Kings of Albion

Chapter One

Ali ben Quatar Mayeen ('Call me Ismail, if you must, but I prefer Ali') was a retired trader – or, rather, a rep for a trader, a sort of latter-day Sinbad. Never made a fortune out of it. not until that last trip he took so long telling me about, and even that was not a real, serious fortune. It was enough, though, to see his son Haroun – Ali called him Haree through medical school in Misr-al-Kahira, which Christians call Cairo, keep a rainproof roof over his head, and buy all the bhang he needed until the day he died. And I mean needed. After two winters in Ultima, or almost Ultima, Thule, Ali's joints played up like hell, especially his knees and knuckles, and especially when it rained, and bhang is the only thing that eases that sort of pain when you're seventy years old. Seventy? That's a guess. Ali himself was capable of putting his age at anything between sixty and seventy-five.

Rain? Yes, for a couple of months a year it rains very seriously in Mangalore, rain, Ali would say, as he'd never experienced it before, not even in Manchester, and even though it's warm rain it got into his joints, made his knuckles swell, and they hurt as if a skilled torturer were sliding red-hot needles into the cartilage between the bones. Knees too. But it doesn't last long, and the bhang helps. In fact, look at it this way, for two months a year he-was as high as one of those dragon kites you Chinese fly during your festivities and, yes, the pain was still there but as if it belonged to someone else. And, apart from the rainy season, the Malabar coast of India, in the empire of Vijayanagara, seemed to Ali like paradise on earth.

He had a couple of wives, sisters, not yet m their twenties, he reckoned, who cooked the native food to perfection, saw that the servants kept the place clean, bathed him, fed him, put him outside on the patio where the fountain played and the lotus and the roses bloomed, and encouraged a couple of friends, traders like him, to come in and swap yarns about old times and old adventures. If he was feeling particularly well, and it was not too hot, he'd potter down to the port, drink some lemonade in one of the Arab-owned establishments, and watch the big dhows with their huge triangular sails coming in over the harbour bar from all four imagined comers of the rounded world. There was an Arab girl down there too, who sang like an angel while she played on a guitarra, nostalgic songs about Granada where she was born. It was there, of course, that I first made his acquaintance.

Wben dusk came, his wives took him back to bed and put him between them so his old bones seemed almost to suck the warmth and life from their soft bodies and he slept, so he told me, like a new-born babe.

Not bad, eh?

Who am I? What is my history? Didn't they tell you? I'm sorry. My name is Mah-Lo, I was bom in Mandalay, moved down to Rangoon when I was a nipper, went to sea on a Malay Arab's boat as ship's boy.., but this is Ali's story not mine. Suffice it to say, when I'd learnt all there was to know about sailing from the archipelagos to Port Suez in the west and back, I called myself an Arab and a Muslim and got myself made master of a trading dhow owned by a Malay sultan. Trade took me up to Nanking on the Yangtze. There the local governor and mandarin told me I could sell information as well as copra and he sent me up here to Cambaluk. Which some call Peking. Back to Ali.

It's not a problem being an Arab and nominally a Muslim in Mangalore. It's a port and therefore cosmopolitan: they've had Christians there almost since there were Christians, going back to a guy called Thomas Didymus who actually knew Jesus and made some converts; Jews who didn't know Jesus and stayed Jews; and of course the Indians themselves come in ill sizes and shapes – pale Aryans and Hindus, copper-coloured Dravidians, like Ali's wives, and dark-skinned Tamils. Most of the seamen are Arab and now they're getting Europeans, who come through the Mediterranean, down the Red Sea and across the Arab Ocean. But, of course, they have to transfer to Arab boats for the last leg. I know the Portuguese reckon some day they'll bypass the Arab Ocean by sailing right round Africa and use their own ships for the whole trip… I'm wandering. Old men do. Something you'll have to get used to. And, of course, there are Chinese. Like yourselves.

Being a Muslim isn't, as I say, a problem, although Vijayanagara has been at war with them for a hundred years, that is with the Bahmani sultans. A couple of hundred miles north, up beyond Gove, Goa the Portuguese call it, you get into their territory. The war is territorial, not ethnic or religious. None of that stupid jihad stuff. Indeed, many commanders and some regiments in His Imperial Majesty's army are Muslim mercenaries. Ali was more likely to get into trouble for being a merchant than for being an Arab. Merchants are noted for being spies, double spies, and for taking remuneration from two opposing sides. There is some justification in this for what trader will deny that the summit of his ambition is to buy and sell in the same market? Trust me. I'm a merchant. I know.

Ali and his fortune. As aresult of the adventures I am going to recount, he acquired land, good farmland in the spice-growing foothills of the Western Ghats, with a couple of villages to go with it. He sent what he could to his son Haree and enjoyed the rest.

Once we had started our routine I used to arrive in his enclosed garden three or four times a week. A regular thousand and one afternoons it felt like, though of course it was nothing like as many as that – I doubt if Scheherezade's were either. He said he did it because he enjoyed talking about his life, because lie would retain thereby a sort of life beyond the grave. According to Ali. this life is it. There is no life after death, neither as the proverbial fly or bug as certain high-caste Hindus. Brahmins they call themselves, would have us believe, nor in a Muslim paradise feasting off ambrosia and nectar, waited upon by houris, entertained by damsels with dulcimers. That, Ali already had.

It was fun, he said, to live again the ecstasies and agonies of a long lite from the safety of a wicker chair, well padded with cushions, in the shade of a fragrant cardamom tree, drinking lemonade, nibbling a bhang cake as a digestif, and letting his lunch, the main dish of which might have been mutton braised in butter with coconut, turmeric, coriander, cumin and ginger, go down. The rest of the household were taking their afternoon naps; even the enamelled fish in the pool hardly shifted.

'I don't take a nap in the afternoon,' he told me, the first time I took my place beside him. 'Sleep does not come easily when you're old. My girls won't come to bed with me while it's still hot – that's what they say, anyway – too sweaty and I tend to fart a lot after a meal. Actually they're probably copulating with their current lovers… If they're not, they should be. At their age I would have been. Where shall I begin?'

'At the beginning?'

Ali ben Quatar Mayeen was born in a small village in the hills near Damascus. When he was eight years old and had just been inducted into the first circle of the mysteries of the Islamic sect his tribe belonged to, a form of Shiism, known as the Ismailites, the local caliph, a Sunnite, took it into his head to have the lot exterminated. In a trice it seemed Ali was robbed of a happy if frugal childhood by circumstances that would be almost too horrific to contemplate now, had I not seen them repeated countless times since, right across the known world, in almost every place I have been to. Only Vijayanagara itself proved free of such horrors. Everywhere one goes it is the same. In the name of God men dismember each other, torture, use ever more vile and yet cunning ways of inflicting pain and death. In a way Ali's family and their friends had been lucky – they were raped and beaten, yes, and cut literally into pieces, but all quite quickly. Nothing compared to the sufferings the Christians inflict on each other when one sect gets the members of another within its power.

On the day that changed his life, that day on which he was born again, he saw his father, his mother, his step-mothers, his brothers and sisters and half-brothers and half-sisters decapitated in front of his eyes, having first been mutilated in unspeakable ways. Well, he would have, had it not been the case that while all this was going on he kept his eyes closed,

'How did you escape?' I asked him.

'I was only six years old and I ran and hid.'

'Just now you said you were eight.'

'I said eight? Just now? You're quite wrong. Six. I should know. Naturally I fled to the safest place I knew… my grandmother's skirts. I would hardly have done that if I had been as old as eight…'

Well, he's by no means the first unreliable narrator I've listened to.

According to Ali, a Sunni warrior decapitated her neatly with a horizontal swipe ol his razor-edged scimitar and as she fell, or rather collapsed, fountaining blood from the stump that had been her neck a moment before, into the cloud or cushion of her apparel that billowed out around her as she sank to the floor with her head in her lap, he aimed a second cut at Ali who now stood revealed behind her. He would have been cut diagonally in half had he not swayed back at precisely the right moment. Instead of taking the edge, the blade of the scimitar, he was merely scratched with the point. Scratched? The cut was an inch deep running from the outer corner of his right eye, taking off his right nostril, passing across his mouth leaving him with a peculiarly nasty hare-lip, crossing the right collar-bone, which it broke, the breast-bone, which it nicked, finally slicing four of his left ribs and laying open the flesh to the left of his belly. Quite a scratch.

He continued his backward fall and passed out. Now it appears that the trauma caused by this wound was so severe that he went into a catatonic trance, much like those assumed on purpose by Hindu godmen, so that all his bodily functions slowed almost to a complete halt, but did not cease. And because his heart was beating, but possibly as little as once a minute, there was no force in the bleeding after the initial rush of blood, and what did leak out clotted before he bled to death or, indeed, before he had lost more than a couple of jugsful.

It was winter and cold at nights, the village was in the mountains. and his trance continued unbroken until the following morning. The murderers, no doubt wishing to render the village and land uninhabitable for ever, sowed the fields with salt and, having first stripped the bodies, dragged them all, Ali's family and neighbours, to the wells and tipped them in. hoping thereby to poison them. The wells, that is.

Should he have offered thanks to Allah that he was left to last and was thus at the top of the heap? Perhaps. But, then, it was in the name of Allah that all this had been done.

He came to when the sun reached his exposed posterior and warmed it. Caked with blood, not all of it his own, and racked with pain – most of it actually a deep-rooted stiffness – he struggled down off the pile of corpses at the top of the well, took a brief look round. Apart from the flies that gathered with the sun, and the rats, he was now the only living creature there. The sheep and goats had been taken, and the dogs as ruthlessly dispatched as their masters. He ran. Pausing only to wrap himself in some sacking he found still hanging from the arms of a scarecrow, and plucking a bean-pole from a villager's allotment for a staff, Ali ran.

Not too far or too fast at first, but once his wound was healed he ran a long way. Perhaps he has been running ever since, or at any rate until he fetched up in Mangalore. He slept occasionally, but in those first years not much, and anyway he continued to run even in his dreams. He ran to Baghdad, then Tabriz, and finally Kabul. From then on, for the most part, he walked, rode or sailed.

He assumed the role of beggar, found his way on to the Golden Road to Samarkand, joined a passing caravan in which the ostlers, camel-men, bearers and so forth had kept in mind the injunctions of the Prophet regarding a Believer's responsibilities to the poor more clearly than their masters had, and begged his way with them right up the Silk Road as far as Karakoum and the Roof of the World. He did the trip again and again, and discovered a certain skill at bargaining, at detecting the ruses of cheating vendors and, when the caravan was ready to return for the fifth time with animals laden with silk, lapis-lazuli and gold, he had become the trusted employee of one of the merchants, a Parsee whose leanings were also towards Shiism, and who looked on him favourably.

It would be wrong to say that thereafter he prospered, hut at least he survived. For ten years or so he worked for the Parsee as a general amanuensis, dogsbody, factotum. He learnt to read and write, to add and subtract, to keep accounts. Later, as the Parsee aged and became increasingly attached to his godown and counting-house, he employed Ali as his agent, his traveller. He discovered a gift for languages born of the earlier necessity to beg from and live with people who had no cause to learn his own. He also found time in which to study the inner secret teachings of the deeper Shia and took a year or two away from trading to dwell with wise men in a community who live among the mountains that lie to the north of the Hindu Kush.

He returned to the service of his Parsee, who eventually reached the sort of age Ali is now. Ali expected to be made his partner with a loan to enable him to continue trading in the I'arsee's name. However, the Parsee preferred a more complete retirement and, urged on by his daughters who wanted to make good marriages into the gentry of the land, liquidated his assets, dug up his gold reserves, and bought plantations of pistachio and apricot trees, thus raising his status to that of landowner. Ali continued to act as his salesman abroad and did tolerably well, selling his ex-master's Sun-dried tiunza apricots and green nuts, but basically he was now a freelance, without the capital to set up as a proper merchant.

His son Haree? The disfigurement Ali had suffered at the hands of the Sunni fanatic taken with the fact that he was never a rich man virtually precluded the possibility of marriage or indeed any sexual relationship other than the transitory sort that can be bought. He was not a pretty sight, and as he aged he became less pretty. His left side slowly collapsed, and his left arm, possibly because a vital nerve had been severed, withered, though he was left with the use of the thumb, index and middle lingers. His face was like an apple that has begun to rot: fine on one side but dark brown and spongily shapeless on the other, and at almost all times when he was in any sort of public situation he covered it with the edge or hem of his scarecrow cape, leaving only the left side and left eye visible.

However, not long after his Parsee withdrew from trading, Ali was doing business on his own behalf with an Egyptian cotton-grower whose crop had failed as a result of an attack of weevils, leaving him substantially in debt to Ali. Now, there is an endemic disease amongst those who live along the banks of the Nile and the canals that irrigate the surrounding flatlands that causes blindness, and this cotton-grower had a daughter who was blind but in other ways attractive and apparently healthy. Ali married her, having first bestowed on her impoverished father all the worldly wealth he then had about him. They settled in Iskenderia where he set up as an agent in the port. Haroun, Haree, was the only fruit of that union since the cotton-grower's daughter died of puerperal fever shortly after he was born. Ali put him in the care of his dead mother's cousin and set off again on his travels but he has paid for his keep ever since. He never really got to know Haree properly, passing as he did through the area once every two years or so, but he now has the satisfaction of knowing that Haree will learn an honourable profession and hopefully make a reasonable living with less trouble than his father has had.

Enough. I am wandering. A tedious recital of a thousand and one adventures on the road was not Ali's purpose, but rather an account of the one big adventure that came at the end. And that is what you want to hear now. It far surpasses all the others in length and interest, in horror, tragedy, passion and even, occasionally, in the happiness n brought. And hopefully you will take from it the insights you desire into other nations and empires, insights for which you have paid.

It all began, as it ended, in Ingerlond, but that part of Ingerlond which is tin the mainland of Europe, namely Calais, a small enclave whose importance lies in its role as the gateway to the island – indeed, almost all the trade with the island is now conducted through this port. I have heard it said that Ingerlond is the arsehole of Christendom and Calais is the arsehole of Ingerlond. Ali didn't find anything to quarrel with in that.

The main exports through Calais are wool and woollen cloth. Indeed there is very little else the Inglysshe, or Anglish as they are sometimes called after one of the savage tribes that settled there, produce in surplus that anyone could conceivably wish to buy, except possibly tin and lead. Calais is the only town where foreigners are allowed to buy Ingerlonder wool, which makes its export easy to tax, and is therefore known in the jargon of their traders as the Staple. The quality is high, though not as good as that of Kashmere, and much in demand in climates too cold for cotton or silk. The Inglysshe have the art of spinning their wool to a fineness which almost equals silk and of dyeing it too, and of weaving it in artful ways. This fine wool is called worsted, and it was in the hopes of picking up some hales of the stuff in exchange for some sable furs Ali had brought from iMuscovy that he was in Calais.

