"Thank you, Subahdar Hadi," Lucinda replied to the war chief with a courteous nod and a glance to her husband to be certain that he and Kota had not drawn their weapons. "My husband and I are not worthy of such a glorious reception as this. Ambassador Boeck surely must have told you we are merely traders on our way to the Dutch factory in Surat. We hardly expect to be greeted by a potentate and certainly not by one who speaks English so fluently."
A smile flashed in the Subahdar's beard. "I am not a potentate, Mistress Quarles. I serve the Moghul as Farrash Khanah, simply a tender of the tents — a camp-maker. It is my master's current pleasure that I oversee the construction of this new port on the Ganges." His face turned a proud profile, decorated with eyepaint and lipstain, and a ruby glinted from his right ear. "Some fifteen years ago the emperor Jahangir desired that I set camp for your countryman Sir William Hawkins, when he toured our empire. He stayed with us for three years, and thus I have acquired some facility with your language. Will you accept my hospitality in Mirzapur?"
"You are too generous, my lord," Lucinda deferred with lowered gaze. "We are a common caravan, not worthy of your attention. I myself am no longer Mistress Quarles. Did the ambassador inform you? I have married Jaki Gefjon." She smiled at her husband, and he stepped forward, swept off his hat, and executed the low bow that Pym had taught him appropriate for dignitaries.
"Ah, the pirate," the Subahdar said, and a soft ripple of laughter followed when Jaki rose stiffly from his bow. "Of course Mynheer Boeck told me of you. Even if he had not, I would have known you. Your notoriety has spiced gossip in tents throughout the empire. The Bantam of Malaya, whose harbor at Serangoon you destroyed single-handedly, warns that you are demon possessed. He says headhunters reared you in the jungles of Borneo. This is so?"
Jaki looked up benignly at the Subahdar. "An accident of birth. None of my doing, I assure you."
The Subahdar laughed, a staccato of grunts that broke the hush of the caravan crowd into titters of polite relief. "Very well, sir." He hissed a command, and the two armed horsemen flanking the lead elephant sheathed their swords and spun away. "Please join me in our camp, out of this oppressive heat. Your merchants may trade in our new marketplace while I have the honor of entertaining you."
Lucinda prodded her elephant, and it knelt on its front right leg and raised its left so she and Maud could step down. Jaki and Kota, infected by the Moghul pageantry, walked to the head of the elephant and helped them to the ground.
The Subahdar sighed loudly and thrust his open palm first at Maud and then at Kota. "Alas." He shook his head. "I cannot extend my invitation to your companions. I have just this day been recalled to Mandu, and my servants are burdened with the necessities of our coming march. You must forgive me. I can favorably entertain only the two of you. Your companions must accompany the caravan into Mirzapur."
Jaki frowned with suspicion. Before he could speak, Lucinda said, "I am sure we will have no need of servants in your household." To Maud, she said, "When you go to the market, try to keep your mind off spices and teas and see if you can exchange that glassware for some textiles."
Jaki handed his musket to his companion. Years of battle had creased menace into the Subahdar's brow, and Kota felt relieved not to have to go with him. He tucked the second musket into his sash and slipped into the crowd.
The Subahdar pointed toward two black saddled horses, and his smile flashed again as he watched Jaki cumbersomely mount. Lucinda rode with her skirt pulled up, to the shock of the attendants who had never seen a woman ride or, for that matter, anyone with sunpale hair and eyes that seemed to reflect the sky.
"I have heard that in Burma you wore an unusual hatband, Sir Gefjon," the Subahdar noted casually after they began their ride up the river-wall trail. "Few men but kings or fools would wear diamonds on their hat. Why do you challenge the avarice of men?"
"I no longer display them," Jaki said.
"But the whole world knows you carry diamonds," Hadi insisted with a bemused grin.
"Those are sacred stones," Jaki replied, riding bent forward, clutching the pommel. "My people call them mountains' tears and believe that they are the sorrow of life's suffering. They are all I have left of my legacy. If another man's avarice took them from me, he would take their sorrow as well — and perhaps that would be best for me."
