The Mountain of Light Read Online Free PDF Page B

the expanse of mud that crept from the walls of the fort to the banks of the river. Azizuddin stood watching until Ranjit Singh glanced up at him and raised his hand.
    In the quiet of the night, the Maharajah’s voice came clear and strong. “Come down, Azizuddin, you have news?”
    â€œYes, your Majesty,” Azizuddin shouted. Then, he turned and ran back out to the Hall of Public Audience and, from there, through the western gate and aroundthe walls of the fort, through the scrub to where his king waited for him.
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    The Shalimar Gardens were laid out in an elongated rectangle, south to north. There were three terraces—the highest one on the southern end, ten feet above the middle terrace, which was also ten feet above the lower terrace. This demarcation in height created the public and private spaces in the gardens. The upper terrace, which housed the pavilion of the Aiwan on its southernmost end, was for the women of the harem. The middle terrace, in the center of whose pool Shuja and Ibrahim had wrestled, was the semiprivate courtyard—here, again, while in residence, the Mughal emperors had met with the grandees of the Empire, or held amusements in the form of musical nights under the stars, and the orchestra would sit on the platform in the center of the pool, the Emperor himself on a marble throne which jutted out into the pool. The lower terrace was essentially the Hall of Public Audience. It had gateways leading into it from the northern, eastern, and western walls—the last of which Fakir Azizuddin had left through to go to Lahore Fort.
    A long channel cut through the gardens in the middle from the south to the north, and thus had Emperor Shah Jahan brought his water feature into every terrace. Where the water descended from one terrace to the next, there were miniature cascades over marble walls littered with niches in which to light lamps on dark nights, and the water then flowed into the central pool in each terrace, and on its way down through the channel.
    Wafa Begam had taken her husband and Ibrahim into the upper terrace to sleep. Their beds were made under the stars, close to the pool in the center. A few coal braziers were set around the quadrangle formed by the water channels. Dried neem leaves curled and charred in the fire of the braziers, sending pungent clouds of smoke into the air to keep away mosquitoes and insects.
    A lamp, its flame shaded by glass and a wooden cap, squatted by her side. Wafa leaned against Shuja’s bed, seated on the marble floor, and ate her evening meal. Every now and then, she tilted the plate toward the light so as to better see what she was eating, but it all looked the same. A mass of curry, the naan soggy in the gravy, the vegetables wilted in the heat, the taste unmemorable. Still, she ate it, licked her fingers, and wiped her plate clean. Then, she rose to wash her hands in the cool waters of the pool and came back to kneel by her sleeping husband’s bed. She rested her elbows on the edge of the cot, her hands clasped under her chin, and watched the rise and fall of breath in his chest.
    When he stirred, uneasy, she laid her face against his arm and waited for his breathing to even again. She stayed like that for a long while. Across the courtyard was Ibrahim’s bed, which he had insisted on dragging to the far end. He lay on his side, faced away, trying to put as much physical distance as he could between them and him, still fretting about being in the courtyard of Shah Shuja’s zenana .
    Wafa placed a gentle kiss on Shuja’s forehead and then took the lantern with her to the water channel and sat down on the sun-warmed stone. She undid the long row of diamond buttons that held her pajamas around her ankles, folded up the cloth around her shins, and put her feet in the tepid, swirling water. The servants had all retired for the night—or rather, she had sent them away, but she still