Several fled wailing. Coins began to zero in on the fakir from diverse points of the compass. But after his Adam's apple moved up and down, and he opened his mouth wide to show it empty, and curled his tongue back to show he wasn't hiding anything, a barrage of paisas and even rupees came down on him.
"A stirring performance, Mr. Foot," said Jack, half an hour later, as they were all riding out of town together. "Lo these many months I have been worried sick about you, wondering how you were getting along—unfoundedly, as it turns out."
"Very considerate of you, then, to show up unasked-for to share your poverty with me," said Mr. Foot waspishly. Jack had extracted him from the maidan suddenly and none too gently, even to the point of leaving half the kidney sitting on the plate uneaten.
"I regret I missed the show," said Padraig.
"Nothing you haven't seen before in a thousand pubs," Jack answered mildly.
"E'en so," said Padraig," it had to've been better than what I've been doing the last hour: sneaking round peering at idolaters' piss-pots."
"What learned you?"
"Same as in the last village—they do it in pots. Untouchables come round once a day to empty them," Padraig answered.
"Are the piss and shit always mixed together or—"
"Oh, for Christ's sake!"
"First kidney-eating and now chamber-pots!" exclaimed Surendranath from his palanquin. "Why this keen curiosity concerning all matters related to urine?"
"Maybe we will have better luck in Diu," Jack said enigmatically.
THAT RIVER-CROSSING MARKED THE BEGINNING of a long, slow climb up into some dark hills to the south. Surendranath assured them that it was possible to circumvent the Gir Hills simply by following the coastal roads, but Jack insisted that they go right through the middle. At one point he led them off into a dense stand of trees, and spent a while tromping around in the undergrowth hefting various branches and snapping them over his knee to judge their dryness. This was the only part of the trip when they were in anything like danger, for (a) Jack surprised a cobra and (b) half a dozen bandits came out brandishing crude, but adequate, weapons. The Hindoo whom Surendranath had hired finally did something useful: viz. pulled a small dagger, hardly more than a paring-knife really, from his cummerbund and held it up to his own neck and then stood there adamantly threatening to cut his own throat.
The effect on the bandits was as if this fellow had summoned forth a whole artillery-regiment and surrounded them with loaded cannons. They dropped their armaments and held forth their hands beseechingly and pleaded with him in Gujarati for a while. After lengthy negotiations, fraught with unexpected twists and alarming setbacks, the Charan finally consented not to hurt himself, the bandits fled, and the party moved on.
Within the hour they had passed over the final crest of the Hills of Gir and come to a height-of-land whence they could look straight down a south-flowing river valley to the coast: the end of the Kathiawar Peninsula. At the point where the river emptied into the sea was a white speck; beyond it, the Arabian Sea stretched away forever.
As they traveled down that valley over the next day, the white speck gradually took on definition and resolved itself into a town with a European fort in the middle. Several East Indiamen, and smaller ships, sheltered beneath the fort's guns in a little harbor. The road became broader as they neared Diu. They were jostled together with caravans bringing bolts of cloth and bundles of spices towards the waiting ships, and began to meet Portuguese traders journeying up-country to trade.
They stopped short of the city wall, and made no effort to go in through those gates, guarded as they were by Portuguese soldiers. The Charan said his farewell and hunkered down by the side of the road to await some northbound caravan that might be in need of his protection. Jack, Padraig, Mr. Foot, Surendranath, and their small retinue began to wander through the jumbled suburbs, scattering peacocks and diverting around sacred cows, stopping frequently to ask for directions. After a while Jack caught a whiff of malt and yeast on the breeze, and from that point onwards they were able to follow their noses.
Finally they arrived at a little compound piled high with faggots of spindly wood and round baskets of grain. A giant kettle was dangling over a fire, and a short red-headed man was standing over it gazing at his own reflection: not because he was a narcissist, but because this was how brewers judged the temperature of their wort. Behind him, a couple of Hindoo workers were straining to heave a barrel of beer up into a two-wheeled cart: bound, no doubt, for a Portuguese garrison inside the walls.
