Coromandel! (27 page)

Jason said, ‘Behind the curtain is my affair.’ He felt a flush of embarrassment rising to colour his neck and face. But of course he was being silly. The girl Catherine could not see any expression on his face--she was too blind. She was looking at him--through him, almost--with her intent, un-shy look.

Jason said, ‘Please come quickly to the point of your visit, Sir Don. My affairs keep me busy.’

‘I know, I know,’ the Don said, and his little beard wagged in an old man’s sneer. ‘You are rich and famous and have much on your mind. Well, if you insist on having your black mistress listen to my daughter’s shame, I can’t prevent you. I have come to make you a formal offer of marriage on her behalf--fifty thousand pieces of eight.’

He flung his hat on the floor and glared at Jason. Stuttering now under the stress of his emotion, he said, ‘Any other f-father would p-put his daughter away rather than s-sink to this. But she’s helpless! L-look at her. She made me do it.’

Jason stood speechless, while realization of the strength of the old man’s love for his daughter crept like a painful light into his mind. And then another, brighter, still more hurtful light came--the girl loved him. No, that was impossible. That word again! But it was impossible. They had met only twice. It could not be love. She had a crazy passion for him, as girls sometimes did. She wanted to be looked after, and thought he could be bribed to do it.

Don Manoel snarled, ‘Answer me, boy! Fifty thousand pieces of eight--yes or no? A grandee’s daughter, and no questions about your birth or faith. Why do you look at her like that? She’s not mad. She has only decided that she must marry you or live miserable the rest of her life. Also, that you must marry her, or you will live miserable the rest of your life! That’s not madness, is it? You think it is? So do I. Yes or no?’

Jason said, ‘I cannot marry Mistress Catherine. I am going to marry Parvati as soon as--soon.’

The Portuguese girl sighed, a long, half-smiling sigh. She said, ‘I knew it. Oh, Jason, you are of one perfect piece all through.’

Jason said, ‘I beg--What?’

She was dotty. She had a pointed nose, and the big eyes were like velvet pieces cut out of her face. Her skin was luminous, as though there were a fine layer of olive oil somewhere deep under the surface. She was thin-shouldered and small-boned, and today dressed all in black and pale blue.

The Don sighed too when Jason spoke of Parvati, but his was a sigh of unhappy triumph.

He said, ‘You heard what Milord Jason said, Catherine? I told you he was in love with a devadassi, didn’t I? And he has been honest enough to say so. He is a good young man--but now you see you must give up this folly.’

Catherine said, ‘I always believed it, Father. But you would not believe that he meant to marry her. It makes a great difference, because’--suddenly she dropped into Tamil--’because she knows it is impossible that he should marry her, even if he does not know.’

Jason started and glanced at the curtain. Parvati would certainly be listening behind there. So when he spoke again he too used Tamil. He said, ‘Parvati has told me it will be difficult. But with the king’s help we shall be married. Mistress Catherine does not know me, so she cannot know that she will be happy with me, or I with her.’

The girl sighed again, and with the same contentment. Her eyes crinkled pleasantly, and she said, ‘How long did it take you to decide to follow your map?’

He muttered, ‘No time, but--‘

She said, ‘You are my map.’

He said doggedly, ‘But the map is not important to me anymore. I had forgotten all about it until you spoke. And--I don’t love you. I love Parvati.’

She said, ‘Parvati can come to you whenever you wish, for as long as you wish. It will not be for long.’

Jason stared at the girl with his mouth dropping, dumbfounded at the arrogant self-confidence of her words. Don Manoel raised his fists and cried, ‘No! You are without shame, Catherine! What have I done to deserve this?’

The sweat began to trickle down Jason’s back under his brocaded coat. He said, ‘I am sorry. It is impossible.’

‘There!’ the Don said. ‘Thank God!’ He wrung Jason’s hand. ‘I do not know whether you are an earl or a farmer, milord-- but you are a kind man. Go out on the verandah, Catherine. I want to talk alone with Milord Jason.’

Catherine walked slowly towards the light. The inner curtains rustled as she passed them. Jason cried, ‘No, Sir Don! I don’t want to talk with you. Please go at once.’

The Don said, ‘It is important, milord. I must make clear to you the dangers that threaten all of us--I repeat, all of us. I do not think you realize . . .’

