The Thirteen Gun Salute (30 page)

From his discreet observation-post, not a hiding-place at all but a comfortable tussock that gave him a general view, Stephen watched them disappear and then looked back to the boulder to estimate the orang-utang's ordinary unhurried quadrupedal speed over a moderate slope, but as it travelled his eye was caught by an object that stopped his breath, that almost stopped his heart and that banished all thought of calculation. What he had hitherto taken for another grey boulder was in fact a rhinoceros.

Rhinoceros unicornis. A male, by his long single horn and his size, something between sixteen and seventeen hands: though that was difficult to judge because of the huge bulk below its withers and the relative shortness of its legs. Three birds were perched upon its back.

Without moving from his tussock Stephen brought out his spy-glass - he was filled with a sudden illogical caution - and as well as he could with his shaking hands he focussed it upon the rhinoceros. Since the animal was not much above a hundred yards away this brought it very close indeed, so close that Stephen saw it close its eyes. It appeared to him that the rhinoceros had recently been wallowing - mud was drying on its massive back - and that on leaving the muddy shore it had gone to sleep there, facing up the grassy slope, a little way from the lake. The final outburst of the orang-utangs had woken it: now it was going to sleep again.

But this was a mistaken view. The rhinoceros was thinking. Presently it opened its eyes again, breathed in and out with enormous force, raised its head, sniffed the air from right to left, brought its ears to bear and set itself in motion, surprisingly buoyant motion for such a solid mass, going straight up the hill And as he watched Stephen understood its reputation of shocking strength and savagery, disembowelling elephants, devastating thorn-brakes for hours on end out of mere blind fury and malignance, tossing bulls as though they were footballs. The speed increased; the thick short legs fairly twinkled as the creature ran, gathering impetus. Looking beyond, Stephen saw another rhinoceros at the top of the slope, quarter of a mile away; it too was male; it too was running at the same smooth, powerful, very rapid pace. At the half-way point they converged, and half turning met shoulder to shoulder in a blow that sent up a cloud of dust; but neither staggered, and each completing its turn they came down abreast, faster and faster still, straight for him. The ground trembled shockingly: Stephen leapt to his feet; and then with a great trampling rushing din they were past, racing towards the lake. Within a yard of its edge they wheeled together, wheeled as quick as boars, and raced up the hill again, shoulder to shoulder, their hooves twinkling in time as they crossed the ridge and disappeared.

Chapter 8

The way up the Thousand Steps had been wearisome but intensely happy both in anticipation and in the present; the way down was more wearisome by far, partly because an exceedingly heavy warm rain fell from the moment he crossed the crater's rim, so thick that he could not see fifty yards ahead and so violent that the drops splashed high, wetting him to the middle. It also obscured the worn, uneven steps, which made the descent anxious, tense, full of care; but beneath all the physical tension there was an even greater happiness than before, that of a fulfilment that had gone beyond any anticipation, and of something not far from the beatific vision.

It glowed within, under the sodden straw cloak the monks had given him, and it was glowing still when he staggered down the last steps and on to the level sward of the durian-grove. The rain stopped as suddenly as it had begun, and the forest was filled with the sound of running water.

He looked expectantly round, but seeing no one he felt in his bosom, the only moderately dry place about him, for the repeating watch that hung there by a string. It was as he inclined his head to hear its tiny bell state that he was an hour and a half behind his time that he noticed the horses' rumps glistening under the lee of the Hindu tower: beyond them a pyramid of tall palm-fronds, inverted to throw off the wet, and inside it Seymour, with two Malays smoking tobacco.

'Lord, sir,' cried Seymour, who had started up with a look of grave concern at his appearance, 'I beg your pardon. I thought you was an orang-utang.'

'Do I look like an orang-utang, Mr Seymour?' asked Stephen.

'To tell you the truth, sir, I believe you do.'

'Perhaps it is the effect of my straw cloak,' said Stephen, looking at his arm. 'Yet it was a fine stiff rain-shedding garment to begin with. I hope I have not kept you waiting?'

'Lord no, sir,' said Seymour. 'I think you are exact to the minute, or close on. We came rather early, as the Captain said.'

'How is Mr Aubrey?'

