‘Perhaps, but in truth we have little to hide. What have I done since my return? Nothing other than wait patiently again and respond willingly to every trivial request my father’s made of me. I’ve bottled up my emotions, speaking only to you of my regret that the emperor will still not grant me more powers or give me some military command.’
‘Your father might be forgiven for not wishing to put you in charge of large armies until he is more certain of your intentions.’
‘I suppose I can understand that from his point of view,’ Salim responded, almost smiling. After a pause his brows knitted once more. ‘You don’t really think my father would ever contemplate disinheriting me in favour of my son, do you?’
‘To be truthful, I don’t know. . Even though he’s over sixty he remains a clever and complex man well attuned to understanding the motives and concerns of those around him without ever disclosing his own. Possibly he might have considered giving a little tacit encouragement to the idea of Khusrau succeeding him, knowing that you would come to hear of it. In this way he might seek to increase the pressure on you to continue to conform to his wishes and indeed to your reformed way of life.’
‘That would be typical of him and his cold machinations,’ Salim shouted again, grinding his heel into one of the thick rugs covering the floor before adding more quietly, ‘My father still has no regard for my feelings. Nor perhaps for those of any other of his relations. When Khusrau comes to hear of suggestions that he might succeed, it will only raise unrealistic expectations in him.’
‘So what do you intend to do?’
‘On the surface to ignore the rumours and continue to act the dutiful son, but privately to draw more followers to me with promises of rewards when I come to power, and to ensure I have enough officers and well- armed men to call on should the need arise. I’ll want your help with this. You can talk more freely than I.’
‘You will have it, Highness.’
‘Meanwhile I will try to find opportunities to probe Khusrau’s attitudes and ambitions. .’
Salim lost no time in arranging a meeting with Khusrau and it was only thirty-six hours later when father and son met at the archery butts. ‘I’m so pleased that you could join me today,’ said Salim as he put his arrow to the string of his double-curved bow and squinting along the shaft took careful aim at the straw-stuffed target, which was shaped and roughly dressed as a man. Moments later, the arrow hissed through the air to thud into the target’s torso.
‘Good shot, Father,’ said Khusrau as he fitted his own arrow and fired, striking the target within an inch of Salim’s shaft. Lowering his bow, he added, ‘I am always pleased to spend time with you.’
‘Good. We have been apart too long. I would not wish you to think you were absent from my mind while I was in Allahabad all those months.’
‘I did not.’
‘What I did I did for the good of the dynasty, for those who come to rule after me.’
Khusrau gave a wry smile. ‘But my grandfather rules now. God willing it will be a long time before he is called to his reward in Paradise. Who can tell what may happen to any of us in the meantime.’
‘What do you mean?’ asked Salim, his tone sharper than he meant it to be as he raised his bow again and fired.
‘Simply that none of us can know what may happen during the years he continues to rule. All of us are mortal. Even if we live, the passage of time changes us and others’ perception of us.’ Khusrau shot another arrow. This time it split Salim’s last shaft as it embedded itself deep in the straw man. Was that shot simply a trick of fortune or an omen? wondered Salim, involuntarily recalling the Sikri mystic’s warning to beware his sons. He fitted another arrow and fired, striking the straw man in the throat.
‘You are right that our lives are subject to divine providence, but we should all wish them to follow a natural progression where sons outlive fathers and only then succeed in due order to their positions and responsibilities. None of us, I’m sure, would want it to be otherwise.’
Khusrau said nothing for a moment, then simply replied, ‘I would not wish that any more than you. I agree we’re all in God’s hands.’
As they continued their practice, as if by mutual consent drawing back from any confrontation, father and son turned their conversation towards everyday matters of court life. However, as he packed away his bow in its rosewood case at the end of the session while Khusrau walked back across the courtyard to join his grandfather in the elephant stables, Salim knew that ambition had been sparked in the heart of his mettlesome eldest son whether by Akbar or not. He must remain on his guard both to extend his network of allies and conciliate his enemies. Above all, he must do everything he could to impress his father, even if that meant concealing his true opinions. It would not be easy, but the reward of the throne would be worth it.
Tears coursed down the cheeks of both Akbar and Salim as the coffin was borne on a simple flower-decked wooden bier through a side gate of the Agra fort towards the boat that would carry it up the Jumna to Delhi for burial next to Humayun. Grief at Hamida’s death was uniting the two men in a way that would have pleased Hamida herself. She had slipped gently into death in her seventy-eighth year after only a few days’ illness with what had at first seemed a simple cough but quickly turned into something much worse.
As Akbar and Salim had sat on either side of the low bed on which she was lying, she had bid them goodbye. As fluid wheezed in her chest she had whispered to them to love each other as she loved them both, if not for her sake then for that of their dynasty. Stretching their arms across her frail body at her request to clasp each other’s hands, they had agreed to do so. Only minutes later, as the light of the crescent moon entered through the casement and a soft breeze rippled the gauze curtains, she had died. Her last words were, ‘I am coming through the stars to join you in Paradise, Humayun.’
What must be going through his father’s mind, Salim wondered as he fought to control his own emotions. Akbar must be growing conscious of his own mortality after the death of Gulbadan a few months previously and then Hamida’s. He was the oldest member of his family now as well as — as he had long been — its head. He had lost a mother who had loved him and protected him both in the very early days after his birth at Umarkot and when, after his father’s untimely death, rebellion had threatened. Hamida’s love for Akbar had been unconditional, as Salim knew it had been for himself. That was why he too would miss her more than he could say, feeling as he could not help but feel that both his mother’s love and that of Akbar were conditional on his adherence to their wishes, to their view of the world.
Salim glanced towards Daniyal, hunched and prematurely aged on his father’s other side. His surviving half- brother had only arrived back at the court an hour before from the isolated palace near Fatehpur Sikri he occupied at Akbar’s command and was visibly shaking. Salim suspected it was from either the effects of alcohol or the lack of it rather than from grief. Then Salim looked at his own three sons, Khusrau, Parvez and Khurram, standing next to him. Perhaps understandably none seemed as affected as himself and Akbar, not having known Hamida so well or for so long. Did they find him as difficult to read as he did his own father? Salim wondered, not for the first time. If they had gone to Hamida and asked her, would she have told them to respect him and learn from him, as she had told him to do from Akbar many years before?
She would have been too honest to do so unreservedly. She had recognised his faults: not only his drinking, his opium taking and his lusts but also his short temper, his impatience and his unforgiving hatred and hunger for vengeance against those such as Abul Fazl who he thought mistreated him. However, despite these failings she had still believed in him and his ability to redeem his faults if he came to rule. He hoped she would have said as much to his sons too. If she ever had, Khusrau at least had shown no signs of taking the message on board. He continued to distance himself from his father, correct, formal and emotionless when they met but seeming to avoid contact whenever he could and, Salim suspected, continuing to hope to supplant him. That was perhaps how Akbar felt about himself, Salim realised. Then he looked across at his father’s lined and tear-stained face and instinctively, almost involuntarily, placed his hand on his elbow in a gesture of understanding and support in his present grief. As the drums beat a slow and mournful tattoo and Hamida’s body was carried carefully up the boat’s gangplank, Akbar allowed his son’s hand to remain on his arm while he took his leave of his mother on earth.
‘Suleiman Beg, you’re bleeding. What’s happened?’ Salim exclaimed as his milk-brother pushed his way through the hangings covering the doorway into Salim’s apartment, crimson blood staining his green tunic and
