The Purchasing Mother’s Son
A Fantastical Tale of 18th Century Siam
by
Bruce P. Grether
Introduction
Present Day, Bangkok
The man was my destroyer, not only because of his good looks. From his appearance, I figured I could be his mother, though I’m no longer certain of anything about him. All through my lecture in the auditorium of the American University Association in Bangkok his presence in the front row totally disconcerted me.
As I spoke about Thai folklore and supernatural beliefs, his piercing gaze never once left my face. I stammered, lost my train of thought, and made all those nightmarish mistakes I’ve never made in my many years of teaching at UC Berkeley. I fumbled my way to the end of the lecture.
To my dismay, the man followed me as I left the podium.
In the foyer I rambled through brief consultations with several old friends from my student days in Thailand, plus some questions from polite members of the urban intelligentsia, without the kind of deliberate patience an author releasing a new book is wise to employ. I felt forced to trade a few obscure scholarly quips with one brilliant Thai intellectual, as he had some minor royal status and major political influence.
All the while the unmistakable redhead from the front row remained peripherally unavoidable. Those devilish pale blue eyes kept me frozen and trapped. Still he showed no impatience as the others chatted with me. Eventually I recognized him as a means of escape from my inquisitors.
“Excuse me, Khun Suwantanee,” I said to an old friend, “and everyone. I am so sorry, but I must go. Thank you all so very much for coming tonight, and I sincerely look forward to your reactions to my new book.”
With hands prayerfully together before my face, with a slight bow I performed the versatile Thai waiof hello and goodbye.
I took hold of the redhead’s arm and used him to plow through the rest of the crowd, he obliged by turning a nod and slight smile upon me; the other people seemed to evaporate before us.
“Your thesis is fascinating and plausible,” he said in a low, deep voice, with a definite English accent. He spoke almost in a whisper and yet the sound cut crisply into my head, like a sharp knife into iceberg lettuce. “However you’re quite wrong.”
That felt like a powerful hand pushing on my solar plexus and nearly felled me backwards. “How do you mean that, sir?”
“Your psychological and anthropological explanations concerning the altered states produced by trance, conditioned belief systems that govern sensory experience, and so on, are far from the whole truth. You see, many of the Siamese folk beliefs and magickal practices you mentioned are quite real, and in fact are actual realities.”
“Siamese? A long outmoded term.”
“It’s an English word. We’re speaking English.”
“Touché, then.”
“I myself, Dr. Price, am living proof of my assertion about the old traditions.”
“How so?”
“I’ll be happy to demonstrate for you.”
We halted to one side of the exit. “Are you aware, Mr. Uhm—”
“Perch. John Nathaniel Perch.”
“Yes, well, I am a card-carrying member of IONS, you know. The Institute of Noetic Sciences based in my native California. So I’m not what most people would consider closed-minded.”
“Wonderful!” His brilliant grin lit the hall where assorted attendees still gossiped and milled about in the process of adjourning toward the exits. “I’m a member and supporter as well,” he said. “Isn’t the Internet a marvel? May I call you—?”
“Helena is fine, Mr. Perch. It’s my name.”
“And John works for me. My apologies if you took offense at the challenge. It’s an old habit of mine, sometimes acting a bit more aggressive than necessary. In recompense, Helena, please allow me to entertain you this evening with dinner.”
“All right. I’ll hear you out.”
“I’m pleased you’re open-minded,” he said, “because at first you will not believe what I plan to demonstrate. No rational modern man actually believes such things are possible in this day and age. Although I find that computer-generated effects in films today seem to have many people slightly confused about what’s possible. Perhaps you will also consider me quite a lunatic.”
“How so?” As we walked toward the exit I wondered what he meant by that.
“For starters,” he said, “there’s my actual age. What would you guess?”
I inspected him carefully, noted the long-sleeved shirt buttoned at the cuffs, the black jeans, Birkenstock sandals, and a gold Cartier watch of masculine design. He wore a small, neatly trimmed mustache. “Around thirty,” I said. “Hard to say, actually. Only I’m never much good at guessing ages.”
Without a blink, he said, “Try 274 years.”
Then I really did laugh out loud and halted just before the exit. “I’ll try,” I said, still chuckling, albeit a bit nervously. “Only you definitely stretch my limits.”
“Quite understandable,” he said amiably. In all honesty it felt lovely to bask in the company and full attention of such a handsome and intriguing fellow.
I inspected him closely again. “Is a woman like me crazy to allow a total stranger to escort her like this?”
He shrugged. “I’m a gentleman of a very, very old-fashioned kind.”
I’ve traveled the world a lot as a single woman, and my intuition about men is strong. Though I sensed he was quite eccentric, he did not seem dangerous, so I merely said, “Very well.”
With no more than a nod, he lightly touched my elbow and steered me through the doorway. As we left the AUA and walked along the busy glare and noise of Rajdamri Road, I texted ahead so that we had reservations at the hotel.
In the marvelous ambience of the Spasso, as we ordered, I considered having some wine to perhaps calm my frazzled nerves. Only when I mentioned it, John shook his head. “I’d prefer your head is completely clear after this, so that you may have no doubt of what you see when I make my demonstration.”
“Ah, Mr. Mystery! Well, I’m not a regular drinker, anyway.”
As we enjoyed the appetizers and finally a fantastic Italian dinner, he asked me about my book. I felt happy to oblige, and threw in a few personal stories not in the book, as examples. Mostly he listened and kept me in place with those intense blue-gray eyes.
“I don’t dismiss the possibility of authentic paranormal phenomena,” I insisted, “though there have been plenty of cases of blatant fraud as well. However, I’ve seen fire walking many times at temple fairs, and nothing really explains that. I’m of the opinion that there’s simply a lot about Nature that we do not understand.”
John smiled. “Perhaps, Helena, our opinions are not so far apart, after all.” He wiped his lips carefully, and then set the napkin down beside his empty plate. “My assertions go beyond such occult phenomena that you may consider part of the cultural or religious belief systems. For example, I maintain that those fantastic spirit-beings you see in traditional Thai art have their basis in a direct experiential reality. They are actual creatures and beings composed of living energy. I’ve seen them many times.”
As the service was cleared and we both declined dessert, I pushed my chair back from the table. “Of course anything is possible, John,” I said, “yet I do trust my own experience more than mere words or other forms of evidence. For example, your rather extravagant assertion concerning your age, well, that would be difficult to verify.”
He too pushed back and stood up, so we adjourned from there and as if by unspoken agreement, we wandered to a colonnade within a kind of roofed courtyard where a few small café tables and chairs bordered an indoor swimming pool. With old-fashioned courtesy, he withdrew a chair from a table and seated me.
When a waiter arrived, we ordered coffee.
“I only intend to offer you an experience so that you might consider my story more seriously,” John said. “Then you may do with it what you will.”
“The story about your age?”
“My age is not the most significant part,” he said. “It’s all here.” He withdrew his hand from his trouser pocket and extended a tiny crimson rectangle of plastic smaller than my little finger. “On this flash-drive, it’s saved. I wrote the story of my life in third person, as a sort of historical novel. This way I’ve been able to include scenes I did not witness. Plus there are other people’s viewpoints, which are reality-based reconstructions. You know, in those days many people corresponded all the time and kept detailed diaries. I have had a lot of letters and many old journals to work from.”
