The Baroque Cycle - The Confusion Part 49

A paper door slid open, and from the darkness on the far side of it emerged a pair of ebony b.r.e.a.s.t.s and a tummy, followed in short order by their owner: Kottakkal, the Pirate Queen of Malabar. Behind her came Dappa, who was also naked from the waist up, but who had belted on his Persian scimitar. This accounted for the dim muttering sounds that had been audible through the paper wall for the last quarter of an hour: Dappa had been translating this story for the Queen.

She was a big woman, about as tall as an average European man, with broad hips that gave her exceptional stability when standing barefoot on the rolling deck of a pirate-s.h.i.+p, and were equally convenient to child-bearing-she had produced five daughters and two sons. She had a marvelous round belly covered in an expanse of smooth purplish-black skin. Jack always had the vague, dizzying sense that he was falling into it, and he suspected that other men felt the same. Her b.r.e.a.s.t.s showed the aftermath of many babies, but her face was quite beautiful: round and smooth except for a sword-scar under one cheekbone, with complicated lips that always had a knowing grin, or even a sneer, and eyelashes as black and thick as paint-brushes. Her head always seemed to be resting on a steel platter, or rather a whole stack of them, for whenever the Queen ventured out she wore-in addition to diverse gold bangles and rings-a stack of flat watered-steel collars that went over her head, and piled up into a sort of hard glittering neck-ruff.

Now the Queen spoke and Dappa translated her words into Sabir: "When we captured the gold-s.h.i.+p with Father Gabriel, Dappa, and Moseh-for Jackshaftoe Jackshaftoe and the others lacked the courage of those three, and had already lost their nerve, and jumped off into the water like panicked rats-" and the others lacked the courage of those three, and had already lost their nerve, and jumped off into the water like panicked rats-"

Jack bowed low and muttered, "A pleasure to see you as always, Your Majesty." but the Queen ignored him and continued: "At any rate, my men were about to put them to death, for they a.s.sumed that this would please me. But then Father Gabriel recognized us as Malabari, and spoke to me in a way that pleased me even more, and so I suffered them all to live."

"What did he say?" asked Enoch Root.

"He said, 'It is your prerogative to cut my head off, but then I cannot tell you the story of how the Vagabond named Quicksilver achieved his long-planned revenge against a Frankish Duke in Cairo, and stole this h.o.a.rd of Mexican gold.' So I commanded him to tell me that tale before he was put to death. And this he did; but what he was really really telling me was that he and his companions were worth more to me alive, as slaves, than as headless corpses bobbing in the Gulf of Cambaye." telling me was that he and his companions were worth more to me alive, as slaves, than as headless corpses bobbing in the Gulf of Cambaye."

"Your Majesty chose wisely," said Enoch Root.

"Often I have doubted it," said the Pirate Queen. "Dappa is a linguist, which (he informs me) means a man with an excellent tongue, and he has found more than one way of putting his tongue to work pleasing me. Gabriel Goto makes a good, if peculiar, garden. Moseh seemed like a useless mouth. Many times my advisors urged me to break the group up and sell them at a loss. Indeed I was on the brink of doing so several times in the early going, for there is an excellent slave-market in Goa and another in Malacca. But when Jackshaftoe secured his jagir jagir from the Great Mogul, everything changed, and the construction of the s.h.i.+p began. Lately even my most skeptical captains have been vying with each other for the honor of supplying the s.h.i.+p's masts." from the Great Mogul, everything changed, and the construction of the s.h.i.+p began. Lately even my most skeptical captains have been vying with each other for the honor of supplying the s.h.i.+p's masts."

"I was wondering where you were going to obtain masts."

"Come with me, O Bringer of Armaments," said Queen Kottakkal, and whirled around and stalked out through Gabriel Goto's paper house. She moved so decisively that the wind of her pa.s.sage peeled dry palm-leaves from stacks of finished artwork. The men hastened to catch up with her, creating a wind of their own, and gloomy drawings of Hazards to Navigation rose into the air and careered back and forth, spinning and sailing lazily on the heavy air. Among these Jack noticed some letters brushed in what he took to be the j.a.panese script-these were on rice-paper and had a weather-beaten and well-traveled look about them.

