The Moghul Read online

CHAPTER ONE

  He watched from the quarterdeck as the chain fed through the whitecaps of the bay, its staccato clatter muffled, hollow in the midday heat. Then he sensed the anchor grab and felt an uneasy tremor pass along the hull as the links snapped taut against the tide. The cannon were already run in and cooling, but vagrant threads of smoke still traced skyward through the scuttles and open hatch, curling ringlets over two draped bodies by the mainmast. Along the main deck scurvy-blotched seamen, haggard and shirtless to the sun, eased the wounded toward the shade of the fo'c'sle.

  He drew the last swallow of brandy from his hooped wooden tankard and instinctively shifted his gaze aloft, squinting against the midday sun to watch as two bosun's mates edged along the yards to furl the mainsail. Then he turned to inspect the triangular lateen sail behind him, parted into shreds by the first Portuguese cannon salvo, its canvas now strewn among the mizzenmast shrouds.

  A round of cheers told him the last two casks of salt pork had finally emerged from the smoky hold, and he moved to the railing to watch as they were rolled toward the cauldron boiling on deck. As he surveyed the faces of the gathering men, he asked himself how many could still chew the briny meat he had hoarded so carefully for this final morning of the voyage.

  The crowd parted as he moved down the companionway steps and onto the deck. He was tall, with lines of fatigue etched down his angular face and smoke residue laced through his unkempt hair and short beard. His doublet was plain canvas, and his breeches and boots scarcely differed from those of a common seaman. His only adornment was a small gold ring in his left ear. Today he also wore a bloodstained binding around his thigh, where a musket shot from a Portuguese maintop had furrowed the skin.

  He was Brian Hawksworth, captain of the five-hundred-ton English frigate Discovery and Captain-General of the Third Voyage of England's new East India Company. His commission, assigned in London over seven months past, was to take two armed trading frigates around the Cape of Good Hope, up the eastern coast of Africa, and then through the Arabian Sea to the northwest coast of India. The Company had twice before sailed eastward from the Cape, to the equatorial islands of the Indies. No English vessel in history had ever sailed north for India.

  The destination of this, the first English voyage to challenge Lisbon's control of the India trade, was the port of Surat, twelve leagues inland up the Tapti River, largest of the only two harbors on the Indian subcontinent not controlled by Portugal.

  He reached for the second tankard of brandy that had been brought and squinted again toward the mouth of the Tapti, where four armed Portuguese galleons had been anchored earlier that morning.

  Damn the Company. No one planned on galleons at the river mouth. Not now, not this early in the season. Did the Portugals somehow learn our destination? . . . And if they knew that, do they know the rest of the Company's plan?

  Since the Tapti had been badly silted for decades, navigable only by cargo barge or small craft, he and the merchants must travel upriver to Surat by pinnace, the twenty-foot sailboat lashed amidships on the Discovery's main deck. There the merchants would try to negotiate England's first direct trade with India. And Brian Hawksworth would undertake a separate mission, one the East India Company hoped might someday change the course of trade throughout the Indies.

  He remounted the steps to the quarterdeck and paused to study the green shoreline circling their inlet. The low-lying hills undulated in the sun's heat, washing the Discovery in the dense perfume of land. Already India beckoned, the lure even stronger than all the legends told. He smiled to himself and drank again, this time a toast to the first English captain ever to hoist colors off the coast of India.

  Then with a weary hand he reached for the telescope, an expensive new Dutch invention, and trained it on his second frigate, the Resolve, anchored a musket shot away. Like the Discovery, she rode easily at anchor, bearing to lee. He noted with relief that her ship's carpenter had finally sealed a patch of oakum and sail in the gash along her portside bow. For a few hours now, the men on the pumps could retire from the sweltering hold.

  Finally, he directed the glass toward the remains of two Portuguese galleons aground in the sandy shallows off his starboard quarter, black smoke still streaming from gaps in their planking where explosions had ripped through the hull. And for an instant his stomach tightened, just as it had earlier that morning, when one of those same galleons had laid deep shadows across the Discovery's decks, so close he could almost read the eyes of the infantry poised with grapples to swing down and board. The Portugals will be back, he told himself, and soon. With fireships.

  He scanned the river mouth once more. It was deserted now. Even the fishing craft had fled. But upriver would be another matter. Portuguese longboats, launched with boarding parties of infantry, had been stranded when the two galleons were lost. Together they had carried easily a hundred, perhaps two hundred musketmen.

  They made for the Tapti, he thought grimly, and they'll be upriver waiting. We have to launch before they can set a blockade. Tonight. On the tide.

  He revolved to find Giles Mackintosh, quartermaster of the Discovery, waiting mutely by his side.

  "Mackintosh, start outfitting the pinnace. We launch at sunset, before the last dog watch."

  The quartermaster pulled at his matted red curls in silence as he studied the tree-lined river mouth. Then he turned abruptly to Hawksworth. "Takin' the pinnace upriver'll be a death sentence, Cap'n, I warrant you. Portugals'll be layin' for us, thicker'n whores at a Tyburn hangin'." He paused deliberately and knotted the string holding back hair from his smoke-darkened cheeks. "I say we weigh at the tide and ease the frigates straight up their hell-bound river. She's wide as the Thames at Woolwich. We'll run out the guns and hand the pox-rotted Papists another taste o' English courtesy."

