Coromandel! (21 page)

Jason walked away from her, out on to the verandah. He thought of his knife. But what had she done? She had never tried to deceive him. He had deceived himself. What a fool! He must learn to be careful, suspicious, cautious. All this pain came from his own dreams. He’d better not dream any more.

But it was a fact, and no dream, that he loved her. Her manner was nothing like that of the women of her trade in London. This was Coromandel. He had behaved meanly to Emily, who would have come searching for Coromandel with him if he hadn’t kept reminding himself that she was a strumpet.

He turned and went close to Parvati and looked at her velvet brown skin to see if there was some sign written there that he might read. She looked sad and beautiful in the calm dusk against the dulled garishness of the curtains. How could he change so violently towards her unless he was a mean-minded scoundrel? She hadn’t changed. She had to do this to earn her food. Handed over by her own mother as a baby--treated like a stick or a stone, to be picked up, used, and forgotten! God’s blood, that was a temple where he had met her, a place of worship--full of vile stone carvings!

Perhaps she’d been waiting all these years for a man to come who would love her for herself. He could be the man. Perhaps she had hoped from the first that he meant to save her. And now he had spoiled it. Her faith and hope were being broken. He saw it in her dark and doubting eyes.

He loved her. He boiled with anger against the men who used her, and against her because she had to allow it. It was no shame to love. But every time he saw her he would see also the ten or twenty or sixty men who had struggled with her in that slimy pit of a temple since he saw her last.

He groaned in physical pain and put out his hands to her, asking her to help him. She took them gently, and he knelt down beside her. He said, ‘Parvati, I don’t mind that you are a--devadassi. I love you. I’ll marry you and take you away from it all.’ There, he had done it and said the words. A flood of relief surged through him, and joy that he had conquered himself. He stroked her hair.

She rested close in his arms. She said, ‘You don’t want to lie with me now?’

He said, ‘No! I’ll marry you tomorrow, Parvati. But I know you haven’t been able to help yourself. I love you, and I--will--marry--you.’

She sat back, a little way from him, and said, ‘You do love me, don’t you?’ She spoke wonderingly and touched his cheek with her glittering black fingernails. ‘You make me feel sad. Why? But of course you can’t marry me. That is impossible. But you are very handsome and nice, aren’t you? Do you understand? You are very nice.’

It was cool and damp in the earliest morning when Jason awoke and remembered that soon the chamberlain would come for him. In the long night he had forgotten that he was a prisoner here, just as he had forgotten Parvati’s trade. Now Sugriva’s low voice called him, and a little trilling bird sat on the yuccas in the verandah, and the new-washed light flowed like honey over the stone floor. Painfully recollection came back. He was Jason Savage, ex-sailor, prisoner, ambassador--a strange mixture, and hard to understand. The girl beside him was Parvati, temple dancer, strumpet, princess. That was harder still. But if he thought of her as a princess still, she would be one for him, wouldn’t she?

She was asleep still, or perhaps pretending to be. He frowned down at her. If it had not sounded blasphemous, and if it had not hurt him to say it, he would have said that she liked being a devadassi. Certainly she accepted it, but there was something deeper than acceptance too. Lying with her had been like some mad kind of churchgoing. He no longer felt it strange that the temple should be her place of prostitution. More than once she had reminded him, in her small ritual acts and preparations, of the Club getting ready for the Oak and Horn. Parson always complained that
that
was part of a bad old religion.

She awoke slowly as he began to get into his clothes. She glanced at the light and said, ‘Hurry!’ He did not feel like hurrying. Yesterday he had been worrying about the king and the chamberlain and the pearlers. Now he yawned and smiled.

Impossible, she had said, that they should marry. He set his jaw. Impossible was a favourite word here in Coromandel: impossible for the king to pay a better price for the pearls; impossible for Simon to change his trade, even though he was starving. But a man could get anything if he tried hard enough. Nothing was impossible--except, of course, for there to be women with six arms or men with elephant faces.

‘Are you ready?’ the chamberlain called from the passage. ‘Parvati, is he preparing himself?’

‘Yes, lord,’ she murmured. ‘You must not be late, lord. This may be very important to you.’

‘There, I’m ready,’ he said. ‘When shall I see you again?’

