On Starlit Seas

by Sara Sheridan

  ‘On your life,’ Her Majesty had said as she handed over the missive, ‘don’t tell da Couto. The man has no subtlety, but he will get you there. You must hand this to Cochrane in person. Da Couto will take you cross-country – it is too dangerous by sea along this coast.’

  Maria prided herself on being capable. The self-reliance born at least partly from the confined cruelty of the Oxfordshire boarding school to which Lady Dundas had banished her proved excellent preparation for lifelong travel in the world’s far-flung reaches. Still, this journey had tested her. When they left the city the train of bearers had been fine, but now the jungle had swallowed their clean clothes and good manners. The men’s skins were all shades of coffee from milky to espresso black, and they stank of mule shit and sweat. Many had their clothes reduced to tatters. Others had simply removed their apparel. In the oppressive heat, Mrs Graham could hardly blame them.

  There were times over the last week, hacking through the vegetation, when she had wondered if the overgrown path wasn’t more dangerous than going by sea – even if shipping was under fire. There was little in the verdant undergrowth that didn’t possess teeth. She quickly learned that the thin muddy rivers were stocked with piranha, that all manner of venomous snakes concealed themselves not only on the ground but twisted round tree branches too, and that the wild monkeys were, to say the least, delinquent. One chattered over her head as she stood by the muddy pool and she kept half an eye on it. Sometimes the monkeys attacked for no apparent reason. But they were not the worst of the jungle’s trials. Many of the flowering plants were not only poisonous but also, if handled incorrectly, fatal. Worst of all, you couldn’t pass water without breaking the flow, for there were flesh-eating insects waiting to use a hot stream of piss as a conduit into the human body. In short, the jungle was a hellhole. The difficult conditions were made more unpleasant by the company. If the jungle leeched energy out of you, Senhor da Couto would surely stifle any life force you had left.

  The diplomat checked Mrs Graham’s whereabouts from his vantage point. ‘It’s taking too long,’ he said.

  ‘I could help,’ Maria offered.

  Da Couto’s thin mouth set in a cruel line that cut his face in two. He turned away. Assistance from a female was unwelcome. Maria watched as one of the men dropped a rope and da Couto’s temper tipped over the edge. He pulled out his riding crop and laid furiously into the man’s naked back, cursing in Portuguese. The switch cut tiny slashes in the man’s skin and thin trickles of blood snaked down his dark flesh.

  ‘Mr da Couto,’ Maria objected. Such cruelty was pointless. ‘Mr da Couto!’

  He ignored her and continued to whip the slave as Maria interposed herself. The bearers looked on as da Couto caught the woman’s arm with his lash. Then he froze, realising what he had done. Maria waved off the injured man and motioned for two of the others to fish the rope from the mud. Her skin stung, but the blow had drawn no blood through the cotton of her plain grey travelling dress. Her fingers felt weak as she flexed them. There would be a bruise.

  ‘¡Vuelva trabajar!’ she said to the men. Get back to work.

  The bearers didn’t move. Da Couto glowered. Sliding off the saddle, his black eyes still with fury, he dismounted and roughly grabbed her, his fingers pressing into the flesh of her arm. Maria’s stomach turned over in shock, but she did not feel afraid. If anything, she relished the challenge. One of her earliest memories was of her father ordering a man beaten for stealing an apple from his ship’s stores. That, however, had been justice. By contrast, da Couto was randomly brutal – a slave to his poor temper.

  ‘You think because you have the Empress’s ear . . .’ da Couto snarled. ‘You think because you are an English woman . . . But I am in charge.’

  Maria’s resolve was steely. It was like dealing with a feral dog or a poorly trained mount – she simply had to take control.

  She cut him off. ‘I think, Mr da Couto, that you are speaking in English, so, happily, none of these men know what we are saying. And I think what is important, sir, is that we get going again as quickly as we can.’ She forced herself to smile and pat him conspiratorially on the arm. Da Couto gathered himself as he loosened his grip. The bearers stopped gawping. ‘In the event, it’s probably as well that you won’t speak Portuguese to me, sir.’

