The Shallow Seas (45 page)

Charlotte nodded. The field looked beautiful as they walked through it, but then, suddenly, she smelled an odour floating on the air, an odour so revolting that Charlotte could not breathe.

“The effluvia of the process,” said Nathanial, putting a hand to his nose. He had warned Charlotte, and she took out a perfumed handkerchief. The stench grew stronger as they arrived at the factory, a series of three-stepped vats and drying and pressing moulds set inside a fenced area by a small stream.

The putrid smell rose from the first vat, where the plants were steeped in water, rotting and bubbling. The ground around the vats was bright blue. Charlotte had never seen anything like it, as if they had wandered into a deep lake. The stream, too, was streaked with the dye. A mountain of rotting stalks stood behind the factory, steaming in the sun, swarming with flies. Men, their arms and chests stained blue, blue splashes on their faces, sat disconsolately taking the final product from the moulds, cutting it into small, hard, dry cakes of iridescent dark blue. They did not look up even as this white woman came into the grounds.

“When the fermentation is complete, the plant is drawn down into the beater vat, where the detritus is picked out of the liquid by hand, and it is churned continuously with paddles for two hours to add oxygen until it turns green and then violet-blue. Then the indigo turns into specks and flakes and sinks to the bottom like mud,” Nathanial explained.

Charlotte was feeling quite sick, but she felt she must see this through, for the men on the ground had haunted faces of abject misery.

“The clear water is drained from the second vat, and the mud is spooned into bags to drain overnight,” said Nathanial. “The next day it goes into those moulds with holes, for pressing and drying.”

Charlotte could stay no more, and Nathanial walked quickly away with her, back to the village, speaking quickly as they went.

“The men who enter into this noxious manufacture, I have ascertained, do not live beyond seven years and must endure this hideous staining, which causes them humiliating miseries. The production befouls the air and the streams.”

Nathanial turned to Charlotte. “Charlotte, imagine this life. For this gruelling and disgusting manufacture, they receive no remuneration at all. It is part of the corvée. It is slavery, Charlotte, you can see. It must stop.”

Charlotte put her hand on Nathanial's arm. She would speak to Tigran tonight, but, she added, Nathanial would have to talk to him, convince him perhaps to turn the fields to tobacco or some other equally profitable crop. He would have to give Tigran good reason to do it. Though he would want to heed her wishes, he would need an accounting.

Nathanial nodded in agreement, impressed by Charlotte's sound judgement.

It was not just to help Nathanial that Charlotte proposed to Tigran a voyage together, but she knew he was pleased and agreed, for her sake, to read a report by Nathanial on alternatives to the indigo production. She asked Tigran to show her the Spice Islands, for she wanted to go away with him in their brig, to cleanse it of bad memory. So, for a time, they left Nathanial to make his report and took
Queen of the South
and two other ships on a trading voyage to Surabaya and on into the Moluccas. She wanted to learn Tigran's commerce, and they both loved the sea. This ship had been a place of such misery to them both, but, now, standing in his arms, looking out over the night sea with its moonbeam trails, she saw that this contentment was love too.

As the months passed, she became Tigran's enthusiastic student, learning the business of Brieswijk and Buitenzorg, finding she was clever and quick, enjoying the evenings spent at his side discussing, to her amazement, crops, trade and liberal economics.

One day, Charlotte was attending to some papers at the desk in the bedroom at Buitenzorg. Tigran had been showing her the accounts for the plantation. Today they would tour the tea factory together. The fire was burning fiercely in the big fireplace, for it was early, and the day was chill. She looked up as she heard a distant clamour in the mountain silence. She rose and went to the landing and called to the housekeeper, but there was no answer.

Frowning, she went downstairs, worried for the children. She went immediately to the playroom and saw the
babus
together with Alexander and Adam before the fire. It was so cold that she had told them to play in the house until the mist went off the hill a little and the day warmed. Seeing her, Zander came to her side and took her hand. He so rarely did this that she was arrested by the gesture, and she heard him say, very quietly, “Papa.” He wanted Tigran. She picked him up in her arms. “Papa is riding. He will come soon.”

