envoy to remain behind to advise me how best to receive you. Everything is ready. You only have to cross the ford.’
A tremendous weight lifted from Humayun. For the first time in months he need not worry where his family and his men were to sleep, whether there was food, whether they were safe from attack. For a moment he closed his eyes and bowed his head in gratitude, then drawing himself up said, ‘I thank you, Abbas Beg. Your words are very welcome.’
‘Then, in the name of Shah Tahmasp, Lord of the World, I welcome you to Persia.’
One hundred attendants were sweeping the road ahead and sprinkling it with rosewater to subdue the dust. Ahead of Humayun and his party trotted one thousand gorgeously caparisoned horsemen whom the shah had sent to escort them to his capital, Kazvin, seven hundred miles to the northwest. Humayun’s own party was no less magnificently mounted on Persian horses — sable black with gold-mounted bridle and saddle for Humayun. Hamida and Gulbadan were in a gilded, velvet-lined wagon drawn by white oxen, horns adorned with ribbons of Moghul green.
Shah Tahmasp’s response to his letter had reached Humayun just three weeks after he had crossed into Persia. Three pages of extravagant compliments had ended with the words:
The shah had issued
The shah had decreed exactly where the column should halt each night so that, as they rode in, tents of fine embroidered white cloth with awnings of velvet and silk were already erected and waiting. Every night brought another exquisite feast — golden platters of sweet white bread baked with milk and butter and sprinkled with poppy and fennel seeds, five hundred different savoury dishes — duck simmered in a walnut sauce, lamb stewed with quinces and dried limes — nuts of every kind covered in gold and silver leaf, dried apricots stuffed with chopped nuts and honey and pyramids of sweetmeats scented with rosewater and sprinkled with jewel-like pomegranate seeds.
Every day saw the arrival of fresh gifts — jewelled daggers and coats cut from cloth of gold and flowered brocades for Humayun and amber and exquisite perfumes sent by the shah’s sister, Shahzada Sultanam, to Hamida and Gulbadan. The rest of Humayun’s retinue was not forgotten — Shah Tahmasp sent daggers and swords made by the finest armourers for his men. Everyone had new clothes. The ragged, weary band that had crossed the Helmand river had been transformed.
But as the weeks passed and they were drawing nearer to Kazvin, passing through orchards of peach and apricot trees and along riverbanks lined with drooping willows, Humayun had still not found an answer to the question that kept troubling him. Why had Shah Tahmasp gone to such extravagant lengths? Was it simply to impress Humayun? Did it flatter his ego to have the Moghul emperor seeking his protection, or was there something deeper?
Though Humayun shared his unease with Kasim and Zahid Beg, he knew he could not discuss it with Hamida. Every sign of the shah’s goodwill seemed to revive her — in her eyes it spelled hope that Tahmasp would assist Humayun against his half-brothers and help him win back Akbar. Of course, in a way Hamida was right. Whatever the shah’s true motives — and just possibly they might be entirely benevolent — he must make an ally of him. .
At last on an early summer’s day, the moment Humayun had been so keenly anticipating arrived. In a meadow bright with flowers near Kazvin, Shah Tahmasp, accompanied by ten thousand of his cavalrymen, was waiting to greet the Moghul emperor. As Humayun had come to expect of the shah, every last detail had been thought of — the exact spot where Humayun was to dismount, where his men were to wait, the path of thick, dark-red rugs sprinkled with dried rosebuds leading to the centre of the meadow where a vast, circular, golden carpet — silken threads gleaming in the sun — had been spread.
Standing alone in the very centre of the carpet, his troops drawn up some fifty yards behind, was the shah, dressed in crimson velvet and on his head a tall, pointed jewelled cap of crimson silk embroidered with gold thread. Humayun knew what the hat signified. It was the
‘You are welcome, my brother.’ Humayun saw that Tahmasp was about his own age, strong-featured, pale- skinned and with luminous black eyes beneath thick brows.
‘I am grateful for your hospitality. I had heard of the glories of Persia and now I have seen them for myself.’
Tahmasp smiled. ‘What little I could provide while you were on the road was, I am sure, poor compared with the magnificence of the Moghuls of which I, in turn, have heard.’
Humayun looked sharply at his host. Tahmasp knew very well there had been nothing magnificent about his flight to Persia. Had there been a barb in those flattering words? Conscious of the thousands of watching eyes — eyes that would see what he was about to do — Humayun made a sudden decision. He must show them that he had not come to Persia a beggar. He would make a gesture so splendid that even in fabulous Persia it would be spoken of down the ages — a gesture so unmatchable that it would place Persia’s ruler in his debt.
‘Shah Tahmasp, I have brought you a gift from Hindustan.’ Reaching inside the neck of his robe, Humayun pulled out the flowered silk pouch in which, through all the hard and hazardous times, he had kept his greatest treasure close to his heart. Slowly, deliberately, Humayun extracted the Koh-i-Nur and raised it high in the air to catch the sunlight. It shone bright as a star and Humayun heard Shah Tahmasp gasp.
‘Had I not been on the road so long, I might have found something yet more worthy of you. But I hope this bauble pleases you. It is named the Koh-i-Nur, the Mountain of Light. May its light shine on you, Shah Tahmasp, and on our enduring friendship.’
Chapter 16
‘That you turned to me in your distress touched my heart.The world will see that when the Moghul emperor sought my help, I answered him. I will give you an army and one of my best generals so that you may reclaim what has been taken from you.’ Shah Tahmasp clasped Humayun by the shoulder. ‘As our fathers were once allies, so we will be. .’ They were sitting on silk cushions on a marble platform constructed over the intersection of two water channels flowing north to south and east to west through the shah’s private gardens.The four quarters of the garden created by the channels were planted with fruit trees — quince, cherry, apple, apricot, peach and the shah’s favourite, apple trees — on whose branches small golden fruit were already forming. Songbirds with jewelled collars hopped among the branches.
When Tahmasp had summoned him to this audience in what the shah called his ‘paradise garden’, Humayun had allowed himself to hope. But the shah’s offer went beyond anything he’d anticipated. The sacrifice of the Koh- i-Nur had been worth it and he struggled to control his elation. ‘You are gracious,’ he replied. ‘With your men fighting beside mine, I have no doubt of victory. .’
‘You may wonder why I am so ready to assist you. It is not just out of sentiment. I have many reasons. Treachery within royal dynasties such as ours is dangerous. You were not the only Moghul to write to me.Your half-brother Kamran also sent me a message — that you were fleeing into Persia, that if I imprisoned you he would give me many things — gold, gemstones and even the city of Kandahar.’ Tahmasp’s black eyes glittered. ‘He sought to bargain with me as if I were a merchant in the bazaar. His arrogance angered me. But more than that, I asked
