Still, he’ll be lucky to see her again. They may dissemble all they like to a new captain. Sam Challoner will be bleached bones in the African sun.
Faith, the boy said. We must have faith.
‘Never mind, Tom,’ he says, smiling at him. ‘I meant faith in Prince Rupert, but a little succour from the Lord can’t hurt.’
‘The general-at-sea will be long gone, sir,’ says one of the men – the one with the ugly scar down his face.
‘What’s your name, sailor?’
‘James Fowler, sir.’
‘Where did you get your scar?’
‘Naseby.’
Sam is about to claim brotherhood; about to say, yes, I was there too. He is about to slap a familiar arm about the man’s shoulders, and talk of the horror of fleeing Cromwell’s Ironsides. Then he realizes that, as a seaman from the Supply, the man was doubtless on the other side. It was a loyal sword that carved open James Fowler’s cheek, not a rebel pike.
An awkward hush falls on the hut. He looks at Fowler, and the man stares back. Hard brown eyes that give nothing away. Even here, thinks Sam. Even in a hut in Africa, surrounded by men who want to kill us, ankle deep in filth and bowel-griping scared, even here the old wounds fester.
‘The general looks after his own,’ says Sam.
‘That’s why we are here, sir,’ agrees Butcher.
One of the crew, a native of these parts, had come ashore to visit his relatives, who had prevented him from rejoining the ship. The general-at-sea had ordered Sam in to take him off again. A trained topman is not a man to lose ahead of an Atlantic crossing. But Sam’s boat had capsized in the surf; and the bedraggled English seamen had waded from the shallows to find themselves surrounded by hostile men.
Butcher nods, and says again: ‘That’s why we are here.’
Fowler snorts.
Butcher turns on him, squaring his shoulders.
‘What? What? Be hanged, you whoreson.’
‘Peace, Butcher,’ raps Sam.
They all know it is Butcher’s fault they are here. Their ordered planned approach to the shore, muskets primed and trained, was scuppered by the coxswain’s untimely inability to remember a single damn rule of small-boat handling. One minute Sam was standing at the stern, viewing the hostile natives down the barrel of a beautiful, God-kissed musket. The next there was salt water in his nose, in his eyes. His legs were up, head down. Bubbles rising. The useless, sopping musket a dead weight in his hands. A numbing crack to his head from the upturned boat.
The noddle-headed, useless scummer. He eyes Butcher. Should he disrate him, if they get out of this? Break him?
‘Sir, sir.’ The boy Tom has his face pressed to the crack. ‘There’s boats. Can see ’em over there.’
‘Move.’
Sam looks through the hole. It takes a second for his eyes to adjust to the sunlight. He can see ‘Captain’ Jacques, the local interpreter who had jabbered to the hostile villagers, calmed their brimming violence, and led the waterlogged would-be rescuers to this hut. Jacques is still talking to them, his hands outstretched and palms facing down.
Sam notices that even thousands of miles from home, on this sun-baked coast, the same hand signals mean ‘calm down, breathe’. Father and Henrietta would like that, he thinks. But his father and sister are dead. Will he ever stop noticing things he would like to tell them? He thinks of the small nuggets of life we offer up to coax smiles from those we love.
Beyond Captain Jacques, there are boats braving the breakers. And in one he thinks he sees the chief himself. Prince Rupert of the Rhine. General on land and sea. Now privateer, fighting a deadly small war against the regicides’ mighty navy. Dressed as if to a tea party with a countess, flicking the dust from his lace cuffs into the hungry surf.
‘Tom,’ he says. ‘Your eyes are better than mine. Is that Rupert himself in the flag’s cutter?’
He switches places with the boy.
Tom pauses. ‘It is! It’s the general, sir. Oh, sir, them waves are vicious. They’re going for it, sir.’
The men in the hut lean in towards the boy, waiting.
‘They’re through! Perfect landing, sir. Oh my eyes! Perfect!’
Fowler looks at Butcher, smiling. The big man ignores him, twisting his body away from the scorn.
Sam elbows the boy out of the way. His eye blinks into the blinding hole, and as his vision clears, he sees the general-at-sea striding up the beach, his hand resting on the pistol at his hip.
‘Rupert looks after his own,’ he says softly. Oh my general.
