The Concubine by Morris West

Author:Morris West
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781760638429
Publisher: ERROR: Invalid publisher: Allen & Unwin
Published: 2017-07-10T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER X

JUST before noon, Miranha went ashore again, and shortly afterwards the Navel of the Universe came to pay his state visit to the Corsair.

They saw him, first, a long way off, carried in a golden palanquin on the shoulders of ten men along the terraces of the palace, then down the winding path to the flat lands. There were guards in front of him and behind, each with a kris strapped between his shoulder-blades, and a long musket of ancient design over his shoulder.

The procession lost itself in the green overhang and they did not see it again until the crowds on the beach parted suddenly, fell to their knees and uttered a long wailing cry that drifted faintly across the water. From the mouth of a canal, a long canoe with a carved prow shot out, propelled by ten oarsmen. When they came to the opening in the crowd, they beached it swiftly and the Navel of the Universe was carried down to it on the shoulders of his servants. When he was seated, the courtiers joined him, one of them holding a large yellow umbrella over his head.

Then the canoe shoved off and the oarsmen drove it swiftly with long sweeps of the big, carved paddles.

The gangway was down and a Malay seaman stood with a boathook to bring the visitors neatly alongside. Arturo waited on the lowest step to hand the visitors aboard. The rest of the ship’s company lined the deck, the officers in freshly starched uniforms, the seamen and the lascars and the galley staff all dressed in their shore clothes and standing stiffly at attention. Janzoon and Alfieri were posted at the top of the gangway, but neither Rubensohn nor Lisette were to be seen.

McCreary thought it was another piece of shrewd stage-management. The Navel of the Universe must be brought to the great man, alone, in the privacy of the saloon. Lisette would be displayed as a prize possession. It gave him grim satisfaction to think that soon this fiction too would be destroyed and Rubensohn would lose Lisette with all the rest.

When the small procession reached the top of the gangway, McCreary saw, with a shock of surprise, that the sultan was a young man—thirty at most—with finely-chiselled Balinese features, set now into a rigid ceremonial mask. He was as colourful as a jungle bird in his ceremonial silks, embroidered with threads of silver and gold. There were jewels at his throat and on his fingers. A dagger with a golden haft was thrust into his sash and in the centre of his round skull-cap a great ruby glowed with dull fire.

Behind him came a fat figure, who looked more like a Chinese than a Malay and whom McCreary took to be the vizier. His silks floated about him like a widow’s drapes, but his slant eyes were shrewd and appraising. The rest of the courtiers were small, brown men, like their master, and their costumes and their jewellery were in descending order of magnificence.

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