Ever since the night of her wedding, Deeti had been haunted by images of her own violation: now, watching from the shelter of the poppy field, she bit the edge of her palm, to keep from crying out aloud. So it could happen to a man too? Even a powerful giant of a man could be humiliated and destroyed, in a way that far exceeded his body's capacity for pain?

In averting her eyes, her attention was drawn to the two grazing horses, which had strayed into the poppy field and were now quite close to her: another step and she would be within reach of their flanks. It was the work of a moment to find a poppy pod that had already shed its leaves; in falling, they had left behind a crown of sharp, dry p.r.i.c.kles. Creeping towards one of the horses, she made a hissing sound as she dug the spiky pod into its withers. The animal reared, as if in response to a snakebite, and galloped off, pulling its tethered companion along in its flight. The horse's panic was instantly communicated to the black mare; in breaking free it lashed out with its hind legs, hitting Kalua in the chest. The three landlords, after standing a moment nonplussed, went racing off in pursuit of their mounts, leaving Kalua unconscious in the sand, naked and smeared in dung.

It took Deeti a while to summon the courage to take a closer look. When it became clear that the landlords were really gone, she crept out of her hiding-place and lowered herself to a squatting position beside Kalua's unconscious body. He was lying in shadow so she couldn't tell whether he was breathing or not. She put out a hand to touch his chest, but only to s.n.a.t.c.h it back: to think of touching a naked man was bad enough - and when that man was of Kalua's station, wasn't it almost a plea for retribution? She cast a furtive glance around her, and then, in defiance of the world's unseen presence, she put out a finger and allowed it to fall on Kalua's chest. The drumbeat of his heart rea.s.sured her and she quickly withdrew her hand, preparing to dart back into the poppies if his eyes showed any sign of coming open. But they remained shut and his body lay so peacefully inert that she felt no fear in examining him more closely. She saw now that his size was deceptive, that he was quite young, with no more than a faint feathering of hair on his upper lip; lying crumpled in the sand, he was no longer the dark giant who called at her home twice a day, without speaking, or allowing himself to be seen: he was just a fallen boy. Her tongue clicked involuntarily at the sight of the dung around his middle; she went to the riverside, pulled up a handful of rushes and used them to wipe away the smears. His langot was lying nearby, glowing white in the moonlight, and this too she fetched and fastidiously opened out.

It was when she was dropping the langot over him that her eyes were drawn, despite herself, to focus on his nakedness - somehow, even as she was cleaning him, she had managed not to take it in. She had never before, in a state of consciousness, been so close to this part of a man's body and now she found herself staring, both in fear and curiosity, seeing again that image of herself on her wedding night. As if of its own accord, her hand snaked out and laid itself down, and she felt, to her amazement, the softness of mere flesh: but then, as she grew accustomed to his breathing, she became aware of a faint stirring and swelling, and suddenly it was as if she were waking to a reality in which her family and her village were looking over her shoulder, watching as she sat with her hand resting intimately upon the most untouchable part of this man. Recoiling, she went quickly back into the field, where she hid herself among the poppies and waited as she had before.

After what seemed like a long time, Kalua rose slowly to his feet and looked around himself, as if in surprise. Then, knotting his langot around his loins, he staggered away, with a look of such confusion that Deeti was certain - or almost - that he had been totally unconscious of her presence.

Two years had pa.s.sed since then, but far from fading, the events of that night had attained a guilty vividness in her memory. Often, as she lay beside her opium-dazed husband, her mind would revisit the scene, sharpening the details and refreshing certain particulars - all of this without her permission and despite her every effort to steer her thoughts in other directions. Her discomfort would have been greater still if she had believed that Kalua had access to the same images and recollections - but she had, as yet, seen no sign that he remembered anything from that night. Still, a nagging doubt remained, and since then she had always taken good care to avoid his eyes, shrouding her face in her sari whenever he was near.

So it was with some apprehension that Deeti observed Kalua now, from the shelter of her faded sari: the folds of fabric betrayed nothing of the concentration with which she watched for his response to her presence. She knew that if his eyes or his face were to betray any knowledge, any recollection, of her part in the events of that night, then she would have no option but to turn on her heel and walk away: the awkwardness would be too great to ignore, for not only was there the question of what the landlords had tried to do to him - the shame of which might well destroy a man if he knew that it had been witnessed - but there was also the shamelessness of her own curiosity, if that was indeed all it was.

