“But they shall not obtain that for which they have
perpetrated their wicked deed.
“And in place of benefit I will send them wretchedness.
“Lo! they shall meet with retribution.”
PERSIAN PROPHETS.
A general sense of alarm appeared to pervade the population of Agra,
upon its being made known that the emperor had returned to his palace,
without any of those exhibitions of triumph by which they conceived he
ought to have been accompanied on such an occasion. One of the most
formidable rebellions which had for many years disturbed the peace of
Hindostan, had been completely put down. The arms of Jehangire had not
only vindicated his right to the throne, but had been wielded with a
degree of valour, worthy of the best days of Acbar. Even to the omrahs,
and the troops who had distinguished themselves in the war, a public
entry into the capital, upon their return from the northern provinces,
was eminently due. But nothing of the kind was now to be expected.
The emperor had come back almost by stealth. It was ascertained that
he had arrived in a small boat by the Jumna, and landing at a private
staircase, that led into the seraglio, was conducted to his apartments
as if he had been a captive, instead of a conqueror.
It was soon after further ascertained, that the omrahs, whose duty
it was, from their high birth, as well as from official station, to
keep guard at the palace, had been already displaced, and that their
functions were entrusted to common spearmen, members of that corps of
Orcha rajaputs, on whom the commander-in-chief seemed now resolved
to lavish all his favours. The very name of these troops was odious
in Agra. They were the known--unpunished--detested assassins of the
lamented Fazeel. They had taken no part in the late war. They had
been sent for by Bochari, while he was upon the march to Cashmere. It
was said, that besides their stipend from the treasury, he presented
them with double pay from his own purse; that they were, therefore,
instruments entirely subservient to his will, and that the late
revolt, though completely extinct, was to be made the pretext for new
regulations in the government of the most tyrannical nature.
The public audiences, given from time immemorial by the emperors,
were discontinued. No person was allowed access to Jehangire, except
Bochari, and those specially furnished with his permission--and then
he could only be seen surrounded by a guard of the Orcha chieftains.
The reason assigned by the Persian for these extraordinary precautions
was, that he possessed in his hands undoubted evidence of a conspiracy,
in which most of the omrahs, and many of the inhabitants of Agra,
were engaged, the object of which was to assassinate the emperor, and
to raise Chusero to the throne. One of the chief conspirators, he
alleged, was the high-chancellor, against whom proceedings were about
to be instituted forthwith.
These tidings, with the many false or exaggerated rumours to which
they gave birth, diffused a deep gloom over the whole capital. The
occupations and amusements of the people were, in a great measure,
suspended. Men were afraid to converse with each other upon any
matter relating to the empire, lest they should incur the vengeance
of Bochari, whose emissaries, profusely paid out of the imperial
treasury, were known to be actively employed in all directions. The
prisons were filled with persons of note, who had been apprehended upon
the denunciations of these spies, without the slightest proof of any
offence being brought against them. Each succeeding morning teemed with
mysterious reports of new arrests, and of secret decapitations, carried
into effect in defiance of every established form of legal procedure.
This calamitous state of things continued for several months, during
which it became manifest that Bochari was the real master of the
empire, although the public ordinances were still signed by Jehangire.
He did not yet venture to displace the subahs of the provinces, who
had been appointed previously to the expedition to Cashmere. It was
not concealed, however, that they were all distributed amongst the
Orcha chieftains, who were to take possession of their offices as
soon as they could be spared from attendance in the capital. As they
constituted the principal support of the usurper, he feigned a variety
of excuses, from time to time, in order to detain them near his person.
Zeinedeen, who was obliged to act with the greatest circumspection,
notwithstanding the sacredness usually attached to his character as a
dervish, did not fail to convey to Kazim accurate intelligence of these
events, which, he very justly stated, were felt with tenfold severity
by the people of Agra, as they were no longer under the protection of
the high-chancellor. While he was to be seen, they said, in the seat of
judgment, they smoked their chibouques in tranquillity, because they
knew that no injustice could reach them, if the administration of the
law were in the hands of Kazim Ayas.
The first act of open resistance to the absolute authority exercised
by Bochari during a period of more than twelve months, occurred in
consequence of an attempt that was made by his order to raze the
mansion of the high chancellor to the ground. A private execution might
be attended with serious consequences the moment it became known. An
open trial might prove equally perilous. In order to feel the public
pulse with respect to his desired victim, he instructed his myrmidons
to proceed to that officer’s state residence, on the bank of the Jumna,
and to demolish it. The design became known, however, and the persons
employed to effect it no sooner commenced operations than an immense
crowd assembled at the place, and assailed them with bitter reproaches.
The men persevered,--troops having in the mean time arrived to their
assistance. This was the signal for a general tumult. A part of the
building had been already thrown down. The materials were made use of
by the people as missiles, which they hurled against their antagonists.
The cavalry found it impossible to act, so dense was the crowd by which
their movements were impeded. They were slaughtered in detail, and in
a few moments the whole of the workmen assembled to execute the orders
of Bochari, were compelled to fly from the ground.
