Thomas Hoover - The Moghul

"Can you navigate the sandbars?"

"I've seen nae sign of bars."

"The Indian pilot we took on yesterday claims there's shallows upriver."

"All the more reason to sail. By my thinkin' the pilot's a full-bred Moor. An' they're all the same, Indian or Turk." Mackintosh blew his nose over the railing, punctuating his disgust. "Show me one that's na a liar, a thief, or a damned Sodomite. Nae honest Christian'll credit the word of a Moor."

"There's risk either way." Hawksworth drew slowly on the brandy, appearing to weigh the Scotsman's views. "But there's the cargo to think of. Taken for all, it's got to be the pinnace. And this Moorish pilot's not like the Turks. I should know."

"Aye, Cap'n, as you will." Mackintosh nodded with seeming reluctance, admiring how Hawksworth had retained mastery of their old game. Even after two years apart. "But I'll be watchin' the bastard, e'ery move he makes."

Hawksworth turned and slowly descended the quarterdeck steps. As he entered the passageway leading aft to the Great Cabin and the merchants' cabins, he saw the silhouette of George Elkington. The Chief Merchant of the voyage was standing by the quarter gallery railing, drawing on a long clay pipe as he urinated into the swells. When he spotted Hawksworth, he whirled and marched heavily down the corridor, perfunctorily securing the single remaining button of his breeches.

Elkington's once-pink jowls were slack and pasty, and his grease-stained doublet sagged over what had been, seven months past, a luxuriant belly. Sweat trickled down from the sides of his large hat, streaming oily rivulets across his cheeks.

"Hawksworth, did I hear you order the pinnace launch'd tonight? E'en before we've made safe anchorage for the cargo?"

"The sooner the better. The Portugals know we'll have to go upriver. By tomorrow they'll be ready."

"Your first obligation, sirrah, is the goods. Every shilling the Company subscrib'd is cargo'd in these two damn'd merchantmen. A fine fortune in wool broadcloth, Devonshire kersey, pig iron, tin, quicksilver. I've a good ten thousand pound of my own accounts invest'd. And you'd leave it all hove to in this piss crock of a bay, whilst the Portugals are doubtless crewin' up a dozen two-deckers down the coast in Goa. 'Tis sure they'll be laid full about this anchorage inside a fortnight."

Hawksworth inspected Elkington with loathing, musing what he disliked about him most-his grating voice, or his small lifeless eyes.

And what you probably don't realize is they'll be back next time with trained gunners. Not like today, when their gun crews clearly were Lisbon dockside rabble, private traders who'd earned passage out to the Indies on the easy claim they were gunners, half not knowing a linstock from a lamppost.

"Elkington, I'll tell you as much of our plans as befits your place." Hawksworth moved past him toward the door of the Great Cabin. "We're taking the pinnace upriver tonight on the tide. And you'll be in it, along with your coxcomb clerk. Captain Kerridge of the Resolve will take command of the ships. I've already prepared orders to move both frigates to a new anchorage."

"I demand to know what damn'd fool scheme you've hatch'd."

"There's no reason you have to know. Right now the fewer who know the better, particularly the men going upriver."

"Well, I know this much, Hawksworth. This voyage to India may well be the East India Company's last chance to trade in the Indies. If we fail three voyages in a row, we'd as well close down the Company and just buy pepper and spice outright from the damn'd Hollanders. England's got no goods that'll trade in the Spice Islands south o' here. Remember Lancaster cargo'd wool down to the islands on the first two Company voyages, thinkin' to swap it for pepper, and discover'd for himself what I'd guess'd all along-a tribe of heathens sweatin' in the sun have no call for woolen breeches. So either we trade up here in the north, where they'll take wool, or we're finish'd."

"The anchorage I've found should keep the cargo-and the men-safe till we make Surat. With luck you'll have your cargo aland before the Portugals locate us." Hawksworth pushed open the heavy oak door of the Great Cabin and entered, stranding Elkington in the passageway. "And now I wish you good day."

The cabin's dark overhead beams were musty from the heat and its air still dense with smoke from the cannon. The stern windows were partly blocked now by the two bronze demi-culverin that had been run out aft, "stern-chaser" cannon that could spit a nine-pound ball with deadly accuracy-their lighter bronze permitting longer barrels than those of the cast-iron guns below decks. He strode directly to the oil lantern swaying over the great center desk and turned up the wick. The cabin brightened slightly, but the face of the English lute wedged in the corner seemed suddenly to come alive, shining gold over the cramped quarters like a full moon. He stared at it wistfully for a moment, then shook his head and settled himself behind the large oak desk. And asked himself once more why he had ever agreed to the voyage.

To prove something? To the Company? To himself?

He reflected again on how it had come about, and why he had finally accepted the Company's offer…

It had been a dull morning in late October, the kind of day when all London seems trapped in an icy gloom creeping up from the Thames. His weekly lodgings were frigid as always, and his mind was still numb from the previous night's tavern brandy. Back from Tunis scarcely a month, he already had nothing left to pawn. Two years before, he had been leading a convoy of merchantmen through the Mediterranean when their ships and cargo were seized by Turkish corsairs, galleys owned by the notorious dey of Tunis. He had finally managed to get back to London, but now he was a captain without a ship. In years past this might have been small matter to remedy. But no longer. England, he discovered, had changed.

The change was apparent mainly to seamen. The lower house of Parliament was still preoccupied fighting King James's new proposal that Scotland be joined to England, viewed by most Englishmen as a sufferance of proud beggars and ruffians upon a nation of uniformly upright taxpayers; in London idle crowds still swarmed the bear gardens to wager on the huge mastiffs pitted against the chained bears; rioting tenant farmers continued to outrage propertied men by tearing down enclosures and grazing their flocks on the gentry's private hunting estates; and the new Puritans increasingly harassed everyone they disapproved of, from clerics who wore vestments to women who wore cosmetics to children who would play ball on Sunday.

Around London more talk turned on which handsome young courtier was the latest favorite of their effeminate new king than on His Majesty's enforcement of his new and strict decree forbidding privateering-the staple occupation of England seamen for the last three decades of Elizabeth's reign. King James had cravenly signed a treaty of peace with Spain, and by that act brought ruin to half a hundred thousand English "sea dogs." They awoke to discover their historic livelihood, legally plundering the shipping of Spain and Portugal under wartime letters of marque, had become a criminal offense.

For a captain without a ship, another commission by a trading company seemed out of the question, and especially now, with experienced seamen standing idle the length of London. Worst of all, the woman he had hoped to return to, red-haired Maggie Tyne of Billingsgate, had disappeared from her old lodgings and haunts leaving no trace. Rumor had her married-some said to the master of a Newcastle coal barge, others to a gentleman. London seemed empty now, and he passed the vacant days with brandy and his lute, and thoughts of quitting the sea-to do he knew not what.