East India

by Colin Falconer

  One of the sailors went to help her. She collapsed in his arms, muttering something about a Captain-General and muskets.

  The men on the raft poled into the lagoon and one of the men jumped into the shallows and started to wade in. He was a soldier, Ambroise vaguely remembered him: he was the sergeant, the most senior of the mercenaries. His beard was encrusted with salt, his hair tangled and straggling around his collar. He had the wild-eyed expression of a man just come from a battle.

  “Go back!’ he shouted, ‘the muyters are here, they have two rafts and they will try to seize the yacht!’

  Mutineers? Seize the yacht?

  What was he talking about?

  The man stood there, ankle deep in the water, and saluted. Ambroise noted a spray of blood on his tattered jacket. “I am Michiel Van Texel of Winschotten, sergeant, loyal servant of the Honourable Company. I have to report there has been a mutiny in your absence and more than two hundred have been murdered on these islands, we are all that is left!’

  Ambroise gaped at him.

  “The muyters intend to seize your yacht, man!You have to return and protect it!’

  No one moved.

  “Look!’ he shouted.

  Ambroise saw where he was pointing, two more rafts headed around the northerly point. They were crowded with men and were heading straight for the Zandaam.

  “You have to get back to the yacht, Heer Commandeur!’

  A man in his position was unaccustomed to taking orders from a common footsoldier, but the purposeful passage of the rafts now headed across the lagoon shook him from his astonishment. He ran back down the beach to the yawl.

  What was going on here? Well, there would be time to find that out later. For now he would take this ruffian's advice and look to his own defences. He had thought to arrive here as saviour. It seemed instead he had walked into a trap.

  The man collapsed in the shallows. Several of his men ran forward to grab him and manhandled him up the beach.

  “Leave him,” Ambroise shouted. “We have to get back to the Zandaam!’

  Chapter 96

  The deck of

  the yacht Zandaam

  I SHOULD not have left, Ambroise thought.

  His mind grappled with the enormity of what he had been told, did not want to believe it. What I have lost in money and Company goods is bad enough, but this catastrophe will be spoken of wherever there are Hollanders living. This is the end of my career.

  He watched the awkward beach-built rafts, bristling with armed men, heading towards them across the lagoon. As they drew closer he could make out the faces of some of the men upon it. He recognised the lance corporal of the soldiers, the ugly one, what was it they called him on the ship? Steenhower. What is he wearing? Not a soldier's uniform, to be sure, scarlet laken covered in gold braiding. He looks like a jester.

  And there was Christiaan, his Undermerchant, dressed like a crown prince. What in God’s name had gone on here?

  Christiaan stood up and raised his hands in salute. “Heer Commandeur! Thank God you have returned at last!’

  “God be thanked and praised!’ Ambroise shouted back. “But why do you come armed?”

  “There has been trouble among us! We shall tell all when we are aboard!’

  By the grace of God, Ambroise thought, you shall not step armed upon this ship, not if what that sergeant told me is true. The Zandaam's gunners were ready at the deck's small swivel-cannon, and their redcoats had fetched muskets from the ship's small arms locker and had them levelled at the raft. He could smell the burning smoke from the tinderboxes. Thanks to the warning they had received, they were well prepared.

  “Tell your men to throw away their weapons,! Into the water!’

  The raft made steadily on, and no answer from the Undermerchant at the prow.

  “Throw away your weapons!’

  “They are soldiers, Heer Commandeur! Their weapons were issued to them by the Company!’

  “Tell them to throw away their weapons or we shall fire on you!’

  Well, that did it. Even from fifty paces distant, he could hear them arguing among themselves, clearly divided on how to proceed. Finally one of the men tossed his musket into the water, and the other followed. Steenhower was last to concede, disgustedly tossing his cutlass into the waves. He could hear Christiaan raving at them. What was he saying?

  They drew alongside and one by one they scrambled up the cleats, to be immediately surrounded by soldiers, pikes and swords drawn. When Christiaan reached the deck, Ambroise nodded and two of the soldiers rushed forward and forced his arms behind his back, binding them with good manila rope.

  “Heer Commandeur!’ he protested. “Why do you treat us this way! We have suffered untold hardships in your absence and thought to be rescued by you!’

  “Bring him below,” Ambroise grunted. “We'll have the truth of all this later.”

  Where was the provost, he wondered, and the pastor? The wave of relief he had felt at discovering some had survived the wreck had already evaporated. It was clear there would be no redemption for Ambroise Secor after all. The Devil had not finished with him yet.

  ***

  They brought Christiaan down to the main cabin, bound with ropes. He was a strange sight indeed, dressed like a peacock with sand and dirt in his hair and his beard. They had now found the pastor alive on the long island and he had interrogated him at length. He could scarce credit the story he had told him.

  The undermerchant had seemed a charming enough fellow on the voyage, always ready with a fine word and good counsel. A man with such elegant manners could surely not be the butcher they said he was.

  “Give him wine,” Ambroise said.

  One of the redcoats held an ewer of Burgundy under Christiaan's face and he gulped at it like a dog. Ambroise glanced at Evarts and his clerk. They looked utterly shaken by what they had heard, and he could see in their faces, they blamed him for what had happened on these accursed islands.

