Chapter Eight
The way up the Thousand Steps had been wearisome but intensely happy both in anticipation and in the present; the way down was more wearisome by far, partly because an exceedingly heavy warm rain fell from the moment he crossed the crater's rim, so thick that he could not see fifty yards ahead and so violent that the drops splashed high, wetting him to the middle. It also obscured the worn, uneven steps, which made the descent anxious, tense, full of care; but beneath all the physical tension there was an even greater happiness than before, that of a fulfilment that had gone beyond any anticipation, and of something not far from the beatific vision.
It glowed within, under the sodden straw cloak the monks had given him, and it was glowing still when he staggered down the last steps and on to the level sward of the durian-grove. The rain stopped as suddenly as it had begun, and the forest was filled with the sound of running water.
He looked expectantly round, but seeing no one he felt in his bosom, the only moderately dry place about him, for the repeating watch that hung there by a string. It was as he inclined his head to hear its tiny bell state that he was an hour and a half behind his time that he noticed the horses' rumps glistening under the lee of the Hindu tower: beyond them a pyramid of tall palm-fronds, inverted to throw off the wet, and inside it Seymour, with two Malays smoking tobacco.
'Lord, sir,' cried Seymour, who had started up with a look of grave concern at his appearance, 'I beg your pardon. I thought you was an orang-utang.'
'Do I look like an orang-utang, Mr Seymour?' asked Stephen.
'To tell you the truth, sir, I believe you do.'
'Perhaps it is the effect of my straw cloak,' said Stephen, looking at his arm. 'Yet it was a fine stiff rain-shedding garment to begin with. I hope I have not kept you waiting?'
'Lord no, sir,' said Seymour. 'I think you are exact to the minute, or close on. We came rather early, as the Captain said.'
'How is Mr Aubrey?'
'When last I saw him, sir, he was in fine form. He ran up to the main-jack the other day—think of that, sir, at his age! But now he is gone off with the master to survey the coast. Should you like something to eat, sir? I have brought you a chicken. It was Mr Elliott that shot it.'
'I should like a chicken of all things,' said Stephen. 'A handful of rice was my breakfast at dawn.' He greeted the Malays, a glum, wet, cross-looking pair, very unlike the Dyaks; they bowed and answered politely, but said there was no time to be lost. The waters were out in the forest and in the plain; they must hurry if they were ever to get back at all.
'Well, I shall eat my chicken, however,' said Stephen, sitting down. 'How did Mr Elliott come to shoot it? This bird is far too big for a jungle-fowl.'
'Very true, sir, but he thought it was a jungle-fowl. He thought all these'—pointing to the stripped carcasses on the floor—'were jungle-fowl, and he blazed away until the woman of the house came and threw a bucket of water over him and his gun. There was a great hullaballoo, and he had to pay. But that was nothing to the hullaballoo in the town the next day, sir—people running about and screeching and letting off muskets, like a revolution . . .'
'Come, tuan,' said the older, sourer, wetter Malay. 'The horses are saddled. We must go.'
Seymour's kindly chicken had been carried in a tarpaulin bag for hours through a tropical rain-forest and it tasted so very like physic that Stephen abandoned it without much reluctance and stumped out on to the sodden grass.
'Let me give you a leg-up, sir,' said Seymour, and Stephen, rising into the saddle under his impulsion, realized that for Seymour he too was an aged man. Several other marks of solicitude fell into line: he had been led across a busy Street in Batavia; his boots had been pulled off at Buitenzorg; and a puzzling half-heard recommendation that Clerke should 'take care of the ancient' now lost its mystery. Did a very old, weatherbeaten, sun-bleached wig make its wearer look, if not decrepit, then at least past mark of mouth?
'Tell me about your revolution,' he began; but before Seymour could reply they had entered the homeward track from the durian-grove and the horses were slithering down what was now a muddy stream, in single file.
Before the rain began again Stephen did manage, in odd bursts, to extract what little information Seymour had to give: facts he had none, but he did convey an atmosphere of crisis. People said that there was an armed rising, that the Vizier had been dragged off to prison, loaded with chains, that the Sultan was on his way back. At another halt and in a completely different context Seymour also said that the French had heaved down their ship; they were careening her, and—raising his voice over the roar of the hurtling rain—they had chosen a damned bad moment for doing so, the lubbers.
It was a damned bad moment for travelling, too. The following hours, though not very great in number, seemed almost infinite in extent: the forest-leeches had never been so active, agile, enterprising; and when at last the troop reached the flooded plain, creeping in mud to their knees and often losing the way in the featureless landscape, the horse-leeches were worse by far.
During those halts when it was possible to converse Stephen tried to learn what was happening from the Malays, but they told him little. They may not have known; they may have been afraid; they certainly held him responsible for the perfectly horrible time they were having; and presently he saw that it was useless to insist.
When at last, at last, they reached it, the town was more informative. Prabang had been spared all but the fringe of the downpour, and although the river was tearing along, mud-coloured, covered with tree-trunks and branches, full from bank to bank, the streets themselves were now no more than damp, and even at this time of night they would ordinarily have been full of people. There was no one. Even Maturin's Javanese place was shut up and blind. The only light to be seen was a general orange glow over the palace roofs and the only sound, apart from the voice of the river, was a confused hubbub behind the palace walls.