"It is all as tidy and prosperous as anything in Hindoostan could be," Jack announced, riding slowly into the middle of it. "A little corner of Amsterdam here at the butt-end of Kathiawar."
The redhead's blue eyes swivelled up one notch, and gazed at Jack levelly through a rising cataract of steam.
"But it was never meant to last," Jack continued, "and you know that as well as I do, Otto van Hoek."
"It has lasted as well as anything that is of this earth."
"But when you make your delivery-rounds, to the garrisons and the wharves, you must look at those beautiful ships."
"Then of ships speak to me," said van Hoek, "or else go away."
"Tap us a keg and dump out that kettle," Jack said, "so we can put it to alchemical uses. I have just ridden down out of the Hills of Gir, and firewood is plentiful there. And as long as you keep peddling your merchandise to the good people of Diu, the other thing we need will be plentiful here."
A MONTH LATER (OCTOBER 1693)
For the works of the Egyptian sorcerers, though not so great as those of Moses, yet were great miracles.
—HOBBES, Leviathan
"LORD HELP ME," said Jack, "I have begun thinking like an Alchemist." He snapped an aloe-branch in half and dabbed its weeping stump against a crusted black patch on his forearm. He and certain others of the Cabal were reclining in the shade of some outlandish tree on the coastal plain north of Surat. Strung out along the road nearby was a caravan of bullocks and camels.
"Half of Diu believes you are one, now," said Otto van Hoek, squinting west across the fiery silver horizon of the Gulf of Cambaye. Diu lay safely on the opposite side of it. Van Hoek had been busy unwinding a long, stinking strip of linen from his left hand, but the pain of forcing out these words through his roasted voice-box forced him to stop for a few moments and prosecute a fit of coughing and nose-wiping.
"If we had stayed any longer the Inquisition would have come for us," said Monsieur Arlanc in a similarly hoarse and burnt voice.
"Yes—if for no other reason than the stench," put in Vrej Esphahnian. Of all of them, he had taken the most precautions—viz. wearing leather gloves that could be shaken off when his hands burst into flame spontaneously. So he was in a better state than the others.
"It is well that we had Mr. Foot with us," said Surendranath, "to bamboozle the Inquisitors into thinking that we pursued some sacred errand!" Surendranath had not spent all that much time among Christians, and his incredulous glee struck them all as just a bit unseemly.
"I'll take a share of the credit for that," said Padraig Tallow, who had lost his dominant eye, and all the hair on one side of his head. "For 'twas I who supplied Mr. Foot with all of his churchly clap-trap; he only spoke lines that I wrote."
"No one denies it," said Surendranath, "but even you must admit that the inexhaustible fount and ever-bubbling wellspring of nonsense, gibberish, and fraud was Ali Zaybak!"
"I cede the point gladly," said Padraig, and both men turned to see if Jack would respond to their baiting. But Jack had been distracted by an odor foul enough to register even on his raspy and inflamed olfactory. Van Hoek had got the bandage off his right hand. The tips of his three remaining fingers were swollen and weeping.
"I told you," said Jack, "you should have used this stuff." He gestured to the aloe-plant, or rather the stump of it, as Jack had just snapped off the last remaining branch. It was growing in a pot of damp dirt, which was carri
ed on its own wee palanquin: a plank supported at each end by a boy. "The Portuguese brought it out of Africa," Jack explained.
"Truly you are thinking like an Alchemist, then," muttered van Hoek, staring morosely at his rotting digits. "Everyone knows that the only treatment for burns is butter. It is proof of how far gone you are in outlandish ways, that you would rather use some occult potion out of Africa!"
"When do you think you'll amputate?" Jack inquired.
"This evening," said van Hoek. "That way I shall have twenty-four hours to recuperate before the battle." He looked to Surendranath for confirmation.
"If our objective were to make time, and to cross the Narmada by day, we could do it tomorrow," said Surendranath. "But as our true purpose is to ‘fall behind schedule,' and reach the crossing too late, and be trapped against the river by the fall of night, we may proceed at a leisurely pace. This evening's camp would be a fine time and place to carry out a minor amputation. I shall make inquiries about getting you some syrup of poppies."
