The Moghul

thrown to the crowd, though their breasts had long since found release from whatever minimal containment they might have known at the beginning of the dance. Their earth-brown skin now glistened bare in the perfumed torchlight.
    The dance seemed to Hawksworth to go on and on, incredibly building to ever more frantic levels of intensity. The drunken crowd swayed with the women, its excitement and expectation swelling. Then at last the women's trousers also were ripped away, leaving them adorned with only bangles and reflecting jewels. Yet the dance continued still, as they writhed onto their knees at the edge of the platform. Then slowly, as though by some unseen hand, the platform lowered to the level of the courtyard and they glided into the drunken crowd, thrusting breasts, thighs, against the ecstatic onlookers. The cheers had grown deafening.
    Hawksworth finally turned away and walked slowly down the embankment to the river. There, in the first hint of dawn, bathers had begun to assemble for Hindu prayers and a ritual morning bath. Among them were young village girls, swathed head to foot in bright-colored wraps, who descended one by one into the chilled water and began to modestly change garments while they bathed, chastely coiling a fresh cloth around themselves even as the other was removed.
    They had never seemed more beautiful.
    Hawksworth was standing on the steps of the maidan when the sail of the English longboat showed at the turn of the river. News of the shipwreck had reached Surat by village runner an hour after sunup, and barks had already been sent to try to recover the remaining silver before the ship broke apart. The frigate was reportedly no more than a thousand yards off the coast, and all the men, even Kerridge, the bosun, and the pilot, had been safely carried ashore by the current.
    Hawksworth watched the longboat's sail being lowered in preparation for landing and tried to think over his next step, how to minimize the delay and loss.
    We can't risk staying on past another day or two, not with only one vessel. If we're caught at anchor in the cove, there's nothing one ship can do. The Portugals can send in fireships and there'll be no way to sink them with crossfire. The Discovery has to sail immediately. We've enough cotton laded now to fill the hold with pepper in Java.
    Damn Kerridge. Why was he steering so close to shore? Didn't he realize there'd be a current?
    Or was it the pilot?
    Were we steered into this disaster on the orders of our new friend Mirza Nuruddin? Has he been playing false with us all along, only claiming to help us stay clear of the Portugals? By the looks of the traders on the maidan this morning I can tell they all think we were played for fools.
    He tried to remember all the Shahbandar had said the night before, particularly the remarks he had not understood, but now the evening seemed swallowed in a fog of brandy.
    But the game, he finally realized, had been more than a game.
    "The voyage will be lucky to break even now." George Elkington slid from the back of the sweating porter and collapsed heavily on the stone steps. "The Resolve was old, but 'twill take forty thousand pound to replace her."
    "What do you plan to do?" Hawksworth eyed Kerridge as he mounted the steps, his doublet unrecognizable under the smeared mud, and decided to ignore him.
    "Not a damn'd thing we can do now, save lade the last of the cotton and some indigo on the Discovery and weigh anchor. And day after tomorrow's not too soon, by my thinkin'." Elkington examined Hawksworth and silently cursed him. He still had not swallowed his disbelief when Hawksworth had announced, only three days before, that he planned to leave the ships and travel to Agra with a letter from King James.
    "The Shahbandar has asked to meet with you." Hawksworth motioned to Elkington as the last seaman climbed over the side of the longboat and onto the back of a waiting porter. "We may as well go in."
    A crowd of the curious swarmed about them as they made their way across the maidan and through the customs house. Mirza Nuruddin was waiting on his bolster.
    "Captain, my sincere condolences to you and to Mr. Elkington. Please be sure that worthless pilot will never work out of this port again. I cannot believe he was at fault, but he'll be dealt with nonetheless." Which is partially true, Mirza Nuruddin told himself, since my cousin Muhammad Haidar, nakuda of the Rahimi, will take him on the pilgrim ship for the next Aden