Brian Hawksworth stepped lightly off the prow of the barge as
it eased into the riverbank and worked his way through the knee-deep
tidal mud onto the sandy shore. Even here, across the harbor, the water
still stank of the sewers of Surat. Then he turned and surveyed the
sprawling city, back across the broad estuary, astonished that they
could have crossed the harbor so easily on nothing more substantial
than a wide raft of boards lashed with rope, what the Indians called a
bark.
Ahead, waiting on the shore, was a line of loaded bullock carts--
conveyances with two wooden wheels higher than a man's head, a flat bed
some six feet wide, and a heavy bamboo pole for a tongue--each yoked to
two tall, humpbacked gray cattle with conspicuous ribs. The carts
stretched down the muddy road that emerged from the tangle of coastal
scrub and were piled to overflowing with rolls of English wool cloth.
The turbaned drivers now shouted Hindi obscenities as they walked
alongside and lashed the sullen cattle into place for unloading. As
Hawksworth watched, the porters who had ridden with him splashed their
way toward the shore and began driving stakes to secure the mooring
lines of the bark. Wool would be ferried across the harbor and cotton
brought back with each trip.
Then Hawksworth caught sight of George Elkington's ragged hat bobbing
in the midday sunshine as the Chief Merchant and his aide, Humphrey
Spencer, climbed down from their two-wheeled Indian coach, drawn by two
white oxen, which had been loaned by Shahbandar. Farther down the line
of carts was a detail of English seamen, led by red-haired Mackintosh,
and all carrying muskets, who had walked the fifteen-mile, two-day trek
to guard the cargo.
The trading season was well underway, and over the past three weeks a
motley assemblage of cargo vessels from the length of the Indian Ocean
had appeared downriver at the bar to commence unlading. Foreign traders
normally transported goods inland to Surat on the barks that plied the
Tapti between the port and the shallow bar at the river mouth. But
these vessels had arrived at the bar with the blessings of Portugal,
for they all had acquired a Portuguese license and paid duty on their
cargo at some Portuguese-controlled tax point.
After evaluating the risk of exposing his English frigates at the bar--
where maneuverability was limited and the possibility of Portuguese
surprise great--Brian Hawksworth had elected to unlade directly onshore
from their protected anchorage north of the river mouth, the cove
called Swalley, then haul the goods overland to the banks of the Tapti
opposite Surat. There would be no risk of Portuguese interference
inland and, once across from the port, the goods could be easily barged
to the _maidan_.
He turned again toward the river and examined the town of Surat from
his new vantage. It was easy to see now why this location had been
chosen for the port, for here the river curved and widened, creating a
natural, protected harbor. The most conspicuous landmarks visible from
across the harbor were three stone villas along the riverfront, all
owned by the Shahbandar, and the square stone fort that stood on the
downriver side of the harbor, its heavy ordnance trained perpetually on
the water. The fort was surrounded by a moat on three sides and on the
fourth by the river. Entry could only be gained through a gate on the
riverside, or a drawbridge that connected its entrance to the open
_maidan_, the square where traders congregated.
The square had swarmed with merchants and brokers as they passed
through, and he had watched as two brokers stood together near its
center--one from Ahmedabad, up-country, and the other from Surat--arguing
loudly over the price and quality of a pile of indigo. The porters
explained that the Surat broker was accusing the other of mixing sand
with the indigo to increase its weight, then disguising his deception
by also adding enough oil that the indigo would still float on water,
the test used to establish purity of the dried extract of the indigo
leaf. As the argument grew more vigorous, Hawksworth noticed the men
join hands beneath a piece of cloth, where they began negotiating the
actual price by means of their fingers, a figure undoubtedly little
related to the movement of their tongues.
Now that the high trading season of September-January had begun,
Surat's narrow streets were one loud bazaar, swollen to almost two
hundred thousand grasping traders, bargaining seamen, hawking
merchants. A dozen languages stirred the air as a motley melange of up-
country Indian traders, Arabs, Jains, Parsis, Persians, Jews,
Egyptians, Portuguese, and returning Muslim pilgrims--every nationality
known to the Indian Ocean--swaggered through the garbage-sodden mud
paths called streets.
Hawksworth gazed back at the city and reflected over the curious events
of the past three weeks. The English had, inexplicably, been received
first with open hostility, and then with suspiciously cordial
deference--first by the governor, and afterward by the Shahbandar.
