Hell's Fire

by Brian Freemantle

  ‘What about Hood?’ demanded Edward.

  Bunyan considered the question.

  ‘An authoritarian, from all I’ve learned. Strict believer in discipline. But a fair man.’

  ‘He’ll allow some latitude in the questioning, then?’

  ‘I trust so,’ said Bunyan, fervently. ‘I got that impression from his opening today.’

  ‘Handle it gently,’ counselled Edward. ‘These court martial panels are laymen, who resent trained lawyers. At the first hint of being patronised, they’ll be against you.’

  ‘I know,’ said Bunyan. ‘I’ll be very careful.’

  I hope so, thought Edward. Bunyan was his only contact with the court and if the man antagonised Hood and the other officers, then the chance to intrude into the hearing would be lost.

  ‘I’ve had a long conversation with the man Morrison, as well as my own client,’ offered Bunyan. ‘Morrison is a clever man, defending himself. Neither he nor Heywood believe your brother has perished.’

  Edward started up at the statement.

  ‘Where then? Where the hell is he?’

  Bunyan gestured, helplessly.

  ‘They’ve no clue. The Pandora spent another three months going from island to island after the Tahiti capture … and found nothing. But they did discover charred spars, bearing the Bounty’s name, indicating a fire at sea.’

  Edward waved the variance away, impatiently, wanting to believe Fletcher was still alive.

  ‘If only he could be found,’ said Edward, distantly. ‘If only Fletcher could be produced, to refute before a court of law all that has been said against him.’

  ‘He’d do so as a defendant,’ reminded Bunyan.

  ‘I know he would,’ agreed Edward. ‘But I’d be defending him. And by God, sir, I’d get to the truth of this affair.’

  The older man was unsure of his ability to cross-examine the witnesses, realised Bunyan, unhappily.

  ‘I’ll do my best,’ said Bunyan, allowing the edge of annoyance into his voice.

  ‘I know you will, sir … know you will,’ assured Edward, effusively. ‘I was just dreaming. If only Fletcher knew what was being done for him …’

  They didn’t want him any more, accepted Fletcher Christian. Or need him, even. Perhaps they never had. He’d served a function, like a paper flag behind which people could walk on a parade. Now the event was over, so the flag could be put aside, an occasional reminder but not something to be concerned about.

  Certainly not followed.

  Only to Isabella was he important, he thought, smiling across the clearing in front of their house. She became aware of his attention and smiled back, contentedly. Their older son was clutching her arm, watching her breast-feed the child born only weeks earlier. Christian wondered if the woman knew how necessary she was to him. Without Isabella, he thought, he would have nothing.

  He cosseted her too much, he accepted. She was a Tahitian, after all, a woman used to every sort of freedom. So his attitude would be unnatural. And he knew the other women gossiped that he stayed too much around the house and laughed that on an island the size of Pitcairn he always wanted to know where she was going and how long she would be away from the house.

  And it was stupid, he knew.

  But he couldn’t help it. Didn’t want to, even. Isabella and the other women thought of it as jealousy, he decided. So let them. Perhaps the mutineers did, too. His behaviour would be as odd to them as it was to the natives. He didn’t give a damn what they thought, any of them. And it wasn’t jealousy, not the normal sort, anyway. It was fear, he knew, a numbing, suddenly-awake-in-the-night sort of fear from which there was no release. He had nothing else but Isabella: nothing at all. He should have felt more for the children, of course, but the emotion wasn’t there. He loved them, he supposed, in the accepted way. He worried when the older boy got too near the rocks and had been anxious when the baby had developed a cough, so soon after being born. But that was concern more than love. And that’s what he had for Isabella. Love. He supposed he’d loved her before they had sailed from Tahiti, all those years ago, on the homeward voyage to England, although he hadn’t realised it then because it was an emotion he did not know how to recognise. Bligh had known it, he guessed. He’d called her a whore, Christian remembered, the very day they had sailed. He strained for the recollection.

