by John Masters
Princess Devadassi was bending over him. He sighed and put his hands to his head. The night had passed, and it was dawn, and cold. The tower of her palace climbed up by fretted, diminishing stages into the grey sky behind her.
He tried to stand up but failed. The princess squatted down opposite him on her heels, her big kohl-rimmed eyes looking seriously into his, but she made no effort to help him up.
He said, ‘I don’t know what happened.’ There was a big lump, painful to the gentlest touch, on the back of his head.
She said, ‘Money?’
Jason gasped and plunged his hand into his waistband. He pulled out a few pennies. Everything else had gone. He said, ‘I have been robbed!’ Then in Tamil: ‘Money--gone. Three pearls--gone.’
She nodded calmly. He struggled to his feet and looked helplessly at her. She signed to him to wait, and went into her palace. After some minutes she came back with an earthenware pitcher of water and poured some of it into his hands and over his head. The water freshened him, and he said humbly, ‘Thank you, Your Royal Highness.’
She smiled and made him a little sign, joining her hands together and touching her forehead. She turned and walked back into her palace. Her hips swung lazily, her little jacket shivered, and once again she looked at him, smiling over her shoulder, before she disappeared into her palace tower.
Jason half raised his hand. But the Phoebe would sail away, and--He swore aloud and staggered off towards the ship, his knees as unstable as a baby’s.
The river shone like a ribbon of pearls, and the Phoebe floated like a brown swan on it, her masts and yards blending into the palms on the far bank. He walked to the end of the jetty and hailed her. A few fishermen working at their nets looked curiously at him but did not come near him.
When he reached the deck Drayton, Green, and Silvester were waiting for him on the poop. Drayton said cheerfully, ‘You’re late back, Jason. Still, all’s well that ends well. What are the pearls like?’
Jason said, ‘I went down to the pearlers’ village, as you told me--‘
Silvester barked keenly, ‘Where are the pearls, eh?’
Jason said, ‘And I went out pearling with their fleet. They go to sea in log boats like--‘
Silvester said, ‘You didn’t get any pearls! Where’s the money?’
Master Drayton said, ‘Pray be quiet, Master Mate. Show me the pearls, Jason.’
Jason said, ‘I haven’t got any. I was robbed.’
The river lapped against the hull; deep in the ship the mast creaked; a sailor working on a rope behind them laughed once.
Master Drayton flushed and stamped his boot so that his gold spurs jangled. ‘This is no time for joking! We sail on tomorrow’s tide.’
‘I’m not joking,’ Jason said. ‘I was robbed. I’ve got a bump on my head.’
Silvester said, ‘But of course he can be trusted with money, not like ignorant ship officers.’
‘You’re a lying dog, Savage!’ Drayton shouted, beside himself with mortification. ‘You spent it on drink and women. That’s why you’re late. I can smell the rum on your breath! Liar, thief, liar!’ He lashed out with the back of his hand and hit Jason across the face.
Jason gasped. ‘I’m not a liar.’ He found his knife in his hands and a mist blurring his eyes.
Silvester said, ‘Aaah! A mutineer as well as a thief and a liar.’ Three swords whirred out and faced him, the tips quivering like the tongues of adders at his throat. Silvester said, ‘Tie him to the mast there. Gunner!’
They tied Jason to the mast, and the gunner flogged him with a rope’s end while the crew watched. Then they carried him down to the cramped dark hole of the forepeak and chained him to the iron ring that was screwed into the vessel’s stem, and left him.
Two rats crept out of a hole near his knees and sat up on their hind legs to watch him, their eyes like four tiny red coals in the gloom. His comrades’ feet pattered along the deck above his head. The water chuckled, the heat grew, and soon sweat bathed him from head to toe and ran in salty channels across the planking. For a time he brooded sullenly on his flogging. They were sailing on tomorrow’s tide. And they believed he was a liar. He curled up as best he could, lying on his face because his back smarted, and thought of Devadassi. Soon he smelled the perfume of her, and then he forgot his bitterness.
