Read The Golden Leopard Online
Authors: Lynn Kerstan
Tags: #Romance, #General, #Historical, #Fiction
But like all her plans lately, this one ran swiftly aground. When she went in search of her soon-to-be-rejected suitor, he had already departed for a day of shooting on the moorlands, leaving her without a target for her stored-up, vehement no’s. Finally, after picking at a breakfast of bacon and melon slices, she set off from the house on a mission that had nothing to do with importunate males.
Well, almost nothing. She had decided to pay a call on her father’s mistress, the widowed Mrs. Bellwood, at her cottage not far from Ridington. Mariah had offered to show her the way, but being in no mood for company, she had declined. Besides, it was about Mariah that she wished to speak with Mrs. Bellwood.
With the morning sun latticing through her straw bonnet, she strode purposefully along the path of the narrow Dart, brown and sluggish in late summer, her direction carrying her away from the distant crack of gunfire. She imagined Duran swinging his rifle up, his finger tightening, a bird falling from the sky. She imagined herself in his sights, flapping her wings, straining to break free.
Pride, like a living creature, stretched and scratched in her belly. Years ago Lady Jessica Carville had publicly declared she would never marry, in part to rid herself of the ambitious admirers who dogged her heels, but mostly to keep herself from wavering. The unhappiest people she knew were married, and they were unhappy
because
they were married. If loneliness was to be her fate, she would endure it without being dictated to by a controlling husband.
And she couldn’t very well change her mind now. In all the clubs, betting books were inscribed with wagers about when the finicky Lady Jessica would yield, and to whom. Gentlemen had far too much time on their hands, and she had no intention of putting money in the pockets of those who doubted her word. It would make her a laughingstock.
As for the other reasons, the true ones, those would remain right where they were, buried so deeply she need never look at them again.
The shallow, wooded valley threaded its way around the rocky Dartmoor hills and skirted patches of bogland, transforming a journey of a few miles to a walk of several hours. She didn’t mind. It was cool alongside the river. Dragonflies danced over the water, and pipits gossiped in the oak branches.
She was rounding an especially tight curve when she saw, nearly concealed by an overhanging willow, a white-clad figure hunkered near the ground. A small cry caught in her throat.
She had recognized him immediately. Realized that she was alone. Wondered if anything she had been told of him was true.
Stiff with alarm, she watched the figure uncurl itself and rise, turning to face her.
Duran’s accomplice. The assassin. He held something in his hands, but she couldn’t make out what it was.
Why was he here? Not waiting for her, surely. And yet, he didn’t look surprised to see her.
Well, there was nothing for it but to face him down. She was miles from help, and if she tried to escape, he could chase her down in a matter of seconds. Her back stiff with apprehension, she directed her feet to a spot a few yards from where he waited. When she came to a stop, he bowed.
One of them ought to say something, she supposed. Unable to meet his gaze, she turned her attention to the object cradled between his palms. It appeared to be a basket of some sort, elongated and pointed at each end.
“A boat?”
“A prayer.” He lifted it for her inspection. “And, yes, a boat.”
Puzzled, she drew closer. Woven of wide-bladed, deep-green grass, the boat was about ten inches long. “How is it a prayer?”
“It will carry an offering. If I may . . . ?”
Nodding, she watched him sink onto his heels and set the boat on a flat rock. Beside it was a small leather pouch with several compartments. He opened it and withdrew a handful of rice, which he sprinkled in the boat. Atop the rice, he laid out an intricate pattern made of almonds, golden raisins, and peppercorns.
“It’s lovely,” she said. “I’m afraid I don’t know much about your religion. Is it true that you worship many gods?”
After a moment’s silence, he directed her to a place beside him, and at his gesture, she dropped to her knees. “Look down,” he instructed, “and tell me what you see.”
Where the river pooled behind a fallen tree trunk, the water lay smooth as a mirror. She studied the face suspended there and the eyes that gazed back at her. “I see myself, of course.”
“Only a reflection of yourself,
memsahib.
It is you, and not you.” His forefinger stirred the water, scattering her image. “Another manifestation of you, and yet, not you. Please to frown.”
Beginning to understand, she produced a fierce scowl. “The image of a way I can be, but I’m not always that way. And of course, it’s me, but not me.”
“There are many paths,” he said, rising, “but all of them lead to the One. Or so I believe. Shall I make for you a prayer?”
Glancing up, she saw something flash in his hand. A knife.
He moved to a patch of rush grass and sheared off a handful of sharp-edged blades.
As her thudding heart began to resume its normal rhythm, she watched him plait the grass with nimble fingers. The knife had vanished as quickly as it appeared, in an undetectable motion that almost persuaded her he might well be, as Duran had told her, a professional killer.
But an assassin wouldn’t teach catechism beside a river, would he? Or make prayer boats in a dapple-shaded glen? “You’re an odd sort of valet,” she said, wishing a second too late that she could call back the words.
“Are you acquainted with many valets,
memsahib?”
“Only my father’s,” she admitted after some thought. “And he’s generally foxed. It must be somewhat difficult for you here in England. Do you intend to remain?”
“It is my intention to return home before the year ends, but what man can predict his fate? And are we to converse only in questions?”
The glint of humor in his dark eyes surprised her. “Why not?” she asked, taking up the challenge. “I have a great many of them. Did you expect to meet me here this morning?”
