Flames of Desire

by Vanessa Royall

  A Farewell to Sadness

  It was Ku-Fel’s rapacity and bloodlust that saved the three fugitives. Not yet knowing of the maharajah’s death, driven by a fierce desire for revenge, she flogged her army onward, marching them hard even in the night. Sean and Selena could hear the columns advancing on Jabalpur, hear the songs of the soldiers as they slogged along, and the high honking calls of the armored warrior elephants. They had plenty of time to find concealment, and Sean camouflaged for them a shelter in a deep, leafy ravine, not far from the route of march. Trees of night wrapped them within a protective shroud, from which they saw Ku-Fel pass by, astride the thick gray neck of an elephant. She leaned forward, as if to move the beast along faster. Her torchlit face shone tongueless, transcendent, looking neither left nor right.

  “The Indian gods have decided to let us pass,” Selena whispered. “It seems we have proven ourselves worthy.”

  She remembered her prayer at Gayle’s grave, and how Davi had assured her that the gods always listened to a genuine prayer. So she said another now, of thanksgiving. They slept that night in the sweet-smelling thicket, not far from the Narbada River, and the child lay between them, happy, quiet, and content. In the morning, they rode westward along the riverbank until the horse tired. Then Sean approached the pilot of a river raft and, showing him the tiniest sliver of a diamond, contracted with the man to take them all the way downstream to Daman, whence Selena had first come to Jabalpur. They boarded immediately, and the pilot’s zeal in speeding them on their way was exceeded only by the glitter of the diamond in his eyes.

  The current was fast and true, and in weeks they reached the yellow coast, three blond Westerners, gazed upon by the small dark natives as if they were indeed children of the sun. Selena almost believed it to be true. A new beginning had come to them, and she wished to be worthy of it. So, after contemplating the matter for a long time, she decided to be truthful with Sean about Royce Campbell. He had not asked about the Highlander, nor even mentioned him, so Selena wisely guessed his rival must be on Sean’s mind. When first she’d told him about her transport from Liver-pool to the Canary Islands to India, she had said only that a “sea captain” had saved her and then died of plague. Now, as the river craft neared Daman, beyond which lay Bombay and passage west, she decided upon absolute truth. She did not know what Sean’s reaction might be, but she wanted everything to be understood between them, nothing to linger from the past.

  It was the morning of their arrival in Daman. During the river trip aboard the cluttered raft, there had been no chance for real discussion, much less intimacy. And, in truth, the tension of the journey, and their constant doubts as to safety, made speech difficult. Words had seemed unnecessary, though, for there was an unquestioned bond between them. Now, however, it was time to speak.

  She steeled her resolve and approached him just as the pilot guided the craft out of one of the delta channels and into the harbor of Daman. Sean was standing by the ramshackle rail, holding Davina, teasing her with a jeweled trinket that swung from a chain. The sun caught it, light danced. Davina’s tiny hand flashed to hold it. The jewel spun away. She chortled and gurgled, delighted with the game.

  Sean grinned as Selena approached. “They say if you show diamonds or gold to a girl-child, she has a destiny of wealth. Did anyone ever show you…?”

  He stopped abruptly, and his eyes turned shrewd. She knew he had probably anticipated something like this, and she knew, too, that there was little she could hide from him.

  “What is it, Selena?”

  “I’ve…I’ve kept something from you,” she said.

  He studied her for a moment, and she felt in him not wariness—nothing as forbidding as that—but rather a kind of intelligent understanding, tempered by affection. His nature would change as little as his concern for her, and she understood that his knowledge of her own nature was as complete as was possible in another’s mind.

  “It’s about Royce Campbell,” she said.

  His eyes darkened imperceptibly. In pain?

  “He’s dead now,” she said.

  Stillness. Davina had stopped laughing and regarded her with the deep, total attention of a child, her blue eyes depthless, puzzled. The shouting on the docks seemed to diminish and fall away. Even the slap of the water on wood seemed to cease.

  Sean waited.

