The sailor ran off towards the sterncastle, and returned with a fat man in a straight-collared shirt with knotted buttons, holding a switch that he used to swat insects and waft the air. A Chinaman. Here, the Chinese were, after the Company, the ones who did the most trade. Their ships were capable of sailing to Africa, and were well-armed enough to stand up to European vessels. The Irrawaddy, like the other rivers on the continent, belonged to them.
Bowman had not fought in China. When the Opium War ended, he was still in Africa. But he knew that, of all the yellow men, the Chinese were the worst.
The man spoke rudimentary English:
“Me Captain Feng. What you want?”
“I must see Captain Wright. And the men need to eat and drink.”
“Captain Wright cabin. You come with me. Men not on deck! Not on deck! In hold! Hide in hold! Not see soldiers!”
“Forget it. I have to see the captain. Now.”
Bowman waited for the captain of the junk to give his frightened-virgin act a rest, then to turn on his heel and lead him to the cabins.
They crossed a sort of galley, where ten sailors were eating rice around a table. The Chinaman came to a halt outside a door, gave a nod of farewell, and left. Bowman grabbed him by the sleeve.
“Take the soldiers something to drink.”
Then he knocked at the door.
*
Wright was also wearing fishermen’s clothes. Cigar in hand, lying on a bunk, he was blowing smoke towards a window shaded by reeds.
“I didn’t ask to see you, Sergeant.”
Bowman saw a half-finished bowl of rice on the table, next to some chicken bones with a little flesh remaining on them and a bottle of Gordon’s gin.
“What do you want?”
Bowman looked up at him.
“I need to know where we’re going. And the next time you burn a village, if I don’t know about it in advance, I’d be surprised if I’m able to control the men. I don’t even know how we’re going to feed them, and for how long. We might encounter Min’s troops at any moment: they should be armed, but I’m not sure if that’s a good idea, given their pedigree and the atmosphere on board this ship.”
Wright sat up on his bed.
“I don’t like your tone, Sergeant.”
Bowman backtracked:
“I didn’t mean to offend you, I just wanted to know what I should do, sir. You know that if the officers don’t know what they’re doing, the soldiers won’t obey them. The baboon who’s captaining this ship told me to put the men in the hold. He’s giving me orders in front of them, sir. This could end badly, with scum like them in tow.”
Wright stood up.
“You’re not as stupid as you look, Sergeant.”
Bowman’s face ticked. Captain Wright stubbed out his cigar in the bowl of rice.
“The men from the Sea Runner are indeed criminals whom the Company has promised to pardon. You’ll find a way to bring them to heel, Sergeant – that’s why I chose you. We’ll stay on board this junk for three days, at most, before we can turn back. In the meantime, the men will remain hidden, because this junk must look like a trading boat. There’s no point arming them at the moment: Feng’s sailors will assure our safety until we have reached our objective. They’ll also take care of the food and drink.”
Wright swallowed a mouthful of gin from the bottle.
“You may go, Sergeant.”
Bowman opened his mouth.
“And what if we encounter one of Min’s boats? These sailors won’t be enough to . . .”
“I told you to leave, Bowman. Now.”
*
The sky was less cloudy than it had been out at sea, and the heat of the forest rose from the two banks. The junk moved silently amid the murmur of insects and the calls of birds. Monkeys on high branches watched it float past.
“Sit down! Not a single head should appear over the railings!”
The men sat in a group in the middle of the deck, their knees drawn up to their chests. In those too-small clothes, with their ash-grey hair, they looked like a bunch of old prisoners on their way to a penal colony. Bowman had trouble recognising them, though he ended up identifying Bufford and the preacher, the two men who were thinking of escaping, the two who had hidden knives in their shirts, and one or two others from the Joy’s group.
“Go down into the hold. And do not come out. We’ll reach our destination in three days. The Burmese will bring you soup and water.”
He paused, met a few men’s eyes.
