Empire of the Moghul: Ruler of the World (2 page)

The tiger had stopped growling and Akbar sensed its amber eyes watching him. Slowly he rested the slender engraved-steel barrel of his matchlock musket on the side of the howdah. He had already loaded the metal ball, trickled gunpowder from his silver-mounted powder horn into the pan and checked the short, thin length of fuse. His
qorchi
, his squire, half crouching close beside him, was already holding the burning taper Akbar would need to ignite the fuse.

Satisfied, Akbar aimed his musket at the densest part of the acacia bushes where he was certain the tiger was hiding, braced his shoulder to the ivory-inlaid wooden butt and squinted down the length of the long barrel. ‘Hand me the taper,’ he whispered to his
qorchi
, ‘and signal to the beaters.’ Clustered in a semicircle behind the elephants, the beaters at once broke into high-pitched yells and began striking their gongs and beating their drums. Moments later, with an answering roar, the tiger burst through the screen of acacias. Akbar saw a blur of long white teeth and gold and black fur leaping towards his elephant as he lit the fuse. There was a brilliant flash, then a deafening bang. The musket’s recoil knocked Akbar backwards, almost somersaulting him out of the howdah, but not before he had seen the tiger drop to the ground, still ten yards away. As the smoke cleared, Akbar saw the animal lying motionless on its side, blood pouring from a jagged hole above its right eye.

Akbar gave a yell of triumph. Without waiting for the
mahout
to bring his mount – which had reacted with admirable calmness to the charge of the tiger and the sharp crack of the musket – to its knees, he climbed, grinning broadly, over the side of the howdah and dropped lightly to the ground. He’d made a fine kill, a perfect kill. He’d proved to the doubters who insisted a musket was too slow for killing such prey that in the hands of a good marksman it was easily fast enough. Curious to inspect the dead beast, Akbar advanced closer. The tiger’s pink tongue, lolling flaccidly from its mouth, was already attracting green-black flies. Then Akbar noticed something else protruding through the thick belly fur. Teats. The tiger he’d been hunting was supposed to have been male.

The thought was swiftly followed by another that made the hairs on the back of his young neck lift. With trembling fingers Akbar yanked his bow from his shoulder and, reaching behind him, grabbed an arrow. He was still fitting it to the string when a second and massive tiger launched itself out of the acacias straight towards him. Somehow Akbar managed to fire his arrow, and then time seemed to stop for him. The clamour of warning shouts behind him faded and it was as if he and the tiger were alone. He watched his arrow very slowly part the air in its flight. The tiger too looked almost suspended in its leap, saliva-flecked lips drawn back, long canines prominent and ears flattened against its head, like the image etched on the golden ring that had once belonged to Akbar’s great ancestor Timur and was now on his own shaking forefinger.

Then, suddenly, time rushed forward again and the tiger was almost on him. Akbar jumped aside, closing his eyes as he did so and expecting at any moment to feel claws ripping into his flesh or smell hot, rancid breath as sharp teeth sought his throat. Instead he heard a skidding thud and opened his eyes to see the tiger crumpled up beside him, his arrow embedded in the crimsoning fur of its throat. For a moment Akbar stood in silence, knowing he had experienced something almost unknown to him – fear – and also that he had been very, very lucky.

Still dazed, he caught the sound of rapidly approaching hoofbeats and turned to see a rider weaving through the low scrub and spindly trees towards them. It must be a messenger from the camp, no doubt sent by Bairam Khan to hurry him up. Five minutes ago he’d have been annoyed to have his sport interrupted but now he felt grateful for the distraction from thoughts of what might have happened. The crowd of beaters, guards and attendants parted to let the rider through. His tall bay horse was foamy with sweat and he himself so caked with dust that his tunic of bright Moghul green looked almost brown. Reining in before Akbar, he flung himself from the saddle, made the briefest of obeisances and said breathlessly, ‘Majesty, Bairam Khan requests that you return to the camp immediately.’

‘Why?’

‘Delhi has fallen to an advance force of Hemu’s rebels.’

Four hours later, as the hunting party with Akbar at its head passed through the first of the picket lines thrown out around his camp, the sun was still high in the clear blue sky. Despite the tasselled brocade canopy shading him, Akbar’s head ached. Sweat was sticking his tunic to his body, yet he barely noticed the discomfort as he pondered the disastrous news of the loss of his capital. Surely his rule was not destined to be over almost before it had begun.

It was barely ten months since, on a makeshift brick throne hastily erected on a masonry platform in the centre of a Moghul encampment, he had been proclaimed Emperor of Hindustan. Still raw with grief at the sudden death of his father, the Emperor Humayun, he had stood awkwardly but proudly beneath a silken awning to receive the homage of Bairam Khan and his other commanders.

His mother Hamida had only recently succeeded in convincing him just how desperate that time had been. How Bairam Khan, despite his Persian origins, had understood better than anyone that in the first hours and days after his father’s death the danger to Akbar came from within – from ambitious commanders who, now the emperor was dead leaving only a boy as heir, might claim the throne for themselves. Most were men with no time for sentiment. Many were from the old Moghul clans who with Akbar’s grandfather Babur had founded a new empire on the dry plains of Hindustan. The code of the steppes, had always been
taktya, takhta
, ‘throne or coffin’. Any who felt strong enough could challenge for the crown and over the years many had done so and would do so again.

