Chapter 31
Between the emperor’s camp and Ramdaspur
July 1635
“Man, it’s hot,” Rodney complained, wiping his neck with a handkerchief—no, that wasn’t what they called it, it was a…bandana.
“That it is,” Gervais said, looking to the mass of mounted men moving south just a few yards from their position. As soon as he heard they might be moving, Gervais had asked Rodney to come with him into town to restock their dwindling supply of salves and medicinal herbs. They’d left before dawn, only to be caught in the tide of riders heading south.
Gervais nodded at the passing soldiers. “I imagine it’s even hotter where they’re going. From what I’ve heard, the Deccan is no earthly paradise, not by a good margin, and the various sultanates are supposed to be quite capable at defending themselves.”
“Speaking of which, aren’t Muslims barred from fighting one another?”
Gervais looked at the up-timer, drawled, “Oh yes, and no Christian ever killed another Christian. Not ever. No. Not once.”
Rodney raised his hands in surrender. “All right. I guess I deserved that.”
“Did you?”
“Don’t make me wring my bandana out in your face, Gervais.”
“But getting to the gist of your question: I’m not really clear on the divisions myself, but as far as I can tell, Shah Jahan’s conflict with the Deccan states isn’t about religion at all.” He shook his head. “Indeed, it’s a lot like Central Europe before you people showed up, only with different religions for spice.”
“That may be so, but just about every one of those guys”—Rodney gestured at the mounted soldiers riding by—“looks like a true believer to me.”
“Perhaps,” Gervais said, looking closely at the men for the first time. Some of them spared a look for the two horsemen sitting on the slight rise, expressions souring when they identified them.
A sudden chill ran down his back despite the heat. Rodney was right. Many of them did seem to have that special look in their eyes, the one that tells a sensible thief he’s dealing with unreasonable men.
He tried to shake the feeling, said: “Well, I suppose it’s a good thing they’re all riding south while we head to Lahore.”
“I suppose so…” Rodney had that look that said he didn’t really believe what he was saying either. Expression brightening, he hiked a thumb over his shoulder at the camp. “Probably a good thing we’re on the move again. The boys are getting really antsy. Having nothing to do has them ready to break everything.”
Gervais looked a question at Rodney, who shrugged massive shoulders and explained, “It was hard enough while we were in Agra, but at least there Angelo was able to point them toward the knocking shops and wine sinks that are ignored by the emperor’s lawmen. Here,” he gestured at the camp surrounding them, “there’s nothing. At least, nothing for young men with more balls than sense.”
“They haven’t been—”
Rodney interrupted, “No, no real trouble yet.”
“But you suspect?”
“Of course. I remember being a guy just out of his teens as well as the next thirtysomething. Randy is especially living up to his namesake. There’s only so much training, riding, and carrying on some guys can do before they really need a…a different outlet.”
Gervais snorted, glad for once of purdah’s restrictions on the interactions between men and women. While Monique was a sensible young lady in most things, she was inexperienced in love, and certain woes they simply couldn’t afford here.
“What do you know about this Mian Mir guy?” Rodney asked, drawing Gervais from his thoughts.
“Not much. Angelo doesn’t know anything we didn’t get from Salim. I managed to ask a few people, but they don’t seem to know anything more. I asked Monique to look into it, but she hasn’t yet had an opportunity.”
“Yeah, Salim said something about Jahanara being taught by Mian Mir, so the ladies might know something more—or be able to ask.”
“I’ll ask next time I see her, but when last we spoke she left me the impression Jahanara was already expending a lot of personal political capital on behalf of the ladies, clarifying their position with regard to the harem and purdah. Which reminds me, that Das fellow Salim engaged to build us the mission?”
“Yes?”
“He says they have a site picked out and bribed the correct people to allow construction to go forward.”
“Good news, I suppose.”
“Why suppose?”
“Makes me nervous, buying something sight-unseen.”
John’s Tent, Emperor’s Camp
“And just where is this army going?”
Salim smiled, looking out past the shade of the awning and into the harsh afternoon light and the horsemen riding away. “To Bengal. The Assamese have proven themselves a greater threat than Islam Khan Mashhadi foresaw.”
“Who?” John asked, biting into a mango.
