The Moghul

by Thomas Hoover

CHAPTER THREE

  The bells sounded ending the afternoon watch and calling the first dog watch. Only four hours since noon, but already the morning's carnage seemed a memory from a distant lifetime. Sultry tropic air, motionless and stifling, immersed the Discovery as the gaunt-faced seamen labored to finish securing the mast of the pinnace. Mackintosh had ordered the pinnace's sail unrolled on deck, and as he inspected the stitches for rot he alternately reviled the men, the heat, the Company. Hawksworth had completed the log and stood in the companionway outside the Great Cabin to watch the preparations, take the air, and exercise his leg. All the previous night he had stood on the quarterdeck, keeping the helm and translating for the pilot. And tonight again there would be no sleep. There's time for a rest now, his weary mind urged, till the first bell of this watch, half an hour. Then he cursed himself for his weakness, his readiness to yield, and shoved open the door of the Great Cabin.

  The oil lamp swayed with each roll of the ship, punctuating the rhythmic creak of the wood paneling and adding to the sweltering heat. He locked the door, then strode aft to push ajar the two stern windows. But the stolid air lay inert, refusing to lift. He would have to prepare the chest in suffocating misery. So be it.

  Brushing the hair back from his eyes, he unlocked a bronzed sea chest and began to extract one by one the articles entrusted to the Company by King James. First was the letter, in English with a formal copy in diplomatic Spanish, both scribed on parchment and sealed in a leather case secured with His Majesty's impression in red wax. The seal, set in London over seven months before, was soft in the heat now, pliant to his touch. He surveyed the room for a moment and then his eye hit on the pair of formal thigh- length stockings the Company had insisted he pack. Perfect. He bound his hose around the king's letter, knotted it protectively over the seal, and tossed the bundle into the smaller wooden chest he would take ashore.

  Then he began to transfer the royal presents: a brace of gold-plated pistols, a half dozen silver-handled swords, a small silver-trimmed saddle, a set of delicate Norwich crystal, jeweled rings, a leather-bound mirror, a silver whistle studded with emeralds, a large cocked hat trimmed in silk, a miniature portrait of King James, and finally, a dozen bottles of fine English sack. He checked each item for damage and then packed them tightly into the small chest. Finally he inserted a tightly fitting false bottom and covered it with a coarse woolen rug.

  Then the second packing began. He started with more gifts, these for port officials, mainly silver-trimmed knives and rings set with small inexpensive pearls. He also enclosed several boxed sets of English gold sovereigns, which the Company had requested be distributed as widely as possible, in hopes they would begin to be accepted.

  Finally he looked about the room for personal goods. First he folded in a new leather jerkin, then next to it packed a new pair of leather boots. He stared at the boots for a moment, and then removed them while he carefully wrapped two primed pistols and slid one deep into each hollow toe. Next to the boots he packed a case of Spanish brandy he had been saving, for personal use aland. Lastly he took his glistening English lute from its corner berth, held it for a moment, and tested the strings. He adjusted the tuning on one string, then wrapped the lute's melon-shaped body in a silk cloth, and nestled it next to the brandy.

  As he secured the lock on the chest and pocketed the large brass key, he suddenly asked himself how he would get the chest into India without its being searched. I'm not a genuine ambassador. I'm the captain of a merchantman, with no diplomatic standing. The Company, for all its mercantile wisdom, neglected to consider that small difficulty.

  So I'll just have to sound like an ambassador. That shouldn't be so hard. Just be impressed with your own importance. And find nothing, food or lodgings, sufficiently extravagant.

  Then he drew himself erect and unlocked the door of the Great Cabin. Only one thing remained.

  "Mackintosh!" The quartermaster was in the pinnace now, fitting the tiller, and he glanced up in irritation. "Send the pilot to my cabin."

  Hawksworth had scarcely seated himself behind the great oak table before the tall chestnut-skinned man appeared in the doorway. Hawksworth examined the face again, expressionless and secure, asking himself its years. Is he thirty; is he fifty? The features seemed cast from an ageless mold, hard and seamless, immune to time.

