Empire of the Moghul: Ruler of the World (19 page)

Six weeks later the
khawajasara
’s delighted face told Akbar everything he needed to know.

‘Majesty, at last it has happened.’

‘When will the child be born?’

‘The
hakim
says in August.’

‘I will go to the
haram
now.’ Akbar struggled to restrain tears of joy as he half ran to the women’s quarters. When he entered Hirabai’s apartments he smelled the familiar sweet spiciness of the incense sticks she always kept burning in a brass pot before a statue of an unsmiling, many-armed goddess. Hirabai was sitting on a low, lacquered Rajput stool as one of her maids combed out her thick hennaed hair. It seemed to Akbar that his wife’s face, grown so angular and drawn, was already softening and that her skin had a new bloom. Yet if he’d hoped for any softening in her manner to him he was disappointed. Her expression as she looked up at him was as distant and unyielding as ever.

‘Leave us,’ Akbar ordered the maid. As soon as they were alone, he asked, ‘Is it true? You really are pregnant?’

‘Yes. Surely the
khawajasara
told you.’

‘I wanted to hear it from my wife as a husband should. Hirabai – you are carrying my child, perhaps the future Moghul emperor.
Is there nothing I can do or say to make you look more kindly on me or to make you happier?’

‘The only way would be to send me back to Amber, but that is impossible.’

‘You will be a mother soon. Does that mean nothing to you?’

Hirabai hesitated. ‘I will love the child because the blood of my people will flow through its veins. But I will not pretend to feelings for you that I can never have. All I pray is that you take other wives and leave me in peace.’

‘Bear me a healthy son and I promise never to lie with you again.’ Hirabai said nothing. ‘I want you to make ready for a journey a week from now.’

‘Where are you sending me?’ For the first time her cold demeanour faltered and she looked anxious.

‘Don’t be afraid. I wish you to go to a place of good omen – Sikri. I did not tell you this before because I know you distrust my religion, but a Muslim mystic lives there. He predicted you would bear me a son and asked me to send you there, to a monastery where you will be well tended until the child is born. I will send the best of my
hakims
with you and you may take all the attendants you wish. The air is good there – cooler and healthier than in Agra. It will be beneficial for you and the child you carry and you may worship your own gods there.’

Hirabai looked down at her hands folded on her lap. ‘It will be as you wish, of course.’

‘Shall I send word to your brother?’

Hirabai nodded. Akbar waited a few moments, hoping she might say something else. ‘I will love the child,’ she had said, but would she? If she hated the father, what affection could she feel for the son? For a moment he pondered the Sufi’s warning. Was his wife’s hostility one of the distant shadows he had glimpsed? With a last searching look at Hirabai’s half-averted face, he left her. Free from the frigid aura surrounding her, he felt the warmth of his happiness returning. He was going to have a son . . .

‘I name you Salim after the holy man who predicted your birth.’

Holding the squirming body of his new-born son in the crook of his left arm, with his right hand Akbar picked up a saucer of small gold coins and poured them gently over the baby’s head. Salim threshed about, flexing tiny fists, but though he screwed up his face he didn’t howl. Smiling with pride, Akbar lifted Salim high so all could see him. Then he placed him on a large green velvet cushion held by his elderly vizier Jauhar. It was the turn of the black-turbaned Shaikh Ahmad, head of the
ulama
, to speak. What did he really think about blessing the child of a Hindu mother? His face, bland above his bushy dark beard, gave nothing away. Whatever his inner feelings, he and his clique had lost the battle – defeated by the birth of this child who as yet knew nothing of the tensions of the world.

After thanking God for Salim’s birth, the priest said portentously: ‘We whom His Imperial Majesty have summoned here to Sikri hail the auspicious birth of this world-illuminating pearl of the mansion of dominion and fortune, this night-gleaming jewel of the casket of greatness and glory. Prince Salim, may God guide you and pour an ocean of divine bounty upon you.’