“So, John, am I to take your story literally?” I accepted the flash-drive that he placed on my palm, and he carefully closed my fingers over it in a gesture of trust.
“That’s entirely up to you,” he said.
Our coffee arrived and for a short while we both inhaled the fragrance and sipped, distant in our own thought, I suppose.
Suddenly he spoke again, and I studied his face as he did. “This city may seem exotic and fascinating to you,” he said, and his eyes closed as if he gazed inwardly upon something else. “However, in this new millennium it begins to look more and more like many other great cities of the planet.”
“Of course,” I said. “I do love Bangkok. I always feel at home here. And Thailand, and the Thai people.”
“I was born not far north of Bangkok, Helena. I lived my early life in, and saw utterly destroyed, a more fantastic city than any other I’ve ever seen on the Earth.”
“You must be speaking of Ayutthaya.”
He heaved a loud sigh. “Well, I’m finished with the text I’ve given you. I’ve spent many years on it. I have nothing more to say on the specifics of that story.”
I held out the flash-drive. “Is that why you came to me? To give me this…”
For answer he stood up and began to unbutton his shirt. Though we were close to a swimming pool, it still seemed rather odd in that context that he took his shirt off.
Then what I saw emptied my mind of everything else.
“You’ll seldom see anything quite like this now,” he said, “even on some of the older men in the countryside.” He turned and carefully hung his shirt on the back of the metal chair.
I gasped, and not so much because of the defined muscles of his physique. Rather because of the elaborate tattoos that covered his luminous white skin like a lacework of alchemical shadows. Every inch of his torso and arms bore designs in dark blue and red ink: magick squares, diamonds, circles, floral patterns, ornamental letters, stylized numbers, symbols, and mythic figures. He revolved slowly to reveal that his broad-shouldered back was equally covered down to the narrow waist at his belt.
“This is the sua yantra, of course,” I said, finding my voice. “A garment of magickal designs intended to provide protection and certain powers.”
“Mine’s complete down to the ankles,” he said. “I did not acquire this for mere decoration. It proved necessary to save my life. And it transformed my existence in ways I could never have imagined it would. In fact, to obtain this garment was not only an ordeal, but also an initiation into a different kind of reality. I went through the full process at a temple, in the traditional manner, an excruciating and humbling experience. Without that full process, it would beno more than decoration.”
I exclaimed, “Beautiful needlework!”
“A necessity. Since birth I’ve been beset by a demonic presence intent upon killing me. In fact, I can feel her presence at this moment. Only she cannot touch me. She cannot come closer.”
Abruptly I decided that in fact I indulged an engaging lunatic. “She?”
“The Purchasing Mother. You may read about her, also.”
“You know, I’ve really got no time for—”
He interrupted me, “Dr. Price, I’m almost finished with what I need to tell you. You must know this—I may in fact be a kind of demon myself. I am almost entirely impervious to physical damage, unless a magickal weapon is used against me.
“However, I’ve also used my powers to kill men. On one occasion—well, if you read my account you may agree that those men deserved to die. At the same time, it still horrifies me to know that I can do such a thing. More than ever, I feel that true nonviolence is the only hope for our species. And yet I’ve killed in what I considered a just cause…
“Plus one of my primary relationships is with what you would consider a ghost—an earthbound spirit. The reality that I inhabit, many people could not believe exists. Then, of course, there is the matter of Constantine Phaulkon…”
“Really, now!”
He raised a hand. “Please just hear me out, Helena. You know who Phaulkon was, I’m quite sure.” I merely nodded and so he continued. “Well, that brilliant, ambitious and ruthless European rose high in the favor of the King of Siam at Ayutthaya until other royal persons became somewhat threatened and removed him.”
“Summarily beheaded, as I recall.”
“Yes, well, shortly after that execution—which happened in 1688—most foreigners were deported from Siam. Only gradually in the following years were those trading interests at Ayutthaya allowed to return. Even then, foreigners were no longer allowed on the Royal Island, except by invitation. Of course, Phaulkon had been the primary ally of the French and they called him ‘Monsieur Constance.’ Thus, of the French, only my stepfather’s private trading company was allowed back. In fact, his own employer, Monsieur Saint Germain, was never compelled to leave because he was a friend of the man I have called Prince Poom in my manuscript—”
“John, I must be honest. If a sympathetic audience for fantastic stories is what you want, I am a scientist. Perhaps this has been a mistake—”
He interrupted again: “No mistake, Helena. No such thing. I’ve selected you carefully to pass this on to you. In writing it, I have used many factual sources, including later conversations with my nursemaid, Narai. Yet if you prefer, consider my story no more than an imaginative novel with historical background.”
He sensed my growing impatience, for he held out a hand as if forbidding me to move, and I stayed. “Dr. Price, with these eyes I’ve seen far too much human suffering and vile behavior! In my youth, I saw many thousands of people raped, tortured, executed and slaughtered; I saw many thousands more marched off in chains to Burma. And this last century, the twentieth, was far worse than all the preceding history combined.”
“So, John, why on Earth do you wish to turn your story over to me?”
He shrugged massively. “Maybe I just I feel that by turning over this novelized account of my actual life, it belongs to someone else and I can let go of it.”
“You know, this hotel has a dress code. You’d best put that shirt back on.”
“I’m nearly finished,” he said. “Now please take a deep breath and watch me closely. You must be able to trust your senses on this. Don’t blink, or look away. Concentrate. Focus.”
I indulged him, sat and breathed and stared directly at him.
“You will not see me again after this,” he said. “Except through my story.” Before I could say more, he raised his hands, crossed his forearms at the wrists and closed his eyes. He brought the inside wrists together and muttered something under his breath.
He vanished.
The floor seemed to tilt. I sprang to my feet, searched around the café terrace by the poolside desperately, head swiveling all about, and yet I knew.
He had not left quickly, or faded away gradually.
He simply disappeared from sight.
Of course my rational mind rebelled completely.
His shirt still lay draped over the back of the chair he had occupied, and the crimson flash-drive remained in my hand.
Trembling violently all of a sudden, I decided that now I didneed a drink, after all. I recalled the final explanation of the famous Indian Rope Trick—the entire audience had been hypnotized, and thus believed they witnessed things otherwise impossible.
“Pull yourself together, Dr. Price,” I said aloud, for grounding, though in a rather unsteady voice. “Get a stiff drink and then go to your room, get out your laptop and see what’s on the drive.”
My initial shock and anger over the entire episode swiftly lapsed to a sense of loss, and emptiness—the most amazing and mysterious thing that ever happened to me had abruptly ended before I really knew it was happening. However that dreadful feeling of regret began to change when I started to read his story.
Again I felt John’s remarkable proximity.
He almost seemed to peer over my shoulder as I read it…
What I saw through John’s third-person narrative changed me not because it proved believable, rather because I do know that in essence it tells the truth. It’s not an objective truth; rather it’s histruth to the best of his honest ability to tell his own story and to reconstruct the viewpoints of others from the evidence. Yet of the place and time, there is no doubt of the basic facts and events.
Ayutthaya was founded in 1351 CE on a large river island where three rivers that flow down from the north of Thailand converge, the Chao Phraya, the Lopburi and the Pa Sak rivers. (“Ayutthaya” is now the preferred English spelling, though in his text John tends to Anglicize the Thai words and names according to his own phonetic whim.) The traditional Siamese culture reached astonishing heights at Ayutthaya, though most of what once existed was utterly destroyed during the fall of the city to Burmese invaders in the 18th century.
