He stood at the edge of the great scar, staring down on the brief hiatus in the savage fight below. Then he turned and vanished from their sight.
'Thank God ...' breathed Fraser with a heartfelt blasphemy.
Mount caught a sight of Drinkwater while he fought to keep his footing. As the explosion had rolled rock, cannon shot and earth down on them Mount had roared his anger, meeting a parang thrust and riposting before turning on a second assailant. The indiscriminate avalanche bore down on them, though the wild trajectory of the heavier debris flew over their heads. Mount was already aware of losing many of his men. Muskets the enemy might possess, but they did not disdain the deadly sumpitan. The struggle uphill had cost them dear, for forty of the hundred and twenty men committed to it were lying behind them killed or wounded.
But the sliding earth had caused more havoc to the defenders, unnerving them, shaking their already fragile discipline and raining debris on their backs, filling their entrenchments. The hardened Patricians recovered first. Waving his sword Mount thrust forward, shouting a manic encouragement to his men.
On the flank Frey was also rallying the attack. He had not seen the captain, and the strength of the fortification and the determination of the enemy had surprised him. His sense of having betrayed Drinkwater lay heavily upon him and he fought with a sullen, dogged and careless energy.
'Look out, sir!' He heard Corporal Grice's warning and turned, his cutlass half-raised to parry, but Grice had spotted a new movement by the enemy. To their right, along the lower slope from the direction of the village, red jackets bright and the light gleaming on their parangs and blow-pipes, advanced a column of Dyaks.
'Right face, Corporal!'
But Fraser had seen them from the launch.
'Mr Dutfield ...' Fraser pointed at the ragged column threatening Frey's flank. Dutfield nodded his comprehension and busied himself round the carronade.
'Hold water starboard, one stroke larboard.' Fraser swung the launch. 'Hold water all ... a short pull larboard bow.' The bow oarsman dabbed at the water and Dutfield, sighting along the stubby barrel, held up his hand, then stood back and jerked his lanyard. The carronade roared and a swathe of langridge cut into the Dyaks, sending them reeling. The counterattack broke and fled.
Looking again at the hill, Fraser was aware that the resistance was crumbling. His men were everywhere triumphant, putting to death the last fragmented pockets of opposition.
'By heaven,' he said, his voice almost reverential, 'I believe we've done it!'
CHAPTER 21
A Private Revenge
February 1809
Drinkwater left the struggle for the hill in the balance. Whatever the outcome he had unfinished business to attend to and he wanted it over with, even if afterwards he had to tumble ignominiously into a retreating boat.
Half sliding, half scrambling, he descended to the area before the istana. The high framework of the tripod dominated the place and the smell of ashes mixed here with the tang of powder smoke. Despite the raucous noise of battle, it was deserted, the Dyaks involved in their attack on Frey's men. Pausing only to check his weapons, Drinkwater ran up the steps into the wooden istana.
It was dark inside and it took his eyes a moment to adjust. The entrance chamber was floored with intricately woven matting, and hung with bright-coloured cloth. Beyond, a partition with a door led to the inner balai, or audience hall. A pale shape lay in the centre of the matting and Drinkwater knelt beside it.
'Tregembo ... Tregembo, forgive me ... I was too late ...'
There was the faintest respiration in the thing, for it was no longer a body, but a shapeless mass, blotched with pale areas from which the broken blood vessels had emptied themselves, and dark with suggilations where, like some foul and swollen bladder, it spread upon the flooring. Uncontrolled, the bowels wept.
Shaking with disgust and rage, Drinkwater pressed the barrel of his pistol against Tregembo's skull and pulled the trigger. The swollen body subsided as a red and white mass fanned out across the matting.
'Goodbye, old friend ...'
'What a touching sight ...'
His eyes blurred with tears, Drinkwater looked up. Morris stood before him, a pair of heavy pistols in his hands.
'The faithful retainer ...'
'Hold your tongue, you bastard.' Drinkwater made to rise.
'Stay where you are!' Morris commanded sharply. 'Your kneeling posture is, how shall we say, most appropriate, eh?'
