Ruler of the World eotm-3

by Alex Rutherford

  The move to Lahore had gone smoothly. Even his mother had found little to complain about in her new quarters, which were as airy as those she had left in Fatehpur Sikri and had the added advantage of overlooking the Ravi river. Taking his courage in his hands once more, he had asked his father whether he might accompany the expedition to Kashmir since at nearly fourteen years of age he wished to learn something of military matters. To his great joy and a little to his surprise, Akbar had agreed, even suggesting that he should choose one of his companions to accompany him. He had picked Suleiman Beg, one of his milk-brothers. Almost the same age as Salim, he had just returned from Bengal with his father who had been deputy governor there for some years. His mother had died in Bengal and Salim had little memory of his milk-mother. Suleiman’s strength belied his slight frame and he was always ready to join Salim in trials of skill or in hunting expeditions. His ready sense of humour could always coax a laugh from the other boy, even in Salim’s darker moods when he was preoccupied with what the future might hold for him.

  Despite agreeing to his accompanying him, Akbar still rarely invited him into military council meetings. However, unusually, the previous evening he had done so. When he had entered his father’s great scarlet command tent, he had found Akbar already speaking and the council’s discussion well under way. Scarcely pausing, his father had gestured to him to take a seat at the left-hand end of the circle of commanders sitting cross-legged on some rich maroon and indigo Persian carpets in the middle of the tent.

  Even before Salim had sat down, Akbar had continued, ‘. . so from these reports from our scouts and spies we can clearly expect to encounter a vanguard of the Sultan of Kashmir’s army in the next day or two when the valley broadens out a little. We must be ready for them.’ Turning to Abdul Rahman, the tall, muscular officer who several years ago had taken over from the ageing Ahmed Khan the role of khan-i-khanan, Akbar had said, ‘Have the officers check their men’s weapons this evening. Double the sentries round our camp tonight. Deploy a full screen of scouts about our column when we move out in the morning, which we will do much earlier than usual — an hour after dawn. You yourself will command our leading troops, which should include some of our best squadrons of horsemen and mounted musketeers.’

  ‘Yes, Majesty. I will treble rather than double the number of sentries. And I will ensure that each sentry post has trumpets and drums to warn of any attack under cover of the mist which usually comes up in the morning. I will also order officers to make their rounds of the posts every quarter of an hour.’

  ‘Do so, Abdul Rahman.’

  ‘So that I can ensure your protection, Majesty, in what part of the column will you take your place tomorrow morning?’

  ‘I will lead the war elephants, but the greatest protection should be given to the rear of the elephant column. My son Salim will ride there. It will be his first battle. He, and of course his brothers, are the future of the dynasty, the guarantee that our empire will continue to prosper. I have asked him to join us today so that he can hear us make our plans.’ Salim had felt the eyes of his father’s commanders swivel towards him as Akbar asked, ‘Perhaps you have something to say to the council, Salim?’

  Taken by surprise, Salim’s mind had gone blank for a moment but then, taking courage, he had begun. ‘Only that I will do my best in the battle and that I hope I can be as brave as your commanders and of course you, Father. . and live up to what you expect of me. .’

  As Salim had stuttered to a halt, the commanders seated around his father had begun to applaud and his father had said, ‘I am sure you will.’

  However, as Akbar had turned quickly away from him back to a discussion of the command of the rearguard, Salim had wondered whether he had detected in his father’s tone and expression a disappointment that he had not spoken better and more originally. Then excitement at the prospect of his first battle had eclipsed all other concerns in his mind.

  Now, eighteen hours later, the excitement was still there as Salim gazed at the rhododendron-covered hillside. Suddenly, he saw a movement behind one of the most heavily leafed bushes. ‘What’s that? Is it the enemy?’ he asked Suleiman Beg.

  ‘No. It’s just a deer,’ his milk-brother replied. As if in confirmation, the deer sprinted out from behind the bush, to be shot down by one of the column’s outriders with an arrow hastily drawn from his quiver.

  ‘At least some of the men will eat well tonight, Suleiman Beg.’

  Ten minutes later, Salim thought he again detected movement, this time on the tree-lined crest of a ridge about a mile away. Chastened by his previous mistake he tugged at Suleiman Beg’s arm, pointed to the ridge and whispered, ‘Do you see anything up there?’

