by John Masters
The king said, genuinely puzzled, ‘But, Lord Jason, the three kings will be utterly cast down.’
‘What does that matter?’ Jason cried passionately. ‘How will that help you?’
‘It won’t,’ the king said. He was looking at Jason as though Jason were a favourite horse that had broken a leg--a look of sorrow, disbelief, and pity.
‘But if you keep to the agreement you made,’ Jason said, ‘you and they will be allies, friends ‘
‘But my son, that is impossible,’ the king said, and put on his little yellow hat with finality. ‘Of course it’s impossible. They are Vishnu-bhaktas, I am a Shiva-bhakta. They are of the Right Hand, I am of the Left. They are Vaisyas and Sudras, I am a Kshatriya. They knew it was impossible for us to be allies, and as for friends--bah! But Shiva inhabited you, and the dulcet honesty of your talk deprived them of their reason, so that, by greed, they cast themselves down. Greed is the downfall of all such rascals,’ he finished sententiously.
Jason shouted, ‘I won’t allow this! I will be the murderer of all these people!’
The king said, suddenly small and fat and cold, ‘You won’t allow? Who are you? A bleached outcaste, helpless. The Hollander has many more guns than your Master Drayton’s ship. But I understand your disappointment, Jason.’ He stepped down from the cushion and put his bare arm round Jason’s shoulders. ‘I will not hold my anger, nor must you. It is natural for a real man to be furious when he is overreached. I felt the same when you outmanoeuvred us at the beginning, by refusing to admit that you were an English envoy. You prevented me from playing the English against the Portuguese--so I had to turn to the Dutch. But I didn’t show my anger, did I?’ He patted Jason placatingly. ‘As an Englishman you are defeated, my son. As a man, you are the apple of my eye. There, now let us be friends again.’
Jason turned and walked out. The passages were endless, and the stone steps too steep for his strength. His shoes echoed in the hollowness of the palace, the rope of pearls thud-thudded against his chest, his scimitar clinked mockingly.
Outside the apartment his dragging feet came to a halt. He still had money. The king and the general and the chamberlain would be intent on the preparations for their murderous treachery. He still had Parvati, and it was nearly dark. He pulled himself together.
He drew the curtain aside, closed it behind him, and called, ‘Sugriva!’
‘Lord?’
He said quickly, ‘You and the other servants may go now to enjoy the processions and make your worship. You need not return until tomorrow evening.’
His hands were steady and his legs strong. His brain raced--jewels in that box, money in that, two hours. He’d have to leave some of the gold. Better have two horses, go south, pick up Simon and his wife as servants, then head west, get into Madura territory.
Sugriva said, ‘Thank you, lord.’
Jason said, ‘Hurry.’
When Sugriva had gone he called, ‘Parvati!’
She came out quietly from the inner room. While he had been in the council chamber she had changed her clothes. Now she was wearing exactly what she had worn the day he first saw her in the inner passage of the temple. He said, ‘Our king is going to murder the three kings and massacre their soldiers when they come here tomorrow.’
‘I know,’ she said.
He looked disbelievingly at her face, but she was quite calm and very sad. He said, ‘You--knew?’
She said, ‘Yes. Until the Portuguese girl came the second time, I thought you knew. I could not believe you did not know. The king and the chamberlain insisted that you knew, but that you were too cunning to say so, even to yourself, in case you gave the secret away in your sleep. They admire you greatly for it. So did I. But when the Portuguese girl came I saw that she understood you as I never have--never can. Then I believed that you really were innocent. I admired you more. I could not love you anymore. But it was too late to do anything except what she suggested, and that you would not do.’
Jason’s knees began to shiver again, and his belly was empty, and the noises of the Dussehra clamoured in his ear. He whispered, ‘But why didn’t you tell me, why didn’t you warn me?’
She said, ‘The Brahmins told me that the god did not wish me to. He is my husband. I must obey him. If it is on their foreheads, the three kings will die tomorrow.’
