The Twentieth Wife (44 page)

Jahangir had since married twice, first to the granddaughter of Raja Man Singh, who was Khusrau’s uncle. The relationship had become complicated. Jahangir was now married to his son’s niece, and the grandniece of his wife, Khusrau’s mother. The marriage was obviously a political one; the Emperor was making sure that Raja Man Singh would think twice before he put his nephew on the throne and made his own granddaughter a widow.

Jahangir’s other marriage came a year later, when the imperial army conquered the kingdom of Raja Ram Chand Bundela. Bundela offered his daughter as a wife to the Emperor in an effort to maintain good relations with his new sovereign, so the princess came to Jahangir’s
zenana
as his latest wife.

“Shall we go in, Mama?” Ladli’s gentle voice roused Mehrunnisa from her thoughts. She realized that the sun had already set and the brief twilight was being chased away by the night. She packed her spade and sacks into a basket, and they picked their way through the melon patch back to their apartments.

Mehrunnisa washed her hands, fed Ladli her dinner, ate something herself, and put her daughter to sleep. While she slept, Mehrunnisa took a long bath in the
zenana’s hammam
and came back to her apartments. As she had almost every night for a long time, she sat down at the mirror on the wall and lit one of the oil lamps.

Mehrunnisa touched her face slowly. Her complexion was still unblemished. Around her eyes little lines had developed, very faint, but visible under harsh sunlight. Even seated, she could see her figure; her waist had retained its youthful trimness, and her hips curved out from under it. She was as sensual and desirable as a younger woman . . . but she was young no longer and had been widowed for four long years. She would probably have to live her entire life here behind the walls of the
zenana
and grow old like some long-forgotten concubine. But at least she had Ladli.

Mehrunnisa looked over at her daughter. Ladli slept with the abandon of a child, easily slipping into that life-giving unconsciousness, unaware of all the drama that had taken place in her young life. She remembered little of Ali Quli and asked few questions about him. But one day his unfortunate death would come to prey upon her when she was old enough to be married. Hopefully the events surrounding Ali Quli’s demise would have been forgotten by then, or would at least have been dimmed in people’s memories.

Mehrunnisa rose and went to the window. She opened it and the cool night air rushed into the stifling room. The pleasant smell of wet earth drifted to her nostrils as she leaned out, thinking again, as she almost always did, of the Emperor. Jahangir was showing himself to be a shrewd statesman, she thought. Emperor Akbar would have been proud of him.
She
was proud of what he had done for Khusrau.

A few months after the court had returned to Agra, the Emperor had finally seen his son one afternoon after the
darbar.
Jahangir felt wretched at Khusrau’s miserable and disfigured face. He sent for the empire’s best physicians and ordered them to try to restore sight to his son’s eyes. The physicians only partially succeeded. The prince could now see quite well out of one eye; the other was blind forever. But he was nonetheless carefully guarded; even as Jahangir reinstated Khusrau to the royal favor that all his sons enjoyed, he watched the one who had wanted the crown while it still sat on his
father’s head. Khusrau’s rebellion was not something either the Emperor or the harem ladies had forgotten. The crown would eventually belong to one prince, but only after Jahangir’s death.

Furthermore, a year earlier, with the gracious permission of Jahangir, the Portuguese Jesuit fathers had converted three of Jahangir’s nephews to Roman Catholicism. The ceremony was held at the Jesuit church at Agra, and the celebrations that followed were hosted by the Emperor himself at the royal palace. The three boys were sons of the late Prince Daniyal and were put in the care of the Jesuit fathers when they were brought to court. The Jesuits had pestered Jahangir to allow them to convert the children, and he had agreed, with an outward show of reluctance.

Mehrunnisa smiled into the dark night. It was a brilliant move. Once the boys had been converted they would no longer pose a threat to the throne. It would be free for Jahangir’s heirs. It was unthinkable that the Mughal Emperor of India should profess any religion but Islam, and certainly that was a painless way of getting rid of any rivals his sons might have.

The Jesuits had been in India for a long time. Now there were other
firangis
also. The world was indeed opening up. The newcomers styled themselves “ambassadors” from a tiny island in Europe called England. It was said to be many miles away, and the journey by sea took at least six months. The men who came to court as representatives of King James I of England were little more than traders and merchants. They had no diplomatic skills and came to request trading rights from India.