"What news from your brush-buddies in Nippon and Manila?"

Gabriel Goto's face did not betray any particular reaction, but he turned his head suddenly toward Jack. "Normally I do not look to you to voice any interest in the internal broils of Nippon and the exiled Christian ronin ronin of Manila," he announced starkly. of Manila," he announced starkly.

"But now that I am a king of sorts I must broaden my interests-so indulge me."

"The shogun continues to h.o.a.rd silver for internal use-which amounts to saying that he has been making the Dutch at Nagasaki accept gold coins for the goods that they unload from their s.h.i.+ps. But recently the shogun devalued gold to the point that the Dutch are forced to take their compensation in the form of vast quant.i.ties of copper coins instead." He stopped and inspected Jack's face for signs of incomprehension or boredom. They were following the others across a courtyard where Hindoo statuary lurked in cascades of ripe flowers, and fountains fed melodious brooks.

"Don't be such a tease!"

"All such matters are now firmly controlled by a family called Mitsui-they have founded what you would call a banking house."

"I ween you've been in touch with your uncle's people-the miners."

"How did you know this?"

"Why, it's obvious that the devaluation of gold had great import for anyone running a copper mine in Nippon."

Gabriel Goto, seemingly shocked at having been found out, said nothing. They had entered into the Queen's apartments and were pursuing her down a gallery. She was deep in conversation with Enoch Root, but Jack got the impression that during the pauses, when Dappa was translating, Enoch was c.o.c.king an ear towards them.

Gabriel went on: "Since your inexplicable and new-found interest in Nipponese currency fluctuations is so marked, then, Jack, I shall warn you that it is all very complicated. The shogun has actually made several devaluations, trying to draw more metal from the ground and increase the supply of money, which in his view will bring about a corresponding increase in the amount of goods produced. Or so it seems from a miner's perspective-which, after all, is the only perspective available available to me." to me."

They were ascending a stone staircase, working against a current of cooler salt air. "Tell me of more complications," Jack said.

"You probably imagine my people still working the same land that we were bequeathed many centuries ago. But we lost that land as part of the evolutions I spoke of, and my surviving relatives fled generally northwards, to be closer to the smuggling ports, and farther from Edo. Edo has a million people now."

"It is impossible for a city to be that large."

"It is the largest city in Creation, and no place for Christians."

They had gained the top of the stairs now, and were crowding into a chamber that opened onto a balcony. From the rail of this balcony-the highest part of the palace-they could look down the vine-and flower-covered cliff below and out across the inlet where most of the Queen's pirate-fleet rode at anchor. The s.h.i.+ps seemed to float in mid-air, such was the transparency of the water, and underneath them schools of bright fish maneuvered through coral formations.

"Behold!" said the Queen, sweeping out one bangle-covered arm. Actually she said something in Malabari, but obviously it meant "Behold" and Dappa did not bother with a translation.

A peculiar sort of cargo-handling operation was under way down below: two pairs of small boats, each pair lashed together abeam of each other with logs spanning the gap between them. One of these makes.h.i.+ft catamarans was following several lengths behind the other, and the distance between them was bridged by a colossal tree-trunk, spoke-shaved smooth, and painted barn-red.

Jack heard Dappa speaking in English to Enoch Root: "Normally I would not be so presumptuous as to proffer advice to you on any subject, least of all manners and protocol-but I urge you, sir, not to ask the Queen where she obtained that mast."

"I accept your counsel with grat.i.tude," said Enoch Root.

It was obvious that the mast had just been brought in by one of the Queen's fleet: a frigate of European design. She was the largest s.h.i.+p in the harbor, but much smaller than the one being built on the beach in Dalicot, and so the mast dwarfed her-it was longer than the frigate's deck, and must have projected forward and aft before it had been unlashed and let down onto those boats.

