Empire of the Moghul: Ruler of the World (37 page)

Disregarding the noise and the fierce conflict around him, Salim climbed over the raised wooden front of the howdah. He managed to get his legs on either side of the elephant’s body and to slide down on to its neck. Grabbing at the elephant’s steel plate head armour to steady himself, he drew his sword. Reversing it, and despite the cuts its sharp edge made to his hand, he used its hilt instead of the
mahout
’s steel rod to tap the elephant’s skull to give the command for it to halt. Reassured by the weight of a rider on its neck once more, the animal began to calm and soon halted. In its panic, it had moved fifty yards away from the centre of the fight. Turning round, Salim could see that the survivors of the Kashmiri cavalry charge were breaking off the battle and retreating back through the rhododendrons up towards the ridge over which they had emerged less than an hour previously. Many did not make it. Salim saw one
cream-turbaned Kashmiri, realising that he could not outride his four Moghul pursuers on his blowing black horse, turn and charge back towards them, striking one from the saddle before being cut down himself by a blow to the head.

Later that day, Salim was summoned once more to his father’s war council. This time as he entered the scarlet command tent he did not find the discussion already in full flow. Rather, all eyes were turned to him as he entered and his father was conducting his commanders in applause. As he made his way towards the stool Akbar indicated to him, which was placed next to the emperor’s own gilded throne, Salim was untroubled by doubts that on this occasion at least his behaviour had pleased his father.

‘Y
ou are fifteen years old. It is time you took your first wife.’ Before Salim could reply, Akbar strode off to inspect the target – a log of wood on which three large clay jars had been placed on the parade ground beneath the royal palace in Lahore – at which he had just fired his musket. Even from three hundred yards away, Salim could see that his father had shattered the middle jar. Since their triumphant return from Kashmir three months ago Akbar had several times invited him hunting, hawking or to musketry practice.

Salim hurried after him. ‘Father, what did you say?’

‘That the time has come for you to marry. As well as helping to strengthen our dynasty it will be a celebration of our great victory in Kashmir.’ Akbar smiled. Salim knew that not even Akbar had thought Kashmir would fall into his hands quite so easily. Confronted by the reality that the mountains encircling his kingdom were no barrier against his determined Moghul enemy, its ruler had rushed to sue for peace. In his mind’s eye, Salim again saw the Sultan of Kashmir prostrating himself at his father’s feet outside Akbar’s scarlet command tent then standing meekly while the
khutba
was read in the name of the Moghul emperor. Akbar had granted the sultan life and liberty but from now on Kashmir would be firmly under Moghul control. What was more his father – never content with his
victories or his empire’s boundaries – was already readying his forces for his invasion of Sind.

‘But who am I to marry?’

‘After consulting with my counsellors I have selected your cousin, Man Bai. Her father Bhagwan Das, Raja of Amber, has already given his consent.’

Salim stared at his father. Man Bai was his first cousin, the daughter of his mother’s brother. He had only seen her once when they had both been children and all he could remember was a quiet, skinny, long-legged little girl with her hair bound in plaits.

‘You look surprised. I thought you would be pleased to cross this threshold into manhood. I hear that you are not averse to visiting the girls in the bazaar.’

Salim flushed. He had thought he was being discreet. On the return march from Kashmir, he and his milk-brother Suleiman Beg had slipped out from the imperial quarters to find willing girls among the camp followers. He had lost his virginity one night to a cinnamon-scented Turkish woman while encamped on a mountain pass with cold winds battering the hide walls of her tent – not that he would have noticed had the tent blown away. Back in Lahore, the two youths had taken to slipping out to the town at night. There was a particular inn where Geeta, a plump dancing girl with high, round breasts, had laughingly been instructing him further in the ways of love while Suleiman Beg had been finding delight in the arms of her sister. Afterwards, sneaking back into the palace, they tried to outdo each other with exaggerated tales of their prowess. But tumbling a girl in the bazaar was very different from taking a wife.

