Raiders from the North: Empire of the Moghul (52 page)

‘You idiot, what are you doing?’ Baburi’s face was almost blue. ‘And why are you laughing?’

‘Swim with me to the other side and I’ll tell you.’

Together they forced themselves through the eddies and currents until they reached the far bank and, grabbing handfuls of coarse, sage-green grass, hauled themselves out. Babur flung himself on to the ground, still chuckling though he was shuddering and his chilled skin was puckering with goose-pimples.

‘So what’s this all about?’ Baburi looked down at him, shaking his hair out of his eyes and slapping his sides to keep warm.

‘Last night I was unable to sleep. The thought of the Indus so near made my blood roar in my ears like the waters of the river itself. I made a vow that if God grants me victory in Hindustan, I’ll swim every river in my new empire.’

‘You didn’t have to start so soon . . . you’re still a long way from conquering anything.’

Babur sat up. ‘I had to do it. How could I look at the Indus and not cross it . . . ? Though we must return to Kabul it won’t be long till we’re back. And when I return, this earth will know I have already claimed it. It will welcome me . . .’

‘And now I suppose we have to swim back?’

‘Of course.’

In the hour before dawn, eight months after his swim in the freezing Indus, Babur left Maham’s chamber where, for one last time, he had lost himself in the silken folds of her body, and her
long, sandalwood-scented hair, and returned to be alone in his private apartments. He listened as the war drums boomed out their sombre rhythm across the meadows beneath the citadel of Kabul. Going on to the balcony, he looked out into the soft half-light, pricked by the glow of thousands of campfires. Yesterday, on this same balcony, with Baburi close behind him, he had announced his grand design to his people.

‘From the time Timur invaded Hindustan it has been the rightful property of his descendants. As chief among them I will ride tomorrow to claim what is mine from those who have usurped my birthright. Four months ago I sent a hawk to the self-proclaimed ruler of much of Hindustan – Sultan Ibrahim Lodi of Delhi – as a gift. I told him if he would acknowledge me as his overlord I would give him lands to govern as my vassal. He sent the hawk back – without its head. Now he will lose his throne for insulting the House of Timur and the ruler of Kabul.’

Babur’s people had roared out their approval of his martial tone even if Sultan Ibrahim was just a name to them and they knew nothing of his palaces and fortresses in Delhi and Agra, his great treasuries and vast armies or the confederation of rulers – some Muslim like himself, others infidels – who were his vassals. Babur had smiled inwardly at their unthinking acceptance of his words. True, he had a claim to Hindustan but his greater birthright was to Samarkand. The memory of it still moved him but he knew he would never rule there again.

‘Majesty, your sister wishes to speak to you.’ An attendant interrupted Babur’s thoughts.

‘Of course. Does she wish me to go to her?’

‘No, Majesty, she is here.’

Khanzada stepped out on to the balcony. As soon as she and Babur were alone she lowered her veil. The light falling on her face from a torch in a bracket on the wall softened her angular features and smoothed away the lines. Babur saw again the girl who had solemnly brought their father’s sword, Alamgir, to him in the fortress of Akhsi the night he’d claimed the throne of Ferghana.

‘I know that later you will return to the women’s quarters to
bid your wives and myself goodbye, but I wanted a moment with you alone. You and I are the only ones who remain from the happy days of our childhood in Ferghana when life seemed so secure, so full of promise. We have experienced much since then, both great highs and lows . . .’ She paused. ‘Our lives might have been easier and less eventful but fate made them otherwise. Now you go on this great expedition of yours into Hindustan, which will decide the place of our family in history. I pray it may bring you everything you and I desire, just as our father, mother and grandmother would have done. Victory and conquest will give a point to what we have lived through . . . but take care, my little brother.’ Khanzada’s raisin eyes – so like their grandmother’s but darker – shone with tears.

‘I will, just as when you scolded me to be careful after I fell from my first pony when I was trying to turn too tightly.’ Babur put his arm round her. ‘Whatever happens, you know that I’m following my destiny and trying to live up to my birth. The signs are favourable. Hasn’t the court astrologer predicted that if I launch my expedition now, in late November, while the sun is in Sagittarius, I will be victorious?’

For a brief moment, Khanzada held his face in her hands and kissed his forehead. ‘Goodbye, brother, till we meet again.’

‘I will send for you when victory is ours.’

Then she was gone, hastening back to the women’s quarters where he knew that, in the months ahead – whatever her own anxieties – she would be the strong hub, the comforter rather than the comforted. Humayun would accompany him on the campaign but he had appointed Kamran as regent in Kabul. Even though he would have the wise guidance in public of Baisanghar and Kasim who would both also remain, Khanzada’s astute advice would be the best guarantee of Kabul’s safety and good governance in his absence. He knew also that she would prevent too many jealousies arising among his wives, listening, conciliating and consoling, just as Esan Dawlat had done.

