The Moghul Part 64

"Perfectly, Your Majesty. And, so please Your Majesty, the wine is excellent, though perhaps not as sweet as the wines of Europe."

"Every _feringhi _says the same, Inglish. But we will civilize you. And also teach you something about painting." He seized a gla.s.s of wine from a waiting eunuch and then shouted to Nadir Sharif, who had entered moments before from the back. "Where are my five paintings?"

"I'm told they will be ready before Your Majesty retires. The painters are still hard at work, so please Your Majesty."

"It does not please me, but then I have no wager." He roared with amus.e.m.e.nt. "Your stables will be reduced by a prize stallion come morning if the paintings are not ready soon. Look to it."

As Nadir Sharif bowed in acknowledgment, Arangbar whirled to Hawksworth.

"Tell me something about your king, Inglish? How many wives does he have? We have hundreds."

"He has but one, Your Majesty, and I believe she is mostly for show.

King James prefers the company of young men."

"Very like most Christians I've met. And you, Inglish. Have you any wives?" Arangbar had already finished his first gla.s.s of wine and taken a second.

"I have none, Your Majesty."

"But you, I suspect, are not a Jesuit, or a eunuch."

"No, Your Majesty."

"Then we shall find you a wife, Inglish." He took a ball of opium and washed it down with wine. "No, we will find you two. Yes, you shall be well wived."

"May it please Your Majesty, I have no means to care for a wife. I am here for only a season." Hawksworth shifted uncomfortably.

"You will only leave Agra, Inglish, when it is our pleasure. But if you will not have a wife, you must at least have a house."

"I am arranging it now, Your Majesty."

Arangbar looked at Hawksworth sharply, then continued as though he had not heard.

"Now tell us more about your king. We would know what he's like."

Hawksworth bowed as he tried to collect his thoughts. The wine was already toying with his brain. Although most of what he knew about King James was hearsay, he knew he did not care for England's new king overly much. No English subject did. And idle seamen had reason to dislike him the most of all. He was not the sovereign Elizabeth had been.

"He's of middle stature, Your Majesty, not overly fat though he seems so since he always wears quilted, stiletto-proof doublets."

Arangbar seemed surprised. "Is he not safe? Has he no guards?"

"He's a prudent man, Your Majesty, as befits a sovereign." And, Hawksworth thought, also a coward, if you believe the talk in London.

What all men know for fact, though, is that he's a weakling, whose legs are so spindly he has to be helped to walk, leaning on other men's shoulders while he fiddles spastically with his codpiece.

"Does your king wear many jewels, Amba.s.sador Inglish?"

"Of course, Your Majesty." Hawksworth drank calmly from his wine cup, hoping the lie would pa.s.s unnoticed.

What would the Moghul think if he knew the truth, Hawksworth asked himself? That King James of England only changes his clothes when they are rags, and his fashion never. He was once, they say, given a Spanish-style hat, and he cast it away, swearing he loved neither them nor their fashions. Another time he was given shoes with brocade roses on them, and he railed at the giver, asking if he was to be made a ruff-footed dove.

"Is your king generous of nature, Amba.s.sador? We are loved by our people because we give of our bounty on every holy day. Baskets of silver rupees are flung down the streets of Agra."

"King James is giving also, Your Majesty." With the moneys of others.

He'd part willingly with a hundred pounds not in his own keeping before he'd release ten shillings from his private purse. And it's said he'd rather spend a hundred thousand pounds on emba.s.sies abroad, buying peace with bribes, than ten thousand on an army that would enforce peace with honor. "He is a man among men, Your Majesty, admired and loved by all his subjects."

"As are we, Amba.s.sador." Arangbar took another ball of opium and washed it down with a third gla.s.s of wine. "Tell me, does your king drink spirits?"

"It is said he drinks often, Your Majesty, though many declare it is more out of custom than delight. He drinks strong liquors--Frontiniack, Canary, High Canary wine, Tent wine, Scottish ale--but never, it's said, more than a few spoonfuls."

"Then he could never drink with the Moghul of India, Amba.s.sador. We have twenty cups of wine a night. And twelve grains of opium." Arangbar paused as he accepted yet another gla.s.s. His voice had begun to slur slightly. "But perhaps your king can trade with me. When will the ships from your king's next voyage arrive? And how many of your king's frigates will we see yearly if we grant him the trading _firman _he requests?"

Hawksworth noticed out of the corner of his eye that Nadir Sharif had now moved directly beside him. The prime minister held a gla.s.s of wine from which he sipped delicately. Around him the other courtiers were already drinking heavily, to the obvious approval of Arangbar.

He'll not finish a single gla.s.s of wine, if my guess is right. Nadir Sharif'll find a way to stay stone sober while the rest of the room sinks into its cups. And they'll all be too drunk to notice.

"King James will one day send an armada of frigates, Your Majesty."

Keep Arangbar's mind off the next voyage. He just may try to hold you here until it comes, or refuse to grant a _firman _until he sees the next batch of presents. "His Majesty, King James, is always eager to trade the seas where his ships are welcome."

"Even if other nations of Europe would quarrel with his rights to those seas?"

"England has no quarrels in Europe, Your Majesty. If you refer to the engagement off Surat, you should know that was caused by a misunderstanding of the treaties that now exist in Europe. England is at peace with all her neighbors."