  "May I be of service?"

  "Repeat your name for me." Hawksworth spoke in Turkish. "And tell me again the business of your vessel."

  "My name is Karim Hasan Ali." The reply came smoothly, but almost too rapidly for Hawksworth to follow. "My ship was the Rahimi, a pilgrim vessel on her return voyage from Mecca, by way of Aden, to our northern port of Diu. We carry Muslim pilgrims outbound from India in the spring, and return after the monsoon. As you assuredly must know, for a thousand years Mecca has been the shrine all followers of Islam must visit once in their life. Our cabins are always full."

  Hawksworth recalled the vessel, and his astonishment at her size. She had had five masts and was easily twelve hundred tons, over twice the burden of the Discovery and greater than anything he had ever seen before, even the most ambitious Spanish carrack. But when they spotted her, tacking eastward across the Bay of Cambay, she was unarmed and hove to almost before they had fired across her bow. Why unarmed, he had asked himself then, and why strike so readily? Now he understood.

  "And you were the pilot for the Rahimi?"

  "I am called the musallim.” A note of formality entered the Indian's voice and he instinctively drew himself more erect.

  "Is that the pilot?"

  "Yes, but more. Perhaps it is like your first mate. But I am in full charge of navigation for the nakuda, the owner. To you he would be captain."

  "And what was your salary for the voyage?"

  "I received two hundred rupees for the trip to Aden, and am allowed two extra cabins of goods for personal trade."

  Hawksworth smiled resignedly to himself, remembering he had unquestioningly delivered to the nakuda a bag of Spanish rials of eight equivalent to five hundred Indian rupees to buy out the pilot's contract. Then he spoke.

  "Tonight, we go upriver to Surat. You're still in my service and you'll be pilot."

  "I had expected it. I know the river well."

  "Will there be any Portugal traders on the river?" Hawksworth searched his eyes hoping to monitor their truthfulness.

  "I would not expect it. Although this year's monsoons are past and the river has returned to normal, there are new sandbanks. Every season they shift, becoming more treacherous. Only those of us who know the river well understand the moods of her sands. I have never seen topiwallah traders in Surat this early in the season." Karim paused, following Hawksworth's puzzled expression, then continued, with an air of condescension," Topiwallah is our word meaning 'men who wear hats.' We call Christian traders topiwallahs." He fixed Hawksworth squarely. "And we have other names for their priests."

  "Call Christians what you will, but just remember England is not Portugal." Hawksworth's tone stiffened. "England has rid herself of the popery that still rules the Spaniards and Portugals. Along with their fear-mongering Jesuits and their damned Inquisition. It's now treason to practice Catholic rites in England."

  "I have heard something of your petty European squabbles, your Christian rivalries. Is it your intention now to spread them to India as well?"

  "All England wants is trade. Nothing else." Hawksworth shifted his leg, leaning forward to tighten the bandage. "I'm here as an ambassador. To convey the friendship of my king, and his offer of free and open trade."

  "And after you begin this trade, what then? Will you next try to drive the Portuguese from our ports? So that you can steal away shipping from our own merchantmen, as they have done, and demand we pay you for a license to ply our own seas?"

  "I told you we only want trade. England has no use for sailing licenses, or priests. Our only enemies here are the Portugals. And the damned Hollanders if they start trying to interfere." />
  Karim studied Hawksworth in silence, fingering his jeweled earring in thought as he recalled the morning's battle. Two small English merchant frigates had prevailed over four Portuguese warships, galleons. Never before, he told himself, have the Portuguese been humiliated before our eyes. Pigeons must already be winging word of this incredible encounter to Agra. Separately, no doubt, to the Moghul and to the queen. But Queen Janahara will know first. As always. And she will know her Portuguese profits are no longer secure.

  And what about Prince Jadar? Yes, the prince will already have heard, hours ago. What will Prince Jadar decide to do? That's the most important question now.

  "Just tell me about the navigation of the river," Hawksworth continued unable to decipher Karim's distant expression. "How long will it take for our pinnace to reach Surat? We cast off at sunset."