'You do not approve of the pursuit of pleasure, my dear Nathaniel, do you? You cannot understand it, can you? You and your ridiculous preference for duty!' Morris spat the word contemptuously. 'You are a fool, a willing tool of your masters, an instrument of policy, hiding yourself under your epaulettes and trumpery nonsense, knowing nothing!'
'Damn you ...'
'Oh, damnation, my dear Nathaniel, is a condition figuring largely in your calendar. There is nothing after death and in life we are free to pursue pleasure. It is a more acceptable way of employing power than your own and I imagine I have caused less deaths than you ...'
'You ...'
'Disarm yourself ...' Morris jerked his head and the turbanned catamite emerged from the inner chamber. 'Don't lecture me on the perversity of my philosophy, Nathaniel, surrender your weapons to Budrudeen.' Morris moved the pistols, emphasising Drinkwater's weakness.
Drinkwater threw his own on the matting, pulled the second from his waist and dropped that, the boy skipping as the heavy pistol skidded towards his bare toes. Budrudeen bent to recover them and Drinkwater jerked the sword free from his scabbard and offered the hilt to him.
Budrudeen took it. The red stub of his tongue clacked in his wet mouth. Drinkwater felt the comforting hardness of
Dutfield's dirk nestling in the small of his back. Budrudeen retreated with his trophies.
'No, don't lecture me ... I have waited a long time for this moment. Ever since you took a dislike to me ...'
'Damn you, Morris, you wanted buggery ...'
'Among other things, yes. Do you know a Sikh fortune-teller in Calcutta told me I was blessed among men, that I should have everything I desired and when he asked what was it I desired most, he put his hands upon my head then wrote your name on a paper.' Morris smiled. 'Most remarkable, eh?' He chuckled. The noise of gongs had ceased and screams and shouts came from somewhere below them.
'I had planned to take the specie, of course. That had long been in my mind, but seeing you in that foolish demonstration at Canton ...'
The noise of retreat was now obvious. Morris's composure began to waver.
'Stand up!'
Drinkwater obeyed.
'Precede me into the inner chamber ...'
Drinkwater met Morris's eyes and as the other made way he stepped forward, gauging the distance ...
'No tricks.'
Throwing his full weight behind his left shoulder, Drinkwater charged.
'Dog's turd!'
Morris fired. A searing heat burnt across Drinkwater's left forearm, the ball grazed his thigh and struck harmlessly into the wooden floor. The other shot went wide as Morris fell back, stumbling on his robe, his mind still under the residual effect of opium, his reactions slowed. He crashed into the partition and made to jab one pistol into his assailant's ribs. Drinkwater's fist had already closed round the hilt of Dutfield's dirk. He slashed Morris's wrist.
In a reflex of pain, Morris dropped both weapons. Drinkwater drove the foot-long blade hard into Morris's gut.
'Bastard!' he roared, wrenching the blade upwards so that his wounded muscles cracked.
Morris crashed to his knees as Drinkwater withdrew the blade. He was red to the wrist. Morris looked down, his hands going to his belly. Something blue and shiny slipped through his fumbling fingers.
'Drinkwater ...' Morris looked up, his voice reaching a crescendo of agony, his mouth twisting, his veiled eyes now wide with disbelief.
Drinkwater stood back horrified. Morris fell forward,
caught his weight on his right hand. His eviscerated entrails slithered on to the matting. A faintly offensive smell rose from them on waves of vapour. Morris raised his slashed wrist in a terrible gesture of supplication.
'Nathaniel ... !'
Drinkwater felt a terrible pity rising like vomit in his throat.
'Nathaniel …'
'Christ damn you!' Drinkwater screamed, slashing the dirk across Morris's face. His frenzy ebbing, Drinkwater stepped backwards, gasping. Morris remained supported by one hand. His lower jaw and cheek showed white through the fallen flesh, but his eyes remained on Drinkwater. Then suddenly a dark hole appeared in his forehead. It was a small hole, Drinkwater noted, though the impact of it threw Morris rearing backwards. Drinkwater had not heard the pistol and it was only gradually that he turned his head and saw the smoking muzzle in the hands of the boy Budrudeen.