The boat-crews were paddling toward the sh.o.r.e as gamely as they could, though half the men were laboring with bails; gouts of water flew from the boats in all directions and slapped the surface of the harbor, only to rush back in over the gunwales during the next swell. Jack wondered whether he was about to witness a disaster, until he heard men in the boats, and on the sh.o.r.e, laughing.

Then he turned his attention back to Gabriel Goto. "But if your family are reduced to Vagabonds, how comes it they know so much of currency devaluations-and how do they write you letters on fair-looking rice-paper?"

"The short answer is that they remain bound to the same ancient Wheel, which has not ceased to turn."

"The shogun wants metal to come from the ground-and in order to make it so, the House of Mitsui needs your cousins and nephews."

"That is not the only thing on the shogun's mind. In the far north, the Russians are on the move. Mostly it has been adventurers and fur-traders, ranging from outposts in Kamchatka, the Kurils, and the isles of the Aleuts. But there is a new Tsar in Russia named Peter, a man with a formidable reputation, who has even traveled to Holland to learn the art of s.h.i.+pbuilding-"

"I know all about this Peter," said Jack. "Jan Vroom worked by his side, and Peter wanted him to come to Russia and build s.h.i.+ps there. But Vroom saw the prospect of more profit, and warmer climes, in the offer of van Hoek."

"In any event," said Gabriel Goto, "Peter's fame has reached the court of the shogun. Obviously Russia will one day threaten Nippon from the north. When that day arrives, Nippon will be defenseless against Peter's Dutch-style s.h.i.+ps and al-jebr al-jebr-trained gunners, unless we are well established in northern Honshu and on the vast island to the north-a wilderness full of blue-eyed savages, called Ezo, or Hokkaido."

"So your family may be doubly useful to the shogun. You can mine copper, and you have an interest in moving northwards."

Gabriel Goto said nothing, which Jack took to mean yes yes.

"Tell me-has the shogun's concern about this military threat led him to relax his ban on firearms?"

"He imports books of rangaku, rangaku, which means 'Dutch learning,' so as to keep abreast of developments in fortifications and artillery. But the ban on guns will which means 'Dutch learning,' so as to keep abreast of developments in fortifications and artillery. But the ban on guns will never never be lifted," said Gabriel Goto firmly. "The sword is the symbol of n.o.bility-it is what marks a man as a Samurai." be lifted," said Gabriel Goto firmly. "The sword is the symbol of n.o.bility-it is what marks a man as a Samurai."

"How many Samurai are there in j.a.pan?"

Gabriel Goto shrugged. "Their proportion to the entire population is somewhere between one in ten, and one in twenty."

"And there are a million souls in Edo alone alone?"

"That is what I am told."

"So, between fifty and a hundred thousand Samurai in that one city-each of whom must possess a sword?"

"Two-the long and the short. Many have more than one set, of course."

"Of course. And is watered steel as desirable there as it is everywhere else?"

"We may be isolated, but we are not ignorant."

"And where do the sword-smiths of Nippon get this kind of steel?"

Gabriel Goto inhaled sharply, as if Jack had strayed into the middle of his garden and left muddy foot-prints in the white gravel. "This is a great secret, the subject of legends," he said. "You know that most j.a.panese are Buddhists."

"Of course," said Jack, who hadn't known.

"Buddhism came from Hindoostan. And so did some of our other traditions that are very ancient-such as tea..."

"And steel," Jack said, "which for centuries has been imported, by the finest swordsmiths of Nippon, from India, in the form of small egg-shaped ingots with a distinctive cross-hatch pattern."

For once Gabriel Goto was openly dumbfounded. "How did you come to know this!?"

Down below, the narrow end of the giant mast had plowed into the beach. One pair of boats was being abandoned by drenched rowers. The other group was thras.h.i.+ng the water, trying to wheel the trunk around so it could be rolled up onto dry land. At a glance it seemed not to be moving at all. But move it did, as slowly as the minute-hand of a clock-as steadily as that mysterious Wheel that Gabriel Goto was always speaking of.

