At first light, Jaki and Lucinda sat with Dhup while he chanted his morning sutras. He embraced each of his comrades and then untied the raft's tether from the tongue tree, pressed his palms together, and bowed. They floated away under a sunrise brown as wine, and Jaki gazed serenely at the monk, watching until a bend in the river parted them forever. An ominous misery tainted him, validating Kota's warning about the corpse on the road.
That foreboding came home an hour later, when Maud emerged from the bamboo cabin, face drawn, and announced Lucinda had lost much blood. She had been bleeding since their hard ride from Mandu.
Though the day blistered, Lucinda shivered. Lying with her legs propped on rice sacks, she cursed Hadi and her father, and prayed for the life of her child.
They tied off at the bank, and Kota boiled water while Jaki and Maud foraged for viburnum leaves, barberry roots, and clumps of sphagnum moss to make styptic sponges. The bleeding continued, profusely. Lucinda believed the baby departed with her fortune, her portion of providence. The fists of pain pummeling inside raged at her betrayal by her father. In Mandu she had lost her chance to provide for herself, to refute her father's mastery of her by making her own way in the world. Without her fortune, she had become again as all women were, as she had always been — an embellishment to provide an heir. She hung from her father's will and now she would hang from her husband's — and, as much as she loved him, that galled her. When the clot that was her baby slid from her, she felt all the melancholy she could ever feel for herself or the world.
Jaki wrapped the fetus in a palm leaf, built a pyre of silver dead wood on the mudbank, and watched flames shake the unborn child to blue smoke. The smoke curved in the wind and rustled to the shape of a child, bringing Jaki to his knees in the mud with awe. He watched the childshape rise through noonlight and fill the emptiness as it flowed into the other world. The specter of his descendant smiled at him, it seemed, its arms clutching at emptiness, reaching for him. He smiled back, sadly, his arms rising toward the ghostly child. His fingertips went cold, touched by a presence in the grasp of departure.
*
Maud heated the pebble of opium Jaki had kept with his diamonds since Mirzapur, mixed it with mashed figs, and fed it to Lucinda to allay the pain of her convulsed womb. By the time Jaki returned from the pyre, his wife lay curled up, glassy-eyed and softly muttering.
Tears came then. He pulled Lucinda into his arms, and they held each other. "I saw the child-spirit, Lucinda. And I saw the embrace of this spirit." Jaki stroked her hair. "We will have another child."
He believed that, Lucinda realized by the glow of his face. And in that moment, her blood drubbed with opium, she peered deep into him, recognized his heartsore need for her, her love, for all that she could give to fill the void of his loss. Both orphaned, they shared the irreversible sorrow of life. They were vanishing together; even as they hugged, vanishing, with everything under the astral stare they called a sky, vanishing in the shimmering quickening now.
"No," Jaki said in a hushed voice, and she knew she had been ranting aloud. "We are arriving. This is our bright moment."
He quieted her with a hand to her brow. Yes, he thought, Mandu has shown us the limits of trust. He did not say that. She looked haggard. In the many months of their travels, her hands had toughened, leaving her nails broken-mooned, and her face, without its powders and paints, innocent as a boy's, freckled from the sun and hollow of cheek. He loved her all the more, and his heart spelled with pain when he thought on all she had endured to be with him. He had to make a place in the world where they could live their vanishing together.
*
Weeks later, deep in the night, the wanderers reached the sea. Kota and Jaki moored in a covert of tule grass in view of a large harbor, a splash of lights that gleamed like spilled jewels in the dark river's mouth. Lucinda and Maud wanted to sleep, but Jaki was eager to investigate the shining city on the far shore. Leaving Kota to guard the raft, he wandered into the dark.
The stars dimmed before he returned rowing a canoe of treebark. He drank some tea with Kota, and the women heard his excited voice and emerged from the cabin, rubbing sleep from their eyes. "We will have an ocean-worthy vessel in two days," he said in greeting. "And a crew to man her."