With the assistance of the boy, Drinkwater found a lamp and spilled its oil, setting it on fire with powder and a spark. It caught quickly, flames racing across the dry matting of the istana. Still dazed, Drinkwater backed out into the sunshine. Within the istana the flames were already licking up the columns, curling the cloth hangings. He caught a last glimpse of Morris stretched under his robe of yellow silk in a pool of gore. He lay beside Tregembo's poor bruised and bloated corpse. Then thick coils of smoke and the racing flames hid them from his view. The boy was tugging at him, clacking urgently and indicating that they should run. Something in his face set Drinkwater in motion, releasing him from his archarnement.
He began to run, to run and run, leaving the foul place far behind him in a blind panic. The hot blast of the explosion thrust him in the back. He fell skidding forward, aware of earth and filth in his mouth and the tumbling form of the boy whirling through the air, some trick of the blast tossing him high. A force seemed to squeeze behind Drinkwater's eyeballs; all he could see was a lake of blood.
And then it was raining!
The silvery droplets fell about him. He looked round for Elizabeth and the children. They would get wet, for the rain was heavy, beating down, striking his bare flesh.
'Sir? Sir? Can you hear me, sir? Are you all right, sir?'
'Elizabeth ... ?'
'It's Frey, sir ... Frey ... It's all over, sir ...'
And he opened his eyes to see silver coins falling from the sky.
CHAPTER 22
Penang
March 1809
It was ironic that he should have been saved by the boy Budrudeen. In that final confrontation with Morris the boy might have saved his master instead, but mutilation and degradation had, in the end, turned him against his persecutor. The shot was probably the only act Budrudeen had performed uncoerced in his short life. It was, too, a refutation of Morris's appalling creed.
The boy had not survived long, expiring soon after they brought his abused body back to Patrician in the flotilla of boats pulled by exhausted oarsmen. The losses they had sustained had been fearful and they had burnt the kampong as an act of corporate vengeance while the Dyaks melted into the jungle. And yet they returned with an air of triumph, for they had discovered a hoard of silver, much of it picked up on the hillside by men induced to be honest on the promise of legitimate reward, though there were undoubtedly private sums hidden about Patrician. Over forty thousand pounds worth, by the best calculations, the proceeds of years of depradations against the merchant trade in the South China Sea. Some of this booty had been held near the powder magazine below the istana and so had been blown spectacularly into the air.
But even this justification, satisfactory though it seemed to the profit-mesmerised survivors, failed to gratify Drinkwater. He was seized by the most profound doubts about his conduct, plunged into the blackest of depressions as Patrician, under the easy sail manageable by her depleted company, rounded Tumasek Island and headed north-west into the Strait of Malacca.
'All men murder their own innocence, sir,' said Derrick as he sat, pen poised, awaiting the captain's dictation. Drinkwater looked at the Quaker; it was the first time Derrick had called him 'sir'.
'Why do you say that?' he asked guiltily, as though caught in a culpable act.
'It is part of the human condition.'
'That is damned cold comfort.'
'The truth is rarely comfortable, especially when it touches ourselves.'
Drinkwater opened his mouth to damn the canting and sanctimonious prattler, but acknowledged the other as an equal. 'Does your creed prohibit you rendering assistance?'
'My creed tells me to be guided by the inner spirit ...'
'I had no time for such deep considerations,' said Drinkwater with a hint of returning spirit. 'A course of events initiated and guided by an amoral hand will find little to inhibit it. The most outrageous evil can be perpetrated with bewildering ease, especially if directed by a cool mind ...' And Morris had possessed that, he thought morosely. He stared fixedly at Derrick who lowered his eyes to the paper.
'It has not been my lot, sir, to come face to face with such things.'
The ghost of a smile crept across Drinkwater's mouth. 'No; you have been fortunate,' he hesitated, 'or wise ...'
Had he had innocence left to murder? Yet something had died in him as he slashed Morris in his frenzy, and the realisation robbed him of all sense of having avenged Tregembo.
'Perhaps that is why the Almighty reserved the right to vengeance,' said Derrick with disarming prescience.
'Damn it, don't preach at me,' snapped Drinkwater, 'bend your attention to my report,' and he began to dictate.