A skeptical silence seemed to envelop the room. Arangbar took another cup of wine and drank it off. Then he turned to Hawksworth.

"The matter, Amba.s.sador Inglish, does not seem to us to be that simple.

But we will examine it more later. Nights are made for beauty, days for affairs of state." Arangbar's voice had begun to slur even more noticeably. "You may have heard there will be a wedding here soon. My youngest prince is betrothed to the daughter of my queen. The wedding will be held one month after my own birthday celebration, and it will be an event to remember. Tonight I begin the always-pleasant task of selecting the women who will dance. Do you know anything of Indian dance?"

"Very little, Your Majesty. I have only seen it once. In Surat. At a gathering one evening at the palace of the Shahbandar."

Arangbar roared and seized another gla.s.s of wine. "I can well imagine the kind of entertainment the Shahbandar of Surat provides for his guests. No, Amba.s.sador, I mean the real dance of India. The dance of great artists? Perhaps you have cla.s.sical dance in England?"

"No, Your Majesty. We have nothing similar. At least similar to the dance I saw."

"Then a pleasant surprise awaits you." Arangbar examined Hawksworth's cup and motioned for a servant to refill it. "Drink up, Inglish. The evening is only beginning."

Arangbar clapped drunkenly and the guests began to settle themselves around the bolsters that had been strewn about the carpet. An ornate silk pillow was provided for each man to rest against, and a number of large hookahs, each with several mouthpieces, were lighted and stationed about the room. The servants also distributed garlands of yellow flowers, and as Nadir Sharif took his place next to Hawksworth, he wrapped one of the garlands about his left wrist. With the other hand he set down his winegla.s.s, still full, and signaled a servant to replenish Hawksworth's. Arangbar was reclining now on the throne, against his own bolster, and the oil lamps around the side of the room were lowered, leaving illumination only on the musicians and on a bare spot in the center of the carpet. The air was rich with the aroma of roses as servants pa.s.sed shaking rosewater on the guests from long- necked silver decanters.

The musicians were completing their tuning, and Hawksworth noticed that now there were two drummers, a sitar player, and a new musician holding a _sarangi_. In the background another man sat methodically strumming a simple upright instrument, shaped like the sitar save it provided nothing more than a low-pitched droning, against which the other instruments had been tuned. Next a man entered, wearing a simple white shirt, and settled himself on the carpet in front of the musicians. As silence gripped the room, Arangbar signaled to the seated man with his winegla.s.s and the man began to sing a low, soulful melody that seemed to consist of only a few syllables. "Ga, Ma, Pa." The voice soared upward. "Da, Ni, Sa." After a few moments Hawksworth guessed he must be singing the names of the notes in the Indian scale. They were virtually identical to the Western scale, except certain notes seemed to be a few microtones higher or lower, depending whether approached from ascent or descent.

The singer's voice soared slowly upward in pitch and volume, growing more intense as it quavered around certain of the high notes, while the sarangi player listened attentively and bowed the exact notes he sang, always seeming to guess which note he would find next. The song was melodic, and gradually what had at first seemed almost a dirge grew to be a poignant line of beauty.

Suddenly the singer's voice cut the air with a fast-tempo phrase, which was brief and immediately repeated, the second time to the accompaniment of the drum, as both players picked up the notes. On the third repet.i.tion of the phrase, the curtains on Arangbar's right were swept aside and a young woman seemed to fairly burst across the room, her every skipping step announced by a band of tiny bells bound around her ankles and across the tops of her bare feet.

As she spun into the light, she whirled a fast pirouette that sent her long braided pigtail--so long the end was attached to her waist-- whistling in an arc behind her. Her flowered silk tunic flew outward from her spinning body, revealing all of her tight-fitting white trousers. She wore a crown of jewels, straight pendant earrings of emerald, and an inch- long string of diamonds dangled from the center of her nose.

She paused for an instant, whirled toward Arangbar, and performed a _salaam _with her right hand, fingers slightly bent, thumb across her palm as she raised her hand to her forehead. The movement was possessed of so much grace it seemed a perfect dance figure.

"May I take the liberty of interpreting for you, Amba.s.sador?" Nadir Sharif ignored the hookah mouthpiece that another, slightly tipsy, guest was urging on him and slid closer to Hawksworth. "Kathak is an art, like painting or pigeon-flying, best appreciated when you know the rules." He pointed toward the dancer. "Her name is Sangeeta, and she has just performed the invocation. For the Hindus it is a salute to their elephant-headed G.o.d Ganesh. For Muslims, it is a _salaam_."

Next she turned slowly toward the guests and struck a pose, one foot crossed behind the other, arms bent as though holding a drawn bow. As the _sarangi _played a slow, tuneful melody, she seemed to control the rhythm of the drums by quietly stroking together again and again the thumb and forefinger of each hand. The explosive tension in her body seemed focused entirely in this single, virtually imperceptible motion, almost as a gla.s.s marshals the power of the sun to a tiny point. Then her eyes began to dart from side to side, and first one eyebrow and then the other lifted seductively. Gradually the rhythm was taken up by her head, as it began to glide from side to side in a subtle, elegant expression that seemed an extension of the music.