This attempt at humor brought a quirk to his lips, but it was gone almost as soon as it appeared.
“Christ! I’d sooner cut out my heart than let them—” His eyes met Anna’s, and he abruptly broke off. Clearly he didn’t want to frighten her by referring to what he thought their ultimate fate would be. “Are you hurt? Did they hurt you?”
“Not really. Not like they did you—and Graham. They knocked me out with a drugged dart, and when I woke up they were carrying me in here.”
“Thank God for small mercies, then.” His head swiveled around. “How’s Graham?”
Anna followed the path of Julian’s eyes.
“I think he’s in bad shape.”
Julian grimaced. “They cut him up pretty good, didn’t they? Hell, I should have left them to it. I don’t know what got into me.”
Anna regarded him solemnly. “I think that what you did was the bravest thing I ever saw.”
Julian grunted. “The bloody thing about it is, when I heard him screaming all I could think about was that he was my brother. I hate him down to his toes, but—”
Graham grunted, whimpered, and opened his eyes. Looking around, he made a noise deep in his throat, then started to thrash frantically, his legs making useless kicking motions against the dirt floor, his arms jerking as he yanked against his bonds.
“Graham! Stop it!” Julian’s voice was low but harsh. “Damn it, man, do you understand me?”
Julian’s words must have registered, because Graham stopped thrashing and lay still. His eyes closed, then opened.
“I’m hurt. Oh, I’m hurt,” he moaned. Anna, her heart filling with pity for him, scooted around so that he could see her.
“We’re here with you, Graham. Julian and I. You’re not alone.”
“B-bloody gypsy bastard,” Graham muttered. Anna wasn’t sure that the rest of her words even registered. Graham’s speech was barely coherent; his eyes had a glazed look to them.
“He saved your life, Graham.” After what Julian had sacrificed, Anna could not stand to hear his brother revile him.
“Leave it, Anna. It doesn’t matter.” This came from Julian. He was lying on his side, his head turned so that he could see them, his expression hard beneath the blood and gore that streaked his face.
“It does matter!” Anna said fiercely. Graham’s eyes opened again. He looked at Anna for a moment without even seeming to see her. Then his eyes moved past her to rest on Julian. Suddenly they sharpened, the glazed look disappearing. For that single moment it was clear that he was totally awake and aware.
“God, I hate you,” he said to Julian in a tone of abject loathing. “You should never have been born.”
With that his eyes closed. Instants later, his chest heaved violently and a rattling sound came from his throat. His mouth twitched once, and then he was still. Anna looked at him in silent shock. Surely he couldn’t be …?
“He’s dead,” Julian said bluntly, and shut his own eyes.
LIII
I
t seemed like hours later, but in reality could not have been more than twenty or so minutes, when the flap opened and a white-turbaned head atop a magnificently cloaked body ducked inside the hut. It was not until the islander straightened in the center of the hut that Anna recognized him,
“Raja Singha!” she gasped, and felt relief flutter in her heart.
But he regarded her unsmilingly. Any hope that he had come to rescue them died aborning.
“Memsahib,” he said, his tone remote. “I am sorry you have to die.”
“Oh, no! Raja Singha, no! Please.…”
“She’s done you no harm. Let her go.”
“I cannot do that, sahib. For either of you. For some time now it has been ordained that she should die, The goddess calls her. You did not have to die, had you not been with her. Your fate is merely unfortunate. But she—she has been chosen.”
“But why?” Anna’s voice was no more than a whisper, her eyes huge and piteous as they fixed on her former servant’s face.
“The goddess loves emeralds. Her eyes—they are emeralds. Like yours, memsahib. You will make a most pleasing sacrifice to the goddess because of your green eyes.”
“Oh, no! Please.…”
“You need have no fear, memsahib. You will not be alone in death. The sahib Paul is there, and we will send the little missy after you. You will have your family.”
“Not Chelsea!” Anna cried, terror-stricken.
“She was trapped in the house. In all likelihood she is already dead.” Julian’s voice was hard.
Raja Singha merely looked at him, clearly disbelieving. “You should not have come to Ceylon, sahib. In doing so, you chose the path that leads to your death,” he said, and turned away as if to leave them.
