The Serpent's Tooth Part 4

Walking over to the cas.e.m.e.nt Shah Jahan looked across the Tapti, imagining that through the pearly early morning light he could see the glow of the thousand candles he had ordered to be kept burning around Mumtaz's grave. Suddenly his head began to spin and he gripped the edge of a marble table to stop himself falling. With shaking hand he reached for a pitcher of water and emptied its contents down his throat. As the liquid hit the pit of his stomach he thought he was about to be sick. Slumping to the ground, he leant back against the wall and closed his eyes.

'Father ... Father ... wake up!'

A gentle voice was intruding into his troubled sleep and a hand was shaking his shoulder. Shah Jahan opened heavy eyes to see Jahanara kneeling by him. 'Why are you here? I said I wanted to be alone ...' he muttered. The sun was slanting through the cas.e.m.e.nt but he had no idea how long he'd been sleeping.

'I've been so worried about you, we all have ... We couldn't obey your order not to be disturbed any longer.'

Shah Jahan pulled the cap he had been wearing from his head. As he ran a hand through his hair he heard Jahanara gasp.

'My appearance shocks you, but I've no more use for fine clothes or rich gems ... I followed your mother's bier in these coa.r.s.e garments and I'll wear them until they fall from my body.'

'It's your hair, Father ...'

'What d'you mean?' He tugged a lock forward and examined it. When he had ridden from the battlefield to Mumtaz's side it had been dark as night. Now it was mostly white. The mirror hadn't lied. 'G.o.d has truly cursed me. He has punished me for my sins and cast me out. This is one of his signs.'

'Father ... Father, please ... Shock and grief are the cause ...'

'No, it's a message. G.o.d is reminding me that despite my power, my wealth, I'm only human born to suffer just like the peasants who are dying because of the drought.' He gave a mirthless laugh, then stopped as a yet darker thought came to him. What if Mumtaz's death was G.o.d's retribution for the deaths of his half-brothers? As he stared down at the carpet, the swirls of crimson red and indigo blue danced before him and he felt himself growing dizzy again. Leaning forward he put his head in his hands and began rocking gently to and fro.

'Father, you are making yourself ill. You must eat something,' Jahanara was saying. 'Let me order your attendants to prepare you some food.'

'The very thought turns my stomach.'

'You must try, for the sake of our family. We need you. And you forget you have a new daughter. Satti al-Nisa is caring for her as tenderly as our own mother would have done, but we need to know your orders for her care ...'

Shah Jahan held up a hand. He had no wish to think about the child whose birth had cost Mumtaz her life. 'Tell Satti al-Nisa I am grateful to her but that such matters must wait.'

'You can't just stay here avoiding the world.'

'I don't intend to. It is exactly a week since your mother died. Tonight I will go again to her grave.'

'Let me come with you, Father ... Dara too. As your eldest children it would be fitting and we want to.'

His first impulse was to tell her he would make the journey alone, but his children had the right to mourn Mumtaz as well. 'Very well.'

That evening, three palanquins decked in purple so dark it was almost black bore Shah Jahan, Jahanara and Dara Shukoh out of the same gateway through which Mumtaz's bier had been carried head first from Burhanpur and which hadn't yet been bricked up. The country people, who dreaded ghosts, believed that a corpse must be carried that way and the route of its final journey blocked to confuse the spirit and prevent it from finding its way back to the place where body and soul had parted. Shah Jahan had always thought it a foolish superst.i.tion but now he wished that it was true to have Mumtaz return to him even in spirit would be some balm. Her ghost could never frighten him.

The bearers crossed the river at a ford where the river was little more than a foot deep and continued up the bank towards the Zainabad Gardens, whose semi-ruined arched gateway emerged out of the darkness. 'Set me down here,' Shah Jahan ordered. Stepping from the palanquin, he waited for Jahanara and Dara Shukoh. Then, with them following, he approached the gateway, acknowledging the salute of the Rajput guards with a brief nod. Through the arch the white marble pavilion beneath which he had ordered Mumtaz's grave to be dug glimmered palely as a crescent moon appeared through the scudding clouds. Beneath the canopy over the simple white marble slab bearing Mumtaz's name flickered the ma.s.s of small candles.