Kota poured more tea, and they sat on the raft's bulwark, lifting their faces from the steam to smell the heat of the river quarreling with the cool sea. "I spent most of our fishhooks to rent a canoe from a man I found torch fishing, and I rowed into the port town he called Bharoch. In the harbor I met drunken Portuguese sailors who called the city Broach. It's an open port — Spaniards, Portuguese, Dutch, and English all have houses and slips. And no one fights. The old Moghul had them agree to a truce while in port. Now they are waiting for the new Moghul to award trading rights to the companies of his choice."
"I see no big ships, lah." Kota pointed across the river.
"Tomorrow a Dutch carrack arrives," Jaki said with a confident smile. "I overheard sailors in a barge tavern say that the Portuguese have been alerted by smoke signal from their scouts on the north coast of Gujarat. Amaranth appeared off Porbandar yesterday and will make port here tomorrow night. She's three hundred tons, with light armament, five or six twelve-pounders, and the usual Dutch flummery and low draft."
"Slow, lah. What cargo?"
"She's out of Aden. A slave ship. Her African cargo is meant for the Portuguese, which is why they know so much about her. They need laborers to work their estates in Goa to the south, and they are trading diamonds from their mines to the north. The arrangement is lucky for us."
"What do you mean?" Lucinda asked, looking across the water to the immense tidewall and the long wooden warehouses above the revetment. Company banners announced ownership in bold colors and broad canvas stretched on bamboo stanchions and posted before each docking berth.
"Are we not Dutch agents?" Jaki said. "Today you will introduce yourself to the Dutch factor."
"Dressed in rags?" Lucinda asked.
"You and Maud will get new clothes. We will trade the raft."
Lucinda's eyes danced as she opened her waist pouch and removed a roll of paper twined with vine. "The flying money. From the Chinese vendor in Sarnath. If we can find a Chinese merchant here, we can have clothes, food, even gold."
Jaki nodded thoughtfully. “If we can exchange paper for food and gold, that will further our plan. We will seek advantage from this city’s misfortune. The Europeans in Broach are all sick and sweating blood."
"The red flux," Maud gasped.
"Yes, so it must be. The malignant spirits are in the water, and they drink it without the ritual fire that sets the evil free. Many have died. The rest are weak. I figure the crew on the Amaranth will be famished as well. They have not eaten good food in weeks. And that will be our weapon. A feast!"
Lucinda's face went dark. "You mean to lure the Dutch crew from their ship with food —"
"And while they dine, we take Amaranth for our own," Jaki completed, triumphantly.
"What of the slaves?" Maud asked.
"They shall crew the vessel — to their freedom."
"It is a mad idea." Lucinda sighed. "It may in truth succeed."
*
At dawn, they poled their raft across the river, left the canoe with a fisherman on a reedy crannog near the wharves, and traded the raft for a gold coin. They found a Chinese merchant in a riverside warehouse fronted with stone lions. He scowled when they presented the flying money, yet he honored his countryman's calligraphy and exchanged each bill in gold coin.
That afternoon, properly attired in new European clothes, the travelers rented palanquins. They toured the European cantonment, seeking an adequate hall for their scheme. They chose an inn situated on a hill overlooking the harbor, a hostelry that featured a large windowless gallery. Once kitchen services had been secured from the delighted owner, Kota set out with the cook for the market to purchase food. Meanwhile, Jaki began preparing the gallery and Lucinda and
Maud took a palanquin to the house of the Dutch factor.
Located in a fragrant grove of blossoming champaca, far from the noise of the harbor, the Dutch Company house seemed lifeless, shuttered against the red flux. Maud had to knock a long while before the door cracked open. The flux had killed the factor a week earlier, and his secretary had assumed his functions. The weary man of sallow complexion clapped his bony hands, overjoyed to meet hale Europeans, young women at that, and he bade them tell their story.
