The Golden Leopard

by Lynn Kerstan

  Down on his luck at the time, Duran had quite fancied the notion of assuming his new position. Within a week he’d sold his small house and his string of excellent horses and set out for his ancestral home.

  Six months later, gazing on the derelict house and weedy gardens, he bade farewell to that most treacherous of whores—hope.

  The property was not entailed, and the owner of a nearby estate, eager to expand his holdings, paid a decent price for Duran’s inheritance. He ought to have pocketed the money and hared straightaway back to India, where he might have lived in style for several years. But for reasons that still eluded him, he had paid his cousin’s debts and made generous provisions for the two unlovely daughters, who thanked him by demanding he provide them husbands as well. That meant extravagant dowries, and there went the last of his money.

  Or nearly the last, because he had set aside the fare to India and a few hundred pounds for a London holiday. The Season was in full swing, the viscount to whom he’d sold his property had offered to sponsor him, and for several weeks he cut a dash at all the best places.

  England suited him. He even liked the climate. But far too soon he was attending his last party and making a final circuit of the ballroom when he saw, gazing at him from a pair of wide, curious eyes, a stunningly beautiful young woman.

  There was no accounting for his dizzying suspicion that his life had just unalterably changed.

  As it turned out, only the next three weeks were affected. He’d paid a substantial penalty to secure passage on a later sailing and spent his days gambling for funds to keep himself afloat in the meantime. His nights had been spent with Lady Jessica Carville.

  A small sound cut into his reflections, and the bedchamber door opened to admit Shivaji with a trayful of fresh supplies. He set it on the table and stood for a considerable time looking down at the still, pale figure on the bed. Then he beckoned Duran into the passageway.

  “The pain increases,” he said. “She grows restless. Soon she will awaken, and then you may wrap cloths dipped in warm water around her wrists and ankles to draw the blood from her head. The packets of crushed ice should be placed on her forehead, temples, or at the back of her neck—but only if she wishes. The pain, as I expect you have realized, is on the right side. If she allows it, you should massage these points.” Shivaji lifted his hands and applied pressure to Duran’s temples, a point between his eyes, and various places on his scalp. “Let her guide you,” he cautioned. “And remain near her with a basin. She will be sick.”

  His chest aching as if something inside were straining to get out, Duran returned to the chair at Jessica’s bedside and resumed his vigil.

  Not long after, she began to choke.

  He was there in a heartbeat, supporting her with one hand and holding a basin with the other while she retched uncontrollably. When the spasms calmed he fed her cool ginger tea with a spoon, dabbed her chin with a soft napkin, and watched her sag back onto the pillows with a hushed moan.

  He had scarcely put the soiled basin aside and taken hold of a clean one when the cycle began again. For what felt like a month in purgatory, he struggled to discern what she needed and to provide it. Nearly always he was guessing what to do, sure he’d muddle it up, wondering if he ought to bring in Shivaji to help. Jessica deserved better than a fumbling, flustered amateur.

  But at other times, he felt a strange communion with her. Without direction he somehow knew to rub her temple just so, or where to place the cloth-wrapped ice, or when to do nothing at all.

  In the heat, he had stripped down to his shirtsleeves. Sweat plastered the cambric against his skin and glued his hair to his scalp. Dropping onto the chair after a particularly rough bout with Jessie’s nausea, he watched until she began to relax against the sheets.

  Sleep, he whispered. It was a prayer.

  After a time, when her breathing was soft and even, he dragged his gaze from her face and looked toward the only source of light in the room. On the mantelpiece, the lone candle burned steadily, a beacon in the dark.

  A lantern against a black sky. He blinked, but the apparition—the memory—failed to dissolve.

  A cold shiver passed through his body. Once before, on another harrowing night, he had watched a single light emerge from the darkness, bringing with it, he had been sure, his salvation.

