‘I’m not afraid of you, Majesty.’ She spoke the old Moghul language, Turki, but haltingly and with a strange accent Akbar had never heard.
‘Then what is it?’ He came closer, noting the delicate oval of her face and the unusual vivid blue of her eyes that for a moment reminded him of Bairam Khan. She looked so achingly beautiful he wanted to reach out and touch her. She hesitated, and when finally she spoke he could tell she was choosing her words with great care. ‘When I was told I was to come to your court, it was a great honour and I was happy. So were my two elder sisters.’
‘The two young women who were with you just now?’
‘No, they are not my kin.’
‘Then where are you sisters?’
Her face tightened. ‘When our party was still two days from Agra, a group of Moghul soldiers stopped us. They said that they were an advance guard sent by you to inspect us and take the most beautiful to you at once. They said you were impatient and took my sisters away. When we reached Agra, I asked the keeper of the haram where they were but she said she knew nothing of any other women. Please, Majesty, I am frightened for my sisters. .’
‘I gave no orders for any advance guard. Who was their commander?’
‘I’m not sure, but I think I heard one of the soldiers address him as Adham Khan.’
Akbar’s head jerked back in surprise. ‘Did you see any of their faces?’
‘It was evening, and anyway the men had face cloths pulled up to their eyes.’
The tears were running down her face now and she made no effort to wipe them away, but Akbar, overcome with anger, was no longer attending to her. ‘Wait here,’ he said.
A few minutes later he was striding towards his milk-mother’s apartments. Waving her attendants aside, he flung the silver doors open himself and burst in. Seeing the expression on his face, Maham Anga, who had been writing in a book, at once closed its ivory covers, fastened the gilt clasp and rose to her feet.
‘Akbar, what’s the matter?’
‘Where is your son?’
‘Away hunting. I haven’t seen him for nearly a week.’
‘Have him found — wherever he is — and tell him to return to the court immediately.’
‘Of course. He is yours to command. But why?’
‘A woman newly arrived in the haram — sent to me with several others as a token of respect and friendship by a new ally — accuses him of abducting two of them — her sisters.’
Maham Anga paled. If her son had committed such a crime she certainly knew nothing about it.
‘The accusation is very serious,’ Akbar said more gently, ‘but let my milk-brother answer the charge. If he is innocent he has nothing to fear.’
‘Of course.’ Maham Anga put a hand on his arm. ‘But, Akbar, there has been some mistake. My son would never. .’ Her voice faltered.
‘Let us hope you are right.’
In fact, Akbar learned the fate of the missing young women three days before Adham Khan and his hunting party of other young nobles came riding up the ramp into the Agra fort in obedience to his summons. He was woken with news that two female bodies had been pulled from the Jumna river. A camel driver taking his beasts down to the water’s edge to drink had found them. Both were naked, and their throats had been cut.
‘What is it, Akbar? Why did you summon me to your apartments so late when I’m still tired and dusty from my journey?’
‘Adham Khan, do your remember how we used to gallop our ponies through the meadows beneath the Kabul fortress?’
‘Of course I do. But I don’t see-’
‘Those were good times. We seldom spent a day apart.’
‘That is what a milk-brother is for.’
‘It was more than that. I had no brothers or sisters of my own. Without you I would have been lonely. And when I was kidnapped from my parents by my uncles, your mother was my sole protector and you shared my captivity, suffered the same hardships, faced the same perils. . That is what makes what I have to ask you so difficult. But we are no longer boys, and I am an emperor, and so I must.’
‘What are you trying to say, Akbar?’ Adham Khan’s light brown eyes — so like Maham Anga’s — were fixed on Akbar’s face and his expression was no longer light-hearted.
‘Three days ago, an old man — a camel driver — discovered the bodies of two young women floating in the river when he took his beasts to drink. He found a long stick and with its help dragged them to the bank and raised the alarm. The corpses weren’t very pretty.’ Akbar again saw before him the grazed, muddy bodies, already buzzing with flies, that he had insisted on viewing. Those staring eyes — a paler blue than Shayzada’s — looking sightlessly out from purpling bloated faces, those gaping blood-encrusted throats, had somehow been more horrible than anything he’d witnessed on the battlefield.
Adham Khan shrugged slightly. ‘I’m sorry to hear it, but what has this to do with me?’
‘Be patient. I ordered my hakim to examine the bodies. He told me the cuts were deep and clean — probably inflicted with a sharp dagger — and that the women had not been dead for more than two or three days. He also said they had been raped.’ Again Akbar’s mind conjured the shameful scene: two young women, sent to what should have been a luxurious and pampered life at his court, lying blood-stained and violated on the hakim’s marble slab. ‘Adham Khan, do you know who these women were?’
‘Why should I?’
Akbar studied his milk-brother’s indignant face. ‘Are you certain?’
‘Of course. Are you accusing me of killing them?’
‘No. I’m only asking whether you knew them.’
‘But why? Someone must have implicated me.’
‘The women’s sister, Shayzada, told me that as they were all on their way here their party was stopped by Moghul soldiers and her sisters were abducted. Shayzada heard one of the men address their commander as Adham Khan.’
‘It’s a lie. Someone must have bribed her to discredit me.’
‘You swear to me, then, that neither you nor your men had anything to do with the abductions or the murders?’
‘I swear as your milk-brother.’ Adham Khan’s strong hand grasped Akbar’s. ‘I would never violate the bond between us.’
‘Then I accept what you say.’
‘Where is this woman, Shayzada?’
‘Here in the haram. I offered to send her home but she chose instead to serve my aunt who, moved by her story, has offered to take her into her household.’
Adham Khan said nothing but Akbar noticed the rapid rise and fall of his chest. ‘You mustn’t blame her, Adham Khan. She didn’t know who you were when she named you and she must have been mistaken in what she thought she heard. . it was understandable in the fear and confusion. I am certain she wasn’t coerced or bribed to speak as she did. Now let’s talk of pleasanter things. I’ve seen a roan stallion I’d like your opinion on. .’
It was a relief to move on to ordinary topics. Though he’d had no choice, it had embarrassed him to question his milk-brother. Adham Khan’s angry, earnest rebuttal had been a relief. All the same, Akbar knew that something had changed between them. The very fact of his asking Adham Khan to declare his innocence must surely mark the end of their old boyhood intimacy. But, as he had told his milk-brother, he was the emperor.
Chapter 5
On a humid May afternoon, Akbar slept, head cushioned by Mayala’s soft, voluptuously rounded stomach, as a peacock-feather punkah pulled on a long rope by an attendant in an adjacent room stirred the hot air above them. They had just enjoyed a particularly exhausting and innovative bout of love-making and Akbar should have been dreaming of pleasurable things. Instead strange images filled his mind, causing him to stir and even cry out. Feeling a hand on his forehead he sat up with a start, but it was only Mayala trying to soothe him. It had been like this ever since the two young women’s bodies had been found, though that was eight weeks ago now. Every day, despite himself, he was growing more preoccupied, more watchful, every instinct sensing a threat that seemed all the more dangerous because he didn’t know when or from where it would come.