Slave Of Destiny (4 page)

Michael was scared.
He and Sally were tied up to a post in a room with a dirty wooden floor and
they had some sort of tape over their mouths. They were both worried, but
Michael felt responsible for her.
The
room that they had been left in had no windows, but he could just make out some
chairs and a table. The walls in the room appeared bland, no paint nor
decoration, just a dingy wood finish.
 
There
were stairs off to the right side of the room, towards the back. Michael knew
that his vision had adjusted to the darkness, but still couldn’t see much.
 
The only light that was entering the
room came from the stairwell, so he lay there reflecting on the past events and
everything that had happening to him.

The two of them had only gone ashore that afternoon for a
swim. Michael didn’t even think about looking out for Mad Wayne, because he had
left with Jack and the other crew to pick up the extra supplies. He was just
happy to be there with Sally, but some men must have subdued the two of them
with chloroform as soon as they arrived at the waterfall.

“
Why would someone want to hurt us?
” he thought.

Michael heard the footsteps before he looked up, but no one
came up the stairs straight away. Slowly the footsteps sounded again before
someone entered the room and turned on the light.

“
Marcus, is that you
?” Sally thought as the figure
approached closer.

“Hi there bitch. I bet you didn’t think that I would be
involved in all this.” he said, his words more a statement rather than a
question.”

He reached over and harshly ripped the tape off her mouth.

“Ow” she cried. “Marcus, you hurt me you mongrel.”

Marcus ignored her remark and looked at her. She seemed
thinner now and there was no joy in her face. He moved away because she looked
frightened, as if she expected that he might do her harm. He stood there in
silence unable to comprehend her fear.

“Why, Sally? Why? How could you leave me and our marriage
for… that?” he spat out, pointing to Michael. “I want an answer, not lies. I
want the truth!”

“
Me? Sally is married? I remember Marcus as her evil
step-brother. I’ve got nothing to do with all this madness
” Michael
thought, becoming worried.

“I had to leave Calcutta, because of the great famine and it
wasn’t safe to stay there anymore” she said.

“Your father, the Maharaja, is the reason why the great
famine began. His partnership with the East India Company and their imports of
cheap tea and cocaine left half of the labourers without work, so they turned
to drugs to ease their pain. Then the company began to export all the wheat the
people grew, so along with a severe drought, the population began to starve” he
said, pointing out her ignorance.

“My father would never do that! The people love him!” she
shouted.

“If they loved him, then why did you leave?” he snarled.

“I…I…They…” she sobbed, trying to reply to his chilling
words.

“There’s no need to say anything, because it will all be over
soon. Your kidnapping will force your father’s hand. He will have to leave
Calcutta and move to the province, before the British armed forces throw him in
jail. You will be coming with us, but I still don’t know what to do with …him”
he snarled.

“Please don’t harm Michael, because he has nothing to do with
all this” she sobbed. “I only just met him on
The Teresa.
”

“Shut up bitch. I’ll leave him for Mad Wayne to deal with” he
said, placing some more tape over her mouth. “We have to leave on the
Vega
with the high tide. Untie her, Snake!”

Michael squirmed and wriggled as best as he could, but it
wasn’t enough to stop Snake from untying Sally and dragging her away.

He could hear the heavy scuffling footsteps echoing down the
stairwell, then a door creaking open before slamming shut. He knew he had to
escape, but as the minutes dragged on he knew he had little chance of that.

The post Michael was tied to was large and square with fairly
sharp corners. Maybe he could fray the rope enough to get free. It appeared to
be his only hope, so he began his task while believing that Captain Thomas
should be looking for him, thinking he had run away again.

* * *

Two hours later
Michael had sawn through the rope and was just removing the tape off his mouth,
when he heard footsteps coming up the stairwell. There wasn’t any place to
hide, so Michael decided to take his chance and fight his way out.

“Mad Wayne!” he
said. “Trust you to be messed up in all this.”

“I arranged to
kidnap the lovely Sauli Bhanj, but I demanded to take my turn with you” he
snarled. “It was so easy to take the two of you together.”

“Is that Sally’s
real name?” Michael enquired as he felt in his pocket for the oily rag.

He pulled it out,
unwrapped it and pulled the dagger out of its sheath. The small dagger felt
comfortable in his hand, so he dropped the rag and the sheath and prepared for
battle. Mad Wayne was a towering bear of a man and he filled the exit.

“Stinkin’ little
brat. I’ll teach you for makin’ a fool outta me and stabbing at me” he cursed,
feeling confident. “You won’t hurt me with that little thing.”

Mad Wayne ambled
over to him, but he didn’t even have time to raise a fist. Michael’s right arm
came up with a smooth swift arc, pushing his dagger into Mad Wayne’s chest,
finding his vital organ; his heart. Wayne’s eyes stared at Michael with
disbelief as he raised his hands to try and remove the weapon. Wayne tried to
speak, but failed, before he tried to speak again. Blood was streaming down his
dirty shirt and, as he tumbled forward, he vomited blood. Wayne fell heavily
onto the table, smashing it to pieces before tumbling to the floor. Blood
leaked everywhere, but Mad Wayne remained deathly still with his eyes fixed
open. Michael stood there looking at the grisly corpse for several minutes,
making sure Mad Wayne was actually dead, before he walked over and removed his
dagger. He wiped it clean on Mad Wayne’s shirt, before Michael located the
sheath and the rag. He wrapped the dagger back up and placed it deep in his
pocket, still trembling with rage and shock. There could be other guards
around, so Michael cautiously made his way down the stairs and out into the
humid night air.
The Teresa
mustn’t be too far away; probably over that
low hill, so he wearily followed a worn path in the general direction.

