Wisps of silversalt had carried her off; she’d fallen asleep to the melody of her own breathing. The moaning infiltrated her dreams, of giving birth to a baby with a voice that twinned her own.
She awoke to the sound. It came from outside, like a whisper through the cottage walls.
Across the yard she spotted Eligius lying against Dimbola’s gate. He could not speak to say how he had come through the jungle in his condition. It took her and Julia to carry him to his mat in the house.
He slept through the night and well into the next day, in a fever born of his beating. When he woke, Julia told him that he writhed as if in some kind of flight.
“Wynfield’s soldiers are in your village,” she said. “The church was ransacked last night. And your beating…”
He sucked in air, breaking the colors clouding his vision.
“My mother and I heard you in the night. You spoke of your father as if he was alive.”
“Please. I don’t want the soldiers to hurt my mother.”
“It’s done.” Catherine stood in the doorway. “What happened to you ought have no place. It’s savage. It cannot go unanswered.”
He tried to sit up. The effort ignited a fire deep in his chest. “I have lost yet more time. The roof remains a shambles. Is there wood? I can finish.”
“You’ll stay in bed. Let the other colonials drive their ser - vants to the ground. But you’ll not lay around idling away time.” She placed a thick book on the mat at his feet. “I expect you to apply your heart to this. Tonight, I’ll hear your thoughts on the passage I’ve marked.”
Her fingers were red, like a maid’s. She appeared as if she’d been scaling fish against rock, as his mother did at low tide. But his mother had never returned with her efforts still radiant upon her. She had never been touched by the madness slumbering under his mat.
“Julia, let him be. You too, Ewen.”
Ewen rolled to his feet. He’d been lying still, pressed into the shadows enveloping the sleeping mat. “You never saw me.” He giggled as he ran out of the room.
“Did you know about the Galle Face?” Julia asked. “Is that why you were beaten? For refusing to go?”
“I don’t understand.”
She lifted his blanket. The pane of glass lay against his thigh. “It was next to you when we found you. If you were a thief, you would have sold it.”
She left him. He opened the bible the memsa’ab had given him. She’d circled a passage in soft charcoal. Fine black granules filled the separation between pages. Ecclesiastes. The word felt insurmountable. The rest of the passage chilled him.
When Catherine returned that evening, she asked him to read it aloud. Her lean face was near beautiful, with its fine cheekbones and high forehead. Her hair was wrapped demurely. Yet still there was something wild about her.
“I’m afraid,” he said.
“I know you are. Do as I ask.”
He opened the book. “Light is sweet, and it is pleasant to the eyes to see the sun. Even those who live many years should rejoice in it; yet let them remember that the days of darkness will be many.”
She sat down next to his mat, on the floor like a child. “Its meaning?”
“Are the dark days here now?”
“To believe otherwise is vanity.”
She reached for the book. Now there was silver across her palms, embedded like stars. She had come to love the way it dusted her, like something from a child’s wondrous dream. “The question that intrigues is how to hold the light higher, eh?”
Footsteps in the corridor interrupted her. The sa’ab’s slow shuffle. “Is he awake?’ Charles called. “How is it with him?”
“Better.”
She lowered her voice to a conspirator ’s hushed whisper and read from the book. “Before the sun and the light and the moon and the stars are darkened, and the clouds return with the rain, and men are bent, and the breath returns to God who gave it.”
This madness engulfed her. It slipped a crooked smile across her face and kept her from rising at her husband’s approach.
“Julia tells me of her conviction that you are not a boy who would desecrate a church,” she told him. “I can’t say where this conviction comes from, but my daughter does not idly place her faith. Do not make a fool of her, or me.”
“Are you reading to him?” Charles appeared in the doorway.
“No, my husband. I’m done for tonight.”
“Well, he looks better. I’ll say goodnight.”
“As will I.”
She had begun an education of his eyes; her shining hands had started it. Already she felt increasingly adrift from her known life, with only an Indian for company.
“Memsa’ab? I’m not afraid of reading. I’m afraid of everything changing.”
“As am I. Perhaps we can find a way around that sad state.”
She left him in a gray growing dark. It deepened with the hour. Gradually, the sounds of ary’s evening cleaning fell away. The clatter of dishes, the emptying of filthy water buckets into the yard outside his window, the strangely forlorn whisk of the rug being dragged to its morning spot. When all was still, he rose from his mat. His wounds had dried to taut seams in his skin.
The halls of the Colebrooks’ home were quiet. It was as if the family became weightless at night. These people were nothing like the families in Matara. Even at a late, lonely hour, he always felt his village around him, like the stones Matara’s mothers placed at the corners of their children’s bedding to hold their babies down when the wind came in a flurry of fists against their huts.
He passed the watchful paintings on his way to the front of the house. At the window, he glanced outside and saw a figure at the gate. Chandrak’s face shone in the moonlight. It glistened like the starlit trails left in the sand by molting crabs.
Eligius held himself very still. It’s dark in here, he thought. The moon doesn’t catch me; there are no holes in this roof. He cannot see me.
