A strong stench of waste and squalor hit Akbar’s nose with such violence that he turned his face away, and as they trotted on, he heard groans of pain and sickness, mutterings of prayer. They had reached the northern limits of the city, which was speckled with the shanties of the farmers who came to Agra every morning in bullock carts loaded with wheat. They camped in the city for a few nights until they exhausted their stock. These shanties had been set up by Asif Khan in the north of the city, away from the well lit, cleaner parts. Akbar had heard from Khan Baba that the Hindus prostrated in front of stones and pictures of Gods. If I opened one of these doors and looked inside, he thought, would I find the walls littered with these idols? For a moment he pondered the possibility of doing so, but then he remembered he was no king now, just a trader. His curiosity would have to wait. Perhaps in the future, after he had become the undisputed ruler of the land, he would find ways to break their faith and guide them to the one true path.
How quaint the idea that lifeless stones and drawn pictures could deliver you to paradise—that one true land that only Allah presided over—which you could reach only by living every single day as the great prophet Mohammed decreed. How silly these men were, who saw God—a power beyond any human’s imagination—in their little pictures?
They were at the edge of the city now, and at once Akbar felt the sudden chill in the black air. His ankles wrapped themselves tighter around the sides of his horse, more for warmth than fear. He looked over his shoulder at the city they had just passed, and it too was shrinking within itself, into a shroud that grew smaller with each snuffed out lamp. Beside him Hussain dug into his sack and brought out a timber staff. Wrapping a white cloth around its tip, he doused it with oil and lit it. He may turn out to be impotent on the battlefield, thought Akbar, but he seemed to know the ways of travelling at night.
Their horses hesitated. Hussain took the lead, holding the torch over his head, cajoling his colt at the same time. Akbar followed suit, caressing the neck of his mare, digging his ankles into the stirrups. And with every step the trees closed around them tighter.
* * *
‘We shall stop her for a few moments, Jahanpanah,’ said Hussain.
He had a soft voice, one which had not cracked yet. Akbar wondered where Maham Anga had found such a boy to become his riding companion. Indeed, wouldn’t a guard have done a better job than he?
‘How far do we have to go?’
‘Not more than a few thousand yards, my lord. But the horses are tired and we are approaching a dense part of the woods–’
‘A part which may contain bandits?’ Akbar placed his right hand close to the horse’s side, to calm him. Every now and then the beast snorted and rolled its head sideways, as if wishing to shake off the reins and collapse on its knees. It had not been a long ride, but these were no Persian horses. ‘All right,’ he said finally. ‘We do not have a choice it seems.’
‘Just a short rest, Your Majesty, and then we shall once again be on our way. We shall make up for lost time.’
Akbar looked up to find the moon, but could only see a small circular section of the starlit sky from amid the overhanging branches. Crickets chirped in the bushes and the fallen leaves rustled, even though there was no wind. Akbar had camped in woods before; he knew the sounds the forest made even on quiet nights, but he thought he heard the faint sound of hooves thudding against the soft earth.
‘Do you hear anything, boy?’ he said.
Hussain, who was tethering his horse to a tree, turned around. ‘Hear what, my lord?’ His hand stole deep into his sack, where he probably concealed a weapon.
Akbar held up his finger to his lips. But he heard nothing except the swaying of branches and the low whistle of the wind. The sound had come and gone in an instant.
‘I think the bandits are upon us,’ Akbar said. He felt no fear. His heart stirred with excitement, and once again he fingered the jewelled daggers in his bosom. ‘We shall not wait. We shall go on.’
‘Bandits?’ said Hussain. ‘In these parts?’
‘Yes. Untie your horse. We shall ride with our weapons drawn.’
Except for the soft tread of their horses, a deathly silence fell around them. They carried on along the narrow path. With every step, Akbar looked around him, his right hand holding up the largest dagger in his set. The blade which had been sharpened that very evening gleamed in the firelight. Hussain had drawn his blade too, and his face showed an earnest attempt at courage, but his eyes—the eyes of a toddler, really—betrayed him.
