The Shallow Seas (2 page)

Sambal
:
A condiment or side dish used in Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, the southern Philippines and Sri Lanka, as well as the Netherlands, made from a variety of peppers, although chilli peppers are the most common.

Saman tree:
The rain tree, a tall, wide-spreading tree used for shade. Its leaves close when the weather is overcast, allowing rain to penetrate the canopy and nourish the plants beneath, one of the few tropical jungle trees to do so.

Sireh
: Malay word for betel. The leaves of the betel tree are used as a wrapping for the slices of the areca nut, lime paste and other ingrediants and chewed as a stimulant.

Slametan
:
Communal feast symbolising the unity of those participating in it. The ceremony is taken from the Javanese word slamet which means a peaceful state of equanimity, in which nothing happens. A Slametan takes place at marriages, births and deaths, major events in the Islamic calendar, and to mark unusual events: moving house, going on a long trip, illness, sorcery, etc.

Slendang
:
Long cloth used to carry a young child around the shoulders.

Sultan:
The royal appellation of the kings of the court of Yogyakarta. By definition they are secondary to the Susunan, for their court was created out of the division of the lands of Mataramby the Dutch in 1830.

Susunan
or
Susuhunan
:
The Emperor of the Royal Court of Surakarta, sometimes called
Solo
. The
Susunan
is recognised as the legitimate descendant of the court of the second Mataram dynasty, the Muslim dynasty which displaced the previous Hindu Sailendra dynasty. Its name was taken from an older Hindu/Buddhist dynasty called Mataram which ruled Java from the 8th to the 10th century.

Tuaru
:
Hibiscus bush. The crushed leaves were commonly used for hair washing in Indonesia before the advent of manufactured shampoo.

Tempeh
:
Referred to as the “Javanese meat”,
tempeh
is made by a natural culturing and controlled fermentation process that binds soybean particles into a cake form. Invented by the Javanese, it is now common in other parts of Southeast Asia as well. It is still especially popular on the island of Java, where it is a staple source of protein.

VOC:
Or the Vereenigde Oostindische Compagnie in Dutch, literally “United East Indian Company”, it was established in 1602, when the States-General of the Netherlands granted it a 21-year monopoly to carry out colonial activities in Asia. The first multinational corporation in the world, it was also the first company to issue stock. It remained an important trading concern for almost two centuries until it went bankrupt and was formally dissolved in 1800, its possessions and debts being taken over by the government of the Batavian Republic. The VOC's territories became the Dutch East Indies and were expanded over the course of the 19th century to include the whole of the Indonesian archipelago.

Waringan tree:
Indonesian name for the banyan tree.

Wayang
:
Wayang
is an Indonesian word for theatre, but comes from the Javanese word for shadow or imagination and also connotes “spirit”. Famous stories of the
wayang
are the Javanese adaptation of tales from the
Mahabharata
, of which the most famous character is Arjuna.
Wayang kulit
shadow puppets, prevalent in Java and Bali, are the best known of the Indonesian
wayang. Kulit
means skin and refers to the leather construction of the puppets that are carefully chiseled with very fine tools and supported with carefully shaped buffalo horn handles and control rods.

Wei qi
:
Classical board game known in the West by its Japanese name,
Go
, and believed to have originated at least 4-5,000 years ago. Some say that the board, with ten points out from the centre in all directions, may have originally served as a forerunner to the abacus. Others think it may have been a fortune-telling device, with black and white stones representing yin and yang. By the time of Confucius,
wei qi
had already become one of the “Four Accomplishments” (along with brush painting, poetry and music) that must be mastered by the Chinese gentleman.

Zhen Jiu
:
Acupuncture

Zhi Ya
:
Acupressure

“The shallow sea that foams and murmurs on the shores of the thousand islands, big and little, which make up the Malay Archipelago has been for centuries the scene of adventurous undertakings.”

Joseph Conrad,
The Rescue

Foreword

Water links Singapore and Jakarta, which once was Batavia. Long ago, during the ice ages, they were part of the Asian continent and shared one vast shore called Sundaland. When the ice melted and water crept over it, the land below became the Sunda Shelf and the lands above became the Malay Peninsula and the Malay Archipelago. The big islands of Sumatra, Java and Borneo were born and so, too, the myriad smaller ones.

