Empire of the Moghul: The Tainted Throne Read online

  Jahangir heard the two men gasp. The idea for their punishment had come to him in a flash of inspiration only moments before he spoke. He knew his grandfather Humayun had prided himself on devising novel and sometimes bizarre ways of fitting punishments to the crime. Now so had he. However, he had no further time to waste on accomplices and so turned towards Khusrau who, his hands clasped in supplication, was sobbing brokenly and muttering something Jahangir couldn’t catch but which sounded like gibberish. He drew himself up, preparing to utter the words that would send his son to his doom.

  ‘Khusrau, you raised an army of disaffected traitors with the sole intention of overthrowing me – your father and the lawful Moghul emperor – and seizing my throne for yourself. You are responsible for the blood that has been spilled and in justice you should pay for that in blood.’ The harshness of his voice was real and he meant every word he said. Khusrau knew it as well and in his fear lost control of his bladder. Jahangir saw a dark strain spreading through his cotton trousers and urine dripping on to the ground to form a yellow pool.

  A wave of pity for the state to which Khusrau had been reduced washed over him. Though moments earlier he had had every intention of ordering him to be beheaded, suddenly he no longer desired his death. There had already been so much bloodshed, so much suffering . . . ‘But I have decided to spare you,’ he heard himself say. ‘You are my son and I will not take your life. Instead you will be kept in prison where over the months and years ahead you will have time to reflect on the transgressions that caused you to forfeit your liberty and your honour.’

  As Khusrau, Aziz Koka and Hassan Jamal were led away Jahangir turned to his milk-brother, who was still standing nearby. ‘Suleiman Beg, order our soldiers to cut the throats of any impaled prisoners who are still alive. They have suffered enough. Have their bodies disposed of in a common grave, the stakes taken down and fresh earth spread over the ground. Have those wounded in the battle – whether friend or foe – treated by our hakims. Let all the dead have the funeral rites of their religion. I want to forget how much blood has been spilled today.’

  A week later, in the fortress of Bagrat which he had made his temporary headquarters while his forces recuperated and reorganised, Jahangir studied the long letter he had just received from the Governor of Lahore reporting the fate of Aziz Koka and Hassan Jamal. As he read, Jahangir could picture the scene – the two struggling noblemen, all their dignity stripped from them, being stitched into the reeking bloody hides. The animals’ heads had still been attached, the governor reported, and flopped about grotesquely with every desperate movement the prisoners made inside as they were paraded through the city while the population jeered and threw rotting vegetables and stones at them. Aziz Koka, sewn into the ass’s skin, had suffocated as the hide had dried and contracted in the intense heat. Hassan Jamal had still been alive if almost unconscious when pulled from the ox skin. He was now in Lahore’s dungeons. At the end of his letter, the governor asked whether Jahangir wished Hassan Jamal to be executed.

  Jahangir walked over to the casement and gazed out at the drear, sandy landscape. Now that he had had time to reflect on it, he was a little ashamed of the savagery of the punishments he had meted out even if they had been merited and would serve to deter other rebels. He had acted in the heat of the moment when his anger had been overflowing. Now he was calmer he was starting to wish he had behaved differently. Only a weak ruler need be afraid to show mercy . . . He had intended Hassan Jamal to die. It was only by some sort of miracle that the man had survived but it gave him a chance to show clemency that might begin to heal the rifts among his courtiers that Khusrau’s rebellion had opened up. At once he summoned a scribe and dictated his reply to the governor. ‘Hassan Jamal has been punished enough. Let him live.’

  He had given his son a harsh lesson, Jahangir mused as soon as he was alone again, but would Khusrau have learned it? He was headstrong, conceited and above all ambitious. Ambition wasn’t easy to suppress, as he himself should know. Hadn’t he spent nearly twenty years of his own life tormented by the fear that his father Akbar might deny him the throne he craved? Hadn’t he rebelled himself? Just as he had done, Khusrau would have to wait to know whether he would name him, his eldest son, his heir despite his rebellion. And such a decision could wait. God willing, he had many more years left.