The words will die tomorrow rang like a frenzied bell in Jason’s ears. He seized her arms. Too late to worry about the past now. He had understood nothing. He had been everyone’s fool. But Parvati loved him. He cried, ‘Quick! We must get away. Start packing the money! Leave out a thousand gold pieces. I shall need that for bribes to get horses. We can be near the borders of Madura by the second night if we ride hard. Don’t bring any extra clothes. We’ll buy some more when we are safe.’
Parvati stood still, upright, smoothly curved and large-eyed, in the middle of the floor. Again she had become one of the stone statues in the temple. Jason cried, ‘Hurry, my darling. You’re all I have left now.’
She said, ‘I cannot leave here. It is impossible. I am married to the god.’
Jason muttered the word aloud, but for his own ears. ‘Impossible. Impossible.’ He had been hearing that word much and using it often. He groped for the true meaning of it. Parvati had turned into a Hindu statue. ‘Impossible’ meant different things to different people. Mary Bowcher, Jane Pennel, Mabel Dempster--to them Coromandel had been impossible. But not to him. So he had left them in their places and gone towards--a dream. But to him it was impossible for a ship to go under water, for a man to fly, for a voice to be heard from London to Manairuppu. To Parvati all these, and more, were possible. They had happened in the past--not as fables, but as truth--and they could happen again. Those impossibilities, and all miracles, were in the minds of the gods and in the eyes of the stone statues. To Parvati the impossible was what the will declared could not happen--such as a Right-Hand king making common cause with a Left-Hand king, or a faithful devadassi being unfaithful.
He thought he understood, while Parvati stood so still there, her fingers curved and her eyes steady--but he could not agree. He was English. His mind raced free to far limits, and came then to a towering wall, which he called the impossible. Parvati was Indian, and around her, like pillars in a temple, stood isolated obstacles which could not be removed because they held up the firmament--but beyond those pillars there was no horizon at all.
For a passionate, lyrical moment he understood, as he had understood Stonehenge. He soared with her, and the ecstasy of physical love fired him as he explored a spiritual world that he had never even dreamed of.
Then came the word, like a drumbeat, speaking itself--‘Impossible. Impossible.’ And it was he who spoke it.
He said, ‘Good-bye. I will never love anyone again.’
The stone melted. Her tears washed his cheek, and she was not Indian or English, white or brown, saint or harlot. She cried, ‘I love you. Oh, Jason, I love you.’
She was gone, and the ecstasy gone, and the moment of understanding when, for the first and only time, he had truly been with her. Now he was alone and heard scornful voices: Softy! Booby! He must be weak in the head--believes all he’s told!
What could he do? What if he took his riches and ran away in this night on a strong horse? No one would catch him. He would begin again, already rich, in Madura or Golconda. He would work hard, and in a few years he would be powerful again, again a leader of people.
All his life he would hear them laughing in Manairuppu, and hear the Dutch gun booming in the river at noon, though he were forty miles away when it fired. The gun was the signal of their victory; in the throat of the cannon they laughed at him.
It would be wonderful if, by spending all those golden coins, by emptying every iron-bound box, he could prevent the gun from firing. Money was good, but revenge was better, and the power to do to them what they had done to him. Then he could live, because now he knew the answer--to let people laugh, but to make sure that he la
ughed last, though silently. He could do it, because he had the power to make men and women believe. How wonderful it would be to ride through the world, knowing that there was no laughter behind him, but bitter rue that he had passed that way with his grey eyes and honest tongue. Let the women cry and hang their long hair over their faces.
I did love her. I did love the others too. I shall not love again. Ah, yes, but this time it’s true, because I am not able to love. There is a sound of laughing in the place where I used to love.
Out, you whoreson pimp! She’s gone. The fires of Dussehra shake the temple tower, and palm trees stoop their heads among the stars of Coromandel. The passionate sea moans on the bar. Soldiers march in this dark along the streets, among the processions. The men of Tiruvadi and Ponpalamai and Krishnapatti march to the place where the laughter is to be. The Holland ship rocks on the ocean, the mouths of her guns spread wide, ready to shout with laughter at the touch of the portfire.
