The Luminist Read Online Free Page A

of them bore limbs torn from the banyan grove ringing Matara.
    â€œDo not come if you intend to cause trouble,” Swaran told them. “I’ll go alone. My son and I. I would do this even in defiance of you. We will die if we remain this way.”
    â€œCome.” Chandrak extended his hand. “Why are we fighting?”
    Swaran took it. “I’ll go with you if Sudarma wishes me to,” Chandrak said with a wink.
    Eligius saw his father pull his hand back, with some effort. Chandrak’s grip was field-strong.
    He stood, taking his father’s notes and the East India Company’s charter. “I’m ready, appa.”
    Sudarma spilled pieces of onion into the simmering ragi. She guided her knife back through the bulb, her hands precise, her fingers slivering near the promise of blood. “Go because you’re men of Matara who know each other all your lives. And if not for that, then stay in the fields and do nothing.”
    Swaran kissed his wife’s forehead. She gazed up at him and put both hands on her stomach, but he’d already turned to face Chandrak and his fellow villagers. “ To have you with me would be a blessing. Among these Directors, there may be an honorable man. He is new. I don’t know him to say that he will listen to me, and make the others listen. But there is time enough if I fail for you to tell me how wrong and weak I am. Then we can see how well your way works.”
    Chandrak conferred with his fellows. “ We’ll go with you.”
    Eligius carried his father’s most precious notes. They fluttered in the breeze he stirred as he ran across the road towards
the jungle. Aribbon of runoff water passed beneath his feet and he stepped in it, bursting the reflection of the sun.
    Matara’s women called after their men. Admonitions to be safe, to come home when it was done, to tell them how it was.
    â€œThey think your father’s ideas will save us,” Chandrak said when he caught up with Eligius. Swaran walked ahead, alone with his thoughts. “And if he fails, what they already suffer will be blamed on him, as if it was always his fault. This is the way of the world. You shouldn’t grow up weak and believing in nonsense. Do you understand?”
    Eligius stared at the banyan limb in Chandrak’s hands.
    â€œNow we have everything we need,” Chandrak said.

Dimbola
    CATHERINE WALKED ACROSS THE GROUNDS TOWARD the small cottage where the crate and the letter from Sir John waited. It was October 1836. The natives called it Aipassi.
    When she’d first disembarked the Royal Captain in January of that year, touching the hewn stone of Ceylon’s Port Colombo dock caused her to despair her reunion with Charles. How could she explain Hardy to a man who understood only the simple calculus of legal theory, calendar days, nautical distances?
    She’d spent the prior four months studying Bible verse and struggling to puzzle out her emotions in the impossible leaning of the sea. On the day of her arrival in Ceylon’s harbor, Julia had come to her cabin weeping that there was a body floating freely atop the waves. In another moment she’d heard its impact against the ship’s hull, like the hesitant knocking of a child at a parent’s closed door. That was Ceylon.
    Matters needed time, she’d thought.
    Charles had come in a solid, if ordinary, carriage piloted by the maid he’d written of in his letter, and so she’d looked this Mary up and down, searching for signs of the new life. A sturdy, quiet twenty-three year old, Mary carried herself that day and all days after with the bearing of a bricklayer and the air of lessened expectations common to servants aligned with midlevel households.
    Charles looked older. Sick even still. His ivory beard was thicker now. It blanketed the prominent jawline she had watched
soften with age. His burly frame had thinned considerably. She wondered what Mary was