The gunner came down in the evening, unchained him, and gave him a crust of bread. Jason tore off a piece of the crust and put it down beside him for the rats. Then he went to sleep.
He slept well and was still asleep when the gunner came and said gruffly, ‘On deck, you!’ Clambering up the companion, he found it was early morning. A strong land wind rattled through the rigging, and baskets of fruit lay all over the deck, and chickens clucked in crates by the mast, and tethered goats bleated in the bows. The bank seemed close today, and the houses very clean and inviting, and the sun shone on the tower of the princess’s palace.
As the gunner led him aft he made up his mind. He had crossed half the world to come to this Coromandel. Voy’s map was in its hiding-place in his breeches, and he must follow it. Besides, if he stayed in this ship he would go to other places and might find one as wonderful as Coromandel. He might meet another girl as beautiful as the princess, and fall in love with her. Her felt an awful pang at the thought of the bliss and the disloyalty lying in wait for him over the horizon.
The gunner took him to the poop and stopped. Silvester shouted, ‘All hands to the break of the poop!’ The crew ran aft.
Drayton said, ‘Savage, I have decided to punish you no further if you will confess to the crew that you stole the money. They would have shared in the profit.’
The smell of the shore was very strong here. If he didn’t confess they’d chain him up in the forepeak again, and he’d never get another chance. He said, ‘All right. I will.’
Behind him Fremantle spat in disgust and said, ‘You dirty little tyke--and I’ve been telling the lads you couldn’t have done that.’
Silvester said, ‘Speak up, Savage, so’s they can all hear.’ Jason took a deep breath. Now that the moment had come it was not easy to say the words. He said, ‘I beg your grace to forgive me that I drew my knife against you.’
Drayton nodded. ‘Go on.’
Jason looked helplessly round at the sailors and said, ‘I-- I ‘
‘Deck there! Sail ho!’ The shout came down strongly from the masthead. Green leaped back and bawled, ‘Where, what sort?’
‘On the horizon, due east! Must be a Europe ship.’
Drayton cried, ‘The Isabella! Get to sea at once, Master Green--at once, d’you hear?’
But Green was already shouting, ‘All hands to set sail! Anchor-men to your place! Hurry, hurry!’
Silvester muttered, ‘Damned lily-livered bag of pox! You, you--hoist the shallop inboard!’
The crew scattered to their duties, and in a moment Jason found himself alone. He went to the mainmast and tapped the small fresh-water barrel that was kept roped to it. It was full. He prized out the bung with the point of his knife and watched the water run out across the deck. Then he replaced the bung and kicked it well home, cut the securing ropes with his knife, and went below. He rolled up his belongings, hoisted his heavy sack with its four books on to his shoulder, and returned up the companion. Now the timbers groaned and creaked as the sails tugged at the masts and the masts in their footings strained the bowels of the vessel.
Jason poked his head above deck level and looked around. She had already begun to turn and was now pointed across the stream. A strong ebb tide was making out to sea, and Silvester, the only officer who might retain enough wits to stop him, was busy in the bows.
Jason stepped out, crossed the deck, picked up the barrel, walked to the bulwark, and jumped overboard.
As he hit the water the barrel smashed up under his chest and winded him. He hung on and after a moment found strength to kick with his legs. The poop of the Phoebe towered over him, and he saw Drayton and a couple of sailors star
ing down and shouting, but he could not hear what they said.
Then the Phoebe drew away and Jason kicked harder, being carried down all the while on the tide, and came at last to land, among some gaping fishermen near the bar at the mouth of the river. He gave them the barrel and walked quickly south towards the pearlers’ cove, turning occasionally to watch the Phoebe as she struggled over the bar, put down her helm, and ran north-east before the wind.
After three weeks here with the pearlers, still, whenever he came in from the fields or the sea, the poverty of their little settlement struck him like a chill. Plenty of people in England were poor. Many children went barefoot in the winter slush; in many houses women shivered at their work because they had neither wood for fires nor candles for light, and only cracked boards or torn paper to keep out the rain; many men worked all day with only a piece of bread and a raw turnip for food. Jason knew families in Pennel who had to make their bread from such ears of corn as they could pick up in the fields after the harvesters had finished.
