Empire of the Moghul: Brothers at War (31 page)

‘But you, Sultana?’ Hamida touched the woman’s arm. ‘You must come with us . . . it would be dangerous for you to remain. Maldeo will guess what you have done . . . ’

To Humayun’s surprise, Sultana shook her head.

‘But this is your chance to rejoin your own people . . . ’

‘After what has happened to me here at the hands of Maldeo, I can never go back . . . That part of my life is over. But when I see his ambition, his greed thwarted, that will be my reward . . . ’ A sad but also triumphant smile briefly lit her face. ‘And I doubt he will suspect me . . . he does not think I have the brains or the courage to do what I have done . . . ’

‘I will never forget you, my blood-sister. And when I am empress in Agra, I will send for you . . . and if you wish to come you will be treated with the greatest honour.’ Hamida kissed Sultana’s cheek. ‘May God protect you.’

The sky was only just paling to the east when Humayun, dressed in hunting clothes like those around him, rode slowly through the concentric walls towards the gatehouse that was the only exit from the fortress. A fine black hawk given him by Maldeo was on his wrist, bright eyes concealed beneath a jewelled and tufted cap of yellow leather. Behind him, surrounded by Kasim and his other courtiers and commanders, were the litters carrying Hamida, Khanzada, Gulbadan and the rest of the women. After leaving Hamida last night he had gone straight to his aunt and his sister to tell them of the peril and of what they must do. True Moghul princesses, they had at once grasped the situation and obeyed him calmly and unquestioningly.

Humayun’s blood was pumping as hard as if he was riding into battle as he led his party nearer to the gatehouse. In the soft morning light he could see that the metal grille was still lowered. His eyes flicked left and right, seeking any sign of an ambush. Though he had believed every word Sultana had said, he had been deceived before in this place. Also, Sultana herself might have been betrayed, perhaps by an enemy within the
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curious about her meetings with the Moghul empress. But all seemed as it should be. No arrow tip, no musket protruding from a slit in the gatehouse. Just the usual guards.With seeming casualness, Humayun gestured to Jauhar who called out in ringing tones, ‘Raise the gate. His Imperial Majesty wishes to go hawking.’ The captain of the guard, a tall man in orange tunic and turban, hesitated. Humayun felt sweat trickle down between his shoulder blades and glanced down at Alamgir, hanging at his side. Across his back was a full arrow case. But there was no need for force. After barely a second or two, the Rajput captain shouted, ‘Raise the grille.’

The men above the gate began turning the windlass to draw up the thick black chains from which the grille was suspended. Agonisingly slowly – or so it seemed to Humayun – creaking and shuddering the heavy iron grille rose. With every foot, so too did Humayun’s hopes, though he kept his expression distant and slightly bored.

Even when the grille was fully up, Humayun did not hurry but spent a moment or two adjusting the hawk’s leather hood. Then, with a wave of his hand, he and his little entourage trotted forward. Slowly, so as still not to rouse suspicion, they rode down the steep ramp curving along the side of the outcrop that only a few weeks ago they had ridden up with such high hopes, out of the ceremonial arched gatehouse at its foot and then through the quiet streets of the town where the people still slept. Soon they were heading eastward, the seeping golden light of the rising sun before them, and into the sandy wastes that though so hostile were their best protection.

H
umayun signalled the small scouting party with whom he had ridden ahead of his main column to halt. He swallowed a single mouthful of the precious water in the leather bottle at his side then patted his horse’s neck, which was flecked with creamy patches of sweat. Around him, the blistering, shimmering desert stretched away, silent, endless and all-engulfing.

‘Over there, look!’ shouted one of the scouts – no more than a youth – hands cupped around his eyes against the glare. ‘To the left!’

Humayun scanned the horizon and caught his breath as he made out the indistinct shape of first one and then two palm trees emerging from the heat haze and then, a little further along, what might just be the glint of sunlight on water. ‘I see palm trees and what could be a river. How about you, Ahmed Khan?’

‘Yes. Perhaps that patch of trees shelters the settlement of Balotra we’ve heard about. That water could be the Luni river flowing down to the Rann of Kutch.’

‘How much do we know about Balotra?’

‘Very little. By the look of it, it’s still fifteen miles or so off. I’ll send some of these scouts ahead, Majesty, if you wish, while we wait for the main party and make camp here for the night.’

‘Do so, and have the scouts make sure there are none of Maldeo’s men waiting in ambush in the settlement.’

Luck had so far been on Humayun’s side. Despite many anxious glances over his shoulder, during these past weeks there had been no sign of pursuers from Marwar. After rendezvousing with his main force, Humayun had turned north for a while in a calculated bid to deceive Maldeo. Over four days’ hard march, with everyone’s nerves on edge, pickets posted all around the column, scouts ranging even further afield and deliberately abandoning detritus – old equipment and even wagons – to convince any of Maldeo’s scouts who came that way that he really was heading north, Humayun had circled eastward. Then he had turned south, parties of men following on foot in the early stages to disguise their tracks by sweeping the sand with bundles of brushwood.

Only once had Humayun thought he could see riders on the horizon, but they’d proved nothing more threatening than a herd of goats that must have wandered from their village looking for the small, bitter berries that grew on the few scrubby bushes. He had tried to picture Maldeo’s consternation on returning from his secret meeting with Sher Shah’s emissaries to find his ‘guests’ gone, but his thoughts had quickly turned to how best to find a refuge for his family and his men. They could not meander endlessly through the desert. The suffocating heat and shortage of fresh food and clean water could kill just as easily as Rajput arrows and musket balls.