  "The tide will be running in tonight, and that will aid your oarsmen." Karim instantly became businesslike. "There will also be a night breeze off the sea. But the Portuguese have no authority on our river. Once you are inland you are under the rule of the governor of Surat. . . . and, of course, Prince Jadar, whom the Moghul has appointed to administrate this province."

  Hawksworth heard the first bell and walked to the stern windows to monitor the slant of the dying sun and to inhale the fresh evening air. Then he wheeled and examined Karim, the pilot's face shadowed in the half light.

  "And who are these officials? This governor and prince?"

  Karim smiled and carefully secured the fold of his turban. "The governor administers the port of Surat. He collects trading duties of the Moghul’s court in Agra. Prince Jadar is the son of the Moghul and the military ruler of Gujarat, this province."

  "Then who will I meet in Surat?" Hawksworth groped for a pattern. "The governor or the prince?"

  Again Karim paused, wondering how much to tell, before continuing evenly, "Neither of these need concern you now. The first official you must satisfy will be the Shahbandar, what the Moghuls call the mutasaddi. The Shahbandar controls the customs house, the portal for all who would enter the Moghul’s domain. His power over the port is absolute."

  Hawksworth slapped one of the bronze cannon to punctuate his dismay.

  In India also! Good Jesus, every Muslin port in the world must have this same petty official. I've heard that Shahban­dar is Persian for "Lord of the Haven," and if that's true the office is named perfectly. Every one I've known has had the right to refuse entry to anyone, at his whim, if bribes are insufficient and no more powerful official intervenes.

  "Who does the Shahbandar here answer to? The governor? The prince? The Moghul himself? Or somebody else you haven't told me about yet?" Hawksworth tried to push back his rising anxiety.

  "Captain, you have, in your guileless feringhi way, raised a question it is wiser not to pursue. I can only assure you the Shahbandar is a man of importance in Surat, and in India."

  "But who should I seek out when we reach Surat?"

  At that moment two bells sounded on the quarterdeck, and with them a ray from the fading sun pierced the stern window, glancing off the oak boards of the table. A twilight silence seemed to settle uneasily over the Discovery, amplifying the creaking of her boards.

  "Captain, I have already told you more than most foreigners know. You would be wise to prepare now to meet the Shahbandar." Karim rose abruptly and bowed, palms together, hands at his brow. "You must forgive me. In Islam we pray at sunset."

  Hawksworth stared after him in perplexity as Karim turned and vanished into the darkened companionway.

  Not yet even aland, and already I sense trouble. He fears the Shahbandar, that's clear enough, but I'm not sure it's for the usual reasons. Is there some intrigue underway that we're about to be drawn into, God help us?

  He took a deep breath and, fighting the ache in his leg, made his way out to the quarter gallery on the stern. A lone flying fish, marooned in the bay from its home in the open sea, burst from the almost placid waters, glinting the orange sun off its body and settling with a splash, annoying the seabirds that squabbled over gallery scraps along the port side. Seamen carrying rations of salt pork and biscuit were clambering down the companionway and through the hatch leading to the lower deck and their hammocks. Hawksworth listened to them curse the close, humid air below, and then he turned to inhale again the land breeze, permeated with a green perfume of almost palpable intensity.

  Following the direction of the sweetened air, he turned and examined the darkening shore one last time. India now seemed vaguely obscured, as through a light mist. Or was it merely encroaching darkness? And through this veil the land seemed somehow to brood? Or did it beckon?

  It's my imagination, he told himself. India is there all right, solid ground, and scarcely a cannon shot away. India, the place of fable and mystery to Englishmen for centuries. And also the place where a certain party of English travelers disappeared so many years ago.

  That should have been a warning, he told himself. It's almost too ironic that you're the next man to try to go in. You, of all the men in England. Are you destined to repeat their tragedy?

