He looked at her, wordless, his admiration overflowing; and she smiled back, with fine spirit, and said: ‘Here – finish him!’
He took the two pistols in either hand – though his left hung nearly useless – and strode down the steps towards the fighting men. In all the press and uproar, Nick Garrett saw him coming, and saw also what he carried. Clearing a space round him with a whirling arm, Garrett bellowed his anger and his defiance; he seemed within an ace of rushing headlong towards his main enemy, ready to match his blade against the chance of a bullet. But when Richard’s arm came up, sighting the pistol carefully across the tangling bodies and tossing arms, Garrett’s nerve wavered. On an impulse which could not be questioned, he ducked swiftly out of the line of fire, and jumped for the steps and the nearest portico. Richard’s shot, changing its aim swiftly, shattered an ornamental jar of magnolia blooms, a foot above his head. Then Garrett was out of sight, and, with him gone, the heartbeat of the battle swiftly died.
Richard turned, racing for the doorway leading to the gardens and the Steps of Heaven; swift as he was, another panting figure caught up with him and ranged alongside in pursuit. It was Amin Sang the bereaved, spear in hand, intent on the same execution. Running together, they left the lighted uproar of the palace, and emerged into what seemed, by contrast, a pitch-dark night. But there were torches set in iron holders at the edge of the gardens; Richard seized one, and Amin Sang another. Ahead of them, a shadowy figure sped away into the gloom, and leapt out of sight down the first flight of steps.
Others joined the pursuit, with torches or without them; as their eyes gained strength, the moonlight gained also, showing them Garrett’s figure hurtling down the steps, the lights on the water far ahead, and the comet-tail of flaming torches flaring out in pursuit. Richard and Amin Sang ran side by side, and step by level step; the pleasure of the chase had restored Richard’s strength, and for Amin Sang, his grandfather’s blood must be spurring him on to pious loathing of the murderer. Halfway down the Steps of Heaven, in full cry among the streaming torches, it was clear that they were gaining on their quarry, and must soon overtake.
For Richard, it was paramount that he should gain most of all, and be the first one in the racing pack to catch up with the outlaw. For Garrett was his own man; it was Richard who had brought him to the island, it was Richard who shared the guilt, until Garrett was destroyed. There was dishonour by association, also; in later accounts of this night, in the myths and folk tales which would assuredly grow up round it, men must never say that it was the Tunku of Makassang’s right-hand man who had attempted to murder the Rajah, to procure the succession for his own lord, and that they were both party to the same base plot, an infamous return for honour … He himself must be Nick Garrett’s executioner, and no one else.
Pricked by this need, he forgot his weariness and his loss of blood, and began to charge full tilt down the sloping steps, expending every ounce of energy in the effort to outstrip the others and to close with the figure ahead. Already they were nearing the water at the lower end of the Steps of Heaven; already Garrett’s form began to be silhouetted against the pale expanse of moonlit ocean. He was labouring now, his energy sapped as much by drinking and wenching as by the hard, hour-long fight he had waged and lost in the audience chamber; and Richard, though gasping himself, could hear the other man’s loudly sobbing breath, and his heavy footfalls slurring and stumbling their way down the last remaining steps.
Then suddenly they were there, at their journey’s end … It was the foot of the Steps of Heaven; there was nothing beyond save darkness and blank water. Richard, beside himself with the hunger to kill, hurled his torch at Nick Garrett; when it missed, and fell hissing into the sea, he swiftly sighted his pistol, and fired his only shot. But his aim, ruined by the uncertain light and the pumping of hisheart, was wild, and the shot missed also. Now he had nothing – nothing save his bare hands, which would have to be enough.
Nick Garrett had turned snarling, at bay. It must have been a fearful sight, with the water lapping greedily at his back, to see the stream of torches closing in on him, to hear the hoarse breathing and the wolfish cries, to have the avenging figure of Richard Marriott as the focus of all this. But he was a brave man, and a desperate one. He stood up straight, and gasped out: ‘Come on then, Dick!’ A gleam at his right hand showed that he still had his sailor’s dirk.
