Later, as the final course of the meal — sweetmeats of all descriptions including dried apricots stuffed with walnuts and curd cheese mixed with sultanas and pistachios — was brought in on silver platters, Humayun looked around at his commanders, all enjoying the feast and discussing the future and the prospects for the reconquest of Hindustan. He felt content as he had not done for many years. He had never doubted his courage or skill in combat; nor, he suspected, had his followers. But he knew he had gained other perhaps more important strengths as well. He was becoming ever more confident in his authority as a ruler and a leader and in his ability to inspire loyalty in those such as Bairam Khan who had no pre-existing ties to him.
But what about those who had such ties but had not been loyal, among them the nobles and commanders who had supported Kamran and Askari and, of course, his half-brothers themselves? Humayun’s mood sobered. Over the past sixty hours since he had entered the citadel he had been pondering their fate, especially Kamran’s. He had nearly yielded to a visceral desire to revenge himself on his half-brother with his bare hands for threatening his child.
But as his rage had cooled he had begun to think more calmly. He could never forgive Kamran but did he owe it to the future of his dynasty to try to heal the rifts within it rather than deepening them? His father’s face — so like Kamran’s with those brilliant green eyes — swam before him. Suddenly the contentment and confidence welling through him coalesced to make his decision. Standing up, Humayun called Jauhar to him. ‘Have Kamran and Askari brought before me here, at once, together with those of their leading commanders whom we have also kept prisoner.’
A quarter of an hour later, Jauhar whispered to Humayun that the prisoners were outside the chamber’s thick doors. Humayun rose to his feet and clapped his hands to call for quiet. Almost instantly a hush fell on the room as his officers put down their eating implements and goblets, wiped their mouths, sticky from the sweetmeats, and turned all their attention to their emperor.
‘My loyal commanders, we have celebrated our victory and rightly rejoiced in our success in overcoming our enemies, but our task is only half complete. Now we must look to the future and the reconquest of Hindustan. However, first I must deal with those who, unlike you, showed me no loyalty and neglected the ties of blood and of ancestral obligations. Bring in the prisoners.’
Two attendants pulled open the doors and Kamran walked into the room. His hands were tied but his legs were free. Straight-backed, head high, and bruised, hawk-nosed face emotionless, he walked forward, looking neither to left nor right until the guards escorting him halted him ten feet in front of Humayun. He was followed by Askari, who had been confined in comfortable private quarters since being brought to the citadel but whose hands were now also bound. Even though he must have known he had less to fear than his brother since Humayun had promised him his life, his demeanour was less assured than Kamran’s. He was perspiring a little and looking round and smiling nervously at some of those of Humayun’s men he recognised. Behind him came ten of Kamran and Askari’s senior commanders. Among them were Hassan Khahil, a burly, wild-haired Uzbek, and Shahi Beg, a diminutive but courageous Tajik with a livid white scar on his left cheek. He had been Kamran’s commander in Kabul and was in fact a cousin of Zahid Beg, Humayun’s own general. As Shahi Beg entered, Humayun noticed the two men’s eyes met but then both looked instantly away.
Once the commanders were lined up behind Kamran and Askari, Humayun began addressing his own troops. ‘You see before you the men we have defeated. The men who have shed our blood and killed our friends. Yet the war we have fought was a battle between brothers and relations. I know this only too well, as do many others of you. We have fought those with whom we should have banded together to fight the common enemy who has usurped our lands in Hindustan. Much more — heritage, tradition and ambition — should bind us together than those rivalries and jealousies which have split us apart. Divided among ourselves, we may never reconquer Hindustan. United we should be so powerful we need fear none. The fear would be our enemy’s alone — our conquests and ambitions would be without limit.
‘For that reason I have preferred reconciliation to punishment, however well deserved. I have decided to forgive these my former enemies you see before you, provided they will join us in regaining and expanding our empire in Hindustan.’
With that, Humayun walked over to Askari and drawing a small dagger cut his brother’s bonds and embraced him. As he did so, he felt Askari relax and there were wet tears on his half-brother’s cheek as it brushed against his own. Then he moved towards Kamran and severed his bonds too and embraced him. Kamran’s body felt rigid but he did not pull back. Nor did he resist as Humayun held his and Askari’s arms aloft and yelled to the resounding cheers of all present, ‘Onwards to the reconquest of Hindustan.’