  He’d been a prisoner then, as he was now. But the Bombay Caravan had been a floating cage, and at sea, escape was out of the question. He had all but resigned himself to six months of incarceration when a storm drove the ship perilously close to the Madagascar coast. After a night’s battle the seamen fought free and the ship, heading south, was near to rounding the island when the driving rain sputtered and then ceased altogether. Within an hour the swells had smoothed, the clouds had blown clear, and like a snuffed candle, the wind abruptly died.

  For nearly a week the becalmed ship lay anchored within sight of the coast, the shrouds hanging limp from the yardarms. Seamen and passengers passed the time with eyes uplifted, watching for a breeze to stir the canvas.

  All but Hugo Duran, who prowled the decks with the scent of land curling in his nostrils. Now and again he leaned against the rail, his gaze arrowed on the shoreline, a featureless green smear suspended between the indigo sea and the hazy blue sky. At this latitude humidity blurred everything—destination, distance, and above all, reason.

  Only a mile away, he kept thinking. An easy target for a strong swimmer. He need only reach the water undetected.

  Easier said than done, with Shivaji never far away. But even his relentless jailer slept on occasion, and their neighbors in the aft section of the trader, a hard-drinking lot of former Company soldiers, usually made enough noise to cover a surreptitious exit from the tiny cabin. He often stole out late at night to stand, half naked in the cooling breeze, staring up at the winking stars. Shivaji was used to him going. He wouldn’t suspect a thing.

  Although the return of the wind would scotch his chances, Duran cautiously bided his time until the eighth night. In part he was waiting for the new moon, but that proved unnecessary when high, rainless clouds congealed overhead, obscuring even the stars. Well after midnight, when the bored watch had gathered at the poop for a light meal of cold roasted potatoes and tea, he made his way to the foredeck, climbed over the rail, handed himself along one of the taut anchor chains, and slipped into the bath-warm water. Ducking, he swam steadily beneath the surface, lifting his head only to steal an occasional gulp of air until he was well beyond the canopy of light cast by the ship’s lanterns. Then he struck out full speed for shore.

  At first navigation was simple. So long as the ship was at his back, the coast had to be straight ahead. Occasionally he looked over his shoulder, checking his position, puzzled because the ship appeared to be drifting sideways.

  When he had been in the water about twenty minutes, he paused to take stock of his situation. By this time he ought to be well out of sight of the ship. Instead, like a dandelion puff against black velvet, the golden light of the ship’s lanterns were still visible. Only now, instead of being behind him, they shone almost directly to his right.

  Panic seized him. Fighting it off, he made himself vertical and let himself sink. If he was close to shore, and he bloody well ought to be, the land would be sloping upward.

  But it was a long time—a very long time—before his feet touched ground.

  There at sea bottom, he realized what had gone wrong. For the brief moments his toes were in contact, he felt them scraping along sand-scoured rock. A current, damn it, and a strong one. All this time, inexorably, it had been carrying him parallel to the shoreline.

  Disoriented, he hung limp as seaweed in the soothing seawater, yielding to its dark seduction. He had cast the dice, as he had done at the nizam’s court, gambling for his life on a single throw. This time, it appeared he had lost.

  But what did it matter? He had no family, his friends were widely scattered, and his reputation was shot to hell. Who would m
iss him?

  Well, he would. However brutal his life, however lonely, he wanted more of it. Half a century at least, if only to drink good cognac and watch the sun go down.

  Kicking hard against the stony ledge, he shot upward like a flare and reached the surface with just enough strength to suck in a lungful of air.

  Going down had been a mistake, but coming up did not noticeably improve his situation. The fuzzy ball of light that marked the position of the ship was his only point of reference, but it was significantly dimmer now. Treading water, he watched the ship float slowly away.

  It wasn’t moving, of course. Lifting his hand, he reaffirmed there was not the slightest breath of wind. Only air, he thought, air pressing down on him, laden with moisture and nearly as heavy as the water beneath.