Something is very wrong, he told himself. A contest of wills is
underway between the Shahbandar, Mirza Nuruddin, and the governor,
Mukarrab Khan. And so far, Mukarrab Khan seems to be winning. Or is he?
Six days before, the governor had suddenly reversed his policy of
noninterference in port affairs and authorized a license for the
English to sell their cargo in Surat and buy Indian goods, something
the Shahbandar had found one excuse after another to delay. However,
Mukarrab Khan had delivered this license directly to the English,
rather than forwarding it to the Shahbandar through normal channels,
leaving Brian Hawksworth the unpleasant responsibility of presenting
this document to the Shahbandar in person. But the meeting turned out
to be nothing like Hawksworth had expected.
"Once more you astound me, Captain." The close, torch-lit chamber of
the customs house office had fallen expectantly silent as the
Shahbandar drew slowly on his hookah and squinted with his opaque,
glassy eyes at the black seal of Mukarrab Khan affixed to the top of
the page. Hawksworth had waited for a glimmer of anger at this
insulting breach of port protocol--which surely was Mukarrab Khan's
reason for insisting the license be delivered by the English Captain-
General. But the Shahbandar's eyes never lost their noncommittal
squint. Instead he had turned to Hawksworth with a cordial smile. "Your
refusal to negotiate seems to have worked remarkable dispatch with His
Excellency's officials. I can't recall ever seeing them act this
quickly."
Hawksworth had been amazed. How could Mirza Nuruddin possibly know the
terms he had demanded of the governor: produce a license for trade
within ten days or the two English frigates would weigh anchor and
sail; and accept English sovereigns at bullion value rather than the
prevailing discount rate of 4 1/2 percent required to circumvent
"minting time," the weeks "required" by the Shahbandar's minters to
melt down foreign coin and re-mint it as Indian rupees.
No one could have been more surprised than Brian Hawksworth when
Mukarrab Khan had immediately conceded the English terms and approved
the license--valid for sixty days--to land goods, and to buy and sell.
Why had the governor agreed so readily, overriding the Shahbandar's
dawdling clerks?
"Naturally you'll need an officer here to schedule the river barks."
The Shahbandar's voice was even, but Hawksworth thought he sensed an
air of tension suddenly grip the room. "Normally barks are reserved
weeks in advance now during the high season, but we can always
accommodate friends of Mukarrab Khan."
It was then that Hawksworth had told the Shahbandar he would not be
bringing cargo up the river, that instead it would be transported
overland from their protected anchorage using bullock carts arranged
for by Mukarrab Khan.
"The cove you call Swalley is several leagues up the coast, Captain.
Foreign cargo has never before been unladed there, nor has it ever been
brought overland as you propose." He had seemed genuinely disturbed. "I
suggest it's both irregular and unworkable."
"I think you understand why we have to unlade from the cove. The
decision is made." Hawksworth tried to keep his voice as firm as that
of Mirza Nuruddin. "We'll unload the bullock carts just across the
river from the port here, and we'll only need a bark to ferry goods
across the harbor."
"As you wish. I'll arrange to have one at your disposal." The
Shahbandar drew pensively on the hookah, ejecting coils of smoke into
the already dense air of the chamber, and examined Hawksworth. Then he
continued. "I understand your frigates are some five hundred tons each.
Full unlading will require at least three weeks, perhaps four. Is that
a reasonable estimate?"
"We'll arrange the scheduling. Why do you ask?"
"Merely for information, Captain." Again the Shahbandar flashed his
empty smile. Then he bowed as lightly as protocol would admit and
called for a tray of rolled betel leaves, signifying the meeting was
ended. As Hawksworth took one, he marveled that he had so quickly
acquired a taste for their strange alkaline sweetness. Then he looked
again at Mirza Nuruddin's impassive eyes.
Damn him. Does he know what the Portugals were planning? And was he
hoping we'd be caught unlading in the shallows at the river mouth? He
knows I've just spoiled their plans.
As he had passed back through the customs shed headed toward the
_maidan_ and sunshine, Hawksworth could feel the hostile stares. And he
knew the reason.
The new English visitors had already made an unforgettable impression
on the town of Surat. The merchants George Elkington and Humphrey
Spencer had been given accommodations by a Portuguese-speaking Muslim,
whom Spencer had immediately outraged by demanding they be served pork.
