Retribution Road

by Antonin Varenne

  The soldier smiled at Bowman.

  “God forgives trespasses, as I refuse to fight unjustly or for no good reason. I could have mastered that man, without fighting and without your intervention, Sergeant.”

  “Bloody hell, are you a vicar or something?”

  “Merely a sheep in the flock, Sergeant.”

  “A sheep who’s still standing with a twelve-inch slash in his belly is good meat, I reckon.”

  Bowman looked around them.

  “Is there anyone you trust on this boat?”

  The soldier was puzzled.

  “What do you mean? Someone I know?”

  “Yeah, someone you trust.”

  The soldier looked at the men who surrounded them, lying or standing, eating or sick, chatting or silent. He pointed at one of them, sitting on his hammock, placidly swallowing his rotten breakfast.

  “Are you taking the piss?”

  The soldier shook his head. Bowman gave a half-smile.

  “Him? You’re sure?”

  The tall thin man nodded.

  “Him.”

  Bowman walked up to the blond man who had, the night before, tried to cut the sheep’s godly throat.

  “You.”

  The soldier jumped out of his hammock and saluted.

  “Sergeant!”

  “Over here.”

  When the blond bull found himself face to face with the wounded soldier, he froze.

  “Sorry, Sergeant, it was stupid of me. I got in a rage over nothing. I swear it won’t happen again.”

  “Shut your mouth. You, preacher, explain it to him. He has to do the same thing. When there are ten of you, pack your kitbag and meet me on deck. Sergeant Bowman’s orders. They’ll let you pass. Got it?”

  The godly soldier nodded, while the bull said yes without understanding what was happening.

  “Names?”

  The preacher’s name was Peavish. The man he had decided to forgive was called Bufford.

  Bowman went over to his hammock, knelt down in front of his bag, and emptied it out on the floor.

  He unfolded a uniform jacket that was barely in a better state than the one he was wearing, and on top of it he put his mother-of-pearl powder horn, the almost-empty bottle of rum, his military papers in the little oiled leather pouch, his Bible and his reserves of tobacco, then wrapped the jacket around these objects. At the bottom of the canvas bag, on top of this bundle, he put a pair of new boots and a change of clothes. Then he took his dagger from his belt and added that to the pile.

  When he went up on deck, something had changed, though what it was he didn’t immediately understand.

  The seventeen ships in the fleet, which had not moved for days, were swaying from side to side, the lines of their riggings crossing on the horizon. Small waves lapped against the hulls, the sea turned white and all the men on the deck of the Healing Joy felt the wind on their faces. The clouds in the sky were moving east towards Rangoon. On the officers’ deck, a sailor hoisted the flags, communicating General Godwin’s orders to the other ships.

  The wind was blowing in the Company’s favour, and the clouds had not burst.

  The sailors climbed up rope ladders and on to booms 130 feet above the sea. Godwin and his general staff appeared on the poop deck, their medals and the gold braid of their uniforms shining in the sunlight. Telescopes were turned towards Rangoon. Major Cavendish was there too, staring at the coastline.

  The soldiers were sent to battle stations, the sailors to their posts. The anchor chains were pulled from the sea, link by link, the men grunting with the effort. The sails, unfurled, swelled in the wind. The fleet’s portholes opened to reveal the mouths of cannons. Thirty-pound carronades, black and stocky, hidden under sail bags, appeared on the decks. The same sounds came from all the ships, ricocheting off the water and carried by the wind: the sounds of armament and manoeuvres.

  Amid the general panic, in the middle of the ship’s turmoil, Bowman’s ten men emerged from the main hatchway, protecting their eyes from the light. They turned around, looking for the sergeant. Peavish, Bufford and eight other soldiers whom Bowman had never seen before. They lined up along the railing, patient as farmers in church, but Bowman did not have time to inspect them.

  He could see, threading its way through the fleet’s vessels, every sail raised, a three-masted sloop, about 100 feet long, as white as those yachts on the Thames that the rich sail in summer. Except that this one was armed with twenty-pound cannons, eighteen of them, and its decks were populated not only with sailors but with twenty soldiers in uniform.