  “Heer Undermerchant.” “Thank God you're here at last. You have no idea the savagery that took place after you left us.”

  After you left us.

  “What have you done here, Christiaan?”

  Christiaan looked astonished. “What has that damned pastor accused me of? Does he seek to blame me for what has happened?”

  “We have heard the evidence against you from David Krueger, from Joost van der Linden and from the pastor himself. They all say the same thing.” Yes, they had all confessed, these great high officers of Christiaan's kingdom, these heroes and generals. After what the pastor had told him, he had put van der Lindenj and Krueger to the question, and praise be to God they had succumbed quickly. He had employed the water torture, grimly suited to their situation, since it required no elaborate equipment. He had not enjoyed doing it, but there had been no choice and it seemed though the muyters had enjoyed killing, none of them had much of a stomach for brutality against themselves. With rattling breaths they had soon gasped out their confessions, blaming their wrongdoing on the undermerchant.

  Their stories of rapine and massacre were hard to credit. He still did not wish to believe all he had heard.

  “A private word with you, Heer Commandeur. I have things to tell you that should only pass between you and I.”

  Ambroise was tempted to agree, for his own sake, but saw the trap. These proceedings must be documented in full, he thought, if he was to save any tattered remnants of his reputation before Governor Coen.

  “Anything you have to say must be said before the Captain Evarts and recorded in full,” he told him. Who is he about to damn? he wondered.

  “It was not I who is to blame here, no matter what they tell you. It was that brute Steenhower and Joost van der Linde, your fine jonker! I only tried to preserve my own life. A man may sometimes go along with terrible things in order to save himself, as some of you on the council already know.”

  You bastard, Ambroise thought. He poured himself a draught of wine. His hand
s were shaking.

  “The cadet, Theunis Quick, and Lance Corporal Joris Jansen, known as Steenhower, have freely confessed that it was your plan to seize any ship sent to the rescue of the poor souls wrecked here after the foundering of the Utrecht, that it was your plan to turn to piracy.”

  “That is an outrageous accusation! Well, of course they all wish to blame me. They want to save their own necks.”

  “They say you ordered the deaths of over two hundred of those that survived the wrecking of the Utrecht, some of m women and children.”

  “Did any of your witnesses see me kill a single man, woman or child? I pretended to be among them, and when the rescue ship came, I planned to give fair warning to prevent them boarding it. What choice did I have? It was that, or death. You know what that choice is like, don't you, Heer Commandeur?”

  Labouring the point now. Ambroise felt the perspiration inching down his spine. But it was true what Christiaan said: not one of the witnesses, though they had all named the undermerchant as leader, had actually accused him of murder.

  “You deny these allegations, then?”

  “I was the sole voice of reason in this madness.”

  “You have witnesses you can bring in your defence?”

  “Vrouwe Noorstrandt,” he said.

  Ambroise licked his lips. “What has Vrouwe Noorstrandt to do with this?”

  “She came to me, begged me for my protection, which was freely given.”

  “Protection?”

  “Conduct your investigation more carefully, Heer Commandeur, and you will find that I did all I could to save lives and Company property, amid terrible barbarity.”

  Ambroise wanted to believe him. He knew himself that the truth was never clear, and that he himself was in no position to judge another.

  Yet they had all spoken against him, each of the muyters named him as the instigator of every plot, every murder and the pastor had corroborated it all. All that stayed his hand was that it was all too terrible, too impossible, to imagine.

  “We should speak to the others,” Evarts said. “The women, and the other soldiers.”

  Ambroise nodded. “Take him away,” he said, feeling more weary than he ever had in his thirty-five years.

  “I am innocent!’

  “That is yet to be proved.”

  “I am the one you should thank that any lived at all!’

  The soldiers dragged him out of the cabin, his heels dragging on the deck. They could hear him screaming his protests all the way. Afterwards there was a long silence at the table. Evarts reached for the win jug, his hands shaking. No one spoke.

  Chapter 97

  The Houtman Rocks

  CORNELIA was gratified to see that the commandeur did not look well.

  There were shadows under his eyes, and his face was gaunt from illness. Guilt had etched some of those lines, no doubt. This handsome man had had all juices squeezed out of him, colour and flesh together.

  He looked around the makeshift shelter, the surprise registering on his face as he took in the tapestry that had once hung on the wall of the Great Cabin and that now covered the opening; over there, the silver ewer that had stood by the stern window of the Utrecht; his priceless Persian carpet was underfoot, salt-stained and discoloured by the coral limestone that had been trodden over it. She tried to imagine this filthy lean-to the way it looked through his eyes; this hovel, had once been the palatial apartments of the mogul of Houtman Rocks.

  But for Michiel Van Texel, I would have been the whore of this seraglio.

  Ambroise stood half-stooped under the canvas, his hand opening and closing over the hilt of the sword at his waist. “You say this was where he tried to rape you?”

  “If Michiel Van Texel had not come back for me, he would have dishonoured me in here. That was his plan, and Krueger told me that if I did not comply, he would murder me.”