Later that night, Akbar slipped from the huge many-canopied brocade tent specially erected in Sikri for the feast celebrating his son’s birth. For a while he had joined in the slurred singing, circling arm in arm with Ahmed Khan and his other commanders in some semblance of the old dances of the Moghul homelands – not that many could remember the steps. But now there was something he felt he must do. Calling for his horse, he mounted and taking only a few of his guards, rode slowly through the warm night air, scented by the still-smoking dung fires over which the villagers of Sikri had cooked their evening meal, towards the nearby monastery where Hirabai was still lodged. Glancing up it seemed to him that the stars, so beloved by his own father Humayun, had never seemed so numerous or so lustrous. It was as if they had found a special radiance to shed upon the earth that now held his son – the son he must do everything to protect. Even now, at a time of so much happiness, he could not forget the Sufi’s words of caution . . .

‘It is the emperor!’ shouted one of his guards as the arched entrance of the monastery appeared before them. Orange-clad Rajput soldiers from Amber to whom Akbar had awarded the honour of protecting the Empress stood to attention and their captain stepped forward.

‘Welcome, Majesty.’

Akbar dismounted and tossing his reins to his
qorchi
walked through the gateway into a small, dimly lit courtyard. As the cry went up again, ‘It is the emperor!’ one of Hirabai’s Rajput maids appeared through the shadows carrying an oil lamp whose tiny flame flickered and danced.

‘Please take me to my wife.’

Hirabai was lying propped on blue cotton cushions on a low bed. Salim was feeding at her breast and Akbar saw a contentment in her face he had never witnessed before. It was so unexpected it made her seem almost a stranger. But as she looked at him, the glow faded. ‘Why have you come? You should be at the feast attending to your guests.’

‘I felt a sudden need to see my son . . . and my wife.’

Hirabai said nothing, but took Salim from her breast and handed him to her maid. The baby began to cry, angry at having his feeding so abruptly ended, but Hirabai signalled to the maid to take him away.

‘Hirabai – I have come here to make one last appeal to you. For the rest of our lives Salim will be a link of flesh and blood between us. Can’t we forget the past and begin again for him? Let all my sons be yours too so that in later life they can support and help one another as full brothers.’

‘I have done my duty. As I have already told you, I wish you only to leave me alone. You promised that if I bore you a son you would do so. Let other women father your sons.’

‘Salim’s position will be less secure if he has only half-brothers. They will feel less loyalty to him. Have you considered that? Don’t you owe it to your son to make his position as strong as possible?’

‘My son has Rajput blood in his veins. He will trample any rival into the dust.’ Hirabai raised her chin.

Frustration at such heedless, stubborn pride, such a narrow view
of the world, filled Akbar. For a moment he wondered whether to tell her of the Sufi’s warnings of what might lie in the future, but he knew she wouldn’t listen. So be it, but he would not leave his son to be brought up by such a woman.

‘Very well, I will respect your wishes. But there is a price for what you ask. Though you may see Salim whenever you wish, I intend to place him in my mother’s care. Moghul princes are often reared by senior royal women rather than their birth mothers. She will appoint a milk-mother as is also the Moghul way. My son will be brought up as a Moghul prince, not a Rajput one.’

Hirabai stared at him. If he had anticipated grief, remonstrations, he was wrong. The only sign of agitation was a slight tautening of her jaw. ‘You are the emperor. Your word is law.’ Her tone was contemptuous, insolent even. He had come to her tonight to give her one final chance, but, as he had known in his heart, she had utterly closed her mind against him.

‘Y
ou have done me a great honour and given me a great responsibility, Majesty.’

‘I know you will acquit yourself well, Abul Fazl. I wish the chronicle of my reign to be a testament to future generations. You must record the truth – the bad as well as the good. Don’t seek merely to flatter me.’

‘I will write every word with a pen perfumed with sincerity.’

