The White Rajah (1961)

by Monsarrat, Nicholas

Amin the Younger nodded. ‘I agree – they mean to make an attack there also.’ He spoke in Malay, of which Richard knew enough to follow what he said. ‘Probably they plan to storm the palace from the south.’

  ‘It is possible,’ agreed his grandfather. He also was eyeing the map – the map with many question marks and the inherent dangers. Then he turned to Richard. ‘What did you think when you looked at the Mystic?’

  ‘She is ready to move,’ answered Richard. ‘They must have three or four hundred men on board. And their own fleet of prahus. They might be planning it for tonight.’

  ‘So?’

  ‘We must plan it for tonight also.’

  They were all watching him, and the attention was flattering; but Richard found that he could not yet draw much satisfaction from this. He was only important to these plans because he had weapons of a special sort – firearms, and a big ship. It was for this reason that his price was high, and he must earn it before he could sit back and play the hero.

  He looked from Amin Sang, young and proudly eager, to Colonel Kedah, in whose single eye lurked a gleam of fierceness. He was not cool towards such allies.

  ‘This is my plan,’ he told them, ‘and there is an important part in it for all three of us. In fact, we cannot succeed unless we each carry out exactly what we have to do.’ He spoke slowly, knowing that Amin Sang, though he had mastered only a few words in English, could understand it if it were simply pronounced. ‘My ship will set sail at dusk; she will be across the bay by midnight, and midnight is the time we all strike. With me will be the fleet of prahus, carrying soldiers, as many as they can hold; they will be commanded by Amin Sang. When we are near the other side, the prahus will leave me, and turn eastwards, and land their soldiers somewhere between Shrang Anapuri and the causeway.’ He touched his forefinger to the map. ‘There is a shallow bay there. I have seen it through the telescope. It will serve well enough.’

  Richard paused, then turned again to Colonel Kedah. ‘Now the three tasks come together, and the timing is important. At midnight, your men will break out from the causeway, and push the enemy back along the road to Shrang Anapuri. They are numerous, as we have seen, but they can be no match for the Royal Regiment in force … Your men’ – his eyes went round to Amin Sang – ‘will wait for this retreating enemy, and fall upon them as they retreat. They are likely to be confused, and thus faint-hearted. You will then turn towards the sea, and kill off the survivors from the Mystic as they swim ashore.’

  ‘Survivors?’ Amin Bulong echoed the surprising word. ‘How will this be?’

  ‘The Mystic is mine,’ said Richard, with great confidence. ‘Just as Colonel Kedah will surprise the men coming up to attack the causeway – who will think they have only a small garrison to deal with – so I aim to surprise Black Harris, whether or not he knows I am in these waters.’

  ‘You have some new plan?’ asked Colonel Kedah.

  ‘It is an old plan. Nearly three hundred years old, to my knowledge. I have always wanted to see if it is as good as the historians tell us.’

  Amin Bulong was watching him, amused and thoughtful at the same time. ‘Three hundred years ago,’ he said, ‘would take us back to the Spanish wars against your own country. Perhaps to Sir Francis Drake himself.’

  Richard smiled back at him. ‘Was Andrew Farthing a historian, as well as all the rest?’

  ‘He liked to tell us stories of the brave men of his country, though a man of peace himself.’

  Colonel Kedah, who could not have followed this exchange, turned his single eye upon Richard. ‘I understand all parts of the plan except your own,’ he said, rather coldly. ‘You say that our prahus will be leaving you, to land Amin Sang’s men on the coast. Do you not need help, then? Will you attack this Mystic ship alone?’

  ‘I shall need three prahus,’ answered Richard. ‘Old ones. This will be their last voyage.’

  ‘You must explain,’ said Amin Sang, though he had caught the note of determination in Richard’s voice, and his young face was alight.

