The White Rajah (1961)

by Monsarrat, Nicholas

  A gasp went round the room; it was clear that, in spite of the gossip and the whispering which had filled the Sun Palace for many days, most of those present had no foreknowledge of the Rajah’s true intention. Richard, preserving an impassive face, felt his heart beating loudly. So this was the answer to the puzzle … He knew that there could be no greater honour, for any man in this country; such an adoption was a most signal mark of favour, placing him at one stroke on a pinnacle of distinction. What else it might carry with it, either now or in the future, he could not guess, and did not wish to ponder; it was enough, at this moment, to relish the award for what it implied, in terms of approval and open recognition.

  The low murmur of voices was stilled as the Rajah began to speak again.

  ‘You all know this man,’ he said with simple directness. He had no need to point at Richard, or to indicate him by name; every eye in the room was bent on the tall figure in the imposing uniform, standing just outside the golden canopy. ‘He has proved himself a true friend of Makassang. He has fought our battles. He has overthrown our enemies. It may be that he has saved us from utter destruction. He is therefore worthy to be called our son. It is the greatest honour in our power to give, and we give it to him freely.’

  He motioned for Richard to come forward, and the latter joined the Rajah under the canopy of state. He felt rather than saw that, along with all the rest, Sunara was staring towards him; he knew what he would read in her eyes, if he should turn to look. But he gazed straight ahead, as the Rajah motioned again, this time for Selang Aro to join them.

  The High Priest, who could not be liking the moment, or anything connected with it, came forward until he was standing between the two principal figures. He seemed to know what was required of him, though this must have been a rare ceremony, if indeed it had ever been witnessed before by anyone in the room. He took up the jade dagger in one hand, and the small gold chalice in the other; then he signed to Richard to bare his arm, and when this was done, he made a tiny incision at the wrist, no more than a deep pinprick, and drew a few drops of blood which he let fall into the chalice. Richard bore the small wound without flinching; at the moment of the broaching of his flesh, he thought he saw, deep in Selang Aro’s eyes, a brief shadowy stirring, as if, when he wielded the knife, the High Priest might be wishing that he could wield it to more purpose. But it might have been a trick of the light, and in any case it was so swift a flicker of feeling that it had vanished without trace before Richard could well recognize it.

  Within a few moments, the Rajah’s blood joined Richard’s in the chalice. Selang Aro raised it high above him, and intoned: ‘The royal blood is mingled. With this act, you shall be father and son.’ Then he lowered it, and allowed the few drops to fall into the skull cup; and this, in turn, he presented to the Rajah.

  The old man held it poised a few inches from his lips, dwelling on the solemn moment. ‘We take you as our son,’ he said, in a moved voice, and drank briefly of the wine. Then he held out the cup to Richard.

  With nothing to guide him, Richard spoke the first words that came into his mind, by way of worthy answer. He said, in Malay: ‘I take you as my father,’ and also drank. Then he set down the cup, and, on an impulse, leant over and embraced the old man with both arms.

  He made no mistake; his instinct had been true, as his movement had been natural. Murmurs of appreciation came from every quarter of the room; be was suddenly surrounded by smiling faces; the Rajah clasped his hand in a warm grip, folding into it the parchment document which was, it seemed, his patent of nobility; and when at last Richard turned to look at Sunara, her face also was alight with happiness. Quickly the tableau moved on; Amin Bulong and the chiefs of the Council of State crowded round to give him their good wishes; he noticed that all of them now addressed him as Tunku – meaning, Prince – as if this were a distinction which had been settled on earlier. He felt himself to be surrounded by friends and well-wishers, by public honour, by a benevolent esteem which, flowing towards him, was as heartening as a rising tide.

  The Rajah, it seemed, had one more thing to say; and when the general movement was subsiding, he held up his hand for silence, which was quickly accorded.

  ‘The ceremony is finished,’ he said. There was a lightness in his tone, displacing his former solemnity. ‘I now have a son, whom it is my pleasure to name the Tunku of Makassang. You know that I have a daughter also, the Princess Sunara.’ There came into his voice and his look an added touch of humour, almost of roguishness. ‘I should make it clear to you all that they are not, in truth, brother and sister.’

