A sentry hurried into view. "What's going on?"
"I should ask you that, soldier," Andr`e said, his heart grinding, his words tumbling over. "Did you see anyone, anything? I was passing Mademoiselle's door and heard, or thought I heard someone pounding on her shutters. Quick, look around!"
Behind him, Pierre Vervene, the Charg`e d'Affairs, a flickering candle in his hand, hurried anxiously into the room, dressing gown over his nightshirt, nightcap askew. Others began crowding the doorway, "What's going on-- oh, Andr`e! What the devil... what's going on? Mademoiselle, you screamed?"
"Yes, I, he--" she stammered, "Andr`e was, he, someone banged on the shutters and Andr`e, well, he--"
"I was just passing her door," Andr`e said, "and rushed in--isn't that true, Angelique?"
She dropped her eyes, holding the bedclothes closer around her. "Yes, yes that's true," she said, afraid and hating him but attempting to hide it.
Vervene joined Andr`e at the window and peered out. "Perhaps it was the wind, we have sudden squalls here and the shutters aren't exactly new." He shook one of them. Indeed it was loose and rattled noisily. Then he leaned out and shouted after the sentry. "Make a very good search and come back and report to me." Then he closed and barred the shutters, and re-bolted the windows. "There!
Nothing to worry about."
"Yes, yes, but..." Tears of relief began to well.
"Mon Dieu, Mademoiselle, nothing to worry about, don't cry, you're perfectly safe, no need to worry, of course not."
Vervene took off his nightcap and scratched his bald pate, at a loss. Then, thankfully, he saw Ah Soh amongst the others at the doorway and motioned at her importantly.
"Ah Soh, you-ah sleep here, with Miss'ee, heya?"
"Yes Mass'er." Ah Soh hurried off to get some bedding and everyone else began to drift away.
"I'll wait with you, More'selle Angelique, until she returns." The older man yawned. "Probably you were both mistaken, and it was the wind. Who would want to bang on the shutters, eh? There aren't any rotten little street urchins and guttersnipes in the Settlement to play pranks or be pickpockets, thank God! Must have been the wind, eh?"
"I'm sure you're right," Andr`e said, over his scare now, dreading that someone had been outside, watching--he had seen the crack but no other signs. "Don't you agree Angelique?"
"I, I, perhaps yes," she said, very unsettled and not yet recovered from her fright, both because of him and because of the sudden sound. Why did it happen then?
Was it someone, or just a God-given wind--truly a gift from God? Wind or not, person or not I don't care, she decided. I don't care, I escaped, tomorrow I move back beside Malcolm, daren't stay here, mustn't stay, too close to Andr`e, too dangerous. "It sounded like someone banging, but, but I could be mistaken. It could have been a, a sudden gust."
"I'm sure it was," Vervene said confidently. "My shutters are always banging, wake me up all the time." He coughed and sat down, peering kindly at Andr`e whose face was still chalky. "No need for you to wait, my friend. You don't look very well at all, as though, Heaven forbid, you've a crisis of the liver."
"Perhaps, perhaps I have. I, I certainly don't feel very well." Andr`e glanced at Angelique. "Sorry," he said, holding her eyes, making his voice calm and soft, seemingly the old Andr`e once more, all strangeness and lust and violence vanished. "Good night, Angelique, you've nothing to be afraid of, ever. More'sieur Vervene is quite right."
"Yes... yes thank you, Andr`e." She forced a smile and then he was gone. She had looked at him deeply, wanting to read the truth behind his eyes. They were friendly, nothing else. But she did not trust what she had seen. Even so, she knew that she would have to make peace with him, would accept his inevitable apologies--pretending to forget everything and agreeing the attack was a momentary madness--and would become friends again. On the surface.
She shuddered. In her innermost being she also grasped that whatever he demanded, eventually she would have to give. While he lived.
Ori was trembling, hunched down against an upturned fishing boat on the pebbled beach.
Twenty yards away was the edge of the surf, the waves sibilant. "You're completely baka," he gasped, his fury directed totally against himself. Before he realized what he was doing he had hammered on the shutters and then, appalled at his stupidity, had rushed away, scaled the fence, found the oar he used as camouflage, shouldered it and loped across the roadway without being challenged, gai-jin voices in his wake.
Hiraga must be right, he thought, nauseated, mixed up, his heart aching in his chest, shoulder throbbing and a warm trickle of blood seeping from the tear in the wound his headlong flight had caused.
Perhaps this woman really has sent me mad.
Madness to pound on the shutters--what good would that do me? What does it matter if another pillows her? Why should that enflame me, make my heart roar in my ears? I don't own her or want to own her, what does it matter if another gai-jin takes her with or without violence? Some women need a measure of violence to excite them, like many men... ah, wait, would it have been better if she had fought me rather than welcoming me, however drugged she was--or pretended to be?
Pretended?
This was the first time such a thought had entered his mind.
Some of his venom left him though his heart continued to race and the ache behind his temples did not leave.
Could she have been pretending? Eeee, it's possible, her arms embraced me and her legs wrapped me and her body moved like no one has ever moved--all pillow partners move sensually, with moans and sighs and sometimes a few tears and, "Oh how strong you are, how you exhaust me, never have I had the privilege of such a man before ..." but every client knows that these are surface words, learned by rote, part of their training, nothing more and meaningless.
She wasn't like that, every moment had meaning for me.
Whether she pretended or not doesn't matter-- she probably did, women are so filled with guile. I don't care, I should not have bludgeoned the shutter like a berserk fool, revealing my presence and hiding place and probably ruining forever my chance of gaining access there again!
Again his anger burst. His fist smashed the wood of the hull. "Baka!" he croaked, wanting to shriek it aloud.
Footsteps on the pebbles. On guard, he slid deeper into the shadows, the moon baleful, then heard the voices of approaching fishermen, chatting one with another, and cursed himself afresh for not being more alert. Almost at once, a rough, middle-aged fisherman came around the stern of the boat and stopped. "Watch out! Who're you, stranger?" the man said angrily, readying the short mast he carried as a club. "What are you up to?"
Ori did not move, just glared up at him and at the other two who moved up beside him. One was also middle-aged, the other a youth not much older than Ori himself. Both carried oars and fishing tackle. "You do not ask those questions of your betters," he said. "Where are your manners?"
"Who're you, you're not samur--" The man stopped, petrified, as Ori leapt to his feet, the sword instantly in his hand, the blade dangerously half out of its scabbard.
"On your knees, scum, before I cut your baka hearts out--a haircut does not make me any less samurai!" Instantly the fishermen fell to their knees, heads to the beach and were bleating their apologies, no mistaking the authority or the way the short sword was held.
"Shut up!" Ori snarled. "Where were you going?"
"To fish, Lord, half a league out to sea, please excuse us but, well, in the dark and your hair not norm--"
"Shut up! Get the boat in the water.
Move!" Once safe out to sea, now over his blinding anger, the salt air cleansing, Ori looked back at the Settlement. Lights still on in the French and British Legations, the Struan Building and the Club that Hiraga had identified for him. Oil streetlamps along the praia, a few windows glowing in other bungalows and godowns, Drunk Town pulsating as normal throughout the night, the gin shops never totally sleeping.