The Moghul Part 44

"No one else seems to be. No one will talk to me now, not even the servants. Suddenly I don't exist." Her eyes softened. "Thank you. Thank you for coming. It means you're not afraid. I'm glad."

"Why do you care whether I came or not?" He asked almost before realizing what he was saying.

She hesitated, and unconsciously ran her glance down his frame. "To see you one more time." He thought he saw something enter her eyes, rising up unbidden. "Don't you realize you've become very special for me?"

"Tell me." He studied her eyes in the lamplight, watching them soften even more.

"You're not like anyone I've ever known. You're part of something that's very strange to me. I sometimes find myself dreaming of you.

You're . . . you're very powerful. Something about you." She caught herself, then laughed. "But maybe it's not really you I dream about at all. Maybe it's what you are."

"What do you mean?"

"You're a man, from the West. There's a strength about you I can't fully understand." He watched her holding herself in check.

"Go on."

"Maybe it's partly the way you touch and master the things around you."

She looked at him directly. "Let me try to explain what I mean. For most people in India, the world that matters most is the world within.

We explore the seas inside our own mind. And so we wait, we wait for the world outside to be brought to us. But for you the inner world seems secondary." She laughed again, and now her voice was controlled and even. "Perhaps I'm not explaining it well. Let me try again. Do you remember the first thing you did on your very first morning in the palace?"

"I walked out here, to the observatory."

"But why did you?"

"Because I'm a seaman, and I thought . . ."

"No, that's only partly the reason." She smiled. "I think you came to see it because it belongs to the world of things. Like a good European, you felt you must first and always be the master of things. Of ships, of guns, even of the stars. Maybe that's why I find you so strong." She paused, then reached out and touched his hand. The gesture had been impulsive, and when she realized what she'd done, she moved to pull it back, then stopped herself.

He looked at her in the lamplight, then gently placed his other hand over hers and held it firm. "Then let me tell you something. I find you just as hard to understand. I find myself drawn to something about you, and it troubles me."

"Why should it trouble you?"

"Because I don't know who you are. What you are. Even what you're doing, or why. You've risked everything for principles that are completely outside me." He looked into her eyes, trying to find words.

"And regardless of what you say, I think you somehow know everything there is to know about me. I don't even have to tell you."

"Things pa.s.s between a man and woman that go beyond words. Not everything has to be said." She shifted her gaze away. "You've had great sadness in your life. And I think it's killed some part of you.

You no longer allow yourself to trust or to love."

"I've had some bad experiences with trust."

"But don't let it die." Her eyes met his. "It's the thing most worthwhile."

He looked at her a long moment, feeling the tenderness beneath her strength, and he knew he wanted her more than anything. Before he thought, he had slipped his arm around her waist and drawn her up to him. He later remembered his amazement at her softness, her warmth as he pulled her body against his own. Before she could speak, he had kissed her, bringing her mouth full to his lips. He had thought for an instant she would resist, and he meant to draw her closer. Only then did he realize it was she who had come to him, pressing her body against his. They clung together in the lamplight, neither wanting the moment to end. At last, with an act of will, she pulled herself away.

"No." Her breath was coming almost faster than his own. "It's impossible."

"Nothing's impossible." He suddenly knew, with an absolute certainty, that he had to make her his own. "Come with me to Agra. Together . . ."

"Don't say it." She stopped his lips with her finger. "Not yet." She glanced at the papers on the table, then reached for his hand, bringing it to her moist cheek. "Not yet."

"You're leaving. So am I. We'll leave together."

"I can't." She was slipping from him. He felt it. "I'll think of you when you're in Agra. And when we're ready, we'll find each other, I promise it."

Before he knew, she had turned and gathered the bundles. When she reached for the lamp, suddenly her hand stopped.

"Let's leave it." She looked toward him. "Still burning." Then she reached out and brushed his lips with her fingertips one last time. He watched in dismay as she pa.s.sed on through the doorway. In moments she was lost among the shadows of the orchard.