The poor foundered horses were led back to their stable; the Malays paid and rewarded. Stephen, aware that the young, however kind and solicitous, had in fact less stamina than the old, took Seymour back to the ship, told Macmillan to remove every single leech before letting him lie down—the boy was sleeping as he stood—and then walked off to van Buren's house.
'How glad I am you are a night-bird,' he said, sitting down heavily. 'I should have been in a sad way else. My brothel is shut.'
'You must take off your clothes,' said van Buren, looking at him with close attention, 'and when we have rid you of all your parasites you must rub yourself with a towel and put on a dressing-gown. Then with an omelet and a pot of coffee you will feel more nearly human.'
'Dear colleague,' said Stephen six cups later, 'never did you make a better prognosis. But I am interrupting your work.'
'Not at all. I am only arranging the skins you were so very kind as to send me. Many thanks indeed: there is a nectarinea I had never seen, and what I take to be a new sub-species of graculus. Tell me, how did your journey go?'
'Kumai was nearer Paradise than anything I am likely to see again in this life or the next; I cannot bless my fate enough for having been allowed it. I communed with orang-utangs; they held me by the hand. I saw the tarsier . . . immeasurable wealth. But allow me to tell you at another time and at immeasurable length. First, pray let me know what is afoot.'
'Before I do so,' said van Buren, holding up one hand, 'tell me whether you have brought the tarsier for us to dissect.'
Stephen shook his head, thinking of the simple-minded little creature that had gazed at him with its huge noctambulant's eyes, sitting just the other side of Ananda's lamp. 'I promised not to kill anything: and indeed, you know,' he said, 'a man would need a heart of brass to kill a tarsier.'
'Where primates are concerned, I have a heart of brass,' said van Buren. 'And the tarsier is the strangest of them all. But to return,' he went on, looking at Stephen with his head cocked on one side, 'do you really wish me to tell you what is afoot?'
'Well'—still looking at him quizzically—'Hafsa and her family took what I was going to call your advice but which I find I must call the advice arising from some outside source and at the third attempt their people seized Abdul in bed with Ledward and Wray. The Europeans pleaded the Sultan's safe-conduct and the Vizier let them go; but Abdul was hurried off and messengers were sent to the Sultan. Some of Abdul's friends made a commotion, but the Vizier's men and the remaining Dyak guard soon put them down, and now those who ran away are being searched for. That is why the houses are all shut up.'
'I see. I see.' A long pause. 'How do you think it will end?'
'I do not know. Abdul's pretty face may save his skin: it may not. I just do not know. By the way, I should have told you before: your Pondicherry clerk—'
'Lesueur?'
'Lesueur. Was murdered. Pray tell Mr Fox to take great care. He is likely to be here in the morning, well before the Sultan and his train. He would be well advised to go aboard the ship; so might you. Assassins are ten a penny in Prabang, and poison is by no means rare.'
'I might, too.'
'I will find you a pair of pistols and send Latif and the watchman with you.'
The boat put off, the boat pulled back; Stephen, limp with fatigue, was hauled up the side. Richardson led him to his cot, and before he sank into something not far removed from a coma he heard a voice say, 'The knocking-shop is closed, and the Doctor's come home to bed,' followed by a cackle of good-natured laughter.
Eight bells in the morning watch pierced through the very deep fog of sleep and Stephen raised his head, aware of an urgency though not of its nature. Some moments later the pattern fell into shape and he called aloud for Ahmed. After the first reviving cup he said, 'Ahmed, I must shave my face and put on my good black coat.'
At one bell in the forenoon watch he stepped on to the quarterdeck, smooth and decently dressed, stared at the washed, innocent sky, and said, 'My dear Mr Fielding, good morning to you. Please may I have a boat to take me ashore, with a couple of Marines as a guard? I am going to see Mr Fox, and the town is somewhat disturbed.'
Fox had arrived an hour before; he was in a state of intense but contained excitement and his greeting, though friendly and even familiar, was utterly detached. 'One of my informants has been murdered,' said Stephen, 'and as I dare say you know already, Ledward and Wray are still at large. There is the possibility not only of open murder but also of poison secretly administered: a most reliable source tells me that you should take very great care.'
'Thank you for the warning. I did indeed know that they were at large: I had scarcely reached the house before a note came from Wray, offering to bear witness against Ledward in return for protection and removal to any other country or island whatsoever. Here it is.'
'He must think you bear Ledward very great ill-will,' said Stephen, having looked at the note.
Fox grinned and said, 'I hope, I hope to have him put to the same death as Abdul. The only thing I am afraid of is the Sultan's notion of honour. He gave them his safe-conduct, and he is so very touchy about these matters that even the Vizier dared not arrest them: though to be sure they may have been taken up secretly, in case the Sultan should change his mind—they have not been seen in the French compound. Yet whether or no, I think we may say the treaty is in the bag, to use a low expression.'