Chandrak remained at the gate a long time. Once, he picked up a rock as if he might hurl it. But he just held it, while gazing towards the faint light in Holland House.
Eligius glanced around the room for anything he could use as a weapon, should Chandrak come over the gate. It could only be the memsa’ab in the cottage, keeping company with her wood-legged beast.
When Chandrak finally left, Eligius crept outside. To his eyes, Chandrak had left the same black impression as, at that moment, lay under his mat. A mark on the air. But when he reached the gate, there was nothing.
The door to Holland House was ajar. Beyond it, pale light rippled as if disturbed by the breeze. He peered inside, careful to stay silent.
She sat on the floor, muttering to herself. She held a feather in one hand, the paper in the other.
A letter, he thought. From that man. Words, what to do.
She was trying to make it come again. Her hands were stained. In the available light he saw swirls of black atop her fingers.
Somewhere within, he thought, hides the name of this obsession she has betrothed herself to.
He went to the well and returned with a small cistern of water. Entering, he knelt beside her, took the feather from her hand, and began to rinse her skin of its stain. So much of it remained.
She was silent while he ministered to her with patient, careful fingers. “These shadows,” he said. “To hold the fact of one, like the stone it came from. Nothing else matters to you.”
Putting the letter down, she held her other hand out to him. “No,” she said, marveling at the sound of it. Her blood set to words.
He tended to her. As flecks of never-born shade fell from her palm into the cistern, he wondered what became of such things as these, that came to the world broken or not at all, and stayed no longer than a breath.
A Boy Who Remains
REVEREND AULT SET DOWN HIS TEACUP SO MARY COULD refill it. “I’m told the soldiers have searched through the southern country and found no evidence to identify the
perpetrators of the Galle Face’s desecration.”
Eligius hid his bruised face in the mid-day murk of Charles’ shuttered study. There was some comfort to be found in the gloom that the memsa’ab always complained of. It reminded him of his hut in Matara. So little of the light found a way in.
“You left word with the villagers in Matara, then.” Catherine raised her cup, sending Mary back to the scullery for the kettle and another muslin bag of tea. “Someone beat this boy terribly.”
“I must report that I did not. There were no men in the village. Only women.”
“Stephen,” Charles said, “it’s vitally important that you get word to Governor Wynfield and the other directors, that they are to come to me today. We have to discuss this. Afire such as this is slow to spread, but eventually it will.”
That day, the Colebrooks found easy tasks for Eligius to do. He helped Mary cut cold pheasant for lunch, ground the bird’s feathers down to a fine point so Julia might have some writing materials, cleaned the study floor while the sa’ab read a treatise on land rights that bore his name. They were tentative with him, and he thought that it was not all attributable to his injuries. Even Julia, who emerged from Holland House in the late afternoon and took her quills without a word, looked at him as if he were painful with light.
The full Court – nine men in all, ones he’d seen and some he had not – arrived at twilight to an inviting fire and trays of brandy in the study. “Stay near,” Charles told him, “lest their glasses go unnoticed.”
Of the directors present, most seemed aligned with the governor; they even sat on his side of the study. Two remained with Charles. One was older, rotund and pinched around his eyes. The other was a younger man, tall and thin, with a whippet’s spastic alertness and a beard like dusted curtain cord.
Wynfield spoke first. “I have gone forward with my bill on the taxes to the provinces. It will come to a vote of the Court, then on to Parliament. I believe the roll favors me, my friends. I ask your support. Justice Newhope, I see you itch to speak.”
The older director rose from his seat at Charles’ side. “We’ve all heard of the havoc to the north, and it began with an exodus of the men. They bought arms and within weeks there were homes and trades ablaze. Trouble has found us. Should we now levy another property tax here in the southern country, upon men who could not meet the last one and show a penchant for outrage against the church of England? Is it not the height of irresponsibility to push them to their limit?”
“Surely Ceylon doesn’t know of the occurrences so far north,” Wynfield said. “Lack of communication plagues these people, but it can be a boon in such times. These are not related acts.”
Charles leaned forward until he could peer out the study door. “Come here, Eligius.”
Eligius brought a brandy snifter and stood in the doorway to the study. “Tell us,” Charles said, “how long it takes you to walk to our gate from Matara.”
“Less than half the night, sa’ab.”
“It is not so much, then,” Charles said, “to consider men trekking through the jungle, passing word to each village. Let me tell you my thoughts on this bill. Word will spread that our interests have been attacked in Jaffna, and now the port. A hike in taxes that they cannot bear that all the pawnbrokers in Madurai cannot fund? Governor, haven’t we already given them reason enough to despise our presence?”
Their eyes drilled holes in the back of Eligius’ head as he filled glasses and emptied pipe ashes into an urn.
“It is my wish,” Wynfield said, “to avoid violence.” He picked up a framed cartograph of Ceylon from Charles’ desk. “But these men, these howling fools at the Court gates, stand on the precipice of a terrible day. Perhaps your servant can explain their conduct to me. Is this a holiday of some kind? Something for the men alone, that the villages should empty of them?”
Eligius remained quiet.