He was staying in a tavern or lodging-house in the quarter that lies between the harbour and the main cloth market, and Suffering, as almost everyone does in those climes, from what seemed to be an everlasting cold – his nose leaked like the bladder of an incontinent octogenarian, his chest churned and rattled as if it were a bucket filled with unset mortar, and he-had gone early to bed. It was a big bed and. following the custom of those uncivilised regions, he had been constrained the night before to share it with two mariconic tinkers who buggered each other off and on, and a squire, his lady and two children on their way to join the Duke of Burgundy's court. The two infants whined and whimpered until their mother prevailed on Ali to expose his face to them. She told them that he was the devil and would carry them off to hell if they didn't shut up. They did.

However, on this second night, because of the ague from which he was suffering, he had gone to bed while the rest were still at supper and was alone in what the landlord was cheat enough to call his best 'guestroom' when there was a knock at the door.

I remember that at this point Ali ben Quatar Mayeen shifted a little in his chair, then moved the chair so the wickerwork creaked a little, took his head out of the dipping sunlight and glanced across the table at me. 'Shall I go on? I'm not boring you?'

'No, no. Not in the least.' 'You yawned."

'A moment or two ago. perhaps, when you were describing the status of Calais. But now I am caught in the net of your tale as surely as the Sultan Schahriah was in the web Scheherazade spun. But if you, Ali, are tired, I can come back tomorrow and hear who your visitor was in that dreadful lodging-house.'

'Perhaps that would be better. The house is stirring again, and presently, no doubt, my wives will want to attend me as they usually do when the afternoon gets cooler…'

Chapter Two

The following afternoon, when I returned to that delightful patio with its pool of iridescent fish and cages of singing birds and its scent of cardamom, Ali took up his tale. He spoke slowly, with difficulty even after the lifetime that had passed since the scimitar sliced his mouth, hut making expansive gestures with his good hand.

Loosening my stiletto in its scabbard beneath the covers, I called out that the door was unlocked.

On account of the grey habit and hood worn by my visitor, I took the figure that came in to be a friar, or mendicant preaching monk, of the Franciscan order. He was earning a greasy tallow candle that gave off more black smoke than light and, to my levered brain, made the wooden plank walls of that cubbyhole sway back and forth like the sail on a luffing dhow. I noticed that his robe had been patched with a tiny heart-shaped piece of red felt just above the waist – but I was, at that time, unaware of its significance. He squeezed between the bed and the wall and thus sidled up to where my head lay propped on a dirty bolster filled with unwashed fleece trimmings and set the candle on the shelf above me. I gripped the silver-wired hilt of my stiletto and wished that my palm were not so slippery with sweat. He must have sensed my unease.

'I wish you no harm," he said, and sat on the edge of the bed, pushing back his cowl as he did so. His face was lean, grey, clean-shaven, apart from a slight stubble, and marked by two deep creases that ran from the corners of his nose, which was large but bony, past the comers of his mouth and gave him a look that combined asceticism with melancholy. His eyes were dark, but in that light piercing.

'You are, I believe,' he continued, 'Ali ben Quatar Mayeen, a traveller and merchant from the east."

I conceded that this was so.

'But I understand, too, that you belong to a secret brotherhood under which you also carry the name-'

But now I was alarmed and I let him see the stiletto. 'Pray do not utter the word on your lips, or it may be your last,' I said.

'Very well,' but I could see how his thin mouth lengthened into a smile that held both delight and mockery, 'names are power and should be respected. However, I should like you to believe that I come to you as a member of a similar society that shares many of your beliefs. I am putting my life at risk by admitting as much, but hope thereby to gain your trust. I have a favour to ask that may or may not be in your power to grant, but will be easier for you to perform than anyone else I am ever likely to meet.'

I waited to see what would be forthcoming.

'My fellow sectarians have a secret house in the north-west of Ingerlond. Amongst our number is a man, who, like you, came from the distant east many years ago. He is the younger brother of a prince of an eastern country who sent him abroad on a particular mission. He now wishes to return. However, due partly to the fact that both his legs have been cut off through the knee joints and also to certain vows he has taken, he is unable to travel. He instructed me to find a traveller who came from his pan of the world and give him this…'

He held up a packet. It was as long as the span of a stretched hand, from little fingertip to thumbnail, its width a little less, its depth half the thickness of a large thumb. It was wrapped in black oiled cloth, and tied with rust-coloured leather thongs.

'What is it?' I managed to croak. Much of my success as an agent for traders has arisen from a gift of insatiable curiosity, which I share with cats. Curiosity, you may say, killed the cat, but then you will recall Allah mitigated that threat with the gift of nine lives. At least eight of which I have used.

'I am not permitted to say,' my visitor answered. 'It should only he opened by the man to whom it is addressed or by his direct heir. Indeed, for what it is worth, my friend, whom we know as Brother John, since that is the nearest our tongue can get to his real name, added a curse of some viciousness on anyone else who might even attempt to undo these thongs. But judging by its weight and shape I would hazard a guess that it contains pages ot parchment, and is therefore some sort of message, testament or whatever. Will you take it?'

By now, for all I was suffering from a fever and all the other symptoms I have described, to which were added severely aching knees, that near fatal curiosity was stirring like a waking lion. Or cat.

'First,' I said, 'tell me to whom this packet must be delivered."

The stranger's eyes gleamed yet more brightly, and his tongue touched the corner of his thin mouth. Clearly he believed I was hooked. Indeed, I was.

'The prince you must take it to is called Harihara Raya Kurteishi."

Even by then, after such a short acquaintance, I was not able to quarrel with that 'must', though immediately I suspected that I was likely to be committing myself to a journey longer than the one I had envisaged. I cleared my throat and swallowed the evil-tasting phlegm that filled my mouth.

'And where does he live?'

'In Vijayanagara, an empire which is ruled by John's cousin, a great emperor who is known as Mallikarjuna Deva Raya.'

I sighed and let my aching head fall back on that noisome bolster. I swear it smelt of dog-shit.

'Vijayanagara is almost on the other side of the world. Only Cathay lies beyond it,' I croaked. 'If I travel for half a year I will come to the lands I was born in, which you call the Holy Land. To get to Vijayanagara I will have to travel as far as that again.'

'There was a Venetian who went the whole way to Cathay, and others have followed since. I believe he even called in at Vijayanagara on his way home.'

'Marco,' I scoffed. 'He went with his father, Niccolo, when he was twelve and came back a middle-aged man. I am already as old as he was when he returned, probably older.'

But at that moment there was uproar below, filling the narrow street, and indeed we could see the glimmer of torches dickering through the cracks in the shutters of the one dormer window of that tiny room. I was not then as fluent in the Inglysshe tongue as I have later become, but the gist of the shouts, bellowed commands, was clear enough. The commander of the men-at-arms who had burst in on our landlord had reason to believe that a foul miscreant, a counterfeit friar, a most evil heretic, was sheltering beneath his roof.

My visitor's visage went paler even than it had been before and with one swift movement he thrust the black packet beneath the bolster and headed for the window. However, before he could pull back the shutters, which had probably not been opened since summer and were jammed, three men-at-arms, clad in chain-mail and steel helmets with rims like those on a barber's bowl, burst in and apprehended him. At least I must presume they did, for I had buried myself beneath the stinking covers of the huge bed. Even cats curb their curiosity at times. And survive.

My stay in Calais was longer than I had expected. First I had to recover from the Influence of the Stars, or Influenza, as the Venetians call it; then, when I came to trade my Muscovite sables I found that they had been ravaged by moths. It took me some time before I was able to find what I took to be a more than averagely stupid Ingerlonder whom I could persuade that these holes were the fashion in Moskova and conveyed a greater value upon the furs. In truth he had the last word. The bales of worsted he gave me in return were similarly damaged: 'Broderie anglaise, my old china,' he said, and slapped me on the back.

All in all it was getting on for a month later before I was able to set off on my travels again, and, though I had no intention at all of going to the southern extremity of the Indian peninsula, I had almost inadvertently slipped that oiled black packet into one of the deeper recesses of my baggage.

My destination was Bruges, ami to get to the eastern postern I had to pass through the central square. A burning was about to begin. I do not like to witness such barbarities but the press was such that I had to wait until it was over. It was, need I say it, my quasi-Franciscan Iriar who was tied to the stake, high above the crowd, high enough for me to be able to see that his thumbs (his hands were bound in front of him) had been crushed and his body broken on the wheel. He was, however, still alive and aware enough of what was going on to spit on the crucifix that a Dominican was waving under his nose, conjuring him to repent as he did so. There was a plaque attached to his neck by a noose so it rested on his chest and it bore the words: 'Self-confessed but Unrepentant Brother of the Free Spirit'.

The flames caught, the smoke rose, and as they did it was my impression that somehow his mysterious eyes, still gleaming with intelligence and possibly knowledge, found mine and for a moment I felt he was communicating to me both a sense of collusion and trust. Then his eyeballs rolled upwards and his whole body seemed to relax as he breathed in the smoke that was billowing about his head. I recognised the symptoms of ecstasy, that most sublime ecstasy of all, the ecstasy of a death embraced, of union with the god within.

The smell of burning flesh remained in my nostrils for a week.

Chapter Three

For the next three days Mangaiore was the scene of a prolonged festival in which the goddess, in her role as Queen of the Sea, was wooed and bedded by Vishnu to the accompaniment of dancing, music, fireworks and the rest. On the fourth day I returned to Ali's large bungalow and rejoined him in his garden where he resumed his tale as if there had been no interruption at all.

The next two years saw me inexorably drawn eastward as if my soul were a sliver of magnetised steel, mounted on a pin and dragged by a lodestone. No doubt this was in part a response to the trader in me for commerce recognises that a promise given has the strength of a contract, but also there was a more spiritual bond which my Franciscan had evoked. The Brothers of the Free Spirit, whose innermost councils have renounced God as well as the Devil, have their Islamic equivalent to which I belong. Having studied at the feet of the successors of the Old Man of the Mountain, Hassan lbn Sabbah, I count myself an adept, and it is my duty to do all I can for all who share our disbeliefs, whether they come from Muslim, Christian, or Hindu beginnings.

At this point Ali must have noticed the shift in my expression for he paused with the eyebrow above his good eye raised like an inverted black crescent moon. I took the plunge. 'You are, then,' I stated, somewhat uneasily, 'an Assassin.'

He cracked a walnut between the thumb and forefinger of his good hand and used the digits of the other to pick over the white flesh he had exposed.

'You may say so, so long as you do not attribute to me the practices the vulgar ascribe to us. As you know, I take hashish a great deal, and the word assassin derives from the word hashish. And occasionally I have had good cause to bestow on mortals the supreme ecstasy of death. But I don't make a habit of it.'

This was a relief, and I allowed him to return to his narrative.

My first visit to the Malabar coast arose out of business I had in southern Arabia, at the south end of the Red Sea, in a small port called Mokha, where I was trading silver ingots for woven camel-hair carpets with certain Bedu chieftains. Once we had concluded the deal they sealed it with a beverage I had not come across before, which they called k'hawah. It is an infusion made from the ground-up pits or bean-like stones of a small cherry-like fruit of a low bush, which is grown on the sea-facing slopes of the mountains that border the Red Sea. I was impressed by its beneficial effects: it enlivens the spirit without intoxication, removes headaches, and stimulates mental activity. Moreover, taken with sugar crystallised from the sap of the cane that grows on the plain below the hills, it is remarkably palatable.

So impressed was I with this concoction that I immediately bought half a dozen sacks of these beans and took them to Venice, where I sold them at a very considerable profit. The enterprise was aided by the cunning of a Venetian alchemist I knew who had invented a way of improving the infusion by expressing steam through the grounds of the k'hawah inside a sealed retort. This improved its potency and flavour. He sold the resulting drink in tiny cups for enormous prices in the Piazza di San Marco.

Thinking I was now about to make a proper fortune at last I returned to Mokha only to find that during my absence the local imams had declared k'hawah to be an intoxicating liquor and therefore proscribed by the Kor'an and it underwent a brief spell of prohibition.

I do not easily give up and enquiring amongst fellow traders learnt that the nearest habitat they knew of that resembled that of the south-west-facing slopes of the Yemeni mountains was that of the Western (ihats lying behind the Malabar coast of southern India, particularly that part served by the port of Mangalore. I bought four dozen potted k'hawah bushes for almost nothing since they were now of no commercial value and booked a passage for them and myself on a dhow bound for Mangalore and its palm-green shore. Once there, I arranged for a landowner who grew cinnamon, cardamom and ginger on his estates in the mountains to set aside a quarter of an acre of his poorer, higher land where the earth did indeed resemble that of the south Yemeni hills. My forty-eight bushes were taken from their pots and planted there. He was happy to gain rent however small from this unlikely patch with a promise of a share of the profits if any accrued.

Since any profit that there was to be made from this venture would be.it least a couple of years or so in the future I returned to Arabia, but not before I had ascertained what commodity the Vijayanagarans were most in need of and would pay for most handsomely.

Horses.

The Vijayanagarans' only mounted arm at the time was a regiment of elephant, which, in the well-ordered and virtually harmless form of warfare practised between Hindus, performed a merely formal function. When a phalanx of elephants advanced on infantry it was understood that the infantry would retreat.

The sultans, however, took warfare more seriously; elephants do not like horses and, when faced with a cavalry charge, run amok trampling the infantry behind them and often unseating their mahouts. Indeed, so serious had the situation become, the sultans would surely have overrun the Vijayanagaran empire decades before I got there, had they ever been able to agree amongst themselves. However, they tended to fight each other with yet more vehemence than they fought their neighbours. Meanwhile the Vijayanagarans were beginning to build up a horse cavalry of their own, retaining elephants for ceremonial parades only. But the process was still in its infancy, and at that time, for a prime, partially broken, three-year-old stallion, strong enough to carry a man in armour or service a mare, they would pay its weight in coriander seed or dried ginger.

And in Moskova or Stadholmen they pay for those spices, weight for weight, in silver or amber.

For what – the tenth time in my life? I thought my fortune was made. However, I did not have the wherewithal to buy horses in any great numbers and had to borrow heavily from the Yemeni Jews in Aden. Nevertheless I got together a string of eighteen horses including six brood mares in foal and, heedless of the warnings of diose who know best, put them on a ship for Mangalore. Even the ship's captain, who was also in debt and in a hurry to make money, told me to wait a few weeks, but I would have none of it. We were duly caught in the north-east monsoon and shipwrecked on one of the Laccadive coral islands where we remained for five weeks, eating horseflesh, before we were picked up by pearl fishers and taken on to Mangalore.

I was now penniless and return to the Yemen was not an option – the Jews there would have had me impaled as a warning to reneging borrowers and indeed it seemed the only asset I had left was the black packet my Brother of the Free Spirit had given me two years earlier and a handful of gold coin I had managed to keep about my person. I called at the godown of the agent of a Cairo-based trailer I had done business with in the past, though not in Mangalore. However, his chief clerk here had heard of me and was able to advise me that Prince Harihara Raya Kurteishi was part of the Emperor's household with a senior position in the military establishment and, of course, resided in the City of Victory itself. In the course of the next few days a large caravan was due to leave Mangalore, headed by the governor, or ttayak, and I should be able to buy myself a place in it.

