Love's Odyssey (21 page)

The next day they located the kampong, the village, where the one-eyed man and the fire-haired woman had spent the night.

"Is she ill?" Adrien demanded.

"The nonee does not fight with the one-eye," Sito said. "They travel together."

Romell hadn't made any attempt, then, to escape. Was she too frightened? The man Sito spoke to didn't think of her as the Dutchman's captive. Adrien puzzled over this. Romell couldn't have known this man, it wasn't possible. Or was it?

A survivor from the Zuiderwind? No, he'd seen every survivor and none was badly scarred or one-eyed.

"Nonee call the man a name," Sito said. "They think the name is Paydor,"

Hair rose along Adrien's neck. For a moment he couldn't move. Was it possible Pieter Brouwer had survived the tortures of Southland? Adrien's teeth clenched as he pictured Romell with Pieter.

One stray tendril of thought snaked into his mind: Had she gone willingly with Pieter?

Adrien groaned and passed his hand over his face. The ground rocked under his feet and at first he didn't pay any attention. A stronger tremor nearly knocked him down, and he raised his head. Earthquake.

A distant rumbling began. One of the villagers grabbed a length of fiber and rushed to the tall coconut palm in the center of the huts. Quickly he climbed the spindly trunk into the top fronds.

"Api-api!" he shouted to the others, pointing and gesturing.

Adrien saw a dark cloud spurt into the sky and knew it must be coming from one of the volcanic cones.

"The mountain spirit is angry," Sito said. "She breathes fire. If she is angry enough, her fiery blood soon pours down the mountain to kill all it touches."

Chapter 21

Romell sat in the clearing, trying to plait vine fibers into a carrying bag. Pieter was hunting in the woods nearby, and Romell sighed as she thought of him.

Day by day he grew increasingly confused. His strength had diminished until now he rested much of the time. In the last few days their relationship, which had been slowly changing, had settled into one of mother and child. Romell looked out for him, helped him. It couldn't go on—what would become of them?

A sudden, shuddering roar threw Romell onto her side. Darkness blotted out the sun. She struggled to her feet, screaming Pieter's name. He staggered from the trees near their hut, kris in hand. Hot black speckles drifted onto Romell's bare shoulders as she ran toward him. She brushed at them frantically.

"The volcano!" she cried as she reached Pieter's side. She grabbed his free hand and pulled him down slope. "Hurry!" When he resisted, she screamed at him. "Pieter! The volcano is erupting!"

He turned his head from side to side dazedly, and she wondered if he had made any sense of her words. She pointed toward the cone, which was obscured by billowing smoke. As she watched, flames shot into the air with another tremendous roar; a choking, sulfurous smell filled her nostrils.

Pieter's gaze swung from the mountain to her and his eyes cleared. He started off down slope, pulling her after him. "Hurry!" he urged.

They fled, stumbling and sliding in their frantic flight. Hot ash showered through the trees, and Romell heard the ominous thud of stones crashing into the underbrush as the cone spit rocks.

"The jungle," Pieter gasped. "We must get into the jungle so the canopy will protect us."

Romell beat at a smoldering burn on her sarong and prayed none of the burning debris would set her hair aflame. To her right, a tangle of dead vines caught fire and ahead of them the crown of a tree flared.

Would they be safe even in the jungle? What if the green roof caught fire?

Choking and gasping, clothes torn by their flight through the underbrush, the pair finally staggered into the dimness of the jungle. Romell leaned against the sturdy aerial root of a parasite tree to catch her breath, but Pieter collapsed onto the ground, wheezing and groaning.

As she began to regain strength, Romell felt the prickle of burned skin on her shoulders, arms, and legs. Looking at her forearms, she found blisters, and Pieter's back showed red spots among the scars. He coughed, sitting up.

Watching him, Romell felt a chill run up her spine. He had failed badly--could he go on? She had no notion where they were, in relation to Batavia, and knew she could never find her way there alone. If anything happened to Pieter, what would become of her?

"The lava," he said, with effort. "If the lava comes we're done for. I can't go any farther."

Romell remembered a painting she had seen of molten rock running down the rocky sides of a mountain. Would that happen here?

"You can lean on me," she said. "We'll go on."