An hour later, Humayun made his way to Hamida’s apartments in the royal women’s quarters. She had arrived with Akbar and Gulbadan the previous evening and in the joy of their reunion they had not spoken of Kamran and his fate. As he entered, he could tell at once from her expression that she knew of his decision.
‘How could you!’ she burst out.‘You have pardoned Kamran, the man who stole our child and exposed him on the walls of Kabul. Are you mad? Don’t you care about our son and my feelings?’
‘You know I do. It was a hard decision. A ruler must think about more than his personal emotions. He must think about what’s best for his kingdom. If I’d had Kamran executed, I would have made implacable enemies of some of his most loyal followers and relations, not least Askari whom I had already agreed should live as a condition of his surrender of Kandahar. If I’d had Kamran imprisoned, he would have become a focus for discontent and plotting. The same would have been true if I’d punished his commanders. Our family is not the only one riven by the rebellions. Much better that I try to reconcile my enemies than to provoke blood feuds. If I am to reconquer Hindustan, I will need the willing commitment of all my nobles and vassals, not just those who have supported us this far.
‘Yes, of course I could press others to accompany me or to send levies, but they would soon be plotting or looking for any opportunity to defect or at the very least to return home. That would not help to win back our lands. The wounds that are most difficult to heal are those inflicted by the ones who should be the closest. But if I can heal those from my brothers, our dynasty will be the stronger and Akbar’s position in its future the more secure.’
At the mention of Akbar, Hamida’s expression softened a little, but it still betrayed scepticism and uncertainty. This was so hard for her. Humayun thought back to his own enraged assault on Kamran. At least he had had an opportunity to vent his feelings. .
‘I loathe Kamran. I can never forgive him.’
‘Hamida, I’m not asking you to forgive Kamran — that I know you can never do. But I am asking you to trust in me. . in my judgement. And I have another more personal reason for sparing Kamran. . loyalty to my father and above all the promise I made to him as he lay dying to follow his wishes and do nothing against my half-brothers, however much they deserved it. Their failure to honour his decision that I should succeed to the throne should not absolve me from keeping my own word to him.’
Humayun looked straight into Hamida’s eyes. ‘I am truly sorry if my decision hurts you, but you must know nothing can alter my great love for you and our son and my determination that when I die, which God willing will not be yet, I will leave him secure on the throne of Hindustan as my father left me.’
‘If you tell me that allowing Kamran to live will make Akbar’s future more secure then I must accept it. The future of our son is what matters most. But I cannot lie to you. In my heart I wish Kamran was dead. I would sleep more easily in that knowledge.’
‘This is best for Akbar.’
At last, Hamida smiled and stretched out her hand to Humayun. ‘Come to bed. It is late.’
It was nearly ten o’clock the next morning when Humayun
emerged from the women’s quarters to find Jauhar waiting for him, beaming broadly. ‘Majesty, good news. . wonderful news. Our spies have brought reports that Sher Shah is dead. He was assaulting a fortress in Rajasthan when a missile filled with burning pitch that one of his siege engineers had hurled at the walls rebounded and landed on a gunpowder store. The entire store exploded, dismembering Sher Shah and two of his senior commanders. They say parts of Sher Shah’s body were scattered over a hundred yards.’
‘Are the reports reliable?’
‘The spies say they come from several sources. There is no reason to doubt them.’
Humayun found the news difficult to take in. It seemed to justify his decision to pardon his half-brothers and unite his subjects. They would need to act quickly and together to seize the opportunity to regain the throne of Hindustan.
‘Call my commanders to me. Let my half-brothers join us too. Together we will march to fulfil our family’s destiny.’
Part IV
Return of the Moghuls
Chapter 21
A Brother’s Grief
‘Majesty, you must come at once.’ Humayun slid back into its embossed black leather scabbard the ivory and steel-hilted sabre — a recent gift from a vassal — that he had been examining. ‘What is it, Jauhar?’
