Dark Road to Darjeeling

by DEANNA RAYBOURN

  “We are,” I told him coldly. I made no effort to wrest my arm from him; I knew too well that I would fail and the attempt to do so would only underscore the weakness of my position. “I have nothing further to say upon the subject and I have no wish to listen to whatever you might say. This conversation is at an end because I say it is.”

  “Is that what you imagined when you married me? That you would play the tune and I would dance a merry measure for you?” he demanded. For once he wore his anger hotly. His usual cool self-possession had deserted him, and I saw that his Gypsy blood, usually held so firmly in check, had got the better of him. His dark complexion was suffused with colour and his eyes glinted ominously as his hand tightened further upon my wrist until I thought the bones should break. That was the translation of his name, I remembered suddenly. Brisbane, Old French for “breaker of bones,” and it suited him then. He could have ground my bones to powder beneath the heel of his boot, so hot was the rage within him, and yet he used no more force upon me than that required to keep me there to listen.

  “I am not your plaything, Julia,” he told me, his honeyed voice rasping with emotion. “Too often I have indulged you and given way because I did not see the harm in it. You took me as lord and master, and I have been neither to you. By God, it ends now.”

  He turned to leave the Peacocks, dragging me behind by the wrist still clamped in his fist.

  “Where are we going? Brisbane, you are frightening me.”

  “Good,” he said harshly. “You need to be frightened. It is past time you understood what you married.”

  He said nothing more, but strode on, neither slackening his pace nor loosening his grip. We proceeded out to the road and when we came to the crossroads, we struck up the path toward the ridge. I had not realised Brisbane was familiar with the monastery, but he seemed to know his way, picking out his path with no hesitation. When we reached the gates, he walked in without ringing the gong, stopping only when he had crossed the threshold into the entry hall of the monastery itself.

  The servant Chang appeared, her face set in scolding lines, but Brisbane gave her a harsh command in Chinese and she stepped sharply backward, muttering something in return. I stared at him in astonishment, but he did not look at me. He had told me once that he had spent time in Canton. I ought to have realised he spoke the language.

  But I had no time to reflect upon Brisbane’s secret talents. He continued on, pushing through rooms until he came to one I had not seen before. It was furnished with a curious assortment of things, West and East greeting each other in a strange sort of collection that was oddly harmonious. Heavy armchairs jostled with porcelain tulip vases and jade statues. A great bearskin stretched atop a Turkey carpet of exquisite make, and a pair of enormous bronze chandeliers illuminated the coffered Tibetan ceiling painted with dragons and demons. The White Rajah was seated on a great carved chair that looked suspiciously like solid mother-of-pearl, and he was smiling in welcome.

  “You have come at last, children. How happy I am to see you.”

  Brisbane stood next to me, taut as a bowstring and immovable as marble.

  “Spare the pleasantries, old man. You have information regarding the death of Freddie Cavendish. I want it.”

  I stared at the pair of them in astonishment. I had never seen Brisbane so cold, so murderous, and at his words, my friend became someone else entirely. The White Rajah’s expression changed, and his benevolent smile turned hard, his eyes flat and malevolent as a cobra’s.

  “Do not think to order me about, boy. I will not have it. Besides, you have not even introduced me properly to the lady. Or would you rather I do it?” he asked with a sly glance at me.

  But this was a battle Brisbane would not let the old man win. He cut in sharply, and when he spoke it was with a stranger’s voice. “Julia, I believe you already know the White Rajah. Or to give him his proper name, Black Jack Brisbane. My father.”

  The Seventeenth Chapter

  Have you not heard his silent steps?

  He comes, comes, ever comes.

  —Silent Steps

  Rabindranath Tagore

  I opened my mouth in disbelief, but the old man smiled again, and the chill of it reached to my very marrow. “Yes, my dear girl. It is too true. Come and let me embrace my daughter-in-law.”

