East India

by Colin Falconer

“What about Table Bay?”

  “I find my memory is short these days. I can remember no further than this past week, and how you saved all our lives.”

  “And Jan?”

  “You mean the attack on vrouwe Noorstrandt? That is not so easily forgotten. Your bosun will have to answer for what he did.”

  “Because, you know, I think he will try and say that it was me behind it. He has threatened me so.”

  “Why would he say that?”

  “To bring me down with him. Out of spite.”

  “Were you behind it? Because there is nothing I can do if you are guilty of such a terrible crime.”

  “I swear to God, and on my immortal soul, I had nothing to do with it.”

  He waited to see what the commandeur would say to that. As much as he hates me, he thought, he's in a bit of a fix himself. He needs me to back him when he comes up against Governor Coen. No one else is going to find the wreck for him, and if he doesn't find the wreck, the loss of the Company's silver is down to him. It will be the end of his career.

  The man wasn't a fool; he understood the bind he was in.

  “Let me tell you something, man to man,” Ambroise murmured. “We are both in a situation here. You have lost the ship, I have a responsibility for the treasure on it, so the Lord Governor will be asking us both some hard questions. We could help each other out here.”

  “That is what I think also.”

  “I have to admit it, Jacob,” he said and it was the first time he had called him by his first name, ‘for all our differences in the past, you have proved yourself to me these last days. I cannot think of any other man who I would trust to find the Utrecht and rescue the silver.”

  The skipper smiled. “I’m glad you see it that way. You're not such a bad fellow, are you, Ambroise?”

  Of course, I'll cut your throat for you, if I ever get the chance, but for now I need you, just like you need me.

  Ambroise smiled and bundled his jacket against the thwart so that he could rest his head there. In moments he was asleep.

  The skipper was relieved they had reached an understanding. Either way, the wind blew fair for Jacob Schellinger. If the wind blew from the south in the morning, he would sail to Melaka, as they had planned that night in the steerage, and let the bosun do for this doughy bag of wind with his knife.

  But if it blew from the north, or they came upon a Company ship in the straits, then he would accept the commandeur's plaudits in front of Governor Coen and then go back for the Utrecht and rescue the people from the Houtman Rocks.

  He stared at the bosun, asleep under the canvas by the prow. Like an ugly old dog, faithful in his way, but when they got past their usefulness, well you had to remember they were only a dog.

  The warm offshore breeze carried with it the smell of over-ripe fruit and corruption. He waited on the weather to decide their fate.

  The Houtman Rocks

  Cornelia was sitting alone on the beach, when she saw Christiaan heading towards her. He looked pleased about something. He thrust a piece of paper in her hand.

  It was stained with salt and dirt. She recognised François' careful hand, but it was cramped and barely legible, for the ink had been stained with rainwater.

  She read:

  TO THE PAS...GERS AND CR ... SHIP UTREC ...:

  Since on all th ... about our foundered ship Utre ... no freshwater to be found, in order to keep ... people who are saved, I ... an expedition should be ... the High Island to see whether ... God's gracious will that fresh water ... of which so much may be taken to the people ... certain of having enough provision for ... then meanwhile someone should ... to Batavia in ... let the Lord-General and his counc ... of our disaster and to ... early assistance. Therefore we ... try our utmost and do our duty and ... poor brethren in their great need. In ... of the truth, signed ... own hand.

  AMBROISE SECOR.

  Christiaan watched her for her reaction. She handed it back to him, let no emotion show on her face. “Where did you get this?” she said.

  “The provost found it on verrader's eylandt,” he said.

  Traitor's Island. It was what some of them called the seal island now. She hated that name.

  “I was right. You see? Your fancy boy ran off and abandoned everyone.”

  When did Commandeur Secor become ‘her fancy boy?” “His intention is clear from the letter,” she said.

  “It seems to me it was never his intention to come back for you, or for anyone.”

  “I would have thought this letter persuades you of quite the opposite,” she said, gathered her salt-stiff skirts about her and got to her feet. Why the Undermerchant should find such pleasure in uncovering the commandeur's perfidy, she could only guess. She was wrong to have thought of him as her peer;he was a toad, for all his fine clothes and elegant manners. She walked away and left him standing there with his damned letter. There was nowhere to go on the island that was better than this spot, but she would find somewhere, anywhere, just to be away from him.

  Chapter 51

  Banten, Java

  THEY stumbled through the shallows and fell on their knees, kissing the black sand as if it was the wife they had left behind in Holland. Others--those who had been to the Indies and knew its secrets--attacked fallen coconuts with their knives, tipping back their heads and gulping the sweet juice down their parched throats.

  Ambroise heard the skipper shouting. He had found a waterfall. They all ran like children into the jungle after him, tearing off their salt-stiff clothes and throwing themselves into the cold, clean water and drinking until their bellies were distended like pregnant women’s.

  Ambroise finally lay replete on his back in the shade of the ferns. He was still somehow thirsty, though his belly was stretched to bursting. He ran his tongue around his blistered lips, tasting sweetness for the first time in so many days. Some were weeping, others were praying--even Sara de Ruyter.

