Empire of the Moghul: The Tainted Throne (5 page)

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.

But now the reason for the shouts wasn’t
dacoits.
The cries were of relief and joy, not fear. Ahead of him Bartholomew could see watchtowers silhouetted against the remnants of the sunset – it was Gaur. Bartholomew let go of his sword hilt and gave his sweating horse a pat. ‘Not long now, you wretched old nag.’

What was all that commotion in the courtyard at this hour? Bartholomew wondered irritably as he lay on the straw-filled mattress in the small room he’d rented in a caravanserai just inside the walls of Gaur by the main gate. He sat up and scratched vigorously then clambered to his feet and without bothering to pull on his boots went outside. Though it was barely dawn, merchants were laying out their wares on a great stone platform in the centre of the courtyard ready to begin trading: sacks of spices, bags of rice, millet and maize, rolls of dun-coloured cotton and of garish silks. Bartholomew surveyed them without interest but as he turned away he found the carpet seller he had rescued looking up at him.

‘Gaur is a fine city, sir.’

‘Very fine,’ Bartholomew said mechanically. He was about to go back to his room – he could do with an hour or two’s more sleep – but then a thought struck him. ‘Hassan Ali – that is your name, isn’t it?’

The man nodded.

‘Hassan Ali, you know Gaur well?’

‘Yes. I come here six times a year and two of my cousins are traders here.’

‘You said you wanted to repay me for my help. Be my guide. I don’t know this place and my employers in Portugal wish me to send them a full report of it.’

An hour later Bartholomew followed Hassan Ali across the square courtyard of the caravanserai and out through its high arched gateway into the streets of Gaur. At first with its narrow, refuse-strewn streets it looked a mean place but as Hassan Ali, walking with surprising speed for such a small man, led him towards the centre the streets began to broaden and the houses – some of them two storeys high – to become more handsome. Bartholomew also noted the many groups of soldiers they passed. ‘Where are they going?’ He pointed to a double row of twenty green-sashed, green-turbaned warriors marching by.

‘They were the detachment guarding the city’s gates during the night but they have now been relieved and are returning to their barracks.’

‘Where are they?’

‘Not far. I will show you.’

A few minutes later Bartholomew looked up at a tall square fortress-like building with a parade ground in front of it. Built of mud bricks, its walls rose about fifty feet. As he watched, a group of horsemen, doubtless returning after exercising their mounts, trotted through the heavy metal-spiked gate that was the barracks’ single entrance. ‘It’s a fine building.’

‘Yes. It was built by the Emperor Akbar – may his spirit rest in Paradise – after his conquest of Bengal. He also reinforced the city walls and built the fine caravanserais that we have here. He was truly a great man.’

‘I’m sure. Who commands the Moghul troops here? He
must be an important man to be so favoured by the emperor.’

‘I don’t know his name. I’m sorry.’

‘It’s not important. I was merely curious to know who was entrusted with such a task. Hindustan is so huge compared with my own country. There, it is far easier for a monarch to control his lands and to know what is going on . . .’

‘It is true. Our empire is without parallel in the world.’ Hassan Ali nodded complacently. ‘Come. Let me take you to the great bazaar where much trading is done in addition to that in the caravanserais.’

They were just turning away when the harsh metallic blaring of a trumpet made them halt. Moments later twelve soldiers splendidly mounted on matching bay horses cantered out of a side street and across the parade ground towards the barracks. One of them was holding the short brass trumpet he must have just sounded to signal their arrival. They were followed by three further riders – two in domed helmets riding on either side of a tall man who was looking to neither right nor left and whose long dark hair flowed from beneath a white-plumed helmet.

Bartholomew’s pulses quickened. He glanced around for Hassan Ali and saw him conversing with a melon seller in a grimy dhoti. Bartholomew listened hard but couldn’t understand what they were saying. It must be a local language, he thought. It certainly wasn’t Persian. The melon seller seemed to have a lot to say. He had emerged from behind his mounds of cylindrical yellow-green fruits and was talking vigorously and pointing to the barracks into which the man with the plumed helmet and his escort had now disappeared.

‘Sir,’ said Hassan Ali, ‘the commander of the garrison is called Sher Afghan. That was him we just saw. The melon seller told me he is a great warrior. Two years ago the late emperor sent him to the jungles and swamps of Arakan east of here to deal with the pirates living there. It is a terrible place, infested with crocodiles, but Sher Afghan triumphed. He captured and executed five hundred pirates, throwing their bodies on to pyres of their own burning boats.’

‘Does he live in the barracks?’

‘No. His mansion is in a large garden to the north of the city, by the Swordmaker’s Gate. Now, let us go to the bazaar. You will find much to interest you there . . . last time I was here I saw a painted wooden figure of one of your Portuguese gods. It had golden wings . . .’

Bartholomew bided his time. Every day the rains still came, hot and heavy, the drops bouncing up from the paved courtyard of the caravanserai. In between the showers he put on the hooded dark brown robe he had purchased in the bazaar to make his appearance less remarkable and walked around Gaur until he had fixed in his mind every twist of every street, every alley, in the area between the barracks and Sher Afghan’s house. He also observed his intended victim’s movements which, apart from the odd day’s hunting or hawking when the weather allowed, seemed surprisingly regular. Nearly every afternoon, Sher Afghan spent several hours in the barracks. On Mondays he reviewed his troops on the parade ground, watching their displays of musketry practice, and on Wednesdays he inspected some part of the city’s defences.

During the long journey from Agra Bartholomew had pondered how best to find an opportunity to kill Sher Afghan. He smiled to think he had even contemplated trying to pick a quarrel with him as if Gaur were an English town where he and Sher Afghan might meet and brawl in a tavern. Now he had seen not just the muscular strength of the man but that a bodyguard accompanied him everywhere the idea had less to commend it. Whatever he did must be by stealth. It might be possible to find a vantage point from which to aim an arrow or hurl a dagger but the chances of even wounding him, let alone of killing him outright, were slender. Jahangir had made it absolutely clear that he wanted Sher Afghan dead.