“Tippoo ordered Ukalipt trees to be planted in great numbers, first in Nandy near Mysore, and later in the Nilgherries, those mountains which march almost to India’s tip.” (‘An Eye-witness Account of the Kingdom of Tippoo Sahib’, John Curry, 1803)

Part I: The bloody sands

I call it a dream, but it is not. It is a memory that I remember when I am asleep.

When my sleeping self is taken by the dream, it is as though the recollection is more real than the reality in which my body sleeps. It is as though something says to me: Look—there you are, up to your fourteen-year-old shanks in the icy waters off St Cast, while the aide-major talks of balance. Just where you have always been, and shall be forever.

Yes, there I am: and the tide washes me bloody to the thighs with what it brings to shore.

While I dream, I hear the rumble of the Cauvery river, split by this island of Seringapatam; I smell the scents of Indian madder and moonflower, released by this Indian night; I feel the soft warmth of Usha’s skin beneath my arm, the slow kiss of her breath against my cheek. The dream makes of these real things themselves only a dream. I sense that they are there, yet I cannot believe in them.

Look. He has developed a habit, the aide-major, in the thirty minutes since the British bomb-ketches have ceased firing on the shore; since the British fleet gave up the rescue of my stranded comrades. He wades through the Channel waters, searching for an Englishman too wounded to stand; such as he finds, he pulls back to the shallows where I kneel, the guard’s musket barrel nuzzling my ear. Then he stops before me, holding some broken man-boy by the hair, so that my countryman must look at me. “Allons,” he says, wiping wet lips with thumb and finger. And then he pushes steel into the throat of his catch and saws away. He does it slow, and observes me all the while, mouth agape and eyes a-staring, as though I am an exquisite mirror for his cruelty; as though to see my comrades’ last agonies reflected in my face makes his pleasure double. The sea’s spume laps red.

Usha’s breath catches; she turns to one side, and is all at once tense and quiet, as though listening. Perhaps our child has woken; perhaps he has called out in his sleep. Or perhaps Usha feels, through my lockjaw stillness, something of what I live through in the dream. Her hand rests on my shoulder. I feel it; but I do not believe it. And yet, in the dream I believe, I ask help from the dream I cannot believe. Usha! Bring me back … My limbs cannot move; I cannot speak.

How many slow deaths does the aide-major show me, beneath that blue, blue sky? In some dreams it is five; in some, eighty-nine; in some it is incalculable.

Usha! Beware the Sultan’s men and the brutality of Power; make not an enemy of that Mohan Lal who cannot die; keep my secret from those who would harm us; but, above all, my dear love, keep safe Kuruppan our child! Usha …

It has come to this: that I ask my wife to protect my son and me. I do not know whether this is part of the dream that is real or part of the dream that is a memory; I am unmanned in both. But I know this: in the dream that is memory, the aide-major speaks to me, and I know what he says, though in those days I had no language but English. He says: See, boy; the price of desertion, the price of cowardice, the price of running. You have your life, drummer boy; but now, for the rest of that life, you also have this. The blade has caught on something, some sinew that resists, and the aide-major pushes and twists until it is released with a jerk. It is a fair exchange, boy. A balanced transaction. Keep your worthless life, but keep too the memory of what you did for your fellow-soldiers of the 67th Regiment of Foot.

I look up, away, anywhere: the sky is of a most profound blue, an uttermost blue, a blue that cannot, surely, know clouds; against it flaps the yellow standard of the aide-major’s battalion. All yellow, that cloth, all yellow bar a central emblem: a black fleur-de-lys, like the heads of three cowled snakes fanning out from a common noose. It whips evilly in the sea’s breeze. I am racked by a fearful spasm; musket to my ear or not, I turn double on myself; and my vomit too is yellow and black. The aide-major nods, and my guard pulls me upright by the shoulder. Look. Another throat to slit, another life to add to my tally of betrayal. No! Vauquelin, I beg you!

“Husband!” Usha is pulling at my upper arm. “Husband!”

I try to still my gasps; my throat is raw, as if from drinking bad arrack. I sit up; I run my hands through my hair; I rub my legs. Their flesh is cold, like a drowned man’s.

“Husband, is it?” I pant. “An improvement over ‘Kuruppan’s father’, indeed. I should be pleased.” I say this in levity, to wash away the dream-memory’s outrages, but there is some truth in my words. For whatever reason, I have never persuaded Usha to refer to me as Mr Saunders, still less Patrick; I am always identified indirectly. But I love her none the less for her strange habits, and she knows it. Anyway, perhaps it is for the best: if she does not call me Patrick Saunders in private, she will not do so in public, where I must be known as Patricio Sorondo, the Spaniard.

“You were shouting.” Something about her tension, about the way she looks to the window—open to all the Kingdom of Mysore—chills me. “In another language.”

I get up from the charpoy and walk to the window. It is past the darkest hour; the moon is full, and the sky clear. I see only what I know to be there. In one direction, the massy fort of Tippoo, Sultan of Mysore; it hunches its black angles upwards like an armoured beast born of earth. To the left of the fort, I see the curve of Mohan Lal’s rotunda, where, as always, a yellow light flickers. He is peering at the heavens, doubtless; does he never sleep? As little as the thing he keeps in his basket, by all accounts … as little as the devils they say he conjures up by his dark machinery. Above the fort, the stars Lal covets wheel their mysterious courses, slow and fine. In another direction, closer by, I discern the white tumble of the Cauvery’s flow; and closer still, extending from the river to our bungalow, in pots or buckets or heeled into loose soil in readiness for replanting—my trees, my Ukalypts, my future.

