The Moghul Part 38

An Indian vessel caught at sea without a _cartaz_, or steering south when its stated destination was north, was confiscated; its captain and crew were executed immediately, if they were lucky, or sent to the galleys if they were not. Fleets of armed galleons cruised the coastlines in patrol. If a vessel gave cause for suspicion, Portuguese soldiers boarded her in full battle dress, with naked swords and battle cries of "Santiago." And while their commander inspected the ship's _cartaz_, Portuguese soldiers relieved pa.s.sengers of any jewelry salable in the streets of Goa. _Cartaz_ enforcement was strict, and-- since a percentage of all seized cargo went to captains and crews of patrol galleons--enthusiastic. The seas off India were theirs by right, the Portuguese liked to explain, because they were the first ever to have the ingenuity to make claim to them.

The revenues the _cartaz _brought Portugal were immense--not because it was expensive to obtain, it cost only a few rupees, but because it funneled every ounce of commodity traded in the Arabian Sea through a Portuguese tax port.

And it is the Portuguese taxes, Mirza Nuruddin told himself, not just their galleons, that the English will one day drive from our ports. And on that day, our merchant ships will again lade the best cargo, sail the richest routes, return with the boldest profits.

"There seems nothing further then, Mr. Elkington, I can do for you."

The Shahbandar smiled and bowed his small, ceremonial salaam. "Save wish you a fair wind and Allah's blessing."

So it's over, Hawksworth thought as they turned to leave, the last time I'll ever see you, and thank you very much, you unscrupulous deceiving son of a wh.o.r.e.

"Captain Hawksworth, perhaps you and I can share a further word. You are not, as I understand, planning to depart India. At least not immediately. I'd like you always to know my modest offices remain at your behest."

Elkington paused, as did Hawksworth, but one of the Shahbandar's officials took the merchant's arm and urged him firmly toward the door of the chamber. Too firmly, Hawksworth thought.

"I think you've done about all for us you can." Hawksworth made no attempt to strain the irony from his voice.

"Be that as it may, I've heard rumors that your trip to Agra may be approved. Should that happen, you must know you cannot travel alone, Captain. No man in India is that foolhardy. The roads here are no more safe than those, so I hear, in Europe. All travelers inland need a guide, and an armed escort."

"Are you proposing to help me secure a guide? Equal in competence, may I presume, to the pilot you hired for the _Resolve_?"

"Captain Hawksworth, please. G.o.d's will is mysterious." He sighed. "No man can thwart mischance if it is his destiny. Hear me out. I have just learned there's currently a man in Surat who knows the road to Burhanpur like his own sword handle. In fact, he only just arrived from the east, and I understand he expects to return when his affairs here, apparently brief, are _Resolve_d. By a fortuitous coincidence he happens to have an armed escort of guards with him. I suggest it might be wise to attempt to engage him while you still have a chance."

"And who is this man?"

"A Rajput captain with the army. A soldier of no small reputation, I can a.s.sure you. His name is Vasant Rao."

Mukarrab Khan reread the order carefully, scrutinized the black ink seal at the top of the page to a.s.sure himself it was indeed the Moghul's, and then placed it aside. So at last it had come. The prospect of English presents was too great a temptation for the acquisitive Arangbar, ever anxious for new baubles. The Englishman would be going to Agra. No one at court could have prevented it.

But that road--east through bandit-infested Chopda to now-threatened Burhanpur, then north, the long road through Mandu, Ujjain, and Gwalior to Agra--was a journey of two hard months. The Moghul's seal meant less than nothing to highwaymen, or to servants and drivers whose loyalties were always for sale. It's a long road, Englishman, and mishaps on that road are common as summer mildew.

He smiled to himself and took up the other silver-trimmed bamboo tube.

It had arrived by the same runner. The date on the outside was one week old.

It always amazed Mukarrab Khan that India's runners, the Mewras, were actually swifter than post horses. This message had traveled the three hundred _kos _south from Agra to Burhanpur and then the remaining hundred and fifty _kos _west to Surat--a combined distance of almost seven hundred English miles--in only seven days.

Runners were stationed at posts s.p.a.ced five _kos _apart along the great road that Akman had built to link Agra to the seaport of Surat. They wore an identifying plume at their head and two bells at their belt, and they gained energy by eating _postibangh_, a mixture of opium and hemp extract. Akman even conceived of lining the sides of the road with white stones so his Mewras could run in darkest midnight without lanterns. There were now some four thousand runners stationed along India's five main arteries.

The only things swifter, Mukarrab Khan had often told himself, are lightning . . . and a blue, white-throated Rath pigeon. A distance requiring a full day for a runner could be covered by a pigeon in one _pahar_, three hours, given good weather. Arangbar kept pigeons all over India, even in Surat--but then so did everyone else at court.

Recently, it seemed, everyone was training pigeons.

Next to the date was the seal of Nadir Sharif, prime minister and brother of the queen. Mukarrab Khan knew Nadir Sharif well. A dispatch from Nadir Sharif, though it always reflected the wishes of the Moghul or the queen, could be relied upon to be reasonable. If the Moghul in fury condemned a man over some trivial transgression, Nadir Sharif always forgot to deliver the sentence until the next day, having found that Arangbar often tended to reverse sentences of death when musing in his evening wine cups. This order will be reasonable, Mukarrab Khan told himself, but it will have to be obeyed, eventually.