"More chymistry!" van Hoek scoffed, and dipped his hand into a pot of ghee. But he did not object to Surendranath's proposal. "I could have been a brewer," he mused. "In fact, I was!"
VAN HOEK HAD SURRENDERED his brewing-coppers to Jack and gone down to the harbor of Diu to see about hiring a dhow or something like it. Jack, spending Surendranath's capital, had set some local smiths to work beating the copper tuns into new shapes—shapes that Jack chalked out for them from his memories of Enoch Root's strange works in the Harz Mountains. Surendranath had sent messengers north to the kingdom of Dispenser of Mayhem, along with money to buy the freedom of Vrej Esphahnian and Monsieur Arlanc. Then the Banyan, somewhat against his better instincts, had set about turning himself into a urine mogul.
Some simple deals struck with the caste of night-soil-collectors and chamber-pot-emptiers caused jugs, barrels, and hogsheads of piss to come trundling into van Hoek's brewery-compound every morning. By and large these had been covered, to keep the stink down, but Jack insisted that the lids be taken off and the piss be allowed to stand open under the sun. Complaints from the neighbors—consisting largely of religious orders—had not been long in coming. And it was then that Mr. Foot had come into his own; for he'd been at work with needle and thread, converting his black Puritan get-up into a sort of Wizard's robe. His line of patter consisted half of Alchemy—which Jack had dictated—and half of Popery, which Padraig Tallow could and did rattle off in his sleep.
What Jack knew of Alchemy-talk came partly from the mountebanks who would stand along the Pont-Neuf peddling bits of the Philosopher's Stone; partly from Enoch Root; and partly from tales that he had been told, more recently, by Nyazi, who knew nothing of chymistry but was the last word on all matters to do with camels.
"Amon, or Amon-Ra, was the great god of the ancient peoples of al-Khem.
SEPTEMBER 1693
"ROGER, YOU ARE a great man now, and worth more than the Great Mogul."
"So I have heard, Daniel—but it is perfectly all right—I do not mind hearing it again."
"You are also educated, after a fashion."
"'Tis better to be educable—but pray continue in your flattery, which is so very unlike you."
"So then. What metaphysical significance do you attach to the fact that you are unable to pay for a cup of coffee?"
"Why, Daniel, I say that I just did pay, not for one, but two—unless that object on the table before you is a mirage."
"But you didn't, really, my lord. Coffee was brought forth and you incurred a debt, pricked down on Mrs. Bligh's ledger."
"Are you questioning my solvency, Daniel?"
"I am questioning the whole country's solvency! Empty out your coin-purse. Right there on the table. Let's have a look."
"Don't be vulgar, Daniel."
"Oh, now 'tis I who am vulgar."
"Ever since you had the stone cut out, you have seemingly regressed in age."
"I will bet you the whole contents of my purse that yours contains not a single piece of metal that could be exchanged for a bucket of cods' heads at Billingsgate."
"If your purse's contents were worth so much, you'd be Massachusetts-bound. Everyone knows that."
"You see? You are afraid to accept the wager."
"Why do you belabor me about the fact that England has no money?"
"Because you are a momentous fellow now, rumors career about you like gulls round a herring-boat, and I want you to do something about it, so that I can go to America…right. Very well, my lord, I shall give you a few minutes to bring your mirth under control. If you can hear what I am saying, wave at me—oh, very good. Roger Comstock, I say 'tis well enough for you that you have credit, and can buy cups of coffee, or houses, by simply asking for them. Many other men of power enjoy the same privilege—including our King, who appears to be financing his war through some kind of alchemy. But some of us are required actually to pay for what we buy, and we have nothing to pay with at the moment. They say that America is awash in Pieces of Eight, and that is a sight I would fain see—alas, ships' captains do not dispense credit, at least, not to Natural Philosophers…. Oh yes, my lord, do be entertained. I am here in Mrs. Bligh's coffee-house, in pied rags, solely as a Court Jester to Creditable Men, and request only that you throw a silver coin at me for every giggle and a gold one for each guffaw. Fresh out? What, no coins in the bank? Does your purse hang as flaccid as a gelding's scrotum? 'Tis a common condition, Roger, and this brings me round to another subject 'pon which I will briefly discourse while you blow your nose, and wipe the tears from your eyes, and that is: What if all debts, public and private, were to be called in? What if Mrs. Bligh were to march over to this cozy corner with her accompt-book resting open on her bosom like a Bible on a Lectern and say, Roger Comstock, you owe me your own weight in rubies, pay up straightaway!"
