East India

by Colin Falconer

  He wished they would come upon the rest of the fleet. He would only be happy when they finally sighted the Southland and knew the worst of the journey was over.

  Chapter 25

  ALMOST a week now since the attack on Vrouwe Noorstrandt. It was outrageous, unthinkable, that men should perpetrate such a horror and get away with it. But he was still no closer to getting to the truth of it. He had interrogated the entire crew and received only shrugs and mumbled answers to his questions--not a man among the night watch claimed they had heard or seen anything unusual, not a single crew member would look him in the eye.

  And the pastor was blaming Cornelia herself.

  It was Christiaan who finally gave him what he needed. He pushed a piece of paper across the desk, written in his own neat hand. “These are the ones you want,” he said.

  Ambroise read down the list; all of them popular fellows like the bosun. Neither the skipper nor Sara de Ruyter were included on his list.

  “How did you come by this?”

  “These are my own conclusions. They were all on the night watch yet none of their crewmates can remember seeing them on the deck at the time of the attack.”

  “These men told me they were in the yards.”

  “Convenient.”

  Ambroise shook his head. If I put these men in irons, he thought, it could instigate a general revolt among the crew. I have no evidence against them, and no one else has spoken out. What am I to do?

  “Thank you, Christiaan.”

  He rose to leave.

  “How is the lady?” Christiaan asked him.

  “Her injuries are no longer noticeable. Her spirit, I think, may take longer to heal.”

  “The culprits must be found and punished.”

  “Of course.”

  “And you, Heer Commandeur? You are quite recovered now?”

  “Yes, quite recovered, thank you, Christiaan.” This was not quite true. Even though the worst of the fever had broken, there were still days when he shivered and sweated by turns. In fact, he felt too ill to deal with this crisis. But he had to.

  He had to.

  ***

  As Christiaan walked out into the Council Room, David Krueger looked up from the desk and their eyes met. A conspirator's glance.

  “Is he going to do something?” Krueger whispered.

  Christiaan shook his head. He did not understand it. How could this bastard have delayed so long? Was he just a coward or was he far more subtle than he looked? Every day he delayed, the likelihood of mutiny receded.

  Had he guessed what they were trying to do?

  What else must he do to force his hand?

  Chapter 26

  CHRISTIAAN felt the eyes of the soldiers on them as they made their way across the orlop. They went to the storage for'ard, where Heer Commandeur kept the private chests the Honourable Company wasn't supposed to know about. Dark as a witch's arse in here. The provost found the hatchway in the decking and opened the padlock with his keys. He threw it open.

  There was the bosun, blinking in the light, his skin crusted with filth, weeping sores on his wrists and legs where the chains had opened the skin. The sailors called it Hell, no room to lie down or to sit up; you crouched down here in your own filth and vomit until it pleased the commandeur to let you go.

  “Now you can piss off,” the skipper said to the provost.

  “The commandeur...”

  “Just fuck off now, man.”

  Christiaan nodded to him, confirming the order. The provost hesitated then shrugged and backed off. “I won't be far away,” he said and went back to the orlop.

  The bosun was crying like a girl. He drew back at the smell of him. He had been in there five days already, wouldn't make it to Java, in his opinion.

  “Get me out of here. Please, skipper. Please.”

  The wound on his hand hadn't healed--it was still swollen and purple, like the bite of a dog. “You silly bastard, Jan. You let her leave her mark on you.”

  “Please...”

  “Stop your snivelling. Grow some balls, man.”

  “Heer Undermerchant, please, get me out of here or I'll tell them what you made me do.”

  The skipper gave him a look.

  “You too, skipper.”

  “I didn't know anything about it. God's death, don’t you drag my name into this.”

  “You got to help me, skipper!’

  “I'll do what I can,” he hissed at him. “You keep your mouth shut.”

  The skipper turned away. The provost was waiting for them, and he went back and shut the hatchway like he was slamming it down on a nest of demons. They heard the bosun start his weeping again. The skipper could not hide his disgust.

  “When I was an understeersman,” he murmured, “I saw one man kept in Hell for a month; by the time they brought the bastard out he was raving like an idiot and he could never stand straight again.”

  “Maybe better he dies in there, better for all of us. Some souls were meant for Hell, like the pastor says.”

  “No way for a man to behave, no matter what they do to you. Better if he does go crazy before we reach Batavia. Even this torture will seem like a paradise with willing virgins compared to what they'll have waiting for him in the fort.”

  “You think he’ll give our names to the commandeur?”

  “The fuck he will,” the skipper said.

  When they got back on deck Christiaan took deep breaths to clear his head, get the stink out of his nostrils. This wasn’t working out how he’d planned it. He would have to think of something else before he ended up down there himself.

  ***

  The sickness was on him again; the words in his journal seemed to melt down the page. Ambroise blinked, tried to focus. Hard even to think when he felt like this. The cloak of silence that had fallen over the ship had unnerved him, now he wanted only to see the fever coasts once more, know that good Dutchmen were at hand. There was a fortune in rix-dollars and German thalers in the hold, and his authority over the crew was fragile.

  They didn’t like him locking up their bosun. But he had to do something.