Even Akbar felt fear stirring in his chest. These were mere daggers, good to fight off a pickpocket in the alleyways of Agra, but here, in the black woods surrounded by bandits with swords, spears and lances, what good would they be? If only Maham Anga had taken better precautions. Grow your own eyes and ears, she had said. Was this her way of showing him how badly he needed to begin thinking for himself?
They turned a sharp bend to the right, and Hussain’s horse was the first to grunt doubtfully at the soft earth. Akbar’s showed no such hesitation and plunged knee-deep into a ditch with such force that the knife slipped from his hand. His body heaved. He held onto the reins and whispered a fierce expletive in the panicked beast’s ear. Akbar wrenched his feet out of his stirrups, and pushed himself off the saddle, jumping down to the side of firmer ground. Hussain who had also jumped off his colt ran over to him, pointing the torch at him frantically. In the light, Akbar saw that his horse’s hooves were entangled in a net, and the more it thrashed, the tighter the ropes wound themselves around its body.
Now, he thought. Anytime now.
He crouched, keeping his head steady. He relaxed his eyes and listened for sounds. His right hand brought out another, smaller knife. Hussain stood with his back to him, swishing the torch around. But everywhere he looked, he saw nothing but dark foliage.
A pungent dash of oil hit Akbar’s nose, then the scratch of a match. Before they could look at one another, a whip cracked from the thickets behind Hussain, and struck out at his left wrist, the one holding the dagger.
‘Hussain!’ cried Akbar, running to him.
The boy was already on his knees, whimpering in pain. The hand that held the torch trembled, so Akbar snatched it away from him. He advanced toward the bush, renewing the grip on his dagger.
‘My lord –’
‘Shh.’
The whip licked out of the bush again quietly, but Akbar, ready for it, bore the crack on the staff, and when it pulled back, ran with it to dive into the bush. In the weak light he caught sight of a flash of metal and a pair of gleaming red eyes. As he fell amid the branches and leaves, he reached out with his right hand and grasped at something—anything—that would come to hand. His fingers felt the rough of wool. With a grunt he tugged at it and the weight of a man dragged toward him.
When he felt he was close enough, he lashed at him with his knife.
The man screamed. Akbar swished with his left hand, this time caught hold of a clutch of hair, and aimed the stroke of his dagger at the man’s cheek. Against the blade he felt a patch of rough skin, and another howl leapt into the air. Just as Akbar was about to jump into the bush, a whip lashed out of the darkness and caught him in the middle of the spine, digging into his skin through his garment, pushing him out into the clearing again, next to the fallen torch.
‘Who’s there?’ Akbar called out, his eyes ablaze. ‘Come out and fight like a man, whoever you are!’ He crouched and picked up the light again, pointing it straight at the bush. A low moan of pain reached him. ‘Come on out!’ said Akbar. ‘If you were born to a woman, you would come and fight us.’ The flesh in his back burned from the whip wound.
He heard a patter of steps behind him and in a moment, the clearing was flooded with light. He turned around to find Hussain surrounded by a group of men, one of them holding a sword to his neck. A cloaked horseman trotted into the clearing. He jumped off his horse and strode towards Akbar. He wore an old, battered breastplate, a b
rown scabbard, and golden, pointed shoes fashioned out of brass.
Akbar threw the torch away to the side—he had no need for it any longer—and held onto the dagger tightly.
Five
‘WELL,’ SAID THE cloaked man. ‘We have found a trader who wishes to fight.’
‘And I shall fight you too, if you dare,’ said Akbar, advancing a step.
The man looked around at his comrades. A moment passed and they burst into raucous laughter. A snivelling robber stole out of the bushes, a whip in hand and a fresh knife wound on his right cheek.
‘Come here, Lakha,’ said the cloaked chief. ‘The boy with the knife is dangerous.’
Akbar shot the rat-like thief a look, in response to which he cracked his whip on the earth once and joined his band.
‘Now I would love to stay and fight you, boy,’ said the chief, his eyes trained on Akbar. ‘But I would rather take all the jewels that you have and leave you here, unarmed, with Lakha. We shall see how heroic you are when you do not have a weapon.’
‘I wonder, too, how heroic your man can be without a weapon in his hands.’
‘We are bandits, my lord.’ The chief bowed elaborately in his direction. ‘We fight only with weapons.’
‘And you fight from behind trees.’