  “A good northerly breeze has brought us home,” the skipper shouted and they all cheered.

  He laughed along with the rest over the breaking open of a few coconuts, helped them fill the water casks and drag them back to the sloop. Ambroise went back into the undergrowth and unhitched his breeches, for the simple pleasure of answering nature's call for the first time in a month without other men watching.

  ***

  The bosun watched Heer Commandeur head down the jungle path. Never thought that pansy bastard would survive in the boat this long, such a sick little man with his fevers and his pale skin and his lace collar, just goes to show. The skipper said he was a weakling, but the skipper wasn't always right, if he was they wouldn't have all ended up here in this stinking boat.

  Now the skipper had saved them, it was time for a man to think about his own skin.

  He had kept his eyes on the commandeur all through that morning, waiting for this chance. He drew his knife and followed him.

  He looked over his shoulder. No one watching, the undergrowth all green and clicking with insects. Just a few strides in this jungle and a man was invisible, only the distant shimmer of the water to show you the way back to the beach.

  And there it was, Heer Commandeur's lily-white backside bent over, the water had given him the squirts already, him and a few others by the sounds of it. Well he won't have to worry about the flux after I've done with him.

  Suddenly there was a hand across his mouth and his arm was twisted up behind him, the knife dropped with a soft thud onto the damp earth.

  Secor stumbled to his feet, his face white with shock.

  The skipper grinned at him over the bosun’s shoulder. “Now didn’t I tell you to watch yourself when you were away from our little ship, Heer Commandeur?”

  ***

  They sailed past Prinsen Island, saw the glow of the Krakatoa volcano to the north, turning the sky orange over an oily dusk. As soon as they entered the Sunda strait the wind dropped and for two days they drifted with the current.

  At Dwers in den Wegh
they found a breeze that took them past white beaches and palm trees but then it dropped away at sunset and the current took them back the way they had come. The skipper ordered them all back to the oars and they fought the tide by the light of a half moon.

  The next day they dropped anchor by the Topper's Hat, and the men slumped exhausted over their oars, backs roasting in the fierce sun, praying for a breeze. It was sunset when they saw the sails astern, the topmasts just visible behind the palm trees of Dwers in den Wegh. The skipper dropped a kedge anchor in the lee of the island to wait for it to come up.

  “We’re saved,” Ambroise said.

  “Maybe,” the skipper said.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Could be pirates, which will be bad luck for us, because then we’re all dead men.”

  “After we have survived so much? God could not be so cruel.”

  “Couldn’t he? Then you’ve got a different god to mine.”

  Chapter 52

  The Houtman Rocks

  A CHARMING and erudite man, Ambroise had said of him once, an amusing fellow, a little strange in his demeanour at times, but shows great promise. He saw a great future for him in the Company.

  Cornelia wondered what their commandeur would say if he saw him now, strutting around like a peacock in Ambroise’s own crimson braided jacket and ruffed white shirt. And the gold medallion, where had that come from?

  This morning he appeared unannounced in the women's tent. The shelter had been set aside from the others, as was proper, but he walked straight in, as if he had right of entry.

  “My lady,” he said to her and gave her a look, head to foot, as if she was a dock front whore and he was inspecting his purchase. “You have everything you need here?”

  “Everything,” she said. “Sand flies, constant thirst, not a moment's privacy. What else should we ask for?”

  “I am endeavouring to put such hardships behind you. Just a little patience and I am sure I can vouchsafe your future comforts. I wish you to know that I have placed you under my personal protection.”

  “From what?”

  He ignored the question. “Do you like it here?” he asked her, looking around as if the tent was lodgings in a tavern and he was about to demand of the landlord a better room.

  “I should prefer a bed with down pillows and a fire in the hearth.”

  “You should not be sleeping with these other women.”

  “Surely you would not have me sleeping with the soldiers?”

  “I shall try to improve on these arrangements.”

  “We all suffer, Heer Undermerchant. I count myself lucky to be alive.”

  “I am here for you,” he said. He went out. She saw the other women give her a look. So Miss High and Mighty is to get favoured treatment again.

  Once again she was alone.

  Chapter 53

  The Sunda Strait

  THE ship arrowed towards them from the lee of the island, and the men jumped to their feet, waving desperately, almost overturned the boat in their desperation. Ambroise spared a glance for the bosun, trussed like a hog there in the bow. Never had he seen such hate in a man's eyes.

  But that was the way of it. If it wasn’t for the skipper, he’d be lying in some swamp with his throat cut right now, so he felt no compassion for him.

  There were three ships, all with Company flags at the masthead. The Zandaam was in the van, by God. What about that for Fortune? The skipper had promised him he would come up with the rest of the fleet in more northerly latitudes.

  ***

  The sailors lined the deck of the Zandaam, staring at them in astonishment. He was welcomed aboard by the commander and swiftly hustled below. Heer Cryn Raemburch was a Councillor of India, of the same rank, but Ambroise felt like a beggar before a lord. Raemburch was in starched ruff, his hair and beard neatly trimmed, a gold medallion gleaming at his breast; and here was Ambroise Secor, stinking, hair stiff with salt, the stitching rotting away on his clothes, wasted away to a skeleton. The felt hat he had so carefully preserved through the month's ordeal seemed only to add to his dejection.