“There is nobody there,” I say. “And in any case, it was probably Spanish that I spoke. Or Portuguese.” And it probably was; I have not spoken English for many a year. But Usha has only Tamil; she would not distinguish my mother tongue from any other language.

“You said Vauquelin.” She mispronounces the word, but I recognise it. And coming from her lips, the name is like a blow; it is as if the boss-eyed, blubber-lipped aide-major had stepped into the room and caught her by the hair. “When you were shouting, you said Vauquelin.”

I shrug. “What of it? The speech of dreams. Go to sleep, my love.” I feign a yawn. “Go to sleep.”

“I will,” she says. But she remains upright, watching me in the soft darkness.

“What is it, my dear?”

“You know what.”

I take a deep breath, and turn again to the window. The moon bars the ground with silver. “A beautiful night,” I say.

“And some beautiful night or beautiful day, when they find out you are English, they will kill you. But first they will kill Kuruppan and I, so that you may see it. Mohan Lal will make it so.”

“After fourteen years, my dear, I think they are convinced that I am Spanish. As for Mohan Lal – I do believe, Usha, that he may be less ugly than the portrait given him by gossip, and in any case—”

“Less ugly? He of the black arts? He that has made it a labour of two lifetimes to defile all gods, and break the link between birth and death, and that delights in others’ pain as others delight in cool water? No painting could make him foul enough! Please, husband, do not make of this family something that may interest him. Please.” I open my mouth to speak, but she waves me into silence. “As for your fourteen years of hiding—you have said yourself that if one true Spaniard visits Tippoo Sultan’s court, you are unmasked. And now that Tippoo begs aid from Britain’s enemies—” Her voice fails; her hand moves to her mouth as if to offer assistance.

“Ah! There, I can offer encouraging news. It seems that Tippoo has not gone to the Spanish, but to Napoleon, who is sending a military advisor. That is, a Frenchman, not a Spaniard. His arrival is imminent.” Usha merely looks at me. “Darshan told me,” I add. And at this she nods, satisfied. For my part, I frown. It is true that scholarly Devadarshan knows more than this wandering planter, but even so—are my words of no value? But Usha, one hand a-twisting at her marriage necklace, has thought of another matter for argument.

“Suppose this person’s advice provides no shield against British cannon—and you know how many now whisper of defeat—then what?If the British prevail, they will hang you, either as traitor or as deserter.”

Indeed, the British advance is massive, and steady, albeit slow; few believe that Tippoo will withstand it. Hence all of Mysore is now like a pot slowly coming to boil. But I have an arrow to my bow; it is one I fletched myself, without Darshan’s aid, and with only a little help from Benedito da Souza. It is time I show its point to Usha.

“Listen, my dear. Benedito told me news of a treaty between France and Spain. They join forces now, to fight the British. Thus, Tippoo’s new advisor will be the natural ally of Patricio Sorondo. And I am convinced that, if I can only convey to him the value of my trees—and their unmatched qualities, which will be as new to him as they were to Mohan Lal—he will support my application to move sapling and seedling away from the coming battle. His advice will carry more weight among Tippoo’s ministers than my oft-repeated words.”

And who, surely, would disagree with such advice? All know of Mysore’s appetite for timber. Fast-growing timber, that is: to power smithies and forges, to feed the cannon foundries of Kunnakapoor and fuel the gunpowder factories at Taramandalpet. And straight-growing timber, to construct factories for war-rockets and other cunning ordnance; to make, in short, the multifarious vehicles of death with which the Sultan goads the British and their Company. For the Kingdom of Mysore used what little straight timber it had many a year ago, during the wars fought by Tippoo and his father Hyder; in fact, the Mysore Sultans ravaged their own country, if indeed it is theirs; and hence they tolerate me in this land, for my Ukalypts grow faster and straighter than any other tree. And the trees make a wondrous oil for the physic, to boot … To leave these fragile plants, the fuel of Mysore’s future growth, between two opposing armies would be madness. Such will be the military attaché’s advice; I am sure of it.

I continue. “Indeed, he will, I am sure, see the value of placing such a crop at the edge of Tippoo’s kingdom. There, you see, as well as being far from battle, it would be available for supply to the French, regardless of the outcome of the British action. And once my investment is safe, my love—then, then, we can flee.”

Usha shakes her head. But I forestall further argument: “Listen. The day grows, and I must attend to my trees now. Be patient, Usha—I am clearing a path down which we may run. You and I and Kuruppan. To a new life, a new world. I promise you.”

She does not respond; I walk from the room. But before leaving the bungalow, and as I kiss Kuruppan’s sleeping head, I hear her take a deep, shuddering breath, as if to prepare for some great trial: a race, perhaps, or a labour of pain.

#

Later, after measuring a selection of Ukalypts, and seeing to their watering and weeding, I go to Devadarshan; partly for his civilised company, but partly also, I confess, in the continued hope that he might intercede with Mohan Lal regarding the protection of my crop—a favour which Darshan has so far refused to countenance. But I would rather argue with Darshan than with a Frenchman, so I shall try again. He is sitting in the day’s early warmth, in front of the low, flat-roofed abode where he lives and works.

“What news?” I ask.