“How could I?” He tied off the prow of her boat and began to shape the stern. “But then, does any encounter occur by accident?”
“Oh, very well,” she said, standing and brushing off her skirts. “I give up. No more questions. You were referring, I presume, to fate. Of course, now I can no longer ask if you believe we lack free will, and that our actions are predestined.”
“In that case, I cannot reply. But when you appeared, I was put in mind of a story. Would you like to hear it?”
She wasn’t at all sure. He made her feel the way she always did in company with Duran, torn between fascination and a healthy instinct to flee. But it would be ill-mannered to leave now, before her boat was finished. She wondered where he had concealed that gleaming knife.
“I love stories,” she said with unconvincing cheerfulness. “I hope this one is not to be a sermon in disguise.”
“As to that, I cannot say. It is an old legend, and carries a different truth each time it is told and for each one who hears it.”
He stood motionless, except for the hands weaving the blades of rush grass, and spoke in a quiet voice. “In the old times there was a princess, beautiful and brave, who fell in love with a gallant prince. He was rich, heir to a kingdom and the lodestar of his people, but in his thirtieth year, he fell ill of a mysterious sickness. The physicians tried every remedy, but nothing availed. Only a year of life remained to him, said the astrologers, mourning.
“Not wishing others to witness his decline, the prince took himself into the forest where no one could find him, although everyone searched until, despairing, the king his father called them home.
“But the princess refused to accept that he must die. Journeying from her own country, venturing deep into the forest, all alone she searched in vain. At last, shortly before the day foretold by the astrologers, the day of her beloved’s doom, she came to a precipice. At its rim, or perhaps a little beyond it, stood Yama, the Lord of Death.
“‘Spare him,’ begged the princess, dropping to her knees. As her tears fell, they gathered at cliff’s edge and became a waterfall, which one can see to this day if one knows where to look. ‘Take me instead. Let me die in his place.’
“Sorrowful, Yama shook his head. ‘I am not called for you, my lady. You will sleep now, and when you waken, he will have stepped upon the moon. It will ask
Who art thou?
And if he knows to answer
I am thou,
he will be reborn. Perhaps in future you will meet, and recognize each other, and love again.’
“The princess tried to stay awake, reaching out her arms in supplication, but her eyelids closed like the fall of night. When they opened, a year had passed, and another went by before she found her way out of the forest. It is not known what became of her after that.”
Jessica found herself breathing heavily, her hands clenched in her skirts. “That’s a horrible story,” she said. “It has no point to it. Well, save that everyone, except maybe the prince, tried to do something to change what happened. But they all failed. What’s the use of a story where people do their best, all for nothing? And why did Yama refuse to spare the prince’s life?”
“Because he is the Lord of Death. It is his nature to kill, and his duty. He must fulfill his dharma, as must we all.”
“I don’t know what dharma is. Not mercy, I take it.”
“The word encompasses many meanings. Duty. Constancy. Brightness. The order of the universe. It was only a story,
memsahib.
And after all, it is no great thing to die. The shedding of a skin, like the serpent does without a thought. Nothing more than that.”
“But after molting, the snake wriggles away, quite alive.”
The Hindu’s lips curved in a barely perceptible smile. “So he does. I bow to your wisdom. And your boat is finished. What offering will you place in it?”
All the things he had told her, even his final evasion, were laced with messages she was helpless to interpret. And the idea of a prayer boat was suddenly repellent to her. “I brought nothing with me,” she said, wanting to leave and not at all certain he would permit her to go. The river seemed to be made up of fallen tears.
“Look around you,” he said gently. “Choose.”
She did, wanting to weep and wondering why. She had forsworn tears a long, long time ago. Eyes blurred, she broke an umbrella of pink blossoms from the flowering rush plant he had used to create the boat. What had been severed, she decided, laying the offering in the vessel, could be put together again.
He placed her boat in her hands, took up his own, and they walked a few steps beyond the calm pool to where the water resumed its summer pavane.
The birds had gone silent. No breeze stirred. Only the river, its course determined when the hills and valleys were formed, drove its way to the sea. They set their boats on the water at the same instant, and for a time, the woven vessels with their offerings of rice and almonds, raisins and peppercorns and flowers, navigated side by side on the current. Then the river curved again, and they were lost from sight.
Her prayer, when she remembered to produce one, was the first thing that came to her mind. And as it did, she knew it was the thing she most wanted. “Let Mariah be safe,” she whispered. “Oh, and put some happiness in her hands. She’ll never go after it on her own.”
Looking over at the silent, enigmatic man standing beside her, the man who carried a knife and wove grass into prayers, she could not imagine what kind of request he had made of his own deity.
“You should not, I think, be walking so far without an escort,” he said. “Will you return with me to the house?”
It felt as if she had been with him in this enchanted place for hours. But when she looked up through the canopy of oak, the sun stood directly overhead. Only noon, then. Plenty of time to complete her errand and return before anyone missed her. Not that anyone would. “Thank you,” she said, “but I’ve been walking these trails nearly all my life. I’ll be perfectly safe.”
There was a brief silence. “Yes,” he said, bowing. “You will be safe. Good day,
memsahib.”
She had gone only a little way when she looked back to see him in the same place, the breeze stirring the loose ties of his turban and the fringed ends of his gray sash. “Your name is Shivaji, I believe,” she said, reluctant to leave without having deciphered the puzzle of this man. “Has it a meaning?”