The Subahdar shook his head and squinted sadly at Jaki. "Young pirate, you are thinking like a primitive. I am surprised you have kept your sacred stones and their sorrow this long." He looked over at Lucinda and the diamond about her neck. "You are both so very young. Are you yet twenty? I am thrice your age, and I have seen fools and kings suffer because they have misjudged evil. I am glad Allah sent you to me before you were found by one of the many despotic governors who rule these impoverished fiefdoms. Their men are bandits and you are wearing their favorite god for an ornament."
"Is this not your kingdom?" Lucinda asked. "Are not all the governors Muslim and thus moral? The Koran forbids stealing even from infidels."
"Your knowledge of the Holy Book is a sign of your civility," the Subahdar said, guiding his horse closer to her, gazing with admiration into her wide face. "The Koran also says no one shall be forced to the faith. Though we rule these lands by law, we have not forced civility on anyone — and so, I thank Allah you are with me, for I will see that you are treated justly."
*
Blue, green, and yellow tents, big as houses, loomed into view on the bluffs overlooking a deep bend in the river. "Your trading, Mistress Gefjon, will take place aboard our floating shops," Subahdar Hadi said, pointing to the shadowy southern bank. There, barges in the shapes of predatory birds anchored. "You will have an opportunity to exchange your crude eastern goods for the finest merchandise of our empire."
They dismounted and servants in bright silks led them across intricate carpets to the camp's bazaar. Taking their cue from the Subahdar, Jaki and Lucinda removed their boots and followed him into a tent raised on a dozen green-lacquered pillars, eighteen feet tall, supporting a wooden platform that served as a second story. Brocade and velvet swathed the pillars, and tapestries hung from beneath lattices that spilled sunlight onto peach-bright carpets. Cloth screens stitched with hunting and battle scenes divided the capacious tent into twelve chambers. "The signs of the zodiac," the Subahdar informed them, ascending an anchored rope ladder. "And up there, where we shall dine, the empyrean heaven, which covers the lower sky. But before you join me, please, refresh yourselves."
He clapped, and a female servant in a blue sari emerged from one of the chambers and greeted Lucinda; a manservant in an open tan robe stepped from an opposite compartment and bowed to Jaki. In their separate screened cubicles, wooden tubs inlaid with mother-of-pearl steamed with hot water. They shed their dusty clothes and stretched out on deerskin-padded tables. The servants prepared them expertly, kneading travel-sore muscles and vigorously rubbing skin with astringent fruits, then massaging teeth and gums with almond paste. Keen razors effortlessly shaved Jaki's stubbly beard. Then they bathed in clove-tinted water. Emerging ruddy and glistening, they lifted their arms while servants dried them with rough cotton cloths, anointed their scalps with aloe and more perfumed oil, and dressed them in local garments: an apricot-tinted sari for Lucinda and a patterned shirt of Dacca muslin and blue trousers for Jaki. They stepped out simultaneously and laughed to see each other dressed as Moghuls. Their skin glowed, and their eyes looked brighter for the dark collyrium the servants had stroked on their eyelids.
They mounted polished stairs to an upper story plush with lustrous cushions, pillows, and bolsters. A feast awaited on a varnished reed mat. At the top of the rope stairway a servant with a pearl-handled dagger sheathed at his hip in damask and gold admitted Lucinda and stopped Jaki. He put a hand on the sorcerer's medicine bag, and Jaki yanked it free.
The Subahdar stepped from behind a latticework screen and exchanged blunt phrases with the guard. "I am sorry," he finally said to Jaki. "My captain is to
o suspicious to permit your sack in the dining hall unopened. Will you appease him by showing us what you carry?"
"That's a charm pouch." Lucinda giggled, still giddy with the luxuriant glow of the hot oil rubdown.
Jaki slid the bulky bag from his shoulder and laid it on the carpet. Before opening it, he delivered the speech about the elemental forces that he had first heard from Jabalwan. "It is made of snake leather, and the design stitched on it with serpent teeth, shell, and boneheads are the powers of the world." He opened the bag. His hat lay on top, and inside it the seven diamonds. "The mountains' tears I've told you about." Below the Bible and Pym's spyglass, both of which the captain scrutinized for hidden blades. medicine satchels bunched: leafrolls, bark sheafs, slivered root bundles, bamboo canisters filled with herbs, and also the phials of extracts and powders he had purchased in the bazaars. Under that array of medicines a carved ivory canister held Pym's maps of the New World. That intrigued Hadi, and he unrolled each of the maps. He did not study them, for beneath them, at the bottom of the bag, a large triangle of folded canvas potentially hid a weapon. The guard insisted on opening it, and when the Subahdar recognized the pirates' banner, he shouted a laugh.
