Butterfly Island

by Corina Bomann

  The young woman didn’t see him, she was so sunk in her thoughts.

  “There might be a solution,” Stockton was saying, having calmed himself a little.

  “And what might that be?” Henry asked.

  “There are women in the village who know how to rid a woman of her brat.”

  His words fell like splinters of broken glass.

  “You mean she should go to an abortionist?”

  “Not go, but you could bring such a person here. In the house, away from the prying eyes of others, she could get things back to the way they were before.”

  “But that’s a sin!” Tremayne snapped.

  “What your daughter did with that bastard was a sin!” Stockton hit back angrily. “If you did this you wouldn’t lose face with the others! I would still accept her as my son’s wife, if she were no longer pregnant.”

  Cahill bit his lip as Grace walked past him, erect and with her head held high like a queen. She had obviously overheard Stockton’s demand. She stopped in the doorway, hesitated a moment, then entered. And before their neighbour could come out with any further threats, she said, calm and self-possessed, “I intend to keep the baby, Mr. Stockton. You will not bring me to sin against life.”

  Silence followed her words. Cahill would have loved to be able to see the expressions on their faces. They were probably frozen in shock.

  “Father, to protect you from scandal here, I have decided to go to England and give birth to my baby there.”

  Still there was no answer.

  “A savage’s brat?” Stockton was the first to give vent to his rage. “Miss Tremayne, please see reason! You could be rid of all your worries, just like that.”

  “Murder, you mean? Why? Because you want to make me the mother of your heir, as you once put it? Or have you reconsidered your position since our encounter?”

  “That’s—”

  “A lie? Is that how you’d describe it, Mr. Stockton?” Grace paused briefly before continuing. “You’ve read my account, Father! You were hell-bent on finding the wrongdoer, but that’s not Vikrama! This man here is heaped with guilt, so read a bit more closely!”

  Stockton’s heavy breathing filled the room. “Surely you’re not going to take this girl seriously.”

  “Be silent, Mr. Stockton! This is my house. I’m in charge here. And I would advise you to leave, now, before I forget myself!”

  “You’ll regret this, Tremayne. I’ll make sure that the whole of Ceylon knows what your daughter is!”

  He stormed out, fuming, his footsteps echoing through the room. In the hall, he muttered something incomprehensible. A door slammed.

  Everything fell silent again.

  “Father?” Grace whispered softly.

  “You will travel to England as soon as possible,” Tremayne pronounced, his voice shaking. “You will give birth to the baby, and we will find a family who will accept it and look after it.”

  “No, Father. I . . .”

  “Don’t argue!” Tremayne thundered. “Now go to your room and don’t come out again.”

  Grace did not reply. She turned slowly and left the room. From his hiding place in the shadows, Cahill saw tears running silently down her cheeks.

  In the days that followed, his services were not required. Rain showers cooled the air, signs of the oncoming winter in these latitudes. In a month’s time they would be celebrating the birth of the Saviour.

  Cahill withdrew into his study, refusing to speak to his wife or his children. What was to become of the plantation now? The Tremaynes had another daughter; she would inherit Vannattuppūcci. But what about the family’s reputation? Stockton would never rest until Tremayne was ruined—all the more so if Miss Grace’s assertion was proved.

  A week later, a carriage pulled up in front of the house. Miss Grace only took a few things with her. Miss Giles travelled with her, probably to ensure that Miss Grace didn’t do anything else stupid.

  Cahill did not know what her farewell with her family had been like, but apart from Miss Victoria, no one was standing on the steps to wave the two women off. The carriage left the plantation. Cahill had found out that Tremayne’s daughter would be sailing back to England on a post ship called Calypso.

  After his eldest daughter’s departure, Henry Tremayne was never the same. He would shut himself away in his study for hours, alternating between disappointment, rage, and despair.

  Then Cahill plucked up courage. He was hardly expecting his news to cheer Tremayne up—quite the opposite. But he had decided to tell him what he knew before anything else happened.

  “I don’t need anything, Mr. Wilkes,” Tremayne called out, assuming it was the butler at the door.

  “It’s me, Cahill,” the lawyer whispered. “I have to speak to you.”

  Silence followed his words.

  “Come in!” Tremayne said finally.

  As Cahill entered he was shocked to see the state his employer was in.

  It wasn’t so much his clothes—there had been other times when he had dispensed with wearing a jacket. But beard stubble shadowed his face, his mouth was a thin-lipped line, and his eyes were sunk in dark hollows.

  “What do you want, Cahill?” he asked. Even his voice sounded different, as though it had aged in a matter of days.

  “I believe I have something that may interest you.”

  Henry raised his eyebrows. “Really?”

  “There’s something you ought to know, now that . . .” His employer’s angry expression silenced him. Tremayne stood up behind his desk as though he intended to set about him. But he merely straightened his shoulders and beckoned him forward.

  As he closed the door behind him, Cahill was struck by an idea. Don’t make it any worse than it is. But he had crossed the Rubicon and there was no going back. His employer had a right to the truth, so that the traces of the past could be laid to rest once and for all.