  In the beginning she had asked him to help her practise, but da Couto insisted on using his very formal English and simply pretended not to understand when she tried the vocabulary she had learned in Rio. As a result, the only new words Maria had picked up on this trip were curses used by the men. Alongside Portuguese, the bearers spoke a strange argot that she could hardly discern – a language of African descent mixed with something Hispanic. She was curious about what they discussed when they switched to this from Portuguese. She heard them at night in the absolute darkness, whispering in a pack before falling asleep – low words and sharp clicks. Maria had an ear for languages, but this was beyond her.

  ‘You mustn’t interfere,’ da Couto snapped.

  Maria smiled. ‘There’s enough danger here, sir, without making it worse for ourselves. We require the services of all these men.’

  Da Couto’s stony expression was hooded with menace. ‘Wait over there. It will not be much longer.’

  The thin cotton of Maria’s dress chafed her damp skin as she moved to the other side of the pool. Not for the first time, she thought how pleasant it would be to return to England for a few weeks, where the weather at this time of year would be brisk and the dangers less visceral.

  As the men fitted the ropes around the trapped animal, Maria flexed her ankles and her wrists, stretching her legs under the cover of her fitted dress. She had seen native women in India flexing gracefully like elegant statues in the privacy of their quarters. Saluting the sun, they called it – a mystery of the Orient. Now, lengthening her stomach like a reclining cat, she longed to bend down and touch the muddy ground. She would do so tonight, she decided, in the privacy of her tent and without the constraint of her bodice.

  Da Couto circled the mud. The mule was bound in a thick web of sodden ropes. Three more mules and a horse had been harnessed to pull it clear. The diplomat nodded curtly. On his signal, the cry went up and slaps of encouragement sounded on the animals’ damp flanks as they moved forward to pull their trapped confederate free.

  As the mule scrambled to safety, there was a sudden rumble of thunder and a flash of lightning and the air immediately felt clearer as huge drops of rain splashed onto the jungle floor. Where it hit the leaves, the sound amplified into a drum-like rhythm. The men cheered and three of them began to dance.

  Maria turned her face upwards, her dark hair immediately glossy and her cheeks glowing. The path would become a morass in seconds. It was difficult to believe that she had thrown snowballs in Chile only a few months before and that her fingers had been nipped pink and painful with the cold. In the jungle, the mere memory melted as quickly as a cube of ice.

  ‘Are you all right, madam?’ Da Couto peered at her.

  Twice in the last week Maria had woken in the night, imagining da Couto lingering outside her tent in the sticky darkness. Her eyes jerked to the holsters slung like saddlebags across her horse’s back. In one she had a loaded gun, which by now would almost certainly be too damp to fire. In the other she kept an extra water bottle and a small flask of brandy for medical purposes. Over the years she had learned to stow her own supplies, just in case.

  ‘I’m merely attending my manuscripts,’ she said steadily. ‘I have two books ready for publication. The papers must remain dry.’

  As she spoke, huge drops of water ran down her neck, slipped under the thin dress and pooled in the small of her back.

  ‘We will not be much longer.’ Da Couto turned his horse.

  Maria double checked the buckles and pulled a rug over the opening in the vain hope that it would keep the moisture at bay. At home, she knew, her manuscripts would be pored over. If Spain and Portugal loosened their g
rip on South America, there would be opportunities for British trade. Her publisher, John Murray, was a man who liked to bring valuable reports to London, and London invariably loved whatever he brought. He’d have her words typeset quickly and the books would be on sale in every bookshop in the country before she had time to resupply and return. She looked forward to remembering this whole experience from a very great distance. She would tell Murray about the impossible terrain and her malicious companion and they’d laugh about it.

  ‘It was a trial,’ she’d admit, ‘but I got through it.’

  She pulled herself smoothly into the saddle, her manners fitted round her like armour. Almost lazily, while Mrs Graham’s back was turned, the diplomat raised his whip and struck one of the slaves.

  ‘Mr da Couto. Really,’ Maria scolded.