At that time, Ayutthaya had over a million inhabitants, making it one of the largest cities in the world. Its destruction was almost total.
Whatever my opinion of his veracity, I needed to see John again.
I wandered through various parts of Bangkok.
I became quite obsessed and against all reason, cancelled several subsequent events intended to promote my new book’s release. I moved to a less opulent accommodation so that I could afford to extend my stay in Thailand. I felt that such a striking figure of a man with vivid red hair should be easy to spot, which proved ludicrous of course, as Bangkok now boasts over nine million inhabitants! I even engaged the services of what can only politely be called a “private investigator.” No definite traces of a “John Nathaniel Perch” or anyone by any name matching his description emerged.
Though I knew he might not by now look as he did when I met him, I continued to search for more than two weeks. Finally while I roamed at random through an immense marketplace steeped in amber twilight—despite his assertion that I would never see him again—by chance I did catch a glimpse of him! I happened to look over my shoulder between two rows of little shops. He stood upon a rickety porch overlooking a canal behind the market.
He appeared to be speaking with a lovely Thai woman dressed in elegant western clothing of black and white, her hair stylishly bobbed, sunglasses perched atop her head. He wore a tight t-shirt and tan safari pants, the tattoos on his arms clearly visible. They appeared absorbed in conversation, and she held one of his hands between both of hers.
My heart leapt and I rushed into the alley, rudely bumping aside pedestrian shoppers and toppled a pyramid of painted paper umbrellas in my haste. I ignored indignant cries on my heels and reached no more than ten yards from them before John must have heard the commotion. His face turned and he looked directly into my eyes.
His expression was not so much surprise, as annoyance.
“John!”I shouted, “I’ve got to talk with you! John!”
To no avail. I bounded clumsily forward and closed the gap. Either he slipped behind the woman, or she in front of him. When I reached her, no trace of him could be seen. At my frantic queries, the woman calmly denied that anyone had been with her there moments before.
“With my own eyes, I just saw him here,” I said, in perhaps a rather pathetic tone of pleading for confirmation. “Talking with you! He left something of great value with me, in my care. Won’t you help me find him?”
She kept shaking her head and frowning, while I swept the empty air about us with my arms, like a crazy person. Of course she did have reason to be embarrassed by the public scene I caused. An assortment of curious Thai faces had turned our way.
“You must not raise your voice this way,” the woman said.
“I know this sounds crazy, but I know about him. I know what he can do. He becomes invisible; nothing can harm him. He has some kind of power, or at least he convinces others that he does. I only want to ask him some more questions.”
She listened patiently for a short while. “I cannot help you,” she said. “If someone is like that, he is not a man. He is more like a sorcerer, or he is a demon.”
“I’m not sure what he is, or who,” I said. My shattered excitement lost its steam and bitter disappointment flooded me. “Well, I am sorry to have bothered you. I apologize if I caused you embarrassment.”
She smiled. “Mai pen rai,”she said with a little nod, using that all-purpose Thai phrase that means: “It doesn’t matter, or not to worry, or it’s okay.” Her face grew serious; she stepped down from the veranda, and hurried away into the crowd of shoppers. I made no attempt to follow her.
By the time I finished reading John’s story for the second time, I considered how close I was to the actual location of Ayutthaya.
I had already decided I must soon make my own pilgrimage there—of course!—when I made a most startling discovery that suggested to me the entire story could be far closer to the truth than it is fabricated. While pursuing some old documents at what was actually a jewelry store, more than an antique business, I asked about any old records, papers or files that might have survived from the 18th century.
At first, I was told they had none such and knew of none such, but then an older partner in the enterprise, and elderly Chinese gentleman with quite a few gold teeth in his smile, did smile broadly and chuckled.
In a dark back room lit only by several gleaming brass table lamps with emerald green shades, what appeared to be half a dozen long wooden drawers, warped, somewhat dusty and even charred in one area, were brought and placed on a table for my inspection. Much to my annoyance, it proved necessary to make a considerable payment even to be allowed to inspect the contents of the drawers. I was unable to bargain the price down far before I felt compelled to use one of my credit cards to pay. This, because the little I could see enticed me. Also, my intuition seemed to tingle in my brow.
The hours I spent looking at page after page of very old and often quite damaged, worm-eaten and mildewed documents yielded an unexpected treasure. One section of some sixty pages inscribed in French contains reference to not only His Honor Alexandre de Saint Germain, but mentions his French Oriental Trading Company, and his liaison in Bangkok, a Monsieur Hugo. Even more thrilling and producing goose-bumps all over me from head-to-toes, was the causal notation that at a certain time the company’s owner had officially turned over his duties to his lieutenant named as one Monsieur Guy Therieux. The salary roll listed Therieux’s son as one Bruno Henri, as if he too worked at the company office. The date of Guy’s death is noted as the same day John records in his manuscript, and the fact that his son succeeded him in his position is also noted.
Though I paid far too much for those particular pages, and they contain no specific reference to a spouse or stepson of Bruno Therieux, I no longer doubted the overall authenticity of John’s account of his life and times. Actually there is a tantalizing notation that seems to refer to the younger Therieux’s “dependents,” or “ses personnes à charge.” Against all reason, everything fell together to suggest, if not conclusively prove John’s veracity.
Of course none of these details I’ve mentioned will mean much until you have read the rest of John’s story.
The following weekend I rode a tour bus north from Bangkok some sixty-two miles along the Chao Phraya River. The modern town called Ayutthaya has over 50,000 inhabitants, though nothing close to the million it had at its peak. It is a center of agricultural trade, industrial manufacture and tourism. Bridges now connect directly to the island. Tropical trees thickly shroud the east and west shorelines surrounding the island. Tucked among them are both traditional and contemporary buildings.
A thriving and relatively small community, this bears scant resemblance to the fantastical city that covered the island and the shores around it that John describes in his story. Only the basic geography and scattered fragments of ruins remain unchanged.
Our group stopped first at the Tourism and Industry Promotion Center near the middle of the island. The ruins have become a historical park, and efforts continue to reconstruct various locations. In 1991 Ayutthaya was declared a Unesco World Heritage Site. Eventually as the tour group proceeded to other stops, I managed to slip away from our amiable guides and roamed the haunted parklands by myself.
In all honestly, not a lot remains, except for a few pockets of ruins, pieces of palaces and temples and monasteries. In areas, following the devastation in 1767, the jungle grew back so aggressively it became impenetrable. Some of it looks like Angkor Wat. Most of the canals were filled in. The great outer rampart walls that surround the island, some of them built in crenellated European style, are gone, mined for their superior brick for later construction elsewhere. Mostly you find expanses of open space dotted with stands of stately shade trees—a peaceful place perfect for sightseeing and picnics.
The accuracy or lack of it in John’s account no longer concerned me. In my research, I found no definite evidence of the English presence at Ayutthaya, as John depicted it, though quite a few Europeans evidently lived there again, even after Phaulkon. The official French presence had been banned before 1700, though the Jesuits remained. Possibly a private French company such as John describes could have existed. However the actual records are extremely sketchy, as so much evidence was lost.
Despite my earlier skepticism, I now felt possessed by melancholy imaginings and strange sensations. As it destroyed so much, the fire that ravaged the city must have also purged some of the massive human suffering. John recounts in his astonishing tale, that Buddhist monks performed mass exorcisms to cleanse the place spiritually.
