by John Speed
Da Gama thought about telling him about Slipper, about the secret headdress, but decided against it. "A man of the Khaswajara's stature coming to your factor, all alone? Something big was up."
"Yes, you're right. Very observant. Very good." Victorio licked his dry lips, and Mouse patted his face with a white kerchief. "I have decided to make you a partner." Da Gama looked up in surprise. He thought he had already been made a partner. Rich men had no honor, he thought with disgust. He wished he were back on a horse with his pistolas tucked into his belt. "Yes, a partner. And when you bring her here, you'll get your first commission. What do you say to twenty thousand hun, eh?"
Da Gama lowered his head. In fact it seemed a paltry sum compared to Victorio's profit; on the other hand, it was ten years' wages. "Whatever you think best, sir," he answered with as much gratitude as he could muster. "That will be more gold than I have ever owned."
"Exactly," Victorio said. A little yellow was returning to his cheeks, and he began to sit up straighter. "That is why I will keep the money safe for you, in an account that you may draw upon at will."
And that you may turn on or off as you like, Da Gama thought bitterly. "I'll have it now, sir, if you please. And in gold, if you please. Otherwise you can find another man to fetch your nautch girl."
Victorio blanched. Seeing this, Mouse glared at Da Gama. "What have you said to my master, you lout!"
But before Da Gama could reply, Victorio placed a heavy hand on Mouse's arm. "Quiet, son, quiet. It is just farang talk. Do not worry." To Da Gama he said in Portuguese, "You must mind your manners around him, sir. For love of me he'd put a dagger through your heart while you are sleeping, whatever I may say. Give him a smile, sir."
But though Da Gama did as he was told, Mouse eyes shone with a murderous gleam. "I still want the gold, sir," Da Gama said with his most polite tone and another glance at Mouse.
"I have no gold to give you."
"Surely ..."
"Listen to me. I've made you a partner; now you must share my secrets. We have no cash. None. Mouse buys my food on credit." Victorio patted the eunuch's withered hand. "I must ask you to fund your own journey to Belgaum. Bearers, palanquins, horses, and so on. I expect it will be only seventy or eighty hun, but that is more than I have at the moment."
Da Gama remembered Shahji and the loan he had nearly refused. He nodded and Victorio continued.
"Also ten or twenty hun for me. I must keep up appearances. The important part's the girl."
"The nautch girl," Da Gama agreed.
Victorio frowned. "Her? She's nothing. Seven lakh hun? I'm speaking of Lucinda. How much do you think she's worth, eh? The heir to the Dasana fortune-how many lakhs do you think that's worth, eh? How many crore of hun? You saw the factor. How much do you think that's worth, eh? Carlos and I have been busy. And it all belongs to her."
Da Gama let out a low whistle. "Someday, you mean, when she comes of age. But you're her guardian, so it falls to you ..."
Victorio, now fully animated, raised his hand. "As a partner you must now share this information, but in confidence."
Now what? thought Da Gama, who realized that he was only a partner whenever Victorio had bad news to tell.
Victorio glanced at Mouse, and though he and Da Gama spoke in Portuguese, still Victorio whispered his next words: "She came of age a year and two months ago."
Da Gama looked up, shocked. Vittorio nodded his heavy head. "We kept this secret from her, Carlos and I, so that we might better order her affairs. Hers is the third greatest fortune in Portugal." Victorio enjoyed seeing the amazement on Da Gama's face.
"I had no idea."
"No one was meant to know. Now bring her here, and swiftly. We cannot afford to lose a moment!"
Da Gama nodded, though he did not understand Victorio's sense of urgency. "What do you mean to do, sir?"
"Do? Why marry her of course!"
Not even Da Gama could hide his amazement. "I thought she was pledged. . ."
"To that fool Oliveira? I arranged that match. It is easily disposed of."
"But, sir, your health ..."
"You think I'm too old? You're wrong. I'll have an heir in no time, if she's fertile. It still gets hard, believe me. You can ask Mouse if it doesn't."
Da Gama's brain was swirling. "What if she objects?"
"She's still my ward. She has no choice!"
"You just said she's come of age!"
Victorio shook his head. "She doesn't know that, though, does she?" He raised his eyebrows until his jet eyes showed, black as a night without stars. Then his head slumped, and Mouse hurried over to straighten his knit cap and pat the beads of moisture from his brow.