  "Can you navigate the sandbars?"

  "I've seen nae sign of bars."

  "The Indian pilot we took on yesterday claims there's shallows upriver."

  "All the more reason to sail. By my thinkin' the pilot's a full-bred Moor. An' they're all the same, Indian or Turk." Mackintosh blew his nose over the railing, punctuating his disgust. "Show me one that's na a liar, a thief, or a damned Sodomite. Nae honest Christian'll credit the word of a Moor."

  "There's risk either way." Hawksworth drew slowly on the brandy, appearing to weigh the Scotsman's views. "But there's the cargo to think of. Taken for all, it's got to be the pinnace. And this Moorish pilot's not like the Turks. I should know."

  "Aye, Cap'n, as you will." Mackintosh nodded with seeming reluctance, admiring how Hawksworth had re­tained mastery of their old game. Even after two years apart. "But I'll be watchin' the bastard, e'ery move he makes."

  Hawksworth turned and slowly descended the quarter­deck steps. As he entered the passageway leading aft to the Great Cabin and the merchants' cabins, he saw the silhouette of George Elkington. The Chief Merchant of the voyage was standing by the quarter gallery railing, drawing on a long clay pipe as he urinated into the swells. When he spotted Hawksworth, he whirled and marched heavily down the corridor, perfunctorily securing the single remaining button of his breeches.

  Elkington's once-pink jowls were slack and pasty, and his grease-stained doublet sagged over what had been, seven months past, a luxuriant belly. Sweat trickled down from the sides of his large hat, streaming oily rivulets across his cheeks.

  "Hawksworth, did I hear you order the pinnace launch'd tonight? E'en before we've made safe anchorage for the cargo?"

  "The sooner the better. The Portugals know we'll have to go upriver. By tomorrow they'll be ready."

  "Your first obligation, sirrah, is the goods. Every shilling the Company subscrib'd is cargo'd in these two damn'd merchantmen. A fine fortune in wool broadcloth, Devon­shire kersey, pig iron, tin, quicksilver. I've a good ten thousand pound of my own accounts invest'd. And you'd leave it all hove to in this piss crock of a bay, whilst the Portugals are doubtless crewin' up a dozen two-deckers down the coast in G
oa. ‘Tis sure they'll be laid full about this anchorage inside a fortnight."

  Hawksworth inspected Elkington with loathing, musing what he disliked about him most—his grating voice, or his small lifeless eyes.

  And what you probably don't realize is they'll be back next time with trained gunners. Not like today, when their gun crews clearly were Lisbon dockside rabble, private traders who'd earned passage out to the Indies on the easy claim they were gunners, half not knowing a linstock from a lamppost.

  "Elkington, I'll tell you as much of our plans as befits your place." Hawksworth moved past him toward the door of the Great Cabin. "We're taking the pinnace upriver tonight on the tide. And you'll be in it, along with your coxcomb clerk. Captain Kerridge of the Resolve will take command of the ships. I've already prepared orders to move both frigates to a new anchorage."

  "I demand to know what damn'd fool scheme you've hatch'd."

  "There's no reason you have to know. Right now the fewer who know the better, particularly the men going upriver."

  "Well, I know this much, Hawksworth. This voyage to India may well be the East India Company's last chance to trade in the Indies. If we fail three voyages in a row, we'd as well close down the Company and just buy pepper and spice outright from the damn'd Hollanders. England's got no goods that'll trade in the Spice Islands south o' here. Remember Lancaster cargo'd wool down to the islands on the first two Company voyages, thinkin' to swap it for pepper, and discover'd for himself what I'd guess'd all along—a tribe of heathens sweatin' in the sun have no call for woolen breeches. So either we trade up here in the north, where they'll take wool, or we're finish'd."

  "The anchorage I've found should keep the cargo—and the men—safe till we make Surat. With luck you'll have your cargo aland before the Portugals locate us." Hawks­worth pushed open the heavy oak door of the Great Cabin and entered, stranding Elkington in the passageway. "And now I wish you good day."

  The cabin's dark overhead beams were musty from the heat and its air still dense with smoke from the cannon. The stern windows were partly blocked now by the two bronze demi-culverin that had been run out aft, "stern-chaser" cannon that could spit a nine-pound ball with deadly accuracy—their lighter bronze permitting longer barrels than those of the cast-iron guns below decks. He strode directly to the oil lantern swaying over the great center desk and turned up the wick. The cabin brightened slightly, but the face of the English lute wedged in the corner seemed suddenly to come alive, shining gold over the cramped quarters like a full moon. He stared at it wistfully for a moment, then shook his head and settled himself behind the large oak desk. And asked himself once more why he had ever agreed to the voyage.

  To prove something? To the Company? To himself?

  He reflected again on how it had come about, and why he had finally accepted the Company's offer. . . .