  Captain Wright emerged suddenly from the fo’c’s’le, a double-barrelled pistol in his belt and a messenger’s satchel strapped across his chest, followed by a sailor carrying his bag. The sloop came alongside their ship and Bowman saw its name, in golden letters on the white hull. The Sea Runner dropped its sails, and the sailors on the Healing Joy lowered the fenders, threw the hawsers and rolled out the officers’ gangplank. Wright went first, jumping onto the deck of the Runner, which he quickly crossed before disappearing into the cockpit. Bowman yelled at his men:

  “Board now!”

  They hurtled down the gangplank, shoved forward by the sergeant, and clambered aboard.

  Immediately, the hawsers were cast off, the sloop caught the wind and rapidly moved away, manoeuvring a path through the fleet. A cannon blast sounded. The ships tore themselves away from the water where they had been mouldering and, heading for Rangoon, turned away from the sloop.

  The war was starting without them, as if Godwin and God had been waiting for Bowman and his men to leave before setting it in motion.

  *

  The Sea Runner set a westward course. Bowman remembered Cavendish’s map, the drawing of the river in the middle of that green expanse. They were on their way to the Irrawaddy estuary, drawing nearer to the coast.

  Land was only a mile off now, parallel to the sloop’s course. They could make out details of the forest, beaches and rocks, some trees taller than others, mangrove and coconut trees leaning over the waves; odours reached them from the land, the scented wind sucking their boat in faster and faster. When Bowman turned around, the fleet was already nothing but a line of little white dots on the horizon.

  For the men from the Healing Joy who had just boarded the Runner, the heat of the continent felt like a promise after months spent suffocating in hammocks. A new world, close by, the masts of the sloop leaning towards it like outstretched arms.

  The soldiers already aboard no longer eyed the coast with the same curiosity. They had seen enough of it to grow weary of the sight and were aware of what really awaited them there: it was not the promised land, merely the start of an endless jungle, the immense territory where the warriors of the kingdom of Ava lay in wait.

  Bowman sat on his kitbag, leaning against the cockpit wall, and looked at the thirty soldiers scattered over the deck.

  The ten men from the Joy talked between themselves, in groups of two at the bow of the ship. Each of them knew others in the same group, but none of them knew everyone. A coalition of chance and acquaintance. Peavish stood apart and it was Bufford, in the end, who had determined the make-up of the group: sturdy, muscular and probably rather stupid. The man he had chosen, and those who had been chosen after that, were very much in his image. Hard men. The kind of men Bowman would have mistrusted had he chosen them himself, gathered together here by the preacher, with his sheeplike forgiveness and faith.

  The men already aboard were in the same mould. Beefy men in frayed uniforms, tattoos on their arms, comparable to Bufford’s men in age and appearance, but they stood silent. They stared out gloomily at the coastline or the sea. Two soldiers, scanning the green line of the continent, caught Bowman’s eye. One had torn jacket sleeves, with wounds on his wrists from steel chains. The other was barefoot, and like his friend’s wrists, his ankles were grazed and bruised, rubbed raw by the touch of metal. Some of the other uniforms had been ripped at the shoulders, w
here stripes had been removed.

  The men from the sloop were prisoners of the fleet, rowdy soldiers and N.C.O.s, taken from the holds where they had been awaiting their sentence, some of them perhaps even the hangman’s noose.

  Bowman closed his eyes and savoured the cool wind on his face, the smells of the land in his nostrils.

  For four hours, the Sea Runner sped forward. After the excitement of boarding, his men had returned to the resigned mannerisms of soldiers being transported who knew where, who knew why. The two chain-marked soldiers had ended up sitting in a corner together, postponing their dreams of escape.

  Bowman dozed, eyes half closed, surveying the movements around him.

  The sailors observed this strange, silent group. The sloop’s captain, an old naval officer, stood at the helm on the upper deck, flanked by two Company soldiers, wearing muskets across their chests. The cannons were ready to fire, portholes open, and below deck, Bowman sensed, the rest of the crew was in a state of high alert.

  The sloop tacked to one side. The rigging creaked, the sails snapped and the booms swung over the heads of the drowsing men, waking them suddenly. The Runner was changing direction, heading towards the coast. It was late afternoon and the sun would soon set. In these latitudes, night fell in the blink of an eye.

