As the mullahs in their black robes and high white turbans finished chanting their prayers, Babur showered tiny silver and gold coins from a jade saucer over the head of his five-day-old son, lying naked on a blue velvet cushion in Baisanghar’s arms.
‘You are my first-born, my beloved son. I name you Humayun, Fortunate One. May your life be fortunate and may you bring honour and glory to our house.’ The tenderness he felt as he looked into his son’s wrinkled little face was like nothing he’d ever known. He’d wanted a son — many sons — to carry the blood line down through the generations, but he had never thought of what fatherhood would mean to him. It was good he had no formal speeches to make — he might not be able to hold his voice steady or keep back the tears welling in his eyes.
Humayun’s voice rose in a thin wail as Babur handed the empty saucer to Baburi at his side. Lifting the child from the cushion, he held him high so that all his courtiers, all his chiefs, could see him and acknowledge their new prince.
Maham, though still weak, his mother and grandmother would be watching through the carved marble grille high in the wall to the right of the royal dais in Babur’s audience hall. They would have seen him acknowledging the traditional gifts — silver coins signifying good luck, silks, horses and hunting dogs from the wealthier nobles, sheep and goats brought by the tribal leaders.
The feasting and celebrations would last late into the night, long after Humayun had been returned to the care of Maham and his wet-nurse, a bright-eyed young woman who had recently weaned her own son. To be wet- nurse to a Timurid prince was a great honour and the position was eagerly sought. She would guard her new charge well.
Gusts of male laughter roused him from his thoughts. Back on the blue cushion that Baisanghar was still holding, a vigorously wriggling Humayun had unleashed an arc of yellow urine.
‘So may he piss on all our enemies!’ Babur shouted, amid the general mirth, but he had something else to say. He had not planned to do it now, in this way, but something — a new resolve — was driving him on. He signalled for silence.
‘You have come here today to honour my son, to honour my house — the House of Timur. The time has come for me to claim Timur’s title of Padishah, Lord of the World. I, with my son Humayun and my sons yet to be born, will prove myself worthy of it, and all who support me will share the glory.’
Chapter 17
Six months later Babur sat, face impassive, on his gilded throne, his courtiers erect and motionless around him, as Baburi lowered the sack to the ground before him.
‘Show them.’
Taking his dagger from his blue sash, Baburi slit the sack to reveal the contents: two heads, blood-encrusted and mottled purple-black with weeping putrescence. The stench of decay — sweet and rotten to the point of nausea — filled the room. The ragged flesh where a blade had roughly hacked through the base of the neck suggested that death had not come easily to the two men. The once handsome features of Sayyidim, the young cup-bearer whom Babur had helped hold down while his frost-bitten hand had been amputated, were only just recognisable in his bloated face. His bursting lips were pulled back to reveal gums suppurating pus above still perfect white teeth. As for the other head, Babur had not even recognised the man — one of Baisanghar’s lieutenants — but his death, like Sayyidim’s, would be avenged.
The dead men’s task had been to take a letter from Babur to the King of Khorasan, his distant relation, at his court in Herat. Merchants arriving with the biggest caravan to reach Kabul that season had reported that, beyond the Hindu Kush, Shaibani Khan was on the move again at the head of a vast army. Some said his target was wealthy Khorasan, west of Kabul, others that it was Kabul itself. Babur’s letter to the king had been a warning but also a suggestion for their alliance. Except that the letter had never arrived. .
Baburi had come upon the messengers’ fate by chance during a routine raid against a clan of sheep-rustling Kafirs. While searching the mud-brick huts of their remote village he had found the messengers’ heads in a large clay pot under a buzzing cloud of green-black flies. The heads of their ten-man military escort were nearby. From the account Baburi choked out of the headman, the Kafirs had tortured them for no reason other than sadistic pleasure. Some had had their tongues cut out, but even more appalling was what had they done to one messenger who had been slashed in the abdomen during the fight in which they were captured. The Kafirs had put their hands into the wound and pulled out part of his intestine and, as he screamed out, tied it to a post and then made the man dance around it, unravelling his intestines as he went until at last death had mercifully ended his sufferings.
Baburi, resisting the temptation for instant vengeance, had bound the headman’s ankles to his wrists behind his back and rounded up all the other Kafirs he could find to bring back to the citadel in Kabul. The convoy had arrived just a few hours earlier and in the dungeons beneath the citadel it hadn’t taken long to force from them a confession of who had bribed them to carry out such a barbarous act.
Babur addressed his courtiers in a flat, dispassionate voice. ‘I asked you to assemble here before me to hear proof of an act of treason. These heads belong to my messengers to the King of Khorasan. They were murdered on the orders of a man of my blood, a man I trusted. . Bring him in.’
A gasp went up as Mirza Khan was led into the room surrounded by guards. In deference to his rank as a descendant of Timur he was not bound. There was nothing humble or fearful in his demeanour or his clothes: a heavy enamelled chain hung round his neck and his tunic of purple silk was secured about his stout body with a yellow sash woven with pearls. His expression was insolent.
Glancing briefly at the two rotting heads as if they were no more than a speck of dirt on his red riding boots Mirza Khan touched his hand to his breast but said nothing.
‘The men who murdered my messengers — Kafirs from the mountains — have confessed to their crime. They name you as the instigator. .’
‘Any one of us, never mind villains, will say anything under torture. .’
‘Sometimes even the truth. . They say you paid them to seize the messengers — one of them once your own cup-bearer — as they entered the Shibartu Pass and to steal the letter they were carrying to the King of Khorasan. You also told them they could do as they liked with the prisoners, provided their disposal was permanent. In their stupidity they kept their heads as proof of this. .’
Mirza Khan shrugged. ‘Kafirs are known for their lies and deceit. .’
‘My quartermaster found this among their miserable possessions.’ An attendant passed Babur a shabby little bag of flowered silk. Untying the cord at its neck, Babur pulled out a small plug of ivory with a piece of onyx set into its base. ‘Your seal, Mirza Khan. The craftsmen who inscribed your name did a good job — see how clearly your name and titles stand out. You were a fool to send a token like that to your hirelings, but I always knew you had manure for brains. .’
It was good to see Mirza Khan’s fear beginning to show. Sweat was running down his face into his perfumed beard and dark stains were spreading visibly into the purple silk beneath his armpits.
‘What I don’t understand is why you did it.’
Mirza Khan dabbed at his face briefly with a lilac handkerchief but remained silent.
‘If you don’t speak I’ll have you tortured.’
‘You can’t — I’m of Timur’s house, your own cousin.’
‘I can and I will. You forfeited your rights when you betrayed me.’ Babur’s cold words seemed to crush the insolence from Mirza Khan. The screws were twisting now.
‘Majesty. .’ It was the first time Mirza Khan had addressed him so. ‘I had no choice — I was forced to act as I did. .’
‘A man always has a choice. For whom were you acting?’
Mirza Khan suddenly began to retch. A thin trail of yellowish vomit spewed from the corner of his mouth, staining the purple silk of his tunic. He wiped it away, raised his head and looked piteously at Babur. ‘Remember,
