“I was still living in Puttalam even though it lay in ruins,” the man said. “It was still my home. When I saw them, the older one was ill, and the missionary made him rest in the shade for a long time. Then he helped him up. The old one was upset that there was no one important to speak to. They had a cart. The old one lay down in the back, where servants would ride – ”
A cry went up in the fields as a monstrous plume of smoke rose above the trees. It engulfed the sky over the plantation. The colonial children screamed. Their father came to the porch with his rifle.
So close, Eligius thought. No more than half a mile.
In the fields, one man dropped his hoe. He walked to the road. Two more fieldworkers followed. They marched past the colonials’ property line in a parade of rags and coffee skin.
The colonial put a protective arm around his wife. His children and the old woman went into the house.
“Son,” the one-eyed man said, “forget the colonials. They ’ll get what they deserve. Find a weapon or a place to wait, but don’t be found doing nothing.”
Eligius nodded.
“I spoke to the old one. I brought him some water. Do you know he was the only colonial to ever speak to me like a man?”
“What did he say?”
“That he was sorry for many things. For Swaran Shourie.”
Another plume rose. Eligius heard more screams.
“Offer a prayer over the old one.” The man dropped his bag of cotton and began to walk. “ When you bury him. And one for me. I’ve no family left to mourn me.”
Eligius waited for more of the field workers to leave, then joined them. They passed the house gate, the mob of them, singing old songs he first heard as a child playing on the beach where the fishermen made beautiful melodies that compelled the waves to return day after day.
Now all the colonials were inside the house. He could see movement at their front windows. The children, watching without comprehension.
He thought of plumes of smoke rising over Dimbola.
When the workers turned into the gate, axes and hoes held high, he ran in the opposite direction. Soon the sounds of shots were too faint to hear.
He ran into the night, and the next morning, through a ribbon of sounds and smells, voices and fighting and burning. He slept only awhile, and only when he reached the lion’s mouth, as the first bruise-violet light could be seen over the mountains. Once, he woke in the night to what sounded like sobbing coming from the valley below. The wind was blowing, he thought, and the dead were whispering their secrets to the appa of the neem tree. He’d tried to will the sound away, then got up and started walking until he couldn’t hear anything but the jungle stirring.
It took him until midmorning to find something to eat in the pantry of an abandoned house. How strange, he thought, to see these walls broken like those of the villages. A week since it burned. Maybe less.
A garrison of weary soldiers shuffled by on the road outside. He hid until they passed, then went to find the colonials’ well. Drawing up the bucket, he soaked his torn feet and wondered where else to look. Nowhere, everywhere. The sa’ab could have simply gone, never to return out of shame. Maybe he’d already passed Dimbola in the dark. A last look before he fell to the land he loved but increasingly did not know.
If he failed to find the sa’ab, he thought he might do the same.
He left the house and shadowed the garrison until midday. In a field swaying with razor grass, he parted company with the soldiers. They continued up the road.
Pulling up clumps of blades, he cut a patch into the field big enough to sit down in and not be seen. He promised himself that he’d only rest awhile. His feet were cracked and bloody. His back ached; he could only bend forward a fraction before daggers pressed against his spine. What would it matter, he thought, if he never returned to Dimbola? What would be missing? A servant. A water bearer, a carpenter. A mover of light. Catherine would make her way with photographs of her betters, depicting their once-hoped for selves. Sir John would map stars. That he would be precise about it would only matter to him. Julia would marry and raise children with Wynfield. She would become a lady under a wide hat that kept her well hidden.
Perhaps she would lose one of her babies, like her mother. She would mourn the stranger that came to her new world broken, then go on.
I would never see what her idea of love was. I would never make portrait sitters of the stars.
A sound grew on the road. Carriage wheels churning up rocks and dirt, and the jagged wheeze of a horse driven too hard.
He peered over the tops of the grass blades. The carriage emerged on the far side of the field. It pulled off the road and the driver hopped down to help a woman out. She moved in a wobbling, unwieldy way. Her distended belly pulled her forward like a cast anchor. She knelt to the dirt. The sounds of sickness filled the air.
Behind her, another woman stepped out unaided. A maid or midwife, Eligius thought, followed by two small children. The downed woman barked at them but the distance made cotton of her words. She held out a demanding hand but still her children slipped into the grass, two blurs of curls melding with the green.
He started to smile, until the high sun glanced off of something brilliant and shiny in the trees across the road from the family. Metal.
He was up and running before those trees parted, before the men spilled onto the road. Like beetles pouring from a split rice sack they scrambled up and over the carriage and its driver. Eligius saw him slip under a rolling wave of blades. The car - riage tipped over with their weight. Its horse crumpled as its lead line hung it sideways.
An awful stew of cracking wood, pitiful whinnies and an abrupt cry reached his ears. He scanned the field, terrified. The world spun in a smear of green and flashes of gold hundreds of yards away. The children. They were screaming for their mother. Soon the sounds of last life and the breaking carriage would quiet. They would be heard.
