Empire of the Moghul: The Tainted Throne (6 page)

But on a clear day when the rains seemed finally to be easing and there was a new freshness in the air, the solution came to Bartholomew. It was so obvious and simple – though not without danger to himself – that he grinned as he wondered why he hadn’t thought of it before.

Two weeks later, towards eleven o’clock in the evening – an hour before the caravanserai’s gates would be locked for the night – Bartholomew slipped out of his room, giving a parting kick to the sweat-stained straw-filled mattress on which he’d spent so many uncomfortable nights. Beneath his dark robe, his sword in its scabbard was suspended from a steel chain round his waist as were his two daggers, the Turkish blade on his right side and the Persian weapon on his left. He had cut slits in the coarse cloth of his robe to ensure he could reach for them quickly.

Bartholomew swiftly crossed the caravanserai’s courtyard and
went out through its arched entrance past the sleeping gatekeeper who was supposed to keep watch for late arrivals seeking a bed for the night for themselves and stabling for their animals. Once outside he glanced swiftly around him to make sure he was alone. Then he set off through the quiet, narrow streets. He’d walked this precise route many times and knew exactly where it was taking him as he headed across the parade ground and past the barracks towards the north of the city. Reaching a small Hindu temple where tapers burned in a brass pot before the image of an elephant god, Bartholomew turned down an alley where the overhanging upper storeys of the houses were so close they almost touched. He caught the soft sound of a woman singing from one house and the crying of a baby from another. Here and there the orange light of oil lamps flickered through the carved wooden
jalis
covering the windows.

Suddenly Bartholomew’s foot caught something soft. It was a dog whose reproachful whimper followed him as he continued his leisurely progress. There was no need to hurry and anyway a man in a hurry always attracted more attention. The alley was broadening out, and as it curved round to the left it gave on to a large square. Bartholomew had seen it at every time of day and night. He knew how many neem trees shaded the stallholders peddling their wares in the heat of the day, how many other streets and alleys led into it and how many men would be guarding the tall house directly opposite him at the far end of the square. Pulling his hood still lower over his face, Bartholomew peered cautiously round the corner into the square. The new moon was shedding hardly any radiance but the glow from braziers burning on either side of the house’s metal-bound gates showed that
– just as on other nights – four guards were on duty. It also showed that a green banner was flapping from a gilded pole above the gates – the sign, as he had discovered from Hassan Ali, that the commander was at home. All seemed very quiet. Had any sort of party or feast been in progress he would have had to postpone his plan . . .

Having seen what he wanted, Bartholomew drew back into the shadows of the alley and, turning, began to retrace his steps. After a hundred paces or so he came to a small street branching off to the left. In the daytime it was full of vegetable sellers raucously pressing their own wares on passers-by and deriding their competitors’ produce, but now it was silent and empty. Bartholomew walked along it, the leaves of rotting vegetables slippery beneath his feet and the air reeking of their decomposition, but his mind was on other things. This street curved round behind the square. In a few hundred yards it would pass close to the western wall of the fine gardens behind Sher Afghan’s house.

The wall was quite high – at least twenty feet – but there were enough foot- and handholds in the brickwork to make climbing it possible, as he knew. On the past two nights he had hauled himself over it, choosing a place where a tall clump of bamboo was growing on the other side, to drop down amongst the dense vegetation. Crouching amongst the leafy bamboos he had listened and watched. Through the swaying stems he had been able to make out a courtyard with a bubbling fountain and beyond it the dark walls of the house. Metal gates identical to those at the front led inside the house but with two important differences. They were kept open – beyond them he had glimpsed an inner courtyard – and they were also only lightly guarded. At night, a
watchman – no more than a youth as far as Bartholomew could tell from his slight frame – sat on a wooden stool just inside the gates. He appeared to have no weapon – only a small drum to beat to rouse the household in case of danger.

But what danger could Sher Afghan be expecting? He was the commander of a garrison in a quiescent – albeit distant – part of a peaceful and powerful empire. The soldiers guarding the front gate were probably more for show than anything else. Once again Bartholomew found himself wondering why the emperor wanted this man dead and why – all-powerful as he was – he had chosen this way of getting rid of him. If Sher Afghan had committed some crime why didn’t Jahangir just execute him? He was emperor after all. But then that was none of his business. All that mattered were the thousand
mohurs.

Reaching the wall without incident, Bartholomew glanced about him to make sure yet again that no one was around. Satisfied, he hitched up his dark robe and began to climb. This time for some reason, perhaps nerves or impatience to get the job done, he didn’t choose his handholds so well. When he was already about fifteen feet up, the corner of a brick he was grasping in his right hand crumbled and he nearly fell backwards to the ground. Digging his toes hard into crevices between the bricks and hanging on with his left hand – he could feel blood oozing from beneath his nails – he managed to steady himself. Stretching his right arm higher he probed the rough surfaces until he found a place that felt secure. With one more big heave he was on top of the wall.

Brushing the sweat from his face he carefully lowered himself down the other side, letting go when he was still ten feet above the ground to drop into the space he had
found among the bamboos. Squatting down, heart pounding, he listened. No sounds, nothing. That was good. It must be after midnight now but it was still too early to make his move. He shifted a little to make himself more comfortable. He felt some small creature – a mouse or a gecko – run over his foot and heard the familiar whine of mosquitoes. Frowning slightly, he focused his mind on the task ahead.

It was about one in the morning when Bartholomew began moving slowly towards the house, keeping under cover of the bamboos and then of the spreading branches of a thickly leaved mango tree. In the moonlight, he could see the watchman, young head slumped on his chest and clearly fast asleep on his stool. Beyond him the inner courtyard, lit only by small torches burning in brackets on the wall, was quiet and still. Bartholomew darted across the garden past the still playing fountain to the wall of the house, choosing a place a little to the left of the gates that was overshadowed by a projecting balcony. Flattening his back against the wall he closed his eyes for a moment as he steadied his breathing.