  “But…” she struggled, “but…there was a time, well…”

  “It does not matter, Selena,” he said. “That is in the past. I love you and I trust you, and we three are together. The past does not matter. Spare yourself…”

  “No,” she shook her head, fighting off the easy way. She had to say it, for now and for the future. “He was the one who saved me,” she said in a rush. “He was the sea captain I told you about…”

  “In which case I am more than grateful to his memory,” Sean Bloodwell interrupted.

  “And on his ship we were…together,” she finished.

  For a long time Sean said nothing.

  “You did not have to tell me this,” he said finally, that touch of pain still about his eyes, “but since you have, let me say that the most important thing is not the fact itself, which you might justly have kept in your heart forever. The most important thing is that you have wished me to know the truth. You were always a splendid girl, Selena, but now you are a woman, stronger and braver than I could ever have expected. And I expected a great deal.”

  He fell silent for a moment.

  The little girl looked at him, then at Selena. She smiled tentatively, wanting them to speak again.

  “We both did what we wished to do in the past,” Sean said then. “That is what free individuals are meant to do. Let us be glad for the happiness that is past, and look to the future. Together. Let us so pledge now and we shall speak no more of what you have told me.”

  Tears of joy, sadness, love, flooded her eyes. That he could understand so much! That, somehow, the past was not yet dead. That all future promises, all vows, would rise in her heart, and fly, and never come down to tawdry earth.

  “Yes,” she sobbed.

  Davina, startled, stuck out her little lower lip and started to sniffle.

  “There, there,” Selena said-through her tears, reaching for the little girl. She clung, however, to Sean. “There, there. Everything’s all right now.”

  “Everything’s all right,” Sean repeated soothingly.

  And they believed it.

  “Sahib, sahib, where you want go?” called the pilot, gesturing toward the crude and crumbling harbor.

  “Down the coast to Bombay,” Sean told him.

  “No, oh, no, no, sahib. Not my boat. My boat, she sink on high sea. You must take other.”

  “Damn,” Sean said. He sounded more worried than angry. “What’s wrong?”

  “I’m beginning not to like this. I should have guessed it sooner, but better late than never. How far down the coast is Bombay? Fifty miles?”

  She tried to recall the trip aboard the Massachusetts, but could only remember her growing panic and Captain Jack’s mocking leer.

  “I don’t know,” she said. “Maybe the pilot does.”

  “Exactly the man I wouldn’t ask. He’s the problem.”

  The raft was slogging now in the mouth of the river, and the sinewy raftsman ruddered and poled and oared it in toward one of the docks. Daman looked to Selena just as it had the first time: teeming and filthy. She remembered Haruppa and his filthy loincloth, the sting of his hand on her face. Davi killed him. Good. One less evil onshore. But why was Sean worried about the pilot? He’d done well, all the way down the Narbada.

  “Because he knows we have one diamond,” Sean whispered, when she asked. “That satisfied him, as long as we were out on the river. Now, however, he knows we have to get to Bombay. And he’s probably guessed we have other jewels. Obviously, we’re not traveling in a group, like most Westerners. And, just as obviously, we’re running from something.”

  She looked at the pi
lot, who quickly looked away. On the docks, a hundred brown hands reached out, some to help pull the raft in to mooring, in hopes of reward, some for alms.

  “He’s going to make some fast friends from that bunch,” Sean deduced, “and I wouldn’t doubt that he’ll have plenty to tell about the diamond.”

  Selena felt the quiver of fear that passed through her, and it was all she could do to keep from touching the hard lump of stones that were still tied in the corner of Davina’s blanket.

  “What do we do now?”

  “We act confident,” he said, reaching out and grabbing a section of dock, pulling the raft to, and swinging up. “All right, hand up Davina. Then come up yourself. We’ll worry the pilot a little, before I pay him. Maybe he does know somebody around here who can take us…”

  The pilot already looked worried, as if he were about to be cheated, and tied hasty knots, following Selena and the child onto the docks. At least a hundred people crowded around, curious, suspicious, sullen. Some looked threatening already, though there had been no provocation.

