by Tim Severin
‘A fraction more,’ the Miskito called as the muzzle of the gun dipped slightly. ‘Hold it.’ He thrust home the wooden wedge.
Mansur was standing with Prince Jainalabidin several paces to one side and both were watching keenly. ‘His Highness wishes to know whether you are aiming at the top or bottom of the gate,’ said the chamberlain.
‘Neither,’ said Dan. ‘I’m aiming at the ground twenty paces in front of the gate, in case the gun shoots even higher than I calculate. It won’t matter if the shot bounces on the ground before it strikes the target. Might even make the impact more destructive.’ He busied himself with a powder flask, pouring a trail of gunpowder into the touch-hole.
From the palisade came a spatter of musketry, almost immediately followed by the angry snap of a lantaka in retaliation.
‘All ready,’ said Dan calmly, putting back the stopper in the powder flask.
Stepping to the nearest bush, he broke off a straight, slender branch about two feet long. He stripped off the leaves and prised open a split at one end. He turned to one of the Omoro musketeers and took from him a length of burning match-cord. He wound it around the stick and jammed the lit end into the cleft.
‘If Your Highness would like to fire the cannon, but please stay well back,’ he said, handing the match-stick to the boy.
Hector had to admire Prince Jainalabidin’s composure. Without further prompting, the boy approached the cannon and lowered the glowing end of the cord to the touch-hole.
There was a tremendous explosion and the gun reared back. The force of the recoil lifted the front of the sledge several inches off the ground, and the discharge seemed to jolt the youngster off his feet. Mansur darted forward just in time to catch the boy as he stumbled. Angrily the prince waved him away. The lad’s face was streaked with burned gunpowder, his clothes speckled with black marks, but the smile he turned towards his companions was radiant.
Standing clear of the cloud of black smoke that billowed from the muzzle of the gun, Hector watched the flight of the shot. A black dot hurtled across the killing ground. There was a spurt of dust as it hit the ground and bounced. Even as the dust was still rising, a section of the palisade immediately to the left of the gate whirled away in a cloud of splinters.
For several moments Hector was deafened. His ears were ringing with the explosion. When he regained his hearing, he was aware of a shocked silence. There were no musket shots from the palisade ahead of him. Even the two lantaka on either side had ceased firing.
‘A little to the right, I think,’ Dan announced.
Jezreel had the reamer in his hand and was already at the muzzle of the gun, hooking out the fragments of burned wadding. After several passes with the reamer, he peered into the barrel.
‘I’ll need my shirt again,’ he said. He wrapped the grubby garment once more around the head of the reamer, then rudely turned his back on the prince and his entourage. Their puzzled looks turned to understanding as they realized that the big man was relieving himself copiously on to the cloth.
There was a slight hiss and an acrid smell of scorched urine as he swabbed out the barrel.
It took another ten minutes to reload the cannon to Dan’s satisfaction. Then he had Jezreel shift the rear of the sledge a few inches to the left. At last he was ready and held out the match-stick once again to the prince. ‘Let’s hope this one finishes the task for us, Your Highness.’
The boy’s arm was fully extended and his hand trembled slightly as he applied the lighted match to the touch-hole a second time. Again the brass gun leaped on its sledge as the charge exploded and sent the shot hurtling towards Haar.
This time the entire left-hand section of the town gate was demolished. It collapsed backwards, and its partner on the right side sagged on its hinges.
‘A perfect shot,’ exclaimed Hector, and the boy grinned with delight.
There was a fraught silence as they peered towards the palisade. ‘Well, what next?’ asked Jezreel. ‘That was our last shot, though they don’t know it.’
For a long interval nothing happened. Then out from the wreckage of the town gate emerged five men. They were unarmed and one of them was holding up a staff from which hung a red and blue flag. The little group was walking towards the spot from where the brass cannon had fired.
‘They must have seen our gun smoke,’ said Jacques.
