Ruler of the World eotm-3

by Alex Rutherford

  Salim’s emerald-green face cloth slipped for a moment and the bitter wind nipped his own exposed flesh. Despite his thick, pustin, sheepskin jacket, he felt chilled to the core and Suleiman Beg’s lips looked blue with cold beneath the luxuriant dark moustache he had grown over the past weeks, of which he was inordinately proud. Snow was beginning to fall thickly now, the flakes whipping around them. The head of Salim’s grey horse went down as its forelegs slipped on the frozen ground, almost unseating him. Leaning back in the saddle he pulled hard at the reins and the weary animal managed to right itself just as Salim caught what he thought was the sound of hoofbeats ahead.

  ‘Halt. I heard something. Zahed Butt, take a detachment forward to investigate,’ he yelled to the captain of his guard. ‘Order the rest of the column to take up defensive positions around the baggage wagons.’

  ‘Who do you think it is?’ Suleiman Beg asked.

  ‘I don’t know, but we can’t take any risks.’

  As Zahed Butt cantered off into the snow at the head of a dozen soldiers, Salim frowned. Lawless bands infested these passes but surely even they might baulk at attacking an imperial force increased to five hundred well-armed men by the addition of recruits from the clans around Peshawar. War was these clansmen’s trade. All were well mounted on shaggy-haired ponies bred to withstand the winter conditions, and well armed. Most carried long-barrelled muskets strapped to their saddles beside their lances. He checked his own weapons — his Persian sword and two daggers, one a throwing weapon, all slung round his waist, and a double battleaxe strapped to his saddle. A qorchi was carrying his musket and his bow and arrows, though in the blinding blizzard gun and bow alike would be almost useless with only fleeting indistinct shadows to aim at.

  The wind was growing fiercer, howling down the narrow pass. Salim’s shivering horse whinnied its discomfort and, lowering its head once more, pressed closer to Suleiman Beg’s mount. Salim tightened his grip on the reins again. If anything was amiss ahead he must be ready — better prepared to meet an attack than on the Indus. . Anxious minutes passed as he peered into the whiteness, straining his eyes and ears for any sight or sound which might betray what lay ahead. Then, above the wind, he thought he faintly made out three short blasts of a trumpet — the agreed signal that all was well. A minute or two later he heard them again, nearer and more distinct, and soon afterwards his soldiers re-emerged from the whirling snow. As they drew closer, Salim saw about a dozen newcomers riding close behind them.

  ‘Highness.’ Zahed Butt trotted up, his bushy beard and his sheepskin cap alike crusted with snow and his breath rising in frosty spirals. ‘Saif Khan, the Governor of Kabul, has sent an escort to guide you on the final stages of your journey.’

  Salim’s shoulders dropped as he relaxed. His long ride into exile was nearly ended.

  Chapter 25

  The Treasurer of Kabul

  The citadel’s massive walls — at least ten feet thick in most places — were a good defence against the winter storms that had continued unabated since Salim’s arrival in Kabul two days ago, and a fire of crackling khanjak logs was burning in the hearth, now and then spitting showers of red-gold sparks. All the same Salim felt chilled to his very bones. He drew closer to the fire to warm his hands as he waited for Saif Khan, who had gone to give instructions to his steward, to return.

  While attendants piled yet more wood on the fire, Salim turned his head to gaze at the low platform at the far end of the long room and the throne which stood on it. Its red velvet cushions were faded and its gilded feet and high curved back a little tarnished. In the distant Moghul palaces of Lahore or Fatehpur Sikri far beyond the frozen passes such a shabby item would be unthinkable, but Salim looked at it with respect. This was where his great-grandfather, the future first Moghul emperor, had sat as the King of Kabul to dispense justice. Perhaps it was from this very seat that he had announced his intention to invade Hindustan and claim it for the Moghuls. In the flickering light of torches in sconces high on the rough stone walls, Salim could almost conjure an image of Babur deep in thought, his sword Alamgir at his waist. If Babur could leave Kabul to satisfy his ambitions perhaps it was still possible for his great-grandson to do the same and fulfil the Sufi seer’s prophecy, Salim comforted himself. Just as soon as these snows eased he would visit Babur’s grave in its hillside garden above Kabul. .