"But, Daniel, that never happens. Mrs. Bligh, if she wants coffee-beans, can go down to the docks and shew her book—or her Lectern, in a pinch—to a merchant and say, ‘Behold, every powerful man in London is in debt to me, I have collateral, lend me a ton of Mocha and you'll never be sorry!' "
"Roger, what is Mrs. Bligh's bloody book—by your leave, Mrs. Bligh!—but squiggles of ink? I have ink, Roger, a firkin of it, and can molest a goose to obtain quills, and make ink-squiggles all night and all day. But they are just forms on a page. What does it say of us that our commerce is built 'pon forms and figments while that of Spain is built 'pon silver?"
"Some would say it speaks to our advancement."
"I am not one of those hard cases who believes credit is Satan's work, do not put me in that poke, Roger. I say only that ink, once dried on the page, is a brittle commodity, and an œconomy made of ink is likewise brittle, and may for all we know be craz'd and in a state to crumble at a touch. Whereas silver and gold are ductile, malleable, capable of fluid movement—"
"Some say it is because their atoms, their particules are bathed in a lubricating medium of quicksilver—"
"Stop it."
"You asked me to wax metaphysical, just a minute ago."
"You are baiting me, Roger. Oh, it is all right. By all means, amuse yourself."
"Daniel. Do you really want to go to Massachusetts, and leave all this behind?"
"All this is more amusing, not to mention profitable, to you than 'tis to me. I want to put distractions behind, go to the wilderness, and work."
"What, in a wigwam? Or do you have a cave picked out?"
"There are plenty of trees remaining."
"You're going to live in a tree?"
"No! Cut them down, make a house."
"I fear you are unused to such labor, Daniel."
"Oh but I am educable."
"One really would do better to have an institution on which to rely. You could be a vicar of some Puritan church."
"Puritan churches tend not to have vicars."
"Oh, that's right…then perhaps Harvard College would have you."
"Then again,
perhaps not."
"Here, Daniel, is my metaphysical reading of your circumstance:"
"I am braced."
"England is not finished with you yet!"
"Merciful God! What more can England possibly ask of me?"
"I shall come to that momentarily, Daniel. First, I propose a transaction."
"Is this transaction to conclude with silver changing hands? Or ink-squiggles?"
"It is to conclude with a sinecure for Daniel Waterhouse. In Massachusetts Bay Colony."
"Damn me, and here am I, on the wrong side of the ocean!"
"The sinecure is attended with certain perquisites including a one-way trans-oceanic voyage."
"Are you saying, England wants from me something so dreadful that when I have done it, she won't want me around any more?"
"You read too much into it. You are the one who has been bawling about Massachusetts for all these years."
"But then why do you specify it has to be one-way?"
"You can come back if you think it would be in your best interests," Roger said innocently. "As long as the Juncto remains in power, you shall have protectors."
"Your voice has the most annoying way of fading just when you are on the verge of saying something interesting. Do you do that for effect?"
"Juncto…juncto…JUNCTO!"
"What on earth is a junk-toe? Some new type of gout?"
"More like a new type of gov't."
"I am quite serious."
"A scholar might say it Latin-style: yuncto. Or, a Spaniard thus: hoonta!"
"Why don't you just say ‘joint,' which is what it means?"
"I know what it means. But then people would suppose we were discoursing of knees or elbows."
"But isn't the idea to be mysterious?"
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