  Da Couto said nothing, only motioned the bearer on his way as Mrs Graham nodded curtly that she was ready. Her hand moved without a thought to check the buckle on the small leather dispatch bag strapped to the saddle. Then she pushed a wet strand of hair away from her face and sat ramrod straight, mirroring the long-backed kapok trees – the tallest and most majestic of the jungle’s botanical treasures.

  ‘Madam, please, be careful,’ the diplomat said without conviction.

  Maria sighed. She reached out to touch a vivid orange flower that jutted towards her from a bush sprouting leaves so dark they seemed almost black. Only just in time she pulled her fingers back as she remembered that the jungle was not to be trusted. For a second, as she turned, Maria thought she saw da Couto glower in disappointment. His smooth facade dropped like a shadow.

  No wonder he hates me, she thought as her horse walked on to join the others. He thinks we come this way solely for my pleasure.

  3

  England to Brazil

  Will Simmons’s trip did not start well. In fact, it exceeded the boy’s expectations in its dreadfulness – far worse than the day he’d sailed a bumpy crossing to County Down. At least the passage to Ireland had been mercifully short. Now, for several days as the ship headed south, he vomited over the side, he vomited into a bucket and he vomited onto the deck. At night, between snatched bouts of sleep, he vomited over the edge of his hammock. A rope of sick unfurled from his insides, almost smothering him as it came out. Practically delirious, Will would have sworn he hadn’t eaten as much in his whole life as came back up again. He lost all sense of time and place, engulfed in the aching nausea that prolonged day and night until each minute seemed like an hour. In short order, he prayed for death, despite not believing in the mercy of God.

  Then, when the ship docked to take on supplies at Tenerife, the sickness abated. Will emerged into the sunshine looking like a pile of crumpled clothes with a pale head on top. His stomach felt as if it had been turned inside out. He had lost weight and felt woozy, but at least he was no longer retching. He washed in a barrel of seawater to remove the stench and went ashore.

  Abroad was a revelation. The boy from Cornwall marvelled at the lush plants and the plentiful baskets of oranges and bananas. He’d never seen sky so blue. The pristine whitewashed walls entranced him and the yucca plants were as strange as living sculptures. As Will walked the bone-dry streets, he relaxed in the heat and his left knee, which for two years had given him nothing but gyp in the damp English climate, moved as easily as if it were a rusty old lock greased with pig fat. At a dockside inn run by an Englishman, Will ravenously ate his first food in over a week and fell asleep in the sunshine listening to the man’s daughters play the castanets.

  When he set sail once more, he had to admit that the Old Street Bridge Club was right: once a fellow got used to it, travel was not as bad as he’d expected.

  Crossing the Atlantic, the ship docked next at Trinidad, where a small block of chocolate was brought on board at Matelot with the rest of the supplies. Despite having delivered the gentlemen several blocks of cacao, Simmons had never tasted the drink. He took small beer at home – coffee being for gentlemen of business, tea for ladies and chocolate for the nobility. Here, the whole crew were fed the dark, warm drink, sharpened with a shot of rum. Not all of them liked it.

  ‘It looks like shite,’ the cabin boy hissed.

  But the concoction certainly didn’t taste like shite. Will smiled as he raised the pewter cup to his lips and the bubbles exploded on his tongue. The chocolate was rounded like port or brandy but satisfying like brose.

  ‘I could grow fat on this.’ Simmons grinned, his mouth alight, as he sat on a barrel.

  ‘At home, they reserve it for Her Ladyship,’ a toothless old sailor laughed, raising his tankard.

  The daily chocolate left Will in high spirits, so that some days he believed he could wheel with the gulls that fished the foaming water close to shore. Now that he felt so free, it came to him that the corner of England which up till now had been his whole universe, was in fact only a tiny scrap of a boundless realm. The world was an enticing whore slowly opening her legs. Will listened eagerly to the stories told by the old sailors – tales of Chinese junks and polar frosts. Tales of Indian monsters, and herds of horses in the Americas that, if a man could only catch one, he could keep.

  Best of all, here he was no greenhorn, no scum, no lowlife. While he travelled, he was a man of the world. All this time and he had never known. He wondered what the captains he’d negotiated with had thought of him – green as grass. No wonder they’d tried to cheat him. He’d thought a trip to Eel Pie House for a bit of fishing and a bland supper was a grand outing. Not now, he thought, not now.