  Ahead of the ship’s bow, the sergeant saw a grey beach: a cove in the shape of a half-moon, quite deep, bordered by two rocky promontories. As the sloop approached, he saw the village and that dark stain that he had, at first, not been able to identify. A large junk in anchorage, with ochre-red sails. In the middle of the beach, a pontoon jutted into the water, some outrigger canoes were drawn up on the sand, and a dozen buildings, parallel to the curve of the bay, backed onto the forest. Wooden cabins with palm-leaf roofs. Fishing lines were hung from bamboo porches. Between these houses and on the beach, patrolling in pairs, were Company soldiers in red uniforms, about thirty of them in total. Ten were gathered in front of the largest building, a sort of temple or communal house, opposite the pontoon, the central point of the village. The soldiers were lined up on the platform of its wide covered terrace, guarding a large closed door. Lobster pots, still-smoking fireplaces, chickens, dogs and little black pigs could all be seen in the village’s streets which, apart from the soldiers, looked deserted.

  On the captain’s order, the sailors lowered the sails. The sloop glided over the calm water, in the silence of this perfect natural shelter, until it reached the junk. Burmese sailors threw ropes to the British sailors and the Sea Runner moored alongside the pot-bellied ship. Painted on its bow, six feet above the Englishmen’s deck, two red-and-black eyes stared down at them.

  Wright came out of the cockpit as soon as the manoeuvre had been completed.

  “Tell the men to leave their personal belongings and military papers on board the Sea Runner. They’ll remove their uniforms and board the junk.”

  Bowman repeated Wright’s words:

  “They’ll remove their uniforms?”

  “They’ll get undressed. Uniforms, boots and personal belongings stay on this ship. Tell them they’ll get them back when they return. Same thing for you, Bowman.”

  A rope ladder fell from the junk. Wright took hold of it and climbed up onto the Burmese boat.

  Bowman stood in the middle of the deck:

  “Round up here! Bags at your feet!”

  The men gathered chaotically. The sergeant lined them up.

  “Your belongings stay on this ship! On my orders, you will strip off, put everything in your bags and climb onto the junk! Now!”

  There were twenty-eight of them, half-smiling and looking at each other. Hands behind his back, Bowman waited. His silence had its effect on the troop, and their smiles vanished. He walked from one man to the next, taking the time to look into their eyes, and stopped in front of Bufford. The blond man glanced at his comrades, then back at the sergeant, and began unbuttoning his jacket. Slowly, the others followed suit.

  In underwear, or a shirt tied around their waist, they carefully packed their bags. The sun was going down behind the trees; on land, between the huts, the Company’s soldiers were patrolling with flaming torches.

  The men on the Runner stood in a tight knot in the middle of the deck, their white skin and black tattoos touching. Bowman had watched as a few objects had disappeared into the folds of underpants and shirts. A Bible, a gold cross on a chain, a little pouch of tobacco or a pipe. He saw two knives vanish behind cloth too, and committed the soldiers’ faces to memory.

  “Board now!”

  They climbed up onto the junk, clumsily, hastily, each one showing his white arse and legs to the soldiers below, who laughed, until their turn came to climb the ladder. Bowman, the last man on board the sloop, removed his boots and his uniform. On his belly, under the fabric of his long johns, he slid his Afghan dagger, his tobacco and his pipe, before weighing up his powder horn.

  He’d had it made specially in Bombay, after his regiment had returned victorious from the Punjab. The inside coated with rubber-tree sap, the lid watertight, the horn could be plunged in water and still keep the powder dry. Bowman had spent four months’ pay on its fabrication and the inlaid silver and mother-of-pearl. It was his reward as a soldier after twelve years of service for the Company. So he could fight even when it was raining.

  He packed away his jacket and his boots, crossed the Sea Runner’s deck to the steering post and saluted the captain. The old naval officer stared at the trouserless sergeant.

  “Sergeant, the sloop has to return immediately. What do you want?”

  “Sir, Troop Sergeant Bowman, First Company, Madras Regiment.”

  “I don’t give two hoots for your rank, Sergeant. Board that junk immediately!”