The warm waves that whisper on the shores of the thousand islands have a thousand tales.

This is one.

Prologue

Et in Arcadia ego
. Once I, too, lived in paradise.

The words came into her mind as she stood, still and silent as stone. Her eyes followed the waves that curled and glinted in the long trail of the ship's wake leading back to the cliffs of Singapore. The island with the red earth—
tanah merah
; the cliffs now mere ruddy smudges on the horizon. Her sojourn in Arcadia had been brief. For the second time in her short life, a ship was carrying her away from joy and into misery. Suffering the grief of absence, condemned to remember joy and then remember absence, an endless circle. Grim-visaged comfortless Despair, and Sorrow's piercing dart. Until this moment she had not thought beyond the parting, the heart-stopping moment of leaving. The black brig rose on the dark swell, and she felt sick.

A cloud drifted across the morning sun, smothering the light, plunging the vista into obscurity, and the brig sank into the valley of the wave. The land vanished and the world became water. Charlotte leaned against the rail and began to vomit violently, coughing, retching, tears coursing down her face. She had left him. She felt the power of her body ebb from her so quickly that she slumped to the deck. She would not see him again. She could still feel the strength of his arms, the imprint of his body against hers, could hear, in the roar of the wind, his deep voice, bitter and hurt. It would never relent, she thought, this grief. She felt a vice, like fingers, around her heart, as if his hands had sped over the waves to pull her back to him. Taking no care for the mess on her clothes she rose, stumbled to a low chest and began to climb.

As she grasped the rail, strong hands gripped her waist, carrying her back down to the deck. She turned in fury to the man who had stopped her and struck him as hard as she could. She began to struggle with a grim determination, gasping for breath. She had to go back to Singapore, to Zhen.

Tigran held her firmly until her desperation lessened and she let him support her. She looked up, and he saw that in the distraction of her mind she did not recognise him.

I have to go back, you see,” she said shakily, in her most reasonable voice. She shook her head. “It's a mistake. Can you take me back please?”

“Yes, I will take you back, but now rest a little and take some refreshment.”

As he felt her legs fail, Tigran took her in his arms and signalled a man to fetch the Javanese maid who had been brought on this voyage to care for Charlotte. In the cabin, he laid her gently on the bed. She did not stir, and he saw she was asleep, overcome with sickness and emotion. He left the maid to care for her, changed his clothes, felt briefly the place on his cheek where her blow, surprisingly strong, had landed, and went back to the deck.

Tigran Manouk was the master of this brig,
Queen of the South
, and a fleet of merchant ships, part of his vast empire in the Dutch East Indies which included coffee, tea, sugar plantations and factories, indigo farms, ship-building, banking. His father, Gevork, an Armenian merchant, had become one of the richest men in Java—so rich that, on occasion, he had bailed out the impoverished Dutch government in Batavia as it struggled to take over administration of the former VOC possessions.

Charlotte Macleod had been just eighteen when Tigran met her in Singapore. He had been visiting his sister Takouhi and his niece Meda, a lovely, sweet-hearted girl, daughter of the new settlement's master architect, George Coleman. George had fallen in love with Takouhi years before in Batavia, where, as a young man, he had built sugar factories and embankments for Tigran's father. George and Takouhi had been together for eighteen years, until Meda fell dangerously ill.

Grief tightened its fingers around Tigran's chest, and he took a deep breath of windy, salty air. Takouhi had been sure that a return to the cool hills of Java, the
jamu
and the magic of the
dukun
would cure her child, but they had not. Meda had died only a few months ago. It was a blow so shattering that no one had yet recovered. George, crushed, had resigned his government position as Superintendent of Public Works and disappeared to Europe. No word had been heard from him since.

Takouhi and Charlotte had become close friends in Singapore. When George left, Charlotte had written to Takouhi, and Takhoui dispatched Tigran to fetch her friend and bring her to Batavia. This Tigran did gladly, for he had, the very night he had met Charlotte, and to his own vast surprise, floated like a powerless moth inexorably and dangerously into her flame. Love had taken possession of him, and try though he had for a brief moment to reason her from his heart, he had realised, with a strange and joyful acceptance, that he would not be able to forget this woman. She was like an exquisite melody, a haunting tune which inhabited his mind.

