East India

by Colin Falconer

  “They were the same men who attacked me? What do you think?”

  “I think it’s very possible. Anyway, remember what I said. Any man gives you trouble, let him answer to me.”

  There was a shout from the beach.

  They went down to the cay, watched three men wade in among the coral shallows towards what looked at first like another piece of flotsam from the wreck. They dragged it from the water and up onto the sand.

  But it wasn’t wreckage; it was a man. Another miracle. After so long, someone else had been saved. “It's the Undermerchant!’ someone called out.

  “God be praised!’ the pastor shouted. “A gentleman to guard our souls!’

  They stood around him as he lay gasping on the clinker beach, choking water from his mouth and nostrils, his eyes rolling back in his head. “Heer van Sant lives!’ the pastor shouted. “Everything will be well now, you will see. God be thanked he saved the good undermerchant from the wreck!’

  Cornelia looked at Michiel. He did not seem quite as sure.

  ***

  That night Michiel went out with Gerrit van Hoeckto catch mutton birds. They were easy to catch at night--the stupid creatures built their nests on the ground. The light from their torches blinded them and they fluttered around in panic, like chickens, and were easily caught. While Gerrit held up the lantern, Michiel grabbed them with his bare hands and throttled them, then threw them into a sack.

  Not hard work, but sometimes painful for the ground was not always sure and if you stumbled on a nest in the darkness you could fall in up to your knees.

  “What do you make of this talk about Ryckert?” Michiel said.

  “I think it's just that, talk.”

  “Still, I don't like it. You think he was mixed up in the attack on the Noorstrandt woman?”

  Gerrit van Hoeck's shoes crunched on the coral. He didn't say anything.

  “Vrouwe Noorstrandt told me she heard him, that he was talking mutiny.”

  “They wouldn’t dare. You know what they do to muyters.”

  Just then they heard a commotion ahead of them, a mutton bird floundering as it tried to escape, its wings caught up in the saltbush. Michiel grabbed it and threw it into the sack with the others.

  Michiel didn’t like it. There was something not right here. A man didn’t just wander into the sea and disappear like that. He must have had some help.

  Whatever he had said, it had scared someone enough to want to shut him up.

  Chapter 44

  The Great Southland

  THE loneliest place on earth.

  Ambroise slumped onto his knees on the sand. His uniform, soaked through in the storms, had dried in the wind and stiffened like tree bark. His mouth was gummy, his throat parched. What he wouldn't give for some of that putrid water from the ship's barrels now.

  This vast emptiness chilled his soul. The coastline stretched away into the distance, and not a town, not a village, not a person or animal to be seen.

  The skipper said no white men had ever left their footprints in these sands, as if this was a matter for pride. The Great Southland, everyone said, was quite empty, and so it seemed from the sea. But it was not empty at all.

  It was full of flies. The moment they reached the beach, hordes of them descended and would not be denied. They were not like the flies in Holland, lazy and fat; they attacked with the gusto of bees, crawling into ears and eyes and noses. They even flew into his mouth, leaving him gagging.

  And still not a drop of water.

  Beyond the sandhills, all they saw were endless dry plains the colour of rust. Dotted about these plains were what they first took to be huts belonging to the natives, but when they came close up they found they were giant ant nests, hard as timber.

  They returned to the beach and the skipper ordered some of the men to dig holes in the sand but at the bottom of these pits the water was salt as well and the men spat it out and cursed God.

  Suddenly a shout from the foot of the limestone cliffs further down the beach. The bosun and his men had discovered some pools of fresh water. Ambroise stumbled after the others and when he got there he went at it shoulder to shoulder with the sailors, the water tasting so sweet and cool he wondered why he had ever in his life thought to drink wine.

  They collected eighty kannen of water from the pools, about as much as they had when they left the Houtman Rocks just over a week before. It was not enough for salvation but it gave them all hope.

  ***

  They sailed north, saw a party of blacks as they came close to the coast, and when they landed they found the ashes of a camp fire scattered with the bones of crabs. The ashes were still warm and the sailors rekindled the fire and toasted the fish they had caught with lines off the reef. There was barely a morsel for each of them, just enough to set the stomach growling again.

  Look at our fine commandeur, the skipper thought. What a sorry sight, he looks. It’s only when things go wrong you find out who the real men are.

  “There is more water somewhere in this vicinity,” he was saying. “The undermerchant Jacob Remmessens mentions it in his log...”

  “There is no water in this accursed place. This is like looking for a fuck in a nunnery.”

  The obscenity raised a smile from the sailors. Sara laughed out loud. Oh my God, look at her. It would be embarrassing to show up in Batavia with her clinging onto him. But as things stood at the moment, there was no good reason to go within a hundred miles of the fort. First they had to safely make landfall in the Indies and that was by no means certain; but from there he could navigate to Melaka. Keep the commandeur for insurance, for the time being, if by chance they came across a Dutch warship without Secor, and anyone survived on those islands, they would be hung as deserters. This little she-devil hanging on to his leg could always go over the side one night if she proved too much of a nuisance.

  “We have to find more water or the people are doomed.”

