A Kingdom Divided: Empire of the Moghul - Hardcover

The wind was chill. If Humayun closed his eyes he could almost imagine himself back among the pastures and mountains of the Kabul of his boyhood, rather than here on the battlements of Agra. But the short winter was ending. In a few weeks the plains of Hindustan would burn with heat and dust.

Drawing his fur-lined scarlet cloak more tightly around him, Humayun walked slowly along the walls. He had ordered his bodyguards to leave him because he wanted to be alone with his thoughts. Raising his head, he gazed up into clear skies that were splashed with stars. Their intense, jewel-like brightness never failed to fascinate him. It often seemed that everything was written there if only you knew where to look and how to interpret the messages…

A firm, light footstep from somewhere behind him disturbed him. Humayun turned, wondering which courtier or guard had been rash enough to disobey their emperor’s expressed wish for solitude. His angry gaze fell on a slight, tall figure in purple robes, a thin gauze veil pulled over the lower face, with above it the raisin eyes of his aunt, Khanzada. Humayun’s expression relaxed into a smile.

‘We are waiting for you in the women’s quarters. You said you would eat with us tonight. Your mother complains you spend too much time alone, and I agree with her.’

Khanzada dropped her veil. The tawny light from a torch burning in a sconce fell on a fine-boned face no longer as beautiful as in her youth but one that Humayun had loved and trusted for as many of his twenty-three years as he could remember. As she stepped a little closer he caught the soft fragrance of the sandalwood that burned constantly in jewelled golden saucers in the women’s apartments.

‘I have much to reflect on. I still find it difficult to accept that my father is dead.’

‘I understand, Humayun. I loved him too. Babur was your father, but don’t forget he was also my little brother. He and I went through much together and I never thought to lose him so soon…but it was God’s will.’

Humayun looked away, unwilling for even Khanzada to see the tears gleaming in his eyes at the thought that he would never see his father, the first Moghul emperor, again. It seemed incredible that that strong, seasoned warrior, who had led his nomadic horsemen down through the mountain passes from Kabul and across the Indus to found an empire, was dead. Even less real was the thought that only three months ago, with his father’s eagle-hilted sword Alamgir at his waist and the ring of his ancestor Timur on his finger, he himself had been proclaimed Moghul emperor.

‘It’s so strange…like a fantasy from which I keep expecting to wake.’

‘It’s the real world and you must accept it. Everything Babur wanted, everything he fought for, had one purpose only – to win an empire and found a dynasty. You know that as well as I – weren’t you fighting at your father’s side when he crushed Sultan Ibrahim Lodi at Panipat to claim Hindustan for the Moghuls?’

Humayun said nothing. Instead he looked up once more at the sky. As he did so, a shooting star sped across the heavens and vanished, leaving not even a trace of its fiery tail. Glancing at Khanzada, he saw that she had seen it too.

‘Perhaps the shooting star was an omen. Perhaps it means my reign will fizzle out ingloriously…that no one will remember me…’

‘Such self-doubt and hesitancy would anger your father if he were here now. Instead he would have you embrace your destiny. He could have chosen one of your three half-brothers as his heir, but he selected you. Not just because you are the eldest – that has never been the way of our people – but because he thought you were the most worthy, the most able. Our hold on Hindustan is precarious – we have been here only five years and dangers press in from every side. Babur picked you because he trusted not just in your courage, which you had already demonstrated on the battlefield, but also in your inner strength and your self-belief, your sense of our family’s right to rule, which our dynasty must have to survive and prosper here in this new land.’ Khanzada paused.

When Humayun did not reply, she raised her face to the light of the torch and ran her finger down a thin white scar extending from her right eyebrow almost to her chin. ‘Do not forget how I got this, how when I was young and your father had to abandon Samarkand to the Uzbeks I was seized by their chieftain Shaibani Khan and forced to submit to him. He hated all who, like us, have the blood of Timur. It gave him pleasure to humiliate and degrade a princess of our house. I give thanks that I never despaired all the time I was a captive in his haram…never forgot who I was or that it was my duty to survive. Remember that when another woman attacked me and stole some of my beauty, I wore this scar as a badge of honour – to show that I was still alive and that one day I would be free. After ten long years that day came. I re-joined my brother and rejoiced to see him drink to my return from a vessel made from the skull of Shaibani Khan. You must have the same self-belief, the same strength of character, Humayun, as I had.’

‘Such courage as yours is hard to emulate, but I will not fail my father or our house.’

‘What is it, then? You are young, ambitious…you were eager for the throne long before your father fell ill. Babur knew; he spoke to me of it.’

‘His death was so sudden when it came. I left so much unsaid. I didn’t feel ready to be emperor…at least not so soon, nor in such a way.’

Humayun let his head drop. It was true. His father’s final moments still haunted him. Summoning the last of his strength, Babur had ordered his attendants to dress him in his royal robes, seat him on his throne and call his nobles to him. Before the entire court, in a weak voice but firm in his resolve, Babur had ordered Humayun to take Timur’s heavy gold ring, engraved with the head of a snarling tiger, from his finger, saying, ‘Wear it with pride, and never forget the duties it imposes on you…’ But Babur had been just forty-seven, still in his prime and far too young to hand on his fledgling empire.

‘No man, not even an emperor, can know when he will be called to Paradise and in what manner. None of us can predict or control fully the course of our lives. Learning to live with the great uncertainty of mortality as well as the other vicissitudes of fortune is part of growing to adulthood.’

‘Yes. But I often think there is more we can do to understand the underlying patterns behind our lives. Events that appear random may not be. For example, Aunt, you said just now that my father’s death was God’s will, but you’re wrong. It was my father’s will. He deliberately sacrificed himself for me.’

Khanzada stared. ‘What d’you mean?’

‘I’ve never revealed to anyone my father’s last words to me. Just before he died, he whispered that when I was sick with fever a few months earlier, my astrologer, Sharaf, had told him that he’d read in the stars that if he wished me to live he must offer up what was most precious to him. So falling on his face he offered God his life for mine.’

‘Then it was indeed God’s will – God accepted the sacrifice.’

‘No! Sharaf told me that all he intended was that my father should offer up the Koh-i-Nur diamond – not his life. But my father misinterpreted his words…It seems overwhelming that my...