As always, Mukarrab Khan tried to guess the message before unsealing the two-inch-long silver cap attached to the end of the tube. Probably taxes, late delivery. Or perhaps there's been a discrepancy between the open report filed from my chamber by the wakianavis, the public reportefs, and the private report, which I supposedly do not see, sent directly to the Moghul by the harkaras, the confidential reporters. And if that's the complaint, it will disprove my suspicion that no one in the Imperial chancery ever actually reads the reports. I deliberately inserted a difference of one-half lakh of rupees as reported logged at the mint last month, just to see if they would catch it.

Mukarrab Khan unrolled the dispatch. And his heart stopped.

Clasping the paper he wandered distractedly out of the now-empty audience hall and down the stairs toward the courtyard. When he reached the veranda he only half-noted the heavy clouds threatening in the west, toward the sea, and the moist air promising one last spatter of the monsoon. Servants were removing the tapestried canopy that shaded his cushioned bench, and when they saw him they discreetly melted out of sight, leaving one side of the cloth still dangling from the poles.

He dropped heavily onto the bench and reread the order carefully, his disbelief growing.

On the recommendation of Queen Janahara, Mukarrab Khan had just been appointed India's first amba.s.sador to Portuguese Goa. He would leave in two weeks.

CHAPTER TWELVE

The moon was high, bathing the sleeping veranda in a wash of glistening silver, and the air was deliciously moist, heavy with perfume from the garden below. From somewhere among the distant rooftops came the thread of a man's voice, intoning a high-pitched melody, trilling out wordless syllables like some intense poetry of sound.

Hawksworth leaned back against one of the carved juniper-wood posts supporting the canopy above his sleeping couch and explored Kali's body with his gaze, as a mariner might search a map for unknown islands and inlets. She lounged opposite him, resting against an oblong velvet bolster, examining him with half-shut eyes while she drew contentedly on a hookah fired with black tobacco and a concentrated _bhang _the Arabs called _hashish_.

Her hair hung loose, in gleaming black strands reaching almost to her waist, and her head was circled by a thin tiara of gold and pearls, supporting the large green emerald that always hung suspended in the center of her forehead--even when she made love. The gold she wore--long bracelets at her wrists and upper arms, swinging earrings, even tiny bells at her ankles--seemed to excite her in a way Hawksworth could never understand. Her eyes and eyebrows were kohl-darkened and her lips carefully painted a deep red, matching the color of her fingernails and toenails. And as always she had dyed her palms and the soles of her feet red with henna. Four different strands of pearls hung in perfect array beneath her transparent blouse, glistening white against her delicate, amber-tinted skin. He noticed, too, that her nipples had been rouged, and told himself this was the only thing about her that recalled the women in London.

"Tonight your thoughts were far away, my love. Do you weary of me so soon?" She laid aside the _rome-chauri_, the rubber ring impregnated with powdered hair that she often asked him to wear for her, then took a vial of rose attar from beside the couch and dabbed herself absently along the arms. "Tell me the truth. Are you now beginning to recoil from women, like so many bragging and posturing men I've known, and to long for a boy who fears to seek his own pleasure? Or a subservient _feringhi _woman whose parts are dry from lack of desire?"

Hawksworth studied her for a moment without replying. In truth he did not know what to say. Your nightly visits to this couch have been the most astonishing experience of my life. To imagine I once thought being with the same woman night after night would eventually grow monotonous.

But you always come here as someone different, always with something new. You play on my senses like an instrument--with touch, with scent, with tongue. Until they seem to merge with my mind. Or is it the reverse? But you're right when you say the mind must surrender itself first. When that's done, when the mind is given up to the body, then you somehow forget your own self and think only of the other. And eventually there grows a union of pleasure, a bond that's intense, overwhelming.

But tonight he could not repress his vagrant mind. His feeling of failure churned too deep. It had stolen his spirit.

Day after tomorrow the _Discovery_ weighs anchor, he told himself, with half the cargo we'd planned and twice the men she needs, while the _Resolve_ slowly breaks apart on a sandbar. I've failed the Company . .

. and myself. And there's nothing that can be done. Kali, dear Kali.

The woman I really want to be with tonight is Shirin. Why can't I drive her from my mind? Half the time when you're in my arms, I pretend you're her. Do you sense that too?

"I'm sorry. I'm not myself tonight." You're right as always, he marveled, the mind and the body are one. As he paused, the singer's voice cut the stillness between them. "How did you know?"

"It's my duty as your courtesan to feel your moods. And to try to lift the weight of the world from your heart."

"You do it very well. It's just that sometimes there's too much to lift." He studied her, wondering what she was really thinking, then leaned back and looked at the stars. "Tell me, what do you do when the world weighs on you!"

"That's never your worry, my love. I'm here to think of you, not you of me."

"Tell me anyway. Say it's a _feringhi's_ curiosity."

"What do I do?" She smiled wistfully and drew again on the hookah, sending a tiny gurgle into the quiet. "I escape with _bhang_.

And I remember when I was in Agra, in the _zenana_."

She lay aside the mouthpiece of the hookah and began to roll betel leaves for them both, carefully measuring in a portion of nutmeg, her favorite aphrodisiac.

"Tell me how you came to be here, away from Agra."

"Is it really me you wish to hear about?" She looked at him squarely, her voice quiet. "Or is it Shirin?"

"You," Hawksworth lied, and absently stroked the edge of her foot, where the henna line began. Then he looked into her dark eyes and he knew she knew.

"Will we make love again if I tell you?"