The Moghul Part 35

I had planned it perfectly. I had shown them the opportunity for great profit, then denied it to them. They were preparing to leave, but surely they would have returned, with a fleet. Then Mukarrab Khan approved their trade, after waiting until he was certain the Portuguese preparations were almost complete. So now they remain, awaiting their own destruction, never to leave again. And when these frigates are destroyed, will any English ever return?

The Englishman will surely be dead, or sent to Goa. There'll be no trip to Agra. And Arangbar will never know why.

But the silver coin will soon be ready. And the prince's cipher today said Vasant Rao himself will arrive in ten days to escort the Englishman and the silver as far as Burhanpur. Time is running out.

There's only one solution left. Will it work?

The barge eased into the shallows and the porters slid into the water, each already carrying a roll of cloth.

"I expected this difficulty, Captain Hawksworth. But your

path is of your own making. You yourself chose to unlade at that distance from the port." They were in Mirza Nuruddin's chamber, and the Shahbandar faced Hawksworth and Elkington with his rheumy, fogbound eyes. The chamber had been emptied, as Hawksworth had demanded. "I propose you consider the following. Unlade the woolens from your smaller frigate immediately, and let me oversee their transport here."

He drew nonchalantly on the hookah. "My fee would be a small commission above the cost of hiring the carts. One percent if they are delivered here within two weeks. Two percent if they are delivered within one week. Do you accept?"

Hawksworth decided not to translate the terms for Elkington.

"We accept." It seems fair, he told himself. This is no time to bargain.

"You show yourself reasonable. Now, the lead and ironwork you have cargoed is another matter. Bullock carts are totally unsuitable for those weights in this sandy coastal delta. The weights involved require they be transported by river bark. And that means unlading at the river mouth."

Hawksworth shook his head. "We'll dump the cargo first. We can't take the risk now."

"Captain, there is risk and there is risk. What is life itself if not risk? Without risk what man can call himself alive?" Mirza Nuruddin thought of his own risk at this moment, how his offer of help to the English would immediately be misconstrued by the entire port. Until the plan had played through to its ending. Then the thought of the ending buoyed him and he continued, his voice full of solicitude. "I can suggest a strategy for unlading your ironwork at the river mouth in reasonable safety, after your frigates have been lightened of their wool. With an experienced pilot, you can sail along the sh.o.r.eline, south to the bar, and anchor under cover of dark. Barks can be waiting to unlade you. If the lead and ironwork are ready for unlading, perhaps it can be completed in one night. You can unlade the smaller frigate first, return it to the cove you call Swalley, and then unlade the other vessel. That way only one frigate is exposed at a time."

As Hawksworth and Elkington listened, Mirza Nuruddin outlined the details of his offer. He would hire whatever men were needed. He normally did this for foreign traders, and took a percentage from them-- as well as from the meager salary of the men he hired. And he already had a pilot in mind, a man who knew every shoal and sandbar on the coastline.

As Hawksworth listened his senses suddenly told him to beware. Hadn't Shirin told him to trust his intuition? And this scheme was too pat.

This time his guts told him to dump the lead in the bay and write off the loss. But Elkington would never agree. He would want to believe they could unlade and sell the lead. His responsibility was profit on the cargo, not the risk of a vessel.

So he would take this final risk. Perhaps Mirza Nuruddin was right.

Risk exhilarated.

He smiled inwardly and thought again of Shirin. And of what she had said about trusting his instincts.

Then, ignoring them, he agreed to Mirza Nuruddin's plan.

And the Shahbandar produced a doc.u.ment already prepared for their signature.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

"Now we will begin. As my guest, you have first throw of the dice." Mirza Nuruddin fingered the gold and ivory inlay of the wooden dice cup as he pa.s.sed it to Hawksworth. Then he drew a heavy gurgle of smoke from his hookah, savoring the way it raced his heart for that brief instant before its marvelous calm washed over his nerves. He needed the calm. He knew that any plan, even one as carefully conceived as the one tonight, could fail through the blundering of incompetents.

Or betrayal. But tonight, he told himself, tonight you will win the game.

The marble-paved inner court of the Shahbandar's sprawling brick estate house was crowded almost to overflowing: with wealthy Hindu money- lenders, whose mercenary hearts were as black as their robes were white; Muslim port officials in silks and jewels, private riches gleaned at public expense; the turbaned captains of Arab cargo ships anch.o.r.ed at the bar, hard men in varicolored robes who sat sweltering, smoking, and drinking steaming coffee; and a sprinkling of Portuguese in starched doublets, the captains and officers of the three Portuguese trading frigatta now anch.o.r.ed at the bar downriver.

Servants wearing only white loincloths circulated decanters of wine and boxes of rolled betel leaves as an antidote to the stifling air that lingered even now, almost at midnight, from a broiling day. The torchbearers of Mirza Nuruddin's household stood on the balconies continuously dousing a mixture of coconut oil and rose attar onto their huge flambeaux. Behind latticework screens the _nautch_ girls waited in boredom, braiding their hair, smoothing their skintight trousers, inspecting themselves in the ring-mirror on their right thumb, and chewing betel. The dancing would not begin until well after midnight.

As Hawksworth took the dice cup, the sweating crowd fell expectantly silent, and for the first time he noticed the gentle splash of the river below them, through the trees.

He stared for a moment at the lined board lying on the carpet between them, then he wished himself luck and tossed the three dice along its side. They were ivory and rectangular, their four long sides numbered one, two, five, and six with inlaid teakwood dots. He had thrown a one and two sixes.

