by Wilbur Smith
He ran down to the stores and found a bottle of lamp oil. He splashed it over the bales of cloth in the hold, and added powder from the small keg they kept for the swivel guns. He moved quickly, driven by a freedom and an energy he had never known. He told himself it was a sensible precaution, to hide Crawford’s body and so that none of the crew ashore would think to look for him. The truth was he did it from sheer devilish abandon.
Halfway up the ladder, he turned and tossed the lamp back into the darkness. The glass shattered; fire caught the oil-soaked cloth and flared up. Flames licked through the hold.
Christopher stared, hypnotised by his own handiwork. I did this, he thought again. The destruction he had unleashed coursed through his veins like a shot of opium.
A blast of hot air from the hold below blew into his face, and he knew it was time to go. He climbed the ladder, crossed the deck and sent one last kick into Crawford’s corpse for spite. No time to launch the jolly boat, but there was the hollowed-out tree trunk that Crawford had come in, tied up near the bow. He lowered the chest on a rope, clambered down into the small boat and grabbed the oars. He rowed with all his strength, keeping ahead of the orb of light that spread behind him as fire engulfed the ship.
His boat grounded on sand. He splashed out, carrying the chest on his shoulder, and ran up the beach. When he reached the safety of the treeline, he looked back. The Joseph burned like a bonfire on Gunpowder Treason day, lighting up the dark and turning the night sea golden. Down on the waterfront, townsfolk came running half naked from their beds and gawped at the sight. Several of the Joseph’s crew were among them, some with their women still clinging to them. He wondered how they would get home, how long it would take them to find another ship.
He stumbled inland until he came to a track winding through the trees. He didn’t dare go to the harbour, not with the Joseph’s crew still there, but he had been watching the coast and he knew there were many towns and villages in the interior where he could seek refuge.
He was about to turn north, when he saw a light approaching through the trees. He dragged the chest back off the path and crouched in the bushes.
The figure grew nearer, carrying a lamp made from a hollowed-out gourd. He stopped just in front of Christopher’s hiding place, examining the footprints and the drag marks Christopher had left in the dusty track.
‘Chris?’ he called.
It was Danesh. With a wave of relief, Christopher floundered out from the undergrowth. Danesh recoiled in horror, not recognizing him: all he saw was a half-naked demon smeared in blood and dust.
‘Chris?’ He stared. ‘I saw you come ashore.’ He took in the blood, and the wild look in his eyes. ‘What have you done?’
‘I killed him.’ Saying it aloud was not as easy as saying it to himself. But then he looked at Danesh, and fancied he saw new respect in his friend’s eyes.
‘And the ship?’ said Danesh.
‘Gone. I burned it to the waterline.’
Danesh looked grim. ‘That ship was our work. Our pay.’
‘Your pay. Crawford gave me nothing, remember?’ He went back to the bushes and hauled out the chest. ‘But I made him pay. With this, we can buy our own cargo. We’ll charter a ship. No more hauling ropes and feeling the bite of his rope end: we’ll give the orders, now. A few good voyages, and we can buy a bigger vessel. Then two.’ Already, he could see himself sailing into Bombay harbour on a fine merchantman, her gunports picked out in dazzling gold leaf. He saw Ruth waiting for him on the waterfront, swooning in his arms as he stepped ashore, and the impotent rage on his father’s face as he realized he was beaten.
Danesh’s expression had changed. ‘What about the key? Did you bring that?’
Christopher unwrapped the cord from his wrist and slotted in the key. The lock sprang, the lid tipped back. Gold and silver gleamed within.
‘With this …’ Danesh scooped up a handful of coins and let them trickle through his fingers. ‘A man could live like a king.’
‘Careful,’ Christopher laughed. ‘We must not spend it all at once. If we invest it, we will soon have a fortune ten times larger.’