He knew what he was going to do. There would be no watch on him, because he had been defeated.
He took as much money as he could carry and left the palace by the main gate. The guards there saluted him respectfully.
A thousand lights burned in the streets, the smoky yellow flames flickering and bowing in every shop and house and courtyard. He walked unhurriedly among the people, waited with patience for the processions to pass, and at last came to the open place where the jetty was--where tomorrow the king would massacre his friends.
A voice challenged him. ‘Halt! Who are you?’ It was a soldier, one of a pair standing in the dark doorway of a house.
He answered, ‘It is I, Jason Savage, deputy chamberlain. Take me to your captain.’
The soldiers walked beside him distrustfully and with swords drawn, until they reached the house on the north-east corner of the open place. The river flowed black and silent in the starlight beyond the outer wall of the courtyard of that house.
Jason had seen this captain once or twice on duty in the palace. Jason said, ‘The king has ordered me to spend the night here. My task is to row out to the Dutch ship with a message from the king. Is there a boat ready?’
‘We can make one, Lord Jason,’ the captain said cheerfully.
Jason said, ‘Please have it roped up now and see that a paddle is beside it. Put it just above the high-tide mark.’
‘It shall be done.’
‘And awaken me in good time.’ He took the captain a little aside and said, ‘These orders are from the king. No one else is to know I am here--even though they use the king’s name. No one at all. You understand?’
The captain smiled, his strong teeth gleaming. He said, ‘I understand, Lord Jason. I will awaken you in good time--I myself.’
Jason lay down in the corner. It had been easy, as he knew it would be. Among so many layers of intrigue, there was one that would suit any story. There was a boarded window beside him, through which he could probably escape if the king came to seize him. But the king was unlikely to come, and the captain would not give him up to anyone else--not, at least, without a lot of hesitation and argument.
The house was full of soldiers. When he raised himself on one elbow he could see the rows of bare feet in the inner room, and later he heard snoring. He thought of all the other houses round the square, all full of hidden soldiers. What words should he use to make the three kings realize the truth? They might all have been poisoned by then.
At dawn he dozed off, and then the captain was shaking him and it was well into the morning. The dark soldiers filled the room now, and their faces shone with suppressed excitement, and their sword blades and spear points glittered in the streaks of light spreading from the cracks in the closed door and boarded windows. He put his eye to the door-jamb. A fierce sun hung in the sky, lazy white clouds rolled in from the sea, and a breeze stirred the dust in the square. A group of coolies were putting up a gaudy awning on the opposite side of the square.
The captain offered him food. He washed as best he could and ate hungrily. Before he had finished, a man stuck his head round the door and called, ‘Captain! The ship has been sighted.’
The captain said, ‘Wait! Where are the armies of the kings?’
‘Each of them is an hour’s march from our gates, and on the move.’ The captain shut the door behind the messenger and smiled and rubbed his hands.
Time passed. A little boat put out into the river. An old woman hobbled about the square picking up scraps. The coolies finished putting up the awning and went away. The river made low slapping sounds as the tide hurried in and met the flow of fresh water, stopped it, and banked it in its channel. A small body of Manairuppu cavalry trotted into the square and took position behind the awning, with the river to their left.
The captain said, ‘Now we’re ready.’
Jason took careful stock. There was the open square, bounded on three sides by houses and on the fourth--the north--by the river. He was in the house at the north-east corner, and it was full of Manairuppu soldiers. Clearly all the other houses fronting the square also contained soldiers, but the only sign of Manairuppu strength actually visible was the small body of cavalry on the west side, behind the awning. A street led into the square in the centre of each of the three sides, and down one or more of those would come the armies of Tiruvadi, Krishnapatti, and Ponpalamai. The four kings would meet under the awning.
