The White Rajah

  He did not seek his adopted son’s company, nor did he avoid it; he seemed to take it for granted that all was well with the world, and that any misgivings of Richard’s had been matters of small moment, short-lived qualms which might be overlooked in an accepted climate of retribution and terror. For his enemies, real or imagined, the old man reserved his most vicious scale of reprisal; for all others, a royal goodwill now seemed to be the rule.

  ‘It is not your fault,’ Sunara now told Richard, returning the hungry pressure of his hand. ‘You did what you thought right – it was an act of pity – it was right!’ Her lovely face, which now, towards the end of her time, was often frail and transparent, glowed with sudden warmth and feeling. ‘I am proud of what you did, in spite of what followed. It was merciful, and brave!’

  ‘It did no good.’

  ‘It did good to one man, and that is more than all the sum of what is happening now.’ She leant against him, seeking to give every comfort in her power. ‘You know that I was awake when you went down to the steps, Tuan?’

  He was surprised. ‘I thought you fast asleep.’

  She shook her head. ‘I knew what you had in mind. You had been crying out in your sleep, as if you could not endure your dreams. Then you were wakeful, and restless. I knew that you would do something.’

  ‘You should have prevented me.’

  ‘I would not have prevented you, for all the wealth of Makassang!’

  He put his arms round her, in thankful tenderness. This was the most loving woman in the whole world. ‘But what now, Sunara? Will it always be like this? Is this how he will rule?’

  ‘I fear so. I think it will be rule by terror, as it was in the old days – by terror and by spying. Perhaps it has reached us already. You know that it was a spy who reported what you did?’

  ‘I thought something of the sort. There was a watchfulness about the whole palace, that night. But I was not in the mood to creep about, or to dissemble.’

  She looked up at him. ‘We may have to dissemble, in the future.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘If my father has spies, then we must have spies of our own.’ Her words struck him with astonishment; this new world, suddenly glimpsed, of calculated plotting and intrigue was alien to all his nature, and to all his expectation too. The peace and happiness which he had hoped for seemed to be receding, rather than drawing nearer; at this strange pace, the longer he stayed in Makassang, the less likely he was to achieve the contentment on which he had set his heart … But because he loved Sunara, and because she was so deeply involved in all these affairs, he softened the expressions of dismay which had all but sprung to his lips.

  ‘I had hoped, my darling,’ he told her, ‘that we could live together, and be happy in our love, and enjoy our lives, without ever being troubled by such matters. I hoped that we had reached our safe haven.’

  ‘You cannot have hoped it more than I.’ It was clear that she had given much secret thought to what she was saying; her tone was full of brooding contemplation. ‘But lately I have lost heart … We know that Kedah is working against you. And my father is changing, too – now he prefers to govern by fear … It may be–’ her voice trailed into silence, as her latent doubts multiplied.

  ‘What may be?’

  ‘It may be that it will come to a struggle.’ She was speaking to herself rather than to Richard. ‘Of course, we are not powerless. We have spies of our own, and friends too. We have Manina, and John Keston, and Amin Sang. We have the Fifty of the Brave. There are countless men who will follow you without question. We need not–’

  ‘Sunara, Sunara!’ he interrupted her. ‘You cannot be serious! You talk as if we were still at war. This is not the life we have planned together. What have I to do with spies and followers? I want peace, and love, and you, and the children!’

  ‘You may yet have to fight for all of them,’ she said stubbornly. ‘Do you think they will be served to you on a golden platter?’

  He was taken aback. ‘I have fought already, for peace and for all the rest. Surely it is over now? Surely I have fought enough?’

  ‘This is Makassang,’ she declared. He had never heard her voice so bitter; he knew that it must relate to the child she carried, and her primal need to guard its life. ‘You are not living in some sleepy, comfortable English world …’ Catching his look, she softened momentarily. ‘Forgive me, Richard – my thoughts are too much for my tongue … But you were my father’s favourite, and now you have lost favour. You know what that means? It is as if you had landed in Makassang this very morning. You heard him tell how such invaders were dealt with. That was in the old days. But do not be so sure that the old days have changed.’