  “What has happened to you, man?” Raemburch said when they were alone in his cabin.

  Ambroise looked around him. The ship was not as grand as the one he had lost, but the cabin was not unlike his; there was a Bible on the table, a linen towel draped across the bunk, and Raemburch's oak chests in the corner, the symbols of his rank.

  The butler placed a glass of Burgundy before him, in Venetian glass.

  He started to tell the story, the tale he had rehearsed so many times in his head for Governor Coen: I did my duty by the people and the Company goods in the only way possible. I never once thought of my own personal salvation. But to his own astonishment, as well as Raemburch's, he was unable to finish. He choked on the words and started to shake.

  And for the first time since he was a child, he wept.

  Chapter 54

  The long island

  THE wind rushed over the surface of the lagoon, raising ripples on the water. A seagull, its feathers ruffled by the southerly wind, strutted along the shore, leaving arrowhead prints in the salt crust. Twenty paces distant, a seal lay among the long grass, watching Michiel with a velvet eye.

  So this was Krueger’s paradise, his water garden! One salt depression of stagnant water fringed with moss and reeds, surrounded by a spit of sand and coral and stunted bushes a mile long and a cannonball's shot wide at its widest part, as dry and barren as the cay from where they had come.

  They had searched the island for two days, thought that if pair of idiots like van der Beeck and van der Linden had found water then it must be running in streams a mile wide. But there was nothing. They had covered every inch of the island, found no wells, no soaks.

  Michiel joined the others on the beach and slumped down, exhausted and thirsty.

  “That fucking jonker never found any water,” Westerveld said. “What was he playing at?”

  “I don't understand this,” du Trieux, the French corporal, said.

  “Never trust a man with ink on his fingers,” Westerveld said and spat in the sand.

  “I wouldn't do that,” Barteau, another of the Frenchies, said. “You might need that spit later.”

  “Christiaan says we're running out of water,” Westerveld said. “If we go back empty handed we've got some real problems, man.”

  “They swore they found water here. What's going on?”

  “I don't know,” Michiel said, though he suspected he knew very well. He felt an oily stirring of fear in his belly. “We better light a fire, get those bastards back here to get us,” he said. “We stay here much longer, we're going to die ourselves.”

  He stared across the channel towards the Houtman Rocks. He didn’t want to tell the others that help was not going to come. He didn’t really want to believe it himself. Even after all the life he had seen, how men behaved in a war, he still found it hard to credit the things they would do in a peace.

  The Houtman Rocks

  Christiaan stared at the smudge of smoke above the long island. He put down the eyeglass and smiled. So, they were panicking already. Let's have a toast to these brave boys, with their blackened tongues and parched throats, who give their lives so others might live. A heroic achievement.

  I'll drink to that.

  ***

  The strips of bandage the barber had put on Richard Merrell’s arm were stinking. A jagged end of bone had broken the skin; Maistre Franz had attempted to reset it, but the limb was still crooked. Cornelia washed away the sticky yellow fluid oozing from the purple swelling. Merrell’s face was flushed with fever, his eyes unnaturally bright.

  She made new bandages from strips of cloth she had plundered from Company goods with help from the pastor’s daughter, Hendrika. She wrapped the arm as best she could with these while Hendrika dipped a rag in a bowl of cool seawater to cool Merrell’s forehead.

  It stank in the sick tent…if you could call it a tent.
Just a scrap of canvas, open on one side to the weather, roughly supported with broken spars and timber. There were a dozen men lying in here on thin blankets, flies crawling over them, some sick with the flux, others still injured from the night of the wreck. Maistre Arenson had done what he could but he had lost his instruments and his medicines in the wreck, and even with those, she thought, the results would not have been much different.

  Merrell opened his eyes. “Thank you,” he whispered.

  “Are you in much pain?”

  He shook his head, but she knew it was a lie.

  “Where’s Michiel?” he asked her.

  “He has gone to the long island,” she said. She wished the big man were here now. He would know what to do, about Christiaan, about his friends.

  “You’re the fine lady, aren’t you? I saw you many times.”

  “My name is Cornelia.”

  “Michiel saw you too. He talked about you all the time on the ship.

  "He talked about me?"

  "He said if only you were not rich, you would be the kind of woman he would like to marry.”

  She touched his forehead. He was burning up.

  "I told him he was crazy."

  After a while Merrell started raving, in the Englander language, nothing more she could do for him. She and Hendrika helped the barber nurse the others, it helped take her mind off her own misery; the little boy with his leg still in pieces where he fell badly into the yawl, the sailor with his foot infected from the coral, burning up like Merrell, his foot the size of a cannonball.

  “Perhaps Joost will help us,” Hendrika said.

  “The jonker?”

  “He likes me.”

  Cornelia wondered at the girl’s innocence. Yes, he likes you girl, but only for one reason. But then perhaps, for Richard Merrell’s sake, they should try.