  The current had him firmly in its grip, sweeping him alongside the island and away from the ship. Swimming at a right angle to it, as he had been doing, ought to have broken him free. But something, perhaps the contours of the land beneath him, perhaps a confluence of warm and cool water in this particular place, had created a lethal trick of nature.

  Madagascar was out of his reach.

  There was only one chance now. Turning, putting the glimmer of ship’s lights to his left, he swam with determined strokes for the open sea. Some currents were narrow, he knew, and weaker at one side. If he managed to get loose without exhausting himself, he could make his way, chastened and resigned, back to his prison.

  But his energy was waning far sooner than he would have guessed. The long months of imprisonment in Alanabad must have weakened him. The warm water leached his strength like a lover.

  He forced himself to concentrate. Without a landmark for positioning, not even a star in sight, he couldn’t tell if he was making progress. And even if he broke free of the current, what then? Cut off from the shore, the ship perhaps miles to his left, the open ocean ahead of him, and to his right—well, if he’d wanted to go in that direction, he might as well have traveled along with the current. It was getting wherever it was going faster than he could swim.

  For a few moments he rested, bobbing like a cork, morbidly amused by the irony of it all. He had succeeded in escaping his own personal assassin, only to meet an unsatisfactory and impersonal death in the middle of nowhere. A few passing fish would be pleased, he supposed, to dine on his corpse.

  He’d no idea which direction he was facing now. He made a small circle in the water, looking carefully, but the ship had vanished. Stopping had been a mistake. With nothing to position by, he had no idea which way to go.

  And then, not twenty yards away, a lantern snapped open, casting a small golden arc over the prow of a dinghy. Standing there, his hand wrapped around the lantern pole, was Shivaji, his face a mask carved out in shadows. Behind him, hunched on the benches, two figures held their oars straight out and still.

  Not sure he had been seen, Duran raised an arm and waved it back and forth. There was no response. He called out, or tried to, but the scratchy noise from his swollen throat barely reached his own ears.

  The boat remained motionless on the glassy water. They couldn’t see him, then. He had to move closer, splashing to draw their attention. But his arms would scarcely lift. He could manage only a dog paddle, his aching legs trailing behind him like strands of kelp. But that was all right. He hadn’t far to go. Soon enough, Shivaji would spot him.

  He beat directly ahead for what seemed a long time, but the light never altered. He should be nearer, dammit. The light should be brighter. He lifted his head trying to gauge the distance. It looked the same. How could that be?

  Redoubling his efforts, he was certain he had covered at least twenty yards before he paused, breathlessly treading water, to search again for the light. His eyes, glazed with saltwater, felt on fire. But yes. He was sure of it. The lantern was closer than it had been.

  Certain now that they could see him, he waved again and forced his leaden arms and legs to propel him through the turgid sea. Fifteen yards. Ten. His body burned with the effort. Five yards. The folds of Shivaji’s robe streamed like honey from his wide belt, where a curved blade hung in a jeweled leather case. His eyes glowed like coals.

  Duran reached up, his hand inches from the prow.

  No hand descended to help him. His fingertips brushed the rough wood and hit water again. Shivaji stared down at him.

  To Duran’s horror, the boat began moving away from him. He looked beyond the lantern, past Shivaji, to the oarsmen.

  They were rowing backwater.

  He nearly laughed. Shivaji had not come to save him.

  He had come to watch him die.

  A pleasure he would be denied, damn his eyes. In an explosion of pride and rage, Duran sucked in a long breath, twisted around and down like an otter, and drove himself away from the boat until his lungs were near to bursting. Forced at last to the surface, he lifted only chin and mouth to seize another breath before dropping.

  Long before his breath ran out again, his leg muscles had cramped up beyond recall. There were only his arms now, pulling him by inches through the water, in which direction he had no idea. The way his luck had been running, he would no doubt rise up to find himself directly alongside Shivaji’s sightseeing boat.