He says nothing, at first, but nods at the mat laid a short distance in front of him, below the step on which he sits – close enough for conversation, but far enough to maintain hierarchy. Lowly gardener or not, I flatter myself that this place is set for me; certainly Devadarshan seems to enjoy our little dialogues, and my Tamil, I believe, is quite passable. Sometimes Usha laughs into her hands when I speak, by which sign I know that I have made some error of language, but I care not; her gaiety enriches me (I dare say that some of my errors are deliberate, for this reason). But Devadarshan never laughs: he only unsmilingly corrects my pronunciation, all the while hunched over his figures. How can a man speak and calculate at the same time? He is a mystery to me; and the extent and origin of his learning confound me. I am not alone in this—they say even Purnaya, first minister to Tippoo, seeks Devadarshan’s wisdom. Before addressing my question, Darshan shouts for his servant Nanjan.

“What news, you ask?” he says, after Nanjan has shouted back. “Only bad.” His Tamil is soft: the accent of a gentleman. Cross-legged on a closely-woven grass mat, a tray of writing materials to one side of him, a pile of parchments to the other, and his calculations before him, he is every inch the bookish Hindoo. “The Sultan has ordered another day of executions and amputations. The beasts are being readied, and the rope fresh-made. They say he wishes to clear the dungeons of … ” He pauses. “ … foreigners.” I nod, po-faced. It seems that all except the British know that British prisoners, taken in previous battles, have endured Tippoo’s dungeons for many a year. “So, yes, the only news is bad. Unless you can tell me differently.”

A crow flies to the ground in front of our mats, sees us and flaps away again. Its wings strop, up and down, up and down, as though to razor the air. Nanjan appears, a sleepy old goutard as nimble as a tortoise, and sets down tin cups: warm milk, sweetened and spiced, half of which he has spilled in the dust. Devadarshan, I believe, employs him out of kindness, for as far as I can see the old man is as much use as an onion skin.

“Well,” I say. “I can tell you that my Ukalypts turn Indian sun and Indian soil into fine timber faster than even I had thought possible. That is good news. A most valuable asset to the kingdom! Worthy of protection in this time of war, surely! Such good fortune for the Sultan, to have this resource … ”

Darshan says nothing; he is deep in calculations. “Such good fortune!” I repeat.

He looks at me askance, from beneath one raised eyebrow. “It does not surprise me that you believe in fortune,” he says, in a voice as dry as cinders, “given the fortunate route by which you acquired your, ah, valuable asset.”

I laugh, as if he makes a joke; but I think I know his meaning. How does a Spaniard—whose country is as much at war with the British as is Tippoo’s kingdom—acquire the seeds of the remarkable Ukalypt tree, brought from Australia by the British ship Endeavour, less than thirty years ago? But I have answers to that, and my account, I believe, holds even more water than the Endeavour did when it yawed into Batavia, on its way back to England. For Batavia is Dutch owned, and the Dutch are great traders with Spain; all know that, even in India. So why then should a Spaniard not have been in Batavia; and why would a Spaniard not have taken his chance to steal from the Endeavour’s rented warehouses, while his enemies the English remedied her wounded hull and shipworm in the dry-dock? If Devadarshan knew more of the world, he would accept this tale as easily as did the Sultan’s ministers that he serves. But, before I can speak, he resumes.

“When Patricio Sorondo, the Spaniard, first came to Tippoo’s court, few concerned themselves with his tale of good fortune. Few cared. But now the British come, and people mutter that Tippoo’s reign may end, and with it the Kingdom of Mysore—and so all men look to protect themselves, and some will do so by casting suspicion on others. For example: how does one Spaniard gain entry to the Endeavour’s stores? Do the English value their treasure so little that they leave it unlocked and unguarded, take it who may? And why did that Spaniard choose to take seeds, of all things; and why those seeds in particular? It is as if the Spaniard knew what would grow from them.”

I blanche beneath my beard, and begin a stuttered protest. Darshan is a good man, and I think of him as a friend—yet would he tell them I was English, if he knew? I do not wish to test him with such knowledge … But my discomfort is covered by an explosion from the fields beyond the fortified walls. Our heads turn. One of Tippoo’s war-rockets shoots across the sky, trailing smoke and sparks. Behind it, the long pole to which the rocket’s iron combustion chamber is affixed gyrates like a screw. I have been told that the greater part of the damage done by such machines is by virtue of this bamboo tail, which dreadfully lacerates man and horse alike as it whips through enemy regiments. The rocket disappears from view; the crack and echo of its impact follow. Perhaps Tippoo’s intent is to threaten dissenters within Sreringapatnam; perhaps he seeks to bolster the morale of his kushoon brigades; perhaps he wishes to dismay the British spies who doubtless see what we see; whatever its purpose, we are silent as the demonstration of Tippoo’s weaponry continues. When it is over, Devadarshan sighs and returns to his figures again: “As I was saying: in this time of war, you would do well to bide quietly, especially given your—circumstances. Do not draw attention to yourself and your trees.”

“I have no choice! My crop can endure pots no more; movements of moon and stars tell me it is ready to be planted out; and I cannot leave it here, to be ploughed and churned by battle, and by the machines of battle.” I nod towards the wisps of smoke left by the war-rocket.

“I advise you to forget your crop. Doubtless some will survive, maybe more than you think; start again with those.”

“No! I must protect my trees, every one. They are all that I have … ”

“You also have your family. They are more valuable than trees, I think.”