Yet I also sensed traces of lingering horror.
And from before that, unearthly splendor such as the world has not seen since.
In my mind’s eye, I saw regal ghosts arrayed in rainbows of bright silk, gleaming gold and glittering jewels, speaking in playful games of rhyme. In that subtle dimension of a place’s memory, those royals heard angelic musicians play, and still saw the Heavenly City’s full majesty and unrivaled splendor. They knew that the sacred white elephant remained safe in its keep at the Hub of the Universe.
As I strolled the expanses of parkland where old Ayutthaya once flourished, I imagined that at sunrise and sunset I might hear those spectral temple bells tolling around me in the hundreds, muted only by the mists of time.
Then in a sunny moment while unseen breezes chased through shimmering treetops, I shivered with the distinct and certain sense of being watched. When I stopped moving, for several seconds I thought I heard quiet footsteps nearby. Of course, I wanted to experience something of the kind. Though I looked around myself with great care, I still appeared to be quite alone.
Is he a demon, or a man possessed by something evil?
Perhaps more of a demigod, I suspect.
I never saw John again.
Helena T. Price, PhD
Berkeley, California
If thou beest born to strange sights,
Things invisible to see,
Ride ten thousand days and nights…
— John Donne, Song
Book I
The Heavenly City
Chapter One:
A Rite Gone Wrong
On a Thursday, the first day of March in the Year of Our Lord 1736, in her final attempt at motherhood, Mrs. Philip Aloysius Perch gave birth to a healthy son in her home at Ayutthaya, Siam.
Her labor and the birthing had become a prolonged and excruciating ordeal. The Dutchman, Dr. Hoot, on whom she depended all through her pregnancy, attended her with the assistance of two ladies from the English community. The baby’s tiny head came into this world capped with orange down the color of his father’s hair.
That hue also matched the most auspicious color to wear in the city of Ayutthaya on Thursdays.
Breathlessly and through a face that still glistened with sweat despite the kindly ministrations of the two women, the mother announced: “In a month’s time, this precious child shall be christened John Nathaniel at Saint Joseph’s Church.” Though she knew full well that her own parents, Kenneth and Evangeline Clayborne, would balk at the name as an unwelcome reminder of her disgraced brother, Cynthia Perch had a will strong enough to insist upon it anyway.
I’ve earned the right to insist on any name I wish,she thought as she watched in dreamlike wonder while Dr. Hoot tied off the umbilical cord and severed it with a sharp scissors. Already I’ve alienated my mother by asking for these two ladies to attend me instead of her. Of course, she will be asking for the baby in no time.
As soon as tiny John Nathaniel was truly detached, the delighted English ladies took over, and washed the lustily wailing newborn. Then somewhat reluctantly they turned him over to a Siamese wet-nurse of excellent reputation whom the good doctor had brought into the household.
Cynthia had lost a great deal of blood. The resulting light-headedness and sheer exhaustion may have contributed to her boldness in naming the child for her outlawed brother. She had always been known for her stubborn loyalty to that long-absent sibling anyway, as well as her determination to become a mother.
Once the bleeding subsided and she rested quietly upon the soft blue cloudiness of a dose of that new miracle drug laudanum, Dr. Hoot left her in the doting care of the two English ladies. Cynthia trusted him on matters of health and childbearing, as she did no other person, despite the strained relations between their nations of origin, which meant little to her and even less to him. On his way through the parlor, the Dutchman encouraged Colonel Perch—the wide-eyed and sullen Englishman starkly unnerved by the entire enterprise—with, “You might wish to inspect your son.”
The Colonel went striding upstairs and outside the room designated as nursery, he informed the wet-nurse of his request. Then he peered with knit brow into the basket held proudly before him by the small Siamese woman. As the baby almost immediately began to whimper, possibly due to the strong reek of alcohol and tobacco from his father, Perch waved the woman away.
“At least it’s male,” he muttered. “Thank God! I suppose he won’t look so hideously raw after a time.”
To his great relief, the English ladies told him that his wife had fallen asleep, and that she must not be disturbed.
* * *
The wet-nurse Narai patiently waited until all three English women had fallen asleep. She gently lifted the child in her arms. When he stirred, she offered a breast, which he took. Already he knew her scent and flavor. Narai walked silently along the veranda outside the bedrooms into shadows of the far end at the back of the house where another woman, who served as a midwife among the Siamese, awaited her in the darkness.
Narai lightly bounced the child three times in her arms.
“Three days the spirits’ child,” she said. “Four days a human child. Whose child is this? Whoever it belongs to, take it!”
The household women knew this was a moment of supreme danger to the child. Like every newborn, evil spirits wanted him and the women were determined to protect him from harm.
“It is my child,” the other woman said. “Let me be the Purchasing Mother.”
Narai said, “Come, O Purchasing Mother, on his third night, and we will sell you a child to keep for your own.”
Thus in the first days of his life a series of secret rituals was conducted on behalf of young John Nathaniel Perch. Narai and the midwife set the stage for the rites of protection to be completed on his third day when the spirit child became fully human.
They knew this child’s case was particularly urgent. Mrs. Perch had previously suffered several miscarriages and a traumatic stillbirth. So the women carefully rehearsed their strategy to foil the Purchasing Mother, a demonic entity that often claimed the lives of infants, especially during their first three days.
Despite his coloring, so alien to their eyes, the household women recognized the newborn as an especially beautiful and perfectly formed little fellow. For this very reason they took care to refer to him aloud amongst themselves as “revolting,” “hideous,” and “detestable.” To praise him at this stage would attract the attention of a variety of evil spirits inclined to covet things of special beauty.
The phiis,as they were called in the native language, would become enamored of little John Nathaniel and try to steal him. The women also knew that powerful and dangerous as they could be, the phiishad little intelligence and often took their cues from smarter humans. They could usually be thwarted by cunning and careful contrivance.
In fact, these women knew of seven primary Purchasing Mothers. One such evil spirit existed for each day of the week that a child could be born. Furthermore there were twenty-eight lesser Purchasing Mothers that corresponded to days of the lunar month. All such demons could cause illness or death to a newborn.
John Nathaniel spent his first days mostly in a hanging crib with netted sides, housed in a nursery that adjoined his mother’s bedroom where she lay recuperating from the delivery. This room where Narai nursed him and bathed him and changed his diapers also had another doorway directly onto the veranda. Narai took him through the inner door to his mother only when summoned.
Fortunately the two English ladies left on the second day, when Dr. Hoot declared Cynthia stabilized, though he ordered that she remain in bed and not be disturbed.
Narai found it no problem to quietly whisk the baby downstairs and back to the servants’ quarters while his mother slept. His father, often absent from the home anyway, seemed content to wait until the boy could carry a toy sword before he would pay his son much attention.
On the third night after his birth the household women and some of their friends had prepared a room at the back of the servant’s quarters. They decorated with ornaments of tinsel, and created an altar complete with offerings of food and liquor, and bowls of water. Incense smoldered and candles burned.
According to a ritual formula, sticky rice had been prepared in four colors: black, red, yellow, and white. The rice was molded and formed into a life-sized and quite realistic figure of a baby, then placed in a basket before the altar. The rice baby was white with black hair and eyes, red lips, gold ornaments of yellow rice and the whites of its eyes were white.