  He spread his arms wide, the sleeves of his oriental robe falling back to reveal forearms thick with muscle. Something in the change of his demeanour revealed the extent of the disguise he had adopted before. His hair was still white, his beard still sparse, but the thin and reedy voice had been replaced by one remarkably like his son’s, and his movements, so laboured before, now betrayed the vigour of a man half his age.

  I sank down upon a tapestried stool and put my head into my hands. “I thought you were dead,” I managed.

  “Is that what you tell people about me?” he asked Brisbane lightly. “How wounding.”

  “Perhaps if I say it enough, it will come true,” Brisbane countered.

  I peeped through my fingers. “Where have you been all these years after you abandoned Mariah and her child?”

  Black Jack sighed and toyed with his ring, the emerald sparking green fire in the dim shadows of the room. “It makes a pretty melodrama, doesn’t it? The poor Gypsy witch and her starveling half-breed brat? The truth is, Mariah Young was the devil’s own bitch, and that is the truth. I have the scar upon my back to prove it.”

  “And you were the innocent party?” I persisted.

  He slanted me a wicked smile. “I was never an innocent, my dear, not even in the cradle. But I met my match in Mariah. She was a beautiful girl, the loveliest I ever saw, I will give her that,” he conceded. “But as poorly suited to marriage as I was. I wouldn’t have even believed the boy was mine until I saw him in his cradle and he was the very image of me,” he added, nodding toward his son.

  I stared from father to son, realising how blind I had been. The colouring was different, for Brisbane bore his mother’s black eyes and hair, and his skin carried the dusky olive cast of the true Gypsy, but the high cheekbones, the proud brow, the noble nose—all were his father’s. Only the mouth was different, for where Brisbane’s underlip curved full, his father’s was thin and pinched.

  “You did not answer my question,” I told him. “Where have you been?”

  He smiled at Brisbane, his features twisted with malice and amusement. “I like her. In spite of myself, I like her. She is troublesome, but then she is not my trouble to bear, is she? You will have your hands full with that one.”

  I rose to my full height and looked at him with all the loftiness my birth afforded me. “Do not speak of me as if I were not present.”

  He blinked slowly, a familiar trick of Brisbane’s, and gave me a nod of assent. “As you wish, Lady Julia,” he said, with deliberate emphasis upon my title. “And as much as I am enjoying this familial visit, I confess, I am rather busy at present. Your business is with the murder of Freddie Cavendish, you said?” he asked, turning to Brisbane.

  “Why do you think he knows anything about Freddie’s death?” I put to Brisbane.

  Black Jack smiled at his son, doubtless waiting to see how much he knew. Brisbane did not disappoint. He did not look at me as he began his recitation of the facts. “The White Rajah has been offering the gentlemen of the valley and the surrounding area a place for diversions—gambling being foremost.”

  I turned to Black Jack and he shrugged. “A fellow must earn his keep,” he explained, “and as you will likely have heard, my family have cut me from the honey pot. I make my own way in the world, and I have not done too badly.”

  Brisbane looked at him with an expression of rank distaste. “There is no evil so low you will not stoop to it if there is a profit to be made.”

  Black Jack seemed affronted. “Not true. I do not engage in slavery anymore. Too dangerous.”

  I felt my stomach heave a little. “Anymore?”

  Black Jack shrugged. “The C
hinese do enjoy their comforts. But the Chinese are tricky devils, and one has to tread carefully with them.”

  “He has trafficked in opium as well,” Brisbane informed me. “And doubtless still does.”

  “Not beyond what I use for my own pleasure,” he said stoutly. He turned to me, his tone conversational. He might have been discussing the weather. “The trouble with opium trading is that eventually one’s clients all become slaves to the pipe and so indolent they can no longer pay. No, I find a nice solution of cocaine to be much more efficient. It gives the user more vigour than he knows what to do with, and he feels he cannot live without it. He will do anything to get more, and frequently does.”

  I stared at him, the pieces assembling quickly in my mind. “Dr. Llewellyn.”

  Black Jack lifted an expressive brow. “She is too clever by half. Yes, my dear. Poor Dr. Llewellyn is quite devoted to his needle.”