"A propitious start. You English embrace fortune as a Brahmin his birthright." The Shahbandar turned and smiled toward the Portuguese captains loitering behind him, who watched mutely, scarcely masking their displeasure at being thrown together with the heretic English captain. But an invitation from the Shahbandar was not something a prudent trader declined. "The night will be long, however. This is only your beginning."

Hawksworth pa.s.sed the cup to the Shahbandar and stared at the board, trying to understand the rules of _chaupar_, the favorite game of India from the Moghul's _zenana _to the lowliest loitering scribe. The board was divided into four quadrants and a central square, using two sets of parallel lines, which formed a large cross in its middle. Each quadrant was divided into three rows, marked with s.p.a.ces for moving pieces. Two or four could play, and each player had four pieces of colored teak that were placed initially at the back of two of the three s.p.a.ced rows.

After each dice throw, pieces were moved forward one or more s.p.a.ces in a row until reaching its end, then up the next row, until they reached the square in the center. A piece reaching the center was called _rasida_, arrived.

Hawksworth remembered that a double six allowed him to move two of his pieces, those standing together, a full twelve s.p.a.ces ahead. As he moved the pieces forward, groans and oaths in a number of languages sounded through the night air. Betting had been heavy on the Shahbandar, who had challenged both Hawksworth and the senior Portuguese captain to a set of games. Only an adventurous few in the crowd would straddle their wagers and accept the long odds that the English captain would, or could, be so impractical as to defeat the man who must value and apply duty to his goods.

"Did I tell you, Captain Hawksworth, that _chaupar _was favored by the Great Moghul, Akman?" The Shahbandar rattled the dice in the cup for a long moment. "There's a story, hundreds of years old, that once a ruler of India sent the game of chess, what we call _chaturanga_ in India, to Persia as a challenge to their court. They in return sent _chaupar_ to India." He paused dramatically. "It's a lie invented by a Persian."

He led the explosion of laughter and threw the dice. A servant called the numbers and the laughter died as suddenly as it had come.

"The Merciful Prophet's wives were serpent-tongued Bengalis."

He had thrown three ones.

A terrified servant moved the pieces while Mirza Nuruddin took a betel leaf from a tray and munched it sullenly. The crowd's tension was almost palpable.

Hawksworth took the cup and swirled it again. He absently noted that the moon had emerged from the trees and was now directly overhead. The Shahbandar seemed to notice it as well.

Mackintosh watched as the last grains of red marble sand slipped through the two-foot-high hourgla.s.s by the binnacle and then he mechanically flipped it over. The moon now cast the shadow of the mainmast yard precisely across the waist of the ship, and the tide had begun to flow in rapidly. The men of the new watch were silently working their way up the shrouds.

"Midnight. The tide's up. There's nae need to wait more." He turned to Captain Kerridge, who stood beside him on the quarterdeck of the _Resolve_. George Elkington stood directly behind Kerridge.

"Let's get under sail." Elkington tapped out his pipe on the railing.

Then he turned to Kerridge. "Did you remember to douse the stern lantern?"

"I give the orders, Mr. Elkington. And you can save your questions for the pilot." Captain Jonathan Kerridge was a small, weasel-faced man with no chin and large bulging eyes. He signaled the _Resolve_'s quartermaster and the anchor chain began to rattle slowly up the side.

Then the mainsail dropped, hung slack for a moment, and bellied against the wind, sending a groan through the mast. They were underway. The only light on board was a small, shielded lantern by the binnacle, for reading the large boxed compa.s.s.

The needle showed their course to be almost due south, toward the bar at the mouth of the Tapti. On their right was the empty bay and on their left the glimmer of occasional fires from the sh.o.r.eline. The whipstaff had been taken by the Indian pilot, a wrinkled nut-brown man the Shahbandar had introduced as Ahmet. He spoke a smattering of Portuguese and had succeeded in explaining that he could reliably cover the eight-mile stretch south from Swalley to the unloading bar at the Tapti river mouth in one turn of the hourgla.s.s, if Allah willed. With high tide, he had also managed to explain, there were only two sandbars they would have to avoid.

And there would be no hostiles abroad this night. Even the Portuguese trading frigates were safely at anchor off the river mouth, for this evening their captains had been honored by an invitation to attend the gathering at Mirza Nuruddin's estate.

"Your beginning has been impressive, Captain Hawksworth. But now you must still maintain your advantage." Mirza Nuruddin watched as Hawksworth threw a double five and a two, advancing two of his four pieces into the central square. The crowd groaned, coins began to change hands. "You have gained _rasida _for two pieces. I'll save time and concede this game. But we have six more to play. _Chaupar _is a bit like life. It favors those with endurance."

As the board was cleared for the next game, Mirza Nuruddin rose and strode to the end of the court. The wind was coming up now, as it always did on this monthly night of full moon and tide, sweeping up the river bringing the fresh salt air of the sea. And the currents would be shifting along the coast, as sandbars one by one were submerged by the incoming tide. He barked an inconsequential order to a hovering servant and then made his way back to the board, his guests parting automatically before him. The drinking crowd had already begun to turn boisterous, impatient for the appearance of the women. As always, the _nautch _girls would remain for additional entertainment after their dance, in private quarters available in the rambling new palace.

"This game I will throw first." The Shahbandar seated himself, and watched as Hawksworth drew on a tankard of brandy, especially provided for the Europeans present. Then Mirza Nuruddin made a deft twist of the cup and the ivories dropped on the carpet in a neat row of three sixes.