'When last I saw him, sir, he was in fine form. He ran up to the main-jack the other day - think of that, sir, at his age! But now he is gone off with the master to survey the coast. Should you like something to eat, sir? I have brought you a chicken. It was Mr Elliott that shot it.'

'I should like a chicken of all things,' said Stephen. 'A handful of rice was my breakfast at dawn.' He greeted the Malays, a glum, wet, cross-looking pair, very unlike the Dyaks; they bowed and answered politely, but said there was no time to be lost. The waters were out in the forest and in the plain; they must hurry if they were ever to get back at all.

'Well, I shall eat my chicken, however,' said Stephen, sitting down. 'How did Mr Elliott come to shoot it? This bird is far too big for a jungle-fowl.'

'Very true, sir, but he thought it was a jungle-fowl. He thought all these' - pointing to the stripped carcasses on the floor - 'were jungle-fowl, and he blazed away until the woman of the house came and threw a bucket of water over him and his gun. There was a great hullaballoo, and he had to pay. But that was nothing to the hullaballoo in the town the next day, sir - people running about and screeching and letting off muskets, like a revolution...

'Come, tuan,' said the older, sourer, wetter Malay. 'The horses are saddled. We must go.'

Seymour's kindly chicken had been carried in a tarpaulin bag for hours through a tropical rain-forest and it tasted so very like physic that Stephen abandoned it without much reluctance and stumped out on to the sodden grass.

'Let me give you a leg-up, sir,' said Seymour, and Stephen, rising into the saddle under his impulsion, realized that for Seymour he too was an aged man. Several other marks of solicitude fell into line: he had been led across a busy Street in Batavia; his boots had been pulled off at Buitenzorg; and a puzzling half-heard recommendation that Clerke should 'take care of the ancient' now lost its mystery. Did a very old, weatherbeaten, sun-bleached wig make its wearer look, if not decrepit, then at least past mark of mouth?

'Tell me about your revolution,' he began; but before Seymour could reply they had entered the homeward track from the durian-grove and the horses were slithering down what was now a muddy stream, in single file.

Before the rain began again Stephen did manage, in odd bursts, to extract what little information Seymour had to give: facts he had none, but he did convey an atmosphere of crisis. People said that there was an armed rising, that the Vizier had been dragged off to prison, loaded with chains, that the Sultan was on his way back. At another halt and in a completely different context Seymour also said that the French had heaved down their ship; they were careening her, and - raising his voice over the roar of the hurtling rain - they had chosen a damned bad moment for doing so, the lubbers.

It was a damned bad moment for travelling, too. The following hours, though not very great in number, seemed almost infinite in extent: the forest-leeches had never been so active, agile, enterprising; and when at last the troop reached the flooded plain, creeping in mud to their knees and often losing the way in the featureless landscape, the horse-leeches were worse by far.

During those halts when it was possible to converse Stephen tried to learn what was happening from the Malays, but they told him little. They may not have known; they may have been afraid; they certainly held him responsible for the perfectly horrible time they were having; and presently he saw that it was useless to insist.

When at last, at last, they reached it, the town was more informative. Prabang had been spared all but the fringe of the downpour, and although the river was tearing along, mudcoloured, covered with tree-trunks and branches, full from bank to bank, the streets themselves were now no more than damp, and even at this time of night they would ordinarily have been full of people. There was no one. Even Maturin's Javanese place was shut up and blind. The only light to be seen was a general orange glow over the palace roofs and the only sound, apart from the voice of the river, was a confused hubbub behind the palace walls.

The poor foundered horses were led back to their stable; the Malays paid and rewarded. Stephen, aware that the young, however kind and solicitous, had in fact less stamina than the old, took Seymour back to the ship, told Macmillan to remove every single leech before letting him lie down - the boy was sleeping as he stood - and then walked off to van Buren's house.

'How glad I am you are a night-bird,' he said, sitting down heavily. 'I should have been in a sad way else. My brothel is shut.'

'You must take off your clothes,' said van Buren, looking at him with close attention, 'and when we have rid you of all your parasites you must rub yourself with a towel and put on a dressing-gown. Then with an omelet and a pot of coffee you will feel more nearly human.'

'Dear colleague,' said Stephen six cups later, 'never did you make a better prognosis. But I am interrupting your work.'

