by Olivia
"In that case I guess Mr. Raventhorne is right in his contention that nobody really knows anybody else!"
"Well, Jai certainly is an example of his own theory: His inner self is a blank even to us." Her expression changed to turn serious again. "By tying the sacred red thread around Jai's wrist each year, I have accepted him as my brother. But," she shook her head as if in sorrow, "sometimes he is like a man possessed. He frightens me."
Olivia was spellbound, and at the same time resentful. Why was the Maharani telling all this to her, who knew Jai Raventhorne scarcely at all? Was her interest in him that obvious, that demanding? And yet, Olivia could not help feeling that there was a purpose in Kinjal's revelations. A thought suddenly occurred to her that was so ridiculous, so wild, that she very nearly laughed at the impossibility of it. Were Kinjal's words meant as some kind of warning to her? If so, for heaven's sake, why?
As it happened, Olivia's agitated questions to herself were destined to remain unasked and unanswered for the moment. A maidservant appeared to announce the Maharaja's imminent arrival in the zenana. It was almost dusk, and evidently court matters for the day were being adjourned. With an exclamation and a hurried apology, Kinjal excused herself to go to the temple for the forgotten evening ritual. From a distance and in contemplative silence, Olivia sat and watched the pretty ceremonies. The trident on top of the temple was now cloaked in gloom. Despite the dark, however, its presence seemed to her as eloquent and as pervasive as the brassy tinkle of temple bells that were part of the ritual.
For Olivia's entertainment that evening, the Maharaja had arranged an elaborate ballet in the crimson and gold audience hall of the main palace, quite the largest room Olivia had ever seen. She felt deeply honoured and touched at the thoughtfulness. Attended by a host of ladies and chattering maidservants, she and Kinjal sat in a curtained enclosure, for the hall was packed with people. The Maharaja was in another enclosure with leading dignitaries of his court. The ballet unfolded a story from the Hindu epic Ramayana; the dancing was full of fluid grace, captivating rhythms and intricate footwork. Court musicians swayed with the beat and made music on strange instruments—wind, string and percussion—and the dancers all wore bands of brass bells on their ankles. For Olivia it was an alien experience but nonetheless pleasant, for the innovations and improvisations of the musicians, as explained to her by Kinjal, showed complexities that were disciplined if not easily understandable.
At the dinner that followed, served Western style in the Maharani's palace, there were just the three of them. From the Maharaja's talk, wide ranging and informal, Olivia learned much about the mystique of kingship as practised in India with subtle balances between pragmatism and tradition, at least in Kirtinagar. The Maharaja's plans for his State were ambitious and imaginative, and his concern for his people was evidently foremost in his mind.
Two subjects were not touched upon, among the many that were—the coal and Jai Raventhorne. Olivia was certain that the omission in both cases was calculated.
"Our base for the shoot will be my hunting lodge in the jungle." Dinner was over and the Maharaja was almost done with the gurgling hookah at which he pulled with unalloyed pleasure. "We have to make a dawn start so as to reach it before the sun rises high."
An early night was called for, but, still charged with excitement from everything she had seen, experienced and heard, Olivia felt not the least sleepy. "I am in the habit of reading awhile before I go to bed. My uncle tells me you have an extensive library here with a fine collection of rare books. May I be permitted to browse there for a half hour?"
Olivia's request pleased the Maharaja, and an aide was immediately dispatched to unlock the library, housed in a separate building, and prepare it for her perusal. She bid Kinjal good night, for they would not now meet before the morning, and followed the Maharaja across the compound. During the slow, leisured walk they discussed books. "Bender's travel diaries about India might interest you, Miss O'Rourke, and perhaps Kalidasa's epic poem, Shakuntala. I have translations of both in English." They chatted for a few more minutes on the steps of the library, a handsome white single-storied building with scarlet bougainvillea spilling over the portico, and then the Maharaja excused himself, pleading matters still to be attended to for the shoot. "We are truly delighted that you are with us, Miss O'Rourke," he said; then, with visible hesitation, he added in a murmur something that was extraordinary, "but I sincerely hope you never have occasion to regret your visit."