“The present governor of Mughal-controlled Bengal. He’s held the office a short time.”
“Pardon, I meant to ask about the Assamese, not the governor.”
“Oh. I’m not all that familiar with them myself.” He shrugged. “Foreigners from beyond the eastern borders of the empire.”
“But not ferenghi?” John asked, smiling broadly.
Puzzled, Salim answered the question seriously. “No. That term is used for Europeans.”
“Oh, and here I thought I’d have a chance to go full Klingon.”
“Sorry, but what?”
John chuckled. “It’s from a show on TV, back up-time before the Ring of Fire. It had a race of aliens called Ferengi, merchants and hustlers to a man, bound only by their own set of rules, rules that often clashed with what all the other races thought of as correct behavior.”
Salim tried to hide his surprise at how accurate that translation was. The ferenghi had a deplorable reputation among the peoples of India. They broke agreements, interfered with the pilgrims on Hajj, and generally disrupted everything.
John caught the look of discomfort. “Wait, that’s what you guys actually think of us?” he asked, eyes wide.
Salim tried to make amends: “The merchants, they haven’t been the best representatives of Europeans in general, and with what…” He trailed off. Shah Jahan would not like to hear that he’d spoken of what they knew of the history.
“With what?”
“With what has been going on with Dara Shikoh, I meant to say.”
“Huh. I thought you were going to mention what the English did to India in our…that other history.”
Caught out again, Salim shook his head and decided to give up dissembling. “I was, but I don’t think it my place to bring it up just now.”
“If not now, when? Rodney isn’t here, but we, all of us, are prepared to talk openly about what happened in our history. We did some studying before we left Grantville, see.”
“You would speak openly about it?”
“Of course.” John’s brows drew together over his eyes. “It’s not like we did anything wrong.”
“I see the distinction, but it is a fine one to draw. Perhaps too fine for the angry.”
John nodded. “True, though we still believe that the more you know about what went down in our timeline, the better for everyone.”
“Still, we should not speak too much on this, at least not now. I will see if I can secure a private audience with the Sultan Al’Azam.”
John smiled again. “You know where to reach me.”
Lahore Fort, Jahanara’s Quarters
“We could have been staying here the whole time?” Monique asked, looking about in awe.
“Well, technically, yes,” Jahanara said, pleased at the uniform expressions of wonder on her visitors’ faces. Father had completed his renovations of Lahore Fort the same year Mother died, the project serving as the model for the later work on Red Fort. White marble was everywhere, pietra dura and inlays striking the eye from almost every surface. “And yet, at the same time: no. The emperor is the court, and the court is the emperor. Staying here while he marched to punish those he thought had harmed my brother Dara would have been disrespectful to both my brother and Father.”
“I see, it’s just that…knowing this is here when we were sweating it out in tents outside Ramdaspur is just…painful.”
Jahanara smiled. “Then I suppose it’s best we did not tell you.”
She joined Monique and the other mission women in a brief chuckle.
The up-time woman, Priscilla, looked Jahanara in the eye. “You seem at ease, Begum Sahib.”
“I suppose I am. I have always loved Lahore. My favorite teacher resides here still, and I have many fond memories of this place.”
“We are glad to see you happier.”
Jahanara smiled more broadly. “Also, I have news from my father that he will be summoning your husband and Rodney to speak with him. I made mention of your request, so I have every hope that Father will address your concerns with your husbands.”
“And my father?” Monique asked.
Jahanara nodded, “Yes, of course.”
Ilsa snorted in most unladylike fashion.
“What is it, Ilsa?”
“Just something my mother used to say.”
“Oh?” Jahanara invited.
The ferenghi woman spoke at length, Sahana translating, “When men gather to discuss marriages and other things involving women, they think they are the ones determining our fate, when really, they’re just parroting what their wives and mothers told them to say.”
Smidha laughed aloud from behind Jahanara, the sound surprisingly loud.
Jahanara turned to face her advisor, finding the older woman had covered her mouth with one hand, eyes round with shock at her own outburst. “I’m sorry, Begum Sahib, but those words could have been taken from my mother’s own mouth!”
“Be that as it may, Smidha, I hardly think Father would approve of this wisdom.”