  ‘… sad farewell to your whore, like all the others …’ Something like that. Yes, Bligh had known.

  But it had taken Christian several years to realise what it was he felt about her. And become frightened at that acceptance.

  ‘I love you,’ he said. How many times did he say that during the course of a single day? Too many, he thought. The words had become flattened by over-use.

  Her reaction to the expression of affection always amused him. She nodded her head vigorously, as if agreeing it was right he should do so, then made the usual response.

  ‘Me too.’

  ‘You should say you love me,’ he chided, gently. Her command of English was very good, far better than his Tahitian, but sometimes the words refused to form in the proper queue.

  ‘I love you,’ she said, accepting the correction and gazing down, shyly. It was odd, thought Christian, how a woman who knew no inhibition in physical love could still be embarrassed at the words.

  ‘I love Thursday,’ she added, kissing the older boy. ‘And Charles, too. Is that right?’

  ‘Yes,’ he assured her. ‘That’s right; that’s very right.’

  Was that a rebuke? he wondered, an indication that she knew he did not feel about the boys as he should? No, he dismissed, immediately.

  The older boy would be four years old soon, realised the mutineer. It had seemed fitting at the time to name him after the day and the month in which he had been born, Thursday October Christian. Now it seemed wrong. But then most of the things he had done seemed wrong, thinking about them in the lonely exile of Pitcairn.

  Nothing had been right, he reflected, after that April morning so long ago. Nothing at all. Christian was surprised the recrimination was still so bitter. Immediately he found the answer. With no future, it was natural to live constantly in the past.

  ‘… not a day without torment …’

  Bligh’s words were as clear now as they had been when the man had stood in the stern of the launch, mouthing his threats while the rabble who had followed the uprising had jeered and milled about him on the poop.

  And the man had been right, accepted Christian. The anguish had been with him at the moment of mutiny and had hardly left him since. Had it not been for Isabella, Christian would have long ago carried out the idea that had come to him as he had walked to the mizzen and cut away the sounding lead. The cliffs upon which the women they had brought with them from Tahiti scrambled and clawed for birds’ eggs were very high and the sea-washed rocks below savagely sharp. It would all be over very quickly. Just a little pain, that’s all. And now physical pain seemed so unimportant, compared to the constant mental ache.

  He’d known from the start how difficult it would be to get the men to accept his leadership, he remembered. Quintal, now the constant challenger, had shown his attitude within minutes of the mutiny, even before Bligh had been seized. So their rejection of his command should not have irritated as much as it did. But it wasn’t really their refusal to obey, he admitted. Their lack of respect hurt far more. There were hardly any of them who didn’t regret the situation in which the mutiny had placed them. And they blamed him for leading them into it, behaving always as if he had secured their support by trickery. Which was unfair, he decided. Bloody unfair. Only one man was to blame for what had happened that day aboard the Bounty.

  William Bligh.

  Had he survived? wondered Christian. Unlikely, he decided, realistically. The mutineer knew too well how hostile the natives could be, even confronted with the visible evidence of a heavily armed ship like the Bounty. And less than twenty-four hours after the launch had been set adrift, those tor
rential thunderstorms had lashed the whole area, so what chance had a small boat, with only seven inches of freeboard, stood in conditions like that?

  No, he thought, Bligh was dead. Thank God. Yes, he decided, expanding the thought. Thank God. It was right that he should be dead. What if he hadn’t perished? What if he had reached safety somewhere, as he had feared the man might in those early, fear-driven days? If Bligh had survived, he would have carried out his threat, Christian knew. There wouldn’t be a civilised part of the world where a warrant did not exist for his immediate arrest. He closed his eyes, visualising how the launch had wallowed in water soon to be driven into waves over thirty feet high. No, he reassured himself. Bligh would be dead. Had to be.

  And I might well be, reflected Christian, settling back to his reminiscence. His was a living death, made bearable only by Isabella.