"Will you allow me to display your emblem while we eat? It is our custom to hang the tapestries of our guests." Hadi marveled, genuinely impressed with the craftsmanship of the embroidery and guessed the handiwork Chinese before Jaki told him. The image frightfully detailed the eagle-stare of a beast in a vertigo of white flame, its tangled serpent legs dragon-circles of jet and jade, wings spread like the inexorable geometry of night, talons slashing. Hadi regarded the young pirate with fresh scrutiny while they chatted about trade and dined on black partridge, fatted kid, quail, fawn, camel's milk, yogurt, coconut and pistachio mash, mounds of vegetables, chilled wine, and betel nut wrapped in mint.
Dressed in clothes familiar to Hadi, Jaki's youth became more apparent to the Subahdar — as were his primitive strengths. This striking crossbreed of northern barbarian and southern aborigine seemed almost a child, not even old enough for a full beard. And without his boots, his feet revealed he belonged to humankind's lowest caste, a forest dweller with broad calloused soles and big toes splayed like thumbs. His hands, too, bossed with callus, looked powerfully sinewed as an ape's. The muslin shirt exposed the phosphorous glints of scars on his shoulder. Here was a man who was as much animal — a man meant for respect but not honor.
The Subahdar shifted his gaze to the woman and observed no signs of the beast on her. She seemed to ignore her mate's primitive appearance, his feline slouch-walk, and his childlike beliefs. What was it then she found appealing in him? The message that the Subahdar had received weeks before from Boeck had informed him that an English rajah's daughter had run away with a pirate she loved, and Hadi had expected to meet a man of authority, with a beard, regal bearing, and the courtly manner of the English ambassadors he had entertained in the court of the Moghul. What came before him approached the farcical, and he laughed at himself for the anxiety he had indulged when he first decided to retrieve the lady for the powerful English rajah.
"You must stay in Mirzapur while I am gone," he said to Lucinda. "The roads are too dangerous to go on from here without a military escort. Rest until I return, and I will arrange for a guard to accompany you to Surat."
"Oh, we cannot stay here, Subahdar," Lucinda said with a glance at Jaki. "I am to have a child in the spring. Soon after, my husband and I shall be in the New World."
"A child? Ah!" Hadi stroked his beard. "You don’t regard the New World a dangerous place for a child? I have been told that it is a land of wilderness, religious fanatics, pirates, and savages."
"That is why she is going there with me," Jaki interjected, dunking a rolled leaf of bread and sliced quail in orange sauce, "since I am all of that." He spoke with a smile, yet tense with doubt. He did not like the Subahdar's calculating gaze, which did not hide his contempt.
Lucinda chuckled and squeezed Jaki's knee. "The New World is also colonies, Subahdar, outposts of empire, and we have arranged with the Dutch to settle in Brazil."
"Then you cannot linger here if you are to travel to the other side of the world in half a year!" Hadi lifted his goblet of lemon water and toasted them as he had learned from the English emissaries. "You must come with me tomorrow. Leave the caravan behind. I will write you notes of trade for your goods and you can travel by horse with me to Mandu. Prince Dawar Bakhsh is pleased to meet foreigners. You will conduct excellent business with him, and he will provide a small army to escort you to the coast. They will protect you from brigands and introduce you to the wealthiest rajahs along the way."
Lucinda accepted happily after ascertaining that their servants could accompany them. Jaki, unable to contain his mounting dread of the Persian war chief, stood and walked to the trellis window, where a telescope pointed toward the river. He peered through the eyepiece and espied river trees amuck with sunlight, the Ganges' brown thigh, punting boatmen with sweat in the cracks of their faces. As the Subahdar prattled about the telescope and its advantage in battle, Jaki spotted Maud haggling with a trader over a basket of goat tufts, the world's softest fur, imported from Kashmir. High above, on a dusty ridge, the gunmen who had surrounded them earlier drilled, gracefully kneeling and rising through enfilade maneuvers.