  “He said he tried to protect you and all the women.”

  She gave a bitter laugh.

  “Is it true he ordered the murders of all these people?” he said.

  “Those with him went along with it eagerly enough.”

  “I cannot...” He shook his head, mute with horror. He frowned, trying to imagine the things that had happened here after he had gone. But it was impossible, she thought. Unless you were here, you could not picture such things. Once they would have been unthinkable.

  “I think Michiel is dying,” she said.

  He shook himself from his terrible reverie. “Who?”

  “The sergeant you saw on the beach, the one who warned you about the muyters.”

  “I am sure the Zandaam’s surgeon will do all he can for him.”

  “He saved us.”

  Ambroise nodded at this, but she knew he did not understand, or was too preoccupied with his own concerns to care. She followed him outside. He stared at the shanty of shelters and stones, the kingdom that Christiaan had built, its wreckage of wine barrels and broken ceramic bottles and discarded weapons.

  “I came back for you.”

  “Is that what you think?”

  “Cornelia, I had no choice but to do what I did,” he said, and she almost smiled, for they were the same words that Salomon du Chesne had used. “Please. Say something.”

  But there were no words. Anger and reproof would change nothing now, and who was she to judge him? But if it was absolution he wanted, then she must disappoint him. She would have to find her own way through this; let him find his.

  And so they stood there in silence. Once they had shared a love of art and learning, now their only common ground was shame, and they could not speak of that.

  “I did not abandon you, ever. I did what I had to do, for the good of all.” “I should get back to the ship,” she said. “I would like to be with Michiel Van Texel.”

  “The soldier? Why?”

  “I will not let him die alone.”

  “Why would you care so much?”

  “He did not let me die alone, and I shall not let him.” She made her way down the beach to the yawl.

  “By your leave,” he called after her. “I have some bad news for you.” She turned.

  “It is about your husband.”

  The yacht Zandaam

  The surgeon had probed for the musket ball, a bloody business by all accounts. Now Michiel lay in a hammock on the gun deck, his face white as chalk. He was having trouble breathing. She gripped his hand and his eyes blinked open.

  “You did it, Cornelia,” he murmured. “You survived.”

  “You too.”

  He shook his head.

  “Don’t you do it, Michiel. Don’t you say goodbye to me. Not now.”

  He opened his right hand to show her half guilder gripped there. “I’ll take it with me.”

  “You're going to be all right, you’ll come back to Holland with me. We’ll make babies together. I’m not going to let you die.”

  Michiel smiled and closed his eyes. His breath rattled in his chest.

  “Don’t forget me, Cornelia. Promise.”

  “I could never forget you,” she whispered, and she sat there with him through the long afternoon, as he slipped away.

  Chapter 98

  The seal island

  THE next day they buried him among the mutton bird nests and the scuttling crabs. The pastor mumbled some words from the Commandeur’s bible and then they filled in the shallow grave. Cornelia fell to her knees, the half guilder clutched in her hands. Ambroise stared at her in astonishment. He offered his hand to her but she shook her head. He and the pastor walked away and left her there alone.

  Chapter 99

  IT SENT a chill up the spine, to hear him chanting and raving from the little prison of coral slabs they had built to house him. They had put him on the seal island for the commandeur did not trust him on Houtman Rocks with the other prisoners.

  Foul weather, grey and cold, whitecaps on the lagoon, and they had all got soaked through sailing the short distance from the Za
ndaam to the island. Three redcoats escorted her up the shingle beach to the lonely and desolate cell.

  She heard the rattle of leg chains. Christiaan was crouched in the corner of his little gaol. Rain leaked through the brushwood ceiling that had been thrown over the clinker walls. His eyes shone ferociously in the grey-green light. He grinned as if he had been expecting her.

  “I wish to speak to the undermerchant privately,” Cornelia said to the sergeant of the redcoats and he nodded and went to wait outside, though he did not seem pleased with this arrangement.

  Cornelia ducked her head and went past the guard. It was stinking and miserably cold inside. All that he deserved.

  “So, what plans have you made to get me away from here?” Christiaan whispered.

  She gaped at him, astonished that he should think it was why she had come here. “Have you no remorse?”

  “For what, my lady?”

  “For the terrible crimes you have committed against us.”

  “I have committed no crimes. I followed the will of God.”

  “Was it the will of God that you should destroy so many people? Was it the will of God that you should take away the honour of Hendrika Molenaar and the Post girls?”

  “I did not take their honour! I liberated them.” A rush of wind, draughts through the flimsy coral walls. “You have told them I looked after you, that I treated you well?”

  “You would have used me like a common whore.”

  “How can you say such a thing?”

  “May you rot in Hell!’

  “There is no Devil, my lady, there is no Hell.” He grinned with broken teeth. Some of Michiel’s men had done that, the limit of the vengeance the Commandeur had allowed against him during his imprisonment. It seemed like too much restraint after all that had happened.

  “You must pray there is no hell, Christiaan, for if you are wrong, I do believe the Devil has several new and exquisite torments devised particularly for such as you.”