As she helped the exhausted Pieter deeper into the jungle, Romell realized she'd forgotten the noisy strangeness of traveling beneath this live canopy that shut out the sun. Giant ferns as big as trees towered over them, and it seemed that every insect and beast in the jungle was clamoring at once. She wondered if the animals protested the volcano's eruption.

"Must find a safe place to spend the night," Pieter warned.

"Soon," Romell responded, wondering how long they could keep moving. The stifling heat of the jungle oppressed her--she'd enjoyed the cooler air on the mountainside. Pieter's weight on her shoulder tired her, and she knew by his dragging footsteps that he was near the end of his strength.

A troop of monkeys swung by on lianas as thick as her wrist, chattering and peering curiously down at them. Staring up at the monkeys, Romell walked into a gigantic spiderweb that settled over her face. She cried out, frantically tearing at sticky strands.

“God!" Pieter intoned, yanking her backward.

A black and hairy spider as large as a man's hand waited on a fern frond just ahead.

"Ugh! I hate this jungle," Romell exclaimed as they detoured around the spider.

"I'll take care of you," Pieter assured her. She said nothing.

What good would it do to tell him it was the other way around now that she took care of him?

"We'll find another mountain," he went on. "I’ll build a house for you. We'll be happy together."

"Pieter," she said softly, "we must go back to Batavia."

"Never!" He pushed free of her and limped along on his own. "I won't share you with others."

Romell trailed after him. "What if something should happen to you?" she asked. "How could I find my way back alone?"

"If I must die, we'll die together," he said grimly. "No one else shall have you."

She didn't argue, watching as his steps faltered and he began staggering, finally falling to one knee. She helped him up.

"Put your arm around my shoulders," she said wearily.

Though the ground still trembled underfoot occasionally and they'd twice heard the now-muted roar of the volcano, no rocks fell here and the ash was shut away by the jungle roof or else had ceased falling. The stench of sulphur blended with the odor of rot and decay but, as far as Romell could tell, nothing was aflame.

"Torrentius tells of dancing girls and wine," Pieter said after a time, his voice thin and reedy, like a boy's. Romell knew he had drifted from the present again.

"Under God's heaven," he continued, in the same voice, "free and unfettered, where a man may do as he pleases. No wrong—there's no wrong in that world—all is right. Women to love as often as can be, soft breasts, warm loins."

Tears ran from his single eye. "Torrentius," he called, his voice rising. "Torrentius, where are you? Why have you forsaken me?" The last words he shrieked so loudly that the nearby jungle voices quieted momentarily.

"Hush," Romell murmured, trying not to think of the obscene painting Pieter had given her so long ago. What he spoke of now seemed a boy's desire, a boy yearning for the forbidden fruits of manhood.

"He's gone," Pieter said in a choked voice. "He's left me. I am lost." He broke into sobs.

"Hush," Romell repeated. "Torrentius is dead and gone. You don't need him."

"Not Torrentius," Pieter said. "God. God is gone from me." He could no longer walk, and Romell put both her arms around him to hold him upright. He wept on her shoulder.

Unwilling pity rose in Romell’s breast. She thought of words from a sonnet by John Donne:

If lecherous goats, if serpents envious

Cannot be damned, alas, why should I be?

Pieter had committed grievous sins in the eyes of God and of man, done evil for which there could be no redress. And yet--God was all merciful.

God, Oh! of thine only worthy blood

And my tears, make a heavenly Lethean flood,

And drown in it my sins black memory;

That Thou remember them, some claim as debt,

I think it mercy, if Thou wilt forget.

Perhaps God could forgive where she could not. John Donne had thought so.

"We must go on," she said to Pieter.

But he couldn't go far. Soon Romell was forced to ease him to the ground, where he slumped against a tree trunk. She crouched beside him, sitting on her heels as she'd been taught by the Southland natives. Had God intended their torture of Pieter as a purging to save his soul?

From nearby came the three-note eerie moaning cry that Pieter said a tiger made. A hunting tiger. She got to her feet, peering this way and that in the dim light. Unseen birds called, hidden frogs shrilled. Tense with fear, she waited for the tiger's next cry.