  It had been a dull morning in late October, the kind of day when all London seems trapped in an icy gloom creeping up from the Thames. His weekly lodgings were frigid as always, and his mind was still numb from the previous night's tavern brandy. Back from Tunis scarcely a month, he already had nothing left to pawn. Two years before, he had been leading a convoy of merchantmen through the Mediterranean when their ships and cargo were seized by Turkish corsairs, galleys owned by the notorious dey of Tunis. He had finally managed to get back to London, but now he was a captain without a ship. In years past this might have been small matter to remedy. But no longer. England, he discovered, had changed.

  The change was apparent mainly to seamen. The lower house of Parliament was still preoccupied fighting King James's new proposal that Scotland be joined to England, viewed by most Englishmen as a sufferance of proud beggars and ruffians upon a nation of uniformly upright taxpayers; in London idle crowds still swarmed the bear gardens to wager on the huge mastiffs pitted against the chained bears; rioting tenant farmers continued to outrage propertied men by tearing down enclosures and grazing their flocks on the gentry's private hunting estates; and the new Puritans increasingly harassed everyone they disapproved of, from clerics who wore vestments to women who wore cosmetics to children who would play ball on Sunday.

  Around London more talk turned on which handsome young courtier was the latest favorite of their effeminate new king than on His Majesty's enforcement of his new and strict decree forbidding privateering—the staple occupation of England seamen for the last three decades of Elizabeth's reign. King James had cravenly signed a treaty of peace with Spain, and by that act brought ruin to half a hundred thousand English "sea dogs." They awoke to discover their historic livelihood, legally plundering the shipping of Spain and Portugal under wartime letters of marque, had become a criminal offense.

  For a captain without a ship, another commission by a trading company seemed out of the question, and especially now, with experienced seamen standing idle the length of London. Worst of all, the woman he had hoped to return to, red-haired Maggie Tyne of Billingsgate, had disappeared from her old lodgings and haunts leaving no trace. Rumor had her married—some said to the master of a Newcastle coal barge, others to a gentleman. London seemed empty now, and he passed the vacant days with brandy and his lute, and thoughts of quitting the sea—to do he knew not what.

  Then in that cold early dawn appeared the letter, requesting his immediate appearance at the Director's Office of the East India Company, should this coincide with his convenience. He found its tone ominous. Was some merchant planning to have him jailed for his loss of cargo to the Turks? But he'd been sailing for the Levant Company, not the East India Company. He debated with himself all morning, and finally decided to go. And face the mercantile bastards.

  The new offices of the Company already seemed embalmed in the smell of lamp oil and sweat, their freshly painted wood timbers masked in dull soot. A stale odor of ink, paper, and arid commerce assailed his senses as he was announced and ushered through the heavy oak door of the Director's suite.

  And he was astonished by what awaited. Standing hard by the Director's desk—was Maggie. He'd searched the length of London in vain for her, and here she was. But he almost didn't recognize her. Their two years apart had brought a change beyond anything he could have imagined.

  No one would have guessed what she once had been, a dockside girl happiest at the Southwark bear-gardens, or in a goose-down bed. And somehow she had always managed to turn a shilling at both—wagering with a practiced eye on the snarling dogs brought in to bloody the bears, or taking her pleasure only after deftly extracting some loan, to allay an urgent need she inevitably remembered the moment she entered his lodgings.

  That morning, however, she reigned like an exotic flower, flourishing amid the mercantile gloom. She was dressed and painted in the very latest upper-class style—her red hair now bleached deep yellow, sprinkled thick with gold dust, and buried under a feathered hat; her crushed-velvet bodice low-necked, cut fashionably just below the nipples, then tied at the neck with a silk lace ruff; her once-ruddy breasts now painted pale, with blue veins penciled in; and her face carefully powdered lead-white, save the red dye on her lips and cheeks and the glued-on beauty patches of stars and half-moons. His dockside girl had become a completely modern lady of fashion. He watched in disbelief as she curtsied to him, awkwardly.

  Then he noticed Sir Randolph Spencer, Director of the Company.

  "Captain Hawksworth. So you're the man we've heard so much about? Understand you escaped from Tunis under the very nose of the damned Turks." He extended a manicured hand while he braced himself on the silver knob of his cane. Although Spencer's flowing hair was pure white, his face still clung tenuously to youth. His doublet was expensive, and in the new longer waist-length style Hawksworth remembered seeing on young men-about-town. "'Tis indeed a pleasure. Nay, 'tis an honor." The tone was practiced and polite, a transparent attempt at sincerity rendered difficult by Hawksworth's ragged appearance. He had listened to Spencer mutely, suddenly realizing his loss of cargo had been forgotten. He was being
congratulated for coming back alive.

  "'Twas the wife, Margaret here, set me thinkin' about you. Says you two were lightly acquainted in younger years. Pity I never knew her then myself." Spencer motioned him toward a carved wooden chair facing the desk. "She ask'd to be here today to help me welcome you. Uncommonly winsome lady, what say?"

  Hawksworth looked at Maggie's gloating eyes and felt his heart turn. It was obvious enough she'd found her price. At last she had what she'd always really wanted, a rich widower. But why trouble to flaunt it?

  He suspected he already knew. She simply couldn't resist.

