The sun was shining on the house when Sir Ralph and Leon arrived there. Servants came running out, crying out a greeting to the master they had feared drowned in the storms. The rajah was moved by this and stood still on his steps and held out his arms and took them all into a wide embrace, while Leon stood back and watched the scene with a face devoid of expression. He had often instructed the Chinese houseboys who worked for the rajah not to kowtow to him; he was just an ordinary white man who had been given a dishonourable discharge from the Army of the East India Company, not a king or a god. But he recognised an uncomfortable truth: those who cleaned and cooked in the Savage House felt some deep affection for Sir Ralph, for which he could not really see any explanation.

With the greetings over and the cook running indoors to prepare food for the rajah’s return, Sir Ralph began to enquire about Edmund. But he was told exactly what he feared, that Mr Ross had not returned.

After they had eaten and Sir Ralph had retired to his great curtained bed to sleep, Leon made his way to the room that had been occupied by Edmund.

He folded back the raffia screen at the window and let sunlight fall upon the Turkey carpet – one of many the rajah had shipped from Constantinople, whose beautiful intricacies always troubled Leon for the arduous labour that had gone into them, as if he imagined that into the exquisite madders and carmines of the weave the blood of Asian children had been wantonly mixed.

Leon walked slowly round the room. As he moved, a lizard on the wall sped upwards and began clinging to the ceiling. The place was tidy, with Edmund’s few possessions laid out on a mahogany writing desk. Leon went to the desk and saw that a half-finished letter lay there, held down by a jade paperweight.

Leon’s ability to read English was not as good as he would have liked, but Sir Ralph was a patient teacher and Leon a willing pupil. He understood that English was the language of the rajah’s secrets and the existence of these secrets made him feel small, so he worked hard on mastering reading and writing.

He sat down at the desk and stared at the letter. There were some words which he couldn’t understand, but he could read the recipient’s address at the top of the page:

Dr Valentine Ross,

31 Edgars Buildings,

Bath, England

The letter began ‘My dear brother’, and went on to describe the rajah’s house near Kuching and how it was a place unlike any Edmund had ever seen elsewhere in the Malay Archipelago. It then began to set out Edmund’s frustrations at the loss of his collecting equipment and his anxiety at his diminishing supply of money. It broke off suddenly with the words I hope to …

What Leon kept returning to was the name ‘Valentine Ross’ and the address in Bath. In the revelation of these details, he glimpsed immediately how his own future might achieve the kind of magnificent alteration he frequently dreamed of. He took up the letter and went to his room and placed it out of sight under his sleeping mat.