For a moment Olivia stood rock still. There was a gusty breeze blowing and the Maharaja's voice had been low; after brief introspection Olivia decided that the two had combined to deceive her ears, for there could be no logical explanation for what she thought he had said. With a shrug, she abandoned her bafflement and went inside.
Like the evocative aroma of damp earth, there is also something universal in a room filled with old books. Glass-fronted cupboards lined with velvet stood open for her benefit; calf-bound volumes, neatly labelled and stamped in gold with the crest of Kirtinagar, were arranged in order of language and subject. Ledgers, also bound and crested, gave cross references and relevant information in that immaculate, decorative calligraphy that was a natural product of Indian aesthetics. On the reading desk a paraffin lamp threw a bright pool of light in which were placed three or four books meant for her attention. With a discreet cough the aide walked into an adjoining chamber and left Olivia to her own devices.
As she slipped into the seat and cautiously fingered the bound volumes, Olivia washed over with nostalgia for her father's precious collection of books, which had been her responsibility to look after, and for Sally MacKendrick's one-room lending service, which went by the rather grand name of the "library." Sally too loved books and they had together spent many hours of contentment labelling, cataloguing and arranging the collection her father had helped Sally acquire as a small business after Scot MacKendrick had fallen prey to a band of claim jumpers at the mines where he worked. The lingering mustiness in the air of the Maharaja's library was like a whiff of home, but the rest of the environment she was in now contained an element of unreality, a dreamlike ethereality that seemed to remove her into quite another dimension, one she could not quite assimilate. It was as if, ever since she had arrived in Kirtinagar, she had been waiting for something to happen; she appeared to be poised on the verge of a dark chasm filled with uncertainties. Books forgotten for the moment, Olivia sat clasping and unclasping her hands, toying with a gathering malaise made more irritating because it defied identification.
A clock in the next room struck eleven and she jumped back into full alertness. With a sigh she closed the book before her without having read beyond the title. Picking up the rest of the books, feeling somewhat foolish at having had the library unlocked without having benefitted from it, Olivia rose, fitted the chair neatly back under the desk and turned to seek out the aide waiting in the adjoining chamber. She stilled again with a sharp intake of breath.
The apparition of Jai Raventhorne greeted her eyes from a far corner.
He was sitting with his legs outstretched over a stool, his arms crossed against his chest, his face shadowed. For a wild moment Olivia believed it was truly an apparition, but then he spoke.
"Why are you startled to see me?" He uncoiled himself from his seat and stood up. "Didn't you know that I would come?"
It was a moment before Olivia could speak, but when she did, what she said surprised her. "Yes. I knew you would."
Suddenly, everything fell into place: the short notice that made it impossible for Sir Joshua to accept the Maharaja's invitation; the prescience that Lady Bridget would not wish to accept for herself without her husband and that Estelle would not wish to accept at all. Even easier to guess would have been Sir Joshua's reluctance to let pass such a golden opportunity to ingratiate himself with Arvind Singh, as would have been the only alternative left—to dispatch Olivia as a surrogate.
Instinctively, she also realised that Jai Raventhor
ne had master-minded this weekend for only one purpose—to meet her again.
Walking over to where she still stood in confusion, he reached out for the book on top of the pile she held in her arms. "Hmmm. Did you find Bernier informative?"
"Yes. Very much so." As she struggled for composure, Olivia could feel the warmth in her cheeks. "His Indian journeys seem to have been as tireless as they were perceptive."
Raventhorne raised an eyebrow. "You learned all that merely by staring at the title-page? You must be more clever than I thought, Miss O'Rourke."
Her colour deepened. How long had he been watching her? "You seem to have an incorrigible habit of scrutinising people when they are unaware of your presence, Mr. Raventhorne," she said coldly but uncomfortably conscious of her erratic pulse rate. "Obviously you apply your lack of scruples with prolific indiscrimination."
