"Yes, I see quite plainly that you were so good as to remove the elephant-trunk, and that the lady has a proper nose now, and for that you have my undying gratitude," Jack hollered sarcastically, "and as long as I am helping you with your self-esteem, sirrah, allow me to thank you for scraping off the blue paint. But! For! Christ's! Sake! Do you know, sirrah, how to count? You do!? Oh, excellent! Then will you be so good, sirrah, as to count the number of arms possessed by this Lady? I will patiently stand here while you take a full inventory—it may take a little while…oh, very good! That is the same reckoning that I have arrived at! Now, sirrah, if you will be so kind, how many arms do you observe on my body? Very good! Once again, we agree. How about Surendranath—how many arms has he? Ahh, the same figure has come up once again. And you, sirrah, when you carve your idols, you hold the hammer in one, and the chisel in another, hand—how many makes that? Remarkable! Yet again we have arrived at the same figure! Then will you please explain to me how come it is that This! Lady! is formed as you have formed her? Why the numerical discrepancy? Do I need to import a Doctor of al-jebr to explain this?"
Jack stormed out of the shed, followed closely by Surendranath, who was saying, "You told the poor fellow she was supposed to represent a goddess—what on earth were you expecting?"
"I was being poetickal."
Jimmy and Danny had long since clambered aboard, and were running from stem to stern and back again, hooting like schoolboys. Enoch had been walking about her, tracing short segments of arcs on the wet sand, and was now standing in violet light with the water up around his knees.
"My first thought was that she couldn't have been wrought by a Dutchman, on account of her marked dead-rise,
LATE 1696 AND EARLY 1697
THEY WERE TRAVELING NOW AS Hindoostani gentlemen: Enoch and Jack each had a light two-wheeled carriage drawn by a pair of trotting bullocks. Each carriage could have accommodated two passengers, provided they were very close friends, but by the time Jack and Enoch had packed themselves in with their diverse weapons, bundles, wine bottles, et cetera, there was only room for one. And that was fine with Jimmy and Danny Shaftoe, who acted as if they'd never seen anything quite this bizarre in all their travels, and could not choose between being amused and disgusted. That was before they discovered that their own horses could barely keep up with these trotting bullocks over the course of a long night's march. Their escort—eight musketeers and eight archers, siphoned off from the endless Siege that Sword of Divine Fire had supposedly been prosecuting against the Marathas—had to jog the whole way.
By day the pace, combined with the sun, would have slain them all in a few hours. So they woke up around sunset, lay about camp for a few hours as the heat of the day seeped away into the earth and sky, then got underway a couple of hours before midnight and hurried down roads and paths until dawn. Jack had made the trip several times, and had learned how to break it up into stages, each of which ended in a mango-or coconut-grove near the walls of a town. They would smooth out some ground and make camp as the sun rose, and a few runners—adolescent boys of his jagir, well compensated for their exertions—would be dispatched to loiter outside the town's gates until they were opened. These would go in and bargain for victuals while the others slept in the shade of the trees. The goods would then be delivered after sundown as the party readied themselves for the next stage.
This was traveling of a wholly serious and businesslike nature, and demanded certain adjustments of Jimmy and Danny, who in their journey across Eurasia with Enoch Root had wantonly indulged in side-trips and digressions. There was no time to do anything except cover ground, or make preparations to cover ground. There was no time even to talk.
Once they had escaped from Jack's blighted jagir the landscape was pleasant enough, but uniform and monotonous: ditched and irrigated fields alternating with groves of food-bearing trees, and occasional stretches of jungle covering hills, vales, and other areas that were not suited to agriculture. Sometimes they had to pass through such parts; the jungle seemed to rush out of the night to envelop them, and they moved forward with extreme care, expecting stranglers to abseil from overhead limbs, or large man-eating felines to explode from the brush. They had to ford several rivers, which in this part of the world meant wading through crocodiles. At one of these fords, Danny noticed a pair of largish reptilian nostrils closing in on a boy who was straggling behind the main group, and discharged his pistol in that general direction. It probably had no effect on the crocodile, but it scared the boy into catching up. At another ford, an immense crocodile carried away one of their donkeys.