Mansur allowed himself a smile of grim satisfaction. ‘That tall man in the black gown beside the flag. He’s the Rajah’s chief minister. I’ve negotiated with him a dozen times in the past. This time there’ll be no haggling and humbug, for I will dictate the terms.’
NINETEEN
‘CONGRATULATIONS. I hear that you persuaded the Sugala to settle their differences with the Sultan,’ said Musallam Iskandar. The Malaccan trader was in the front rank of the excited crowd clustered on the landing stage to greet the expedition’s return to Pehko’s muddy creek. A few yards away a squad of jubilant citizens was manhandling the brass cannon ashore from its raft, and the two smaller lantaka had already been carried off by teams of porters.
‘Have you heard anything about a foreign woman living in the palace?’ replied Hector impatiently. He hadn’t expected to see Maria among the welcoming crowd, but he scanned the faces of those on the jetty nevertheless.
The Malaccan looked at him sharply. ‘The woman you mentioned before? There’s a rumour about a foreign woman in the Sultan’s household, but I don’t know any details. The bazaar gossip is all about the victory celebration the old man has promised his son. It’s due to take place tomorrow.’ His tone became more sympathetic. ‘I have received permission to set sail for home after the ceremony. There’s space for you and your companions on board, if the palace agrees.’
‘I will only leave Pehko if that woman can come with me,’ Hector told him.
The Malaccan shrugged. ‘I am not accustomed to female passengers on my ship. But if the Sultan says she may travel with you, then naturally I will follow His Majesty’s wishes.’
Hector’s elation at the victory over the Sugala had faded during the journey back to Pehko. It had been replaced by a premonition that he would face exactly the same problems he’d left behind. ‘Even if Maria is allowed to leave,’ he said, ‘I don’t know where we’d find the money to pay you for our passage.’
Musallam waved the objection aside. ‘I expect no fee. I hear the Sugala agreed that the skins from God’s Birds will be sold only through Pehko. So in future I need only come to this port to collect the harvest. That puts me in debt to you.’
The crowd was beginning to thin out. They had succeeded in getting the brass cannon up the slipway and were attaching drag ropes to the gun. Clearly they were intending to shift it up to the Kedatun sultan. Mansur had hurried off to the palace immediately after landing, just as Hector was hoping to speak with him about Maria. But the chamberlain hadn’t come back. Hector was beginning to feel that he and his companions were being discarded now their usefulness was over.
Musallam Iskandar tried to cheer him up. ‘Why don’t you and your colleagues stay aboard my vessel tonight? Tomorrow we can go together to the palace to attend the celebrations, and there maybe you will be able to speak to your woman.’
HECTOR PASSED a restless night aboard the jong and was already on deck and waiting to go ashore when a drizzly, grey dawn heralded an overcast day well suited to his sombre mood.
‘This rain is a sign the monsoon will soon be here,’ commented Musallam, wiping his pockmarked face as he joined Hector. The trader was wearing a fresh white gown and a neat black and white checked turban, which gave him a formal appearance. ‘It will bring the wind we need if we are sailing for the Straits.’
The dugout that served as the jong’s tender was already alongside. As soon as Jacques, Jezreel and Dan appeared, all five of them were paddled ashore, and together they began to climb the path leading to the palace. Around them the people of Pehko were hurrying up the hill. They were dressed in their best clothes
– crisp sarongs and newly laundered shirts, head-cloths in blue and red. By comparison Hector felt he and his friends were pretty shabby in the threadbare shirts and breeches they’d been wearing for the past eighteen months.
By the time they reached the top of the hill, the rain had stopped and the sky had begun to brighten. Hector noted that the two lantaka had already been returned to their customary places in front of the palace. Between them stood the brass five-pounder, its muzzle pointing out over the town and decorated with a garland of orange flowers.
A line of the Sultan’s subjects was filing respectfully through the palace doors, which stood open to receive them. Judging by the air of suppressed excitement, invitations to visit the palace were rare.
