The Tiger's Lady (76 page)

With a hoarse groan Pagan kicked free of his trousers and swept her atop his granite thighs until his hot length teased her velvet woman’s petals.

Barrett’s soft laughter echoed over the glade. “Shall I tell you what else I learned, my tiger?” She did not wait for an answer, but leaned down and whispered in Pagan’s ear.

Her husband swallowed audibly. His fingers dug into the soft curves that strained against his thighs.

“Did I get that right?” she asked sweetly.

“I devoutly hope so.” His dark eyes glittered. “What in the name of heaven am I going to do with you,
Angrezi?”

“Everything
, I trust, my lord. As swiftly as you possibly can.”

Her low, breathless plea was the last straw. Pagan surged upward, parting her sleek petals and impaling her in one hard thrust. “Ah, my soul, I only meant to distract you. Why is it always
you
who end up distracting
me?”

“
It—it—only serves you right, you insuff—sufferable—ohhhhhh!”

Pagan smiled darkly as he watched his wife shudder and arch against him, her hair spilling like a golden nimbus around her shoulders.

She was, he thought dimly, the most beautiful thing he had ever seen or ever would see, and he knew he would never tire of watching the many faces of her passion.

With that thought in mind, he began to move anew, cupping her sweet bottom and fitting her to his hard length while he tongued one tightly budded nipple.

Barrett’s eyes flashed open, dazed and smoky. “N-no, you don’t, you wretched man! Not again, Dev, no! Not until—” Her voice broke.

Her nails dug into his shoulders as passion exploded through her once more.

“Distracted yet, my sweetest love?” Pagan asked huskily long seconds later, when her breath had stilled.

Her eyes opened, wide and unfocused.

When he saw the dark need trembling within those beautiful eyes, felt her sweet, anxious yearning, he drove deep, head flung back as he muttered ragged words of praise in a jumble of four ancient and very earthy tongues.

Barrett understood none of them. She barely recalled basic English at that particular moment.
“P-Pagan!”

“Yes, my beauty, take me. Ah, falcon, hold me. Hold me deep. Hold me
forever.”

And Barrett did, offering him the haven he had never known, the love he had never expected, the paradise he had never imagined. “So I mean to, my love,” she whispered. “Always and forever.”

Gasping, she stretched to meet each reckless thrust, breathless, yielding, love-flushed.

Delighting in the fires that smoldered deep in Pagan’s eyes.

For they were fires of triumph and delight, and she meant to see them glowing in his dark eyes always.

“But …
s-six
children?” she murmured.

The next moment she tensed, following Pagan down, down, into the circle of light, into the haven of love that she knew would surround them always.

Far away, across two continents and two great oceans, where leopards roared and the sun sank in fuchsia splendor over emerald tea fields, a small, wiry figure inched up a rocky slope and then slipped between a narrow opening in the mountain’s blackened base.

As his eyes adjusted to the darkness, the old man made his way into a shadowed cave studded with all manner of precious gems.

For long moments he studied the scattered stones glinting on the tunnel floor, picking up one after another and then discarding each in turn. As always, he wondered at the greed of the
Angrezi,
who valued these stones so blindly while having no notion of their true power.

Such a pity.

Abruptly the shaman’s eyes narrowed. He found what he had been searching for.

With a low sigh, he cupped the great red stone and raised it to his forehead in a gesture of profoundest respect. “Ah, my beauty, my old one. How I delight to see that you are safe once more.”

Within his wiry fingers the crimson surfaces began to hum, flashing with dim images.

Gripped by a rare twinge of curiosity, the shaman looked down to read the future reflected in those ancient stone facets.

There he saw first a pair of smiling lovers in a distant green land, their hearts full and true as their souls spilled together in bliss. In the ruby’s fires he saw that there would indeed be six children for them, just as the Tiger had predicted, one to become a prime minister, one an inventor, one a brilliant actress, one a poet, another a celebrated explorer, and the last a tea planter like his father.

One by one the images swirled past, and the shaman’s old, knowing face creased with laughter at the exploits of those six stubborn children, who would be both delight and torment to their parents.

Yes, it was good, he thought, very good that the old curse had finally been laid to rest. The jackal and his minions were gone now. Windhaven would be haunted no more. Just as he had hoped, the Tiger had proved to be a good guardian and would see the new tea acres to maturity.

And there in the ruby’s fires the shaman saw that in the fullness of time there would come the son of a son, tall and clear-eyed, who would take a smiling Sinhala princess to wife.

From their passion would spring a dynasty, a dynasty strong enough to weather the harsh inventions of a restless, untamed future.

Yet even in that future there would be the healthy leaves, rising green among the blue mountains, row upon serried row. In the years to come the teas of Windhaven would become known throughout the world and his beloved island would prosper once more.

The shaman sighed then, turning away from the stone.

Now he could rest, certain that his beloved Lanka would be safe amid the coming storms. He needed to know no more than that.

Long ago he had learned that it was best to know as little as possible about the future.

Yes, it had all been most exhilarating, the thin man decided. But now it was time to go, back to the valley of the wind in the land of the high snows.

