Ghost Fire

by Wilbur Smith

  He opened a door. The three maidservants lined up inside curtsied. “This will be your room, Constance. I have taken the liberty of appointing some maids for you, but if they prove unsatisfactory I will happily find you others.”

  “You are too kind,” Constance murmured. She took in the large room with its rich carpets, teak furniture and ornamental hangings, the high, airy windows fitted with carved sandalwood screens. After weeks of sleeping in a cot in a cabin the size of a coffin, the space felt immense. The bed alone could have slept four abreast.

  “Where is my room?” asked Theo.

  Gerard put his arm around his shoulder. “You will not live here.”

  “But—”

  “I have made special arrangements with the governor that you will take up a position as a writer for the Company. It is a little irregular, at your age, but given your circumstances and the family connection, I was able to prevail. You will have lodgings in Writers’ Row, inside the fort, with the other bluecoat boys.”

  “But I want to live here,” said Theo, obstinately. “With Connie.” He stared beseechingly at his big sister.

  “You must do as our cousin says,” she said. “It will be for the best.”

  Gerard ruffled Theo’s hair. “If you are as clever as I hear tell, I dare say you will soon own a house to make mine look like a mere cottage.”

  “But I could live here and still work in the fort. It is no distance.” Through the window, he could see the Palladian façade of the governor’s house a stone’s throw away.

  “It is not just about learning the ropes. Living with the other writers, you will come to know them intimately. You will make connections and friendships that will be invaluable to your career.”

  “You must, Theo,” said Constance. She was keen that Theo embrace the opportunity to further himself. “And, as you say, it is no distance at all. We will surely see each other almost as often as if we lived in the same house.”

  Theo’s face flushed dark. He turned away, his thoughts in turmoil. He kicked at the frame of a door and tried to marshal the raging demons in his head. He wanted to be with Connie. He had promised to protect her at all times, and she had pledged never to leave him. But a higher calling was making itself heard, its voice a shriek, like a bird of prey with blood on its talons. His father and mother had been slaughtered and vengeance burned in his soul. A bookish life was a mockery.

  “Then I will join the army,” he said.

  “That is not the right path for a gentleman,” Gerard cautioned.

  “I do not care about being a gentleman. I want to fight the French.”

  “You will do as I say.” Gerard’s friendly demeanor had vanished. His tone was harsh and threatening.

  Theo was unbowed. “You cannot stop me.”

  “You are my ward—you are mine to command.”

  “I will volunteer.”

  “The commander of the army is the president of the council,” said Gerard, with a bitter laugh. “He will not accept you.”

  Theo looked at Constance. How could she stand there, fanning herself, while their cousin bullied him like this? “I will run away.”

  “You will not,” said Gerard, and now his voice trembled with something truly dangerous. “Whom could you go to? Where would you run? You are an orphan now—my charge—and if you embarrass me I swear you will pay a price you cannot afford. You will join the Company, and you will excel in every endeavor to bring credit upon yourself, and on me. Do I make myself clear?”

  Fury boiled inside Theo. He felt an overwhelming urge to swing at his cousin, to bloody that haughty face. Then he remembered Constance. She would be living in Gerard’s house. As his ward, their cousin would have absolute power over her. Any insult that Theo inflicted, Gerard could take out ten times over on Constance. Was that what he had meant by “a price you cannot afford to pay”?

  Without a word, Theo turned and stamped down the stairs.

  “You must not think badly of him,” said Constance. “After all we have suffered, he is fragile.”

  “Of course,” said Gerard. “He is very loyal to you.”

  Constance smiled. “He takes his duties as a brother very seriously. He always thinks it is his job to protect me.”

  “You do not look as if you need protecting from anyone,” said Gerard, with a wink. “But this will be for the best. Standing on his own feet, and making his way in the world, will help him to put his sorrows behind him. Forgive me if I sound callous, but that is the way of things.”

  “You do not sound callous. I think you are very generous.”