“Anyone who wants to escape, go ahead and jump in the water now. If you even make it to the shore, I wouldn’t give you two days before you’re roasting over a campfire. Otherwise you can always swim with the current and in twelve hours you’ll reach the sea, except the sharks will have eaten your legs by then. From there, you’ve got about a six-month swim to reach India.”
Smiles and whispers. Bowman stopped speaking and waited for silence.
“The only way to get back from where we’re going is on this boat. So get that into your thick heads. And this too: there’s no such thing as good or bad orders. You don’t know what will save your skin and what will bury you, so don’t waste your time trying to think about it. When I give you an order, you obey. Captain Wright does not like being disturbed. If you have a problem, you talk to me.”
They were still smiling. Bowman waited.
“Those men who hid knives in their underwear when we were leaving the sloop, stand up slowly now and throw them overboard. You can keep your Bibles and your tobacco, but anyone who brought knives with them, don’t wait for me to come and take them from you.”
The smiles faded. For a few seconds, no-one moved. The slats in the sails banged against the masts in the ever-weakening wind. Fat Captain Feng had emerged from the fo’c’s’le, his switch in his hand, and was watching Bowman. Half the sailors were watching him too, in a rough circle around the troop of soldiers.
One English soldier stood up, hesitated, then put his hand under his shirt and took out a knife. He threw the weapon over the side and tried to look straight ahead, as far as possible from the sergeant.
Bowman moved between the squatting men.
“You won’t eat today. Half-ration of water. Anyone who gives him even a grain of rice won’t eat for two days. Sit down.”
The soldier sat down. Bowman stood above him, staring down. There was another silence.
“You got off lightly, you prick.”
He waited for a moment, long enough for the words to get into those thick heads, then turned around to face another soldier – a sturdy, tattooed man, one of those who had not yet stopped smiling. One of Wright’s hard men.
“Take that knife out of your shirt.”
The man did not blink.
“I don’t have a knife, Sergeant.”
He was making Bowman’s task easier. This kind of example only worked with the toughest men.
“Get up.”
The soldier slowly rose. He was four inches taller than Bowman.
“Name?”
“Collins.”
“Give me the knife, Collins.”
“I don’t have a knife, Sergeant.”
He smiled.
Arthur Bowman, eyes staring into Private Collins’, thought about the horse he’d shot at Pallacate, a month ago. He thought about the mare’s big black eye rolling upwards in its socket, about its tongue licking the earth. Then he saw again the messenger, that man broken in two, in the courtyard of the trading post, that man he had watched die, his eyes full of questions. Bowman thought about the charge they had made on the palace of Amritsar, when they had attacked with bayonet and sabre, the skulls they’d smashed, the bellies they’d slit open, the eyes of the Sikhs who fell into his arms, their hot blood flowing over his hands, their sad, surprised expressions, each of them seeking a little comfort in Sergeant Bowman’s eyes, before tipping over into oblivion. He saw the mountains of corpses piled up after the battles, which they set on
fire and which burned for days, raising columns of smoke all over the Punjab, smoke that stank far worse than that fishermen’s village. He saw the blacks in Africa whose hands, arms and tongues he’d cut off, the sepoys he’d whipped, the men he’d beaten to death with his bare hands. Bowman saw the Company advancing ever eastward, him in the lead, a rifle in his hands, shooting at women, children, old people, guarding warehouses of pepper or cloth, taking boats from which, each morning, they threw corpses in the water without a single prayer. The wars and the battles, the bullets that had pierced him, the blades that had slashed him, and still he had moved onward, the “spearhead” of the East India Company, who sliced off ears, branded children with fire, killed men so he could take their women, guarded shipments of tea. He went back as far as the first man he had killed, at fourteen years old, an apprentice sailor on his first ship. Not a battle, just a man who picked a fight with him, had it in for him. A knife in his throat while he slept.