"You want to return to this homeland that you have never seen," Jack said. "It could hardly be more obvious."

Gabriel Goto closed his eyes and turned towards the Laccadive Sea. The onsh.o.r.e breeze blew his long hair back from his face and made his kimono billow like a colorful sail. "When I was a boy standing at my father's knee and watching him paint his pictures of the Pa.s.sage to Niigata, he told me, over and over again, that Nippon was now a forbidden land to us, and that the places he was drawing were places I would never see. And that is just what I believed for most of my life. But let me tell you that when I stood in Saint Peter's, in Rome, waiting to kiss the Pope's ring, I looked up at the ceiling of that place, which was magnificently adorned by a painter named Michelangelo. Not in Latin, English, or Nipponese are there words to express its magnificence. And that is the very reason for its being there, for sometimes pictures say more than words. There is a place in that painting where the Heavenly Father reaches out with one finger toward Adam, whose hand is outstretched as I am doing here, and between the fingertips of the Father and the Son there is a gap. And something has leapt across that gap, something invisible, something that not even Michelangelo could portray, but anyway it has crossed from the Father into the Son, and the Son has been awakened by it, and been infused with awareness and purpose. At the moment that I stood there in Saint Peter's and saw all of these things, understanding suddenly came into my mind, bridging the gap of miles and years that separated me from my father, and I became aware for the first time. I understood that even though with his words with his words he had forbidden me to return to Nippon, he had forbidden me to return to Nippon, in his pictures in his pictures he had told me that one day I he had told me that one day I must must return-and in those same pictures he had given me the means." return-and in those same pictures he had given me the means."

"You believe that the Hundred and Seven Views of the Pa.s.sage to Niigata Hundred and Seven Views of the Pa.s.sage to Niigata are a sort of nautical chart, telling you how to return?" are a sort of nautical chart, telling you how to return?"

"They are better than a chart," said Father Gabriel Goto of the Society of Jesus. "They are a living memory."

HALF THE TOWN WAS PULLED away from their mock-battle to heave the mast up onto the beach, and eventually three elephants were brought into play. Through the Queen's spygla.s.s, which had evidently been pilfered from some Portuguese sea-captain's personal effects, Jack could see his sons-now half-naked, and covered with bruises-striving alongside Nayar youths to land this prize. Eventually it was paraded through the town, garlanded with flowers, bristling with incense-sticks, and then it was made the centerpiece of more merry-making, which continued into the night. In earlier years Jack would have been at the center of this, but as it was, he delegated the revelry to Jimmy and Danny, and spent most of the evening huddled with Enoch and the other members of the Cabal. away from their mock-battle to heave the mast up onto the beach, and eventually three elephants were brought into play. Through the Queen's spygla.s.s, which had evidently been pilfered from some Portuguese sea-captain's personal effects, Jack could see his sons-now half-naked, and covered with bruises-striving alongside Nayar youths to land this prize. Eventually it was paraded through the town, garlanded with flowers, bristling with incense-sticks, and then it was made the centerpiece of more merry-making, which continued into the night. In earlier years Jack would have been at the center of this, but as it was, he delegated the revelry to Jimmy and Danny, and spent most of the evening huddled with Enoch and the other members of the Cabal.

Everyone in the town slept late the next morning, save a few sentries and low-caste laborers. Jack reckoned it would be a simple matter to find his sons pa.s.sed out under a palm-tree somewhere. But he could not find them. The tide was about to go out, and men on s.h.i.+ps were calling his name. Jack returned to the top of the cliff, intending to wake up Monsieur Arlanc and ask him to search for Jimmy and Danny later. But on his way to the apartment where the Huguenot slept, Jack detected volcanic emanations from the Queen's chambers, and detoured thataway out of curiosity. As he approached her door he saw not just one but two sets of weapons leaned up against the door-posts: European muskets and cutla.s.ses. Dim moanings, mutterings, and controversies emanating from the other side of that door told Jack that the boys had finally found what they had been looking for in the way of Oriental decadence, though Jack honestly could no longer tell it apart from the Occidental kind. In any event Jack left the boys there to pursue their own story while he sailed away to pursue his.

