On a February evening Babur gave the logs burning in the large, open fireplace a poke with a stick to coax more warmth from them. Although his face and the front of his body were warm from the direct heat, his back felt chill, despite his thick brown wool cloak, as cold winds billowed the hangings from the small, unglazed but roughly shuttered windows of the mud-brick house. At least these draughts would carry some of the woodsmoke out through the chimney. It was so thick and acrid that Babur’s eyes stung and watered.
He reflected that these were by no means the only tears he had shed since the late autumn day when, with the snows whirling round them, his party of at most two hundred had breasted the broad pass and descended to the small settlement of Sayram. In truth, it was little more than a walled village of shepherds with two or three inns to house occasional travellers. But it had two attractions for Babur. Its muscular headman, Hussain Mazid, was a cousin of Ali Mazid Beg, murdered by Mahmud at Samarkand, and utterly loyal to Babur. The other advantage was the settlement’s remoteness. Though it lay on a minor trade route from Kashgar, it was as many miles distant from the forces of Shaibani Khan as it was from the outposts of Ferghana.
Babur knew he had been right not to accept Jahangir’s offer of sanctuary made in the aftermath of his expulsion from Samarkand. In the first place he had doubted its sincerity and in the second he had not wished to put himself in the power of his half-brother and his puppet-master, Tambal. Neither did he wish to play the poor relation, accepted on sufferance as he had once tolerated Jahangir and his scheming mother, Roxanna.
Babur’s refusal had meant that he couldn’t entrust his womenfolk to Jahangir either. Without his own presence, they would once more have been little better than hostages. In any case, both Kutlugh Nigar and Esan Dawlat had refused outright even to contemplate such a prospect. They had preferred to share the danger and deprivation of his wanderings.
At least now they had a roof over their heads and privacy in the small room they shared in this draughty building. But Babur wept to see them take turns to use the only fine-toothed ivory comb they had left to remove the white eggs of lice from their unfurled long hair. Neither had uttered a complaint about that or the bedbugs, which, breeding deep in crevasses in the wall, infested bed linen and garments whatever precautions were taken. Nor had they complained about the cold or the limited food — gristly horsemeat and turnips served daily from a large fat- encrusted cauldron in the kitchen. Esan Dawlat had compared it to the food of her revered ancestor, Genghis Khan.
In his despair, Babur had expected his mother and grandmother to blame him for surrendering Khanzada to Shaibani Khan but, as usual, Esan Dawlat had surprised him. Late one morning she had found him still in his sleeping quarters, silently sobbing, curled into a foetus position with his head turned to the mud wall. ‘What is it, Babur, that makes you so forget your position and your manhood?’ she had asked. When he had not replied, she had asked again, more gently, ‘Come now, what is it?’
He had uncoiled himself and faced her, eyes red-rimmed with tears. ‘Don’t you know? Can’t you guess? I’m despondent that I’ve lost Samarkand once more but, above all, I feel such terrible, terrible guilt about meekly yielding Khanzada to Shaibani Khan. I feel dishonour that I failed in my duty as the head of our family, and as a man, to protect my only sister, whom I love so much. I feel a desperate impotence that I’m in such a diminished position that I can still do nothing to recover her.’
Esan Dawlat had taken his large hand in her small ones. Then she had reminded him of the fate of Genghis Khan’s first wife. ‘Long before he became the Great Oceanic Ruler, he married a young Qongarit woman, a sturdy beauty named Borte, and, with the support of her clan, attempted to increase his power through a conflict with a neighbouring clan, the Markit. However, he was inexperienced and the Markit were cunning. In a surprise raid on his camp, the Markit carried off Borte and killed or scattered most of Genghis’s followers. He fled alone into the Kentei mountains where the Markit were unable to find him, so well did the mountains protect him. For the rest of his life, Genghis Khan prayed every day to the deity of the mountain, and every day offered him a sacrifice.
‘Only a year later, with the help of forces recruited by the Qongarit, he defeated the Markit and recovered Borte. When, several months afterwards, she gave birth to her first child, Jorchi, no one dared question his paternity. He grew up to become one of Genghis Khan’s greatest generals.
