The Moghul Part 2

"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. . ."

"d.a.m.n 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 amba.s.sador 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 d.a.m.ned heathen does it, but they swear 'tis true. No, sirrah, we can't send some fancy-t.i.tled amba.s.sador 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 d.a.m.ned 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?"

"d.a.m.n 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 d.a.m.ned 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 b.u.t.terboxes 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 wars.h.i.+ps 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?"

"n.o.body. 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 s.h.i.+pp'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 s.h.i.+pp'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 pa.s.sage 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 s.h.i.+pyard 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 s.h.i.+pyard 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 s.p.a.ce, 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 s.h.i.+pbuilder, William Benten, and his foreman, Edward Chandler, had narrowly escaped charges of lining their pockets by subst.i.tuting 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 pa.s.sed, 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 p.i.s.sin' 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 s.h.i.+pped '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 pa.s.sage east and north of the Cape. As soon as his first tankard was dry, the old man spoke.

"Aye, I made the pa.s.sage 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 p.i.s.sin' sinkhole."

"But what about the pa.s.sage 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 pa.s.sage you're e'er like to s.h.i.+p. Portugals post bottoms twice the burden o' the Company's d.a.m.n'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 pa.s.sage? How do they steer north

from the Cape? The Company has no charts, no rutters by pilots who've made the pa.s.sage."

"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 wh.o.r.emasters 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 s.h.i.+fts 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 a.s.sembled by an English navigator, from charts he made on his voyages."

"He's the lyin' son of a Spaniard's wh.o.r.e. 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 s.h.i.+p. 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.