“You do not understand. It is not a matter of one or the other. And for moving the trees, Mohan Lal would agree, if only it were put to him judiciously—”

“Perhaps it is you that do not understand. A meeting of forces approaches. The British and their Hyderabadi allies on the one hand, and our Mysore masters on the other, yes. But there is more.” He nods towards the curve of Mohan Lal’s rotunda, round against the sky. “The old man hides in there night and day; he tells none what he does, maybe not even Absalom the giant; but hints and guesses say that he seeks some grand conjunction, some confluence of power. Whatever that may be, we can be sure it will benefit none but Mohan Lal; and whatever tools he uses in his endeavours, it would be better not to be one such. So do not walk into the tiger’s cage; do not go talking to him of trees and fortune. That is my advice.”

“I do not intend to, sir! Perhaps I have more wit than you know”— Devadarshan tries to hide a smile; but I see it, damn him!— “for my strategy is to have the new military advisor, the one we spoke of, intercede with Mohan Lal on behalf of my trees and I. As you know, I can persuade no other to do so. Perhaps he will even have Tippoo’s ear … ”

Devadarshan shrugs. “For that, you will need far more of the good fortune you have so far enjoyed. But again, I counsel you to choose silence, and to hope that those in power forget your existence.” He raises his head and, for once, looks at me directly. “Truly. For your wife and son, if for nothing else.”

And such is the power of Darshan’s gentle guidance that I am almost persuaded.

#

The sight of my crop, however, brings me new resolve. Darshan means well, but he does not understand; he is a scholar, not a man of practical bent. I must do what I must do. And so I determine to start packing straw around the trees in their pots, to ready them for travel. As though it were the most innocent thing, the most natural thing, to prepare to run at such a time as this; as though none could deny the sense of it. Devadarshan spoke of fortune did he not? Well, they say it favours the brave.

Sometimes it requires courage to run away. I do believe this; I do.

The dried grass and coconut straw smells clean; it rustles and resists as I tie it in bundles against a terracotta pot, over the soil and around the stem of a Ukalypt. I pour water over the packed straw; its fibres hold it well, like a sponge. Good; this will do. I show my handiwork to the pair of helpers Mohan Lal has allocated to me (they change weekly, by order, perhaps so that none can become too close to any other; the Sultan always fears plots among his subjects), and ask them to help me do likewise to the other pots. It is likely to take us a week of long days.

We have worked thus for perhaps an hour, and the sun has become hot, when I look behind me, as if my head were drawn to another’s surreptitious gaze. There, by the lean-to shelter that serves as potting-shed—no more than a thatched roof set against one mud wall—two men stand. At first, I think it is a man and a child, and a sudden fear for Kuruppan claws at me. But as they walk towards me, I see that the smaller is made small only by the size of the creature that walks with him. It is Mohan Lal and giant Absalom: Absalom, who is cousin to the eunuch Goolam Kadeer—that Goolam Kadeer who ten years before gouged the eyes from Shah Ullum II and thereby made Tippoo himself weep. Only Mohan Lal had saved Absalom from a scapegoat’s death; which is why Absalom now would die for Mohan Lal.

“Well.” Lal’s voice is thin, and dry, and cold; it is thus that a lizard would speak, I think. Or a snake. “Well, mali.” I know that he knows my name – at least, he knows me as Sorondo—but to a minister of the Sultan such creatures as I are named by their occupation, and thus to him I am only mali, or gardener.

I smile broadly, and make a namaskar, but my heart jumps up and shakes the bars of its little cage.

“Welcome, Your Excellency. Let me send for food and drink from my bungalow—”

Lal waves this suggestion away. “I neither eat nor drink during daylight hours, mali. And good Absalom follows my example.” The giant makes no sign of having heard; hands like hams, their fingers curled towards his palms, wait at his sides; his beard, dyed henna red, falls over his enormous belly. He looks down at me dully, slack jawed.

“Some water, then, Your Excellency, to wash your feet, if you would honour me thus … ” For Lal has Power; and I will, as always, abase myself before Power if I cannot run from it.

“Enough, mali.” Something in his voice makes me wonder if such empty flatteries bore him. “I am here for an accounting, not to be pawed by a foreigner.”

“An accounting, Your Excellency?”

But he says nothing more; he only looks at me with his black, black eyes. And I find I am compelled to talk, like a schoolboy before his master. I tell him of my trees; of the numbers at one stage or another; of the rates of growth I have measured, season by season, and year by year; of how this crop will be the beginning of plantations that will end Mysore’s hunger for timber, forever. But only if they can be protected in this time of war.

He nods all the while, as we walk among the trees, with Absalom two paces behind. He sees the straw-wrapped pots, and something glints in his eye, and he smiles. But still he says nothing. I talk on.

This is the first time that I have spoken to Lal for perhaps three months, and one of only a few times since he dictated the terms under which I might establish Ukalypt plantations in the Kingdom of Mysore. He was then old but vigorous; the interceding months, however, have somehow sapped him. His skin is thin and pale; it is blotched with darker patches as if some rot were working its way up from within. Only his eyes are unchanged: dark and fierce.

Eventually, my words run dry. I have told him everything, I believe, that I can.

“And your boy, Kurban?”

“Your Excellency?”

“Your boy. Is he well?”

“Oh, Kuruppan! Your Excellency, thank you, he is very well. He grows, I believe, even faster than my Ukalypts! Ha, ha!”

“That is good. He is the perfect child, mali—perfect. See that you look after him.”

