Ryman, Rebecca (111 page)

Speechless
at what Olivia now held in her hand, a pair of exquisite emerald earrings,
Sujata stared riveted. Against the white of Olivia's palm they glittered like
green fire.

"These
are yours if you can achieve what I want."

Sujata
tore her eyes away from Olivia's hand and swallowed. "What is it that I
must achieve?" she whispered dazedly.

"Something
quite easy, but patience! First I must be assured that you possess the
requisite information."

Having
had time—even a few seconds—to think, Sujata was now cautious. "I spoke in
haste," she muttered, suddenly nervous. "I would never cut out his
heart and eat it."

"You
will not be required to! Tell me, do you know the Chitpur house well?"

The
question startled Sujata. "The Chitpur house? Of course I know it well! I
was sole mistress of it once." Her chin rose with an unconscious pride
that was somehow pathetic. "Why?"

"Would
you be able to enter it without anyone knowing?"

Her
eyes widened. "Yes, but the Sarkar—"

"The
Sarkar's ship is being provisioned. Temporarily he resides on board. Bahadur
also. The house is negligently guarded, particularly at night. The watchman sleeps,
three of the staff are down with the flux and the dogs are also on board the
ship. All this has already been ascertained." If Sujata had learned one
skill from her Sarkar, she herself had learned another: how to secure and use
information as a weapon. The two men she had hired to watch the Chitpur house
round the clock and supply her details about the woman she now faced had not
come cheaply; but the small fortune she had paid them had provided rich
dividends. With luck, the dividends would be even richer. "I presume that
you are still familiar with the Sarkar's personal apartment?"

Sujata
looked at her with contempt. "Naturally. I shared it with him."

"And
his personal belongings?"

"Everything
he possessed was in my care." Again that flash of unaware pride, but then
the wariness returned. "He has nothing of value because he values nothing
material, except for his guns. If stolen, these too he could afford to replace
a hundred times. Evidently, the lady memsahib does not know the Sarkar as well
as she pretends!"

"There
is something that he does value." Olivia dismissed the taunt; it was not
to trade insults with this sorry woman that she had spent painstaking days
building her dossier of information and risked this visit. "It is this
that I wish retrieved. That is, if you can find it."

"If
it is there, I will find it. The Sarkar locks nothing." Despite her boast,
she looked uneasy and her slitted eyes were questioning, but she could not keep
them away from the silken pouch. "A childish prank will only irritate him,
no more . . .," she said uncertainly.

"You
might know his body well, Sujata. I am better acquainted with his mind. If
anything can be relied upon to mortally wound him, it
is
only this
childish prank."

"The
lady memsahib talks in riddles," Sujata muttered, turning sullen at the
slur suggested by Olivia's remark. Still in the grip of greed, however, she did
not think to retaliate. "Before I can give an answer I must know more. I
must know everything."

"No!
I must have your answer
first.

"But
the lady mem doesn't understand!" Sujata cried. "I am frightened of
the Sarkar. If he ever found out—"

"He
will not find out your involvement. The blame will be mine. He will not even
think to suspect you." She scanned the frightened face thoughtfully.
"I have been informed that you wish to leave town and go to Benares where
your mother lives. With these," she picked up the pouch of jewellery,
"you could afford all that you wish. You could vanish, leave behind
forever this life that you despise. You would no longer be dependent for a
living on the lust of men who revolt you. Some day you might even marry, have
children." Relentlessly, Olivia continued her cajolings. "You could
start that music school that I learn is your life's ambition."

"How
have you come to know so much about me?" There was again fear in Sujata's
kohl-smeared eyes. "And why?"

"It
doesn't matter how. The
why
I have already explained." She opened
the silk pouch and dangled the earrings casually.

Hypnotised
by the flashes of green fire, Sujata remained riveted, all her yearning
concentrated in her eyes. Then, with a wail she buried her face in her palms.
"Once I had everything, everything! Then
you
came, and nothing was
the same for me again. I lost it all. I was cast out on the streets like an old
rag. All because of
you,
white-skinned memsahib! He is of
my
world,
not yours." She was distraught. "Why did you not stay with your own
kind and let me keep what was
my
due?"

"He
did not cast you out onto the streets," Olivia said with cold disdain.
"The whole bazaar knows that it was he who set you up in this
kotha,
he
who gave you everything you possess."

"But
he robbed me of my self-respect, of my future! How can I ever face my community
again, my mother, my brothers? As the Sarkar's woman I was somebody; now I am
nothing!"
Desolate, she rocked back and forth on her heels, moaning softly.

Olivia's
heat died as quickly as it had arisen. Yet another victim! With an effort she
pulled herself together. "Just tell me, Sujata, yes or no?" she
asked, feeling soiled and tired.

In
control of herself again, Sujata wiped her eyes with a corner of her veil.
"I committed the sin of learning to love him. In our profession it is not
allowed. For that I must atone. Once I would have cut out my tongue rather than
wound him with a harsh word. Today I offer to cut out his heart!" In her
painful self-discovery, she gave a small, sour laugh, then said with a sigh of
defeat, "My answer is yes. Tell me what I have to do."