  The bejewelled luxury of the Moghul palaces of Hindustan with their intricately carved sandstone, scented fountains and elaborate ritual seemed separated by more than distance from this stark stronghold where Babur had nurtured his plans of conquest. Of course, the Kabul citadel, perched on a rocky promontory above the town, had never been intended as a palace to impress the cultured. It had been built to awe the local tribes and to control the trade routes. Kabul’s wealth depended on the vast, swaying caravans that passed through each year with their cargos of jewels, sugar, cloth and spices, and that wealth must be protected. Even now, the Kabul revenues were important to the Moghul treasury.

  ‘Forgive me, Highness, for leaving you alone.’ Saif Khan returned with a swish of his fox-lined robes. He was a stout, genial-looking middle-aged man, though a long white scar on his left cheek and some ragged frills of shiny, pinkish flesh where his left ear had been would have shown he was a fighter even if Salim hadn’t known of his years of campaigns on the empire’s frontiers which had led his father to appoint him governor. ‘If you will allow me, I would like to introduce the other members of my council to you.’

  ‘Of course.’

  Saif Khan whispered to an attendant who at once went to the door and ushered in the six counsellors. The governor introduced each in turn — the master-of-horse, the chief quartermaster, the commander of the garrison. . As they bowed, Salim surveyed them with only polite interest. But then Saif Khan uttered a name that made him pay more attention. ‘This is Ghiyas Beg, Treasurer of Kabul.’ Ghiyas Beg. . where had he heard that name before? Salim stared at the tall, angular man bending before him. As the man raised his head again and Salim looked into his fine-boned face — less starved than when he had last seen it but still gaunt — the years rolled back. He was a boy again, listening transfixed in Fatehpur Sikri to Ghiyas Beg standing before Akbar and telling his tale of his desperate flight from Persia, of how he had nearly abandoned his newborn daughter beneath a tree. .

  ‘I remember when you came to Fatehpur Sikri, Ghiyas Beg.’

  ‘I am honoured.’

  ‘How are your family?’

  ‘All in good health, Highness. The mountain air of Kabul has been good for them.’

  ‘Including your daughter?’ Salim was struggling to remember her name. ‘Mehrunissa, I think you called her?’

  ‘Indeed, Highness. Mehrunissa, “Sun Among Women”. She is well.’

  ‘You’ve clearly prospered here. My father sent you to Kabul as an assistant but now you are the treasurer,’ Salim said, and continued a little awkwardly: ‘He has sent me to Kabul to satisfy myself that it is being properly governed and in particular that all the revenues are being correctly accounted for and sent to the imperial treasuries.’

  ‘I will stake my life that not a single shahrukki has gone astray.’

  ‘I am glad to hear it, but I will still need to inspect your records.’

  ‘Of course, Highness. I can bring my ledgers here, or if you prefer, when these storms ease, perhaps you would honour my home with a visit?’

  ‘I will.’

  When Salim was alone with the governor once more he stared for a while into the flames. Something about Ghiyas Beg intrigued him, just as it had the first time he had seen him. The smooth words falling so effortlessly from his tongue could have been spoken by any courtier. However, Salim hadn’t missed the look on Ghiyas Beg’s face when he had questioned him about the revenues. The Persian seemed deeply protective of his honour. . or was he being suspiciously over-vehement in his protestations of injured innocence?

  Something his grandmother had once said about stran
ge patterns in life — and about Ghiyas Beg in particular — came back to him. Hadn’t she predicted that the Persian might one day become important to the Moghuls? But the question was how? For better or for worse? Looking up, he found Saif Khan watching him curiously. What was he thinking? That here was the wayward son of the emperor, sent to Kabul as punishment for his sins? He must know the tour of inspection was a mere pretence and that Salim had left the court in the deepest disgrace. Gossip travelled quickly even if Abul Fazl hadn’t written to Saif Khan as Salim was sure he had, perhaps even instructed him to provide reports on his behaviour. To cover his confusion he asked, ‘Tell me more about Ghiyas Beg. Is he as good and honest a treasurer as he claims?’

  ‘The emperor has no better servant in Kabul. He has improved the way in which tolls are levied on the caravans and also the gathering of taxes from the towns and villages. During the five years that I have been governor, he has increased income by nearly a half.’