Jason saw that Catherine was standing by the curtain. It opened a crack, and Catherine raised a big eyeglass on a holder to her eye. Catherine and Parvati were looking at each other through the gap in the curtain. Don Manoel’s voice hurried on--in persistent anxious pleading, but Jason heard only the rustle of feminine whispers from the curtain.

He shouted, ‘Please go away, both of you!’

The Don said stiffly, ‘Very well, milord. Do not blame me for the tragedies that may fall on all of us alike, if what I suspect is true.’ Then his anger broke down under his anxiety, and he said, ‘Please let me talk to you. I must, I must. You can’t know--‘

Jason seized him by the shoulders and pushed him towards the outer curtain, shouting, ‘I don’t want to hear. Go away, damn you!’

He ran back for the girl, but when he reached her she put out her hand, laid it in his, and followed him quietly to the curtain, and so out into the passage.

For the space of a breath he was alone. Then Sugriva hurried in from the passage and Parvati from the inner room. Sugriva said, ‘Lord, there is a fellow waiting in the forecourt to see you. It is the same black man who was here before.’

Parvati said, ‘That girl is the one you must marry, Jason. She is your half that is lost, that you are always looking for in the mirror, that you used to look for in your map. What she suggests is good and possible. Nothing else is.’

Jason cried, ‘God’s blood, you are mad! Women are mad. To think that I put yucca in my shirt for you!’

He ran out along the passage, down the steps, turned left into the stables. ‘A horse, quick--any horse!’ he bawled.

‘Yes, Lord Jason! Coming this minute!’

The stable boys ran about like ants while he stood raging with jealousy and disquiet in the heavy light. Simon was waiting for him in the forecourt, but he could not bear to see Simon now. Simon would have some moaning complaint about food and pearls and damned starving babies. Why didn’t they go to a merchant like Vishnuprodhan? If they had any sense, any willpower, they wouldn’t be in trouble.

He swung into the saddle and raced through back streets towards the sea. The people scattered like rabbits in his path, saying to one another, ‘That is the foreigner, Lord Jason--a mighty man, a great man.’

As soon as he reached the sandy beach Jason slowed to a canter. The clouds were dark purple today, the sun hidden far above them, and the sea at his left hand a waste of violet dotted with white. The waves rode in like squadrons of cavalry, and the spray blew in torn sheets across the salt-white sand. The piles of driftwood that were really boats lay in clusters above the high-tide mark, but even in this weather some of the fishermen were preparing for sea.

Jason reined in and watched as two men came down, tied their boat together, and hauled it to the edge of the surf. He called out, ‘Surely you aren’t going fishing in this?’

They glanced up, cried, ‘We’re hungry,’ and launched the craft into the broken water. They paddled out towards the curved violet vaults of the waves. The strength of the sea caught them, the bow pointed to the sky, then leaned over backwards, and the boat capsized, hurling them into the foam. They scrambled aboard and tried again. Three times they tried; each time the sea dashed them back. The fourth time the wave was smaller, and the bow of their craft hung for a second like a finger, trembling, pointing in entreaty at the dark clouds, then dropped down, and they were over. Then the waves hid the boat, so that the men seemed to be sitting in the water, and soon he could no longer see them.

He turned his horse’s head south, momentarily feeling small and ashamed. But there was nothing he could do for these pearlers and fishermen--yet. Let them wait a little, until after the Dussehra, and then they’d know the value of having Jason Savage for their friend.

But in truth, whatever advantage he wrought for them would soon go for nothing. They were shiftless people and drank too much and took no thought for the future. They must have had good years in the past. What had they done with the money they’d got then? He knew the answer. They’d spent it in feasting and marrying off their children and getting into debt on account of their silly superstitions.

Marry Catherine d’Alvarez, who thought she would soon drive Parvati from his thoughts! He shook his head angrily. He thought he disliked Mistress Catherine very much now. He had been a fool to feel sorry for her. Perhaps it was foolish to feel sorry for anyone.

He trotted on along the shore, watching the straight miles of sea and the ranks of white foam. When would it begin to rain again? Or were the rains over at last? This might be the last storm cloud before the calm, sunny days which they told him would come at Dussehra.

‘Lord! Lord Jason!’

He looked round. Simon was running at the horse’s quarter. His deep chest heaved, and his breath came in gasps. The sand was heavy here, and wet with spray. Jason saw Simon’s footprints trailing back beside the horse’s hoofmarks towards the distant tower of Manairuppu temple.

