Julian Rathbone - Kings of Albion

'There was a personal side to Jehani's mission too. He and Prince Harihara had quarrelled – over a woman, of course. That is all over now. She died shortly after Jehani left, and the Prince is anxious to find him, help him fulfil his original mission and bring him home.'

Thus Arrish. Events bore out what he told me then, but with an added dimension. In England Jehani had fallen in with a group of hedonistic atheists who acknowledged no god but the god within, the individual conscience unmediated by holy books or priests – the Brothers of the Free Spirit, who had cells right across Europe and corresponded with like-minded people in the east too. Everywhere they recruited hierophants, mostly from the lower sort, and everywhere they were ruthlessly persecuted. The Brother who had given me Jehani's packet and died at the stake in Calais had been one of their number.

One problem we faced was clothes. Neither the Prince nor Anish could conceive of the effects of cold rain, frost, howling icy gales, the whole panoply of weather those western isles could throw at us. When I described sleet driven by an icy wind they said that they would wear two silk or cotton gowns instead of one. In the end I realised we were approaching the problem from the wrong angle.

'Let us,' I said, 'set aside a certain amount for each member of our expedition, in some easily carried but easily exchanged commodity which we will carry separately from the rest, in sealed packets, and which all will swear not to touch until we need to buy the clothes the locals wear to keep out bad weather.'

Of course they suggested spices, but we were already carrying many sackfuls of many different sorts, and I was afraid that those kept for clothes would be muddled with the rest and exchanged for something of no particular value in Ingerlond, though of substantial value in Vijayanagara. In the end we chose pearls. These, though beautiful, are not rare along the coasts of Vijayanagara or on the many small islands and archipelagos out in the ocean, but in northern climes are highly prized, especially those of any size or of unusual colouring. Each of us, then, took a small bag of pearls, which was only to be sold or exchanged for warm clothing and substantial footwear when these became necessary.

There was another problem too, which I came upon in a small yard behind the stables that had served as an entrepot for our baggage. It was in the form of a heap of leather cases, tooled, in part gilded and painted, with tasselled straps and handles, varying in length from three feet to ten, and for the most part roughly cylindrical. There were two score or more of them, together with racks and racks of feathered shafts, again of varying lengths and styles. They provided the clue, of course, to what the leather cases contained, though it was Anish who murmured the explanatory word. 'Crossbows,' he said, somewhat drily. 'His lordship collects them.'

'Well, he can't take them with him,' I said firmly. 'What we have here will require six mules and two more muleteers, which means a seventh mule to carry their baggage. Moreover, there are enough weapons here to furnish a squad of archers – no one will believe we come in peace as traders when they sec this lot.'

'He will insist, I fear.'

'Why?'

'It is not simply the weapons that obsess him but the use to which he puts them. He hunts. It is his passion. He has crossbows and bolts for every sort of quarry he might come across. Tiny ones imported from China, scarcely more than a pound or so in weight, which throw a six-inch dart, for small birds – larks and quail particularly -to machines from Nepal capable of throwing a bolt three hundred paces and bringing down a mountain goat. Finally, this monster,' he kicked a bag big and bulky enough to hold the body of a six-foot wrestler, 'which, when assembled, requires a crew of three, one of whom carries it on his back, another to wind a winch to pull back the string, which is made from plaited water butfalo hide, and a third, his lordship, who aims and shoots.'

'And what does he kill with that? Elephants?'

'Crocodiles.'

I prodded it with my stick. 'It won't do you know. Even apart from the bulk and nuisance of it all, it still won't do.' 'Why not?'

'The Ingerlonder nobility do not hunt with bows and arrows. They hunt from horses with dogs.'

'What animals do they hunt, then, with these dogs?'

'Deer, hares, otters, wolves, foxes.'

'They eat fox?' There was disgust in Anish's voice.

'No. But they like the excuse the foxes give them to ride fast over farmland, regardless of the damage their horses do.'

In spite of my interdiction Prince Harihara smuggled out a large selection of these weapons when we left, almost certainly with Anish's connivance.

So, towards the end of the third month after I had arrived in the City of Victory, we set off for Gove. There were the three of us, plus four cooks, ten muleteers, ten soldiers with all their accoutrements, a couple of secretaries experienced in financial affairs, a fortune-teller, a Buddhist monk, who came along, he told Anish, because he had nothing better to do, four general servants, two of whom were always in attendance on the Prince, carrying huge parasols above him as he rode on a fine mule, a couple of dhoti wallahs to keep our clothes clean, a fakir or conjuror, and three musicians: forty-two in all, with enough baggage to need forty mules.

This baggage, apart from an excessive amount of personal belongings, consisted mainly of dried spices: ginger, cardamom, peppercorns, coriander seed, cumin, nutmeg, cinnamon and cloves. Hidden here and there were more pearls, diamonds and some rubies, including a pair of kurundams, each as long and thick as your thumb, in perfect crystalline form, combinations of prisms with hexagonal pyramids, rhombohedrons and basal pinakoids.

This was all far too much, of course. There were too many unnecessary people and things. At least I had drawn the line at elephants. The Prince had not been pleased. 'How will the inhabitants of the countries we pass through, and the Ingerlonders themselves, know that we are people of consequence if we do not arrive on elephants?' He only gave in on the understanding that the subject would be broached again when we arrived in Cairo where, as he understood it, African elephants would be available for sale or hire.

On the border with the Bahmani sultanates, Gove is even more cosmopolitan than Mangalore, and since its traders deal even-handedly with both empires, although it was at that time governed by the Dravidians, a wide variety of ships and crews was available for charter, even including, amongst the latter, some Italian sailors from Venice and Genoa, Portuguese, Malays and Chinese.

On my advice, we opted for an Arab vessel, a medium-sized dhow capable of carrying some hundred and fifty tons, manned by an Arab master and crew. They had just dropped off a cargo of blackamoors from the Zanzibar slave markets, and the master was looking for a charter to take him back up the Red Sea. This boat was called the Moon of Islam, and the below-decks cargo space had solid timber bunk beds, just shelves, really, for the slaves, which made her well equipped to take all our company and gear. There was also a cane and thatch covered area in the stern, which Prince Harihara commandeered for himself and his closest retinue – myself and Anish. There was another similarly roofed area on the foredeck. The Moon of Islam was painted green; she was well rigged with a newish sail, and her seams were well caulked. These, and similar matters, are the sorts of things a wise merchant checks when time and money permit. Otherwise he takes a chance and sometimes comes to grief, as I had with my shipload of horses.

A hundred and fifty tons? The masters of smaller boats insist on hopping round the coastline, running for port as soon as a squall appears on the horizon, even at that time of year when the weather is generally settled, the winds steady from the north-east. In any case, with anything smaller we should have had to take two ships to accommodate us all. As it was, we left the mules behind, planning to hire beasts of burden as soon as we made our landfall in Suways, the port that serves the city of Misr-al-Kahira, Cairo, the capital of Egypt.