  He recalled again the story he knew all too well. The man financing those English travelers almost three decades past had been none other than Peter Elkington, father of George Elkington, Chief Merchant on this voyage. Like his son, Peter Elkington was a swearing, drinking, whoring mer­chant, a big-bellied giant of a man who many people claimed looked more and more like King Harry the older and fatter he got. It was Peter Elkington's original idea those many years back to send Englishmen to India.

  The time was before England met and obliterated the Armada of Spain, and long before she could hope to challenge the oceanic trade networks of the Catholic countries—Spain to the New World, Portugal to the East. In those days the only possible road to India for England and the rest of Europe still was overland, the centuries-old caravan trail that long preceded Portugal's secret new sea route around the Cape.

  The idea of an English mission overland to India had grown out of Peter Elkington's Levant Company, franchised by Queen Elizabeth to exploit her new treaty with the Ottoman Turks, controllers of the caravan trade between India and the Mediterranean. Through the Levant Com­pany, English traders could at last buy spices directly at Tripoli from overland caravans traveling the Persian Gulf and across Arabia, thereby circumventing the greedy Venetian brokers who for centuries had served as middle­men for Europe's pepper and spices.

  But Peter Elkington wanted more. Why buy expensive spices at the shores of the Mediterranean? Why not extend England's own trade lines all the way to India and buy directly?

  To gain intelligence for this daring trade expansion, he decided to finance a secret expedition to scout the road to India, to send a party of English traders through the Mediterranean to Tripoli, and on from there in disguise across Arabia to the Persian Gulf, where they would hire passage on a native trader all the way to the western shore of India. Their ultimate destination was the Great MoghuFs court, deep in India, and hidden in their bags would be a letter from Queen Elizabeth, proposing direct trade.

  Eventually three adventurous traders were recruited to go, led by Roger Symmes of the Levant Company. But Peter Elkington wanted a fourth, for protection, and he eventually persuaded a young army captain of some reputation to join the party. The captain—originally a painter, who had later turned soldier after the death of his wife—was vigorous, spirited, and a deadly marksman. Peter Elkington promised him a nobleman's fortune if they succeeded. And he promised to take responsibility for Captain Hawksworth's eight-year-old son, Brian, if they failed.

  Peter Elkington himself came down to the Thames that cold, gray February dawn they set sail, bringing along his own son, George—a pudgy, pampered adolescent in a silk doublet. Young George Elkington regally ignored Brian Hawksworth, a snub only one of the two still remembered. As the sails slowly dissolved into the icy mist, Brian climbed atop his uncle's shoulders to catch a long last glimpse. No one dreame
d that only one of the four would ever see London again.

  Letters smuggled back in cipher kept the Levant Com­pany informed of progress. The party reached Tripoli without incident, made their way successfully overland through Arabia, and then hired passage on an Arab trader for her trip down the Persian Gulf. The plan seemed to be working perfectly.

  Then came a final letter, from the Portuguese fortress of Hormuz, a salt-covered island peopled by traders, overlook­ing the straits between the Persian Gulf and the Gulf of Oman, gateway to the Arabian Sea and India's ports. While waiting at Hormuz for passage on to India, the English party had been betrayed by a suspicious Venetian and accused of being spies. The Portuguese governor of Hormuz had nervously imprisoned them and decreed they be shipped to Goa for trial.

  After waiting a few more months for further word, Peter Elkington finally summoned Brian Hawksworth to the offices of the Levant Company and read him this last letter. He then proceeded to curse the contract with Captain Hawksworth that rendered the Levant Company responsible for Brian's education should the expedition meet disaster.

  Peter Elkington admitted his plan had failed, and with that admission, the Levant Company quietly abandoned its vision of direct trade with India.

  But Brian Hawksworth now had a private tutor, engaged by the Levant Company, a tousle-haired young apostate recently dismissed from his post at Eton for his anti-religious views.