  ‘He cannot have such things in mind.’ Richard was appalled, not only by these astonishing thoughts, but also by the fact that Sunara could think them, and voice them, with such rare freedom. It was something in her which he had never suspected, and now could scarcely comprehend. ‘He has made me welcome, he has done me the greatest possible honour, he has blessed our marriage–’

  ‘And he has changed his mind!’ Now it was her turn to interrupt, and she did so with passionate fervour. ‘I know him, Richard. In his old age, he has been taken with the mood to surprise and to shock even me, his only child … When all these punishments and tortures have run their course, he will turn to something else. I have a terrible fear that this something else will be–’

  Her voice broke off, on a single instant of time, as her acute hearing caught a soft footfall outside their apartments. Silence, suspect and dangerous in its falsity, fell between them; and then Richard, turning, was in time to see Colonel Kedah brush aside the light silk curtains, and present himself on their threshold.

  Though his face was impassive, his single eye, sardonic and calculating, surveyed them in a manner which might have brought disquiet to the most innocent.

  ‘Forgive me for intruding on your privacy,’ he said. The silky voice was an insult itself. ‘But I bear a message from his Highness.’

  Richard stared back, not disguising his cold dislike. ‘You do not intrude … We are not private here, as must be obvious … What is your message?’

  ‘It is an invitation,’ answered Kedah. Insolently sure of himself, he gave not an inch of ground. ‘His Highness invites you to witness the punishment of the last of the Shwe Dagon traitors.’

  ‘What punishment is this? And what traitor?’

  ‘The fat man. You remember the fat man?’ Richard could readily have strangled Kedah, for his tone of voice and the disdainful look which accompanied it. ‘You must have noted that he has been his Highness’s favourite, for a very long time.’

  ‘I thought by now that there was no one left alive, on the steps.’

  ‘Care and skill have preserved this one … But he is the very last. It is his Highness’s opinion,’ said Kedah, vilely matter-of-fact, ‘that there will be sufficient time to flay him alive.’

  2

  It was a boy, a pale petal of a child with Sunara’s enormous eyes and the promise of his father’s sturdy frame. Richard Marriott, possessed by wonder, gazed down at it with a bursting heart, near to tears. The tiny puckered face and the soft limbs were infinitely moving; as the infant lay cradled in Sunara’s arms, the two of them together seemed to sum up all that he hoped of life, all that he most loved and most cherished. In this broad bed, he thought, lay everything a man could desire, and more than he could deserve.

  Then he remembered Adam, his firstborn, and thought: There is room for him, too, in this close-coupled private world – thanks be to God, and to Sunara.

  Richard was near to tears for another, more potent reason. It had been a most difficult birth: Sunara’s small frame, apt for love, was not apt for child-bearing; she had been more than a day in labour, and her lovely face, grey with exhaustion, seemed to become the more drained of life as she strove to give life to the world. Manina, attending her, using a woman’s skill in a woman’s dolorous world,
had not slept for forty hours or more; she suffered even as the Princess, her mistress, suffered, bearing in her dried up, wizened old body all the writhing pains which Sunara herself had to bear. Richard, feeling foolish and guilty at the same moment, underwent an almost unbearable torment of spirit as he watched his wife enduring her prolonged agony.

  Her time had come upon her, as the monsoon was at last about to break. The skies were laden and lowering, the air heavy, the heat monstrous; every normal movement, much less every pain of labour, was enough to start a drenching sweat. In this tense and oppressive stillness, it seemed as if nature herself could not relent, as if the world would grow hotter and hotter, and heavier and heavier, until its very fabric melted and the people gasped and died. But then there had been a rolling crack of thunder, and a terrifying play of lightning about the palace rooftops; and then came sudden swamping relief.

  With the skies streaming, and the parched earth resounding to a million pattering drumbeats, the child was delivered, and gave its first cry.