And then, after some additional questions which show me—perhaps they were designed so to do—that Lal has understood and remembered every single figure and calculation I gave him regarding the propagation and growth of Ukalypts, the old man makes as if to turn to go. But all of a sudden he stops, and speaks. “We expect another of your countrymen, the morrow.” My heart flips over itself again, and something buzzes in my head, as if I am about to faint and fall. He looks at me, a half-grin on his face: “At least—tell me again, which country are you from, mali?”

“Spain, Your Excellency!”

“Ah! Then our new military advisor is only a cousin to you, not a brother. A Frenchman, mali, come to teach our sepoys how to fight the British. And that after the British have whipped the French like old horses for twenty years now, in all parts of my world and yours.” He laughs, thin and cold, and I wish he had not, for something about it makes me shudder.

Then, at last, he leaves, followed by his brutish servant.

Later, when day nears its end and my helpers have left, I repair to the potting-shed lean-to. If only I had had the courage to directly ask Lal – Your Excellency, permit me to save my trees – instead of pecking around the subject like a chicken in its coop.Once again, I feel the guilt and shame felt by those who quail before authority. What did Darshan say, only yesterday? Hope that those in power forget your existence! But I do not need Devadarshan’s advice on such matters, for I suspect I know more than Darshan of what Power does to those who have none. Indeed, it was Power that made me first run; only to run again, and again, and again.

I often wonder how it would have been had I run down a different road, or not run at all. In what world would I now live? And I sometimes think that always, whenever I come to a fork, I run down the wrong road, and find myself where Shame lies in wait, and Guilt sets its gin. But I can never retrace my steps and take a different way. That is forever the agony of this life—that it could, so easily, have been a different, better life.

And yet, had I taken a different road, I would not now have Usha and Kuruppan. Surely, there is some path we can follow, all three, to a better world?

I rub away some dirt from the potting table; something catches my skin. A brad: loosened by the drying and splitting of the table’s plank, it pokes its head proud of the surface. I work at it until it comes out, and pocket it for re-use. In India, everything must be used twice, and used once more. Like my shame; like the guilt from which I run, from which I have been running since I was a boy.

To be that boy again; to take a different road, a different bridge! Memories gnaw at my poor, guilty soul … Look: I am standing behind my father as the Inclosure men take his small-holding; as they fell the trees he’d coppiced for fence-wood and kindling. The trees where I’d sheltered and climbed since I first walked; whose twiggy branches first led my young eyes, in some far-off night, to the stars in their infinite majesty. The boy that I was knows each oak, and holly, and hazel, and elm; he knows the feel of their manifold barks; he has by heart the stories they have slowly grown. And Father’s shoulders tremble with each falling trunk …

I knew then that he could never protect me from the rapacity of Power. And I determined to escape from a world where Power does what Power wants, and damn all gentle folk. So I turned on my heel, and I left my father there; I took my fourteen-year-old feet to the Army, and became a drummer boy for the 67th Regiment of Foot. The boy that I was blamed my father for the loss of our land, our trees, for weakness before Power; the man that I am is tortured by the memory of what that boy did. Yes, I left my father to find his pauper’s grave, alone. Because he could not withstand Power.

And what next? My comrades in the 67th Regiment of Foot were kind to their drummer-boy; they looked out for me; they showed me the ways of canvas and mud. But when that boy saw how things were at St Cast—when he saw Power raise its head again, and bare its yellow teeth—he dropped his drum and ran from those who’d helped him. He ran to Power, to the massed French, to the Regiment Volontaires Étrangers, 1st Battalion, with its yellow and black standard. Let me beat a French drum now, I begged, as the aide-major pressed his boot to my neck. Beneath his moustache, his lips were wet, and grew a white froth in their corners; he slowly drew finger and thumb together across his mouth, as if to wipe away his drool. He dried his hand on his sleeve, and he spoke: “Allons,” he said, and marched me to the headland, where we watched Admiral Lord Anson retreat while my countrymen were slaughtered. And then he took me down to the St Cast sands.

I tidy away the day’s work in the lean-to; spare pots are stacked against the mud wall, all awry. Soon – God willing, if only Power will listen to this poor planter—I will have no more need of these terracotta buckets. My trees will grow in the sweet soil of the Nilgherrie Mountains, their roots unbound. Thus I try to set my eyes to the future.

Evening will soon be here, yet the sum of this day’s labour is my hangdog soul. Perhaps Usha and the child will drag me from this swamp; none else may.

#

What can compare with the South Indian dusk? It warms, but does not oppress; it cools, but does not chill. It dyes the sky violet to indigo, and uncovers stars like trembling drops of quicksilver. By its grace, flowers release fragrances too subtle for the brash day.

Somewhere, a jackal calls; its high note disappears into infinite time. Usha sits, cross-legged on a mat, minding the oil-lamp; moths make shadows that dart and jump. I play with Kuruppan.

Kuruppan! When my boy smiles, it is as if it is the first smile of Man; as if it comes from a place where kindness is deemed more of a virtue than the collection of wealth, where there is no more pain than a bruised knee. And he smiles often. Through Kuruppan, I feel the cool air of my childhood caress my arms, and smell the smoke from apple-wood fires; I see the grand oaks and elms of the Surrey Hills, taller than fairy-tales; I hear again the nursery rhymes my mother sang. Little boy blue … With the brad from my pocket, we scratch pictures on a palm-leaf: dogs and monkeys, elephants and people. The gift of children is to give one’s own childhood back.