He turns back into the hut. ‘Cutlasses out. Let’s go. I’ll not have him find us skulking in here like a pack of mongrels.’
They stand at his back, and he pushes his way out of the hut, into the glare of the sun.
Captain Jacques listens to the headman’s tirade, nodding and tutting where required. He turns to Prince Rupert, who stands a little apart, wiping his forehead with a dust-stained handkerchief. The harmattan, the hot wind that blows from land to sea in this late dry season, picks up the dust and dances with it. The heat is thick.
Behind the general-at-sea is the small African boy they found after a skirmish last year, lost and alone. He trips after Rupert now, sticking tight to the big man’s shadow, just as the dog, Boy, used to. The lad clicks his tongue in disgust at the headman’s words, and spits violently into the dust. He must share a tongue with these fellows.
Sam wipes his forehead with a grubby sleeve. He has lost his hair tie, and the back of his neck is sweat-slimed under the thick raggle of hair. He thinks pointless thoughts of cool streams and cloths dampened with ice. He remembers the waterfall near Kinsale, back in Ireland. Swimming under the rush of it, to let it tumble in an icy deluge over his head. He nearly choked on the blessed fresh water as he laughed aloud at the joy of it.
The headman has stopped speaking. Prince Rupert half smiles politely. He looks as if this is a meeting of great diplomats, not a half-arsed engagement on a forgotten scrubby beach.
Captain Jacques clears his throat in the silence and looks ruefully at the prince. ‘This one says, your greatness, that kindness was given you and was spat on. Peace be upon you, great one, I am sorry for this anger. This one says that the little boat with the fat man steering’ – he points out into the bay, where a flotilla of small boats now bobs beyond the breakers – ‘stole one of his beloved canoes and killed one of his men. A nephew, begging your lordship’s indulgence. His sister’s favourite son, Allah bless her. Sorry, your, um, holiness, but he says that he will keep one of your men. A white slave would make him a big man, your greatness.’
Sam smiles. Christ knows where Captain Jacques learned his English – presumably at one of the trading posts along the coast where a bloat of European merchants risk sweat and syphilis to vie for trade. Somewhere with a shaky grasp of honorifics. I would be dead without him, he thinks, and looks upon the African with a vast goodwill, an almost lovesick smile on his face.
He catches Rupert’s eye and forces the smile down.
The negotiations go back and forth. At last the terms are agreed. Butcher and the boy Tom are sent to tell the pinnace of the Defiance to let go the native canoe. The group on shore watch as Butcher runs the cutter alongside the pinnace. The figures aboard are stick men at this distance, moving in jerky silhouettes against the darkening sky. The native canoe is lowered into the swell beyond the breakers.
‘This one, may Allah spit on his wife’s womb, says you may go,’ says Captain Jacques.
Rupert nods. ‘Thank him for his generosity,’ he says, in the thick German accent that has never been tempered by all his service in the English cause. ‘Add whatever words you think fit.’
‘This one says he will hold one back until his canoe reaches land, your nobleness.’
Sam looks at the ranks of villagers ranging up against them. What are the odds? he wonders. Ten to one? More?
‘I will stay, sir,’ he says, his lips moving before his fear catches u
p.
Rupert nods. ‘Good man. Captain Jacques, we want assurances. Tell him that this officer is dear to me, and I will kill those who hurt him.’
A stream of vowels and clicks, and it is agreed upon. Rupert and the small band with him walk to the shore, to the beached longboat.
‘We will get beyond the breakers and back oars,’ says Rupert. ‘When the canoe returns, can you swim to us?’
‘Yes, sir,’ says Sam. He learned to swim in the Thames upriver from London, with mud sucking at his ankles and his brother Ned holding the other end of a rope tied round his waist. He is not a strong swimmer, and he looks nervously at the big waves.
‘Good man,’ says Rupert again, and suddenly he is gone. Sam fights to stop himself running after his chief, throwing himself at the long legs as they stride away. Rupert climbs into the boat, which scrapes its way across the shingle and sand, into the froth of the sea. Through the breakers now: shivering precariously on the rise, crashing murderously on the fall.
