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entire frontage, up to the veranda wrapped around the base of the house. The property was thick with coconut, casuarinas, mango, and breadfruit, but they were underwater to the base of their trunks.
    He could see the problem from the gate. The Colebrook estate was a basin, high at either end and dipped in the middle.
    A flotilla of wood had been hastily erected to span the flood. The planks led to the side of the house, where a canopy of billowing sheets had been erected. From the gate, Eligius could see rows of chairs facing forward toward the veranda and a canopied stage.
    â€œYour memsa’ab,” Ault said, “lives on superlatives as if they were her daily bread.”
    â€œI don’t understand.”
    â€œFlattery,” Ault said. “It will see you through when matters grow dark, as matters are bound to do. Remember to present her with the letters. As I knew nothing of you, I’ve not told her of your ability with English or your abhorrence at what it is you will be doing. It’s best that you find your own place.”
    Eligius hesitated at the gate. “Did you know my father?”
    Chandrak watched him.
    â€œYes,” the missionary said.
    â€œDid you bring him to these people?”
    â€œTo the people who lived here before. I’ve known your village for many years. I help where I can. I thought he might find
something of worth here. That happens in the strangest places, I’ve come to realize. If not him, then someone else. But what of it?”
    The back of Eligius’ neck was stiff from the cold rain, but he couldn’t rub it, or return Chandrak’s warning gaze, or move at all. To act was to tilt the world somehow, and then he would not be able to put it right.
    â€œI can remember how he was before the books and laws, when he was a man like other men in my village. He was my father. And then he wasn’t. The other men listened to him speak but stopped calling him to the fire. My mother hardly looked at him. Everything that mattered got lost.”
    â€œThe boy is upset,” Chandrak said. “Let me speak to him. For his mother. It will help things.”
    Ault dismissed them with a wave. Chandrak led Eligius away from the missionary. “There’s a greater good to be served,” he told Eligius. “I will tell you what you need to know about these people, and you will listen.”
    â€œNo, grama sevaka. I just want to go and come home with rupees.”
    Chandrak’s hand tightened until a warning of pain blossomed in Eligius’ arm. “Do you know they want to stamp England across India’s brow? The households they’re creating, like the one your father served, are English households. No matter that Ceylon lies just outside the window. In their homes, it’s the role of the dutiful wife to govern her family’s days and nights, their meals, their sleep, their social obligations and their cleanliness, and yet not be seen to govern anything, or else their husbands look weak. Do you understand this?”
    â€œYes,” he said grudgingly. It wasn’t so different from his own home.
    â€œYour memsa’ab’s husband is infirm. She has two children, and with all this to manage and never enough to manage it with, she must maintain their position. A servant who helps his memsa’ab with such things is a great blessing. You will be a servant they depend on. Tell me you will do this.”

    Eligius nodded. He wanted to leave, yet something of Chandrak’s anger felt familiar, a once-inhabited room violently rearranged.
    â€œI ask you now, be a man like your father. He served them so he would always know how it felt to bear these bastards on his back. It gave him strength to be the man he was.”
    The rain left tears on Chandrak’s cheeks. “Go. Send your heart away and walk through their gate as if nothing mattered.”
    He turned from Eligius and shambled into the gathering storm. The