It was about four
in the morning when Michael found an overhanging rock, so he crawled underneath
it and fell asleep.

Michael continued
on his journey after three hours sleep, still not sure if he was going in the
right direction. All of a sudden he heard voices, so he quickly moved off the
track and hid behind a thick bush.

“Nawala siya
Babalik tayo” Pedro said to Carlinga as the two men ambled past his hiding
spot.

“
I wish I could
understand what they’re saying
” Michael thought, seeing the other man nod
as if he agreed with him.

Michael waited for
five minutes, until the two men had well and truly walked well away, before he
continued on his way. Fifteen minutes later he paused, because the sound he could
hear was a waterfall. When Michael reached the falls, he slaked his thirst,
before continuing on the track which would take him down to Pertamina Beach. A
longboat was about 100 yards out and it was coming his way.

“Alby” Michael
shouted, waving his arms.

“I’m so glad to see
you” he shouted as the boat hit the sand.

“The captain was so
pissed off when you didn’t come back last night” Alby mentioned, shaking his
head.

“Sally and I were
kidnapped. I managed to escape, but two people took Sally away” he said sadly,
before he added. “I killed Mad Wayne.”

“What did you do,
Lad?” he asked as if he didn’t really hear him correctly.

“The kidnappers
left me tied up, so that Mad Wayne could come back later and dispose of me.
I…I…I managed to cut through my bonds just in time, before I stabbed him in the
heart” Michael gulped, explaining why he was late.

“Captain Thomas
will want to hear this, so we better head back to
The Teresa
” Alby said
grimly.

* * *

“I want you to tell
me your story again but slow down this time, because I could nay understand a
word you said” Captain Thomas admitted when Jack and Michael were in the
captain’s cabin.

“Yesterday
afternoon Sally and I went ashore as planned. Constance explained to us about
the proximity of the waterfall, so we went straight up there for a swim and a
bath. I guess I wasn’t paying much attention, but the next thing I remember is
waking up in a dingy room. A man called Marcus, her husband, arrived there with
another man called Snake. He took her away after he mentioned he was going to
use her as a pawn to overthrow the royal family in India. He left me tied up,
but I managed to saw through my bonds, just before Mad Wayne found me. He
threatened to kill me for stabbing at him yesterday, but I managed to stab him
in his heart with the dagger Alby gave me. Is Sally’s real name, Sauli Bhanj?”
Michael asked.

“Yes lad, that’s
her real name, but I was trusted to take care of her. I too thought she would
be safe going ashore” he admitted. “Did they mention where they were taking
her?”

“I assumed that
they would be taking her back to Calcutta to force her father, the Maharaja and
the royal family, to step aside and flee to the province. Marcus said that they
were leaving on the high tide last night” Michael mentioned. “We have to follow
them and save her!”

“We can’t do that
Lad, because that means they would have fourteen hours head start. We left
India because of the Great Famine. There is an intense drought in the Deccan
Plateau which resulted in crop failure. However, the export of grain to England
by Lord Lytton is playing a massive role in the famine. These exports will
result in the deaths of millions of people. The government of Bengal and its
Lieutenant-Governor, Sir Richard Temple, tried to import cheap rice from Burma,
but he was criticized for excessive expenditure, so it was stopped” he said.
“Believe me, it will only get worse.”

“I don’t think the
Indian National Movement will harm members of the royal family. They just want
them to step aside, so that Dadabhai Naoroji can influence British public
officials to promote Indian welfare. He wants the leader of the Indian
Association of Calcutta, Surendranath Banerjea, to unify the Indian people under
a common political program” Jack mentioned.

“We better leave
soon, because someone will be looking into Wayne’s murder and they will be
looking this way. There’s still time to sail away, so Jack, get your men to
raise the anchor and the sails. Keep the reef in them though, because the winds
will still be strong.  The sooner we leave the better” he said grimly.

“So it’s all
settled then. We’re just going to leave Sally to her fate” Michael said; rage
engulfing him as he stormed out the door.

“There isn’t
anything we can do” shouted Captain Thomas, understanding his grief.

* * *

The Teresa
had barely cleared
the point of the island when a sudden burst of wind brought her close to the
reefs, but without the fine skills of the skipper they would have been
shipwrecked. The sloop held its course for the entire day due to the strong
southerlies, but the winds turned more to the west with the approach of night
and the reefs in the sails were removed. The moon was in its last quarter, so
it rose much later. Michael crawled up to his secret spot, sat down and thought
about Sally. The phosphorescence sparkled in the water, almost as if the water
was on fire. The crew had been quiet during the day, as if they too were
reflecting on what had happened to Mad Wayne.

“I’m going to find
you again one day, Sally” he whispered, hoping she would remember him. He opened
the small locket she given him, on that faithful morning. Michael originally
thought her to be of Asian origin, with her dark hair and eyes, but to find out
she was married was a complete shock to him.

***

Sally’s voice was firmer and louder now. “Marcus, I don't
think that I could ever lie to you, and what would be the point of lying now.
What is done is done, and there is no going back or remaking the past.”

“Greed, envy, pride and vanity, I think they all played their
parts in why you left me. I wanted to give you the things that I couldn’t buy.
I know you wanted excitement and were tired of living on my meager income. You
were tired of my poor friends, and their low-class wives, and the burden of
being a wife all at once” he suggested.

“I wanted to keep my, beautifully smooth and young looking
skin. I wanted my beauty to last forever. I didn’t want to look like some of
your friends” she admitted.
She paused
and then spoke again.
“I think I was
always like that, even as a child; I was selfish and self-obsessed. You tempted
me with your promises and I fell into your trap. I imagined you were my path to
freedom and away from my strict family At least, that is what I foolishly
believed was freedom.”