"We did not all of us escape the flux," Lucinda lied, placing a carved cedar box she had brought as a gift on the table. She opened the orante case, revealing a sheaf of trade bills from the caravan. The secretary’s bulbous eyes widened, pleased to learn of the profits Lucinda had earned for the company and which, she told him, the Moghul Shah Jahan kept secure in his Mandu warehouse. "All those silks and rare woods mean nothing to me now that my husband is dead," she told him, relating how Jaki had died of fever during their river journey. "We, too, have suffered from the flux. Now that we have survived to reach this port, we shall give thanks to God with a feast. We have hired a large hall not far from here, and we are presenting every kind of delicacy we can procure from the harbor merchants. Will you join us tomorrow night?" Once she had the factor's exuberant acceptance, she added, "The whole town is talking about the carrack due tomorrow. As I mentioned, my father is a sea captain, and I know too well the travails of the sea. Do extend our invitation to the captain and officers of the Amaranth. While the crew has the pleasures of shore leave, their superiors are too often without comfort. I would honor them." The factor gave his hearty promise, and Lucinda and Maud left him cheerfully leafing through the trade bills.
At the inn, the women found Jaki examining the doors to the gallery. "Lisbon oak." Jaki knocked on a panel, and the door resounded thickly. "They are strong. And once we wedge them, they will hold our drunken guests for a spell."
Kota returned with a wagonload of vegetables and animals and joined Jaki in the gallery. They fit wedges Jaki had fashioned under each of the two doors. Kota shook the doors and felt their strength. "Not enough."
Jaki smiled. "This is only the first door. Come." He led Kota outside and showed him crates of bamboo segments. "The Indians call them charkhi, used to control their elephants in battle. The Chinese ward off demons with them. The merchant who took the flying money says these will raise dragons."
Kota pulled the cap from one bamboo cylinder and poured out thick-grained gunpowder. The heavy lines of his face hoisted a smile. "Chinese rockets. Lah."
They slept that night in the gallery and spent most of the following day arranging the banquet hall and supervising the innkeeper's preparation of the meal. Outside in the yard, under the bougainvillea shrubs and over tufted swards, Jaki and Kota strung the charkhi.
When the harbor bell rang the arrival of the slave ship, Jaki had already spotted the majestic sails from the roof. With a spyglass he had purchased from the Chinese, he watched the cumbersome vessel sweep into port. Amaranth rode easily at anchor a quarter mile from shore behind the black tidewall that jutted farthest into the estuary and held back the silt. The path along the tidewall out to the ship crowded with onlookers and merchants even as the waters around the ship jammed with small boats. Through his spyglass, Jaki watched traders waving their goods. He spotted the gaunt Dutch secretary surrounded by musketmen in tan uniforms of the Dutch Company, and the scurvy-blotched crew disembarking.
"The Dutch will be here soon," Jaki called as he climbed down from his perch. "One last review to make certain all is ready — and then Kota and I are off to the dock. You know what to do."
"What if the Butterboxes qualm at feasting in a shut room?" Maud said. "How can we hold thirty men in here?"
"The Dutch are as afraid of the flux as any European," Jaki said, leading them to the gallery. "Remind them that a windowless chamber is the safest place in India to dine."
Kota sniffed the aromas of the braised capon and stewing mutton, and he showed his purple teeth. "Good food, lah. Hungry stomach louder than fearful heart. Not worry."
They stood at the doorway and appraised their two days' work. In the radiant lanternlight, the tapestries' keen colors rendered a festive backdrop for the long banquet table laden with chappati, steaming biryani rice, bowls of fruit, tankards of arrack, and an empty centerplace for the large platters of lamb and capon.
Jaki turned to go, and Lucinda took his arm. He countered the fear he met in her face with a quick smile. "We cannot fail," he said with certainty. "We are strong together."
"If anything happens to you —"
"If we are not back before the last course," he repeated, more for his peace than hers, "politely excuse yourselves and go immediately to the fisherman at the harbor bazaar who bought our raft. Pay him with the gold you have left, and he will take you both to Surat. It's less than twenty miles south of here. You have the diamonds." He placed his hand against her bodice pocket and felt the rocks there. Before she could speak again, he looked to Kota and Maud. "You won't have to use them. Our plan will carry us." Lucinda hugged him, and Maud watched dolefully. "And be of cheerful countenance. Our guests must feel joy." He nodded for Kota to leave, kissed his wife, and backed out the door.