The next day—or rather, the next evening—they woke up to find themselves in a black country of black men. It had been a long night's march and their bodies wanted to sleep but their minds did not. When they lay their heads down they could hear the earth thumping beneath them, like a gentle heartbeat, for this black earth was far richer in saltpeter than any in Jack's jagir, and the ground outside the walls of this town was pocked with holes where people labored with their thudding timbers all day long.
If the earth was full of thumps the air was just as full of strange cries, for every peasant working in the fields hollered "Popo!" every minute or so. Jack ended up sitting in the shade of a tree with Jimmy and Danny and Enoch, eating mangoes that literally fell into their laps, occasionally jumping up to sweep back plagues of ants, and watching these black Hindoos live their lives. A cool westerly breeze blew over them smelling of salt water, for they had almost crossed Hindoostan from east to west, and were nearing the Arabian Sea.
"Those field workers are Cherumans—a caste so low that they can pollute a Nayar from a distance of sixty-four feet," Jack explained, "whereupon the Nayar is obligated to kill them, and then purify himself with endless and pompous rites. So to save themselves from being killed, and the Nayars from being inconvenienced, they cry out Popo! all the time, to warn all comers that they are present."
"You're full o'shite as ever, Dad," said Jimmy with equal measures of contempt and affection.
A different cry sounded from around the road-bend: "Kukuya! Kukuya!" As soon as they heard it, the Cherumans picked up their hoes and moved away from the road, depopulating a sixty-four-foot-wide strip to either side of it. Presently a small party of travelers came into view: a black-skinned woman, naked from the waist up except for her gold jewelry, riding a white horse, and a few servants on foot.
"If that be a Nayar, then let's go to where the Nayars live," Danny said.
"What the hell d'you suppose we've been doing for the last week?"
"There's more like her where we're going?"
"Yes—they run the place. They are a warrior caste. It's just like going to St. James's and gawking at the Persons of Quality: lovely ladies, and men with swords—who don't hesitate to use 'em."
After the sun had gone down, Jack sent his escort back to re-join the luxurious Siege. They lay about in that camp for the rest of the night dozing. At daybreak they were startled awake by a shouting match between a Cheruman, standing before a slab of rock sixty-four feet from the city limits, and a Banyan standing on the parapet of the wall. The Cheruman upended a sack of money onto the slab: cowrie-shells, Persian bitter almonds, and a few black coppers. Then he withdrew. A minute later the Banyan came out, deposited a bundle of goods, plucked off a few shells, almonds, and coppers, and went back into the town. The Cheruman returned and collected the bundle and whatever change the Banyan had left behind.
"Seems a wee bit cumbersome," Danny observed, watching incredulously.
"On the contrary, I deem it eminently practical," said Enoch Root. "If I belonged to a small warrior elite, my greatest fear would be a peasant uprising—ambushes along the roads, and so on. If I had the right to kill any peasant who came within a bow-shot of me…"
"You could relax an' enjoy the good life," Jimmy said.
After provisioning themselves in the town they turned south and followed the coast deeper into Malabar. From time to ti
me they would pass a criminal who had been impaled on a javelin and left to die by the road-side, which only confirmed the impression that they were in a well-ordered place now, and had not taken any undue risks in sending their escort home. The heat of the sun in this far southern place was murderous, but the farther they went the closer the came to the Laccadive Sea with its cool onshore breezes, and in many stretches the road was lined with Palmyra palms whose enormous leaves cast volumes of shade on the way below.
They knew they were close to the court of Queen Kottakkal when frail racks began to line the road, all a-drape with those same palm leaves, which had been put there to dry and whiten. The Queen's scribes used them as paper. A lot of shouting could be heard up ahead.
"What're they hollerin' about?" Danny wondered.
"Maybe one of their ships just came back loaded to the gunwales with booty," Jack said, "or maybe a crocodile is loose in the town square."