  ‘Three prahus,’ repeated Richard. ‘And three brave men who can swim strongly. And three pots of oil. The gunpowder I can furnish myself.’

  vii

  Surprise, thought Richard, in the last moments of prickling silence before hell broke loose; it was the only thing to be achieved, the only prayer to be sent heavenwards, the only word in the language … Thus far, everything had gone perfectly; the wind had served them, from the moment that the Lucinda D stood out from the Steps of Heaven with her three fire prahus in tow; when they came within five miles of their target, the expected uproar had been unloosed ashore as fighting broke out at the causeway. It was this uproar, this noise and yelling and clash of arms, which should even now be distracting all on board the Mystic. Let them not turn aside, Richard had prayed, let them look landwards a little longer, as the Lucinda D, creeping up on the blind side, gently launched her secret weapons on the unsuspecting foe.

  He could see the fire prahus now, three vague diminishing blurs of darkness against the pale sea, propelled by determined men, closing the gap between themselves and their quarry. The canoes were linked together; in each of them was a pot of oil, a charge of gunpowder, a slow-match timed to burn for five minutes, and a single paddler who, at the last moment, would slip overboard and swim away from the holocaust. All they needed now, to achieve this careful treachery, was surprise.

  By his side, in the darkness of the Lucinda D’s quarter-deck, Nick Garrett breathed: ‘They are there, by God! They are there!’ Even as he spoke, the first prahu exploded in a sheet of flame under the Mystic’s counter, showering half her hull with flaming oil.

  The blow could not have struck at a better moment. Those on board who were not staring landwards, wondering at the noise now spreading along the whole coast road, were preparing to heave up anchor and get underway; the flames lit their astonished figures, and those of the men working on the yards, and the sails they were unbrailing. When the second fire prahu exploded in its turn, sending burning oil leaping as high as the barque’s main topsails, a desperate turmoil broke loose; while the third, burning fiercely but broken away from its fellows by the violence of the explosions, drifted downwind among the sampans and canoes clustered near the Mystic, a fiery intruder which they were too horrified to escape.

  As the second fire prahu burst into flame, Richard shouted, at the top of his voice: ‘Fire!’ The Lucinda D’s guns and small arms, held in check until this moment, answered with a crackling roar, beginning their work of execution. They had never had an easier target.

  For now the fire had taken hold. Splashes of flaming oil, mounting the sails, spread swiftly into great billows of burning sailcloth; the counter with its ornamental rail was well alight; on the deck, wreathed in smoke and split by red and orange tongues of fire, figures ran to and fro in a frenzy, and presently began to fall, as the murderous hail of shot, unanswered by a single counter-blow, took its toll ofthe close-packed throng. The Lucinda D, edging within fifty yards of the Mystic, poured broadside after broadside – with cannon and repeating riflegun, with blunderbuss, musket, and pistol – into her helpless quarry. It was easy; the main work had been done much earlier, when they had crept up in the darkness and launched their fire canoes; this was their reward, and there was not a man on board, remembering the Mystic’s treachery which might have led to their ruin, who did not savour it fiercely.

  Scattered shooting began to come from the Mystic, as a few of her crew rallied to face the attack; but from such a flaming pyre they could only aim into the darkness, and few of these shots found their mark before even this feeble counter-stroke died to nothing. Half the ship had become engulfed in roaring flame; and now groups of men up in the bows and along the bowsprit began to jump for their lives, yelling in fear and pain as they sought safety in the unknown darkness.

  A lucky shot from the cannon split the mainmast and brought it down; it toppled in a fiery wreath of flame, like a great tree in the path of a fo
rest fire. The Mystic, with her cable slipped by some distraught hand, began to drift towards the shore, a ship-of-war turned into a blazing hulk. Men with their clothes on fire continued to cast away their weapons and leap overboard, seeking to quench their agony in the murky water.

  Then Richard Marriott saw Black Harris. He was standing on a hatch cover at the break of the fo’c’sle, silhouetted by a whole wall of flame; a small figure with tossing arms, shouting against the roaring of the fire, exhorting his men to turn and fight. Richard could not help admiring his spirit which, overcoming murderous surprise, refused to admit that defeat might be spitting in his very face. He had a cutlass in his hand, and with it he slashed at some of his own men as they fled from their guns and made for the only safe platform remaining – the bowsprit hanging above the water. But Richard Marriott did not hate him the less for his bravery. This was the man who would have sold him into death. He deserved the same fate, and he was within an ace of earning it.

