1637: The Peacock Throne, стр. 169

“Efficient,” he finished, through teeth that were a bit clenched.

His wife had something of a smirk on her face. Seeing it, John’s lips twisted. “Hey, thanks for the sympathy, dear.”

Ilsa shook her head. “I wasn’t smiling at you in particular, I was smiling at all of you. Men. It doesn’t seem to matter what century you were born in, either.”

Priscilla was smiling also. “A Begum Sahib’s place is in the kitchen, right?” She shook her own head. “When are you dimwits going to finally figure out that if Jahanara had this era’s idea of the proper genital equipment as well as being the oldest of the siblings, she’d have become the emperor the moment her father died. And not one of her brothers would have dared to contest the issue. Well, maybe Aurangzeb would have. He’s a damn sight more gifted than the rest of the bunch and certainly stubborn enough.”

Another headshake. “Back up-time, they called Margaret Thatcher the ‘Iron Lady.’ Ha! They had no idea what the term really means.”

“Okay, okay,” grumbled John. “You’ve made your point. You don’t need to rub it in.” Gingerly, he reached back and poked the edges of his worst wound. “Ouch.”

A servant came into the chamber. “You told me to tell you when you needed to start getting ready for the wedding. For the women, that is now. Not yet for the men.”

John grimaced. “Even in a litter, that trip’s going to hurt. Dammit, do I really need to go to—”

“Yes.” That came from everybody. Except the servant, of course. She kept properly silent, although she might have hid a smirk.

Ilsa, Priscilla and Monique all rose to their feet. “Stop bitching,” said Pris. “At least you don’t have to spend hours and hours getting all hennaed up.”

She didn’t sound all that aggrieved, though. None of the men could prove it, but they all suspected the women of the Mission—up-time and down-time both—enjoyed the excuse to put on the elaborate makeup and skin decorations that were Indian custom for such occasions.

None of them said anything, of course. They weren’t that dimwitted.

Red Fort

“And they make jokes about hillbilly marriages,” Priscilla said to Rodney, in a half whisper. “I don’t know about your family history, but none of mine ever had a girl marrying her uncle.”

Rodney smiled, although he kept it on the thin side. “Hey, they do it in Europe too, y’know. If she hadn’t run off, the archduchess of Austria, Maria Anna, would have married her uncle, Duke Maximilian—and even as it was, she ran off to marry her first cousin Fernando.”

His wife made a face, but, like her husband, she kept the expression on the subtle side. In the interests of diplomacy, you might say. She wore a water-silk veil that concealed her face from anything more than a few feet, but it paid to be careful.

Not that anyone would be likely to notice. An imperial wedding ceremony like the one they were attending was what anyone would call a gala affair. Nobody was paying any attention to what a couple of peculiar westerners were saying or doing—and if they had paid them any attention, it would have simply been because of Rodney’s size and the couple’s proximity to the emperor. Even so, the vast mustering field of Red Fort had been made over into a confection of silk pavilions populated by bejewelled and perfumed nobility, so there were plenty of distracting views.

“Royals will be royals, I guess,” she murmured. “Being fair about it, the Mughals are more broad-minded than most European monarchs. Jahangir’s wife—Shah Jahan’s mother—was a Rajput princess. A Hindu, to boot. Certainly more broad-minded even than folks seemed to be about religion back in our time.”

Rodney nodded. “Akbar the Great did the same thing. In fact, she was Jahangir’s own mother. Yeah, I grant you they’re not snotty that way—and won’t be, so long as Dara Shikoh stays in power. If Aurangzeb ever takes the Peacock Throne, though…”

He winced, and made no effort to hide it. “Be a different story altogether, then. He’s what you could call a Saudi type of Muslim. Intolerant as all hell.”

“And here comes the bride,” murmured Pris. “At long last.”

Rodney smiled again, this time making no effort at all to keep it subdued. No reason to: everyone else was smiling widely also. That much, at least, was exactly what would have happened at a West Virginia wedding when the bride made her entrance to the pavilion.

“Could be anyone under those veils,” Priscilla said, startling Rodney.

“But it is Roshanara, right? She couldn’t pull some stunt or something, right?”

“Oh, it’s her, and she’ll be gone as soon as this performance is over. But I can’t help feeling that, like a bad rash, she’s sure to be back.”

Rodney coughed to cover a laugh.

“Are we there yet?” said Pris, merciless in the face of her husband’s self-control. “My feet are starting to hurt.”

“Not hardly, dear. Royals will be royals, remember?”