With that decision his form seemed to glisten. Rocks tumbled from the ceiling and somewhere far below the earth lurched in protest, its rumble sounding curiously like the roar of a great cat.

There in the dim light, surrounded by glinting jewels, the shaman brought the ruby to his forehead one last time.

Around him the air began to stir and shimmer, the earth to pitch. There was a faint flash, almost like the movement of sleek white fur through the darkness. A moment later the walls shook and the tunnel exploded, burying the cavern and all its jewels forever.

Of course, by that time the shaman was already far, far away…

END

Angrezi
: English; Englishman or woman

Ayah
: Nursemaid

Bern
: Elephant grass

Burra-sahib
: Important man

Diya redde
: Water cloth; length of fabric worn by

Sinhalese women for bathing

Ghat
: Steps or embankment beside a river or reservoir

Howdah
: Seat for riding on an elephant

Jo hoga, so hoga:
What is meant to be will be.

Kama
: Desire, love, sensual pleasure

Khanjar
: Indian dagger with twisting, double-edged blade

Lat-sahib
: Lord

Mahattaya
: Sir, Mister

Mahout
: Elephant handler

Mar ja sale!
: Die, bastard!

Meri jaan
: My heart, my soul, my world

Memsahib:
Miss, Madam (referring to European women)

Sahib
: Sir, Lord (referring to a European man)

Tulwar:
Long, curved Indian sword with a single cutting edge

Yakkini
: Female devil

Zenana
: Women's quarters

Dear Reader:

I hope you have enjoyed Brett and Pagan’s story as much as I have enjoyed telling it. Difficult and demanding though this pair turned out to be, they have constantly managed to surprise and delight me, which surely repays any frustration they entailed.

The ruby?

Ah yes, that fabulous jewel. Funny you should ask. As it happens, in 1896 a rare, flawless ruby of 46.75 carats was sold at auction in London. As one early gemologist commented, “When a ruby exceeds six carats and is perfect, it is sold for whatever is asked for it.”

To my knowledge there was no curse connected with this gem, which came up for auction again in 1988. But other famous stones such as the Orloff Diamond and the Hope Diamond have a long history of violence and ill omen. Both gems are said to have been stolen from Hindu idols. The Hope Diamond, in particular, is accounted to be a stone of great evil, and has been implicated in over a dozen violent deaths among its owners.

The life of the early European coffee and tea planters in India and Ceylon was vastly primitive. Many succumbed to disease (cholera, malaria, smallpox, dysentery, and elephantiasis, to name a few) or animal wounds (leopard, cobra, krait, tiger, wild boar, sloth bear). The saying was that two summers made a planter—or broke him. Alas, many did not last even that long. Those who did and managed to clear the dense jungle to plant coffee did well for a decade or two.

Then in the 1860s a deadly leaf virus swept through all the coffee acreage of Ceylon, southern India, East Africa, and Java. By 1890 hundreds of estates in Ceylon lay abandoned and coffee had disappeared as a cash crop.

Tea was the natural answer, though it had not been cultivated by the British until 1839. The vast majority still came from China, where traditional secrets of cultivation, fermentation, and hand rolling were fiercely guarded. Even today, many of those same techniques are still preserved in tea-producing areas of south China.

I have tried to be faithful to the harsh realities of life faced by these early planters. It was a life of beauty and hardship, triumph and challenge. Those who stayed grew to love the life; most would not have chosen to live anywhere else. (Very few would have had a home with anything near the grandeur of Windhaven, of course!) Yes, there actually
is
a record of a tiger in Ceylon. The nineteenth-century explorer, Sir James Tennent, wrote that government officials had seen the creature often while hunting. “One gentleman of the Royal Engineers, who had seen it, assured me that he could not be mistaken as to its being a tiger of India, and one of the largest description.” (Tennent.
Ceylon: A Natural History of the Island.
London: Longman, Green, Longman, and Roberts, 1868).

The events at Cawnpore are as I have told them. Only four men are known for certain to have survived the massacre at the
ghat,
but some records mention a heavily bearded Englishman who escaped through the jungle, only to be shot before he could relate his tale. On that germ of fact I have based Pagan’s escape.

The causes of the massacre—and indeed of the Mutiny itself—are still hotly contested. Here I will only add that acts of extreme compassion and bravery as well as rankest barbarism were committed by both sides,
Angrezi
and Indian.

It is interesting to note that today the government of Sri Lanka is one of the most ardent supporters of wildlife preservation. With an active wildlife conservation program and some ten percent of its acreage set aside for parklands, Sri Lanka is actively working to protect its rich and varied animal population. Elephants are especially revered, for cultural as well as religious reasons, and many ambitious programs have been enacted to relocate these gentle giants to safe forest habitats.

Today no Sri Lankan species is endangered.

Would that
we
could say as much.

Today tea, too, continues to be produced in Sri Lanka in record quantities.

Keemun, Lapsang Souchong, and Hyson. Though the words originated in connection with Chinese teas, they continue to enchant and delight, conjuring up cloud-swept highlands and mysterious, shadowed valleys. I must confess that I have always been a tea lover, and perhaps it was those wonderful, exotic names which captivated me first.