To Deeti's relief, the sight of her seemed to kindle no spark in Kalua's dull eyes. His ma.s.sive chest was clothed in a discoloured, sleeveless vest, and around his waist he was wearing his usual dirty cotton langot - out of the folds of which his oxen were now picking bits of straw, gra.s.s and fodder while he stood in front of his shack, shifting his weight between his pillar-like legs.

Ka bhaile? What's happening? he said at last in his hoa.r.s.e, unmindful way, and she felt sure now that if he'd ever had any memory of that night, his slow, simple mind had long since lost track of it.

Ey-re Kalua, she said, that man of mine is unwell at the factory; he has to be brought home.

He gave this some thought, c.o.c.king his head, and then nodded: All right; I'll bring him back.

Gaining confidence, she took out the package she had prepared and held it up in her hand: But this is all I can give you in payment, Kalua - don't expect anything more.

He stared at it: What is it?

Afeem, Kalua, she said briskly. At this time of year, what else do people have in their houses?

He began lumbering towards her, so she placed the package on the ground and stepped quickly back, clutching her daughter to her side: in the full light of day, it was unthinkable that any kind of contact should occur between herself and Kalua, even that which might result from the pa.s.sing of an inert object. But she kept careful watch, as he picked up the leaf-wrapped package and sniffed its contents; it occurred to her to wonder, fleetingly, whether he, too, was an opium-eater - but she dismissed the thought instantly. What did it matter what his habits were? He was a stranger, not a husband. Yet, she felt oddly glad when, instead of putting the opium away for his own use, he broke the lump in two and fed the halves to his oxen. The animals chewed contentedly as he tied them to his yoke, and when the cart had drawn abreast of her, she climbed in with her daughter and sat facing backwards, with her legs dangling over the edge. And so they made their way towards Ghazipur, sitting at either end of the cart's bamboo platform, so far apart that not even the loosest of tongues could find a word to say, by way of scandal or reproach.

On that very afternoon, five hundred miles to the east of Ghazipur, Azad Naskar - known universally by his nickname, Jodu - was also preparing to embark on the journey that would bring him athwart the bows of the Ibis and into Deeti's shrine. Earlier that day, Jodu had buried his mother in the village of Naskarpara, using one of his last coins to pay a molla-shaheb to read the Qur'an over her freshly dug grave. The village was some fifteen miles from Calcutta, in a featureless stretch of mud and mangrove, on the edge of the Sundarbans. It was little more than a huddle of huts, cl.u.s.tered around the tomb of the Sufi fakir who had converted the inhabitants to Islam a generation or two before. If not for the fakir's dargah the village might well have melted back into the mud, its inhabitants not being the kind of people to tarry long in one place: most of them earned their living by wandering on the water, working as boatmen, ferry-wallahs and fishermen. But they were humble folk, and few among them possessed the ambition or impetuosity to aspire to jobs on ocean-going ships - and of that small number, none had ever aspired more ardently to a lascar's livelihood than Jodu. He would have been long gone from the village if not for his mother's health, their family circ.u.mstances being such that in his absence, she was sure to have suffered complete neglect. Through the duration of her illness, he had tended to his mother in a fashion that was both impatient and affectionate, doing what little he could to provide some comfort in her last days: now, he had one final errand to perform on her behalf, after which he would be free to seek out the ghat-serangs who recruited lascars for deep-water ships.

Jodu, too, was a boatman's son, and he was, by his own reckoning, no longer a boy, his chin having become suddenly so fecund in its crop of hair as to require a weekly visit to the barber. But the changes in his physique were so recent and so volcanic that he had yet to grow accustomed to them: it was as if his body were a smoking crater that had just risen from the ocean and was still waiting to be explored. Across his left eyebrow, the legacy of a childhood mishap, there was a deep gash where the skin showed through, with the result that when seen from a distance, he seemed to have three eyebrows instead of two. This disfigurement, if it could be called that, provided an odd highlight to his appearance, and years later, when it came time for him to enter Deeti's shrine, it was this feature that was to determine her sketch of him: three gently angled slashes in an oval.