The women had gathered and waited expectantly in the prepared room where the pungent fragrance of incense grew ever stronger. In that smoky miasma candlelight glittered on tinsel.
At last Narai arrived with John Nathaniel in his basket. She entered and walked slowly, calmly past the others, then knelt and placed the basket before the altar beside the basket that contained the rice baby. She performed a deep waiof reverence, with hands pressed together before her brow.
Narai bowed all the way to the floor, then she sat upright. “Hail to the great and beneficent Powers!” she intoned. “I invoke you, O Purchasing Mothers! The Purchasing Mother of the City Above; the Purchasing Mother of the Middle Way; the Purchasing Mother of the City Below; the Purchasing Mother Under the Bed. Each the cause of a different kind of harm.
“Come, Purchasing Mothers, to see what we have to offer you!”
Almost immediately a loud rapping sound came from the doorway and all of the women jumped in startlement. The sound struck genuine fear in their good hearts. Their faces turned as one toward the entrance.
A terrifying figure stood outlined against the night.
Breasts bare, she wore a gilded dancer’s helmet shaped like the head of a deer with antlers. With a pale yellow skirt tied low at her waist, she held a palm leaf fan in her left hand and gripped a spear in her right hand. The butt of the spear had made that sound as she knocked it against the doorframe. Her human nose was painted black like the nose of a deer.
This woman, the midwife who advised Narai in these matters, had bravely invited the phiicalled Lady Kulathook, to possess her body for this purpose. All of the women knew that she risked permanent possession or insanity for the sake of the child, and that terrified them further.
Only this was not really the midwife—it was Lady Kulathook, the Purchasing Mother of Thursday, who stood there.
The Purchasing Mother pounded the butt of her spear on the threshold again for attention. Her reddened eyes bulged with a famished eagerness. Her face and breasts shone with sweat. Her nostrils flared like those of a stalking predator. The women felt the malign and avid presence that emanated from her. They believed that should they fail in this rite, John Nathaniel had little chance of survival.
Narai swallowed her fear with some effort, turned slowly to face the strange figure directly and made a deep waiof respect to Lady Kulathook.
“Come in and join us, O Purchasing Mother,” she said. “Come and see what we have to offer you.”
Now bidden to enter, Lady Kulathook swept into the room. She halted and gazed down upon Narai with a disdainful expression that chilled the blood of all the women. With her fan, she made a dismissive gesture at the wet-nurse, and then went forward and squatted down before the two baskets in front of the altar.
She sneered, teeth visible, and the protruding red eyes swiveled back and forth between the real child and the rice baby by turns, as if calculating what fruit to buy in the marketplace.
“Who do you think you are, foolish mortals?”
The women heard the harsh and mocking tone of Lady Kulathook, nothing like the midwife’s usual gentle voice. The glaring eyes darted back and forth. She exuded an aura of premature death that bruised the sultry, smoky air of the room.
“When you summon a being of my importance, you mortals better have a good purpose to my benefit, or I will destroy you all!”
She made jerky threatening motions with the spear and fan held out at her sides.
Narai responded politely and yet forcefully, “O Purchasing Mother, do not be angry with us. Restrain your temper, for our purpose is to please you. Enjoy these offerings of liquor and food, incense and candles that we present.” She crept forward and made a waiwith both hands over the rice baby. “Please admire the lovely figure we offer you in place of the hideous mortal child.”
She gave only a cursory nod toward John Nathaniel who remained dozing since she had nursed him well before she brought him from the main house. “Cause no harm to this revolting one who was born among humans. He is not of your noble kind. He is detestable, for he cannot live like you in marshes, along rocky shores, among trees of the forest, in caves, in cliffs, and in rugged mountains.
“When you have partaken of the fine offerings, please go wherever you like, but go away from here. Let this homely human child live here with us. Give us your promise not to harm him or to trouble him.” Narai truly spoke from her own heart.
In tense silence the women waited.
Lady Kulathook’s mouth hung open and a string of saliva swung like a crystal pendant from her lower lip. Her head tilted slowly side-to-side like that of a praying mantis on the hunt as she considered the options with insect-like deliberation.
By flickering candlelight of the smoky room the observers could actually seea yellowish nimbus that discolored the air around Lady Kulathook’s squatted figure. Her power to kill or spare the child rippled through that feverish aura like the undulating body of a viper. She stared doubtfully at the sparkling tinsel, the glowing candles.
She sniffed the incense smoke as if unimpressed; her black nose crinkled.
Several women could not contain gasps of dismay amid the awful suspense.
Abruptly the Purchasing Mother shifted the spear to her left hand with the fan. The right hand darted out with a serpent’s speed and grabbed a ball of sticky rice from the altar. She devoured it with loud animalistic chewing and smacking of her lips. She followed the ball with a glass of potent rice liquor downed in a single gulp, and a mouthful of water.
She wiped her lips with the back of her hand and her eyes narrowed to slits.
She had accepted the offerings—so far, so good—still the women held their breaths. The outcome remained precariously in the balance.
“Great Lady,” Narai said, “we beg you, please, allow us to purchase this unworthy human child from you who could claim him. Let us purchase this detestable child for thirty-three cowries.” Though her voice quavered, the wet-nurse spoke as calmly as possible. “In his place we will also give you this handsome figure to admire. We ask only your promise that from now onward you will cause no harm to the human child. Allow us as mortals to keep him and care for him. He can be of no use to you.”
A soft clicking sound came as Narai drew from within her blouse a string of thirty-three cowrie shells, valued as currency in Siam. She held out the string of perfect shells and it swung in small circles, agleam in candlelight.
For an excruciating interval Lady Kulathook’s head tilted slowly side-to-side as she continued to ponder. A low buzz of uncertainty, almost like the thrum of some kind of insect hive, came from deep in her throat. The sound rose and fell monotonously.
“Keep your cowries, foolish mortals!” she declared without warning.
Women gasped and cried out all over the room. Lady Kulathook seized the rim of the basket that contained John Nathaniel and pulled it closer. “No,” she said, “this child is far more beautiful!”
Despite her horror, Narai managed to keep her composure enough to move closer on her knees, the cowries extended and dangling. “Please, no, O Purchasing Mother,” she said. “The mortal child is hideous! He will only die if you take him. Look at this lovely figure instead, so handsome and fine. See the perfect shells that we offer.”
“Mm,” Lady Kulathook hummed.
At last she released the basket and snatched the shells from Narai’s trembling fingers. “I am not so easily deceived as you think!” She grabbed the basket with the rice child and surged to her feet in a single catlike motion. “No, I am not stupid!”
The women tried to keep silent as she continued to vacillate. Bulging red eyes glared suspiciously back and forth between the real child before the altar and the false one that she held.
She began to set down the basket she had taken up, and the witnesses groaned.
Then as she straightened again, they sighed in relief.
“Linger no longer,” Narai concluded in haste. “Hurry and begone with your purchase. Take with you all danger and illness away from this human child. Great Lady, make all misfortune and harm vanish from him—”
Lady Kulathook interrupted her, “I make no promise.”
Dismayed, Narai struggled to finish her recitation: “Leave only the four elements… and the three sources for him in full measure…”
Lady Kulathook appeared dissatisfied with her decision. As if she had taken offense, she whirled and stalked from the room.
Cautious smiles crossed the faces of the stunned women. They all understood what the Purchasing Mother’s hesitation and her failure to make a promise meant; they had been only partially successful, and must remain vigilant.
