The Moghul

by Thomas Hoover

  *

  "Tonight you may have been luckier than you suppose, Captain Hawksworth." The Shahbandar's fingers deftly counted the five sovereigns through the leather pouch Hawksworth had handed him. Around them the final side bets were being placed against the Portuguese captain who would play Mirza Nuruddin next.

  "It's hard to see how."

  "For the price of a mere five sovereigns, Captain, you've learned a truth some men fail to master in a lifetime." Mirza Nuruddin motioned away the Portuguese captain, his doublet stained with wine, who waited to take his place at the board. "I really must call the dancers now, lest some of my old friends lose regard for our hospitality. I hope you'll find them entertaining, Captain Hawksworth. If you've never seen the nautch, you've yet to call yourself a man."

  Hawksworth pulled himself up and thought about the river and slowly worked his way through the crowd to the edge of the marble court. The damp, chill air purged the torch smoke from his lungs and began to sweep away the haze of brandy from his brain. He stared into the dark and asked the winds if they knew of the Resolve.

  Could it all have been a trap? What if he'd told the Portugals, and they had warships waiting?

  Without warning, the slow, almost reverent strains of a sarangi, the Indian violin, stirred from the corner of the courtyard, and the crowd shifted expectantly. Hawksworth turned to notice that a carpeted platform had been erected directly in the center of the court, and as he watched, a group of women, perhaps twenty, slowly began to mount steps along its side. The torches had grown dim, but he could still see enough to tell they all wore the veil of purdah and long skirts over their trousers. As they moved chastely toward the center of the platform he thought they looked remarkably like village women going to a well, save they wore rows of tiny bells around their ankles and heavy bangles on their wrists.

  The air was rent by a burst of drumming, and the courtyard suddenly flared as servants threw oil on the smoldering torches around the balcony. At that instant, in a gesture of high drama, the women ripped away their turquoise veils and flung them skyward. The crowd erupted in a roar.

  Hawksworth stared at the women in astonishment.

  Their skirts, the skintight trousers beneath, and their short halters—were all gossamer, completely transparent.

  The dance was underway. Hips jerked spasmodically, in perfect time with the drummer's accelerating, hypnotic rhythms—arching now to the side, now suggestively forward. Hawksworth found himself exploring the dancers' mask-like faces, all heavily painted and expressionless. Then he watched their hands, which moved in sculptural arcs through a kind of sign language certain Indians in the crowd seemed to know. Other hand messages were understood by all, as the women stroked themselves intimately, in what seemed almost a parody of sensuality. As the rhythm continued to intensify, they begap to rip away their garments one by one, beginning with their parted waist wraps. Next their halters were thrown to the crowd, though their breasts had long since found release from whatever minimal containment they might have known at the beginning of the dance. Their earth-brown skin now glistened bare in the perfumed torchlight.

  The dance seemed to Hawksworth to go on and on, incredibly building to ever more frantic levels of intensity. The drunken crowd swayed with the women, its excitement and expectation swelling. Then at last the women's trousers also were ripped away, leaving them adorned with only bangles and reflecting jewels. Yet the dance continued still, as they writhed onto their knees at the edge of the platform. Then slowly, as though by some unseen hand, the platform lowered to the level of the courtyard and they glided into the drunken crowd, thrusting breasts, thighs, against the ecstatic onlookers. The cheers had grown deafening.

  Hawksworth finally turned away and walked slowly down the embankment to the river. There, in the first hint of dawn, bathers had begun to assemble for Hindu prayers and a ritual morning bath. Among them were young village girls, swathed head to foot in bright-colored wraps, who descended one by one into the chilled water and began to modestly change garments while they bathed, chastely coiling a fresh cloth around themselves even as the other was removed.

  They had never seemed more beautiful.

  Hawksworth was standing on the steps of the maidan when the sail of the English longboat showed at the turn of the river. News of the shipwreck had reached Surat by village runner an hour after sunup, and barks had already been sent to try to recover the remaining silver before the ship broke apart. The frigate was reportedly no more than a thousand yards off the coast, and all the men, even Kerridge, the bosun, and the pilot, had been safely carried ashore by the current.

  Hawksworth watched the longboat's sail being lowered in preparation for landing and tried to think over his next step, how to minimize the delay and loss.

  We can't risk staying on past another day or two, not with only one vessel. If we're caught at anchor in the cove, there's nothing one ship can do. The Portugals can send in fireships and there'll be no way to sink them with crossfire. The Discovery has to sail immediately. We've enough cotton laded now to fill the hold with pepper in Java.

  Damn Kerridge. Why was he steering so close to shore? Didn't he realize there'd be a current?

  Or was it the pilot?

  Were we steered into this disaster on the orders of our new friend Mirza Nuruddin? Has he been playing false with us all along, only claiming to help us stay clear of the Portugals? By the looks of the traders on the maidan this morning I can tell they all think we were played for fools.