  Brazil came quickly. By the time they made harbour on the mainland at Natal, Will quit the ship a different fellow from the surly, pale-faced lad who had boarded at Portsmouth. His hair had lightened and his skin was golden. Things had shifted. The ship was heading south with the tide. Several of the sailors turned out to bid Simmons farewell. Below decks, he shook hands like a gentleman leaving his own wedding and said he hoped they’d meet again. Then, coming up on deck, he halted nervously at the top of the gangplank. The voyage had been a safe haven. The sailors were rough, but everyone was on the same side. On the alien dock that teemed before him, he would be alone thousands of miles from home.

  ‘Go on, Will!’ one of the men shouted from the wooden belly.

  Simmons took a deep breath. His heart raced as he forced himself to smile. Then he steeled his guts and walked down the gangplank, away from everything and everyone that was familiar.

  It was like diving deep underwater. Natal was heaving. The air was hot as an oven and the noise was overwhelming, but Will noticed nothing of that. When he surfaced, he was along the dock and, listen as he might, he couldn’t make out one word of the King’s English among the stevedores, the sailors with shore leave and the merchants touting for trade. He spun on his heels, taking in the incomprehensible bustle, surprised that from a distance he couldn’t even see the vessel that had been his home all these weeks. I must find the Bridge Club’s man, he thought to himself.

  ‘Senhor Dourado?’ he asked. ‘Senhor Dourado?’

  Someone must be acquainted with the fellow.

  *

  Captain James Henderson liked Natal, especially down here in the evening, with the ships creaking in the darkness. He spent a good deal of time up and down the coast of Brazil and the town was one of his favourite ports. Supplies were high, the people were if not always friendly at least reasonable, and Natal had managed to stay out of the fighting that was impeding trade further south. Tonight, Henderson cut a fine figure on the deserted moonlit dockside. His hair was dark and his skin was pale as wax. His eyes were a shade of blue so light they were almost transparent. They might have made him seem younger were it not for the shadow of his beard. He didn’t look Brazilian. He wasn’t. But he’d lived here for a long time.

  The captain had spent a pleasant evening ashore – he had procured a fine dinner and a woman with whom he had swapped the generosity of her favours for the generosity of his wallet. Now one hostelry after a
nother snuffed out its lights. Up an alleyway the sound of footsteps receded as the last straggle of sailors quit the dock. Far off there was a peel of laughter as two harlots shared a joke – a flirtatious, disembodied, comforting sound. Henderson was walking back to his ship when he came across the lad. It was evident the boy was English, because he was talking to himself in the middle of the cobbled quay.

  ‘I thought they was all Indians,’ he said, drunkenly, his voice laden with wonder. ‘I could have swore it.’

  Henderson grinned. The lad was perhaps ten years younger than he was. He was not badly dressed and carried a sailor’s roll that looked brand new. He clearly hadn’t been here long. This, the captain noted, might prove amusing. Henderson cleared his throat.

  ‘Hardly see an Indian in these parts, old man.’ His voice was clear, his English accent chiming like a cool glass of clean water. ‘Seen plenty in the interior, all feathers and bare chests, but at the coast they’re a rarity.’

  The reply was unexpected. The boy started. He drew his knife as he spun round, squinting to make out the fellow in the low light. Two sailors passed, ignoring the drawn weapon. Henderson said nothing. On the tall side and well built, the captain could handle himself in a fight – he had the strong, slim shoulders of a fellow who threw a powerful punch, and he wasn’t afraid. In fact, a small smile played at the corners of his mouth.

  ‘You need to be desperate or crazy or both to go into the jungle, and you seem neither. But that’s where the Indians live, if you really want to see one.’ His pale eyes remained calm as he appraised Simmons’s blade.

  Will stared as he tried to place Henderson’s accent, which was London by way of Brazil and New York and well beyond the boy’s experience. Henderson was a handsome man and he’d squared up like a gent.

  ‘You won’t need your knife, mate.’ The captain coolly held out his hand as he stood the boy down. ‘I was only being friendly. My name is Henderson.’