  "Now I pride myself on being a sound judge of humanity, Hawksworth, and I've made sufficient inquiry to know you can work a ship with the best. So I'll come right to it. I suppose 'tis common talk the Company's dispatchin' another voyage down to the Indies this comin' spring. Soon as our new frigate, the Discovery, is out of the yard. And this time our first port of call's to be India." Spencer caught Hawksworth's look, without realizing it was directed past him, at Maggie. "Aye, I know. We all know. The damned Portugals've been there a hundred year, thick as flies on pudding. But by Jesus we've no choice but to try openin' India to English trade."

  Spencer had paused and examined Hawksworth skeptically. A process of sizing up seemed underway, of pondering whether this shipless captain with the bloodshot eyes and gold earring was really the man. He looked down and inspected his manicured nails for a long moment, then continued.

  "Now what I'm about to tell you mustn't go past this room. But first let me ask you, Is everything I've heard about you true? 'Tis said the dey of Tunis held you there after he took your merchantmen, in hopes you'd teach his damned Turks how to use the English cannon you had on board."

  "He's started building sailing bottoms now, thinking he'll replace the galleys his Turkish pirates have used for so long. His shipwrights are some English privateers who've re­located in Tunis to escape prison here. And he was planning to outfit his new sailing ships with my cannon. He claims English cast-iron culverin are the best in the world."

  "God damn the Barbary Turks. And the Englishmen who've started helping them." Spencer bristled. "Next thing and they'll be out past Gibraltar, pillaging our shipping right up the Thames. But I understand you revised his plans."

  "The Turks don't have any more cannon now than they had two years ago. When I refused to help them, they put me in prison, under guard. But one night I managed to knife two of the guards and slip down to the yard. I worked till dawn and had the guns spiked before anybody realized I was gone."

  "And I hear you next stole a single-masted shallop and sail'd the length of the Barbary Coast alone, right up to Gibraltar, where you hailed an English merchantman?"

  "Didn't seem much point in staying on after that."

  "You're the man all right. Now, 'tis said you learn'd the language of the Turks while you were in Tunis. Well, sirrah, answer me now, can you speak it or no?"

  "For two years I scarcely heard a word of English. But what's that to do with trade in India? From what I know, you'll need a few merchants who speak Portuguese. And plenty of English . . ."

  "Hear me out, sir. If all I wanted was to anchor a cargo of English goods and pull off some trade for a season, I'd not be needin' a man like you. But let me tell you a thing or so about India. The rulers there now are named Moghuls. They used to be called Mongols, Turkish-Afghans from Turkistan, before they took over India about a hundred years back, and their king, the one they call the Great Moghul, still speaks some Turki, the language of the Central Asian steppes. Now I'm told this Turki bears fair resemblance to the language of the damned Turks in the Mediterranean." Spencer assumed a conspiratorial smile. "I've a plan in mind, but it needs a man who speaks this Great Moghul’s language."

  Hawksworth suddenly realized Maggie must have some­how convinced Spencer he was the only seaman in England who knew Turkish. It could scarcely be true.

  "Now I ask you, Hawksworth, what's the purpose of the East India Company? Well, 'tis to trade wool for pepper and spice, simple as that. To find a market for English commodity, mainly wool. And to ship home with cheap pepper. Now we can buy all the pepper we like down in Java and Sumatra, but they'll not take wool in trade. And if we keep on buying there with gold, there'll never be a farthing's profit in our voyages to the Indies. By the same token, we're sure these Moghuls in North India will take wool. They already buy it from the damned Portugals. But they don't grow pepper." Spencer leaned forward and his look darkened slightly. "The hard fact is the East India Company's not done nearly as well as our subscribers hoped. But now the idea's come along—I hate to admit 'twas George Elkington first thought of it—that we try swappin' wool for the cotton goods they produce in North India, then ship these south and trade for pepper and spice. Indian traders have sold their cotton calicoes in the Spice Islands for years. Do you follow the strategy?"

  Spencer had scrutinized Hawksworth for a moment, puzzling at his flash of anger when Elkington's name was mentioned, then pressed forward.

  "Overall not a bad idea, considerin' it came from Elkington." Then Spencer dropped his voice to just above a whisper. "But what he doesn't understand is if we're goin' to start tradin' in India, we'll need a real treaty, like the Hollanders have down in some of the islands. Because once you've got a treaty, you can settle a permanent trading station, what we call a 'factory,' and bargain year round. Buy when prices are best."

  Hawksworth sensed the interview would not be short, and he settled uneasily into the chair. Maggie still stood erect and formal, affecting a dignity more studied than natural. As Spencer warmed to his subject he seemed to have forgotten her.

  "Now, sir, once we have a factory we can start sending in a few cannon—to 'protect our merchants,' like the Hollanders do in the islands—and soon enough we've got the locals edgy. Handle it right and pretty soon they'll sign over exclusive trade. No more competition." Spencer smiled again in private satisfaction. "Are you startin' to follow my thinkin'?"

  "What you've described is the very arrangement the Portugals have in India now." Hawksworth tried to appear attentive, but he couldn't keep his eyes off Maggie, who stood behind Spencer wearing a triumphant smile. "And they've got plenty of cannon and sail to make sure their trade's exclusive."

