‘Where should we take her, Majesty? Back to her own mansion?’ asked the other.
‘No … Prepare apartments for her in the imperial haram here in the fort. Also give every attention to her attendants — they risked their lives to help her.’ Shah Jahan watched as, following the hakims’ instructions, attendants covered Jahanara and her two waiting women with cotton sheets soaked in water and lifted them carefully on to litters. As they carried them from the terrace Shah Jahan followed slowly. Glancing for a moment towards the Jumna river he made out the pale shape of Mumtaz’s half-built tomb. ‘Don’t let my daughter die like her mother,’ he found himself praying. ‘Punish me, instead. I deserve it.’
Chapter 10
Shah Jahan leant closer as Jahanara muttered something. Briefly her eyelids flickered but then she lay quiet and still again in the half-light of the sick chamber. Though she was getting no worse the hakims were worried. Her periods of full consciousness were brief and her burns, pink and suppurating beneath their dressings, terrible to look at. So it had been for the past ten days. He was spending all the time he could by her bedside, making only the briefest of appearances in his audience chamber. As he sat head bowed, his mind returned again and again to that night. In his opium-laced longing and confusion he had mistaken Jahanara for Mumtaz and tried to make love to her, his own daughter, a sin before God and man. He could not forgive himself and therefore how could he ever expect Jahanara to do so?
Dara and Murad often joined him in the sickroom. Soon Aurangzeb would arrive from Burhanpur and Shah Shuja from Bengal. His family would be reunited again, but in what terrible circumstances. How could he admit to them what had really happened? Where was that aura of good fortune he had striven to preserve on his return to Agra after Mumtaz’s death? … Yet it wasn’t that fate had turned against him. He had cast her off through his own weakness, and even if she survived Jahanara’s scars would remind him for ever how he had betrayed his daughter’s trust. He was so lost in his thoughts that at first he didn’t hear one of the hakims enter the room and he started when the man came close and whispered, ‘Majesty?’
‘What is it?’
‘The foreigner says he knows of a European doctor who might be able to help Her Highness. I’m doubtful but I promised to pass his message to you.’
‘What foreigner? … Do you mean Nicholas Ballantyne?’
‘Yes, the Englishman.’
‘Send him to me at once. If he knows anyone or anything that might help I want to hear about it.’
Half an hour later Nicholas stood before him on his terrace, just a few feet from where Jahanara’s skirt had caught alight.
‘Well? I understand you know a doctor who you think can help the princess?’
Nicholas nodded. ‘He’s a French physician now settled here in Agra. I met him many years ago — he helped cure my master Sir Thomas when he was racked by stomach fluxes — and I know he is highly skilled. I told him about the Lady Jahanara’s burns and he described a remedy that he invented to help soldiers burned by flaming arrows or exploding cannon during battle. It combines medicines from Arabia, from his own country and from Hindustan and he swears that it reduces the pain. He also says that if applied soon enough it encourages the burnt skin to renew itself. He’s outside. I brought him with me in case you wished to speak to him — I could interpret. He speaks little Persian.’
‘Bring him in.’
The physician was a short, squat man and his dark belted robe was stretched tight across a rounded belly.
‘What treatment d’you propose?’
Nicholas translated, then listened carefully to the physician’s response before turning back to Shah Jahan. ‘Before he can decide what to recommend, he says he must examine the patient. He asks whether it’s true that her shoulders, back and legs have been severely burned?’ Shah Jahan nodded. The doctor reflected a moment then spoke again. ‘He says he’s treated similar cases here in Agra where thatched roofs are so dry that a few sparks can ignite them. Last month just such a fire swept through a row of houses in the north of the city. Several women died because they feared to break purdah by leaving their homes but he was able to save a few … As well as the salve I told you about he has invented other treatments, all of which can ease the patient’s suffering.’
‘He talks of easing pain. Can he restore the sufferer to health? My daughter’s two attendants have died of their burns.’
‘I know the answer to that, Majesty — I asked him myself. He says he will try but he can make no promises — at least not until he has seen the princess.’
‘And the disfigurement? If my daughter does survive, can he lessen that?’
Nicholas consulted the physician. ‘No, Majesty. He cannot obliterate the scarring that inevitably results from burns.’
‘That is a lesser matter. Tell him that if he saves my daughter’s life I’ll give him anything he wants.’
After a further whispered exchange Nicholas replied, ‘He asks how soon he can see her?’
‘She is being cared for here in the imperial haram. Only in the most extreme circumstances are my own hakims allowed to enter. No foreign man has ever been admitted. Though such rules are foolish in desperate times like these, I must show some regard to them. I will allow the two of you to visit the haram, but my eunuchs will lead you with your heads covered until you reach my daughter’s room.’
The Frenchman was saying something else and Nicholas lowered his head to catch the words. ‘Majesty, he asks for complete control over everything the princess eats or drinks.’
‘Tell him my daughter is barely conscious and that all that has passed her lips since the accident has been a concoction of water and opium to deaden her pain, especially when the dressings are changed.’
‘The doctor insists she must eat as soon as she is able — mashed fruits, especially bananas — but in particular she must also be made to drink as much water as possible. Her body needs fluids.’
Half an hour later Nicholas put his hand on the shoulder of the French doctor, standing directly in front of him, as the khawajasara instructed. Then a eunuch — smooth-faced and willowy — arranged a piece of green brocade over both the foreigners’ heads, twitching it into place until satisfied that neither would be able to see anything when they entered the haram. The brocade tickled the back of Nicholas’s neck as at the khawajasara’s command he and the doctor stepped slowly forward, the doctor’s hand resting on the eunuch’s shoulder.
‘I was in a haram some years ago,’ the Frenchman whispered, ‘in the household of the Moghul Governor of Gujarat. One of his wives thought she had been poisoned. In truth, she had simply over-eaten and I recommended a purge. But I’ve never forgotten how difficult it was to take the woman’s pulse. She had so many ropes of pearls wound round her arms that at first I couldn’t find it.’
As the doctor chuckled, Nicholas heard doors thrown open and warnings shouted ahead that two foreigners were approaching and the haram inmates should keep out of sight. As he and the doctor shuffled forward, he felt soft carpets beneath his booted feet and smelled the spicy sweetness of frankincense. A few twists and turns and then he caught a rasping of hinges as more doors were opened. This wasn’t how he had imagined entering the exotic, erotic world of the haram. Lurid stories of these sexual pleasure grounds had fascinated him ever since he’d arrived in India. Now, though, his thoughts returned to the injured, possibly dying, princess. Of all Shah Jahan’s children, Jahanara and her brother Dara Shukoh were the ones he remembered most clearly from their childhood. Jahanara had especially enjoyed questioning him about customs in his own country — how women lived and how one had become its sole ruler.