Jodu's boat, inherited years before from his father, was a clumsy affair, a dinghy made from hollowed-out logs and bound together with hemp ropes: within hours of his mother's burial, Jodu had loaded it with his few remaining possessions and was ready to leave for Calcutta. With the current behind him, it did not take long to cover the distance to the mouth of the ca.n.a.l that led to the city's docks: this narrow waterway, recently excavated by an enterprising English engineer, was known as Mr Tolly's Nullah, and for the privilege of entering it, Jodu had to hand the last of his coins to the keeper of its tollhouse. The narrow ca.n.a.l was busy, as always, and Jodu took a couple of hours to make his way through the city, past the Kalighat temple and the grim walls of Alipore Jail. Emerging into the busy waterway of the Hooghly, he found himself suddenly in the midst of a great mult.i.tude of vessels - crowded sampans and agile almadias, towering brigantines and tiny baulias, swift carracks and wobbly woolocks; Adeni buggalows with rakish lateen sails and Andhra bulkats with many-tiered decks. In steering through this press of traffic, there was no avoiding an occasional sc.r.a.pe or b.u.mp and for each of these he was roundly shouted out by serangs and tindals, c.o.ksens and bosmans; an irritable bhandari threw a bucket of slop at him and a lewd seacunny taunted him with suggestive gestures of his fist. Jodu responded by imitating the familiar shouts of sea officers - 'What cheer ho? Avast!' - and left the lascars gaping at the fluency of his mimicry.

After a year spent in rural seclusion, it made his spirits soar to hear these harbour-front voices again, with their outpourings of obscenity and abuse, taunts and invitations - and to watch the lascars swinging through the ringeen made his own hands grow restless for the feel of rope. As for the nearby sh.o.r.e, his gaze kept straying from the G.o.downs and bankshalls of Kidderpore, to the twisting lanes of Watgunge where the women sat on the steps of their kothis, painting their faces in preparation for the night. What would they say to him now, those women who'd laughed and turned him away because of his youth?

Beyond Mr Kyd's shipyard, the traffic on the water thinned a little, and Jodu had no difficulty in pulling up to the embankment at Bhutghat. This part of the city lay directly opposite the Royal Botanical Gardens, on the far side of the Hooghly, and the ghat was much used by the Gardens' staff. Jodu knew that one of their boats would pull up here sooner or later, and sure enough, one such appeared within the hour, carrying a young English a.s.sistant curator. The lungi-clad c.o.ksen at the helm was well-known to Jodu, and once the sahib had stepped off, he pushed his own boat closer.

The c.o.ksen recognized him at once: Arre Jodu na? Isn't that you - Jodu Naskar?

Jodu made his salams: Salam, khalaji. Yes, it's me.

But where have you been? the c.o.ksen asked. Where's your mother? It's more than a year since you left the Gardens. Everyone's been wondering ...

We went back to the village, khalaji, said Jodu. My mother didn't want to stay on after our sahib died.

I heard, said the c.o.ksen. And there was some talk that she was ill?

Jodu nodded, lowering his head: She died last night, khalaji.

Allah'r rahem! The c.o.ksen shut his eyes and muttered: G.o.d's mercy on her.

Bismillah ... Jodu murmured the prayer after him and then added: Listen, khalaji - it's for my mother that I'm here: before she died she told me to be sure to find Lambert-sahib's daughter - Miss Paulette.

Of course, said the c.o.ksen. That girl was like a daughter to your mother: no ayah ever gave a child as much love as she did.

... But do you know where Paulette-missy is? It's more than a year since I last saw her.

The c.o.ksen nodded and raised a hand to point downriver: She lives not far from here. After her father died she was taken in by a rich English family. To find her, you'll have to go to Garden Reach. Ask for the mansion of Burnham-sahib: in the garden there's a chabutra with a green roof. You'll know it the moment you see it.

Jodu was delighted to have achieved his end with such little effort. Khoda-hafej khalaji! Waving his thanks, he pulled his oar from the mud and gave it a vigorous heave. As he was pulling away, he heard the c.o.ksen talking excitedly to the men around him: Do you see that boy's dinghy? Miss Paulette - the daughter of Lambert-sahib, the Frenchman - she was born in it: in that very boat ...

Jodu had heard the story so many times, told by so many people, that it was almost as if he had witnessed the events himself. It was his kismat, his mother had always said, that accounted for the strange turn in their family's fate - if she hadn't gone home to her own village for Jodu's birth, it was certain that their lives would never have embraced Paulette.

It had happened soon after Jodu was born: his boatman father had come in his dinghy to fetch his wife and child from her parents' home, where she had gone for the delivery. They were on the Hooghly River when a brisk, squally wind had started to blow. With the day nearing its end, Jodu's father had decided that he would not risk crossing the river at that time: it would be safer to spend the night by the sh.o.r.e and make another attempt the next morning. Keeping to the bank, the boat had arrived eventually at the brick-bound embankment of the Royal Botanical Gardens: what better resting-place could there be than this fine ghat? Here, with the boat safely moored, they had eaten their evening meal and settled in to wait out the night.