  There was a startled silence; then the allusion was caught, and the whole room seemed to dissolve into delighted laughter. Richard looked at Sunara; her eyes were downcast, but into her pale cheeks a warm blush had crept, which nothing could disguise. After a moment she looked up, bravely, under the probing of a thousand amused and speculative glances; then she put her hand into Richard’s, and together they faced the great audience, to acknowledge the truth of what the Rajah had hinted. The murmur of the throng swelled to acclamation, carrying with it an earnest of unstinted loyalty; there seemed no one in the room who did not wish them well.

  It was upon this moment of love and triumph that there now burst a most unseemly intrusion.

  It came first as a confused flurry of sounds from a distant portico, and the heavy trampling of booted feet; then as a voice, raucous and rough, shouting: ‘Out of my way, you damned yellow dog!’ on a note of crude brutality. A spear dropped clattering on a marble floor. Then, at the far end of the room, the crowd stirred, and wavered, and drew back, allowing entrance to three figures who stood out from their surroundings like hawks in a flight of doves.

  They were white men, and arrogantly so; as they advanced, they cleft and elbowed their way through the assembled guests, and on to the floor of the audience chamber, striding with great insolence, as many Europeans did among Asiatics. Truculent and uncouth, perhaps full of liquor, they struck a note of the utmost vulgarity. With a sudden sense of shame, Richard Marriott realized that they were his own men. They were Nick Garrett, and Peter Ramsay, and Peal, who had been a tinker and was now, it seemed, a drunken sailor on the loose.

  A cold silence fell; the trio reached the middle of the floor, halfway to the high table. Nick Garrett was in the lead, dressed in his rough working clothes, a cutlass at one side of his belt, a pistol on the other. Amin Sang, the young captain of his grandfather’s guard, came forward a few steps, as if preparing to intercept them; but Garrett halted twenty paces off, and looked slowly round him, first at the high table, and then directly at Richard Marriott.

  In the warm night air, he was sweating, and the smile on his face was heavy and mirthless. When he had looked his fill, and the taut silence had stretched to intolerable limits, he stuck his hands in his belt with a gesture of contempt, and called out to Richard: ‘We were not bidden to your banquet, but you see we are here, just the same!’ And then, with particular venom: ‘Well now, Dick! Where’s your greeting? Have you forgotten your old shipmates?’

  By contrast with the heartening scene of a few moments before, it was a most shameful moment, and Richard was at a loss how to deal with it. He stood in confused silence, while Amin Sang, and some members of his guard, started down the steps towards the intruders, their spears grasped and ready. But it was the Rajah who made the first effort to meet the situation on a plane of normality.

  He called out sharply to Amin Sang: ‘Wait!’ and then he turned to Richard. ‘These are your men?’

  ‘Yes, your Highness,’ said Richard. Recovering from the first shock of surprise, he felt anger and the need for action flooding in. ‘I will express my regrets to you later. But at the moment–’

  Like Amin Sang, he made as if to start towards the intruders, and the menace in his bearing was unmistakable. Once again, the Rajah intervened.

  ‘Let them be made welcome,’ he said. ‘On this night, there are no strangers in my house.’
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br />   ‘You hear that, Dick?’ Garrett called out to him mockingly. ‘You may be too good for us, but others think differently! What about a draught of wine, now? We have climbed a long way to get it!’

  Richard, once more at a loss, looked about him. He saw disgust and anger on many faces; a rightful disdain in Sunara’s expression; a cold courtesy in the Rajah’s. Only Selang Aro seemed unconcerned, as if he were not at all surprised by the turn of events. Earlier, the High Priest had stood aside from the well-wishers who had crowded round to clasp the hand of the newly-adopted son; but now he had drawn close again – indeed, he was within a few feet of Richard, his face expressionless, his hands hidden in the folds of his monk’s robes. Suddenly, Richard’s sixth sense of danger came to life, but before he could react to the stab of warning, the silence and the stillness burst into ugly violence.