“ Tell me, boy.”
“It is not.”
Charles clutched his heavy woolen coat about his body. It was as if he resided alone in a country of eternal cold. “Do you know where your fellows are, Eligius?”
He shook his head.
“If you know anything of the men of your village,” Newhope said, “you must tell us.”
“I was with my mother on your Sunday. The other men were still there with their sons.”
“What were they doing?”
“Watching my beating.”
“For what reason were you beaten?” Charles coughed, bringing a sodden handkerchief to his lips.
“No reason was given.”
“There’s been no end of trouble in the provinces,” Wynfield said. “Men like these abandon their responsibilities to mere children. Or is there something else to their disappearance, boy?”
Eligius looked to Charles. The old man seemed intent on the map in Wynfield’s hands.
“Hearing nothing to the contrary,” Wynfield said, “I presume the actions of your fellows speak for you.”
“Do you speak for all here?” Eligius asked.
“Don’t be impudent,” Charles said.
“Is this how servants conduct themselves in your house?” Wynfield asked. “Small wonder, your wife’s distractions from her duties. I don’t wish to see these walls continue to crumble around you, my friend.”
“How dare you insult him in his ill health!” Crowell shouted.
“There’s more to it than you know, sir.”
Charles’ eyes found his young servant in the corner. They filled briefly, then dried. “There is no need for that subject, Andrew. We are not speaking of me, but of the threat of violence swelling in this country.”
“The subjects are linked, I’m afraid. A man of vigor controls his servants as well as his wife. He puts a firm oar in the water. Everything about you speaks of twilight at a time when our obligation to England tips the balance in favor of immediate and vigorous action here in Ceylon. A popular uprising gains traction and leads to rebellion. Commerce halts. Fields die. Taxes cease. To stop these incidents from becoming an issue, we must keep these people focused on working their fields and on paying their debts. Sad but true, it always falls to us.”
Setting Charles’ map down, he went to the door. “We are apart on so many things now, Charles. Have you noticed? Let us find common ground on at least this much. The affairs of her Majesty’s colonies must be equal to their cost, and thus far we have much ground to cover. Her fleet, her trading company, her exports. India is a bride with an insufficient dowry.”
He tucked the bill into the lining of his overcoat. “I’ve drafted an amendment to the Doctrine of Lapse. Where the absence of a feudal heir triggers the natives’ forfeiture of villages now, we will broaden it to include villages where the men are missing and delinquent taxes continue. Parliament has responded favorably.”
“I knew nothing of this,” Charles said.
“It is a service we will provide to Ceylon. In a jungle-covered country like this, diseases of the most malignant character are harbored. Year after year they reap a pestilential harvest from this thinly scattered population. Cholera, dysentery, fever, and smallpox all appear in their turn and annually sweep whole villages away. Gentlemen, I ask you. Can we stand by and do nothing? I for one say no. I have seen enough of the moldering dead. If a village comprising two hundred able-bodied men is reduced by sickness to a population of fifty, can those left behind cultivate the same amount of land? No, gentlemen, it falls to us to clear it away and make something of it. These people have to adapt to us, not the other way around.”
Wynfield rose to leave. His loyalists rose with him. “You have some time to study this as you wish. But not long, my friends. I expect your answer soon. This cannot wait.”
“You have my word,” Charles said as Newhope and Crowell stared at him.
“Excellent. My best to your wife and children. Please, have Catherine send her bill of needs to my staff for the celebration in honor of Holland. As sponsor of his voyage, it is
only right. Let your maid walk through the market untroubled.”
Eligius glared at Wynfield as he left. Charles waved him over and handed him an empty brandy snifter. “ Watch yourself, boy. While you glare at one, another sees you and marks you for trouble. There is too much you don’t know to be so impetuous at such a dangerous time.”
“Why doesn’t anyone believe me? I don’t know where the men are.”
“Your wounds are likely all that keep you from being arrested in their place. Now go about your work. Let us alone to talk this out.”
Eligius left the study. How uneasy Newhope and Crowell appeared. How uncertain. He’d never seen a colonial without their attendant arrogance. These men breathed the same anxiety as the men of Matara did around their fires while their ranks thinned and the trees rang louder with new voices each night.
And the sa’ab; he looked ashamed and small. What could such men do to move the governor? Did they even want to? In the end it was just Indians losing their land. A common enough occurrence.
He left the study door slightly open. From the dining room, he heard enough to know that Charles was behaving irregularly in the eyes of his friends. Once there’d been a different man, said Crowell. Newhope reminded him that he was ill, not dead. Would he not rise to Ceylon’s defense, as the man he once was?
Only when Newhope suggested that they contact the Court of Proprietors in London did Charles speak. He asked them to give him time in the same tone that he’d employed with the governor. A kind of prayer. “Let me study this in concurrence with the laws on the subject,” Charles said. “Perhaps there are mechanisms we can employ.”
Mary interrupted his eavesdropping. She handed him a bucket and mop. “Ewen took ill.”
He went to Ewen’s room, grateful for the task. It was better to sop up a boy’s vomit than to hear these old men talk.
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