66 The Love Pirate Read online

  He knew then that he had lost the one thing that mattered more to him than anything else in the world – Bertilla.

  He tried to call her name, but his lips were dry and he made no sound.

  Then he saw that there was a closed door on the other side of the kitchen.

  Without much hope he opened it to see standing opposite him, her back pressed against the wall, an expression of absolute terror on her face, Bertilla!

  In the light from the moon coming through the window, they stood staring at each other. Then with an inarticulate cry that was somehow infinitely pathetic, she ran towards him.

  He could not speak.

  He could not even kiss her hair as it touched his lips.

  He only knew as he held her against him that his whole heart, mind and soul were singing with the knowledge that what he had feared had not happened.

  Bertilla was alive!

  Chapter Seven

  Bertilla was trembling in Lord Saire’s arms.

  Then at length she stammered in an inarticulate whisper he could hardly hear,

  “I was – frightened – I h-hid under the bed – and I was praying – that you would s-save me.”

  “You knew I was here in Sarawak?” he asked, his voice unsteady.

  “N-no – but I thought of you and I – tried to tell you – wherever you were, how t-terrified I was.”

  “I have saved you, Bertilla,” he sighed, “and it is all over. There is nothing now to make you afraid.”

  He felt her relax against him as the tension went out of her body and now he raised his head to look at the moonlight on her hair and her eyes turned up to his.

  “It is all right,” he said again and knew that, while her hands still clung to his coat, she was not as terrified as she had been.

  There was the sound of a step behind them and the Officer in charge of the soldiers said,

  “I was looking for you, my Lord.”

  “I have found Miss Bertilla,” Lord Saire replied.

  There was a note of triumph in his voice almost as if he had scaled a high mountain or swum a deep river.

  “Could I speak to you a moment, my Lord?”

  Lord Saire looked down at Bertilla and her hands tightened on him as if she was afraid to lose him.

  “Sit down on your bed for a moment,” he said gently. “I will not go out of your sight, so there is no need to be afraid. I have brought soldiers with me and all the Dyaks have run away.”

  He knew that it was with a superhuman effort at self-control that Bertilla said nothing and allowed him to help her to the bed. She sat down on the edge of it.

  As she did so, he noticed for the first time the poverty and discomfort of the room and felt furious that Bertilla should have been made to suffer such hardships quite unnecessarily.

  Then he smiled at her reassuringly and walked out of the room and into the kitchen, leaving the door open so that she could see him and not feel that she had been left alone.

  The Officer spoke in a very low voice.

  “There is no sign of Miss Agatha Alvinston, my Lord, but there are trails of blood going into the jungle, which may be hers or it may have come from a Dyak she has wounded.”

  The Officer paused and added a little uncomfortably,

  “My men are not anxious to search until it is daylight.”

  Lord Saire understood that.

  He knew that the Dyaks were past masters at hiding until their victim had almost passed them, then lopping off his head with a single stroke.

  “I am sure it would be wise to leave everything until the morning,” he said and saw the relief in the Officer’s face.

  “What about the young lady, my Lord?”

  “We will take Miss Bertilla Alvinston back with us to the Palace,” Lord Saire said firmly. “Is there any way of obtaining a conveyance of some sort? It would be rather a long walk for her.”

  “I will send for one immediately,” the Officer said.

  “That would be excellent,” Lord Saire agreed, “but I would rather you and your men guarded us until we are actually able to leave the Mission House.”

  “Of course, my Lord.”

  Lord Saire looked round the kitchen and saw a pair of candlesticks on a table and the Officer followed the direction of his eyes and hurried to light the candles.

  The moonlight was so brilliant that it was easy to see without them. At the same time Lord Saire thought that they would somehow reassure Bertilla.

  The golden light dispersed the shadows and seemed to make everything less frightening.

  It revealed, somehow, even more than in Bertilla’s bedroom, the poverty and the primitive discomfort of the kitchen and even the poor quality of the cooking utensils.

  Lord Saire said nothing, but his lips tightened.

  As the Officer moved away to give orders to his men, he went back into the bedroom to sit down beside Bertilla and put his arms round her.

  “I am taking you to stay at the Palace with the Rajah and Lady Brooke,” he said. “They will look after you, as I should have done.”

  She looked up at him enquiringly, her eyes very large in her pale face and yet he saw that the terror had gone from them and once again she was trusting him.

  “I am really very angry with you for running away from the Hendersons without saying goodbye to me,” he said, but his voice was soft and gentle.

  She looked away from him towards the moonlight outside.

  “I know why you went,” Lord Saire said, “but it was quite unnecessary. That is something I want to talk to you about when we have more time and certainly in more comfortable circumstances.”

  She did not reply and after a moment he said in a different tone of voice,

  “As you will not be coming back here, I suggest that you pack your clothes and we will take them with us to the Palace.”

  “I have only unpacked part of one trunk,” Bertilla replied. “There was so little space to put anything.”

  Lord Saire saw that her trunks were in fact standing in a corner of her room.

