The Luminist (30 page)

“I asked a question that I believe I know the answer to. Spend a day on this, Eligius. No more. Or else I will find the way to you.”

“You would do that rather than say goodbye. How you loathe goodbyes.”

He smiled.

She opened her arms and he came to her. They parted without a word. Eligius began his walk to the remains of villages, Catherine to what remained of home.

 

SEASONS OF RAIN and drought had alternated in a terrible maypole since his last glimpse of the East India Court. All the light had been scrubbed from its exterior. Paint peeled from the eaves just below the lip of the roof, revealing dirty gray stone as pockmarked as the day it was broken free and beaten into walls.

Soldiers milled about near the locked gate. A contingent of thirty stood in a phalanx just on the other side of the iron bars, monitoring the Indian men who occupied the road and the cleared field beyond. Eligius saw twice as many soldiers talking in groups, rifles within easy reach.

He crossed the field. A thicket of Tamil men watched the Court and its surrounding buildings. Some turned to see who made the dry sticks break. They nodded at him and returned to their vigil. No one spoke to him or to each other. Whatever had been planned, it was done.

It filled him with dread, watching them wait.

In five hours, he encountered only one village still intact. The sounds of guns broke the stillness every few miles. Through the day they came faster, lingered longer. Not far off. Soon, he'd find them.

At a plantation near a clear stream, he knelt to drink. Warm water broke the dust in his throat. He splashed it over his face and neck, then surveyed the grounds. The estate was prosperous and well-kept. He could see the family on the porch. A young woman in a dress as yellow as saffron, with a hat pulled down to shade her. Her three children played on the grass while an older woman sat in a chair swinging gently from two chains.

The late afternoon light was thinning. There was no one around to ask whether they'd seen Colebrook and the missionary.
He wasn't sure how far he'd come and didn't recognize any of the landmarks around him.

A handful of Indian men toiled in the field abutting the house. They picked fat cotton from the coil of green that reached to their ankles.

He was surprised to see anyone still working for colonials. “My brothers,” he asked, catching the attention of the closest men. Two of them looked to be his age, but worn to poles by their labors. “Are these fields the colonials'?”

“Everything is theirs.” An older man raised his hand to shield his tearing good eye; his left was as cloudy as egg white. “We only get what's dead.”

“It used to be our land,” one of the boys said.

“Part of it,” his peer commented. “Our village was over there.” He pointed to the trees. “It was sold to them.”

“I'm looking for two of the colonials,” Eligius interrupted. “An old man and a missionary. They would have traveled two, maybe three days ago. Maybe they came to your village.”

The one eyed man spat on the ground. The younger ones took their cue from him and turned away. “I saw them,” the man said. He glanced over his shoulder at the house. The colonials were far away and attending to themselves. “They passed through Devampiya a day and night ago.”

“Heading south?”

The man shook his head. “North.”

Moving away from Dimbola. Towards the smoke and the guns.

“I was still living in Puttalam even though it lay in ruins,” the man said. “It was still my home. When I saw them, the older one was ill, and the missionary made him rest in the shade for a long time. Then he helped him up. The old one was upset that there was no one important to speak to. They had a cart. The old one lay down in the back, where servants would ride – ”

A cry went up in the fields as a monstrous plume of smoke rose above the trees. It engulfed the sky over the plantation. The
colonial children screamed. Their father came to the porch with his rifle.

So close, Eligius thought. No more than half a mile.

In the fields, one man dropped his hoe. He walked to the road. Two more fieldworkers followed. They marched past the colonials' property line in a parade of rags and coffee skin.

The colonial put a protective arm around his wife. His children and the old woman went into the house.

“Son,” the one-eyed man said, “forget the colonials. They 'll get what they deserve. Find a weapon or a place to wait, but don't be found doing nothing.”

Eligius nodded.

“I spoke to the old one. I brought him some water. Do you know he was the only colonial to ever speak to me like a man?”

“What did he say?”

“That he was sorry for many things. For Swaran Shourie.”

Another plume rose. Eligius heard more screams.

“Offer a prayer over the old one.” The man dropped his bag of cotton and began to walk. “ When you bury him. And one for me. I've no family left to mourn me.”

Eligius waited for more of the field workers to leave, then joined them. They passed the house gate, the mob of them, singing old songs he first heard as a child playing on the beach where the fishermen made beautiful melodies that compelled the waves to return day after day.

Now all the colonials were inside the house. He could see movement at their front windows. The children, watching without comprehension.

He thought of plumes of smoke rising over Dimbola.

When the workers turned into the gate, axes and hoes held high, he ran in the opposite direction. Soon the sounds of shots were too faint to hear.

He ran into the night, and the next morning, through a ribbon of sounds and smells, voices and fighting and burning. He slept only awhile, and only when he reached the lion's mouth,
as the first bruise-violet light could be seen over the mountains. Once, he woke in the night to what sounded like sobbing coming from the valley below. The wind was blowing, he thought, and the dead were whispering their secrets to the appa of the neem tree. He'd tried to will the sound away, then got up and started walking until he couldn't hear anything but the jungle stirring.

It took him until midmorning to find something to eat in the pantry of an abandoned house. How strange, he thought, to see these walls broken like those of the villages. A week since it burned. Maybe less.

A garrison of weary soldiers shuffled by on the road outside. He hid until they passed, then went to find the colonials' well. Drawing up the bucket, he soaked his torn feet and wondered where else to look. Nowhere, everywhere. The sa'ab could have simply gone, never to return out of shame. Maybe he'd already passed Dimbola in the dark. A last look before he fell to the land he loved but increasingly did not know.

