"No," Kota replied with hot determination. "Our blood will mingle here."
The fortuneteller let out a howl, and the gypsies charged. Jaki and Kota engulfed held off the attackers by whirling their weapons in wide strokes. But there were too many shrieking demons, and when the intruders' swords clanged against the scimitars, gypsies sidled closer and swiped viciously at Jaki's and Kota's legs. In moments they would be hacked meat.
An explosion shook the dark chamber to startled silence and sent bats shooting into the searing day. From the doorway, sunlight flapped about Maud's silhouette and the smoking flintlock she had fired.
Jaki and Kota leaped through the opening that the gunshot had sheared and bounded up the stairs.
The fortuneteller hissed at the pirates and the maid who stood fast in the sunhaze behind them. He circled his burnt thumb in the air. "My curse is on that diamond. The shadow of death goes with it from here!"
Jaki grinned, reached into his medicine bag, and tugged out the pirate banner Pym had bequeathed him. Even in the dense shadows of the shrine, the oppressive image of the dragonhawk elicited moans from the gypsies. "My curse for yours!" Jaki shouted, and his echoes tripped over the answering cries of the despairing beggars as they fled into the depths of the temple, tumbling over each other like frantic rats.
Jaki sheathed his sword and bowed to Maud. "We owe you our lives," he said with open relief.
Maud blew a happy sigh and helped Kota and Jaki fold Wyvern. Her breath sharpened. "This is the flag that spared us from the pirates at sea. What is this beast?"
"Life's talons," Jaki answered and added, with a glint of mischief in his eye. "Our mother."
"She looks so terrible."
"She is. She loves us to death." Jaki handed her the diamond. "And this is yours, Maud. Keep it or trade it for fair value."
Maud clasped her hands. "I will not take it, Jaki. Lucinda does not want me to have it."
"I want you to have it."
They wobbled arm in arm back toward the camp, Kota walking backward behind them to see they were not attacked. "Why, Mister Gefjon, do you want me to have this diamond?" Maud asked.
"We have many diamonds. You are part of our family, why should you not have one?"
"You honor me so, but I am only a servant, not family."
"Not in my eyes." Jaki stopped and faced her. "I have married Lucinda but not all her ways — though she thinks she is changing me. And I suppose she is. One thing will never change, and that is what belongs together. In my tribe, a family shares all it has. To me, you shall always be Lucinda's sister, not her servant. Take the diamond. Lucinda sent you back for it. It is yours."
A shiver narrowed through her bones. "It is cursed. Lucinda will die."
"All life is cursed. The mother of life is terrible. She eats her young. Shall we then deny ourselves?"
"Jaki, I cannot take it." She tugged at her mass of brown curls. "I am only a maid. It is my station, and so I will always be a maid. No amount of diamonds will change that. But —" She lowered her gaze, searching for the courage to speak. "Your concern, that wishes on me this wealth, that I do accept. It is a gift I cannot possibly misplace and no one can steal. As I am in your eyes Lucinda's sister then you are in my eyes a brother. I will cherish that." She looked up then at the understanding in his eyes.
Lucinda was waiting for them. She had paced there, counting her failures. Why was he so resistant to her wisdom? Why did he still insist on mixing high and low? The obvious answer depressed her: Jaki himself was low, a primitive, a child of unalloyed nature whom she could never redeem. Yet now, with the necessity she felt growing from within her, Jaki's civilizing had become more vital than ever.
"The diamond," Jaki said, presenting her with the chunk of cloudy rock. "Maud will not take it back. She believes it is cursed. Will you have it?"
Lucinda took the gem. "I will. And I will wear it as you once wore yours."
Maud groaned. "Luci, the gypsy cursed it."
"Maud, go and prepare supper." Lucinda shooed her away and dismissed Kota with a wave.
"You have no fear of the curse or the gypsy's frightful prophecy?" Jaki asked, escorting her back toward their tent.
She chuckled. "As a child I used to hide in my father's study when he met with members of a secret society who had tried to recruit him." Her laugh dazzled. "The Church of the Two Thieves, they called themselves. They wore robes and tall hats, burned incense and read ancient tomes about angels, prophecy, and the hidden hand of God. They were just men. No ghosts appeared. No auguries came to pass. And when they were done, they took their robes and hats off, drank wine, and stumbled home like the besotted men they were. That cured me early of any faith in the supernatural. I fear no curses. And neither do I fear death. What is there to fear? When I die, I will be as I was before I was born, in God's grace."