Then he began edging towards the gates. Reaching them he paused and peered inside. He was so close to the watchman that he could hear his light snores. But there was no other sound. Tensing his muscles, he sprang forward through the doors, grabbed the youth from behind with both arms and hauled him out into the garden, right hand clamped firmly over his mouth. ‘One sound out of you and you’re dead,’ Barthlomew whispered in Persian. ‘Do you understand me?’ The youth’s eyes were wide with fright as he nodded. ‘Now take me to where your master Sher Afghan is sleeping.’

The youth nodded again. Gripping the nape of the young watchman’s neck with his left hand so firmly that his nails
dug into the flesh, and with his right drawing his curved-bladed Turkish dagger from its oxhide scabbard, Bartholomew followed him across the inner courtyard, through a doorway in the corner and up a flight of narrow stone stairs to a long corridor. He could feel the youth trembling like a frightened puppy beneath his grip.

‘Here, sir. This is the room.’ The boy halted outside a chamber with highly polished doors of some dark wood inlaid with brass tigers. Bartholomew thought he could smell some spicy perfume – frankincense perhaps – and tightened his hold on the youth, who looked round, brown eyes terrified. Without warning he opened his mouth to cry out an alarm.

Bartholomew didn’t hesitate. In two rapid movements he jerked back the boy’s head with his left hand and with his right raised his bright-bladed Turkish dagger and drew it across the smooth-skinned throat. As the youth’s last breaths bubbled through the gaping wound he laid the limp body down. In other circumstances he might have spared him, but not here where he could so easily lose his own life if he made a mistake. Instinctively he wiped the bloody dagger on his robes. All his thoughts were on what he would find on the other side of those dark doors with their gleaming tigers. He’d heard it said that ‘sher’ meant ‘tiger’ – if so he was in the right place and Sher Afghan was just a few feet away.

Still holding his dagger in his right hand, with his left Bartholomew carefully raised the ornate metal latch – again fashioned like a tiger – on the right-hand door and gave a gentle exploratory push. To his relief the door opened smoothly and quietly. When it was about six inches ajar he stopped. A shaft of pale golden light told him the room he was about to enter was not in darkness as he had hoped.
Perhaps Sher Afghan had already seen the door swing open and was even now drawing his sword . . .

Bartholomew hesitated no longer but pushed the door wide and stepped inside. The large room was hung with red silk embroidered with gold thread. Soft thick carpets were beneath his feet and a spiral of smoke was rising from some crystals glowing in an enamelled incense burner. Wicks were burning in oil-filled bronze
diyas.
But Bartholomew’s gaze was on none of these things. He was staring through the almost transparent pale pink muslin curtains drawn across the room to divide it in two. Through the fabric he could see a large low bed and upon it two intertwined naked bodies, a man and a woman. The man at least was so absorbed in his lovemaking that Bartholomew could have probably kicked the door open without his noticing. The woman was on her back, slender legs hooked around the man’s muscular hips as he thrust and her view of the door obstructed by her lover’s body.

Providence could not have given him a better opportunity, Bartholomew thought as he came nearer. Carefully, he slipped through the muslin curtains and treading softly approached the bed. He was now so close he could see the sweaty sheen on the man’s body and smell the salty tang of it but both he and the woman, whose head was turned aside, her eyes closed, were still oblivious of his presence. Close to climax, with each thrust Sher Afghan was joyously throwing back his head. As he did so, Bartholomew leapt forward, grabbed him by his thick black hair, yanked his head back even further and neatly severed his jugular. Bartholomew was a skilled killer. Just like the gatekeeper, Sher Afghan made not a sound as his hot red blood pumped from the gaping wound.

Bartholomew grabbed hold of the heavy body, stared for
a moment into the still open eyes to reassure himself that it was indeed Sher Afghan, then pushed it to the floor and turned his attention to the woman who had now opened her eyes and was sitting up, knees drawn up defensively. Her lover’s blood was running down between her opulent breasts and her dark eyes were fixed on his face as if trying to predict what he would do next. ‘Don’t make a noise and I won’t hurt you,’ he said. Slowly, her gaze never leaving his face, she pulled up a sheet over her but said nothing.

He was relieved – he didn’t want to kill a woman any more than he had wanted to kill the young watchman – but at the same time he was surprised. He’d have expected someone in her situation to scream hysterically or shout abuse but she didn’t look as devastated as she might have that the man who just moments earlier had been passionately and vigorously making love to her was lying in a pool of congealing blood on the floor. Instead her expression was almost one of curiosity. He realised she was taking in every detail from his dark, grubby robe and blood-smeared hands to the stray curls of red-gold hair slipping from beneath the length of dun-coloured cloth he’d wound round his head.

He turned to go. He’d stayed too long already. Backing away just in case she had a weapon concealed somewhere, he reached the doors, expecting any moment to hear her scream out for the guards. But he was through the door, down the corridor and hurling himself down the stone steps into the silent and now empty courtyard before, at last, he heard a woman’s shrill cry of ‘Murder!’ As he ran through the dark gardens he heard a commotion break out behind him – men’s voices, the sound of running feet – but he was nearly at the wall now. Forcing his way through the tough
bamboos, not caring how he scraped or scratched himself, he flung himself at the wall and scaled it, this time without difficulty.

Back in the street he paused for a moment. Taking his Turkish dagger, still stained with Sher Afghan’s gore, he kissed it lightly. The thousand
mohurs
were his.