The Dutch ship would float in on the tide, with the wind behind her, until she was opposite the square. There would be a signal, and the ship would open fire with her cannon into the packed mass in the square. Yes, that was certainly it, because the Manairuppu cavalry and the awning were close against the west side--so the ship could fire across their front, without harming them. The ship would fire for a time and achieve the greater part of the massacre. Then the soldiers hidden in the houses would rush out and complete the work.
Jason decided to change his plan. He had meant to escape in the boat after he had somehow warned the three kings of treachery--but he could make better use of it than that. He had told the captain that he was going out to the Dutch ship in it.
God’s blood, he would! He would pretend he was a messenger from the king. If he spoke with enough assurance he could prevent or delay the Dutchmen from opening fire. There were risks, but the king had almost certainly not told the Dutchmen of his existence, and it was a better plan than any other he could think of.
He settled down to await his time.
Music wailed in the hidden streets, and the army of Tiruvadi surged in a mob onto the square, halted, took up a tight formation, shouted twice, and fell silent. They wore coats of every colour--or no coat--and some had spears and some swords and one or two long firelocks. They were about a thousand strong.
The army of Ponpalamai marched in from the south, and among them were many horsemen. The army of Krishnapatti flooded in from the west.
A soldier ran down the stair from the upper room and muttered, ‘The four kings have come on elephants and are now under the awning.’
Jason craned his neck but could see nothing, not even the elephants, for the mass of horses and men and standards filling the square.
The messenger ran down again from the upper room and said, ‘The ship is crossing the bar!’
Jason said, ‘Now I must get ready.’
He left the house by the back door, slipped across the courtyard, and crouched on his heels at the top of the muddy slope leading down to the river. The boat lay ready, and the paddle lay beside it. He peered carefully round the corner of the wall. Some Manairuppu soldiers were leading goats and buffaloes into the square; twenty bands had begun to play, and some of the mass--that part which, by its position, could see down the river--had turned to stare towards the sea.
The great Dutch ship, her hull black and her sails red, rose to meet the tide rip on the bar. Her bow dipped, and the water curved out from it in a heavy blue wave, and white lace wrinkled along the ship’s black sides behind it. She rode over the shallow water o
f the bar, settled, and came on in silence.
Jason launched his boat and began to paddle towards the ship. Once he glanced over his shoulder. Confusion was spreading in the square. Perhaps the kings were already shouting, ‘Treachery!’ But the music would drown those shouts, and the temple horns were blowing and the priests shouting incantations and the swords falling on the sacrificial animals. He paddled with sudden desperation.
The bow of the ship loomed over him. He stopped paddling and shouted, ‘Don’t fire. I have a message from the king.’
Ah, he had spoken in Tamil. They would not understand. He shouted again in English. Three heads sprang up over the bow, two blond and one dark--the chamberlain! The chamberlain’s mouth dropped open, and his hat fell off. His arms waved; he was yelling something; the blond heads disappeared. The sails roared down with a clatter and a rush.
Jason swung the boat round with two fierce strokes of the paddle and headed upriver, racing on the tide to beat the ship.
After half a minute’s frantic paddling he stood up, waving his paddle in the air, and began to shout and scream his warning to the packed armies in the square. ‘The houses around you are full of soldiers,’ he shrieked. ‘Look to your arms! Treachery! Close up to fight!’ The black bulk of the Dutch ship towered behind him; the anchor thundered into the river. In the square the noise rose to a full-throated universal scream, and all the men and animals struggled together in mad confusion.
The Dutch ship fired its guns. The blast hurled Jason to his knees. For a moment he struggled to prevent the craft from rolling over. When he looked up he saw that long avenues had opened up across the square--avenues paved with torn, prostrate figures. A man on one leg was hopping towards the river. The ship fired again and again and again. The houses burst open, and Manairuppu soldiers poured into the square, and swords rose and fell like twinkling fireflies.
A fountain of water jumped out of the river in front of him, and a cannon-ball whistled viciously over his head. He turned quickly. The Dutchmen were trying to bring the bow chaser to--bear on him, but could not depress it sufficiently. The chamberlain was dancing up and down and waving his fists.
