The major-domo, standing behind them, struck his wand of office twice upon the marble floor, and announced: ‘Your Royal Highness, the Princess Sunara approaches.’
She was attended by six companions, who formed a graceful semicircle at her back; and in other parts of the great hall, Richard noticed, other women, young and old, were now joining the gathering, giving it a further relaxation, a softer texture. Close to, the Princess had a face of the rarest beauty, and her body, delicately formed, a lissom grace which, hinted at in the dance, was apparent in every smallest move she made. She was dressed now in a dark green sarong edged with gold, and she wore also a tunic of cloth of gold on the upper part of her body. Unconsciously, Richard found his eyes searching beneath its contours for the soft shoulders, the flawless breasts which, even in his embarrassment, had delighted his eyes earlier. Perhaps it was this which caused her, when he was presented by the Rajah, to appear cool and remote; for after a single glance, which seemed to take in his bold eyes, bemedalled uniform, and tall figure in an instant’s sweep, she retreated to a distant detachment, to which Richard, clearly, was not to be allowed the key.
‘Captain Marriott,’ said the Rajah to his daughter, when they had sat down and the wine had been passed again, ‘has this moment agreed to enter my service. He will fight the pirate ship across the bay.’
Princess Sunara inclined her head, but she said nothing. She sat, serene and composed, on a small ivory stool; her feet, in golden sandals, were demurely crossed. The little finger of her right hand was also gilded, Richard noticed – the traditional mark of virginity in all these islands.
‘So we may expect great things tomorrow, or the next day,’ the Rajah went on. He was still moved and eager; it was almost as if he were pleading with his daughter to show a like appreciation. ‘And I have another surprise for you, Sunara.’ He spoke over his shoulder to the major-domo, who in turn signed to the musicians to fall silent. In the sudden stillness, the musical box was carried forward, and placed on the table. It was Richard himself who set it in motion.
The tinkling melody of ‘Loch Lomond’ filled the air. As she recognized it, the Princess’s expression changed, from indifference to unfeigned delight; it was as if she shed ten years, on the instant, and became an enraptured child again. She heard it out, as they all did, with close attention; only when the melody was ended did her air of coolness return.
But she did speak, at last, and her voice, soft and low, was as if the music were continuing.
‘That is beautiful,’ she said. ‘Beautiful and sad …’ She reached out a slim hand and touched the walnut lid of the musical box. ‘It is indeed a surprise to hear it again. This must be some new gift.’
‘From Captain Marriott,’ said the Rajah. ‘He has proved himself most generous. It is a cherished possession, it seems. It belonged to his mother.’
Sunara’s eyes rose briefly, to meet Richard’s. ‘In that case, it must be very painful for him to part with it. Should you not be content with some smaller token?’
Richard squared his shoulders. No child like this one, however lovely, was going to mock him thus.
‘The pain – if there is any pain – is as nothing compared with the pleasure of giving. Particularly when you have all shown such appreciation … I am told that the tune is a familiar one to you.’
‘Of course,’ answered Sunara. ‘It was Andrew Farthing’s favourite. He taught me to sing it, long ago.’
‘He seems to have enjoyed great honour in your country,’ said Richard.
‘He was a good man,’ said the Rajah. ‘A true scholar, and a man of God.’
‘I wish I had been able to meet him.’
‘I do not think,’ said Sunara coldly, ‘that you would have found many thoughts to share with each other.’
‘Your Highness cannot know that,’ answered Richard with equal coldness.
‘You have heard my father say that he was a man of God.’
‘What am I, then?’
For the first time, Princess Sunara looked at him directly, for more than a brief glance. Her eyes, brown flecked with green, were as honest and as obstinate as a child’s.
‘You are fighting for my father?’
‘Yes.’
‘For love of fighting?’
‘No.’
‘For love of money, then?’
‘For money.’
‘Andrew Farthing would have called you a mercenary.’