  He tried to remember all the Shahbandar had said the night before, particularly the remarks he had not under­stood, but now the evening seemed swallowed in a fog of brandy.

  But the game, he finally realized, had been more than a game.

  "The voyage will be lucky to break even now." George Elkington slid from the back of the sweating porter and collapsed heavily on the stone steps. "The Resolve was old, but 'twill take forty thousand pound to replace her."

  "What do you plan to do?" Hawksworth eyed Kerridge as he mounted the steps, his doublet unrecognizable under the smeared mud, and decided to ignore him.

  "Not a damn'd thing we can do now, save lade the last of the cotton and some indigo on the Discovery and weigh anchor. And day after tomorrow's not too soon, by my thinkin'." Elkington examined Hawksworth and silently cursed him. He still had not swallowed his disbelief when Hawksworth had announced, only three days before, that he planned to leave the ships and travel to Agra with a letter from King James.

  "The Shahbandar has asked to meet with you." Hawks­worth motioned to Elkington as the last seaman climbed over the side of the longboat and onto the back of a waiting porter. "We may as well go in."

  A crowd of the curious swarmed about them as they made their way across the maidan and through the customs house. Mirza Nuruddin was waiting on his bolster.

  "Captain, my sincere condolences to you and to Mr. Elkington. Please be sure that worthless pilot will never work out of this port again. I cannot believe he was at fault, but he'll be dealt with nonetheless." Which is partially true, Mirza Nuruddin told himself, since my cousin Muhammad Haidar, nakuda of the Rahimi, will take him on the pilgrim ship for the next Aden run, and allow him to work there until his reputation is repaired. "You were fortunate, at least, that the largest part of her cargo had already been unladed."

  Elkington listened to Hawksworth's translation, his face growing ever more florid. "'Twas the damned pilot's knavery. Tell him I'd see him hanged if this was England."

  Mirza Nuruddin listened, then sighed. "Perhaps the pilot was at fault, perhaps not. I don't quite know whose story to believe. But you should know that in India only the Moghul can impose the death penalty. This matter of the pilot is past saving, however. It's best we move on. So tell me, what do you propose to do now?"

  "Settle our accounts, weigh anchor, and be gone." Elkington bristled. "But you've not heard the last o' the East India Company, I'll warrant you. We'll be back with a fleet soon enough, and next
time we'll do our own hirin' of a pilot."

  "As you wish. I'll have our accountants total your invoices." Mirza Nuruddin face did not change as he heard the translation, but his spirit exulted.

  It worked! They'll be well at sea within the week, days before the Portuguese warships arrive. Not even that genius of intrigue Mukarrab Khan will know I planned it all. And by saving these greedy English from certain disaster, I've lured to our seas the only Europeans with the spirit to drive out the Portuguese forever, after a century of humiliation.

  India's historic tradition of free trade, the Shahbandar had often thought, had also brought her undoing. Open-handed to all who came to buy and sell, India had thrived since the beginning of time. Until the Portuguese came.

  In those forgotten days huge single-masted arks, vast as eight hundred tons, freely plied the length of the Arabian Sea. From Mecca's Jidda they came, groaning with the gold, silver, copper, wool, and brocades of Italy, Greece, Damascus, or with the pearls, horses, silks of Persia and Afghanistan. They put in at India's northern port of Cambay, where they laded India's prized cotton, or sailed farther south, to India's port of Calicut, where they bargained for the hard black pepper of India's Malabar Coast, for ginger and cinnamon from Ceylon. India's own merchants sailed eastward, to the Moluccas, where they bought silks and porcelains from Chinese traders, or cloves, nutmeg, and mace from the islanders. India's ports linked China on the east with Europe on the west, and touched all that moved between. The Arabian Sea was free as the air, and the richest traders who sailed it prayed to Allah, the One True God.

  Then, a hundred years ago, the Portuguese came. They seized strategic ocean outlooks from the mouth of the Persian Gulf to the coast of China. On these they built strongholds, forts to control not the lands of Asia, but its seas. And if no man could remember the centuries of freedom, today all knew well the simple device that held the Arabian Sea in bondage. It was a small slip of paper, on which was the signature of a Portuguese governor or the captain of a Portuguese fort. Today no vessel, not even the smallest bark, dared venture the Arabian Sea without a Portuguese cartaz. This hated license must name the captain of a vessel and verify its tonnage, its cargo, its crew, its destination, and its armament. Vessels could trade only at ports controlled or approved by the Portuguese, where they must pay a duty of 8 percent on all cargo in and out. Indian and Arab vessels no longer could carry spices, pepper, copper, or iron—the richest cargo and now the monopoly of Portuguese shippers.

  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 passengers 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 whore.

  "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. God'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 resolved. 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 assure you. His name is Vasant Rao."