The White Rajah (1961)

by Monsarrat, Nicholas

  He showed this very clearly when he answered: ‘Your Highness, I have no objection to make.’

  ‘Very well.’ The Rajah, an excellent judge of men, exhibited no surprise; it was as if he had foreseen, and approved, Kedah’s eventual agreement. His frail body and withered old face seemed to gather majestic strength as he rose from the ivory throne, and walked towards a side table where certain maps and sketches had been spread out. ‘Join me here,’ he commanded, ‘and we will make our plans in detail … This is our strategy, in general terms. The garrisons will be brought back, to encircle Shrang Anapuri under the command of Colonel Kedah. The Tunku will lead an attack on the Shwe Dagon, where the leadership of the revolt is gathered. Amin Sang will remain here in the Sun Palace, with a small body of men, to guard our own person.’

  Richard, catching sight of Amin Sang’s crestfallen face, was emboldened to propose something more adventurous than mere guard duty for his friend.

  ‘Your Highness, there can be no question of danger to the palace, or to yourself, if we strike first, as we plan to do. I had in mind a two-handed attack on the pagoda, one from the northern gate, one from the southern. It would be an assistance to me if Amin Sang can lead one of these.’

  ‘Am I to be left unprotected?’ inquired the Rajah, with a touch of hauteur.

  ‘By no means,’ answered Richard. ‘I suggest that Captain Sorba be assigned to command the Palace Guard. As you know, he is a trustworthy officer.’

  ‘He is a fool,’ said the Rajah, ‘but perhaps a fool will do … This talk of a two-handed attack on the Shwe Dagon – you must take care that there is no destruction of the fabric of the pagoda, or of the various statues and relics. They are, after all, part of our riches. It should be possible to capture it without harm to the building.’

  ‘It is bound to become somewhat stained, in the course of the action.’

  ‘There is no harm in that. The monks can clean it … And this time, Tunku’ – the Rajah’s voice took on an odd note of venom, quite unlike his former cool tone – ‘I would like some evidence of victory, in the form of prisoners brought back. Shall we say – five hundred?’

  iii

  The view from the top of the Golden Pagoda was the finest that Richard Marriott had ever seen. To be sure, his gaze was turned inwards only; he did not look below the Shwe Dagon towards Shrang Anapuri, where under a brazen sun Colonel Kedah and his lines of disciplined troops were conducting the methodical slaughter of hordes of panicked, fleeing, hemmed-in Land-Dyaks. Richard’s view was his personal prize, the view of the platform at the summit of the pagoda, lined with painted shrines and smiling Buddhas, and slippery now from the blood of the countless corpses which marked their victory.

  He had fought his way up one of the towering staircases, step by step, man by man; Amin Sang had done the same, entering by the northern gate on the opposite side. They had met at last on this hard-won pinnacle, both wounded, dripping with sweat and blood, near exhaustion from the desperate effort. It had been hand-to-hand encounter ever since the gates were first breached, with teak logs for battering rams, and the hardest-fought battle of Richard’s life; there had been many moments during that day when he had doubted their success – when the enemy rallied with screams of defiance, when his own men were sent toppling by the score down the stairway, when it seemed impossible that he could force his way a single step higher. But he had triumphed in the end, and Amin Sang had done the same.

  The divided uproar of the two battles, the faint converging shouts of ‘Makassang!’ had drawn closer together, until at last the two commanders and the remnants of their men had met at the top with a great cry of victory. Then they had set to work on the last grim moments of execution. The harvest of that execution lay about their feet now – sprawling grotesquely, ungainly and awkward in death. The smell of blood, drying and baking in the sun was everywhere.

  The attack had begun at dawn; it was now nearly midday, and, save for one guarded cage of prisoners for the Rajah’s pleasure, there was not an enemy left alive within all the labyrinths of the Shwe Dagon. It had been methodically cleared, level by level, shrine by shrine, hiding place by hiding place, until the whole edifice reeked of slaughter. The trail of corpses led upwards to this elevated offering of death, under the shadow of the golden dome itself.