Shah Jahan's eyes blurred with tears so that everything seemed suddenly magnified and multiplied as he walked towards the grave. Reaching it, he dropped to his knees weeping helplessly, his tears splashing on the marble. Bending lower, he kissed the cold stone. Mumtaz had been his lover, his friend, his guide through life's complexities. To face each new day without her would be a torment. But it was his burden to bear. For the sake of Jahanara and Dara Shukoh, whose hands he could feel resting on his shoulders, and his other children he would devote himself to strengthening the empire and securing the future of their dynasty. Though Mumtaz had pa.s.sed into another life, he would take the empire to even greater glory in her memory ... But even as he made that pledge it echoed hollowly round his mind, bringing him little comfort. What did any of it matter without her beside him? There was greater consolation in the promise he had made to her in the last moments of her life. Raising his head he whispered, 'I will build you a tomb like Paradise on earth in Agra. You won't lie long in this famine-struck land.' As he knelt by the grave Shah Jahan lost all sense of time.

'Father ... are you all right?' Dara Shukoh's tone was hesitant.

This was the first time his son had ever asked him such a question. Until now it had been his role as a father to nurture and protect his children. How often had he spoken those very words to one of his sons after a fall from a horse or a tumble during a wrestling contest? Life was strange. A week ago, hair still dark as ebony, he had been riding to war against his enemies, never realising how close or in what way he was to tragedy. Now he was an object of the compa.s.sion, pity even, of a son barely out of his boyhood. 'I am an emperor and as such I must and will weather this as I have weathered setbacks in battle and plots against my life. But as a man, no, I'm not all right. This wound will never heal. The pain may lessen but it will never go away and I wouldn't wish it to, because the absence of hurt would mean I had forgotten your mother.'

'Nothing will be the same for any of us,' Dara said. At her brother's words, Jahanara took him in her arms and held him for a moment, just as she had when they were children and he needed comfort, even though she was barely a year older.

His children were so young, so vulnerable, thought Shah Jahan as slowly they made their way from the garden. Though tragedy had overtaken his family he must protect them from its consequences. For the first time since Mumtaz's death, his mind returned to the war he was fighting. Though he had suffered a mortal wound he must conceal it from his enemies, who would already be scheming how to exploit his misfortune. They might even expect him to leave the Deccan and return in mourning to Agra.

Shah Jahan frowned. The Bij.a.purans' treachery had forced him south. If they hadn't risen up, he would still be in Agra. Mumtaz would have stayed in the comfort and security of the haram to give birth instead of enduring an exhausting journey to this desolate part of his empire. She might have lived ... His enemies would die repenting their foolhardiness.

Shah Jahan looked up reluctantly from the drawings spread out before him. His master builder had followed his guidance but the result looked wrong. The tomb itself seemed dwarfed by its position in the middle of a large square garden. Yet he'd intended the garden as merely the setting for the flawless jewel that would be Mumtaz's mausoleum. 'I know the effect I want but I can't see how to create it ... This looks too ordinary. What do you think, Jahanara?'

'I'm not sure ... it's not easy to tell.'

He looked broodingly at the drawings once more. 'I asked not to be disturbed. Why are you here, Jahanara?'

'Because I must speak to you. It's six weeks since my mother died yet I and my brothers and sisters still hardly see you. Neither do your courtiers or your counsellors. I mean no disrespect but I know that my mother would say the same thing if she were still alive. You must not neglect your duties because of your grief for her.'

'How am I neglecting my duties? My commanders have their orders and are in the field against the rebels. We are driving them back. What more do you expect of me?' He saw Jahanara flinch and softened his tone as he added, 'Please understand. I can find no rest until I have decided the plans for the mausoleum.'

'I know how much that means to you, but you still haven't seen your new daughter. You haven't even given her a name. And now I hear that you intend to send her to Agra to be brought up in the imperial haram.'

'You don't understand. I wish the child to be well cared for, but the thought of her is painful to me.'

'She's not "the child". She's your daughter. At least look at her once before you send her away.' Without waiting for his answer Jahanara clapped her hands. At the signal Satti al-Nisa entered the room. Coc.o.o.ned in a soft woollen blanket in her arms was the baby. 'Majesty.' She bowed her head, then held the bundle out to him.

Shah Jahan hesitated. He was on the point of ordering Satti al-Nisa to withdraw, but something stopped him. Slowly he stepped closer and with a hand not quite steady drew back the blanket. The baby was sleeping, one curled fist pressed against her mouth. How could he feel animosity towards such a tiny, innocent creature ... Yet he felt no fatherly tenderness. It was as if he had lost the power to feel anything much at all.

'Majesty, the empress often talked about the names you and she might give the child if it were a daughter. There was one name in particular she was fond of,' Satti al-Nisa said.

