‘It’s more than that.’
‘What d’you mean?’
‘Maham’s been unhappy. After Humayun she had no more children that survived. Despite three further pregnancies, two were stillborn and the third — a son — died in my arms just minutes after my hakim summoned me to Maham’s chamber. She was exhausted. I watched the light in her eyes fade as the new son we’d both longed for struggled for breath then went still. When I look back, it’s as if something died in her, too, at that moment.’
‘She has Humayun. .’
‘Yes. But she still feels she’s failed. . Even though she loves me and I care for her, it’s cast a shadow between us.’
‘Is that why you took more wives? For companionship? To find a soul-mate?’
‘I had no such expectations. I married again for practical reasons. It’s good for a king to have many heirs and it was a way to reward loyal followers and bind powerful clans to me.’
‘These new wives of yours, what are they like?’
Babur thought of tall, muscular Bibi Mubarak, daughter of the powerful chieftain of the Yusufzai clan from the mountains above Kabul, and of fat little snub-nosed Dildar, whose father had fled the Uzbeks in Herat and made the long journey to Kabul to offer his allegiance. ‘They’re not amazingly beautiful, if that’s what you mean. But they are good women. .’
‘Good in bed?’
‘Good enough. .’
‘Which are the mothers of your two youngest sons?’
‘Six years ago Gulrukh gave birth to a brother for Kamran, little Askari. Then three years later, Dildar also had a boy.’
‘And Maham? It must have been hard for her.’
Babur’s face tightened. ‘It was. . Years ago, as a new young wife with everything ahead of her, she accepted my marriage to Gulrukh without question. But her grief when I took other wives was unnatural. When rumours spread that they might be pregnant her sorrow was uncontrollable. Not even Baisanghar, her own father, or Khanzada could quieten her. One night she attempted to cut her wrists with the shards of a broken pot. My hakim had to sedate her with a potent mixture of wine and narcotic kamali. .’
‘And is she still so unhappy?’
‘No. . and there’s a reason. About four years ago, while I was away on an expedition along the borders of Hindustan, Maham wrote telling me that Dildar was pregnant. Her letter ended, “Whether it is a boy or a girl, I will take my chances. Give the child to me and I will raise it as my own and be content once more.”’
‘What did you do?’
‘It was difficult. I knew I was wronging Dildar but how could I deny Maham something that might comfort her? I wrote back that though the child was still in Dildar’s womb, it was hers. As I said, it turned out to be a boy. .’
‘What’s his name?’
‘Hindal.’
Baburi’s eyes flickered. ‘Which means Conqueror of Hindustan.’
‘I chose it in a moment of euphoria. The news of his birth came while I was still away on that expedition. Perhaps it was wishful thinking, but I took it as a sign that Hindustan, with its great wealth, its great possibilities, was where my destiny lay, if only I could find a way. .’
‘Just as we talked about all those years ago when we raided its borders. Do you remember those seemingly limitless skies, that intensely orange sun?’
‘Of course — and the lake we saw filled with thousands of birds, wings as red as if they’d been dipped in blood. . They were hard to forget.’ Babur rose from the yellow brocade cushions he’d been leaning against and went over to an open casement. Torches flickered on either side of the gatehouse in the courtyard below where all was quiet, as it should be in the darkest hours of the night. ‘But Hindal is three now and I’m no closer to realising my dreams of a great empire in Hindustan or anywhere else. . I know I should be grateful for what I’ve got. When they look at me, my nobles and commanders — even Baisanghar, who has been with me all these years — see a king secure on his throne with little to trouble him. They don’t understand the dissatisfaction and lack of fulfilment that envelop me. And why should they? I can never tell them. .’
‘What about Khanzada? Surely your sister knows you too well to be fooled.’
