Empire of the Moghul: Brothers at War (23 page)

Seven days later – an ominous sign of how close Sher Shah now was to Lahore – Humayun had his answer. It was Kasim who brought it to him in his apartments. Strangely there were two letters – one in Sher Shah’s bold, ungraceful hand and bearing his seal and the other rolled up in a piece of bamboo that – according to what the scouts had told Kasim – Sher Shah had insisted must also be delivered to Humayun.

Humayun read Sher Shah’s letter first.
I have conquered Hindustan. Why should I fight you for what is already mine? I will leave you Kabul
–
go there.
But there was more:
Why expect to keep an empire when you cannot even command your own family’s loyalty? Your brother Kamran is willing to betray you. But I want nothing to do with any of you Moghuls except to see your heads roll in the dust where they belong. I have written to your brother rejecting his offer – just as I reject yours – and telling him I would inform you of his treachery.

Humayun took the bamboo tube and pulled from it a piece of yellow parchment. Unrolling it, he immediately recognised Kamran’s spiky writing. It was his letter to Sher Shah. ‘“My brother denied me my birthright,”’ he read aloud in a voice trembling with anger. ‘“If you, Sher Shah, will leave me the Punjab and the Moghul lands to the north including Kabul to rule as my own, I will deliver Humayun to you or – if you prefer – slay him with my own hand, I swear it.”’

Kasim picked up Kamran’s letter from the floor where Humayun had let it fall and reread it, face creasing in shock as he took in Kamran’s arrogant, murderous words. Humayun himself strode to the doors and flinging them open shouted, ‘Guards, bring my brother Kamran to me immediately. If he resists, overpower and bind him.’ He had suspected his brothers might intrigue against him but never that one of them would be so lost to what he owed to the dynasty to offer to betray him to an outsider. Humayun paced his chamber, watched by a silent and anxious Kasim, until at last one of the guards returned.

‘Majesty, we cannot find him.We went first to his apartments but he was not there. Then we searched the rest of the fort – we even sent into the women’s apartments to see whether he might be with his mother, Her Highness Gulrukh, but she was not there either . . . ’

Humayun and Kasim exchanged glances. ‘Send me the officer in charge of guarding the main gate – quickly, man!’

A few minutes later a nervous-looking officer was ushered before Humayun.

‘Have you seen any of my brothers today?’

‘Yes, Majesty. This morning Prince Kamran and Prince Askari went out riding. They have not yet returned . . . ’

‘And their mother Gulrukh and her women?’

‘They too left the palace in a litter. The
begam
said she wished to call on her cousin, the wife of the chief treasurer of Lahore, in her palace in the north of the city.’

Humayun swore. Doubtless she was already with her sons and their troops and they were all hurrying to get beyond his reach. The temptation to ride in pursuit was almost overwhelming but that was exactly what Sher Shah would hope he would do. His enemy had played his hand well, on the one hand giving Humayun evidence of his brother’s duplicity and on the other giving Kamran reason to fly. But he would not fall into the trap so artfully set for him by neglecting Sher Shah’s threat and immediately pursuing Kamran and Askari to pit brother against brother in battle.

Revenge must wait.

H
umayun twisted in the saddle. It was thirty-six hours since he had abandoned Lahore to Sher Shah. Behind him streamed his remaining troops, only some fifteen thousand men – many had deserted. Beyond them straggled for miles a desperate mass of humanity half choking in the hot dust, their possessions loaded higgledy-piggledy on carts, donkeys and mules.

Only four days ago a group of travel-stained merchants – so terrified that they’d abandoned their mule trains and goods along the way – had galloped into Lahore, yelling to whoever would listen that Sher Shah was threatening to put the city to the sword. A few hours later, a messenger had arrived from Sher Shah himself. The letter he was carrying was simple and to the point. Sher Shah was indeed threatening to destroy the city and slaughter its people – but only if Humayun refused to withdraw from it.