He ran for them as the winds swept the stiff blades against his bare legs, gashing him relentlessly. The children clutched at each other and cried when he reached them. Kneeling next to them, he told them to hush in a harsh tone. They obeyed, eyes wide.
He lay them flat, his palms against their cheeks. Holding them down, he craned his neck. There were men at the carriage, pulling it apart and carrying it off. There were others gathered at the tree line.
He took one child under each arm and rose cautiously. His neck and back burned. Carrying them like parcels from the butcher, he set them down behind a thick coil of neem roots. The children were so small. They slipped into the gaps. The boy held his sister’s hand.
“Don’t move,” he told them. “Don’t make a sound.”
The boy’s eyes flickered with primitive recognition. His hand left his sister’s and covered her eyes.
Eligius’ heart broke. They think they’re about to die from me.
A sound made him spin around. Far in the field, one of the men raised his blade into the sun and brought it down, scattering grass into the air and with it, a tumbling sheaf of the maid’s frock.
“Hold your sister tight,” Eligius ordered the boy. “Don’t let her see.”
The boy’s lip trembled. Tears sprang from him.
“I’m going to cover you both so you won’t be spotted. Only I will know where you are. Don’t move until I come for you. Do you understand?”
The boy nodded. His little chest filled and fell.
Eligius covered them both with leaves until only a bit of their golden curls protruded like treasure. He found a heavy rock and ran, leaving his mind behind with the children. He ran as if in a silent void, with only the rock in his hand and bubbles of light descending from his vision to dazzle the green swaying grass.
The man never heard him. He was in mid-swing, his machete soaring up in a curtain of red drops and a fluttering flag of lace wrapped stubbornly around the blade, and he never heard Eligius descend on him with the rock. The stone struck bone and didn’t stop. The
man fell limply.
The maid lay on her back. Her face was turned to one side, demure. She was covered with blood, dirt, and grass. The skin of her cheek lay open and imbrued The man’s indiscriminate swings had left that side of her unrecognizable. She was breathing shallowly, expelling ribbons of red foam.
He’d once gone hunting with his father and other men. One was skilled with a slingshot and brought down a bird before it had a chance to escape. Breast split, it waited. He could remember the look in its eyes as their shadows fell over it. How it trembled as his father picked it up and twisted its head until its neck snapped.
The maid looked at him like that. There was nothing to be done to stop her leaving.
He left the dying woman and crept through the grass to the remains of the carriage. They’d torn apart the horse in the same manner. Bits of both lay in broken mounds.
He knew the men could see the road. Were he to take the children that way, they would be spotted.
“Leave me alone!”
He got onto his haunches. Between the men’s ranks, he saw the young woman screaming. The remains of her dress hung from her arms. Her breasts and womanhood were bare. Her hands lay protectively across her pregnant belly. The man closest to her set his blade down and went to her, forcing her to her knees. He wore a tunic. A servant once, maybe a day and a lifetime before.
A shot rang out. One of the men who’d stepped forward for a closer look fell. More shots cascaded like rain, and more of the men fell. A small cadre of soldiers ran towards the quickly scattering men, firing flame. The men slipped between trees and were gone. The soldiers followed them.
As quickly as it began, the road fell silent. The sounds of fighting grew muffled behind the canopy of jungle.
He ran to the woman. “Come with me quickly. I have your children safe.”
The woman rose but didn’t walk.
“Hurry. They could come back.”
They reached the trees and for a moment he thought the children were gone. Then one twig rolled from its perch atop a soft rise and a finger wriggled through. He uncovered the children and bid the woman to lie down with them.
“My servant,” the woman said. “My driver.”
“Stay here. You need clothes.”
She embraced her babies against her breasts. They burrowed into her as if seeking away back.
He returned to the field. The maid was still. “I’m sorry,” he whispered. Gently, he pulled her frock from her shoulders and down her torso. It was stained with blood but whole. At least the young mother would be covered.
The dress snagged under the maid’s body. He pulled harder, not wishing to touch the ruin of her. His efforts caused her head to loll lazily over, revealing a smooth, clean cheek.
He took a step back as the world spun away from him. A voice rose in his head, bitter from a life of work that never received its adequate due. What does a servant do? You carry on and you don’t see what’s plainly there. Kutha.
He pulled Mary ’s dress free and brought it to the young mother. While she slipped it over her head, dislodging her children only for the instant it took to let the dress fall across her nudity, he asked her where her home was. Near the port, she responded.
“Near Dimbola,” he told her. “Near the Colebrooks.”
“You’re their servant. The one who helps Catherine with her portraits.”
He helped her climb out of the clump of tree roots. They walked through the grass to the road. “She served us well,” the woman said when they cleared the field. Her children clung to her maid’s dress. The little girl pressed herself against the fabric, leaving a swipe of red on her forehead.
The spot where Mary lay could no longer be discerned from the expanse of grass.
He crossed the road and found a machete. “We stay in the jungle. It’s not safe to be seen.”
“We should wait for the soldiers to come back,” the woman said.
“There are more of us than them, memsa’ab. We’re alone. Can you walk?”
She nodded.
“We have far to go. If your children tire, we will carry them.”
