The Moghul

the world that matters most is the world within. We explore the seas inside our own mind. And so we wait, we wait for the world outside to be brought to us. But for you the inner world seems secondary." She laughed again, and now her voice was controlled and even. "Perhaps I'm not explaining it well. Let me try again. Do you remember the first thing you did on your very first morning in the palace?"
    "I walked out here, to the observatory."
    "But why did you?"
    "Because I'm a seaman, and I thought . . ."
    "No, that's only partly the reason." She smiled. "I think you came to see it because it belongs to the world of things. Like a good European, you felt you must first and always be the master of things. Of ships, of guns, even of the stars. Maybe that's why I find you so strong." She paused, then reached out and touched his hand. The gesture had been impulsive, and when she realized what she'd done, she moved to pull it back, then stopped herself.
    He looked at her in the lamplight, then gently placed his other hand over hers and held it firm. "Then let me tell you something. I find you just as hard to understand. I find myself drawn to something about you, and it troubles me."
    "Why should it trouble you?"
    "Because I don't know who you are. What you are. Even what you're doing, or why. You've risked everything for principles that are completely outside me." He looked into her eyes, trying to find words. "And regardless of what you say, I think you somehow know everything there is to know about me. I don't even have to tell you."
    "Things pass between a man and woman that go beyond words. Not everything has to be said." She shifted her gaze away. "You've had great sadness in your life. And I think it's killed some part of you. You no longer allow yourself to trust or to love."
    "I've had some bad experiences with trust."
    "But don't let it die." Her eyes met his. "It's the thing most worthwhile."
    He looked at her a long moment, feeling the tenderness beneath her strength, and he knew he wanted her more than anything. Before he thought, he had slipped his arm around her waist and drawn her up to him. He later remembered his amazement at her softness, her warmth as he pulled her body against his own. Before she could speak, he had kissed her, bringing her mouth full to his lips. He had thought for an instant she would resist, and he meant to draw her closer. Only then did he realize it was she who had come to him, pressing her body against his. They clung together in the lamplight, neither wanting the moment to end. At last, with an act of will, she pulled herself away.
    "No." Her breath was coming almost faster than his own. "It's impossible."
    "Nothing's impossible." He suddenly knew, with an absolute certainty, that he had to make her his own. "Come with me to Agra. Together . . ."
    "Don't say it." She stopped his lips with her finger. "Not yet." She glanced at the papers on the table, then reached for his hand, bringing it to her moist cheek. "Not yet."
    "You're leaving. So am I. We'll leave together."
    "I can't." She was slipping from him. He felt it. "I'll think of you when you're in Agra. And when we're ready, we'll find each other, I promise it."
    Before he knew, she had turned and gathered the bundles. When she reached for the lamp, suddenly her hand stopped.
    "Let's leave it." She looked toward him. "Still burning." Then she reached out and brushed his lips with her fingertips one last time. He watched in dismay as she passed on through the doorway. In moments she was lost among the shadows of the orchard.

    BOOK THREE

    THE ROAD

    CHAPTER THIRTEEN

East along the Tapti River valley the land was a verdant paradise, a patchwork of mango and pipal groves and freshly turned dark earth. By mid-October the fields of cotton, corn, and sugarcane were in harvest; and in the lowlands paired buffalo strained to turn the crusted mud to readiness for broadcast sowing the grain crops of autumn: millet, wheat, and barley. The monsoon-washed roads had again grown passable, and now they were a continual procession, as mile-long caravans of corn-laden bullock carts inched ponderously west toward the shipping port of Surat.
    The distance from Surat to Burhanpur was one hundred and fifty kos , and in dry weather it could be traversed in just over a fortnight. Vasant Rao had hired fifty carts to transport the sealed bundles—which he said were lead—to Burhanpur, swelling his entourage of forty Raput horsemen by fifty