'What was it? I don't recall ...'

'Gauharara.'

'Then let it be so.'

Gauharara suddenly woke and began to thresh about in Satti al-Nisa's arms, then to wail.

'Take her back to the haram.' Shah Jahan turned away as Satti al-Nisa carried his daughter swiftly from the room.

'Don't send Gauharara from us, Father. Satti al-Nisa wishes to care for her.' For a moment Jahanara rested her hennaed fingertips on the coa.r.s.e-woven cotton of his tunic. Since Mumtaz's death he had decreed that all the court should wear only the plainest garments.

'Very well.' At the relief on Jahanara's young face he felt regret for causing her anxiety, yet he couldn't help himself. Since Mumtaz's death it was as if a barrier had sprung up between himself and the rest of the world, including his family, whom he knew he loved. Even now he was wishing Jahanara would go away and leave him to his thoughts, but it seemed she had more to say.

'Father, there's something you should know. A few days ago Aurangzeb came to me in great distress. A mullah had told him that G.o.d had taken our mother away because you are a bad Muslim who flouts Islamic law by employing Hindus and other non-Muslims at your court. I told Aurangzeb that the mullah was talking nonsense that you rule as our great-grandfather Akbar did by showing tolerance to all but he would not be convinced.'

'Perhaps he was right not to be. Maybe the mullah is speaking no more than the truth. These past weeks I've asked myself over and over how I could have offended G.o.d so badly to be punished in this way. Perhaps I have been too lax, too indulgent towards those of other faiths, like the arrogant Portuguese Jesuits who travel the length and breadth of my empire proclaiming that they alone have G.o.d's ear. They are corrupt, and venal as well. Remember how they expelled us from their settlement on the Hooghly river when we were fugitives, even though your mother was so weak? They acted without the care and compa.s.sion they boast is at the heart of their religion because they wanted to gain favour with my father and Mehrunissa. I've often thought of them over the years but now I've acted. Two weeks ago I despatched soldiers to expel the priests from their settlement and to burn their buildings down so that they cannot return. I am also thinking of forbidding the construction of further Hindu temples in my cities.'

'What?' Jahanara looked stunned, and it was a moment or two before she could gather her words. 'Father, expel the foreign priests if you must they have done something to deserve it but don't turn on your loyal subjects just because they are of a different religion. Your own mother, your grandmother, were Rajput princesses. Hindu blood flows in your veins and mine. What's more, your Hindu subjects have done nothing to offend you and they share in our grief ... Think of the messages of condolence we have received. The courts of Amber and Mewar and Marwar mourned with us, observing the forty days as strictly as we did ourselves. Don't repay them by restricting their religious freedoms ... It isn't just.'

Shah Jahan stared at his daughter as if seeing her properly for the first time. Her strained expression, the pa.s.sion in her voice, told him she was speaking from the heart. And there was so much of Mumtaz in her she had her mother's courage and her gentle persistence. Even her tone was so like Mumtaz's that for a moment, if he closed his eyes, he could imagine that his wife was still with him. The thought brought pain but also consolation of a kind.

'Perhaps you are right. I will think further before I act. But in return I've something to ask. I've decided to send your mother's body back to Agra for temporary burial until the tomb I will build there is ready to receive her. The golden casket I ordered will arrive in two or three days' time and there's no reason to delay any longer. My mind will be easier knowing she has returned to rest in the place she loved. I can't leave the Deccan myself until I have beaten my enemies, so I'd like you and Dara to accompany the funeral cortege. As you reminded me once before, as my eldest son and daughter it is fitting.'

Shah Jahan charged at the head of his men towards a large squadron of Bij.a.puran hors.e.m.e.n. He had encountered them as they crossed in front of his own forces on one of his sweeps of the countryside. At the urging of his officers he had reluctantly re-joined his forces for the first time a few days after the departure of Mumtaz's cortege for Agra, but now he found that the excitement and risks of the search and ensuing pursuit were almost the only things that dulled his grief for Mumtaz, forcing him to concentrate his mind on present dangers rather than the past. He had been glad to embark on this, the third such sortie.

'Majesty, you are outdistancing us. Rein in a little or we cannot protect you,' he heard the captain of his bodyguard yell above the thunder of the charging horses' hooves. He paid no attention. If his fate was to die so be it. He would join Mumtaz in the gardens of Paradise. Within moments he clashed with the foremost Bij.a.puran, a squat man on a white horse whose opening stroke with his curved scimitar whistled through the air above Shah Jahan's plumed helmet as he ducked. Shah Jahan's horse was galloping so fast that it carried him beyond the man before he could get in a stroke of his own. Another Bij.a.puran horseman thrust at him with his long lance but he turned it aside with his sword before giving a backhand slash with his own weapon which thudded into the rump of the rebel's chestnut horse, causing it to rear and unseat its rider before bolting.

