The Moghul

a bit too careless about the information they gather. For example, a cipher intended for the prince— sent by one of Jadar's secret swanih-nigars stationed in Cochin, on the far southern end of the Malabar Coast—was just intercepted by a Portuguese shipping agent at the port of Mangalore, down the coast south of Goa. The message was of great interest to the Portuguese, and they saw fit to forward it to me. What do you suppose the message contained?"
    Hawksworth pulled himself alert.
    "I have no idea."
    "Tell me, Ambassador. The East India Company does trade on Java, am I correct?"
    "Six years ago the Company established a factory . . . a trading station . . . at Bantam, the main port on the island."
    "Was there a voyage to Bantam this year?"
    "The Discovery was bound for Bantam this year, with cargo from Surat."
    "Ambassador, the time for games is over. Your charade has made things very difficult for those of us who would try to help you." Nadir Sharif studied Hawksworth deliberately, almost sadly. "It would have been helpful if you had told me everything sooner. It's embarrassing that I must receive my information through captured intelligence, when I'm authorized to serve as your agent. I'm sure it will not surprise you that the Portuguese Viceroy, His Excellency, Miguel Vaijantes, is most disturbed at the news. There will be consequences."
    "What are you talking about?"
    "The cipher for Jadar. You could have told me sooner of your king's plans. It would have made all the difference." Nadir Sharif stared coldly at Hawksworth. "There's no longer any need to pretend you don't know. The fleet was sighted off the Malabar Coast, by coastal fishing barks, only three days ago. Four armed frigates, showing English colors, with a course north by northwest, which means they will stand to sea and avoid the Portuguese patrols along the coast. It was only by the slightest chance that they were seen. And then another accident that the cipher intended for Jadar was intercepted. Otherwise no one would have known. It was very resourceful of your East India Company, Ambassador, to have a second fleet sail up our west coast from the English factory at Java. Unless the Portuguese had intercepted and decoded Jadar's cipher, they would have been taken completely by surprise. Now they estimate the English fleet is scheduled to reach Surat within the month. Unless they are met and engaged . . . which they most assuredly will be."

    *
    The perfumed air of midmorning still seemed to hover above the inner courtyard of Arangbar's palace as Hawksworth approached its towering wooden gates. The astonishing news of the English fleet had sent his spirits soaring, and he had donned his finest doublet and hose for the occasion. As scimitared eunuchs scrutinized his gilded invitation and bowed obsequiously for him to pass, he suddenly felt he was walking through the portals of a Persian dreamland.
    For the past two months servants and slaves had toiled through the crisp autumn nights transforming the courtyard of the Red Fort's inner palace from an open-air marble arcade into a vast, magnificent reception room for Arangbar's five-day lunar birthday fete. The surrounding galleries had been softened with rich carpets, their walls cloaked in new tapestries; and in the central square a flowering garden, freshened by interlocking marble fountains, had appeared out of nothing. In this new garden time had ceased to flow, night and day knew not their passage one into the other, for the sky itself was now a vast canopy of imperial red velvet, embroidered in gold and held aloft by silver-sheathed poles forty feet high and the size of ship's masts. The horizons of this velvet sky were secured to protruding stone eyelets along the second-story galleries by multicolored cotton cords the thickness of cable.
    The centerpiece of the upcoming celebration was an enormous balance, the scale on which Arangbar's yearly weight would be taken. By that weight his physicians would foretell the future estate of his body, and if his weight had increased since the previous year, there was universal rejoicing. But, greater or less, his weight always seemed to augur well for India. His physicians inevitably found it reason to forecast another hundred years of his benevolent rule.
    Nor was the balance itself suggestive of anything less than a portentous occasion. The measure of a king demanded kingly measures. Its weighing pans were two cushioned platforms, gilded and inlaid