  Bertilla rose from the bed, took a few garments from a very dilapidated chest of drawers and lifted down two gowns from the hooks where they were hanging on the wall.

  It took her less than five minutes to add to the trunk her brushes and comb and a pair of slippers that were under the bed.

  Lord Saire, very much at his ease, sat watching her.

  He thought how sweet and unselfconscious she was and that she moved with a grace that reminded him of a gazelle.

  Finally she looked round and said,

  “I think that is everything. I would not wish to leave behind any of the lovely things that Mrs. Henderson so kindly gave me.”

  She closed the top of her round-topped leather trunk as she spoke and Lord Saire rose to say,

  “Leave it. I will get the soldiers to strap it up for you and bring it outside. I imagine it will not be long now before a conveyance arrives to take us to the Palace.”

  He was right in that assumption, for, by the time they reached the open door at the front of the Mission House, a carriage drawn by two horses was coming towards them.

  The soldiers piled the trunks on the back.

  Then, having helped Bertilla into the open carriage, Lord Saire sat beside her and, as the horses started off, he took her hand in his.

  “You are no longer frightened?” he asked.

  “Not now – you are here.”

  Then in a low voice she asked,

  “What has – happened to Aunt Agatha?”

  He knew that the question had been in her mind ever since he had arrived and he was glad he could answer truthfully when he said,

  “I have no idea. She may have run into the jungle or the Dyaks may have taken her with them, but there is nothing that the soldiers can do until the morning.”

  “I was afraid that – something like this would happen,” Bertilla said in a low voice, “when I saw a Dyak watching her – beat one of the women so – unm
ercifully.”

  “Your aunt beat her?” Lord Saire asked in amazement.

  “She was always – beating the women who were supposed to help her – teach the children and they were sent to the Mission instead of having to go to – prison.”

  Lord Saire said nothing, but he could understand only too well that the Dyaks would resent one of their women, whatever crime she might have committed, being ill-treated by a Missionary they had little respect for.

  His fingers tightened on Bertilla’s hand.

  “Forget what has happened for tonight, Bertilla,” he said. “We can talk about it tomorrow.”

  Bertilla turned towards him with a childlike gesture and hid her face against his shoulder.

  “I-I think Aunt Agatha is – d-dead,” she said, “and although it is – wrong of me – I cannot be very unhappy about it. I think she had gone a little mad.”

  “Don’t think about it tonight,” Lord Saire suggested gently.

  A moment later they saw just ahead of them the lighted windows of the Astana Palace and then they were passing through the well-kept gardens surrounding it.

  Lord Saire knew that Bertilla was nervous as they stepped out at the front door.

  But when the Ranee with a smile of welcome kissed her, he knew that she was in good hands.

  *

  Bertilla lay on a chaise longue in the garden and looked at the butterflies hovering over the flowers, some of them almost as large as small birds.

  Their wings were covered with peacock-coloured blue-green scales that shimmered and gleamed in the sun.

  She felt as if they symbolised the thoughts that shone within her mind and were so beautiful that she dared not put a name to them.

  She had on the Ranee’s orders not been called until late in the morning.

  When she was dressed, she had come downstairs to be told that a chaise longue was waiting for her in the garden and that Lord Saire had gone out with the Rajah, but would be seeing her later.

  A servant had brought her a cool drink and she lay in the shade of a tree heavy with blossoms.

  As she looked at the orchids and other flowers growing so profusely round her, she felt that she had indeed stepped into Paradise.

  She could hardly believe it was possible that Lord Saire had actually appeared in answer to her prayers and saved her as she had longed for him to do.

  She had been panic-stricken when as night fell and the moon came out she was aware that there were movements among the trees outside the Mission House and they were not caused by the wind.

  There was no dusk in Sarawak and darkness came swiftly like a veil falling over the land. Then there was the brilliance of the stars and the clear silver light of the moon to illuminate everything and yet at the same time it made the shadows seem ominous.

  The slightest movement could create terror!

  All day long her aunt had been more unbearable than ever, screaming at the women and singling out the Dyak woman for special abuse.

  She had not actually beaten her again, as if she realised that she had gone too far the day before.

  But she had threatened her and she had beaten the others and several of the children until the whole place seemed to be filled with the noise of their screaming.

  To Bertilla it was horrifying and several times during the day she had run to her room to shut the door and fling herself down on her bed.

  She had put her hands over her ears so that she could no longer hear the cries of those who were being hurt.

  Her aunt had called her and she had to go back to help with the children, to tidy up after they had gone and to cook a meagre meal for her and her aunt to eat in the primitive kitchen. There was very little, so it was soon finished.

  Then Bertilla had gone to the window to look out at the night.

  She hoped that its beauty would erase from her mind the sordid scenes she had been forced to witness that day.

  But as she stood there she had seen the bushes move.

  At first she thought that it was some animal or perhaps one of the larger hornbills, which she was still hoping to see.

  But the leaves were moving not only in one place but all around the mud compound.