  Before Suleiman Beg could answer, it became clear that there was something and it wasn’t another deer for tonight’s pot. There was a blast of a trumpet from one of the Moghul scouts. Soon he appeared over the crest, hands and heels working frantically as he urged his horse down between the trees and shrubs. A musket shot crackled out from behind him. Then several other riders appeared in hot pursuit. One, on a black horse, was gaining fast on the scout despite his zigzagging, ducking and dodging beneath and through the bushes and branches. When he was only about twenty yards from the scout, the rider — without doubt a Kashmiri — pulled back his arm and moments later the Moghul fell, presumably hit by a throwing dagger.

  By then, many more Kashmiri horsemen were pouring over the crest and charging towards the column, crashing down through the vegetation. The Moghul cavalry on the flanks were turning their horses to face the threat and mounted musketeers were jumping from their saddles to prime their weapons and ready their firing tripods. Somehow the Kashmiris must have evaded Abdul Rahman’s screen of scouts, or perhaps killed all of them before they could get a signal away except for the man who had just fallen so bravely.

  Salim’s heart began to beat faster and he felt all his senses heighten. Behind him in the howdah of his war elephant, two of his bodyguards were preparing their muskets. He could see others doing the same on the elephants immediately ahead, while on each the two mahouts sitting behind the elephants’ ears were striking the beasts’ skulls to make them turn to face the attack, at the same time trying to make themselves as small a target as possible in their exposed position. Suddenly one fell, arms flailing, from the elephant two ahead of Salim’s and crashed to the ground with an arrow in his neck. The following elephant carefully avoided his prone body although the man was probably already dead.

  Moments later, Salim heard an arrow hiss through the air close beside him. Then he saw a phalanx of Kashmiri horsemen with steel breastplates and domed helmets ornamented with peacock feathers come crashing into the line of flanking Moghul cavalry. They unhorsed several of their rivals by the impetus of their downhill charge. Penetrating swiftly towards the elephant column, they were followed by more and more of their comrades galloping down the green hillsides, some with turquoise battle banners billowing behind them. From time to time a Kashmiri or his horse fell, hit by musket balls or arrows.

  Once, a thick-set, green-turbaned Moghul officer charged at a Kashmiri banner bearer and slashed him across the eyes with his sword as they clashed, even succeeding in grabbing the Kashmiri’s banner before the now sightless rider dropped from the saddle. However, a second Kashmiri thrust his lance into the officer’s abdomen as he attempted to wheel his horse to re-join his comrades. With the turquoise banner flapping around him, the Moghul fell from his horse, but his foot caught in his stirrup and he was dragged head bumping along the ground a little way behind the bolting animal before his body caught beneath the hooves of some charging Kashmiri cavalry. Freed from the stirrup, it was left sprawling bloody and mangled on the stony earth.

  Other Kashmiri riders were now within fifty yards or so of Salim’s elephant, kicking and urging their mounts forward through the Moghul cavalry, slashing around them with their swords as they advanced. Both Salim and Suleiman Beg put arrows to their bows and fired, w
hile behind them the muskets of their two bodyguards crackled. Salim saw his target — one of the leading Kashmiris — fall from his horse, a white-flighted arrow embedded in his cheek. Salim was exultant. That was his arrow, wasn’t it? He’d brought him down. But his delight was short-lived. One of the bodyguards behind him — a black-bearded Rajput named Rajesh who had guarded him and his brothers for many years — uttered a strangled cry and fell from the howdah clutching at his throat. Moments later, one of the two mahouts behind his elephant’s ears too collapsed to the ground. The elephant in front, turning in obedience to its own mahouts’ urging to face the Kashmiri horsemen, couldn’t help trampling the body, releasing a rank, nauseating smell as the man’s stomach and intestines ruptured, bursting under the pressure of the elephant’s foot.

  Salim fired again at another Kashmiri cavalryman within thirty feet of his elephant. This time he missed but his arrow hit the man’s horse in the neck. Thrashing its head about and whinnying in pain, it skittered sideways, causing its rider to drop his lance as he fought with both hands to control his mount. Salim heard a thump behind him and the howdah swayed violently. Glancing round, he saw that his second bodyguard lay slumped on the floor. Suleiman Beg was already trying to staunch a bullet wound to the man’s right thigh that was bleeding profusely, using a yellow cotton scarf he had pulled from his own neck.