Nevertheless, once Lady Kulathook was gone into the night, Narai heaved a loud sigh of relief. She lifted John Nathaniel Perch in his basket and carried him back to the main house.
Chapter Two:
Old Friend in a New Guise
Monsieur Bruno Henri Therieux attended the christening of Cynthia Perch’s son with the same tormented longing that he had always felt for her. She had been forced to relocate the event from Saint Joseph’s Church, though the priest had been willing to allow an Anglican rite to be held in his Catholic sanctuary for a substantial donation.
Bruno’s request of the priest at Saint Joseph’s, his Father Confessor, had helped his childhood friend Cynthia to make the arrangements, however Dr. Hoot insisted that she change the location to her home for the sake of her health.
The Frenchman’s anticipation of seeing her almost overcame his dread of the social occasion by the time he hired a riverboat and rode to the ceremony.
Traffic thronged the great waterway. To his left stood the island shore of mighty brick ramparts—crenellated with leaf-shaped battlements along the parapets—that enclosed the royal precinct of the Isle of Indra, the Heavenly City, and the Navel of the Universe. He saw scaffolds and ladders and little figures that moved along them in places as workers touched up the whitewash that glared blindingly in the sunlight. This whitewashing was a constant chore in the heat and humidity where mildew and mold grew rampantly.
Only the canal entrances with huge water gates broached those mighty walls. Behind the boundary of fortifications, he glimpsed the tops of temple and palace roofs that lifted in tiers of colorful tile with gilded dragon-peaks and eaves. Gold stupa spires by the score thrust shining blades against the vivid blue sky.
Despite his embittered emotions concerning the mother, the Frenchman also felt eager to see little John Nathaniel Perch for the first time—this new namesake of his other boyhood friend John Nathaniel Clayborne. Very seldom did Bruno visit the Perch household at Englishtown, a small neighborhood situated downstream from what his father Guy called the “French Quarter” on the western side of the river.
To his right he observed a lush shoreline of towering trees and more ordinary buildings and docks. Water steps, and mooring posts, and canal mouths, passed by. That shore at last yielded the entrance to the canal that led into Englishtown and to the outdoor ceremony.
He arrived just after the final benediction by the Anglican priest.
Politely he doffed his tricorne hat, and then replaced it.
Bruno encountered Cynthia near a table where the priest had set up a cross and small tabernacle on a purple altar cloth. The mother proudly displayed her son in her arms, though she still appeared somewhat pale and haggard despite having dressed magnificently for the occasion. She met his gaze and gave Bruno a slight nod, as if their meeting was unremarkable, though it had been quite a long time.
“He looks like a monkey,” Bruno said. He pulled back the lacy edge of the boy’s little bonnet for a better view of the shrewd little face. “One of those red hairy things from Borneo, you know?” He hastened to add, “A most charming little ape, of course!”
Cynthia clucked. “Be kind, my dear. We all begin life more or like less like this little treasure. It’s not his fault that Johnny has his father’s coloring. Otherwise, he’s quite perfect.”
“Oh, of that I have no doubt,” Bruno said.
Several other guests moved away to provide room for their exchanges, aware of the personal delicacy of this meeting. The powdered faces observed them, curious and yet carefully composed beneath formal wigs despite the heat and humidity of the tropical climate. Regardless of some sharp glances and lingering stares, Cynthia took hold of Bruno’s elbow and they strolled toward a breezy terrace at the east side of the house where a striped tent had been pitched over refreshments.
The fragrance of flowers wafted through the garden. Spicy and delicious smells of food mingled from the tables where two servants waved fans in a hypnotic rhythm to keep flies away. Exquisite and colorful Siamese-style floral arrangements among the gleaming silver serving dishes made the tables covered with white linen a lovely sight to behold.
Other guests continued light chatter, though they kept a certain distance from the mother and child and her friend, the Frenchman. They acted as if unaware of his close association with her banished brother. That, of course, was foremost in their minds, along with the fact that England and France were often enemies politically.
Cynthia’s pale eyes stared past Bruno—across the turbulent brown waters flecked with passing boats—at the fairytale vista of the island.
He studied her refined profile and knew that he had only managed to annoy her.
“Forgive me,” he said. “I’m certain your son will grow to be quite worthy of his uncle’s name.”
“I certainly hope not, my dear!” Cynthia did not look at him; her implacable expression had not changed visibly, yet her tone grew slightly shrill and contentious. “What about his father?”
Bruno shrugged. “At least this boy’s got good blood on yourside, Cynthia. Please do not misunderstand what I say.”
“I understand perfectly, darling.”
“You only make it worse, to address me with such a fond term,” he said.
“You know that I am fond of you, as always. Will you please meet my eyes?”
With a start he realized that her face had turned to engage his directly. The baby in her arms began to stir and made little popping sounds as if he might begin to fuss at any moment, or even to cry out.
Bruno’s heart sank deeper into his gut and yet some part of him soared high and invisible as he obeyed and looked at her. Such a lovely female creature she is!Quite frighteningly so…
Her own blond hair pulled back and piled up, fixed with combs and pearls. That imposing figure encased in pink silk, Flanders lace and Venetian braid. The pensive face regarded him with fond forbearance; the shadows about her eyes hinted at the lingering effects of her ordeal in labor. A delicate cameo from near Mount Vesuvius in Italy completed the front of her high collar. Still, within all this feminine glamour he could yet see the enchanting girl he knew. Only thatmakes her approachable at all!
Cynthia observed him now with no less partiality.
His thick black hair in a single braid down his back beneath the new tricorne of fine grey felt. He had fastened a single ostrich plume to the left side of the hat with an emerald broach. The lime green eyes never changed; they held glints of saucy irreverence and what she always considered a touch of indulgent French melancholy. Though he cultivated a neat little mustache of late, she also saw in him the beloved companion of her youth. He had lost none of that boyish appeal and recalcitrant romanticism. He really is sohandsome, sort of a dashing Mediterranean gallant among all these demure Saxon dandies and doddering codgers!
Without lowering his voice, he said, “I still maintain that you should have married me,” for which she sent a sharp little kick to his ankle from under her skirts. “Ouch,” he said. “Yes, I deserve that!”
He saw that her parents, the elder Claybornes, stood not far away and had most likely heard their exchanges. That stiff aristocratic English couple expressed their disapproval by pointedly looking away from their daughter, though at present no other guests had engaged them in conversation. Life in the tropics for many years had given them the look of carved tribal totems: neglected and weatherworn. At the same time, they burdened themselves with the finest of European fashion: her wig towered and his hung long below his shoulders.
Cynthia winced. “You are utterly without redeeming qualities, Monsieur Therieux!” She shifted to a better purchase in her arms the cause célèbre in his long white gown and sunbonnet. Though a slight rocking of her arms had settled him, little John Nathaniel stared up vacantly at the shiny coils and waves of his mother’s golden hair that caught the light. “Quite hopeless, indeed!”
“On the contrary, dear woman,” Bruno touched her satin-paneled sleeve. “I’ve never entirely given up hope.”