Two of Queen Kottakkal's s.h.i.+ps sailed on that tide, and turned opposite ways when they cleared the harbor. The one on which Jack was a pa.s.senger planned to coast southwards until it rounded Cape Comorin at the tip of Hindoostan. Then it would turn north and sally through one of the gaps in Adam's Bridge-the chain of reefs and isles that stretched between the mainland and the Island of Serendib. From there it would be a short voyage to Dalicot, where the Cabal's s.h.i.+p was being built. Their eventual purpose was to raid s.h.i.+pping around the Dutch settlements of Tegnapatam and Negapatam, and the English ones at Tranquebar and Fort St. David, but they said they would be happy to deposit Jack on the sh.o.r.es of his jagir, jagir, which was not too far north of those places. Enoch Root, meanwhile, took pa.s.sage on a northbound s.h.i.+p, intending to make a rendezvous in Surat with a Danish merchantman that was ballasted with cannons, and that wanted to unload them to make s.p.a.ce for saltpeter and cloth. which was not too far north of those places. Enoch Root, meanwhile, took pa.s.sage on a northbound s.h.i.+p, intending to make a rendezvous in Surat with a Danish merchantman that was ballasted with cannons, and that wanted to unload them to make s.p.a.ce for saltpeter and cloth.

THREE MONTHS LATER J JACK WAS a King no longer: merely a Vagabond sailor infringing on the hospitality of the Malabar pirate-queen. He and van Hoek, Jan Vroom, Surendranath, Padraig Tallow, and various Dutchmen sailed into Queen Kottakkal's harbor aboard something that was close to being a s.h.i.+p. Her hull was painted and ballasted, her decks were in place, and a temporary foremast had been jury-rigged, giving her the ability to crawl through the water before a following wind. Her gunports were caulked shut. She was unarmed and helpless, but four of the Queen's pirate-s.h.i.+ps had escorted, and occasionally towed, her around Cape Comorin. She had not been christened yet-it had been decided to save that ceremony for when the masts were stepped, the guns installed, and all members of the Cabal on hand. a King no longer: merely a Vagabond sailor infringing on the hospitality of the Malabar pirate-queen. He and van Hoek, Jan Vroom, Surendranath, Padraig Tallow, and various Dutchmen sailed into Queen Kottakkal's harbor aboard something that was close to being a s.h.i.+p. Her hull was painted and ballasted, her decks were in place, and a temporary foremast had been jury-rigged, giving her the ability to crawl through the water before a following wind. Her gunports were caulked shut. She was unarmed and helpless, but four of the Queen's pirate-s.h.i.+ps had escorted, and occasionally towed, her around Cape Comorin. She had not been christened yet-it had been decided to save that ceremony for when the masts were stepped, the guns installed, and all members of the Cabal on hand.

The cannons had preceded them, and were stacked on logs just above the tide-line. Jack, ever disposed to view things from a wretch's standpoint, grasped right away that the movement of these objects from the hold of the Danish s.h.i.+p to their current position, concealed just within the first rank of palm trees, embodied a lavish expenditure of human toil-perhaps not so much as the Pyramids but still enough to give him pause.

For his part van Hoek, once he had sloshed ash.o.r.e, stomped past the cannons without breaking stride, and did not even pause to light his pipe until he had encountered his three masts lying side-by-side in the middle of the town, out back of the Temple of Kali. He walked up and down the length of each one, stooping to inspect how they had been blocked up off the ground. He stood at their narrow ends and peered down them to check for undue curvature, and ambled up and down pounding on them with a pistol-b.u.t.t and listening to the wood's reverberations with a hand cupped to his ear. He frowned at cracks, as if he could weld these imperfections shut with his furious gaze, and rested his hand contemplatively on places that had been scarred by the sawing friction of hawsers, collisions with spars, and impacts of pistol-b.a.l.l.s. At first van Hoek seemed in the grip of something that approached panic, such was his anxiety that the masts would be found wanting. Gradually this eased into the quotidian fretting and continual state of low-level annoyance that Jack knew to be the perpetual lot of all competent sea-captains.