  Meanwhile Salim could see a strong body of Moghul cavalry was now in turn charging into the flanks of the Kashmiris, attempting to beat them back. Several Kashmiris fell — one, a burly, heavily bearded man carried clean out of the saddle and transfixed by a well-aimed lance thrust from one of the captains of the imperial bodyguard. Another was decapitated by the heavy stroke of a Moghul battleaxe which caught him across the throat just beneath the jaw, sending his head flying backwards amid a spray of blood. The Moghuls were succeeding as he knew they would, thought Salim, but then the elephant beneath him lurched once more. The second mahout, a small, dark, elderly man wearing only a rough cotton loincloth, had fallen from behind its ears to the ground. Lashing its trunk, the riderless beast began to turn away from the conflict. As it did so, it knocked a Moghul horseman from his saddle. If Salim didn’t do something the frightened elephant would kill more men and panic more horses.

  Disregarding the noise and the fierce conflict around him, Salim climbed over the raised wooden front of the howdah. He managed to get his legs on either side of the elephant’s body and to slide down on to its neck. Grabbing at the elephant’s steel plate head armour to steady himself, he drew his sword. Reversing it, and despite the cuts its sharp edge made to his hand, he used its hilt instead of the mahout’s steel rod to tap the elephant’s skull to give the command for it to halt. Reassured by the weight of a rider on its neck once more, the animal began to calm and soon halted. In its panic, it had moved fifty yards away from the centre of the fight. Turning round, Salim could see that the survivors of the Kashmiri cavalry charge were breaking off the battle and retreating back through the rhododendrons up towards the ridge over which they had emerged less than an hour previously. Many did not make it. Salim saw one cream-turbaned Kashmiri, realising that he could not outride his four Moghul pursuers on his blowing black horse, turn and charge back towards them, striking one from the saddle before being cut down himself by a blow to the head.

  Later that day, Salim was summoned once more to his father’s war council. This time as he entered the scarlet command tent he did not find the discussion already in full flow. Rather, all eyes were turned to him as he entered and his father was conducting his commanders in applause. As he made his way towards the stool Akbar indicated to him, which was placed next to the emperor’s own gilded throne, Salim was untroubled by doubts that on this occasion at least his behaviour had pleased his father.

  Chapter 19

  Jewel of Chastity

  ‘You are fifteen years old. It is time you took your first wife.’ Before Salim could reply, Akbar strode off to inspect the target — a log of wood on which three large clay jars had been placed on the parade ground beneath the royal palace in Lahore — at which he had just fired his musket. Even from three hundred yards away, Salim could see that his father had shattered the middle jar. Since their triumphant return from Kashmir three months ago Akbar had several times invited him hunting, hawking or to musketry practice.

  Salim hurried after him. ‘Father, what did you say?’

  ‘That the time has come for you to marry. As well as helping to strengthen our dynasty it will be a celebration of our great victory in Kashmir.’ Akbar smiled. Salim knew that not even Akbar had thought Kashmir would fall into his hands quite so easily. Confronted by the reality that the mountains encircling his kingdom were no barrier against his determined Moghul enemy, its ruler had rushed to sue for peace. In his mind’s eye, Salim again saw the Sultan of Kashmir prostrating himself at his father’s feet outside Akbar’s scarlet command tent then standing meekly while the khutba was read in the name of the Moghul emperor. Akbar had granted the sultan life and liberty but from now on Kashmir would be firmly under Moghul control. What was more his father — never content with his victories or his empire’s boundaries — was already readying his forces for his invasion of Sind.

  ‘But who am I to marry?’

  ‘After consulting with my counsellors I have selected your cousin, Man Bai. Her father Bhagwan Das, Raja of Amber, has already given his consent.’

  Salim stared at his father. Man Bai was his first cousin, the daughter of his mother’s brother. He had only seen her once when they had both been children and all he could remember was a quiet, skinny, long-legged little girl with her hair bound in plaits.

  ‘You look surprised. I thought you would be pleased to cross this threshold into manhood. I hear that you are not averse to visiting the girls in the bazaar.’