She said, ‘When the king--or you--sends for me. But don’t come into the temple looking for me, lord. You were very near the shrine that first day, where outcastes are not allowed.’

‘We’re going to get married,’ he said forcefully. ‘You will see. You want to marry me? I must know if you want to.’

She said, ‘It is impossible.’

He seized her shoulders, pressed them back on the cushions, and kissed her hard. He muttered, ‘I love you,’ and slipped out through the curtain. The chamberlain ushered him quickly away along the passage.

Jason forced his mind away from her. He was going to see the king. The king would be sitting on a throne, with a crown on his head. There would be courtiers, rich hangings, and an impressive silence. Drayton had put himself at a disadvantage with Don d’Alvarez because he was worried about his noisy spurs. Now the chamberlain was trying to hurry him, Jason--so he would not be hurried.

He walked steadily with long slow strides, placing his shoes firmly on the stone paving and, as he went, gradually gaining obstinacy. They could do no worse than kill him, and they would not do that unless they were mad for blood, like weasels; which they were not. They could not have brought him here with such politeness meaning to strangle him. And now he had Parvati to think of and care for. Her salvation, as well as their chance of happiness together, depended on him.

He looked up. A silver curtain blocked the passage, and two guards stood there with spears in their hands, and the chamberlain had got far ahead of him and was waiting impatiently by the curtain, and beckoning him to hurry. He came to the curtain, passed it, saw another in front, with more soldiers. The chamberlain held the curtain aside for him, and he strode through. The curtain fell into place with a dull rustle. The chamberlain dropped heavily to his knees, then to his face, on the floor.

It was a bare, square room with yellow-washed walls and two windows. A low dais covered by a single huge stuffed pink cushion rose from the centre of the floor. Jason peered at the man sitting cross-legged on the cushion. He had seen him before. This was the man who had been watching from an upper balcony when the chamberlain was leading them to the Don’s house, the day the
Phoebe
anchored in the river.

The chamberlain said, ‘It is the king! Kneel down, kiss the ground between his feet--there!’ He made frantic gestures.

Jason stared at the king. It wasn’t right to lie flat on your belly like a caterpillar, even for a king. King Charles didn’t expect people to do that. Jason said, ‘I won’t.’ This king didn’t even have a crown, only a small round cap of yellow velvet, embroidered with pink and gold brocade.

The king said, ‘Please!’ and then Jason didn’t mind. He knelt and kissed the stone. Under his lips it was smooth, and sunk in a little hollow two inches deep.

He stood up, and the king was smiling with delight and twirling the little cap round and round on the end of his fore-finger. He was a man in his early fifties. He was plump, pale brown, and very simply dressed, since he wore nothing but the hat and a white skirt round his waist. His eyes were very small, dark, and twinkling bright, and he had a soft, black, droopy moustache, salted with grey. Jason liked him at once.

The king said, ‘You are the one who waved to me. I knew you would be. I have done my part, haven’t I? We are not fools in Manairuppu, though the Portuguese think so. What is the message from your master--Drayton, was not that his name?’ He put his hat back on his head and leaned forward expectantly.

‘Drayton?’ Jason said. ‘I have no message from Master Drayton. I jumped overboard.’

‘We know that. It was most skilfully done. Don d’Alvarez does not know where you went, or where you are now, though his men have been searching for you ever since that day. But let us get to business. I want nothing more than to lessen the power of the Portuguese in my kingdom. I welcome your English help. When we have driven out the Portuguese you will find me a generous friend. But of course we must take the first thing first, and get rid of the Portuguese, eh?’ He twirled his cap on his finger and twinkled cunningly. ‘What is your Don Drayton’s proposal?’

Jason’s brain raced uncomfortably. He thought he was catching at least one word in three, and the general sense seemed clear---except that it was nonsense. He said, ‘I jumped overboard because I did not want to forget Parvati.’

The king said, ‘Parvati? The devadassi? What is this? Come, my friend, have I not said that it was well and skilfully done? I assure you that no one can overhear us.’ He swept his hand round in a large gesture to show the emptiness of the room and the solidness of its walls. ‘Now we must bare to each other our secret thoughts, mustn’t we?’

