With an ever-increasing sense of foreboding Humayun slowly approached and, crouching down, raised the dead man’s head. Hindal’s tawny eyes stared blankly at him. Unable to bear their unblinking gaze, Humayun closed them. As he did so, the warmth of his brother’s dead flesh shocked him, then he realised that Hindal’s face had been resting against the horse’s flanks. He drew his dagger from his sash and waving back his guards cut through the ropes with which someone had secured Hindal’s body to the horse. Then he carefully lifted his brother’s corpse and laid it gently, face up, on the flagstones. As he knelt beside it, by the flickering amber light of a torch held aloft in the gathering gloom by one of Ahmed Khan’s men he saw a raw wound in Hindal’s throat that only an arrowhead could have made.
Grief washed through him. Hindal was the one of his half-brothers he had cared for most. Courageous, honest and principled, and less ambitious than his siblings, perhaps Hindal had been at heart the best of all Babur’s sons. ‘I wish you godspeed to Paradise, my brother, and that in death you will forgive me the hurt I did you in life,’ Humayun whispered. Images of Hindal in his youth and of him proudly recounting his rescue of Akbar filled Humayun’s mind, bringing tears to his eyes. It was some minutes before, brushing them away with the back of his hand, he got to his feet and asked, ‘Who found the body?’
‘I did, Majesty,’ said the torchbearer, who, Humayun saw, was no more than a youth.
‘Where?’
‘His horse was tethered by some juniper bushes half a mile from the town.’
So someone had drawn out the fatal arrow, tied Hindal to his horse and then left him where he would be found. Such an act bore all the hallmarks of Kamran, Humayun thought with a weariness of heart. Far from being grateful for his mercy, within two months of being set free Kamran and Askari had vanished from Kabul. United against him again, they had become raiders, sweeping down from remote strongholds at the head of bands of tribesmen — lawless Kafirs and Chakraks mostly, but whoever they could find; they weren’t particular — to attack Humayun’s outposts and the caravan trains that were the source of Kabul’s prosperity — its life’s blood. Kamran would not have forgiven Hindal’s betrayal in rescuing Akbar and he certainly had the malice to send Humayun the message of Hindal’s slaughtered body.
But what had actually happened? If the murderer was Kamran, had Hindal’s death been the result of a chance encounter or had Kamran deliberately hunted Hindal down in the northern mountains which he had made his retreat in the years since he had rescued Akbar? ‘Search my brother’s body and his saddlebag. Look for anything that might tell us how or why he met his end,’ Humayun ordered as he turned away, unable to face the task himself.
A few minutes later, a soldier came up to him where he stood in the gloom, lost in his thoughts and recollections. ‘We found nothing of importance, Majesty, except this note in the saddlebag.’ Humayun took the scrap of paper and read it by the light of a torch. In a few brief sentences addressed to no one, Hindal asked, if anything should happen to him, to be buried close to his father. He also wrote that he wished Akbar to have his ruby-inlaid dagger that had once belonged to Babur. ‘The dagger was still in his sash, Majesty.’ The soldier held out a silver scabbard, also inlaid with rubies, that glittered in the torchlight. So whoever had killed Hindal had not been a thief, Humayun thought. It also told him that death had come suddenly and probably unexpectedly to Hindal, who had had no time to draw his dagger. Again he saw Kamran’s green-eyed, sneering face. .
Three weeks later, the branches of the tall cherry trees brought by Babur as saplings to Kabul stirred in the breeze, shedding blossom that fluttered like pink snowflakes. Spring melt water from the mountains rippled through the two intersecting marble-lined channels that divided the garden into four quarters planted with pomegranate, apple and lemon trees. The scent of honey rose from the lilac clover covering the ground as, walking through the garden Babur had planted, Humayun came to the new grave in the middle of a grove of young willows. The inscription on the marble slab told the onlooker that here lay Mirza Hindal, youngest and beloved son of Babur, Moghul Emperor of Hindustan.
Gulbadan had chosen the delicate tracery of irises and tulips that the masons had carved round the stone’s edge and every day, on Hamida’s orders, the pale marble was sprinkled with dried rose petals. She had never forgotten her gratitude to Hindal for saving Akbar — if anything it had grown because Akbar was still their only child. The hakims blamed the long and agonising labour she had endured giving birth to him and had predicted that though she was still young — not yet twenty-five — there would be no more children.
Turning away from Hindal’s grave, Humayun walked the few paces to Babur’s simple tomb. Every time he came here, he sensed his father’s presence so keenly he could almost see him standing before him, eyes fixed understandingly upon him. Babur too had taken Kabul only to have his hopes of advancing quickly to invade Hindustan disappointed. Yet there was a profound difference between their circumstances. Babur’s problem had been that he lacked an army strong enough to take on Sultan Ibrahim, Hindustan’s powerful overlord. That obstacle had been overcome when his friend Baburi had brought him Turkish cannon and matchlocks — weapons then unknown in Hindustan. Humayun’s problems were more complex, more corrosive, because they came from within his own family. Because of Kamran and Askari, Humayun had been forced to delay his invasion of Hindustan just when the prospects of victory had seemed so good.
The chaos following Sher Shah’s death should have been a perfect opportunity for Humayun to invade — Sher Shah’s reign had lasted only five years and many would have returned to the green banners of the Moghuls.
Instead, the threat of Kamran and Askari had made it impossible for him to mount a prolonged expedition. Sher Shah’s chiefs had had time to rally and choose a new emperor. Rejecting Sher Shah’s elder son — a man better known for his love of luxury than for his military prowess — they had elected his younger son, Islam Shah, whose first act had been to order the murder of his elder brother. The message had not been lost on Humayun. If he had executed Kamran and Askari rather than pardoned them, then he, not Islam Shah, would have been sitting on the throne in Agra.
That his half-brothers should have been able to frustrate his plans for so long hurt as well as enraged Humayun.Where was their gratitude for his mercy? Perhaps he shouldn’t be surprised at Kamran, whose hatred and jealousy of him were seemingly implacable, but why had Askari repaid his generosity with such deceit? When Askari had surrendered to him at Kandahar, he had seemed to feel remorse, even shame for his actions. Perhaps those feelings had been genuine but under Kamran’s influence hadn’t lasted. All his life Askari had been dominated by Kamran. .
Still brooding, Humayun walked slowly back to where Jauhar was holding the reins of his horse while it grazed the sweet grass beneath an apple tree. Climbing into the saddle, Humayun pushed the horse quickly back towards the citadel. He had made a decision. Hindal’s death had been a sign that there must be no more waiting, no more prevaricating, no more sentimental hopes that his half-brothers might still be reconciled. So far his efforts to flush them from their mountain hideaways had been futile. Something more determined was required. .
That night, as Humayun entered his audience chamber, he found his commanders and his counsellors already waiting. As he surveyed their faces, there was one man he still instinctively looked for — Kasim, whose calm commonsense and absolute loyalty had been one of the few constants of his turbulent reign. But last winter, crossing the icy courtyard Kasim had slipped and shattered his right hip. The hakims had sedated him with opium but the shock to his old body had been too great. He had slipped into unconsciousness and two days later passed away as quietly as he had done everything in life. Kasim had been with Babur from the first precarious days of his reign as boy-king of Ferghana, just as he had always been at Humayun’s side. Humayun had been so used to his calm, reassuring presence and to listening to his softly spoken and consistently valuable advice. His death had been a true severing from the past.