  This new tutor scorned as dogmatic the accepted subjects of Latin, rhetoric, and Hebrew—all intended to help Elizabethan scholars fathom abstruse theological disputa­tions—and insisted instead on mathematics, and the new subject of science. His anti-clerical outlook also meant he would teach none of the German in fashion with the Puritans, or the French and Spanish favored by Catholics. For him all that mattered was classical Greek: the language of logic, pure philosophy, mathematics, and science. The end result was that the commoner Brian Hawksworth received an education far different from, if not better than, that of most gentlemen, and one that greatly surpassed the hornbook alphabet and numbers that passed for learning among others of his own class.

  To no one's surprise, Brian Hawksworth was his father's son, and he took naturally to marksmanship and fencing. But his first love came to be the English lute, his escape from the world of his tutor's hard numbers and theorems.

  It lasted until the day he was fourteen, the day the Levant Company's responsibility expired. The next morning Brian Hawksworth found himself apprenticed to a Thames waterman and placed in service on one of the mud-encrusted ferryboats that plied London's main artery. After three months of misery and ill pay, he slipped away to take a berth on a North Sea merchantman. There he sensed at once his calling was the sea, and he also discovered his knowledge of mathematics gave him an understanding of navigation few other seamen enjoyed. By then he scarcely remembered his father, or the luckless expedition to India.

  Until the day Roger Symmes appeared alone back in London, almost ten years after that icy morning the Levant Company's expedition had sailed. . . .

  The Discovery groaned, and Hawksworth sensed the wind freshen as it whipped through the stern quarter gallery and noticed the increasingly brisk swirl of the tide. Almost time to cast off. As he made his way back to the Great Cabin for a last check, his thoughts returned again to London, those many years ago.

  He had found Symmes at the offices of the Levant Company, nursing a tankard of ale as he sat very close to their large roaring fireplace. He bore little resemblance to the jaunty adventurer Hawksworth remembered from that long-ago morning on the Thames. Now he was an incongruous figure, costumed in a tight-fitting new silk doublet and wearing several large gold rings, yet with a face that was haggard beyond anything Hawksworth had ever seen. His vacant eyes seemed unable to focus as he glanced up briefly and then returned his stare to the crackling logs in the hearth. But he needed no prompting to begin his story.

  "Aye, 'tis a tale to make the blood run ice." Symmes eased open a button of his ornate doublet and shakily loosened his new ruff collar. "After the Venetian rogue gets us arrest'd with his damnable lie, the bastard Portugals clap us in the hold of a coastin' barge makin' for Goa, in company with near a hundred Arab horses. When we finally make port, they haul us out of that stink hole and slam us in another, this time the Viceroy's dungeons. We took ourselves for dead men."

  "But what happened to my father?" Hawksworth blinked the sweat from his eyes, wanting the story but wanting almost more to escape the overheated, timbered offices that loomed so alien.

  "That's the horrible part o' the story. It happen'd the next mornin', poor luckless bastard. We're all march'd into this big stone-floor'd room where they keep the strappado."

  "What's that?"

  "’Tis a kindly little invention o' the Portugals, lad. First they bind your hands behind your back and run the rope up over a hangin' pulley block. Then they hoist you up in the air and set to givin' it little tugs, makin' you hop like you're dancin' the French lavolta. When they tire o' the sport, or they're due to go say their rosary beads, they just give it a good strong heave and pop your arms out o' your shoulders. Jesuits claim 'twould make a Moor pray to the pope."

  Hawksworth found himself watching Symmes's wild eyes as he recounted the story, and wondering how he could remember every detail of events a decade past.

  "Then this young captain comes in, struttin' bastard, hardly a good twenty year on him. Later I made a point to learn his name—Vaijantes, Miguel Vaijantes."

  "What did he do?"

  "Had to see him, lad. Eyes black and hard as onyx. An' he sports this sword he's had made up with rubies in the handle. Ne'er saw the likes o' it, before or since, e'en in India. But he's a Portugal, tho', through an' through. No doubt on that one."

  "But what did he do?"

  "Why, he has the guards sling Hawksworth up in the strappado, lad, seein' he's the strongest one o' us. Figur'd he'd last longer, I suppose, make more sport."

  "Vaijantes had them torture my father?"

