"I must be leaving now." Mukarjee's voice rose to public volume as he nervously scooped up his umbrella and his bag, without pausing to secure the knot at its top. Then he bent toward Hawksworth with a quick whisper. "Captain, the Shahbandar has sent his Rajputs. You must take care."
He deftly slipped past the guard in the doorway and was gone.
Hawksworth examined the Rajputs warily. They wore leather helmets secured with a colored headband, knee- length tunics over heavy tight-fitting trousers, and a broad cloth belt. A large round leather shield hung at each man's side, suspended from a shoulder strap, and each guard wore an ornate quiver at his waist from which protruded a heavy horn bow and bamboo arrows. All were intent and unsmiling. Their leader, his face framed in a thicket of coarse black hair, stepped through the doorway and addressed Hawksworth in halting Turki.
"The Shahbandar has requested your presence at the customs house. I am to inform you he has completed all formalities for admission of your personal chest and has approved it with his chapp."
The palanquin was nowhere to be seen when they entered the street, but now Hawksworth was surrounded. As they began walking he noticed the pain in his leg was gone. The street was lined by plaster walls and the cool evening air bore the scent of flowers from their concealed gardens. The houses behind the walls were partially shielded by tall trees, but he could tell they were several stories high, with flat roofs on which women clustered, watching.
These must all be homes of rich Muslim merchants. Palaces for the princes of commerce. And the streets are filled with dark-skinned, slow-walking poor. Probably servants, or slaves, in no hurry to end the errand that freed them from their drudgery inside.
Then as they started downhill, toward the river, they began to pass tile-roofed, plaster-walled homes he guessed were owned by Hindu merchants, since they were without gardens or the high walls Muslims used to hide their women. As they neared the river the air started to grow sultry, and they began passing the clay-walled huts of shopkeepers and clerks, roofed in palm leaves with latticework grills for windows. Finally they reached the bazaar of Surat, its rows of palm trees deserted now, with silence where earlier he had heard a tumult of hawkers and strident women's voices. Next to the bazaar stood the stables, and Hawksworth noticed flocks of small boys, naked save for a loincloth, scavenging to find any dung cakes that had been overlooked by the women who collected fuel. The air was dense and smelled of earth, and its taste overwhelmed his lingering memory of the wind off the sea.
The streets of Surat converged like the spokes of a wheel, with the customs house and port as its hub. Just like every port town in the world, Hawksworth smiled to himself: all roads lead to the sea.
Except here all roads lead to the customs house and the Shahbandar.
Then, as they approached the last turn in the road, just outside the enclosure of the customs house, they were suddenly confronted by a band of mounted horsemen, armed with long-barreled muskets. The horsemen spanned the roadway and were probably twenty in all, well outnumbering the Rajputs. The horsemen made no effort to move aside as Hawksworth and his guards approached.