Shah Jahan struck at a third Bij.a.puran but his blow glanced off the rebel's breastplate. Moments later, he found himself alone on the far side of the Bij.a.puran ranks. Several enemy riders were wheeling to attack him. Realising the danger his impetuous and foolhardy charge had brought him into, he immediately headed, heart thumping, towards the nearest man, still battling to turn his horse, and before the rider could react thrust his sword deep into his abdomen below his steel breastplate. As Shah Jahan wrenched his weapon free his adversary collapsed on to his horse's neck, dropping his short lance.

A second Bij.a.puran had been quicker to turn and at once attacked the Emperor. His sword struck the pommel of Shah Jahan's saddle as the emperor swayed back out of the way, simultaneously striking out with his own bloodstained blade and knocking the Bij.a.puran's domed helmet from his head. Undaunted, the horseman rode again at Shah Jahan, this time joined by two of his comrades. Shah Jahan pulled back hard on his reins purposely causing his horse to rear up, front legs flailing. One of its hooves caught the foremost Bij.a.puran, who fell backwards. Immediately Shah Jahan, gripping his reins with his left hand to turn, slashed at the next rider catching him in the muscle of his upper right arm and forcing him also to drop his weapon. Struggling desperately to turn his horse to face the third attacker, the helmetless man, Shah Jahan realised that he was not going to be able to do so before the Bij.a.puran got in his blow. Instinctively he tried to make himself the smallest target possible. Then the Bij.a.puran's head split before his eyes into a mess of blood and brains. The captain of his bodyguard had forced his way through the column and cleft the man's unprotected skull in two. Others of his bodyguard were appearing and straight away charging into their enemies' disintegrating ranks. The Bij.a.purans who could disengage themselves from the fight by no means all of them were beginning to kick their horses into a gallop to escape, leaving their fellows to die or be taken prisoner.

Forty-eight hours later a period during which he had scarcely left the saddle, never mind slept Shah Jahan was standing with Ashok Singh on a flat outcrop of rock looking down on the small walled town of Krishnapur sited in the ox-bow bend of a dried-up river. From his interrogation of some of the Bij.a.purans captured during the earlier skirmish Shah Jahan had discovered that the town had become a base for their activities. Sparing neither himself nor his men, two hours earlier he had reached Krishnapur to find its gates firmly closed against him. His men now encircled the town.

'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 a.s.sault 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 G.o.ds 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 G.o.d'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 Bij.a.purans 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 hors.e.m.e.n burst through the gateway. Scattering women and children alike before them, they swerved their mounts round Krishnapur's walls, h.e.l.l-bent on their own escape. More followed. None slowed to avoid the p.r.o.ne 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 Bij.a.purans' 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 antic.i.p.ation of just such a Bij.a.puran 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 Bij.a.purans 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 Bij.a.puran hors.e.m.e.n who were galloping along the rutted riverbed. Suddenly, as if as one and clearly in response to a shouted order, the whole Bij.a.puran 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 Bij.a.puran 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 b.l.o.o.d.y 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 Bij.a.purans as nothing else could the futility of their continued resistance to his authority and the unflinching harshness of their punishment should they persist.

As he rode back through the gateway into Burhanpur a few days later, Shah Jahan saw Aslan Beg waiting for him in the sunlit courtyard, a letter in his hand. 'Majesty, a rider brought this yesterday. It is from the Lady Jahanara. I thought you would wish to see it immediately.'

Shah Jahan broke the seal at once.

Father, I wanted you to know as soon as possible that we have reached Agra safely after ten weeks of travel and that my mother's body has been laid in a temporary grave on the banks of the Jumna exactly as you wished. As we approached the city, wailing crowds lined the highway, covering their heads with dust and weeping. So has it been throughout the journey, as if the indigo of grief had descended on our land. I will write later at greater length.

As he read, Shah Jahan felt a familiar dark desolation steal over him, dissipating his pleasure at his military success. When he and Mumtaz had left Agra he had never imagined that their life together was almost over. With her by his side he had looked to the future and the fulfilment of his ambitions to expand his empire with confidence, but now, whatever triumphs he achieved as an emperor, what could they mean to him as a man when so much joy and warmth had been taken from him? What consolation could he find in building a cold tomb? He had promised Mumtaz he would not give way to despair, but was that a promise he could keep?