Jahangir had ignored the merchants, treating them as he would Indian merchants—and rightly so, Mehrunnisa thought. It was highly insulting to the dignity of the Mughal empire to be approached by merchants instead of qualified noblemen from the court of England. What were the English after all but a country of fishermen and shepherds? How could such a tiny island hope to
compete with the glory of the Mughal Empire? India was self-sufficient and wanted nothing. The foreigners wanted the spices, calico, and saltpeter that India had in abundance. If so, they should have taken the trouble to approach the Emperor with an appropriate ambassador.

The captain of the first English ship to anchor off India’s shores, William Hawkins of the
Hector,
was an erudite man. He spoke good Turkish, the language of the courts. Mehrunnisa, in the
zenana
balcony with Ruqayya, could remember being impressed by him on the day he was presented to the Emperor. But, fluent in Turki or not, Hawkins was a mere merchant. In any case, the English had yet to prove their worth to the empire if they wished to be granted any special privileges. Right now, the Portuguese Jesuits held too strong a position at court. They had been in India for many years.

Mehrunnisa drummed her fingers on the windowsill, childhood fretfulness overwhelming her again. When she was young she had been aware that only the ladies of the imperial
zenana
could break the rules this society imposed on women. Now she was a member of that
zenana
and realized that just being here was not enough. Even here, only a handful of the women had power—those married to the Emperor, those related to him, or those who were his favorites. Oh, that she had been born a man and could take her place at court. English presence in the empire had put the Jesuits in a quandary, and if Jahangir had a skilled advisor, he would know how to set the two sides off against each other, to the advantage of the empire. But here she was, doomed to spend her life in the
zenana,
with no hope of marriage to the Emperor, no excitement of court life and political intrigues in her future.

The eastern sky lightened as Mehrunnisa turned away from the window. While she had been immersed in her thoughts, the night had passed. She crawled slowly into bed and shut her eyes tightly.
She needed to sleep; in a few hours it would be time to rise and attend to her duties.

•   •   •

“H
ERE SHE IS.
What took you so long?” Ruqayya demanded.

Mehrunnisa bowed to the Dowager Empress. “I beg pardon, your Majesty. I overslept.”

“Again?” Ruqayya raised an eyebrow. “You really must sleep better at night, child. Now help me dress. Khurram is on his way to visit me.”

For the next hour, Mehrunnisa tried her level best to please her mistress. Outfit after outfit was held up for Ruqayya’s approval and discarded. No, it could not be this one; she had worn it twice. Were her ladies-in-waiting fools to think she would be seen in something she had worn twice? Why hadn’t it been thrown away already? Not that one either, it was blue; today was not a blue day. As for that one—until the
zenana
jeweler brought her new rubies set with diamonds, that simply would not look good. Finally the Empress decided. The ladies-in-waiting heaved a sigh of relief and went to work. As Mehrunnisa was pinning the Empress’s veil on her head, Prince Khurram entered. All the ladies bowed.

Khurram went up to the Empress and kissed her papery cheek.

“How are you, Ma?”

“Fine. And would be better if you came to visit me more often,” Ruqayya said in a petulant voice.

Khurram grinned with good humor, having heard this complaint frequently, and sat down next to her. He knew how to twist his grandmother around his little finger very well and make her forget her anger. Mehrunnisa smiled as he reached over for a
burfi
from a silver dish next to the divan and fed it to her, wiping his
ghee-
smeared hands on a silk towel. The first time she had seen the young prince, Ruqayya had fed him a
burfi
with the same affection. He was unconsciously imitating her after all these years.

“Inshah Allah,
your Highness,” she said.

“Inshah Allah,
Mehrunnisa.” Khurram ran an appreciative eye over her.

“Khurram,” Ruqayya laid a hand on his arm, unwilling to let his attention slip from her for even a second, “what have you done with yourself this last week?”