Just outside their tent, she took Jaki's face in her hands. "Love, I must tell you a thing."
Some turbulence in her eyes came forward, and his stomach fisted.
"I am not afraid of death," she said. "I am afraid of life. It is so cruel. We must strive hard to find our way to the New World and there make a home — a real home."
"We will, my antelope. Do not be afraid."
"I am not afraid for me. I am afraid for another — the one I carry within me."
Jaki's tongue thickened. "You are with child?"
"Yes," she nodded. "I have not bled since we crossed into India."
"That is only two moons."
"That is enough. I feel the changes." The heat of her pride burned like a rash at the sides of her neck. Jaki pulled her closer, and she could feel the passionate hope of his embrace.
*
The raft that carried William Quarles and Robert Fletcher up the Irrawaddy returned to Dagon six weeks later with both Englishmen swaddled in rags and shivering with malaria. They had reached Prome through the monsoon run-off, and the journey had taken much longer than Quarles had estimated. The swollen river, clogged with uprooted trees and dead animals, demanded long portages, which exhausted their supplies. Prah, the merchant who had lost his best elephants playing chess with Lucinda, took his revenge on the white woman's father by extracting from him his sword and all his gold for an old, cantankerous elephant and a lame guide that no one else would employ.
When they faced the wall of the jungle, wholly grown over since the passage of Lucinda's caravan two months earlier, Fletcher did his best to dissuade Quarles from going any farther. The air had thickened and gone still, and monsoon rains had thinned to a perpetual mist that hung in tatters among the root burls of the dripping, sparkling forest. Quarles insisted on barging relentlessly through the jungle with the dim hope of catching Lucinda while she tarried in the highlands meeting her trading obligations.
Fletcher briefly entertained the notion of returning by himself when he saw that Quarles had fled reason. But he had aspirations beyond foreign service and hoped for a commendation from the captain, who, despite his defeat at Serangoon, commanded renown throughout Asia as a man of power. Only after they had entered the eternal twilight of the jungle — when Quarles began to rave about a cold vacancy in his chest that only his daughter's touch could heal — did Fletcher understand the captain’s ambition beyond reason for madness.
The following night, the irascible elephant that had sulked for days bolted while they slept, taking with it their sacks of rice, skins of fresh water, and compass. Even then, Quarles intended to proceed on foot, but the lame guide could not, and the Englishmen were lost without him. With great reluctance, Quarles agreed to return to Prome. Yet even that proved nearly impossible, for the chill in his chest expanded throughout his body and soon he lay enfeebled and chattering in a makeshift litter.
Two days later, Fletcher also caught the chills, and the two of them hobbled feebly after their guide. Without him, they would certainly have perished, too weak to forage for food or even to build a fire. When they staggered into Prome, reeling like drunk
s, staring with yellow, crazed eyes from under hair that had shriveled to mats of ash, the villagers did not recognize them and almost butchered them for evil forest spirits. Prah took pity and sent them downriver in the raft they had arrived in, provisioning them with rice and fruit.
In Dagon, the arrival of the Englishmen alarmed Jakob Boeck. Afraid they would die and that his involvement with them might constitute a fractious political incident, he immediately notified the English factor newly arrived from Jakarta.
"You were a fool to chase into the jungle after your impetuous daughter," the English factor told Quarles when the captain had gained enough strength to sit up in bed and listen. Quarles clutched the Bible cover that he carried with him as an emblem of the pirate he stalked. The inscription within it had come clear to him at the height of his fever. Then he saw that death sanctioned his only reason to live — that the mine of signature constituted the treasure of one's name, one's honor. That insight, written by the hand of the pirate's own father, had pushed him to go on until the shadow of death had stopped him. The Bible cover had become his assurance that only the death of Jaki Gefjon could guard his honor now that the pirate had destroyed The Fateful Sisters and taken Lucinda as plunder.
"You ignored the Admiralty's order that I sent you in Surabaja." The factor's voice came from a muffled distance. "That was most foolish of all."
