Empire of the Moghul: Brothers at War Read Free Page A

rank of the enemy. He could still recall the ecstatic joy of victory when – bloodstained sword in hand – he had surveyed the dusty plains of Panipat and realised that Hindustan was Moghul. Now all that was being put at risk.
    I’ll not have it – this taktya, takhta , ‘throne or coffin’ as our people called it when we ruled in Central Asia. We’re in a new land and must adopt new ways or we’ll lose everything, Humayun thought. Reaching inside his robe for the key he wore round his neck on a slender gold chain, he rose and went to a domed casket in a corner of the chamber. He unlocked it, pushed back the lid and quickly found what he was seeking – a flowered silk bag secured with a twist of gold cord. He opened the bag slowly, almost reverently, and drew out the contents – a large diamond whose translucent brilliance made him catch his breath each time he saw it. ‘My Koh-i-Nur, my Mountain of Light,’ he whispered, running his fingers over the shining facets. Presented to him by an Indian princess whose family he had protected in the chaos after the battle of Panipat, it possessed a flawless beauty that always seemed to him the embodiment of everything the Moghuls had come to India to find – glory and magnificence to outshine even the Shah of Persia.
    Still holding the gem, Humayun returned to his chair to think. He sat brooding and alone until the sound of the court timekeeper, the ghariyali, striking his brass disc in the courtyard below to signal the end of his pahar – his watch – reminded him that night was falling.
    This was his first major test, he realised, and he would rise to it. Whatever his personal feelings – at this moment he’d like to take all of his half-brothers by the neck in turn and throttle the life from them – he must do nothing rash, nothing to show that the plot had been betrayed. BabaYasaval’s request for a private audience would have been noticed. If only his grandfather Baisanghar, or his vizier Kasim, who had been one of his father’s most trusted advisers, were here. But the two older men had accompanied Babur’s funeral cortège to Kabul to oversee his burial there. They would not return for some months. His father had once spoken to him of the burden of kingship, the loneliness it brought. For the first time, Humayun was beginning to understand what Babur had meant. He knew that he and he alone must decide what to do, and until then he must keep his own counsel.
    Feeling the need to calm himself, Humayun decided to pass the night with his favourite among his concubines – a pliant, full-mouthed, grey-eyed young woman from the mountains north of Kabul. With her silken skin and breasts like young pomegranates, Salima knew how to transport his body and patently enjoyed doing so. Perhaps her caresses would also help clear his mind and order his thoughts and thus lighten the road ahead, which seemed suddenly and ominously dark.
    Three hours later, Humayun lay back naked against a silk-covered bolster in Salima’s room in the haram . His muscular body, scarred as befitted a tested warrior, gleamed with the almond oil she had teasingly massaged into his skin until, unable to wait a moment longer, he had pulled her to him. Her robe of transparent pale yellow muslin – a product of Humayun’s new lands where weavers spun cloth of such delicacy they gave it names like ‘breath of wind’ or ‘dawn dew’ – lay discarded on the flower-patterned carpet. Though the pleasure Salima had given him and her response to him had been as intense as ever and Humayun had relaxed, his mind kept drifting back to Baba Yasaval’s revelations, re-igniting his anger and frustration.
    ‘Bring me some rosewater to drink, Salima, please.’
    She returned moments later with a silver cup inlaid with roundels of rose quartz. The water – chilled by ice carried down in huge slabs from the northern mountains by camel trains – smelled good. From a small wooden box beside the bed, Humayun