The Moghul

low-caste drivers and bullock teams. He had also hired five additional carts to carry provisions.
    Brian Hawksworth had contracted for his own cart and driver, negotiating a price of twenty rupees for cartage of his belongings all the way from Surat to Agra. He was amused to reflect that the chest containing King James's gifts for the Moghul of India traveled lashed to the bed of a ramshackle, wooden-wheeled cart originally intended for hay.
    The caravan had been scheduled to depart early on a Saturday morning, but the drivers had suddenly refused to budge until the following day. Hawksworth had confronted his driver, Nayka, a dark-skinned low-caste man with the spindly limbs of the underfed, and demanded to know why. Nayka had twisted his head deferentially, riveting his eyes on the ground, and explained in halting Turki.
    "Today is Saturday, Captain Sahib. Saturdays and Tuesdays are sacred to the goddess Devi, the Divine Mother. Journeys begun on those days always meet disaster. Bandits, tigers, washed-out roads. A Mussalman once made my cousin bring a cart of indigo to Surat from a village down the river on a Tuesday, and a bridge broke under his load. Both of his bullocks were drowned."
    It was mid-afternoon on Sunday when the caravan finally pulled out from the water tank at Surat's Abidjan Gate. By nightfall they had traveled three kos , reaching the outskirts of the village of Cossaria. The next day they made twelve kos east-northeast to reach the town of Karod, a strategic fort on the Tapti, dominated by a hilltop castle that garrisoned two hundred Rajput soldiers. The next three days their camp stages had been the towns of Viara, Corka, and the large garrison city of Narayanpur.
    On the insistence of Mirza Nuruddin, Hawksworth had carried only a minimal amount of money with him. Instead he had adopted the practice of Indian merchants, leaving a chest of silver in Surat and receiving a letter of credit, which could be debited for cash at major stops along the road to Agra. Moneylenders received negotiable notes against the silver deposit, which would be paid in Surat at 7 percent surcharge, thereby allowing travelers along the bandit-infested roads to carry cheques instead of cash.
    Hawksworth found himself annoyed that Vasant Rao never allowed the caravan to stop inside the towns, where traditional Indian guest houses—a stone floor and a roof—were available free for travelers. Instead they camped each evening on the outskirts, while a few Rajputs rode in to the town bazaar to buy fresh vegetables, bricks of cow dung for cooking, and betel leaves for the drivers.
    The evening they reached Narayanpur, the governor of the garrison, Partab Shah, had paid a surprise visit to their camp, bringing his own troup of nautch women. While the women entertained the Rajputs with an evening of dance and low-priced intimacy, Partab Shah whispered warnings to Hawksworth that the road farther east was no longer safe now that civil rule in the Deccan was teetering. The governor had offered to provide additional troops to escort the English ambassador and his gifts for the Moghul safely through the district. To the governor's—and Hawksworth's—dismay, Vasant Rao had politely declined.
    It had been well after midnight when the governor and his aides rose to return to Narayanpur. Vasant Rao had insisted that the women be sent with him. Then he convened the Rajputs and drivers and announced that they would assemble the caravan two hours before sunup the following morning, an hour earlier than usual. They would try to reach and ford the Tapti before nightfall, then veer northeast for Burhanpur. Hawksworth thought he detected a trace of worry in Vasant Rao's voice for the first time.
    They were well underway by sunup the next day, and as he fought off sleep in the rising heat, Hawksworth reflected on what he had seen along the road. It was clear the larger towns were collection depots for the Surat region, centers where grain, cotton, indigo, and hemp were assembled for delivery to the port. As their caravan rumbled through town after town, Hawksworth began to find them merely a provincial version of Surat, equally frenetic and self-absorbed. Their bazaars bustled with haggling brokers and an air of commerce triumphant. After a time he began to find them more wearisome than exotic.
    But between these towns lived the other India, one of villages unchanged for centuries. To a Londoner and seaman they were another world, and