  “You think there's a single one of that rabble left alive, commandeur? We are wasting our time on this.”

  “After that storm they will have water enough to last them for weeks.”

  “If that is true, then what do they need us for? We should run for Batavia now. By my reckoning we could be there in ten days’ sailing, if this weather holds.”

  “We have a duty to the Company's goods and the people!’

  “Have a sense, man! How should we get back there now? I cannot sail into the teeth of this wind. We will have to wait here on the beach for the weather to break and that could take days, perhaps weeks. No, we must make for Batavia.”

  To a man the others shouted their agreement.

  The pansy bastard looked stricken. All for show, he reckoned. He wanted to save his skin as much as the rest of them now.

  The Houtman Rocks

  Christiaan looked up from the fire as two shadows emerged from the darkness and sat down on either side of him; the jonker Joost van der Linde and the big clerk, Krueger; strange partners now, indeed. They had with them a bottle of burgundy they had bullied from the commandeur's butler. They passed it to him.

  “We trust you are recovered from your ordeal, Christiaan,” Joost said.

  Krueger nodded. “We had quite given you up for dead.”

  “I am well, thanks be to God. He would not suffer such an ignominious end for Christiaan van Sant.”

  “It would appear not,” Joost said.

  “What truly grieves my heart is the silver lying out there at the bottom of that reef.”

  “It seemed to us you did not want to leave it,” Krueger said.

  “If it were not for Fortuna and that idiot of a captain, we might be sailing off to a life of ease and riches by now.”

  “Well, there are more serious matters now to hand.”

  “You think our present predicament is not serious?”

  Krueger stirred the coals of the fire with the tip of his knife. “Our plans are no longer secret.”

  Christiaan had kn
own this would happen, men being what they were. “What has happened?”

  “That fool Ryckert got himself very nicely drunk. The next thing he's going about the camp, the wind blowing his tongue about. Everyone knows of the conspiracy now.”

  “Damn him to hell.”

  “That part is done,” Krueger said. “A pity we didn’t send him there sooner.”

  “What kind of special fool would speak of such things, even when they were drunk?” “We both think that we should find out who stands with us and kill the rest,” Krueger said.

  Christiaan threw back his head and guffawed, startling the other two. What bloodthirsty ruffians the Honourable Company were appointing as clerks these days! A man might scarce dictate a letter for fear of being run through with pen and ink! But Krueger was serious. And there was never a doubt about the young jonker; Joost was a sadistic little bastard and one well worth having around.

  “What's so amusing, undermerchant?” Krueger said. “Should we keep this rabble alive to eat our food and drink our water so that no worthy man survives to see a rescue ship?”

  “I have no quarrel with your reasoning,” Christiaan said.

  “The sooner we start culling,” Joost said, ‘the longer the rations will last. Those not with us be against us, and they can taste my sword.”

  “Except the women,” Krueger said. “We can impale them on a different kind of weapon.” He laughed at his own joke.

  “Let me think on this,” Christiaan said.

  “What is there to think about?”

  “Look around you, Krueger! There are enough soldiers and Company toadies on this island to defeat us twice over, no matter how much you wish things different!

  “There must be a way,” Krueger said.

  “You're a clerk,” Joost said. “What do you suggest? We should write them a letter?”

  “When the swords come out, you'll see I know well enough how to use one!’

  Christiaan bade them to silence. Voices raised in the darkness were enough to give any soldier cause to move his hand to his sword. “We must walk softly here. Leave it with me, I shall devise a strategy that will see us safe through this.”

  Joost nodded. Krueger too, though slower to acquiesce.

  “Keep your own counsel, both of you, and do nothing to arouse suspicion. Do you understand me?”

  “Let us not delay too long,” Krueger grumbled.

  He took the bottle back from Christiaan and drained it.

  “You boys do not seem to suffer overly much from the ration,” Christiaan said.

  Joost laughed. He punched the clerk's arm, and they staggered away into the darkness to find their tents and sleep off the effects of their stolen wine.

  ***

  Christiaan stayed by the fire, thinking. The Lord indeed moved in mysterious ways. He had thought to find the survivors in dire straits; that first day, it was reported that they had been beating each other with their fists in an effort to get to the water. But he had found the situation on the island not nearly as hellish as he had believed.

  The soldiers had managed to restore order, there was a guard night and day over their Spartan provisions; the ship's council had even been reconvened to manage affairs. They had worked out a ration, which Salomon diligently recorded in a bound ledger, like the good clerk he was.

  Since the commandeur's unfortunate departure there had been several rainstorms, which had filled the water barrels, and further casks of biscuit and wine and salted pork had washed up on the beach or been salvaged from the shallows by the flimsy rafts the carpenters had built from the flotsam.

  And by a further stroke of good fortune, the main mast had washed in on the same storm that broke the Utrecht's back, and it had provided enough canvas and timber for almost everyone to build lean-to tents and shelters.

  There was yet a variety of natural food, though it must soon run out. The mutton birds had at first provided a little meat, they told him, but these were all gone now. Some of the sailors caught lobster with their bare hands in the shallows, while others took oysters from the reef at low tide or rigged lines and pulled in fish from the channel. Delicious to eat but precious few for the mouths they had to feed.