"Indeed! There is not much point in the lack if it is not made use of for all kinds of profit." He sounded unworriedly cheerful as he relieved her of the books. "Come, let us go outside. Confined spaces suffocate me."
The aide having materialised again, Raventhorne handed over the pile and indicated that the library could now be relocked. Olivia stood aside with nervousness and an odd sense of anticipation that made her tongue feel clumsy against her palate. "I . . . I presume you will be one of the guns at the shoot tomorrow?" Even as she asked it she knew it was an inane inquiry.
He touched her arm lightly, anxious to be gone. "Naturally. Arvind expects some return for the trouble I have made him take on my behalf to fetch you here!"
Olivia's breath ran shallow again; the Maharani's conversation and the Maharaja's parting remark suddenly appeared pertinent in some way she could still not fully grasp. "May I ask why the trouble was necessary?" Her breathlessness increased as she tried to keep pace with his impatient strides. Even to her own ears, her voice sounded unfamiliar.
He did not answer immediately. When they were half way across the garden he stopped so abruptly that she almost cannoned into him. He turned to face her with his brows pulled together in an edgy frown.
"You and I come from two widely mismatched hemispheres, Olivia." He spoke carefully, almost quietly, but with an undertone of bewilderment, "But between us there is an . . . affinity. I want to find out why, for I don't like it. It . . . disturbs me."
Her face burned; she almost stopped breathing. The unexpected sound of her first name on his lips had produced sensations within her stomach that made it feel hollow. "I . . . don't understand what you mean..." Her whisper sounded so patently false that he smiled.
"Don't you?" He did not challenge her lie further. "The gross pity of it is," he took a long, sighing breath, "that we are so irreconcilably on opposite sides."
Olivia's short laugh was as inadvertent as it was incredulous. "You think of me as an ... enemy?" She could not have been more astonished.
He pondered as he stroked his chin between a thumb and forefinger. "Perhaps. But more than that I think of you as a surprise. And I have never cared much for surprises." He turned away and resumed his strides towards the Maharani's palace.
Less energetically, Olivia followed. The drift of the conversation alarmed her. Unerringly, he had touched a chord she recognised. He had vocalised with a single word something she would have chosen not to have acknowledged yet. An affinity! Even as they walked across the deserted lawn with its no-doubt unseen eyes, untouching and unspeaking, they seemed bound by a common thread, intangible and at the same time forceful. Between them was a mute communication, unenunciated but eloquent, that resonated behind the carefully erected façades they maintained. Yes, she was drawn towards Jai Raventhorne. Whatever that mysterious power that propelled her in his direction, it was potent enough to be sensed also by him. Despite her alarm, Olivia felt a surge of elation.
"We went to see your ship." Olivia spoke not so much as to convey something important as to break a silence far from easy. "It stood out from the others and looked very graceful."
"We?" They had arrived in the private garden adjoining the apartment she was occupying.
"My cousin Estelle and I."
"Ah yes. Estelle Templewood." He pulled his pipe from his belt and sucked on it without lighting it. The name of her cousin had been said as if some comment was to follow, but it didn't. Instead, he paced idly, seeming to be entirely involved in the action of his feet.
"Your emblem . . ." Olivia hesitated.
"Yes?"
"What made you choose Shiva's trident?"
"Why? Do you disapprove of it?"
She ignored the causticity. "No, but I do believe it is another of your flamboyances devised to produce, well, a feeling of intimidation in those you dislike . . ." It was an absurd observation considering that it in no way concerned her!
"Good. If it does, then that gives it sufficient justification."
"You mean you like the idea of frightening people?"
"Before the gods destroy, it is said, they make people mad. And fear is as efficient a means of provoking madness as any."
"It is also said," she pointed out quickly, "that you are mad! Since I doubt if it is fear that makes you so, what is your excuse?"
She knew he would answer with an evasion, and he did. "Does a madman need excuses for his lunacy?"
"All right then, causes—and I'm sure you have some because, as Voltaire wrote, madness is to have erroneous perceptions and to reason correctly from them."