Richard came on; as he did so, the circle of torches closed in at his back, a fiery ring of witnesses; in front there was nothing save the hated figure who must be destroyed, whose grave – the sea itself – was palely gaping for him. He feinted to the right, and as Garrett brought the dirk across, probing savagely for Richard’s chest, he clawed at Garrett’s arm, and secured an iron hold on it. No man alive could have loosed himself from such a grip; the dirk, falling with a clatter on to the lowest step, was the evidence of this.
Now they were man to man; the one near to exhaustion, the other wounded and weak from loss of blood. In such a struggle, Richard had always been able to hold his own. But it must be done quickly, he thought, or this time his strength would not last him out.
Nick Garrett had his life to lose; Richard Marriott, beside the same stake, had an enormous rage that one of his own men could have behaved with such treachery. Even thieves’ honour should hold back from this margin of shame … He forgot his pain, he felt himself briefly and invincibly strong; not even Garrett’s knee, coming up to crash into the pit of his stomach, could turn him aside. While the watchers with their ring of torches closed in, he seized Garrett in the murderous grip which Cornish wrestlers used to make a man cry out for mercy, and forced him to his knees, and then backwards till his neck and shoulders overhung the void at the bottom of the steps. Then Richard, sitting astride the lower half of Garrett’s trunk, raised his hands, and locked them together, and brought them crashing down on the other man’s face and temples.
There was nothing for Garrett’s neck save to give way, and this it did, with a sharp crack which could be heard half a mile off. With that sound, and a rattle of breath, the man beneath him became a corpse.
Richard, utterly spent, was near to fainting; only the helping hand of Amin Sang at his back saved him from toppling into the water. But then strong arms lifted him clear, and Nick Garrett’s body, released, fell over the edge of the last step with a ragged-sounding splash, and sank, and rose again, and drifted sluggishly away.
Richard would have no litter to carry him back. He crouched and rested within the circle of torches, and took a long draught of wine, and then raised himself and began to climb the Steps of Heaven again, slowly, with Amin Sang at his side. Above them, the Sun Palace, though still ablaze with light, was quiet now, and cleansed of strife. In his soul, he had but three things left to do that day; to make his duty to the Rajah, to hold Sunara in his arms, and then to sleep and sleep … He stumbled, in utter weariness, and Amin Sang caught him by the elbow and supported him for a step or two.
‘Thank you,’ said Richard, in a throaty voice. His wound, stiffening, made his head swim with pain; his thoughts seemed to be wavering to and fro, like his body on the long climb. ‘I am not the strongest man in the world, at this moment … I hope his Highness came to no harm … Your grandfather saved his life, at the cost of his own … It was bravely done … And you yourself have earned nothing but honours tonight.’
‘I could have hated you, Tunku,’ said Amin Sang, astonishingly, out of the night. In a flash of understanding, Richard realized that the young man was speaking, for the first and the last time, of Sunara, and of his love for her which he had not declared, and would now never do. ‘But I cannot hate you now … You have avenged my honoured grandfather … From this night forward, I am your man, for ever.’
v
Their two hands had been bound together with a silk scarf, in token of their uniting. They had eaten rice from the same bowl. They had bowed in obeisance to their elders, and the Rajah had asked for, and received, their vows. Later, a Bu
ddhist priest – who could take no direct part in the marriage, since earthly love was too profane a matter for men of God – had read from the Lotus of the True Law, and a children’s choir had chanted their praises. But all the solemn ceremony of a state wedding had been only a prelude to the feast, which Richard found intolerably prolonged, and the feast only a prelude to the seclusion of their wedding night, which was proving, as yet, even more of an ordeal than what had gone before.
Richard Marriott stood by the open window of his apartment, looking towards the sea, watching the moonlight cleaving a pathway to the far horizon, hearing plainly the surf of the Kutar beaches, miles away to the south. Round him the Sun Palace was sunk in a deep night-time silence; though in the audience chamber the merriment continued, yet it could not penetrate here, where the coral walls were thick, the teak doors as solid as rock, the solitude absolute. His thoughts were the thoughts of a bridegroom, yet they were mingled with other thoughts, ranging from the strange past to the shadowy future.