Quarles gazed up at the ceiling as if at a holy fresco. "I cannot go back," he croaked. "I have nothing. Only my daughter."
"Nonsense, William." The factor's wrinkled face and vivid blue eyes loomed closer. "You have a name. And you have the ancestral estate in Devon that you won back with your life's effort. You must defend those — or you will lose them."
Quarles' gaze roamed across the room's carved lime-wood garlands and swags, poor rhymes of the jungle vegetation that he could still see behind his closed lids, just as he could still smell the acid stink of the forest compost, the decay of all things, the signature of death.
"William, are you listening to me?" The factor's eyes shone cold as nailheads. "Shall we speak later?"
Quarles rested his gaze on the airy flowers carved at the edge of the ceiling, and he willed himself out of the hot tunnels of the forest and into this hornet-colored room. "I cannot return to England without my daughter," he said in a vicious voice. "My name — my estate — they mean nothing to me without her."
The factor averted his eyes with understanding. "I have anticipated that, and I have already sent a letter of explanation to the Admiralty informing them that you are engaged in a vital diplomatic mission. I have purchased you some time."
Quarles passed him a weary, querying look.
"The Thieves' Church is your ally, William."
"I am sworn to the Church of—"
"England — yes, I know. You have repeatedly refused our call." The factor nodded impatiently. "Will the Church of England save you now? Have they a plan for recovering both your reputation and your wayward daughter?" He smiled paternally when the captain's emaciated face relaxed with wondering, and he bent closer. "You do not understand the Church of the Two Thieves. You think her some papist device. I assure you, she is far older than the Church of Rome. Far older than Rome. Ah, you squint with incredulity." He sighed a silent laugh. "When the Romans invaded Britain, they toppled our shrines, defaced our worship-stones, and forced their religion upon us. Our Celtic faith did not die with the Romans. Our gods took their names. And when Rome became Christian, so did the names of our craft. We are the children of the forest. Like the two thieves that hung beside Christ, we are both of this world and the afterworld. No crown claims our fealty. We serve life herself—the struggle of light and life, prosperity and fertility, against poverty and defeat. For those who believe in life against death — both in this world and the next — we are their guardians."
"What is your plan?" Quarles asked in a flat and hopeless voice.
The factor clamped his jaw and sat back. Quarles would be no man's minion, he realized, but he wanted something desperately and that was as good. "Boeck informs us that Lucinda's caravan has trade papers that will admit them into the Moghul kingdom, then across India to Surat. As you must know, the Moghuls are in turmoil now, with Jahangir dying or already dead and no heir apparent. The Moghuls despise foreigners and will not allow us free access to their domains. But the Thieves' Church has made contact with a Moghul faction that has a strong chance of assuming leadership when Jahangir passes. Their chances will be much enhanced if they can acquire flintlocks to arm their supporters. We have twenty-three cases of Dutch flintlocks — one hundred and fifteen guns — seized from a Portuguese prize that in turn had taken the guns during their raid on Amboina last year. I will send a message to the Moghuls that we will exchange these weapons for your daughter and subsequent trading rights when they assume power." The factor cocked his head to mark the simplicity of the plan.
Quarles narrowed his eyes suspiciously. "You do not need me for this plan."
"Oh, but we do, William. As I say, the Moghuls are in turmoil. The outcome is uncertain. England can make no formal partisan declaration at this risky time. We must hedge now, mustn't we? Your mission will be a personal one, without the sanction of the crown. If you succeed, you will have your daughter back, and England may have an ally on the Peacock Throne. If you fail — you may forfeit your life. That must hardly seem a risk to a man who intrepidly defied an Admiralty order and plunged headlong into the jungles of Burma." His eyes sank deeper into his skull. "Shall I make arrangements for your mission to Surat?"
Quarles closed his eyes, and the brackish stench of the jungle swelled through him. With a breathless gasp, he hissed, "Yes."
*
Lucinda had a jeweler in Varanasi clasp the retrieved diamond to a gold filigree necklace fine as two strands of braided hair, and she wore it with her tiger's beard necklace. The bold display of these emblems of power impressed the villagers, and soon fabulous stories of the Tiger Lady traveled on a road of tongues ahead of the caravan. Crowds gathered in the hamlets to see the woman with hair like the sun's harp, the woman who had purged Manipur of tigers.
