'Scour the stockade for weapons, Sergeant. Muskets if you can find them, dhas if you can't, or sharpened sticks if that's what we can get. I want every man to have at least something to defend himself with if the Burmese return.'
Myat wrinkled her nose and looked away. 'Oh, you won't need weapons, Ensign. One sniff of the stink here and any dacoit will avoid this stockade. That is if you don't all die of disease before the dacoits come.'
Wells could not resist the slight twitch at the corner of his mouth.
'And when you have searched for weapons, sergeant, organise a bathing party, could you?' Jack gave Myat a look that was meant to subdue her but instead only resulted in a slight narrowing of her eyes as she fought to control her laughter. 'Else this woman of yours will drive me to distraction.'
'Yes, sir,' Wells said. 'She's very good at that, sir if you don't mind me saying.'
I know, Sergeant, I know.
Walking without the support of Ranveer was painful. Jack forced himself to take one step, then another. He cut himself a staff and moved further, yard after yard until he felt confident in his ability to move independently. It was another two days before he took full control of the stockade.
'I want to get these men back to Rangoon.'
Why am I saying so much to a ranker and a native translator? Because they saved my life, damn it!
'Most of the men can hardly stand yet, Ensign Windrush,' Myat pointed out.
'I'm quite aware of that,' Jack said, 'but Bo Ailgaliutlo's men won't be away forever and when they come back we will be trapped like rats.'
'Buddha says…' Myat began but Jack interrupted her.
'Buddha can say what he likes. Buddha was never in command of a unit of weak men in enemy territory. We are getting out if they're fit or not.'
Myat bowed her head in less-than-meek acquiescence.
'Sergeant, keep the sentries alert and force them back to fitness. I am going to inspect this place.'
The interior of the stockade was simple with a scattering of huts of various sizes around an open space. The huts were untidy, with betel-stained mats on un-swept floors, rough-cut teak pillars rising to thatch that rustled with rats, vermin and nothing much else.
'What are you seeking, Ensign Windrush?' Myat watched him bang his heels on the floors and rap on the walls.
'Whatever I can find,' Jack said.
'Bo Ailgaliutlo's hut is apart from his men,' Myat spoke quietly. 'If you seek what he took from you.'
'You seek the same things,' Jack said.
'It is your responsibility to return them, not mine to take them.' Myat was expressionless again.
Bo Ailgaliutlo's hut was smaller and graced by more ornate décor, a splendid brass bed and, oddly, Jack thought, a portrait of a young Queen Victoria. Two uniform jackets hung from a beam. One had belonged to Commander Marshall, and the other was Jack's. He slipped it on with relief.
Now I look like a soldier again.
There was nothing valuable on display, so Jack prodded at the walls, seeking hidden cavities. He was about to give up when Ranveer entered the hut.
'Is the sahib searching for something?' Ranveer looked as solemn as a servant should, with eyes that gleamed.
'Yes, the sahib is. The sahib is searching for his property that Bo Ailgaliutlo stole,' Jack did not hide his frustration.
'The two golden statues?' Trust Ranveer to know everything.
'That's them,' Jack said.
'Would the sahib like me to help?' Ranveer's face was innocent.
'Damned right the sahib would like you to help,' Jack said.
Ranveer wasted no time. He removed the rush matting from the floor and stamped with the heel of his boot, worked his way from one side of the hut to the other and said: 'here, Sahib. It is hollow here.'
There was a slot in the planking, through which Ranveer slipped his fingers, and a section of the floor lifted up. Underneath were Jack's Buddhas, a small bag of European coins and pieces of Oriental jewellery.
Is that the spoils of Bo Ailgaliutlo's dacoitry, or a nest-egg for the future?
Tossing the coins to Ranveer, Jack pocketed the Buddhas. Their weight was comforting.
Now I have hope again. Now I can buy my way to respectability.
'Right men,' Jack addressed his assembled collection of soldiers and sailors in the maidan outside the huts. 'We have to get back. Myat knows the area better than anybody here, and she tells me that we have a garrison on Pegu, a place for which we all have fond memories.'