  Salim flushed. He had thought he was being discreet. On the return march from Kashmir, he and his milk-brother Suleiman Beg had slipped out from the imperial quarters to find willing girls among the camp followers. He had lost his virginity one night to a cinnamon-scented Turkish woman while encamped on a mountain pass with cold winds battering the hide walls of her tent — not that he would have noticed had the tent blown away. Back in Lahore, the two youths had taken to slipping out to the town at night. There was a particular inn where Geeta, a plump dancing girl with high, round breasts, had laughingly been instructing him further in the ways of love while Suleiman Beg had been finding delight in the arms of her sister. Afterwards, sneaking back into the palace, they tried to outdo each other with exaggerated tales of their prowess. But tumbling a girl in the bazaar was very different from taking a wife.

  ‘I am surprised. I hadn’t thought of marriage at all. .’

  ‘Young though you are, you should have. Marrying into the houses of the most noble of our vassals, as I did, tightens our grip on our empire as surely as conquest. Such alliances give the powerful families an even greater stake in our success. They ensure that in times of trouble they will support us, not because they love us but because it is to their advantage.’ Akbar paused, eyes searching Salim’s face. He had seldom spoken to his son so earnestly. ‘Why do you think there are so few uprisings against us and every year we grow yet richer? Why do you think that the ulama no longer dare to bleat openly about my policies of religious tolerance or my Hindu wives or my introduction of the Din-i-Ilahi, the Divine Faith? My position is unassailable and that is in good part because of the alliances I have made through marriage. Understand this, Salim. This is not about your wishes nor about pleasure. You can build yourself a haram of concubines for that. It is about duty. I have informed your mother of my decision.’

  His father’s view of marriage was a joyless one, devoid of human emotion, Salim thought, so unlike that of his grandmother who often told him of the mutual love and support she had shared with Humayun. Perhaps his father’s loveless marriage to his own mother was at the root of his coldness. It had been his first union and it may have made him
even more reluctant to give himself fully to succeeding brides than his self-contained self-confident nature made him already. Certainly he never spoke of any of them with great affection, being seemingly keener to list the alliances they had brought and how they had contributed to his own and the empire’s glory.

  Anyway, Hirabai would surely be pleased by his marriage. Any child he had by Man Bai — and a son might well be a future Moghul emperor — would be more Rajput than Moghul. But then he remembered what she had said of her brother Bhagwan Das, Man Bai’s father: ‘People can always be bought. .’ As so often, his mind became clouded with doubt and uncertainty, though he knew he should be pleased that his father had arranged such an important dynastic match for him. He tried to look grateful — which in his heart he was.

  ‘When will the wedding take place?’

  ‘In about eight weeks’ time when your bride arrives from Amber.’ Akbar smiled. ‘That will also give time for guests to travel here from all over the empire and for others to send gifts. I intend that this will be one of the most magnificent spectacles ever witnessed in Lahore and have already been planning it with Abul Fazl. The festivities will last for a month with processions, camel races, polo matches and elephant fights, and every night feasting and fireworks. Now, let us return to our target practice.’

  Salim was disappointed. There was much more he would have liked to ask, but his father was already priming his musket.

  Man Bai was sitting beneath her layers of gold-embroidered veils in the mansion which Akbar had had specially prepared for the entourage from Amber. Two days ago towards sunset Salim had watched the arrival of the long procession bringing his bride. First had come forty Rajput warriors mounted on cream-coloured stallions, breastplates and lance tips gleaming in the light of the dying sun. Six elephants, jewels flashing in their silver headplates, had followed, bearing in gilded howdahs on their backs the personal bodyguard sent to protect Man Bai on her journey. Then had come his bride on another even more gorgeously caparisoned elephant. Silk curtains, vivid blue as a kingfisher’s wing, draped over her gold-painted, turquoise-inlaid howdah concealed her from view. Immediately behind came her personal waiting women riding on camels, heavily veiled and further protected from the sun by white silk parasols embroidered with pearls held by attendants perched behind them. Next had trotted a further detachment of Rajput warriors, this time mounted on matching black horses. At the very end was the Moghul escort, green banners flying, that Akbar had sent to accompany them.