Akbar suppressed a smile as he looked at his newly appointed chief chronicler. Though he had other scribes, he had begun to feel the need for someone who would do more than just write down his words – someone he could trust to inform himself about and record all the important aspects of his reign, even when he himself was away. Abul Fazl was a bull-necked, bow-legged man a little younger than himself with a small but livid birthmark at the corner of his left eye. His father Shaikh Mubarak, a learned theologian, had brought the family to the Moghul court some years earlier. Abul Fazl’s skills both as a commander and as an analyst of court politics had already caught Akbar’s attention, but it was his vizier Jauhar who had recommended him for this appointment, observing to Akbar that ‘although vain and an outrageous flatterer, Abul Fazl is clever and loyal. He will glory at being at the centre of events and will perform the task more ably than a more modest or retiring man.’
Certainly the beaming smile on his clean-shaven face told Akbar how gratified he was by the award of such a position of trust.

‘You must take particular care in recording the reforms I intend to make to the empire’s administration. One of the chief purposes of the chronicles will be to guide my successors.’

‘Of course, Majesty.’ Abul Fazl signalled with a richly beringed hand to an attendant who placed a carved mulberry wood writing slope before him and handed him paper, pen and ink.

‘Then let us begin.’ Akbar got up and paced his apartments. Through an arched opening he could see boys riding their camels along the sunlit banks of the Jumna and beyond them a group of his courtiers, one with a hawk on his wrist, going hunting. He wished he was with them, but business must come before pleasure.

‘I have already made some important decisions. First, I wish to fit all my officials into a single hierarchy. Every one of them, whether they are soldiers or not, will be designated as commanders of a certain number of troops. You look startled, Abul Fazl, but with such a large and disparate empire I must find ways to make my rule uniform and consistent. Even the head of the royal kitchens will be included – he will become a commander of six hundred. You, as my adviser and chronicler, will be a commander of four thousand.’

Abul Fazl permitted himself a satisfied smile and bent over his writing again as Akbar continued. ‘Next, certain lands within my empire will be designated crown property and my officials will collect the due taxes and remit them straight to my treasury. The rest of my territory will be divided into
jagirs
– fiefs – and given to my nobles and commanders to govern. They will be responsible for gathering the taxes and may keep a proportion in return for maintaining an agreed number of troops for the crown. In that way, should I need to go to war I will be able to gather a large and well-trained army quickly.’

‘Can the holders bequeath their
jagirs
to their sons, Majesty?’

‘No. When they die, the
jagir
will revert to me to be disposed of at my pleasure.’ Akbar paused. ‘By making every man of importance a servant of the empire and by being able to remove troublemakers from their
jagirs
and confiscate their property when they die, I can
compel my nobles’ loyalty and prevent any of them from building a power base against me.’ He paused, and for a few moments the only sound was the scratching of Abul Fazl’s long, ivory-stemmed pen. ‘Is everything clear? Have you noted down everything I said?’

‘Yes, Majesty. I have written accurately and in sufficient detail for all who read my account to benefit from your great wisdom, unparalleled insight and organisational genius in bringing order to your new dominions.’

Why did Abul Fazl have to use quite so many words? Akbar wondered. He seemed to think that verbose and constant flattery was the way to Akbar’s favour. Perhaps it was the Persian way, though Bairam Khan had not been like that. The memory of his old mentor and his treatment of him was still painful, and Akbar determinedly pushed it out of his mind.

‘Let us go outside. We can talk further there.’ He led the way from his private apartments to a courtyard where his three sons were playing. Five-year-old Salim was riding in a small cart being pulled by Murad, just eleven months younger, and three-and-a-half-year-old Daniyal. They hadn’t noticed him yet, standing with Abul Fazl in the shadows beneath a neem tree, and went on with their game. Salim was growing fast. He had Hirabai’s narrow, slender build and the same thick dark hair and long-lashed eyes. Murad was nearly as tall but thicker set, more like Akbar himself, but with the tawny eyes of his Rajput mother, a princess of Jaisalmer. Little Daniyal, chubby with puppy fat and trying hard to keep up with Murad, as yet resembled neither Akbar nor his beautiful Persian mother.