A day or so later I joined the caravan, which was indeed substantial, and set off for the hinterland beyond the Ghats. At the front went priests and monks, some wearing jewelled vestments, others in simpler robes the colour of burnt earth, blowing their gilded trumpets, striking their gongs and chiming their finger cymbals, scenting the air around them with frankincense, and bearing on a shoulder-high litter a bronze but gilded and polychrome statue of the dancing, tour-armed Shiva, ringed as usual with fire, draped with silk and decorated with jewels and garlands. Behind him came the governor, who was returning to the City of Victory for the great festival of Mahanavami, which marks the end of the monsoon season, the same monsoon that had shipwrecked me and my horses.

He rode on the first of six elephants, caparisoned in velvet with gold bullion tassels and edgings. Next came a score of mounted soldiers carrying burnished spears and shields inlaid with gold, silver, copper and mother-of-pearl, all of which flashed sunlight back through the moist haze. They were there for show – war-parties from the sultanates do not come so far south and none of the civil population has any cause to threaten the lives of their rulers. In this happy land even mountain brigandage is unheard of.

Behind this ceremonial bodyguard came twenty or so donkeys on one of the first of which I rode, the rest being used to carry the impedimenta we might require on the way. Westerners despise people who ride donkeys, reserving the animal for purposes of draught, even though their principal goddess rode one on her way from Palestine to Egypt and later her son, the Prophet Jesus, also used one to enter Jerusalem in triumph. I had no such reservations, especially as by then I had reached an age where riding was always preferable to walking. Behind the donkeys came mules and a camel train carrying goods from all over the known world which, once the monsoon was over, had begun again to arrive in Mangalore.

Forgive me for dwelling a little on this journey. I have been constrained at times to make a mendicant's living out of telling tales of travel on street corners or in places where men eat and take their leisure, and old habits die hard.

First, once we had left the bustle and mess of Mangalore (ports, even in the best arranged of places, are always messy, are they not?) there was a narrow plain some thirty or so miles wide, of wetlands, of lagoons filled with wading birds and fishing boats, rafts and floating villages with, where the land rose a few feet, plantations of coconut palms and plantains. The road, a causeway, threaded its way often across a carpet of lotus whose flowers the women and girls of the villages, Tamils, wove into garlands, which they either wore or offered in homage to the god who went before us. Often they sang and danced, and the twanging of their stringed instruments and the wailing of their flutes signalled our arrival or faded into the mists behind us.

As we left the lagoons we crossed land that was still wet but drained, where water levels could be controlled, and here were the paddy-fields of rice, a bluish green at that time of year and like a haze of fur across the greenish blue of the water. The earth beneath the hoofs and feet of our animals became firmer, so they clipped and clopped instead of squelching, and lifted us above the palms, watery lotus plains and rice paddies. We camped for the first night on the outskirts of a village set in fields of coriander, which almost overcame us with the sweet, fruity, spicy fragrance of its flowers and seeds and the more acrid odour of leaves crushed by the passing feet of peasants.

More pungent yet and pepper)' were the plantations of cardamom trees on the higher slopes above the village, which we passed through on the following morning, leaving the coastal plain behind us under a nacreous blanket of mist. It came to my mind that somewhere nearby was the tiny plantation of k'hSwah bushes I had caused to be planted, but I was given no opportunity to leave the caravan and seek out the plot I had leased.

As well as cardamoms there were groves of cinnamon and hedges of peppercorn vines and, near the copious streams that tumbled out of the Ghats, reed-beds of ginger whose bulbous rhizomes were hung along the cane walls of the dwelling-places to dry. Amongst these spice plantations there were also groves of citrus trees, whose fruits hung amongst their star-like flowers, golden lamps in a green night, including the sweeter varieties recently imported from China.

We camped that second night in the foothills of the Ghats and near the entrance to a soaring but narrow gorge through which tumbled one of the many rivers that fed the lagoons we had passed through and would continue to do so, months even after the monsoons had passed. Already the air was cooler, partly on account of the height we had climbed but also because of the continuous and conflicting breezes that funnelled through the gorge or eddied over the rounded foothills. Much of the area remained virgin forest stalked by jaguars, hunted over by eagles and forming not only wonderful groves filled with flowers and honey but shelter, too, for many animals, tiny deer, pigs and even wild elephant.

But I suspect you would prefer me not to describe every stage of that journey. Suffice it to say the next day the climb through the winding gorge became more and more terrifying, the track narrower, the precipitous drops from it to the cataracts below steeper and deeper until we reached a point when looking down we could see the backs of soaring eagles and vultures. Then, at last, the sky opened out again and we found ourselves not at the top of a pass with a descent equally horrendous in front of us, but rather in an upland of broken countryside, riven with valleys that opened out into undulating plains albeit crags still soared above them. This vast and varied landscape now tilted towards the east, for the large rivers of the area ran in that direction towards the Eastern Ghats, through which they tumble along the Coromandel coast.

This broken plain, scarred and scored by rivers, was by tar the most fertile land I have ever seen, for the areas the rivers could not reach were served by a network of artificial canals and waterways, carved from the virgin rock or built of cunningly interlocked blocks of stone. Every crop flourished in that rich soil, that warm atmosphere, and so plenteous was the supply of food that the lords of that land were able to maintain tracts of untouched forest as hunting reserves without diminishing the welfare of the ordinary people.

After a day or two during which our path meandered with a river we came to its confluence with a larger waterway, one of the two great rivers of that empire, the great Tungabhadra, and the next day the most wonderful sight I had ever seen presented itself to my eyes as we wound with the river round a vast crag and saw beneath us the City of Victory.

It is a city larger, more beautiful, more harmonious in architecture and in the lives of the hundred thousand who live there, than anywhere else in the world. Byzantium and Rome may have monuments to equal those of the City of Victory, but none to surpass them, and by no means so numerous, and both have suffered the ravages of age and numerous conquests while those of Vijayanagara are at the most only a century old: indeed, building even now continues apace in the suburbs and on the summits of the surrounding crags. Cambaluk alone has ornamentation and open spaces as fine – but forbidden, of course, to ordinary mortals.

Religions the world over have tempted us away from the proper purpose of our lives, the pursuit of happiness on earth, by promising an afterlife in a heavenly city unachievable on earth. Let their prophets and priests look on the City of Victory and admit their error.

Chapter Four

The City of Victory occupies a natural basin through which the river flows and which is surrounded by wild crags in a crescent that protect it from attack from all quarters of the compass, save the east. These crags are linked with massive walls of wedge-shaped masonry and the gates are so placed in this indomitable combination of natural and man-made defences that caravans, or approaching hostile armies, have to make sharp turns beneath angled battlements from which missiles and boiling pitch can be hurled and tipped. These gateways also serve as customs posts where tribute and taxes, which are a major source of the wealth and splendour inside, arc-collected: the City of Victory is not merely a consumer, using its own vast wealth deriving from spices, diamonds and gold to buy in luxuries of all sorts, but is also an entrepot where traders from east and west can meet without having to cross the deserts, mountains and war-lords' domains north of the Himalayas. At least, such was the case when I first made the trip.

It was at the great west-facing gate that the governor of Mangalore and his entourage and guard left us. The rest of us, especially those clearly not citizens of the empire, were subjected to the usual questions, form-filling, payment of entry taxes and the like, which are everywhere the scourge of anyone whose livelihood has depended on trade. I had to state my business, how I had come to bring to Prince Harihara Raya Kurteishi a package addressed to him, that I intended to seek him out in the next day or two and give it to him.

I have to say that at Vijayanagara (for the name serves both the empire and the city) these formalities were conducted with more politeness and genuine condescension than I have experienced anywhere else, the officials courteous and punctilious and, being no less prosperous than any of their fellows in that earthly paradise, quite immune to bribery. Indeed, they showed a humanity I had never previously experienced from such functionaries, to the extent that when I had to let my cloak drop, their attitude to my scarred and mutilated face and body was not of fear or derision as is usually the case, but solicitude and polite curiosity as to how I had been so horribly disfigured. Moreover, they recommended to me a hostel attached to a temple when- I would be well received and not charged at all, apart from what I might feel able to give freely, as charity. Admitted at last through that great gate, I began my descent, following their directions, through the Sacred Zone, to the small temple they hail indicated.

The great river itself divides the city into two main sectors, which are built on the steep hills above it leaving a wide plain between. This is filled with fields, especially of cotton, orchards, plantations, parks and gardens, terraced on the higher levels and all irrigated with abundant water, channelled into canals that feed tanks ami reservoirs. The loftier of these supply large, ornate fountains, set on decorated belvederes, from which the citizens gaze across the valley to the broken mountain ranges, often clad in mist, a hundred miles away.

This Sacred Zone was filled with temples dedicated to the pantheon of what I soon learnt I should not call the Hindu religion, of which the most magnificent were dedicated to Shiva and Vishnu and the goddess Fampa, who is identified with the river. I cannot do justice to this vast complex of temples with their endless ornamentation, decoration and colour. There was also much fantastic statuary, particularly at gateways or at the bottom of the many flights of stairs. These were representations of tigers and elephants, done to the life so you almost felt nervous of walking where a massive foot might tread on you, or a large cat might sink its claws into your back.

Every wall is pierced with galleries and pillared arcades on which a thousand thousand images in carved and painted stucco present the lives, adventures and loves of their gods and goddesses, and their heroic avatars. Shiva rides his bull, or Rama, an avatar of Vishnu, searches for his wife Sita, abducted, according to legend, by Ravana; the tale continues as the monkey general Hanuman leads his hordes against Ravana. And in places where the vast walls were not divided into countless alcoves and shrines they were filled with statues in deep relief, or were richly painted with murals of dancing men and women, princes and princesses, gods and goddesses, often performing with open joy the act of procreation, which seem somehow to express the fecundity of the area and an eagerness to enjoy and share with others the earthly pleasures of this life.

These decorations are all richly coloured in every hue of the rainbow, with scarlets, crimsons and the deep rich blue of lapis-lazuli, speckled with gold, predominating. Indeed I have not mentioned the gold, beaten to airy thinness on every dome, gleaming more solidly on crowns and sword hilts, inlaid in granite, with diamonds from the diamond pipes that are not far off. Everywhere there are flowers, in beds, in hanging baskets, growing in pots, woven into garlands and hung about the images' necks, flowers white, yellow, red and purple that fill the air with a fragrance that mingles with that of the smoke that lazily wreathes the air from a thousand bronze pots that serve as thuribles.

To the south and below this upland area of temples and sacred precincts, and hardly less magnificent, is the Royal Enclave, then east of that, on the far side of the river with its parks and gardens, the township proper. Lacking the natural defences of the higher places it has its own fortifications and includes the multifarious markets, the artisans' shops and factories, the merchant houses and the barracks of the military.

The temple-hostel to which I had been directed was dedicated to Cianesha, the elephant-headed son of the god Shiva and his consort Parvati, or Pampa, who personifies the great river Tungabhadra. I have said that already? Well, I warned you, my mind wanders at times. One of my companions told me that Ganesha is the god to whom one makes supplication at the outset of any great undertaking so it seemed to me therefore an apt place to stay on the first night of my first visit to the City of Victory, a visit that would take me to the end of the world and back. Or, at any rate, as far as Macclesfield.

The temple itself was small, little more than a large kiosk; an intricately carved roof of sandalwood set on eight slender pillars gave the structure an octagonal ground plan. Under the centre of the finely carved pyramidal ceiling, on a raised octagonal platform, sat the god, a charming brick-red figure with a plump male torso, pantalooned legs crossed on a cushion set in a lotus, with his four hands holding a necklace, an axe, an ornamental sickle and a lotus flower. His elephant head, which bore an expression of open welcome, wore a gold crown, rakishly tilted, decorated again with enamelled lotus flowers while various fine bracelets, anklets, armbands and necklaces of gold chain, pearls and sapphires circled his limbs. Offerings of garlanded flowers, food, sweet cakes and incense were arranged neatly on all sides, and as I stood there admiring this homely, pleasant but rich and enriching figure a small family of husband, wife and three lovely children came in with more offerings.

I should say here that the religion of the Dravidians is not congregational: they do not attend their temples in huge masses to listen to or assist in long ceremonies so there are no huge spaces of the sort one finds in Christian cathedrals or the great mosques of Islam. Believers come singly or as families, to make their simple offerings and commune with the saint, avatar, god or goddess of their choice through wordless meditation.

This charming temple was set in an open garden filled with roses, jasmine and many brilliant and huge flowers unnamed in our tongues since they grow only where the air is always warm and where there is abundant water. There was also a pool where the evening breeze caused lotus flowers to tug at their sub-aquatic moorings above the gold and silver whiskered carp who sought the shade beneath. Birds with brilliant plumage, some so tiny they were no bigger than a child's thumb, others trailing clouds of glorious feathers, flitted, hummed or strutted amongst the bushes and beneath the palms.

One wall was filled with a pavilion in which a dozen or so pallets stuffed with cotton flowers were set out for passing travellers or pilgrims to take their rest, but not before dark-skinned maidens with almond-shaped eyes, clad in rose and emerald silks, had brought us bowls of rice, spiced vegetables, and cakes spiked with bhang, no doubt taken from the day's offerings to Ganesha. They danced sinuously, dramatically and, I have to say, provocatively to a small group of musicians with long-armed rebecs and pottery drums to which the girls added the silvery chime of their finger cymbals. Some of the older of these dancers offered themselves freely to the more prepossessing of our company for conversation, dalliance and, if the mood took them, love beneath the silken sheets that covered our pallets.

Chapter Five

I arose with the sun and breakfasted off ripe mangoes and spiced bread, which I found had been left at the end of my bed, and washed myself in a marble basin set in the wall behind the pavilion. Thus refreshed I made my adieux to the temple maidens before strolling down wide, palm-lined boulevards to the Royal Enclave. It soon became clear that I was part of a swelling crowd making its way to a huge square, whose centre was a magnificent platform some thirty feet high and some hundred and more paces square, made out of granite and rock that sparkled with green crystals. It was pavilioned in splendid fabrics and jewels and girded with as yet unlit flambeaux and torches. As we made our way down, I fell in with a young man whose simple garb, shaven head but proud mien suggested that I was in the presence of a neophyte of some priestly order.

In Urdu, the lingua franca of those parts, he explained to me why he and the countless others around us were there. Such was the interest I felt in what he had to say, I walked with him right down to the big square with its platform, leaving the Royal Enclave behind me.

'Tonight,' he explained, and his voice was soft and musical, though quite deep, 'is the first of nine that make up the great festival of Mahanavaini, which celebrates the end of the wet season. People are already gathering to be sure of getting places in the Square around the platform from which they can enjoy the best views of the joyful celebrations that will begin at nightfall…' He went on to describe the form the festivities would take – a succession of dances by troupes from each ward of the city – and as he did so I took the opportunity to examine his appearance more carefully.

He was about twenty years old. perhaps a little more, not tall but. as far as his voluminous but simple gown would allow me to guess, well built, with long hands and lingers and long feet. His head was round and shaved to a short furry pelt with a ridge of longer hair, an inch or so long, running from his forehead to the nape of his neck where it ended in a small twisted pigtail. His eyes were dark, large and deep-set beneath a long bushy eyebrow that had no gap in the middle. Often they seemed focused on some distant or perhaps inner reality, but when brought to earth they glowed with humour and an affection too easily bestowed. His voice, as I have indicated, was deep but gentle, not in the least harsh.