But when their little group reached the doorway, a doorkeeper resplendent in a helmet decorated with plaques of turtle shell stopped them. He waved the Malaccan trader on through, but after a disdainful look directed the others to a side entrance. They found themselves in a cramped vestibule, where palace servants explained with sign language that the visitors could not go farther unless they changed out of their soiled garments. They were offered loose trousers of fine white cotton, long-sleeved shirts in the same material and sashes of violet silk.
‘I’m not surprised. This smells of grease and cooking,’ said Jacques, wrinkling his nose as he unbuttoned his grubby shirt and pulled on the fresh clothes. ‘How do I look now?’ He pirouetted in his new get-up. ‘I feel that I am about to go on stage in an opera.’
‘In the role of a clown,’ suggested Jezreel, as he struggled to fasten the buttons of his new shirt, which was too small for him.
Self-conscious in their new costumes, they were ushered through a door that gave directly on to the main reception hall of the palace. Hector blinked with surprise. The gloomy cavernous chamber of his earlier visit had been transformed. Great swags of yellow, pale-blue and rose-pink muslin were suspended from the bamboo poles wedged between the rafters. The shutters along the walls had been thrown open to let in light and air. Fresh matting had been laid on the boards, the wooden pillars that held up the roof were wrapped in bright-green palm fronds, and small spirals of smoke rose from incense burners, which gave off a heady, sweet perfume. A band of a dozen musicians in yellow and grey gowns played a melody on gongs, flutes and drums.
Three or four hundred people were gathered in the room. Most were men, but here and there Hector saw women demurely dressed, some with black veils, others with shawls over their heads. He looked among them hopefully, trying again to find Maria, but was disappointed. The crowd stood in a hollow square facing the Sultan’s divan at a respectful distance. The royal couch with its red velvet cushions had been raised on a low plinth covered with brocaded silk. The old man himself was nowhere to be seen, but he was obviously expected because many of the courtiers Hector remembered from his previous audience stood ranged on each side of the divan. Instead of their black pyramid caps, they were wearing towering headdresses made from the feathers of God’s Birds.
It took Hector a moment to recognize Mansur among them. The tall, thin chamberlain was standing next to the empty divan, and his headdress was a particularly magnificent arrangement of black and orange-yellow plumes. Hector was considering whether to walk across boldly and ask about Maria when the band stopped playing and there was the clash of a large gong. All the courtiers turned and faced to their left, the plumes of their headdresses bobbing and nodding in a ripple of colour. The muslin curtains had been drawn aside, and the old Sultan came hobbling through the gap. Immediately behind him stalked an attendant holding up a ceremonial parasol of yellow silk. At the old man’s right hand a courtier carried the silver betel box, and to his left another attendant held a silver spittoon. Slowly they advanced into the room while the crowd hushed. The old man wore a pure-white sarong over a pair of black trousers, a broad belt of red silk, and a tight, long-sleeved jacket of black velvet slashed with gold and a high stiff collar, which failed to hide his thin neck with its folds of wrinkled skin. On his feet were finely worked purple slippers. Instead of a feathered headdress he wore a head piece of gold filigree.
He reached his divan and lowered himself stiffly on to the cushions. The attendants placed the betel box and spittoon beside him, bowed and withdrew. The servant with the parasol took up position directly behind his master. The Sultan slowly turned his head, blinking his red-rimmed and rheumy eyes as he surveyed his subjects. He reminded Hector of one of the tortoises he’d seen so long ago on the Encantadas.
The gong sounded again, a gentler stroke, and this time it was Prince Jainalabidin who entered. The boy was dressed in the same costume as his father, but bare-headed. Behind him came an attendant bearing a smaller ceremonial parasol. The boy took his place standing on the step below his father, at his right hand.
A short pause was followed by a tapping of drums and the sound of a stringed instrument that reminded Hector of a viola. The crowd parted to allow a troupe of a dozen women and girls to glide into the open space before the Sultan. They were dressed in matching costumes – sarongs of flowered red silk and short green satin jackets fastened with buttons of shell. On their wrists and ankles they wore an array of gold bangles, and they kept short shawls of green gauze draped over their heads. With their gaze demurely on the ground before them, they performed a slow-paced sinuous dance, gyrating gracefully, moving their hands and arms, and every now and again holding a pose whenever a small gong was struck.
