Hawksworth felt suddenly numb. He stumbled past the aged priest and blindly stared into the torchlit courtyard, trying to remember precisely what Roger Symmes had said that day so many years ago in the offices of the Levant Company. One of the few things he had never forgotten from Symmes's monologue of hallucinations and dreams was the name Miguel Vaijantes. Hawksworth slowly turned to face Father Sarmento and switched to English. "I will promise you this, Father. If I reach Agra, I will never speak of popery unless asked. It honestly doesn't interest me. I'm here on a mission, not a crusade. And in return I would ask one favor of you. I would like you to send a message to Miguel Vaijantes. Tell him that twenty years ago in Goa he once ordered the death of an English captain named Hawksworth on the _strappado_. Tell him . . ." The crash of shattering glass from the hallway of the palace severed the air between them. Then the heavy bronze door swung wide and Shirin emerged, grasping the broken base of a Chinese vase. Her eyes blazed and her disheveled hair streamed out behind her. Hawksworth thought he saw a stain on one cheek where a tear had trailed, but now that trail was dry. She strode directly to Mukarrab Khan and dashed the remainder of the vase at his feet, where it shattered to powder on the marble tiles of the veranda. "That is my gift to the queen. You may send it with a message in your next dispatch. Tell her that I too am Persian, that I too know the name of my father's father, of his father's father, of his father's father, for ten generations. But unlike her, I was born in India. And it is in India that I will stay. She can banish me to the remotest village of the Punjab, but she will never send me to Goa. To live among unwashed Portuguese. Never. She does not have the power. And if you were a man, you would divorce me. Here. Tonight. For all to see. And I will return to my father, or go where I wish. Or you may kill me, as you have already tried to do. But you must decide." Mukarrab Khan's face was lost in shock. The courtyard stood lifeless, caught in a silence more powerful than any Hawksworth had ever known. He looked in confusion at Father Sarmento, and the old Jesuit quietly whispered a translation of the Persian, his own eyes wide in disbelief. Never before had he seen a Muslim woman defy her husband publicly. The humiliation was unthinkable. Mukarrab Khan had no power to order her death. He had no choice but to divorce her as she demanded. But everyone knew why she was his wife. What would a divorce mean? "You will proceed to Goa as my wife, or you will spend the rest of your days, and what little remains of your fading beauty, as a _nautch_ girl at the port. Your price will be one copper _pice_. I will order it in the morning." "His Majesty will know of it within a week. I have friends enough in Agra." "As do I. And mine have the power to act." "Then divorce me."