  There was a knock on the door. It was Christiaan, a shining light in this dark night.

  “You are unwell again, Heer Commandeur?”

  “It is nothing.”

  “You are very pale.”

  “Sit down, Christiaan.”

  He had once thought the undermerchant a man of fashion and learning with no real stomach for the job. He had misjudged him. His moral certainty had been a comfort these last terrible weeks. If Christiaan had fault, it was that he was too rash. If he had his way he would have had him throw half the crew in chains, and there would have been mutiny.

  The bosun was certainly guilty. No matter what the skipper said, the wound on his hand was made by a human bite. And besides, he had been on watch the night Cornelia was attacked. How was it possible that he saw nothing?

  And where was Sara, Cornelia's maid, when the assault had taken place? He had no doubt she was fornicating with the skipper in his cabin. The skipper himself was guilty of a dereliction of duty, at least. He would answer for it in Batavia, to Governor Coen.

  But to try and punish him, here on the boat, would be suicide. Others in the crew might be brought to reckless action. One of the understeersmen, Messeker, was related to him by marriage; the skipper was also great friends with Konick, the constable of the guns.

  And the mood of the ship had shifted while he had been sick; he needed the skipper’s good graces right now more than the skipper needed his.

  Any day now, they would sight the Southland coast and turn north for Java; two weeks’ sailing would bring them under the walls of the fort. On that happy day he would leave the skipper’s fate - and that of Sara de Ruyter - to the tender mercies of the judges in Batavia.

  He set aside his journal and replaced the pen in its stand. “I want you to speak to the skipper for me, Christiaan. Remind him again to set lookouts on the masthead ton
ight in accordance with the Governor General's directive on the Houtman Rocks.”

  “The skipper says we are still six hundred miles from the Southland.”

  “It will not hurt to remind him.”

  Christiaan leaned in, as if even the bulkheads might be listening. “I think we should have him put in chains with the bosun,” Christiaan said. “We cannot be seen to be doing nothing, Heer Secor. The poor woman. What she must have suffered!’

  “No one is more concerned for her plight than I, Christiaan.”

  “Then why do we hesitate?”

  “We have spoken about this before and you know my mind on it.”

  “We have God and the law on our side in this!’

  “Even God cannot help us as much as the Beschermer, but our escort may now be anywhere between here and India.”

  “Well, whatever you say, Heer Commandeur. But be assured, whatever course you decide on, you shall have my utmost support. This is a terrible, obscene crime that has been committed here.”

  “Indeed. But even if the skipper is guilty we need his expertise in these latitudes.”

  Ambroise put a hand to his forehead, it came away greasy with sweat. Yet he was shaking with cold, like he had just been pulled from a canal in the middle of winter.

  “Sinjeur Secor?”

  “I think I shall take to my bed, Heer Undermerchant. Remember what I said. Talk to the skipper, if you please.”

  “Shall I send for the barber?”

  “He will only concoct one of his foul herbal potions and try to bleed me again. Rest is the best medicine. I shall take to my bunk. I hope to feel better in the morning.”

  “Indeed. It is all our fondest wish.”

  After Christiaan left, Ambroise lay down, shivering with cold, and pulled the blankets over him. There was no Cornelia to tend him now. They had hardly spoken since the attack; she took her meals in her quarters, and hardly ever appeared on deck.

  He missed her more than he had words to say.

  I am a future Councillor of India, he thought, President of the Fleet, with a glorious future and a famous past. Other men envy me, yet here I lie, sick, afraid and in love with a woman I cannot have. God indeed has exquisite ways to torment every one of us. He does not need poverty or pain when there are the vagaries of men's hearts to do the job for Him.

  ***

  Michiel Van Texel ached to be off this painted pig sty. The commonplace of life seemed like a mogul's luxuries; to watch the sun rise in the morning and set at the end of the day; to breathe fresh air; to be able to walk twenty paces standing upright, without falling over ropes or a biscuit barrel.

  And fresh water! There was green scum floating in their barrels now and you had to hold your nose to drink it. The food was as bad, the salt meat rotten, there were weevils in the biscuits, and everyone had boils and the itch.

  Zany Bosman had scurvy, his breath stank like opening a fresh grave, he had lost most of his teeth and his gums were raw and bleeding. Michiel brought him some of his own water ration in a pannikin and held it to his lips, tried to get him to drink it. At this rate he wouldn't make it to the Indies.

  He heard the delicate notes of a pipe from somewhere on the gundeck above. A pretty song for Zany’s dirge. No point in crying over it, it was your lot in life, you were a soldier so you lived and died as best as a man can. How it all turned out in the end was out of your hands.

  The water spilled down Zany's chin. Poor bastard. They had fought together in Flanders, known each other five years now as comrades in arms. They had survived enough scrapes but now it was his time, by the looks of it.

  They would see the red coasts of the Great Southland any day, they said, and from there it was just two weeks to Batavia. Still, two weeks too far for Zany.

  Michiel went back to his hammock, tried to sleep, and dreamed of palm trees, exotic palaces, willing women, and Company wages to bring home again to Holland.

