Instead of coming to her bedside Shah Jahan walked to an open casement and for a while stared out into the dusk. The only sound was the mournful shriek of a peacock roosting in a neem tree in the courtyard outside. Then, slowly, he turned to face her, but it was still some moments before finally he spoke and when he did his voice sounded hoarse. ‘So many times I’ve been on the point of coming to beg your forgiveness or at least to ask for your understanding … I never realised I was a coward until I found I lacked the courage to do so. Now that I have come, it’s so hard … my feelings overwhelm me and the words won’t come …’
‘No, please …’ The bleak look on his face banished her fear of him. ‘Let’s not speak of that night … we must both try to forget it.’ Jahanara sat up, wincing with a pain that was more mental than the physical result of the stretching of the not yet fully healed scars from her burns.
‘You are too generous. You nearly died because of me … because I violated all the natural bonds between father and daughter. That is why I must speak … I can’t bear to think you might ever look at me again the way you looked at me that night. I make no excuses, but I was confused by the opium I had taken to help me sleep. I was in another world … in my semi-conscious state I thought you were Mumtaz and had returned to me … I thought I was reaching out to her. I never meant to violate my own daughter … I didn’t know it was you until it was too late and you were fleeing from me.’
‘You thought I was my mother?’
‘Yes. I’d been dreaming of her and confused my longings with reality. It will never happen again, I promise you. Not a drop of wine or grain of opium has passed my lips since your accident.’
‘That at least makes me very happy.’
‘But can you forgive me … not only for what I did but for the terrible consequences?’ Shah Jahan bowed his head. ‘I torment myself that just as your mother’s death was my punishment for ordering the killing of my half-brothers, your injuries were my punishment for my actions towards you — an eternal reproach.’
Jahanara was silent for some time. She could see now how the incident had happened. It was not some vicious act by her father but the result of a grief he could neither control nor come to terms with. If she did not say she forgave him — and make herself mean it — the events of that night would corrode both of their souls, eating away at their relationship. Before the fire her greatest anxiety had been her father’s withdrawal from the world. If she rejected him now he would isolate himself even more.
She composed her face into a smile and said simply, ‘Yes, I forgive you.’ Moments later she felt Shah Jahan tentatively take her hand. Using all her self-control she did not withdraw it, and not wishing to explore either of their emotions further said briskly, ‘Don’t let’s ever talk of the night of the fire again — it can only bring pain to us both. Instead we should look to the future. Won’t you send me some of your petitions for me to deal with, just as I used to?’
‘I would be grateful for your help again.’
Seeing relief flood her father’s countenance Jahanara added, ‘As soon as I can walk properly again — the doctors tell me it won’t be long — will you take me by barge down the river to visit my mother’s tomb? I would like to see what progress there’s been. You were not the only one to love her, Father. We all did.’
Her willingness to include him in her family once more brought a tear to Shah Jahan’s eye as he responded, ‘We will all go. It’s been a long time — far too long — since our family was together.’
Part II
‘Sharper than a serpent’s tooth …’
Chapter 11
Agra, 1647
As Shah Jahan approached through the scented gardens, the white marble mausoleum beneath its teardrop dome seemed to float against the backdrop of the pinkening sky. Its sheer perfection still made him catch his breath. Earlier, one of his court poets had presented him with verses to commemorate today, the sixteenth urs, the anniversary, of Mumtaz’s death.
The back of the earth-supporting bull sways to its belly,
Reduced to a footprint from carrying such a burden.
The eye can mistake it for a cloud.
Light sparkles from within its pure stones
Like wine within a crystal
When reflections from the stars fall on its marble,
The entire edifice resembles a festival of lamps.
The poet had caught both the awesome size and the spectral radiance of Mumtaz’s final resting place. Four years ago, on the twelfth anniversary of her death, her body had been taken from her temporary grave, carried into the crypt and laid in a white marble sarcophagus inlaid with jewelled flowers, their curving fronds suggesting vitality and renewal as if they were truly growing over the marble. A simple epitaph inlaid in plain black marble told the onlooker that here was THE ILLUMINED TOMB OF ARJUMAND BANU BEGAM, ENTITLED MUMTAZ MAHAL. He had spent an hour alone in the crypt before mounting the stone steps to join his family and courtiers in public mourning for his dead empress, just as he was about to do now.
If he had believed those who had consoled him that the passing of time would blunt his pain, he would have been disappointed. Although the pressures of ruling might preoccupy him for a time, immediately afterwards his mind returned to his loss. His emotions were as raw as on the first urs to be held in the mausoleum. Yet not to feel loss would mean he was forgetting Mumtaz, something he could never do … He could at least find comfort in what he had created. His love and loss could not have found more perfect expression.
Even now the tomb was not quite finished. Craftsmen were still putting the final touches to the pavilions of finely carved red sandstone set into the boundary walls where musicians would play, and he had ordered further embellishments to the mosque and guesthouse. Only last month, his comptroller of revenues had reported that the costs of building the tomb had reached fifty lakhs of rupees. He had hinted that such great expense might soon become a drain on the imperial treasury, but Shah Jahan had cut him short — the Moghul empire was wealthy and powerful enough for any project he wished to pursue including the bejewelled Taj Mahal, as people had begun to call the tomb from a shortening of ‘Mumtaz Mahal’.
What a legacy he, Shah Jahan, would bequeath to future generations … what majesty his buildings would convey, whether the Taj Mahal, his monument to his personal loss, or his new city of Shahjahanabad in Delhi, a symbol of his imperial power. History would not easily forget his reign. He had extended the Moghul empire’s boundaries farther south than ever before and who knew what further expansion he and his descendants might achieve to the north?
That thought made him glance over his shoulder at his four sons — all dressed like him in mourning white and matching their pace to the sombre beat of a single kettledrum from the gatehouse as they followed him, walking beside the central north-south water channel with its softly bubbling marble fountains. As he neared the mausoleum, he heard the voices of his dark-robed mullahs as they prayed for the repose of Mumtaz’s soul in the gardens of Paradise. Reaching the sandstone platform, he led the way up the steps on to the smaller marble plinth and into the tomb’s central octagonal chamber. Silk wall hangings gleamed in the light of golden chandeliers and smouldering frankincense crystals spiced the air.
Shah Jahan took his place before the latticed screen of polished jasper. Carved from a single block of stone to resemble filigree and inlaid with gems, it veiled the white marble cenotaph that was an exact copy of the sarcophagus in which Mumtaz lay in the crypt below and over which was spread a sheet of perfectly matched Arabian pearls.