The Moghul

afternoon sun, was Shirin.
    Her eyes were carefully darkened with kohl and her mouth red and fresh. She wore a gossamer scarf decorated with gold thread, and a thin skirt that betrayed the curve of her thighs against the outline of her flowered trousers. The musty air of the room was immersed in her perfume, as though by her very being she would defy the walls of her prison. She looked just as he had remembered.
    She turned and stared at him for a moment, seeming not to believe what she saw. Then her eyes hardened.
    "Shall I teslim before my sentence?"
    Arangbar said nothing as he examined her wordlessly, sipping slowly from his almost-empty cup. Now more than ever he realized why she had once been his favorite. She could bring him to ecstasy, and then recite Persian poetry to him for hours. She had been exquisite.
    "You're as beautiful as ever. Too beautiful. What do you expect me to do with you?"
    "I expect that I will die, Your Majesty. That, I think, is the usual sentence for the women who disobey you."
    "You could have stayed in Surat, where you were sent. Or gone on to Goa with the husband I gave you. But instead you returned here. Why?" Arangbar eased himself onto the stone bench beside the door.
    "I don't think you would understand, Majesty."
    "Did you come because of the Inglish feringhi? I learned yesterday that you conspired to meet with him. It displeased me very much."
    "He was not responsible, Majesty. I met with him because I chose to. But I came to Agra to be with Samad again." Her voice began to tremble slightly. "Samad is guilty of nothing, except defiance of the Shi'ite mullahs. You know that as well as I. If you want to hear me beg for him, I will."
    Arangbar seemed not to notice the tear that stained the kohl beneath one eye. "It was a death sentence for you to disobey me and come back. Perhaps you actually want to die."
    "Is there nothing you would die for, Majesty?"
    Arangbar stared for a moment at the window, its hexagonal grillwork throwing a pattern across his glazed eyes. He seemed to be searching for words. "Yes, perhaps I might die for India. Perhaps someday soon I will. But I would never die for the glory of Islam." His gaze came back to Shirin. "And certainly not for some half-naked Sufi mullah."
    "Samad is not a mullah." By force of will she held any trace of shrillness from her voice. "He is a Persian poet. One of the greatest ever. You know that. He defies the Shi'ites because he will not bow to their dogma."
    "The Shi'ites want his head." Arangbar examined his empty cup and tossed it to the floor, listening as the silver rang hard against the stone. "It seems a small price for tranquility."
    "Whose tranquility? Theirs?" The tears were gone now, her eyes again defiant.
    "Mine. Every day I'm flooded with petitions about this or that heresy. It wearies and consumes me. Samad ignored the laws of Islam, and he has followers."
    " You ignore the laws of Islam."
    Arangbar laughed. "It's true. Between us, I despise the mullahs. You know I once told them I had decided to become a Christian, because I enjoyed eating pork and the Prophet denied it to all men. The next day they brought the Quran and declared although it was true pork was denied to men, the Prophet said nothing specifically about what a king could eat. So there was no need for me to become a Christian." He paused and sobered. "But Samad is not a king. He is a well-known Sufi. The mullahs claim that if he's dead, the inspiration for heresy will die with him. They say his death will serve as an example. I hear this everywhere, even from Her Majesty."
    "Her Majesty?" Shirin searched for his eyes as she spoke, but they were shrouded in shadow. "Does she make laws for you now?"
    "She disrupts my tranquility with all her talk about Islam and Shi'ites. Perhaps it's age. She never used to talk about the Shi'ites. But now she wants to bring the Islam of Persia to India. She forbade Sunni mullahs even to attend the wedding. But if it pleases her, what does it matter? I despise them all."
    "But why Samad? Why sentence him to death?"
    "Frankly I don't really care about this poet, either way. But he has not tried to help himself. When I allowed him to confront the mullahs who accused him, he refused to recite the Kalima, 'There is no God but Allah.'"
    "What did he say?"
    "Perhaps just to spite them, he would only recite the first phrase, 'There is no God,' the negation. He refused to recite the rest, the affirmation. He said he was still