  Chapter 27

  THE scarlet lion of Holland dipped through the swells, the wake as bright as phosphorus. The skipper strode onto the deck in his cloak and high sea boots, leaned over the lee rail and spat into the sea. The scrolled stern gleamed in the moonlight; a yellow glow from the windows of the great cabin was reflected in the wake. Somewhere down there that little pimp Secor lay snug in his bunk, moaning like the weakling he was.

  The Great Southland lay over the horizon, and then the Indies --just two weeks' sailing. Landfall meant trouble for all of them; that bitch had it coming, but try telling that to the Governor General Coen. Poor Jan was for it. Stupid bastard, getting himself mixed up in the undermerchant's little games.

  What about me? What am I going to do?

  The provost struck the mainmast with his ceremonial mace, to mark the turn of the watch. “All's well!’

  All’s well for now; not for much longer.

  He put his telescope to his eye and searched the horizon. Was that surf out there? He called to the lookout hunched forward on the bowsprit. Pieter Robben, silhouetted against the night stars, shouted back that it was only moonlight on the water.

  Dangerous latitudes these, coming up to twenty-eight degrees, but his charts told him he was still six hundred miles west of the Great Southland, running north east before the wind. Nothing to worry about.

  The commandeur had sent a message through the undermerchant to post mast lookouts! Thought he was skipper now, pompous little bastard. Well, he would post the mast lookouts when he thought it was time...

  What was that?

  He thought he heard a sound, like distant thunder.

  He put the telescope back to his eye. It must be the wind in the shrouds.

  He felt a shiver along his spine. There it was, that sound again, thunder in a clear night sky, and here they were, sailing ahead under full sail.

  Oh, for the love of Jesus Christ.

  That's not moonlight, man.

  He saw it in time to make purchase on the poop rail and brace himself for the impact. He heard the grinding of timbers, imagined the rudder bolts tearing away as the great ship lurched out of the water with a shriek like a wounded animal. He heard a scream as one of the crew fell from the yards and bounced on the deck, his head pulped.

  A shudder passed through the length of the ship, as the prow rose from the water and then the Utrecht canted to port in a tower of spray.

  ***

  Ambroise was thrown from his bunk, wrenched from his sleep. He scrambled for a hold as he slid across the deck of his cabin then lay on his back, hard against the bulwark, stunned. He heard the keel grinding across the reef, then there was a sudden and deathly silence; the ship listed onto her side, and he thought they were about to capsize.

  The passengers were screaming on the gun decks. The Utrecht lurched as the first roller broke over her bows.

  He scrambled to his feet, felt blood leaking down his face where he had hit his head on his writing desk. He steadied himself on the bulwark and scrambled out of the cabin and up the companionway, still in his nightshirt.

  The Utrecht fought her way back from her list. Another swell crashed into the hull, sending a wall of spray over the decks. The shrouds flapped useless from the yards. There was a terrible shriek as yet another roller dragged the Utrecht’s keel across the reef.

  He found the skipper standing under the great lamp, hunched into his cloak, his knuckles white around the rail. He was screaming orders, while sailors poured from the hatches to aid the night watch, scrambling like monkeys up the ratlines.

  “What have you done?”

  “It's just a sandbank.” How could he be so calm? As if this catastrophe was some trifling inconvenience for which he bore no responsibility.

  “A sandbank?”

  The boom of surf around them in the darkness mingled with screams; now the passengers were pouring onto the decks, and the sailors were cursing them, shoving them out of their way.

  “How can it be a sandbank? By your reckoning we are six hundred miles from the So
uthland!’

  “Some unknown reef. We are on the tail of it.” He pushed Ambroise aside and bellowed orders aloft, then turned on the nearest sailor to hand. “Only the crew on deck! Get that rabble back below!’

  Ambroise grabbed him by shoulder and spun him around. “I warned you about this! Did you not keep a proper lookout, as I advised?” The ship lurched, broad-sided by another roller. Ambroise staggered sideways. “What counsel now?”

  “I'll get us off. It's not the first time I've been on a ship that's touched ground.”

  “If you had followed my instruction this would not have happened at all!’

  The skipper turned away. Well he could not stand here in his nightshirt arguing. He hurried back below. He hoped the skipper was right, and that this was, as he said, just a sandbank.

  God help them all if he was wrong.

  ***

  It was the first time she had been on deck for days.

  Ever since...it...had happened she had locked herself away in her cabin, too ashamed to see anyone. She was dressed now in her best gown; if she was to die, she would die with her dignity, at the last.

  It was difficult to stand upright; the ship had listed to windward. Down on the main deck the press of people were suffocating those standing against the starboard rail. It was clear to her that they were beached. Spray drifted in the glow of the stern lamps, and the ship groaned with the impact of each comber.

  Two sailors unlashed the painter but a gust of wind picked up the smaller boat and hurled it across the deck as if it were a mere scrap. A man screamed and toppled into the water. The skipper screamed orders from the poop as the sailors scrambled to secure the boat. But it was gone.

  They lowered the yawl next, and the skipper and several sailors clambered in. The pastor tried to get in after them. One of them knocked him roughly aside.