The decision to quit Lahore just as he had been forced to yield Agra was a terrible humiliation. But Sher Shah commanded vast armies that – if the reports reaching Humayun were true, and there was no reason to doubt them – outnumbered his own forces by twenty to one, perhaps more. Despite the trenches and fortifications he had ordered to be dug, without city walls to protect it any attempt to defend Lahore against such an overwhelming force was doomed, even if the troops he had summoned from Kabul could reach him in time.

After only a few hours’ reflection, Humayun had ordered his commanders to prepare to evacuate Lahore. As the news had spread, the citizens had refused to believe that with Humayun gone, Sher Shah would keep his word to spare them. There had been panic. From one of the citadel’s stone towers, Humayun had watched people pouring from their houses, clutching cloth-wrapped bundles of their most precious belongings and gripping the hands of small, screaming children. A few carried old people on their backs. Soon the narrow streets had become clogged with handcarts and wagons drawn by stumbling animals. Under the pressure of fear ordinary citizens had lost their reason and become a crazed and callous mob, desperate only to get away and save themselves. Shops had been looted and the weak and frail elbowed and pushed aside, some falling to be trampled and crushed underfoot. It had been like witnessing the end of the world.

The panic and chaos had grown yet worse as the boom of massive explosions had begun to reverberate in the citizens’ ears, coming from the great parade ground near the palace where Humayun had ordered the destruction of his largest bronze cannon, which would be too slow and cumbersome to take with him. Teams of straining oxen had dragged the guns out on to open ground where Humayun’s gunners, their naked torsos dripping with sweat, had hastily stuffed their barrels with powder and – after fixing long cotton fuses – ignited it, sending fragments of hot, twisted metal into the air.

Snatching his thoughts back to the present, Humayun glanced to his left at the powerful figure of Hindal riding on a great cream-coloured stallion at the head of his own small entourage. Immediately on hearing of Sher Shah’s message, Hindal had sought Humayun out and sworn on their father’s name that he had known nothing of Kamran’s and Askari’s defection. Since childhood Hindal had never been good at concealing his emotions and seeing his half-brother’s shocked face and incredulity at what Kamran and Askari had done, Humayun had believed him. Later, calm reflection had told him his instincts had been correct. Otherwise, why would Hindal have remained in Lahore and risked retribution? Also, Kamran and Askari were full brothers. Hindal – like Humayun himself – was only their half-brother, so the ties of blood and honour were weaker. As if sensing Humayun watching him, Hindal turned his head and gave him a brief smile. It was good that Hindal had chosen to stay with him, thought Humayun. Perhaps amid the present danger to their dynasty at least two of Babur’s sons could form an enduring bond and draw strength from it.

In the last desperate hours before abandoning Lahore to his rapidly advancing enemy, Humayun had embraced Baisanghar and bidden him farewell, perhaps for the last time. It had been hard to part from his grandfather and even harder to convince the old man he must go north with a detachment of troops to secure Kabul for Humayun. Again and again Humayun had had to argue that Kamran and Askari might take advantage of his plight to try to seize the kingdom, that he no longer had confidence in his governor there who had been so tardy in sending reinforcements and that Baisanghar was one of the very few he could trust unreservedly to hold it for him.

This was true, but there was another reason too why Humayun wanted his grandfather to go north, although he could not have admitted it to Baisanghar. Though the warrior spirit still burned within him and his mind was clear, he was old – eight years older even than Kasim – and losing his physical stamina. He’d be safer as well as more useful in Kabul rather than draining his small remaining stock of strength accompanying Humayun on the long, perhaps dangerous, journey he had decided on: six hundred miles southwest down the Ravi and Indus rivers to Sind. The Sultan of Sind, Mirza Husain, was of Humayun’s blood – his mother was Babur’s cousin – so he was honour bound to receive Humayun. But would honour mean any more to Mirza Husain than it had to his half-brothers with whom his ties of blood were so much closer?

