The White Rajah (1961)

by Monsarrat, Nicholas

  Sunara’s face, which had been cold enough, grew positively glacial as she stared back at him. She spoke in a low voice of absolute contempt: ‘Do not address me in that disgusting manner.’

  Kedah tried to rally beneath the lash of her look and tone. ‘You know well enough, Princess, that I have been adopted as your father’s son.’

  ‘Yes …’ In the small figure there was the most steely pride Richard had ever seen. ‘And I am more than ever happy to have been removed by marriage from such a connection.’

  It was open warfare; the fact that her answer was less than accurate (for she had married another ‘adopted son’ herself) only pointed her overwhelming distaste. Richard, ashamed that Sunara should have been the one to give this lead, quickly jumped in to play his part.

  ‘There are other ways in which you forget your place. You have no business to put John Keston under guard, without advising me.’

  ‘I advise you now,’ said Kedah.

  ‘And I demand to see him.’

  ‘He cannot be seen.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘He waits to be questioned.’ Kedah, slowly regaining his self-confidence, faced Richard squarely. ‘I must again remind you of this evening’s ceremony. I have been given complete authority over the army, as over everything else in Makassang. Should I choose to arrest a man, and cage him, that is my affair, and no one else’s.’

  ‘If he comes to any harm,’ Richard told him, ‘I will hold you accountable. Remember that.’

  ‘If he comes to any harm, he will have deserved it.’

  Richard stepped forward, angry, his hand still on the pistol butt. ‘Since you are so stubborn, I will appeal to theRajah.’

  Kedah, now fully composed, shrugged his shoulders. ‘Please yourself. But I would not advise it. His Highness has been grossly disturbed once already this evening, and he will not be in the mood for another intrusion.’

  ‘Keston did not disturb him – of that I am sure.’

  ‘I was not speaking of your servant.’ A sneer crossed Kedah’s face. ‘Not of that servant, at least.’

  They waited for him to unwrap this mystery, but he made no attempt to do so. Once more, Richard was forced to seek the answer himself.

  ‘You talk in riddles, as usual … Who has disturbed him tonight?’

  There was a long moment of silence. Then Kedah, instead of answering the question, put another himself.

  ‘Was Amin Sang with you earlier?’

  ‘Yes.’ It was Sunara who answered, suddenly foreboding. ‘Why do you wish to know?’

  ‘I was asking myself who could have inspired him to his extraordinary behaviour.’

  Richard, sick at heart, divined the odious theme of this play-acting, and cut it short. He would not pander to thismonster’s pleasure. ‘Have you taken Amin Sang also?’

  Kedah nodded. ‘Yes.’

  ‘This is lunatic! On what charge? Or was he also wandering the palace corridors with a cutlass in his hand, looking for victims?’

  ‘His arrest is a graver matter altogether.’ Kedah spoke with obvious relish. ‘He threatened the person of the Rajah … He was drunk, and he broke into the royal apartments… I find it necessary to ask what you know of this, and what part you played. When he was here, for example, did you ply him with wine?’

  ‘Oh yes!’ answered Richard, heavily sarcastic. What Kedah was saying was so ludicrous that he forgot his prudence, and his fear for his friend. ‘Oh yes, certainly we plied him with wine! I myself laid him on his back, and poured a flagon down his throat, and then sent him off to insult his Highness!’ He looked at Kedah with derisive contempt. ‘What nonsense is this? Amin Sang would not insult the Rajah, if he lived to be a hundred years old.’

  ‘He has little chance of that now,’ said Kedah.

  The words were carelessly uttered, but they struck home with a horrifying chill. Richard had the instant conviction that Kedah had used an exact phrase, with intent – that he had made up his mind that Amin Sang had not, in fact, very much longer to live. Indeed, there might be a worse construction even than that … He asked, with a fear he could not keep from his voice: ‘Where is Amin Sang? What have you done with him?’