  “And the men who owe you money for gambling and intoxicants, how do they pay?” Brisbane asked.

  Black Jack snorted. “Cash, boy! What do you take me for, the Bank of England? I do not extend credit.”

  “And if they cannot?” I asked quietly. “Would you accept porcelains, for example? Small paintings, jewellery?” I glanced about the room, crammed as it was with small and precious objets d’art, and I saw it for what it was, a storehouse of ill-gotten gains.

  “He would. And I wager sometimes he will accept information,” Brisbane put in softly.

  Black Jack’s ice-blue eyes narrowed, but he said nothing.

  “What sort of information?” I asked.

  “The valuable sort,” Brisbane supplied. “For the victim who cannot pay in coin, he will take information he can use to his advantage, usually by means of blackmail.” He fixed his father with his implacable black stare. “I want to know what information Freddie Cavendish gave you.”

  “What makes you think he gave me information?”

  “Call it intuition,” Brisbane told him.

  Black Jack burst out laughing. “The Gypsies still have a hold on you, don’t they, boy? You believe all that nonsense of your mother’s. She claimed to have the sight and she persuaded you that you had it as well. I don’t believe it. The sight is a faery story, meant to coax money from the gullible, and in case you hadn’t noticed, boy, I am far from gullible.”

  “What you believe is immaterial to me,” Brisbane said, never abandoning his calm. “But I will have what I came for.”

  “Or?” The word was low and soft, but the danger was implicit. I had the sense of two lions, one aged but still dangerous, the other younger and stronger, circling over the same bit of prey. I had seen Brisbane’s ruthlessness; like any other weapon in his arsenal, he used it carefully, deliberately. But I wondered for an instant if he would be able to wield it against his own father.

  I need not have worried. Brisbane matched his savage smile, baring his teeth.

  “Then I will call seven ravens to pluck out thine eyes,” he said, pronouncing each word with such finality that I felt my breath sitting tightly within my chest. I recognised the words. They were the beginning of an old Romany curse, an archaic conjuration of evil upon one’s enemy. I had never heard Brisbane speak in such a fashion, but as I looked at Black Jack, I understood precisely why he had done so. For just an instant, something uncertain flickered in the cold blue depths of the old man’s eyes, and behind it stood fear.

  It was gone in an instant, for the old man mastered himself. Black Jack threw back his head and laughed, a deep, throaty sound, but it did not deceive me. The hesitation betrayed him, and I knew then that for all his evil deeds, Black Jack took only calculated risks, and he could not afford to take on his son, at least not in a physical sense, and perhaps something primitive and superstitious within him had been stirred at the ancient Gypsy words.

  He strode to a chinoiserie cabinet and rummaged for a moment, withdrawing a book. He handed it, quite deliberately to me rather than to Brisbane, all the while keeping one hand casually in his pocket.

  “I think you might find this of interest, my dear. It was a gift from Freddie Cavendish.” I took it, but he did not release his hold on the other end.

  I stared into the ice-cold eyes of the devil. “How do we know you did not kill him yourself?”

  His upper lip curled. “I do not kill for sport any longer, child. I am too old for that. I have been far too close to the noose to court it willingly.”

  Any longer. I felt another surge of nausea and subdued it. Even the scent of him, sandalwood and bay rum, now made me feel ill. I had thought him kindly and benevolent. How could I have been so deceived?

  As if he sensed my thoughts, he put his head to the side. “Do not sulk, child. They have a proverb in this part of the world. When the student is ready, the teacher will come. Now you have learnt the lesson. No one is what they seem. Life is a walking masque, little one, a series of conjuring tricks. Think upon it, and remember me well.”

  And with that, he turned loose from the end of the book, raised his other hand from his pocket, and shot a smile at Brisbane.

  “No!” Brisbane cried, launching himself, but before he could reach me, the room erupted in a shower of sparks and smoke.

