‘No, Ashok Singh! I will not bargain with them. They must surrender unconditionally. They’ve ignored the proclamation in which to honour the memory of my wife I offered clemency. Now that they are surrounded why should they expect me to renew my mercy?’
‘I will tell their emissary.’ Ashok Singh hesitated for a moment as he was about to leave. ‘Forgive me, Majesty. If deprived of any hope of mercy might they not fight the harder?’
Perhaps Ashok Singh was right, Shah Jahan reflected. ‘Very well. Tell the envoy that any who leave the town within one hour of his return will live. I make no promises as to whether as free people or slaves, but they will live.’
Fifty minutes later Shah Jahan was sitting on his horse in front of the main gate of Krishnapur just out of arrow and musket shot. The gatehouse was a substantial sandstone building with an intricately carved hissing serpent relief above the double gates themselves. Shah Jahan had ridden down from the outcrop to see if anyone would accept his offer of life and to make his preparations in case they did not. He was determined that as soon as the hour was up he would order his forces to make an all-out assault on Krishnapur. The best route of attack would be across the dried-up riverbed since the town walls were lower and looked weaker at that side, doubtless because in normal times the river formed a first line of defence.
‘Majesty …’ Ashok Singh was again at his side. ‘If the invaders choose to fight, I and the captain of your bodyguard have a request. Please don’t expose yourself recklessly in the battle as you did the day before yesterday.’ The young Rajput prince paused before continuing, ‘All the court knows the grief you feel at the empress’s death … that you say your life has become empty. I too lost my beloved wife, not in childbirth but from the spotted fever — she died before I could be told and rush back from a tour of inspection of some of my father’s outlying posts. I too was devastated and held my own life cheap, risking it recklessly in battle and on the hunting field until my father took me aside and lectured me sternly. He made me understand that it was for the gods and not for a man to decide when he dies. It was the more so for me as a prince with responsibilities to my destiny and to him and the dynasty. Even though you are not a Hindu I believe your religion too teaches that a man should submit to God’s will. What’s more, your responsibilities are much greater than mine. You are not a younger son but head of a dynasty that controls a vast empire many times larger than the state of Amber. What would become of it and your family if you got yourself needlessly killed?’
Shah Jahan was silent for a moment before replying. ‘You’re right, I know. My sons are not yet of an age or experience when they could easily succeed me. I know too that Mumtaz herself would have said the same to me, and my daughter Jahanara has already done so. But from your own experience you must know it is easier to give such good advice than receive it and put it into practice.’
‘But you will heed my words, Majesty?’ Ashok Singh persisted gently.
‘Yes. Should the Bijapurans sally out of Krishnapur I will stay back in a position where I can command the whole action rather than rush forward to lead the charge.’
Moments later, almost as if in response to his words, the main gates of Krishnapur swung open. Was it to be a sortie or surrender, Shah Jahan asked himself. Capitulation, it seemed, as a column of women emerged through the gates, many gripping the hands of small children, others holding their palms outstretched in supplication. Nearly all were thin to the point of emaciation. The drought had not spared Krishnapur any more than anywhere else. Shah Jahan was just turning to give Ashok Singh the order for his men to go forward to receive their captives when suddenly armed horsemen burst through the gateway. Scattering women and children alike before them, they swerved their mounts round Krishnapur’s walls, hell-bent on their own escape. More followed. None slowed to avoid the prone bodies of those whom the first riders had knocked over but simply trampled them beneath their hooves.
‘Fire on those riders! Don’t let any get away!’ Shah Jahan shouted to Ashok Singh. His outrage at the Bijapurans’ treatment of the townswomen immediately overwhelming his promise to hold himself back from the action, he kicked his horse forward. Before he could get far, however, he heard a disciplined volley from the band of musketeers he had ordered to be stationed near the walls in anticipation of just such a Bijapuran sortie. Their firing emptied several saddles. It was a reduced enemy squadron which closed up as best it could and kicked on, heads bent low over their horses’ necks in the hope of safety, leaving their fallen comrades like the trampled women and children to care for themselves.
Shah Jahan had reined in briefly to see the effect of the musket shots. Now as he pushed on again his bodyguard and Ashok Singh’s Rajputs were around him. Together they were gaining fast on the Bijapurans when about a dozen of the hindmost wheeled their horses to turn back and attack their pursuers — clearly prepared to sacrifice themselves to save their comrades. Sacrifice themselves they certainly would, but no one else would escape either, thought Shah Jahan grimly as, drawing his sword, he prepared to meet the rebels, now only yards away.
The first of them — no more than a youth — crashed into the front rank of Shah Jahan’s bodyguard. He got in only one stroke of his sword, cutting into the muscular arm of a bearded Rajput, before being swallowed up by the charge of Shah Jahan’s men and knocked from his horse to die crushed beneath their onrushing hooves. His fellows fared little better. Only one succeeded in unhorsing a member of the bodyguard before he was himself spitted by a Rajput lance and carried out of his saddle. Soon Shah Jahan’s riders were beyond the melee and gathering speed once more, leaving crumpled bodies and riderless horses in their wake. Within five minutes they were up again with the remainder of the Bijapuran horsemen who were galloping along the rutted riverbed. Suddenly, as if as one and clearly in response to a shouted order, the whole Bijapuran column, still over fifty strong, reined in and threw down their weapons.
‘Take care. Don’t approach them too closely in case it’s another trick,’ shouted Shah Jahan.
A tall Bijapuran horseman wearing a cloak of gold cloth rode through their ranks, dismounted and prostrated himself. ‘We surrender, Majesty. We accept your offer to let us live.’
‘What?’ shouted Shah Jahan. ‘You expect my offer to stand after you have ridden down women and children and caused the death of some of my own men? You had the chance to live but you forfeited it by your brutal behaviour. You and your officers will die. Your men will be sold into slavery.’
‘Majesty, I implore you …’
‘There is no point in pleading. Accept your fate with dignity. Death comes to us all sooner or late. Yours will not be pointless but will serve as a deterrent to anyone else contemplating invasion or rebellion.’
An hour later Shah Jahan watched as his men laid the first stones of the tower he had ordered to be built to display the severed heads of those he had had executed, already piled nearby in a bloody heap around which hordes of blue-bodied flies were buzzing. His warrior ancestors had built such towers in their homelands on the Asian steppes and Akbar too had followed the practice early in his reign when he had faced stubborn enemies. Looking skyward, he saw vultures already circling, eager to feast on eyes and the soft flesh of cheeks and lips as soon as they felt it safe to do so. This bloodstained, reeking monument would signal to the Bijapurans as nothing else could the futility of their continued resistance to his authority and the unflinching harshness of their punishment should they persist.