They had not been long asleep when they were woken by a clamour of voices. A lantern had appeared, bringing with it the face of a white man: the sahib had thrust his face under their boat's thatched hood and uttered many words of frantic gibberish. It was clear he was very worried about something, so they were not surprised when one of his servants intervened to explain that there was a dire emergency; the sahib's pregnant wife was in great pain and in desperate need of a white doctor; there were none to be had on this side of the river, so she had to be taken to Calcutta, on the other bank.

Jodu's father had protested that his boat was too small to attempt a crossing, with no moon above, and the water churning beneath shifting winds. Far better that the sahib take a big bora or a budgerow - some boat with a large crew and many oars; surely there were some such at the Botanical Gardens?

So there were, came the answer; the Garden did indeed have a small fleet of its own. But as luck would have it, none of those boats were available that night: the head curator had commandeered them all, in order to take a party of his friends to the annual Ball of the Calcutta Exchange. The dinghy was the only boat presently moored at the ghat: if they refused to go, two lives would be lost - the mother's as well as the child's.

Having herself recently suffered the pains of childbirth, Jodu's mother was touched by the evident distress of the sahib and his mem: she added her voice to theirs, pleading with her husband to accept the commission. But he continued to shake his head, relenting only after the handing over of a coin, a silver tical worth more than the value of the dinghy itself. With this unrefusable inducement the bargain was sealed and the Frenchwoman was carried on board, in her litter.

One look at the pregnant woman's face was enough to know that she was in great pain: they cast off at once, steering towards Calcutta's Babughat. Even though it was windy and dark, there was no difficulty in setting a course because the lights of the Calcutta Exchange had been especially illuminated for the annual Ball and were clearly visible across the river. But the winds grew stronger and the water rougher as they pulled away from the sh.o.r.e; soon the boat was being buffeted with such violence that it became difficult to hold the litter still. As the rolling and tossing increased, the memsahib's condition grew steadily worse until suddenly, right in midstream, her waters broke and she went into the throes of a premature labour.

They turned back at once, but the sh.o.r.e was a long way off. The sahib's attention was now focused on comforting his wife and he could be of no help in the delivery: it was Jodu's mother who bit through the cord and wiped the blood from the girl's tiny body. Leaving her own child, Jodu, to lie naked in the boat's bilges, she took his blanket, wrapped the girl in it, and held her close to her dying mother. The child's face was the last sight the memsahib's eyes beheld: she bled to death before they could return to the Botanical Gardens.

The sahib, distraught and grieving, was in no position to deal with a screaming infant: he was greatly relieved when Jodu's mother quietened the baby by putting her to her breast. On their return, he made another request - could the boatman and his family stay on until an ayah or wet-nurse could be engaged?

What could they say but yes? The truth was that Jodu's mother would have found it hard to part from the girl after that first night: she had opened her heart to the baby the moment she held her to her breast. From that day on, it was as if she had not one child but two: Jodu, her son, and her daughter Putli - 'doll' - which was her way of domesticating the girl's name. As for Paulette, in the confusion of tongues that was to characterize her upbringing, her nurse became Tantima - 'aunt-mother'.

This was how Jodu's mother entered the employment of Pierre Lambert, who had but recently come to India to serve as the a.s.sistant curator of Calcutta's Botanical Gardens. The understanding was that she would stay only until a replacement could be found - but somehow no one else ever was. Without anything ever being formally arranged, Jodu's mother became Paulette's wet-nurse, and the two children spent their infancy lying head-to-head in her arms. Such objections as Jodu's father might have had disappeared when the a.s.sistant curator bought him a new and much better boat, a bauliya: he soon went off to live in Naskarpara, leaving behind his wife and child, but taking his new vessel with him. From that time on, Jodu and his mother saw him but rarely, usually at the beginning of the month, around the time when she was paid; with the money he took from her, he married again and sired a great number of children. Jodu saw these half-siblings twice a year, during the 'Id festivals, when he was made to pay reluctant visits to Naskarpara. But the village was never home to him in the way of the Lambert bungalow, where he reigned as Miss Paulette's favoured playmate and mock-consort.

