The Moghul

what to say. Your nightly visits to this couch have been the most astonishing experience of my life. To imagine I once thought being with the same woman night after night would eventually grow monotonous. But you always come here as someone different, always with something new. You play on my senses like an instrument—with touch, with scent, with tongue. Until they seem to merge with my mind. Or is it the reverse? But you're right when you say the mind must surrender itself first. When that's done, when the mind is given up to the body, then you somehow forget your own self and think only of the other. And eventually there grows a union of pleasure, a bond that's intense, overwhelming.
    But tonight he could not repress his vagrant mind. His feeling of failure churned too deep. It had stolen his spirit.
    Day after tomorrow the Discovery weighs anchor, he told himself, with half the cargo we'd planned and twice the men she needs, while the Resolve slowly breaks apart on a sandbar. I've failed the Company . . . and myself. And there's nothing that can be done. Kali, dear Kali. The woman I really want to be with tonight is Shirin. Why can't I drive her from my mind? Half the time when you're in my arms, I pretend you're her. Do you sense that too?
    "I'm sorry. I'm not myself tonight." You're right as always, he marveled, the mind and the body are one. As he paused, the singer's voice cut the stillness between them. "How did you know?"
    "It's my duty as your courtesan to feel your moods. And to try to lift the weight of the world from your heart."
    "You do it very well. It's just that sometimes there's too much to lift." He studied her, wondering what she was really thinking, then leaned back and looked at the stars. "Tell me, what do you do when the world weighs on you!"
    "That's never your worry, my love. I'm here to think of you, not you of me."
    "Tell me anyway. Say it's a feringhi’s curiosity."
    "What do I do?" She smiled wistfully and drew again on the hookah, sending a tiny gurgle into the quiet. "I escape with bhang . And I remember when I was in Agra, in the zenana ."
    She lay aside the mouthpiece of the hookah and began to roll betel leaves for them both, carefully measuring in a portion of nutmeg, her favorite aphrodisiac.
    "Tell me how you came to be here, away from Agra."
    "Is it really me you wish to hear about?" She looked at him squarely, her voice quiet. "Or is it Shirin?"
    "You," Hawksworth lied, and absently stroked the edge of her foot, where the henna line began. Then he looked into her dark eyes and he knew she knew.
    "Will we make love again if I tell you?"
    "Possibly."
    "I know how to make you keep your promise." She took his toe in her mouth and brushed it playfully with her tongue before biting it, ever so lightly. "So I will tell you anything you want to know."
    He scarcely knew where to start. "What was it about the harem, the zenana , that you liked so much?"
    She sighed. "We had everything there. Wine and sweet bhang . And we bribed the eunuchs to bring us opium and nutmeg and tobacco. We could wear tight trousers, which none of the women here in Surat dare for fear the mullahs will condemn them." As she spoke, her eyes grew distant. "We wore jewels the way women in Surat wear scarves. And silks from China the way they wear their dreary cotton here. There was always music, dance, pigeon-flying. And we had all the perfumes—musk, scented oil, attar of rose—we could want. The Moghul had melons brought by runner from Kabul, pomegranates and pears from Samarkand, apples from Kashmir, pineapples from Goa." She remembered herself and reached to place a rolled betel leaf in his mouth. "About the only thing we weren't supposed to have was cucumbers . . ." She giggled and took a betel leaf for herself. "I think His Majesty was afraid he might suffer in comparison. But we bribed the eunuchs and got them anyway. And we also pleasured each other."
    Hawksworth studied her, not quite sure whether to believe it all. "I've heard the harems of the Turks in the Levant are said to be like some sort of prison. Was it like that?"
    "Not at all." She smiled easily. A bit too easily, he thought. "We used to take trips to the countryside, or even go with His Majesty when he went to Kashmir in the hot summer. In a way we were freer than the poor third wife of some stingy merchant."
    "But weren't you always under guard?"
    "Of course. You know the word 'harem' is actually Arabic for 'forbidden sanctuary.' Here we