'Let us not say anything of the sort,' said Stephen. 'My very best source tells me that it is the toss of a coin whether Abdul does not turn the scale, with his pretty face and his gazelle-like eyes.'
'Does he go so far? Does he indeed?' cried Fox, disconcerted. He searched Stephen's face. 'I must go.' He rang the bell and ordered a guard. 'I have an appointment with the Vizier. The Sultan comes back late this afternoon: there is to be a full council-meeting and there will be a decision tonight. Your balcony at the—at your lodging in the town looks over the palace courtyards. May I call on you this evening? I have not heard a word about your journey to Kumai—you went, of course?'
'I beg your pardon for appearing like this,' said the envoy, who was wearing the Marine officer's uniform and blue spectacles, 'but I thought . . .'
'A very sensible precaution, sir,' said Stephen. 'Nothing hides a man better than a red coat. Pray come in and sit on the balcony; there is a modest collation laid out. The sea-slugs are a speciality of the house; so alas is the luke-warm Macao wine, but we can always call for tea or coffee. And quite soon, shortly after sunset, you will see a blazing great star rise over there, by the Mosque of Omar. Jack Aubrey tells me it is Jupiter, and if he were here with his telescope he would show you the four little moons.'
'I beg your pardon,' said Stephen's sleeping-partner, opening the door and looking at Fox with intense curiosity, 'I forgot my drawers.'
'Before coming here,' said Stephen as they settled on the balcony, overlooking the busiest street, the open space in front of the Rasul mosque, and the wall and the outer courtyards of the palace beyond, 'I had like everybody else read about Malays running amuck, or amock, as I believe one should say, but never did I expect to see two of them doing so at once—my first sight of the phenomenon, at that. One came down this very street not an hour ago, cleaving his way in the midst of a frantic clamour, slashing right and left, a train of blood behind and a herd of people running away in front until he was brought down and killed by a Dyak with a spear. Then while the crowd was standing round the body, talking and laughing and pushing their krises into it, another maniac came down that little side-street, screaming shrill and high, and they scattered again. He ran off out of sight right-handed, having wounded two men as he passed, and what happened to him I cannot tell; but five minutes later people were walking about, talking, buying and selling, and fanning themselves as though nothing had happened.'
'It is a strangely cruel and bloody country at times,' said Fox. 'Or perhaps indifferent is the better word.' They ate in silence, wandering among the array of dishes. The shadows lengthened. Fox was searching in a bowl of prawns when he raised his head and stood motionless. 'That must be the Sultan arriving,' he said.
The drums and trumpets grew louder, then suddenly louder by far as the procession turned the corner and filed in through the outer palace gate. More trumpets within and the sound of shouting wafted over on the seaward breeze so that it was almost at hand.
'Before the light fades, I should like to show you the drawings I made of Kumai,' said Stephen. 'They are inept, they suffered much from the rain, particularly the outer leaves, but they may give you some notion of what I saw.'
'Oh please do,' cried Fox, his whole attitude changing. 'I long to see what you have brought down.'
'This is my attempt at the great figure which dominates the temple. The stone is a smooth light-grey fine-grained volcanic rock. The drawing gives no sense of its majestic serenity nor any of that feeling of far greater size than its actual twelve feet which is so strong when you stand before it. Nor can you easily see that the raised right hand has its palm facing outwards.'
'Oh, I can make out the hand very well. A capital drawing, Maturin; I am so grateful to you. This is the Buddha in the abhaya mudra attitude, signifying Fear not, all is well. Oh, such an omen! As far as I know, no other has ever been recorded in these parts.'
'Here are my paced-out plans; and this is what I call the narthex, where I slept. These are the particular carvings of a sculptured frieze where the narthex roof joins the main body. The marks show where the beams have impinged upon the frieze, obscuring it in places: obviously the carvings are earlier than the roof.'
'Oh yes,' said Fox, studying the pages with great attention, 'these are very early indeed. Perhaps earlier than anything I have ever seen in Malay country. Lord, what a discovery!'
While there was still day enough he took Stephen over them again and again, and then he said, 'It would be a pity to call for a lamp. I have all the plans and drawings clear in my head, and I could follow you pace by pace if you would be so very kind a
s to describe everything you saw.'
'That would take us well into next year, but I will try to give some general impression. Will I begin with the nectarincas, which take the place of humming-birds here? Do nectarincas interest you?'
'Only moderately.'
'Orang-utangs, then?'
'To tell you the truth, Maturin, there are already so many orang-utangs among my acquaintance that I would not cross the street to see another.'
'Well, well: perhaps I had better start with the Hindu temple, and confine myself to holy things and their surroundings.' This he did, and as his tale rose up the Thousand Steps, shrine by shrine, so the sun sank to the western sea; and by the time he was describing his first sight of the temple, its former immensity and the disposition of its parts, Jupiter had appeared.
Stephen reached the narthex, the opening of the temple door, the sunlight showing him the figure within, and Fox said, 'Oh, I quite agree. I have had a greater sense of holiness—sanctity—detachment—unworldliness in the severer Buddhist temples of the ancient rite than in any but the most austere Christian monasteries.'
The Thirteen-Gun Salute Page 25