The road opened up into the main street of a fair-sized port town consisting mostly of woven reed dwellings. There were occasional timber houses along the street, and these became more numerous and larger as they drew closer to the waterfront: the bank of a significant river that ran slowly and quietly through a deep-looking channel that broadened, a quarter of a mile downstream, to form an inlet of the Laccadive Sea. The town had doubtless stood here for æons but gave the impression of having just been set up in the midst of an ancient forest, as giant trees—teaks, mangoes, mahua, mahogany, coconut-palm, axle-wood, and one or two cathedral-sized banyan trees—stood between houses, and spread and merged overhead to create a second roof high above the palm frond thatchings that topped the buildings.
Young Nayar men were racing from house to house and tree-trunk to tree-trunk hollering at each other in extreme excitement. The travelers had only just come into view of the waterfront when a posse of Nayar boys burst out of a house and ran past them, completely ignoring them. Moments later those Nayars were pursued by a shower of arrows that came hissing down all around, some landing among the Shaftoes and lodging in the soft ground.
"Those black fookers are shoowatin' at us!" exclaimed Jimmy, yanking out his pistol and cocking the hammer.
"Not just at us, Jimmy boy," Jack said, in an ominously quiet voice.
All of the others turned to see Jack sprawled in his little two-wheeled carriage, both hands clutching his abdomen, where an arrow projected from his body at right angles. "It's a damned shame," he whispered. "Come all this way to die here and now…"
Jimmy was torn, like a man on the rack, between his desire to go and kill some black people, and the strictures of the Fifth Commandment. "Dad!" he cried, dismounting, and crossing over to the carriage in a couple of strides. He put his hand up to Jack's face as if to give him a tender caress—then clamped his father's jaw between thumb and fingers and wrenched his head this way and that, inspecting him. "You still bear the marks o' the beatin' we gayave ya—an' to think you'll carry 'em to yer grayave."
"To me they're like the sweet kisses I never had from the two of you—and never deserved—"
"Aw, Dad!" Jimmy cried, and planted one directly on Jack's lips. Fortunately from Jack's point of view it only lasted a few seconds—then Jimmy grunted, bit his father's lip, and spun away from him, clutching his ribs.
Danny was looking down on them coolly from the back of his horse, holding a bow whose string was still quivering. "When you're finished, tell me so I can go an' throw up. Then we've a score to settle with those Nayars, or what e'er the fook you call 'em."
Jimmy bent down stiffly and picked up the arrow that Danny had just loosed into his ribs. It had a blunt tip.
"Take two—you'll be needing 'em," Jack said, handing Jimmy the one that had bruised him in the stomach.
A couple of Nayars charged each other in the middle of the street nearby, and fell into a terrific duel with bamboo swords.
"I'm startin' to like the looks o' this town!" Jimmy said. "May we use firearms?"
"I do not think it would be considered sporting," Jack said, as Danny shot a blunt arrow into the chest of a strapping Nayar who was just emerging from a doorway. A dozen arrows swarmed from the windows of the same dwelling and knocked Danny out of the saddle.
"Ye basetards!" Jimmy bellowed, and charged the doorway before the snipers could nock a second flight of arrows.
"Run along and play, boys," Jack said—unnecessarily. He and Enoch slapped their bullocks' reins and went into motion. Soon the street debouched into a sort of waterfront plaza hacked out of the mangroves. Diverse small river-boats and coastal craft were tied up along the quay, reminding Jack, in a very imprecise way, of Thames-side. Turning their heads they could look downstream to the inlet that served as Queen Kottakkal's chief, and only, harbor. A dozen or so larger vessels rode at anchor there, and their appearance made Enoch chuckle. "Nowhere have I seen a more motley collection of pirate-vessels—not in Dunkirk, not even in Port Royal of Jamaica. Turkish galleots, Arab dhows, Flemish corvettes—is there anything they won't use?"
"To carry guns and to sail fast are the only requirements," Jack said. "The dhow, second from left, is the vessel she took from us."