As for Paulette, the first language she learnt was Bengali, and the first solid food she ate was a rice-and-dal khichri cooked by Jodu's mother. In the matter of clothing she far preferred saris to pinafores - for shoes she had no patience at all, choosing, rather, to roam the Gardens in bare feet, like Jodu. Through the early years of their childhood they were all but inseparable, for she would neither sleep nor eat unless Jodu was present in her room. There were several other children in the bungalow's quarters, but only Jodu was allowed free access to the main house and its bedrooms. At an early age, Jodu came to understand that this was because his mother's relationship with her employer was special, in a way that required her to remain with him until late at night. But neither he nor Putli ever referred to this matter, accepting it as one of the many unusual circ.u.mstances of their peculiar household - for Jodu and his mother were not the only ones to be cut off from their own kind; Paulette and her father were perhaps even more so. Rarely, if ever, did white men or women visit their bungalow, and the Lamberts took no part in the busy whirl of Calcutta's English society. When the Frenchman ventured across the river, it was only for what he liked to call 'busy-ness': other than that he was wholly preoccupied with his plants and his books.

Jodu was more worldly than his playmate, and it did not escape him that Paulette and her father were at odds with the other white sahibs: he had heard it said that the Lamberts were from a country that was often at war with England, and at first it was to this that he attributed their apartness. But later, when his shared secrets with Putli deepened in import, he came to understand that this was not the only difference between the Lamberts and the English. He learnt that the reason why Pierre Lambert had left his country was that he had been involved, in his youth, in a revolt against his king; that he was shunned by respectable English society because he had publicly denied the existence of G.o.d and the sanct.i.ty of marriage. None of this mattered in the least to the boy - if such opinions served to insulate their household against other sahibs then he could only be glad of them.

But it was neither age nor sahibdom, but a much subtler intrusion that loosened the bonds between the children: at a certain moment Putli began to read, and then there was not enough time in the day for anything else. Jodu, on the other hand, lost interest in letters as soon as he learnt to decipher them; his own inclinations had always drawn him towards the water. He laid claim to his father's old boat - Putli's birthplace - and by the age of ten had become adept enough in its use, not just to serve as a boatman for the Lamberts but also to accompany them when they travelled in search of specimens.

Odd as their household was, its arrangements seemed so secure, permanent and satisfying that none of them were prepared for the disasters that followed on Pierre Lambert's unexpected death. He perished of a fever before he could set his affairs in order; shortly after his pa.s.sing, it was discovered that he had acc.u.mulated substantial debts in furthering his researches - his mysterious 'busy-ness' trips to Calcutta were revealed to have consisted of surrept.i.tious visits to moneylenders in Kidderpore. It was then too that Jodu and his mother paid the price of their privileged a.s.sociation with the a.s.sistant curator. The resentments and jealousies of the other servants and employees were quickly made manifest in angry accusations of deathbed theft. The hostility became so acute that Jodu and his mother were forced to slip away, in their boat. Left with no other option, they returned to Naskarpara, where they were given grudging refuge by their step-family. But years of comfortable bungalow-living had left Jodu's mother unfit for the privations of village life. The irreversible decline of her health started within a few weeks of their arrival and did not end until her death.

Altogether, Jodu had spent fourteen months in Naskarpara: in that time he had neither seen Paulette nor received any word from her. On her deathbed his mother had thought often of her old charge and had begged Jodu to meet with Putli one last time, so that she would know, at least, how much her old ayah had missed her in the last days of her life. Jodu, for his part, had long been aware that he and his erstwhile playmate would one day be reclaimed by their separate worlds and he would have been content to leave it at that: if not for his mother, he would not have set out to look for Paulette. But now that he knew he was nearing the place where she lived, he found himself growing both eager and apprehensive: Would Putli agree to meet him, or would she have him turned out by the servants? If he could but see her face to face, there'd be so much to talk about, so much to tell. Looking ahead, downriver, he spotted a little pavilion with a green roof and quickened his pace.

Four.

Heading into Ghazipur, in Kalua's ox-cart, Deeti felt strangely light in spirit, despite the grim nature of her errand: it was as if she knew, in her heart, that this was the last time she would be travelling that road with her daughter, and was determined to make the best of it.

The cart was slow in making its way through the warren of lanes and bazars that lay at the heart of the town, but once the road curved towards the riverfront, the congestion eased a little and the surroundings became more gracious. Deeti and Kabutri rarely had occasion to come into town, and they stared in fascination at the walls of the Chehel Satoon, a forty-pillared palace built by a n.o.bleman of Persian ancestry, in imitation of a monument in Isfahan. A short while later they pa.s.sed a still-greater wonder, a structure of Grecian inspiration, with fluted columns and a soaring dome; this was the mausoleum of Lord Cornwallis, of Yorktown fame, who had died in Ghazipur thirty-three years before: as the ox-cart rumbled past, Deeti showed Kabutri the statue of the English Laat-Sahib. Then, suddenly, as the cart was trundling around a curve in the road, Kalua clicked his tongue, to rein in the oxen. Jolted by the abrupt change of pace, Deeti and Kabutri swivelled around to look ahead - and their smiles died on their lips.