He looked beyond her at the Royal Navy officer, her husband. In full dress uniform including gold braid, Philip Aloysius Perch seemed determined to guzzle more than the lion’s share of the potent punch provided in a huge silver bowl beneath the striped canopy. Bruno studied him. The man’s grown rather pudgy and blotchy complected, so quickly he’s lost whatever brutish appeal he may have had when she married him. What a tragic irony that she felt compelled to do so, and then she lost the child anyway! Not that I’d ever hint at what I know of that,especially not to her! And how did her brother know, anyway? Still, I do believe that he knew the truth of it…
Indeed, though the colonel had owned a certain angular charm only a few years before, his face had grown rather puffy and now his nose was always vivid like a cherry.
“Does it really matter, Cynthia?” Bruno said. He felt intoxicated by the whole occasion though he had not had anything to drink. “You know, we live in completely different worlds now, you and I. For example I suspect that your darling husband and this old childhood friend of yours named Bruno Therieux are quite distinct and unrelated species of male animals.”
“That may be so,” she said with a slight nod and a wicked gleam of complicity in her eyes. “Only you must not speak so. Not here, not now. All such silliness aside, my dear, let me ask you something. Lacking his actual namesake, would you serve as my little one’s honorary uncle? You’re practically a brother to my own brother and myself… or you were.”
“Wherever your brother may be in this wide world,” Bruno said, “that is still how I feel. Of course, I’m honored that you ask. I’ll gladly be his French uncle. And most sincerely, I meant nothing unkind by my first statement regarding your adorable bundle of joy. Let me revise that saucy remark to congratulate you for producing a most spectacular cherub!”
Bruno swept off his hat and bowed deeply.
“Thank you so much!” Her laughter tinkled like a wind-chime. “Such flattery is always welcome to a new mother, I suppose, only it’s not necessary. I know how beautiful is my son.”
* * *
Later the same year Bruno sat within a pavilion in the gardens at the compound that belonged to his employer Monsieur de Saint Germain.
He sprawled back in a rattan chair set in that gazebo of the kind called a salahby the Siamese. It had a red tiled roof supported on slender wooden pillars, without walls, being open on all sides to the verdant heat of the vegetation and blooms. Bruno wore breeches only to his calves, without stockings, open leather sandals from India on his feet. His shirt, a light cotton blouse with loose and full sleeves, he left open wide at the collar almost to his waist. The profuse black hairs of his chest caught a bit of breeze now and then, still he sweated profusely.
The elegant little salahstood not far from the house where Bruno, an unconfirmed bachelor of twenty-six years, continued to live with his father, Monsieur Guy Therieux.
Their employer, Alexandre de Saint Germain, who presided over a privately owned and lucrative trading company at Ayutthaya, lived in a more palatial villa at the rear of the compound. Bruno had lived in this compound since he arrived from France as a boy of thirteen with his father. Guy’s reserved personality contrasted perfectly with Saint Germain’s lively and unconventional character. Despite those contrasts of personality, Saint Germain and Guy had become extremely close and familiar friends.
According to both older gentlemen, Bruno took after both of them.
Now the butler Surasin found him in the salah.
As the Siamese most often did, Surasin wore his hair pulled up in a neat round topknot at the crown of his head. This native hairdo provided a striking contrast with the European-style livery of his uniform. The man’s homely face had appealing warmth, rather than good looks. Surasin presented Bruno an envelope on a polished silver salver held precisely by immaculate white gloves.
“Kop-koon maahk,”Bruno thanked him in Siamese, and with a little wai: native courtesies towards a servant of which many Europeans might not approve. Both his words and the prayerful gesture of respect would have horrified Cynthia’s parents.
He always treated servants courteously and often spoke with them in the native language he had gained fluency in during his teenage years, both practices that some Europeans, such as the Claybornes, considered beneath them in this remote region of the Orient. Perhaps to the private chagrin of his conservative father, Saint Germain’s unconventional character and behavior had indeed influenced Bruno.
He allowed the butler to withdraw before he broke the seal and opened the pages within the envelope, which exuded a familiar perfume.
My Dearest B:
You are indeed a heinous cad for not having divulged to me what you knew all these years! Rest assured, however, that you are already fully forgiven. I recently saw and spoke with our long-lost _____; you can guess whom. He came sneaking into the house like a thief while P. is absent again, and he almost got himself killed by our alert watchmen. He discovered somehow that he has a nephew named for him. Said he has seen you not only the once that you admitted to me, but several times over the years.
Now I’ve gotten the whole tragic tale from his own lips. Such a frightful shame and a terrible waste. When I could not bear to let him leave me, _____ became adamant, even angry. He accuses me of feminine weakness! He would neither listen to reason, nor be swayed by womanly tears. Understandably it made him uneasy to be so near to our parents, just across the yard.
Of course his departure broke my heart all over again, almost worse than if he had never returned at all. Still I am grateful to God in Heaven that the man did visit me. I have gained a small measure of peace of mind on the matter in knowing for myself that he is not only alive, rather quite well, all things considered. He shocked me at first, yet when did he ever fail to prove shocking? But for the unmistakable deep azure of his eyes, I might not have known _____.
We both know as much now. Please accept my forgiveness for your secrecy and dishonesty, and be good enough to forgive me for my pestering you about him. It is only because we both love him that we so indulged. I am aware that he made you swear by the love you bear him not to tell anyone what you knew. Indeed, you care about my sanity enough to abrogate that slightly. You only thought of _____’s welfare as I continue doing so much of the time, always.
Would you oblige me by coming to dine the evening after this next? P. is still gone for some weeks, perhaps months. Let me know, if you would be so kind. I have much more to tell you, my dear dear friend.
Most fondly, C.
“Forgive!” Bruno gave a lout snort of indignation and began to crumple the scented pages in his fist.
A peacock bawled raucously from somewhere in the lush foliage of the compound with a melancholy that touched his heart. The bird sounded more human than he felt at the moment. An old unforgotten twinge of measureless affection reverberated in his vulnerably bared chest like a melody that lingers upon an abandoned lute that is set down too abruptly.
“Oh hell and damnation,” Bruno muttered, and he smoothed the pages out on his knee. “It’s the very least we both deserve.”
* * *
Clayborne had clearly been spying on the compound.
Saint Germain and Guy Therieux had gone out to dine at the French household in the next compound while Bruno stayed home by himself.
When a doubtful and suspicious Surasin received his permission to usher the visitor inside, on condition the man surrender his arms, Bruno scarcely recognized the swarthy, bearded man.
“Signor Ricco Cruz, Esquire,” the butler pronounced the name strangely in Siamese tones, “to see you, monsieur. He says he has confidential business with you.”
In the vestibule Bruno gaped at the exotic figure. Not a Portuguese or Spaniard as the name might suggest; the Englishman a few years older than himself wore a long black waistcoat over a full white blouse. Boldly pleated red and blue pantaloons had been vigorously belted via a black silk sash and tucked rakishly into tall black boots. He wore his dark brown beard full and bushy, his hair bound up in a white turban. Gold rings dangled from both earlobes and a diamond stud sparkled from the left nostril.
Deeply sun-browned skin set off those clear blue eyes, which alone Bruno found utterly familiar.
Bruno grinned. “You look like a real pirate, my friend!” He threw his arms wide. “Or perhaps Othello the Moor?”
“I bea buccaneer, boyo,” John Nathaniel Clayborne said. “But ye’ve got the same look of a puling schoolboy.” He accepted the embrace and kisses of his boyhood comrade and pounded his back. “When are ye gonna grow up, laddie?”