He laughed. "At least you do concede that my reasoning might be correct even though to ask a lunatic to rationalise his lunacy is surely a contradiction in terms!"
Olivia sighed; the exercise in dialectics was as futile as always, but she refused to be diverted. "To return to your emblem, Shiva's trident is a symbol of destruction. Whom do you wish to destroy?"
Raventhorne thrust his pipe back in his belt and shrugged. "Let us just say . . . the destroyers."
"You equate your progenitors with your destroyers, is that it?"
It was not a remark designed to please him, nor did it. "My progenitors, as you call them," he snapped, "are what I equate with greed. It is neither to be indulged nor tolerated."
"Not all are greedy," Olivia observed with matching asperity. "Many Europeans come out here for reasons that are selfless."
"Like you?" His low laugh was derisive. "Greed comes in many shapes and colours, my dear Olivia. Yours, for instance, is for a rich Anglo-Saxon husband. Harmless enough and shared by many spinster mems but hardly selfless!"
She was intolerably incensed. To rise to his poisonous bait, however, would be to pamper his perversity. She forced herself to remain unruffled. "You mean the fishing fleet? You consider me to be one of that?"
"Well, aren't you?" He threw her an insolent smile. "Even though it is unlikely that our prize buffoon will allow you to be one of the returned empties, hah!"
"Why, thank you," she cooed, utterly livid but not dropping her flinty gaze an iota. "I already have had that assurance from others whose business my affairs are as little as they are yours."
His sudden nod of approval was, if anything, even more infuriating. "You know," he said, satisfied, "anger really does become you. Now come here, I want to show you something interesting." With yet another mercurial change of mood he strode off towards a cluster of trees, leaving her standing and stiff with outrage. "See that?"
Olivia swallowed her chagrin and allowed curiosity to take over. Slowly she followed him into the trees, where he sat balanced on his haunches, peering into the undergrowth where something glowed eerily. "Well, what is it?"
"Wild fungus. It shines in the night with its own inherent phosphorescence. Isn't it amazing? I found it by accident last week and have been fascinated ever since."
In great detail he launched into an explanation of wild fungi in India, waxing lyrical about their beauty. Obviously, he had made a study of the subject, for his information was prolific and authoritative. Something about the way he spoke, in short excited sentences and w
ith immense enthusiasm, reminded Olivia suddenly of her father, who also often went into raptures over some new and trivial discovery. Overcome again by consuming curiosity about this most contrary of men, she was once more driven by an irresistible urge to reach the core of that "onion," which had eluded even his closest friends.
"Where was it," she asked in wonder, "that you received all your education. Here, in India?"
He rose and dusted his trousers. "In those best possible of institutions," he replied drily, "the school of hard knocks and the university of experience."
"But in India?" she persisted.
"Everywhere. The institutions are universal."
Olivia was sorely tempted to stamp her foot. "You ask me such grossly personal questions," she said petulantly, "yet you refuse to answer a single one of mine! Is that just?"
Even in the gloam she could see his eyes harden. "I would hate you to run away with the idea that I am a just man. I am not. And my life, such as it has been, is of little consequence to you, whatever its inadequacies."
"But it is in those inadequacies that you revel, isn't it?" she cried, unbearably frustrated by the stone wall with which he blocked questions.
"No, but I accept them. They give me pride of possession because they are among the few things that are mine and mine alone." Aborting all further conversation, he stalked away from her.
At the entrance of the zenana two maidservants awaited them, but as Raventhorne approached they melted into the shrubbery with their veils over their faces. A signal flashed through Olivia's brain, tying up yet another loose thread; Raventhorne's presence here over the weekend was the reason why she had seen no sign either of her ayah or of Sir Joshua's other servants who had accompanied her. Servants in India were the means often used to ferret out information of people's secret doings (which was why Calcutta was such a village!). As such, Raventhorne had ensured that there would be no risk of their meeting in Kirtinagar being reported to the Templewoods. His deviousness was indeed far reaching, but Olivia could not help a sense of relief at the vital precaution.
