“As a European woman Velvet would be a rarity to the emperor of India, Michael. I will wager he has never seen one before. To ignore her would be to insult the Portuguese governor’s gift, and he would not do that. No, my child has already been in his bed. I can only hope she does not love him so there will be no pain in leaving him. Any guilt she may feel I will assuage and help her to overcome, but first you must get her back for us, Michael!”
Michael O’Malley heard the agony in his sister’s voice. He had to accept her words as accurate, for if anyone knew the East it was Skye by virtue of the two periods in her life when she had lived in Algeria and Morocco. “I’ll get her back,” he said quietly. “Never fear, sister. I will bring our Velvet safely home. Poor child! How she must be pining for her homeland!”
But Velvet had not given a thought to England for several weeks now. Pansy had recovered quickly from the ordeal of her childbirth, and they had left Fatehpur-Sikri with Akbar and all his household to return to the capital of Lahore.
Velvet felt a small pang as she passed by the great chessboard with its red sandstone squares for the last time. The huge court of the Panch Mahal gleamed brightly in the morning sun as they passed beneath the lovely entrance gate. From the vantage point of her gaily decorated howdah atop a plodding female elephant, Velvet turned to catch a final glimpse of the former capital of the Mughals in all its abandoned splendor. Then with the resilience of youth she looked only ahead.
They traveled in a crescent-shaped formation, Akbar followed by his cavalry and then his elephant corps. Mounted archers and pikemen guarded the enormous convoy. Before Akbar went drummers and trumpeters upon elephants; only one sounded his drum at specific intervals. In the middle of the caravan rode those wives and favorites of Akbar who had accompanied him from Lahore. The consorts were all mounted upon elephants, their serving women riding behind upon camels. The women were guarded by armed eunuchs who drove all away from the line of march. Behind them came the treasury and the baggage train, which included the tents and furnishings, all packed into mule-drawn carts and accompanied by soldiers, water-carriers, carpenters, tent-makers, torch bearers, leather workers, and sweepers.
Velvet quickly realized that she should have no fear of attack, for no one would dare to accost Akbar. It was simply to be a tedious journey, but at its end he had promised her gardens and fountains. The monsoons were over, and the cold season was coming. In Lahore, he said, her life would be perfection, and so she dreamed the hot days away snug in her howdah. When the evenings came, however, she was escorted from the women’s tents to the large two-story pavilion where Akbar slept to partake in exquisite nights of passion with this powerful man who had become her husband.
She was no longer segregated from the other women, though only Jodh Bai and Rugaiya Begum approached her. They had begun to teach her Persian and a little Hindi so that she might communicate with those about her. With Adali acting as her translator, Velvet struggled to learn, though not with too great a success. She managed enough vocabulary so that she could gossip with the two women, but often Adali was called upon to explain words Velvet could not comprehend.
“I feel so stupid,” she complained to her two friends one evening, “but the sounds are so different from the tongues of Europe.”
“We think you clever,” answered Jodh Bai. “We cannot learn any of your language. It confounds our brains!”
Velvet chuckled. “I think you are just being kind, Jodh Bai.”
Jodh Bai smiled back at Velvet. “It is not difficult to be kind to you, Candra. Your nature is most sweet.”
Candra.It was strange, Velvet thought, to have been given a new name at this time in her life, but indeed she had been. Before they had departed Fatehpur-Sikri, Akbar had spoken to her of it. “The women in my household do not know what to call you, my Rose. You must have a name that they can understand. I have therefore taken it upon myself to rename you Candra. You will answer to it from this time forth.”
“I will do what pleases you, my lord,” she replied sweetly, “but does the name have a meaning?”
“It means moon, or moonlike, in the ancient Sanskrit language. Your skin is so white that it can be compared to the moon, and therefore I consider it very fitting that you be called Candra.”
So she became Candra Begum, the Rose Princess, among those who lived at the court of the Grand Mughal. The women of the zenana treated her with respect for the most part, but kept their distance. With Jodh Bai and Rugaiya Begum for friends she felt no lack of companionship, but she often saw some of the other wives eyeing her with jealousy.