This event filled his mind with alarm. It demonstrated to him the very
slight foundation upon which his power was based, although it had
been suffered to continue so long, without meeting any considerable
opposition. He had failed, it was true, to obtain the concurrence of
any of the principal omrahs or rajahs in his system of tyranny. But
before this occurrence he felt an impression that his authority, armed
as it was with all the terrors which his position enabled him to call
to his assistance, was too formidable to permit of any serious attempt
at resistance. He trembled on his pinnacle.
The long year already spent by Kazim and his family within the walls of
their prison, seemed nevertheless likely to be succeeded by another.
From an early period the governor of the citadel had been displaced,
because he was suspected of being favourable to their interests. The
estates bestowed upon Kazim, by Acbar and Jehangire, as rewards for his
important services to the empire, had been confiscated. His property of
a moveable nature, consisting of money, household furniture, horses,
and cattle of every description, had been seized and distributed,
as well as his estates, amongst the Orcha rajaputs whose rapacity
was insatiable. His office was abolished as no longer necessary in a
country, that had ceased to be governed by law. He and his wife and
daughter were studiously subjected to every species of privation. No
other food was allowed them than that which was daily divided among the
meanest prisoners,--rice, barley bread, and water. They were indeed
suffered to retain three female slaves, the daughters of a nurse
who had formerly lived in Kazim’s family. But no other persons were
permitted to enter their apartments, Zeinedeen alone excepted.
These persecutions, accumulated one upon another, and accompanied
with every petty circumstance of mortification which the Persian
could invent, at first produced a sensible effect upon the health
and spirits of Mangeli. But the mild suggestions of her husband, and
the affectionate attentions of Nourmahal, whose character now shone
out in all its native dignity and beauty, soon beguiled her from the
melancholy anticipations in which she was prone to indulge.
“We are, it is true,” he would say, “deprived of station, fortune, and
liberty. But we suffer in common with many others, who possess not our
resources for rendering these evils tolerable. Disease takes from some
the power of enjoyment in the midst of riches. We still have health. As
to high station, it can hardly be desirable to any elevated mind in the
present state of Hindostan; and the sense of freedom is in our souls,
although we are confined personally within these three chambers.
“At all events let us not shadow out new misfortunes before they
actually come. When they do arrive, they are seldom so difficult to
bear as we imagine. Something altogether unforeseen occurs to limit
their duration, or to disarm them of their terrors. By anticipating
them, we give them reality so far as mental pain is concerned, when
in fact they may never approach us; and when they do, we suffer them
over again, thus unnecessarily doubling the affliction, with which they
would have been otherwise attended.”
Nourmahal was not long in reducing to practice the resolutions,
which had often passed through her mind, as to providing against the
pressure of calamity, such as that in which she and her beloved
parents were now involved. She found means, through Zeinedeen’s
co-operation, of disposing of the jewels and trinkets which she
fortunately happened to have about her person, on the night of her
escape from the fortress, when she was so suddenly transferred from
the ball-room to the hermitage. The produce of these articles enabled
her to purchase, not merely the ordinary necessaries, but even some of
the luxuries of life, to which her parents had been accustomed; and,
moreover, a considerable quantity of brocade, silks, muslins, and other
materials, which, with the assistance of her attendants, she converted
into dresses of the most elegant description. Those maidens were at
first little versed in this sort of employment, but she spared no pains
in instructing them. Her patience, in shewing them how to execute their
work with the requisite degree of neatness, was admirable.
Never perhaps did Kazim contemplate his daughter with a warmer
affection, or, more properly speaking, with a higher degree of
gratitude to Heaven, for having given him such a child, than when he
beheld her engaged in teaching those young women the very rudiments of
needlework, with which they had been before unacquainted, as they had
been brought up to the employment of cultivating flowers, destined to
be sold in the market of Agra. But they were of docile dispositions,
and they soon learned from their young mistress how to perform, with
readiness and precision, their assigned tasks, and even to bestow upon
them those little graces beyond the reach of mechanism, which flowed so
naturally from her own hand.
Nothing could be more beautiful than the flowered muslins which
emanated occasionally from this domestic factory. It was Nourmahal’s
habit to draw the flowers first, and then when her fancy was pleased,
not only with their form, but their variety, to work them herself upon
the plain muslin. She did not follow the usual fashion of strewing only
one species of flower upon the material. She selected such as in colour
and feature best harmonised together, and these she disposed within
her tambour frame so tastefully, that the eye was at once struck with
the novelty, and captivated with the poetic elegance of her invention.
By the industry of her handmaids, these specimens of her art were
multiplied. They found a ready sale in the bazaars of Agra, and of
Delhi, whither they were conveyed by the care of Zeinedeen, and were
speedily so much in vogue amongst the ladies of the two cities, who
converted them into turbans, that the supply was seldom adequate to the
demand.
In the same manner, the dresses in brocade and rich silks, which were
executed by Nourmahal and her gentle companions, were acknowledged,
even by persons the most experienced in the manufacture of female
apparel, to be inimitable. Even when nothing was done to improve the
texture of the material, there was an effect about the fashion of the
robe itself, which pronounced it to be fit only for a noble woman. But
when to the texture were added ornaments in gold or silver--whether
they assumed the resemblance of flowers, or bees, or butterflies, or
the insects that illuminate the forest, or the fishes that lighten over
the deep,--it was said that none but empresses ought to be allowed to
assume such splendid vestments.