Akbar’s elephant stumbled, jerking him from his recollections, but only for a moment. Staring down at the wrinkled grey neck of the beast with its sproutings of sparse coarse hair, his mind soon returned to its dark reflections. If the news was true and Delhi had indeed fallen, everything his mother and Bairam Khan had
done for him might have been for nothing. To win precious time, they had concealed Humayun’s death for nearly two weeks, finding a loyal servant of similar build to impersonate the dead emperor. Each day at dawn, he had donned the imperial robes of green silk and Humayun’s jewelled turban with its plume of white egrets’ feathers and appeared as custom demanded on the riverside balcony of the imperial palace in Delhi, the Purana Qila, to show the crowds jostling each other on the banks of the Jumna that the Moghul emperor lived.

Meanwhile, Hamida and her sister-in-law Gulbadan, Akbar’s aunt, had persuaded the reluctant Akbar that he must secretly leave Delhi. He could still see his mother’s strained anxious face as, holding a flickering oil lamp in one hand, she had shaken him awake with the other, whispering, ‘Come now – bring nothing with you – just come!’ Stumbling from his bed, he had allowed her to throw a dark hooded cloak over him, like the one she was wearing. Barely awake but head reeling with questions he had followed her down narrow passageways and twisting flights of stairs through a part of the palace he had never seen to emerge into a small, grubby courtyard. He could still recall the acrid smell of urine – human or animal, he couldn’t tell.

A large palanquin was waiting, and in the shadows stood Gulbadan and about twenty soldiers he recognised as Bairam Khan’s men. ‘Get in,’ Hamida had whispered.

‘Why, where are we going?’ he had asked.

‘Your life is in danger if you stay here. Don’t question me. Just do it.’

‘I don’t want to run away. I’m no coward. I’ve already seen blood and battles . . .’ he had protested.

Gulbadan had stepped forward and touching his arm had added, ‘When you were a baby and in danger I risked my life for yours. Trust me now and do as your mother says . . .’

Still arguing, he had clambered in, followed by Hamida and Gulbadan who had quickly pulled the concealing curtains around them. He could still recall the coarse feel of those hangings – so different from the silks of the gilded palanquins usually used by the
royal family – and the lurching motion as the soldiers had lifted the supporting poles to their shoulders and carried them out into the night. Gulbadan and Hamida had sat tense and silent and some of their fear had at last communicated itself to him even though he didn’t yet understand what was going on. Only when they were clear of the palace and the city had his mother told him of a plot to assassinate him before he could become emperor.

On the outskirts of Delhi, more soldiers loyal to Bairam Khan had met them and escorted them to a camp fifty miles from the city. A week later, Bairam Khan himself had joined them with the main body of his army and Akbar had been proclaimed emperor on his brick throne. Bairam Khan had then escorted Akbar in great ceremony back to Delhi where in the Friday mosque the
khutba
, the sermon, had been read in his name, confirming to all the world that he was the new emperor. Outmanoeuvred before any of them had time to plan further mischief, all the Moghul leaders had pledged their allegiance to him.

That had dealt with the enemy within but not the many beyond the Moghul frontiers, as this news about Delhi proved. The Moghuls’ position in Hindustan was indeed precarious. Vassals who had only recently sworn loyalty to his father Humayun were trying to break free while enemies beyond the empire were probing its borders. But of all these only one – Hemu – had emerged as a serious menace. He was an unlikely enemy, this reputedly ugly but silver-tongued little man – a lowborn nobody who seemed to have conjured an army out of nowhere to challenge Moghul authority. He hadn’t paid too much attention to him but now he wondered what kind of man this Hemu was and how he inspired his men. What lay behind his success?

Akbar was entering the heart of the tented city that was the main camp. Perched high in his howdah he saw ahead, at the very centre, his own tent – bright scarlet as befitted the command tent of an emperor – and beside it, almost as magnificent with its intricate awnings, Bairam Khan’s. His commander-in-chief was standing outside
waiting for him, and from his posture Akbar could tell how impatient he was for him to arrive.

He had barely descended from his howdah before Bairam Khan spoke. ‘Majesty, you’ve heard the news – Hemu’s forces have taken Delhi. The war council is assembled in your tent and already debating what we must do. We must join them immediately.’ Following Bairam Khan inside, Akbar saw his other commanders and counsellors sitting cross-legged on the thick red and blue carpet around a low, gilded stool draped in green velvet – the emperor’s chair. As Akbar took his place they rose and made brief obeisance to him, but he noticed how, as they sat down again, their eyes quickly turned to the tall, lean man standing by his side.

‘Summon Tardi Beg so that he can tell the story he has already told me,’ Bairam Khan ordered. Moments later, the Moghul Governor of Delhi was ushered in. Akbar had known and liked Tardi Beg all his life. He was a warrior of swaggering confidence from the mountains north of Kabul, with a booming voice to match the muscular bulk of his body. Usually his eyes held a humorous twinkle but now the lined, sun-burnished face above the thick black beard looked sombre.

‘Well, Tardi Beg, account for yourself before His Majesty and the council.’ Bairam Khan’s tone was cold. ‘Tell us how you abandoned the imperial capital to a seller of saltpetre and his rabble.’

‘It was no rabble, but a powerful, well-armed force. Hemu’s origins may be humble but he is an accomplished general who has won many battles for whoever would hire him. Now he is no longer a mercenary, but fighting for himself. He has raised the supporters of the old Lodi dynasty displaced by your grandfather against us, Majesty, and it seems that even the proudest and most noble will do whatever he bids them. Our spies reported a great advance party swarming towards Delhi over the plains from the west and that Hemu’s main army – an even bigger force, with three hundred war elephants – was not many days behind. There was nothing we could do but withdraw from the city or face certain destruction.’