I expressed disappointment that I might miss the performances, or at least be left on the outer fringes of the crowd, as I expected to have to spend most of the day tracking down Prince Harihara Raya Kurteishi. But my new friend insisted that first I must go with him ami see where he would station himself in the throng so I could join him there later. Once established at a good vantage-point he would give me directions to the palace or the part of the complex of palaces where I would most probably find the Prince. When I suggested that I might have to make an appointment and cope with the formalities and bureaucracy that protect such high dignitaries in most countries, he told me there should be no problem. All the members of the Emperor's family, and indeed most of the senior members of the Royal Household, made themselves available to the general public for long periods every day; while I might be involved in a long wait until my turn came up. I should surely be seen before dusk.

On our way I quizzed my companion about various aspects of the crowd that puzzled me, the two most notable being the way in which the well-to-do mingled freely with the labourers, artisans and peasants, and the absence of any soldiers, armed men. tribunes, constables and the like. This was not the India, surviving under Islam, that I had come to know on my three previous visits to the northern ports. Here was no apparent caste system, no rigid social codification according to occupation or ancestry, no snobbery taken to the level of designating some people as untouchable.

My friend, who said he went by the name of Suryan, explained to me that the river Krishna to the north, of which the Tungabhadra was a tributary, was not only the border between Vijayanagara and the Bahmani sultanates but also marked the southern limit of the Aryan invasions many centuries earlier. It was the Aryans, he said, few in number but warlike and well armed, who had imposed upon the conquered populace of central and northern India laws whereby only Aryans or their descendants could hold land, bear anus or belong to the priesthood. In time these practices had been codified as the Bhahminical system, which gave apparently god-ordained legitimacy to a ruthless oppression.

However, he continued, the old practices continued south of the Krishna under the Dravidian Chola dynasties, then later still under the benign rule of the Vijayanagaran Deva Raya dynasty.

'So what is the real Hinduism?' I asked, attempting to conceal my ignorance of what he was talking about, all of which seemed to him self-evident

He began by asserting that the word itself was Persian and not Dravidian. He went on: 'Naturally, since the Aryans adopted our religion there remains much in common. We honour the same manifestations of godliness. Shiva, Vishnu, their consorts and offspring, but often under different names and very often without any ot their harsher characteristics. Indeed there is a gender reversal in their pantheon since the goddess, especially in the form of the beautiful Parvati, is here honoured above the male gods. But we also honour the spirits of place, of trees, springs, seasons and the like, most of whom are also female. I attach myself particularly to the cults of Rati who rides on a swan, her consort Kama, the god of love, Skanda, who rides on a peacock, and Sarasvati, goddess of music and learning.'

'And do you follow the Brahmins in their pursuit of union with the godhead and spiritual perfection through reincarnation?'

'Not at all.' Suryan expressed some disgust at the very idea. 'The goddesses and gods I have spoken of are all human creations, outward manifestations of the goddess within us, and our exercises are devoted to achieving the ecstasies that enable us to become one with that deity.'

This approached very closely the beliefs and practices of the branch of Islam in which I was brought up, until I suffered that cruel sword-stroke and the loss of all those I loved, beliefs I later learnt to understand better in the fastnesses of the Hindu Kush. I was to discover that this Kaula version went to a far deeper level even than that taken by the dervishes who, amongst us, achieve similar if cruder ecstasies m their whirling dances.

By now we had reached a shaded corner of the great square within the portico of one of the buildings that enclosed it. After first promising to return before sunset, I left Suryan there with his back to a less than aniconic linga. the phallic symbol of Shiva, and made my way back up into the Royal Enclave. I had no difficulty getting there: casual passers-by were ready with directions and, as I began to move through the Royal Enclave, minor officials and doormen also helped me.

Chapter Six

My access to the Prince's presence was, indeed, unchallenged though it did involve a wait of several hours. Meanwhile messengers, petitioners, mendicants, suppliers of war materials, inventors of new weapons, and who knows what else?, came and went, singly or in groups, while vendors selling slices of melon or cups of cold water, coconut milk and lassi in their rounds. I asked the doormen who stood at the various entrances that led into the further parts of the building if, how, or when I could be granted an audience with Prince Harihara. My requests were met with polite assurances that I would be taken to him in no time at all. However, I soon realised that similar answers were being returned to almost all who approached them, so at last I did what I had not done in two years and more: I parted with my precious bundle. 'Take it,’ I insisted to a doorman, an elderly but kind-looking man who carried an ebony staff with silver mountings, 'and tell the Prince that, if he needs to know more about its provenance, to send for me before dusk.' I then sat down with my back to the doorpost and waited. An hour or so later I saw him picking his way through the crowd and guessed that it was me he was looking for. Again I presented myself to him.

"Ah!" he exclaimed, with some relief. 'I was beginning to tear you had gone. Prince Harihara will see you now.'

His ebony staff was clearly a symbol of some authority for doors opened to him as I followed and door-keepers stood aside. The halls and courtyards he led me through were beautifully proportioned, not grandiose now that we had left the public area but not lacking dignity either, many with slender pillars, intricately carved ceilings and others with small ponds and fountains. Songbirds fluttered at liberty and butterflies cruised low banks of almond-scented purple flowers. Unglazed windows looked out over the lower town and the great valley beyond. It put me in mind of the Alhambra Palace on the hill above Granada but with this advantage: there, following the Kor'an, the decorations are either abstract or repeat endlessly in fine calligraphy the mantra ' Wa-la ghaliba illah-Llah' (There is no Conqueror but God), while here wall-paintings and low-relief depicted the joys of an earthly paradise in realistic detail.

We came at last to a loggia set behind a pool with views of the mountains we had crossed the day before framed in its arched windows. Prince Harihara Raya Kurteishi was standing in one of them. He turned to face us as we came into his presence.

He was tall and well-built, his dark skin glowing with the sheen so typical of his race. He wore a rich gown made of fine buttery-yellow cotton, embroidered with silver, which added to the easy grace of his movements. He also wore a necklace of filigree gold and precious stones, which might have been a badge of office but whose function, I later decided, was probably decorative. His hair was long, worn to his shoulders, and thick, a lustrous black, not unlike the mane of the leader of a pride of lions; his hands were large and strong. He carried with him an aura that was almost godlike, the charisma of the anointed. And, for as long as he was more than twenty feet from you, you would swear he was in the prime of life, not more than thirty years old. It was only as he came nearer that you saw the deep lines in his face, particularly on either side of his mouth, giving a sharper delineation to his cheeks and jaw, the crow's feet at the corners of his deep-set eyes, the furrows in his brow, the thinness of his lips. He smiled often, but always with a hint of melancholy. In short, he was fifty years old at least, about ten or fifteen years younger than I was at that time.

He welcomed me with a nod. 'You are Ali ben Quatar Mayeen, a merchant?'

I assented.

'And you brought me this packet?' A slight gesture indicated a small table on which it lay, but now with its thongs of faded red leather unknotted and its outer cover of oiled cloth peeled back to reveal the leaves of parchment it contained. My bowed head signalled agreement.

'Then it is possible we have much to talk about.'

My well-being, and indeed my continued existence, have often depended on an ability to make quick, accurate assessments of the people I am dealing with, and particularly of their weaknesses. Prince Harihara, I decided almost immediately, was vain of his appearance, and had a high regard, perhaps not fully justified, for his own abilities – characteristics I associate with younger brothers of heirs apparent, cousins of royalty, people who owe their position to birth but would prefer to think that they have got where they are through merit. They bask in the light shed by those yet more privileged by birth than they, and presume upon it – yet they resent it.

And what did he see?

The man standing in front of him looked like a scarecrow. He wore a large, greasy turban above a black voluminous sheet, torn in places, laded to rust in others, and grubby with the food that had been spilt on it. A diagonal scar traversed a face that a straggly moustache and goatish beard did nothing to make more prepossessing. Below the sheet his shins were stick-like and the nails on his long sandalled feet were turned down like claws over his toes. In his right hand he held a staff, as tall as himself, ash-white and barkless with age, on which he leant, his body tilted to the left so it made a zigzag against the straightness of the pole. In short, dear Mah-Lo, he had before him what you see now, though perhaps a little less ruined by age and pain-racked joints.

Prince Harihara was, therefore, probably disinclined to believe a word of my story: it would seem to him, on the face of it, an unlikely concoction put together to cover the fact that I had either stolen the package from a traveller or picked it up on the quay of some Levantine port. Yet this magnifico was ready to listen to the vagabond: that surely said something about the package I had brought.

Had he not already perused the parchment leaves I doubt he would have given me the time of day, let alone a full personal audience. However, having established that it was indeed I who had brought the packet, he went on to question me as to how it had come into my possession. Reserving judgement tor the time being on my veracity he concluded, 'No doubt you expect some reward for bringing it to me.'

I shrugged and murmured, 'It's a long way from Calais to Vijayanagara. But my main purpose was to fulfil the request of the man who gave it me.'

'He must have made a deep impression on you in what was, after all. a short time.'

I inclined my head but did not elaborate.

'Did you have any knowledge of what this packet contained?'

I glanced at it. 'When I handed it to your major-domo the leather strings were still knotted. It was not I who undid them. I was told that I would be cursed if I did.'

Prince Harihara picked up the bundle of parchment leaves and eased them apart. The cured sheepskin of which they were made creaked repellently and he could not repress a slight shudder of distaste. 'You have travelled much,' he said.

'Just about everywhere, except the southern parts of Africa and the unknown continent of Vinland, which some say lies west of Europe and east of Asia.'

'And you can read?"

'A little of most languages.'

'Inglysshe? Learned men who work in our libraries have already declared that that is the language most of this is written in. However, they were not sufficiently conversant with that language to translate what was in front of them. Can you read Inglysshe?'

'Bills of lading. Regulations regarding import and export, that sort of thing, yes. I can also ask for a room in an inn, order food, get fodder for any beasts I have with me ask directions and pass the time of day with any travelling companion I might share the road with.'

He handed me the top sheet of the part of the bundle that was written in the tongue we had been discussing. I read it aloud.

As John the apostel hit syy with syght

I syye that cyty of gret renoun

Jerusalem so nwe and ryally dyght

As hit was lyght fro the heven adoun

The birgh was al of brende golde bryght

As glemande glas burnist broun

With gentyl gemmes anunder pyght

Wyth banteles twelve of tiche tenoun

Uch tabelment was a serlypes ston-

'Well,' he interrupted, 'what does it all mean?'

'There are many ways of speaking this language, many dialects,' I replied, 'just as there are in your languages. I travelled and traded in the south-east of Ingerlond, and this is written in a dialect which I would guess is spoken in the north-west.'

'But you must have an idea of what it is about.'

'It seems to be describing a city. A city of some wealth, perhaps.'

'Go on.'

'Certainly it says there's gold burning bright, noble gems and, if I've got it right, twelve different sorts of precious stone.'

'How does it go on? What sort of stones? Does it name them?' He handed me the next sheet.

'Jasper, sapphire, chalcedony, emerald…'

'Good, good.'

'Sardonyx, ruby…'

'Are you sure it says "ruby"?'

"The sexte the rybe". I'm sure "rybe" must be ruby.'

'I ask because it is generally believed on this side of the world that rubies can only be found in Burmah and Mandalay. But go on.'

My finger tracked down the page as I picked out the words I believed were of interest to him, ignoring the rest. 'Chrysolite… beryl… topaz… chrysoprase… jacinth and… amethyst,' I concluded.

'Is that all? Is that it?'

I moved on a page or so. 'It goes on about how the streets of the city are golden and the "wones", I think that must mean houses, are all inlaid with precious stones. And the whole place is big. about a mile and a half square.'

He sighed. A sigh of satisfaction, repletion almost. Silence fell. Water tinkled in a fountain, a caged bird sang.

'Where is this city?' he asked at last.

'Jerusalem is mentioned, but I've been there and it was nothing like the place these pages describe.'

'Could it be anywhere in Ingerlond? Perhaps… in the northwest, I think you said?' I shrugged, stuck out my more or less scar-free bottom lip. He insisted, 'Have you heard of such a place? Surely, if such a place exists, you would have heard of it.'

'There are stories.' I ventured, 'but it's a part of Ingerlond I have never been in. The north-west, that is.'

He chewed his thumbnail for a moment and thought, clearly trying to decide how to proceed. 'If you wish payment for the service you have done me – indeed,' he added, double-locking, as it were, the stable-door, 'if you wish to receive a permit entitling you to reside here as a merchant for more than twenty-four hours – you will present yourself to my chamberlain tomorrow morning before noon. You may go now. Enjoy the festival."

And he turned away, picking up the three bits of parchment he had not let me peruse, on which, I presumed, his brother John, or Jehani, to give him his proper name, had written his personal message to him, in the Teluga language, using the script that is the private preserve of the rulers and nobles ot that country, and began to read them yet again.

Chapter Seven

Back at the great platform, I found that the student, or monk, I had met in the morning had been as good as his word and had kept a small space for me beside him, in spite of the huge press that now filled the square. He had even saved me a piece of unleavened bread smeared with a spicy paste that he had bought from one of the many vendors. With it he had kept for me a half coconut shell filled with soured cow's milk, ayran, we call it, lassi is their word – a most refreshing beverage.

The festivities that followed were as magnificent as I had expected, and as tedious. These things always are, are they not? Every quarter of the city had its troupe of dancers, its musicians; each vied with all in the splendour of their costumes and the intricacy of their performance – all of which is wonderful, no doubt, if you are a tiro, an expert who can distinguish the finer points that raise one troupe above another. And certainly they looked good, in magnificent multi-coloured robes and costumes, mostly in billowing silks with embellishments in gold thread, huge moulded masks crusted with gems, leafed with gold and plumed with the feathers of forest birds. Some wore their nails long or had artificial ones attached, some swung scimitars in ritualised combat. Some stamped their feet and others performed extraordinary contortions to represent their multi-limbed deities. They blew trumpets, banged gongs, tooted on flutes and twanged their long-armed guitars.

After an hour I was bored. After four hours, with the torches and flambeaux at last burning low, I was practically asleep. And then, to my consternation, I saw these replaced with fresh ones, which, I calculated, would take us through to dawn. I yawned, apologised to Suryan, and told him that I had been travelling on the road and before that by boat for many months without a break, that I had had a long and tiring day, that I was not as young as I once was…

'Ali, I'm so sorry,' he exclaimed, 'how thoughtless of me! You must come to my lodgings at once where we can have a proper meal and I can lend you a bed. No, no, please, I insist. Like you I have seen enough for one night. The festival runs for a week and we – I – can come again tomorrow. I shall not miss anything of importance.' Already he was leading me downhill, away from the platform, past the huge stables of the imperial elephants, through terraces and parks lit with lamps fuelled with aromatic ghee, towards the river, which we presently crossed on a wide, magnificent stone bridge, guarded by granite lions.

In apology for the spare entertainment he was about to offer me, lie explained that he led an ascetic life, although his family were landowners who could have provided him with all the luxuries he denied himself However, he was not pompous or preachy about all this – he admired showiness in others, and found nothing wrong with worldly pleasures. For, as he had already told me when expounding the Kauli creed, he, like most Vijayanagarans, believed that what happened after death was at best unknowable and that the highest happiness men or women can achieve, through exquisite and passionate sensation, is that unification of mind and body that reveals the godhead within, all achieved in this life.