He had taken many women in that past; but Sunara was not to be ‘taken’, save with tenderness and reverence. For the first time since the youthful escapades, he had doubts of how he would acquit himself; his desire for her was most potent, yet beyond this there was the need for gentleness, the need not to shock or hurt her, the loving awe which might inhibit manhood. She was adored above all. It had been a long and trying day. His shoulder was still stiff and painful from the dagger wound. He wanted nothing more from this day, from this life, save to lie in her arms, but he wanted this with the fiercest hunger he had ever experienced.
They would find their joy or their embarrassment soon enough … He shifted his position, leaning on the sill of the wide window, staring out into a star-pricked, perfumed darkness which answered no questions and gave no hint of what was real and what was a dream. In many ways, Sunara was his only certainty. This was their marriage day, because he loved her. He had remained in Makassang, because he loved her. He was an adopted son, and a prince, because heloved her. But none of these things helped him to divine the future. Rather did they cloud it almost beyond discovery.
Within a few moments, perhaps, such thoughts would not matter; drowning in love, in Sunara, all doubts and puzzlements would melt away. Or perhaps they would matter more strongly still, perhaps they would be all he would have left, if the tide of love were out, if she turned from his rough and intrusive body and left him alone once more.
By the light of reason, he was alone in any case; as much alone as if he had been shipwrecked, or marooned. The Lucinda D had disappeared, most strangely, on the night of the banquet and the fight; she had been there at anchor, when Nick Garrett had made his attempt, but in the morning she was gone. Under whose command? He could not guess. Selang Aro had also disappeared, fading into the shadows without trace. He was not hidden in the Shwe Dragon, which had been invaded and turned upside down by the Palace Guard; nor had the most painstaking torture of captives revealed his whereabouts. There were plenty of rumours, and endless talk in the bazaars, but all trails had run dead, like rivers trickling into sand.
Only Richard Marriott, a captain without a ship, a fighter without an enemy, remained in Makassang, at the centre of a private maze which returned a blank face to all questions. Why was he here? – why should he stay? – what was in the future? – what fate ruled him? It seemed that, in fantastic faith, he was looking, for all these answers, towards a single, lovely, and studious brow.
And she of this brow was here … Behind him the beaded curtains stirred and rustled, and a soft, hesitant voice said: ‘Tuan.’
My lord … He turned, his throat suddenly constricted, and looked at Sunara. She was standing in the arched doorway between the two halves of the dimly-lit apartment; she was dressed for the night, for sleep, for love, in a modest robe of silk which matched her submissive face – and yet belied it. For she was beautiful, and her small form was undisguisedly shaped for joy. He remembered how he had seen her half wanton, half shy, on the night in the treasure vault, and how it was for this present moment that they had both held back – though they had not known it then. As he came towards her now, he prayed that his touch upon her soft body could carry her past all fears, and that she would presently concur in readiness, and welcome him as the glove welcomes the hand.
At his gentle pressure on her shoulder, she said again, in the same submissive voice: ‘Tuan.’ But she was trembling; through the thin silk he could feel the uncontrollable shaking of her body; her eyes were downcast. He pressed her to him lightly, and said what was in his heart.
‘Do not be afraid, Sunara. I love you. I will never hurt you. Not tonight. And not ten years from tonight. You can be sure of that.’
‘I know it.’ She had dropped her head on his shoulder, trustfully, as if she knew that before long it would come to be at ease there. ‘I am foolish … But it is only my body which is trembling … I was waiting for you, as I have been taught by the old ones … What were you thinking of, staring out of the window?’
‘Only of you … No, that is not true. I was thinking a little of the past, and a great deal of the future. And I was asking myself some riddles.’
‘Such as, the reason why you are here?’
‘Yes.’ Wondering at her perception, he pressed her body again, feeling it becoming calmed, divining that it would soon be warmed, as his own was warmed. ‘Yes, that was the chief riddle. But it does not matter now.’
