Around the beginning of 1579, people began hearing reports of the new palace being constructed by Emperor Akbar outside the city limits. In itself, the news would have passed without comment; except it was said that the high walls of the new palace featured neither a window nor inlet except for a massive gate. It began to be rumoured that the emperor planned to incarcerate there in a state of incommunicado those enemies, whom it was not provident to execute or exile for reasons of state. Yet nobody could explain why the officials responsible for recruitment into the royal service were enlisting the services of nannies, nursemaids, minders, and attendants born dumb. They were all being hired to be sent to the new palace.

Then the gossip about the strange palace was replaced by more sinister rumours. A number of poor families had been approached with offers of large sums of money to sell their newborns into the emperor's service. Ordinarily, entering the royal service at birth was considered a signal honour, and a mark of distinction for the family, except in this case the parents had to agree that they would never see nor attempt to make contact with the child again. Some traumatised families who had been tempted to sell off their newborn in a moment of greed and confusion, later changed their minds but found they did so too late. Royal heralds who did not speak a word speedily conducted away the sold children to some unknown location. The midwives and the families involved had been sworn to silence but the word had leaked out.

It had all happened on a whim. The emperor during one of his reflective moods had begun wondering what the natural language of the humans was, the religion in which they were naturally born, and the first words that they uttered when they started their lives.

He had planned a grand experiment to determine the answers of all these questions, and when he discussed it with the sages present at his court; they had highly commended him on this novel idea.

For the experiment, a number of newborns were to be acquired who would be raised in an environment where they would not be exposed to human speech. For that reason everyone around them must be bereft of human speech as well. The Emperor was well pleased to learn that some twenty-odd children had been conducted to the new palace and given into the charge of their dumb surrogate mothers and attendants. The experiment had begun.

In the next few months the emperor's mind was taken up by other entertainments, and he forgot the children of the Gung Mahal or Palace of Silence. In like manner he had forgotten about the project dealing with the allocation of time begun in 1578, in which the hours of the day were carefully allocated to different activities. The implementation and follow-up for these projects fell to the discretion of the court officials. If these were unenforceable edicts, like the allocation of time over which no strict control could be exercised, everyone was left to do as they pleased. But in other cases, such as the project of determining the nature of human speech and natural religion, a complete bureaucratic framework had to be developed.

The mothers whose newborns had been taken from them had not forgotten them. They had found out that they were being kept in the new sealed palace built by the emperor. At any hour of night or day the wails and cries of women being driven away by the sentinels deputed to watch over the environs for trespassers could be heard.

After four years, during another reflective moment, the emperor recalled the project he had started and demanded a report. Upon hearing a marvellous report the emperor deigned to visit and observe the phenomenon himself. Preparations were made and the keepers and the nannies of the palace were alerted of the date of the royal visit.

On the appointed day, Emperor Akbar in full regalia and accompanied by a retinue of courtiers and ambassadors visited the Palace of Silence.

The gates of the Palace of Silence creaked open and the sound of the horses' hooves on the bricked floor of the palace made many attendants block their ears from pain, so long had they lived accustomed to absolute silence.

Then the children were led before the emperor in a herd. The emperor tried to address them but they did not pay him any heed. They made growling sounds like animals and conversed together in a language nobody could decipher. Some of the more unruly ones were in harness; one of them tried to climb up the emperor's saddle straps but was beaten down by a royal bodyguard. The emperor spent some time trying to communicate with the children, but even animal trainers and falconers who knew the signals given out by the birds and the beasts in different moments confessed they could not understand the nature of their speech.

The emperor returned greatly disappointed with the experiment. As it had been a failure, he ordered their release.

For a number of years afterwards, the villages neighbouring the palace would see these half-human creatures hunting or begging for food in their precincts. Many were killed by wild animals. Some starved to death.

Nobody dared tell the emperor that along the path his retinue passed on its way back to the seat of empire, were the unmarked graves of the twin brother and sister who had fought with great ferocity as they broke away from their unnatural prison in the Palace of Silence, and when surrounded by the guards preferred to turn the weapons they had snatched upon themselves, rather than allow themselves to be captured.

Musharraf Ali Farooqi is an author, novelist and translator. He can be reached through www.mafarooqi.com and on Twitter at @microMAF