‘I am surprised. I hadn’t thought of marriage at all . . .’

‘Young though you are, you should have. Marrying into the houses of the most noble of our vassals, as I did, tightens our grip on our empire as surely as conquest. Such alliances give the powerful families an even greater stake in our success. They ensure that in times of trouble they will support us, not because they love us but because it is to their advantage.’ Akbar paused, eyes searching Salim’s face. He had seldom spoken to his son so earnestly. ‘Why do you think
there are so few uprisings against us and every year we grow yet richer? Why do you think that the
ulama
no longer dare to bleat openly about my policies of religious tolerance or my Hindu wives or my introduction of the
Din-i-Ilahi
, the Divine Faith? My position is unassailable and that is in good part because of the alliances I have made through marriage. Understand this, Salim. This is not about your wishes nor about pleasure. You can build yourself a
haram
of concubines for that. It is about duty. I have informed your mother of my decision.’

His father’s view of marriage was a joyless one, devoid of human emotion, Salim thought, so unlike that of his grandmother who often told him of the mutual love and support she had shared with Humayun. Perhaps his father’s loveless marriage to his own mother was at the root of his coldness. It had been his first union and it may have made him even more reluctant to give himself fully to succeeding brides than his self-contained self-confident nature made him already. Certainly he never spoke of any of them with great affection, being seemingly keener to list the alliances they had brought and how they had contributed to his own and the empire’s glory.

Anyway, Hirabai would surely be pleased by his marriage. Any child he had by Man Bai – and a son might well be a future Moghul emperor – would be more Rajput than Moghul. But then he remembered what she had said of her brother Bhagwan Das, Man Bai’s father: ‘People can always be bought . . .’ As so often, his mind became clouded with doubt and uncertainty, though he knew he should be pleased that his father had arranged such an important dynastic match for him. He tried to look grateful – which in his heart he was.

‘When will the wedding take place?’

‘In about eight weeks’ time when your bride arrives from Amber.’ Akbar smiled. ‘That will also give time for guests to travel here from all over the empire and for others to send gifts. I intend that this will be one of the most magnificent spectacles ever witnessed in Lahore and have already been planning it with Abul Fazl. The festivities will last for a month with processions, camel races, polo matches
and elephant fights, and every night feasting and fireworks. Now, let us return to our target practice.’

Salim was disappointed. There was much more he would have liked to ask, but his father was already priming his musket.

Man Bai was sitting beneath her layers of gold-embroidered veils in the mansion which Akbar had had specially prepared for the entourage from Amber. Two days ago towards sunset Salim had watched the arrival of the long procession bringing his bride. First had come forty Rajput warriors mounted on cream-coloured stallions, breastplates and lance tips gleaming in the light of the dying sun. Six elephants, jewels flashing in their silver headplates, had followed, bearing in gilded howdahs on their backs the personal bodyguard sent to protect Man Bai on her journey. Then had come his bride on another even more gorgeously caparisoned elephant. Silk curtains, vivid blue as a kingfisher’s wing, draped over her gold-painted, turquoise-inlaid howdah concealed her from view. Immediately behind came her personal waiting women riding on camels, heavily veiled and further protected from the sun by white silk parasols embroidered with pearls held by attendants perched behind them. Next had trotted a further detachment of Rajput warriors, this time mounted on matching black horses. At the very end was the Moghul escort, green banners flying, that Akbar had sent to accompany them.

Salim had risen early to dress in readiness for the wedding procession to his bride’s house where the ceremony was to take place – a Hindu custom that, as a courtesy to Bhagwan Das, Akbar had decreed should be followed. To the high-pitched wail of pipes and the beating of drums, he and his father, sitting side by side in a jewelled howdah on the back of Akbar’s favourite elephant, had proceeded at a stately pace. In front had marched rows of attendants carrying trays of gifts from pearls and gems to spices, including piles of the finest saffron sent by the Sultan of Kashmir from his crocus fields.