Jauhar spread his hands in a helpless gesture and Humayun read such distress in his face that he asked no more questions but simply followed him. Dusk was falling and purple shadows softened the stark outlines of stone and brick as Humayun quickly descended into the courtyard. Just inside the gateway four of Ahmed Khan’s men were clustered around a tall chestnut horse. Drawing closer, Humayun noticed that its neck and shoulder were stained with something dark that was attracting flies, and as the men stepped back from the horse to salute him he saw a body slung face down over the saddle, limp as a dead deer. The discolouration on the horse’s coat was congealed blood. But it was the body itself that arrested his gaze. Though he didn’t want to believe it he thought he recognised that powerful form, whose lifeless arms and legs were so long they dangled down beneath the horse’s belly.
With an ever-increasing sense of foreboding Humayun slowly approached and, crouching down, raised the dead man’s head. Hindal’s tawny eyes stared blankly at him. Unable to bear their unblinking gaze, Humayun closed them. As he did so, the warmth of his brother’s dead flesh shocked him, then he realised that Hindal’s face had been resting against the horse’s flanks. He drew his dagger from his sash and waving back his guards cut through the ropes with which someone had secured Hindal’s body to the horse. Then he carefully lifted his brother’s corpse and laid it gently, face up, on the flagstones. As he knelt beside it, by the flickering amber light of a torch held aloft in the gathering gloom by one of Ahmed Khan’s men he saw a raw wound in Hindal’s throat that only an arrowhead could have made.
Grief washed through him. Hindal was the one of his half-brothers he had cared for most. Courageous, honest and principled, and less ambitious than his siblings, perhaps Hindal had been at heart the best of all Babur’s sons. ‘I wish you godspeed to Paradise, my brother, and that in death you will forgive me the hurt I did you in life,’ Humayun whispered. Images of Hindal in his youth and of him proudly recounting his rescue of Akbar filled Humayun’s mind, bringing tears to his eyes. It was some minutes before, brushing them away with the back of his hand, he got to his feet and asked, ‘Who found the body?’
‘I did, Majesty,’ said the torchbearer, who, Humayun saw, was no more than a youth.
‘Where?’
‘His horse was tethered by some juniper bushes half a mile from the town.’
So someone had drawn out the fatal arrow, tied Hindal to his horse and then left him where he would be found. Such an act bore all the hallmarks of Kamran, Humayun thought with a weariness of heart. Far from being grateful for his mercy, within two months of being set free Kamran and Askari had vanished from Kabul. United against him again, they had become raiders, sweeping down from remote strongholds at the head of bands of tribesmen — lawless Kafirs and Chakraks mostly, but whoever they could find; they weren’t particular — to attack Humayun’s outposts and the caravan trains that were the source of Kabul’s prosperity — its life’s blood. Kamran would not have forgiven Hindal’s betrayal in rescuing Akbar and he certainly had the malice to send Humayun the message of Hindal’s slaughtered body.
But what had actually happened? If the murderer was Kamran, had Hindal’s death been the result of a chance encounter or had Kamran deliberately hunted Hindal down in the northern mountains which he had made his retreat in the years since he had rescued Akbar? ‘Search my brother’s body and his saddlebag. Look for anything that might tell us how or why he met his end,’ Humayun ordered as he turned away, unable to face the task himself.
A few minutes later, a soldier came up to him where he stood in the gloom, lost in his thoughts and recollections. ‘We found nothing of importance, Majesty, except this note in the saddlebag.’ Humayun took the scrap of paper and read it by the light of a torch. In a few brief sentences addressed to no one, Hindal asked, if anything should happen to him, to be buried close to his father. He also wrote that he wished Akbar to have his ruby-inlaid dagger that had once belonged to Babur. ‘The dagger was still in his sash, Majesty.’ The soldier held out a silver scabbard, also inlaid with rubies, that glittered in the torchlight. So whoever had killed Hindal had not been a thief, Humayun thought. It also told him that death had come suddenly and probably unexpectedly to Hindal, who had had no time to draw his dagger. Again he saw Kamran’s green-eyed, sneering face. .