  "We know all about the Portugals' fleet of warships, and their shipyards in Goa, and all the rest. But these things always take time. Took the Portugals many a year to get their hooks into India's ports. But their days are numbered there, Hawksworth. The whole Eastern empire of the Portugals is rotten. I can almost smell it. But if we dally about, the damned Hollanders are sure to move in." Spencer had become increasingly excited, and Hawksworth watched as he began pacing about the room.

  "Well, if you're saying you want a treaty, why not just send an ambassador to the Great Moghul’s court?"

  "Damn me, Hawksworth, it's not that easy. We send some dandified gentry who doesn't know the language, and he'll end up havin' to do all his talkin' through court interpreters. And who might they be? Well let me just show you, sirrah." Spencer began to shuffle impatiently through the papers on his desk. "They're Jesuits. Damned Jesuits. Papists straight out o' Lisbon. We know for a fact they do all the translatin' for the court in Agra." He paused as he rummaged the stacks in front of him. "We've just got hold of some Jesuit letters. Sent out from the Moghul capital at Agra, through Goa, intended for Lisbon. They'll tell you plain enough what the Company's up against." His search became increasingly frenetic. "Damn me, they were here." He rose and shuffled toward the door, waving his cane in nervous agitation. "Hold a minute."

  Hawksworth had watched him disappear through the doorway, then looked back to see Maggie laughing. She retrieved a leather-bound packet from the mantel and tossed it carelessly onto the desk. He found himself watching her in admiration, realizing some things never change.

  "What the hell's this about?"

  She smiled and her voice was like always. "Methinks 'tis plain enough."


  "You want me gone from London this badly?"

  "He takes care o' me. At least he loves me. Something you were ne'er capable of."

  "And what were you capable of? All you wanted was . . ."

  "I . . ." She looked away. "I know he'll give me what you ne'er would. At least he has feelin' for me. More than you e'er did. Or could." Then she turned back and looked at him for a long moment. "Say you'll go. Knowin' you're still. . ."

  "Damn it all!" Spencer burst back through the doorway. Then he spied the leather packet. "That's it." He seized the bundle and thrust it toward Hawksworth. "Read these through, sirrah, and you'll see clear enough what we're up against. There's absolutely no point whatever in postin' a real ambassador now." He hesitated for a moment, as though unsure how to phrase his next point. "The most amazing thing is what they say about the Great Moghul himself, the one they call Arangbar. The Jesuits claim the man's scarcely ever sober. Seems he lives on some kind of poppy sap they call opium, and on wine. He's a Moor sure enough, but he drinks like a Christian, downs a full gallon of wine a day. E'en holds audiences with a flagon in his hand. From the letters I can sense the Jesuits all marvel how the damned heathen does it, but they swear 'tis true. No, sirrah, we can't send some fancy-titled ambassador now. That's later. We want a man of quality, it goes without sayin', but he's got to be able to drink with that damned Moor and parlay with him in his cups. No Jesuit interpreters."

  Hawksworth steadied his hand on the carved arm of the chair, still amazed by Maggie. "What will your subscribers think about sending the captain of a merchantman to the court of Moghul India?"

  "Never you mind the subscribers. Just tell me if you'd consider it. T’will be a hard voyage, and a perilous trip inland once you make landfall. But you sail'd the Mediter­ranean half a decade, and you know enough about the Turks." Spencer tapped his fingers impatiently on his ink-stained blotter. "And lest you're worried, have no doubt the Company knows how to reward success."

  Hawksworth looked again at Maggie. Her blue eyes were mute as stone.

  "To tell the truth, I'm not sure I'm interested in a voyage to India. George Elkington might be able to tell you the reason why. Have you told me all of it?"

  "Damn Elkington. What's he to do with this?" Spencer stopped in front of the desk and fixed Hawksworth's gaze. "Aye, there's more. But what I'm about to tell you now absolutely has to remain between us. So have I your word?"

  Hawksworth found himself nodding.

  "Very well, sir. Then I'll give you the rest. His Majesty, King James, is sending a personal letter to be delivered to this Great Moghul. And gifts. All the usual diplomatic falderal these potentates expect. You'd deliver the whole affair. Now the letter'll offer full and free trade between England and India, nothing more. Won't mention the Portugals. That'll come later. This is just the beginning. For now all we want is a treaty to trade alongside the damned Papists. Break their monopoly."

  "But why all the secrecy?"

  "'Tis plain as a pikestaff, sirrah. The fewer know what we're plannin', the less chance of word gettin' out to the Portugals, or the Hollanders. Let the Papists and the Butterboxes look to their affairs after we have a treaty. Remember the Portugals are swarmin' about the Moghul’s court, audiences every day. Not to mention a fleet of warships holdin' the entire coast. And if they spy your colors, they're not apt to welcome you aland for roast capon and grog."

  "Who else knows about this?"

  "Nobody. Least of all that windbag Elkington, who'd have it talk'd the length of Cheapside in a fortnight. He'll be on the voyage, I regret to say, but just as Chief Merchant. Which is all he's fit for, though I'd warrant he presumes otherwise."

