A Far Horizon (27 page)

On the ramparts, Governor Drake gave a furious roar at the sight of the departing Fort William men. Others of the Council of War raised their voices in equal anger, helpless to prevent the desertion. As Minchin’s boat drew away from shore, new energy seemed to catapult through the Governor. He gave a further shout, deep and loud as a war cry. The sound welled up and burst out of him in a torrent of anguish and wrath. The Chief Magistrate looked at him in surprise and was at first nonplussed when Drake left the ramparts with considerable speed and made for the Governor’s Gate. Bellamy moved closer to Holwell, and both men stared down at the crowded wharf.

‘He goes after Minchin,’ Bellamy announced as Drake was sighted below the walls. ‘And it is the right thing to do. A Garrison Commander cannot desert.’

‘Minchin is a coward,’ Holwell replied, his eyes upon Drake’s portly, hurrying figure. Already Minchin’s boat was gaining distance,
O’Hara pulling hard on the oars. Holwell wondered what Drake could do now to stop him.

The Governor was seen to force a path through the crowd, pushing out strongly with his arms. He began to run along the wharf towards the mudflats a short distance away.

‘Where does he run to?’ the Chief Magistrate frowned.

As they watched, the Governor jumped down on to the river shore. The Chaplain and the Chief Magistrate saw that he made his way towards a boat that waited on the mudflats. By the crest on its bows the Chief Magistrate recognised the Governor’s own
budgerow.
A soldier with a drawn sword guarded the boat and turned at once to assist the Governor. As Drake scrambled into the craft, the man pushed off after Minchin, towards the waiting ships. It was now seen that wind billowed in the
Dodaldy
’s
sails and it pulled on its anchor as if already preparing to sail. The Chief Magistrate saw now that his own craft, the
Diligence,
a short distance behind the
Dodaldy,
had also unfurled its sails.

‘The Governor himself makes to escape to the boats. He does nothing to delay Minchin.’ The Chief Magistrate roared. He grabbed a musket from a nearby soldier and fired it after Drake. The shot arched through the air then fell into the Hoogly, a great distance from the departing Governor.

Eventually Minchin and then Drake reached the
Dodaldy,
and in the distance the tiny figures were seen being helped aboard. Almost immediately the ships began to move downstream, accompanied by a flotilla of boats. The Chief Magistrate was forced to watch his own ship follow the others.

‘We are stranded. How now are we to evacuate?’ The Chief Magistrate howled with rage.

‘God will find a way,’ Bellamy advised, but in a tired voice that carried little conviction.

*

Below the parade ground, the Devi Ashram had not seen these momentous events. Jaya and Mohini returned to spread their
terrifying news and to urge everyone to flee. Govindram was of the opposite opinion, and voiced his views decisively.

‘We shall remain here. It will be safest. Up there it is no better than a stampede of elephants.’ He insisted everyone in the ashram gathered below ground.

‘Always you think you are knowing best, that I as a woman know nothing,’ Mohini argued, so frightened she did not care who heard this disrespect for her husband.

‘Many boats are waiting upon the river. They will take us away from this hell. On the water we shall be safe,’ Jaya yelled at her cousin, equally furious at his pig-headedness. The wives of the
half-caste
Portuguese added their agreement in loud voices. Govindram stood his ground.

‘We shall stay here,’ he ordered.

He left Pagal to guard the devotees and returned above ground to assess the state of affairs himself, taking the old men with him. When he returned to the Devi Ashram it was to report the dire events that had decimated the refugee population.

‘Already two hundred and fifty women have died. We shall remain here,’ Govindram repeated, unmoved by the argument swirling about him.

‘To be slaughtered by the nawab,’ Mohini answered in a faint voice.

‘All escape is now cut off,’ Jaya sobbed in terror.

‘The Goddess will save us,’ Govindram replied.

Everyone turned towards Sati.