The twenty-seven men around Bowman and Collins did not move a muscle. They had all seen death pass across the sergeant’s eyes. They knew death when they saw it. It glided over their heads and turned around Collins in ever-tighter circles.
They had all seen death before, men like that.
Drops of sweat rolled down Collins’ cheeks. There was nothing in Sergeant Bowman’s eyes now but a great emptiness, and a dreamy smile crept across his face, the kind of smile they put on corpses for funerals.
Collins slipped his hand inside his shirt, then paused out of fear that he was moving too fast. It took him an eternity to find the knife handle and to let it drop on the deck floor. The sound of metal on wood made him shiver. Bowman’s smile slowly vanished, and he looked once again like a simple brute, a loud-mouthed sergeant. He seemed to shrink inside himself and took a step back.
“Pick up the knife and throw it overboard.”
Collins bent down, picked up the weapon and tossed it in the water.
“No food until you’ve killed an enemy of the Company. Sit down.”
Captain Feng was still there, behind him, watching. The sergeant walked over to a Burmese sailor and slowly articulated: “Give me your pistol.”
The Burmese blinked and turned towards Feng. Bowman held the man’s chin in his hand and turned his face back to him.
“Give me your pistol.”
The sailor slowly drew the weapon from his belt, held it by the barrel and put it in the English soldier’s hand.
“Cartridges.”
The Burmese took a case from his shirt containing bullets and primers, then an ivory flask filled with powder. Bowman slipped the gun in his belt, the ammunition inside his shirt, and turned back to his men.
“Hatchway. Everyone in the hold.”
Feng had disappeared. The sailors scarpered. The soldiers went down beneath the deck, one after another. Peavish, among the last on deck, walked over to the sergeant.
“Are you happy with the men I chose for you?”
“You only chose Buffalo.”
“And you chose me.”
“Get in the hold.”
Peavish smiled and looked Sergeant Bowman in the eyes.
“I understand why they’re so afraid of you, Sergeant. I was afraid too, the first time, when you saved me from Bufford and lifted him off the ground.”
“You’re in the same boat as the rest of them, preacher. Now go.”
“You’ll be happy with them, Sergeant.”
“Go.”
The stink of fish, rotten vegetables and spices rose from the hold. Bowman leaned over the hatchway.
“The one who had a knife and got up when I asked the first time . . . Name?”
From the darkness, a voice rose.
“Private Harris, Sergeant!”
“Harris, you’re in charge of Collins. If he swallows a single bite, all you’ll get is a knife when we have to fight Min’s monkeys.”
*
Bowman closed the large hatch and inspected the gun he had taken from the sailor. It was a French sailor’s pistol, ’49 model. French weapons were rare in the territories where the English Company had negotiated trade agreements. Either Feng was trafficking with the French or Wright had decided to cover their tracks by equipping the junk with foreign weapons.
The ship’s crumpled sails flapped against the masts. Bowman felt a cool gust of air on his skin. He followed the sailors’ eyes southward and saw black clouds over the Irrawaddy, moving in pursuit of the junk. The wind was blowing stronger and stronger, and Feng’s pilot, clinging to the steering wheel, watched the sky behind him.
If the rain caught up with them, anyone would be able to fall on them without them seeing a thing. Navigating through a monsoon was one thing, defending yourself in a monsoon was quite another. Seeing the expressions on the sailors’ faces, Bowman realised they were making the same calculation.
He spat in the water.
The sailors turned around when they heard him say loudly:
“He can go fuck himself.”
He checked that the powder was dry, poured ten grains into the barrel of the pistol, pushed the bullet all the way in, placed the primer on the flintlock, and put the gun back in his belt.
At the galley table, twelve sailors were smoking long cigars filled with green tobacco and sipping palm alcohol. They froze when the English sergeant stood in front of them.
“Feng.”
The sailors hesitated, then one of them nodded towards a door, the one next to Wright’s. Arthur Bowman walked through a short corridor and went in without knocking.