Hadi nudged Jaki aside and peeked through the eyepiece. "These Rawalpindi marksmen are the pride of the Moghul's army. Their maneuvers are a crown secret."
"You need not fear us breeching your trust, Subahdar," Lucinda ventured. "We are bound far from empire."
"For kings, no corner of the earth is too far." The Subahdar smiled and cupped some lentils with a chard leaf. "Even the New World is touched by the Old."
"In the marketplace," Jaki said, "they say the former Moghul had two sons, and they are fighting for the throne. Is this war why you are called away from here?"
Hadi's eyes narrowed. "You spy on my soldiers, young pirate, and you ask about war —" He thought momentarily of simply having this distasteful heathen taken away and hanged, but knew that the English rajah's daughter would be far easier to transport with her lover than without — and he smiled numbly. "You are lucky to be married to so civilized a wife. She will enrich you." He clapped and servants brought bowls of jasmine water to rinse their hands.
"Tonight you will stay in my camp," the Subahdar announced at the end of the meal. "Your servants shall be summoned and outfitted for our journey. Tomorrow at dawn, we begin for Saugor."
Later that evening, after Lucinda had traded her raw materials for tapestries, ivory sculptures, silk garments, and jewelry, she and Jaki quartered in the zodiac tent with a decanter of wine and a black lump of opium big as a toe. Jaki glowered at his wife. "I do not like this Subahdar."
"How can you not after the gifts and hospitality he has bestowed on us?"
"Because he has bestowed such gifts on us," Jaki grumbled. "He wants us with him to protect not us but his gifts. And besides —" His frown was dark as Cain's brand. "He looks on you with too much favor."
Lucinda chuckled and grabbed Jaki by the ear. "Are you jealous?"
"Is the prey jealous of the hunter?"
She kissed him. "You are too suspicious. Our host is gracious. He has entertained English before. Let us enjoy his gifts." She poured a goblet of wine, sipped it, and passed it to him.
Jaki took Lucinda's hand with the goblet. "Lucinda, we are in danger here. I feel it. We must find a way to get free of Hadi."
Lucinda squeezed Jaki's wrist. "You are a silly boy sometimes. We have found wealth here. Is that not why we have journeyed this far? This is our fortune, Jaki. This is the wealth of our children. I will not give this up because you are afraid."
"I am not often afraid."
"In the jungle you were fearless and that almost widowed me. Now you are afraid and we may lose all we have suffered for." She brushed the long hair from his eyes. "I have grown up among ambassadors and dignitaries. Hadi is a diplom
at. Though he is a foreigner, I know his ways. Trust me, true child, and behave like the honored guest you are."
"We are not guests, Lucinda. We are prisoners."
Lucinda shook her head wistfully. "You have much to learn. I'm glad I am your teacher."
Jaki took a deep draft, hoping to calm his apprehensions, and picked up the lump of opium. It smelled like animal sorrow, like earth where something had died the season before. Pym had not allowed the smoking of opium on board Silenos, but Jaki had glimpsed the dark dens of smokers in Macao and Chan-chiang when he had gone with Blackheart to round up the crew after shore leave. He stabbed a morsel with a stylet from the velvet smoking kit and held the black crumb to the lantern flame on the trivet between them. When the opium bubbled into smoke, he inserted it in the long-stemmed pipe and drew deeply.
The celestial smell pervaded his lungs with cool exultation. He held out the pipe to Lucinda.
"No," she said. "Riding elephants and horses is all I ask of the child in me. Opium is more than our baby needs."
Jaki drew another lungful. Colors steepened, and he gazed up through the trellis at ribbons of sunset. The last heat of day soughed languidly through the tent, not even wiggling the loose tooth of flame in the lantern.
A chill blurred through Jaki, and he stood up. "I'm going to walk about," he said, and his voice sounded shadowy. "Shall we accept our host's offer to stroll his garden?"
Lucinda declined by unhooking her bodice and lying back on the mounded pillows. "The fragrance of the smoke has calmed me so. I will rest here. Do not stay long. The Subahdar says we mount at dawn, and he seems a punctual fellow."
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