The road was filled with people, a hundred strong or more; hemmed in by a ring of stick-bearing guards, this crowd was trudging wearily in the direction of the river. Bundles of belongings sat balanced on their heads and shoulders, and bra.s.s pots hung suspended from their elbows. It was clear that they had already marched a great distance, for their dhotis, langots and vests were stained with the dust of the road. The sight of the marchers evoked both pity and fear in the local people; some of the spectators clucked their tongues in sympathy but a few urchins and old women threw pebbles into the crowd, as if to ward off an unsavoury influence. Through all this, despite their exhaustion, the marchers seemed strangely unbowed, even defiant, and some threw the pebbles right back at the spectators: their bravado was no less disturbing to the spectators than their evident dest.i.tution.

Who are they, Ma? Kabutri asked, in a low whisper.

I don't know - prisoners maybe?

No, said Kalua immediately, pointing to the presence of a few women and children among the marchers. They were still speculating when one of the guards stopped the cart and told Kalua that their leader and duffadar, Ramsaranji, had hurt his foot, and would need to be driven to the nearby river-ghat. The duffadar appeared as the guard was speaking, and Deeti and Kabutri were quick to make room for him: he was an imposing man, tall and full-bellied, dressed in immaculate white, with leather shoes. He carried a heavy stick in one hand and wore a huge dome of a turban on his head.

At first they were too frightened to speak and it was Ramsaranji who broke the silence: Where've you come from? he said to Kalua. Kahwa se awela?

From a nearby village, malik; parose ka ga se awat bani.

Deeti and Kabutri had been straining their ears, and when they heard the duffadar speaking their own Bhojpuri tongue, they edged towards him, so as to be able to overhear all that was said.

At length, Kalua plucked up the courage to ask: Malik, who are these people who are marching?

They are girmitiyas, said Ramsaranji, and at the sound of that word Deeti uttered an audible gasp - for suddenly she understood. It was a few years now since the rumours had begun to circulate in the villages around Ghazipur: although she had never seen a girmitiya before, she had heard them being spoken of. They were so called because, in exchange for money, their names were entered on 'girmits' - agreements written on pieces of paper. The silver that was paid for them went to their families, and they were taken away, never to be seen again: they vanished, as if into the netherworld.

Where are they going, malik? said Kalua, in a hushed voice, as if he were speaking of the living dead.

A boat will take them to Patna and then to Calcutta, said the guard. And from there they'll go to a place called Mareech.

Unable to restrain herself any longer, Deeti joined in the conversation, asking, from the shelter of her sari's ghungta: Where is this Mareech? Is it near Dilli?

Ramsaranji laughed. No, he said scornfully. It's an island in the sea - like Lanka, but farther away.

The mention of Lanka, with its evocation of Ravana and his demon-legions, made Deeti flinch. How was it possible that the marchers could stay on their feet, knowing what lay ahead? She tried to imagine what it would be like to be in their place, to know that you were forever an outcaste; to know that you would never again enter your father's house; that you would never throw your arms around your mother; never eat a meal with your sisters and brothers; never feel the cleansing touch of the Ganga. And to know also that for the rest of your days you would eke out a living on some wild, demon-plagued island?

Deeti shivered. And how will they get to that place? she asked Ramsaranji.

A ship will be waiting for them at Calcutta, said the duffadar, a jahaz, much larger than any you've ever seen: with many masts and sails; a ship large enough to hold hundreds of people ...

Hai Ram! So that was what it was? Deeti clapped a hand over her mouth as she recalled the ship she had seen while standing in the Ganga. But why had the apparition been visited upon her, Deeti, who had nothing to do with these people? What could it possibly mean?

Kabutri was quick to guess what was on her mother's mind. She said: Wasn't that the kind of ship you saw? The one like a bird? Strange that it showed itself to you.

Don't say that! Deeti cried, throwing her arms around the girl. A tremor of dread went through her and she hugged her daughter to her chest.

Moments after Mr Doughty had announced his arrival, Benjamin Burnham's boots landed on the deck of the Ibis with a weighty thud: the shipowner's fawn breeches and dark jacket were dusty after the journey from Calcutta, and his knee-length riding boots were flecked with mud - but the ride had clearly invigorated him, for there was no trace of fatigue on his glowing face.