  But it wasn’t there, not that he could tell, when he surfaced for the last time. He smiled before sinking back into the warm sea that was to be his tomb. On his own terms, though. He could take futile pride in that. When nothing mattered but the manner of his dying, he had chosen to do it a free man.

  It occurred to him belatedly that a prayer might be in order, just in case God was in an especially merciful mood. But before the thought completed itself, consciousness was slipping beyond his reach. He must have tried to breathe. He hadn’t meant to, but water flooded his mouth, seared down his throat, choked his lungs. Black on black, his mind collapsed in on itself.

  A noise—the spit of a guttering candle—exploded in his ears. Blinded by sweat, Duran lurched from his chair in Jessica’s room and shook himself like a dog. The nightmare, whether dreaming or waking, never failed to reduce him to rags.

  He hadn’t drowned, of course. He’d awakened in the dinghy, facedown in bilge water and vomit, with someone pounding on his back. Later he’d awakened again in the ship’s brig, manacles clamped around his wrists and ankles, where he was kept for several weeks on half rations. When Shivaji finally permitted him to leave the dark prison, no word of what had happened passed between them. None was necessary.

  Now, alone with a sleeping Jessica, he felt death hovering again at his shoulder. He padded to the bed and studied the outline of her head against the pillowcase. He could see little else. Behind him, the solitary candle hoarded its frail light.

  Leaning closer, he detected a line between her brows. Her hands were fisted at her sides. But her breathing remained steady, and as he watched, her shoulders appeared to relax. Pain, then, but not bad enough to waken her.

  The light ought to be replenished before it went out altogether. He stole back to the mantelpiece, took an unlit candle, and held its wick to the dying flame. The transfer of fire came just in time. As the old candle reduced itself to a puddle of wax, light sprang from the new one, brassy as a Calcutta nautch girl.

  He placed the candle in a silver-gilt holder on the other side of the mantelpiece, arrested by the dancing flame. It seemed to take life from a stream of air, but the windows were clear the other side of the room, closed and draped with heavy damask curtains.

  The air must be coming down the chimney shaft. That would explain it. Taking the candle, he set it on the flagstone hearth. After a moment, the flame went still. Puzzled, he moved the candle from place to place on hearth and mantel, but the distinctive fluttering only recurred when he put it on the left side of the mantel. Experimenting further, he detected movement when he held the candle against the carved oak wainscoting to the left of the fireplace.

  What the devil? Air was seeping into the room from behind the wall, t
hat was certain, but he couldn’t tell from where.

  A tiny click drew his attention to the door, which opened to admit a shaft of pale light from the passageway. Arjuna’s face appeared, along with a beckoning hand.

  After a last pause by the bed, where he saw no change in Jessie’s appearance, Duran unwillingly obeyed the summons to his own room.

  Shivaji was waiting for him. “You must leave the lady to her servants now. To be discovered in her room would create difficulties for you both.”

  Duran opened his mouth to object and closed it again. She would not be glad to awaken to a scandal. His own head had begun to throb, but he could put that down to sleeplessness and tension. A pinprick compared to what she had suffered. Was suffering even now.

  He glanced back at the door, wanting to rush through it and to her bedside again. He had seen her through the night. He wanted to watch her open her eyes, smiling because the pain was gone. He needed to make sure it was over.

  Shivaji was speaking again. “. . . depart at ten o’clock. You will wish to bid farewell to your host.”

  “Not that again!” Duran’s hand ached to plant itself on Shivaji’s chin. “I leave when I’m sure Lady Jessica is well and after I have secured her help. Not before. Not one bloody minute before.”

  By the end he was shouting, or near to, and Shivaji had grappled him by the shoulders.

  “Control yourself,” came the smooth, unruffled voice. “Information passes quickly among servants. We have been as discreet as possible, but your presence in the lady’s bedchamber may already be known. I cannot permit our mission to be compromised by a dispute with her family.”