  “You must understand that I don’t have much time, Mr. Cahill,” Tremayne began. He indicated a chair in front of the desk. “So get to the point, please.”

  Cahill could see from the accounts ledger, which lay open but untouched, that Tremayne’s time had been taken up by matters other than work.

  “There have been certain developments. Things I didn’t tell you when you arrived because I didn’t consider them important.”

  Henry’s expression darkened, but he continued to listen in attentive silence.

  “Following recent events, I’m sure Mr. Vikrama is still on your mind.”

  Tremayne’s snort suggested that he was all too well aware of him. “What about him? Has he done something else, apart from seducing my daughter?”

  “I fear so, although it’s not exactly his fault, but your brother’s.”

  “Richard? What does he have to do with it?”

  Cahill hesitated, acknowledging a kind of perverse excitement. He would finally be rid of the burden he had carried around for so long.

  “When your brother came to Vannattuppūcci, he was attracted to a young tea picker. Good Lord, was she beautiful! Golden skin, jet-black hair, and strange green eyes, the kind more often found in Egypt. As he was the master, your brother had his way with her, again and again. The poor woman believed that he would make her his wife—after all, mixed marriages between Dutch settlers and natives had happened before, and their children were quite highly regarded. But your brother was cut from different cloth. After a while he grew tired of her—too late, since she was already pregnant. When she told him, he flew into a rage and drove her from the plantation. She returned to her home village in disgrace. But after a while his conscience began to plague him. He fetched her back shortly before the birth, under the condition that she would not betray him. She gave birth to the child, gave him a name and brought him up. When she died, Mr. Tremayne considered it his duty to take care of the lad. Totally unaware that Richard was his father, Vikrama grew up here and became one of the most important people on the plantation.”

  �
��How do you know all this?”

  “Your brother told me shortly before his death.”

  Cahill tensed. The truth was a little different here, too, but who would be concerned? “He planned to establish his son as his legal heir,” he continued. “But his premature death meant things never came to that, thank God. And I never deemed it appropriate to tell Vikrama because you’re Richard’s brother and have a far more legitimate claim than the lad does. Where would we be if these savages ran the plantations themselves?”

  Henry stared at him, perplexed. For a moment it seemed as though Cahill’s words would run off him like water off a duck’s back. But in truth they were penetrating deep into his soul. “That lad is Richard’s son,” Tremayne murmured, finding it hard to believe that God would allow a trick like that to be played on him.

  “I would have told you sooner, but you were too busy—”

  Tremayne’s howl of rage silenced him on the spot. With a furious swing of his arm, Henry swept the inkpot on to the floor, where it smashed, causing ink to flow freely across the parquet.

  “So this means that my daughter has been made pregnant by her cousin?”

  “You could say that.” Cahill stepped back as though he feared being struck.

  Henry stared at his lawyer in bewilderment. Although his mouth was opening and closing, he was unable to make a sound.

  Cahill came over alternately hot and cold as he looked into his employer’s face. Tremayne’s eyes looked like two bottomless pits that threatened to swallow him up.

  “You should have told me immediately that my brother had a bastard!”

  Cahill could think of no reply, since his employer was right.

  “Does he know who he is?” Henry asked, balling his fists in anger.

  Cahill shook his head. “No, I don’t think so. Otherwise he’d hardly have got involved with your daughter. After all, they’re first cousins. Even the savages here aren’t as depraved as that.”

  Henry sank down on the chair behind his desk, the implications of the situation apparently only now sinking in.

  His weakness emboldened Cahill a little.

  “I honestly never dreamed that he and your daughter . . . After all, Miss Grace was a true lady, and the young Stockton was courting her. There was absolutely no indication that she and he . . .”

  But with hindsight there was plenty of indication. The looks that passed between them, Vikrama’s slight smile when he saw her, her face at the window . . .

  It appeared that Grace’s father was thinking along similar lines.

  He jumped up suddenly, stormed around the desk, and grabbed Cahill by the collar.

  “You should have kept more of an eye on that fellow. No, you should have thrown him out as soon as you found out who he is!”

  “But your brother . . .”

  “My brother seems to have been an even greater swine than I thought he was! He should never have got entangled with that woman. It’s a small consolation that she didn’t tell the bastard anything about his father!”

  For a brief moment, doubt appeared to flare up in him. What if she had told him something? But he dismissed the thought with a shake of his head; it seemed simply too dreadful to contemplate.

  He voiced but a single solution to this problem. “If he ever has the gall to show his face here again, you will see to it that the bastard disappears once and for all!”

  “You mean I should . . .” Cahill gasped for breath.

  “You will do it!” Henry snarled. An evil grin spread across his lips. “To make up for concealing this information from me for so long! You will remove all trace of this affair from the world. I mean everything. Then I might see fit to overlook the fact that you deceived me and allow you to keep your position on the plantation. Otherwise, you and your family can pack your bags.”

  Tremayne’s dismissal struck him like a bolt of lightning. He couldn’t move. Nor could he take his eyes off his employer, who was boiling with the rage of a man who’d had one of his favourite things taken from him.

  What would you have done if it had been your Meg? he thought. The answer was immediate: I’d kill the bastard.