A bunk with pillows, a half-eaten plate of food, an open window through which he saw the river behind the boat, the waves left in the junk’s wake and the black clouds moving ever-closer. Feng was lying on the bed, a fan in his hand. Bowman turned around, sensing a presence at his back.
A Burmese child, seven or eight years old, was sitting on the floor, bare-chested, his back to the bamboo wall.
Feng began fanning himself nervously again.
“Not come here! Captain cabin!”
“Where are the weapons?”
The Chinaman stood up, still shaking his fan.
“Not tell. You see Captain Wright!”
The sergeant advanced to the table and dug with his fingers into the rice.
“The weapons.”
“Orders Captain Wright! Not see weapons!”
Bowman took the pistol from his belt and put a finger to his lips.
“Shh. Not a sound.”
He turned towards the child and beckoned him over.
The child stood up, staring at the gun. Bowman held it in front of him, aimed at Captain Feng’s stomach. The little slave did not understand. The sergeant encouraged him with a smile. The child, trembling from head to foot, gripped his fingers around the butt. The weapon was too heavy for the little slave, who held it with both hands, blinking and aiming at the Chinaman’s belly. His muscles, tensed by the effort, twitched in the wounds on his back: the whip marks inflicted by Feng’s switch, which had torn the skin on his shoulder blades. The sergeant held his palm open above the pistol, signalling him to wait, checking that the child didn’t collapse. Feng had put the fan over his belly in a gesture of self-protection. The sergeant spoke softly: “The weapons. Where are they?”
The Chinaman’s eyes moved from the barrel of the pistol to the Englishman’s face.
“Under table. Under big table sailors.”
“Take some food to my men. Water too.”
Feng nodded. Bowman took the gun from the child’s hands and, when he stepped back towards the door, the little slave rushed to follow him. The sergeant closed the door, crossed the corridor and stood in front of the sailors, the child clinging to his leg.
“The table.”
A hesitation. Bowman waited, giving them time to come to the only conclusion possible: Feng could not help them; the English soldier was disobeying his captain and their only chance was to do the same thing. To make a pact with him. They, too,
had seen the village burn and had no illusions over their fate.
One of the sailors looked at the little slave, lowered his head and, in a serious voice, murmured a few words. The sergeant moved his hand slowly towards his pistol.
The sailors stood up, pushed the table aside, and opened a trapdoor hidden beneath a mat. Two of them went down under the floorboards and in their hands the first rifles appeared. Miniés with the letters V.O.C. engraved on them: more French weapons, but supplied to or taken by the Dutch Company. Next from the hiding place they took two thirty-pound kegs of black powder, twenty boxes of forty well-oiled Minié bullets, forty rifles in all, plus another dozen naval pistols, Dutch copper powder-flasks, plenty of primers and a waterproof crate in which Bowman found six small, two-pound fuse bombs.
He walked over to the hatchway, looked at the black sky, which was catching them up, grabbed the child by a wrist and hung him over the hold.
“Preacher! Look after him!”
Hands seized the child by the waist and he disappeared under the deck. The sergeant gripped the ladder and went down in turn. He crouched, pulled his knife from his shirt and, one hand on the pommel, the point of the blade notched in the floorboards, waited. The water of the river splashed against the hull, and in the darkness he made out the men around him, spread out at the back of the hold, tired and starving amid the stench and the dampness.
“Rain’s coming. It’s going to fall hard. The boat won’t be able to go any further, and they’re bound to come alongside us. I’m going to hand out weapons.”
The men began to sit up.
“There are some on this boat who still haven’t understood who I am, but never mind. Once they’ve got a rifle, they can try to kill me if that’s what they want. But there’s something else more important that you haven’t all accepted yet.”
Bowman bent his head and looked at the pale light that fell at his feet from the hatchway.
Retribution Road Page 4