  But what about his other sons? His disputes with his father had kept him apart from them for long periods. On his return to Akbar’s court he had found it difficult to rebuild ties as close as those between a father and his sons should be. Jahangir frowned as words spoken to him long ago by Shaikh Salim Chishti, the Sufi mystic who had foretold his own birth, flashed through his mind. As a young prince uncertain of what the future held he had sought out the old man. ‘Watch those around you. Be careful whom you confide in and take nothing on trust, even from those bound to you by blood . . . even the sons you will have,’ the Sufi had said. ‘Ambition is double edged. It drives men to greatness but can also poison their souls . . .’ He should heed that warning. After all, much that the Sufi had predicted had already come to pass. He had indeed become emperor and ambition had indeed corrupted one of his sons.

  Perhaps that was why his anger at Khusrau had burned so fiercely. He remembered how just two days before his battle with Khusrau, his army had occupied a small mud-walled village. Here the grizzled headman, after prostrating himself before Jahangir, had produced from a pocket of his grubby brown robe three small bronze coins which he claimed had been given to him by a party of Khusrau’s scouts. With visibly trembling fingers he had handed them over to Jahangir in token of his submission. Inspecting them, Jahangir had seen that each of the seemingly hastily struck coins bore the image of Khusrau and the script encircling it had proclaimed Khusrau as the Emperor of Hindustan. Jahangir had been so overcome with anger that he had ordered the headman to be flogged for daring to retain the coins, the coins themselves to be immediately defaced by the farriers and a proclamation to be issued that henceforth anyone found with such coins would lose the fingers of his right hand as punishment for handling them. The headman’s scrawny body had already been roughly stripped to the waist and bound to the only tree within the village compound while Jahangir’s most muscular bodyguard made the air hiss as he practised the lashes with his seven-tailed whip before Suleiman had with difficulty persuaded Jahangir to pardon him. How fortunate he was to have Suleiman Beg by his side as he had since his youth – a loyal friend who instinctively sensed his moods and was now proving a wise adviser.

  But what would Parvez and Khurram – at sixteen and fourteen not so much younger than Khusrau – think about their half-brother’s attempt to depose him and the punishment he had inflicted? Parvez’s mother came from one of the old Moghul clans while Khurram’s, like Khusrau’s, was a Rajput princess and Khurram himself had been brought up by Akbar, who had shown him special favours. Both princes, but in particular Khurram, might think their claims to the throne as good as Khusrau’s. At least he need have no worries yet about the ambitions of his youngest son Shahriyar, still living with his concubine mother in the imperial haram.

  As soon as possible he must return to Agra and his younger sons. He had demonstrated by his treatment of Khusrau and his followers that as emperor he could brook no dissent. But he would also show them that he was still a loving father, that it was only Khusrau’s treachery that had forced his ruthless acts . . .

  Chapter 2

  The Assassin

  ‘You are sure you understand what to do?’ Jahangir looked hard at the Englishman standing before him. This was only his second meeting with Bartholomew Hawkins but it had been enough to convince him that he was well fitted to the role of assassin. Hawkins spoke a crude, halting Persian picked up while serving as a mercenary with the Shah of Persia’s army in Isfahan but enough for Jahangir to have been able to test him to his satisfaction.

  ‘I will give you five hundred gold mohurs now for your journey to Bengal and back. When Sher Afgh
an is dead, I’ll pay you another thousand mohurs.’

  Bartholomew Hawkins nodded. His broad face, reddened by the sun, looked satisfied. Even though he was standing some ten feet away Jahangir could smell the man’s almost animal reek. Why didn’t these foreigners wash? More and more were arriving at his court at Agra. Englishmen like this one, Frenchmen, Italians, Portuguese and Spanish, and all of them, whether missionaries, merchants or mercenaries, seemed to stink. Perhaps it was the clothes they wore. Hawkins’s broad, sweating body was encased in a tight black leather jerkin, pantaloons that fastened with dark red ribbons just above the knee and dun-coloured woollen stockings. On his feet was a pair of scuffed riding boots.

  ‘You don’t mind how I kill him?’

  ‘No. All that matters is that he dies. If you merely injure him that’s no use to me.’

  ‘Once I get to Gaur, how will I find this Sher Afghan?’