  It had been a good idea, he convinced himself, to have the men make uniforms from the spare sails immediately after the uprising. Natives were impressed by the manner of a man’s dress: Bligh had taught him that. For their six months in Tahiti, the captain had sweated daily in his coat, vest and sword, knowing they automatically earned the respect of every islander he encountered. The arrival upon an unknown island of a ship in which the men all dressed the same would increase tenfold the natives’ acceptance, he had argued. And so they had obeyed him, he remembered. Only just. But they’d accepted the order, not so much because he had given it but because that residue of discipline from Bligh’s command was still there and because they had been too frightened then to oppose him, realising completely in those initial hours what they had done.

  They’d complained. But without any real strength. Quintal had led the dissent, of course, with his bumptious arrogance.

  ‘Worse than Bligh,’ Christian had overheard him say, three days after the uprising, as the men had sat cross-legged on deck, stitching at the seams.

  ‘Good teacher,’ Mickoy had replied. And they’d both laughed, enjoying their joke. But even that had been gained from the reassurance of the past. They were as scared as everybody else, Christian had known, despite the bravado and the cursing. The rum-drinking had made that obvious. Christian had made no effort to stop it, knowing he could not succeed by open challenge. The men would have rejected him immediately, taking from him the thin platform of authority upon which he still stood. So every night they had washed away their apprehension until they were unconscious, the Bounty nosing almost unmanned through the Pacific swell.

  Had he realised their feelings, like a true leader would have done, then perhaps they would have accepted him in the role he had then sought. But he had been too engrossed in his own remorse to consider theirs.

  So all he had done was inflate to ridiculous proportions the need for uniforms, carping as Bligh had done in the past, knowing the Quintal comparison was inevitable, but careless of it.

  Whether or not the uniforms were made had become an issue of major importance in his mind. If the outfits were completed, he had convinced himself, then everything was going to be all right: they would acknowledge his leadership, not put every order to the committee of dissidents that appeared to be forming. Without consultation, conscious of his role as their nominal leader, he had chosen Tubai as a refuge. Tahiti was obviously the first place any searchers would look if Bligh survived – he had left the Bounty sneering at their eagerness to get back to it. Tubai was only three hundred miles away, so conditions should have been almost identical, he had decided.

  But they weren’t.

  No women had come giggling to meet them, offering themselves. No men had paddled out in canoes, anxious to trade.

  Instead, there had been almost constant hostility, with the mutineers having to fight for every yard of land they wanted. Christian had decided upon a fort-like compound, with the ship’s guns mounted at the four corners to repel any searchers. His efforts to create it had become ridiculous. As quickly as the sailors dug trenches and created earth and wattle walls, the Tubains tore them down. Every food and water expedition had become the target for guerilla attacks. The night after Christian had ordered the ship’s guns fired, as a show of force, the natives had crept undetected into their compound, stolen muskets and lashed them together in the shape of a funeral pyre to mock them when they awoke.

  Christian had tried to minimise the defeat.

  ‘Tahiti, lads,’ he had urged, as they had manhandled the guns back aboard. ‘Think on it – the women we know! The friends we have there, who’ll feed and shelter us without expecting anything in return!’

  Predictably it had been Quintal who had focused their disgust. Christian had never been able positively to prove it, of course, because they would have laughed at him had he enquired. But he was sure it had been Quintal’s idea to bundle together the uniforms upon which he had been so insistent and commit them overboard, in imitation burial.