  “I am glad you are here,” he said quietly. “My father is an austere man, and since he left I have been too busy with other things. The house could use a woman’s touch. Life will be gayer from now on.”

  Constance squeezed the plump mattress. Suddenly, she longed for nothing more than to sink into it. “I hope so. Perhaps it is selfish, but I feel I deserve a little happiness now.”

  •••

  When Theo first saw his quarters in Writers’ Row, he wanted to run away. It was as far from Gerard’s opulent mansion as could be imagined. Two spartan cells, one with a bed, one with a desk, both covered in dust. Giant ants scuttled about the floor, while the furniture was ridged with the veins of woodworm. For long moments, he entertained fantasies of fleeing Calcutta and making his living as a mercenary at an Indian court, where even Gerard couldn’t reach him.

  Then he remembered his obligations to Constance. He must do this for her, and find a way to fulfill his destiny.

  His pay was five pounds a year, plus three pounds’ allowance, with which he employed two servants. In return, he was required to calculate sums and enter them in the ledgers, inspect cargoes and inventories, ensure the appropriate paperwork reached the correct file, and attend church twice a day.

  In the first month, the work overwhelmed him. Most of Theo’s leftover allowance went on lamp oil, as he scribbled in the ledgers long into the night, cursing the figures that obstinately refused to add up. In daytime, bleary-eyed, he tried to assess the quality of a bale of cloth, while a crowd of merchants harangued him with their sales patter until his head hurt. He put the wrong papers into the wrong files, then could not find them when they were needed. He began to look forward to the compulsory church services, simply so he could nap for a few minutes without feeling a rap across his knuckles or hearing angry voices shouting in his ear.

  But he was determined to win this game. Since he had been a baby, his nursery had been the godowns and marketplaces of Madras, trailing dutifully after his father. He had learned how to haggle almost as soon as he could talk. The endless ritual courtesies of Indian conversation tripped off his tongue. Unlike most Englishmen, he understood that the stock phrases were not merely empty convention but a way of building trust; that the tone a man used to answer your question spoke far more than the words he said. Soon, the merchants who came to Fort William to sell their goods sought him out especially. They gave him the best prices, because they liked doing business with him, and the skills he had learned from his father ensured he acquired the best goods. He was not afraid to unravel a whole bale of calico to see that the fabric in the middle was as good as that on the outside, or to invite the tea merchants to brew a cup with their wares, in case it had been bulked out with sawdust or straw. His reputation as a sharp operator grew: the dishonest merchants shunned him, preferring men who would connive with them in cheating the Company, but the honest ones adored him because he would pay fairly for top quality.

  Eventually, he mastered the ledgers. He had a good head for figures. If he was offered cloth at six rupees the yard, he knew instantly how much the bale would cost, and how much profit he would make if the prices in London stayed constant, or if they dropped a halfpenny. It was when he had to tot up the figures on paper that the numbers swam in front of his eyes. After a time, he hit upon a solution. He taught one of his servants the English names for numbers, and thereafter did his accounts by
lying on his bed, listening to the servant read the figures aloud, then shouting out the tallies.

  Though they lived almost in sight of each other, he did not encounter Constance very often. Even in a universe as small as Calcutta’s, there were different orbits that rarely intersected. Her life, breathlessly recounted in her letters and on the rare occasions they met, was an endless round of assemblies, card parties, rides and dancing. She no longer walked but traveled in a palanquin carried by eight stout Hindus, with a servant girl running beside her whose only responsibility was to smooth out her petticoats. Or she would drive herself in a landau that had been shipped from England, cracking the whip while Gerard lounged beside her.

  “Cousin Gerard is so good to me,” she confided in Theo, one Sunday afternoon. It was evening, and they were walking in the public gardens around the great reservoir known as “the tank.” “He has practically made me mistress of the house.” She had banished to the attic the old pictures of ships and battles and replaced them with Indian paintings in bright and exotic colors.