  Nick Garrett bellowed loudly: ‘Wine, I say!’ and, having spoken these three words, which must have been an agreed signal, he whipped the pistol from his belt and levelled it at the Rajah. As in a dream, Richard watched the wild uproar unfold. Garrett fired, but not before old Amin Bulong had thrown his body in front of his master, to receive the ball in his own chest. Ramsay and Peal both aimed and fired at the same moment, finding their marks among the guests at the high table. Then a great shout from John Keston, who had been attending Richard throughout the evening, made the latter whip round.

  He was almost too late. Selang Aro, that impassive man of peace, had his long-concealed dagger raised to strike. It was aimed, treacherously, at Richard’s back; turning, he received the thrust on the heavy gold epaulette which covered his left shoulder. The padded braid turned the weapon, though it could not deflect it completely; Richard felt a shaft of pain as the blade seared the flesh above his collarbone. He threw off Selang Aro, and then staggered back against the table, his right hand clutched to the bleeding wound.

  Sunara rushed to his side, her face distraught; while all around them a wild turmoil exploded. Amin Bulong had fallen insensible, his body still shielding the Rajah; young Amin Sang was pillowing his grandfather’s head in his arms, cherishing the last moments of his life. Colonel Kedah and some of the Palace Guard made for the assassins, their weapons poised, their faces contorted with fury; Richard saw both Ramsay and Peal fall, under half a dozen spear thrusts, before a worse confusion invaded the room.

  This must be more than a simple attempt at assassination, thought Richard bemusedly – for now general fighting began to break out on the fringes of the audience chamber, and to erupt towards the high table. Bands of armed strangers made their appearance, shouting, brandishing spears and heavy cutting parangs, cleaving a way towards Nick Garrett, who still held his attackers at bay; among them – a vile mark of treachery, this – was one of the grease-daubed wrestlers who had lately been entertaining them. It was strange to see this figure of fun transformed into a demon with a flailing axe. He also was making for the high table, and perhaps for Richard himself, but a spearthrust from one of the guards took him under the heart, and his larded body toppled and slithered down the steps again, as indecent in death as it had been comical in life.

  Not only the enemy strangers, the Land-Dyaks, were now fighting. By the misfortune of this occasion, each of the chiefs who formed the Council of State had brought with him his own small bodyguard. Many of these, coming from different parts of Makassang, were unknown to each other; some, on the other hand, came from smaller tribes, or families, which had been traditional enemies in the past, and were not more than wary truce-keepers at the present time. With the whole room now in an uproar, with women screaming, men fighting and dying, tables overturned, wine spilled, tapestries torn from the walls, it was not long before these men of the bodyguards caught the infection of fear, and took to fighting among themselves.

  Richard still stood under the golden canopy, supported by John Keston and a weeping Sunara who clung to his unhurt arm. He had lost some blood, but his brain was clearing from the misty confusion which the shock of the attack had brought. Presently he said: ‘Let me be … I am well enough …’ and he straightened his tall body and looked about him. Selang Aro, the would-be assassin, had slipped away; in the main part of the room, the fighting ebbed to and fro; Nick Garrett, shouting obscenities, was still on his feet, the centre of a knot of his allies who kept Colonel Kedah and the guard at a long arm’s length. At the high table, Amin Sang had released his grandfather’s dead body, and was standing sentinel over the Rajah, whose frail form was menaced by the hand-to-hand fighting which now threatened to engulf the entire room.

  Richard had come unarmed to the banquet; he cursed the niceness which had made him leave his pistols in his room, and reduced his armament to the ceremonial sword which went with his admiral’s uniform. But he now drew this from its scabbard, wincing at the pain of the effort, and set to work to bring order out of the chaos surrounding him.

  He shouted to Amin Sang: ‘Take your men, and help Kedah! Rally the guard! Clear the floor, and we can see what we are doing!’ And as Amin Sang hesitated, looking behind him at the defenceless Rajah who had now almost collapsed upon his throne, Richard shouted again: ‘I will see to him! I and John Keston! I give you my word! Get down among those devils, and push them back to the walls!’