As Shaikh Mubarak and two other mullahs began reading verses from the Koran, Salim glanced down at his hands, painted earlier that morning by his mother and her women with henna and turmeric
for good luck. Somewhat to his surprise – and relief – his mother had welcomed his betrothal to her niece. Maybe the consideration that any child born of the marriage would be three-quarters Rajput had outweighed her disapproval of Man Bai’s father, Salim thought. He shifted position a little, conscious of the weight of the marriage diadem set with diamonds and pearls that Akbar himself had placed on his head.

When the mullahs had finally finished their intoning, Shaikh Mubarak turned to Man Bai beneath her glittering coverings to ask the customary question, ‘Do you give your consent to this union?’ Salim heard her muffled assent and saw the slight tilt of her head. An attendant stepped forward with a red and green enamelled ewer, and as Salim held out his hands poured rosewater over them. Then another attendant handed him a goblet of water from which to sip to confirm the union. I am a married man, Salim thought as the cool liquid ran down his throat. It seemed unreal.

As the wedding feast got under way, Salim scarcely saw the whirling Rajasthani dancing girls with their jangling anklets and gold-spangled red veils or the sinuous acrobats – muscled bodies gleaming with oil – exerting themselves to entertain him, or heard the discreet laughter of the women of the court sitting behind a carved wooden
jali
that enabled them to watch what was happening without being seen. Neither did he taste much of the food – roasted pheasants and peacocks adorned with their own gilded tail feathers, young lamb cooked with dried fruit and spices, and pistachio- and almond-flavoured sweetmeats. All the time he was thinking, I must remember this moment. This is when I became a man. From now on, I will have my own household and a bride as royal as my own mother. A new confidence was flowing through his veins, and, as he glanced at the small, glittering figure beside him, a surge of excitement at the thought of a new woman to discover.

Salim smiled to recall how Hamida – not his father – had tried to talk to him about the ways to please a woman. Of course, modesty forbade her to be explicit but he knew what she was saying – to be considerate and tender towards his young bride. He would be. Geeta had taught him well. He understood how reining in his own
eager passion could add to the pleasure of both. He had gone to Geeta as an eager boy, newly initiated and as excited and unthinking as any stallion about to be put to stud, but she had made him a lover . . . Yet though he hadn’t needed Hamida’s hints on the art of love-making, he had been glad of her instruction on the rituals of the wedding night – how next morning the bedding would be inspected to confirm that sexual intercourse had taken place and that his bride had been a virgin.

Three hours later, Salim’s attendants removed his wedding clothes and jewels in the bedchamber in the
haram
of the new apartments his father had given him. On the other side of the green brocade hangings his bride – bathed, scented and oiled by her own servants – was waiting for him in the marriage bed. When he was naked, one of his attendants fetched a green silk robe and draped it over him, fastening the emerald clasps at throat and chest. Then the servants withdrew. Salim hesitated a moment, looking at the brocade curtains gleaming in the soft light of the oil lamps burning in niches around the chamber. It wasn’t that he felt nervous but rather that he wanted to fix this moment in his mind. He might one day be emperor, the Rajput princess he was about to bed perhaps the mother of a future emperor. This was no quick, joyous tumble in the bazaar but perhaps another step in his own story and that of his dynasty.

But at the thought of the woman waiting for him on the other side of those curtains desire quickened, driving out such ideas. Salim pushed the hangings aside and stepped into the bedchamber. Man Bai was sitting up, the outline of her breasts clearly visible through her almost transparent robe of peach-coloured muslin. Her long thick dark hair tumbled around her shoulders and the rubies she was wearing in her ears gleamed. Around her neck was a slender gold chain also set with rubies. But what held Salim’s attention was the excited expression in those dark, long-lashed eyes and her bold, confident smile.