  "Aye. Think's he'll squeeze a confession and be a hero. But ol' Hawksworth ne'er said a word. All day. By nightfall Vaijantes has pull'd his arms right out. They carried him out of the room a dead man."

  Hawksworth still remembered how his stomach turned at that moment, with the final knowledge that his father was not merely missing, or away—as he had told himself, and others—but had been coldly murdered. He had checked his tears, lest Symmes see, and pressed on.

  "What happened to you, and to the others? Did he torture you next?"

  "Would have, not a doubt on't. We all wonder'd who'd be the next one. Then that night they post a Jesuit down to our cell, a turncoat Dutchman by the name of Huyghen, who spoke perfect English, thinkin' he'd cozen us into confessin'. But he hates the Portugals e'en more'n we do. An' he tells us we'd most likely go free if we'd pretend to turn Papist. So the next day we blurt out we're actually a band o' wealthy adventurers in disguise, rich lads out to taste the world, but we've seen the error o' our ways an' we've decided to foreswear the flesh and turn Jesuits ourselves. Thinkin' of donatin' everything we own to their holy order." Symmes paused and nervously drew a small sip from his tankard of spiced ale. "Vicious Papist bastards."

  "Did they really believe you?"

  "Guess the Dutchman must've convinc'd 'em somehow. Anyway, our story look'd square enough to get us out on bail, there bein' no evidence for the charge o' spyin' in any case. But we'd hardly took a breath of air before our old friend the Hollander comes runnin' with news the Viceroy's council just voted to ship us back to Lisbon for trial. That happens and we're dead men. No question. We had to look to it."

  Symmes seemed to find concentration increasingly dif­ficult, but he extracted a long-stemmed pipe and began stuffing black strands into it with a trembling hand while he composed himself. Finally he continued. "Had to leave Goa that very night. What else could we do? So we traded what little we had for diamonds, sew'd 'em up in our clothes, and waded the river into India. By daw
n we're beyond reach o' the Portugals. In India. An' then, lad, is when it began."

  "What happened?"

  "T’would take a year to tell it all. Somehow we eventually got to the Great Moghul’s court. I think he was named Akman. An' we start livin' like I never thought I'd see. Should've seen his city, lad, made London look like a Shropshire village. He had a big red marble palace called Fatehpur Sekri, with jewels common as rocks, an’ gold e'erywhere, an' gardens filled with fountains, an' mystical music like I'd ne'er heard, an' dancin' women that look'd like angels . . ."

  His voice trailed off. "Ah, lad, the women there."

  Symmes suddenly remembered himself and turned to examine Hawksworth with his glassy eyes. "But I fancy you're a bit young to appreciate that part o' it, lad." Then his gaze returned to the fire and he rambled on, warming to his own voice. "An' there was poets readin' Persian, and painters drawin' pictures that took days to do one the size of a book page. An' the banquets, feasts you're ne'er like to see this side o' Judgment Day."

  Symmes paused to draw on his pipe for a moment, his hand still shaking, and then he plunged ahead. "But it was the Drugs that did it, lad, what they call'd affion and bhang, made out o' poppy flowers and some kind of hemp. Take enough of them and the world around you starts to get lost. After a while you ne'er want to come back. It kill'd the others, lad. God only knows how I escap'd."

  Then Symmes took up his well-rehearsed monologue about the wealth he'd witnessed, stories of potential trade that had earned him a place at many a merchant's table. His tale expanded, becoming ever more fantastic, until it was impossible to tell where fact ended and wishful fabrication began.

  Although Symmes had never actually met any Indian officials, and though the letter from Queen Elizabeth had been lost en route, his astonishing story of India's riches inspired the greed of all England's merchants. Excitement swelled throughout London's Cheapside, as traders began to clamor for England to challenge Portugal's monopoly of the sea passage around the Cape. Symmes, by his inflated, half-imaginary account, had unwittingly sown the first seeds of the East India Company.

  Only young Brian Hawksworth, who nourished no mercantile fantasies, seemed to realize that Roger Symmes had returned from India quite completely mad.