He also told me that he shared his home with his twin sister.

Presently he led me to a small suite of rooms in a large, rambling building, which included on the ground floor shops, the offices of traders, public baths and a couple of small enclosed gardens, lit with paper lanterns. Citrus trees grew in tubs above pools filled with small fish that darted about like shards of light.

Suryan's apartment was lined with, or perhaps even constructed from, a silvery aromatic wood. Its ceilings were finely carved with stalactitic formations apeing the structure of stylised flowers and the more exotic crystal formations one can find in certain mountain caves. Below the dado the walls were hung with fine silk rugs and paintings on cloth, mostly representing scenes of pleasure: hunting, feasting, dancing and copulation. There was, after all, little in the way of asceticism that I could see, but I supposed that in comparison with the luxury and magnificence of his family's palaces, these rooms might have seemed cramped and homely.

And then something strange happened. While I was still admiring the principal room – indeed, as I peered up at the intricacies of the ceiling – he vanished like a wraith, from my blind side, into the shadows.

'Lima, my sister, will take care of you now, I must depart to my studies…' and, just like that, he was gone.

A few minutes later a light glowed beyond a gauze hanging, which I now realised masked a long passage. It came nearer and glowed more brightly, and soon I saw the hands that held it. a silver lamp with a tiny wick above a reservoir of ghee, and the face that seemed to float above it.

Uma was a delight. Her skin was the colour of dark honey and she had long, glossy black hair, which yet had hints of fire and copper in it. whether natural or applied I do not know. Her almond eyes were surprisingly light in colour, a golden brown, though occasionally tinged with green. Her forehead was high, her neck long but sturdy; her shoulders gleamed like bronzed butter. Her exposed breasts were like pomegranates, the nipples painted scarlet. Her lips were full, rich and welcoming. On that occasion, being indoors and not expecting visitors, she was naked to her waist apart from jewellery and a tall beehive-shaped headdress, gold and studded with gems. Her waist was circled with an emerald green sarong of fine silk and gold thread, which hugged her hips before swooping in a V-shape below the rounded temple of her belly to a fastening that rested on her pelvic bone. It then swept outwards from the shadowy places beneath to expose her thighs. Her only flaw, if flaw it was, was that her eyebrows met, curiously, like Suryan's, above her nose.

She welcomed me with formal warmth, kissed my hands, made me sit on a low couch. Then, from an alcove she brought a bowl of scented water to wash my feet, and gave me a soothing infusion of fragrant herbs and rice wine to drink. As she knelt in front of me and I saw the way the coils of her hair made spirals in the nape of her neck and down her back, and as her soft breasts briefly caressed my thighs, old longings stirred my ancient loins.

The ablutions completed, she then brought me a simple meal of rice, aromatic with turmeric and other spices, toasted pine-nuts and mushrooms, followed by fruits carefully chosen to make harmony of colour and taste, sharp and sweet, musky and honeyed.

As we began to eat, she raised her eyes to mine and said, in a voice that was deep for a woman but as gentle as fur, 'Ali ben Quatar Mayeen, you have lived many years, travelled to the ends of the world, and seen many strange and wonderful ihings; Suryan and I, however, are on the very threshold of adult life, our heads Stooping below the lintel, our feet upon the step, childhood behind us and the great world ahead. It would be a favour it you told me a little of what you have leant, and perhaps, too, what has brought you so far from the inland sea, across the ocean, to Vijayanagara."

I spoke for an hour or so as the night wore on, recounting some of what I have told you, my dear Mah-Lo, over the last week or so. Prompted by her questions, I overcame my reluctance to assume the teacher's role, and intermittently added something of what I have learnt concerning the nature of our brief existence, building on what I had absorbed at my father's knee and later in the mountains of central Asia, of the secret mysteries of the Shiite sect in which are framed my more formal beliefs.

These, as I have already suggested, coincided remarkably with what Suryan had made of the deeper aspects of the Kauli religion, not in formal dogma or in outward representation but at a deeper level of understanding. Uma attempted to put this in words.

'We follow practices known as the panchatnakaras, which help us to achieve the state we call Kula. Kula occurs when mind and sensation are united, the sense organs lose their differences, and the object perceived becomes one with the senses it stimulates. That is the only the ecstasy, the only goal worth striving tor, and thereby and therein is revealed the goddess or god within."

And what,' I asked, 'are the means by which this state is reached?'

'They are many,' she replied, stretching out on the cushions that she had scattered to fill a corner of the room, 'and each reveals the goddess not only in different aspects hut at different levels of intensity. For instance, the ceremonial dancing and music you witnessed tonight can bring more than a glimmer, as indeed can the contemplation, which we call rasa, of the carved and painted images with which our city is filled and which contribute to making we Vijayanagarans the happiest of people. The Brahmins believe that the highest ecstasy comes from rasa, from contemplation of the things other people do or have made. But this is perverse and a mere expression of their belief that those who work with their hands and bodies live at a lower level than those who live through their minds. A yet greater revelation comes to those who sing and dance and play their instruments in mystical accord than to those who merely listen and watch, and to the craftsmen who paint and carve and model. At a lesser level are the joys of eating and drinking as we have done tonight… Yet,' she added, with a laugh that chimed like temple bells, 'even here the joy I experienced in making the meal surpassed yours when you ate it.'

'And how,' I asked, 'is the greatest ecstasy achieved, the most perfect fulfilment, the ultimate state of unity with the god within?'

For a moment it seemed she withdrew from me into an inner world, then, returned, laughing again. 'Oh, that is a matter of prolonged dispute between the wise men, the sadhus. And what it comes down to is that probably no single activity can produce at one moment the perfect resolution of the separateness that keeps each of us from our god. But that some exercises are more likely to bring one nearer than others is self-evident. Some say the divine moment can come in dance and contemplation of dance; others insist that the taking of certain elixirs is an essential – certainly bhang, which you call hashish, and its derivatives are a help. But there are also distillations of certain plants, fruits and flowers whose habitat and preparation only the hill-people know, which may do even more. Others claim they have found the most perfect enlightenment from breathing in the fumes produced by burning the dried gum of the poppy. And, of course, sexual congress performed with proper skill is a favourite route for many.'

I shifted on my cushions, and, following the spicy food, racked with a delicious weariness as I was, released a small fart I would have preferred to keep to myself. Uma smiled… like a mother.

'Better out than in,' she said.

An indulgent mother.

'I have been,' I said, partly to cover the mild confusion I felt, 'to places in the Western Lands where enlightenment has been sought not through pleasure but through abstinence and self-mortification. I have seen crowds many thousands in number in which all have beaten each other with many-thonged whips for hours on end until the streets ran with blood. And I have seen others who have taken themselves to caves in the mountains or tiny temples, and there lived on nothing but crusts and water until, with their bodies almost wasted away, their cheeks heightened in colour, their eyes huge and staring, with spittle on their mouths, they have claimed to see good spirits and evil ones and even God himself. I have to say that most of these I speak of are Christian, and as you no doubt have heard, they are the most mad of all. There is positively no rhyme or reason in most of what they get up to.'

Uma nodded. 'There arc so-called mystics in India too, who claim enlightenment by similar means: fakirs, for instance, who run across burning coals, sleep on beds of nails, or contort their limbs into absurd and unnatural postures before entering a trance-like state wherein all bodily functions appear to cease for many hours or even days. Perhaps such people do experience the ecstasy we seek, but it seems absurd to resort to such painful means when the same results can be achieved in moments of pure pleasure…'

I agreed, for it was indeed the case that the greatest deprivation I had suffered, in spending a day and a night on top of a pile of headless bodies in a well, had not led to spiritual union, ecstatic or otherwise, with the godhead.

And now, while these last few words of Uma were still echoing in my head, I realised that something was happening to me, to my mind and body, which I could not withstand or control. The walls of the room seemed to blow in and out like curtains, I heard a roaring like a wild wind in my ears, and I felt my fingers, my feet, then my lips go numb. A sweat broke out on my brow. Then, as darkness tilled the room and the walls with their hangings receded into it, I became aware of a pinprick of white light that slowly increased in size, became red and spun, like a spiral-shaped comet, trailing fragments of light in a tail behind it. It spun faster and faster, and I felt myself falling into it, or perhaps I was sucked into it, until I became part of it, became the ball of fire itself and I heard a voice, perhaps my own, saying, over and over again, 'I am all there is,' accompanied by a feeling of deepest anxiety and deepest exhilaration combined. Then, nothing, for what seemed a long time, just darkness.

Then out of the darkness came a dark figure, a black-skinned woman with four arms, blood-red palms and blood-red eyes. Below a protruding tongue, which also dripped blood, she wore a necklace of skulls. Her crown bore lotus flowers, but they were purple and red. Her robe was as black as night and strewn with stars, and the moon rose behind her head. She was girdled with serpents. Her voice, however, was soft and seductive and she said, or did she sing? these words: 'Come joyfully into my arms and you will know all there is any need to know.'

I came round to the sound of running water and chiming bells, with the warmth of the sun on my body and a sweet, jasmine-like fragrance in my nostrils. Opening my eyes, which seemed gummed as they are when one wakes from a fever, I found I was lying beneath a low orange tree or bush whose glossy leaves, black against the pearly sky of dawn, shaded my eyes though not my torso and legs. They were lit by the first glow of the sun that had just cleared the crags to the east of the city, bringing with it instant warmth. A deep happiness filled my soul, and without questioning how I had come to be where I was I allowed myself to drift off again into a different sort of sleep, a healing, warming, happy sleep.

Next time I awoke I sat up with a start, and the last shadow of a second or third dream melted like mist. Again it had been of a lady, but as different from the first as could be. This one was pure white, with yellow hair, naked, standing in a cave of ice. Even as I hauled myself into a sitting position (the leaves brushed my old turban and a big round fruit bumped on the top of my head) and re-oriented myself, she vanished. She had left me with a warm, rich glow in my loins and, such was her power, even on an old man, a smear of semen across my stomach.

I plucked an orange from the tree, broke through its rind with my thumb and gorged myself on it. Never had I enjoyed a fruit so much as the juice trickled down my chin and my eyes roved across the domes, shikhatras, or mountain-like towers, and pinnacles of the city. They were both behind and in front of me, on the far side of the valley, glowing with gold leaf or ceramic mosaic. The great river with its woods, gardens, threaded its way between them before losing itself in the fields and forests that stretched beyond into the mist-enshrouded distances.

Again I wondered how I had got to be where I was. Had the time I had spent with Suryan and Uma been just as little real as the dream of the naked white woman? Perhaps. At all events I had come to no harm, had, for the most part, pleasant recollections to dwell on, but now, if I was to be paid by Prince Harihara, I had an appointment to keep.

Chapter Eight

This time, the chamberlain with his silver and ebony wand was waiting for me and eager to conduct me into the Prince's presence. Harihara had chosen to be out of doors, and was sitting in a carved marble chair beneath a palm tree in one of the small, enclosed gardens. Beside him there was an octagonal table, also marble, pierced and fretted to look like one of the more intimate temples. His long fingers picked at a silver dish tilled with ripe fresh dates; next to it he had placed the package of parchment leaves I had brought him from across the world, the red thongs loosely tied up again.

He now questioned me far more closely than he had before about my previous journeys to Ingerlond, how well I knew the language and the customs, and whether or not I should be able to find the place where his brother Jehani was hiding. From this I gathered, erroneously it turned out, that what interested him as much as the whereabouts of his brother was the location of the city built of precious stones and gold.

I answered all these questions with as much honesty as I could muster, but as I sensed that an offer of employment was in the air and since I was destitute, following the loss of my shipwrecked horses, I said nothing that might imply a less than complete mastery of the Inglysshe tongue, or a less than extensive knowledge of the country and its customs.

Next he concentrated on the prowess of the Inglysshe in the arts and sciences of war but on this subject I had to confess myself ignorant-at least at first hand. I gave him my impressions: that both gentry and common people fought with foolhardy bravery, were competent in the management of their weaponry, but had been, in recent times, poorly led. In the past their kings, who claimed many cities and much land on the mainland by right of inheritance, had won many great battles against the kings of the Franks, but in the last few years had lost almost all they had gained. This was because their current king was first a babe then a youth and finally an indecisive weakling, some said mad, and partly because the Franks were led by a wild woman, possessed by devils, who inspired her troops to feats of bravery and cunning. How else could a mere woman have won so many victories before the Ingerlonders captured her and burnt her alive as a witch?

'But they are skilled in the most up-to-date improvements in the art of warfare?' Prince Harihara was now insistent, clearly signalling the answer he wanted to hear.

I am a stranger to the courtier's arts but I knew there would be no point in denying something about which he had already reached a conclusion.

They fight from horses?' Yes. 'They understand the science of building fortifications?' I remembered the towers and battlements that circled Calais. Yes. 'And the art of using fire-powder? Do they have that? I mean not merely as an incendiary but as a propellant.' I recalled that I had seen, on the quay at Calais, monster tubes, known as canes or cannons for their resemblance to the hollow stems of wood children use for simple whistles or pipes, mounted on wheeled carriages. They were used, I had been told, to throw large balls of stone or iron at hostile ships, pirates or Frankish, attempting to cross the harbour bar. So, yes again.

The interrogation continued for a half-hour or more, but, though I could only guess to what it tended, I sensed that I had already said enough and that Prince Harihara's mind was made up. He was merely padding out the process so that it would not appear that he had taken an important decision without due consideration. At last he came to the point, and I confess I was more surprised than I allowed myself to reveal.

He cleared his throat, leant back in his chair so that his face was shaded from direct sunlight. His eyes shone, on account of the reflection from the nearby pool. He laced his long fingers beneath his chin. 'I have a mind,' he said, and his voice was quiet but firm, 'to go to lngerlond myself, find my brother Jehani and bring him home. I have discussed this possibility with the Emperor and he is agreeable, provided I combine the trip with other objectives that will be of more public value. To this end I shall require the services of a guide who knows the language and the country. In short I expect you to come with me in that capacity.'

Note: not 'I should like…' or 'Would you be so good as to…', but 'I expect'. The surprise was that he was coming too. That I had not anticipated – he was of the imperial family, held a senior position in the government, namely Minister for Defence of the Realm. Moreover, considering his age and the pampered ease of his life hitherto, I doubted his capacity to withstand the privations we should undoubtedly encounter.

However, he had arrived at a correct estimate of my circumstances and knew I was in no position to refuse gainful employment. I was not quite sure how I should demonstrate my assent. Had he been a caliph or sultan there would have been no problem: I should have thrown myself on my knees in front of him, grasped his hands, and showered them with kisses and even tears of gratitude, but these Dravidian princes seemed to expect less formal if more subtle appreciation of their rank. They are, however, just as proud as their Arab, Moghul or Brahminical equals, and stand on ceremony too, but a ceremony that is muted, played down, so an illusion is created that discourse with them is conducted as if between equals, near equals anyway. On this occasion I bowed my head, and kept it bowed for a second or two, which appeared to be enough.