  Amin Sang raised his hand in acknowledgement, and took his men under command, and made for the main fighting in the centre of the audience chamber; it was good to see the small, tough spearhead of his guard cleaving its bloody way through the throng. With no other word necessary, John Keston stationed himself in front of the Rajah, his cutlass at the ready; while Richard turned to Sunara, who, regardless of her safety, still had eyes only for him.

  ‘I love you!’ he shouted. At that moment of stress and danger, it seemed the only appropriate thing to tell her. ‘But I want you alive! Leave us – go to your room – lock yourself in with your women!’

  ‘I will not leave you!’ she panted. ‘You are hurt. Do not make me go!’

  ‘Then stand by Keston, under the canopy.’ He found time to smile, in the midst of the turmoil. ‘I will return, Sunara … I am off on a mission of peace.’

  At that, with his ornate, blunted sword in his hand, he began to move among the guests and the warring bodyguards at the high table, ordering them to put up their weapons, threatening them with hanging if they did not. His tall figure, which had been such a focus of honour and fealty a few minutes earlier, carried its own authority; and his fierce bearing did the rest. In this corner of the room at least, peace began to return, especially to the men of substance who already began to see the struggle in its true outlines. Presently they started to join him in his efforts, imposing their own discipline on those who would still fight, outfacing the determined, in a few cases shedding blood to enforce their will. Calm gradually settled; the person of the Rajah was made safe, as some of his Council joined to form a circle round the ivory throne; and Richard could turn his attention to the main struggle.

  His practised eye, which had gauged many a close fight, told him that the worst was over, the day was almost gained. Amin Sang and Kedah, working in a pattern of unison which was a professional delight to see, were quickly clearing the floor, pushing back the mob into the more confined space of the colonnades which flanked theroom, where those who still chose to fight could be cornered and subdued, a single segment at a time. There were already signs of weariness; there was less shouting, more hard-breathing concentration on simple survival; the enemy, whoever had composed their cohorts – and what an inquest there would be, thought Richard grimly; what an inquest, and what an execution afterwards – the enemy had lost the momentum of treacherous surprise, and were now more simply matched, sword for sword, wound for wound. He noticed that, as victory seemed near, the Palace Guard was beginning to run wild in the lust to avenge; there was much headlong pursuit, and aimless slaughter, of people who could be nothing except innocent – slaves, punkah-workers, attendants who had come to pour out wine, and who remained to spill t
heir own blood.

  The avenging troops were scarcely to be blamed for this excess. They had seen their Commander-in-Chief killed, their Rajah menaced, their comrades slaughtered; if the treachery had been successful, it would have been their own blood now darkening the mosaic floors, making the marble steps slippery and loathsome. The wailing screams for mercy, which began to take the place of fiercer battlecries, were a measure of this relief, now turned to sullen fury; and Richard knew that he could not have stemmed it, even if he would. The bloodletting must run its course. Peace would only come when enough dishonoured graves had been filled.

  Meantime, there was one grave which must surely be furnished … Nick Garrett was not yet numbered among the slain or the fugitive; indeed, his hulking figure, towering over friend and foe, dominated that corner of the audience chamber where the fighting still raged. With no time to reload his pistol, he fought two-handed, a cutlass in his right hand, a sailor’s dirk – honed to a razor-sharpness – in his left; at close range, he was too formidable to be overcome, and in the constantly changing movement of men around him, he was a difficult target for any other kind of attack. Richard saw one of the Palace Guard circling stealthily, with a short throwing spear poised in his hand, waiting for an opening; but when he did launch the spear, it flew past Garrett’s jerking shoulder and killed one of the thrower’s own comrades, in useless slaughter.

  But as Richard watched, he felt a touch on his arm. It was Sunara, and in her hand she carried his two pistols, Castor and Pollux, already primed and loaded. Unseen, she must have slipped away, and made the dangerous journey to his room, and returned with this most timely aid.