“We’re all going to die on this godforsaken boat. Those who were in chains before they got here and those who weren’t. I have only one thing to tell you: I don’t want to die here and when I give orders, it will be to get me out of this alive. I never send someone else to do a job I can do myself. If we don’t shoot each other in the back, some of us might make it. If you don’t listen to me, we’ll all snuff it.”
He saw some of the men look down, while others met his eye, still mistrustful.
“We’ll all snuff it. Including this child.”
He stood up, grabbed Feng’s little slave by the hair and tore him from Peavish’s arms. He held him hanging in the square of light and touched the blade of the knife to his throat.
“That means I can cut his head off right now. Ask Peavish, he’ll tell you – it’d be an act of charity.”
Faces twitched. Arses lifted from the floor. Some of the toughest were already looking away.
“So?”
Peavish got down on his knees.
Pulling on the child’s hair, Bowman lifted him higher off the ground. The child started crying and kicking his feet. He cried out in Burmese, things that no-one understood. The blade pierced his skin when he moved, and blood started to trickle down his chest.
“So?”
One man stood up. The one who had no boots on the Runner, the one who had stared silently at the coastline, the canoes on the fishermen’s beach, who had eyed the shores since they got out on the river. The one whose stripes had been torn from his jacket’s shoulder and who dreamed of escape because he had good reason not to believe Wright’s promised pardon.
He stood in front of Bowman. He was the same height and, like half the men in the hold, had the pale hair and eyes of a Viking.
“Leave the child alone, Sergeant. We’ll follow orders.”
“Name and rank – before they took your stripes.”
“Sergeant Penders.”
The child had stopped moving. His feet hung limply above the floor. A thread of blood trickled from his throat down to his trousers.
“Sergeant Penders, you’re a good Christian. But are you speaking for everyone?”
Bowman inspected the other faces, then turned back to Penders.
“You’ve got your stripes back. When I’m not there, you’re the one who’ll kick them up the arse.”
He dropped the child, who ran into the arms of the preacher, then lifted his head towards the hatchway and whistled. Two Burmese hurtled down the ladder with a barrel of water, followed by two large bowls of rice in palm mats, two buckets of soup and some mess tins.
“You’ve got ten minutes to eat. Harris, keep an eye on Collins. Half-ration for you.”
The men rushed over to the food, and Bowman climbed back up on deck.
*
The wind had grown even stronger, driven forward by the rain that was following it. Half a mile downstream, the landscape disappeared behind a white wall. A piston of dark clouds was coming up the river, gaining on them, pushing them towards a bottleneck: ahead of them, the riverbanks were only about fifty yards apart. The water rippled, branches trembled, trees swayed, and all over the forest toads began to croak, so loud you could hear them over the sound of the wind.
Bowman bent down over the hatchway and yelled:
“Rain! Dinner’s over! Weapons are coming! Keep the powder dry!”
Crates and rifles were passed hand to hand from the galley to the hold. Bowman oversaw the operation, while keeping one eye on the sky. The banks vanished behind a wall of white mist. The transfer of the weapons was almost complete when the rain fell, as if floodgates had been opened above their heads. The Burmese were hysterical, pointing to the rain, the sky and the rigging. They all started jabbering at the same time, and some of them put the rifles down so they could ease out the sheets and lower the sails.
Bowman yelled again:
“Keep the weapons dry! Move your arses!”
A Burmese standing near the hatchway, a rifle in each hand, fell forward. The noise of the gunshot had been covered by the roar of the rain. The man lay face down on the deck, arms outstretched, the two Miniés still in his hands, his skull exploded by a bullet.
Captain Wright, at the door of the fo’c’s’le, his pistol smoking in his hand, now stared at Bowman.
“Sergeant! What are you doing?”
Bowman, at the other end of the deck, started moving towards him. A violent gust swept over the river, and the junk tipped towards portside. The sails swelled and the boat seemed to make a U-turn beneath their feet, then to start rotating like water going down a plughole.