I wish this could never end. I wish I were not surrounded by the unending death and pain of this place and time. Darshan said that Tippoo has ordered another day of punishments; my stomach churns at the thought. But I draw a camel, all the same.

“It has two heads, Father!”

“Then it will talk even more than you, little parakeet.”

Later, I hold Usha in the darkness. Neither of us, it seems, can sleep. She asks, not for the first time, for stories of Australia. And this saddens me, for I know she only does this when she wants escape from her own thoughts. But I tell her, just as I have told her before. The deer that jump like rabbits; the little bears in the branches; the birds that screech but do not sing; and the trees, the trees.

I’d seen the Ukalypts all round Botany Bay, I tell her, taller than oaks, straighter than a plumb-line; I’d walked among them, touching their ribboning bark with a wondering hand. And during the Endeavour’s stay, from April to July of the year 1770, I measured the growth of one sapling and found it likely ten feet in a year, and that in soil so poor that an English farmer would leave it forever fallow. I did not need Banks’ education or Cooke’s authority to see profit in the Ukalypt’s wood. And so I clandestinely gathered their seed pods—each pod having many hundreds of their powdery seeds—vowing to run, run with this wooden gold. Once in England, I thought, I’d turn my feet to Holland, knowing the Dutch hunger for timber to feed their ship-building needs; I’d make a plantation there. But the cleft stick of circumstance forced me to jump from Endeavour far sooner than that; it was in Dutch Batavia, on Christmas Day, that I ran. And in Batavia that I met Benedito da Souza, who told me of Mysore’s wealth and Mysore’s wants, and persuaded me to sail with him to Goa as midshipman on a Portuguese two-decker.

“Where is Benedito?” asks Usha.

“He is packing cinnamon and cardamom. He will leave within the month. If they let him.” Indeed, as Portugal and Britain are allies, da Souza has always been in danger of being denounced as a British spy; yet somehow he survives and trades on, with a shrug and a smile.

“If he can leave … ” says Usha.

In the other room, Kuruppan warbles in his sleep, so sweetly. Between Usha and I there is a silence, and it oppresses me.

“My dear. Let us not be sad.”

“Then let us find a place where we can be happy.”

“That is my intent, love. Have I not said so?”

“Indeed, you have said so now for months and years. Yet we are here still, flinching from the Sultan’s whip.”

I know her opinion of our rulers well, and why she holds it. Her mother’s family, Malabar nobles, fled before Tippoo’s army to Travancore. There her mother was adopted by the Attingal royals, as is their pretty custom, and thus Usha is, or should be, a Travancore princess. But poor Usha was taken when Tippoo attacked Travancore in yet another of his expeditionary rages. Indeed, I have great sympathy with her views regarding the Sultan and his kind; such people are endowed with the gentler virtues as a toad is with feathers. But she seems, I believe, to forget our situation.

 “We will not always be here. Trust me, my dear.”

“It is not trust that will save us from what comes. It is action.”

“I know that well!” I pressed my balled fists to my head. The cleft stick of circumstance! Has my whole life been thus?

“And yet, you do nothing.” The sadness in her voice near breaks me.

“Waiting is not the same as doing nothing, my love. To move and replant my trees—this can be done only once, and must be done right. And for the right time, I have to rely on the cycles of moon and stars. Even I cannot hurry the celestial bodies.”

She does not smile. “Your trees will kill us, all three.”

“No, Usha! They will make for us a new life!”

“Unless we die first.”

“Some plans need a gestation before they can be delivered.”

“If you will not hurry for me, think of Kuruppan. He does not deserve whatever fate Lal would give him.”

“I have said before, you make of Lal too much a beast. The old man asks after Kuruppan always—”

She sits up in an instant, as if pulled by the neck, and thrusts away my arm. “Lal? You have spoken with Lal? About Kuruppan?”

“He came to inspect my trees, only today.” I say it airily, as though this planter welcomed Tippoo’s ministers to his fields weekly. “And that he takes an interest in Kuruppan—”

“No! You know nothing of Lal! Even after all these years—”

I sense a storm about to break, and I without shelter.

“Usha, my love, you did not let me finish. I merely—”

“He would feed the child to Absalom! Or worse!”

“I merely meant to say that Lal may … ” I lower my voice. “ … if used judiciously, be of assistance to us.”

“You wish to use Lal? You? To use him? Him? Does the blinded buffalo use the oil-man?” Her fierce whisper near burns me.

“His interest in Kuruppan is a form of currency, my dear, that we may spend.” She opens her mouth and throws up her hands, but I proceed apace. “You see, if the French military advisor—who, let me say, is arriving tomorrow, Usha—suggests to Lal, as I think he will, that such assets as can be moved from Seringapatam, should be so moved to protect them from the British, and if at the same time I ensure that I am seen with Kuruppan in front of Lal, wherever possible, why then his head may be persuaded at the same time as his heart is moved. For I do believe old man Lal is fond of Kuruppan, my dear.” I nod, firmly. “Yes. I do.”

#

Usha shows a cold side over the next week, and I find it easier to work longer days. But even sable clouds may be lined with silver: the packing of my Ukalypts in straw is now proceeding more quickly than I could have hoped. One morning, I allow myself some few minutes of contemplation; I walk the rank and file of my seedlings, inhaling their sweet scent, which is always strongest at dawn. Each green leaf, a promise of Mysore gold. Each sapling, a signal of the labour of years. We shall run, Usha, yes; but we shall not run without these. For if this crop is lost, I am a beggar till my death. I have nothing else, nothing but empty promises and shame.