  Now, looking down at them with tenderness and joy, Richard bent and kissed her brow. Sunara was still drowsy from her first exhausted sleep; her violet eyelids fluttered against the light before her eyes opened. Then she saw him, and her mouth curved to a loving smile.

  ‘Tuan … We have our son.’

  ‘Yes, Sunara.’ Richard brushed the tears from his eyes with a candid, undisguised movement. ‘He is beautiful, and you are beautiful too.’

  She was looking down at the tiny body nestling in the crook of her arm. ‘He is in your image, I think. But after all, he is so small.’

  ‘He will grow to a giant … But tell me how you feel, my dearest one.’

  ‘Tired. Though very happy.’ Her brow wrinkled. ‘What is that strange noise?’

  ‘The monsoon rains.’ The steady drumming on the roof had increased to a hissing roar; from the garden, the rain streaming down upon a thousand leaves was to be heard everywhere. ‘It broke at last, a few hours back.’

  She sighed. ‘May it wash us all clean again.’

  He too, aware of the sluicing downpour of the rain, had been thinking of the Steps of Heaven.

  ‘With the new child,’ he comforted her, ‘comes a new beginning.’ He sat down in a low chair by the bedside, and reached over to take her hand. His forearm rested momentarily on the tiny form of his son; it seemed the sweetest contact of his life. ‘You must think of nothing except to rest, and be strong again. Then nothing can mar our happiness, and no force in the world can take it away from us.’

  He would have said more, from the fullness of his heart. But the old nurse Manina, who had been crouching in one corner of the room, a forbidding presence in their loving Eden, now came forward to the foot of the bed.

  ‘It is time for sleep,’ she said. Her croaking voice had a strange, undeniable authority. ‘The Tunku must be pleased to leave us now.’

  ‘But the Princess is resting,’ protested Richard.

  ‘Resting is not enough.’ Manina regarded him with fierce, resentful eyes. You men! her glance seemed to say: you take your pleasure in us, you wear us out with labour, then you would kill us with talking … ‘It is not enough,’ she repeated. ‘The Princess must have the sleep she deserves, after all she has suffered.’

  ‘Very well,’ answered Richard. He could not argue; this was a woman’s barred realm; he had no place in it, and no rank either. He pressed Sunara’s hand in farewell. ‘I will return, later this evening.’

  ‘Tomorrow, at noon,’ said Manina.

  Sunara smiled. ‘You see how I am guarded … Has Adam visited his brother?’

  ‘Yes. He came with me, the first moment he could.’

  ‘What did he say?’

  ‘He said, “When will he walk?”’

  Sunara’s eyes fluttered and closed again; she was once more drowsy with the healing drugs which were Manina’s secret. ‘Bring him with you, the next time,’ she whispered sleepily, turning her head on to the pillow. Her voice, fading, seemed to come from some faraway country where all was deep relief. ‘Bring him to see us … He must be sure of our love … It is important that we are all one.’

  For a space, it seemed as if it were indeed a new beginning. On seeing this, his first grandchild, some flicker of ancient pride took possession of the Rajah’s spirit, and fired it with a dynastic fervour. At this first flush, he could not do enough to honour the new birth.

  The instant it became known that a boy had been born in the line of succession, benevolent commands began to flow from the palace. All captives were set free, in a general amnesty which for several hours thronged the streets of the capital with a horde of miserable wretches blinking up at the sun. Three days of public holidaymaking were decreed; and to aid in their observance, a hundred casks of wine and a thousand bushels of rice were distributed to the poor. At the Sun Palace, a week of feasting culminated in a vast ceremonial procession to celebrate the naming of the child.

  Makassang had not seen such a show in a generation. There were eighty elephants painted in gold and scarlet; bullocks with ochre muzzles and silvered horns drawing wagonloads of the palace slave dancers, who showered the crowds with magnolia and poinsettia blooms; and towering golden shrines in the shape of the Shwe Dagon, each carried on the backs of a hundred bearers, like a vast litter for the Lord Buddha himself. Basketfuls of silver coins were flung to the mob at each fifty paces. The procession wound for three hours, like an enormous brilliant serpent, through the streets of Prahang, while the gongs sounded and the pipes played their sweetest melodies. Then it made its slow ascent to the Sun Palace, honouring the firstborn grandchild with all the barbarous pomp which the island kingdom could furnish.