‘Well, I am a fighter, at least.’ Richard Marriott stood up, abruptly. He was not going to change his mind or vary his decision; but neither was he going to stay to be disparaged, by this or any other chit of a girl. ‘And it is flattering to be needed, Princess, for any reason under the sun …’ He turned to the Rajah. ‘Your Highness – forgive me, but I must return to my ship. I have much to do, before I am ready for your service.’
The Rajah eyed him carefully, conscious of constraint among their circle, wishing to make sure that it was not a vital element in their exchange.
‘I had hoped that you would enjoy our hospitality for tonight also.’
‘You have been more than hospitable already,’ answered Richard. ‘But if this mercenary is to earn his keep, he must prepare for tomorrow.’
‘Tomorrow is ours?’
‘Certainly!’ Richard inclined his head; it gave him great pleasure thus to put on the cloak of honour. ‘I have pledged my word, as has your Highness. As soon as my ship is ready, we will go to work.’
Amin Bulong, rising, said: ‘I will give the necessary orders. Your ship will be taken in hand at dawn, if that is agreeable. Good luck, or skill, has already brought you within easy distance of our careenage … If you are intent on leaving, let me summon your palankeen.’
‘I will walk,’ said Richard grandly. ‘The night air will sit well with the wine. And even better with the trepang.’ He bowed, with the smallest permissible inclination, to Princess Sunara, and then more formally to the Rajah. ‘Your Highness … I look forward to our next meeting.’
‘Captain Marriott,’ said the Rajah, ‘no meeting could have given me more pleasure than this one.’
‘We have an English proverb,’ Richard declaimed, by way of farewell – and it was wine, pique, and self-confidence all speaking for him at once – ‘which says, “Promise is a fine dog, but Performance is a better one.” With your permission, I go now to review my kennels.’
Attended by torches, and by six of the royal bodyguard, and by his own stumbling trio who occasionally broke into maudlin song, he strode down the Steps of Heaven as if they were part of his own kingdom. His head cleared gradually of the wine, but he did not lose his exhilaration, nor his appetite for action. Wherever he looked – up to the stars, round him at the torchlight, below to the shimmering – he found only a vision to stir his blood. Whether he had been tricked into agreement, or cajoled, or threatened, did not matter a jot. Tomorrow would bring back all the things which were the finest fabric of his life – adventure at sea, fighting, danger, gold. He would square accounts with Black Harris. And earn his due from the Rajah. And from the girl.
vi
‘I do not like this plan at all,’ said Nick Garrett, with the surly look and tone he had been affecting for the past several hours. ‘Black Harris is not for us – not without two more ships as big as the Lucinda to help us. Sixteen guns he has – aye, and we’ve seen ’em at work! He will blow us out of the water before we’re within cannonshot.’
‘It will be a night action,’ answered Richard Marriott, good-humouredly. He was set in his mind, and it would take more than Nick Garrett’s grumbling to alter it. ‘What do you take me for – a damned fool fighting his first battle? I am not going to sail up to his guns in broad daylight! We’ll come out of the darkness and surprise him.’
‘And then he’ll surprise us. What can two guns do against sixteen? – or twenty-four men against a hundred?’
‘We shall have the war-prahus to help us. More than two hundred of them. They have b
een promised.’
‘Promised!’ Garrett spat contemptuously into the shallow water at the tidemark. ‘What are they worth? – save for warcries and drum-beating! The paddlers will turn tail and run at the first shot!’
Richard shook his head. ‘They are better men than that.’ He pointed seawards, where the Lucinda D, lying over at a hard angle, with her lower yards steeped in water, was surrounded by a swarm of native labourers. ‘You have seen them get to work. If they fight half as well, we have Black Harris sewn up in his hammock already.’