“Mary told me of you. She said you were good.”
“She said nothing of the kind.”
The children stood in the shade of a tree canopy, waiting for someone to do something. Were he to leave their mother and take them by the hand, he felt certain they would go willingly. Such was their state of shock.
“Why are you doing this?” the woman asked. “We’re nothing to you.”
A strong wind blew up around them. One of the dead men lay not far from them. His clothes rippled in the unceasing air.
The noise roused the woman. “My name is Margaret. My baby cannot be born here. My husband won’t hear of it.”
“It’s not long off by the look of you.”
“Don’t speak to me that way.” She was breathing too fast. Shock overtook her. “Help me,” she pleaded. “That my children should see me like this.” She held Mary’s bloody garment away from her skin.
They hewed tightly to the trees as they walked. The children began to cry and he sang Gita’s lullaby. In a while it was all he could hear.
Outside Chilaw they found an estate that appeared intact. Margaret broke clear of him and her children and tottered as far as the estate’s lush field of coffee before Eligius grabbed her. He clasped his hand over her mouth and pulled her behind the weathered timber of the estate’s fence line. “I have been traveling for a day and a night,” he whispered, “and I have learned to listen.”
She stopped struggling as the sounds of breaking glass reached them. A band of men emerged from the house, their arms full of tapestries, silver, anything that could be pulled from the house and from each other.
Eligius dragged her back behind a stand of areca without being seen. There, in front of her children, he slapped her hard enough to draw tears. “If you leave again, I will let you. I will take your children. They will be raised by someone with more sense.”
She hung her head and cried, but did not try to seek help from her kind again. There was none to be found. All the colonials were gone, from Negombo to Weligama.
Under his urging, the children managed to coax another hour from their swollen feet before crumpling to the ground and sobbing. “I know a place where we can rest,” he told them. “It’s a magical place I know you’ll like.”
The boy shook his head; what little pride he’d found in protecting his sister had wilted in the face of his maid’s death and a day of trudging through terrifying landscapes. But the little girl stood up and brushed leaves from her dress, a yellow frock he suspected she wore to high tea. She looked like a sunflower after a storm. “What kind of magic?” she asked warily.
“The kind that will get you home.”
He brought them to the elephant temple on the last droplets of their endurance. The boy curled up against the top step and fell into a troubled sleep. His limbs jerked violently, warding off phantoms.
Margaret sat next to him and stroked his hair. Eligius constructed a hasty lean-to, shading her from the sun and the wind. She would not look at him.
Exhaustion lapped at him. He found the gold plaque and sat beneath it, the machete lying across his thighs. A radiating warmth drizzled his scalp and neck; reflected light from the plaque, bent upon him. The sensation filled him with dread at returning to Dimbola with no word of Charles. What words could he use, to say such a thing?
The trees across from the temple rustled. He saw the glint of a rifle, its barrel aimed at him. “I’ll kill you.” English. A young Britisher emerged. His weapon quivered wildly. Blonde stubble dotted his young chin. Sixteen, if that. So like the soldier that day. All the ones who fought the colonials’ battles, did they all have to be boys?
Eligius let the machete fall to the ground. “I’m not one of them. I ’m traveling with a young memsa’ab and her children. We are making our way back to Port Colombo.”
“Lies. How have you survived out here
with children and a woman?”
“I know this land.”
The boy’s rifle lowered. He sniffled. “Tell me it’s true.”
“It is.”
“I’m lost. I was running with my family – ”
“The governor and most of the Court live in Colombo. I expect your family is there.”
“Show me the woman and children. I want to see them for myself.”
He led the boy up the first steps. In the center of the temple, Margaret dozed with her son. The girl was making a leafy lean-to, a tiny version of her mother ’s. She smiled when she saw Eligius.
Eligius woke Margaret. “ We have a guest. He will be walking with us.”
“Where are you from?” she asked the boy.
“My family’s in Tangalla.”
“Not here. From home.”
“Isle of Wight, ma’am.”
Eligius left them to speak of England. He knelt next to the girl. “What’s your name?”
She spread her leaves carefully. “Alexandra.”
“Alexandra, I promised you magic.”
He took her to the temple wall and let her run her hands along its carvings. “They ’re cousins to the clouds,” he said.
She pursed her lips. “They don’t look like clouds.”
“Nor do you and your brother look alike.”
“Elephants don’t fly.”
“That’s why sometimes you see clouds near the ground. They ’re visiting.”
“That’s nice of them.”
“Say goodbye to the elephants. We have to go.”
“I’m very tired.”
“I’ll carry you.”
He lifted her onto his shoulders. Margaret stirred her son and the boy, who’d fallen asleep with his rifle in his arms. Eligius gave the boy his machete. The jungle wasn’t as thick from here, he explained, and were they to come upon any soldiers this close to port, he did not wish to be seen with a weapon.
“Another hour,” he told Alexandra. “ Hold on to me.”
She bounced atop him. She let her head fall back and stared up through the trees. Her hair tickled his neck. “ I saw you make the man fall down,” she said. “ In the grass, with Mary.”
The Luminist Page 23