  Kedah was looking at him with a meaning smile. ‘Ah – you are taking the matter seriously now? – it is no longer a joke? I think you are wise …’ His voice became matter-of-fact, a sing-song recital which was more terrifying than any display of anger. ‘It is probable that Amin Sang bore some grudge against the Rajah, for sending him away from the palace. Whatever the reason, he tried to force his way into his Highness’s apartment, long after midnight. He was drunk, and he was armed … He made a disturbance, and he shouted for the so-called Fifty of the Brave … He struggled when the Rajah ordered him arrested, and made an effort to come close to his Highness … There is no doubt that the guard would have killed him out of hand, if his Highness had not intervened … Amin Sang is now in chains, and so he will remain until he is brought to trial.’

  There was but one more question to be asked, and Richard, steeling his shaken spirit, forced himself to put it: ‘What will become of him?’

  ‘I am new to the law,’ answered Kedah, ‘but I would say that there could be only one penalty.’

  Silence fell on the room, complete and terrible. Manina had drawn a fold of her sarong over her head, and was rocking to and fro as she crouched in her corner, a classic figure of grief. Richard and Sunara had come close together, facing Colonel Kedah; it was the soldier’s moment of triumph, and there was no single thing to be done save to accept the fact, and perhaps, on the morrow, to seek mercy wherever it might be found. But at this moment, on this fearful night, there was nothing more they could say.

  Kedah, however, had not done with them. In the flickering lamplight his figure appeared to loom over them, enormous, not to be resisted; all weapons seemed to lie in his hand, all power pent in that single gleaming eye. When he spoke, he might have been Fate itself, pronouncing doom from a stronghold beyond mortal reach.

  ‘Your Highness made some insulting reference to my adoption as a son.’ The first words were to Sunara, but then his eye came round to Richard. ‘You also have been pleased to hinder me, in any way you could. Perhaps you will now give some thought to what your situation is. You have not so many allies that you can throw out these challenges, these insults … Your two Jewish traitors are no more. Your servant Keston is in disgrace. Amin Sang lies in the shadow of the death penalty. You are alone – you have never been more alone! … So much for my first day as First Minister.’ He drew himself up at last, ready to go, ready to leave the battlefield to its ghosts and its mourning. ‘We will all see another day,’ he went on, and the sing-song note had returned. ‘But it will be my day, and all the days after it will be my days … Remember, when you watch tomorrow’s dawn, that men rise, as well as the sun, and that I’ – he stabbed his thumb into his chest, with sudden brutal emphasis – ‘have risen highest of all. There I will stay.’

  At that, he turned on his heel and was gone from the room, with a click and scrape of his sword hilt; and then they were indeed alone.

  viii

  It had been an awesome night; the little that remained of it passed like some fearful dream, moving past deadly hazards at a snail’s pace. Kedah had left them in the deepest confusion and doubt; Sunara was distressed beyond measure by the happenings of these few fatal hours, and Richard was scarcely less moved. The murder of the Da Costas, so contemptuously brought about, had been a bitter blow; now trumped-up charges had removed yet more of their staunch friends, leaving bare a stage on which the two surviving characters listened in agony for the next blow to fall. For the remaining time of darkness, the heel of the night, they had to endure torments of indecision, of waning confidence, and of actual fear for their lives.

  For now, where before a foreboding silence had reigned, there were too many sounds. There were sounds of feet, now slow, now swift; the precise feet of soldiers, the gliding feet of spies.
There was the sound of shouting from the barracks, there was the sound of arms in the courtyard below; once there was a wailing, hideous cry, which sent them hot-foot to the children’s room – to find both their dear ones wrapped in a sleep so innocent and calm that it shamed the whole adult world. But, for Richard and Sunara, there was never a moment of that night which loosed their tension or brought respite from their crushing cares.

  It was when they were returning from the nursery, crossing a dark antechamber, walking hand in hand like their own children, that Richard said: ‘I will demand an audience of your father this morning, and insist on seeing Amin Sang, and Keston too. It is monstrous that they should be spirited away like this! Kedah must have lost his senses.’