Then the Dutchman stopped for a while to gaze at the b.u.t.t of the mainmast. Nowhere was it more obvious than from this standpoint that what they were really looking at, here, was a stupendous tree-trunk, most likely from a virgin forest in America. In other places its nature was somewhat concealed by the carpenters' work, and by bands of iron that had been hammered out in some enormous forge somewhere and, while still red-hot, slipped onto it like rings onto a finger so that as they cooled and shrank they would cut into the wood and become one with it. But here at the foot of the mainmast-which was almost as thick as van Hoek was tall-the tree's growth rings, and the boundary between heartwood and sapwood, were obvious even through diverse layers of tar, caulk, and paint. Van Hoek had gazed upon it twice as he circled round the mast, and seen nothing untoward, But on this third circuit he came in closer and began to hammer at the wood with the pistol-b.u.t.t. Jack heard a solid thunk, thunk thunk, thunk and then a sharp and then a sharp whack; whack; a moment's silence; and then a cry from the Dutchman. a moment's silence; and then a cry from the Dutchman.

"What's amiss? Smash your finger?" Jack inquired. Meanwhile Jan Vroom came loping out of the trees, looking a bit peaked, asking in Dutch if van Hoek had discovered rot in the mast's heart.

Van Hoek was gazing incredulously at a flake of yellow metal embedded in the foot of the mainmast.

Now it was a longstanding tradition that whenever mariners stepped a mast they slipped a coin beneath it. Supposedly this was to placate sea-G.o.ds, or buy them pa.s.sage to the afterlife when the s.h.i.+p went down to David Jones's Locker and took them with it. Normally such a coin became embedded in the bottom of the mast and could be viewed the next time it was pulled out. Masts that had been stepped several times had as many coins stuck to their bottoms. This particular mast had three of them, but they had been painted over, and so were visible only as blurred scabs. Van Hoek had just knocked a disk of paint clean off one of them with a blow of his pistol-b.u.t.t. It was a French louis d'or. And that was how it came about that Jack Shaftoe, Otto van Hoek, Jan Vroom, and an ever-growing crowd of curious Nayar children found themselves staring into the face of King Louis XIV of France, stamped in fine gold, out behind the Temple of Kali in Malabar.

"Really the coiner was a flattering knave," Jack said. "In person he is not half so handsome as all that."

Van Hoek let go his pistol, yanked a dagger from his belt, and a.s.saulted the mast. Jack guessed he was trying to get the point of the weapon beneath the coin and worry it loose; but the way he was flailing and jabbering he was unlikely to succeed. Anyway Vroom, who was two heads taller, grabbed van Hoek's arm on the backswing and stopped it. "It is bad luck! Leave the coin be!" "It is bad luck! Leave the coin be!" Jack understood that much Dutch, anyway. He did not understand what van Hoek said in return-some sort of advanced calculus of luck, he gathered, in which the sacrilege of removing the coin was weighed against the ill omen of having a golden effigy of Leroy eternally planted in the heart of the s.h.i.+p. Jack understood that much Dutch, anyway. He did not understand what van Hoek said in return-some sort of advanced calculus of luck, he gathered, in which the sacrilege of removing the coin was weighed against the ill omen of having a golden effigy of Leroy eternally planted in the heart of the s.h.i.+p.

Jack looked carefully left, right, and behind, in case cobras or crocodiles were creeping up on them, which in these parts was a routine precaution to take before fastening one's attention on any particular thing for more than a few moments. Then he stepped round this dangerous pair of struggling Dutchmen, drew out his own pistol, and struck one of the other coins. Paint fell away to reveal William of Orange on an English guinea. A blow to the last remaining coin produced King Carlos II on a Spanish doubloon.