Chapter 6.

'Welcome to Burhanpur, Ustad Ahmad.'

'I am honoured you sent for me, Majesty. I came as quickly as I could.'

Shah Jahan scrutinised the tall, slenderly built man bowing low before him, hoping that at last he had found an architect who could help give expression to the vision of Mumtaz's tomb that had begun crystallizing in his mind but was still incomplete. 'My father-in-law Asaf Khan wrote to me that you have designed buildings of great beauty for Shah Abbas. The task I have for you is greater than any the Persian shah can have set to design a mausoleum for my wife of such unique beauty that later generations will still hail it as a wonder of our age. The thought doesn't intimidate you?'

'No. It's a challenge no true artist could resist.'

Clearly Ustad Ahmad was not a modest man, but that was a good thing, Shah Jahan thought. Others he'd consulted like his master builder had been over-eager to please, praising everything he himself had suggested and contributing few ideas themselves. He waved the architect to sit at the long low table. 'What thoughts do you have for me?'

'I think you are familiar with the way the Persians design their gardens?'

'I've seen paintings and drawings. I know they call them pairidaeza.'

'Exactly, Majesty, "gardens of Paradise", with two bisecting watercourses running north to south and east to west to represent the sacred rivers of Paradise. Such should be the setting for the tomb of her late Majesty.'

'But I have already written to you saying that I wished the tomb to be built in the centre of a garden. Do you have nothing new to suggest?' Shah Jahan couldn't keep irritation from his voice but Ustad Ahmad didn't seem abashed.

'I do, Majesty. I believe the tomb should not sit in the centre of the garden instead it should overlook it, dominating the eye. The land you have purchased on the banks of the Jumna is perfect for what I have in mind.'

Shah Jahan looked at Ustad Ahmad, trying to picture what he meant. Ashok Singh had suggested he acquire the site which was immediately downstream of an almost right-angled bend in the Jumna river, from his father, the Raja of Amber, because it was so close to the fort barely a mile and a half away that the tomb would not only be visible from the battlements but could be visited by boat. The architect continued. 'I propose building the tomb on a raised platform on the riverbank with the gardens laid out below.'

'But can the bank take the weight? My builders say the soil is sandy and light and the force of the river may cause erosion.'

'The bend in the Jumna reduces the thrust of the current at that point. Besides, there are ways of reinforcing the bank to support the buildings.'

'Buildings? You're suggesting more than one?'

'Yes. Let me show you, Majesty.' Ustad Ahmad took a large folded paper from his battered green leather satchel, opened it and spread it on the table. 'I have drawn everything on a grid so you can see clearly the layout I'm proposing. The mausoleum would stand on two platforms a large one surmounted by a smaller plinth for the tomb itself.'

'What are these structures you've marked on either side of the tomb?'

'To the west a three-domed mosque and to the east a similar structure to be a resthouse for pilgrims but also the jabab the echo of the mosque, enhancing the symmetry which is so important to my design. And look, Majesty, to complete the effect, at the far end of the northsouth waterway, directly opposite the tomb, I propose a southern gatehouse. As they enter, visitors will see the mausoleum rise before them as if floating against the limitless backdrop of the sky.'

Shah Jahan scanned Ustad Ahmad's drawing he had indeed created an image of perfect balance. Yet everything would depend on the design of the tomb itself, which was marked only by a circle. 'What about the mausoleum?'

The architect produced a silk-wrapped bundle from his bag. 'Before I show you this let me explain my thoughts. I recently visited the Emperor Humayun's tomb in Delhi. What if, I wondered, the late empress's mausoleum was, like Humayun's, built to an octagonal plan but fuller of light, better befitting the memory of a woman? I experimented over and again with the proportions and concluded that the base should be a cube with its vertical corners chamfered to produce the octagon. The sarcophagus itself would lie in the middle of a central octagonal chamber surrounded by eight interconnecting chambers on each of two levels. The exterior facades would consist of two storeys of arched recesses. But enough words, Majesty. Allow me to show you what I mean.'

Ustad Ahmad opened his parcel and took out some wooden blocks which he began carefully arranging into an octagonal structure. 'Look, Majesty on each of the four main sides would be iwans, entrance arches, whose top border would rise above the rest of the facade. The height from the ground to the top of the dome would be two hundred and forty feet.'