The Enchantress Of Florence

Some time before, the stranger stows away on a Scottish ship named Scathach. The “languid Florentine stowaway” (15) is soon discovered and he is saved from punishment by performing elaborate magic tricks for the crew. He introduces himself to Captain George Louis Hauksbank as “Uccello di Firenze, enchanter and scholar” (16). Both men know that this is a pseudonym: “Uccello” is an Italian slang word for penis as well as the word for bird, which Uccello selected because “birds are the greatest travelers of all” (17).

Uccello meets with Hauksbank in the captain’s cabin. Hauksbank has been sent by Queen Elizabeth of England to be the ambassador to the Mughal court. As ambassador, he also has permission “to gather and keep any fortune he might be able to find, whether in gemstones, opium, or gold” (18). Seemingly trusting Uccello, Hauksbank reveals his hidden “objects of virtue” (19), a collection of antiques and curiosities which remind him of his sense of self. He wishes to know Uccello’s secret and reveals a secret of his own: he is gay. After a “long and lonely silence” (22), Uccello sympathetically admits that he does not share Hauksbank’s sexuality. Hauksbank becomes intimidating and demands to know Uccello’s secret. Uccello claims that he has been sent by “the most powerful enchantress of the age” (23) and that revealing his secret could endanger Hauksbank. He begins to tell the story, but Hauksbank drifts into a deep sleep. Uccello has slipped “laudanum” (24) in his drink.

Hauksbank spends the rest of the voyage in a coma. Uccello befriends Praise-God Hawkins, the ship’s lovelorn doctor, and pilfers anything of value from the captain’s cabin. As the ship reaches its destination, Uccello urgently searches for “the greatest treasure of all” (27). On the night of their arrival in Surat, he finds a hidden door in the cabin containing the documents announcing Hauksbank as the Queen’s ambassador. Uccello kills Hauksbank and slips onto the shore unseen, now posing as “England’s ambassador” (29). 

Akbar the Great is the emperor of India. He has many wives but has also “succumbed to fantasy” (33) and invented a fictional wife named Jodha, who immediately becomes a legendary figure in his court. Their relationship is hailed as “the love story of the age” (34). The city of Sikri is arranged “by race as well as trade” (35) and, whenever the emperor visits, the people are ordered to be silent. The “din of the clustered poor” (36) only returns when Jodha tells Akbar about the provision against noise and he orders the people to be as loud as they please.

Akbar returns from a military campaign. As he travels, he thinks about his identity and how it is expressed through grammar. He ponders “the disturbing possibilities of the first person singular—the ‘I’” (38). As emperor, he only thinks of himself in the third person plural pronoun, “we.” After defeating an “upstart princeling” (40), the man’s dying words inspire Akbar to build a place in his city where radical ideas can be discussed without fear of repercussion. Akbar feels burdened by his family history, having descended from a line of “bloodthirsty ancestors” (42). His own grandfather killed the princeling’s grandfather many decades ago and now “history repeats itself” (43). Akbar travels to Sikri, feeling the “familiar demon of loneliness” (44). He thinks about his unimpressive father and reaffirms his desire to build the house of humility. He argues with his servant who is deaf, Bhakti Ram Jain, who is his official flatterer. Feeling better, he allows Bhakti Ram Jain to live.

Akbar travels back to the “beautiful lie” (53) of Sikri. He meets with Birbal, the “first minister and greatest wit of the age” (54) who governs in his absence and who amuses the emperor with his witty, intelligent views. They discuss Jodha, the wife who “has the misfortune not to exist” (55). In the emperor’s absence, the other wives have remained apart from Jodha. They resent the mysterious woman who was born from the emperor’s fantasies and is now his most favored wife. In this respect, she is “both his wife and his child” (60) and his return strengthens her. She does not know whether she would ever be able to leave the palace grounds unless he was with her. When Akbar returns to Jodha, she greets him as she always does. Though he refers to himself as “I,” she does not notice his “descent into the first person” (63). After her failure to notice his grammatical change, Akbar never refers to himself as an individual to anyone else.

Akbar thinks about his three sons. They are debauched and violent children who are “already drunk” (69) during a daytime hunt. He knows that it is “customary for children to plot against their crowned sires, to attempt to dethrone them” (71), but he does not believe that his sons are capable of defeating him. Instead, he expects to meet “a young man” (73) who he can trust.

Elsewhere, the Florentine wakes up in a brothel beside a sex worker named Mohini. She is so thin that she is nicknamed “the Skeleton” (74). Once a courtesan, she was so skilled in her “mastery of the male drugs” (76) that she was thrown out by the Lady Ban Mai, against whom Mohini has now sworn her revenge. In exchange for a large sum of money, she promises to make the Florentine stranger “smell as desirable as any king” (78) ahead of his first visit to court. She covers him in spices and unguents which have a strange effect on the palace guards. He introduces himself as Mogor dell’Amore, “a gentleman of Florence, presently on business for England’s queen” (81). Meeting with Abul Fazl, who is unaffected by Mohini’s potions, he introduces himself to the court with his letter of ambassadorship.

Akbar watches from the shadows and then reveals himself. He is immediately struck by the young Florentine who claims that the Queen of England is the “Western mirror of the emperor himself” (85) while dismissing the diplomatic credentials of the Portuguese. Having woken up in an “oddly fretful mood” (87), Akbar is taken by the “handsome” (88) Mogor. When Mogor reads the Queen‘s letter, he warns about the military intentions of the Pope and showers the emperor with praise. Akbar has a second bout of infatuation, feeling “a great desire for the author of the letter, England’s Queen” (90). His efforts to establish a diplomatic and romantic dialogue with her will eventually fail, however, and many years later he will discover that Mogor’s words bore no resemblance to the actual content of the Queen’s perfunctory letter.