She smiled, but he pushed against her. He was so strong that she was forced to put him down, and he looked at her with his dark almond eyes and, without a word, ran towards the door. He was so fast and sometimes so reckless that she followed him, alarmed, calling the
babu
.

As she passed through the hall, which, even with two fires burning at either end was still cold, the noise of the commotion grew greater. The big teak doors stood ajar, and Alexander slipped through. She ran after him, calling his name. As she passed outside, she saw the reason for the commotion. The syce was trying to calm Tigran's horse, which was clattering its hooves against the flint of the courtyard, its eyes wild, panicked, sweaty. Charlotte stopped, her breath in her throat. She looked frantically back and forth, seeking Tigran. The
babu
, running and crying, grabbed Alexander. Servants gathered round, chattering and they all stood as the horse was calmed.

The gravity of the situation hit her. Tigran was not here! The two big black dogs which always ran by his side were not here. She let out a blood-curdling scream and fell to her knees. The syce was now shouting to the men, and the
mandoor
came forward, shouting orders. A search party: the master must have fallen. A man hoisted himself quickly onto Tigran's mare and calmly began to urge her forward.

Charlotte rose, aided by the housekeeper and her maids.

“No, no, no!” She felt a hideous premonition. She went to her room and sat before the fire, staring. This was to be her punishment. Not the children; it would not be the children, nor her. Whatever it was that needed to be appeased, it would take Tigran, the very best thing, the most worthy one, the white prince. This is what the dark world did. Charlotte fell to her knees, and for the first time in her life, she began to pray. She said his name over and over again like a mantra, sending out a protective mantle.

It was dusk when they found him. He had been thrown from his horse, which had been frightened, they thought, by a snake: nearby was evidence of a nest. The dogs had lain by him like sentinels. It was their whining and keening that had led the party to him. They had put him in the study on a bed. His neck had been broken. Charlotte had known he was dead the minute she had seen his horse without him. Alexander, too, had known. He had spurned her comfort and buried himself in the arms of his
babu
.

She rose, finally, wrapped herself in a woollen shawl and went slowly down the stairs to the study. It had been cleared of everything but the bed upon which he lay. The door stood open, and candles were laid about his bier and throughout the room. Villagers and servants sat silently around him. The estate manager was present, the housekeepers, the maids, as well as Madi, who had brought him into the world, all keeping vigil over him throughout this long night. His body had been prepared, she could see, cleansed and dressed in white, his arms by his side, a white cloth covering him from his waist to the floor.

The room was cold, the yellow flames of the candles merely the colour of warmth, without its substance. Her breath faltered on the frosty air. The breaths of those around him, too, rose in a brumal tapestry, floated fleetingly and was consumed by the darkness. In the midst of this ghostly host, Tigran lay, as if asleep, yet no breath came from him.

She stood transfixed. Raindrops spattered against the windowpanes beyond the thick curtains, like muffled tears. She could not see where he was broken and for a moment thought they had made a mistake. Then Madi begin to chant, quietly, a haunting Javanese song, and the sound was like a sorrowful sacrament. She stepped haltingly up to him and touched his cheek. It was glacial, like ice on the moors, and she recoiled in horror.

But he looked still so like himself that she went up again and put her warm hand to his cheek, looking on his face, so late beloved, and all repulsion disappeared. She leaned over him, the warmth of her breath swirling about his face like a dewy mist, and put her lips to his. She took her shawl and covered his body carefully, pulling it to his neck. Then she put her fingers into his hair and rested her head against his chest. He had left her this morning, left their warm bed and dressed quickly for his ride. He had come to her for a kiss, nuzzling her neck like a puppy, and she had pushed him away playfully because his nose, his cheeks were cold. She had not kissed him good-bye because he had felt cold. Suddenly she began to shiver, her body trembling at this terrible thing.