"You must rest, uncle," he whispered, stealing an angry glance at Da Gama. "You exert yourself too much."
"But I shall exert myself a great deal more when Lucinda gets here." His wet laugh became a wheezing cough.
Da Gama tried to be a soldier. Ignore your feelings and just do your duty, he told himself. But his mind's eye saw that sweet blossom bouncing beneath this old man's sorry ass. Think, he told himself. There must be a way out of this.
"You have no choice, soldado," Victorio said as if he read Da Gama's thoughts. "Not if you want those twenty thousand hun."
Da Gama's cheeks grew hot. "What has that to do with you? It's her money now. I could just as easy get them from her direct."
Victorio's heavy lips lifted into a sly, cruel grin. "How? I'll be her husband soon, so the fortune comes to me. Also she's a murderess. Also she's mad, or going mad like her mother. I have friends everywhere, in Bijapur and Goa, and in Lisbon. You are a nobody. You don't know business or trade or the law. What chance have you against me?"
Victorio leaned forward in his chair, and patted Da Gama's hand. The old man's swollen flesh looked rough and raw, cracked and scaling at the knuckles. "You may try to go against me. Perhaps you have the determination, perhaps even the skill. Perhaps. Or you can be my partner, sir. My partner, and a rich man. Very rich."
Da Gama weighed his options. "All right," he answered softly. Victorio smiled and held out his hand. Cursing himself, Da Gama reached to take it. But as he did this, the old man gasped.
"What are you doing, sir?" Victorio demanded.
"I thought ..."
"I want those twenty huns we spoke of. Give."
After digging in his pockets, Da Gama took out a few of Shahji's coins. The old man's palm was dry as sand.
Vittorio leaned back in his chair, contentment and exhaustion on his face. Mouse took the coins from Victorio, kissing the old man's fingertips. Da Gama turned his head.
Part Five
Arrangements
In the gardens of Belgaum palace, a wide platform swing swayed gently under two enormous mango trees. The platform hung from ropes as thick as a woman's wrist, and the ropes had been covered with cotton batting and silks of many colors. The ropes were tied to the corners of the platform, so it stayed perfectly flat as it swung in the shadows. Cicadas droned outside the garden walls beneath a lazy sun.
The platform floor was padded, creating a large, gently moving room. Three women drowsed among the bolsters and cushions of the swing. The blind woman hummed, first one note, then another, as the swing sawed back and forth, back and forth. Her dry voice mixed with the creaking of the ropes and branches. Another woman sat propped against a cushion reading a long, palm-leaf book.
The last of the three floated with eyes half-closed. Shadows and sunlight danced on those dark lids like silent fireworks. She felt deliciously adrift, tetherless, suspended; as though she were a baby who had not yet learned to speak, not yet even learned her name.
As she sailed in the soft garden air, the blind woman said, "Lucinda." And when she did not answer, the blind woman said again, "Lucinda!"
"Who is Lucinda?" the young woman answered. "I do not know her anymore." And the other women smiled as though she joked.
She recalled a woman named Lucinda. But that woman now
lay scattered in pieces on the banks of a stream, at the bottom of the chasm beneath a treacherous road. Some pieces of her might still be found, the woman guessed, in the trunk that had tumbled from a bullock cart. But Lucinda, that poor farang woman, was now lost forever.
Lucinda had been a lifeless thing, like the Colombina puppet in Tio Victorio's gilded theatre: a doll dressed in corsets and frocks and hose and drawers; all animated by another's hand. That had been Lucinda's life; a life of squeezing: squeezing into slippers too small; into corsets too tight; into roles that had only made her sad. But that Lucinda, that puppet, was scattered in pieces at the bottom of a ravine.
The woman who once had been Lucinda hoped never to see her again.
Lucinda had spoken of this to Lady Chitra who had of course understood at once. "The dew on the leaves before the sun rises," she answered in her dry voice. "The silence before the cock crows. The eggshell not yet broken by its chick." So Chitra said, patting her hand. Her black eyes, sightless as stones, wavered aimlessly. "Not what is, but what might be."
The woman who had once been Lucinda was now wrapped in saris, in yards of crisp silk. Red saris, green saris, black saris shot with gold. Her long hair fell in a soft braid. On her hands she had patterns painted with mehndi.