  From thirty yards away, Richard raised his speaking trumpet and shouted the single word: ‘Harris!’

  In the roar of flames, and the yelling of men in confusion and terror, he had to shout again before his voice carried. But then Black Harris, turning and peering into the darkness, answered him.

  ‘Who is that?’

  ‘Richard Marriott! Your partner!’

  Harris, who must have been astonished, was quick to think and to speak. He did not question, he did not swear or shout his anger, he did not bargain. He cupped his hands, and called out: ‘I will pay what I owe.’

  Richard laughed, in a tone made throaty by hatred and the pleasure of revenge; it was one of the ugliest sounds of the night. He shouted back: ‘Have no fear – I am paid!’ Then he threw aside his speaking trumpet, and drew from his belt the two silvered pistols, Castor and Pollux, which he had carried, and used, for more than ten years. He sighted swiftly, and fired both at the same moment.

  The range was long, but loathing joined with skill to shorten it to nothing. The figure of his enemy, luridly illumined as if by the fires of hell, spun round once and dropped into the sea of flame below him.

  Richard laughed again, on the same animal note. He was indeed paid … Then he leant back against the mizzenmast, breathing deeply, recovering his coolness, and watched the Mystic becoming drenched by fire, and the burning oil on the water as it overtook the swimmers and the prahus and the sampans, and the doomed stragglers who, wading ashore utterly spent, tottered hapless towards the waiting butchery.

  Dawn came up to reveal the scene of carnage with delicate, reluctant fingers, as though fearful of what might be discovered. The Mystic was fast ashore, a charred hulk whose sails, hanging in blackened tatters, were like the shroud of Death himself. Not a man stirred on board, among the grotesque corpses; only the stink of fire marked the burned-out funeral pyre, over which hung a fatal, everlasting peace. Beyond the Mystic, at the tidemark and higher up, countless bodies defiled the morning; some were headless, some brutally hacked to death, some – washing gently at the water’s edge – were unmarked, surprised only by the choking sea.

  Blood stained the sand, often furrowed by desperate, fleeing feet; farther inland, Amin Sang’s warriors were gathered in groups, their spears slaked, their fury spent, resting round campfires which faded with the sunrise, waiting like children for their modest morning rice. Here and there, like a very wraith of sorrow, a woman with black-veiled face and covered head had already crept out, and now sat, rocking to and fro, wailing in hopeless grief some distance from a body she could not yet bear to acknowledge as her own.

  Half a mile offshore, the proud Lucinda D swung to her anchor, unharmed, unscathed, surveying the splendour of her total victory.

  viii

  Selang Aro, the High Priest of the Anapuri, was a tall man, thin and sour-faced; his bony, shaven head topped a body whose gauntness the loose-flowing robes could not conceal. He came to the Sun Palace, and to the Rajah’s audience, attended by six monks, saffron-robed like himself, who looked about them disdainfully, as if to show themselves superior to this temporal power. He came unwillingly, and showed it in his manner and his speech. But he came none the less, because the Rajah had sent for him, and had backed the request with a hundred armed men ‘for safe conduct’. Disguise it how he would, with pride or with sullen looks, when Selang Aro stood before the Rajah’s throne in the great audience chamber, he was a culprit summoned to account for his misdeeds.

  At first he was prepared to deny all knowledge of the attempt on the palace and the causeway; and when the Rajah, whose humour in victory was excellent, gently implied that he was lying, Selang Aro seemed ready to take offence.

  ‘Your Highness is in a position to make these charges,’ he answered coldly. He stood on the lowest step before the ivory throne, facing the Rajah and his entourage, and the commanding figure of Richard Marriott; the plain monk’s robes seemed almost to sneer at the richness of the court. ‘I can do nothing but deny them. I have not stirred from the Shwe Dagon for a month or more. I do not engage in plots of any kind, and I do not plan to rule. My mind is set on higher–’

  ‘Silence!’ said the Rajah suddenly, and his brusque tone showed that he meant it. He leant forward. ‘I have not brought you here to talk, but to listen. There was a plot against my government, and if you did not take a hand in it, then your Anapuri did.’ He smiled, without humour. ‘We have the bodies to prove it … Are you telling me that you have so little control over your own priests that they can take up arms and storm the causeway without your knowledge?’