“I’m arming the men, sir!”
“You disobeyed my orders!
Bowman tensed, ready to dodge a bullet. A yell rose from the cockpit. The two men looked up at the same time. Branches covered with leaves passed over their heads and the junk crashed into something, its whole mass and speed stopped dead. Wright grabbed hold of the doorframe, while Bowman was sent flying against a railing.
The boat’s stern had crashed into the riverbank. It began to turn around, gaining speed. The branches swept across the deck, lashing the fo’c’sle, clinging to the masts, the wood creaking and cracking, exploding like grenades, a rain of debris falling on the crew. After completing this U-turn, the bow of the junk smashed into the forest and the whole cycle began again. This time the boat turned around its bow, re-entering the current sideways. The trees tore the sails, the boat gained speed again, and crashed into the shore for a second time. The whole frame was shaken and the central mast, weakened by the mainsail, which they had not been able to lower, broke in half and fell into the woods. After another U-turn, the boat ran aground, side on, and stabilised.
A silence seemed to follow this shock. People stood up slowly, and heads poked out of the hatchway, eyes taking in the wrecked deck and rigging. Bowman lifted himself up on his elbows, his head and back aching. Bufford emerged from the hold with a gash in his cheek. The Burmese moved from sailor to sailor, helping them. The noise of the rain had begun again, after the impression of silence. On the few feet of river that could be seen, the drops made a pattering noise as they bounced back into the air.
Bowman walked over to the fo’c’s’le, stepping over the debris. A tree had smashed down the wall and part of the corridor that led to the galley. He moved branches and planks out of the way, found Wright lying there face down, and turned his body over. The captain groaned, a dark wound in his temple.
“Is he dead?”
Bowman turned around. Standing in the ravaged corridor, Sergeant Penders – a Minié in his hand, a Burmese hat on his head – stood watching him. Bowman lay Wright’s head back on the floor and stood up. Under the rim of the hat, sheltered from the pouring water, Penders’ face was the only clear image in the blurring deluge.
“I won’t let you leave like that.”
Penders smiled.
“We saved the powder. There are three men seriously wounded, the others will be all right. There are two Burmese missing, including the pilot, and another one is dead. There’s a hole in the hull and the hold is filling with water. I want to know if we should abandon the boat or not, and what your orders are, Sergeant.”
It took Bowman a second to react, perhaps because of Penders’ calm, informal, gentlemanly manners and voice. He looked down at Wright, who still lay unconscious at his feet.
“First we have to find out what we’re doing here. The weapons and the food – that’s all that matters for now.”
Bowman wiped his face, allowing him to see clearly while his eyebrows acted as a dam against the flood of water.
“Send three monkeys here, so they can take Wright somewhere dry.”
The sergeant stepped over the captain’s body, walked through the wreckage of the galley and the corridor that led to Feng’s cabin. The door was open. A tree trunk ran through the room from end to end; it had smashed the edges of two uprights and torn down part of the roof. On the bunk, crushed under
the tree, his chest covered in blood, Feng lay with his mouth agape, eyes almost bulging from their sockets. Bowman opened the drawer of the table, but found nothing. Finally, he yanked a cupboard door off its hinges and threw a pile of clothes onto the floor, followed by an opium pipe, some fans, an inkwell and some pens. He discovered a leather-bound book, its pages darkened and covered with Chinese characters, which he tossed onto the table before searching Wright’s cabin. But he didn’t find any documents there either.
On deck, the Burmese had begun untangling the rigging from the forest, cutting through the intertwining branches with machetes. Bare-chested, hands held together, Peavish was kneeling in front of four bodies stretched out in the rain. Two of the junk’s sailors, one English soldier – whom Bowman recognised as being one of the ten from the Joy – and another corpse whose face and torso were hidden by the preacher’s shirt. Bowman knew it was Feng’s little slave, however, because he could see his feet poking out of his trousers. Peavish’s lips moved in prayer, though no sound emerged from his mouth.