He waited for his words to sink in. The men looked tired, sick and worn. Some of them perked up a little at the mention of Pegu.
'We are marching to join that garrison. With luck, we will be there within a fortnight, and then it will be clean beds, decent food and safety.'
It was only a short speech and not as inspiring as Commander Marshall's. There was no cheering, only a stolid acceptance of their position as the men filed slowly away.
Jack watched them go.
'We are not marching to Pegu, Ensign Windrush.' The voice was weak but determined. 'I am taking charge here.'
Chapter Fifteen
Pegu Province: November 1852
Lieutenant Bertram stood in the door of the hut. 'None of us are fit to march. We are going by water. I outrank you, remember.' His grin removed any sting from the words.
Jack ignored Coleman's harsh whisper of 'I'm not bloody swimming,' as he nodded to Bertram. 'Serangipatam is long gone, Lieutenant. The Burmese burned her I think.'
'I'm not talking about Serangipatam,' Bertram lurched forward. 'This is a military stockade. The Burmese attacked us in war boats, correct?'
'Correct,' Jack agreed, 'but…'
'Bear with me, Ensign,' Bertram swayed so that one of his seamen dashed forward to support him. 'The men of this garrison came in boats and left in boats, but they did not all leave. The guards were left behind. Their boat will be here somewhere.'
'Well, let's find it then,' Jack met Bertram's smile. 'I don't like marching at the best of times.'
'You Serangis,' Bertram said, 'scour the edge of the river. You know how good the Burmese are at hiding traps, so their boats will not be in the open.'
'My men will help,' Jack offered, but Bertram shook his head.
'Your lobster backs wouldn't know a war boat from a walrus,' he said. 'This is a job for seamen. You and your redcoats can salute each other or march at attention or do something equally military.'
Jack felt his spirits lift. Bertram was the opposite of Commander Marshall; a man under whom he could happily work.
Weak as he was, Bertram commanded his men with skill. He divided them into parties to search. 'But watch for any of these infernal traps,' he reminded. 'We've lost enough good men, and we don't want to lose any more.'
'They won't find anything,' Wells had hardly spoken before there was a roar from the river bank.
'Here we are, sir,' a broken-nosed seaman shouted, 'hidden under these ferns or whatever they are.' He swore loudly, 'beg pardon sir but it's alive with spiders and things.' He swore again and stamped hard on the ground as Bertram limped up.
They examined the war boat as it lay close to the bank; half filled with water and with the stern covered with broken branches. There was a ragged hole in the hull near the bow, a hundred different insects scurried along the bottom, and half the paddles were missing.
'Oh dear God; we can't go in that,' Jack said.
'She's beautiful,' Bertram decided with enthusiasm.
'It's a bloody wreck,' Coleman gave his candid opinion.
'We'll have her seaworthy in a day,' Bertram ignored the insolence. 'Ensign Windrush, could you ensure that we are undisturbed? Shoot any of these Burmese rascals that come close.'
'But only the rascally Burmese,' Myat reminded, grave faced, 'not the Peguese. We are on your side, remember.'
Jack waved a hand as he checked the positions in which Wells had placed his men.
This waiting is playing on my ne
rves. I was all ready to march.
'What shall we call her, lads?'
Jack raised his eyebrows but said nothing. He had never heard an officer ask his men for an opinion before. He waited for their reaction.
'We could call her Burma, sir,' one man said.
'Or Serangy, after our ship.'
'Would Mabel be allowed, sir? That's my sister's name.' The seaman was small and very thin, with an anxious expression in huge eyes.
'What do you think lads?' Bertram shouted out, 'Mabel, Serangy or Burma?'
The reply came in a babble of voices, to which Bertram listened with a small smile on his face. 'Mabel it is then,' he decided.
'Thank you, sir,' the thin seaman whispered.
Jack wiped away the sweat from his forehead, swatted vainly at the buzzing insects and felt the reassuring smoothness of the Buddhas in his pocket. 'When will your boat be ready?'
Bertram drew a hand through his ginger hair and looked upward, where the sun was disappearing behind the trees. 'Not today,' he said.