  Sunara shook her head sadly. They were coming out of the dark room into the lamplight; her face, pale and spiritless, proclaimed all their defeated thoughts.

  ‘Kedah is sane enough,’ she said. ‘Too sane for us … He has his plans, and they are all coming true. He has made himself the greatest man in the island, after my father. But I cannot forget my father’s part in all this. The cruelty and the harsh rule are his. They are his orders, which threw Amin Sang and your own servant into the dungeons.’ She raised a weary hand to her forehead. ‘That terrible cry … I cannot put it from my mind … How can we tell? – they may both be dead already.’

  ‘If not they, then some other wretch … Oh, this accursed country!’ he burst out. ‘It is becoming poisoned to the very roots.’

  She asked suddenly: ‘What keeps you here, Richard?’

  He had sat down on one of the daybeds, and let his heavy head fall back on the cushions. The hollow void which was the window showed them that dawn was at hand; into its square of blackness there had crept a pale breath of light; a tree which had been a shadow now grew into substance; one star after another fled away.

  ‘What keeps me here?’ he repeated her question. ‘Love keeps me here, I think. In fact, I know it. For me, it has always been love. Love of you, first. I used to think that I would not stay in Makassang, unless I loved you. It was true then, when I first thought it, but it is true no longer. Other loves have joined yours and mine. Love of the people here, of their nature. Love of what Andrew Farthing stood for – love of his love. I called it an accursed country, because it is becoming so. But it need not be accursed. That is the tragedy. I love it, and I mourn for what has been done to it, and I cannot desert it now, however hard we may be pressed and harassed.’

  She had turned away, and was looking out towards the creeping dawn light. ‘It will be an accursed country,’ she said, very quietly, ‘as long as my father lives.’

  There was no need for her to say more; the fearful theme had been sounded; the music now echoed between them, acknowledged, loud to their ears and hearts; a bell sounding the knell of clear conscience.

  As he took in her words, he had sat up. ‘How can you say such a thing?’ he asked, startled and shocked. ‘You have never spoken such a thought before.’

  She nodded agreement, regretful, resigned. ‘It is an impious thought, the worst thought of my life. I have wrestled long with it, and it is still with me. To save these loves you spoke of – perhaps even to save our love – we must make up our minds to do a terrible thing.’

  ‘Why do you say, “to save our love”?’

  ‘It is simple. Because I am part of him, for as long as he lives. You will come to see the same poison in me, and you would never forget it. I will not have that! I will not lose your love, and you will not lose Makassang. But to keep both, we must not shrink from the worst stroke of all.’

  From far away, deep in the palace, a burst of raucous laughter rang out, more ominous than many other sounds of the night. The dawn was now at hand, the pale sky paler still; soon it would be day, with whatever horrors or ordeals that lay stored up for them. But Richard could not bring himself, even at such a moment when the balance of terror was weighted against them, to accept what she was saying.

  ‘We cannot take his life, Sunara. Better for us to fail altogether … It would mean that we had become as wicked and brutal as he.’

  She was insistent. ‘I called it impiety. There could be no worse crime, for a son or a daughter. But it must be done! Why should we live in mortal danger, why should Makassang be brought to ruin, because my father in his last days has become a child of God?’

  ‘A child of God?’ he repeated. He had never heard the phrase before.

  ‘It is our term for madness,’ she explained to him. ‘And I believe it is true – cruelty and fear and old age have turned his wits. When such a man is mad, and can destroy a whole kingdom, and take my life, and your life, and the children’s lives, then an impious act is nothing! It becomes sanctified! It governs the survival of the innocent – and for that, my father must die, before we do!’

  Richard was appalled still; and he knew what it must cost her, most dutiful and loving of daughters, to propose such a crime, and to defend it. He watched her, wordless. She was standing with her back to him, staring out of the window; the view from this small room was towards theSteps of Heaven, their terrible symbol of the past and the future. In a whirling instant, he knew that Sunara could be judged right; one only needed to turn the spectrum a little, and acknowledge that all action in Makassang had now reached an utterly degrading plane, and that there was left even to the most upright of men, only a choice of evils … To bring her comfort, to take his share of the burden, he said: ‘It must be thought of … But I swear I will do it, Sunara, if we decide so.’