Zada Begum, Akbar’s second wife, was a gray-brown mouse of a woman with no children to keep her company. She was close friends with the third wife, Salima Begum, mother of the Mughal’s eldest daughter, Shahzad Khanim. Both women were haughty and held the rest of the zenana’s inhabitants in contempt. They were much avoided by the others.
Jealousy, however, held in its grip four of the more important consorts: Almira, mother of Prince Murad; Leila, the Princess of Khandesh whose daughter was Shukuran Nisa; Roopmati, the Princess of Bikaner, mother of Prince Daniyal; and Kamlavati, the Princess of Jaisalmer, who had miscarried twice. Akbar no longer visited Kamlavati’s bed, which embittered her greatly, especially considering that a mere concubine named Waqi had borne the last of Akbar’s children, the little Princess Aram-Banu. Each of these ladies eyed Velvet constantly with black, unfriendly glances and gossiped meanly amongst themselves.
“She has eyes the color of a cat’s,” said Kamlavati.
“And her hair,” murmured Almira. “It is the shade of the plowed earth. I certainly never saw hair that color! It’s disgusting.”
“ ’Tis her white skin I find so ugly,” piped up Roopmati. “It looks like a fish belly.”
“She is enormous in size,” said Leila. “Why, she can look our dear lord directly in the eye. That is most unfeminine. I cannot understand what it is about her that he finds so attractive.”
“Perhaps it is her sweet nature.” Rugaiya Begum, who had overheard the others, chuckled. “None of you can lay claim to that particular nicety of character. Candra is as sweet as honey, and Akbar, a wise old bee, has grown tired of your sour fruits.”
As Rugaiya Begum was Akbar’s senior wife they did not dare to turn their backs on her or to refute her words. The older woman offered them an arch smile and then strode away.
It took a month for them to reach Lahore, and as Velvet viewed the surrounding landscape she was not encouraged. The region was positively parched and grim. Her heart sank. How could there possibly be gardens and fountains in this barren brown place? She sighed and for a moment was melancholy for her beautiful green homeland.
Pansy, however, had recovered her former robust health and seemed to thrive as she cared for her son, who grew larger daily on his mother’s rich milk. Velvet had seen several handsome soldiers eyeing her tiring woman with a look akin to lust. Pansy had seen them, too, but she just shrugged and said dryly, “Eventually I’ll take another husband. There’s many a likely lad amongst them, I can see, and virginity ain’t so much to a man as a woman who can have sons. But now is not the time. Besides, as your tiring woman I don’t have to let myself go cheap.”
Finally Lahore loomed before them, surrounded by a great fortifying wall and accessible only through its thirteen gates. It was set upon the banks of the Ravi River, which had its birth high in the purple Himalaya Mountains. They could see the mountains to the distant north. As they came closer to the city, the landscape grew greener the nearer to the river they got, and, looking closely, Velvet saw that the land was irrigated by narrow canals that drew water from the river inland a short distance. From their howdahs they could see in these fields the peasants with their bullocks plowing the tall rows of grain to remove the weeds and keep the topsoil turned.
The Mughal’s great caravan was now strung out along the main road into Lahore. The single drummer thrummed his monotonous cadence as they moved steadily toward the city. Forced to the side of the road by Akbar’s passage were great commercial caravans of heavily ladened camels, smaller caravans that were donkey-borne, peasants, merchants, and nobles astride fine mounts, their women in carefully curtained palanquins. Past them all rode the Grand Mughal and his household, moving majestically through Lahore’s main gate and into the city, where the caravan wended its way through narrow streets, past great mosques and minarets, past the Mughal fort, to the northwest corner of the city where the palace was located.
Here the section of the caravan carrying the women and their servants was brought directly through the main courtyard of the palace and into the women’s portion of the building. The camels knelt so that the occupants of the palanquins could disembark. The elephants, however, were brought one by one to a high mounting block where each howdah’s occupant was assisted out. As Akbar’s newest wife, Velvet was the last to leave her elephant.
“I should be glad,” she said, laughing to Jodh Bai and Rugaiya Begum as she joined them, “that our lord did not bring all his wives else I would have been here the entire night!”
“Youth and beauty are not always first and foremost.” Rugaiya Begum chuckled. “It is a good lesson for you to learn, Candra.”