  Selang Aro was dead; his head, severed by a single stroke from the avenging Amin Sang, had rolled a dozen steps downwards until it came to rest, gory and sightless, obscenely bald. There were men from the Lucinda D, dead also, some of Richard’s own runaways who had chosen to follow Black Harris, and had been led to this murderous ruin. There were armed monks by the score, their saffron robes stained by the last of their treacherous blood. But of Black Harris himself – arch-villain, arch-enemy – there was now not a sign. Richard had glimpsed him briefly at the height of the battle, but then, after discharging his pistols and gauging the struggle which was clearly going against him, he had melted away, and was not to be seen.

  Richard looked round him, leaning on his cutlass. He was wearied to exhaustion, but his body and jaded spirit still had the spur they needed.

  ‘Black Harris is somewhere here,’ he said. ‘He cannot have escaped … I will find him, if the pagoda has to be pulled down stone by stone.’

  His voice was low and hoarse; he spoke the words to Amin Sang, who was perched with cheerful irreverence on the arm of a reclining Buddha, binding up a spearthrust which had furrowed his thigh. The guard-captain knotted the strip of silk which served him as a bandage before replying: ‘Is he not among the dead?’

  ‘No.’ Richard let his gaze wander round the high platform on which they stood, but he knew the answer well enough. ‘No. His is a corpse which I would recognize from fifty yards away at midnight … You are sure he did not slip past your own line of men as they mounted?’

  Amin Sang’s weary, sweat-streaked face split into a grin. ‘No one slipped past my line … I would not be bold enough to ask you the same question, Tunku.’

  Richard smiled also. ‘You would have the same answer … I saw him at one moment, then he fired, and turned away. He wore a red scarf. I have seen it before.’ His eyes went up to the golden dome, burnished and brilliant in the sunshine, massively smooth, not to be scaled by any living thing save lizards and monkeys. ‘He cannot be there, he is not dead, he did not break through to the stairways. He cannot fly, nor jump down a hundred feet. Therefore he must be hiding, somewhere on this very platform.’

  Silence had gradually fallen all over the level where they stood; the groans of the dying had ceased, the battlecries of wildly-excited men had given place to the wordless relief of rest. There were some fifty men – all Richard’s – alive on the platform; a few of them stood, slaking their thirst at a fountain in the peaceful sunshine, most were crouched in the shade of the images and shrines, staunching their blood, binding up their wounds. Here and there a man bent over a sorely wounded comrade, easing his hurt, doing what could be done for his comfort. Richard had just begun to say that they would rest, and then take up their search, when the silence was split asunder by a single harsh cry which rang and echoed round them: ‘Marriott!’

  Richard jumped, as if he had felt a lash across his back. He knew the voice, which seemed to come from behind him, at the edge of the platform where the gaily-painted shrines made a wall against the outer world. But when he turned, stung to hot anticipation by that hated voice, he could see nothing save smiling images, tongueless, benign.

  The voice said again with the same fierce desperation: ‘Marriott! If you move you are dead.’

  Richard stood stock-still. He, and his men, were now all staring in the same direction. At one side of the platform, where the shadow cast by the dome gave place to glaring sunshine, there was a small shrine, a pretty thing of pink mosaic tiling, and miniature gold baubles which copied the shape of the dome itself, and blue enamelled fretwork, and yellow railings – a very wedding cake of a shrine, sentimental and rustic. Its centrepiece wa
s a representation of the Lord Buddha; not a stone or wooden image, like the hundreds which decorated and sanctified the Shwe Dagon, but a painting.

  The work was crudely done, on poor canvas framed in yellow-wood. The colours were garish, the pose banal, the Buddha’s features almost fatuous in their benevolence. Above the plump and smiling mouth, the eyes in the canvas had been cut open, as was sometimes done, for the insertion of beads or jewels. But today, a day of hot sunshine and the smell of blood, there were no jewels – and yet the slits of the eyes did not gape sightless, for all that. The eyes of this Buddha were living, and they stared out of the benign face in implacable hatred. They were fixed on Richard Marriott, a few feet away, and glowing with a mad intensity.

  Richard stared back, almost hypnotized. He had never seen anything more blasphemous, more horrible, than the wicked eyes set in this face of blissful holiness. It was, of course, Black Harris – but in what a fearsome guise!

  The voice came again, throaty with fear and hatred: ‘I have you covered! There is a gun pointed straight at your belly. If you move a muscle, you lose your guts!’