If he failed to find the sa'ab, he thought he might do the same.

He left the house and shadowed the garrison until midday. In a field swaying with razor grass, he parted company with the soldiers. They continued up the road.

Pulling up clumps of blades, he cut a patch into the field big enough to sit down in and not be seen. He promised himself that he'd only rest awhile. His feet were cracked and bloody. His back ached; he could only bend forward a fraction before daggers pressed against his spine. What would it matter, he thought, if he never returned to Dimbola? What would be missing? A servant. A water bearer, a carpenter. A mover of light. Catherine would make her way with photographs of her betters, depicting their once-hoped for selves. Sir John would map stars. That he would be precise about it would only matter to him. Julia would marry and raise children with Wynfield. She would become a lady under a wide hat that kept her well hidden.

A sound grew on the road. Carriage wheels churning up rocks and dirt, and the jagged wheeze of a horse driven too hard.

He peered over the tops of the grass blades. The carriage emerged on the far side of the field. It pulled off the road and the driver hopped down to help a woman out. She moved in a wobbling, unwieldy way. Her distended belly pulled her forward like a cast anchor. She knelt to the dirt. The sounds of sickness filled the air.

Behind her, another woman stepped out unaided. A maid or midwife, Eligius thought, followed by two small children. The downed woman barked at them but the distance made cotton of her words. She held out a demanding hand but still her children slipped into the grass, two blurs of curls melding with the green.

He started to smile, until the high sun glanced off of something brilliant and shiny in the trees across the road from the family. Metal.

He was up and running before those trees parted, before the men spilled onto the road. Like beetles pouring from a split rice sack they scrambled up and over the carriage and its driver. Eligius saw him slip under a rolling wave of blades. The car - riage tipped over with their weight. Its horse crumpled as its lead line hung it sideways.

An awful stew of cracking wood, pitiful whinnies and an abrupt cry reached his ears. He scanned the field, terrified. The world spun in a smear of green and flashes of gold hundreds of yards away. The children. They were screaming for their mother. Soon the sounds of last life and the breaking carriage would quiet. They would be heard.

He ran for them as the winds swept the stiff blades against his bare legs, gashing him relentlessly. The children clutched at
each other and cried when he reached them. Kneeling next to them, he told them to hush in a harsh tone. They obeyed, eyes wide.

He lay them flat, his palms against their cheeks. Holding them down, he craned his neck. There were men at the carriage, pulling it apart and carrying it off. There were others gathered at the tree line.

He took one child under each arm and rose cautiously. His neck and back burned. Carrying them like parcels from the butcher, he set them down behind a thick coil of neem roots. The children were so small. They slipped into the gaps. The boy held his sister's hand.

“Don't move,” he told them. “Don't make a sound.”

The boy's eyes flickered with primitive recognition. His hand left his sister's and covered her eyes.

Eligius' heart broke. They think they're about to die from me.

A sound made him spin around. Far in the field, one of the men raised his blade into the sun and brought it down, scattering grass into the air and with it, a tumbling sheaf of the maid's frock.

“Hold your sister tight,” Eligius ordered the boy. “Don't let her see.”

The boy's lip trembled. Tears sprang from him.

“I'm going to cover you both so you won't be spotted. Only I will know where you are. Don't move until I come for you. Do you understand?”

The boy nodded. His little chest filled and fell.

Eligius covered them both with leaves until only a bit of their golden curls protruded like treasure. He found a heavy rock and ran, leaving his mind behind with the children. He ran as if in a silent void, with only the rock in his hand and bubbles of light descending from his vision to dazzle the green swaying grass.

The man never heard him. He was in mid-swing, his machete soaring up in a curtain of red drops and a fluttering
flag of lace wrapped stubbornly around the blade, and he never heard Eligius descend on him with the rock. The stone struck bone and didn't stop. The man fell limply.

The maid lay on her back. Her face was turned to one side, demure. She was covered with blood, dirt, and grass. The skin of her cheek lay open and imbrued The man's indiscriminate swings had left that side of her unrecognizable. She was breathing shallowly, expelling ribbons of red foam.

He'd once gone hunting with his father and other men. One was skilled with a slingshot and brought down a bird before it had a chance to escape. Breast split, it waited. He could remember the look in its eyes as their shadows fell over it. How it trembled as his father picked it up and twisted its head until its neck snapped.

The maid looked at him like that. There was nothing to be done to stop her leaving.

He left the dying woman and crept through the grass to the remains of the carriage. They'd torn apart the horse in the same manner. Bits of both lay in broken mounds.

He knew the men could see the road. Were he to take the children that way, they would be spotted.

“Leave me alone!”

He got onto his haunches. Between the men's ranks, he saw the young woman screaming. The remains of her dress hung from her arms. Her breasts and womanhood were bare. Her hands lay protectively across her pregnant belly. The man closest to her set his blade down and went to her, forcing her to her knees. He wore a tunic. A servant once, maybe a day and a lifetime before.

A shot rang out. One of the men who'd stepped forward for a closer look fell. More shots cascaded like rain, and more of the men fell. A small cadre of soldiers ran towards the quickly scattering men, firing flame. The men slipped between trees and were gone. The soldiers followed them.

As quickly as it began, the road fell silent. The sounds of fighting grew muffled behind the canopy of jungle.

He ran to the woman. “Come with me quickly. I have your children safe.”

The woman rose but didn't walk.

“Hurry. They could come back.”

They reached the trees and for a moment he thought the children were gone. Then one twig rolled from its perch atop a soft rise and a finger wriggled through. He uncovered the children and bid the woman to lie down with them.