Benjamin Burnham was a man of imposing height and stately girth, with a full curly beard that cloaked the upper half of his chest like a plate of glossy chainmail. A few years short of fifty, his step had not lost the bounce of youth and his eyes still had the brilliant, well-focused sparkle that comes from never looking in any direction other than ahead. The skin of his face was leathery and deeply tanned, a legacy of many years of energetic activity in the sun. Now, standing erect on deck, he hooked his thumb in the lapel of his jacket and ran a quizzical eye over the schooner's crew before stepping aside with Mr Doughty. The two men conferred for a while and then Mr Burnham went up to Zachary and extended a hand. 'Mr Reid?'

'Yes, sir.' Zachary stepped up to shake his hand.

The shipowner looked him up and down, in approval. 'Doughty says for a rank griffin, you're a pucka sort of chap.'

'I hope he's right, sir,' said Zachary, uncertainly.

The shipowner smiled, baring a set of large, sparkling teeth. 'Well, do you feel up to giving me a tour of my new vessel?'

In Benjamin Burnham's bearing there was that special kind of authority that suggests an upbringing of wealth and privilege - but this was misleading, Zachary knew, for the shipowner was a tradesman's son and prided himself on being a self-made man. Over the last two days, courtesy of Mr Doughty, Zachary had learnt a great deal about the 'Burra Sahib': he knew, for example, that for all his familiarity with Asia, Benjamin Burnham was not 'country-born' - 'that's to say he's not like those of us sahibs who drew our first breath in the East.' He was the son of a Liverpool timber merchant, but had spent no more than a scant ten years 'at home' - 'and that means Blatty, my boy, not just any d.a.m.ned place you happen to be living in.'

As a child, the pilot said, young Ben was a 'right shaytan': a brawler, trouble-maker and general hurremzad who was clearly destined for a lifetime's journey through penitentiaries and houses of correction: it was to save him from his kismet that his family had shipped him out as a 'guinea-pig' - 'that's what you called a cabin-boy on an Indiaman in the old days - because they were everyone's to step on and do with as they willed.'

But even the discipline of an East India Company tea-wagon had proved insufficient to tame the lad: 'A quartermaster lured the boy into the ship's store with a mind to trying a bit of udlee-budlee. But chota as he was, young Benjamin didn't lack for bawhawdery - set upon the old launderbuzz with a belaying-pin and beat him with such a will that his life-line was all but unrove.'

For his own safety Benjamin Burnham was sent off the ship at its next port of call, which happened to be the British penal colony of Port Blair, on the Andaman Islands. 'Best thing that could happen to a wild young chuckeroo: nothing like a jail-connah to tame a junglee.' At Port Blair, Ben Burnham found employment with the prison's chaplain: here, under a regime that was both punitive and forgiving, he acquired faith as well as an education. 'Oh those preachers have hard hands, my boy; they'll put the Lord's Word in your mouth even if they have to knock out your teeth to do it.' When sufficiently reformed, the boy drifted Atlantic-wards and spent some time on a blackbirder, sailing between America, Africa and England. Then, at the age of nineteen he found himself sailing China-wards on a ship that was carrying a well-known Protestant missionary. The accidental acquaintance between Ben Burnham and the English Reverend was to strengthen and deepen into a lasting friendship. 'That's how it goes in those parts,' said the pilot. 'Canton is a place where you get to know your friends. The Chinamen keep the Fanqui-devils penned inside the foreign factories, outside the town walls. No Fanqui can leave their little strip of sh.o.r.e; can't pa.s.s the city gates. Nowhere to go; no place to walk, no course to ride. Even to take a little hong-boat out on the river, you have to get an official chop. No mems allowed; nothing to do but listen to your shroffs counting their taels. Man can get as lonely as a butcher on banyan-day. There's some who just can't take it and have to be sent home. There's some who go down to Hog Lane, to puckrow a buy-em-dear or get must on shamshoo wine. But not Ben Burnham: when he wasn't selling opium, he was with the missionaries. More often than not you'd find him at the American factory - the Yankees were more to his taste than his Company colleagues, being more churchy-like.'

Through the Reverend's influence, Benjamin Burnham found a position as a clerk with the trading firm of Magniac & Co., the predecessors of Jardine & Matheson, and from then on, as with every other foreigner involved in the China trade, his time was divided between the two poles of the Pearl River Delta - Canton and Macao, eighty miles apart. Only the winter trading-season was spent in Canton: for the rest of the year the traders lived in Macao, where the Company maintained an extensive network of G.o.downs, bankshalls and factories.