That means another night here; another night vulnerable to dacoit attack.
'We will leave early tomorrow morning,' Bertram said. 'Give the men another few hours to recover their strength.' His grin was surprising after so many weeks in captivity.
As always there was a mist on the river and a pre-dawn chorus of insects and unseen birds as they clambered apprehensively into the narrow Burmese war-boat. Navy- style, Bertram was first on the boat and Jack last. Jack looked up at the log walls of the stockade.
'We should burn the place down.'
'Too late now,' Bertram did not hide his pleasure at being afloat again. 'Come on lads; let's get Mabel moving!'
The seamen studied the paddles with intense curiosity.
'Like this,' Bertram demonstrated how to paddle. 'We face the bows and push Mabel through the river, all the way to Pegu.'
'Watch the banks lads, and don't talk. If we're quiet, people might think we are Burmese.' Jack felt rather than saw Myat's disbelief.
Bertram balanced on the high prow, looking forward into the shifting mist. For a moment Jack thought he looked exactly like a figurehead, a young, proud man facing a God-knew-what threat as he led his men forward like Jason or Odysseus, and then reality returned.
The men of the 113th all had a musket of some sort and carried a dha in place of a bayonet. They were lean and weak after the past few months but were also tighter knit. Despite their hardships, or because of them, they looked like soldiers.
'How far is Pegu?' Coleman asked.
'Downstream with no obstructions it is three days journey,' Myat answered at once.
'Bo Ailgaliutlo put obstacles in the river to stop Serangipatam,' Jack reminded
'I know,' Bertram spoke over his shoulder without looking round, 'that's why I am up here. I'll see them first.'
The thin sailor swore as he missed his stroke and his paddle caused a mighty splash.
'Keep your voices down!' Bertram ordered, 'there could be ears listening.'
The sailors were not expert paddlers; there were more loud splashes and subdued cursing as Mabel moved erratically down the misted river.
'I hope this fog lasts all day,' Jack said, and at that moment it began to lift.
'Slow ahead,' Bertram said, and amended his order to 'stop paddling, back water.' There was a flurry of activity as the seamen tried to master the art of the paddle rather than the oars. Eventually, Mabel came to an untidy halt and bobbed in the current, with two men paddling to keep her static.
'Look ahead,' Bertram pointed, 'there's Serangy.'
'What's left of her,' a seaman muttered, while another swore, cursing the Burmese with a string of foul oaths. Bertram did not order him into silence.
Serangipatam lay on her side on the near bank of the river. Her upper works and part of her hull were burned completely away with the remainder charcoal black and twisted by the heat. Above the wreck and hanging by his neck was the skeleton of a man, picked clean by birds and insects.
'I wonder who that poor bugger was,' Coleman asked.
'Commander Marshall,' Bertram said quietly. 'That renegade fellow told me exactly what they did to him.'
'What was that, sir?' Thorpe asked, but Bertram shook his head.
'It was not a quick death,' was all he said.
The Burmese had once again staked the river to prevent British warships from passing, but as the war-boat was narrower that Serangipatam Bertram managed to manoeuvre between the stakes. He steered to where Serangipatam lay.
'We'll give him a Christian burial,' he said. 'A British seaman deserves better than to hang forever in Burma.'
With the forest a backdrop and a chorus of birds replacing the solemn hymns of a church, they hacked out a ragged grave, and the seamen lowered in the skeleton of their commander with as much reverence as they could muster.
'Does anybody know the words?' Bertram asked. 'No? Well, I will do what I can, then.'
Jack remembered the funeral of his father. He listened as Bertram stumbled over a handful of phrases that vaguely resembled the burial service, and then he sent his men on picket duty around the boat and the gathering.
'He was a hard man,' Jack said.
'He was a good seaman,' Bertram remained loyal to his superior.
They left Commander Marshall on that muddy river bank in upper Pegu province with a roughly fashioned cross above the grave. Nobody looked back.
'Bastards,' the thin seaman said with every forceful stroke of the paddle, 'bloody Burmese bastards.'