Out of the darkness came the sound of a trumpet, a reminder that in the meadows below the citadel, more than ten thousand horsemen were stirring. Soon they would be checking their weapons
and equipment and saddling their horses. The standard-bearers would be unfurling the banners that Babur had decided to stripe with yellow and green – the colours of his homeland, Ferghana, and of Timur’s capital, Samarkand – and emblazon with the three circles that Timur had painted on his banners, to represent the perfect conjunction of the planets at his birth.

The gunners and matchlock men, their skills honed by rigorous, relentless training, would also be preparing. The cannons, muskets, gunpowder and shot were already loaded on to the carts. So were the huge amounts of equipment needed to set up camp – the heavy hide tents, their supporting poles and the great cooking pots needed to feed so many mouths.

As soon as the sky began to pale, the teams of oxen would be yoked. The long lines of pack-beasts – double-humped camels, donkeys, ponies – would be loaded with their burdens of grain, cured meats and other stores. The merchants who would follow Babur’s army to set up the camp market would also be preparing their baggage and animal trains – a long, successful campaign offered the prospect of huge profits. With them would come the usual mass of camp-followers – labourers, scavengers, water-bearers, women with children at the breast, anxious to be near their men, other women hoping to survive by selling their bodies, the acrobats, dancers and musicians who knew soldiers would pay well for a bit of entertainment to distract them from thoughts of war. A whole city was on the move.

A few hours later, just before midday, with the winter sun shedding its silvery light over the landscape, Babur rode out from the citadel of Kabul, Timur’s gold ring on his finger and Alamgir as his waist, to a glorious cacophony of trumpets. As he passed the high walls of the city a knot tightened in his stomach – apprehension, anticipation, excitement? It was all of those things and he had known them many times.

But this time it was different. He felt an awesome solemnity. Truly, fortune was extending her hand . . . if only he could grasp it, all that had gone before – his fight for his throne in Ferghana, his attempts to overcome the Uzbeks and hold Samarkand, his rule
over Kabul – would prove simply stepping-stones to a greater destiny for himself and his dynasty . . .

‘The astrologer was right. Fortune is favouring us,’ Babur told Humayun and Baburi, lounging beside him on cushions beneath leather awnings on a large raft being navigated by oarsmen down the swift-flowing Kabul river. Around them, on a string of larger craft, were the cannon and much of the heavy baggage, while the bulk of the army made its way along the banks.

‘You did well, Humayun, to raise so many troops among the northern nomads.’ Ten days after Babur and the main force had left Kabul, his son had joined them with more than two thousand soldiers from the wilds of Badakhshan.

‘It wasn’t difficult, Father – not with all the gold we had to offer.’

‘They’re good fighters, the Badakhshanis, though they’re quick to quarrel among themselves or with others,’ said Baburi, drawing his blue cloak more tightly round him against the chill air blowing off the water.

‘The pace they’re having to keep up should sap their surplus energy,’ Babur said.

The sight of the rushing jade waters bearing him downriver towards Hindustan pushed thoughts of troublesome tribesmen from his mind and filled him with euphoria. Soon he’d call for some
bhang
mixed with opium. Once it had provided an escape from reality but now it enhanced the happiness of the present and heightened his optimism for the future. Each time he took it, even the austere, stony grey landscape they were passing through seemed drenched in a golden light and every feature – every tree, every flower, even the flocks of fat, shaggy sheep – was endowed with a fresh, startling beauty. When he closed his eyes, other images crowded his mind – of his men galloping joyously across battlefields strewn with the bodies of his enemies, their horses’ hoofs scarcely touching the ground, of himself wearing a golden crown glittering with rubies and sitting on a golden throne beneath an infinite sky . . .

‘What are you smiling about?’ asked Baburi.

‘I’m thinking about what’s ahead. Where we’ll be in a year from now.’

‘In Delhi, I hope . . .’

‘And where d’you think we’ll be, Humayun?’

‘I don’t know, Father . . . but, God willing, we’ll have slain your enemies and won an empire.’

Babur and Baburi exchanged an amused glance at his naivety but then their expressions sobered. Grandiose words, perhaps, for one so young but weren’t their sentiments exactly the same?

‘Majesty, the scouts have returned. They have found a suitable place to cross the Indus.’

Babur’s heart leaped. This was the news he had been waiting for ever since, leaving the Kabul river behind, he had marched his army safely beyond the bare, pebbly defiles of the Khyber Pass and south-eastwards towards the Indus. He and Baburi had just set out to go hunting – villagers had reported two rhinoceroses browsing beneath the interlaced branches of an oak wood five miles beyond his camp – but that would have to wait.

‘Come!’ Babur called to Baburi, then galloped back to where the scouts were waiting outside his scarlet campaign tent.

‘Majesty, there is a place a day’s march from here where, if we build rafts, we can float everything across,’ the commander of the scouts reported.

‘What about the currents?’

‘The crossing place is just below a sharp bend in the river that reduces the strength of the current at that point – we experimented, floating three pack-mules across, and it went well. Also, there are enough trees to cut down for the rafts and there was no sign of any habitation along that stretch of the bank. We should be able to cross unmolested.’