  Had that been the end of his control? he wondered. Perhaps not entirely. They still took sea orders from him, but even that gesture was without meaning. They obeyed because he was the only man left who could read all the charts and use every instrument. It was more a case of his working for them than they for him. He’d been let down by his friends, Christian decided. George Stewart, the damned man who’d first brought out the idea of an uprising, had lost stomach for it by the time they had reached Tahiti. Accepting without apparent concern the risk of arrest from any search boats that would come had Bligh survived, it had been Stewart who had led the break-up of the mutineers. Christian had intended to leave behind those who had been unwilling participants, like the midshipman Heywood and the carpenters Charles Norman and Thomas McIntosh and the blind violinist, Michael Byrn. But he hadn’t expected so many others to risk a rope’s end against the uncertainty of following him in the Bounty. Twenty-four men had remained on the ship when Bligh had been set adrift. And when he had sailed the second time from Tahiti, in the middle of that September night in 1789 to trap aboard some of the sleeping women who might have been unwilling to accompany them into exile, the number had dwindled to eight.

  Nearly all of those who had stayed behind had been the most willing mutineers, he remembered. Ellison, who’d wanted to run Bligh through; Birkitt, whom he had feared might band together with Churchill and Quintal and overthrow him during the actual mutiny; Churchill himself, the man who’d done more shouting than anybody; Thompson, who’d guarded the arms chest and by so doing guaranteed the success of the uprising.

  Christian sighed, enjoying the sun upon his face. How quickly they’d lost faith in him, he reflected. Just over four months and men he’d regarded as his most ardent supporters had decided the possibility of death was preferable to his leadership.

  Would they still be in Tahiti, he wondered, undetected and surrounded by every sexual indulgence and luxury? How good their life would be if that were so, instead of being trapped like he was among a community of little more than twenty people, with hardly any of them prepared to engage in the most trivial conversation.

  The remark of Quintal’s had been accurate, he thought. He had become just like Bligh, despised and ostracised by everyone around him.

  He would have sailed back to Tahiti if he had had a ship, Christian knew. And been glad, almost, if a British man-o’-war had been waiting in Matavai harbour to arrest him.

  But he didn’t have the Bounty. It had disappeared in flames, before they had even had a chance properly to strip it and certainly before any destruction had been decided, either by him or by discussion with the other hard-core mutineers. It had been Edward Young, he remembered, stiff-legged from the rum he had consumed, goaded by Quintal, both of them groping drunkenly from the hold with torches in their hands, giggling at what they’d done. Young had almost died in the blaze, recalled Christian. Pity he hadn’t. It had been Young, following so closely upon Stewart, who had fomented the idea of a mutiny. Twice, thought Christian, he had been trapped by the man.

  And now the mutineers appeared more willing to take notice
of Young than they did of him.

  Perhaps, thought Christian, he should suggest they build another escape craft, like the one they had constructed when the women had become so discontented with life on Pitcairn. It had only been done to placate them, with no care to trim or design and the vessel had capsized immediately they had launched it. convincing the women that return to Tahiti was impossible. But they could get back, Christian knew. Providing enough attention was paid this time to the balance of the vessel. And that they planned their departure for the best weather, to avoid the squalls and storms.

  Being on Pitcairn was like being locked in a cupboard, Christian thought. On Tahiti he would be able to breathe again, as if the door had suddenly been thrown open.

  And to return would have a practical advantage as well. There was a dangerously uneven balance of men and women on Pitcairn. Jealousy was building up, he knew. When it burst out, it would bring bloodshed.

  There was no question, thought Christian, that he would kill rather than share Isabella with anyone. He might have stood back from the commitment to murder in the past, but about her he had no doubts; to keep Isabella entirely to himself there was nothing he would not do.

  ‘Why do you look so angry?’

  He smiled across at her question. Thursday had become bored, he saw, and was striding off fat-bottomed to join the other children.

  How lovely she was, he decided, studying the woman, admiring the gleaming, polished hair that made a curtain down her back, her open face always poised for laughter, even here on Pitcairn.

  It would have been wonderful to drive with her in the carriage to Brigham Church on a Sunday and then go back, for family dinner, to the farmhouse at Moorland Close, aware of the admiration that would come from his brothers for having captured such a beauty.

  ‘I was thinking how much I loved you,’ he said. It would be good to have other words, he thought, rather than those she must be bored at hearing.

  ‘I laugh when I love. I am not angry,’ she said, frowning.