‘She suspects my restlessness — I’m sure of it. But after all she has been through, I didn’t want to load her with my gnawing ambitions and selfish preoccupations — so paltry in comparison with her sufferings. . And I couldn’t talk of it to Maham, she just wouldn’t understand. . whenever I try to speak to her of my dissatisfaction she becomes upset as if I were criticising her. If you’d been here, it might have been different. It’s hard to describe to you what my life has become. I have absolute power and live in opulence but sometimes this enviable existence feels like unfulfilling drudgery with nothing to look forward to except more of the same. Often, to deaden my discontent, I hold drinking parties with my nobles where we sample the potent vintages of my kingdom — like this red wine of Ghazni that we are drinking now. We revel till dawn when my attendants carry me, head bobbing in oblivion, back to my apartments. Sometimes I take opium and bhang — marijuana. They take me to a bright, vibrant world where everything seems possible.’
‘There’s no shame in that.’
‘But where’s the nobility? Where’s the glory my soul still hankers for? I’m scarcely four decades old but I feel as trapped as my father did in Ferghana. What’s more, the old Timurid world — my world, our world — is gone. The Uzbek barbarians have shattered it for ever. What is left for me?’ Babur’s voice trembled. He turned to Baburi and, after a pause, added, ‘I know I must seem ungrateful and conceited. . I’ve never said these things to anyone and perhaps I shouldn’t be saying them to you. . you used to mock my moments of doubt. .’
‘No, not your doubt, only your self-pity. But my life these past years has taught me many things. I was so arrogant, so convinced I was right. I had far more pride than you, though you were the king, not I. Now I understand. . I know how it feels to want something badly and be unable to find a way to it.’
‘What was it you wanted so much?’
‘To come back. .’
‘You’ll stay?’
‘Yes. . at least, until we have another fight. .’
Baburi slapped the end of the five-foot-long bronze tube. ‘This is the barrel. First linen bags filled with gunpowder and then the shot are loaded and rammed down into it. And this,’ he pointed to the swelling at the bottom end of the barrel, ‘is the breech. See this little aperture? They call it the touch-hole. It is where — just before firing — the gunners insert a long, sharp metal spike — the awl — to break open the bag of powder. Finally, a man applies a lighted taper to the touch-hole to create the flashing spark that sets off the main charge in the barrel.’
‘How far can it throw the shot?’
‘It depends on the length of the barrel and its diameter — the bore. The longer the barrel and the bigger the bore, the further the range. Many of the Turkish sultan’s guns have barrels ten feet long or more and some weigh as much as twenty thousand pounds. But they’re small compared with the bronze cannon they call the Great Turkish Bombard that Mehmet of Turkey used seventy years ago when he captured Istanbul. You should see it! The seventeen-foot barrel has a thirty-inch bore and it could fire a twelve-hundred-pound stone shot over a mile away. They say you could hear its blast ten miles off. But it could only fire about fifteen shots a day and needed two hundred men to operate it. It was so heavy it took seventy oxen and ten thousand men to shift it, unlike this one.’
‘Show me what it can do. .’ Babur wanted to see the miracle weapon at work. The target was a ten-foot-high pile of large stones that Baburi’s men had set up three hundred yards away.
Baburi shouted an order to five of his mercenaries, who were wearing round leather skull-caps, leather jerkins and breeches. One man rammed a linen bag down the barrel of the cannon into the breech with a long stick like a polo mallet, except that the top was wrapped in sheepskin
. Then another two, grunting with the effort, heaved a round stone shot into the barrel and — again using the stick — sent it rumbling down into the breech. As they finished, the fourth man approached and inserted the awl to puncture the bag of powder inside and scattered a little loose powder around the touch-hole — ‘Just to make sure,’ Baburi explained.
‘Stand back.’ He waited till he was content that Babur was far enough away, then walked forward to the cannon and checked the angle of the barrel.
Satisfied, he stepped back and signalled to the fifth man to advance. He held a forked staff with a length of oil-soaked cord attached to it, the tip glowing. The man looked towards Baburi.
‘Fire!’
The man pressed his smouldering taper to the touch-hole and leaped back. Seconds later, with a boom the missile shot out of the barrel and across the meadow to smash into the target. A cloud of dust erupted, and as it cleared, Babur saw that the tower of stones was now a pile of fragments.
