But all of this must wait. First his father must be laid to rest. As Wazir Khan, head bowed, held his jewelled bridle, Babur dismounted. Brushing away a tear he took a deep breath, ready to lead his father’s favourite mullah and the most important mourners down into the crypt to pay their final respects. For a fraction of a second he longed for the soft touch of his mother’s hand. But Kutlugh Nigar was waiting within the harem with his sister and grandmother, as was proper. Such occasions were not for women. They had made their silent adieus from behind screens carved high in the walls as the cortege wound down out of the fortress and on towards the banks of the swift-flowing Jaxartes.

As Babur approached the mausoleum’s dark mouth, he saw that Qambar-Ali was already ahead of him, his brown robes swirling around him in his eagerness to be first. ‘Vizier!’ Babur’s young voice was stern. It sounded good.

A faint twitch of irritation flickered over Qambar-Ali’s face as he paused and turned aside. ‘Majesty.’

‘I will lead the mourners for my father. It is fitting.’ Babur stepped past, making sure he trod hard on one of the vizier’s felt-booted feet. That felt good too.

‘Of course, Majesty.’

Babur gestured courteously to the mullah to join him. Qambar-Ali followed them down the low, dark passageway. The other royal council members came next, as their high office decreed they should. Yusuf, as treasurer, was carrying a bowl of gleaming gold coins to be laid at the foot of the sarcophagus. Baba Qashqa was bearing the huge red leatherbound journal in which, as comptroller of the royal household, he had recorded the minutiae of royal expenditure. This, too, would be left in the tomb to show that the king had gone to the next world with his affairs in order. Baqi Beg was cradling a crystal globe, the symbol of office of the court astrologer. Later, when the funeral was over, he was thinking, he would gaze into its shining depths and proclaim in a voice laced with sorrowful regret that the stars would not accept a mere boy as king.