But the poverty at the pearlers’ cove was like a deformation, something that could not be got rid of, something like Flossie Henman’s club foot or Softy Turpin’s upside-down brain.
He and Simon were sitting outside Simon’s hut in the twilight, chewing betel nut. Jason said, ‘Simon, we must force the king to give us more money for our pearls.’ By now he spoke bad but ready Tamil.
Simon said, ‘It is impossible. The king is the king. What can we do?’ He shrugged and spat a stream of red juice into the stream.
‘We must do something,’ Jason said energetically. ‘Otherwise we will all starve to death. I am so hungry now that I can hardly work. I have a plan. Let us all go out pearling every day this week. At the end of the week we will march to Manairuppu, every man, woman, and child of us, and take the catch to the king. That will show him how much we can get if we fish every day for pearls. We will tell him we can get the same amount every week if he pays us enough so that we can buy food instead of having to grow it or fish for it.’
Simon said, ‘The king will take the pearls at the old price, and there will be no fish drying in the sun here for us to eat, and no rice, either. If we starve, we starve. It is written on our foreheads.’
Jason sighed. He had another idea, but this one he must carry out himself, and he did not want to talk about it now in case he failed. He meant to ask the Princess Devadassi to help them. She had a kind face and would surely see the justice of their case once he explained it to her. But he had better not raise the pearlers’ hopes just yet. She might have left Manairuppu on a visit. She might be too frightened of her father the king to intervene in the matter. She might have got married.
He stirred in sudden anxious impatience. He must go to the city at once. But the Portuguese ship had not sailed yet. One of the pearlers had been in Manairuppu yesterday, and reported on his return that the Isabella was still lying in the river. He had heard that it was ready to sail, though. As far as the pearler had been able to find out for Jason, there had been no sea fight when the Phoebe left. That same evening the Isabella came in, but no one had heard gunfire.
Drayton ought to have fought. The example would have shown other people here how they too could get what they wanted by fighting. It didn’t always need to be fighting with guns. The pearlers, for instance--in London they would have been a guild years ago. He had seen the power of the London guilds during the week he stayed with Master Wigmore in Leadenhall Street. A guild could force even the king to do what it wanted, as far as concerned its own business. Simon and the rest of them were good, kind people, but they would starve unless they banded together and stood ready to fight. ‘It is written on our foreheads,’ they kept saying. God’s blood, where could a man go if he believed that?
Well, and why didn’t he, Jason, practise what he preached? Why shouldn’t he go and court the princess? Probably no one had ever showed determination to marry her. Probably she was only waiting for such a man to come along. That was it--determination and money, that’s what got you what you wanted, the same here as in England. He’d never earn enough money by pearling to impress the king. He must find the treasure.
He unfolded his map. The light fell flat now across the sandy point, and a violet haze hung over sea and beach. He said, ‘When we have got a better price from the king, Simon, I must leave you. I am going to look for treasure with this map.’ He put his finger on it and said, ‘This is where we are now. The City of Pearl. I want to ask you about the other places.’
Simon looked dubiously at the map, pointed at the mountains, and said, ‘What are these?’
Jason said, ‘High hills,’ but Simon did not understand.
Perhaps he has never seen a hill, Jason thought. He made motions in the air and pointed to the sky. Simon touched the two emblems of his locket, joined his hands in the Christian mode of prayer, and pointed to the sky. Jason realized that Simon thought the map was a new kind of Bible.
Jason tried again, asking after horsemen--but Simon talked of mysterious gods who lived in the forests. Jason sighed and put the map away.
Simon said earnestly, ‘Always keep it. It is a good puja. It will bring you good food, a good woman, good pearls.’
Simon went into his hut. Jason sat a while longer, staring at the river. Money and will: gold in his hands and a high heart under his shirt. The map had changed its character somehow. In England the map itself had been more important than the treasure. Now he needed the money. He wondered: If someone gave me a hundred thousand pieces of eight, would I throw the map away?