Bruno pushed back, still grasping the arms and studied the face. “I’d know you anywhere, you bastard. Surely you know that ‘esquire’ is an English title. It clashes with this spurious Portuguese guise. And the accent is a god-awful mish-mash!”
“I swear it took ye several seconds t’know me this time!”
“More like one blink.”
Then Clayborne lowered his voice. “I no longer be me English, nor be me Siamese. Now I live among the Portuguese merchants and sailors down near Wat Panang Cheng. And I’m one of ’em.”
Bruno could never forget the man himself, yet that affected low-class speech embarrassed him. Though well educated and in fact schooled with Cynthia and Bruno himself by several excellent tutors, Clayborne began to use the antiquated brogue forms as a youth, only in order to deliberately aggravate his high-class parents. He learned it by imitation from a roguish old Scotsman who provided him with his first liquor and led him to the ladies not long before the geezer drank himself into a death coma.
“To me,” Bruno began, “you’ll always be—”
Clayborne clamped a callused hand over the Frenchman’s mouth.
Bruno nodded and then took his hand and led the way into the library. He closed the doors behind them. While his gaze still drank in his friend’s latest incarnation, he went to a cabinet and extracted a cut crystal decanter with matching cups.
“We’ve just received this especially fine plum sherry from Cathay.”
Clayborne accepted a cup. “Do call me Senior Cruz for the moment, my friend. If ye dinna mind. Unfortunately this time it be more than an amusing game uh impersonation. A trifling yet tiresomely persistent matter of some legality be involved, me wag.”
Bruno chuckled. “The longer you survive the more you remind me of poor old Sir John Falstaff.” Bruno sipped and gestured. “Sit, sit.”
“I canna stay,” Clayborne insisted, and downed his sherry in one more gulp.
“I’m always here, always the same person, John Nathaniel, always doing the same things over and over again. Forever wishing that your gorgeous and heartless sister had married me instead of that besotted naval automaton. I live in such fruitless regrets of what can never be, while you…”
Clayborne paced like a tethered tiger before the tall Regency windows. He gazed toward the river through the towering dark rain trees as if on the lookout for a fleet of authorities in pursuit. Not impossible, in truth.
“There be much that I can envy in yer stability.” He glanced over a shoulder at the Frenchman. “Only I canna imagine such a settled life. I’ll warrant that me sister still cuts a handsome figure of a woman. Yet I had a sharp shock t’see her after all these years—every stitch of girlishness gone. She looked… not exactly old, only decidedly she’s a matron now. More like our mother Evangeline musta been thirty years ago, than I ever woulda reckoned.”
Bruno set down his glass, still scarcely tasted. “Quite an adjustment on both your parts, no doubt. You do realize that it’s been more than eight years since she saw you. It seems an eternity… and only yesterday.”
The Englishman scowled and thrust his cup toward Bruno, who returned to the desk for the carafe and then went to his old friend to pour him more sherry.
“At least,” Clayborne grimaced and swigged, “me namesake I find to me liking. He be quite the budding young Hercules. Takes after me in the mortal coil aspects, as well! Saw her changing his wee napkin herself, with me own eyes.”
“Tell me, why does the Portuguese swashbuckler Cruz come to call upon boring, unmarried, eccentric Bruno Therieux? Is it merely to flaunt his latest exciting identity?”
A soft growl. “Ye still be me best friend, amigo.”
He set his empty cup down on the desk with a loud thump.
“What did Petruchio say?” Bruno fingered his mustache. “I love the man, not the clothes! I beg the man to remain a while, and don’t really care about the costume. Still, I know better than to disappoint myself.”
He moved closer to Clayborne to emphasize his emotion. For the briefest flicker his friend appeared slightly ashamed, and then the swarthy face hardened again.
Clayborne shook his turbaned head. “Came to tell ye that I be off to the Western World. Even be tempted by the notion uh that infernal New World, the Americas. We Portuguese have some thriving colonies there, ye know. Plenty uh gold and slaves to be had.”
Bruno had gone pale as a mushroom. “No, please, no. No, John Nathaniel. I’ll never see you again. I won’t allow this.” He seized the lapels of his friend’s waistcoat in both fists.
Instead of resisting, Clayborne brought his hands up and framed Bruno’s cheeks, and caressed his face fondly. “Even could ye prevent me forcibly,” he spoke now quite softly, “ye wouldna do it. Since ye’re disinclined to risk and roam, I must do so on behalf of us both. Would ye truly deny me that freedom?”
“I fear for you… always. And yes, I envy you in some ways.”
“Look to the good things ye have.”
“Nothing much! Only think of your sister: she’ll die!”
“Not from this, laddie. She’s survived what that scurrilous naval ass put into her.”
“She’ll suspect me of complicity all over again…”
Clayborne grinned. “Be it so untrue?” Though yellowed by the tobacco he reeked of, the man’s teeth looked white in contrast with the dark nest of his beard. Bruno saw a strong reminder of the handsome youth this man had been less than a decade in the past. Merely an echo within all the wear and tear and overgrowth, however.
“When I first met you,” Bruno said, “you spoke better English than I did. This coarse affectation sounds insincere… it’s an act. So unlike you, who always sought sincerity and authenticity and truth when we were boys.”
“All the world’s a stage, is it not? Me sis has her wee boy. Poor devil might even grow into the proper gentleman I could never abide to become, Bruno. Then again, he might take after me and break his mother’s heart all over again.”
“Like as not, you’ll never know, John Nathaniel. Consider: if you depart from Siam without telling her your plans in person, she will never forgive me. Think of me, if not her, will you? She always loved you more than she could ever love me.”
“Not true, my friend.” Clayborne spoke scarcely above a whisper. “It was our parents that could never abide her taking a Frenchman for a lover or a husband. Cynthia still loves you deeply; I saw it in her eyes whenever our words turned your way.”
“You talked of me?” Bruno’s heart pounded in a rising panic.
Clayborne nodded grimly. “Only I canna see her again so soon. Too risky, I fear. And did I tell her the truth, she’d have meself arrested just to stop me going! No doubt ye’ll tell her for me.” The friends exchanged a long, penetrating gaze face-to-face. “Look after her, Bruno.” Clayborne kissed him.
The Frenchman’s shoulders slumped. He pushed Clayborne away.
“To be her fond friend will never be enough for me,” he said. “I still adore your sister with all my heart and all my soul… and what does she care? I’m a confidante when her husband is away. A chaste companion. Why do I continue to torture myself over that woman?”
“Because you love her.” Clayborne’s expression brightened. “If ye’re both fortunate that starchy husband of hers might die! Maybe a cannonball will take off his head and ye can be there t’console the widow!”
Bruno laughed in spite of himself, but quickly frowned again. “You’re the same as everyone else I’ve ever loved. Is it only because I care deeply about a person that they slip away from me when I need them most? You—you’ll be a fish out of water in that Western World. You may have been born in England, but I’ll wager you recall little about the place.”
“Grey and green and cold,” the Englishman said. “Listen, look to me sis. She suffers far worse than ye do being alone, as she’s married to such a bloody lout. Ye’ve got plenty uh blessings t’count, laddie. Now I must be gone.”
Bruno hung his head. “I can’t bear to see you leave. Kiss me once more and I’ll turn around.”
(I have recentlycompleted a series of major revisions of this manuscript. The novel has 39 chapters and 476 pages. Attention book and visual rights agents: I am looking for someone to sell this and other projects that I've been working on for many years.)