  Richard made as if to speak, but Black Harris barked again: ‘Tell your men! I want no mistakes!’

  Without turning his head – for he knew he had all their attention – Richard called out to his staring men: ‘There is a gun aimed at me. Make no move to help!’ Then he looked again into the gleaming eyes of the Buddha, and said: ‘What do you want?’

  ‘My life.’ The words were like a curse. ‘A safe conduct out of this place.’

  Richard found that he could laugh, even in the midst of nerve-racking tension. ‘It would not be worth a string of cash! They would tear you to pieces!’

  ‘Don’t laugh at me, you damned dog!’ roared Black Harris, with fury in his voice. Then he said, more controlled: ‘They won’t tear me to pieces, if you are with me. They won’t put a finger on me. I will take you as cover, with a gun in your back. As soon as we are free, you can go.’

  Richard shook his head. ‘I would not, even if I could. I have sworn to kill you, and so have a thousand others. We will keep our word.’

  The eyes behind the smiling mask glittered. ‘I mean what I say. It is your life or mine. You will take me out, if you want to save your skin.’

  Richard raised his voice. He was continuing to talk because of something he had remembered. ‘They will kill us both,’ he called out. ‘Do you think they would let you go now, because I am with you? They would laugh, even as they cut the two of us down … Come out, Harris,’ he commanded. ‘You have no hope, on this side of hell.’

  He was talking, spinning out the time in desperate subterfuge, because he had remembered Amin Sang – the faithful Amin Sang who was his forlorn and only chance. Amin Sang was directly behind him, or he had been a few moments before; sitting on the stone arm of the image, binding up his thigh. Black Harris, from where he stood behind the painted Buddha, could not see him, or what he was doing; Richard himself blocked the view. Amin Sang was the only man on the platform who might, unseen, aim a spear and launch it at their last enemy.

  Richard’s blood ran cold as he thought of the odds. For Amin Sang himself was unsighted, until Richard moved aside. If he moved, it must be in a single instant – and in that flash, Amin Sang must aim and throw.

  Sweating, he wondered if Amin Sang would see his advantage, and act upon it. How could he be prompted? Would he be willing to take the chance – both for himself and for Richard? He remembered, as if from a hundred years ago, the young guard-captain saying: ‘I will be your man forever.’ Would he steel himself to prove it now? Had he the wit, as well as the resolution? Above all else, how was Richard to give him a signal, to show him the way?

  He could not even remember if Amin Sang, sitting on the Buddha’s arm, intent on his wounded thigh, had had a spear within his reach.

  In the prickling silence, Harris’s voice came again, hoarse and determined in evil. ‘Enough of talking! Will you walk out with me?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Then, if I am to die, I will take you with me.’

  ‘I do not care, as long as you are killed.’ Richard was straining his ears for the slightest sound behind him. He heard nothing. Amin Sang might have fallen asleep. He might even have moved away when Harris first spoke, and be among those standing by helplessly.

  ‘Brave words,’ said Harris. ‘I will count three, and then fire.’

  Richard summoned his wits, for the cast of fate. He spoke in a loud, clear tone. ‘Rather than agree, I will fall where I stand.’

  ‘Save your heroics,’ sneered Black Harris. ‘I tell you, I will count to three.’

  ‘Count to three hundred, if you will,’ said Richard, in the same charged voice. ‘Three will be enough for me.’

  ‘One!’ said Harris.

  Richard stood his ground.

  ‘I mean what I said,’ the voice behind the Buddha’s mask was venomous. ‘You will get me safe conduct, or you will die on that very slab of stone … Two!’

  There was not a sound anywhere, save Richard’s thudding heart. He tried to listen for the warning intake of breath, but he did not hear it. Then, as Harris barked out: ‘Three!’ he flung himself on the ground.

  There was a shout, and a whistling hiss which was the spear hurtling past his crouched back. It flew straight as a die, and impaled the picture of the Buddha where the full belly joined the casing of the ribs. Sacrilege indeed, thought Richard, shaken to his soul. A scream of agony broke the silence, as if the Lord Buddha himself had been foully murdered, and a gun went off behind the picture, discharging harmlessly into the air. Then the picture itself crashed forward amid its ring of tawdry decoration, revealing Black Harris, with a face of torture more terrible than the ancient lineaments of martyrdom, plucking at the spear which had cleft his right kneecap, splitting it like kindling, and buried itself deep in a baulk of timber behind his back.