The punch hit him without warning. A clean hit to the jaw that sent him reeling back. Danesh was a slighter build, but he had been working ships since he was ten years old. He had a lean, wiry strength – and Christopher was exhausted. He stumbled, tripped on a root and fell. Before he could even raise his fists, another blow knocked him momentarily unconscious.
Danesh took the rope belt from Christopher’s trousers and ran it through the handles of the chest to make a crude strap. In taking the belt, he found both the knife and Crawford’s purse tucked into his trousers. He took that as well.
Christopher was coming round. He spat a gob of blood and raised himself on one arm. A threatening motion from Danesh made him think better of it.
‘I thought you were my friend,’ he pleaded.
The look he got back showed nothing but contempt. ‘You are a child,’ Danesh said. ‘Gold has got no friends.’
He hoisted the chest onto his shoulder and set off down the road. Christopher didn’t try to follow. He lay there, watching the light fade, until he was left in darkness.
Are you going to attack me?’
Christopher opened his eyes. On the far side of the road, a man leaned on a wooden staff, watching him. His body was lean and hard, the stubble on his cheeks was grey.
‘Are you going to attack me?’ he said again. He spoke Portuguese, though his face and dress were Indian.
Christopher rubbed his temples. His jaw had swollen, and every movement brought a flare of pain racing up his neck into his head.
‘Do I look so dangerous?’ he groaned
‘There are many bandits on these roads. Some lie in wait, pretending to have been robbed or waylaid, and when the good traveller stops to help him, he himself is attacked.’
‘I don’t think I can even stand up.’
The man didn’t move any closer. ‘Where did you come from?’
‘My ship caught fire. I swam ashore.’
The man nodded thoughtfully. He took in the dried blood cracking and flaking off Christopher’s chest, and the bruises darkening his face.
‘I can take you to Trivandrum to rejoin your crew. Surely they will be concerned for you.’
Christopher shook his head. He pointed to his left, away from Trivandrum. ‘I’m going that way.’
‘Ah.’ The corners of the man’s mouth lifted in a dry smile. ‘So am I.’
‘Will you take me with you?’
He considered it, for about three seconds. Then he moved. So fast, Christopher saw it as only a blur: two bounding steps, and the staff thrusting towards his head. He put up his hands, though they were little protection. The point of the staff stopped, an inch from his eyes. The old man stood over him, just out of reach of his feet. He wasn’t even breathing hard.
‘If you are lying – if you try to do me violence – I will kill you,’ he warned.
Christopher stared at him. ‘Who are you?’
‘A man who can defend himself.’ He touched the bruise on Christopher’s chin with the tip of his staff. ‘You, it seems, are a man who cannot.’
Christopher patted his belt. ‘I don’t even have a knife.’
‘There is more than one way to kill a man, and not all are so crude. We have bandits in this country who will strangle a man with nothing more than a loincloth.’
He said it so casually, Christopher suddenly realized with perfect certainty that he spoke from personal knowledge.
‘Are you a bandit?’
‘Now you insult me?’ He said it good-naturedly. He extended the tip of his staff so Christopher could haul himself up.
‘What is your name?’ he asked.
Christopher opened his mouth. Christopher Courtney, he was about to say. But Christopher Courtney had robbed and killed a man. Christopher Courtney was a fugitive. Worst of all, Christopher Courtney was Guy Courtney’s son.
‘My name is Absalom,’ he said.
The old man looked keenly into his eyes, as if he could read the lies and the guilt behind them.
Nonsense, Christopher told himself. They’re only my eyes; a body part no different from my feet or my elbows.
‘I am Ranjan.’ The old man looked away, and Christopher felt a great weight lift from his soul. ‘I will take you to the next village.’
They walked in silence. The sun rose higher; the road grew busier. At the side of the track, toddy tappers hung off the palm trees like giant spiders, draining the sweet liquor inside. The old man didn’t say a word, while Christopher brooded on everything that had happened. Again and again, he replayed those moments with Crawford, and the savage exultation as the knife ripped open his stomach. He wished he was back on the ship, just so he could do it again.