Now she walked differently. Maybe it was the way her twisted ankle had healed so quickly; or maybe because her tender feet now were cradled in sandals and could feel the ground. Without a corset, she could see the swell of her breasts as she breathed. Air flowed around her bare legs when she moved; silk teased her nipples. Her pale face flushed sometimes with all the new sensations, and she'd clasp her arms around her chest and swallow hard, hoping no one saw.
People still called her Lucinda-she called herself Lucinda-but it was a stranger's name-repeated two or three times before she rememberedyes, that's me. I am that one, Lucinda.
Here no one knew her past. Aldo alone might guess what she'd been like, a young Portuguese woman living in Goa. But she and Aldo had barely met before the changes began, and Aldo himself had started wearing jamas, just like a Hindi.
Maya only knew her as the woman who'd shared her howdah-not a little girl who had grown up in Goa, but the woman Lucinda had become since she left her home.
Lady Chitra's young serving girl, Lakshmi, sat on a stool and tugged the towing rope of the big platform swing. The women glided on it, lost in silent thought.
Far away, at the bottom of a deep ravine, Lucinda's dresses and corsets caught the breeze and tumbled over wet rocks. In a tiny pool of gravel, the stream swirled over her miniature portraits of her mama and her papa, and of the gray-haired Marques Oliveira, her fiance. Beside them in the clear water lay her pot of vermilion, and her delicate silver box of arsenico, and the shattered blue glass bottle that had held her belladonna. A mongoose had taken one of Lucinda's silk slippers to her den and laid her four pink, hairless babies in its toe. But on the swing the woman called Lucinda, now newly born, opened her eyes and looked around as though waking after a long sleep.
"Come see, come see!" a man's voice called.
"Who is that?" Chitra whispered. "It is that man Geraldo!" She sat up, turning her sightless eyes toward the sound. "Go out, go out! This is the women's garden!"
At that moment, Geraldo appeared at the gate, and with him a tall man who held back even as Geraldo laughed and pulled his arm. "Look who I have brought!" Geraldo called.
Lucinda didn't recognize him. A glance at Maya's delighted face made her look once more. Dear lord, she thought, it's him! Captain Pathan! To think I'd nearly forgotten him.
"Go out, go out!" Chitra scolded.
But Geraldo ignored her. "Look who's just come from the doctor's. All better! Good as new!"
Pathan seemed embarrassed by the attention. He saw the little girl staring at him from her stool, and gave her a wink. She covered her mouth to keep from giggling.
But Lady Chitra hissed between her teeth. "This is a woman's place, farang. Go elsewhere."
"Nonsense!" Geraldo answered. "Mistress Chitra is happy that we've come, aren't you, dear? We are General Shahji's guests after all. That gives us some rights. And Da Gama left me in charge! So I shall do what I want-and what I want is to be here!" Geraldo laughed. "Well, Captain? Can you even recognize my cousin?"
Lucinda was pleased to see Pathan peer at her and blink before he answered. "Madam . . ." he gasped.
"Now you must call me Lucy, Captain. We've been through so much, we must be friends." For a moment she was about to extend her hand, but then she remembered where she was, and how she was dressed, and instead held her folded hands to her lowered forehead.
But she looked up at Pathan all the while.
He did the same as he bowed to her. Their eyes locked. Without a turban, his dark hair fell around his shoulders and framed his face. This time he did not seem so arrogant. Lucinda held his gaze, and wondered how she must look to him. A brightness like an ember glowing in his dark eyes was her answer. Lucinda found it difficult to breathe, like a corset tightening, and she looked away and blushed.
The garden suddenly filled with raucous trumpeting, as two grand peacocks strutted toward the swing, fluffing out their iridescent tails. "Now you have disturbed my birds," Chitra chided the men. "They are the only males permitted here! You see the effect you two are having!"
"Yes, we see," Geraldo answered. His mocking eyes glanced at Lucinda with a dark, wicked gleam.
"I'm surprised you don't have more questions, Captain. You've been kept in the dark for nearly a week."
The two men ate supper, seated cross-legged on a white serving sheet placed over the dense, patterned carpet in Geraldo's room. The fare was simple-rice, dal, vegetables, chapatis, dahi-but fragrant and tasty. Near Pathan's hand rested a goblet of water, but Geraldo's was filled with a sweet wine he'd managed to find in the town.