Sam turns to see an argument between Jacques and the headman. Suddenly a clutch of natives rush to the water’s edge. They begin firing arrows at the longboat. Jesus wept, thinks Sam. Oath-breaking bastards. They mean to take me for a slave. A slave. He begins to run forward, but hands grab him and pull him sideways. He cannot believe this is happening. It cannot be so. Thank Christ for this dry mouth, he thinks, as his bladder relaxes with fear. Not a dribble.
What a time to care about such trivialities, with the slaver’s whip poised above his head. But if there is one thing Sam has learned in a decade of fighting, it is that the outward show bolsters the inner man. If you piss yourself, you are as good as surrendered. His breeches are dry, and a pox on their double-crossing heads.
Rupert’s men fire their muskets. The report of the guns echoes in the heat. One local man falls forwards, his head half gone, grey stuff oozing from his open skull as he crumples into the surf. Some of his fellows dive into the sea then. Confident, muscular dives. As the guns fire again, they duck under the water. Arrows sail over the swimmers’ heads to thunk on the boat’s straked planks and pock the unsettled sea. They will swamp the boat if they reach it. A handful of muskets are useless against this weight of hostile enemies.
The beach is a riot of shouting and fighting. Sam realizes that there are different groups at work, and fighting between the locals themselves. The hands pulling him sideways are rough and insistent, and he finds himself in a thicket, the fronds scraping at his skin, pulling at his shirt.
A hand is clamped over his mouth; a huge arm encircles him. He struggles to breathe and tears leak from his eyes. Oh Jesus. Oh Jesus.
He hears a high English shout. Captain Jacques.
‘The watering place, your nobleness. To the watering place.’
Sam doesn’t understand. He gags on the hand that clenches his mouth. It smells of fish and dirt. He wrestles his head to one side, trying to scream.
Captain Jacques is beside him suddenly, shouting into his confused brain. ‘Calm. Calm. I rescue. Stop this fucking struggle.’
Sam lets his limbs go limp, and his captor slowly releases his grip.
‘Come away. Come away,’ says Captain Jacques, and they limp away into the snagging bush.
The watering place at which they stopped a few days past is four days’ walk through the bush. Sam walks with leaden legs. He finds a despairing rhythm. Will they be there? No they will not. Will they be there? No they will not. Right leg, left leg; right, left. Will they? No.
The harmattan sucks the moisture from the air. His mouth is dry and his lips are cracked. There is a desolation in his spirit to match the featureless coast. His stinging eyes follow the steady trudging of his feet. Iridescent birds caw unheeded; pink suns settle, unremarked on, into purple seas.
One sight rouses him from his torpor. A little inland, with the sea at their backs, they stumble across a lake. But such a lake. At first Sam thinks he is dreaming, a strange and hallucinatory dream rooted in his empty stomach, his aching legs and his despair.
How can water be pink?
But there it is, stretching ahead of him. A great and vast expanse of water, pink as . . . pink as . . . He cannot imagine how he will describe it to his fellow sailors, if he ever sees them again. The storing of an anecdote is a sliver of hope, and he works at it. A lake, then, like a crushed strawberry; but such an English analogy seems absurd here, under this great ache of bluish sky. White heaps of sand are piled by the shoreline – or at least so he imagines until Captain Jacques encourages him to dab a wetted finger into the nearest pile and take a taste. Salt. Pure salt.
They make camp, eating a salted fish they buy from a local with a salt-crust glitter to his skin. But as the sun begins to sink, the pinkness of the lake deepens and curdles into a darker colour until it is blood, blood red.
Sam closes his eyes and begs for sleep. For a man who has seen what he has seen, a blood-red lake is a cruel practical joke played by the Almighty, who is doubtless pissing himself up there at Sam’s excessive discomfort. An illusion is all. He will lie here in a salty pyre, and the blood-red lake will not creep up in the night to lick at him. It will not come to claim him for a brother.
Oh Jesus, let me sleep.
Let me sleep.
They arrive the next afternoon at the watering place. The tumble of a fresh-water stream, and beyond it, an empty ocean. They are at the western edge of the world here. An elastic imagination could think a ship would sail off the edge of that horizon; drop down in a plunge of briny fear. Sam settles in silence on the rocky foreshore, eyes straining towards the flat line at the sky’s edge. The wind is not dead set against them – Rupert’s pathetic fleet should be here, if it is coming.