‘And we fight from behind trees, yes. We are not as courageous, shall we say, as noblemen who disguise themselves as traders.’
Akbar caught Hussain’s eye, and knew that the younger man’s heart had skipped a beat, as did his. He gulped. As long as the bandits thought they were traders, they had a chance of being shown some mercy, but now that they knew that they were nobility only Allah knew what they would do to them. Khan Baba had told young Akbar on his tours to the city that the lower classes despised those above them, especially the noblemen, the jagirdaars who levied taxes and squeezed the farmers for their last drop of sweat.
The chief walked up to Akbar. ‘So,’ he said. ‘Which jagir do you belong to, my lord?’
His breath reeked of arrack, the locks of his beard were matted and brown with dirt. The eyes, though, twinkled with mischief every time he spoke. It was clear that he was having a good time.
‘I do not know what you are saying. We’re not noblemen. We’re traders.’
‘Certainly.’ The chief turned to his men. ‘Sukhi, tie up both these dogs to the tree, will you?’ Then he said to Akbar, ‘My lord, if you resist or if you make any quick moves to fight my men, I swear I shall kill your little friend here and will make you watch him die. And then I will kill you too.’ He smiled widely enough for Akbar to see his rotting, chipped canine. ‘Do you understand?’
Akbar nodded and let his dagger fall to the ground.
They tied Hussain to a berry tree and Akbar pressed against the hard bark of a young banyan. Roots dangled down from the branches around him, and the clearing now filled with a mass of black-robed men. ‘You have not heard the name Bihari, have you, my lord?’ he asked, seating himself on a rock at the edge of the clearing, a sufficient distance away from both of them.
Akbar shook his head. If it was a name he had never heard, this man could not be as dangerous as he wished them to believe. With bandits, as with noblemen and kings, Khan Baba had once said, one practiced the look and behaviour of the big fish before becoming one. It was not unheard of for a nobleman of a small jagir, for instance, to call himself the Shehenshah or the Sultan.
‘You have not, eh? No matter. That can easily be changed.’
‘You are just a bandit. Why must I know you?’
‘Just a bandit,’ said Bihari, grinning again. ‘And yet, here I am with your life in the palm of my hand. Like you hold the lives of the farmers in your village in the palm of yours, my lord. It does not feel very good when it is your life that is being snuffed out, does it?’
‘I do what I do by the decree of the emperor.’
‘Ah! You shall not scare me by taking the emperor’s name. The emperor is just a boy, living off what his uncle throws him. You do what you do because there is wealth in it, my lord. I have seen the palaces in which you people live, the guards you employ, the harems, the gardens, the fountains. All of that is built on the blood of your farmers, is it not?’
Akbar did not answer. His words only seemed to aggravate the bandit more. Maham Anga had not warned him about bandits. Now a curious thought struck him. Had she anticipated this? Had she wished for him to be killed by bandits? Was it possible that Maham Anga had an eye on the throne herself, so that her son would succeed him and Bairam Khan?
But Ammi! She who had fed him with her own breast. She would not send him to his death in so cruel a fashion. Would she?
‘Come,’ Bihari was saying, ‘let us see how rich you are under these sacks.’ He signalled to his men, who loosened their bags off the horses’ backs and began to rummage through them. Out came the little bundles of silver and gold coins, then the jewelled daggers. One of his men handed them over to Bihari.
Bihari cooed at them. ‘My, that is one exquisite set of weapons you have, my lord. I think I shall keep them for myself.’ The ropes dug into Akbar’s wrists and torso, and one of them wrapped around the spot where the whip had struck him. Every time he took a breath, the ropes closed around him tighter like a python, making him wince. Beside him, Hussain was a wreck—now sobbing, now praying, now begging the bandits for mercy in his pitifully thin voice.
Bihari ignored him, and fastened his gaze on Akbar. He walked over to him and bent down beside him. ‘Do you know, my lord? My father used to be a farmer. He used to say that to till the land and feed one’s family off it was the only true job for a man. That way you are not taking anything from anyone else.’
Akbar’s heartbeat began to quicken. From the corner of his eye, he saw the chief’s hand grip the handle of one of the knives.
