'Go on, Miss: tip me the grampus.'
'He said: "This was not made by a serpent of the jungle; this is a mark of the snake that lives in Man. " I took this to be a biblical allusion, Mr Reid, so I said, "Amen." Indeed I was wondering whether I should not add an "Hallelujah!" – but then the old khidmutgar burst into laughter and hurried away. And still, Mr Reid, I did not see the meaning of any of this. All night, I lay awake, thinking of it, but at dawn, suddenly I knew. And after that, of course, I could not remain any more in that house, so I sent a message to Jodu, through another boatman, and here I am. But to hide from Mr Burnham in Calcutta is very hard – it would only be a matter of time before I am discovered, and who knows what the consequences might be? So I must flee the country, Mr Reid, and I have decided where I must go.'
'And where is that?'
'The Mauritius Islands, Mr Reid. That is where I must go.'
All this while, even as he was working the oars, Jodu had been listening intently to Paulette, so that Zachary was led to conclude that this was the first he'd heard of what had happened between her and Mr Burnham. Now, as if in confirmation, a heated argument broke out and the boat began to drift, with Jodu resting on his oars as he poured out a stream of plaintive Bengali.
Glancing shorewards, Zachary's eye was caught by a glimmer of moonlight, on the roof of a green-tiled pavilion, and he realized that they had drifted far enough downriver to draw level with the Burnham estate. Bethel loomed in the distance, like the hull of a darkened ship, and the sight of it transported Zachary suddenly to the evening when Paulette had sat beside him at dinner, looking rosily virginal in her severe black gown; he remembered the musical breeze of her voice and how, through the evening, his head had been all a-sway at the thought that this girl, with her strange mixture of worldliness and innocence, was the same Paulette he'd stumbled upon in the 'tween-deck, locked in an embrace with the laundered lascar that she called her brother. Even then he had glimpsed a kind of melancholy behind her smile: now, in thinking of what might have caused it, a memory came to him, of listening to his mother as she told the story of the first time she was summoned by the master – his father – to the cabin in the woods that he kept for bedding his slaves: she was fourteen then, she'd said, and had stood trembling by the door, her feet unwilling to move, even when old Mr Reid told her to quit her snivelling and git over to the bed.
The question of whether Mr Burnham was a better or worse human being than the man who had fathered him, seemed, to Zachary, without meaning or purpose, for he took for granted that power made its bearers act in inexplicable ways – no matter whether a captain or bossman or just a master, like his father. And once this was accepted, it followed also that the whims of masters could be, at times, kind as well as cruel, for wasn't it just such an impulse that had caused old Mr Reid to grant his mother her freedom so that he, Zachary, would not be born a slave? And wasn't it true equally that Zachary himself had benefited enough from Mr Burnham to make it impossible for him to leap easily to judgement? Yet, it had still twisted him in a knot to hear his mother speak of that first time, in Mr Reid's cabin in the woods, and although Paulette's experience with Mr Burnham was in no wise similar, her story too had caused a nippering in the stays of his heart – a stirring, not just of sympathy, but also an awakening of an instinct of protectiveness. 'Miss Lambert,' he blurted out suddenly, breaking in on her altercation with Jodu, 'Miss Lambert, believe me, if I had the means to be a settled man, I would this minute offer to make you…'
Paulette cut him off before he could finish. 'Mr Reid,' she said proudly, 'you are yourself trumping very much if you imagine me to be in search of a husband. I am not a lost kitten, Mr Reid, to be sheltered in a menage. Indeed I can conceive of no union more contemptible than one in which a man adopts a wife out of pity!'
Zachary bit his lip. 'Didn't mean no offence, Miss Lambert. Believe me: wasn't pity made me say what I did.'
Squaring her shoulders, Paulette tossed the ghungta of her sari off her head. 'You are mistaken, Mr Reid, if you imagine that I asked you here to seek your protection – for if there is anything that Bethel has taught me it is that the kindness of men comes always attached to some prix…'
The word stunned Zachary. 'Avast, Miss Lambert! I didn say nothin like that. I know to watch my mouth around a lady.'
'Lady?' said Paulette scornfully. 'Is it to a lady that an offer like yours is made? Or rather to a woman… who sits in the window?'
'You're on the wrong tack, Miss Lambert,' said Zachary. 'Never meant nothin like that.' He could feel his face colouring in mortification now, and to calm himself, he took the oars out of Jodu's hands and began to row. 'So why did you want to see me then, Miss Lambert?'
'I asked you here, Mr Reid, because I wish to discover whether you are fit to bear the name you have been given: Zikri.'
'I don't take your meaning, Miss.'
'May I then rappel for you, Mr Reid,' said Paulette, 'that a few nights ago you told me that if I ever needed anything, I had only to ask? I asked you here tonight because I wish to know whether your promise was a mere bagatelle, lightly uttered, or whether you are indeed a man who honours his parole.'
Zachary could not help smiling. 'You're wrong there again, Miss: many a bar I've seen, but never those of a jail.'
'Word,' said Paulette, correcting herself. 'That is what I mean. I want to know whether you are a man of your word. Come: tell the truth. Are you a man of your word or not?'
'That depends, Miss Lambert,' said Zachary cautiously, 'on whether it's in my power to give you what you want.'
'It is,' said Paulette firmly. 'It most certainly is – or else I would not ask.'
'What is it then?' said Zachary, his suspicions deepening.
Paulette looked him in the eye and smiled. 'I would like to join the crew of the Ibis, Mr Reid.'
'What?' Zachary could not believe that he had heard aright: in that moment of inattention his grip slackened and the current tore the oars from his hands and would have swept them away but for the vigilance of Jodu, who snatched one from the water and used it to pole the other one in. Leaning over the gunwale to retrieve the oar, Zachary found himself exchanging glances with Jodu, who shook his head as if to indicate that he knew perfectly well what Paulette had in mind and had already decided that it could not be allowed. United by this secret understanding, each man took an oar for himself and they started to row together, sitting shoulder to shoulder, with their faces turned towards Paulette: no longer were they lascar and malum, but rather a confederacy of maleness, banding together to confront a determined and guileful adversary.
'Yes, Mr Reid,' Paulette repeated, 'that is my request to you: to be allowed to join your crew. I will be one of them: my hair will be confined, my clothing will be as theirs… I am strong… I can work…'
Zachary leant hard against the oar and the boat surged forward against the current, leaving the Burnham estate in its wake: he was glad to be rowing now, for there was a certain comfort in the hardness of the wooden handle that was grating against the calluses of his palms; there was something reassuring, even, about the dampness on his shoulder, where his arms were grinding against Jodu's: the proximity, the feel and smell of sweat – these were all reminders of the relentless closeness of shipboard life, the coarseness and familiarity which made sailors as heedless as animals, thinking nothing of saying aloud, or even being seen to do, that which elsewhere would have caused agonies of shame. In the fo'c'sle lay all the filth and vileness and venery of being a man, and it was necessary that it be kept contained to spare the world the stench of the bilges.