Jason said warily, ‘Yes, lord. But I have no message from Master Drayton.’

The king put on his hat and turned to the chamberlain. He said. ‘Is it possible?’ He peered at Jason. ‘Did you not see me on the balcony? Do you think I invite the stares of passing strangers without cause? Very well, you knew by that sign that I wished to make secret touch with your captain. You waved back. Good--so we understood each other. Did not the Don’s jackals keep guard on the jetty so that I could not send any message to you while your ship lay in the river? Were you yourself not robbed by those same jackals one night near the temple while carrying a message to me? And then did not Drayton launch you into the river so that he would be safely at sea when the big Portuguese ship came, while you waited in hiding until it had gone?’

Jason said, ‘No.’

A hushed silence descended on the room. A long time later Jason added, ‘I didn’t know it was you on the upper balcony.’

The king said impatiently, ‘Was I not wearing my yellow hat? It is impossible for anyone to wear a yellow hat here who is not me.’

Jason said, ‘We did not know.’

‘That is impossible!’ the king said sternly.

‘I am not a liar!’ Jason said, suddenly shouting. ‘I tell you I don’t know what you are talking about. Drayton ran away because he was afraid to fight the
Isabella
. I jumped over--board because of Parvati.’

The king’s hands flew up in alarm. When Jason stopped, the king slowly lowered his hands and examined Jason’s face and clothes as though he were some new kind of fish just brought up from the black of the sea. Finally--as though Jason had no ears, was indeed a fish--he said to the chamberlain, ‘Do you think he can be speaking the truth?’

The chamberlain said, ‘It is possible, Your Majesty. He does not look intelligent. And he is very young.’

The king said, ‘Ah, looks are deceptive. He might be wise and cunning beyond his years. He must be. See, he has almost made
me
believe him, against all reason.’

Jason glowered at the two of them and hitched up his belt. The king leaned forward and said wheedlingly, ‘
Please
tell me the truth.’

‘I have,’ Jason answered shortly.

The king leaned back and gave him a long wink. He twirled the cap violently, suddenly jammed it on his head, and said, ‘Very well. We must follow your lead. But you wish to be treated well, of course? Your position hinted at, rather than published abroad?’

Jason thought: It doesn’t matter what I say--yes? no? He said, ‘Yes.’

The king said, ‘I see! When do you intend to reveal your presence to the Don?’

Jason said, ‘I don’t know.’

‘You do not fear that he will try to kill you?’

Jason said, ‘Why should he? I know his daughter. She told me where the pearlers’ village was.’

‘I see. Do you see, Chamberlain? It is most skilful, is it not?’

The chamberlain said, ‘Most. The daughter must have known he was with the pearlers, but she didn’t tell her father. A woman in the enemy’s camp is worth an army outside the ramparts. That was most cleverly thought out, and most quickly arranged. Of course, the daughter is nearly blind and perhaps on that account very willing to think she is loved. But the young man was quick, all the same.’

The king nodded. ‘Quite right. You do see.’

Jason thought as quickly as his muddied mind would let him. This was much harder than talking to Softy Turpin, but they had said one true thing. The half-blind girl, Catherine d’Alvarez, must have guessed where he had gone. At the least, it would have been reasonable for her to tell her father about her conversation with Jason when she learned that her father was looking for him. But she couldn’t have. That was strange.

The king said, ‘Very well. I agree. The chamberlain will provide you with the necessary robes and arms to keep up your state. Otherwise it would look strange, wouldn’t it?’ Jason nodded. But in the name of God, to what did the king agree?

The king said, ‘And you will work by yourself against them? You will not need my help?’

Jason nodded again. It was easier than shaking his head or scratching his ear.

The king said, ‘I
see
. In some ways your plan is better, from my point of view. If it fails, the Portuguese will be no stronger than they are now. But, of course, if it succeeds?’ He

looked expectantly at Jason.

Jason said, ‘Yes.’

The king said, ‘I thought so.’ He twirled his hat thoughtfully. ‘Oh, well, we know the Portuguese. Let us try the English. They can’t be worse. I had hoped to play you one against the other’--he smiled ingenuously--’but I see you are too clever for me. You must be wise indeed to be selected for such a task at your age.’