As he watched the show, Hector became aware of furtive movements at the rear of the crowd of onlookers. A number of shadowy figures were emerging from what must have been a hidden door at the far side of the audience hall. He took care not to look at them directly so as not to appear rude, but out of the corner of his eye he estimated some twenty women had joined the onlookers to peer between them and watch the performance.
The dance ended, the performers bowed gracefully to the Sultan and left by the way they had entered. The audience stirred in anticipation, and abruptly the drummers broke into a much faster and more energetic rhythm. Now a team of ten young men came bursting through the audience. They were barefoot and their loose trousers were gaudy with red and white stripes. Billowy white shirts were open at the chest, and their hair was tied back with narrow brow-bands. They bounded into the open space before the Sultan, and began to weave back and forth with short stuttering steps, leaning forward, arms held close and waggling their bodies from side to side. Belatedly Hector realized that they were imitating the mating dance of manuk dewata, when the music changed and the young men were ducking and twisting as they mimicked fighting with sword and dagger, performing great leaps and turns, until the music rose to a crescendo and ended with a tremendous booming crash of the gong.
‘Do you think that was the sound of our five-pounder?’ whispered Jacques beside him. A nudge from Jezreel silenced the Frenchman. The dancers had left, and the Sultan, still seated, was delivering a speech to his people. The old man’s voice was thin and reedy and Hector strained to catch the words. He did not understand the language, but it was clear that the old man was congratulating the boy on the outcome of the expedition against the Sugala. From time to time the Sultan turned proudly towards his son.
Hector kept looking towards the women he had seen at the rear of the audience. They had retreated in a group to a shadowy corner. All of them wore veils, and those he was able to see more clearly kept a fringe of the scarf drawn across their mouths to hide all but their eyes. Try as he might, Hector couldn’t tell if Maria was among them, for he was now sure they were the palace women.
He was caught off-guard when Mansur stepped from the line of courtiers and began to walk towards him. Suddenly he was aware the Sultan had stopped speaking and the audience was looking on expectantly.
‘His Majesty wishes to reward you for your help,’ said the chamberlain.
The crowd shuffled backwards, leaving Hector and his friends standing on their own, exposed.
‘Each of you will
receive a gift of twenty skins of manuk dewata,’ announced Mansur.
Hector gathered his wits. ‘His Majesty is very kind. I thank him.’
Mansur had not finished. ‘He understands that you wish to return to your own people. He would prefer that you stay in Pehko, but his son has asked that you and your comrades be allowed to sail with the ship of Musallam Iskandar. Permission is granted.’
Hector swallowed. ‘I would like to ask His Majesty the Sultan that my betrothed leave with us.’
The old man squinted at Hector as the chamberlain repeated the request, and croaked out his response. He sounded petulant.
The chamberlain turned back to Hector. ‘His Majesty says that you have already been told the relationship between yourself and this woman is not recognized.’
Hector felt the anger rising within him. ‘Then tell His Majesty—’ he began recklessly.
The prince’s treble voice cut across him. The boy was saying something to his father; his words were shrill with indignation. The old man didn’t answer but, turning his head, wheezed a few words to the attendant who stood by his spittoon. The man hurried from the chamber and a short while later came back, carrying a small tray covered with a white cloth.
Mansur took the tray and brought it across to Hector.
‘At the request of his son, His Majesty the Sultan has graciously consented that you be given the opportunity to regularize your position according to our custom.’ He held out the tray.
Puzzled, Hector lifted the cloth. Underneath was a silver coin. He recognized it at once by its lumpy, uneven shape. It was a two-real piece. Every year hundreds of thousands of them were roughly punched out from sheets of bullion in New Spain or Peru. Every buccaneer dreamed of laying his hands on them. Hector wondered for a moment if it was to be a symbolic purchase price for Maria. The thought made him uncomfortable.