The other men had been temporarily lodged in a vacant house owned by an
indigo broker. After the hard-drinking English seamen had disrupted
orderly proceedings in three separate brothels, and been banned in turn
by each, the Shahbandar had ordered five _nautch_ girls sent to them at
the house. But with fewer women than men, a fight inevitably had
ensued, with thorough demolition of the plaster walls and shutters.
Worst of all, bosun's mate John Garway had gone on a drunken spree in
the streets and, in a flourish of exuberance, severed the tail of a
bullock calf--an animal sacred to the Hindus--with his seaman's knife. A
riot in the Hindu quarter had erupted soon after, forcing Mukarrab Khan
to remove the English seamen outside the town walls, in tents erected
by the "tank," the city reservoir.
Yes, Hawksworth sighed, it'll be a long time before India forgets her
first taste of the English.
The barge bobbed lightly as two Indian porters, knee-deep in the mud,
hoisted the first roll of woolen cloth onto the planking. This begins
the final leg of the India voyage, Hawksworth thought to himself. And
this has been the easiest part of all.
Almost too easy.
Pox on it, believe in your luck for a change. The voyage will post a
fortune in pepper. Lancaster was knighted for little more than bringing
home his vessels. He reached Java, but he found no trade. He'd have
sailed home a pauper if he hadn't ambushed a rich Portuguese galleon in
the harbor at Sumatra.
How many weeks to a knighthood? Three? Four? No, we'll make it in less.
We'll man every watch. Woolens aland, cotton out. I'll have the
frigates laded, stores on board--we can buy cattle and sheep from
villages up the coast--and all repairs completed in two weeks. I'll have
both frigates in open seas inside a fortnight, where not a Portugal
bottom afloat can touch us.
And if permission for the trip to Agra comes, I'll be out of Surat too.
If I live that long.
He reached into his belt and drew out a long Portuguese stiletto. An
elaborate cross was etched into the blade, and
the handle was silver, with a ram's head at the butt. The ram's eyes
were two small rubies. He had been carrying it for two days, and he
reflected again on what had happened, still puzzling.
He had returned to the observatory the next morning after he had met
Shirin, and this time he brought his lute. But she did not come. That
morning, or the morning after, or the morning after. Finally he
swallowed his disappointment and concluded he would not see her again.
Then it was he had gone to work cleaning away the moss and accumulated
mud from the stone instruments. Parts of some seemed to be missing, and
he had searched the hut for these without success. All he had found was
a hand-held astrolabe, an instrument used to take the altitude of the
sun. But he also found tables, piles of handwritten tables, that seemed
to hold the key to the use of the instruments. His hopes had soared. It
seemed possible, just possible, that buried somewhere in the hut was
the key to the greatest mystery of all time--how to determine longitude
at sea.
Hawksworth had often pondered the difficulties of navigation in the
deep ocean, where only the sun and stars were guides. They were the
primary determent to England's new ambition to explore the globe, for
English navigators were still far less experienced than those of the
Spanish and Portuguese.
The problem seemed overwhelming. Since the great earth was curved, no
line on its surface was straight, and once at sea there was absolutely
no way to determine exactly where you were, which way you were going,
or how fast.
The least uncertain measurement was probably latitude, a ship's
location north or south of the equator. In the northern hemisphere the
height of the polestar was a reasonably accurate determinant of
latitude, although it was a full three degrees distant from the
northernmost point in the sky. Another measure of latitude was the
height of the sun at midday, corrected for the specific day of the
year. The problem lay in how to measure either of these elevations
accurately.
A hundred years before, the Portuguese had come across an ingenious
Arab device for telling the elevation of the sun. It consisted of a
board with a knotted length of string run through the middle. If a
mariner held the board vertically and sighted the horizon at one end
and some object in the sky at the other, the length of the string
between the board and his eye could be used to calculate the elevation
of the object. In a short time a version appeared in Europe--with a
second board replacing the string--called the cross-staff.
However, since locating both the horizon and a star was almost
impossible at any time except dawn or dusk, this device worked best for
sighting the sun--save that it required staring into the disc of the sun
to find its exact center. Also, the cross-staff could not be used when
the sun was high in the sky, which was the case in equatorial waters.