'Ben Burnham did his time, offloading opium from receiving-ships, but he wasn't the kind of man who could be happy on another man's payroll, drawing a monthly tuncaw: he wanted to be a nabob in his own right, with his own seat at the Calcutta opium auction.' As with many another Fanqui merchant in Canton, Burnham's church connections were a great help, since several missionaries had close connections with opium traders. In 1817, the year the East India Company gave him his articles of indenture as a free merchant, an opportunity presented itself in the form of a team of Chinese converts who had to be escorted to the Baptist Mission College in Serampore, in Bengal. 'And what better man to bring them in than Ben Burnham? Before you know it, he's in Calcutta, looking for a dufter - and what's more he finds one too. The good old Roger of Rascally gives him a set of chabees to a house on the Strand!'

Burnham's intention in moving to Calcutta was to position himself to bid in the opium auctions of the East India Company: yet it was not the China trade that provided him with his first financial coup; this came, rather, from his boyhood training in another branch of the British Empire's commerce. 'In the good old days people used to say there were only two things to be exported from Calcutta: thugs and drugs - or opium and coolies as some would have it.'

Benjamin Burnham's first successful bid was for the transportation of convicts. Calcutta was then the princ.i.p.al conduit through which Indian prisoners were shipped to the British Empire's network of island prisons - Penang, Bencoolen, Port Blair and Mauritius. Like a great stream of silt, thousands of Pindaris, Thugs, dacoits, rebels, head-hunters and hooligans were carried away by the muddy waters of the Hooghly to be dispersed around the Indian Ocean, in the various island jails where the British incarcerated their enemies.

To find a kippage for a convict ship was no easy matter, for many a seaman would heave sharp about at the prospect of signing on to a vessel with a cargo of cutthroats. 'In his hour of need, Burnham broached his business by calling upon a friend from his chocolateering days, one Charles Chillingworth, a ship's master of whom it would come to be said that there was no better manganizer at large on the ocean - not a single slave, convict or coolie had ever escaped his custody and lived to gup about it.' With Chillingworth's help, Benjamin Burnham seived a fortune from the tide of transportees that was flowing out of Calcutta, and this inflow of capital allowed him to enter the China trade on an even bigger scale than he had envisaged: soon he was running a sizeable fleet of his own ships. By his early thirties, he had formed a partnership with two of his brothers, and the firm had become a leading trading house, with agents and dufters in such cities as Bombay, Singapore, Aden, Canton, Macao, London and Boston.

'So there you are: that's the jadoo of the colonies. A boy who's crawled up through the hawse-holes can become as grand a sahib as any twice-born Company man. Every door in Calcutta thrown open. Burrakhanas at Government House. Choti hazri at Fort William. No BeeBee so great as to be durwauza-bund when he comes calling. His personal shoke might be for Low-Church evangelism, but you can be sure the Bishop always has a pew waiting for him. And to seal it all, Miss Catherine Bradshaw for a wife - about as pucka a memsahib as ever there was, a brigadier's daughter.'

The qualities that had made Ben Burnham into a merchant-nabob were amply in evidence during his tour of the Ibis: he examined the vessel from stem to stern, even descending to the keelson and mounting the jib-boom, noting everything that merited attention, either by way of praise or blame.

'And how does she sail, Mr Reid?'

'Oh she's a fine old barkey, sir,' said Zachary. 'Swims like a swan and steers like a shark.'

Mr Burnham smiled in appreciation of Zachary's enthusiasm. 'Good.'

Only when his inspection was over did the shipowner listen to Zachary's narrative of the disastrous voyage from Baltimore, questioning him carefully on the details while thumbing through the ship's log. At the end of the cross-examination, he p.r.o.nounced himself satisfied and clapped Zachary on the back: 'Shahbash! You bore up very well, under the circ.u.mstances.'

Such reservations as Mr Burnham had concerned chiefly the lascar crew and its leader: 'That old Mug of a serang: what makes you think he can be trusted?'

'Mug, sir?' said Zachary, knitting his brows.

'That's what they call the Arakanese in these parts,' said Burnham. 'The very word strikes terror into the natives of the coast. Fearsome bunch the Mugs - pirates to a man, they say.'

'Serang Ali? A pirate?' Zachary smiled to think of his own initial response to the serang and how absurd it seemed in retrospect. 'He may look a bit of a Tartar, sir, but he's no more a pirate than I am: if he was, he'd have made off with the Ibis long before we dropped anchor. Certainly I couldn't have stopped him.'

Burnham directed his piercing gaze directly into Zachary's eyes. 'You'll vouch for him, will you?'

'Yes, sir.'