BOOK THREE

THE ROAD

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

East along the Tapti River valley the land was a verdant paradise, a patchwork of mango and pipal groves and freshly turned dark earth. By mid-October the fields of cotton, corn, and sugarcane were in harvest; and in the lowlands paired buffalo strained to turn the crusted mud to readiness for broadcast sowing the grain crops of autumn: millet, wheat, and barley. The monsoon-washed roads had again grown pa.s.sable, and now they were a continual procession, as mile-long caravans of corn-laden bullock carts inched ponderously west toward the shipping port of Surat.

The distance from Surat to Burhanpur was one hundred and fifty _kos_, and in dry weather it could be traversed in just over a fortnight.

Vasant Rao had hired fifty carts to transport the sealed bundles--which he said were lead--to Burhanpur, swelling his entourage of forty Raput hors.e.m.e.n by fifty low-caste drivers and bullock teams. He had also hired five additional carts to carry provisions.

Brian Hawksworth had contracted for his own cart and driver, negotiating a price of twenty rupees for cartage of his belongings all the way from Surat to Agra. He was amused to reflect that the chest containing King James's gifts for the Moghul of India traveled lashed to the bed of a ramshackle, wooden-wheeled cart originally intended for hay.

The caravan had been scheduled to depart early on a Sat.u.r.day morning, but the drivers had suddenly refused to budge until the following day.

Hawksworth had confronted his driver, Nayka, a dark-skinned low-caste man with the spindly limbs of the underfed, and demanded to know why.

Nayka had twisted his head deferentially, riveting his eyes on the ground, and explained in halting Turki.

"Today is Sat.u.r.day, Captain Sahib. Sat.u.r.days and

Tuesdays are sacred to the G.o.ddess Devi, the Divine Mother. Journeys begun on those days always meet disaster. Bandits, tigers, washed-out roads. A Mussalman once made my cousin bring a cart of indigo to Surat from a village down the river on a Tuesday, and a bridge broke under his load. Both of his bullocks were drowned."

It was mid-afternoon on Sunday when the caravan finally pulled out from the water tank at Surat's Abidjan Gate. By nightfall they had traveled three _kos_, reaching the outskirts of the village of Cossaria. The next day they made twelve _kos_ east-northeast to reach the town of Karod, a strategic fort on the Tapti, dominated by a hilltop castle that garrisoned two hundred Rajput soldiers. The next three days their camp stages had been the towns of Viara, Corka, and the large garrison city of Narayanpur.

On the insistence of Mirza Nuruddin, Hawksworth had carried only a minimal amount of money with him. Instead he had adopted the practice of Indian merchants, leaving a chest of silver in Surat and receiving a letter of credit, which could be debited for cash at major stops along the road to Agra. Moneylenders received negotiable notes against the silver deposit, which would be paid in Surat at 7 percent surcharge, thereby allowing travelers along the bandit-infested roads to carry cheques instead of cash.

Hawksworth found himself annoyed that Vasant Rao never allowed the caravan to stop inside the towns, where traditional Indian guest houses--a stone floor and a roof-- were available free for travelers.

Instead they camped each evening on the outskirts, while a few Rajputs rode in to the town bazaar to buy fresh vegetables, bricks of cow dung for cooking, and betel leaves for the drivers.

The evening they reached Narayanpur, the governor of the garrison, Partab Shah, had paid a surprise visit to their camp, bringing his own troup of _nautch_ women. While the women entertained the Rajputs with an evening of dance and low-priced intimacy, Partab Shah whispered warnings to Hawksworth that the road farther east was no longer safe now that civil rule in the Deccan was teetering. The governor had offered to provide additional troops to escort the English amba.s.sador and his gifts for the Moghul safely through the district. To the governor's--and Hawksworth's--dismay, Vasant Rao had politely declined.

It had been well after midnight when the governor and his aides rose to return to Narayanpur. Vasant Rao had insisted that the women be sent with him. Then he convened the Rajputs and drivers and announced that they would a.s.semble the caravan two hours before sunup the following morning, an hour earlier than usual. They would try to reach and ford the Tapti before nightfall, then veer northeast for Burhanpur.

Hawksworth thought he detected a trace of worry in Vasant Rao's voice for the first time.