"For G.o.d's sake, hasn't he died yet!?" Jack exclaimed. "Twenty years ago people were expecting him to drown in his own spit at the next moment."

Van Hoek calmed down and Vroom relaxed, but did not let go of his arms.

"As I read the signs, the Spanish made this mast in America for a treasure-galleon. English privateers then took it as a prize, or perhaps salvaged its wreck after some hurricanoe. Later those poor Englishmen ran afoul of the French Navy-courtesy of my old friend the duc d'Arcachon." Jack pointed with his pistol-barrel to each of the coins in turn as he made this all up. "That French s.h.i.+p later came east, escorting some merchant-vessels of the Compagnie des Indes, Compagnie des Indes, where G.o.d only knows what befell it. At any rate, the Wheel has now turned again-you may consult our new Pilot, Father Gabriel Goto, for more concerning the Wheel-and the mast is now ours. So let's put a f.u.c.king rupee underneath it and be on our way, shall we?" where G.o.d only knows what befell it. At any rate, the Wheel has now turned again-you may consult our new Pilot, Father Gabriel Goto, for more concerning the Wheel-and the mast is now ours. So let's put a f.u.c.king rupee underneath it and be on our way, shall we?"

"Still I do not like it," said van Hoek, and fired a broadside of spit at the golden Louis. He aimed high, but the tobacco-brown loogie rolled down over the coin like a cloud of battle-smoke darkening the face of the sun.

FIRST THEY BROUGHT THE CANNONS aboard, which was unspeakably tedious and toilsome, but gave them something to pa.s.s the time while Monsieur Arlanc, Vrej Esphahnian, and Moseh de la Cruz journeyed back and forth to and from the aboard, which was unspeakably tedious and toilsome, but gave them something to pa.s.s the time while Monsieur Arlanc, Vrej Esphahnian, and Moseh de la Cruz journeyed back and forth to and from the wootz wootz-forge. Refining the terms of the deal was no less exacting than making watered steel from river-sand. Transporting gold north and wootz wootz-eggs south across frequently hostile territory was no easier, and would have been impossible without pervasive bribery, and an escort of mounted Nayars; Jimmy and Danny came home with wild yarns of sword-and gun-play in jungle and mountain.

But the day came when the s.h.i.+p had been sufficiently ballasted, with cannons, cannonb.a.l.l.s, wootz wootz-eggs, and other heavy objects, that the masts could be stepped without risk of capsizing her. It was agreed that this would be as good a day as any to christen her. So Jack made ready a bottle of fizzing wine from the province of Champagne that he had acquired at staggering expense from a French factor in Surat. The Cabal a.s.sembled upon the sh.o.r.e of the river, where the three masts had been lashed together along with some lighter, more buoyant logs and made into a sort of raft. The river's current strove to push them out to sea, and this raft tugged at a line that had been tied around a tree-trunk a few yards upstream. A couple of juvenile crocodiles, no more than two yards long, had clambered up onto the mast-raft to warm themselves in the morning sun. Standing on the quay above said reptiles, Jack could gaze downstream to a flower-bedecked boat; a few hundred yards of mangrove-lined river; and finally out into the harbor where the mastless s.h.i.+p was riding at anchor with all of her cannons run out of her gunports in preparation to fire a salute.

The other members of the Cabal, dressed in the finest clothes they had, were already aboard the Queen's boat. Jack wasn't, because Queen Kottakkal had instructed him that "according to our traditions" he, Jack, was supposed to board last-after the Queen. And the Queen was still on the bank, talking to various Nayars who belonged to her court of pirate-captains and cavaliers. From time to time one of these Malabaris would glance interestedly at Jack. The Queen herself shot him an occasional glare. She had liked Jack's looks as much as he'd liked hers when he had made his first state visit to Malabar almost three years ago, and after a day or two of steamy flirtation Jack had leaned his Janissary-sword against the door-post of her apartments. He had been making the (in retrospect rash) a.s.sumption that the Queen would know why he was called Half-c.o.c.ked Jack, but that she would be familiar with certain Books of India-that Her Majesty would, in other words, know certain lore that would make Jack's shortcomings irrelevant.