Her guests went still, but Smidha would not be so easily silenced: “True, Shehzadhi Begum Sahib, but your mother would have thoroughly enjoyed it. I daresay she would have also made Shah Jahan laugh in the retelling of it.”
That made Jahanara smile with bittersweet memory. Mother had always been able to get Father to laugh, even when things were at their worst.
“That said, I overstep and beg your forgiveness.”
Jahanara waved the matter away. “It is good to be reminded of such things, especially here amongst friends. Father’s concubines and other wives do not offer him the same solace from care that Mother did.”
“To the detriment of the management of his empire,” Smidha added.
Surprised by her adviser’s sudden openness in front of the others, Jahanara again looked at Smidha.
The older woman wagged her head. “What? I merely speak of the purpose of the harem: to provide men with time free from care and those entertainments necessary to distract the mind and relax the body.”
“Father enjoys his wives and concubines every night.”
Smidha nodded most emphatically. “Indeed he does. But as you said, the pleasures of the flesh do not always soothe a troubled heart. Were it otherwise, your father would have long ago recovered from the wound the loss of your mother left him with.”
Lahore Fort, Harem of Dara Shikoh
“Why are we meeting here?” Rodney asked.
Bertram looked at the up-timer. “Because the emperor has every reason to see his son privately, and if those who were responsible for his care are also present, it raises few questions.”
“I understand that, I just don’t really understand why the emperor should be concerned about questions. We’ve been here for months and he never asked us a thing.”
John spoke up, “I think I said something to Salim that led him to believe now is the time. We were talking about trade and what the English might have done or did—or whatever—in our timeline, and he seemed surprised by my answers.”
Bertram and Gervais shared a look.
Acting on the older man’s tiny nod, Bertram said, “Don Francisco told us something like this might happen. He said one of the things that was most difficult for him to adjust to was how open and trusting you up-timers are with one another. Shah Jahan’s court is nothing like that. There is little to no trust, even among siblings. When you did not mention the history, the court’s natural instinct was to believe you were intentionally withholding information to your benefit.”
“But, Salim—”
“Is neither European nor an up-timer. As much as he’s been a good student of you and us, he does not intrinsically understand this difference of trust.”
Gervais cocked his head and gave a Gallic shrug, “And even if he did, we have no way of knowing whether he could explain the difference to Shah Jahan.”
“True,” Bertram agreed.
Slippered feet sounded from the corridor leading to the balcony overlooking the fort where Dara had slept. One of the palace eunuchs appeared, motioning for them to follow.
The four men were led out onto a wide balcony lavishly furnished with carpets, cushions, and pillows. Shah Jahan, dressed in rich silks and a fine turban, sat next to his son.
Sitting to one side, and looking far less relaxed than the royals, was Salim.
All four guests made the proper obeisances and were given leave to sit in the emperor’s presence, arrayed in a half-circle before and below him.
“The amir tells me you men have things to say regarding the English and the histories brought to us by him,” the emperor said through Salim.
John nodded, spoke for the mission: “Sultan Al’Azam, rather than try and direct your thoughts, we wish to make ourselves available to you to answer any questions you might have about the English and the Europeans. We will answer with what we know.”
“Very good. How is it you were not a part of the British Empire, up-time?”
“The United States—of America, not Europe; the one we had up-time—fought a war for independence some hundred and fifty years or so from now. And we won the war. Later, though, the British pretty much handed power back to the native peoples in just about all their possessions, India and Pakistan included.”
“It only took a couple of world wars and the spawning of revolutionary movements advocating self-rule almost everywhere to finally make them see the light,” Rodney added, his tone tinged with sarcasm.
“When was this?”
“Around two hundred years after the United States gained its independence.”
Shah Jahan’s eyes narrowed as he calculated. “That’s three hundred years of occupation by the English.”
“Not quite, Sultan Al’Azam. In our timeline, Aurangzeb ruled into the dawn of the eighteenth century of our calendar, adding to the empire considerably. His successors were not able to keep the empire together, however. So the English came in and played one sultanate against the other until they ruled it all.”
“I see.” Shah Jahan took very little time to digest that information before asking his next question: “What do you know of the Indian mutiny?”