  ‘He is the city’s governor and commands the garrison in the Gaur fort. Wait and watch and you will soon see him as he goes about his daily business. Any further questions?’

  Hawkins hesitated a moment. ‘Will you give me a document – a letter with your seal perhaps – proving that I am in your service?’

  ‘No. Nothing must connect me with Sher Afghan’s death. I am paying you to use your ingenuity. You told me you had undertaken sensitive missions for the shah.’

  The Englishman shrugged bulky shoulders. ‘Then I have nothing further to ask. I’ll leave tomorrow.’

  When he was alone Jahangir walked slowly out on to the balcony of his private apartments overlooking the Jumna river. Would Bartholomew Hawkins succeed? He seemed tough enough and, unlike most of the other Europeans at court, could speak some Persian. But one of his main reasons for choosing him was that he was a foreigner. If he’d sent his own men, they might have talked, albeit only to a friend or relation, and news of what he was planning might have reached Sher Afghan, giving him time to flee. That would be less of a risk with Bartholomew Hawkins, who had no clan or family loyalties to anyone in Hindustan and owed no man anything. He hadn’t even asked why Jahangir wanted Sher Afghan dead. Such a lack of curiosity was an excellent thing . . .

  Jahangir had told no one the purpose of his meetings with the English mercenary. He would have confided in Suleiman Beg but his milk-brother was dead from the spotted fever. He had died as together they had returned from a short campaign against some of Khusrau’s followers who had fled into the jungles southeast of Agra. Jahangir shuddered even now as he recalled Suleiman Beg’s last moments lying in a humid, airless tent while the monsoon rains beat down from leaden skies on its roof only twelve short hours after he had fallen ill. He had quickly become so delirious that he had not even recognised Jahangir. His lips, covered in a scum of white saliva, had stretched into a scream while his sweat-soaked body had twitched and convulsed beneath the thin sheet that covered it. Then he had been still, leaving Jahangir no chance to bid him goodbye or to tell him how important his wise and restraining words had been throughout his rebellion against his father or during the recent dark days of Khusrau’s revolt.

  To lose the companion he had trusted above all others just when everything was going so well seemed especially hard. In the ten months since Suleiman Beg’s death there had been no further insurrections – not even the merest whiff of dissent. His empire was secure. The only threat had come from the belligerent ruler of Persia Shah Abbas who – if the reports brought by Abdul Rahman’s scouts were true – was scheming to retake Kandahar from the Moghuls. However, the strong army equipped with twenty bronze cannon and two hundred war elephants that Jahangir had at once despatched to the northwest had made the shah think again. His crimson-capped troops had withdrawn long before Jahangir’s forces were even within sight of Kandahar’s high mud-brick walls.

  He still missed his milk-brother badly. Despite his wives and his remaining sons, his powers and his possessions, he felt alone – isolated even – in a way he had not while Suleiman Beg was alive. His boyhood had been filled with uncertainty, trying on the one hand to live up to the expectations of his father Akbar, a man who had never known failure, while on the other remaining loyal to his Rajput mother who had hated and despised Akbar as the barbarian subjugator of her people. Had it not been for his grandmother Hamida, always ready to listen to and encourage him, he would indeed have been lost. Suleiman Beg had been the only other person who had come anywhere close to occupying such a place in his life – a loyal and wise friend whose advice however unpalatable he had trusted among the self-serving counsel of his courtiers, vying for promotion and reward.

  Only yesterday he had gone to inspect progress on the domed sandstone tomb he had ordered to be built for Suleiman Beg near the Agra fort. As he watched the labourers chisel away at the slabs of stone his loss had struck him anew, and he had spent the evening alone with his thoughts. Suleiman Beg’s death had reminded him as little else could have done of the transitoriness of life. No man however young or in however good health or good spirits knew the number of his days. Before death overtook him he must achieve all that he could but he must also enjoy life – as much or as little of it as remained – and why not use his power to allow him to do so? His musings had finally persuaded him to send for Bartholomew Hawkins and entrust him with his secret mission without further delay.