The village was a humble place, a few mud-walled huts thatched with palm leaves. Gaunt cows wandered between the dwellings. On the beach, fishermen rolled out their nets, while drying fish flapped from lines strung between trees.
‘What will you do here?’ the old man asked.
Christopher shook his head. He hadn’t considered it. He could try the fishermen, though the largest craft on the beach was no bigger than the Joseph’s longboat. But the thought of going back to sea appalled him.
‘Do you have food? Money? Friends?’ enquired the old man.
‘None,’ he answered.
‘Then come with me.’
They walked on, many miles more, past fishing villages and pagodas and long, sandy beaches. Close to sunset, they reached their destination. This was a sizeable town, a little inland, far bigger than the villages they had passed through. There was a large market, and many fine temples.
Ranjan led Christopher to a compound on the far edge of the town. From the outside, he thought it must be a temple. Ranjan had such an ascetic air about him he could easily be a monk.
A young man wearing only a simple loincloth opened the gate. Christopher stepped through – and stared about him in wonder. Everywhere, bare-chested young men were fighting. In one corner, they clashed with long wooden staves very similar to the old man’s staff. In another, they wielded sickle-curved swords, whose blades rasped and rang as they twisted together, as though in some intimate mating ritual. A few of the men fought with nothing but their hands and feet, moving so gracefully that the jarring force of their kicks and punches were not readily apparent.
‘What is this place?’ Christopher asked in amazement.
‘This is the kalari – a school for warriors. We teach Kalaripayattu, an ancient martial art. Some say the most ancient in the world.’
‘You know this art?’
‘I am the aasaan, the teacher.’
The movements, quicker than thought; the clash of arms; the smells of sawdust, sweat and blood astonished him. He thought of all the beatings he had suffered in his life: His own father, Crawford and even Danesh. He had learned to accept them, because he could not defend himself.
These men in this arena could defend themselves.
‘Can you teach me this art?’
‘Some of these men have been training since they were boys,’ Ranjan warned him.
‘I can learn.’
Ranjan looked into his eyes. Again, Christopher had the feeling that he saw things Christopher didn’t even know existed.
‘Yes,’ he nodded thoughtfully. ‘Yes, I think you can.’
Life on the ship had been hard; life in the kalari was even harder. On the ship, the beatings were incidental: here, they were the whole purpose. Christopher stopped counting the bruises, the sore muscles and the cracked ribs that made it hard to breathe. He never complained, and he never missed a day’s training.
His body changed. The muscles that had started to develop at sea grew stronger, honed to a new level. His stomach tightened. He walked taller and straighter. He was no longer the round-shouldered adolescent who had run away from Bombay, or the bandy-legged sailor who had stumbled ashore. Tall by any standards, he towered over most of the native Indians training alongside him. Some complained to the aasaan that it gave him an unfair advantage, but he sent them away saying, ‘Only the gods can choose your opponent.’
Christopher learned quickly. He learned the eight steps and the eight stances. He learned the one hundred and eight mamras, the vital parts of the body; the vaikalyakara points that would paralyse an opponent, and the bindu points where a single blow could kill him. He learned to chant the mantras to unlock his powers, and the way to read a man’s face and posture to anticipate his next move. He learned to fight with a staff and a sword, and the sickle-shaped thotti.
Then, at the end of each day, he learned how to heal himself: how to rub his body down with oil, how to massage the vital places to tease out the hurts and bruises, so that he could fight again the next day.
Once a week, all the students gathered in the exercise yard around the raised platform at its centre. The best students would fight on the dais, a whirlwind of strikes and lunges that moved so fast Christopher could hardly follow them. Later, as he learned the strokes himself, he began to recognize them. Now when he watched the fights, his body twitched, copying the moves in his mind, desperate to master them.