John looked across at Rodney, who shrugged and said, “Not much. The English, or rather…The East India Company used local men as indigenous troops, drawing them from both Hindu and Muslim society. Some rumor got started about greased cartridges—”
“The muskets had the powder and shot in a paper container. Oiled paper, torn open with the mouth,” John clarified.
“Anyway, the troops were concerned, as Muslims, that the grease was from pork fat, while the Hindus worried that it was beef. The English, making a huge mistake, disciplined the troopers harshly for daring to question. The East India Company’s response made a bad situation far worse.”
Shah Jahan nodded. “And where were the Dutch in all this?”
John shrugged. “I couldn’t really say, Sultan Al’Azam. Until this mission became a reality, we didn’t know much about India. See, we grew up about as far away from India as it was possible to get.”
“Yet you claim to know the details of this moment in Indian history.”
“Our teacher in what we call high school felt it was infamous enough we should know about it. She pointed it out as one of the clearest-cut moments in the history of racist colonialism.”
“She?”
“Ms. Mailey, Sultan Al’Azam, our most formidable history teacher.”
Rodney muttered something Bertram didn’t quite hear. Shah Jahan asked Salim to translate it.
“Ain’t that the truth,” Rodney repeated.
The emperor’s eyes narrowed. “How so?”
“I didn’t attend her school but my wife did. Priscilla said Ms. Mailey cut her students no slack at all. She had them reading things they considered pure torture.”
“But they weren’t?”
Rodney shrugged his huge shoulders. “Later, Priscilla said she came to appreciate a lot of it. But at the time—”
John interrupted. “What did we know? We were just kids, all we wanted to do was chase girls and play ball.”
Shah Jahan’s Persian was liquid and fast, too fast for Bertram to understand. The tone he understood quite well, however.
Salim smiled a bit uncomfortably. “Sultan Al’Azam understands this desire to chase women perfectly, having enjoyed more than a few himself. He does, however, wonder what this ‘playing of ball’ is.”
“Sports, of different kinds—but they almost all involve playing with a ball.” John shook his head. “But the Sultan Al’Azam moves far afield from his original question. We are happy to discuss up-time sports, but understand the Sultan Al’Azam probably does not have all night to listen to us.”
“Quite right.” Almost without pause, the emperor shifted subjects: “How is it that you speak English, after so long apart from the British Empire? Did you not revert to your mother tongues?”
Bertram glanced at Gervais, saw the older man hadn’t missed the way the emperor was testing John and Rodney. Rapidly shifting from one subject matter to another was an excellent method for finding liars and hucksters. Or, in this case, differentiating between practiced courtiers wishing to advance themselves and these strange people from the future.
“Neither of us are Native North Americans. My people came over from England, near as we can tell, in the eighteenth century. Rodney’s sometime in the nineteenth.”
Rodney nodded. “Late nineteenth, on my father’s side anyway. Came from Germany.”
More liquid Persian, including a gesture meant to encompass both the up-timers. “So your people conquered America?”
“In a sense, yes. The English had settled colonies all along one coast. For a couple reasons; disease, wars, and a whole series of bad faith agreements, the indigenous people—the Native Americans, they were called”—Bertram noted how careful John was in selecting his terms—“were either killed, moved off the desirable land, or died from European diseases they had no immunity to.”
“These Native Americans, did they have religion?”
“Yes, many. I couldn’t tell you much about those religions though.” Another shrug. “There weren’t that many Native Americans around to ask, where I grew up, at least not intact cultures. And those that were around, well…It just never occurred to me to ask.”
“But they were not Muslim? Not Christian or Hindu?”
“No, Sultan Al’Azam, although many of them—probably most of them—eventually became Christians. While some people did say they were bringing religion to the poor benighted savages, I think their motives were far simpler and cruder. Some folks wanted land and had the power to take it from those already on it.”
“Is this what you think happened in India?”
John nodded. “Although the English didn’t settle very many colonists here in India, because the climate and diseases were hard on them since they weren’t accustomed to it. They—the English, I mean—were helped along by some native Indians—as they were in North America. Some people will always turn on others for the right incentives.”
The look that accompanied Shah Jahan’s nod quickly disappeared, like a stone dropped into deep waters. Bertram saw it anyway. Saw it, and feared for those who entertained thoughts of betraying the emperor.