"In the dark, truly, sir," Pathan replied. "My head was in such pain from my injury that the hakim kept the window shuttered and the doors shut. And as you know, the hakim allowed me no visitors."
"However did you stand it, Captain? I should have lost my mind."
Pathan's dark eyes blazed. "In truth it was a comfort. I meditated, I prayed. I recalled the words of the poets and the wisdom of the sheiks."
"Good lord, Captain ... you're not a Sufi? Those men are quite mad!"
"Some may appear mad."
"What, spinning around, and howling at the moon? Do you do that?"
"I know some men who do that. But let's speak of other things. What has happened in my absence, sir? I was pleased to see that you and the women appear well. What about Slipper? And more to the point, sir, where is Deoga?"
Geraldo sat up straight. "I'll first answer your last question. My cousin Da Gama has gone to Bijapur."
"Alone?"
"He went in the company of Commander Shahji. They should be reaching Bijapur today, perhaps."
"But Bijapur is only a three-day ride from here. .."
"Maybe, but Commander Shahji was making a tour of his western forts. Snap inspections, no warning, just arriving at the gates, him and his honor guard." Both men shared amused glances. "Shahji and Uncle Da Gama got along very well."
Pathan asked, "Did Shahji recognize me?"
"I don't think so. Should he have?"
"He was a friend of my father. I met him as a child, but I haven't seen him since my parents died. Still, one hopes-that is the way of things, to hope."
Geraldo had nearly forgotten the dark melancholy that hovered around the burak. "Anyway, before he left, Da Gama put me in charge. `You're in charge while I'm gone, Aldo,' that's what he told me."
"And what have you done with your authority, sir?"
"I'll tell you what-I got rid of that goddammed eunuch."
Pathan reached for another chapati, keeping his eyes turned away from the farang. "And why would you do that, sir?"
"I'll tell you why. He was beating the nautch girl. Beating her! I told him stop and he kept on! So I k
icked him out."
Pathan's thoughts flooded with a thousand questions, but he held them back, and spoke as simply as could. "You found him, you say, beating the nautch girl. Do you know why?"
"I know what he said. He pretended that Maya had stolen something."
"You call her Maya, now?"
Geraldo's eyebrows puckered. "It's her name! She's very friendly once you get to know her."
"Is she?" Pathan left Geraldo's comment floating in the air. "Did the mukhunni say what she had stolen?"
"She had stolen nothing! He's crazy. He's jealous, or delirious, I don't know." Geraldo frowned and he whispered his next sentences. "He said that Maya had something that belonged to him. Would he tell what it was? No! He said he tracked her down for years. He said he'd seen her with it during the bandit attack." Geraldo shook his head. "Again and again I asked what it was. `She knows! Ask her!' he kept repeating. I had to stand between them-he kept swinging at her. He can hurt, too. You wouldn't think it. He looks soft, but he can hit when he wants to."
"He hides much, sir," Pathan agreed. "What did you do then?"
"I overpowered him. You smile, but it wasn't as easy as you think! Then I pushed him outside the wall and made them lock the gates." Geraldo took a long drink of wine, and then stroked his mustache. "Now your smile's gone."
"What did the mukhunni do?" Pathan's eyes betrayed nothing.
"What could he do? He ranted and raved. He can shriek like a cat! He pounded on the gate for a while. A long time, actually. Then he slunk off across the lake, and no one has seen him since." Geraldo laughed. "Don't look so shocked. I heard from the servants that he'd found a ride to Bijapur in some farmer's cart."
Geraldo took another draught of wine and looked very pleased with himself. "When I went for help that day-only a week ago!-what good fortune that I stumbled on Commander Shahji and his honor guard. It was he who sent you to that doctor or hakim or whatever he's called. He was very worried about you, though you looked fine to me. Uncle Da Gama had managed to keep Maya safe; just as you managed to keep Lucy safe. Slipper. . . ," here Geraldo laughed and took another drink, ". . . Slipper was a bloody mess. Completely hysterical. He was perfectly all right of course, not a scratch on him. But he'd managed to shoot Da Gama's horse through the eye and got covered by horse blood. He was sure he would die. No such luck! Shahji sent him to the doctor along with you. Just to be rid of him, I think."
