Shadow Princess Read Free Page A

ran to her father, knowing that nothing but the casual mention of propriety (which to Aurangzeb was akin to something holy and held in reverence) would have stopped him. She ran swiftly, her heart surging in her chest, not seeing the eunuchs on guard along the way who bowed to her. Where was Bapa? Where was he? She burst into her father’s apartments and shook him awake.
    “Mama wants you,” she said, sobbing now. “Go to her. She is dying.”
    •  •  •
    By the time Emperor Shah Jahan entered the apartments, Mumtaz had given birth to their fourteenth child and was asleep. Jahanara and he had stood outside for twenty minutes, their hands linked, listening to the Empress’s cries, and then the wail of the child. The Matron of the Harem, Satti Khanum, had put her head out when they knocked and said, “Her Majesty is fine, your Majesty. Silly child”—this to Princess Jahanara—“to rouse your father from sleep with fears such as these.”
    “I want to see her, Satti,” Shah Jahan had said.
    “Soon, not now. You cannot watch the birth itself. Stay outside, your Majesty, I will call for you.”
    And so they had been left at the door, leaning with their ears flattened against the wood. They had heard the child bawl, a sigh from Mumtaz, a quietness as she slept. And then Satti had opened the door for her Emperor.
    The baby, a girl, was in a gold and silver cradle in one corner of the room. The women around—midwives and slaves—melted away to make themselves inconspicuous as Shah Jahan bent perfunctorily over the child. She was awake, and her vivid blue eyes looked out at him from the folds of silk swathed around her little body.
    “Did her Majesty give the child a name before she slept?” Shah Jahan asked.
    “She suggested—” Roshanara came flying to her father’s side and clasped his arm around the wrist. “She suggested Goharara, Bapa. Do you like the name?”
    “Whatever your mother wants is what will be, my dear. Go.” He nudged her away. “I must be alone with her.”
    He went to the bed and sat down on a low stool someone had set there for him, his knees raised level with his chest, his hands on his thighs. For a long time, as the dark of night wore out and the light of day came to claim its share of time, he gazed at his wife, noted the rise of her chest as she breathed, marveled at the sheer beauty of her features. He would never tire of this simple act. He placed a broad hand on her brow, but she did not stir. Her skin was too warm, he thought, and snapped his fingers once, without turning around. A slave brought a bowl of water scented with the attar of roses and a soft towel, which he dipped into the water and laid on her forehead.
    “You must get well soon, my love,” he said gently. “We have to enjoy the throne of Hindustan, now, when we finally have what I have labored for.”
    Four years ago, Shah Jahan had fought a bloody and terrible battle for this Empire. He had killed his brothers, his cousins, his nephews without a thought for mercy, for he had known that if they in turn had the throne within their grasp, none would have been shown to him. Minor rebellions still abounded, to be sure, and one such had brought them to the southern boundaries of the Empire, all the way here to Burhanpur, where they had once spent years in a sort of semiexile, where some of their other children had been born, where the throne—set so far away at Agra, hundreds of miles to the north, with its immense treasury of jewels—had seemed unreachable. But Mumtaz and he reigned now over this mighty, stupendously prosperous land, and their names would forever be etched in history, and when posterity spoke of the Mughal Empire, it would be in hushed tones of awe and reverence. And his name, and his beloved’s name, would come to signify everything Mughal. There was very little of the self-effacing in Emperor Shah Jahan—in any case, it was not humility which had put the crown upon his head when his own