“Well, not really. I know some people who wouldn’t answer the door if somebody showed up on their porch with a check for a million dollars — not unless they had called first.”
They were in a section of London that Toni didn’t recognize, a fairly well-to-do neighborhood. They had passed Elephant’s Castle, and she thought they were heading north and west, but she had gotten turned around during Carl’s tour of interesting places.
He laughed as he downshifted the Morgan’s manual transmission. He’d told her that the car, a classic from the fifties, spent most of its time in the shop, but that when it was running properly, he much enjoyed driving it. The problem with old British cars was that they only worked if they liked you. If you accidentally insulted one, it would pout, he said, and simply refuse to go until you had suffered enough.
They passed a big building off to the left. “Imperial War Museum,” Carl said. “We’re not far now.”
She had to admit, she had been enjoying her time with the silat instructor. Enough so that she considered getting to know him better than just as a teacher and friend. But despite having quit her job, and the breakup with Alex, she wasn’t ready to get into another relationship just yet. The wounds were still too raw.
“Here we go, then.”
He pulled the two-seater to the curb.
“This is a no-parking zone,” she said.
“Right. And the meter maid who usually works this stretch is one of my students. Orinda? Short, built like a fireplug? Be hell to pay in class if she had my motorcar towed.” He smiled.
The building they parked in front of was another of those sixteenth- or seventeenth-century things with columns and dormered windows and all, not particularly large or imposing, but stately enough.
They walked up to the front. A uniformed, but unarmed, guard saw them, tipped his hat, and said, “Morning, Mr. Stewart.”
“Hello, Bryce. Lovely day.”
Toni looked at him. “Come here a lot, do you?”
“Now and then.”
There was a brass plate on the wall next to a pair of tall wooden doors, and Toni saw that they were about to enter the London Museum of Indonesian Art.
Ah.
She happened to notice a list of the board of directors for the museum posted just inside the door, and prominent on the list was the name “Carl Stewart.”
She looked at her companion. “You’re on the board of directors here?”
He shrugged. “My family contributes to various foundations and such. Give enough money, they put your name up somewhere. It’s nothing, really.”
“Place seems to be empty except for us,” she said.
“Well, that is one of the perks of having your name on the wall. They’ll open a bit early for you.”
When she’d first met Stewart, just after going to his silat school in a bad section of town, she’d used her access to the local computer nets to check him out. His family was more than well-off, a thing he had not mentioned. The rich were different, and not just because they had more money.
“This way.”
She followed him down a corridor with shadow puppets mounted on the walls, and into a room at the end.
“Wow,” she said.
All around here, in freestanding glass cases, or in clear-fronted cabinets against the walls, were scores — hundreds — of krises. Some were in wooden sheathes, some out, revealing a multitude of shapes and patterns of whorled steel in the blades.
“Wow,” she said again.
“Impressive, isn’t it? The largest collection of such daggers outside of Indonesia.”
Toni nodded absently, looking at a seven-waved black steel blade with inlaid lines of gold outlining the body of a dragon whose tail undulated all the way up to the weapon’s point. The dragon’s head was at the base of the blade, opposite the longer side of the asymmetrical hilt.
“Raja naga,” Carl said. “Royal dragon. It was made for a Javanese sultan around 1700. Both of those sheathes there belong to it — that one is the formal ladrang, the one shaped like a ship, the other one, with the rounded ends, that’s the gayaman, for informal wear.”
The sheathes were made of carved wood, with embossed metal sleeves over the long shaft in which the dagger rode.
“What’s the pamor?” Toni asked.
He looked away from the exquisite blade to her. “You know about these things?”
“Not really,” she said. “My guru presented me with one a few months back. I know just enough to ask questions.”
“Ah. Well, the pamor on this one is bulu ayam, cock feather. I don’t know enough about them to be sure about the dapur.”
Toni nodded. Pamor was an Indonesian word that described the pattern found in the steel. Genuine krises—sometimes spelled k-e-r-i-s—were generally made of hammered, welded steel mixed with nickel. When the final grinding and staining was done to finish the weapon, the iron in it would turn black, but the nickel would tend to stay shiny, thus creating designs in the metal. According to her guru, the staining process usually involved soaking the metal in a mixture of lime juice and arsenic, which probably accounted for the kris’s reputation as a poisoned blade.
Dapur was the overall shape, the proportions and esthetics of the blade combined with the handle and guard. Krises could be straight or curved, the latter ranging from a few undulations to more than thirty, but always, she had been told, an odd number of waves.
For hundreds of years, especially on the larger islands, no Indonesian boy could officially become a man until an elder, usually his father or uncle, presented him with a kris. More than a few were given to young women, too. They were not only weapons, but imbued with magic as part of their construction. The size, shape, pattern, time it was made, and desires of the potential owner were all taken into account by the smith, called an empu, who forged the weapon. Some krises were reputed to draw fire away from a house, protect the owner against black magic, or to rattle in the sheath to warn of approaching danger.
Toni’s heirloom, a gift from her silat teacher, was in a safety-deposit box back in New York City. Her guru had given it to her so that its magic might help her get Alex. It had apparently worked.
Too bad it hadn’t worked to keep him.
Carl led her around, pointing out the various configurations of the daggers. They were beautiful, if you could take the time to look at them properly.
“This is my favorite, right here,” he said. He opened the glass case, which was not locked. The British were a lot more trusting about such things, Toni had noticed. In some of the Royal museums, you could literally touch priceless works of art with your nose, if you were that stupid. They just hung unprotected on the walls.
Carl took the kris and its sheath out. He gave it a quick nod, a kind of military bow, then held it up so she could see the designs in the steel. “This is a five-wave dwi warna — a two-colored, or double-pamor—blade. By the guard, it’s beras wutah, rice grains. From here to the point, it’s buntel mayit—the twisted pattern called death shroud. A very powerful pamor, this latter, particularly suitable for a warrior.
“It’s a Balinese blade, they are generally longer and heavier than the Javanese make, though it has been stained and dressed in the Javanese style. Solo seven-plane ukiran handle, of kemuning wood. Look how intricate the carved cecekan is on the inside, here and here.”