“Wait!” Julian’s voice was sharp. “You have tried to kill the memsahib and the little missy for some time, haven’t you? Did you also bring the cobra into the house and set fire to the field?”
“Alas, nothing succeeded,” Raja Singha said regretfully.
“So you thought to kill us all by burning down the house.”
Raja Singha looked pained. “We had no hand in that. The sahib here”—he pointed to Graham disdainfully—”did that on his own. Had he not, we could have sent the memsahib and the little missy to the goddess together. As it is …”
He shrugged. Then, despite Julian’s attempt to delay him further, he exited the hut. Seconds later four hideously costumed Thuggees entered. Without a word for their captives, they produced machetes and sliced through the prisoners’ bonds.
“Anna, I love you,” Julian said clearly as he was half dragged, half carried away.
Immediately Anna understood what he was telling her: that they were being sent forth to meet their deaths.
“I love you too,” she cried after him, despairingly. Then they were pulling her, too, from the hut.
Outside, Anna saw that the sun was peeping over the horizon. Great orange-and-scarlet pinwheels swirled through the purple sky. Birds called, monkeys chattered, a breeze rustled the treetops.
It was beautiful, this day on which she would die.
Anna trembled at the thought. What would they do to her? Would it hurt? Her thoughts flew to Chelsea. Please God protect her child. Kirti would hide her until Ruby could get her away. And Jim—Jim was not taken. Surely, between them, they could keep the child safe, get her on a ship bound for England.
The thought of her little girl orphaned brought tears to Anna’s eyes.
Up ahead Julian was being dragged down a sloping path. His hands tied behind his back now, he hung limply from his captors’ hands. Was he unconscious, or was he waiting to fight for his life, and hers, when he thought it would do the most good?
Looking at the chanting Thuggees around them, Anna despaired. One man was useless against so many, and Julian was weak and hurt.
They were yanking her along, one man on either side. Anna saw blue water in the distance and realized that they were near the ocean. The canoe must have carried them down the Kumbukkan River during the night. If her calculations were correct, the bit of shoreline they now faced was located in one of the remotest regions of Ceylon.
There would be no rescue by her fellow Englishmen. Anna doubted if anyone was even yet aware of the horror that had befallen Srinagar during the night.
Perhaps two dozen Thuggees waited on the beach. Raja Singha, in a magnificent robe, stood slightly apart from the others. At his feet was a canoe equipped with a sail and an outrigger, which was designed to prevent the fragile craft from turning over even in the heaviest of seas.
It was to this vessel that Julian was taken, and it was there that he tried to make a stand. Straightening with a roar, he managed to throw off one of the natives holding him—only to be swarmed by the others. He went down fighting, but he went down, to the accompaniment of Anna’s screams. Which were abruptly silenced as an oily, hideous-tasting gag was forced between her teeth.
It took only seconds for them to beat Julian unconscious. As far as she could tell they didn’t cut him again with their machetes, for which small mercy she was thankful. Instead they stripped him naked and placed him on his side in the canoe, his hands bound behind him and a gag in his mouth. Then, to Anna’s horror, they stripped her too, as methodically and disinterestedly as if she had been an object. Naked, struggling, she was carried to the canoe and forced to lie back to back with Julian. They were bound together, the ropes passing tightly around their throats and chests and thighs and ankles. Then great lashings of seawater were thrown over them, leaving Anna shivering despite the growing warmth of the day as the ropes were tightened yet again.
Raja Singha stepped up to the canoe at the last. Anna didn’t even bother to plead for mercy. It would be useless, she knew.
He reached beneath his robe and withdrew a flat velvet pouch, which he opened. Anna’s eyes widened as she realized what the pouch contained.
The emeralds! Raja Singha had stolen Julian’s emeralds! He must have taken them the previous night, before he slipped out to bring the Thuggees down upon them.
“You will take these with you as a gift to the goddess,” Raja Singha said. Leaning over Anna, he carefully fastened the gleaming green stones around her throat and waist, Anna felt them, cool and heavy against her bare skin, and she felt Raja Singha’s warm fingers as he worked the clasps. The remaining pieces he placed beside her in the velvet pouch. Only then did the notion that she was to be sacrificed in accordance with some pagan religious ritual really sink in. What a hideously foolish way to die!