  “You like job I do for you, sahib?” the pilot began diplomatically.

  Selena looked up and down the length of the godforsaken harbor. It smelled as she had remembered it, just like the clumps of human offal awash on the tide, the dead and dying men and animals along the riverbanks. The hordes of Hindus entering and emerging from the river, washing their sins away in the filthy yellow muck. Eyes were everywhere. Had they really come all this way to meet their end here?

  She was certain those dusky eyes could see right through the cloth of the blanket, could see the jewels she had earned in India, in thrall to an Indian prince.

  “I do good job, right?” the pilot prodded. “You pay me now, sahib, see?”

  He held out a hand. Little Davina, who had been smiling and making noises at the surrounding group of watchers, quieted suddenly. The crowd itself stilled, conscious of conflict, expecting something.

  “Of course I’ll pay you,” Sean said, with his easy, commanding manner. He made it appear perfectly natural. “I require further transportation,” he said to the pilot. “Secure that, and you shall have your reward.”

  The pilot thought it over a moment, looking at first doubtful, then aggrieved. Then he looked angry, and started babbling and waving his arms, telling his countrymen how he had been cheated by the foreign devils.

  Sean guessed what was happening. His ploy had failed. Now he sought to make it up.

  “Here, then,” he said, reaching into his pocket. “If you’re so anxious for…”

  Too late. The words had been spoken; the damage had been done.

  The crowd was menacing now. And the pilot was pointing to the corner of Davina’s blanket. Moreover, the others saw the tiny jewel of payment pass from Sean to the pilot and, although this quieted the pilot himself, it only whetted the appetite of the others. They moved closer, warily, fearing a trick the foreign devils might possess. In their eyes Selena recognized the lewd greed, the sick desire, the illness that wealth can bring, just as easily as it can proffer joy.

  “Sean,” she said unsteadily. “Sean.”

  He turned and faced the group. They stopped, watching him, watching her. Watching the corner of the blanket. Selena saw herself floating, dead, in the yellow water.

  “I must go to Bombay immediately,” Sean told them, smiling with just a trace of unsteadiness. “Who will get me transportation? He shall be rewarded.”

  Everything stopped for a long moment.

  The pilot, sensing trouble, perhaps sensing danger to himself and his own tiny diamond, leaped back into his raft and cast off. He poled frantically until he was free of pursuit, and then made gestures with his hands, partly of farewell, partly of ablution.

  “Well, Selena,” Sean said, stepping over to her, putting an arm around her waist. “I believe well stroll downtown.”

  His decision, and the suddenness with which it was carried out, momentarily confused the surrounding men. Sean pushed through them, and they parted slightly, just enough. Selena could smell their greed as readily as their bodies, and imminent violence tingled electrically above them. Sean walked away from the dock area and toward the low buildings of the city. He walked slowly, his head erect, now and then smiling and bowing at the people on the streets, who joined the original group, babbling, learning of wonders and wealth, until over a thousand people followed them.

  “If the Rob Roys had had this kind of a mob,” Sean said, “your father would be king and I’d be prime minister now.”

  “Maybe we could find shelter in some building,” Selena suggested.

  “It’s either that or sprout wings. I don’t think there’s any kind of Western settlement here yet. God, I’d even settle for a Spaniard.”

  “I’d even settle for an Englishman. Anybody but McGrover.” The mood of the crowd became even more menacing, a rising torrent of envious, accusatory shouting.

  “They’re nerving themselves up for it,” Sean interpreted. “All it will take will be one of them tossing a rock, and then the whole mob will be upon us.”

  Then they reached a kind of rude intersection, a Y, where two small roads melded into a larger one. An official-looking building of white stone, squat, but with the suggestion of a dome, stood in the center of the Y. It looked stronger than the surrounding hovels.

  “Here,” Sean said, and guided her into the street, “we’ll cross over to…”

  He stepped into the roadway, an act which, for some unfathomable reason, inflamed the crowd. Someone threw a stone. It glanced off Sean’s shoulder. He turned to face the mob, and stepped in front of Selena and the baby.