  I ended on the ground, the book clutched to my chest, the wind knocked from my lungs. I rolled over, gasping, to find the carpet where Black Jack had stood beginning to smoulder. Through the smoke, something glimmered. I had just a moment to snatch up the emerald ring from where Black Jack had dropped it before Brisbane gathered me up and dashed from the room, carrying me out to the cool of the verandah. Once more I lay on his lap, blinking.

  “This is becoming an inconvenient habit,” I said when I had recovered my voice.

  “Are you all right?” he demanded, his hands hard upon my shoulders.

  “I am no rag doll, Brisbane. Stop shaking me.”

  He obeyed, then helped me to rise. “Can you walk back to the Peacocks? The sooner we get out of here, the better.”

  “But Black Jack—” I protested.

  “Is fine,” he supplied curtly.

  “The explosion?”

  Brisbane gave me another bitter smile. “A parlour trick I learnt when I was seven. A pocketful of specially-prepared gunpowder. It self-ignites when subjected to a violent shift.”

  “Such as being thrown to the ground,” I said, marvelling a little.

  Brisbane fixed me with a look of disgust. “It is the lowest sort of magic. He is a conjurer of some skill,” he said grudgingly, “but rather than using his arts for entertainment, he works them for more nefarious purposes.”

  He led me out of the gates and onto the road that stretched down into the valley and onward to Darjeeling. He took a great draught of fresh air, as if to clear all of the malign atmosphere of his father’s house from his lungs.

  “The carpet was smouldering,” I said finally. “It will have been destroyed.”

  “Good,” he cut in viciously. “I hope he chokes upon it.”

  We walked for some time in silence. “How long have you known he was here?”

  Brisbane stopped, sighed, then seemed to steel himself.

  “Since Calcutta. I suspected for more than a year that he was in this vicinity but I did not confirm it until then.”

  I stared at him in mystification. “You knew your father was alive, but more than that, you knew he was in India? And you did not care to share this information?”

  “I never said he was dead, and I did not think it would ever matter where he lived,” he protested, and I had to give him the right of it. We had never discussed coming to India, and if I had assumed his father was dead, I had no one but myself to blame. I had heard him speak of Black Jack’s abandonment of Mariah to take to the sea and had naturally believed him lost. Little did I ever imagine he had embarked upon a life of crime.

  Brisbane catalogued Black Jack’s sins for me as we walked, and it was a tale to turn the stoutest stomach. His was an evil the likes of which I had never
known, and the fact that his path had occasionally crossed Brisbane’s made me ache for my husband.

  “The last time I saw him I was twenty,” Brisbane told me. “It was in Morocco, and he gave me this,” he said, touching the crescent scar upon his cheek. I put my finger to the scar and traced it. I had always loved it, this mark of battle. He smiled suddenly, a cold and vicious smile. “Yes, well, I took the top off one of his fingers, so we were well matched.”

  “And you have not seen him since?”

  “No, but I kept myself informed of his whereabouts, as he did mine. I have no doubt that he ended up here as a result of the Cavendish connection with your family.”

  “But we have only been married a matter of months and he has been here far longer,” I pointed out.

  Brisbane’s look was inscrutable. “But we met three years ago, and since then, our lives have been entwined.”

  “And you think he meant to exploit the connection somehow?”

  He shrugged. “I think one remote place is like any other. Sometimes, when he has overplayed his hand, he will retreat and set up a gambling house of sorts. He used to supply prostitutes as well, but I suspect he prefers to deal solely with drugs now. Less complicated in many ways to running an amateur brothel, and he is always one to simplify a process if it means less danger and greater profit. He presents himself as a kindly old recluse and offers the wives nothing to be suspicious of. To the husbands and bachelors he offers much more, luring them into ruinous debts. Once he has rebuilt his fortunes, he is free to leave to begin again elsewhere. I think this time he liked the connection to your family and settled here to keep it as a sort of gambling marker in his pocket, something tucked away against a rainy day should he have need of it.”

  “And what of the disappearing act? Do you think he means to leave now?”

  “I think he meant to end the conversation on his terms. It was ever his way,” he said bitterly.