He dropped into a reverie about many matters. When the Portuguese ship left and he came out of hiding, what would be Don d’Alvarez’s power to work him evil? Would the Don care about the doings of a single Englishman? The Don’s daughter was almost blind, perhaps a little potty. Would he throw the map away? He wouldn’t need it to search for money. But perhaps he’d need it for something else. But money was the most important thing now.
Later it began to rain. He crawled into the little hut they had built for him, and went to sleep.
He awoke, and heard soft voices in the dawn outside. He crawled out, stiff all over, and itching from the bites of the marsh mosquitoes, and stood yawning by the muddy stream. It had been a hot night, full of the noises of water, and now the stream was swollen and the paddies over-full.
He saw seven strangers talking to Simon--rather, one of the strangers, the most richly dressed of them, was speaking, and Simon was crouched on his knees in front of him, listening. The speaker was the man with the pink coat who had guided Drayton’s party to the Don’s house.
Simon’s wife whispered in Jason’s ear, ‘They are the king’s men. They have come for you.’
Jason turned and dived inside his hut. He began to tear out the palm-leaf wall at the back, but it was stronger than it looked, and before he could make a hole three of the strangers scrambled in and seized him. He hit out at them with his fists, but they held tight, and then more of them came in, and they all made soothing motions, and Simon cried aloud in a frenzy of anxiety, ‘Do not fight, Jason! They are the king’s men.’
They pulled him gently into the open. The man in the pink coat said, ‘Does he understand Tamil?’
Simon said, ‘Yes, lord, very well, though it is not always easy to understand what he says.’
The man said, ‘The king is now ready to receive you. The Portugal ship left Manairuppu yesterday afternoon.’ He smiled a small, careful smile. ‘One half-hour later the king bade me bring you to his presence. Do you have all your belongings with you? Good. Do not be afraid, sir. See, we have brought a palanquin for you--with curtains, so that you may be protected from prying eyes.’
He showed Jason the palanquin. Jason had seen several of them in the streets of the city. They were like the chairs in which rich men had themselves carried to and fro in London, only in India you lay down instead of sitting up.
Simon said, ‘It is good, Jason. Think of the king sending suc
h a palanquin for you! You will become a great man. I know. I dreamed it after the first time you came to us.’
Jason did not answer. He felt trapped and unhappy. Sullenly he got into the palanquin, the bearers picked it up, the man in the pink coat climbed, puffing, on to a pot-bellied roan horse, and, jig-jog, jig-jog, they left the pearlers’ cove and splashed away along the muddy path to Manairuppu.
Simon trotted alongside for a time, whispering good-bye and good wishes, until the man in the pink coat said, ‘Go back, you.’
Simon said, ‘I am going, lord, I am going. You will speak to the king about us, Jason?’
Jason said, ‘If I can. But I’m not going to be given a robe of honour. I’m going to be killed.’ Then the leader shouted more angrily, and Simon fell back.
One of the bearers drew the curtains. Jason shouted, ‘I don’t want them drawn. It’s hot in here.’
The man in the pink coat said politely, ‘It is better to keep them drawn. Don d’Alvarez has spies everywhere.’
The curtains stayed drawn. Jason collected himself and began to think. How could he escape? What were they going to do to him? Why the palanquin? He was a rat in a revolving, jolting cage. But why hadn’t they killed him there at the pearlers’ cove? The dust seeped in through the curtains and made him cough. He became very thirsty, and then the noises of the city grew loud and passed by like waves in a dark sea, swelling up--sharp slap of a word against the curtain, echo from the wall--then all fading behind in the swirl of many voices. Tap-rap-tap--an old, blind man with a stick. Incense--women; he thought of Devadassi. The yelp-yijf-yiff of a dog hit by a stone. Cows; why in the name of God did they have cows in the palace? He felt seasick.
The motion stopped with a final jerk and sway, and the bearers lowered the palanquin to the ground. The man in the pink coat drew back the curtain and said, ‘Please to get out now.’ They were in a courtyard like the one beyond the high tower where Devadassi lived, but smaller. Jason said, ‘Where am I?’
‘This is the king’s palace.’