Captain Jacques collects driftwood, looking at him with an unreadable face as he passes. Sam sits and watches the waves, willing the pattern of their suck and crash to calm him. It does not work. What if they do not come?
‘They may come,’ says Captain Jacques as he builds the driftwood into a pyramid. As if he has read Sam’s mind.
Captain Jacques strikes the flint and catches the spark in a nest of straw-like twigs. He places the smoking bundle into the heart of the pyramid. He blows, gently. For a big man, he can move with surprising grace. It is still warm, but the dying light promises a cool night. They will be glad of the fire soon. Besides, it keeps away beasts. This bloody place, Sam thinks. God’s blood. In every bush lurks something malevolent. Plants, animals, men: all created with one aim – to bring about the premature meeting of one Captain Sam Challoner with his Maker.
Sam stretches his aching legs out towards the flames. He feels the growing heat through his boots, and thinks of all the fires he has camped by. In England, God bless it and keep it, he knew night after night of a hot face and a freezing arse as he fought the rebels. But there were no venomous snakes or ravenous insects there to add to his woes.
Perhaps, he thinks, we just underestimated the wildlife. Imagine being menaced by a badger. He grins, but then a swell of homesickness catches him. He longs – longs – for the sharp sip of the year’s new cider. For the smell of a fire-black sausage. For the hoppy, sweaty press of life inside a tavern. For English girls with sarcastic mouths and laughing eyes.
Will he ever see England again? Even if he leaves this God- cursed coast, will he be forever an outlaw, fighting a forlorn, hopeless war against the might of the Commonwealth? Rupert’s pirates’ war against the Commonwealth navy and merchant ships is a comedy. A wren’s piss in the ocean.
What choice has he? Besides, the pissing matters to the wren, if not to the ocean.
He watches Captain Jacques lift a lit stick from the fire, brandishing it at the dusk-drawn shadows like an oversized link-boy sparring with ghosts.
The man straightens suddenly, looking out towards the sea. ‘A ship,’ he says, pointing. Sam jumps to his feet and looks along Captain Jacques’ outstretched finger. There, like a tiny handkerchief dancing on the sea, is a sail. Too far to name it for
certain – it is a smudge in the gloom. Please God, let it be the general-at-sea.
Sam settles down for the wait. He has been long enough at sea to recognize that an extended stretch looms before any action. A man who stays wound tight in the slow sail towards an enemy broadside will find himself running mad. He wills his tight nerves to loosen. He rolls his head in circles to release his shoulders.
Captain Jacques squats down next to him, throwing the smoking stick into the fire.
‘You prince too? Like big man Rupert?’ he asks.
‘No, my friend.’
‘Rich?’
Not a pot to piss in, thinks Sam. ‘Aye. Beyond measure. Rivers of gold on our land,’ he says. ‘Lakes.’
Captain Jacques chuckles. ‘You remember old Captain Jacques, hey? Hey?’
‘You will have my gratitude for life, Captain,’ says Sam fervently.
Jacques settles himself companionably, crunching into the stony ground. ‘You have the wife?’
‘No,’ says Sam.
‘You should marry, my friend. Family?’
Sam thinks on this for a minute. Does he have a family? His mother died in birthing him. His father was condemned as a Royalist traitor not long after the fighting began. Almost ten years ago now. Christ. Ten years. Sam had not waited to see him hang, but fled London to join the king’s cause. Not politics nor God made him fight. No, it was love and anger, mingled in the flesh of his dangling father.
‘I had a sister,’ he says. ‘Henrietta.’
He can’t remember when he last said her name. He watches the fire; even the wood here smells different as it burns. The sounds of the bush creak and rattle around him, but he is too tired to be afraid. Would Captain Jacques be frightened if I tipped him up in Fleet Street? he wonders.
‘A sister?’ prompts the man, in that strange sing-song accent.
‘She was killed in the war. I was in London, sent to try to spring the king. I was hurt. She sheltered me. My brother, Ned, who fought for the Parliament, brought troops to capture me. I escaped, she did not.’
Sam is watching the ships coming closer now; he is nearly sure that the big three-master is Rupert’s flagship. They are coming for him.
The Tyrant’s Shadow Page 2