‘Why not?’
‘Because I am holding you.’
‘That is why you are in Makassang.’ She made a slight movement towards him; and suddenly, it was enough to set his blood on fire – fire which she swiftly caught. ‘You have made me brave, now,’ she said. ‘I knew it would be so … You are here because of love, and you are here’ – she let herself be drawn closer still – ‘because I am yours. Do you remember, in the vault?’
‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Oh yes.’
Before they knew it, their fingers were intertwined, fumbling at the fastenings of her robe; and then, as he held her away from him, she was revealed, and her pale exquisite body glowed in the lamplight.
She raised a beautiful, untroubled face. ‘Do you remember? This was what your eyes sought. And then your hands. Your gentle hands.’
‘And now I seek all the rest.’
‘It is yours … Now I am very brave. I will never be more brave, in all my life. Take me now. Tuan. My lord. Take me now.’
There was a time in the night, at a sighing moment when she was his, that she said, again: ‘Ah, Tuan!’ But that was different, as, by then, all the world was different.
Book Three
The White Rajah: 1861
She was with child, and he had never been happier. It was a joy to watch, at close quarters, her grave preoccupation at this strange station halfway between wife and mother, and to see how she neither said goodbye to the one nor lost sight of the other. It was a joy to make love, gently yet ardently, with her when she carried the hallowed token of this love already. To lie with her, which before had been a wild rapture, was now a deep contentment.
Yet for much of each day he was restless, and out of employment. There were moments when he seemed to be surrounded by toys – he had a toy to make love to, in a toy kingdom, whose small resources and pigmy honours could be manipulated with two fingers, like the chocolate pennies of children. His occupation, like Othello’s, was gone. While he played the man in bed, he seemed to have become, within the space of six months, a mere courtier out of it.
Such were Richard’s uneasy thoughts, as he sat in the garden of the Sun Palace, on an afternoon in May. The servant who had just set a sangaree of spiced Madeira at his elbow, with a low bow and the customary murmur of ‘Tunku’, had now withdrawn, leaving Richard to sip the wine and stare at the view – the perfect view which he had surveyed for hundreds of idle hours already. He wore now the Malay dress which was common in Makassang – a longhi of striped cotton, a braided tunic of silk, and a green turban a
s a badge of rank.
The dress was well fitted for leisure in a hot climate, as the view was well fitted for slothful eyes to enjoy. Below him was the bay, and across the bay was the golden dome of the Shwe Dagon, and beyond that the green jungle and purple hills where Selang Aro lay hid, and where, men said, another enemy, dark and faceless – Black Harris, no less – still roamed, when he was not roaming the sealanes like the pirate he was. It was likely that Harris had seized command of the Lucinda D, which had twice been sighted by the Sea-Dyak garrison, coasting up past the western seaboard; it was likely also that he had never left Makassang, but had made some mysterious, interior part of it his home – an attic lair from which he would fall upon and plunder the rest of the house, when the time was ripe.
But Richard Marriott, alas, did not spend his time hunting these, or any other enemies. He spent it by killing it – the most unworthy of all pastimes.
He killed time with love, which was wonderful, and with eating and drinking, which was not. Like the Rajah, he kept tremendous state, with retinues of liveried servants, and a glittering ceremonial to govern affairs at court; and outside the Sun Palace, there were royal progresses to be made, state visits to Prahang and Shrang Anapuri and those Sea-Dyak garrisons whose morale required it, parades and reviews, regattas and foot races, fêtes champêtres for the rich and the distribution of largesse for the poor.
Dressing for such functions alone might account for three or four hours of every day; and this, it turned out, was a matter of love also. For in the fond belief that Richard’s wearing of the Dutch admiral’s uniform betokened an interest in such matters, Sunara and the palace major-domo had put their heads together, and designed for him a truly gorgeous range of ceremonial dress. He was an admiral one day, a commander-in-chief the next, a peacock princeling on days of celebration. He could not tell her that this aspect of a Prince Consort’s life occasioned him the greatest boredom of all.
The White Rajah (1961) Page 23