And all the time he had been worrying about Hamida. At night he heard her tossing and turning, unable to sleep, perhaps tormented by images of their capture by Maldeo and the murder of herself and her unborn child. But she never complained and brushed off his enquiries with the simple comment that it was indigestion – something she was told all pregnant women suffered from. Last night she had said to him, ‘We will tell our son what it was like – how we protected him in even the worst of places – and he will take strength from the story of how we, and he, survived, won’t he?’ Humayun had pulled her close and hugged her in admiration of her bravery and stoicism.

‘Majesty.’ Ahmed Khan approached Humayun as, next day, outside his tent he took his morning meal – a small cup of water, a piece of unleavened bread and some dried apricots so hardened by the sun that they threatened to crack his teeth. ‘My scouts have just returned. It is Balotra, about twenty miles ahead.’

‘They saw no sign of Maldeo or his men?’

‘No.’

‘How many people live there?’

‘Perhaps two hundred, just herdsmen and farmers.’

‘You have done well,Ahmed Khan. Lead us there.’ Humayun finished his meagre meal with greater appetite than he had begun it. If Balotra was indeed what it seemed, they could find refuge there while he planned his next move.

As he and his men approached the settlement later that day, Humayun saw that it was no more than a few dozen mud-brick houses clustered on the flat banks of the river whose orange-brown waters were very low and flowing sluggishly, as was to be expected during the hot season. But there was water enough for the villagers to grow crops whose green shoots poked through the soil in the cultivated strips along the riverbank.

‘Jauhar. Go ahead and find the headman. Tell him we are travellers who mean his people no harm and that we wish to pitch our camp along the riverbank beyond their fields. Also, say that we need food and fuel for which we will pay – and a house where our women can find shade and rest.’

Standing on the roof of a single-storey mud-brick house, Humayun gazed down towards the river. It was September now and the heat was no longer quite so relentless. Balotra had been a good place to halt – a safe place – tucked away in this sparsely inhabited region. According to Simbu, the elderly, almost blind village headman, Balotra and the handful of other settlements sprinkled along the Luni river were of little interest to the regional rulers or warlords, who left them in peace. Only the seasons governed the villagers’ quiet lives.

Humayun had not told Simbu who he was and the headman, filmy eyes turned on him, had not asked. In fact, he’d asked few questions and seemed to have accepted Humayun’s story that he was a commander a long way from his own lands whose column needed rest and water. Nevertheless, Humayun had sensed Simbu’s anxiety that, despite his assurances and his money, he and his soldiers might bring trouble on his people.The old man would clearly be relieved when they rode away.

Humayun was also anxious to be gone – it was too dangerous to stay in one place for long, however remote – but where should he go? He couldn’t afford a false move. All his instincts – now that he seemed to have shaken off Maldeo – were to go northward to the Khyber Pass and on towards Kabul to raise the mountain clans who owed him their loyalty and attempt to take back the city before Kamran and Askari became even more entrenched there. Until he had re-established his authority in Kabul and removed the threat to his rear he could not even think of challenging Sher Shah.

Going north would, of course, take him close to Marwar again but his other options were also risky without the benefit of returning him swiftly to Kabul. If he ventured east, he soon would enter the Rajput kingdoms of Mewar and Amber whose rulers, for all he knew, might have joined forces with Maldeo. Though the Rajputs were notorious for warring with one another they might well unite against a man they believed was their common enemy – or if the bribe from Sher Shah was great enough.

If Humayun went south he would enter Gujarat, now in Sher Shah’s hands, while the way due west also had its hazards. According to Simbu, across the Luni river lay a further desert, stretching nearly three hundred miles westward all the way to Sind – a treacherous place of wild winds and quicksands that could bring death to the unwary. It had been known to swallow up whole caravans making for Umarkot, the ancient oasis at its heart. Several of Balotra’s villagers had made the journey to trade in Umarkot and knew a safe route but, Simbu had cautioned Humayun with a grave shake of his old head, it was not a journey to be undertaken lightly.

Humayun’s ignorance of events in the wider world made it even harder to take a decision. He knew nothing of what Sher Shah was doing or Maldeo or indeed his half-brothers. Where was Hindal now? With Kamran and Askari? And were his elder half-brothers attempting further conquests to add to the lands they had already stolen? Knowing the extent of Kamran’s ambition he would not be surprised. His half-brother must know that at some point Humayun would come after him and he would be strengthening his position as much as he could. Neither wise old Kasim nor his aunt Khanzada with all her experience had anything to suggest and even his elderly astrologer Sharaf seemed baffled. The stars that shone with such clear and piercing beauty in the night skies offered Humayun no illumination. He knew that, just as his father Babur had done when the world turned its back on him, he would have to rely on his own inner resources to find his answers.

The sound of a woman singing distracted Humayun from his thoughts. Low and sweet, it was a voice he knew well – Hamida’s. At least she was healthy, thriving even, belly round as a watermelon. The child would be big, she would tell Humayun, placing his hand on her stomach so that he could feel the vigorous kicks. Descending the narrow, wooden ladder down from the roof he went in search of her.