Three weeks later, the branches of the tall cherry trees brought by Babur as saplings to Kabul stirred in the breeze, shedding blossom that fluttered like pink snowflakes. Spring melt water from the mountains rippled through the two intersecting marble-lined channels that divided the garden into four quarters planted with pomegranate, apple and lemon trees. The scent of honey rose from the lilac clover covering the ground as, walking through the garden Babur had planted, Humayun came to the new grave in the middle of a grove of young willows. The inscription on the marble slab told the onlooker that here lay Mirza Hindal, youngest and beloved son of Babur, Moghul Emperor of Hindustan.
Gulbadan had chosen the delicate tracery of irises and tulips that the masons had carved round the stone’s edge and every day, on Hamida’s orders, the pale marble was sprinkled with dried rose petals. She had never forgotten her gratitude to Hindal for saving Akbar — if anything it had grown because Akbar was still their only child. The hakims blamed the long and agonising labour she had endured giving birth to him and had predicted that though she was still young — not yet twenty-five — there would be no more children.
Turning away from Hindal’s grave, Humayun walked the few paces to Babur’s simple tomb. Every time he came here, he sensed his father’s presence so keenly he could almost see him standing before him, eyes fixed understandingly upon him. Babur too had taken Kabul only to have his hopes of advancing quickly to invade Hindustan disappointed. Yet there was a profound difference between their circumstances. Babur’s problem had been that he lacked an army strong enough to take on Sultan Ibrahim, Hindustan’s powerful overlord. That obstacle had been overcome when his friend Baburi had brought him Turkish cannon and matchlocks — weapons then unknown in Hindustan. Humayun’s problems were more complex, more corrosive, because they came from within his own family. Because of Kamran and Askari, Humayun had been forced to delay his invasion of Hindustan just when the prospects of victory had seemed so good.
The chaos following Sher Shah’s death should have been a perfect opportunity for Humayun to invade — Sher Shah’s reign had lasted only five years and many would have returned to the green banners of the Moghuls.
Instead, the threat of Kamran and Askari had made it impossible for him to mount a prolonged expedition. Sher Shah’s chiefs had had time to rally and choose a new emperor. Rejecting Sher Shah’s elder son — a man better
known for his love of luxury than for his military prowess — they had elected his younger son, Islam Shah, whose first act had been to order the murder of his elder brother. The message had not been lost on Humayun. If he had executed Kamran and Askari rather than pardoned them, then he, not Islam Shah, would have been sitting on the throne in Agra.
That his half-brothers should have been able to frustrate his plans for so long hurt as well as enraged Humayun.Where was their gratitude for his mercy? Perhaps he shouldn’t be surprised at Kamran, whose hatred and jealousy of him were seemingly implacable, but why had Askari repaid his generosity with such deceit? When Askari had surrendered to him at Kandahar, he had seemed to feel remorse, even shame for his actions. Perhaps those feelings had been genuine but under Kamran’s influence hadn’t lasted. All his life Askari had been dominated by Kamran. .
Still brooding, Humayun walked slowly back to where Jauhar was holding the reins of his horse while it grazed the sweet grass beneath an apple tree. Climbing into the saddle, Humayun pushed the horse quickly back towards the citadel. He had made a decision. Hindal’s death had been a sign that there must be no more waiting, no more prevaricating, no more sentimental hopes that his half-brothers might still be reconciled. So far his efforts to flush them from their mountain hideaways had been futile. Something more determined was required. .
That night, as Humayun entered his audience chamber, he found his commanders and his counsellors already waiting. As he surveyed their faces, there was one man he still instinctively looked for — Kasim, whose calm commonsense and absolute loyalty had been one of the few constants of his turbulent reign. But last winter, crossing the icy courtyard Kasim had slipped and shattered his right hip. The hakims had sedated him with opium but the shock to his old body had been too great. He had slipped into unconsciousness and two days later passed away as quietly as he had done everything in life. Kasim had been with Babur from the first precarious days of his reign as boy-king of Ferghana, just as he had always been at Humayun’s side. Humayun had been so used to his calm, reassuring presence and to listening to his softly spoken and consistently valuable advice. His death had been a true severing from the past.
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