As the hours of night drew on and the fortress fell silent around them, Babur looked on as the old lady wrote and wrote, pausing only to sharpen her quill and to call for more ink. It was extraordinary, he thought, how much she knew of the blood rivalries and bitter enmities but also the complex marriage links and deep personal loyalties between the clans that went back almost to the days of Genghis Khan. For the first time he felt grateful to her for all the hours she had forced him to spend learning who among the tribal chiefs were friends, who were foes and — most important of all — why. Watching the thin set line of her mouth, he was glad that she was his ally, not his enemy.
As every note was written — the Turki script sprawling over the paper — it was folded, sealed with red wax and handed to Wazir Khan to be entrusted to one of his men. Outside, the courtyard echoed to the sound of departing hoofbeats. Only when the call to prayer rose through the early-morning mist did Esan Dawlat finally lay down her pen.
Chapter 2
Babur watched from his horse as the green-grey jade sarcophagus containing his father’s body was borne into the tomb by eight of Wazir Khan’s guards. Thick sheepskins on their shoulders cushioned them against the hardness of the stone but the coffin was a mighty weight. Sweat poured down their wind-tanned faces and one man stumbled, almost losing his hold. There was a gasp from the assembled onlookers — it would be a dreadful portent if the sarcophagus should fall to the earth. Babur’s stomach tightened and he glanced at the vizier a few feet away, but Qambar-Ali’s tortoise face was impassive.
‘Careful, man, you carry our king.’ At the bite in Wazir Khan’s voice, the guard steadied himself, rebracing his shoulder to the burden, and the pall-bearers shuffled slowly into the passageway sloping down to the burial chamber in the heart of the tomb.
Babur’s father had long ago planned his mausoleum. Babur had been just a baby, mewling in the arms of his big-breasted wet-nurse, when the king had summoned stonemasons and craftsmen from across Ferghana and beyond. Under his personal direction they had laboured on the banks of the Jaxartes river a mile and a half or so west of the fortress of Akhsi to create a smaller version of the great Timur’s resting place in Samarkand. Now the tiles on the egg-shaped dome, bright aquamarine counterpointed with rich cobalt blue, sparkled in the June sunlight. His father would have been proud, Babur thought, and at the idea a half-smile crossed his tense face.
As the sarcophagus disappeared from his view, a great wailing rose from the crowds — from courtiers and chieftains in silken robes to simple herdsmen who stank of the animals they tended. Men of whatever condition in life rent their robes and sprinkled their turbaned heads with earth in a ritual that predated even Genghis Khan. What were they really thinking? How many were genuinely grieving like himself? Babur wondered. The chieftains had come in response to Esan Dawlat’s summons but, when the time came, could he rely on them?
‘Beware of those who seem to have no ambition — it is unnatural,’ his father had always counselled him. Babur could not help glancing at Wazir Khan but felt instantly ashamed. With his father dead, after his mother and grandmother the tall, straight-backed soldier he had known all his life was the person he trusted most in the world. But what about that grey-bearded, pockmarked chieftain over there who had ridden so hard through the night from his mountain fastness that his robes were stained with his own and his horse’s sweat? Or that buck-toothed one, with his head shaved in the old Mongol fashion, who had once been banished by his father for his scheming, deceit and greed and only recently forgiven? Esan Dawlat had been forced to take risks with her invitations: she had hoped to summon allies but, even at his age, Babur knew some might easily turn out to be jackals.
But all of this must wait. First his father must be laid to rest. As Wazir Khan, head bowed, held his jewelled bridle, Babur dismounted. Brushing away a tear he took a deep breath, ready to lead his father’s favourite mullah and the most important mourners down into the crypt to pay their final respects. For a fraction of a second he longed for the soft touch of his mother’s hand. But Kutlugh Nigar was waiting within the harem with his sister and grandmother, as was proper. Such occasions were not for women. They had made their silent adieus from behind screens carved high in the walls as the cortege wound down out of the fortress and on towards the banks of the swift-flowing Jaxartes.
As Babur approached the mausoleum’s dark mouth, he saw that Qambar-Ali was already ahead of him, his brown robes swirling around him in his eagerness to be first. ‘Vizier!’ Babur’s young voice was stern. It sounded good.
A faint twitch of irritation flickered over Qambar-Ali’s face as he paused and turned aside. ‘Majesty.’
‘I will lead the mourners for my father. It is fitting.’ Babur stepped past, making sure he trod hard on one of the vizier’s felt-booted feet. That felt good too.
‘Of course, Majesty.’
Babur gestured courteously to the mullah to join him. Qambar-Ali followed them down the low, dark passageway. The other royal council members came next, as their high office decreed they should. Yusuf, as treasurer, was carrying a bowl of gleaming gold coins to be laid at the foot of the sarcophagus. Baba Qashqa was bearing the huge red leatherbound journal in which, as comptroller of the royal household, he had recorded the minutiae of royal expenditure. This, too, would be left in the tomb to show that the king had gone to the next world with his affairs in order. Baqi Beg was cradling a crystal globe, the symbol of office of the court astrologer. Later, when the funeral was over, he was thinking, he would gaze into its shining depths and proclaim in a voice laced with sorrowful regret that the stars would not accept a mere boy as king.
Courtiers flattened themselves against the damp walls of the crypt while others jammed into the passageway. The heavy air reeked of men’s sweat. Babur’s arms were almost pinned to his sides by the crush. As the mullah began to intone, softly at first but voice then rising and soaring around the chamber, fear prickled along Babur’s spine. He was in a confined place. What if an enemy should choose now to strike? In his mind’s eye bright red blood spurted from his slit throat and spilled on to the jade casket with its delicate tracery of tulips and narcissi. He heard himself trying to scream but managing only a blood-choked, bubbling gasp.
Faintness and nausea gripped him. Babur closed his eyes, struggling to master himself. Despite his lack of years and hairless chin, he must be a man. In a few hours, if he played his part courageously, he would be on the throne of Ferghana.
Babur felt for the jewelled dagger his mother had pushed into his purple sash before he had set out and, as his fingers curled around the hilt, his breathing steadied. He looked speculatively around him. Wazir Khan’s men were in the crypt. They would surely not allow an assassin to cut down their prince. Or would they? Scanning their faces, he realised how little he knew about any of the guards. Until yesterday he had taken their allegiance to his family for granted. Today all that had changed. His grip on the dagger tightened.
He focused his attention back on the mullah who, in his deep, sonorous voice, was chanting: ‘May Allah be merciful. May the soul of our king, Umar-Shaikh, even now be in the gardens of Paradise. Let we who are left weep pearl drops of sadness but let us also rejoice that our king is drinking a pure draught of the waters of perfect happiness.’ He came to an end and, folding his hands, backed away from the sarcophagus up the passageway, the spectators parting with difficulty to allow him through to the outside.
Babur closed his eyes for a moment and bade a silent farewell to the father he had loved. Then, holding back tears, he followed the mullah to emerge blinking into the sunlight. A whooshing sound, like a bird in flight, so close it almost grazed his left ear, startled him and he leaped backwards. Was someone out hawking? He looked around to see who would dare seek such sport while the King of Ferghana was being laid in his tomb. But there was no bright-eyed bird with jewelled collar and silken tassels dangling from its claws and shreds of prey in its curved beak. Instead an arrow, long-shafted, with blue-black feathers, quivered in the ground at Babur’s feet. A few inches more and it would have pierced his body.
Shouts of alarm rose from the crowd and people were running for cover behind bushes and trees, staring up in alarm as if expecting the late-afternoon skies to darken with a shower of missiles. Chieftains were yelling for their
