The Moghul Part 3

"Do you remember the Englishmen's names?"

"Seem to recall they were led by a man nam'd Symmes. But 'twas a long time past, lad. Aye, Goa was quite the place then. Lucky I escap'd when I did. E'en there, you stay awhile an' somethin' starts to hold you.

Too much o' India about the place. After a while all this"--Huyghen gestured fondly about the alehouse, where sweat-soaked laborers and seamen were drinking, quarreling, swearing as they bargained with a scattering of weary prost.i.tutes in dirty, tattered shifts--"all this seems . . ." He took a deep draft of ale, attempting vainly to formulate his thoughts. "I've ne'er been one wi' words. But don't do it, lad. You go in, go all the way in to India, an' I'll wager you'll ne'er be heard from more. I've seen it happen."

Hawksworth listened as Huyghen continued, his stories of the Indies a mixture of ale and dreams. After a time he signaled another round for them both. It was many empty tankards later when they parted.

But Huyghen's words stayed. And that night Brian Hawksworth walked alone on the quay beside the Thames, bundled against the wet autumn wind, and watched the ferry lanterns ply through the fog and heard the m.u.f.fled harangues of streetwalkers and cabmen from the muddy street above. He thought about Huyghen, and about the man named Roger Symmes, and about the voyage to India.

And he thought too about Maggie, who wanted him out of London before her rich widower discovered the truth. Or before she admitted the truth to herself. But either way it no longer seemed to matter.

That night he decided to accept the commission. . . .

The _Discovery _rolled heavily and Hawksworth glanced instinctively toward the pulley lines that secured the two bronze cannon. Then he remembered why he had left the quarterdeck, and he unlocked the top drawer of the desk and removed the ship's log. He leafed one more time through its pages, admiring his own script--strong but with an occasional flourish.

Someday this could be the most valuable book in England, he told himself. If we return. This will be the first log in England to describe what the voyage to India is really like. The Company will have a full account of the weather and sea, recorded by estimated longitude, the distance traveled east.

He congratulated himself again on the care with which he had taken their daily speed and used it to estimate longitude every morning since the Cape, the last location where it was known exactly. And as he studied the pages of the log, he realized how exact Huyghen's prediction had been. The old man had been eerily correct about the winds and the sea. They had caught the "tail o' the monsoon" precisely.

"August 27. Course N.E. ft E.; The wind at W.S., with gusts and rain.

Made 36 leagues today. Estimated longitude from the Cape 42 50' E.

"August 28. Course N.E.; The wind at west, a fresh gale, with gusts and rain this 24 hours. Leagues 35. Estimated longitude from the Cape, 44 10' E."

The late August westerly Huyghen had foretold was carrying them a good hundred land miles a day. They rode the monsoon's tail, and it was still angry, but there was no longer a question that English frigates could weather the pa.s.sage.

As August drew to a close, however, scurvy had finally grown epidemic on his sister ship, the _Resolve_. The men's teeth loosened, their gums bled, and they began to complain of aching and burning in their limbs.

It was all the more tragic for the fact that this timeless scourge of ocean travelers might at long last be preventable. Lancaster, on the very first voyage of the East India Company, had stumbled onto an historic _Discovery_. As a test, he'd shipped bottles of the juice of lemons on his flagship and ordered every seaman to take three spoonfuls a day. And his had been the only vessel of the three to withstand scurvy.

Hawksworth had argued with Captain Kerridge of the _Resolve_, insisting they both stow lemon juice as a preventative. But Kerridge had always resented Lancaster, particularly the fact he'd been knighted on return from a voyage that showed almost no profit. He refused to credit Lancaster's findings.

"No connection. By my thinkin' Lancaster just had a run o' sea-dog luck. Then he goes about claimin' salt meat brings on the scurvy. A pack o' d.a.m.n'd foolishness. I say salt meat's fine for the lads. Boil it up with a mess o' dried peas and I'll have it myself. The _Resolve'

_ll be provision'd like always. Sea biscuit, salt pork, Hollander cheese. Any fool knows scurvy comes from men sleepin' in the night dews off the sea. Secure your gunports by night and you'll ne'er see the d.a.m.n'd scurvy."

Hawksworth had suspected Kerridge's real reason was the cost: lemon juice was imported and expensive. When the Company rejected his own request for an allowance, he had provisioned the _Discovery _out of his own advance. Kerridge

had called him a fool. And when they sailed in late February, the _Resolve_ was unprovided.

Just as Hawksworth had feared, the _Resolve's _crew had been plagued by scurvy throughout the voyage, even though both vessels had put in for fresh provisions at Zanzibar in late June. Six weeks ago, he had had no choice but to order half his own remaining store of lemon juice transferred to the sister ship, even though this meant reducing the _Discovery_'s ration to a spoon a day, not enough.

By the first week of September, they were so near India they could almost smell land, but he dared not try for landfall. Not yet. Not without an Indian pilot to guide them past the notorious sandbars and shoals that lined the coast like giant submerged claws. The monsoon winds were dying. Indian shipping surely would begin soon. So they hove to, waiting.

And as they waited, they watched the last kegs of water choke with green slime, the wax candles melt in the heat, and the remaining biscuit all but disappear to weevils. Hungry seamen set a price on the rats that ran the shrouds. How long could they last?

Hawksworth reached the last entry in the log. Yesterday. The day they had waited for.

