the crows of agra

27 Pages·2015·0.29 MB·English

T H E C ROW S
OF AG R A
A BIRBAL MYSTERY
S H A R AT H KOM A R R AJ U
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Copyright © Sharath Komarraju 2015
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A NOTE TO THE READER
THIS IS A work perhaps best described as historical fi ction, but
it makes no claims to being free of inaccuracies. Depending
on your knowledge and love of history, you will fi nd a few (or
many) details in the book that are inconsistent with known
facts of how the Mughals lived.
All the characters that populate these pages—though they
have names and appearances that resemble the originals—
are entirely my creations, and possess motivations and traits
that I made up to fulfi l the demands of my tale. They have
little historical basis.
The architecture and fl oor plans of the harem, Bairam
Khan’s chambers and the emperor’s room, as they are
described in this book, are products of my imagination. The
protagonist, Mahesh Das, who, by the end, earns Akbar’s
favour and becomes Birbal, has been drawn straight out of
folklore. No historical truths here, either.
Some of these liberties are intentional. Many of them
are not. I apologize for them all.
Maybe I could better persuade you to focus more on the
vi A Note to the Reader
story than on its historicity by not calling it historical fi ction.
Maybe ‘a murder mystery with a historical fl avour’ is more
appropriate. Maybe just ‘murder mystery’ is better still.
I don’t know. You decide.
PROLOGUE
BAIRAM KHAN DISMOUNTED his horse. He dragged the
body off the saddle onto his shoulders with a grunt. He
swayed like a drunk, and it wasn’t because of the weight he
was carrying. Bairam Khan had been fighting without food
or sleep for three days straight. His right thigh had taken a
deep dagger cut on the first day, but he had socked it with a
piece of horse hide and carried on fighting. The wound had
begun to ooze pus, and every time he took a step, it burned
his flesh, making him wince in pain. He tightened his grip
on the Hindu infidel. His very blood reeked of blasphemy.
The first thing Bairam Khan had done on discovering
Hemu in the battlefield was to snatch the locket of idols
that hung around the king’s neck and kick it into the dirt.
He had wanted to take of his rings too, one by one, with
his pocket-knife, but he had resisted. Let the boy take a
look at him too, he had thought. Let him see what strange
monsters he must battle if he was to become the emperor
of Hindustan.
Bairam Khan became aware of a faint rising and falling
2 Sharath Komarraju
against the back of his neck. Good. The man was still alive.
It would serve the boy well to slash Hemu’s throat with his
own sword; it would give him the taste of things to come.
Bairam Khan did not think it beyond young Akbar’s ability
to divest life from a living being; he had seen him hunt down
cheetahs with nothing but a spear and a shield. But this was
a human being. Would he keep his nerve, or would he, like
his father, turn out to be a sheep?
With each step, the battle ground of Panipat sank beneath
his feet, sometimes squishing into flesh, sometimes cracking
against bone. On both sides of his path lay the severed heads
of horses, their eyes gouged out. If Bairam Khan could still
look up at the yellow rising moon on the horizon and allow
himself a smile, it was because such scenes were not new to
him. Out of his fifty-four years almost forty had been spent
either in battle or in preparation for it. He knew enough
about the nature of war to feel sorry for those whose lives
had been lost. The good thing was that it was over now. Yes,
from tomorrow it would all be back to normal—until the
next time of course.
As evening fell, a murder of crows swooped down upon
the corpses, cawing in raucous delight. At the entrance
to the emperor’s tent Bairam Khan stood for a moment,
watching the shadows move behind the white curtain. He
let the lance drop to one side with a thud. The murmurs
inside the tent stopped. Bairam Khan rubbed his nose with
a bruised hand and announced himself. ‘I have brought the
prize, Jahanpanah,’ he said.
Akbar’s thin voice returned. ‘Bring him in, Khan Baba.’
The Crows of Agra 3
When they laid Hemu on the carpet and turned him on his
back, he appeared to be larger than he was. Bairam Khan
stripped him of his armour with three or four deft swings
of his knife and cast it aside. He lifted the dying man’s hand
and held it up to the light so that Akbar could see the rings
on Hemu’s fingers.
‘Idols,’ said Bairam Khan in disgust. ‘These men are
pagans. Look at their gods, my king. Is it any wonder that
they lost to us, that we have vanquished them even though
our numbers are small? We have Allah’s mercy on our wings,
whereas these wretches have their rocks looking after them.’
The boy did not seem to look at the hand at all. Instead,
his gaze was fixed on the bleeding empty socket where
Hemu’s left eye ought to have been, where the arrow that
felled him had struck. The fallen king’s chest rose and fell
more evenly now, even though blood flowed unhindered
from the gash under his chest. Bairam Khan thought he saw
a smile flicker on Hemu’s face, but it was just a trick of the
shadows cast by the oil lamps.
‘This man is half dead,’ said Akbar. ‘Take him away and
let him die in peace.’
Bairam Khan let Hemu’s hand drop and stood face to face
with his protégé. He drew his sword and held it out. ‘Take
it, my king,’ he said. ‘Kill this infidel and proclaim this war
over. Claim your victory. Let your blade taste the blood of
your enemy.’
Akbar looked up at him, then at the unconscious man at
his feet. ‘There is no honour in killing one who is already
dead,’ he said. ‘If I were to claim my victory, I should care
4 Sharath Komarraju
for this man, nurse him back to health, and then defeat him
in single combat. That would be honour.’
Still a boy, thought Bairam Khan. Emperor only in name.
He saw shades of Humayun in this boy—that same false
sense of honour and bravado, that furtive darting of the
eyes in speech, that weak voice, that flinch and grimace at
the sight of human blood.
He turned his back on Akbar and placed the sword on
Hemu’s neck for all to see. ‘The first thing you need to learn
about war, my king,’ he said, ‘is that you never, ever pardon
your enemies.’
With that, he raised his weapon and struck down on
Hemu’s bare throat, severing the wind pipe and eliciting one
last, tired groan from the victim. Bairam Khan knelt and held
a finger to Hemu’s nose, and after ascertaining that he was
dead, got to his feet. Two more well-aimed strikes severed
the Hindu king’s head from his body.
‘Hoist his head to the mast on the battlefield,’ he
instructed his soldiers, ‘and let tomorrow be declared a day
of prayer and gratitude to Allah for giving us this victory.’
He turned to Akbar and presented him his sword. ‘The
kingdom of Hindustan is now yours, Jahanpanah,’ he said.
But he thought: he’s just a boy.