Lucinda knew a great deal about the empire they crossed, because two years previous, while touring the English factories at Ajmere and Ahmadabad with her father, she had read the journals of the first English ambassador to India, Thomas Roe. Ten years ago, Roe had won trading rights at Surat after much intrigue in the court of the century-old Moghul Empire. Many nights beside the fire, Lucinda enthralled Maud and Jaki with tales of a strange emperor named Jahangir who surrounded himself with paintings of Saint Bernardino of Siena, Saint Anthony, and John the Baptist. Jahangir had befriended Portuguese Jesuits and, though a Muslim, he drank wine and smoked opium all day in his opulent palace while watching elephants fight. At night he retired to a seraglio of a hundred women who could not be seen in public and lived in opulence guarded by eunuchs. Jahangir's favorite wife, Nur Jahan, ruled him and inspired his fiendish cruelty toward his enemies, even against his eldest son, who had attempted rebellion and suffered the punishment of having his eyelids sewn shut.
Weeks earlier, while still in view of the ice peaks to the north, the village markets hummed with reports about the death of Jahangir. The Moghul Empire convulsed, and huge armies marched across sprawling battlefields where the sons of Jahangir fought for dominion. On the mountain range overlooking the purple, hazy crofts and valleys of India, Jaki had wanted to turn back. "We have profits enough for Boeck," he had said to Lucinda. "Let us return to Dagon and buy passage to the New World."
Lucinda would not be persuaded. With her tiger's beard across her chest, a veiled hat folded over her shoulders like a shawl, and cloudpale hair diaphanous in the breeze, she presided, worthy as a priestess. "War is different in India," she explained. "In Europe, the Spanish devastate whole countrysides, putting harvests to the torch to make winter a weapon. The battles here are strictly between warriors. A whole class of men exist simply to fight, and they do all the fi
ghting. Farmers remain farmers, even in war. Our caravan will travel unmolested. In fact, we will be welcome, as even in war men are hungry for the new. Perhaps more so, seeing with their swords the fleetness of life." She nodded to the empurpled sheen of rain, heat, and the forests' slow exhalations. "We will earn a great profit in this land."
Eager traders met the caravan far outside the newly built Moghul city of Mirzapur, and the train of elephants, camels, mules, and oxen crossed the river to the unfinished marketplace like a rowdy festival, surrounded by a jabbering crowd of hawkers and mongers. Lucinda rode atop the lead elephant with Maud in a canopied howdah, delighted with the attention. In the two days since they had left Sarnath, Lucinda had burdened the elephant behind her with new merchandise — bolts of Chinese silk and nankeens, bales of indigo plants, cinnabar, kaolin, teas both green and black, orpiment and xanthin, slabs of rare lumber: sandalwood, camphor, bosmellia, balsam gum. And here in this city shaping itself to life on the riverbank, she would double her profits.
As the caravan sloshed ashore, gunshots cracked the still heat of the river plain. Elephants trumpeted with alarm, and the jubilant roar of the crowd faded. People peeled aside before two black stallions with mounted swordsmen. Faces masked by black turbans, they rode with unsheathed scimitars raised to their shoulders. They pranced through the wet crowd directly toward Lucinda's elephant.
Jaki and Kota moved their hands reflexively to their flintlocks — and stopped: the river bluffs bristled with men in black pyjamas and turbans who overlooked the riverbank with long-barreled muskets. Their commander rode through the corridor that his horsemen had opened in the crowd and brought his mount alongside Lucinda's elephant.
"I am Subahdar Hadi," he said in English aromatic with open vowels. Standing in his silver-trimmed saddle to face her, he scrutinized her diamond, her tigerskin bodice with its necklace of claws and fangs, and her features muted by the shade of her hat-net. His eyebrows lifted and his tiny eyes widened just perceptibly. "You are the famous Lucinda Quarles. Yes, I know your name. Ambassador Boeck of the Dutch Company alerted me months ago that you were journeying here. But I hardly believed it until the rumors began arriving of a Tiger Lady with gold hair. I am honored to welcome you to the kingdom of Uttar Pradesh, where I am the servant of the great Moghul emperor Shahryar."
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