"Sept. 12. Laid by the lee. Estimated longitude from the Cape, 50 10'

E. Lat.i.tude observed 2030'. At 7 in the morning we command a large ship from the country to heave to, by shooting four pieces across her bow. Took from this ship an Indian pilot, paying in Spanish rials of eight. First offered English gold sovereigns, but these refused as unknown coin. Also purchased 6 casks water, some baskets lemons, melons, plantains."

The provisions had scarcely lasted out the day, spread over twice a hundred hungry seamen. But with a pilot they could at last make landfall.

And landfall they had made, at a terrible price. Yet even this anchorage could not be kept. It was too exposed and vulnerable. He had expected it to be so, and he had been right. But he also knew where they might find safety.

The previous night he had ordered the Indian pilot to sketch a chart of the coastline on both sides of the Tapti River delta. He did not tell him why. And on the map he had spotted a cove five leagues to the north, called Swalley, that looked to be shallow and was also shielded by hills screening it from the sea. Even if the Portuguese discovered them, the deep draft of Portuguese galleons would hold them at sea. The most they could do would be send boarding parties by pinnace, or fireships. The cove would buy time, time to replenish stores, perhaps even to set the men ash.o.r.e and attend the sick. The longer the anchorage could be kept secret, the better their chances. He had already prepared sealed orders for Captain Kerridge, directing him to steer both frigates there after dark, when their movement could not be followed by the hidden eyes along the coast.

He took a deep breath and flipped forward to a blank page in the log.

And realized this was the moment he had been dreading, been postponing: the last entry for the voyage out. Perhaps his last ever--if events in India turned against him. He swabbed more sweat from his face and glanced one last time at the glistening face of the lute, wondering what he would be doing now, at this moment, if he still were in London, penniless but on his own.

Then he wiped off the quill lying neatly alongside the leather-bound volume, inked it, and shoved back the sleeve of his doublet to write.

CHAPTER TWO

The events of that morning were almost too improbable to be described. After taking on the Indian pilot, Hawksworth's plan had been to make landfall immediately, then launch a pinnace for Surat, there to negotiate trade for their goods and safe conduct to the capital at Agra for himself. If things went as planned, the goods would be exchanged and he would be on his way to the Moghul capital long before word of their arrival could reach Goa and the Portuguese.

The pilot's worth was never in question. A practiced seaman, he had steered them easily through the uncharted currents and hidden swallows of the bay. They had plotted a course directly east-north-east, running with topgallants on the night breeze, to make dawn anchorage at the mouth of the Tapti River. Through the night the _Resolve_ had stayed with them handily, steering by their stem lantern.

When the first light broke in the east, hard and sudden, there it lay-- the coast of India, the landfall, the sight they had waited for the long seven months. Amid the cheers he had ordered their colors hoisted-- the red cross, bordered in white, on a field of blue--the first English flag ever to fly off India's coast.

But as the flag snapped its way along the p.o.o.p staff, and the men struck up a hornpipe on deck, their triumph suddenly was severed by a cry from the maintop.

"Sails off the starboard quarter."

In the sudden hush that rolled across the ship like a shroud, freezing the tumult of voice and foot, Hawksworth had charged up the companionway to the quarterdeck. And there, while the masts tuned a melancholy dirge, he had studied the ships in disbelief with his gla.s.s.

Four galleons anch.o.r.ed at the river mouth. Portuguese men-of-war. Each easily a thousand ton, twice the size of the _Discovery_.

He had sorted quickly through his options. Strike sail and heave to, on the odds they may leave? It was too late. Run up Portuguese colors, the old privateers' ruse, and possibly catch them by surprise? Unlikely.

Come about and run for open sea? Never. That's never an English seadog's way. No, keep to windward and engage. Here in the bay.

"Mackintosh!" Hawksworth turned to see the quartermaster already poised expectantly on the main deck. "Order Malloyre to draw up the gunports.

Have the sails wet down and see the cookroom fire is out."

"Aye, sir. This'll be a b.l.o.o.d.y one."

"What counts is who bleeds most. Get every able man

on station."

As Hawksworth turned to check the whipstaff, the long wooden lever that guided the ship's rudder, he pa.s.singly noted that curious conflict of body sensation he remembered from two encounters in years past: once, when on the Amsterdam run he had seen privateers suddenly loom off the coast of Scotland, and then on his last voyage through the Mediterranean, when his convoy first spotted the Turkish pirate galleys. While his mind calculated the elements of a strategy, coolly refining each individual detail, his stomach belied his rational facade and knotted in instinctive, primal fear. And he had asked himself whether this day his mind or his body would prevail. The odds were very bad, even if they could keep the wind. And if the Portuguese had trained gun crews . . .

Then he spotted the Indian pilot, leaning casually against the steering house, his face expressionless. He wore a tiny moustache and long, trimmed sideburns. And unlike the English seamen, all barefoot and naked to the waist, he was still dressed formally, just as when he came aboard. A fresh turban of white cotton, embroidered in a delicate brown, was secured neatly about the crown of his head, exposing his long ears and small, jeweled earrings. A spotless yellow cloak covered the waist of his tightly tailored blue trousers.

d.a.m.n him. Did he somehow know? Did he steer us into a trap?

Seeming to read Hawksworth's thoughts, the pilot broke the silence between them, his Turki heavily accented with his native Gujarati.