When Jack glanced at Myat, she was sitting close to Wells, her face impassive. For once there was no need to order the 113th to stay alert. They positioned themselves around the boat, hugged their muskets and scanned the passing forest, scrub land and fields.
'What's that in the river?' Wells pointed to the side. 'It might only be an animal.'
'It's a man,' the thin seaman called out. He reached out with his paddle as Bertram steered them in that direction. 'No,' he continued, 'it's not. It's a woman.'
She floated face up with her hands spread out.
'Do we bury her, sir?' The thin seaman asked.
'No,' Bertram decided after a pause. 'We don't have time.'
'We took time with the Commander,' the thin seaman reminded.
'He was one of us,' Bertram said. 'She is only Burmese.'
Wells reached over to touch Myat on the arm. Jack looked away, aware of the jealousy that twisted inside him.
There was another body later that day, headless, and a third without arms, trailing blood within a frenzy of feeding fish.
'Bo Ailgaliutlo's been busy,' Wells said.
I led my men to defeat. Every death here is my fault for failing at the stockade.
'He's dead; everybody's bloody dead. I'll do for that murdering Burmese bugger!' Coleman pulled the dha from his belt and kissed the blade. 'I swear it!'
They smelled smoke arrived before they paddled around the bend, and the village was only a smouldering mess.
'Keep paddling,' Bertram decided. 'We can't do anything here.'
There were other villages, either burned or deserted, with the rice fields untended, the huts ruined and fishing boats holed and sunk at the river's edge.
'It is like Attila the Hun passed here,' Bertram said.
'No,' Jack shook his head, 'just Bo Ailgaliutlo and his dacoits. War here is not civilised.'
'Is war anywhere civilised, Ensign Windrush?' Myat asked softly. 'The war in the Punjab killed thousands, the war in Afghanistan saw a British Army destroyed, and all the camp followers slaughtered, and they were mere skirmishes compared to your great war with France.'
'How on earth do you know that?' Jack asked.
Myat gave a nod that did not hide the mockery in her eyes. 'I know, Ensign. I am only a native and not one of you,' her glance at Bertram was meaningful. 'I have no right to know about European history or anything else.'
Jack felt the colour rise to his f
ace. 'I did not mean…' He did not complete the sentence. What did I mean if not that?
Chapter Sixteen
Pegu: November to December 1852
'There it is boys,' Coleman pointed across the maidan, 'there's the temple of Pegu.' The men gave a little cheer, sailors and seamen together.
In the evening light, the town looked more exotic than ever with its great pointed temple rising to the darkening sky, dwarfing the huts that clustered all around. The dainty sound of bells ghosted across to them.
'There's a flag flying from the temple,' Wells said, 'but I'm blessed if I can see which one.' He turned to Myat. 'Can you make out the colours?'
'It's the British flag,' Myat said at once, and when the words spread, the men cheered again.
'So all we have to do is march in like soldiers, and we'll be safe,' Jack told them. The 113th stared at the Union flag that flapped above the town as if sight alone could bring them food and clean water and security from biting insects and marauding dacoits.
'Come on lads, smarten up!' Wells lined them up. 'I've no idea which regiments are in Pegu, but I do know that they have not done what we have done. Clean your muskets, smarten what's left of your uniforms and march to attention. We're going into Pegu like soldiers, like the best regiment in the Army.'
'You Mabels,' Bertram shouted, 'let's show these red coats how sailors march.'
'You're going home,' Wells whispered to Myat and touched her arm.
Jack looked at the remains of his command. They looked older, harder, leaner and fitter, if much less smart. Even Thorpe looks something like a soldier.
'We've done it, lads,' Jack said. 'We've faced the worst that Burma can throw at us and survived. We will be in a British held town soon, with British soldiers manning the walls and no more worries about dacoits…'
'What's that sound?' Thorpe was first to hear it.
'It's just the wind in the trees,' O'Neill said, 'nothing else.'
'It's drums,' Coleman's voice was leaden.
'Can you hear that, Bertram?' Jack called along the length of the column.
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