Free The Shallow Seas by Dawn Farnham Page B

distant East, so far from the mother land, keeping a candle burning in this dark history.
    Tigran led her to the graves of his father and mother, of three babies lost to them very young and of his father’s concubine, Miriam’s mother, who had been baptised and laid to rest here. Charlotte was curious why Takouhi’s mother was not buried there. Tigran explained that Takouhi’s mother had been Javanese, of the Mohammedan faith. Really their father should not have married her, for she never converted. He finished and began to turn away, but Charlotte put her hand on his arm, silently requesting to know more. Tigran smiled at her curiosity, glad that she was showing an interest in his family.
    â€œShe was a Javanese princess from the Kraton in Surakarta in the eastern part of the island who was given to my father. As I understand, this should not have happened. Takouhi knows the whole story. You will have to ask her. In any case, when she died, the court took her back to be buried in the royal cemetery.”
    He led Charlotte to a corner of the graveyard where thick gardenia bushes grew in profusion and filled the air with a heady scent. He showed her a little carved stone shrine which stood on a plinth just outside the fence, wound about with a faded, chequered black–and-white cloth. Flowers and woven grasses adorned it. Charlotte looked up at him.
    â€œThis is for Surya and the children,” he said. “They are not buried here,” he told her, reading her mind. “Surya was Balinese; it is not Java, it is an island, an island unlike any other in the archipelago. It has kept to its ancient traditions of the Hindoo and the Boodha, driven there by the spread of the Mohammedan faith which moved slowly through Java hundreds of years ago. Every week, someone from the kampong comes to put flowers,” he said. “Many former slaves are Balinese. A great number of slaves in Batavia have always been Balinese. I think they like this little piece of Bali. My father would not have allowed it, but I am happy it is here.”
    Tigran plucked a gardenia bloom and placed it gently on the little shrine.
    â€œEverything I loved about her was in her Balinese ways, her looks, her grace. I didn’t want to change any of that. The Hindoo burial is by fire. So she was cremated together with the babies in her arms, and I put their ashes into the sea.”
    Charlotte felt a sob rise and controlled herself with difficulty. The way he had said this, so simply, the way he had silently placed the flower on the shrine, spoke of the deepness of his feelings for this young girl, dead at twenty, the same age as herself.
    Tigran moved quickly away. He did not want Charlotte to grieve over this. He had spent three years doing that, filled with desolation and quiet madness. As he watched their funeral pyre, he had thought he might lose his mind, and when he had placed their ashes on the ocean he had wanted to slip over the side with them, quietly sink down into that deep dark watery place, forget Surya’s flowing hair and dark eyes, forget the gurgling laughter of his little girls, drown love. Only restraining hands had prevented him, the hands of Petruk, his friend and Takouhi’s Balinese manservant. Takouhi had come, but he had not wanted to share this moment with anyone else. When the grief had finally, slowly, lessened, and he could breathe, he had sworn never to feel like that again. But here was Charlotte, so like Surya, though he would never say it: light-skinned, dark-haired, lovely and young, filled with promise and light.
    They moved to the stone of Miriam’s daughter, Maria, who had lived but three short years, next to Meda’s grave. Fresh leaves and flowers adorned all the graves, but the greatest number had been spread over these. Charlotte saw, half covered by grass and earth, a rope chain connecting all the children’s gravestones, joining them, it seemed, so that they would have