'That's settled, then. Chamberlain Anish will take over now and look after you. Through him I want you to make all the preparations you think necessary to get us on our way as soon as possible. I shall require a train commensurate with my position as envoy of the Emperor, but not so magnificent as to inspire envy or suspicion. Anish and you will work out the details.'

He waved his hand, and I found that the Chamberlain was already at my elbow, having returned on silent feet. His master popped a date in his mouth, and thus contrived to signal that the audience was over and that he had other business to attend to. Thus it was that three months later we sailed not from Mangalore but from the more northern port of Gove or Goa, which we Arabs call Sindabur, thereby making the overland journey from the City of Victory shorter by fifty miles or more and the sea voyage to Yemen by.is many leagues.

During the in-between time I was put on the Prince's pay-roll and given a room in the compound that served in the Royal Enclave as his private residence, his official offices, and quarters for his servants and staff. The room was small but clean, the wont thing about it being that it was set over a yard on to which the kitchens opened so the air was often heavy with the smell of clarified but rancid butter, garlic and stale spices. The money, however, was good, especially as I had no expenses, and I banked almost all of it with a Jewish diamond-dealer, whom I befriended on the other side of the river, thereby laying the foundations of the minor fortune that now sustains my old age.

I did not, during this time, meet or even see Suryan or Uma. I spent the early afternoon of the day on which I had concluded arrangements with my Jew wandering about the commercial sector looking for the house to which I thought I had been taken. The trouble was that there were, it seemed, literally scores that might have passed for it and none that fitted my recollection exactly, so I gave up. Indeed, by the time we left the city I was more or less ready to accept that the whole experience had been a fantasy brought on by tiredness, the strangeness of my new surroundings, with some wish-fulfilment thrown in too.

However, I did find a temple, a shrine, not in the Sacred Zone but tucked away between the river and the commercial sector the image of whose goddess exactly matched up with my dream, if it had been a dream, of the black woman ornamented with skulls, dripping with blood. The place was deserted, as if ill-omened, though kept clean and properly maintained. No one would tell me who this goddess was, but rushed past when I asked them, some making warning signs much like those we use in Arab countries against the evil eye. However, eventually a small girl, carrying a straw bag filled with flat, plate-like loaves of bread, told me she was Kali, Bhadra-kali, the goddess of death who, in the legend, slays Shiva.

For the rest I continued to enjoy most of what Vijayanagara had to offer. The great buildings, many of them public, whether devoted to government or religion or to utility and pleasure, never ceased to fill me with wonder and delight. Especially I remember the Queen's Bath, the Shiva Temple, with its bewitching wall paintings, the stepped pool with its terraces of stone seats dropping in half pyramids to the cool water where anyone might find refreshment in the afternoon heat, the imperial elephant stables with their wonderful gilded domes and tall entrances. Everyone; it seemed, was a musician or poet, from the Emperor himself, who was considered an avatar of Krishna and who in writing verses in praise of the god thus praised himself, down to the humblest porter in the fruit market.

There was fruit and rice in plenty for all, and so cheap as to be almost free. Milk, butter, cheese, eggs and fish cost a little but not much. Meat eating was discouraged as being both unhealthy and against religion though the nobility hunted deer and wild goat through the mountain forests and served it at family feasts. Everyone was adequately housed for there was timber, brick and stone in abundance. And so, dear Mah-Lo, my three-month stay passed in congenial work preparing for our expedition and in delight at my harmonious and elegant surroundings.

There was just one evil to be feared: the sultans to the north of the river Krishna, their satraps, and the envious malevolence of their Brahminical collaborators. For the most part they fought each other rather than the Dravidians, but every now and then a warlord, feeling secure to the north after a brief, successful campaign against his neighbours, crossed the river and penetrated as far as he could, looting, pillaging, raping until the Emperor could gather a force strong enough to drive him back. Then the streets of the city would be filled with the wounded and maimed, temples became hospitals, and the open spaces camping grounds for refugees.

Chamberlain Anish, he who carried the ebony wand, proved a valuable ally, a skilled negotiator and a man of practical sense.

About fifty years old, he was short, tubby, had narrow eyes a little like a Chinaman's, and a real understanding of his master's foibles, which yet did not lessen the respect in which he held him. He also had a small silky beard, a fringe about an inch long that ran from ear to ear like a noose: he stroked it with brusque little movements whenever he was pressed to make a difficult decision. Apart from the irritation this habit caused me. we got on well enough.

One day, when time hung heavily as we waited for an official in the treasury to release funds, I asked him what were the real purposes of our journey and indeed of Jehani's before us.

His normally serene expression clouded. 'It is historically inevitable," he said, 'that Vijayanagara will be overwhelmed, if not by the Bahmani sultans then by the Moghul hordes from further north. It has been the policy of our enlightened emperors to do all they can to postpone that evil day for as long as they can.' He took a turn about the treasury official's anteroom, looked over his shoulder as if fearing eavesdroppers and took me by the elbow to a shady corner. 'The root of the problem is this. Our Mussulman armies will fight their co-religionists only for as long as two conditions are fulfilled. One, that we can pay them more than our enemies can, and, two, that they are assured of winning while suffering only minimal casualties. There is no point in being paid a vast sum if you don't live to enjoy it. This means we must either employ ever larger armies or equip them with the best arms and armour available, then teach them to use them efficiently. The latter course is obviously preferred. We have had indications, by rumour and hearsay, that the Inglysshe, since they are the least civilised and most barbaric people on earth, are, when well led, unbeatable, not only through their courage and prowess but also because of the equipment they use. It was to establish the truth of this assumption that Jehani travelled west, hoping to bring back with him knowledge of the military technology the Inglysshe possessed, and possibly military men who could teach our armies how to fight.

'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.

Chapter Nine

There is always excitement, even for an old trader like me, in embarcation and departure. Picture us, if you can, towed away from the quay by row-boats, manned by dock-workers, out into the estuary of the Juari river, behind us the gilded shikharas of the temple to Shiva, the dome and minarets of the mosque with its black marble portico, and then, as the estuary widens, the customs buildings and the offices of the harbour-master. All seemed to crowd together as we moved away from them. The quay itself was lined with those members of the Prince's household who were not accompanying us. including all the women and his ten elephants. A band played, handkerchiefs and scarves were waved, elephants trumpeted and were rewarded by their mahouts with ripe mangoes.

Across the river, on the other side of the estuary, the forest came down to the water's edge, the sand a white line between green trees and emerald water. Along the edge beyond their beached boats smoke gusted out of the many fishermen's villages from the fires used to cure their catch, and beyond them, above the nodding palms, and far closer than they are at Mangalore, the Western Ghats climbed into the almost perfect blue of the sky. Above them, the north-east trades that would carry us across the Arabian Sea spun angels' hair from the clouds.

While we were still in the estuary but hail left the villages behind us we passed a point where dugongs grazed the abundant seaweed that filled a small cove and marvelled at the human way the cows suckled their young. I remarked that it was strange to find a colony so close to human habitation since their meat is highly prized. This prompted Anish to tell me they were protected in this area as servants of the goddess in her manifestation as Queen of the Sea.

On our ship all was bustle: while most of the crew stood by the mast, with the ropes in their hands that would presently hoist the big lateen sail, the rest went about their business making movables fast wherever their passengers would let them; the passengers, apart from those closest to the Prince, moved about the decks seeking places behind gunwales and bulwarks where they might be sheltered from spray and worse, and marking out their territories with their bundled blankets or rattan bags. Few wanted to go below, and in any case much of the space was taken with our larger baggage and spice sacks.

Gulls and other seabirds gathered in our wake, so we carried a comet trail behind us, and the air filled with their angry, pleading mewing. For a moment or two as we passed the harbour bar the ship bucked and shuddered in the swell, and spray flew across the deck; then the sailors in the forepeak cast off the hausers that linked us to the tow-boats, and those in the waist of the vessel hauled up the sail, which filled and bellied like a pregnant woman, pregnant with adventure.

The motion settled now into the steady rhythm of the rollers that slipped beneath us on their way to crash in a line of surf on the already distant Malabar coast. In almost no time at all the uplands of the Western Ghats, beneath their line of mountain cloud, were the only sign of land, they and the birds that followed us until nightfall.

Now the swell was no longer crested and in every direction the sea-acres of deepest indigo-black stretched to the horizon, but this was no watery desert. A shoal of flying fish flashed by, silver shards of razor-edged light, their spiny fins shredding the heaving surface. Behind them, and in ravenous pursuit, came a school of porpoises, tumbling like kittens, snapping like puppies at the fish, their skins the shiny black of carved, polished coal; while further off three whales kept station, venting their lungs in spumy breaths like smoke.

As I said, there is always excitement, a lightening of the spirits at such times. Even though one knows landfall will come, or, if not, then a watery grave, one also knows that for a day or two, a week perhaps, this is a time out of life, a space where anxiety and worry have no place. Meanwhile, there is the brightness of the sky and the rush of the wind to be enjoyed, the smells of tar, hemp and seasoned timber to be relished, and, to be shared, the slow dance of the rise and slip of the deck, the swaying tilt of the horizon, as the ship performs its pavana with the wind and waves.

Thus it was, on that day, for me – but not for Anish who, along with many others, was seasick. I suspect Prince Harihara was too, for he kept to himself in the rush-roofed area in the stern.

For my part, using my old stick to steady myself, and with the hem of my old cape banging against my knees, I took a turn round the deck. Five of our muleteers were already crowded around a cook, who was crouched over a metal bowl of charcoal, slapping slabs of dough on a metal plate above it and flipping them over as the bubbles of air separated the skins of blackening crust. The smell of grilled bread and spices wafted by on the bluish smoke, and the Arab crewmen, properly aware of the dangers of fire at sea, looked on warily, one swinging a canvas bucket ready to scoop the sea-water that rushed by below the lee rail.

Further on I came on our fakir, already with a tiny crowd of seamen, a couple of servants and four of our soldiers around him. Lean, with sinews in his neck strung tight like the strings on a sitar and fingers that flickered in what I imagine he took to be an entrancing way, he wore a baggy loincloth, none too clean, and a turban, so I supposed he was a Mussulman like myself, though of Indian stock.

Our sergeant, the second in command of the soldiers, a big, burly-fellow with a scimitar which had a spike protruding from the hilt, grumbled in my ear, 'He won't levitate or do his rope trick on account of the wind. He reckons if he did the ship would go on and leave him suspended above the ocean.'

I could not restrain a laugh. 'Well,' I replied, 'we'll see when the wind drops or when we get to dry land.'

Meanwhile the fakir was contenting himself and his onlookers by discovering long chains of knotted silk scarves in their ears and an abundance of hard-boiled eggs in his own mouth. Considering his entire upper body, apart from his turban, was bare, all this was remarkable enough in its way.

I moved on to the forepeak and found, in the angle of the bow, the Buddhist monk. As I approached he contorted himself into a yogic position beneath his saffron robe and began to repeat, with eyes shut and face lifted to the sky and sun. some meaningless mantra. His head was shaved; the simple accoutrements of his craft – a begging bowl, a pottery drum, linger cymbals and tiny bells – stood on the deck beside him. He was slight of build, had long fingers and feet, and no eyebrows at all, though the skin where they had been was red, raw and flaking. Indeed, apart from a dark haze over his scalp, his skin was smooth and hairless, like a eunuch's. He was darker than most of our party, not African dark but heading that way. Lost in his rapture, meditation, whatever, he paid no attention to me, did not open his eyes or move at all, apart from his lips, which continued to emit their monotonous drone until I passed on. On account of his religion and physical characteristics I took him to be Sinhalese from Sri Lanka.

A sudden commotion in the waist of the ship drew my attention away from him. Our sergeant had the fakir by the throat, had him up against the gunwale the edge of which was in the fakir's back and likely to make an apt fulcrum for levering him over the side. I swung myself past the mast, ducked my head under the comer of the sail and tapped the sergeant on the shoulder with the end of my stick. 'At least,' I said, 'tell me why he deserves drowning before you put him in the sea.'

He twisted his head and brought his big bullish face within inches of mine. His breath smelt of rice beer, garlic, smoked fish.

'He cheats," he bellowed, 'took a gold ring off of me by sharp practice.'

Distracted by my intervention he relaxed his grip on the sinewy throat of the fakir enough for the mountebank to draw breath and gasp.

'All straight and above board,' he cried. 'He bet me six months in his service against his gold ring he could tell me which hand I had it in. Listen, he can have it back, I'm buggered if I care.' He held out his palm with the ring on it. The sergeant took it – it was a big, chunky affair, a lion's head with tiny ruby eyes – slipped it back on the middle finger of his right hand, then pulled the hand back to his shoulder as if he were drawing a bowstring, and let loose with all his might into the fakir's face. I grabbed his flailing wrist and just saved him from going over. Nevertheless, as he lurched back, he doubled up, spitting blood and a broken tooth.

'There,' shouted the sergeant, and his little eyes roamed over all the bystanders, who now numbered most of those on board, 'that's what I do, and worse, to anybody tries to make a monkey out of me.'

That was not the end of the affair. At least, I am fairly certain it was not. Night came on, the wind dropped, the boat ambled on beneath a moonless sky with just a helmsman, who had the art of steering by the stars, and a lookout in the forepeak on watch. Neither heard anything untoward, though both said that at the darkest time the silence was disturbed by the splash and gurgle of whales or larger dolphins nearby.

And in the morning the sergeant was nowhere to be found. After supper, during which he had continued to drink copiously, he had fallen into a deep slumber with his head cushioned on his arm, in the lee of the ship's side, and when morning came he had gone. Some fingers were pointed at the fakir, but the Buddhist monk swore he had slept beside him all night, below deck, sharing one of the shelves and a thin blanket and neither had stirred until first light. I, myself, had slept on deck, outside the bamboo door of the cabin where Prince Harihara and Chamberlain Anish were bedded and I, too, heard the splashing of dolphin, as I thought. Except – that immediately preceding it I had been half woken by the sound of someone pissing long and heavily into the sea. This was followed by a brittle-sounding snap, like a branch being broken over a strong man's knee, a gasp and a splash. The splash a dolphin makes when it leaps out of the water, or that of a small whale's fluke when it smacks the surface? I didn't think so. But there was no point in saying otherwise.

Those with authority on the boat, the master and his mate, exercised the prerogatives laid down by maritime custom and overruled Prince Harihara's desire for a more complete inquiry into the loss of his sergeant. Landlubbers, they said, especially those who get drunk and fail to take the most obvious precautions, have been falling off boats since ocean travel began, and that was that. Questions, of course, remained unanswered, the most weighty being: why did the sergeant not cry out?

The master shrugged with all the disdain of a man who has gone through a long life without touching intoxicating liquor but who has observed the evil effects of drunkenness from Cadiz to Surabaya. Why ask for rational behaviour from a drunk? So the matter was laid to rest, and if any shared my misgivings, they kept them to themselves.

