Nathaniel's nutmeg (22 page)

With enemies in every camp the two Englishmen were
now in the gravest of dangers. 'I could not peep out of
doors for fear of the Portugals,' records Hawkins, 'who in
troops lay lurking in by-ways to give me assault to murder
me.' Soon, they chose more direct action. Learning that the
English captain had been invited to dinner with a friendly
Moghul official they hatched a plot to murder him. While
a company of Portuguese troops fanned out along the
shoreline, three soldiers bristling with weapons stormed the
marquee. Hawkins reacted quickly, grabbing his musket
and stopping them in their tracks. The Moghul official then
shouted to his followers and the Portuguese, suddenly
outgunned, fled from the scene.

It was not long before they tried again. A band of forty
men, egged on by Portuguese monks, tried to storm
Hawkins' home, 'but I was always wary, having a strong
house with good doores'.The man engineering the attacks
was a Jesuit priest called Father Peneiro. Fanatically anti-
English and a close friend of 'the dogge Mocreb
[Mukarrab]' he did everything he could to whip up hatred
against Hawkins and Finch throughout their stay in India.

By February 1609, Hawkins realised he would achieve
nothing by staying in Surat and set out for Agra, the
imperial capital, leaving behind a much-recovered Finch.
To protect him during the ten-week journey he hired fifty
Pathan horsemen, 'a people very much feared in these
parts', though not so feared as to stop two more attempts
on his life before he reached the capital. News of his arrival
had preceded him, causing quite a stir at court. The
Emperor wished to meet this curiosity immediately and
'presently charged both horsemen and footmen in many
troupes, not to leave before I was found, commanding his
knight marshall to accompany me with great state to the
Court as an ambassador of a king ought to be'. So keen
were they to bring Hawkins to his audience with the
Emperor that he was scarcely given time to change into
clean clothes. He was unprepared in another respect. It was
well known that Jehangir expected anyone to whom he
gave an audience to arrive with a large bag of presents.
Paintings, toys and trinkets were his favourites, but he had
a keen eye and did not take kindly to gifts of an inferior
quality. Hawkins had arrived in India with half a cartload
of presents but all had been stolen by 'the dogge' in Surat.

Rummaging through his baggage for a gift, the only item
he could find was a small bundle of cloth; 'a slight present,'
he admitted later, 'and not esteemed'.

Despite all the setbacks Hawkins found himself heartily
welcomed by Jehangir and chatted to him for two hours in
Turkish, informing him of all the problems he had faced in
Surat. Despite their different stations in life, the two men
struck up an instant friendship and the Emperor 'spake
unto mee in the kindest manner that could be [and] with
a most kind and smiling countenance'. Jehangir loved
curiosities and an Englishman at his court was something
truly exotic. Hawkins was given lodging and instructed to
appear before the emperor every morning.

Each day Hawkins questioned him about the possibility
of opening an English factory in Surat. Each day Jehangir
stalled for time and urged him to be patient until, tiring of
the constant petitions, he suggested that England would be
best served if Hawkins stayed at his court on a semi­-permanent basis. As an inducement he offered an annual
pension of £3,200 a year, four hundred horses and the title
of Inglis Khan: 'the title for a Duke'. It was a tempting offer
and the captain-turned-duke weighed up the options.
Eventually he agreed to stay for 'halfe a doozen yeeres',
deciding it would be foolish to turn down this opportunity
to 'feather my nest'.

He now became an intimate member of the Emperor's
inner circle. Not only did he take part in the ceremonial
duties that accompanied the daily durbar, where he sat in
the little railed enclosure reserved for the highest nobility,
but he also became a regular guest at the nightly wassails
that filled the inner recesses of the palace with debauched
laughter. It was at one of these drinking binges that
Jehangir was struck by a brilliant idea. 'He was very earnest
with me to take a white maiden out of his palace' — not as
a mistress, but as a wife. For a free spirit like Hawkins the
idea of settling down to a life of domesticity was far from
appealing but he knew that he would have to be diplomatic
when refusing the Emperor's kind offer. Quick-thinking as
ever, he told Jehangir he was theologically opposed to
marrying a Muslim, but jested that if the Emperor found
him a good Christian girl, why, he would be up the aisle in
a trice. 'At which speech,' says Hawkins, 'I little thought a
Christian's daughter could be found.' Nor did he realise
that he had thrown down the gauntlet. It became a matter
of honour for the Emperor to find Hawkins a wife and
after much searching he learned of an Armenian Christian
who had recently lost her father and was all alone in the
world. Hawkins found himself unable to refuse. 'Therefore
I took her,' he writes, 'and for want of a Minister, before
Christian witnesses, I married her.' He later discovered that
such a marriage was unlawful, 'upon which news I was new
married again'. Surprisingly, the couple fell head over heels
in love and 'for ever after I lived content and without feare,
she being willing to goe where I went and live as I lived.'

