Chapter Twenty-Eight
Aster watched Amit fiddle with a keyboard on his desk and adjusted his screen three times before she lost her patience.
‘Where are your missing staff?’
He winced and waggled his head rapidly, a forlorn expression on his face.
‘Please, Lady Aster, may I be inviting my wife? She has a good business head and has many ideas.’
Aster frowned, but nodded her head. Two against one wasn’t an issue and if he needed moral support, then so be it. She couldn’t imagine what he had done to drive his staff away, but there were clearly empty seats and the workers in the fields were also determined that she didn’t pay attention to the newly planted crops.
Priya came into the room and immediately the atmosphere in the room changed. She stared at Aster boldly whilst her husband looked nervously between the two women. Then she nodded curtly.
‘We will need tea.’
Amit jumped up, but she shook her head.
‘You make it weak. We need strong tea for our words.’
Priya’s English was highly accented, but she made herself plain in the words she used and the jut of her jaw. By the time they were all settled, Aster took a sip of the tea and nodded her thanks and then asked Priya to begin. She immediately deferred to her husband.
‘We are extremely grateful to the Hiverton Estate. Everything we have achieved here is because of you.’
Aster held up her hand, denying Priya’s unwarranted praise.
‘We have certainly provided a catalyst. But this success is down to you, and we too have benefited from our arrangement. But recently, we have noticed a new competitor in the market and if you are working with them, then we need to know. This would be in breach of our contract.’
Husband and wife both blanched as Amit hurried to reassure Aster that they were not working with anyone else, that they greatly esteemed the Hivertons, that they hoped they would work together for generations to come.
‘They are stealing our bushes.’ Priya’s words cut through Amit’s gush of praise, her words landing heavy and angry. ‘They are stealing our people.’
She glared at Aster, tears welling in her eyes as she struggled to gain her composure.
‘Who is?’
‘Bad men. They come in the night and take them.’
‘And your workers. Are they paying them higher wages?’
‘No. They are stealing them.’
‘But the workers?’
‘Stealing.’
Aster looked at Amit for clarification.
‘What my wife says in so few words is the heart of our despair. Our villagers are being kidnapped. Their families are distraught. Our weavers are mothers, their children are crying for them at night. We tell them their mummies are on holiday, but they are not. They have been stolen.’
Aster’s heart sank. That explained how they were being undercut on price. They were using slave labour.
‘And the crops?’
‘Last year, they dug up an entire field. The field you saw was a new set of plants.’
‘This has been going on for a year?’
‘No, no, no, no. They have only been taking the people this season.’
Which was hen the new fabric had started to emerge onto the market, thought Aster. Everything fell into place.
‘But why didn’t you tell us last year when the bushes were stolen?’
They looked at each other and then back at Aster.
‘Because the following day a group of very bad men, wicked men, arrived in a jeep. They had many guns and they said if we told anyone, they would come back and burn the village down and kill everyone in it.’
Aster stared at them.
‘So what did you do?’
‘We replanted the bushes. We have been growing new plants ever since we began and have expanding into all the fields in the valley. Your sister has been buying all the land around here for us.’
‘But what did you do about alerting the police?’
Priya made a derisory noise and then spoke quickly in Bengali. It was too fast for Aster to catch most of it, but Priya’s body language spoke volumes and Aster caught the gist of it. The local police were based in Kolkata. They didn’t care about the villagers. They would only come if the villagers paid. Now they had the money, but were scared by the threat. It was not unheard of for a militia to wipe out a village for various reasons. An investigation would be launched. Money would be paid and the victims would remain dead and unavenged.
Aster also learnt some very expressive turns of phrase that made Amit pull at his wife’s sleeve as she cut him off with a slicing movement of the hand. Her eyes flashed in indignation as her chest heaved and Aster could see this had been festering for months. And now with the loss of their villagers, she could hardly blame the woman for her anger. As she petered out, Aster rubbed her chin, thinking what the best plan of attack was.
‘Do you have any idea where they are based?’
They shook their heads.
‘They could be anywhere. This is a big country.’
‘But this plant only grows in this region.’
‘It is a big region.’
Aster leant down to her bag and pulled out a sample of the rival cloth and passed it to the couple.
Taking it, Priya stood up and walked over to a microscope over by a display table and placed it under the lens. Aster and Amit sat in silence for a while as Priya played with the magnification and then turned back to them. She spoke slowly in English.
‘This could be us. But us last year.’ She switched to Bengali and Amit supplied the words in English that Aster struggled to translate. ‘The thread is almost as fine as ours, but the cotton is still juvenile and the fibres haven’t set as well. Of course, it could be that the weavers are less experienced, but I think this work is Shakila’s. I recognise the way she does her leaves.’
She broke off then and choked back a sob. Amit jumped up and hugged her as the two wept together. Aster sat, uncomfortable in the face of such strong emotion, until Amit wiped his face and held Priya’s hand. They returned to the table. Priya gripped the fabric and as she offered it to Aster, she told her to keep hold of it.
‘Who is Shakila?’
Amit stared miserably at Aster and then dropped his head in shame. ‘Shakila is our daughter.’