  "I'd like a few days to think about it." Hawksworth looked again at Maggie, still disbelieving. "First I'd like to see the Discovery. And I'd also like to see your navigation charts for the Indian Ocean. I've seen plenty of logs down to the Cape, and east, but nothing north from there."

  "And with good reason. We've got no rutters north of the Cape. No English sea dog's ever sail'd it. But I've made some inquiries, and I think I've located a salt here who shipp'd it once, a long time past. A Dutchman named Huyghen. The truth is he was born and rais'd right here in London. He started out a Papist and when things got a bit hot in England back around time of the Armada he left for Holland. E'en took a Dutch name. Next he mov'd on down to Portugal thinkin' to be a Jesuit, then shipp'd out to Goa and round the Indies. But he got a bellyfull of popery soon enough, and came back to Amsterdam. Some years later he help'd out their merchants by tellin' them exactly how the Portugals navigate the passage round the Cape and out. The Hollanders say hadn't been for the maps he drew up, they'd never have been able to double the Cape in the first place. But he's back in London now, and we've track'd him down. I understand he may've gone a bit daft, but perhaps 'twould do no harm if you spoke to him."

  "And what about the Discovery? I want to see her too."

  "That you will, sir. She's in our shipyard down at Deptford. Might be well if I just had Huyghen see you there. By all means look her over." He beamed. "And a lovelier sight you're ne'er like to meet." Then, remembering himself, he quickly turned aside. "Unless, of course, 'twould be my Margaret here." . . .

  As agreed, Hawksworth was taken to Deptford the next day, the Company's carriage inching through London's teeming streets for what seemed a lifetime. His first sight of the shipyard was a confused tangle of planking, ropes, and workmen, but he knew at a glance the Discovery was destined to be handsome. The keel had been laid weeks before, and he could already tell her fo'c'sle would be low and rakish. She was a hundred and thirty feet from the red lion of her beakhead to the taffrail at her stern—where gilding already was being applied to the ornate quarter galleries. She was five hundred tons burden, each ton some six hundred cubic feet of cargo space, and she would carry a hundred and twenty men when fully crewed. Over her swarmed an army of carpenters, painters, coopers, riggers, and joiners, while skilled artisans were busy attaching newly gilded sculptures to her bow and stern.

  That day they were completing the installation of the hull chain-plates that would secure deadeyes for the shrouds, and he moved closer to watch. Stories had circulated the docks that less than a month into the Company's last voyage the mainmast yard of a vessel had split, and the shipbuilder, William Benten, and his foreman, Edward Chandler, had narrowly escaped charges of lining their pockets by substituting cheap, uncured wood.

  He noticed that barrels of beer had been stationed around the yard for the workmen, to blunt the lure of nearby alehouses, and as he stood watching he saw Chandler seize a grizzled old bystander who had helped himself to a tot of beer and begin forcibly evicting him from the yard. As they passed, he heard the old man—clad in a worn leather jerkin, his face ravaged by decades of salt wind and hard drink— reviling the Company.

  "What does the rottin' East India Company know o' the Indies. You'll ne'er double the Cape in that pissin' shallop. 'Twould scarce serve to ferry the Thames." The old man struggled weakly to loosen Chandler's grasp on his jerkin. "But I can tell you th' Portugals've got carracks that'll do it full easy, thousand-ton bottoms that'd hold this skiff in the orlop deck and leave air for a hundred barrel o' biscuit. An' I've shipped 'em. By all the saints, where's the man standin' that knows the Indies better?"

  Hawksworth realized he must be Huyghen. He inter­cepted him at the edge of the yard and invited him to a tavern, but the old Englishman-turned-Dutchman bitterly declined.

  "I'll ha' none o' your fancy taverns, lad, aswarm wi' pox-faced gentry fingerin' their meat pies. They'll ne'er take in the likes o' me." Then he examined Hawksworth and flashed a toothless grin. "But there's an alehouse right down the way where a man wi' salt in his veins can still taste a drop in peace."

  They went and Hawksworth had ordered the first round. When the tankards arrived, Huyghen attacked his thirstily, maintaining a cynical silence as Hawksworth began describ­ing the Company's planned voyage, then asked him what he
knew of the passage east and north of the Cape. As soon as his first tankard was dry, the old man spoke.

  "Aye, I made the passage once, wi' Portugals. Back in'83. To Goa. An' I've been to the Indies many a time since, wi' Dutchmen. But ne'er again to that pissin' sinkhole."

  "But what about the passage north, through the Indian Ocean?"

  "I'll tell you this, lad, 'tis a sight different from shootin' down to Java, like the Company's done before. 'Tis the roughest passage you're e'er like to ship. Portugals post bottoms twice the burden o' the Company's damn'd little frigates and still lose a hundred men e'ery voyage out. When scurvy don't take 'em all. E'en the Dutchmen are scared o' it."

  Then Huyghen returned to his stories of Goa. Something in the experience seemed to preoccupy his mind. Hawks­worth found the digression irritating, and he impatiently pressed forward.

  "But what about the passage? How do they steer north from the Cape? The Company has no charts, no rutters by pilots who've made the passage."