'Penang, sir.'
Quilhampton was smiling as Drinkwater came on deck and they exchanged salutes. The high-peaked island was still distant, still remote and blue. Beyond it and stretching away on the starboard beam lay the line of the Malay coast.
'We shall be at anchor by noon, sir.'
'Yes.'
'How is the wound, sir?'
'The wound is nothing, James. Lallo's curettage removed the morbid tissue and there is no inflamation. I assure you I am quite well. It is not yet time for you to step into my shoes.'
'Sir, I never ...'
'No, of course you didn't. You are certainly more cheerful than you have been, no, hear me out. It was a bloody business, James, not an affair of much honour. To be candid I did not expect to survive it and, damn me,' considered you owed me obligation enough to attend to Elizabeth and the children ...'
'Sir, of course ...'
'Well, sir, enough said about the matter then. I apprehend,' went on Drinkwater, diverting the conversation with an obvious hand, 'you will be disappointed again today.'
'Why so, sir?'
'Your high spirits are evidence of expectations, ain't they?'
'Er, well, I, er ...'
'You will receive no word from Mistress MacEwan, James, because, despite the foolish inventions of your imaginations, no one in England knows where we are, beyond the fact that we were last ordered to the Pacific'
'But we are homeward bound, sir, are we not?'
Drinkwater turned, lifted his glass and scrutinised the island as it loomed over the horizon.
'God and Admiral Sir Ed'd Pellew permitting.'
'Captain Drinkwater, pray take a seat ... a glass, sir?'
Your servant, Sir Ed'd.'
'I collect we've met before, sir?'
'In ninety-four, sir, a night action on the French coast with the flying squadron. I was in Kestrel ...'
'Ah, yes, the cutter ... a gallant scrap, eh?'
'Indeed, sir.'
'May I present Captain Frederick Torrington of the Polyphemus, the latest teak frigate from the Parsee yard at Bombay.'
Drinkwater recalled the elegant, over-painted thirty-six-gun cruiser his boat had passed pulling to the flagship.
'Sir. A fine-looking ship, a credit to the Service ...'
Drinkwater nodded to the thin-lipped boy who wore the single epaulette of a junior post-captain, then turned again to the pock-marked, balding admiral
whose tall frame still seemed to possess the energy of a young man.
'Sir, my report ...' he handed over the papers. 'May I enquire, Sir Ed'd, if those two ships in the roads are from Canton or Calcutta?'
'You refer to the Indiaman and the Country-wallah?' drawled Torrington.
'I do, yes ...' Drinkwater was aware of an amused glance passing between Pellew and Torrington.
'Why do you ask, Captain Drinkwater?'
'The Indiaman seemed familiar, sir ...'
'She should do, sir, she was part of your convoy.' It was Torrington who spoke, the tone of his voice impertinent, even insolent.
'Is she Guilford?'
'Yes ... I took her ...'
'Torrington had the good fortune, Captain Drinkwater, to be sent on a cruise by myself ...'
'Hoisted Dutch colours and lay to in the Gaspar Strait. Took those two fellows two days later ... damndest piece of luck. Taken by pirates don't you know; got 'em back without a shot being fired.'
'Damndest luck, sir. I congratulate you. Captain Callan is in health?'
'Positively so, sir, absolument ...'
'Leadenhall Street will be most gratified, Captain Torrington. I had despaired of ever finding them again.'
'Nil desperandum, Captain Drinkwater.'
'It is difficult to avoid it sometimes, sir,' said Drinkwater ruefully, 'but doubtless the experience will affect you one day ...'
Pellew coughed, a trifle pointedly. 'I expect Captain Torrington will be rewarded by the Court of Directors with a present of plate,' he said.
'I do most assuredly hope so, Sir Ed'd,' Drinkwater stood.
'Sit down, sit down. Captain Torrington was just leaving ...'
There was a twinkle in Pellew's eyes as the door closed behind Torrington. 'Forgive him, Drinkwater, he's a bear cub.'
'That is the trouble, sir.' Drinkwater stopped, thinking he had gone too far with such a shameless nepotist as Pellew, for all his reputation as the finest seaman of his age.
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