“Don’t hang around there, you’ll catch your death. We should throw them overboard.”
“We should bury them, Sergeant.”
Bowman looked at the corpses.
“In the river. Right now.”
He went down to the hold and joined Penders, who was holding an oil lamp. Next to him, a Burmese was shouting and gesticulating.
“I don’t know what he’s on about, Sarge, but it doesn’t sound good.”
Water was pouring between several uprights over an area of about six feet, and some of the ribs were broken. The rain was also coming in between the boards of the deck, which had been twisted and pushed up. The water in the hold was already calf-high. The junk was leaning towards the shore, aground on rocks and pressured by the current, which was cracking the hull.
“There are still some watertight compartments on the boat, but the hold is filling up, and even if it doesn’t sink, this thing won’t be navigable.”
Bowman thought fast.
“We’ll stay aboard as long as it stays afloat. Put the food and the weapons in the fo’c’s’le, where it’s dry.”
He went back up on deck. The Burmese were busy freeing the rigging. Bufford and Peavish, who had tried to kill each other two days earlier on the Joy, were working together to carry the English soldier’s corpse to the railing. They threw it overboard. Only the child’s body remained. The preacher had sent Buddha’s sheep to the sharks, but was still hesitant to do the same with the child. The wind had blown the sheet off his face: his skull was smashed in, and the rain was falling on his dead eyes, filling his open mouth.
“Buffalo! Peavish has scruples, so throw the child in the water. You, preacher, take five Burmese with you and moor the junk to the trees. If the current takes us now, there won’t be any food for the worms at all – the sharks’ll get us all.”
Bowman went back to the fo’c’s’le and, before entering, turned around. Bufford was holding the little slave in his arms above the railing. He muttered something as he stared at the child’s face, then leaned over him and, before dropping him in the river, planted a little kiss on his forehead.
Arthur Bowman half smiled and almost shivered as he remembered Peavish, on board the Healing Joy, pointing to Bufford.
The preacher must be able to see things he couldn’t.
Captain Wright was lying on his bunk, a cloth tied around his head. Bowman closed the cabin door and the sound of the rain grew quieter. He bent down to pick up the bottle of Gordon’s gin that had rolled onto the floor, took out the cork, drank a mouthful under Wright’s gaze, then put the bottle to his lips. The captain swallowed some and pulled a face.
“Water.”
Bowman looked around him, found a flask, and helped the captain to drink.
“What happened?”
“The monsoon. We hit the shore.”
“Damage?”
“The rigging’s a bit of a mess, but the Burmese are handling it, sir.”
Wright tried to sit up, but the pain pushed him back. His face turned grey and he threw up a little bile on his chest. Bowman tore a scrap off the bunk’s sheet and wiped it up.
“You disobeyed my orders, Sergeant.”
“For the safety of the ship, sir.”
“Will the junk be able to keep going?”
“Yes, sir.”
“And me?”
Bowman looked him in the eyes for as long as he had to. The officer turned his head to the wall. He was silent for a moment, then looked back at the sergeant.
“You must complete the mission, Bowman. The rain is there . . .”
“What mission, sir?”
“Min’s ambassador . . . The Spanish. Buy weapons . . .”
“I can’t hear you, sir. What mission?”
Wright’s voice shook a little.
“One of Min’s ambassadors, on the river. A boat, in two days . . . Or one day. Negotiate for weapons . . . with the Spanish, for the war. The monsoon . . . The war . . . in the next dry season . . . Spanish arms for Min . . . Bowman . . . I’m dying . . .”
Wright gripped Bowman’s shirt and looked at him with that expression which he knew so well. The sergeant took the captain’s hand in his, unfastened the tensed fingers from the fabric and stood up, taking the bottle of gin.
“Bowman . . .”
The sergeant closed the door, went through the galley and came out onto the deck.