Sometimes I think of what I have not told Usha. Of Antoinette, to whom I promised all and gave nothing; who gave her all in helping me escape from France, and received nothing. I took her love, I took her language; I left her. Some guilt cannot be expressed, still less escaped; run as you like, it follows tirelessly. Yet I had no choice but to flee France, when I could; they had made almost a slave of me, and would, I am sure, have killed me in the end. But Usha would not see it in such light; she has too much honour.

I pluck a leaf, crush it, and rub it between my palms; the fragrance invigorates. I breathe in, deeper and deeper, as if this sweet Ukalypt might clean my sullied soul.

A movement interrupts my self-scourging: someone approaches, stepping through my pots and seedlings. A man. At first, a small hope rises: is it Devadarshan? His unsmiling counsel is always welcome. But then I see the man is younger, broader; he wears a sepoy’s uniform. One of the Mysore men-at-arms, from Tippoo’s kushoon squadrons. I make a namaskar as he approaches; he does not respond, but looks me up and down as if repelled by the sight of this faithless foreigner.

“You are Sorondo?”

“Yes.”

“I come from Mohan Lal.” My heart leaps, as if through hope or fear. “You are informed that the forthcoming day of entertainments is to be in honour of the new military advisor. The Sultan desires the presence of all who are not engaged in duties essential to the kingdom.”

A pretty invitation! Damned if you neglect your duties in order to attend; damned if you do not. Only the ministers can say which duties are deemed essential, and they will not say. That is the Sultan’s way: to subject all to a cruel caprice.

The sepoy continues, as if he had seen my hidden reluctance: “Better to join the audience, Sorondo, than to join the entertainers.”

I make another namaskar, and laugh heartily: join the entertainers, ha! “I thank you, brother. Is there – may I ask, might there be, any other message? Perhaps the Minister requires my presence, to discuss this fine crop?”

“And perhaps you believe the Minister is accustomed to bandy words with unclean foreigners who scrape in the dirt, like dogs.” He sneers and saunters away.

The braggadocio of Power. Will it plague me always? Sometimes it seems that some devil’s lens has focused all evil on this one place and time, as if to see how a universe might be when no good people rule. There is no help for it but to run, with Usha and the child; run, run, run.

But first, make safe the Ukalypts! Where is the new advisor, damn him? They tell me he has been in Seringapatam now several days; but I have not seen him. I heard that he went to Benedito’s factory, which is near to the likely line of British advance, but none can say any more than that. I must speak to the advisor; Benedito might be able to tell me where he is, but my messages to him go unanswered.

I watch the sepoy walk towards the bridge over the Cauvery, and my gaze follows the road to the far shore. There, the kushoon brigades are mustered. Before them, their Mysore commanders, straddling fine horses. And with them, I see a man. A European, surely, for he wears a hat, not a turban, and I never saw any in India wear a hat but the Europeans. At such a distance, I cannot be certain, but I feel in my waters that there—at last! – is the Frenchman who, please God, will persuade the Sultan’s men to let me move my Ukalypts from harm’s way.

I leave my trees and walk to Tippoo’s fort. It takes longer than it might; the passage of carts and people, carrying stores of weapons and food in readiness for the expected blockade, is continual. Once there, I loiter by the fort’s entrances, moving from one to another, hoping to engineer an accidental meeting with my intended ally when he returns from inspecting the kushoons. I confess, I have little idea of how to open an exchange of words with this stranger, and it is possible that my overture will buy me no more than a taste of his boot. But I must try.

And then—good fortune, as Darshan would say, and brought by Darshan himself! For, as I push through crowds and past bundles of produce, I see my friend and confidante on the road ahead of me, walking towards the fort; and with him, a man in the uniform of the French in India! I set my pace faster; I scamper after them; I smooth dishevelled hair and endeavour to bring my breath under control.

“Devadarshan!” I pant. “Well met!”

He stops, my friend Darshan, and looks over his shoulder, his face unreadable as ever. He answers not in Tamil but in slow and simple Hindoostanee, doubtless for the benefit of his companion.

“Ah, Sorondo,” says Darshan. Then he speaks to the one who walks with him. “Sir—may I introduce Sorondo, the Spaniard who plants trees for the kingdom’s future needs.”

Darshan’s companion, I see, fills out his uniform; it stretches tight across his back, and his neck bulges from his collar, showing damp flesh below dark hair shot through with grey. He turns slowly. And as he does so, it is though a great hand takes me by my neck and pushes my head down, down through icy waters, and grinds my face into the St Cast sands. For I see lips slack and wet beneath an oiled moustache, and bullfrog eyes staring wide as if in perpetual threat; I see thumb and finger rise to mouth, and wipe at lips; I see him look at me oddly, as if trying to grasp something half-remembered. And I hear him say to himself, musingly: “Allons … ”

#

“What is it, husband?” Usha’s voice is low and urgent. This damned day is near over; I am sitting inside the bungalow, on the floor; back to the wall, head to my knees. I cannot speak; I can hardly breathe. She runs fingers through my hair. “What is it?” I raise my head a little, and look to my hands. They tremble as if with ague. She is silent for a small minute, then sits beside me, puts her arms around me and draws me to her sweet softness. “Is it over?” she says. “They have found out?”

“Not yet. But they will. They will, now.”