F
rom the deck of the
Dodaldy,
Emily Drake looked towards Fort William. As the Governor’s wife she had been allocated a makeshift cabin, hurriedly partitioned off, in the roundhouse on the upper stern deck. She had given this to Mrs Mackett, who had suffered a miscarriage before evacuating the fort, and Mrs Mapletoft and her new baby, Constantia. The other cabin she had insisted be given to the weakest children. She refused to sleep below deck, where conditions were unbearable. The
Dodaldy
had been built to carry fifty passengers, but there were now well over a hundred terrified women and children on board. All, like her, after one look below, immediately settled themselves on the deck. This was a feat of some manoeuvring, for the place was crowded with wildlife. Ducks and pigs, chickens, turkey, sheep and goats, a cow and her calf, all these animals, besides the ship’s cats, must share the deck with the passengers. Time and the cooking pots would reduce their numbers, but for now the menagerie bleated and crowed. It was as if they lived in a farmyard. Since the
Dodaldy
was an Indiaman and must traverse hostile seas, the deck was also fitted with cannon and all the paraphernalia these needed: canisters of powder, ramrods, water buckets, cannon balls and grapeshot. Little room was left for passengers. Manningham and Frankland, as well as the Reverend
Mapletoft and several members of the Fort William miltia, were also on board. They had been forced by decency to sleep below deck but emerged at times gasping for air. Ships’ passengers were always required to carry with them their own furnishings: a bed, linen, pillows, footbath, washstand and chest of drawers, besides lamps and candles and supplies of food. The women on board the
Dodaldy
possessed only the clothes they stood up in.

None of this worried Emily Drake. She looked down into the Hoogly’s sinuous currents and listened to its many voices. As the boat rocked on the tide she leaned on the rail and its rhythm moved through her. Behind her were sounds of misery and yet she marvelled that about the ship the hot winds blew unconcernedly, the tide ebbed and turned and birds wheeled and cried in voices like stones skimming over the water.

Women came to crowd about her at the rail. Far away, over the water, Fort William appeared diminished. Fire still flared in White Town. The women sobbed, pointing out whose house was aflame and whose still stood. Only Emily had no wish to climb back into the life left there. Nothing now held her to the town. Its burning left her unmoved; something obsolete was being cleared away as already something was cleared within herself. Even Harry’s small grave did not draw her. He was gone from her, embarked upon a fathomless journey where neither voice nor touch could reach him. Nothing now seemed of importance but the pinprick of time in which she now stood. Roger was as distant from her as Harry, embarked upon a different journey. He had no need of her, nor she of him. This knowledge flowered within her in an emotionless way.

Before Fort William, figures small as tin soldiers could be seen strutting about. At the quay a collection of boats had gathered. The moments when she had stood upon that quay, forced into an overloaded barge, seemed already to belong to another life. Then, all she had wanted was to return to Fort William, for in the uncertain light of the flares she was sure she saw Harry. His small face was
buffeted within the shadows and stared out from below the dark waves. The sound of his crying reached her from the cemetery.

‘Set me free,’ she had pleaded, struggling to stand in the precarious boat so that it rocked violently. The women screamed and pulled her down. She had wrenched herself from their grasp but already, she remembered, the stretch of water was widening. All the while the lantern danced above her head, fingers of light swinging over the river. Again they had pulled her down. Again came the crying that she knew must be Harry. It seemed nearer, as if he had reached the water’s edge and held out his small arms for her return.

‘Set me free,’ she had shrieked as they pulled at her skirts. The whimpering came again. For a moment the boatman seemed to hesitate; the craft lost its rhythmic pull.

‘They will come on to the boat if we stop now,’ someone screamed from the back.

Then, in the light of the rocking lantern, she had seen the crowds of refugees spilling out of Fort William, wading into the water after the boat. She saw mothers with babies at their breasts, and knew it was the cries of these hungry children that she had heard, not Harry.

She drew back then in the boat. Harry’s face had disappeared beneath the weight of other faces; his cry was swallowed by the screams of other exhausted infants. Women fought on the wet steps, stumbling forward into the water, holding their babies out to her. Then, beyond the desperate crowd, standing apart beneath the illumination of a flare, Emily had seen the spirit girl, Sati. As the water widened between the quay and the boat she had watched the girl grow smaller until at last the darkness claimed her. Then Emily Drake sat down in the boat, suddenly without emotion. She was filled with the memory of the girl’s wild dance again and how her own feet had itched to join her. She knew then she was hungry for whatever might bring her alive.

