‘We have always been a nation of warriors,’ answered Sunara. ‘Warriors, pirates, raiders, wreckers of rich ships … Most of the jewels are from our mines in the north – their working is a personal privilege of the Rajah of Makassang. The coins, as you can see, are from many lands; there have been treasure ships in these waters since the beginning of history, and sometimes they do not reach their homeland.’ She smiled; in the flickering torchlight, she was very beautiful, and Richard was conscious again of their solitude, at the hour of midnight in this cavernous vault. ‘But I need not teach you what can happen to a treasure ship.’
Richard, about to answer, found that his eye had been caught by something else, perhaps the strangest object in the whole room. It was a suit of armour, of a pattern long forgotten, rusty and mildewed, standing by itself in one corner. He raised his torch and peered at it, and as he did so, he caught his breath afresh. The pattern of the armour could be recognized from a score of prints and pictures in his father’s old library; and the faded coat-of-arms on the breastplate was unmistakable. It chanced that he had some amateur knowledge of such things; his father had taught him the language of heraldry, and, long ago, brother Miles, at the age of fourteen, had not been too young to wax pedantic about fesse gules and vert, lions passant and salient. Now, confronted with the fleur-de-lis on a blue ground, and the three golden lions on a red, he pointed in great excitement.
‘Those are the Tudor arms!’ he said. ‘Our own Queen Elizabeth!’
Sunara approached, and with him examined the pale colours engraved on the breastplate. ‘You know that, also? We did not know it, until Andrew Farthing told us. It was from the ship going round the world.’
‘The ship?’
‘The first English ship to do so.’
‘But that can only mean – this must have been one of Sir Francis Drake’s men-at-arms!’
‘Even so.’
‘Of course!’ exclaimed Richard. His awe and excitement charged his voice with deep feeling. ‘That was the voyage which compassed the whole world, before he returned to fight the great Armada! In fifteen hundred and eighty – nearly three hundred years ago. I recall that they touched at many places hereabouts, in the Spice Islands, the Moluccas. This man must have died on board, or he was killed. A gentleman adventurer …’ He was still wonderstruck at the sight of the armour standing alone, its breastplate bespeaking the pride of valour across three hundred years, its leather joints creased and stained with age. ‘He was a small man, seemingly … I hope he died well.’
‘My father drinks from his skull,’ said Sunara.
Richard looked at her. She had used a matter-of-fact tone, as if it were no great subject for comment, but he could not help remembering that he himself had drunk from this same ceremonial cup, and had not known what pale ghost from the past had furnished it. Now he learned that it had been one of Drake’s own men … He reached out, and touched the armour, asking forgiveness for hapless sacrilege, and answered: ‘Well, God rest his soul, in any case.’
Sunara turned aside, and took up her torch again from its mirrored sconce. There was sudden urgency and meaning in her voice as she said: ‘There is another room.’
She led the way, past the treasure chests and the heaped jewels and the banners. At the farther end of the vault, opposite the entrance door, there was an archway in the wall; and as they passed through it, the light from their torches began to fall upon some objects which reflected the fire, but which burned also with pinpoints of red against a vague whiteness. They were like eyes in the darkness – and as the light increased, Richard found that they were indeed unearthly eyes, rows of them, staring out at the intruders. For the white patches in the gloom were human skulls; and the red points of light were huge rubies set into the eye sockets. Sunara put down her torch; then she advanced, and bowed low to the skulls, which stared and stared back with their sightless, unwinking gaze. Richard shivered involuntarily, and turned his glance away. There had been enough of death and decay, for one day … He saw that the room, which was small, contained only three things; the rows of skulls, ranged on marble shelves, another row of some dozens of rubies, neatly sorted into pairs of different size and quality; and a golden couch with a magnificent lion-skin draped over it.
He turned to her. ‘Who are – they?’
‘My forefathers, and my family. It is a burial custom in Makassang. The skulls are set with rubies, and enshrined here forever.’