  ‘Any man can put on a priest’s robes.’

  ‘And shave his head? And call your name as he goes to fight?’ The Rajah’s tone was scornful. ‘If such a man is not a priest, then he has many talents going to waste … There were three kinds of serpent in this matter. The man Harris, and his sailors. The Land-Dyaks, hunting heads like the carrion birds they are. And the Anapuri. Your Anapuri.’

  ‘If they took part in this, then they acted without my knowledge,’ answered Selang Aro. He was still arrogant in his disdain. ‘I rule ten thousand men, but I cannot rule them every minute of the day.’

  ‘If your rule is too heavy for you, we can see that it is lightened.’

  The fencing went on, while the court listened with evident enjoyment, and Amin Bulong and Colonel Kedah stared at the High Priest with a different expression altogether, and Richard Marriott gave himself the pleasure of watching Princess Sunara. She sat on her father’s right hand, beautiful and cool as before; but she was aware of him, and she could not disguise it. Earlier, indeed, she had made this plain, in a brief private exchange before the audience was started.

  ‘My father tells me that I was discourteous to you, and must apologize,’ she had said, in her low voice, her eyes downcast. ‘I do so now.’

  ‘I need no apology,’ Richard had answered, prepared to continue the coldness of their first meeting, ‘and I have not come to hear one. My attendance is of less consequence. The mercenary is here only to collect his pay.’

  ‘None the less, you must forgive, if I apologize,’ she said. Her voice had trembled, but whether from the effort of her humility, or from some other cause, he could not divine. ‘That is our custom here.’

  ‘Do you apologize because your father orders it?’

  She raised her eyes at last to his. The beautiful face was indeed moved by deep feeling; the proud princess had become the troubled child. ‘I am my father’s daughter,’ she had answered, ‘and I obey him in all things, according to custom. But indeed, I am truly sorry.’

  He had relented at that, not able to resist the appeal in her voice and manner; and now, as he looked at her, he was very glad that he had done so. In the Sun Palace, he was acclaimed a hero; in the Rajah’s eyes, he was a true friend; but he found, inexplicably, that he needed Sunara’s approval to give significance to his triumph. He knew by now that he had earned it, and when he looked at her across the audience chamber, his face showed his cont
entment.

  Selang Aro, continuing to argue and to deny, was growing less sure of himself, and the monks who stood at his back seemed to have lost some of their disdain. It seemed that they were coming to realize that, on this heavy occasion, their saffron robes and polished begging bowls might not afford them the protection of sanctity.

  Richard could not decide whether the Rajah was having sport with the culprits, or whether he did indeed intend some punishment. There was the water torture, there were the hungry red ants; for the Rajah, the path towards these might involve no more than a change of mood … But presently it appeared that he had summoned Selang Aro, not to punish but to warn.

  ‘That is enough,’ he said, interrupting Selang Aro for the second time. His manner was still benevolent, but there was sufficient steel in it to make his words foreboding. ‘I know what is in your mind, but you do not know what is in mine. I will enlighten you, and then you will go.’

  A sudden silence fell all over the audience chamber; the whispering ceased; all eyes were on the Rajah, an old man with authority in every word and gesture.

  ‘First, there will be no more plots,’ said the Rajah. His voice was that of a law-giver, not to be challenged by any lesser mortal. ‘I can defeat them at will, but I would rather conserve my men for worthier tasks … Secondly, any Anapuri priest found with arms in his hand will be killed. He will be killed with his own weapons, so that my Palace Guard need not soil their spears in such disgraceful blood … Thirdly, Colonel Kedah, or his emissary, will pay a visit of inspection to the Shwe Dagon on the first day of every month.’

  ‘But that is sacrilege!’ Selang Aro burst out. Gone was the disdain and the air of indifference; hatred darted out of his eyes like a snake’s tongue. ‘Armed men have never set foot in the Golden Pagoda, since the day it was first consecrated. The Lord Buddha–’

  ‘The Lord Buddha would say,’ interrupted the Rajah, ‘that since armed men seem to come out of the Shwe Dagon, armed men may go in. That is what I say, in any case.’