And then both men naturally turned their heads to gaze southwards across the river. The opposite bank was a stone bluff undercut by the current, so that it bulged out towards them slightly, then rose to a plateau some ten fathoms above their heads. This was not extraordinarily high, but it sufficed to command the river and the inlet with batteries of forty-eight pounders and mortars that could be seen, here and there, protruding from embrasures at the corners of Queen Kottakkal's palace wall. It was difficult to make out where the natural cliff left off and the built wall began, for both were concealed deep behind a mat of interwoven vines, some as thick as tree-trunks, that had grown outwards to a depth of yards. This hanging jungle was home to a whole nation of adventurous monkeys with prehensile tails. The vines that grew on the Queen's fortifications were of diverse species, but all of them seemed to be flowering. These were not roses or carnations but ripe dripping fleshy organs of sweet light, big as cabbages, grown in shapes that Euclid never dreamed off, organized in clusters, networks, and hierarchies. At the moment all were facing into the sun, so that the jungle-wall blazed with shocking color. It looked as if some fabulously wealthy pirate-nation had laid siege to the place and bombarded it with giant rubies, citrines, pearls, opals, lumps of coral, and agates, which had lodged in the cliff and been left there. It hummed and teemed with the energy of a million bees and a thousand hummingbirds that had been drawn to the place from all over the South Seas by the cataract of narcotic fragrance that came out of it. Compared to this, the mossy domes of the palace above and the blunt muzzles of its guns, were as dim as old paint.
Getting up there, if they had not been invited, would have been a short, fatal adventure. As it was, Jack and Enoch were conveyed across the river without losing any limbs to crocodiles, and ascended to the palace without running afoul of any trap-doors or poison-dart barrages. They followed a series of stairways—some external, winding up the stone cliff-face among the vines, and some internal, cut through the stone. Finally they emerged into a small courtyard surrounded by walls with many arrow-slits: a killing-ground for invaders. But a door was opened and so they entered into the palace.
Very little of Queen Kottakkal's palace was really indoors: It was a complex of gardens, terraces, temple-courts, and plazas divided one from the next by a sparse net-work of roofed galleries, with apartments situated here and there.
"Normally it is teeming with Nayars," Jack offered, "especially when so many pirate-ships are in the harbor. But they are all down in the town, enjoying the mock-battle."
He led Enoch on a short excursion down a gallery and across agarden to the very door of a large stone dwelling with diverse balconies and windows. But he drew up short when he noticed a sheathed sword leaning against the door-post. Jack shushed Enoch with a finger to his lips, and did not speak until they had put a hundred paces be
hind them.
"It was a good enough sword," Enoch said, "some sort of Persian shamsir, to judge from its extreme curvature and slender blade. But methinks you show it more respect than is warranted…"
"These Malabar women are as free with men, as Charles II himself was with women," Jack explained. "In these parts, a man can never tell which children are his. Or to put it another way, every man knows his mother but hasn't the faintest idea who his father might be. Consequently, all property passes down the female line."
"Including the crown?"
"Including the crown. One peculiarity of this arrangement is that a man, going in to pay a call on a lady, never knows what other man he might discover in her bed. To prevent awkward situations, a gallant therefore leaves his weapon leaning against the door-post when he enters—as a sign to all who pass by that the lady's attentions are spoken for."
"So the Queen is passing some time with a Persian? Odd, that."
"The weapon is Persian. Dappa—our linguist—bought it in Mocha when we passed through there years ago. Of all of us, he is the only one who has made much headway in learning the Malabar language."
"He is putting it to good use!"
"He has already put it to good use by convincing the Queen that he and the others have a higher calling than to be slaves."
And with that Jack opened the door to another, much smaller apartment, and led Enoch through to a terrace at the back that looked out over the harbor. European-style tables and chairs had been brought out here. Two men were working over messes of palm-leaves covered with writing, figures, maps, and diagrams: Monsieur Arlanc and Moseh de la Cruz.
They were only mildly surprised to see Jack. Enoch Root required a bit of explanation—but once Jack adumbrated that the stranger had something to do with cannons, the others welcomed him. Moseh, Jack, and Monsieur Arlanc fell quickly into a detailed conversation about the ship. They were speaking Sabir, which was the only tongue they all shared. Enoch could not perfectly follow it. He drifted away to gaze out over the Laccadive Sea, and then turned his attention to some ink drawings that had been pegged to the wall.
The Confusion Page 63