Here is a way of killing a man. You place a long silk scarf round his neck, retaining the ends in your hands at arm's length. You raise your foot and place it on the side or back of the man's head, with your knee bent to a right-angle. Then, very sharply, you straighten the knee. It needs the speed of a falcon's stoop, suppleness, agility, determination and training by an adept. It is the method of ritual slaughter known as thuggee and is carried out by devotees of the goddess Kali. So, maybe we had a Thug amongst us. The fakir? Perhaps. But the Thugs are cunning people, usually work in small groups or pairs, at least, and are not above using a likely innocent as a decoy. From then on I always made sure that beneath the folds of my cape and buried in my loincloth my Damascene stiletto was within easy grasp, and at night I slept with its hilt in my hand. I, too, have my skills.

Chapter Ten

The voyage unfolded without further incident. We reached the Strait of Bab el-Mandeb some two weeks later, untroubled by bad weather apart from an occasional squall, and began the long haul up the Red Sea, a distance about the same as we had already travelled. We put into the small port of Mokhi where, when I found that the imams' interdiction against drinking the infusion of k'hawah beans, which had prevented me making my fortune some four years previously, had been lifted. I prevailed upon Prince Harihara to lay out a piece of his gold on a couple of sacks. I assured him they would sell as well as coriander seed once we got into Europe. We also took on fresh water and other supplies that had begun to fall low, especially lemons.

Fortunately, at that time of year, the winds were now mostly from the east and south-east, though frequently falling away, which, with the presence of much moisture in the air, produced an enervating heat; nevertheless I took great delight during these calms in swimming in the warm limpid water of the Red Sea above coral reefs of great beauty, often plunging my head below the surface and kicking my way down like a frog so the shoals of rainbow fish darted away ahead of me. I swam with ease, in spite of my twisted, scrawny and scarred old body, which skill the rest of the crew and passengers with envy, even awe. It is a skill few have who do not come from sea or lakeside communities but one

I had been at pains to acquire when it became clear to me that sea voyages were to take up a significant portion of my life.

Indeed, that early experience of surviving the sabre slash, followed by a night bedded on top of my partially dismembered mother, had left me with not only an inordinate desire to live, but also a willingness to learn how to survive in all foreseeable circumstances. Moreover, it gave me a readiness to grasp the pleasure of each fleeting moment, each sensation, from the tremulous and slight, even the tiny scrabble of.I little red spider finding its way through the hairs on the back of my hand, to the mind-blowingly grand, like the glory of a sunset with low-lying cloud at sea.

I also persuaded the Prince to lay out a tiny sum on a sackful of sponges, which were peddled at our ship's side during a calm by a couple of lads who rowed a tiny skiff up to us from the Arabian shore.

The last two hundred miles or so were the worst, as they almost always are on that particular voyage, and took a quarter of the time we spent in the Red Sea. As the banks of the Khalij As Suways, the Gulf of Suez, closed in on us, the winds blew out of the west, earning on their back the heavy, sharp grit of the desert; the sky became overcast, with a featureless grey haze tinged with ochre, and the master and crew were increasingly bad-tempered as they struggled to keep our head close to the wind without losing forward way. The dolphins and flying fish departed for the south and an evil, grubby spume settled on the decking making it slippery and movement hazardous. As the Gulf narrowed, other shipping, too, became a hazard, those going our way competing with us to find good berths within the roads before nightfall, those leaving scudding by with the wind on their quarters, angry with us for getting in their way, spilling the wind out of our sail when they got too close, so we were likely at times to drift beam-on to that evil breeze.

Still, we made Suways by close on midday on our forty-second day out of Goa, which was about what I had told the Prince to expect. It now fell to me to organise the next stage of our journey: not only was I the only person in the party who had knowledge of Ingerlond. our ultimate goal, but I was, too, the only Arab, with knowledge ot that tongue and of the processes and prices, the snares and snags that befall travellers in those parts.

First, I had to find lodging for our party and then camels to carry us and our baggage to Al-Iskenderia, named after the great Iskender who conquered the world some two thousand years ago, or so they say, and this delay bred another. It had been our plan to give Misr-al-Kahira a miss, and pass as inconspicuously as we could across the delta and out of the country – a plan I did not much like as I had hoped to seek Haree, my son, in his place of study, and spend some time with him. However, wandering in the souk Prince Harihara came across a shop which sold the hides of various wild animals including a tawny, ragged affair with a mask still partially intact beneath a tangled halo of coarse black hair. It was, of course, the pelt of a lion.

He called me to his side. 'Ali, is not this the skin of a lion?'

I thought of temporising, of perhaps speaking to the merchant, a lean man in a red gown with a red tarboosh but no turban to go round the rim, and asking him in Arabic to deny the obvious. But, I thought, why not? I could see where this would lead, and I was in no great hurry to get to Ingerlond. It was not my brother we were looking for. Suddenly I realised I was looking through a window of opportunity, that of seeing Haree. after all.

'Yes, Highness.'

'Can lions then be found in Egypt?' 'I believe so. Highness."

I le stood there, in the dusty dusk of the shop, with the bright sunlight beyond its striped awning searing the eyes, and all the noise and bustle of the alley beyond, and quizzed me further. He pushed his glossy black hair back off his shoulder and briefly caressed his marble smooth chin. 'What other large animals live wild?'

'Crocodiles in the Nile, and, upstream, hippopotami, I believe… There are large birds too. Pelicans, storks, cranes and herons…'

We left the shop in a hurry, with its keeper tugging at my sleeve. 'Will he not buy, then? Does your master not want to buy? F can lower the prices,' he shrilled.

'I think he plans to kill his own,' I replied, tearing myself away.

It took some organising. First, we had to abandon the status of incognito travellers we had adopted. We went to Misr-al-Kahira. after all, and introduced ourselves to the Caliph's court where, as representatives of an empire as rich as any in the world, and having offered suitable gifts from the small treasury we had brought with us, we were made welcome and given lodgings in that part of the palace set aside for honoured guests. There followed a week or so of feasting and such like while a full-scale hunting party in the desert was prepared.

One of the few bitter moments of the whole trip arrived when I went to Haree's lodgings. There I discovered that he had left only a month earlier to study the causes of blindness under a Moorish physician in the university of Kamatta-al-Yahud, which the Christians call Granada.

We were well lodged in a pillared pavilion set in a rose garden with a rectangular pool edged with basalt. Unfortunately there were not enough rooms so we had to share – cooks, soldiers, servants, clerks, fakir and monk all together in a quite small vestibule. Of course, our Prince and his chamberlain had cells to themselves close to the communal baths. So it was that when the day dawned on which the week-long hunting trip was to start. I asked to be excused. My plea was that I am not happy on a horse, hate camels, and that I am too old for such sports. Prince Harihara was reluctant to leave me behind, but some days previously I had discovered that one of the Caliph's musicians had once played his flute in a military band belonging to a Pathan chief and hail enough Hindustani vocabulary to manage interpretation at a simple level. Consequently my services as interpreter were not essential. My aim, apart from avoiding the pains and terror of horse-riding, was to rest: I was, after all, and I do not think I have mentioned this, by far and away the oldest in our party and the strains of travel were taking their toll.

I watched the party leave, the grooms lumbered with a variety of crossbows, including the monster engine designed for crocodiles. As soon as the great arched gate hail closed behind them, and the dust settled, I made my way back to our quarters.

There are few delights as rich as that which comes from the knowledge that one has a limited but extensive time to oneself, in pleasant surroundings, with adequate comforts and ways to pass the time with satisfaction. I folded my tired old knees on to a pile of cushions near the pool, and sitting thus cross-legged, completed a breakfast of quails' eggs with aubergine mashed in mare's yoghurt, sesame-seeded rolls, followed by almond and honey cakes. It occurred to me that a cup of K’hawah would be the ideal accompaniment, but the effort and time required in preparing it precluded the possibility and I made do with my usual glass of lassi aromatised with a pinch of the Moluccan nutmeg we had brought with us.

For a time I watched and listened to the songbirds, many with bright and lovely plumage, who inhabited that walled garden as if it were an aviary, and made friends with a sleek grey cat with a broad flat forehead and large ears which, either from lethargy or experience of repeated failure, made no attempt to menace the birds. The time wore on and the heat built. The sun flashed from the gilded domes and minarets that rose above the nearer roofs, and my eye was caught by a pair of vultures. They were soaring almost without motion on wings white with black tips against the deep azure of the sky – quartering, I reckoned, the execution maidan where impaling were scheduled. Since its odours, of charcoal burning and rotten offal, were masked by the fragrance of roses, orange blossom and an almond-scented purple creeper that festooned one of the walls, the birds were the only visible signs of the rapacious hustle and bustle of the great city beyond.

I had thought to begin a letter to Haree, an account of my journey so far, to leave at his lodgings when we left, but already the delightful sloth that comes when one has nothing pressing to do was filling my soul and I decided instead to take a bath.

The main pool was covered by a dome, open to the sky at its centre, and pierced with smaller lights below. These let in direct sunlight, blindingly bright and warm in contrast to the velvety darkness of the rest. The water shimmered blackly except where the light fell, and there it was emerald green and laced with patterns like the veins in marble. A deck of grey granite surrounded it, also rippled but this time with quartz, and beyond were cubicles, or alcoves framed with looped-back curtains of fine cotton gauze. Steps with balustrades led down into the pool and at their head was a pair of life-size sculpted lionesses, which sat on their haunches, heads up and alert above the taut musculature of their shoulders, round ears pricked.

I stood on the threshold of this circular hall to allow my good eye time to adjust to the dark and light, and for my ears to savour the play of ripples on the sides of the pool and the rhythmical pulses of water dripping on stone and on water. Then I slipped off my sandals, not wanting to soil the floor with dust, and made my way to the nearest but one of the alcoves (who, in such a situation, ever takes the nearest opening that offers?), intending there to divest myself of cape, loincloth and turban. I did not use the alcove out of modesty, for I fully expected to be alone, but because it had a low stone shelf, and the floor by the pool was wet. There I loosened my turban, unwound it, and pulled my cape over my head. Just as it came free I sensed, rather than heard, a presence. My right hand delved into my loincloth, where my stiletto always remains hidden, then relaxed. The new arrival was the Buddhist monk and I foresaw no harm coming from him, though I felt a touch irritated that the solitude I had been relishing was gone.

He pulled off his sandals and his voluminous habit, leaving them on the deck at the water's edge before stepping down between the lions and into the pool.

Most of what light there was was in front of him and, bouncing off the water, as sharp as diamonds, made only a dark silhouette of his figure, yet one sunbeam, catching the haze of tiny droplets its heat sucked up, fell between us. A moment or two passed therefore while my mind struggled with the vision my one good eye was feeding it. It is extraordinary, is it not? how the brain refuses to yield to the evidence of the senses when confronted with stimuli that contradict its expectations. In such circumstances it will swear sour is sweet, and hot cold. And on this occasion that those softly rounded shoulders, the waist that really was a waist above broad dimpled hips and generous buttocks belonged to a man.

It gave up the pretence when she stooped a little and, in a gesture that somehow contained the essence of femininity, scooped water over the breasts I could not yet see before wading into the centre of the pool where the water came up to her armpits. She turned and I could see that her brown body was indeed female and, in a flash, I recognised Uma, the – I was about to say goddess – but the young woman, sister of Suryan, who had given me hospitality on my first night in the City of Victory.

Chapter Eleven

‘Ali?' How to describe the way she sang those two syllables?

Her voice caressed the air and water and yet it was a call, a question. 'Ali ben Quatar Mayeen? Don't be shy. Please come in with me.'

I released the hilt of my stiletto, leaving it wrapped in the folds of my loincloth, limped forward out of the alcove and stood at the top of the steps, between the two lions. With my good hand I gripped the right ear of one. My heart was beating like the wings of a newly caged bird, and I'll tell you why. I had not seen, in the flesh, an entirely naked woman for twenty years, not since the day dear Haree's mother told me she was with child.

Uma was beautiful and whatever she had in the way of what a purist would call flaws, such as a mole or two on her back, gave her the perfection she would have otherwise lacked – they conferred upon her the individuality, the thisness that shields true beauty from the dullness that measures itself against an ideal. In those moles lay mutability and mortality, the twin pillars on which the lintel of life is placed. Ah. Does that surprise you? My way of life and physical limitations, taken with a predilection to speculation, which began with the question 'How can this be?' have led me to read and talk with great minds.

The austerity of her shaven scalp was now mitigated by a thin pelt which lent her head a vulnerability that immediately invited a gentle caress. Her features seemed more marked: her eyes, pools of darkness shot with green, seemed larger, her cheeks less prominent, her red-ochre lips more full. Moreover, when I had seen her before she had been painted, her eyelids green or blue and silvered, her lips carefully outlined and filled in, her anus and neck had been hung with bangles and chains of precious stones and gold, all of which had contributed to an attraction that invited fantasy but precluded tenderness.

She moved towards me through the water, from the deepest part to the shallows, passing through sun-splashes that gilded the darkness of her skin to nightlike shadow and into light again. The water rippled first like blue-black velvet then liquid gold against her rounded breasts, her chest, the gentle mound of her belly, her sex and her thighs. Some drops remained to twinkle like diamonds in the darkness of her hair. "Come on. Come in.' Her hand unfolded towards me, the paler palm upwards, soliciting nearness.

For a second the water, though warm, struck cold to my ankle as it took my foot in a noose and I allowed myself a short shiver before my feet found the shelving bottom of the pool.

Uma had moved away and backwards as I descended but now she came forward again, the water surged between us, and she folded me into a clinging embrace with her cheek against my chest. I realised that she was shuddering, but I sensed that I was not the cause.

Then she stood back a pace and did something no one had ever done before, not even the whores I frequented in the years before I married Haree's mother, and which she could not do because she was blind and I was loath to prompt her. Uma placed her finger in the hollow between my ribcage and hip, the deep hollow starred with loose skin where the Sunnite's scimitar had finished its work sixty years before. Slowly, so the skin crept beneath her touch, and I shuddered with her, she moved her finger up the jagged line through the valley the steel had carved in my ribs, across my still angled collar-bone, up over my cloven chin and split lips, across my cheek and into the sightless socket of my eye. Then she laughed, the sound like bells reverberating quietly beneath that egg-shaped vault.

She came in closer again and I could smell the cinnamon fragrance of her skin beneath the sharper odours of the water, which rose, warmed by the earth's inner heart, from a deep spring far below, and slipped her hand between my arms and torso, high up almost in my armpits. There was awkwardness now as my twisted left arm got in the way, but she ran her hands down my flanks to my hip-bones and then up again, but on the way she let me feel her nails and provoked a sudden shock of desire. She smiled up at me. put her hands on my shoulders, and I felt the old bald man below thicken at last against her belly and, with a sense of sacrilege almost, trespass anyway, I put my hands – both of them, the withered claw as well – on her sides so that my forearms could feel the swell of her breasts, which were heavy but firm, and then the comfort beyond the comfort of apples as they pressed into my chest.

Her hands slipped up my neck, her fingertips explored its cord-like sinews, plucked teasingly at the loose skin, pulled the pendulous lobes of my ears, ran up the nape of my neck and over the wispy grey hair I keep well hidden beneath my old turban. The laugh came again, hardly more than a breath. 'Ali, how strong are you? Let's see.'

Her caress became a hug as she hung round my neck and launched herself upwards, spilling water from her flanks. Her thighs circled my waist and her ankles locked in the small of my back, and though she was not heavy and the water was buoyant, I was afraid I'd topple forward.