Eventually, Baisanghar had given way, persuaded by the logic of Humayun’s arguments. However, Khanzada and Gulbadan had been harder to deal with and this time it was Humayun who had conceded defeat. His aunt and half-sister had refused to accompany Baisanghar. ‘I have earned the right to decide my own fate,’ Khanzada had insisted quietly. ‘All the years I suffered in Shaibani Khan’s
haram
, I told myself that if I survived never again would I lose control of my life, my destiny, even if death was the only alternative. And the destiny I choose is to go with you, nephew.’ Gulbadan had remained silent throughout this speech but Humayun had noticed how tightly she was gripping Khanzada’s hand and how determined was her expression. When Khanzada had finished speaking Gulbadan too had made clear her wishes to accompany Hindal and Humayun.

In his heart Humayun was glad they were with him. They were riding close by on sturdy brown ponies, followed by their attendants and the wives and daughters of some of his and Hindal’s commanders, including Zahid Beg’s wife, also mounted on ponies. Speed was vital and this was no time for more decorous modes of transport, concealed from the common gaze behind the curtains of litters or howdahs. Nevertheless, the small group of women was closely guarded by the most trusted of Humayun’s bodyguards and well hidden from prying eyes beneath voluminous garments, their hair bound up and concealed by tight-fitting caps. Above the cotton face cloths that protected them from the wind and the choking dust only their eyes were visible.

There should have been a further pair of eyes – grey ones – to gladden his soul, Humayun thought. Before finally quitting the Lahore palace he had paid a brief visit to the newly dug grave in the garden where Salima had been buried only two days before. She too would have wanted to go with him – he was sure of it – but a sudden fever contracted just as news came of Sher Shah’s ultimatum and with chaos rising all around had claimed her life within twenty-four hours of its onset. In the last minutes of her sweating delirium, her staring, unfocused eyes had not recognised him or seen the tears in his eyes as he held her small hand in his own larger one and watched as her last breaths fled from her body. He would miss her so much. Since he had abandoned Gulrukh’s opium-laced wine and even more since his defeats at the hands of Sher Shah, Salima had become ever more important to him, providing an all-consuming physical relief from his mental doubts and daily cares and responsibilities.

But there was no time now for grief or for reflections upon the fragility of human existence. All the time as he rode Humayun kept returning to the same question. Had he done the right thing in abandoning Lahore? The answer, though, was always the same. Faced with an imminent bloodbath – the massacre of so many thousands of innocent citizens – he’d had no choice but to order his forces to retreat across the broad wooden bridge that spanned the Ravi river north of the city. As soon as his men were safely over, he’d had the bridge destroyed to hinder Sher Shah’s troops from pursuing him. The camp followers had had to cross as best they could, scrambling aboard fishing – and ferry-boats.

But Sher Shah had as yet made no attempt to pursue Humayun who, after a day and a half almost constantly in the saddle, was now forty miles clear of Lahore. With each passing mile and hour he became more and more convinced that he would be given time to regroup. It was also good that those cannon he had been able to bring with him – dragged to the Ravi river by bullocks – had been safely loaded on to rafts to be floated downriver under the care of Humayun’s gunnery commander and his men. Their orders were to wait for the rest of the army to catch up at Multan, two hundred miles southwest of Lahore. He was well provided with muskets, powder and shot as well as with treasure in coin and gems which he could use to pay his forces and buy provisions for them as they journeyed to Sind. Perhaps things were not as bleak as they seemed.

But gazing up into the bleached, cloud-streaked skies, Humayun saw two vultures, circling doubtless above some dead or dying creature. At Panipat – just before the Moghuls’ great victory – he had seen eagles wheeling above the battlefield. From noble eagles to filthy, ill-omened devourers of carrion . . . Was that a symbol of how his fortunes had declined? Humayun plucked an arrow from the gilded leather case hanging across his back and, unstrapping his double-curved bow from his saddle, sent an arrow hissing through the hot air. It found its mark. Swiftly he drew another arrow but as he looked up, eagerly seeking his second target, all he saw above him was an empty sky.