He remembered her earlier words. ‘These are the watching eyes you spoke of?’
‘Yes. Would you dare to rob this vault, with such guardians as these?’
He shook his head. ‘No.’
‘I do not know them all by name,’ she said. She seemed at home in the room, but warmed also by a special quality of feeling; for some reason, he had never before been so conscious of her sensual beckoning. Standing in the stillness of the skull room, with the eyes staring down at them, they might have been the last man and woman left on earth. She pointed a slim hand. ‘That was my grandfather, and that my great-grandfather. That is my own brother, who was killed fighting – you may see the spear furrow at the temple – and that, my mother, who died when I was born. The others’ – she swept her arm around – ‘are honoured ancestors. I also will rest my head here, some day.’ She turned to the lowest shelf, with its rows of matched rubies, and pointed once more, at a pair of the stones which lay on one side. ‘These are my eyes,’ she said.
Now he did more than shiver; he was seized with that terror which springs most fiercely from love.
‘Oh God!’ he exclaimed. ‘I cannot bear that thought.’
She seemed surprised. ‘But it is not sad. I shall be at peace, and these my eyes will join the other watchers.’
‘It is horrible!’ he said, uncontrollably.
‘Why so?’ She had sat down on the curved golden couch, a couch such as Cleopatra might have graced; she looked more lovely than any woman in the world. He noticed suddenly that she was wearing the same clothes as on the evening they had first met; a green sarong edged with gold, and a tunic of cloth of gold which hid what his eyes had then so greedily searched for. Now there was no greed, only longing and worship. The gilded fingernail on her right hand, the mark of virginity, was challenging and moving at the same time. But because of love, she was indeed inviolate. ‘Why so?’ she repeated. ‘Death is only a stage on our journey. That is all we need to know.’
‘It is the thought of your eyes,’ he said. He did not dare to speak directly of love. That moment had not yet come, in this room with the watchers on guard. But he had to reveal something of what was in his mind. ‘It is because, living, you are so beautiful, and I could not bear the thought of your living eyes being stolen away, and exchanged for cold jewels.’
Now they were staring at each other; he had declared himself enough; she was a princess seated upon a golden couch, he was a strong man who thought her ravishing. It was a moment of charged feeling, of overwhelming compulsion. But it was Sunara, not Richard Marriott, who responded to it.
She still held his gaze with her own steadfast look; though hers had softened wonderfully, to a compliance he had never guessed in her.
‘I am glad that I am beautiful,’ she said. She spoke very slowly, with pauses filled only by the thudding of his heart. ‘I am glad, being a woman, that you should think so … I have learned much about you, during these many days … I do not know all that you want – perhaps you do not yet know yourself – but I know one thing that you want … You want to see what your eyes have been seeking for, ever since I first danced in the Dance of the Priestesses.’ He cast his head down, in swift confusion, and she noted it, and asked: ‘Why should that not be? You are a man … Why need you be ashamed? Why need I be ashamed?’ She rose from the couch, softly small, flawlessly beautiful; her eyes alone were drawing them both past all return to the divided past. ‘Shall I dance for you again, my lord?’
He could not answer her; the constriction of his throat was
overpowering. In a graceful, unconcerned movement, she took off her golden tunic, revealing the small and perfect breasts. Then she looked straight at him, and began to sing, a small wayward song in a small true voice; and then she began to dance.
It was a dance not like the Virgin Sacrifice, lulling some god into slothful benevolence; indeed, it was not formal at all, it fulfilled no pattern – it was Sunara speaking to Richard Marriott, for his private pleasure, and for hers. By the light of their twin torches, her pale body moved with exquisite grace, shadowy one moment, glowing at the next; as she danced, she spoke with her hands, with the offering of her bosom, with her eyes which never left his. The dance answered his wondering heart, and the question which had struck him with the first astonishment – why she was dancing for him.
She was acknowledging his love, bending to the precious compliment, rising to the ardour which prompted it. She was saying as much as he had said, and more – and saying it without pause for reticence. If he could be brave, her flickering body told him, then she would be braver still – candid in answer, loving in intent, honest in desire, generous in all things.