  She did not answer; he thought she might not have heard. She was now staring fixedly out of the window, into the dawn light and the new world of today. Suddenly she said, in a very different voice: ‘Richard! Please come here!’

  He rose swiftly. ‘What is it?’

  ‘A most wonderful ship.’

  He had feared instant anger; now his alertness relaxed into anticlimax. ‘What is a ship to us, however wonderful?’ he chided her gently. ‘After what has been said, these last few minutes?’

  ‘It is like no ship I have ever seen before. Come quickly, and look!’

  Her voice was eager. But she did not yet know that what she saw, in the ghostly light at the foot of the Steps of Heaven, was the most remarkable ship-of-war on the waters of the globe.

  3

  It was not one ship, but three, Richard presently observed through the great telescope; as the daylight gained, two other shadows of grey emerged out of the mist as small paddlewheel vessels, possibly gunboats, anchored in attendance on the flagship. But they were only tiny fish intheir giant shoal, dwarfed entirely by the iron bulk of Sunara’s ‘most wonderful ship’, which rode to her cables in the full majesty of maritime power and prestige.

  Richard gazed at her with avid eyes, shifting the telescope lenses constantly, dwelling with a sailor’s critical care on a dozen aspects of her appearance. Since she was lying stern on to the Steps of Heaven, he saw first her name, which was HMS Warrior, emblazoned in great gilt letters on each quarter. She was a big ship, even by the modern standards of 1862; he judged her perhaps as much as nine thousand tons, and more than four hundred feet long, with a massive breadth of hull which must have been armour-plated. When she swung to her anchors, he counted nearly forty big guns, though he could not guess their calibre. As a strong man might say of his strength, it was doubtless enough.

  But what struck his imagination most of all was the fact that she was rigged both for sail and steam; the combination of a long bowsprit and two funnels amidships proclaimed that she was one of the new brand of British warships, which were now transferring to steam power. Looking at this monumental example of what had hitherto been only vague rumour, he felt himself in the presence of history – and of professional doubt. She was the first steam-driven vessel he had ever seen.

  Richard adjusted the lenses again, pulling back the focus so that, as the ship swung nearly broadside on, he could examine and enjoy her whole grey length. In spite of its imm
ense power, it was a most beautiful hull, almost yacht-like in its long curved sweep up to the gilded ‘warrior’ figurehead; the towering spars dwarfed the funnels, the furled canvas gleamed like fresh paint. Indeed, she gleamed all over, stem to stern; the decks must have been holystoned daily, perhaps hourly – there was at that moment a watch of seamen, their trouser legs rolled to the knee, scrubbing and swabbing down the fore-deck, working like precise marionettes at their task. The brasswork, of which there was a lavish amount in every available space, shone like burnished gold wherever the sun caught its surface.

  Aft, under a spotless canvas awning covering the quarter-deck, a congregation of officers, tremendous in gold braid, was assembling for some ceremony which he guessed to be the raising of colours at sunrise. Even as he looked, the ceremony approached its climax; there was a bugle call, audible across the water, followed by a concerted shrilling of bosuns’ pipes; and slowly the white ensign was hoisted, while on the quarter-deck all stood motionless at the salute. The ensign, with the brave colours of the Royal Navy, completed a trio of noble flags which proclaimed the utmost in consequence – the Union Jack at the bow, mark of a major warship, and the great St George’s Cross at the mainmast, to tell the whole world that this paragon of ships carried an admiral in command.

  The deck swabbing was completed; now the guns’ crews were exercising the main armament, training and elevating the guns with a constant flickering of polished steel. Signal flags fluttered up to the yardarm, to be answered by smaller bunting from the two gunboats. Another bugle call rang out, and suddenly the decks were cleared, and HMS Warrior became herself again – serene, silent, spotless, ready for any trial of strength with any other ship afloat – or with any other nation.