The Moghul

everything about me. We'll leave out nothing. Agreed?" She reached and kissed him. "Will you begin first?"

    CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

    The imminent wedding of Prince Allaudin and Princess Layla was a momentous event in the history of the Moghul empire. It represented the final merging of two dynasties. One, that of the Moghul Akman and his first son Arangbar, was in direct descent from the Mongols of the steppes who had conquered India by the sword less than a century before, melding under one rule a disorganized array of Muslim and Hindu states. The other dynasty, that of Queen Janahara, her Persian father Zainul Beg, her brother Nadir Sharif, and now her daughter Layla, represented a very different kind of conqueror. At court they were called, always in whispers, the "Persian junta."
    Whereas no combination of forces indigenous to India—even the recalcitrant Rajput warrior chieftains of the northwest—had ever succeeded in wresting power from the invading Moghuls, this extraordinary Persian family had, in one generation, come to rule India virtually as equals with the dynasty of Akman, assuming the power that the decadent Arangbar had let slowly slip away. With the marriage of Queen Janahara's daughter to the weakling son of Arangbar, a son she was carefully promoting to the role of heir-apparent, the last element in the Persian strategy would be in place. When Arangbar died, or was dethroned, the powerful line of Akman, who had unified India by a blend of force and diplomatic marriages, would be supplanted by what was, in effect, a palace coup. The "Persian junta" would have positioned itself to assume effective control of India: Prince Allaudin, for so long as he was allowed to maintain even the appearance of rule, would be nothing more than a titular sovereign. Queen Janahara, together with her father and her brother, would be the real ruler of India.
    The queen could, of course, have contented herself for a time longer merely to direct Arangbar from beside the throne, but that could never be entirely satisfactory. Arangbar still wielded power when he so chose, and that power could be enormous.
    India had no independent judiciary, no parliament, no constitution. There was, instead and only, the word of the Moghul. Criminals were brought before him to be tried and sentenced. Offices of state were filled, or vacated, on his personal whim. The army marched at his word. And he owned, in effect, a large part of Indian soil, since large estates went not to heirs but returned to the Moghul when their current "owner" died. He granted lands and salaries as reward for loyalty and service. And he alone granted titles. Seldom in history had a land so vast, and a people so diverse, been held so absolutely under the unquestioned rule of a single hand. Queen Janahara now looked confidently forward to the day that hand would be hers.
    The power Arangbar now possessed was thought by many to have brought his own undoing. Originally an introspective if sometimes whimsical sovereign—whose early memoirs were filled with scientific observations on India's fauna and flora, and statesman-like ruminations on the philosophy of governing—he had become slowly dissolute to the point of incapacity. A man who had forsworn both alcohol and drugs until well into his third decade of life, he was now hopelessly addicted to both. In consequence his judgment and instincts had grown ever more unreliable. And since all appointments of salary and place depended on his word alone, no career or fortune was truly secure. It was into this vacuum of sound leadership that the "Persian junta" of Janahara's family had moved.
    The Persian junta was supported by all those at court who feared Arangbar's growing caprice, by other influential Persians, by the powerful mullahs of the Shi'ite sect of Islam, by Hindus who still habored historic grievances against Moghul rule . . . and by the Portuguese. The "Persian junta" was not loved. But it did not need to be loved; it enjoyed an even more compelling ingredient for success: it was feared. Even those who might have preferred the succession of Prince Jadar wisely held silent. The tides of history were there for all to see.
    Even Brian Hawksworth saw them.
    The private palace of Zainul Beg, father of Janahara and Nadir Sharif and grandfather of Princess Layla, was more modest than that of Nadir Sharif, and its architecture more Persian, almost consciously reminiscent of the land of his birth. It lay on the banks