  “I hope he is not too forward,” said Theo. Living in Writers’ Row, in the constant company of two dozen boys all under the age of eighteen, had given him a breakneck education in all manner of experiences that had nothing to do with commerce. It had made him very protective of his sister’s honor. More than once, he had had to defend it with his fists in impromptu bouts with the other boys behind the carpenter’s yard.

  Constance linked her arm in his. “He is a perfect gentleman. And, I declare, he thinks no more of marriage than of going to the moon. I could walk past him wearing nothing but my petticoats, and he would not look up from his papers.”

  “Connie!” said Theo, shocked. He did not like his sister even thinking of such behavior.

  Her eyes danced. “Do not play the innocent. I heard from Henry Lushington’s sister that you had been seen three times last week with a certain Indian girl at a punch house in Black Town.”

  Theo was instantly transported back to the sensuous, smoky dark rooms, the heady scent of nutmeg and spices, the voluptuous girls and, in particular, the sweet young maiden who had taken a shine to him, her soft, supple skin like the finest silk on the tips of his fingers. He shivered. “That is different.”

  “Indeed—for if I were seen unchaperoned in a punch house with a native, I would be drummed out of our society.”

  “That is not what I meant.”

  “Why should the rules not be the same for women and for men? We are all creatures of flesh and blood.”

  Theo flushed scarlet. “To protect your virtue.”

  She laughed. “Rest assured, brother, my virtue is safe. I believe our cousin intends to marry me off to a sea captain or a Company trader. He has begun correspondence with Governor Saunders in Madras concerning our inheritance. He says he fears it is being ill-used in our absence, but I think his true worry is that I shall have no dowry, and he will be left with an old maid to feed all his days.”

  “I wish he showed so much concern for me.” Though Gerard frequently had business in the governor’s house at Fort William, he almost never visited Theo. “Sometimes I think he deliberately snubs me.”

  “He means it kindly,” said Constance. “He wants you to learn habits of self-reliance. Also, he does not want it to be said that you rise only because of your connections. He is very sensitive to this point: his own father, Uncle Christopher, meddled constantly in Gerard’s life, and his friends resented him for it.”

  “It does not seem to have harmed his career,” said Theo, thinking of the great mansion.

  Constance slipped her arm out of his and kissed his cheek. “I must go. We are invited to supper with the Manninghams, and I will be late for my hairdresser.”

  •••

  As time passed, and as Theo’s masters noticed every week the balances in his ledger outshone those of the other bluecoat boys, he began to travel away from Calcutta, sometimes for days, visiting distant suppliers. He enjoyed seeing more of the country, though the pace of the expeditions infuriated him. Even the shortest trip in India required all the pageantry and pomp of a royal progress. Musicians led the column with trumpets and drums, while the merchants rode in howdahs on the backs of elephants. A detachment of soldiers followed, together with scores of the local servants known as peons and hircarahs. Wherever they went, hordes of the native inhabitants clustered around them. Sometimes they were lucky to go five miles in a day.

  On most of these trips, Theo was attached to a senior agent named Deegan. He was a Scotsman, who had lived in India longer than anyone could remember and insisted he would die there too. “This heat and the liquor are all that holds my body together,” he maintained. “If I went back to a Scottish winter, the cold would snap me in two.” He had given himself over to the Indian way of life. He dressed in loose Indian clothes, his head wrapped in an enormous turban, and ate the most pungently spiced curries Theo had ever tasted. He kept an Indian wife, though rumor insisted there still existed a Mrs. Deegan back in Edinburgh.

  “Once ye’ve had black, you never go back,” he told Theo, with a wink. They were sitting in the agent’s house in one of the trading stations, lounging on cushions. “Softest bonny pussy you’ll ever feel.”

  He handed Theo the stem of the hookah pipe. Theo took a long drag of the vaporized mu’assel, a syrupy tobacco mixture, with molasses, vegetable oil and a fruit flavor. The hit made him light-headed and gently relaxed. He said nothing.

  “I blame it on the clothes they wear. Our bonny Englishwomen are parceled up in their busks and stays, pinched in so tight it makes them tough as old leather. Now your Indian girl, all she has is soft cotton wrapping her boobies, as close to nature as the Good Lord intended.”