  Perhaps Ghiyas Beg was as guileless as he had appeared today and in his original audience before Akbar all those years ago, Salim thought. He realised too there was nothing to be gained from continuing his inner debate about whether he was reporting on Saif Khan’s conduct or the other way round. He must behave as a conscientious inspector of the collection of his father’s taxes and the administration of his province. That would be his only hope of securing a return to Akbar’s favour.

  The snow had ceased and a temporary thaw meant that the battlements of the citadel were no longer covered in ice when Salim rode down the ramp, outriders ahead and Zahed Butt and his bodyguard close behind. He had invited Suleiman Beg to go with him to Ghiyas Beg’s house in the town below but his milk-brother had laughingly asked to be excused on the grounds that he had no head for figures.

  A chill wind was driving small, fleecy white clouds across a pale blue winter sky as Salim approached the town walls. Beyond, smoke was rising from the caravanserais where only a few hardy travellers were billeted. When winter was over and all the passes were open again, Kabul would be teeming and walking its streets a man might hear twenty, perhaps thirty, different languages, or so Saif Khan had told him. Unlike Suleiman Beg, Saif Khan had been eager to accompany Salim, as he always was wherever he wanted to go, but Salim was suspicious of Saif Khan’s motives. Was he trying to keep an eye on him? In any case, he was weary of the governor and his repetitive stories and crude jokes. He would see Ghiyas Beg alone.

  Ghiyas Beg’s house was a large two-storey building occupying one side of a tree-shaded square. The treasurer, turbaned in green silk and flanked by attendants, was waiting outside to greet him and Salim saw that a length of purple velvet had been spread from the marble block where he was to alight over the puddles on the thawing ground to the doors of polished chestnut wood that led into the house.

  ‘Highness, you are welcome.’ Ghiyas Beg waved away a groom and himself held Salim’s right stirrup as he dismounted. ‘Please follow me.’

  Signalling his bodyguard and the other soldiers to remain outside, Salim accompanied Ghiyas Beg through the doors and across a courtyard into a large, luxuriously furnished chamber in which two braziers of coals were glowing. Cream brocade hangings covered the walls while bolsters and cushions of sapphire-blue velvet were set against them. The carpets were soft, thick and richly coloured, better than any in the citadel — in fact, the best Salim had seen since leaving his father’s palace in Lahore.

  ‘You live well,’ he said. The magnificence of Ghiyas Beg’s residence had reignited his doubts. Even if he was the best tax collector Saif Khan had ever seen, was Ghiyas Beg still creaming off some of the revenue for himself?

  ‘I am glad you like my home. I’ve tried to furnish it the way my house in Persia was, importing painted and patterned tiles and so forth. So many caravans pass through Kabul, a man can find or order anything. Please, take some refreshment. The grapes grown around Kabul make good wine — almost as good as the red wines of Ghazni to the south — or perhaps some rose-flavoured sherbet? My wife is skilled at distilling the fragrance of the roses she grows so that even in the harshest months of winter we can be reminded that the summer warmth will return.’

  ‘Thank you. Some sherbet.’

  An attendant knelt before Salim with a bowl of water in which to rinse his hands and a scented towel on which to dry them while another poured some sherbet into a silver cup. Salim took the cup and drank. Ghiyas Beg was right. The sherbet indeed tasted and smelled of roses and of summer.

  ‘I have the ledgers ready, Highness. What do you want to examine first? The caravan revenues or the village taxes?’

  ‘A little later,’ said Salim, deciding to draw Ghiyas Beg out and thus perhaps to catch him off his guard. ‘First tell me about your life here. I’m curious.’

  ‘About what aspect, Highness?’

  ‘You are a cultured, educated man. How do you manage to live in such a place as Kabul? What possible satisfaction or interest can you find in its squabbling tribes, its blood feuds and its greedy merchants?’

  ‘A man can find interest in anything if he sets his mind to it. And remember, Highness, I’ve cause to be grateful even to be in such a remote place as this. When your father sent me and my family here, he rescued us from penury and gave us hope. This may not be Isfahan or Lahore, but I have worked hard, tried to do my duty, and I have prospered. The emperor pays his servants well. By now I am wealthy enough to take my family back to Persia but my loyalty is to your father and I will stay here for as long as I can serve him well. Perhaps one day he will remember me and appoint me to a post in one of his great cities — Delhi or Agra, maybe.’

