‘Ours?’
‘Of course. Though our father named me emperor, we are all Babur’s sons, all part of the Moghul destiny — you, me and even Kamran and Askari. We bear the same responsibilities. Our dynasty is young, the roots barely finding a purchase in this alien soil, but we can — we will — be great so long as we do not lose our self-belief or tear our dynasty apart by fighting one another.’
‘Perhaps you are right. Sometimes, though, it all seems such a burden that I wish I were back in Kabul, that our father had never heard of Hindustan. . ’ The expression in Hindal’s tawny eyes was unconvinced and his tall, thick-set body seemed to slump despondently in the saddle.
Humayun reached out and touched his brother’s muscular shoulder. ‘I understand,’ he said quietly, ‘but it was not our choice to be born who we are.’
Three hours later, the camp fires were being lit in the lee of a low, stony hill that Ahmed Khan — riding ahead with his scouts — had found. Humayun’s large scarlet tent was pitched in the centre with Hindal’s next to it. Fifty yards away were tents for Khanzada and Gulbadan and their attendants and for the small group of women in Hindal’s entourage, all enclosed by baggage wagons drawn up around them in a protective circle with their traces knotted.
Men squatted on the ground, slapping a mixture of flour and water into flat loaves to bake on hot clay tiles in the fire. Soon the aroma of lamb was mingling with the smell of wood smoke as the cooks’ boys slowly rotated the sharpened stakes on which chunks of new-slain sheep, salted and rubbed with herbs, had been spitted. The fires hissed as the fat ran into the leaping flames. Humayun’s stomach growled as, inside his tent, he drew off his gauntlets and Jauhar unclipped his sword belt.
‘Jauhar, this is the first feast I’ve held since we left Lahore. Though it will be poor compared with the celebrations I once held in my palaces, we must put on a good display. All must eat and drink their fill. . For those eating in my tent, have the silver and gold dishes unpacked. . and I wish you to play your flute for us. It is a long time since I have heard you.’
Later that night, dressed in a dark green tunic over buckskin trousers and jewelled dagger tucked into his yellow sash, Humayun looked around him with satisfaction. To his left, Hindal and the senior officers were sitting in a semicircle on the ground, laughing and talking. Zahid Beg was gnawing on a lamb bone. Despite his leanness, he could easily out-eat any of Humayun’s other commanders and took pride in his gigantic appetite. Humayun smiled to see him discard the bone and hack off a fresh hunk of roasted flesh with his dagger.
On the far side of the tent, encircled by high screens that concealed them from view, a small group of women including Khanzada and Gulbadan were seated. Their conversation sounded decorously muted and their laughter was more restrained than the men’s but almost as frequent. Humayun hoped they had everything they wanted and decided to see for himself. Looking round the edge of the screen he saw Gulbadan talking to a young woman seated close beside her, feet gracefully curled beneath her. The woman’s face was in shadow but as she leaned forward to take a sweetmeat from a dish, candlelight illuminated her features.
Humayun felt a tightening in his stomach as he took in the graceful set of her small head on her long slender neck, the pale oval of her face, the shining dark hair pulled back and secured with jewelled combs and the luminous eyes which, suddenly aware of his scrutiny, she turned towards him. Her gaze was open and appraising — no trace of nervousness that she was looking at the emperor — and it sent an almost visceral shock through him. As Humayun continued to stare, the young woman dropped her gaze and turned back to Gulbadan. Her profile — they were sharing some joke by the way she was smiling — showed a small nose and delicate chin. Then, leaning back, she was once more lost to the shadows.
Humayun returned to his place with the men, his polite interest in the women’s well-being completely forgotten. As the feast continued he found it hard to concentrate, so haunted was he by that glimpse of an unknown face. He tapped his brother on the shoulder.
‘Hindal, there’s a young woman sitting by your sister whom I don’t recognise — take a look and tell me if you know her.’ Hindal rose, went across to the screen and peered round. Then slowly he returned to Humayun’s side.
‘Well?’
It seemed to Humayun that Hindal hesitated before answering. ‘Her name is Hamida. She’s the daughter of my vizier, Shaikh Ali Akbar. . ’
‘How old is she?’
‘About fourteen or fifteen. . ’
‘To which of the clans does Shaikh Ali Akbar belong?’
‘His family is of Persian descent but were long settled in Samarkand until, in our father’s time, the Uzbeks drove them out. Shaikh Ali Akbar fled as a young man and eventually found his way to my province of Alwar. I made him my chief counsellor there.’
‘Is he a good counsellor?’
‘Yes. And something more than that, perhaps. The blood of a famous mystic runs in his veins — Ahmad of Jam, who had the ability to foretell events. In his lifetime he was known as Zinda-fil, “the Terrible Elephant”, because of his powers.’
‘Tomorrow morning before we march send Shaikh Ali Akbar to me. I wish to talk to him.’
Humayun barely slept that night. Though in Sarkar he had told Mirza Husain he would not take a wife until he had won back his throne, he knew in his very soul that he must marry Hamida. There was no thought, no logic to it, just an overwhelming attraction. A feeling which, despite his many previous lovers, he had never experienced with such overpowering intensity before, not even when he had chosen Salima. It was not simply the desire to possess Hamida physically — though that was certainly a part of it. Instinctively he sensed within her a beauty of mind, a strength of spirit radiating out towards him. He knew that not only would she make him happy but that with her by his side he would also be a better ruler, more able to achieve his ambitions. However hard he tried to dismiss such thoughts as irrational and better fitted to a blushing adolescent, they returned with renewed vigour. Was this what the poets described as falling in love?
Even before it was light, Humayun washed, dressed and then, dismissing his attendants, waited impatiently. At last his men began to stir, kicking the smouldering embers of last night’s fires into new life and starting to pack up their tents and possessions ready for the day’s ride.Then he heard footsteps outside his tent and Jauhar held back the flap as Shaikh Ali Akbar ducked inside.
‘Majesty, you wished to see me.’ Shaikh Ali Akbar was tall and, like his daughter, fine-boned. He made graceful obeisance to Humayun and waited.
‘I saw your daughter, Hamida, at the feast last night. I want to make her my wife. She will be my empress and the mother of emperors. . ’ Humayun burst out.
Shaikh Ali Akbar looked astonished.
‘Well, Shaikh Ali Akbar?’ Humayun persisted impatiently.
‘She is so young. . ’
‘Many are married at her age. I will treat her with great honour, I promise you. . ’
‘But my family is not worthy. . ’
‘You are nobles of Samarkand. . Why object if I wish to raise your daughter further as my father did my own mother? Her father — my grandfather Baisanghar — was a nobleman of Samarkand like yourself.’
Shaikh Ali Akbar said nothing. Puzzled, Humayun stepped closer. From the man’s troubled face something was wrong. ‘What is it? Most fathers would rejoice.’
‘It is a great, an unimaginable honour, Majesty. But I believe. . no, I know. . that your half-brother Prince Hindal cares for Hamida. He has known her since she was a child. I serve him and it would be disloyal of me to give her to another, even you, Majesty, without telling you this.’