“Tell me.”

“The new advisor. The Frenchman. I know him. His name is Vauquelin.”

She makes a little frown. “Vauquelin? You said that in the night—that night you dreamed … ”

So I tell her. I tell her of St Cast; of Vauquelin’s butchery; of how it returns to me sometimes, in the deepest nights. She is as silent as a rock.

“When he remembers me, we are all dead.”

“Listen.” She has her hands on my cheeks; she makes me look at her. “He has not recognised you. That is the important matter. And why would he? You were then a boy. You are now, I guess, a head taller, a shoulder wider, with a beard as full as a Mussulman’s. So there is no reason for him to recognise in you the boy of more than thirty years ago.”

There is truth in this. I am also now browned and leathered by the tropics’ sun; no longer a pale and delicate worm of a child. There is probably but six or seven years between Vauquelin and I; in mid-age that means nothing, but at fourteen it is the difference between man and boy. Yet still the old horror gnaws at me.

“But I knew him on sight. So he may remember, some day. He may. And if he does … You know that poor Benedito has had to flee? Darshan told me, when we were alone. Vauquelin had let it be known that he sees the Portuguese as he sees the British. Fortunately, Darshan warned Benedito of this before Vauquelin could tell Benedito himself.”

“All it means, husband, is that there is now no reason for us to stay in this citadel of brutes. Not even for your trees. Do you agree?”

I turn my gaze to the open doorway. Through it I see my plants, their leaves dark against the day’s fading light. Their exquisite scent …

“Do you agree?”

All the money I have ever owned; all the labour of my strongest years; all caught in root and branch. From Australia to India by way of Batavia.

“Yes. Yes, Usha. We must leave as soon as we can.”

But even as I speak—yes, even as I give my dear wife this assurance, God help me—I am wondering; I cannot help it. For Usha is right; Vauquelin will not immediately see beneath my beard; he may not at all; why would he? I may have less time, but I have still some time, surely. I feel Usha’s eyes on me.

“What now, my love?”

“You did not tell me of Vauquelin. What else do you keep locked away?”

“My dear—”

“Tell me everything.”

So I tell her—and I cannot meet her eye in the telling—of Antoinette. And then I tell her the truth of why I had to run from the Endeavour before it returned to England. Of Magra the New York Irishman, an Endeavour midshipman like myself, who knew that I was an army deserter. Of how he held it over my head night and day; of how he made me thus his whipping boy for all manner of misdemeanours, the nature of which grew more vile as the voyage progressed.

“Listen, Usha: one night, Magra made the Captain’s clerk Orton drunk almost to death, and while the clerk was thus insensible, cut away his clothes, and, as if he were no more than a dog’s pup, sliced off the tops of his ears, and then told all that it was I, to the point that even poor Orton—who was my friend, Usha, my friend—believed it.”

All that is true; indeed, by the time the Endeavour left Australia, Magra had turned all against me.

“So Captain Cooke would have had me punished for Orton’s assault as soon as we docked in England; yet had I denounced Magra, Magra would have told all that I was a deserter, and then I would have been manacled until Plymouth, and there given to the army.”

The cleft stick of circumstance, as always. But whose fault was it that the Irishman knew me to be a deserter? Mine, only mine; for it was the consequence of my own injudicious, rum-soaked confidences; my own weak attempts to curry favour with fearsome Magra.

After I finish speaking, I am silent for a while. Outside the bungalow, geckos chirrup. Eventually, I must speak.

“Well? I am worthless—is it not so?”

She turns to me; she puts a hand to my face. “You were young. You made mistakes. And had you not made those mistakes, I would not have you now. Such is fate.”

“You forgive me?”

“I will always forgive you, husband. Always. Because I love you.” As we hug, her hair catches on the dampness of my cheek. “I ask only this: forget your trees, and make plans to flee.”

“Trust me, my dear. Trust me.”

And as I say this, my lips to her ear, I look through the open doorway again at my trees. Their leaves move slightly, and their fragrance washes over me like balm.

That night, while Usha sleeps, I lie in tormented wakefulness. What now can I do? In the next room, Kuruppan dreams; I hear him say, Little boy blue … Perhaps that is what decides me; I must act, or Power will take us all, including my blameless child. I cannot, must not, simply follow this world’s flow like a leaf in the river. I must change my life through my own efforts; and if that requires diverting a river, so be it!

The words come to me as easily as the wind; as if some spirit of earth or air whispered into my ear:

O Absalom, be so kind as to beg of Mohan Lal an audience for this poor gardener … I implore the benefits of his wisdom in this uncertain time, for albeit that the kingdom’s Ukalypt plantations have benefited from the Minister’s generous endowments; nevertheless, the kingdom’s enemies such as the British, and the Nizam’s men of Hyderabad their allies, will doubtless cause much loss of the Sultan’s crop before those enemies of the Sultan meet their just and inevitable defeat at the Sultan’s hand. And therefore I beg the Minister’s sage advice now that the constellations favour their planting, on the protection of the Sultan’s property his Ukalypts, and, in order to follow the times given by the stars, I do most humbly request the Minister’s sage advice at his most early convenience …

Yes: this message, if dull-witted Absalom relays it in proper form, must give me at least a brief audience with Mohan Lal. Moreover, if all goes well, I may also seek his leave to absent myself from the public executions, three days hence. My stomach clenches at the thought of the Sultan’s entertainments …

Indeed, this will work to my great advantage.

I am sure of it.