  "An' how could they?" Huyghen evaluated Hawksworth's purse lying on the wooden table and discreetly signaled another round. "The Portugals know the trick, lad, but you'll ne'er find one o' the whoremasters who'll give it out."

  "But is there a trade wind you can ride? Like the westerly to the Americas?"

  "Nothin' o' the sort, lad. But there's a wind sure enough. Only she shifts about month by month. Give me that chart an' I'll show you." Huyghen stretched for the parchment Hawksworth had brought, the new Map of the World published by John Davis in 1600. He spread it over the table, oblivious to the grease and encrusted ale, and stared at it for a moment in groggy disbelief. Then he turned on Hawks­worth. "Who drew up this map?"

  "It was assembled by an English navigator, from charts he made on his voyages."

  "He's the lyin' son of a Spaniard's whore. I made this chart o' the Indies wi' my own hand, years ago, for the Dutchmen. But what's the difference? He copied it right." Huyghen spat on the floor and then stabbed the east coast of Africa with a stubby finger. "Now you come out o' the Mozambique Channel and into the Indian Ocean too early in the summer, and you'll be the only bottom fool enough to be out o' port. The monsoon'll batter you to plankin'. Get there too late, say past the middle o' September, and you're fightin' a head wind all the way. She's already turn'd on you. But come north round by Sokatra near the end o' August and you'll ride a steady gale right into North India. That's the tail o' the monsoon, lad, just before the winds switch about. Two weeks, three at most, that's all you'll get. But steer it true an' you'll make landfall just as India's ports reopen for the autumn tradin' season."

  Huyghen's voice trailed off as he morosely inspected the bottom of his tankard. Hawksworth motioned for a third round, and as the old man drew on the ale his eyes mellowed.

  "Aye, you might make it. There's a look about you tells me you can work a ship. But why would you want to be goin'? T’will swallow you up, lad. I've only been to Goa, mind you, down on India's west coastline, but that was near enough. I ne'er saw a man come back once he went in India proper. Somethin' about it keeps 'em there. Portugals says she always changes a man. He loses touch wi' what he was. Nothin' we know about counts for anything there, lad."

  "What do you mean? How different could it be? I saw plenty of Moors in Tunis."

  Huyghen laughed bitterly. "If you're thinkin' 'tis the same as Tunis, then you're e'en a bigger fool than I took you for. Nay, lad, the Moor part's the very least o' it." He drew on his tankard slowly, deliberately. "I've thought on't a con­siderable time, an' I think I've decipher'd what 'tis. But 'tis not a thing easy to spell out."

  Huyghen was beginning to drift now, his eyes glazed in warm forgetfulness from the ale. But still he continued. "You know, lad, I actually saw some Englishmen go into India once before. Back in '83. Year I was in Goa. An' they were ne'er heard from since."

  Hawksworth stared at the old man a moment, and suddenly the name clicked, and the date—1583. Huyghen must have been the Dutch Catholic, the one said to speak fluent English, who'd intervened for the English scouting party imprisoned in Goa that year by the Portuguese. He tried to still his pulse.

  "Do you remember the Englishmen's names?"

  "Seem to recall they were led by a man nam'd Symmes. But 'twas a long time past, lad. Aye, Goa was quite the place then. Lucky I escap'd when I did. E'en there, you stay awhile an' somethin' starts to hold you. Too much o' India about the place. After a while all this"—Huyghen gestured fondly about the alehouse, where sweat-soaked laborers and seamen were drinking, quarreling, swearing as they bar­gained with a scattering of weary prostitutes in dirty, tattered shifts—"all this seems . . ." He took a deep draft of ale, attempting vainly to formulate his thoughts. "I've ne'er been one wi' words. But don't do it, lad. You go in, go all the way in to India, an' I'll wager you'll ne'er be heard from more. I've seen it happen."

  Hawksworth listened as Huyghen continued, his stories of the Indies a mixture of ale and dreams. After a time he signaled another round for them both. It was many empty tankards later when they parted.

  But Huyghen's words stayed. And that night Brian Hawksworth walked alone on the quay beside the Thames, bundled against the wet autumn wind, and watched the ferry lanterns ply through the fog and heard the muffled harangues of streetwalkers and cabmen from the muddy street above. He thought about Huyghen, and about the man named Roger Symmes, and about the voyage to India.

  And he thought too about Maggie, who wanted him out of London before her rich widower discovered the truth. Or before she admitted the truth to herself. But either way it no longer seemed to matter.

  That night he decided to accept the commission. . . .

  The Discovery rolled heavily and Hawksworth glanced instinctively toward the pulley lines that secured the two bronze cannon. Then he remembered why he had left the quarterdeck, and he unlocked the top drawer of the desk and removed the ship's log. He leafed one more time through its pages, admiring his own script—strong but with an occasional flourish.

  Someday this could be the most valuable book in England, he told himself. If we return. This will be the first log in England to describe what the voyage to India is really like. The Company will have a full account of the weather and sea, recorded by estimated longitude, the distance traveled east.