  Jahangir looked up at a sky that every day grew heavier and darker with rain clouds. In a very few weeks the monsoon rains would begin again. He hoped they wouldn’t hamper Hawkins’s journey down the Jumna and then the Ganges to Bengal. Though the rivers would soon be in full spate enabling the boats to make swift progress, the currents would become more hazardous. It wasn’t an ideal time for such a mission but he was impatient. If Bartholomew Hawkins succeeded, he could take possession of the one thing – or rather the one person – that would make his life complete, even if the cautious Suleiman Beg might have questioned his methods of obtaining it.

  Bartholomew Hawkins slapped at a mosquito that had just bitten him on his jawline. Looking at his hand he saw that it was smeared with dark red blood. Good, he’d got the bastard, though it was only a small victory against one of the armies of biting insects that were making his life such a trial. The horse he had purchased for the last stage of his journey to Gaur was old, its ribs sticking out bony as a camel’s, but even the finest animal would find it hard to make much progress in the thick ochre mud. Only the thought of the thousand mohurs was keeping him going. Since leaving Agra he’d had two prolonged bouts of fever – his sweat had soaked him, his garments and his bedding – and one of such ring-stinging liquid diarrhoea and agonising stomach cramps that he’d vowed – and meant it – to take the first ship he could find when he reached the coast and sail home to England. But at least when he’d had his last bout of fever he’d still been on a riverboat and an old white-clad, white-haired Hindu priest with kind brown eyes had looked after him. Yet when Bartholomew had tried to press a coin into his hand the man had recoiled. He’d never understand this country.

  Peering ahead in the fading light, he could just make out the rear of the Gaur-bound mule train that he had attached himself to. Preoccupied with driving their laden beasts over the boggy ground, none of the merchants had shown any interest in him which was good although he had his story ready – he was a Portuguese official on his way to the trading settlement of Hooghly near the mouth of the Ganges to enquire into the prospects for increasing trade in indigo and calicoes. He looked nothing like an official – nor, come to that, a Portuguese given his curly red-gold hair and pale blue eyes – but these people didn’t know that. Or that in his saddlebags were two very fine steel daggers: one a Persian weapon with a blade so sharp it could split the hair of a horse’s tail and the other a Turkish one with a curved blade engraved – or so he’d been told by the Turkish armourer who’d sold it to him – with the words I will kill you but whether you go to Paradise or to hell is God’s will.

  The emperor’s demeanour had suggested he’d
far rather Sher Afghan went to hell but he’d revealed nothing about why he wanted the man dead. Bartholomew reached for his leather bottle and took a gulp of water. It was warm and fetid-tasting but he’d long ago ceased to worry about such things. All he prayed was that he wouldn’t be seized with another attack in his bowels. Restoppering the bottle his thoughts returned to Jahangir, how intent the dark eyes in that handsome fine-boned face had looked as he’d given Bartholomew his orders. Despite his fine brocades and the glittering rings on every finger, Bartholomew had detected a man perhaps not so unlike himself . . . a man who knew what he wanted and was prepared to be ruthless in pursuit of it. He had also noted the whitened scars – one on the back of Jahangir’s left hand and another running up his right brow into his hairline. The emperor knew about the art of killing too.

  Suddenly Bartholomew heard men shouting to one another up ahead. Instinctively he felt for his sword in case robbers – dacoits the local people called them – were falling on the mule train. Such attacks often happened at dusk when the enfolding darkness gave cover to the robbers and the merchants were growing tired. Three nights ago at that time Bartholomew had saved a puny carpet seller. The man had stopped in drizzling rain to redistribute the load from a mule that had become lame among his other beasts. He had been struggling with a rolled carpet almost as large as himself when two bandits had trotted up out of the darkness. Jumping down from their ponies, one had kicked the carpet dealer to the ground while the other had begun gathering the reins of the mules, preparing to lead them away. Both were so preoccupied they never saw Bartholomew, galloping out of the murk, until it was too late. Drawing his Toledo steel sword he had almost severed one man’s head from his shoulders and split the other’s skull like a ripe melon. The carpet seller’s gratitude had been overwhelming and he’d tried to force a rug on him. But Bartholomew had already been regretting his actions. If he was to carry out his mission and win his reward, he must not attract attention.