The other students mostly ignored Christopher, but Ranjan kept a close eye on him. One day, he took Christopher to a wood-carver’s workshop. The smell of oil and wood-shavings was rich in the air. On the benches, half-finished animal gods stared from their blocks, their faces merging with the raw wood.
Christopher stood watching, waiting for the aasaan to explain why they had come. The carver tapped with his chisel, each stroke taking off a minuscule sliver of the hard wood.
Without looking up, the carver spoke – in a local dialect Christopher couldn’t understand.
‘What did he say?’
‘He says the figures already exist in the wood. His job is merely to peel away the outer layers and reveal what is within. With every blow of the chisel, it becomes more like itself.’ He looked at Christopher. ‘Do you think the wood has feelings?’
‘No.’
‘According to our Hindu faith, every living thing has consciousness. Even the plants can feel. If that is so, do you think the wood enjoys being carved?’
The carver tapped the hammer. The sharp blade bit into the wood.
‘It must be agony.’
‘And yet each blow helps it to become itself. The path is hard, Absalom – but the destination …’ He stroked the face of Ganesh, the elephant god, carved so lifelike Christopher thought its trunk might unfurl and wrap around his neck.
‘The destination is the truth of who we are.’
When he was not training, Christopher earned his keep through labour. At first, this involved cutting trees for firewood, or tending the gardens where they grew food for the kalari. Sometimes, when they had too much of one thing and not enough of another, Ranjan sent him to the market to barter. Apart from when he was fighting, these were Christopher’s favourite times. He took pains to learn the local language, and picked it up quickly, chatting with the merchants who soon came to recognize him. They never smiled when he came to their stalls. They knew he would bargain ferociously, not content until he had squeezed the last possible dam off the price.
One day, in the market, an Indian approached him. Jewelled rings crusted his fingers; servants fanned away the flies around him. Christopher moved to get out of his way, but a glance from the Indian made him pause. One of the servants stepped forward. Well-dressed, with an emerald-tipped pin in his turban and gold thread embroidering his robe, he was clearly a steward in the rich man’s household. His fat lips were rendered even more conspicuous by the red betel
-juice stains around them.
‘This is my lord Parashurama,’ he announced. He kept a clear distance, as all high-caste Indians did, fearful of defiling himself through contact with the foreigner. ‘He is the wealthiest merchant in this town.’
Parashurama smiled at him. ‘I have heard of you. They say you are a fearsome fighter in the kalari.’
Christopher bowed.
‘Other men say you drive such bargains to make merchants weep.’
‘My father taught me there is always a better price to be had.’
‘Indeed – but not all men know how to get it. I could use a man like you.’
‘My master has a cargo that must be brought to the town of Neyoor,’ said the steward. ‘The roads are not safe, and when it arrives he expects the best price. Perhaps you are the man to do it.’
‘What is the cargo?’
‘Salt.’
‘In return,’ said Parashurama, ‘I will give you five per cent of whatever you sell it for.’
‘Twenty per cent,’ said Christopher.
The steward scowled. Parashurama laughed. ‘Truly, your reputation is deserved. Let us agree on ten per cent. And,’ he added, as he saw the argument rising to Christopher’s lips, ‘if you serve me well in this, I may have further work for you. I trade in many goods, and there are more valuable cargoes than salt.’
‘I must ask my master,’ said Christopher. But when he spoke to Ranjan, the old man simply opened his palms in blessing.
‘I am not your master, and you are not my slave. As long as you choose to stay with me, I will teach you. When you choose otherwise, you may go.’
‘Am I ready?’
The old man studied his palms. ‘What is the first precept?’
‘Never choose a battle; only fight if you cannot walk away.’
‘If you remember that, you will come to little harm.’
In fact, the trip passed without incident. Christopher was almost disappointed when they arrived at the house in Neyoor he’d been directed to. He haggled hard; at one point, he ordered the servants to reload the mules and was halfway out the gate before the merchant called him back to continue the negotiations.