  At the final ceremony, the child was named Presatsang, which was the name of the Rajah’s own son, long dead in battle. In the public proclamations, the title Rajah Muda – that is, the Young Rajah – was used.

  Later, on the evening of this great day, when dusk had fallen upon the scene of rejoicing, Richard Marriott looked down on the vast throng of celebrants in the palace gardens, and watched the multitude of flickering torches, and heard the shouting and the laughter, and felt his heart swell with pride and happiness. At this moment of honour, the omens seemed all good, all auspicious. Presatsang had come to a fine inheritance; from now onwards. Richard himself, and Sunara, and the two boys might hope for happiness, in a country plainly fashioned, like paradise, forsuch joys and such fulfilment.

  He was to remember that night later, with mourning and a sense of loss, for there was never another like it, in all his days in Makassang.

  For a full week after the naming ceremony, it was noted that the Rajah kept to his apartments; he received no one save Colonel Kedah and his major-domo, and he paid no visits, not even to the nursery suite where Presatsang was installed in the customary state of new babies, surrounded by his idolaters. But Richard thought little of this – the old man was doubtless tired after the festivities, and would make his appearance when he had recovered his strength. When he did make his appearance, however, it was clear that his mood had swung, as it had done so many times in the past, away from a brief benevolence and towards its brooding opposite. His time in seclusion seemed to have been fed on suspicion and jealousy, and on nothing else.

  There had been no inkling of this; a week earlier, the Rajah had appeared as eager as anyone in the palace to take part in the joyful ceremonial. A most trivial occasion, which was magnified into wretched embarrassment, served to mark the turning point.

  It was a late afternoon in the royal nursery, shortly before one of the day’s important occasions – the baby’s evening bath. Richard and Sunara were there, and Amin Sang – the ‘double-uncle’, as Adam now called him – and Adam himself, and Manina, giving grudging leave for the spectators to witness this act of worship. It was very much a family party, relaxed and intimate; and the parents watched amusedly as Amin Sang instructed Adam in a new form of ‘guard duty’ – a formal patrol round the curtaine
d crib in which Presatsang lay.

  Adam, now a sturdy five-year-old, was taking his martial duties seriously. He marched with small, swaggering steps round a designated square, halting and grounding his miniature spear at each corner; from time to time Amin Sang called out appropriate orders, in the manner of a guard-commander disposing of his men. Intent on the play, none of them noticed the Rajah enter silently and stand by the doorway, watching the scene. Indeed, it was Adam himself who first discovered his presence, and that most unfortunately. The little boy was over-excited, and he was, in the manner of children attracting too much grown-up attention, ‘showing-off’ to his audience. Suddenly he broke off his march, with a look of theatrical alarm, and ran over to the doorway, his small spear thrust forward in a position of attack. Then he shouted: ‘On guard – an enemy!’ and brandished the spear in the Rajah’s face.

  In a certain mood, the Rajah would have laughed, while scolding him, and the others would have joined in without hesitation. But it was obvious that the Rajah’s mood was not of this quality. He remained standing in an attitude of frozen dignity, staring down at Adam who, aware now of an enormous breach of etiquette, stood stock-still in sudden fright. Under the Rajah’s bleak gaze, the innocent game became transformed and ugly; the comfortable ease of the room was swiftly destroyed, and danger put into its place. Richard, rising to greet the Rajah, was aware of sharp discomfort.

  ‘Good evening, your Highness–’ he began.

  The Rajah gestured for silence, which was itself an unlooked for insult. He remained staring down at Adam, whose lips, in a face turned scarlet, were already trembling. Then he said, in a soft and terrible voice: ‘What did you call me, boy?’