The two of them were standing on the low wharf, fashioned of giant teak piles, which abutted one side of the Steps of Heaven; the Lucinda D now lay sprawled in the shallows, not more than thirty yards from them. Amin Bulong had said that she would be taken in hand at dawn, and careened within an hour, and his word had been made good, fantastic though the undertaking had seemed. At first light, the shipwright overseer – an ancient Malay who looked more likely to mouth incantations and cast spells than to repair a modern ship – had come on board with six assistants as old and decrepit as himself, while scores of prahus and sampans manned by younger, lustier men milled around the ship, and onshore there could be seen hundreds of workmen assembling on the wharf. From thence onwards, the Lucinda D was in firm and skilful hands. She had been swiftly lightened, by unloading some of her stores and gear into cargo sampans (the stevedores worked like running ants, bearing burdens twice their own size); then she had been edged nearer the shore, and naked divers – who seemed able to stay underwater for two minutes and more – had gone down to position the giant weighted rollers on which she would be brought into the shallows.
Once she was in low water, warps were led from the masts to pulleys anchored on the sea bed, and thence ashore. There they were seized upon by work gangs who must have totalled more than a thousand men. Gongs began to beat, in fierce command; the thousand men heaved and strained, chanting in chorus as they built up the surging rhythm; and the Lucinda D, overborne by this multitude of clawing humans, began to heel over sharply. Within a few moments, she was clipped down and lying on her side, and the injured planks were laid bare.
These were what the shipwrights were working on now, as Richard and Nick Garrett, out of employment, lounged on the wharf and waited for their ship to be given back to them. At their backs the throngs of men who had done the heaving down lounged also, lying in whatever patch of shade they could find, dozing, gossiping, chewing the betel nut which seemed to have stained the teeth of every man to a noisome scarlet. There was a vile smell in the air; it came from a wide-mouthed cauldron on the foreshore, in which was being boiled a mysterious kind of pitch for making good the seams of the new planks. It was a secret blend, Richard had been told, of pine resin and fish oil ‘which would last forever’. He was left with the hope that the stink of it would at least disappear with the passing of time.
Nick Garrett was still grumbling and complaining. He had been awakened early, with news and plans which had come as a complete surprise, and he had set his mind against seeing any sense in any of them.
‘Why should we make it our quarrel?’ he asked. ‘Who cares what happens to this rajah? Black Harris can rule in Makassang, for all I care!’
‘We are making it our quarrel,’ answered Richard crisply, ‘because we are being paid for it. A hundred thousand rix dollars! We would be mad to refuse it!’
‘Maybe we are mad to believe it. How do we know he will honour the bond? You should have taken a few hundreds, to seal the bargain, and then we could have sailed as soon as we were fit, with no one the wiser.’
‘The Rajah will honour his bond, have no fear. He is that sort of man.’
‘Peter Ramsay says he is old as Methuselah, and near his death.’
‘He is old,’ agreed Richard. ‘But not yet feeble.’
‘Peter says there are rubies and diamonds and gold, enough to sink a ship.’
‘It is a handsome palace.’
‘And a handsome girl, eh?’ Nick Garrett leered at him. ‘I hear she has a pair of breasts fit to blind a man’s eyesight. Maybe they blinded yours!’
Richard, conscious of a distaste he could scarcely define, said shortly: ‘I did not like her … As soon as they are finished here, Nick, have the ship kedged out into deep water, and take the stores on board again. Then look to the weapons. And tell Manina she will be coming ashore with the boy, before we sail tonight.’
‘Where will you be, then?’ Garrett asked suspiciously.
‘I have a meeting ashore, to work out the plans. I am waiting for the palankeen now.’
‘Well, make no more promises, for God’s sake,’ said Garrett sourly, ‘or we will find ourselves fighting headhunters in the jungle.’ He shaded his eyes against the glare of the sun striking the water, watching a cora-cora which had cast off from the Lucinda D and was just coming alongside the lowest of the Steps of Heaven. Behind the single paddler sat a soldierly figure in scarlet, easy to recognize. It was the hostage, the captain of the bodyguard. ‘Now what is this?’ demanded Garrett, anger in his voice. ‘Are we letting him go?’
‘Matters are changed,’ said Richard. ‘I need him ashore, for the planning.’
‘We should take another hostage, then.’
‘Matters are changed,’ repeated Richard. ‘We are working together. There is no need of hostages.’