  Krueger was right, there were over two hundred of them crammed on this little island and that was too many.

  Christiaan made his calculations. He could count on twenty men of like mind; the jonkers were with him, according to Joost, and perhaps a handful of Steenhower's soldiers. Against this he counted perhaps a hundred and fifty who might resist them, two score of them armed soldiers still loyal to the Honourable Company. The odds seemed insurmountable, on the face of it. But most of his twenty were aristocrats and VOC officials, well educated and from good families. The majority of the people, tailors and coopers and carpenters and shopkeepers, would defer to them as naturally as cattle followed a farmer to the abattoir.

  It was disappointing that of the surviving mercenaries, whose particular skills could have been useful to their plans, so few were considered likely recruits. Steenhower had singled out just a few: Gerrit van Hoeck, Willem Groot, Gilles Clement.

  The ones who caused Christiaan greatest concern were the veterans, among them some English and French. They had set themselves apart from the rest. Their orderly tents, neat little fires, and weapons stacked pyramid-fashion were at odds with the amateur muddle of the civilians. They were professionals, accustomed to living rough and fighting hard, dangerous men who would trounce his following of disaffected nobles and malcontent Company time servers, no matter that Krueger and Joost van der Linde thought.

  He had to be rid of them, somehow.

  The task was easier now that the commandeur had scuttled off with the skipper, for it left him in charge of the council and the people, by rightful authority of the Honourable Company. Anyone who disobeyed him was a muyter now.

  If the skipper reached the Indies, he doubted the commandeur would be alive to enjoy the homecoming. The Company would not send anyone but Jacob Schellinger himself to find the wreck. When the rescue ship came they would overcome it, with or without the skipper's help, and take to the high seas.

  Things had not turned out quite the way he had planned, but they could still overcome this setback. It was, in the end, God’s will and a man should be humble before the greater design.

  ***

  She was terrified of the darkness now. There is nothing to fear out there, she tried to tell herself. It is not like those first dark days; the pastor was preaching again each morning about good and evil, the soldiers were playing dobbelsteen, as they did on the ship; everyone was talking of rescue, calculating how many days it might take a ship to return for them.

  The sound of the provost's voice calling the all's well at night was good to hear when once she started at the cry of every seabird.

  The women huddled together around a dull lantern, speaking in whispers. Neeltje Groot’s baby would not stop crying. The child had been born on the ship a few days out of the Cape, and he had not stopped his fussing since. Neeltje fretted over him constantly, he would not thrive and she thought she would lose him. She offered the infant her breast but he squirmed and would not settle. It had been going on all night and none of them had slept.

  Cornelia watched the other women fuss around her; Grietje Willemsz, the widow, had raised plenty of children of her own and seemed to know about these things. Cornelia herself felt helpless around infants, had no experience of children, but someone had to do something.

  “Perhaps I can help,” she said.

  They all gave her a look.

  “He has the colics,” Grietje said.

  “If Grietje can’t do anything, what makes you think you can?” Marretje Overmaars said.

  “The undermerchant may have a potion that will help,” Cornelia said. “They say he was once an apothecary in Haarlem.”

  “Barbers and apothecaries don't know how to help a woman with things like this,” Grietje said.

  “It wouldn't
harm to ask him.”

  Grietje frowned, but Neeltje nodded, in mute appeal. The poor woman was desperate.

  Cornelia gathered her skirts and ducked out of the door of the shelter. Elisabeth Post called after her and followed.

  “Vrouwe,” Elisabeth said. “If you will speak with the undermerchant, perhaps you might also speak with him about the rumours.”

  “Rumours, Elisabeth?”

  “About Ryckert.”

  “What did you hear?”

  “That there are muyters among us here on the island. Now that the commandeur has gone...a few of us are frightened something bad may happen to the undermerchant unless he is warned.”

  “All right, I will speak to him.”

  A wan smile from Elisabeth. “Thank you, vrouwe.”

  Well, one of the women still trusted her. Some consolation, at least.

  ***

  The undermercahnt seemed quite recovered from his ordeal on the wreck. The warmth of his smile when he saw her was a welcome surprise; she had thought Michiel Van Texel was her only friend on the whole island.

  “Cornelia!’ “Heer Undermerchant.”

  “I was so relieved to hear that you survived our disaster. You look radiant, despite our privations.”

  “We all thank God that He has seen you safely delivered from the wreck. We thought you had perished.”

  “It was incumbent on me to be the last to leave the vessel. I hoped somehow to protect the Company goods, but it was not to be.” He indicated the silver ewer set upon a driftwood table in the corner of his shelter. “A glass of wine, perhaps?”

  She declined, watched him pour himself a generous draught into a pewter cup. She frowned at this indulgence. Christiaan might do well to remember how wine and water were rationed here.

  “I need your help,” she said.

  “I am at your service as always, vrouwe.”

  “One of the women, Neeltje Groot, has an infant with her, and he sickens. They say you were once an apothecary. I thought that perhaps you...”