  Theo thought of Constance, the way she’d fought with their mother over wearing her sari. Since they had arrived in Calcutta, he had only ever seen her wearing immaculately starched English dress.

  Deegan sucked on his pipe and blew a smoke ring. “D’ye ever go down to the riverbanks, early in the day when the native women wash?”

  Theo shook his head.

  “They bathe fully dressed, you know, but when they come out, oh, laddie, those wet clothes hide nothing. You see all their beauties and graces.”

  “I am usually at morning prayer,” said Theo.

  “Aye,” grunted Deegan. “And that’s the tragedy of it. This Company would rather you were locked up in chapel, staring at the floor, than observing what’s happening around you.”

  “I am not sure the governor would see it so.”

  “Course he wouldn’t.” Deegan drained his glass of arrack and gestured at the serving girl to pour more. “The Company has grown fat and complacent. The governor is a fool, and the council filled with men who are so busy lining their pockets they do not see what is in front of their noses. We are guests in this country, though you would not know it from the way we lord it over them. There are a few hundred of us, against millions of Indians, but we presume to think we’re untouchable.”

  “The Indians profit too much from our trade to confront us,” said Theo. It was the sort of opinion he often heard in the mess hall at Fort William.

  “The Indian has his pride, just like any man. Some more than most. You know that our local prince, the nawab, is dying?”

  “I have heard rumors.”

  “Aye, there are always rumors. There are rumors that his heir, his grandson, has the temper of Nero and the appetites of Caligula. There are rumors he has seen that the Company treats his grandfather like a lackey and means to teach them manners. There are rumors that a French general has been seen skulking around his court, and no one troubles to think it significant because no war is declared yet. Have you heard the story that our esteemed Governor Drake is gathering an army in Calcutta to attack the French settlements upriver?”

  “That is preposterous.”

  “Of course it is. Our fat fart of a governor couldnae find his own cock in a brothel, let alone start a war. But why
are people saying it?”

  “To discredit us?”

  “Aye. The French know we’ve no cause or hope to attack ’em. But if they make out we do, and the nawab believes ’em, he’ll not be best pleased. Can’t have his guests brawling in his own front room.” He took another long pull on his pipe. “Did you notice nothing amiss in the market today?”

  “I thought we got surprisingly good prices.”

  Deegan nodded. “That we did. But only because we agreed to pay cash. If we had asked for credit, they would have turned us away.”

  “Why?”

  “Because they do not think we will be here in six months’ time to honor our debts.”

  He belched—a noxious gas of curry, arrack and tobacco. His turban had slipped. Years of alcohol and sunburn had left his nose as red as a pepper. He looked what he was: a foolish, dirty old man. How could anyone take his warnings seriously against the supreme assurance of young men like Gerard Courtney?

  Yet still Theo wondered.

  •••

  Major General Corbeil was sweating. Even in the shade of the nawab’s pavilion, the still air was boiling. The French general tugged at the collar of his starched white uniform, cursing the heavy cloth. If he found the tailor who had made it, he would pull out his fingernails.

  The young nawab, Siraj-ud-daula, lounged on golden cushions on the throne he had recently inherited from his grandfather. His plump, rounded body reminded Corbeil of the pears that grew in the orchard on his family estate in Normandy. He fidgeted incessantly with the rings on his fingers, each one bulging with precious stones as big as musket balls. He looked bored.

  Corbeil tried to master his face, to hide the sneer that rose so naturally. The nawab was a fool, devoted to sensuality and cruel pleasures. But he might be useful.

  “I am grateful to Your Highness for inviting me to witness this entertainment,” he said.

  In front of the royal pavilion, a naked man was trying to run away from an elephant. He had large chains shackled to his ankles. One was attached to a stake in the ground; the other was fastened to the elephant’s leg. Mounded earth walls made a rough arena encircling them, lined with the crowds who had come to watch.