  Bowman stood straight, shoulders wide.

  “Sir, I want to give you this. It’s something . . . It’s precious to me, Captain. I want to leave it with you, so it doesn’t get lost with the other bags.”

  Bowman held out the horn.

  “What are you talking about? Leave this ship – that’s an order!”

  Bowman did not move.

  “Captain, I need to know your name.”

  “What?”

  The captain of the Sea Runner turned to the armed men who acted as his bodyguards.

  “Get this man off my ship!”

  The two men aimed their rifles at the sergeant. Bowman took a step backwards, crouched down slowly without lowering his eyes, placed the horn on the deck and stood up again. The captain almost shouted:

  “Get the hell off this ship, Sergeant, before I have you shot!”

  Bowman went down the officers’ gangplank and threw his jacket and boots on deck before climbing up to the junk.

  *

  On board, under lamps hung from the rigging, the men waited, naked, in a circle around a dark heap in the middle of the deck. Bowman walked closer. It was a large pile of clothes.

  “What are you waiting for? Put them on!”

  The men picked up old Burmese rags from the pile – baggy fishermen’s trousers, too small and stinking of fish, and belted shirts. When they had finished getting dressed, there were still enough clothes for another thirty people. Bowman ordered the rest thrown into the sea.

  The Burmese sailors moved into action, raising the battened sails, lifting the anchor, loosing the ropes to release the Sea Runner, which moved away towards the pontoon. The sloop was going to pick up the soldiers patrolling the fishermen’s huts on land.

  The men laughed and swore as they compared their new outfits, which looked like children’s clothes worn by adults. Bowman, who had also put on a pair of trousers and chosen a shirt, attached his knife to the cotton belt and turned towards the shore.

  A hut was in flames. The soldiers’ torches moved quickly from one house to the next and behind them the palm roofs blazed.

  The junk’s sailors took long bamboo poles from the hold and pushed their boat forward, as the breeze was not strong enough to propel it
. They punted with all their strength, glancing back at the village behind them.

  The torches converged on the large building. The other houses were burning, sparks rising fifty feet in the air, blown by the wind out to sea and towards the too-slow junk. The flames illuminated the bay in red and yellow, painting the sails and hull of the Sea Runner, moored to the pontoon on a sea the colour of lava. On the terrace of the large building, the soldiers threw their torches against the door. The flames quickly climbed up the walls to the roof. The men from the Company withdrew to encircle the building, rifles raised. Screams rose from inside. Naked fishermen ran through the walls of fire, only to be scythed down by bullets at point-blank range. Women, carrying children, their clothes ablaze, also tried to flee, but collapsed in the sand after a few strides, killed by the soldiers. The roof of the building caved in, blowing thousands of cinders into the air where they swirled like a gigantic flight of fiery starlings.

  The first scraps of incandescent palm leaves fell on Sergeant Bowman’s men. The Burmese sailors screamed as they pushed the bamboo poles. At last, the junk passed the edge of the bay, and the wind swelled the sails, pushing the ship out to sea as it sent a thick cloud of ash down on the men’s heads. They covered their mouths with their hands, blocking their noses so they wouldn’t breathe in the stench of burnt flesh.

  The village disappeared from sight but the fire still lit up the sea and the coastline like a sunset. They saw the flame-coloured Sea Runner leave the bay and vanish into the night.

  Before the Burmese sailors blew out the lamps illuminating the deck, Bowman saw his men, pale and silent in their fishermen’s clothes, start smacking their shoulders and shaking their hair, yanking nervously at their shirts and trousers covered with ash.

  4

  Lying crammed together on the deck, the men had been awake for a long time when the sun appeared over the forest. The first rays licked the ash-covered ship. Faces grey with ash, black lines in the wrinkles of their foreheads and the corners of their mouths, the soldiers looked like corpses.

  A tailwind blew the junk up a river more than a thousand feet wide. The Burmese sailors pulled buckets of water tied to ropes from the sea. The men washed themselves and the deck was rinsed down. Bowman collared a Burmese, asking him where Captain Wright was and who was commanding the junk. The man shook his head, replying in his own language. The sergeant didn’t understand a word. He raised his voice: “Captain!”