The prince turned to his grandmother, and Mehrunnisa looked at him. He had grown into a fine young man at nineteen years of age, and everyone was speculating that he would be the next heir to the throne. Lucky Arjumand, Mehrunnisa thought, and then realized that although her niece and Khurram were officially engaged, four years had passed since the day Jahangir had seen her at the engagement. Her family had fallen into disgrace one by one, starting with—Mehrunnisa flinched, the memory still raw—Ali Quli’s murder of Koka. She wondered whether the marriage would ever take place. Her family was technically no longer in dishonor, and her father had even managed to regain the Emperor’s good graces. But Jahangir seemed to have forgotten about the engagement. So also, it seemed, had Prince Khurram.

She smiled as he gave her a furtive wink without stopping his narrative. Ruqayya was lying back on the divan, her eyes closed, her hand still clutching Khurram’s arm possessively.

“Will you be attending the Nauroz festivities?”

Mehrunnisa turned to the prince. “Yes, your Highness.” The New Year was right around the corner.

“What about you, Ma?” Khurram asked Ruqayya.

The Dowager Empress put out a hand and fondly stroked Khurram’s hair. “I will be there too, darling. Mehrunnisa will be attending to me.”

“Give her some time to herself, Ma. The bazaars will be magnificent this year. I plan to spend all my time there—after paying my respects to the Emperor, of course,” he added hastily.

“Don’t forget to present yourself to his Majesty every day,” Ruqayya warned. “He will be very upset if he doesn’t see you.”

“I will.” Khurram nodded. “My mother said the same to me. I do know what etiquette demands, Ma. Why do both of you insist on telling me what to do?”

About halfway through, at the mention of Jagat Gosini, Ruqayya’s back had begun stiffening until she held herself straight as a plank. Slipping behind the Dowager Empress, Mehrunnisa desperately tried to divert Khurram’s attention, but he went on, switching the topic. “And what about Mehrunnisa? Will you allow her some time so that she can wander around the bazaar? How is she ever going to find a husband if you keep her locked up here with you?”

But the Dowager Empress stared straight ahead of her and said in carefully measured tones that echoed years of hatred and hurt, “If your mother tells you what to do, then you must certainly listen to her. Why listen to an old woman who has no say in anything around here anymore?”

With great reluctance, Ruqayya had relinquished her title as Padshah Begam to Jagat Gosini upon Akbar’s death. Ever since then, the two women had met in icy silence, barely bowing to each other. Ruqayya thought the whole situation unfair, but Mehrunnisa knew how cruel Ruqayya had been to a young Jagat Gosini when she had demanded and taken her son from her. Now, at the receiving end, Ruqayya hated her situation. It galled the Dowager Empress to be pushed aside for—as she put it—a mere chit of a girl. But it was Ruqayya Khurram called “Ma.” That word was a constant reminder of the past to both women—a reminder that made Ruqayya gleeful and Jagat Gosini furious.

Much as she had disliked Jahangir’s wife earlier, Mehrunnisa had pitied her for losing Khurram during his formative years, just as she now pitied Ruqayya. But Mehrunnisa’s dislike for Jagat Gosini had
not waned. Over the past few years she had come to learn just how much the Empress had tried to keep Jahangir from marrying Mehrunnisa. In the imperial
zenana,
nothing was secret.

Mehrunnisa knew also that Jahangir never came to visit Ruqayya because of her own presence in the Dowager Empress’s apartments. If she could have, Jagat Gosini would have dismissed Mehrunnisa, but Ruqayya had insisted upon her services. Jagat Gosini let the matter go, knowing better than to annoy the Dowager Empress, for she would certainly create enough of an uproar to attract even the Emperor’s attention. And the last thing she wanted was Jahangir’s attention focused back on Mehrunnisa.

Now Khurram went down on his knees next to his grandmother and put his cheek against hers, his arms around her plump shoulders. “Who wouldn’t listen to you, darling? You know how important you are to me, don’t you?”

“Really?” Ruqayya’s sour mood was fast disappearing. Khurram could charm her out of her worst tantrum.

“Really,” said Khurram, kissing her loudly on both cheeks. “Now tell me, what is Mehrunnisa going to do at the bazaar tomorrow?”

Ruqayya threw back her head and laughed. “Why the sudden interest in Mehrunnisa’s marital status? Why don’t you marry her yourself?”

“Ma,” Khurram protested mildly. “You know I cannot do that. Although . . .” He turned to look at Mehrunnisa with a speculative gleam in his eyes. “She is beautiful.”