  Now Bertilla felt that she was waiting ominously and it was hard to breathe because she had begun to be afraid of what she might see.

  There was another movement and this time she had a glimpse of what she was sure were the short plumes the Dyak men wore on their heads.

  “Aunt Agatha!” she had cried, an urgent note in her voice.

  “What is it?” her aunt enquired.

  “There are men out there. They are hiding, but I am sure I can see them.”

  Her aunt had jumped to her feet to come to the window.

  Then she had made a sound that was almost one of elation and to Bertilla’s surprise she had reached out to close the wooden shutters with a slam.

  “I will teach them! I will show them!” she mumbled. “Coming here to threaten me as they have done before!”

  “Who has threatened you? Who are they?” Bertilla asked.

  But her aunt was already pulling a gun out of a cupboard and carrying it with a box of cartridges into the classroom.

  Bertilla had put the shutters over the windows after she had cleaned the rooms, not that she had thought at the time to keep people out, but to prevent the insects with which the forest abounded from coming in.

  There were not only moths and beetles but also bats and small birds that could fly all over the place unless kept out.

  Her aunt was still talking to herself,

  “They will get more than they bargained for. I will teach them a lesson they will not forget. Barbarians! Savages! Murderers! If I kill two or three of them they will soon learn who is the Master!”

  Bertilla watched her in perplexity as she knelt down in front of one of the shuttered windows and then removed a small piece of wood from the lower part of it.

  It made an aperture through which she could poke her gun and now, having loaded it she knelt down, looked down the barrel and fired.

  The explosion made Bertilla jump and the noise seemed to echo and re-echo round the room.

  Then from the outside there was a shrill cry and Bertilla ran to her aunt’s side.

  “You have shot someone! Oh, Aunt Agatha, you cannot do this! You have shot someone and you may have killed him!”

  “Go and hide yourself, you little coward!” her aunt said harshly.

  Because there was something so contemptuous in the way she spoke, Bertilla took a few steps backwards.

  Suddenly frightened not only by what was outside but also by her aunt’s behaviour she ran back into the kitchen.

  She stood irresolute and then realised that, although the shutters were closed, it was not dark because they fitted so badly.

  There were spaces between the flat boards through which the moonlight was percolating.

  Hardly aware of what she was doing, she went to the window to look out through an aperture to see what was happening outside.

  Then she gave a cry of sheer horror for, advancing from the protection of the trees, she could see a dozen Dyaks and she knew at once what they intended.

  There was no mistaking their war-dress, the feathers on their heads and shoulders and the tufts of hair on their shields.

  Each one carried a curved kris, which was their prized asymmetrical dagger and the sharp steel glinted evilly in the light from the moon.

  She could see very clearly the elephants’ teeth in their ears and the blue tattoos on their arms.

  Their long black hair hung almost to their waists and it seemed to Bertilla that there was a ferocious expression on their faces that could not be misunderstood.

  Now her aunt was firing at them and, while they were obviously nervous of the bullets, they did not retreat but moved from tree to tree, occasionally coming out onto the compound before moving back again.

  They were making it appear almost like a childish game, but a
t the same time Bertilla was well aware that they were manoeuvring for position.

  Then one Dyak uttered a sound that was like a whoop of defiance and aggression, a war cry, and as he did so he slashed the air with his kris.

  All the other men wielded theirs in the same way, making the blades cut through the air and it was only too clear what would happen.

  Bertilla cried out in terror.

  She ran away from the window to rush into her bedroom and creep under the bed, thinking it was the only protection she could find.

  Then she had prayed – prayed for Lord Saire to save her as he had done before.

  Her prayers were incoherent and the words tumbled over themselves, but in her heart she cried out to him desperately, despairingly, like a frightened child.

  Last night after the Ranee, sweet and motherly as her own mother had never been, had left her, Bertilla had thanked God before going to sleep.

  She thanked Him for sending Lord Saire to her rescue and for saving her from being decapitated by the Dyaks.

  She had thought as she crouched beneath her bed that at any moment she might find herself pulled out from under it, perhaps by her hair.

  Then the last thing she would hear in her life would be the swish of the kris as it fell to sever her head from her body.

  But miraculously she had escaped!

  Now, as Lord Saire came towards her, walking across the lawn between the flowers, she thought for a moment that he was wearing the shining armour of a Knight and that he held in his hand the spear he had killed the dragon with.

  He was smiling as he reached her and, as impulsively she held out both her hands to his, he took them and kissed first one and then the other.

  “You slept well?” he asked in his deep voice.

  Because he had kissed her hands, Bertilla was blushing and could not look at him, but after a moment she replied,

  “Lady Brooke must have given me – something to make me sleep – and whatever it was, when I awoke – it was disgracefully late.”

  “And you are not too tired?”

  She shook her head.

  Then, because she knew it was the question she must ask, she said in a low voice,

  “You have – heard about Aunt – Agatha?”

  Lord Saire sat down on the edge of the couch and kept both her hands in his.