It could not take her long to give him this simple message. Presently she was very near to him. The small tune died away, and her smile died also, and the last flowing movements of her shoulders. She ended her dance, not with a bow – as to her father formerly – but with upraised arms which dropped gently on to his shoulders. Then there was nothing left in the world but the rise and fall of her bosom, and her eyes engulfing his.
He did not hesitate; her honesty must be matched, or he would be a coward forever.
‘I love you, Sunara,’ he said.
She was grave and direct, as always. ‘After you have seen my body?’
Once again he must match this. ‘Yes. And before that. And now, when I see nothing but your eyes.’
‘What do you see in them?’
‘The answer.’
She broke into a slow smile. ‘Then you do not need to hear it.’
‘I need to hear it.’ He was trembling now. The thudding of his heart was enough to shake his whole frame.
On the verge of all their shared desires, she dropped her hands, as if, at last, they did not need to touch each other in order to be closely entwined. Her voice was as soft and as clear as her gaze. ‘I can love no other man but you,’ she said, and stood on tiptoe for his embrace.
They lay together for a long time on the golden couch, enjoying a new world of sensual wonder; their kisses were untrammelled, their caresses as free as the air they breathed. But, in spite of his storming need, he did not take her, nor did he, after the ebbing of this first wildness, mourn his denial. For though she allowed him much, and would have allowed him all, yet he felt in her compliant body a shyness, a hope that she would be spared until tomorrow, or another day – until some new dawn made it more fitting. It was as if the gilded nail of her virginity, proud and appealing in the same moment, did in truth protect her. He did not press his will, because his will was not exactly matched by hers, and it was this matching which, for the first time in his life, his love demanded.
When this became understood between them, and her loving smile and gentler kiss acknowledged his forbearance – though they did not greatly aid it – he took her hand, and pressed it, leading them both back to the world they had left.
‘You are beautiful, Sunara,’ he said tenderly. ‘Too beautiful for one man … Tomorrow I will–’
‘We speak of tomorrow already?’
‘Better so …’ He took her golden tunic from where it lay, and placed it about her shoulders, and – with hands not yet steady – fastened the jewelled clasp at her bosom, hiding the shape on which his eyes, and indeed his hands, had dwelt. Then he stood up, and drew her to her feet. ‘Do not think me the less a man,’ he said, ‘for talking of tomorrow, when today is still so much with us. It is part of a man’s love, for all that. At least, it is part of mine.’
‘It might be the dearest part … You are strangely mingled,’ she said thoughtfully. ‘A pirate at one moment, a man of gentleness at another. But it is easy to love you the more for it. There are times – and tonight is one – when you put me in mind of Andrew Farthing.’
He was astonished; it was the last name he would have expected to hear. ‘Andrew Farthing?’ The touch of his hand caressing her cheek was ironic. ‘I understood that he was an old and godly teacher.’
‘Even so. But he could change his nature also – or show another side of it. He once told us, with disapproval, of a great prince of the Roman Church, who used to pray: “Oh Lord, grant me the gift of continence – but not yet.” Then he smiled and said: “Honesty is a virtue also.”’
They had begun to wander back slowly, their hands clasped, out from the room of the skulls, past the shelves and chests and counters of the treasure vault, towards the gaping doorway which led to the stairs and the upper air. Richard’s blood was cooling, and his thoughts with it; he was content in love, happy, utterly at peace, as if he had in truth possessed her body, and slaked his fierce hunger. That could be his happy lot tomorrow, he knew, or the next day – and in that assurance he found enough delight to carry him past a hundred burning temptations. He could not feel his body denied, when his heart sang with promise, and when her hand-clasp was his warranty of fulfilment … To ease the moment of its last tension he asked: ‘What became of Andrew Farthing? Did he die in Makassang?’ Then he remembered. ‘Nay, your father once told me he was murdered. How did that come about?’
