darkness as Babur, Humayun and their entourage approached closer.
Father and son were quiet as they reached the tents to which their wounded were being brought. Some men were lying still and quiet, some trying to drive away the black flies crawling across their bodies and clustering on their wounds, some screaming out in pain, others biting the backs of their hands to prevent themselves from doing so and yet others begging for help.
‘So it’s true, Father, as you once said, that the badly wounded cry either for their mothers or for God.’
‘Their mothers have been their greatest and most unquestioning comfort in this world, and God is their greatest hope for the next.’ Babur paused, then continued, ‘We must give thanks that the bravery and sacrifice of these men have made us undisputed masters of Hindustan. We must repay them by seeing that the families of the fallen are cared for and those who survive compensated. Above all, we owe it to them and to ourselves not to squander the results of their sacrifice. Nevertheless, we should not dwell on sacrifice and death. Both — whether of the rulers or the ruled — are essential to all empires. To become overly concerned about them is to grow weak and indecisive. Tonight we should rejoice in our victory. We have vanquished our greatest enemy. When they hear of his utter defeat, other rulers will not dare to attack us. We have secured a bright future for our dynasty.’
In the late afternoon of the next day as shadows were lengthening, Babur once more addressed his troops, assembled around him. Many were bandaged and some supported themselves on crutches.
‘Men, let us rejoice and give thanks to God for the great victory you have won by your courage and belief in our righteous cause. We have shown ourselves once more worthy successors to the noble Timur and history will remember us as such. We celebrated last night and when we are back in Agra, which lies scarcely four days’ march away, I will again break open my treasuries and reward each and every one of you.
‘Last night I learned from a prisoner that late in the battle Rana Sanga — our insolent opponent who dared set his power against ours — was wounded in the abdomen so badly that he had to be carried from the field in a litter slung between four horses. Today, scouts checking that the Rajputs were not regrouping came in sight of a great funeral pyre being built ten miles west of here. A peasant working in the fields told them it was for Rana Sanga, who had died nearby, and that those building it were the surviving members of his bodyguard. Our scouts hid in tall crops nearby until they saw it was indeed his body that was placed on the pyre. They rode away only after they had witnessed the torch applied to the base of the brushwood. Looking back, they saw orange flames flare to the sky. The rana did not live to boast of his eighty-first wound. The flames consumed not only him but Rajput ambitions to deprive us of our new lands.
‘To ensure any surviving rebels or others who wish ill to our empire understand the futility of opposing us, we will again follow the custom of Timur. I have ordered the corpses of our enemies to be decapitated and the heads collected to be piled in towers at every crossroad from here to Agra. Let the hopes of our enemies rot with them.’
That evening Humayun made his way to the part of his father’s vast scarlet campaign tent that contained his private quarters. His mind was buzzing with images of battle and his ambitions for his own place in the new empire. He must be his father’s heir. After all, he was his eldest son — even though under the traditions of Timur and his descendants the eldest did not succeed by right — and also the son of Babur’s favourite wife. Now he had proved himself in battle too. Perhaps he should broach the subject of succession with his father now. Or, at least, seek a new command in which he could impress further.
Pushing aside the heavy gold curtains which shielded his father’s quarters, he saw Babur stretched out on a low divan covered with gold-embroidered cream and purple cushions, a silver pipe at his side. He seemed neither to see nor hear Humayun enter but continued to gaze into the middle distance. Coming closer, Humayun saw that his father’s expression was of a benign content and that the pupils of his green eyes were dilated. He put out a hand and shook Babur gently by the shoulder. His eyelids fluttered briefly and his eyes began to focus. ‘Humayun, when did you come in?’
‘Only a minute or two ago.’
‘After dinner, I took a pipe of
Humayun realised it was no time to talk of his ambitions. His father was relaxing into some of his old distractions. Perhaps he should, too. The red wines of Ghazni were good. It wouldn’t be long before he at least would be drinking them again. ‘I only came in to tell you that the preparations are well under way for the beginning of our march back to Agra tomorrow and, of course, to say good night.’
As he made his way back to his own tent, Humayun looked up into a night sky pricked by stars. As he watched, more appeared, patterning the heavens. Suddenly he felt impatient with the clamour of the camp, noisy with men and animals, and the crackling of fires whose flames seemed crude compared with the celestial light above. He called for his horse, mounted and rode out into the darkness to be alone with his thoughts beneath the silent stars.
Chapter 26
The waters of the Ganges were warm and Babur swam the thirty-three strokes it took to cross the river with pleasure. It felt good to fulfil the final part of his vow, made six years ago when, with Baburi, he had plunged into the icy Indus and sworn to swim every major river of his new empire. Shaking droplets of water from his hair and eyes, Babur hauled himself out on to the bank and lay down in the sun. On the opposite bank, the bodyguards and huntsmen who had ridden with him from his nearby camp at Kanauj, a hundred and fifty miles east of Agra, waited with the horses in the pool of green shade beneath a leafy neem tree. Tonight, when it was dark, he and his men would go fishing, holding candles just above the surface of the water. For some reason the shimmering light was irresistible to fish, luring them to the surface where their silvery bodies were easily grabbed.
Babur closed his eyes and contemplated the river. According to the scholars he had ordered to draw him maps of Hindustan, the Ganges flowed eastward, passing through Bengal to spill into a great blue ocean. One day, Babur promised himself, he would see the great shining expanse of water he found so hard to visualise. . How did it look, the horizon where the water met the sky?
He was still finding Hindustan a bewildering, surprising place. Compared to his homelands it was indeed another world. Its mountains, rivers, forests and wildernesses, its villages and provinces, its animals and plants, people and languages, even its rains and winds were altogether different. . But whereas when he had first crossed the Indus he had thought Hindustan alien, even oppressive, now he was starting to appreciate it. Since defeating Rana Sanga he had spent much of his time on the move, setting up vast encampments, cities in miniature, with his own red tent at the heart — just as Timur had once made tours of inspection from Samarkand. His journey had given Babur the opportunity to show himself to his new subjects but also to learn.
At night, he took increasing pleasure in writing his diary, documenting everything from how the peasants tended their fields to the teams of
Soon he’d return to Agra, where the gardens he had planted were flourishing and had recently yielded the first grapes and melons grown by the gardeners he had summoned from Kabul. In addition, seven hundred Hindustani stonemasons were at work on the mosque he had commissioned in Agra to celebrate his crushing of Rana Sanga. With its high recessed arches —
