far as he thought it would bear his weight. Then, still holding on to it with one hand, he lowered his body into the torrent and turned to face upstream. He was only just in time. There she was, like a bundle of sodden red rags . . . Reaching out with his free hand he managed to grab hold first of Roshanara’s tunic and then one of her arms. It took all his strength to tug her, one handed, out of the water and on to the branch, but he managed it, then pulled himself up. To his relief he could hear the child’s ragged breathing. Her body was limp, but she was alive. One of his soldiers had climbed out on to a nearby branch and he handed her to him.

As Roshanara was being taken to safety, Khurram was already edging back along the branch. He could make out Arjumand being whirled towards him, still clinging to her piece of wood, but she was too far away for him to be able to catch hold of her. When she was almost level with him he leapt into the water and struck out towards her. The river was deeper here but, just as he’d hoped, the bend was reducing its force. Ten strokes brought him to Arjumand’s side. Putting his left arm round her waist, he said, ‘Let go of the log. I have you.’ She did as he said and he began to make for the shore, striking out with his right arm and kicking as hard as he could with his legs. With so much water in his eyes it was hard to think of anything but the green blur of the bank and not letting go of Arjumand.

Then he saw something sticking out towards them. ‘Grab the lance shaft, Highness,’ a voice was shouting. Reaching
out, his fingers made contact with wood. Then, gripping the lance handle hard, he felt himself being pulled in. Moments later, he and Arjumand were lying in the mud gasping for breath. Arjumand’s right upper arm was scraped and bleeding heavily where she had caught it against some rocks and her cheek was gashed but her first words were, ‘Roshanara . . . is she all right?’ Khurram just nodded. Shivering, wet and muddy as they were, they clasped one another in silent gratitude.

The oozing, evil-smelling brown mud still sucked at the wheels of the wagons as if unwilling to let them pass. Khurram felt close to despair. Over the weeks since crossing the Mahanadi river their progress had become painfully slow, sometimes no more than three or four miles a day, as they headed northeastwards towards the Ganges delta. The monsoon rains had ended but their legacy was still there, from the moist air to the thick carpet of rotting leaves and fallen branches and the glinting black water of the now-stagnating swamps they had fed. Though they had had no further trouble from bandits and had seen no sign of Mahabat Khan, hazards lurked all around. Venomous serpents slid through the undergrowth. Whirring, biting mosquitoes descended in swarms at dusk, hungry for warm blood. And now disease had begun spreading among his men – six had died in the last two weeks including his elderly steward, Shah Gul, who had faithfully fled with him into exile from Agra. Every morning his forces were
fewer as men slipped away, preferring to take their chances on their own.

Locked in gloom, Khurram pushed aside one of the tangles of dank, ragged green moss that dangled from every tree. His greatest worry was Arjumand, again pregnant, and their children. The children all looked sickly and thin and Arjumand herself was haggard, with shadows beneath her eyes. The injury to her upper arm she had suffered crossing the Mahanadi had never healed fully. It still looked hot and puffy and occasionally oozed yellow pus. What should he do? He wished he knew the whereabouts of Mahabat Khan’s army . . . whether, now that the dry season had come, it was on his heels or whether it had turned back during the monsoon. With no information it was impossible to plan. The scouts he had despatched ten days ago to search for any signs of pursuit hadn’t yet returned and perhaps they wouldn’t – the opportunity to desert might have proved too tempting.

His head ached and glancing down he saw how worn and mud-streaked his clothes were, like the dull coat of his once fine horse whose ribs now visibly protruded. Looking ahead again, he tried to convince himself that the vegetation was thinning. Surely they couldn’t be far from the coast, or at least the network of waterways that made up the mouth of the Ganges. If they could only find one of those they could follow it downstream to the sea . . .

As if his thoughts had conjured them, Nicholas Ballantyne and another of his guards emerged from the green shadows ahead. He had sent them out early, as he always did after his experience with
dacoits
on the riverbank, to scout the way ahead. ‘Well?’ he called as soon as they were in range.
Then to his surprise he saw that they were not alone. Twenty yards behind them, mounted on a handsome white mule was a man in a long robe of coarse brown cloth whose strange, flat, wide-brimmed hat obscured his face.

‘Highness,’ said Nicholas, trotting up, his young face pink with sweat. ‘That man is a Portuguese priest. We found him supervising a group of men cutting firewood about five miles ahead. He says we’re not far from the Portuguese settlement at Hooghly.’

‘Hooghly?’ Khurram frowned. He had heard his father talk about the trading settlement. There had been stories at court that the Portuguese priests there were trying forcibly to convert the local people to their religion and even that Portuguese merchants were selling those who refused to the slave traders whose ships put in there . . . ‘Does this priest know who I am?’

