The crash of shattering glass from the hallway of the palace severed the air between them. Then the heavy bronze door swung wide and Shirin emerged, grasping the broken base of a Chinese vase. Her eyes blazed and her disheveled hair streamed out behind her. Hawksworth thought he saw a stain on one cheek where a tear had trailed, but now that trail was dry. She strode directly to Mukarrab Khan and dashed the remainder of the vase at his feet, where it shattered to powder on the marble tiles of the veranda.
"That is my gift to the queen. You may send it with a message in your next dispatch. Tell her that I too am Persian, that I too know the name of my father's father, of his father's father, of his father's father, for ten generations. But unlike her, I was born in India. And it is in India that I will stay. She can banish me to the remotest village of the Punjab, but she will never send me to Goa. To live among unwashed Portuguese. Never. She does not have the power. And if you were a man, you would divorce me. Here. Tonight. For all to see. And I will return to my father, or go where I wish. Or you may kill me, as you have already tried to do. But you must decide."
Mukarrab Khan's face was lost in shock. The courtyard stood lifeless, caught in a silence more powerful than any Hawksworth had ever known. He looked in confusion at Father Sarmento, and the old Jesuit quietly whispered a translation of the Persian, his own eyes wide in disbelief. Never before had he seen a Muslim woman defy her husband publicly. The humiliation was unthinkable. Mukarrab Khan had no power to order her death. He had no choice but to divorce her as she demanded. But everyone knew why she was his wife. What would a divorce mean?
"You will proceed to Goa as my wife, or you will spend the rest of your days, and what little remains of your fading beauty, as a nautch girl at the port. Your price will be one copper pice. I will order it in the morning."
"His Majesty will know of it within a week. I have friends enough in Agra."
"As do I. And mine have the power to act."
"Then divorce me."
Mukarrab Khan paused painfully, then glanced down and absently whisked a fleck of lint from his brocade sleeve. "Which form do you wish?"
An audible gasp passed through the servants, and not one breathed as they waited for the answer. There were three forms of divorce for Muslims. The first, called a revocable divorce, was performed when a man said "I have divorced you" only once. He had three months to reconsider and reconcile before it became final. The second form, called irrevocable, required the phrase be repeated twice, after which she could only become his wife again through a second marriage ceremony. The third, absolute, required three repetitions of the phrase and became effective the day her next reproductive cycle ended. There could be no remarriage unless she had, in the interim, been married to another.
"Absolute."