She had turned to gaze at the
Dodaldy
waiting out in midstream, its lanterns ablaze. In the overloaded barge there had been silence but for the watery swish of the oars and their occasional knock against
the bows. Far away on the quay, beneath the flares, the refugees could be seen returning to the fort. Blackness and silence enveloped the barge, as if the river now possessed them. The boat was sunk low in the water and pulled forward with an effort. Emily trailed a hand in the water and the current ran through her fingers. The river sang into her flesh. She knew then she would have no control over the future. She would do as she would do.

When at last they reached the
Dodaldy
she had climbed passively aboard. Above her the great masts of the ship rose into the sky. In the darkness, the cries of night animals drifted over the water; the howl of jackals and the croaking of frogs came to her as the disembodied voice that entered all her dreams, calling to her from beyond the rim of consciousness. Eventually she slept, but the sounds echoed in her sleep as if to awaken her to herself.

Her dreams that first night on the
Dodaldy
had been of the river. She was wading across it. The moon sailed in the sky, lighting the water about her. As she reached midstream the Hoogly’s strong currents suddenly gripped her. She looked into the water and saw long, oiled sinews twisting about her. At first she seemed powerless against this force, however much she battled, but eventually she freed herself. On the bank there were people who helped her out of the water. They told her she was lucky to have escaped. Look at what you were fighting, what was after you, they said. She turned to where they pointed and saw on the bank beside her the burnt remains of a body. She had expected to see some terrible creature but faced instead a heap of bones and ash. It had now become very dark. And look up there, the people said, pointing in fear to the sky. She looked up, searching, but saw only the moon and stars.

She had woken then upon the hard deck to the violent beating of her heart, filled by a terrible fear. Above her the sky was still covered by night. She had lain on her back, looking up at the moonless expanse, her heart slowly regaining itself. The dream stayed with her; she knew it had come for a reason.

In the morning the heat rose in a mist, hovering over the water as
if the Hoogly were a steaming cauldron. The business of battle had already begun on the distant shore. The sound of cannon and musket fire resounded; the showers of fire-arrows were as spectacular as a fireworks display. About the fort the wedding-cake houses of White Town were blazing. On the
Dodaldy
a great anxiety blew up. Messenger boats plied backwards and forwards so that news from shore was regularly received. It was in this way that the women on board the
Dodaldy
were able to make sense of the jerking frieze of events upon the banks of the Hoogly. Their concern was for their men, which the constant shattering noise of cannon did nothing to assuage. Soon Captain Minchin arrived on board to confirm the hopelessness of conditions on shore.

Suddenly, a strong vibration shook the ship. Looking up, the passengers saw that the craft’s huge sails were being unfurled with a great rippling and flapping and roars from the crew. At once the hot winds took hold of the canvas so that the sails billowed and creaked in a terrifying fashion, assuming a life of their own.

The ship, now full of the urge for flight, tugged hard upon her anchor chain. The impatience could be felt by those on deck. It was then that a craft rowing out from the mudflats was determined by those with spyglasses to carry the Governor himself. The
Dodaldy
got ready to receive its last passenger and move downstream to safer water.

Until now it was as if time had stopped. The close proximity of the great river upon whose back she rocked had filled Emily with new certainty. All that seemed real was the river stretching before her, the unending arc of the sky and her place between these things. Her soul seemed to swell, as if at last it emerged from long hiding. Now, suddenly, that one small boat pulling slowly away from the shore seemed to threaten her existence, diminishing everything once more to the scale of petty concerns. When her husband clambered aboard the
Dodaldy
she would be seen again in the old perspective. She must remain silent when she was on fire; once more she would be the
Governor’s wife. Once more she would be bent to resemble the people about her.

Already it was happening. Roger Drake had reached the boat and was being helped aboard. Already she made her way towards him, as did Manningham and Frankland and Captain Minchin. Already Mrs Mapletoft and Constantia and Mrs Mackett, who grew sicker each day, were asked to vacate the roundhouse cabin for the Governor. Emily’s protest at this treatment of the frail women was carelessly swept away. She was powerless to make her voice heard but must climb the steps behind her husband, fettered to protocol and the mindless actions of others.

Above her the wind blew stronger in the sails as the ship prepared to move. Wood creaked, canvas groaned, the voices of wheeling birds screeched above the
Dodaldy.
A hot breeze blew about the ship, the voice of the river floating to her upon it. Screaming birds and thrumming sails ate up the disembodied words, but Emily knew to whom the voice called.