A brilliantly colored bird with a curved beak flew from the greenery above and lit on a fern. It cocked its head and peered one-eyed at her. Would a parrot come so close with a tiger near? A coughing bark somewhere behind her made her jump and whirl around. The parrot squawked and flapped away.

It's a deer, she told herself firmly. One of those little barking deer. A swishing began, grew louder, and Romell crouched by Pieter again. The barking call was repeated, closer to them, reverberating in Romell's ears. No deer could make that noise. The swishing stopped and a large black bird with a gigantic beak glided from the foliage. As it passed, it began to flap its wings, and Romell heard the same loud swish begin again.

She took a deep, relieved breath, then tugged at Pieter's arm. "Wake up," she urged. "We can't spend the night in the open like this. Pieter!"

He groaned and blinked his eyes, but didn't move. She tugged at his arm again, but wasn't able to budge him.

Although he looked at her, his gaze was un-focused. He shivered despite the burning heat of his skin, and Romell knew his fever had returned. I must find shelter for us, she told herself. Rising, she looked about and reluctantly decided there was no possible shelter in sight. She took a few steps away from Pieter, glancing back to be certain she could still see him.

Fearfully, she scanned the growing darkness for a hollow tree trunk, for any depression big enough to hide in. To her left, a parasite tree had set its dozens of aerial roots into the ground about its host. Sometimes these roots branched close enough together to form a partial shelter. Romell parted fern fronds twice her height to make her way toward the roots. A snarl froze her in her tracks.

Tawny eyes looked up at her from a whiskered striped face, the lip drawn up in a snarl that showed sharp white teeth. Romell, startled, stared down at the animal, hardly believing what she saw. She laughed in hysterical relief—the tiger club wasn't much bigger than a dog!

As Romell watched, the cub snarled again and began to back away. Belatedly, she realized that a cub that small wouldn't be on its own. She took her hands from the fern fronds and began edging away. She'd gone no more than a few steps when a heart-stopping roar echoed through the jungle.

Romell turned and raced for a root shaped like a bent knee, which she'd noticed in passing, and scrambled up onto it, reaching for a higher root and pulling herself up to a fork where she turned to look down, clutching at her perch to keep from falling.

A huge tiger bounded from the ferns, crossed to the aerial root she'd first climbed to and leaped on to the lowest bend. Romell screamed as the beast raised itself on its hind legs. The tiger's head came almost to the fork where Romell clung. She felt its hot breath on her legs as it snarled angrily.

She could go no higher, and she drew up her legs and screamed, again and again, expecting to feel the animal's cruel claws rip into her at any moment. The tiger roared and the terrible sound, so close to her, almost made Romell lose her grip on the root.

To her surprise, the beast dropped to all fours, growling, then jumped to the ground. Romell peered down, trying to see in the near darkness what the tiger would do next. She drew in her breath as she caught sight of Pieter, kris in hand.

"Pieter!" she cried.

The tiger roared and leaped. Beast and man tumbled to the ground, Pieter's shouts and curses mixed with the tiger's snarls. Together they thrashed and fought, and Romell saw the blade of the kris rise and fall.

Pieter screamed, a high-pitched bubbling yell, and then Romell heard him no more. The tiger's growling went on and on, gradually fading into a silence unbroken by jungle noises.

Romell found herself unable to move. Finally, she forced her fingers to loosen their desperate grip on the root and dropped down onto the bent knee of the lower root. She cautiously let herself down to the ground.

The tiger lay motionless, the kris embedded in its side, blood welling onto the striped coat. Pieter's legs were visible, but the rest of his body was hidden by the tiger's bulk.

Romell grabbed the tiger's tail but couldn't move the heavy carcass. She grasped Pieter's feet. With the last of her strength, she managed to pull his body from under the dead tiger. Romell knelt beside him, feeling rather than seeing the deep gashes in his chest.

"Romellje." His voice was faint and she started, so certain had she been that he was dead. She leaned closer.

"This time I will die," he whispered.

She touched his cheek, feeling blood on her fingers.

"I love you, my Romellje."

Tears filled her eyes. She had never loved Pieter. Until these past few days she had hated him. She bent until her lips were by his ear.

"I forgive you," she said, "for all you’ve done. Go absolved to God." She touched her lips to his, the first and only time she’d willingly kissed him.