  He congratulated himself again on the care with which he had taken their daily speed and used it to estimate longitude every morning since the Cape, the last location where it was known exactly. And as he studied the pages of the log, he realized how exact Huyghen's prediction had been. The old man had been eerily correct about the winds and the sea. They had caught the "tail o' the monsoon" precisely.

  "August 27. Course N.E. ft E.; The wind at W.S., with gusts and rain. Made 36 leagues today. Estimated longitude from the Cape 42° 50' E.

  "August 28. Course N.E.; The wind at west, a fresh gale, with gusts and rain this 24 hours. Leagues 35. Estimated longitude from the Cape, 44° 10' E."

  The late August westerly Huyghen had foretold was carrying them a good hundred land miles a day. They rode the monsoon's tail, and it was still angry, but there was no longer a question that English frigates could weather the passage.

  As August drew to a close, however, scurvy had finally grown epidemic on his sister ship, the Resolve. The men's teeth loosened, their gums bled, and they began to complain of aching and burning in their limbs. It was all the more tragic for the fact that this timeless scourge of ocean travelers might at long last be preventable. Lancaster, on the very first voyage of the East India Company, had stumbled onto an historic discovery. As a test, he'd shipped bottles of the juice of lemons on his flagship and ordered every seaman to take three spoonfuls a day. And his had been the only vessel of the three to withstand scurvy.

  Hawksworth had argued with Captain Kerridge of the Resolve, insisting they both stow lemon juice as a preventative. But Kerridge had always resented Lancaster, particularly the fact he'd been knighted on return from a voyage that showed
almost no profit. He refused to credit Lancaster's findings.

  "No connection. By my thinkin' Lancaster just had a run o' sea-dog luck. Then he goes about claimin' salt meat brings on the scurvy. A pack o' damn'd foolishness. I say salt meat's fine for the lads. Boil it up with a mess o' dried peas and I'll have it myself. The Resolve' ll be provision'd like always. Sea biscuit, salt pork, Hollander cheese. Any fool knows scurvy comes from men sleepin' in the night dews off the sea. Secure your gunports by night and you'll ne'er see the damn'd scurvy."

  Hawksworth had suspected Kerridge's real reason was the cost: lemon juice was imported and expensive. When the Company rejected his own request for an allowance, he had provisioned the Discovery out of his own advance. Kerridge had called him a fool. And when they sailed in late February, the Resolve was unprovided.

  Just as Hawksworth had feared, the Resolve's crew had been plagued by scurvy throughout the voyage, even though both vessels had put in for fresh provisions at Zanzibar in late June. Six weeks ago, he had had no choice but to order half his own remaining store of lemon juice transferred to the sister ship, even though this meant reducing the Discovery's ration to a spoon a day, not enough.

  By the first week of September, they were so near India they could almost smell land, but he dared not try for landfall. Not yet. Not without an Indian pilot to guide them past the notorious sandbars and shoals that lined the coast like giant submerged claws. The monsoon winds were dying. Indian shipping surely would begin soon. So they hove to, waiting.

  And as they waited, they watched the last kegs of water choke with green slime, the wax candles melt in the heat, and the remaining biscuit all but disappear to weevils. Hungry seamen set a price on the rats that ran the shrouds. How long could they last?

  Hawksworth reached the last entry in the log. Yesterday. The day they had waited for.

  "Sept. 12. Laid by the lee. Estimated longitude from the Cape, 50° 10' E. Latitude observed 20°30'. At 7 in the morning we command a large ship from the country to heave to, by shooting four pieces across her bow. Took from this ship an Indian pilot, paying in Spanish rials of eight. First offered English gold sovereigns, but these refused as unknown coin. Also purchased 6 casks water, some baskets lemons, melons, plantains."

  The provisions had scarcely lasted out the day, spread over twice a hundred hungry seamen. But with a pilot they could at last make landfall.

  And landfall they had made, at a terrible price. Yet even this anchorage could not be kept. It was too exposed and vulnerable. He had expected it to be so, and he had been right. But he also knew where they might find safety.

  The previous night he had ordered the Indian pilot to sketch a chart of the coastline on both sides of the Tapti River delta. He did not tell him why. And on the map he had spotted a cove five leagues to the north, called Swalley, that looked to be shallow and was also shielded by hills screening it from the sea. Even if the Portuguese discovered them, the deep draft of Portuguese galleons would hold them at sea. The most they could do would be send boarding parties by pinnace, or fireships. The cove would buy time, time to replenish stores, perhaps even to set the men ashore and attend the sick. The longer the anchorage could be kept secret, the better their chances. He had already prepared sealed orders for Captain Kerridge, directing him to steer both frigates there after dark, when their movement could not be followed by the hidden eyes along the coast.

  He took a deep breath and flipped forward to a blank page in the log.

  And realized this was the moment he had been dreading, been postponing: the last entry for the voyage out. Perhaps his last ever—if events in India turned against him. He swabbed more sweat from his face and glanced one last time at the glistening face of the lute, wondering what he would be doing now, at this moment, if he still were in London, penniless but on his own.

  Then he wiped off the quill lying neatly alongside the leather-bound volume, inked it, and shoved back the sleeve of his doublet to write.