‘Both you and Khanzada have Genghis Khan and Borte’s blood in your veins. You have the courage never to despair but to confront harsh fate and come through to eventual victory.’ Esan Dawlat had gripped his hand firmly. ‘Strengthen your will, difficult as it may be. Steel yourself to look only forward, not back.’
Even now, despite his grandmother’s words, the thought of Shaibani Khan’s rough hands on his sister’s soft flesh exploring the most intimate parts of her body came into his mind, provoking nausea and revulsion. Clenching his fists, he summoned all his mental strength to push the images away. Then he prayed that his sister would retain the will to live — as Borte had done — and submit to Shaibani Khan. Her resistance could only lead to her death. He would fight for both of them to crush Shaibani Khan and rescue her and the family honour.
Although it was approaching midnight and all in the hall around him were asleep, as the occasional stertorous snore testified, Babur was too disturbed by his recollections, too full of powerless, restless anger at what had happened and, above all, too worried about what lay ahead for himself and his family to attempt to sleep. Instead, blood pumping furiously but futilely, he pulled his cloak about him and stepped over the recumbent bodies of some of his retainers into the cold of the night to compose his thoughts, cool his mind and slow his pulse.
Outside, the sky was a mass of stars and the snow that had fallen earlier had frozen into grains of ice, which the biting wind was blowing in flurries across the compound. Babur made his way to the mud walls surrounding the village. He climbed up the rough steps on to them and looked out over the shadowy white landscape. Above the pass, the mountain peaks glistened silver as the moonlight struck them. The pure beauty of the scene took his breath away.
Suddenly, from the direction of the animal pens, he heard an isolated cry, then another shout followed by uproar. A minute or so later a dark animal shape shot across the snow directly below him and off across the frozen ground out into the darkness. As it went, pursued by unavailing arrows fired by the men who had been guarding the animal pens and had come running after it, Babur saw that it was a long, lean grey wolf, with something in its mouth — probably a chicken.
‘Did you get him. .’ Babur called to one of the guards as he ran close by beneath the walls.
‘No, Majesty. That is a cunning wolf that has been harassing our animals for the last few nights. At first he found a way into the horses’ enclosure and tried to attack one of last year’s foals. It had been sick and we were nursing it. The horses beat him off with their hoofs. Last evening, he got into the sheep pen and by the time we drove him off he had bitten one of the smaller ewes so badly we had to kill it — in fact, Majesty, it was in your stew this evening as a change from the horsemeat. But tonight the wolf got into one of the hen houses and took one before the cackling of the rest disturbed us. He’s been rewarded for his persistence.’
Babur peered out into the dark again, towards where the victorious wolf had vanished. Perhaps it had a message for him. Face reality, persist as Genghis Khan — and Timur — had done. Try a different approach to your goal. Never give up until you have your reward. The wolf had been rebuffed in his attempts on both the sheep and horse folds but had succeeded in his attack on the hens. Perhaps he himself should concentrate less on Samarkand and Ferghana for a while and consider whether there were other places where he might establish himself as a ruler before expanding his empire. His hero Timur after all had rampaged from China to India and Turkey.
As Babur descended from the walls and retraced his steps to the house, he passed the low, single-storey hut where the women servants lived. For the first time in a long while, he found himself repeating out loud his father’s mantra: ‘Timur’s blood is my blood.’ For what remained of the night he, for once, slept deeply and well.
‘The grey is faster than the roan. . anyone can see that.’
‘You’re wrong, Baburi. When the snows melt and we can ride again I’ll prove it to you.’ Babur held his hands to the fire.
Hearing the door open and feeling a chill blast of air, Babur looked round to see Hussain Mazid approaching, his height and bulk almost comically accentuated by the small hunched form of an old woman, wrapped in a dark green quilted jacket, by his side. Despite her apparent age and fragility, she was keeping up pretty well with Hussain Mazid with the aid of a stick.
The ill-assorted couple stopped before Babur and made the customary salutations.
‘This is Rehana, Majesty,’ Hussain Mazid explained, seeing Babur’s surprise. ‘She was my wet-nurse when I