Throughout his time in Agra, Hawkins gives almost no
description of the place, save to mention that it was 'one of
the biggest cities in the world'. Although the Taj Mahal had
yet to be built, the city was nonetheless adorned with
outlandish public monuments, none of which was more
beautiful than Jehangir's palace built inside the walls of
Agra Fort. From here, richly caparisoned elephants would
carry the imperial court up into the hills for numerous
hunting expeditions. Here, too, a steady stream of courtiers,
sycophants and imperial flatterers from all over India would
arrive to pay homage to the Emperor. And as word got
around of the influence of the Englishman at court - and
as jealousies flared — the web of intrigue grew ever more
complex.

'The Jesuits and Portugalls slept not,' recorded Hawkins
with evident relish, 'but by all means sought my overthrow;
and to say the truth, the principal Moslems near the king
were exceeding envious that a Christian should be so close
unto him.' Hawkins was shrewd enough to hold his own
against men like Mukarrab Khan and the Portuguese
Jesuits, and this latter group received a stern warning from
the emperor that if Hawkins 'died by any extraordinary
casualty, they should rue for it'.

He was fortunate to be invited to partake in the
numerous daily drinking binges at court for they brought
him ever closer to the Emperor. Jehangir liked to spend the
greater part of every day completely drunk and was quite
open about his love of alcohol, stating in his memoirs
that he began to drink wine at the age of eighteen and
increased his consumption day by day until it no longer
intoxicated him. Then he moved on to spirits until, by the
end of his life, his hand shook so much that he could no
longer drink from his cup.

The imbibing would begin as soon as the day's official
business was over. Jehangir would eat his main meal of the
day, then retire to his private quarters with a few of his
closest friends. These invariably included Hawkins, who
describes how the Emperor would drink himself into a
stupor. Then, after consuming a large quantity of opium to
heighten his sense of well being, he 'layeth him down to
sleep, every man departing to his own home'.

Hawkins knew that if he was ever to acquire the elusive
trading privileges so desperately sought by the East India
Company he needed to have a constant supply of novelties
and trinkets to present to the Emperor. He wrote several
letters to London urging them to send high-quality
presents, a call that repeatedly fell on deaf ears. Several times
the directors sent paintings of inferior quality and letters
had to be despatched to London warning them 'to be very
wary what they send'. In the end Jehangir took matters
into his own hands, writing a list of his favourite presents
which included 'any figures of beasts, birds, or other similes
made of glass, or hard plaster, or silver, brass, wood, iron,
stone or ivory'.

It was the expectation of more gifts that at long last led
Jehangir to grant Hawkins his request for an English
factory in Surat. Learning of the imminent arrival of the
Ascension,
he gave his approval for the establishment of an
English trading base and allowed Hawkins to send a
message to William Finch with the good news. Finch was
most impressed with Hawkins' work and was duly
deferential in his reply, addressing him as 'my Lord' and 'my
Worship', rather than 'the captain'.

The Moghul officials and the Portuguese now
redoubled their efforts to revoke the Emperor's licence.
They proved successful for hardly had Jehangir's order
reached Surat than it was inexplicably countermanded.
There was more bad news in store for Hawkins and Finch.
The
Ascension
'was cast away' off Gujarat, presumably after
striking a reef and, although many of the crew were saved,
the 'disorder and riot committed by some of them' caused
Finch untold trouble, especially when a certain Thomas
Tucker butchered a cow in the street - 'a slaughter more
than murder in India'.

Hawkins, meanwhile, was trying to mend his fences
with the emperor, all the while making observations about
Jehangir's unpredictable character. Most afternoons he
accompanied him to lion and elephant fights which were
of a scale and brutality akin to those of imperial Rome.
Relishing the quantities of blood spilt, Jehangir took
increasing delight in gladiatorial contests between man and
beast, as Hawkins relates in a particularly gruesome
anecdote.