Another version of the cross-staff was the astrolabe, a round brass
dial etched with degree markings and provided with a movable sight that
permitted taking the elevation of the sun by its shadow. But even with
the astrolabe there was the problem of catching the sun precisely at
midday. And on a rolling ship the error in reading it could easily be
four degrees.
For longitude, a ship's location east or west on the globe, there were
no fixed references at all; but as a mariner traveled east or west, the
sun would come up somewhat earlier or later each day, and precisely how
much earlier or later could be used to compute how far he had gone.
Therefore, calculating longitude depended solely on keeping time
extremely accurately--something completely impossible. The best
timekeeping device available was the hourglass or "sandglass," invented
somewhere in the western Mediterranean in the eleventh or twelfth
century. Sandglass makers never achieved real accuracy or consistency,
and careful mariners always used several at once, hoping to average out
variations. But on a long voyage seamen soon totally lost track of
absolute time.
Since they were unable to determine a ship's location from the skies,
mariners also tried to compute it from a vessel's speed and direction.
Speed was estimated by throwing a log
with a knotted rope attached overboard and timing the rate at which the
knots in the rope played out--using a sandglass. Margins of error in
computing speed were usually substantial. Direction, too, was never
known completely accurately. A compass pointed to magnetic north, not
true north, and the difference between these seemed to vary
unaccountably at different locations on the globe. Some thought it had
to do with the lodestone used to magnetize the needle, and others, like
the Grand Pilot of the king of Spain, maintained seamen were merely
lying to cover their own errors.
For it all, however, longitude was the most vital unknown. Many
attempts had been made to find a way to fix longitude, but nothing ever
worked. Seamen found the only real solution to the problem was
"latitude sailing," a time-consuming and expensive procedure whereby a
captain would sail north or south to the approximate latitude of his
destination and then sail due east or west, rather than trying to sail
on the diagonal. King Philip III of Spain had offered a fortune to the
first man who discovered how to tell longitude at sea.
Hawksworth spent days poring through the piles of tables, many of which
were strewn about the floor of the room and damaged from mildew and
rot. Next he carefully copied the symbols off the walls of the circular
building and matched these with those on several of the charts. Were
these the names of the major stars, or constellations of the zodiac, or
. . . what? The number was twenty-eight.
And then it came to him: they were the daily stations of the moon.
As he continued to sift through the documents, he realized that the
scholar who wrote them had predicted eclipses of the moon for many
years in advance. Then he found a book, obviously old, with charts that
seemed to provide geometric corrections for the distortion caused by
the atmosphere when sighting stars near the horizon, something that
always had been troublesome for navigators.
He also found other writings. New. Some appeared to be verses, and
others, tables of names and numbers. Sums of
money were written next to some of the names. But none of it meant
anything without the Persian, which he could not read. And Shirin had
never returned to the observatory, at least not when he was there.
Until two days ago.
At the observatory that morning the sky had been a perfect ice blue,
the garden and orchard still, the air dry and exhilarating. No workmen
were splashing in the moat beyond the wall that day. Only the buzz of
gnats intruded on the silence. He had brought a bottle of dry Persian
wine to make the work go faster, finding he was growing accustomed to
its taste. And he had brought his lute, as always, in hope Shirin would
come again.
He was in the stone hut, cleaning and sorting pages of manuscript, when
she appeared silently in the doorway. He looked up and felt a sudden
rush in his chest.
"Have you uncovered all of Jamshid Beg's secrets?" Her voice was
lilting, but with a trace of unease. "I've found out that was our
famous astronomer's name. He was originally from Samarkand."
"I think I'm beginning to understand some of the tables." Hawksworth
kept his tone matter-of-fact. "He should have been a navigator. He
could have been a fellow at Trinity House."
"What is that?"
"It's a guild in England. Where navigators are trained."
She laughed. "I think he preferred a world made only of numbers." Her
laugh was gone as quickly as it had come, and she moved toward him with
a vaguely troubled look. "What have you found?"
"A lot of things. Take a look at this drawing." Hawksworth tried to
remain nonchalant as he moved the lamp back to the table from where he
had placed it on the floor. "He identified what we call parallax, the
slight circular motion of the moon throughout the day caused by the
fact it's not sighted from the center of the earth, but from a spot on
its surface that moves as the earth rotates. Now if he could measure
that accurately enough with these instruments . . ."