Coughing violently, Anna managed to spit out her gag. “Raja Singha, you know better than this!” she said, desperation lending urgency to her voice. “There is no goddess! She does not exist! You—”
“You will not speak so of the goddess!” Roaring, Raja Singha slapped Anna’s face so hard that her ears rang and roughly shoved the rag back in her mouth. Tears sprang to her eyes as he stepped away with a curt signal to the others.
Amidst much shouting, the canoe was thrust into the surf, propelled by four islanders running and then swimming on either side until the craft was well beyond the pull of the tide, well beyond the headland even. Then the sail was set, and the natives turned as if one and headed back to shore.
Anna and Julian, naked and bound, were left alone to face the uncertain temper of the sea.
But they were alive. Anna, not knowing the full extent of the horrors that faced them, was inordinately grateful for that.
LIV
T
he sun came up, and the ropes dried and tightened, making it difficult to move or even breathe. The salt water dried on Anna’s skin, making it sting and itch unbearably. As the sun progressed over the sky, its rays burned her tender flesh until she was brick red and hurting all over. Even the emeralds grew warm in the heat and chafed her salt-roughened skin. She couldn’t even writhe in agony; the bonds were simply too tight.
A half inch or so of water in the bottom of the canoe added to her misery. It made the skin of her right side soggy and raw, while the skin on the rest of her body cooked. Her bruised arm ached; her mouth was parched, from the gag and lack of water, and her limbs had long since gone numb. Julian, whom she could feel breathing against her back, must be in the same miserable shape. They couldn’t even talk; the gags prevented that. She wasn’t even sure he was conscious.
If she had known the misery that the canoe represented, instead of thanking God for being set adrift in it she would have prayed instead for a quick death.
By early afternoon Julian was stirring. He had been unconscious, Anna realized, because it was so obvious from the movements of his body just when he came back to himself. Not that he could move much; because of the tightness of the ropes the least shift in his position caused her unbearable agony. The muffled whimpers emerging from behind her gag as he struggled to somehow free himself of his bonds made him go rigidly still. After that he was careful, although she could feel his hands moving between them as he worked to free himself. Which was hopeless, as Anna could have told him. The Thuggees had set them adrift in the pitiless sea to die, and die was precisely what they were going to do.
The sun went down at last, giving Anna a small amount of temporary ease as its burning rays could no longer roast her skin. But the cool wind that blew up as the night moved on soon caused her to shiver uncontrollably, while the skudding of the lightweight craft up and down over the waves made her so nauseous that she didn’t much care if she did die, as long as it was soon. Fatalistically she tried to sleep, dreading the morning and the reappearance of the sun. How long did it take one to die of thirst? she wondered as her tongue swelled in her mouth. Two days? Three?
So miserable had she become, and so resigned to her misery, that, when Julian’s hands, which had been writhing ceaselessly for hours, at last came free, she could not believe it. Even with his hands free, it took some time for him to maneuver his bound arms enough to permit him to pull his gag loose. But he did it, and Anna felt a quiver of renewed hope rise within her as for the first time in nearly twenty-four hours she heard his voice.
“Anna.” Her name was a dry rasp. “My poor Anna.”
Then he wriggled some more, and finally his fingers found the knot at the back of her head. It took a long time, his movements hampered by the ropes that cut ever deeper into her skin and his fingers working blindly, out he finally got it free. As the stinking cloth was pulled from her mouth, Anna took in deep, shuddering breaths. Her tongue ran over her parched lips but was so dry that it did little good.
“Julian,” she croaked when she could speak. “Oh, Julian, I don’t want to die.”
“I know, my love. I don’t, either. And we might not. If we can just get untied.…”
“The ropes are too tight,” she told him, despairing. “They poured seawater over the ropes to get them wet, and then, when the sun dried them, they tightened.”
Julian said nothing for a long moment. Then, when she called his name with sudden sharp anxiety, he spoke.
“Even with my hands free, there’s no way I can reach the knots. We have to throw ourselves over the side.”