Hawksworth then noticed how Mukarrab Khan was dining. He, too, ate with his fingers, just as you would in England, but somehow he managed to lift his food gracefully with balls of rice, the sauce never soiling his fingertips.
A breeze lightly touched Hawksworth's cheek, and he turned to see a servant standing behind him, banishing the occasional fly with a large whisk fashioned from stiff horsehair attached to a long stick. Another servant stood opposite, politely but unnecessarily cooling him with a large fan made of red leather stretched over a frame.
"As I said, Ambassador, your requests present a number of difficulties." Mukarrab Khan looked up and took a goblet of fruit nectar from a waiting servant. "You ask certain things from me, things not entirely in my power to grant, while there are others who make entirely different requests."
"You mean the Portugals."
"Yes, the Portuguese Viceroy, who maintains you have acted illegally, in violation of his law and ours, and should be brought to account."
"And I accuse them of acting illegally. As I told you, there's been a Spanish ambassador in London ever since the war ended, and when we return I assure you the East India Company will . . ."
"This is India, Captain Hawksworth, not London. Please understand I must consider Portuguese demands. But we are pragmatic. I urge you to tell me a bit more about your king's intentions. Your king's letter. Surely you must know what it contains."
Mukarrab Khan paused to dip a fried mango into a shimmering orange sauce, asking himself what he should do. He had, of course, posted pigeons to Agra at sunrise, but he suspected already what the reply would be. He had received a full account of the battle, and the attack on the river, before the early, pre-sun Ramadan meal. And it was only shortly afterward that Father Manoel Pinheiro had appeared, frantic and bathed in sweat. Was it a sign of Portuguese contempt, he often wondered, that they would assign such an incompetent to India? Throughout their entire Society of Jesus, could there possibly be any priest more ill-bred? The Jesuit had repeated facts already known throughout the palace, and Mukarrab Khan had listened politely, masking his amusement. How often did a smug Portuguese find himself explaining a naval disaster? Four Portuguese warships, galleons with two gundecks, humiliated by two small English frigates. How, Mukarrab Khan had wondered aloud, could this have happened?
"There were reasons, Excellency. We have learned the English captain fired langrel into our infantry, shredded metal, a most flagrant violation of the unwritten ethics of warfare."
"Are there really supposed to be ethics in warfare? Then I suppose you should have sent only two of your warships against him. Instead you sent four, and still he prevailed. Today he has no need for excuses. And tell me again what happened when your infantry assaulted the English traders on the river?" Mukarrab Khan had monitored the Jesuit's eyes in secret glee, watching him mentally writhe in humiliation. "Am I to understand you could not even capture a pinnace?"