The
flame of the single lamp in the room spluttered. It seemed that the fuel was
exhausted. Amidst the darkening shadows, Olivia replaced the earrings in the
pouch. She had not intended to part with them until the bargain was completed,
but now she rose and laid the pouch on the mattress beside Sujata. "Yes. I
know what you mean, Sujata. We have more in common than you think."

She
sat down again and began to dispense her precise instructions.

"Raventhorne
will na damage our property," Willie Donaldson said. "But I saw the
commandant anyway."

"You
went to Fort William?" Olivia asked.

"Aye.
This morning. Should trouble arise, they will help."

Donaldson
abhorred the situation Farrowsham was in, even more so the fact that there was
much that was being kept from him. But, all said and done, he could never let
his Agency down, nor the Birkhursts. If Farrowsham was threatened, then that to
him was the clarion call. He was honour bound to answer it and do his best.

"What
does our man on the
Tapti
report?"
In Calcutta's cutthroat corporate world, everyone had informers in everybody
else's camp. Donaldson was too shrewd a trader, too seasoned an India hand, not
to also have his own spies at Trident. Raventhorne's establishment was tightly
knit, hard to penetrate, but then greed being a universal vice (sometimes
virtue), with his persistence Donaldson had managed to secrete one wily Indian
clerk into Trident's shipping department. The man was now on board the
Tapti
helping the stevedores with the provisioning. Yes, Raventhorne had superior
muscle power, but he was not as invulnerable as he thought!

"He
says he has na let Raventhorne out of his sight for two days. At night, he
keeps watch on the master cabin from one of the longboats on deck. So far, he
reports, there are nae moves in the direction we fear. Leastways, na yet."

"Yes,"
Olivia conceded after some reflection, "I panicked unnecessarily. He will
not act openly, nor in any direction we anticipate. It's not that kind of a
war."

"Just
what kind of a war is it then, Your Ladyship?" Donaldson pounced on that
to ask quietly.

Having
let slip a comment she should not have, Olivia smiled. "I meant, this is
the kind of war in which strategy is the missile, not conventional
armaments." She met his quizzical eyes without a blink.

It
was Donaldson who first dropped his stare, all his remaining questions
unvoiced. She had made a night journey in secret— where? His peon had lost her
in the maze of gullies after she had abandoned her carriage. It was that
Templewood bungalow that was somehow at the crux—how? And the
Daffodil,
never
even claimed by Raventhorne and now stripped bare where she had lain for
months—where did
that
fit in? Already disturbed, Donaldson was making an
even more disquieting discovery. He was not a coward; in his decades of trade
he had fought many battles, some lost, some won. But now he felt fear, not of
Raventhorne, who was a known devil, but of this strange, enigmatic woman whose
depths he had not been able to plumb at all. He ventured no more questions. He
would rather not know the answers.

"Where
did you go last night?" If Willie Donaldson considered ignorance bliss,
Estelle suffered no such illusions. At luncheon she put the question bluntly to
her cousin.

"On
an errand."

"Errand
where? To whom?"

"A
business matter. It doesn't concern you."

Estelle
pushed her plate away, her appetite disappearing. "You are determined to
have Lubbock's men pull down those rooms?"

"Of
course!"

"Don't
do it, Olivia. He will turn more rabid." Helplessly, she tried one final
appeal.
"Let
me go and see Jai,
please
, Olivia! He will at
least let me have my say, I'll force him to. He will not refuse to see
me."

"All
right. By all means go. In fact, I was about to request you to do precisely
that."

Estelle's
jaw dropped loose with amazement. "You
were?"
she gasped.
"Why?"

"As
it happens, I would like you to deliver to him a letter from me." Olivia's
tone sharpened. "It will be only a delivery, Estelle, no more. I warn you,
not one iota more!"

Estelle
glared, riven with suspicion. She was no longer sure how far in her malice
Olivia could be trusted. "What will you say to him in that letter?"

"I
don't know yet. I can only decide that tonight."

Reading
nothing in her cousin's expression, Estelle
abandoned her efforts to probe.
"Anyway, I have not seen Kinjal for a week," she said coldly. "She
will be offended. Why don't we both call on her this morning? I would like to
get to know her better."

It
was a pointed inquiry; neither had Olivia seen Kinjal for a week—but how could
she have? She could lie to everyone; she could not lie to Kinjal. Yet, she
could not tell her the truth either! "No," she replied lightly
enough, "I have other matters to attend to here. Please make my sincere
apologies and assure her I will see her soon."

Whatever
remorsefulness Olivia felt did not take long to dissipate in the tightness
trapped inside her chest. Yes, tonight would decide once and for all the fate
of that war Donaldson could not understand. If Sujata failed, then she too
would have failed. Sujata was the last wild card in her pack, her final trump—
she
must
succeed in that midnight mission! Lying unlocked somewhere in
the Chitpur house was Jai Raventhorne's most precious belonging—his
only
precious
belonging—that red velvet bundle Estelle had found on the
Ganga,
the
bundle in which lay all the splintered memories of a childhood that never was,
a mother who might never have been. Raventhorne would never have risked leaving
it aboard the
Ganga
after she had docked and then sailed away on another
voyage, Olivia calculated, praying passionately that her instincts were
accurate.

And
once she held that bundle in her hand, Olivia knew, with it she would also hold
Jai Raventhorne's soul. Fragments of a missing childhood for fragments of a
ruptured life. Yes, it was a fair exchange.