Nick Garrett glared at him, openly hostile. ‘You are quickly swayed,’ he said. ‘I must have a sight of this girl. First we are to trust some old devil who calls himself a rajah, then we are to fight Black Harris, not for ourselves but for someone else. The sun must have melted your brains!’
‘We are fighting for the money.’
‘And that’s another thing! Have we changed our trade since we grounded on Makassang? If there is so much plunder here, why do we not take it for ourselves?’
‘It is not to be had for the taking. You have seen something of their strength. If there is a state treasure, you can be sure it is well guarded.’
‘We might do worse than join forces with Black Harris,’ said Garrett, half to himself.
‘And be robbed and swindled again? Now hark at who has lost his brains!’ A palankeen, wending its way slowly down the Steps of Heaven, had nearly reached the bottom, and Richard turned to go. He could see the young captain of the bodyguard staring in his direction, and he made a sign of greeting, which was returned. ‘We will do as I have said, Nick,’ he declared, firmly. ‘Make the ship ready to fight. Take on water and fresh fruit. I will be back this afternoon.’
‘You eat luncheon with the Rajah?’ Garrett inquired sarcastically.
‘I hope so. He keeps the best table that I ever saw.’
‘If you do not return by nightfall,’ said Nick Garrett, with a rare and grisly attempt at humour, ‘I will know that he has eaten you.’
In the cool of the flame tree bower which sheltered the giant telescope, the four men had taken their turn to examine the Mystic, at her anchorage across the bay. Richard Marriott and the captain of the bodyguard – called, by tradition, Amin Sang, meaning Amin the Younger – had been greeted on their arrival by Amin Bulong, who would be lending his authority to the plan of attack; and they had been joined immediately by the commander of the Royal Regiment, Colonel Kedah, whose troops would fight the major part of the action on land. Kedah was a tall, thin, hard-bitten man whose appearance was not aided by his having but a single eye; across the other, a spearthrust had furrowed a livid scar which gave his face a most devilish appearance. But he seemed a capable man, and a trustworthy one, and his words, though few, were worth hearing.
Richard Marriott had been the last to look through the telescope, and he could only agree with the others that its panorama was ominous. Around the Mystic, things were quieter now, with fewer sampans and less traffic to the shore; but her decks were black with men, and the sun caught their weapons unceasingly. By the look of her spars and rigging, she could have set sail at any time. But much plainer to be seen, and m
ore threatening still, was the movement of soldiers along the coast, from Shrang Anapuri to the causeway.
They were not in formation, and they straggled along the road in twos and threes; but there were enough of them to stir the dust continuously, and they plodded along eastwards without pause. It was clear that two formidable forces were on the move – the men aboard the Mystic, and the men massing towards the causeway. They seemed to confirm what the Rajah had forecast; that Black Harris was spear-heading an attack designed to take the Sun Palace by storm, while the Anapuri and their allies cut the narrow causeway and isolated the arm of land on which the great centre of government stood.
Now, in an anteroom plainly furnished and screened from prying eyes, the four of them sat round a table and considered what had to be done. Richard, lacking charts, had sketched a rough plan of the bay upon a piece of white silk, and this lay before them as they talked, telling its own story of chances to be risked and dangers to be faced.
‘They have given us two tasks,’ said Amin Bulong. As ‘Commander-in-Chief’ of Makassang, he was taking the lead in their discussion, though Richard knew that sooner or later he himself must make the most significant contribution of all. ‘We have to prevent the Mystic reaching here, or, if she comes across the bay, we must throw back the men she will try to land. And we must keep the causeway open, so that the palace is not isolated from the rest of the island.’ He turned to Colonel Kedah. ‘How many men have you there?’
‘The causeway garrison is five hundred men,’ answered Kedah. His single eye was bent upon the silken sketch map. ‘But we shall need more, and I have sent them down already.’
‘More? To hold it?’
‘Judging by the number of men moving up from Shrang Anapuri, they mean to do more than stop us breaking out. They mean to break in.’
The White Rajah (1961) Page 14