Peavish had gone ashore with a group of ten Burmese. The preacher seemed able to communicate with them, speaking a few words in their language – or in another Indian language that they understood. When the junk was solidly moored to the trees, Peavish came back on board, followed by Feng’s sailors, who threw worried glances towards the forest.
Bowman ordered everyone to gather round. Englishmen and Burmese all squeezed into the last free space on the deck, between the fo’c’s’le and the large hatchway.
“We’re going to build a shelter! Cut the mainmast down, put it on the fo’c’s’le, and use the sails to make a roof. Weapons and food will go in Wright’s cabin! Peavish, as the monkeys seem to understand you, you’re in charge. Dismissed!”
The men were starting to shiver with cold under the rain, and they moved fast in order to keep warm. Bowman led Penders aside.
“We have to make sure we’re ready by tomorrow. A boat will pass by then, or maybe in two days. We have to take it.”
“How do you know that?”
“Wright, before he kicked the bucket. But it’s one of Min’s boats, with an emissary or something on board. Wright wanted to stop it. We need that boat, or we’ll end up dying here. Would it bother you to throw a captain overboard?”
Penders smiled.
5
Night fell unexpectedly. The rain, masking the sky, had drowned out the hours spent clearing up the junk, dismantling the sails, sawing the mast and laying it on the fo’c’s’le. The sails, tied to the railings, now covered the whole deck like a very low mansard roof, and the men had to scurry, bent double, beneath it. The branches had been pruned and the tree trunks on the deck removed, except for the largest, which now served as a gangplank to the shore.
Bowman had authorised fires. Some rocks found on land were used to make hearths in which wood from the boat’s broken frame was burned, followed by the scented red wood of the branches. They heated water to cook rice and vegetables. Whenever they had to visit the land, it was in groups of ten armed men, and they would return to huddle inside the big tent as if it were an impenetrable fortress, even though an arrow, never mind a bullet, would speed right through it.
Despite the fire and the smoke, clouds of mosquitoes swarmed around the men, who smacked their own faces and scratched their bodies nervously, well aware that these cursed insects were the ambassadors of malaria, a more deadly enemy than all of Min’s soldiers.
In the hold, the water level rose as quickly as the river. Five feet since the rain began.
The Burmes
e congregated along the railings, where the canvas roof was at its lowest and the air at its least unpleasant. Against the stump of the broken mainmast, against the wall of the fo’c’s’le and in the corridor covered by the sails, the rifles were stacked. Extra weapons, ammunition and food supplies were stored in the galley, now free of its large table, which had been chopped up and burned to cook the rice. Penders and three soldiers guarded this improvised floating artillery.
Bowman sat in Wright’s cabin and sipped gin from the bottle. The glass bulb of the lamp was broken, but he let the oil burn on the wick, watching the little flame. Hunger gnawed at him, but he made do with regular mouthfuls of alcohol and kept his tiredness at bay by smoking a cigar.
He opened the door to the galley and when he saw the weapons, the three Burmese guards and Penders sitting on the floor, his Chinese hat on his head, he felt like the captain of a pirate ship. Him, Arthur Bowman, with a toff’s cigar in his mouth.
He beckoned Penders to his cabin. There, sitting on the bunk, Bowman gestured with his chin to the box of cigars, while holding out the bottle of gin to the ex-sergeant.
“If we complete this mission, you’ll get your stripes back. You might even end up a lieutenant.”
Penders smiled.
“What about you?”
“Same for me.”
“Except Wright wanted to shoot you.”
Bowman took the bottle back.
“If we complete this mission and come back alive, we can tell them whatever we want.”
“We?”
“You and me. We’re not out of here yet, but if we do make it, why would we go back to Rangoon and tell them that we threw Wright in the river when we could be heroes? Men like us never rise higher than sergeant. Unless they accomplish an important mission.”
Penders looked at Bowman in a way that irritated him, as if he knew a little more about the world than he did and found it amusing. He reminded Bowman of those lads who have been to school and who have a local rivalry, like the rivalry between a man who works in a factory and another who works in the sewers.
Retribution Road Page 5