The Moghul

sent.
    Samad settled his wineglass on the carpet with a sigh of resignation. "You've heard nothing I have said. I am telling you it would be best for you to forget about your 'mission.’ Your destiny is no longer in your hands. But if you will open your heart, you will find it has riches to compensate you manyfold. Still, they can be yours only if you can know love. But now, I fear, the only love you know is self-love, ambition. You have not yet understood it is empty as mirror.

    "The world is but a waking dream,
    The eye of heart sees clear.
    The garden of this tempting world,
    Is wrought of sand and tear."

    Hawksworth shifted and stared about the room. It was darker now but several men had entered. Few of them seemed to understand Samad's Turki.
    "So what do I do now?"
    "Stay with us for a while. Learn to know yourself." Samad rose and stepped off the dais. "Perhaps then you will at last find what you want."
    He motioned for Hawksworth to walk with him to the balcony. Across the courtyard a single lamp burned in the turret of one of the buildings. "Tonight must be remembered as a dream, my English. And like a dream, it is to be recalled on waking as mere light and shadow." He turned and led Hawksworth to the door. The men stood aside for them. “And now I bid you farewell. Others will attend you."
    Hawksworth walked into the marble corridor. Standing in the half-light, her face warm in the glow of a lamp, was . . .
    Shirin.

    CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

    The night sky above the courtyard was afire, an overturned jewel box strewn about an ivory moon. They passed through a gateway of carved columns and ornate brackets, into a smaller plaza. The mosque was left behind: around them low were empty pavilions, several stories high, decorated with whimsical carvings, railings, cornices. Now they were alone in the abandoned palace, surrounded by silence and moonlight. Only then did she speak, her voice opening through the stillness.
    "I promised to think of you, and I have, more than you can know. Tonight I want to share this with you. The private palace of the Great Akman. The most beautiful place in all India." She paused and pointed to a wide marble pond in the middle of the plaza. In its center was a platform, surrounded by a railing and joined to the banks by delicate bridges. “They say when Akman's court musician, the revered Tansen, sat there and sang a raga for the rainy season, the clouds themselves would come to listen, and bless the earth with their tears. Once all this was covered by one magnificent canopy. Tonight we have only the stars."
    "How did you arrange this?" He still was lost in astonishment.
    "Don't ask me to tell you now. Can we just share this moment?"
    She took his arm and motioned ahead. There, glistening in the moonlight, were the open arcades of a palace pavilion. I've prepared something especially for us." She guided him through a wide-open archway and into a large arcade, illuminated by a single oil lamp atop a stone table. In front of them, on the walls, were brilliantly colored renderings of elephants, horses, birds. She picked up the lamp and led him past the paintings and into the next room, a vast red chamber whose floor was a fragrant standing pool of water. In the flickering light he could see a marble stairway leading to a red sandstone platform projecting out over the water, supported by square stone columns topped by ornate brackets.
    "This is where Akman spent the hot summer nights. Up there, on the platform, above a cooling pool of rosewater. From there he would summon his women to come to him from the zenana ."
    Hawksworth dipped his fingers into the water and brought it to his lips. It was like perfume. He turned to he and she smiled.
    "Yes, the Sufis still keep rosewater here, in memory of Akman." She urged him forward, up the stairs. "Come and together we'll try to imagine how it must have felt to be the Great Moghul of India."
    As they emerged onto the platform, the vaulted ceiling above them glowed a ruby red from the lamp. Under their feet was a thick carpet, strewn with small velvet bolsters. At the farthest edge was a large sleeping couch, fashioned from red marble, its dark velvet canopy held aloft by four finely worked stone columns. The covering of the couch was a patterned blue velvet, bordered in gold lace.
    "Just for tonight I've made this room like it was when Akman slept here, with his chosen from the zenana ." She slipped the gauze wrap from her shoulders. He looked