  “You are very courageous, aren’t you?” he said scornfully. “What do you want of us? Money? You want money, well, all right…”

  He turned and held out his hand for the blanket. Selena met his eyes. It was all going to be lost now. Every hope was gone again.

  “It’s the only way,” he told her, his voice steady. “They may kill us anyway. But I’ll throw the jewels into the street, and while these swine are rooting around for them, killing each other, maybe we can make it over to the stone building.

  Life. Seventy feet away, in a stone shelter. She thought of Father, dead in a stone hut. Gray, cold. This was white, smooth, and the sun shone on it. The road was yellow, dusty. The diamonds were heavy in the blanket. The price of life.

  She gave him the blanket, as two more stones landed near them, hurled by hotheads far back in the crowd. Sean lifted the blanket above his head. The dark eyes followed it, and the noise of the crowd diminished somewhat.

  “Selena,” Sean told her quietly, “I’m going to attempt something that might give you a chance to get the baby into that building over there. Judging on the basis of my experience in Bengal, I’d say it’s one of the nawab’s provincial offices. When I begin speaking, go toward it. Slowly.”

  Selena held the child closer and anxiously measured the open space she would have to cross. Sean still had the blanket up over his head, moving it slowly from side to side. The movement had a curiously mesmerizing effect on the crowd.

  “Yes, I have more diamonds for you,” Sean said then. His voice carried over the mob and all around the intersection. Selena turned, as casually as she could, and started walking.

  “But shall I distribute to you that which is not even mine?” she heard Sean ask.

  The sound of the crowd swooped to a dull, puzzled mutter.

  “What is your meaning?” someone asked.

  Selena was halfway across the intersection now. The white building rose in front of her. She saw a dark face at one of the windows. A man wearing a turban looked speculatively down at her, and then looked over the crowd.

  “This wealth I would give you gladly,” Sean was saying, “but I bring it to your nawab. Would you take it from me and risk his wrath?”

  Selena reached the steps that led into the building and turned to see Sean standing alone before the muttering mob. Sean had effected a
shrewd stroke by mentioning the nawab. The men in the front rank, facing him, seemed to hesitate. A few stragglers at the edge of the crowd melted away down dismal alleys.

  “Which of you shall have the honor and reward for escorting me to your nawab’s representatives?”

  Selena, halfway up the steps now, breathed a sigh of relief. Sean’s ploy was going to spare them death at the hands of the mob. She knew that for certain when several of the men in the crowd began to argue fiercely with each other for the honor Sean had suggested. Sean lowered the blanket and started across the intersection, just as a haughty Indian in a glistening white turban appeared in the doorway at the top of the stairs.

  The people in the crowd scattered and fled; save for the sound of Sean’s boots on the gravel, all was quiet. Davina’s eyes brightened at the sight of the turban. Selena waited. One danger was gone, but others lay in wait. The Indian fixed his condescending gaze on Sean, who reached the base of the steps, and bowed. The Indian was amused.

  “I call upon the nawab,” Sean announced, “for purposes of opening trade with him. I am prepared to make a most generous gift if an audience is granted.”

  The Indian smiled.

  “Who arranges the audience,” Sean added, “shall also be generously rewarded.” He smiled.

  “Allow me to invite you into my office,” the Indian said, coldly courteous.

  In spite of the imposing quality of the building itself, the room was bare and dirty. Flies hung lazily on the walls and ceilings. Sean and Selena were motioned to cushions on the floor. The Indian sat down, cross-legged, before them, his eyes moving from Selena to Sean and back again. He ignored Davina.

  “You are British?” he asked.

  “Yes,” Sean said.

  Now the Indian regarded Selena and the child.

  “Where are your men, your guards? Where is your party? We have been dealing with the Portuguese, and always they travel with many persons.”

  “We have come from the east. A war in the interior caused the unfortunate loss of my party. Only the three of us have survived. But I bear the authority to further trade between your nawab and the East India Company.”