‘No, Highness. All I told him was that you were a Moghul nobleman.’

‘Tell him to approach.’

As the priest rode forward, he bowed his head in greeting. Beneath the brim of his hat, Khurram saw amber eyes in a long thin-nosed face with a close-clipped fringe of beard. ‘I understand that you are a Portuguese priest from Hooghly.’

‘Yes, Highness,’ the man answered in Persian.

‘You know me?’

‘My name is Father Ronaldo. I visited your father’s court some years ago. At that time your father was showing great interest in our religion – the true faith. He even spoke of appointing a Jesuit priest like myself as tutor to your youngest brother.’

Khurram nodded. He remembered now how interested
his father had been in the Jesuits – just as his grandfather Akbar had been. For a time the court had swarmed with priests and the mullahs had objected to their processions through the streets of Agra behind a great, rough-hewn wooden cross and their incessant clamour to be allowed to build their churches.

Father Ronaldo pursed his thin lips. ‘The emperor allowed himself to be swayed by the dogma of his own priests, who were jealous of our influence and feared us as the revealers of the true path to God.’

Khurram said nothing. This was no time for a religious debate. He and his family needed help and this man might provide it. ‘Do you know what has brought me to Bengal?’ he asked, eyes fixed closely on the priest’s face. The amber eyes flickered.

‘We heard something of a disagreement between you and your father,’ said Father Ronaldo after a moment.

‘It is more than a disagreement. We are on the brink of war. I have brought my family here in the hope of finding a refuge for them while I regroup my forces. I still have many allies.’

‘You really think it will come to war?’ The priest looked shocked.

‘I hope not but it may. My father is no longer his own man. He has given in to wine and opium and leaves the governance of his empire to his wife.’

‘The Empress Mehrunissa? A recent decree granting our merchants the right to trade in indigo bore her seal. We were surprised, but assumed it must be because the emperor was ill.’

‘No. She rules, not he. I will tell you more later, but
first I must know whether you and your fellow Portuguese will give my family sanctuary at Hooghly. We have travelled hundreds of miles, often in great danger. My children are young and my wife is ill and pregnant. She must rest.’

For the first time the priest smiled. ‘It is our Christian duty to help you, Highness. If you will send your English squire ahead with me, I will speak to my brother priests and we will prepare quarters for you.’

A light breeze stirred the muslin hangings of the whitewashed room in the simple one-storey, palm-thatched house sitting on stilts on the banks of the Hooghly river where Arjumand was lying on a low divan. For a moment her gaze rested on the dark painting of a man nailed to a wooden cross on the wall opposite her. He was so thin that every rib protruded and blood so dark it was almost black ran from beneath a wreath of thorns down his waxen face, which was twisted in agony. His eyes looked despairingly up to the sky, the pupils barely visible, just the veined whites. It was a horrible picture and at night she placed a cloth over it, but in the daytime she didn’t wish to offend the Portuguese maids who attended her with such kindness. It was they who cooked and cleaned for the priests and had also taken over the care of her, Khurram and their small household here in the priests’ walled compound, often serving them the salted fish of which the Portuguese seemed so inordinately fond. Khurram’s soldiers were comfortably encamped on the banks of the Hooghly about a quarter of a mile beyond where the Portuguese trading vessels were moored.

Often her mind filled with memories of Agra and especially of her grandfather Ghiyas Beg, whom she would never see again. A Portuguese merchant who had called at Hooghly not long before she and Khurram had arrived had told the priests that the Imperial Treasurer was dead and the Moghul court in mourning. She could scarcely believe it. He had been such a presence in her life – in the lives of all her family. Inevitably, the news had also turned her thoughts to her aunt. Mehrunissa would surely be grieving . . . or would she? Because of Mehrunissa, the Moghul imperial family was split as so often in the past, father against son, half-brother against half-brother. Sometimes it seemed to her that their family troubles were like a canker in the heart of a flower, eating away unseen until it was too late.

Such disunity should never happen among her own children, she thought, listening to the shouts of her sons from outside. Khurram loved his three sons and they loved him. What was more, her boys were full brothers with a single loving mother to watch over them, not the sons of different mothers, brought up in different establishments so that the early bonds of fraternal love were never fully formed. And surely the dangers and hardships they’d faced – perhaps still faced – would bind them yet closer.

Feeling a kick inside her, she shifted. What would this child be? Another son? It was a big child – her belly had never been quite so swollen before. She usually felt well in pregnancy and with each child giving birth had come more easily. But this time she felt ill and a little afraid. All that she had endured, and the infection in her arm that had still not yet healed, had left her
feeling so weak . . . She gasped as a sudden sharp pain ran through her.