‘Look at that.’ Baburi’s voice was full of pride. ‘At Chaltran, Sultan Selim used a row of cannon just like these, protected by a barrier of carts, and there was nothing the Persians could do. . Afterwards, the Turks surged forward, and shot down any Persians who still resisted with their matchlock muskets. Look. .’
Baburi clapped his hands and one of his men carried over a long, thin wooden box that he placed at his feet. ‘You taught me a long time ago to be an archer. You made me a Qor Begi, a Lord of the Bow. Now I can teach you to be a marksman with one of these.’ Baburi bent and took a long metal object from the box. ‘It’s fashioned from the finest steel.’
‘It’s shaped like a little cannon.’
‘Exactly. It’s a musket — a cannon in miniature. See, it has a long metal barrel for firing a ball. This matchlock mechanism, as it’s called, is how it works. You put the gunpowder here, into the pan, then light the end of a thin piece of rope. When the flame reaches the gunpowder, it ignites it and the force fires the ball from the barrel.’
‘How far?’
‘More than two hundred yards but it’s most accurate up to about fifty. Try it.’
As soon as one of the Turks had set up a melon on a pole as a target, Baburi poured a small amount of gunpowder into the pan and loaded the shot. ‘ To help take the weight as you aim, you should rest the barrel on this frame.’ Baburi indicated a tall metal stick about four feet high that forked at the top to make a cradle. Thrusting the end of the stick into the ground, he showed Babur how to rest the barrel of the musket in the centre of the cradle. ‘Look straight down the barrel at your target and, remember, when it fires you’ll feel a kick, so brace yourself. Ready?
Babur took the musket, placing the butt against his shoulder, closed his left eye and focused his right along the shining barrel. When he thought he had the melon in his sights, he nodded. Baburi lit the piece of rope, which began to smoulder.
‘Keep it steady. .’ Baburi was still speaking as, with a sharp crack, the ball shot out and the top of the melon disintegrated in a spray of orange pulp. . ‘Good. But now let me show you what my trained musketeers can do with these. .’ He gestured to another row of targets: fifteen straw dolls lined up on a trestle table some fifty yards away. An equal number of Baburi’s men lined up, primed and loaded their weapons and, one after another, fired with perfect precision, each man knocking over his target, then stepping back smartly to reload and stand to attention. Immediately the fifteenth man had reloaded, they swung round a hundred and eighty degrees, rested their muskets again in the cradles and fired at a row of clay pots set up even further away. Again, each man’s aim was perfect.
‘Of course, in the heat of battle, fingers fumble, targets move, but I’ve seen these guns shatter advancing lines of soldiers.’
Babur put his arm around Baburi’s shoulders as he tried to put into words the vision that had been forming in his mind as he had watched his friend demonstrate the power of these miraculous new weapons. It was as if Canopus had risen above the enshrouding clouds to blaze brightly on him and his dynasty once more.
‘You’re not just my friend. You’re my inspiration. You’ve brought me far more than weapons. . Until now, although I’ve long wished to make one, a full-scale attack on Hindustan was not possible. I had neither the numbers of men nor any special advantage. The rulers there are numerous and strong. Their overlord is the proud, arrogant Sultan Ibrahim Lodi of Delhi. To win Hindustan I must defeat his huge armies and his ranks of war elephants. But with these new weapons I now see how I can do it. I may not be destined to have a great empire like Timur’s in the lands of my birth but with your cannon and muskets I can surpass his raid over the Indus to Delhi. We will fulfil the dreams we had all those years ago.’
Chapter 21
Blood and Thunder
Dreams of greatness came easily. Achieving it was harder. It had taken Baburi and his Turkish mercenaries six months to create a corps of troops skilled at firing the cannon and muskets he had brought to Kabul. Meanwhile, as the citizens of Kabul had grown used to the flashes and booms around their city, Babur had despatched an embassy to the Turkish sultan, with a message from Baburi and bags of gold coin, to buy six more cannon and four hundred muskets from the foundries and gun-makers of Istanbul.
