The Moghul

stone pillar, a pillar like the one in the porters' lodge except it was immense, taller than his head. You belong to me now, her eyes seemed to say, and she began to bind him to the pillar with silken cords. He struggled to free himself, but the grasp on his wrists only became stronger. In panic he struck out and yelled through the haze of incense.
    "Let . . . !"
    "I'm only trying to wake you, Captain." A voice cut through the nightmare. "His Eminence, the Shahbandar, has requested that I attend your wound."
    Hawksworth startled awake and was reaching for his sword before he saw the swarthy little man, incongruous in a white swath of a skirt and a Portuguese doublet, nervously shaking his arm. The man pulled back in momentary surprise, then dropped his cloth medicine bag on the floor and began to carefully fold a large red umbrella. Hawksworth noted he wore no shoes on his dusty feet.
    "Allow me to introduce myself." He bowed ceremoniously. "My name is Mukarjee. It is my honor to attend the celebrated new feringhi ." His Turki was halting and strongly accented.
    He knelt and deftly cut away the wrapping on Hawksworth's leg. "And who applied this?" With transparent disdain he began uncoiling the muddy bandage. "The Christian topiwallahs constantly astound me. Even though my daughter is married to one." One eyebrow twitched nervously as he worked.
    Hawksworth stared at him through a groggy haze, marveling at the dexterity of his chestnut-brown hands. Then he glanced nervously at the vials of colored liquid and jars of paste the man was methodically extracting from his cloth bag.
    "It was our ship's physician. He swathed this after attending a dozen men with like wounds or worse."
    "No explanations are necessary. Feringhi methods are always unmistakable. In Goa, where I lived for many years after leaving Bengal, I once served in a hospital built by Christian priests."
    "You worked in a Jesuit hospital?"
    "I did indeed." He began to scrape away the oily powder residue from the wound. Hawksworth's leg jerked involuntarily from the flash of pain. "Please do not move. Yes, I served there until I could abide it no more. It was a very exclusive hospital. Only feringhi were allowed to go there to be bled."
    He began to wash the wound, superficial but already festering, with a solution from one of the vials. "Yes, we Indians were denied that almost certain entry into Christian paradise represented by its portals. But it was usually the first stop for arriving Portuguese, after the brothels."
    "But why do so many Portuguese sicken after they reach Goa?" Hawksworth watched Mukarjee begin to knead a paste that smelled strongly of sandalwood spice.
    "It's well that you ask, Captain Hawksworth." Mukarjee tested the consistency of the sandalwood paste with his finger and then placed it aside, apparently to thicken. "You appear to be a strong man, but after many months at sea you may not be as virile as you assume."
    He absently extracted a large, dark green leaf from the pocket of his doublet and dabbed it in a paste he kept in a crumpled paper. Then he rolled it around the cracked pieces of a small brown nut, popped it into his mouth, and began to chew. Suddenly remembering himself, he stopped and produced another leaf from his pocket.
    "Would you care to try betel, what they call pan here in Surat? It's very healthy for the teeth. And the digestion."
    "What is it?"
    "A delicious leaf. I find I cannot live without it, so perhaps it's a true addiction. It's slightly bitter by itself, but if you roll it around an areca nut and dip it in a bit of lime—which we make from mollusk shells—it is perfectly exquisite."
    Hawksworth shook his head in wary dissent, whereupon Mukarjee continued, settling himself on his haunches and sucking contentedly on the rolled leaf as he spoke. "You ask why I question your well-being, Captain? Because a large number of the feringhis who come to Goa, and India, are doomed to die."
    "You already said that. From what? Poison in their food?"
    Mukarjee examined him quizzically for a moment as he concentrated on the rolled leaf, savoring the taste, and Hawksworth noticed a red trickle emerge from the corner of his mouth and slide slowly off his chin. He turned and discharged a mouthful of juice into a small brass container, clearing his mouth to speak.
    "The most common illness for Europeans here is called the bloody flux." Mukarjee tested the paste again with his finger, and then began to stir it vigorously