  Cahill brooded for several days and nights about how to track down and ambush Vikrama. The failed attempt to beat him up made the lawyer keen to exercise caution. The lad is a skilled fighter—you don’t stand a chance against him. He wouldn’t even need one of his knives to kill you.

  But before he could corner him, he had to find out where he was. Tremayne’s and Stockton’s men were still searching in vain for him.

  Then fate smiled upon him for the first time in many weeks. One night, unable to sleep, he was sitting at his study window, when he caught sight of a figure slipping through the garden. He recognised him straight away from his movements. What was Vikrama doing here? Miss Grace had been gone for a month, and Tremayne had strictly forbidden him from setting foot here ever again. Was he now making a play for the other girl?

  Without a moment’s hesitation, Cahill pulled on his trousers over his nightshirt and opened his desk drawer. The metal of his revolver gleamed malevolently. A shot would surely be heard for miles, but there was no other way of taking the lad. Even with a knife he would probably be bested by him. After tucking the gun into his waistband, he left the house. How peaceful the plantation seemed! Only the rustling of the bamboo and the murmur of the leaves on the trees lay in the air like faint whispers.

  He could still make out Vikrama, who had by now almost reached the house. The boy’s got a nerve, Cahill thought with grudging respect.

  Keeping to the shade of trees and bushes, the lawyer followed him. All the windows of the house were dark, like dead eyes looking out on the driveway and the fountain.

  Despite all his apparent courage, Vikrama did not dare enter through the front door. Concealed in the shadows, he made his way around the building and disappeared from Cahill’s view.

  What was he up to?

  Peering around the corner of the building, he saw Vikrama by an open window. A slim girl’s hand appeared and took something from him. A long, cloth-wrapped package. He exchanged a few words with her, which Cahill could not make out, then withdrew. The lawyer’s hand was on his revolver. Not yet. As Vikrama turned, he quickly ducked back into the shadows. Vikrama started to walk in his direction. As the sound of his footsteps approached, Cahill hid behind one of the dense rhododendron shrubs to wait. Would he return to his quarters? Cahill turned and looked towards the house. What were the chances of a shot waking all the inhabitants and plantation workers?

  While he was still considering, Vikrama disappeared into the undergrowth. That was not the way to the living quarters. Where could he be going?

  Once Cahill was certain that Vikrama could not see him, he stepped out from the rhododendron bush and followed him.

  As he plunged into the undergrowth and listened for footsteps, he suddenly realised where the lad was heading. Into the plantation.

  He concentrated on making as little noise as possible. Vikrama appeared to suspect nothing. It was as though the tea plantation that had been his home since childhood made him feel safe. Cahill almost laughed bitterly. He has no idea that death is hot on his heels. Or does he? Does he suspect something?

  A hot flush flashed through his body, and he broke out in a sweat. It was like that time when he had followed his employer up the mountain, convinced he was saving Vannattuppūcci. If Richard had not intended to reveal his identity to his son and hand over the management of the plantation to him—a semi-savage, Cahill thought, still disgusted—he could still be alive.

  Cahill had considered it his duty not to let the plantation fall into the hands of a Tamil. His words had been of no use at all. After catching up with him on Adam’s Peak they had argued, an argument that ended with Richard falling into an abyss.

  Cahill had the shattered body within his sight but, convinced that only Richard’s death could prevent a stupid mistake, he had made no attempt to rescue the fallen man. H
e had convinced himself that this was ultimately for the good of the plantation—and its salvation, for who would have wanted to trade with a plantation that was in the hands of a native?

  The situation now was similar; once more he would be the saviour by obliterating the proof of Richard Tremayne’s infidelity and his lawful heir. He was no longer able to help Grace, but maybe Vannattuppūcci.

  Vikrama was now in his sights, but completely unaware he was being followed. Cahill cocked the revolver as quietly as possible.

  Shall I tell this half-caste that it’s his cousin he’s got pregnant? That he’s Richard Tremayne’s bastard? No, why waste my breath on him.

  He breathed deeply and pulled the trigger.

  The shot echoed like thunder from the mountainsides. Who might have heard it? For an anxious moment Cahill saw his own head in the noose, but then he remembered he was here on behalf of his employer. That Tremayne would be grateful towards him for doing the dirty work his men had been unable to achieve.

  The shot felled Vikrama like a tree. He collapsed with a groan that was scarcely heard above the echoing gunshot.

  Cahill stared at him incredulously, almost paralysed with shock. Then he came to his senses with the thought that he would have to get rid of the body. As far away as possible, so that no one would find it. His despair, his fear of punishment, would help him to find a way.

  He needed a spade, and he knew where to find one.

  His heart racing, he ran back to the house. No one had been awoken by the shot. The windows were all in darkness.

  Back in the plantation, the tea field suddenly seemed hostile, the shadows around its edge whispering reproaches into his ear, the wind singing a lament for the life that had been taken here. The neatly uprooted tea bush looked like a watchman who was not intending to do his duty too well.

  It was one thing to kill a man, but another thing entirely to dispose of the corpse. Even after he had wrapped the body in a cloth, he was sure he could feel its eyes following him.