Even more satisfying to Babur had been the knowledge that his own armourers were learning to make the new weapons under the expert guidance of Ali-Quli, the grey-bearded Turkish master-gunner who had accompanied Baburi to Kabul. His ability with both cannon and musket was extraordinary — especially as five years ago, two fingers of his right hand had been blown off by an exploding matchlock with a cracked barrel.
Night after night, Babur had sat late with Baburi, questioning minutely his accounts of battles in which cannon and matchlocks had been deployed. In what circumstances were they most effective? In open battle or siege? How could you best protect your gunners and matchlock men against archers or cavalry charges? How did these weapons change the traditional methods of attack? Before he tested them in battle, he must understand everything.
Babur also sent men out into the city to linger in the large, arched caravanserais where the merchants of many lands displayed their wares on raised stone platforms in the middle of the courtyard, trading gossip as well as goods. Babur’s agents listened carefully, asking the occasional discreet question. They heard much boastful talk from the Hindustani merchants about Delhi’s vast palaces of carved rose-pink sandstone and the grandeur of Sultan Ibrahim’s court but not the faintest rumour that he — or any other ruler of Hindustan — had acquired cannon and matchlock muskets.
But now, at last, on a cold, clear January day, Babur was leading an expedition to see for himself the effect of these weapons against an enemy unused to them. That enemy was the new Sultan of Bajaur, a dependency of Kabul, who had taken it into his foolish young head to refuse Babur the customary annual tribute in grain, sheep and oxen.
The Bajauris, living high in the mountains in dense forests of oak, olive and wormwood, noisy with rasping mynah birds, were an idolatrous, infidel people with strange beliefs. When a Bajaur woman died the men placed her corpse on a stretcher and, taking each of the four corners, raised it up. If she had lived a good life, the Bajaurs believed her spirit would cause the men holding the stretcher to shake so violently that her body would be thrown to the ground. Only then would the people don black mourning garb and begin their lament. If, on the other hand, a female corpse induced no such motion, it was considered proof of an evil life and the body was tossed unceremoniously on to a fire to be reduced to nothing.
The ruler of these singular people had provided him with a fine opportunity, Babur thought, as, with Baburi by his side, he rode out of Kabul at the head of a column that included a detachment of newly trained matchlock men and gunners, all hand-picked by Ali-Quli, and four cannon. They circled northwards up through hilly terrain towards Bajaur. In the old days, Babur and his men would have ridden fast and hard on a raid like this, taking their enemy by s
urprise. But the heavy cannon in their trundling bullock carts slowed their pace, providing more opportunity and time for observers to raise the alarm.
Babur brooded on this as he rode, not noticing the chill wind in his face. He was also reflecting on a passage he had come across in a chronicle shortly before leaving Kabul: ‘Timur prized bold and valiant warriors by whose aid he opened the locks of terror and ripped in pieces men like lions and through them and their battles overturned the heights of mountains. .’ It also told of Timur’s loathing for cowards. Any man, whatever his rank, who failed him in battle had had his head shaved and his body painted red. Then, dressed in women’s clothes, he had been dragged through the camp to be beaten and reviled by his comrades before being executed. Mercy had been unknown to Timur.
Babur understood the need for ruthlessness. Just three nights ago, on a surprise tour of inspection, he had found five men asleep on picket duty and had ordered an example to be made of them. Their left ears had been sliced off and the men paraded before the rest of Babur’s force, bleeding and with the severed ears on a string round their necks. But if he was to succeed, as Timur had done, in forging and holding an empire, he would have to find even greater reserves of toughness within himself, an even greater ability to sacrifice others to his ambition without the appearance of a second thought.
‘Majesty.’ One of Babur’s scouts, well muffled in sheepskin against the cold, rode up to him. ‘The sultan has fled from his capital ten miles ahead of us to a fortress on banks of the Bajaur river in the hill country twenty miles east of here. He has taken all his army, two thousand soldiers, with him.’
‘You’re sure of this — it isn’t a trap?’
‘We saw him ride out with his troops, accompanied by many camp-followers and citizens, and tracked him all the way.’
‘Tell me about the fortress.’ Babur leaned forward in his saddle, green eyes glinting above his face-cloth.
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