‘It was the priests, the Anapuri,’ she replied. She was answering more than his question, matching his step towards normality with a considered coolness of her own. ‘They feared his influence, which was very great, all over the island. One day he was found stabbed, on a forest pathway, going towards one of his mission houses.’
‘Did he make many converts here?’
She shook her head. ‘No. Our belief in the Lord Buddha is too strong; he could not turn it. It troubled him, at first, but towards the end he was satisfied with simple teaching. He used to say, “Men can come to God in different hats …” Is that an English saying?’
Richard smiled at the thought. ‘I never heard it before,’ he answered, ‘from a Scottish minister … I wish I had known your Andrew Farthing.’
‘One day I will give you his journals to read.’
‘He kept journals?’
‘He wrote of his hopes and his fears for us. They are sad to read – full of loving, and regret.’
‘But what did he regret?’
‘He called it, our want of a good shepherd.’
They were making their way up the stairs now, still going hand in hand; Sunara’s walk, which he felt rather than saw, was graceful and swaying, the walk of a woman in love with a man close by her. Richard had a last pang, for what had so nearly been, and had now faded; and then he tossed away the thought, without repining, and said: ‘It seems to me that these priests of the Anapuri have much on their consciences. Do you think we shall see them more quiet now?’
‘No. Not while Selang Aro lives. He is the spring of all this. He will bide his time, and watch, and try again when he feels strong enough.’
‘Fear nothing!’ answered Richard cheerfully. ‘I will protect you. You are safe with me.’
Sunara, checking her step, turned to look at him. For the first time in the jointure of their lives, he saw her face lit by a feminine guile, mocking him in love.
‘I can swear to the world that that is true,’ she said mischievously. Then she turned and ran ahead of him, up the stairs and away, before he could think of a fitting answer – or a fitting action either.
iii
On the following morning, being the morning of the great banquet – for which the preparations were so lavish that many parts of the palace had been in a continual stir, from the earliest dawn – it was John Keston who, to Richard’s surprise, brought him the tray of fruits and the silver jug of Amboina coffee with which he began his waking
day. Richard lay, as usual, in the canopied bed, under a light covering of silk; without stirring, as soon as he awoke, he could look past the open window of his private balcony, to the seaward slopes of the palace grounds, and the restless Java ocean which, pounding in upon distant beaches, was always to be faintly heard, a reminder of outer majesty, at any hour of any day or night.
He felt deeply at ease; he had slept well, the day was fair, he would meet Sunara, by accident or design, within an hour or two. Seeing John Keston unexpectedly at his bedside, Richard greeted him jovially.
‘Well, now, John! You put me to shame with your early rising! I thought you would still be aboard the Lucinda. Did you sleep ashore last night?’
‘No, sir.’ Keston put the tray with its savoury burden down at the bedside table, and propped the pillows behind Richard’s head; then, turning, he began to gather up his master’s clothes and set the room to rights. ‘I came ashore at first light, and told the servants here that I would wake you.’
‘You are welcome,’ said Richard, in the same careless mood. He stretched his arms out wide, greeting the new day, pushing aside the languors and confinements of the night; when he was refreshed, with his hand poised over the coffee pot, he looked up at John Keston again. ‘There’s nothing gone amiss on board, is there?’
‘I would not say that all is well.’
Richard, not in the mood for long faces and gloomy words, smiled at the tone. It was true that he had left John Keston on board the Lucinda D, in order (as he had phrased it) to keep an eye on Nick Garrett; but he could not believe that this surveillance had uncovered any dark secrets or plots. Sailors were always grumblers, and Garrett was one of the best of them; but now that Richard had sent down two chests of rix dollars – more than ten thousand gold coins – for the general sharing onboard, he did not expect any serious disaffection. The days were too handsome, Makassang was too happy a place … Pouring his coffee, reaching out for a slice of the paw-paw fruit spiced with cinnamon, he said: ‘Tell me of these great disasters.’
The White Rajah (1961) Page 19