As it had turned out-to make a long story (a story Jack wished every day he could forget) short-the tryst had gone more badly than Jack could ever have imagined. It turned out that Jack did not know the half of it where Books of India were concerned. That there existed certain advanced Books, unknown to, or at least unmentioned by, Eliza. That these Books enumerated diverse additional s.e.xes above and beyond the usual Male and Female, including a plethora of different categories of hermaphrodites. That each of these was not merely a s.e.x but a Caste unto itself, subject to diverse limits and regulations like any other caste. That, depending upon how certain ancient writings were translated into Malabari, Jack belonged to one or another of these hermaphroditic castes, and that consequently he ought to have gone about dressed in a certain type of clothing so that all and sundry would know what he was, and treat him well or poorly depending on whether they were of a lower or higher caste. That Queen Kottakkal was of a higher caste whose members were (to put it very mildly) not in the general habit of entertaining hermaphrodites in their bedchambers.

At any rate Anglo-Malabari relations had been set back centuries. Jack had barely escaped with his life. Moseh and other Cabal members who were the Queen's slaves had spent the better part of a year apologizing. Since then, Jack had had difficulty meeting the Queen's eye, and she had not spoken more than a few words to him-he had become a sort of out-caste, a s.e.xual and social Cheruman.

Jack was reflecting upon these very topics, and watching a third, somewhat larger crocodile struggle up onto the mizzen-mast, when he realized with a bit of a shock that the Queen was speaking to him (albeit through Dappa), and in complete sentences, no less. She had boarded her boat now and was standing in the bow, facing upstream towards Jack. The rest of the Cabal, in their breeches, periwigs, robes, and kimonos, were seated behind her, listening with obvious curiosity.

"The gold is mine, Vagabond, not yours-dared you think otherwise?" said Dappa, translating for the Queen. Then, as an aside, he added, "She used a much more degrading term than 'Vagabond,' but..."

"You're trying to spare my feelings-I understand. Tell the Queen that she stole it from us fair and square, just as we did from the Viceroy, and I've never imagined else-wise. Dappa, do you think she is on the rag or something?"

The Queen responded, "Then why do you try to deceive me by sailing away over the horizon on a great s.h.i.+p in which I have invested so much of what is mine?"

"Dappa, have you not acquainted Her Majesty with the basic principles of the s.h.i.+p-owning business? Do I have to explain shares? Do I have to remind her that most of the s.h.i.+p's crew is to be hand-picked Malabaris? That both of her sons will be aboard? What is going on in her mind?"

"Very likely she is on the rag as you said," Dappa responded, "and in a bit of a Mood because her boys are leaving the nest."

The Queen said something. At the same moment she reached up with both hands and carefully removed one of the metal ornaments from her neck: a single watered-steel ring, like a dinner plate with a large hole in the center. She gripped it in one hand and curled it in towards her belly while turning sideways to Jack. Then suddenly her hand sprang outwards. The ring hissed through the air, narrowly missing Jack, and buried itself, shockingly deep, in the trunk of a tree.

"Stop talking to each other, and talk to me," she said. Another ring came off her neck, and every man within a hundred yards cringed. She flung this one at a closer target: the line mooring her boat to the quay. It sang through the rope as easily as flying through a shaft of sunlight and vanished into the water with a sizzle. The boat began to drift downstream. Jack caught movement in the corner of his eye and turned back to look at the masts: they too had gone into ponderous movement, and were adrift in the river now-Queen Kottakkal's first throw had cut their line.

A third ring spun out and embedded itself in the mainmast next to a coil of rope with a throwing-lead tied to its end. "Mark that rope," said the Queen. "If you throw it to one of your friends on my boat, here, your masts are saved. If not, they drift out to sea, and all of you are my slaves to the end of your days."

"Are you certain you translated that aright?" Jack inquired.

"I translated it perfectly, perfectly," said Dappa, gazing nervously at the departing masts.