*
The tang of the sea wind cleared Jaki's head as he walked around to the kitchen to pick up the twenty-pound sack of rice he had set aside earlier. In the yard beside the inn, they checked the array of charkhi, carefully noting where the fuses ran under the shrubs. Jaki tucked a flintstriker in his doublet beneath the Indian caftan he wore. Then they clicked the blades of their hand knives together. "We cannot fail," Jaki said in Malay.
With a gray turban covering his blond hair, no one took particular notice of Jaki in the falling darkness, and he and Kota merged with the crowd of Indians shoved aside as the Dutch secretary's carriage with the ship's officers inside rolled past, followed by troops of laughing crewmen.
The canoe that Jaki had left with a fisherman awaited them. They paid the man with the bag of rice and rowed out toward the big ship. Many small ships bobbed about Amaranth, their crews astonished by her size and inspecting her swollen hull and huge anchor chain. No one singled out the canoe with its two scarfed men. Kota spotted an open gunport facing the breakwater, and Jaki guided the canoe between the giant hull and the black stone tidewall.
Neither bothered to secure the canoe when they grabbed on to the splintery hull and began to scale it. They both knew that either this ship would be theirs within the hour or they would need no vessel but their loosed souls. The tidewall hid them from view up to the gunports, and there they crawled through the open port they had spotted from the canoe.
The stink, hot and sharp, made the men gnash teeth to keep from gagging. Kota checked the low-ceilinged gun room and found no one. In the gangway, the groans of the slaves rose from below with a fetor of feces and corpses. Jaki jerked his thumb topside, and they took separate gangways to the upper deck.
Jaki emerged under the quarterdeck. From there he could see the watch on the forecastle and on the main deck facing the tidewall. Kota's squat shadow appeared on the main deck beside the bell. He signed to Jaki that a guard stood behind him on the quarterdeck, and Jaki signaled his companion about the forecastle guard. From his doublet, Jaki removed a velvet wallet stuck with poison thorns, each thorn meticulously threaded to a spool of cotton fiber. He fit a thorn into the reed pipe he carried in his turban. The feel of the ship breathing beneath him revived memories of his years on the boards, reeving rope high on the main mast, sliding along the decks on a rolling sea, dangling like a star from the crosstrees. He rose with the sway of his bones, muscles twisting to the tilt of the deck, and he sidled backward up the steps to the quarterdeck.
The guard leaning on the taffrail, watching the milling crowd below, jerked upright with the needling pain at the side of his neck. Jaki had yanked the thorn free with the thread attached to it, and when the guard slapped his flesh, found nothing.
A biting insect, he thought. Jaki waited hunched behind the binnacle until the poison began its work. Finally the watch leaned heavily against the rail and slumped.
Kota, relying only on his dagger, had already killed the watch on the forecastle and, like Jaki, propped the body at its station. They converged on the last deck watch, who guarded the gangway onto the tidewall. Jaki struck the guard in the throat with the dart. When the man staggered as if hit on the head, Kota rushed to him and tripped him onto his dagger. They sat the dead man against the chainwale so he remained visible from the tidewall, and they hurried for the hold.
The malodor of rotted flesh glazed the chutes of the companionways, and the two men descended with clenched jaws. Moans and feeble voices shifted in the dark. Kota found an oil lantern hanging from a rafter, and Jaki lit it with the flintstriker. In the papery glow, they gasped to behold men dark as soil chained to the floors and shackled to the walls for as far as the lanternlight reached. The sparks of eyes winced at them, and Jaki shuffled forward.
Another light flapped from across the deck as a fourth guard stepped up through the gangway to the orlop deck. The bullish man in sailor's trousers and leather vest bellowed in Dutch, hung his lantern from a rafter, and unwound the whip hooked to his belt. He surged forward, and the first snap of the whip cut Kota across his jaw and flung him backward against the stairs.
Jaki slammed the lantern onto a step, dousing himself in darkness, and ducked aside as the whip snapped again where he had been standing. He tripped over the body of a slave, collapsed to his face, and the whip lashed across his back, slashing like a razor and rending his caftan. Jaki bounced to his feet with the pain and dove for the guard. The Dutchman drew a parang. Jaki pulled short and had to cover his face with his arms as the whip swiped at him again. The pain tore his sleeves away, and he felt blood run to his elbows.
Wyvern Page 49