Bihari flung the pouch onto the ground and held up the dagger; running a light finger along its serrated edge. ‘For years he toiled on the land. Our land! And for years he paid the nobleman what they demanded. But you know your kind better. The more you have, the more you want. Is that not so?’ He placed the knife’s point on Akbar’s stomach, and pushed with enough pressure so that he could feel the sharpness against his skin.
‘Yes, you tuck in your stomach,’ he said, eyes widening. ‘You do not want to be stabbed. You do not want to die.’ He waited, as though he wanted Akbar to say something.
‘For Allah’s sake, do not hurt him!’ cried Hussain. ‘Do whatever you wish to me.’
Bihari ignored him. ‘Yes, my lord? You do not wish to die, do you?’
Akbar shook his head.
‘No.’ Bihari shook his head. ‘No one wants to die, but everyone must, some of us before others. That is what the nobleman said to my father, that year when the crops failed.’ The knife made another push, this time into Akbar’s side, hard enough to make him wonder if it had drawn blood. ‘And do you know what happened? My father died that year, before he turned forty. Say,’ he said, grinning, ‘how old may you be, my lord?’
‘I turn twenty this year, at the onset of winter.’
‘Ah, twenty. Such a young, tender age. It will be a pity, would it not, if you were to breathe your last tonight?’
Akbar held his silence.
‘Yes, it would be sad indeed. Your mother and father, brothers and sisters will grieve.’ He turned to Hussain. ‘And your friends.’
The knife eased at his side. ‘I do not generally kill the noblemen whom I rob, my lord.’ He paused for a moment, examining the knife’s blade. With his free hand he scratched the side of his face, from the ear down to the chin. ‘I do not kill noblemen generally, but then again, noblemen do not fight my men either.’
‘He did not fight you on purpose!’ cried Hussain, struggling against the ropes. ‘He did not know you!’
Akbar looked around him. They men had their heads bent, weapons lowered. The forest descended into a deep silence. Akbar did not know what to make of it, but he was aware—from the s
weat on his palms, from his quickened heartbeat—that he was scared out of his wits. An emperor must never be frightened, but when death stands and looks you in the eye, fear takes a life of its own.
‘There is something about you that annoys me,’ said Bihari, placing the knife edge on the base of Akbar’s neck. ‘I think it is your face, those mouse-like eyes. Have you ever been told by anyone that you are incredibly ugly, my lord?’
Akbar shook his head and closed his eyes.
‘Then you do not have honest friends. And what is a life without honest friends, eh? So I think this time—this one time—I shall make an exception to my ways and kill you.’
‘No!’ cried Hussain.
Akbar pushed back against the bark of the tree as much as he could. Suddenly he could no longer feel the sting of the ropes. Suddenly it seemed that all the world was comprised of only him and that knife edge, which would—any moment now—slash his neck. Gone were thoughts of Khan Baba, of Ammi, of Ruqaiya, of Foofi, of the Mughal throne. It was him. And the knife’s edge.
* * *
And the voice of Allah, who would throw open the gates and welcome him.
It came to his ears—sweet as Foofi’s poetry, powerful as Ammi’s gaze, loving as Ruqaiya’s caresses. It came rushing over the fallen leaves, faster than the night wind, melodious enough to make him want to sleep. Once or twice the voice called, but Akbar could not quite hear what it said. The third time, he heard it well, and it brought a frown to his brow. Because the voice, the voice of Allah, did not call him by his name.
Instead, it said, ‘Bihari.’
Six
THE KNIFE EDGE eased on Akbar's neck. With each passing second he felt himself being pulled away from heaven’s gates. But fear held him like stone and could not muster up the courage to open his eyes.
‘What do you think you are doing, Bihari?’ said the voice.
‘I…I…this nobleman–’
‘He is no nobleman.’
Akbar slowly opened his eyes to see a middle-aged man standing at the edge of the clearing. He wore a white dhoti, a dirty brown shawl, and a weathered pair of open sandals on his feet. A long red line of vermillion divided his forehead into two. A knapsack slung from his left shoulder and a sacred thread slashed across his torso, the tip of which was wedged into his dhoti. What struck Akbar were the stranger’s eyes—luminescent and alive.
The Crows of Agra Page 3