God’s blood, Simon had an insolence to follow him out here when he wanted to be alone! He snapped, ‘Simon, why have you followed me?’

Simon joined his hands in supplication and said, ‘Lord, I am sorry. They told me in the city that you had gone, and the one behind your curtain sent down a message that you did not want to see anyone, but--‘

Jason said, ‘I’ve told you that I can’t help you until I am in a stronger position myself. I’m doing the best I can.’

‘Yes, yes, lord,’ Simon said. ‘We know that. We only pray that you will soon have success. One of our old men is eating earth.’

Jason felt very tired. He had seen earth-eaters in Tiruvadi and asked Parvati why they did it. She told him, ‘Because they are hungry.’ They knew that they would die from it, but they did it. And after a time no one could help them. No one could do anything but watch them die. He had seen a man die from eating earth. He had seen no greater agony of death.

‘Eating earth,’ he repeated mechanically. But what could he do?

Simon said, ‘But I did not come to tell you this, Lord Jason. A great ship sailed into our cove yesterday.’

Jason cried, ‘What ship? Was it the English ship--mine, the
Phoebe
?’

‘No.’ Simon shook his head. ‘It was like it, the man said who saw your ship, but not the same. It was bigger, bigger even than the Portuguese ship.’

Jason said, ‘What nationality was it, then?’

Simon shrugged. ‘We do not know. But they sent a little boat ashore and asked the way to Manairuppu, and how far. We told them. They spoke only a word or two of Tamil, and no other language we could understand. Then the little boat went back to the big ship, which stayed in our cove until it was dark. After dark it sailed away, straight out to sea. We saw it in the starlight. But before it left, the little boat rowed ashore just behind the point, and one man got out of it, and the rest rowed the little boat back to the ship. Then the big ship sailed away. The man walked towards Manairuppu.’

Jason said, ‘Were the men on the ship dark, like Don Manoel and Padre Felipe? Or fair?’

‘Fair, fairer than you. Like bleached grass was their hair,’ Simon said.

Jason let the reins rest on the horse’s neck. The strangers were unlikely to be Spaniards or Portuguese. They might be English; but he had not heard of any other English ship that was making the voyage to these waters. One might have come, though. The Dutch--they were seafaring people. He’d seen a Dutch ship in the Narrow Seas, and most of its crew were fair--haired. But if the Dutch or anyone else wanted to go to the city of Manairuppu, why didn’t they all go there in the ship? Instead of that, the mysterious vessel was somewhere out to sea, and only the one man ashore, and he gone by this secret means in the dark of last night towards the city.

Simon said, ‘Another thing, lord--they asked about pearls.’ The spray rattled against Jason’s stiff coat. He was worried, and the now familiar feeling of uncertainty was growing. He said, ‘I must get back to the city now.’

Simon shuffled his feet. ‘I too, lord, to my house.’

Jason said, ‘Good-bye. Don’t think I have forgotten you.’

Simon ran south along the sand, and Jason watched him.
Don’t think I have forgotten you!
That was exactly what he had done.

But this ship, and the strange man who went towards Manairuppu in the dark?

He turned his horse’s head and galloped north. As soon as he reached the palace he told Parvati what Simon had said. Then he said, ‘I want you to find out for me who the man is. The priests in the temple will know. They hear everything. They knew where I was, didn’t they? Run down to the temple now and ask them. I must know where he is hiding.’

Parvati said, ‘I will go, lord.’

She went out. Jason sat on the cushions and stared at the evil-coloured sky. The wind rose steadily and droned about the city. Parvati came back late in the afternoon.

He asked eagerly, ‘Well?’

She said, ‘The priests say no white man has come into the town.’

‘They’re lying!’ Jason cried angrily. ‘He must be here. Simon said so.’

Parvati said, ‘The priests say no such man has come.’

Jason said, ‘I must go and tell the king.’

Parvati said, ‘Of what use to tell the king? If the priests say no man has come, he must believe them.’

Jason cried, ‘Nonsense! He has come, and he must still be somewhere in the kingdom. It may be the Dutch, knowing the weakness of the Portuguese, and trying to force in here in their place. That would upset all my plans. The Dutch may be preparing to attack the city! They are no better than pirates. I must tell the king.’