'Not at all. I am only arranging the skins you were so very kind as to send me. Many thanks indeed: there is a nectarinea I had never seen, and what I take to be a new sub-species of graculus. Tell me, how did your journey go?'

'Kumai was nearer Paradise than anything I am likely to see again in this life or the next; I cannot bless my fate enough for having been allowed it. I communed with orang-utangs; they held me by the hand. I saw the tarsier... immeasurable wealth. But allow me to tell you at another time and at immeasurable length. First, pray let me know what is afoot.'

'Before I do so,' said van Buren, holding up one hand, 'tell me whether you have brought the tarsier for us to dissect.'

Stephen shook his head, thinking of the simple-minded little creature that had gazed at him with its huge noctambulant's eyes, sitting just the other side of Ananda's lamp. 'I promised not to kill anything: and indeed, you know,' he said, 'a man would need a heart of brass to kill a tarsier.'

'Where primates are concerned, I have a heart of brass,' said van Buren. 'And the tarsier is the strangest of them all. But to return,' he went on, looking at Stephen with his head cocked on one side, 'do you really wish me to tell you what is afoot?'

'Certainly I do.'

'Well' - still looking at him quizzically - 'Hafsa and her family took what I was going to call your advice but which I find I must call the advice arising from some outside source and at the third attempt their people seized Abdul in bed with Ledward and Wray. The Europeans pleaded the Sultan's safe-conduct and the Vizier let them go; but Abdul was hurried off and messengers were sent to the Sultan. Some of Abdul's friends made a commotion, but the Vizier's men and the remaining Dyak guard soon put them down, and now those who ran away are being searched for. That is why the houses are all shut up.'

'I see. I see.' A long pause. 'How do you think it will end?'

'I do not know. Abdul's pretty face may save his skin: it may not. I just do not know. By the way, I should have told you before: your Pondicherry clerk -'

'Lesueur?'

'Lesueur. Was murdered. Pray tell Mr Fox to take great care. He is likely to be here in the morning, well before the Sultan and his train. He would be well advised to go aboard the ship; so might you. Assassins are ten a penny in Prabang, and poison is by no means rare.'

'I might, too.'

'I will find you a pair of pistols and send Latif and the watchman with you.'

The boat put off, the boat pulled back; Stephen, limp with fatigue, was hauled up the side. Richardson led him to his cot, and before he sank into something not far removed from a coma he heard a voice say, 'The knocking-shop is closed, and the Doctor's come home to bed,' followed by a cackle of good-natured laughter.

Eight bells in the morning watch pierced through the very deep fog of sleep and Stephen raised his head, aware of an urgency though not of its nature. Some moments later the pattern fell into shape and he called aloud for Ahmed. After the first reviving cup he said, 'Ahmed, I must shave my face and put on my good black coat.'

At one bell in the forenoon watch he stepped on to the quarterdeck, smooth and decently dressed, stared at the washed, innocent sky, and said, 'My dear Mr Fielding, good morning to you. Please may I have a boat to take me ashore, with a couple of Marines as a guard? I am going to see Mr Fox, and the town is somewhat disturbed.'

Fox had arrived an hour before; he was in a state of intense but contained excitement and his greeting, though friendly and even familiar, was utterly detached. 'One of my informants has been murdered,' said Stephen, 'and as I dare say you know already, Ledward and Wray are still at large. There is the possibility not only of open murder but also of poison secretly administered: a most reliable source tells me that you should take very great care.'

'Thank you for the warning. I did indeed know that they were at large: I had scarcely reached the house before a note came from Wray, offering to bear witness against Ledward in return for protection and removal to any other country or island whatsoever. Here it is.'

'He must think you bear Ledward very great ill-will,' said Stephen, having looked at the note.

Fox grinned and said, 'I hope, I hope to have him put to the same death as Abdul. The only thing I am afraid of is the Sultan's notion of honour. He gave them his safe-conduct, and he is so very touchy about these matters that even the Vizier dared not arrest them: though to be sure they may have been taken up secretly, in case the Sultan should change his mind - they have not been seen in the French compound. Yet whether or no, I think we may say the treaty is in the bag, to use a low expression.'