  ‘At your service, Tunku,’ said Amin Sang calmly, and came sauntering forward, a huntsman ready to retrieve the fallen animal which has run the last course of its life.

  The canopied state barge, which had been sent across the bay to carry them back, put out from the shore with its load of weary, happy, and triumphant men. The overseer’s drum gave out its commanding signal, followed by the sweet music of the pipes; the hidden oarsmen took up their steady beat, the huge curved prow dipped and rose as the barge met the thrust of deep water. With a fair and favouring wind, they left the small bay of Shrang Anapuri and, crossing the threshold of the sparkling sea, set their course towards the Sun Palace, and home.

  Richard and Amin Sang reclined at ease on couches under the velvet canopy; below them in the sumptuous well-deck the fifty men of the Royal Regiment who had stormed their way to the top of the Shwe Dagon – the Fifty of the Brave, as they were already coming to be called – also took their ease, as honoured passengers in the royal barge. Not for them the dusty homeward trudge of common soldiers … Both the commanders were tired to the bone, after the wild and relentless struggle which had taken such toll of nerve and sinew; and Richard’s wound, a slash across the forearm, had swollen and stiffened in the last few hours, so that he could not settle easily even in this cushioned retreat. But victory was the great salve for such troubles; it was victory which bound up all wounds, eased all pain. The warriors might not be whole in body, but they were returning in triumph from a battle which would become part of the folklore of Makassang, to be told and sung and remembered wherever men gathered to gossip of bitter fighting and brave deeds.

  John Keston appeared at Richard’s side with a tall glass of sangaree, for his further comfort. John Keston was disgruntled, as perhaps he had a right to be: at Richard’s insistence, he had been left behind in the Sun Palace, as part of the Rajah’s personal guard, and this voyage in the state barge, to bring back the fighting men, was the nearest he had come to taking part in the battle. His tightened lips and heavy silences made clear his displeasure. Richard, well aware of his s
ervant’s mood, tried to bring him some cheer.

  ‘Thank you, Keston,’ he said with great heartiness, accepting the sangaree. ‘This is all I have need of, to round off a beautiful morning … I hope it will do more for my arm than it will do for my liver.’

  John Keston, impassive as a clergyman who has strayed into some dubious entertainment, said nothing.

  ‘Does the arm trouble you, Tunku?’ asked Amin Sang from the other couch. His wounded thigh, which had opened painfully during the night, was propped with pillows, but he wore a look of deep contentment none the less; his quick wit, coupled with his skill, which had saved Richard’s life in fantastic circumstances, was already a legend among his men, and he won a hero’s acclaim wherever he went. ‘That stroke went deep. Would it not be better to have it covered?’

  Richard shook his head. ‘I never knew a wound that was not the better for the sun on it.’ He was looking up at John Keston, still wanting to improve his grumpy spirit. ‘Isn’t that so? – fresh air is the best ointment?’

  ‘I couldn’t say, sir,’ answered Keston.

  ‘Well, I will say!’ exclaimed Richard, exasperated. ‘Come, man – cheer up, for God’s sake! We are bringing home victory, not going to a funeral. My arm will never mend, with all these sour looks on it.’

  John Keston pursed his lips primly, not to be wooed from his sulkiness. ‘Maybe, if I had been by, you would not have had the wound.’

  ‘You could not be with me.’ Richard made a last try for persuasion. ‘If you had been on this side of the bay, then the palace would have lacked its proper protection. Don’t forget, you were guarding what I treasure, above all else … Now, Keston, we have had this talk before, and settled the matter. There was duty to be done at the pagoda, and duty to be done at home. They were of the same importance. I had to leave someone behind whom I could trust. You know that.’

  ‘Duty, is it?’ exclaimed Keston, with overflowing bitterness. ‘Standing guard, twenty miles from the battle! Is that all I am good for? I thought my place was to be by you. It has been so for the past ten years. Let others do the guard duty, and act as messenger boys!’