Now he could hardly believe his good fortune in having her here. He frowned. There was a man—Takouhi had mentioned a man in Singapore. A love affair. It would cause a great scandal, for Charlotte's brother, Robert, was the Chief of Police of Singapore, and such a storm would have doubtless meant the end of his position. That was all Tigran had known when he set out on this voyage.

But he knew more now. Charlotte's reaction to this departure told him of the violence of her feelings. Love is the devil's weapon, he thought, for it forces reason and all the natural instincts of self-care from the mind, like a damnable battering ram. His own feelings for Charlotte were of an intensity he had not believed possible at his age. Tigran was forty years old, toughened and shielded by experience—so he had believed—from life's jolts. His looks belied his years, for his eyes were full of a restless energy, and his body retained its youthful vigour. Dark-eyed, he wore his long black hair pirate fashion, half-braided and beaded. Although the Manouks were Armenian Christians, brother and sister had been raised by native women, and many of Java's ancient customs clung to them.

Tigran reflected on his desire for Charlotte, so vulnerable now, so beautiful though that every moment he was with her he wanted to bury his face and hands in her hair, kiss her lips until she could hardly breathe. He subdued the effect these thoughts invariably brought upon his body, gripped the shroud rigging and stared into the moiling waves.

He had intended to ask Charlotte to marry him on his last visit to Singapore, but Meda's illness had forced his rapid return to Batavia. Now he was angry at himself for not coming back immediately, though it had been impossible whilst Meda was so deathly sick. That was forgotten now in his ardour, and he cursed and punched the wood of the rail hard, wincing as his skin broke from the blow. He would have taken her to Java, and this damn mess with the other man would not have happened.

He watched the blood well from his skinned knuckles and hung his hand over the rail, gazing as a stream of scarlet coursed down his fingers, feeling the sting of the salt spray. Regret, regret! Well, he would not regret again. He was determined to have her promise before they landed. This enforced departure of hers would be his good fortune. Time would heal her, she would forget the other man, and he would make her the happiest woman in the world.

He ordered the wind sail to be rigged to send fresh air to the cabins under deck and went below.

1

Charlotte's first impression of Batavia was of a ghost town. It was not just the oppressive thoughts in her mind at leaving Singapore, Zhen and Robert. Nothing could have stood in starker contrast to the harbour at Singapore, with its low red-roofed buildings, its wide and busy harbour of sapphire blue, the gentleness of its island sands and the low green hills beyond. The
Queen of the South
had threaded its way through the thousand islands which lay before the port of Batavia and dropped anchor near the mouth of the Haven Kanaal, the stone-walled channel which projected far out into the shallow sea like a long grey tongue. The sky, overcast and hazy, turned the water of the roadstead to slate.

It had been two hundred years since ships had sailed up this canal to the shipyards and docks beyond, Tigran explained. A combination of bigger ships, the narrowness of the channel and the constant sand banks which built up at the mouth meant that ships must anchor far from shore and await the arrival of the slow, flat-bottomed lighters. If the waters were choppy, this could be treacherous. The weather that day was calm, however, and while she waited for the boat, Charlotte took a long look at this place which was to be her home.

The approach was deceptively pretty: islets scattered amongst the diamond glints of the blue sea like jewels from a broken necklace; a hundred white-rimmed emeralds, distant amethysts, hued agate, rugged grey quartz and far-flung, filmy amber. But as the ship drew closer to the mainland, the illusion dropped away. As far as the eye could see, there was nothing but a low, muddy morass dotted with palms. The high mountains beyond the city, of which she had been told, were invisible, veiled in dense cloud. Of the city itself, she could see nothing but a chalky white lighthouse on the end of the canal wall, a few grey stone houses and a small, low fort. Charlotte's heart sank. It was as if all colour had been sucked out of this joyless day. The night of her arrival in Singapore flooded her memory. The moonlight, the forest of masts, the swaying lanterns on the ships like dancing fireflies, the Chinese junk and the man who had called to her. Her heart swelled, and an unbidden tear slid down her cheek.