The Moghul

by Thomas Hoover

  *

  Mukarrab Khan reread the order carefully, scrutinized the black ink seal at the top of the page to assure 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 spaced 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 ambassador to Portuguese Goa. He would leave in two weeks.