  Ghiyas Beg seemed almost too good to be true, thought Salim. ‘And if not?’ he asked.

  ‘I am content. When a man has seen death reaching out for himself and his family and escapes, he learns to be thankful for what he has and not to make himself unhappy by yearning for what he cannot have. That is a lesson to us all, Highness, whatever our station in life.’

  Salim started. Ghiyas Beg wasn’t referring to his own position, was he? The treasurer’s expression remained respectful. In any case, he himself could never be that patient and philosophic, Salim thought. Every time an imperial post rider clattered up the ramp into the Kabul citadel, his leather satchel bulging with letters and despatches, he hoped that one was from his father recalling him to court, but so far he had received not one word from Akbar. The only official letters to him had been from Abul Fazl asking nitpicking questions about his reports on subjects such as the state of Kabul’s defences or the condition of the road to Kandahar.

  ‘Please try one of these sweetmeats. In Persia it is traditional to offer them to our guests. My wife made them from almonds and honey with her own hands.’

  ‘You have only one wife?’

  ‘She is like a part of me. I need no other.’

  ‘You are a lucky man. Few can say that,’ said Salim, thinking how much Ghiyas Beg’s words reminded him of his grandmother’s description of her marriage to his grandfather, Humayun. ‘But doesn’t your wife long to return to Persia?’

  ‘She feels as I do that we should be content with our lot. God has been merciful.’

  Salim stared at the treasurer, impressed despite himself by the man’s quiet dignity and patience and again recalling Hamida and how she had often told him that their troubles had only strengthened the bonds between herself and Humayun. He could only wish that his own ties with any of his wives were so strong. But he reminded himself he had come to Ghiyas Beg’s house to question him about how he carried out his responsibilities, not about his private life.

  ‘Bring me your ledgers, Ghiyas Beg, and explain in detail how you levy the toll on the caravans that pass through Kabul. Saif Khan told me that you have made some improvements. .’

  The warm night air was pungent with the smell of dung fires, spices and baking bread as the citizens of Kabul prepared their evening meal on the flat roofs of the houses Salim passed on his way through the streets
. Over recent weeks as spring had blossomed he had been so many times to Ghiyas Beg’s house that his grey stallion could probably find its way there blindfolded. ‘What do you and that old man find to talk about? You spend more time with him than I ever did with my father,’ Suleiman Beg had asked earlier that day, just as he had on many previous occasions. He was amazed that Salim sometimes preferred the Persian’s company to the chance to hunt wild asses or go hawking in the hills around Kabul.

  It was something Salim could not quite explain, even to himself. In Ghiyas Beg he had discovered a cultured, civilised man — a man of ideas and spiritual depth who, he sensed, felt as imprisoned and unfulfilled as he did but, unlike himself, could still find contentment. His visits to his house no longer had anything to do with checking that the treasurer was efficient and honest and indeed a great asset to his father. Ghiyas Beg had quickly proved his records accurate, and that his luxuriously furnished house had been financed by the salary due to his rank and a few trading ventures he had engaged in over the years. However, the two men had found, despite the disparity in their ages, that they shared many interests, from the natural world to the changing style of miniature painting under influences from Persia and Europe.

  Tonight, however, was different. It was the first time Ghiyas Beg had invited Salim to dine at his house. Emerging from a street so narrow that the upper storeys of the timber-framed mud-brick houses on each side almost touched, Salim saw that the square where the treasurer lived was ablaze with light. Lanterns of coloured glass — red, green, blue and yellow — swayed from the boughs of budding almond and apricot trees. On either side of the entrance to the house stood giant candelabras four feet high in which burned a mass of candles. Crystals of golden frankincense smouldered in jewelled incense burners.

  Ghiyas Beg was, as usual, waiting to greet him, dressed more magnificently than Salim had ever seen him. His silk robe was embroidered with flowers and butterflies and from a gold chain round his lean waist hung an ivory-hilted dagger in a coral and turquoise inlaid scabbard. On his head was a tall velvet cap like those worn by the envoys from the Shah of Persia Salim remembered seeing at Akbar’s court.