41

Charlotte and Nathanial left the chapel grounds. She felt bludgeoned by remorse, bruised with guilt. This man who had loved her beyond reason haunted her. For months after his funeral, in the midst of some activity, she would suddenly drift into misery. Every time she thought about it, she thought of her fault, his love and kindness which she had not even repaid that morning with one small kiss. This kiss grew in her mind until it took on enormous importance. She could not shake the idea that it was this that had separated Tigran from life and death: if she had taken him into her arms that morning, he would be alive now.

Charlotte plucked a gardenia flower and placed it carefully on the Balinese shrine. Tigran's grave lay nearby. Perhaps he would find Surya again, and his baby daughters. She felt in her heart that he had never truly recovered from that first love, that in some way she had been Surya's shadow. She shook her head. Delusion—delusion and guilt. She just wished it to be so, to assuage her own feelings. Nathanial, the man of science, of reason, had tried desperately to rationalise the events of that day, but he knew he was trying to help her fight a battle she had to fight alone.

They walked out into the park and looked down towards the distant silver gleam of the river. The pony trap was waiting, drawn by the same two gentle black-and-white ponies which had taken her on her first tour of these grounds. She moved between them, remembering, her hands caressing their soft noses, their big liquid eyes gazing at her. Nathanial helped her into the carriage. Charlotte took the reins and set the ponies at a clip down along the drive. She contemplated the vast grounds, now bathed in late afternoon light.

Tigran had appointed her legal guardian of their children and left everything to her: Brieswijk, the trading house, the plantations, the Singapore properties, all his vast fortune. She was now, undoubtedly, one of the richest women in the East Indies. This thought, too, left her exhausted with guilt. The oblivion of opium had tempted her, like a loving friend, to take him again into her arms, but her promise to Zhen and the thought of what humiliations and torments Tigran had endured to rid her of it gave her pause. Finally it was Nicolaus, who came with his own two children, with Alexander by his side and Adam in his arms, who gave her comfort, talking of his father, these little boys, of Tigran's legacy. Resolve took the place of withering, guilt-laden inaction.

Nathanial had given her Alexander Pope's
Essay on Man
, for he lived by Pope's words that “the proper study of mankind is man,” and she found, within this book, an inspiration.

Such is the world's great harmony, that springs

From order, union, full consent of things;

Where small and great, where weak and mighty made

To serve, not suffer, strengthen, not invade;

More powerful each as needful to the rest
,

And, in proportion as it blesses, blest;

Draw to one point, and to one centre bring

Beast, man, or angel, servant, lord, or king
.

For forms of government let fools contest;

Whate'er is best administer'd is best:

For modes of faith let graceless zealots fight;

His can't be wrong whose life is in the right
.

In Faith and Hope the world will disagree
,

But all mankind's concern is Charity:

All must be false that thwart this one great end
,

And all of God, that bless mankind or mend
.

Charlotte had recently completed the papers to divide the trading house into equal shares between all of Tigran's children by both herself and his
nyai
. She had set out with absolute determination to find out if he had other children in the villages at Brieswijk, but none had been found. She had arranged a fund invested at the Javische Bank to help former slaves and to provide funds where need be to compensate those owners of slaves who agreed to manumission.

She ordered that the plantations at Buitenzorg and elsewhere should be managed as to increase the benefit to the native population, all taxes on rice land to be one fifth of the revenue and paid labour to replace the corvée duty. She knew from her new Dutch-English
mandoor
at Brieswijk that this produced far greater productivity than the corvée. She had appointed
mestizo
overseers, vetted by Nathanial, to all the estates and factories and enjoined them to propriety and good offices. The indigo farms were closed. The native villages were empowered to grow crops which could bring them profit and reject those which were unprofitable and caused harm, leaving this decision to consultation and their enterprise.

She had devoted herself to reading at the library of the Society and had come to believe in the liberal policies of Adam Smith, Von Horgendorp, Raffles and Muntinghe. Above them all was Nicolaus, Tigran's eldest son, responsible for all the business of the Manouk house, in whom she had absolute trust. She had given the shipping fleet to him, drawing a percentage of its revenues and keeping only
Queen of the South
as her ship, at her command.