'Hold me, stupid.'

There was only one way I could – by placing my good hand under her buttocks and my bad one round her waist in the small of her back. She wriggled so that my fingers could not help but slip between and find the dark, warm moistness, not of the pool but of her secret places. Her shuddering faded now, and she placed her chin on my shoulder and nibbled my ear, then wriggled so her breasts parted from my chest with a delicious yet comic squelching noise, as when one sucks in one's cheeks through pursed lips.

'Ali, you need a wash, you know? Put me down over there, where the soap is.'

I had not noticed, but now I did, that a ledge ran round the pool just below the projecting rim but above the surface of the water. On it, not far from the steps where the water came only to my knees, there was a small alabaster flask and a sponge, perhaps one of the sponges we had bought from the boat-boy on our way up the Red Sea. I placed her so that she was sitting on the rim and handed her the flask and the sponge. The flask contained a thick, slippery cream, a dollop of which she eased out on to the sponge, which she grasped in the fingers of her right hand. 'Come closer. Between my knees.'

Imperious in the way only a young and beautiful woman can be.

And she dabbed the stuff, which was pearly white and scented with wild lavender, on my shoulders, chest and stomach. 'Closer still, I can't reach.'

Petulant now, she began to spread it over my front, scooping up water, and working up a lather. At first my skin cringed.

'Relax. It's meant to be fun. It's meant to feel nice.'

My heart began to palpitate again and I had to lean forward and put my hands on either side of her on the rim for support – which, of course, brought us closer still and again I could feel her breath in my ear. One hand, and the sponge in the other, slipped down my back, clasped my thin buttocks, wrinkled like walnut shells.

'Put your feet apart. Come on. Don't be shy. Your mother or your nurse did this for you when you were a baby.'

And again the bald man below pressed against her belly, but now he was harder and hot, as were my buttocks as her fingers slid between them. I could feel tears starting in my eyes, of pleasure, yes, but of a gratitude too, so intense that my heart began to swell as if it would burst, and also of a sort of vulnerability rewarded at last by shelter. After sixty years I felt as if I had come home. Her right hand now came round the front and slipped between us. Still pressing the bald man against her belly her fingers began to slide along him. Up and down, and the heat became burning. 'He's thin,' she murmured, 'like the horn handle of a knife, and long, and just as hard. Only in sensation are we truly alive,' she continued, 'but, remember, you have five senses.'

I could smell her, a muskiness like hot metal with the cinnamon and the soap; I could feel the water, the vapour around us, the stir of air on my back, the sting of tears, the heat of my body that now centred on a burning rod of fire, the slippery flags beneath the hot soles of my feet, the warmth of her breasts, the ripple of her fingers; I could hear the rustle of her breath, the drip of water and its lolloping gurgle too, the storm of beating blood in my ears; I could taste salt on her skin and panic in my mouth; and through my one blurred eye I could see the whirling sky-shards in the roof, the flashes of diamond off the water. Then all came together in a brief nova of joy.

Down in the water I knelt in adoration and clasped her, buried my face in her. She hoisted her buttocks on to the marble rim, spread her thighs and, with her hands now at the back of my head, made my mouth find her sex. She pushed on over me, and 'Eat me,' she said, 'eat me and drink me."

I did. And when she arched back her neck and cried I heard through it a rising shout, prolonged like surf, then crashing to a fall. It came from a distance, from a thousand throats, and it was real enough. Again she shuddered, and not from the ecstasy she had just experienced.

We resumed our clothes and returned to the gardens and the pavilion in the noontide heat, where the white stone seared the eye and the black shadows drowned it. The songbirds were still and only white doves cr-cr-crooed in the eaves. Uma sat in a leather-slung chair, legs stretched out, head forward and to one side, resting on the palm and fingers of her right hand. The posture-was mannish and revelatory. I suddenly realised that this Buddhist monk was not Uma but Suryan, her brother. Or, rather, that she-adopted the disguise as Suryan or as a monk so that she could move about on her own, indeed travel to the ends of the earth, untroubled by the annoyances that crowd in on a lone woman.

'I had,' she was saying, 'just come back from the impaling. I did not stay for the second lot – you heard the crowd shout just now when they were done.'

My blood ran cold to think she had been to the place of execution and seen what she had seen.

She went on, 'They were no good, you know. They wasted it. Such a waste.'

I felt a glimmer of understanding. 'They were cowards?' I volunteered.

'The worst sort. They screamed, they struggled, they shit themselves. They had the chance of the highest ecstasy, the greatest sensation. Through their agony they could have experienced, if they had been prepared to relish it, a moment of immortality. More than a moment. Instead they made it a village shambles.'

I have lived in Misr-al-Kahira and in many other Arab caliphates. I had known what that shout had been: the public impaling of robbers in the execution square. Snake-shaped hooks like those butchers use to hang dead oxen had been slung over the parapet of the gaol. The criminals had been hoisted on to the upturned points, which had thrust up through their backs, their entrails and out through their stomachs, and there they had been left to die. And Uma, driven by her strange theology, had been there to watch, hoping to see souls as well as bodies transfixed with the spikes of ecstatic pain.

Trumpets and drums. A week had passed. The hunting party was back. They came in through the big double gate, trying to look as if they had had the time of their lives – but nothing could disguise the fact that they were caked in desert dust, scratched and bruised from where they had taken tumbles, almost incapable of walking after being mounted on galumphing camels for hours on end, splattered with dried blood, their own as well as that of the animals they had killed, and weary to the point of terminal exhaustion. Behind the hunters came four carts that seemed to be loaded with heaped black flies; they trundled along beneath a buzzing, snarling haze.

Even Prince Harihara, who had been determined that the trip should be judged a success, looked thoughtful as the carcasses – matted, shapeless, bloody lumps of fur and hair – were tipped out beneath spiralling twisters of insects into that peaceful, harmonious courtyard, lined with citrus trees and roses, its long rectangular pool running down the middle. He walked through the black cloud, which glittered in the sun, prodding the bodies with the butt of his hunting spear, his other hand resting on the silver hilt of a Malayan hunting-knife that was stuck in his jewelled belt. His long, normally glossy hair was matted and dirty, his robe was torn, and for once his chin showed signs of stubble. 'Two buffalo, Ali, fine beasts.

Six desert foxes. Eight quail, four sand-grouse, three gazelles, a hippopotamus, a crocodile and, best of all, three lions. What do you think?'

He didn't usually turn to me for praise – it is a commodity thought to be debased when offered by the lowly – but no one else was on hand to give it.

Well. The buffalo were white, had spreading horns six feet across and huge dewlaps. I presumed they had not been pulling carts when his crossbow bolts struck home, though I imagine not many hours had passed since they had been. The foxes were dogs which, Anish later told me, had come bounding to greet them from a village they were approaching. The quail had been netted by local bird-trappers and the sand-grouse were poultry, though of a distinctive breed and plumage. Hippo and crocodile were babies, the adults having fled. One of the lions was a cub, the lioness its mother which, while trying to protect her young, had exposed herself to the hunting party's missiles; the male was mangy, old and toothless. The gazelle were genuine, having been shot from horseback with ordinary bows and arrows by an Ahl Bedu chieftain and his sons, in whose tents the party had spent a couple of nights after getting lost in the desert.

'Truly, O Prince, you are a second Nimrod, and before Allah a great hunter.'

'Nimrod, eh, Ali? Who was Nimrod?'

'A great hunter, Prince,' I answered, risking a hint of impatience in my voice.

‘Ah’

And he and the whole troupe headed for the baths, leaving them muddy, bloody and spoiled for a full twenty-four hours until the flow of water cleansed them.

Later I stood with Anish, supervising the cleaning and repacking of the crossbows and the somewhat diminished supply of bolts. 'That,' he murmured, 'was about the worst experience of my life. Truly we have passed beyond the bounds of civilisation.'

I thought about what he had been through and what was to come.

'Anish-bey,' I said, giving him the Arab title since I am an Arab and we were in Arab country, 'I don't think we have passed the boundary. We are close to it, but I would say we are still in a country that may properly be called civilised."

'With public executions? Impaling? To say nothing of this hunting business.'

'Believe me. You have not seen anything yet.'

Chapter Twelve

That evening over supper, taken outside the pavilion with silver lamps hanging from its arches and in the trees, the song of crickets and a great orange moon above the minarets beyond, pretending to eat sand-grouse and gazelle meat (the rotten carcasses had been buried and what we had were chicken and goat from the market), the three of us discussed which route we should take to Ingerlond. I favoured running along the coast to Sebta, crossing the straits to the great rock called Jebel Tariq and making our way to Kaniatta-al-Yahud which, I argued, would prolong our stay in civilisation longer than any other route. Of course, I had in mind that that way I would be able to see Haree, though I kept that consideration to myself. However, Anish had done some homework on his own through an Indian merchant from Bombay he had hunted out, and had discovered that all commerce between the centres of civilisation and the western barbarians was done through the city-states of Venice and Genoa, that although there was always the danger of piracy the Venetians voyaged in convoys; moreover they used galleys with oars as well as sails, which precluded the delays that might attend calm weather or adverse winds. Consequently, I was commissioned next day to leave for Iskenderia, find a ship-broker and charter a galley to take us to Venice. My familiarity with the port stood me in good stead and I had no difficulty in finding what we needed.

It was then that Uma took me to one side and asked me if I would teach her the Inglysshe language. I proceeded to do so, whenever the opportunity arose, and found her an apt pupil -more so than the Prince and Anish, who occasionally joined us and made a class of these lessons.

Our induction into barbarity remained gradual. Venice, of course, looks to the east and has borrowed much of our glory in its own architecture, along with the treasures it has plundered from us. St Mark's not only looks like a mosque with a minaret, many of its stones were taken from Arab and Ottoman lands. The city-republic boasts painters of remarkable skill some of whom, had they not been fixated either on the infancy of their god and his mother or his ugly death, equalled – so Prince Harihara asserted – those of Vijayanagara. They seemed, too, to have a fair appreciation of the joys of what it is like to be truly human that we found only rarely the further we journeyed west and north.

While we were there I went in search of the alchemist who had discovered such a signal way of making an infusion out of k'hawah beans. He was still alive, though in straitened circumstances, and delighted to find we had brought two heavy sacks with us. We took a sample along to a Jew who traded in money from a house on the Giudecca. He sampled the drink and lent a considerable sum to my alchemist, who was able thereby to set up a k'hawah house once more in the Piazza di San Marco. The money we raised defrayed all the expenses of our expedition's stay in that watery city. This Jew, Shillem by name, had an interesting history: he had been forced to convert following a nit-picking judgement made against him by the supreme court of the city. However, he had got over this and had been back in business as a banker for a decade or more. I have to say he treated us fairly.

In miles we were now well over half-way to our destination but not in time; in fact, it took us as long again as we hail already taken, and more, to find our way to Calais. The adventures and difficulties we went through are not germane to the main thread of my story so I will cut short the telling of them.

Having hired mules and asses in Mestre. We followed the valley of the river Po across the north of Italy through Vicenza, Verona and Milano to Torino.

There was much to admire in all these places but they were spoiled by the continuous state of warfare between them and even between rival parties within them. Often these fatal feuds were between families of merchants who, instead of competing in the marketplace by improving the quality of their goods or selling cheaper, resorted to swords, daggers and poison. The situation was particularly bad in Verona, which we passed through as quickly as we could after losing one of our cooks in a brawl between two gangs of unruly youths belonging to rival families. These youths even resorted to despoiling each other's tombs, but that's another story.

It was now late summer, and quite hot so the change of climate did not much bother us until we began to climb the mountains north-west of Torino. Mere, at the top of a pass called Mont Cenis, which offered us majestic views of peaks near and distant the like of which I have only seen in the high Pamirs, we caught sight of distant snow. No one would believe it was other than outcrops of white marble and branded me a liar when I tried to tell them it was crystallised water.

'Like purified sugar or salt?' Anish exclaimed mockingly.

'Like purified salt in appearance,' I replied, 'but very cold.'

Prince Harihara, however, supported me. He had heard of it but had never realised it existed in such vast quantities.

We were to see a lot more before we were through.

My companions felt the cold in the mountains and were glad to descend again into the wide valley of yet another great river, this nine the Rhone, where we found the peasants occupied with the harvest of grapes from which they made a fermented alcoholic drink that has a similar effect to bhang or rice wine, but leaves you sick and with a headache. Taken in excess over a long period, it produces fatal internal bleeding and even madness. So much were the people of the area addicted to it that they grew vines in preference to wheat, hemp and other wholesome crops.

It was now that my inexperienced companions began to experience the phenomenon that over the next year and a half was to disturb them almost more than any other: the change of the seasons. In Vijayanagara there are two, warm and wet. and hot and dry, and they follow a pattern so predictable that you can tell to the day in advance when the rains will begin and at what time of day it will rain and for how long. My friends soon discovered that a day might begin warm and bright, but end cold and wet, and that as the months rolled by the leaves fell off most of the trees, that almost all growth failed so the people had to subsist on what they had stored in barns which, by the following spring, was usually rotten. We saw people dying of hunger – a sight to which I was no stranger, but which Prince Harihara and Anish declared was obscene, an offence against nature and the gods, which indeed it is.

While I have a speculative mentality Anish likes to categorise, label, evaluate. Once, as we passed across a high plain where the crop of wheat had been burnt before harvesting rather than the stubble afterwards, where we saw the unburied corpses of women and children who had been raped and impaled, where we passed an open grave-pit filled with the blackened corpses of those who had died of plague, he said, 'Ali, you know if you said our Vijayanagaran commonwealth was the First World, and the Arab states we passed through the Second, then this surely is the Third and worst, a world where the evil hounds of famine, sword and pestilence range at will behind the god of war.'

We made slow progress up the Rhone and then the Saone,.moss those burnt and ravaged uplands then down the Seine to Paris, passing through lands owned or ruled by the King of the franks and the Duke of Burgundy, who were rivals for supremacy in the area, and many other fiefdoms, principalities and duchies, seeing many skirmishes on our way. We also saw much repression and persecution of the peasantry, and of anyone who raised a voice against the abuses or irrationality of the Church; this resulted in frequent burnings and worse in public places. As foreigners who were clearly not Christians and, since our skins were dark instead of pale, cold and bloodless, possibly not fully human, we were in constant danger of being arrested and condemned as heretics, spies or aliens. However, these people believed above all in money and wealth, although they were loath to admit it, and we were always able to buy safe-conducts and even armed protection from the nobles whose land we rode across from the store of gold and jewels we had brought with us.

Meanwhile the weather worsened and all were grateful for my foresight in this as in other things. Each person's small cache of pearls was sold in the city of Dijon, the principal residence of the Dukes of Burgundy, and soon every great lady of the court, and many of the men too, were vying with the rest in the splendour of the pearl heads they wore as necklaces, rings and earrings. By creating a fashion we turned what might have been a glut into a shortage, and the consequence was that our whole party left the walled city clad in the richest of furs and woollens, and well shod too.

And so, without too much suffering or discomfort, we came at last, in the very depths of winter, to the shores of the sea again, but this time a cold grey sea, and the port of Calais. It was the month the Ingerlonders call January, approaching the turn of the years they number 1459 to 1460.