Morris had his own Praetorian guard amongst the sea-pirates of the Borneo coast, deserters, escaped prisoners, drunks and opium-eaters, a rag-bag of riff-raff and scum that the lapping tide of European civilisation had cast up like flotsam on this remote shore. Here were the means to attack Company and Country ships, here were the means to work them, to infiltrate their crews, to rise in coordinated piracy that needed only the Dyaks for cover and the expertise of their skills in handling their praus. The cleverness of the thing astonished Drinkwater; how perfectly they had been fooled, he thought.
His deductions were confirmed by shouts of abuse in recognisable English and Spanish. Several men were arguing over women, and the drum beats died away as, aroused to an erotic frenzy, the purpose of the Bacchanalia reached its climax. Frantic coupling was already in progress, less uninhibited pairs melting into the shadows or seeking privacy in the huts lower down the slopes.
A rustling in the undergrowth below him impelled Drinkwater to retreat, moving sideways into brush and ferns as a libidinous couple burst over the ridge, flinging themselves on to the ground vacated by himself. Within seconds they were engrossed in an urgent and grunting embrace; Drinkwater took advantage of their preoccupation and shifted his position.
When he again looked down on to the beaten earth before the istana he was closer to the seated leaders. They remained after the departure of their men, seemingly impassive to the arousing frenzy of the dance. A few guards stayed in attendance on the triumvirate, who appeared to be puffing on pipes.
Suddenly Morris heaved himself to his feet and, like a crouching familiar, Drinkwater saw the turbanned boy scuttle from the shadow of his robe. In the dying flames of the now neglected fires the yellow silk seemed to shimmer and the guards cringed as Morris shot out an imperative arm. The Dyaks seemed galvanised, moving to the tripod. The dark square was lowered, revealing itself as a small cage of bamboo. A prescient cramp seized Drinkwater's gut, contracting it sharply. His heart thundered in his chest. The Dyaks opened a rickety door and dragged out a bundle which they quickly hitched to the lowered rope.
In a trice they were dancing back, tallying on to the rope and hoisting the bundle up again, leaving the cage dragged to one side.
Drinkwater could see what it was now, though there was something oddly liquid about its movement as it left the ground feet first. Suspended upside down was the naked body of a man. As he rose he emitted a low gurgling moan.
Still standing, Morris shouted: 'Arria-a-ah!'
With the gorge rising uncontrollably in his throat Drinkwater could hear the anticipatory pleasure in those last attenuated syllables. The Dyaks released the rope. The low moan rose to a brief and awful shriek which stopped as the body struck the hard earth beneath the tripod.
It was Tregembo.
CHAPTER 20
A Forlorn Hope
Tregembo, or what had once been Tregembo, lay oddly crumpled and without form. The earlier liquidity of the body was clear to Drinkwater now, clear as the piercing of those agonised shrieks, for the tripod had done its terrible work. Tregembo, though still living, had been broken into pieces, his bones fractured by repeated impact with the ground.
Drinkwater vomited, his empty stomach producing little but the slimy discharge of bodily disgust.
'There, sir!'
Dutfield's arm was outstretched, a pale line of rigidity above the swaying grey shapes of the oarsmen.
'Hold water!' hissed Fraser, and the gentle knock-knock of the rag-muffled oars ceased, the turgid water swirled with dull stirrings of phosphorescence and the boats slewed to a stop.
Dutfield's keen eye had detected the only landmark within the creek, the captain's landing place. They lay on their oars and gathered themselves for the final assault. Mount was aware that they were already late, for the edges of the overhanging trees were darker against the lightening sky. But a canopy of vapour hung above them, cold on their skin and dampening the priming powder in the pans.
'Cold steel,' he whispered, 'if your firelocks fail, cold steel
He heard the words passed along, the sibilant consonant thrilling Mount with its menace. The slide of steel from scabbards, the last tiny clicks and rattles of men turning pistols in their hands and thumbing hammers and frizzens, an occasional grunt, the papist whisper of a prayer, passed like a breeze over dry grass.
'Ready, Mount?' Fraser's voice came low over the flat water that was assuming a faint yellow in response to the dawn sky.
'Aye,' the marine officer replied.
‘Frey?'
'Aye, sir.'
'Pater?'
'Yes ...'
Even the purser, Mount thought, the warrant officer's unusual presence indicative of just how desperate a hope rested with them. Patrician's officers were spread very thinly indeed, and if their assault failed, if it was bloodily repulsed as, Mount privately thought, by all the laws of military science it should be, the ship would inevitably fall.
'Take station then ...'
There was a back-watering, a twisting of the boats' alignments. Oars became briefly entangled in the narrow channel. A man cursed, stung beyond toleration by yet one more mosquito.
'Silence!'
'Vestigia nulla retrorsum,' muttered Mount, 'no retreat from the lion's den,' and in a louder voice, 'Cold steel and a steady arm, my lads ...'
'Stand by!' commanded Fraser, and the oarsmen leaned forward, their blades hovering above the water.
'Give way!'
'Thank the Lord for this mist,' muttered Mount as the stern thwart of the launch pressed his calf with the impetus of acceleration.
Taking station on the launch, the Patrician's boats swept forward to the attack.
Morris passed the pipe to the boy, exhaling the last fumes of the drug. An utter peace descended upon him, his mind swimming in a pool of the most perfect tranquillity. His body seemed to float, satiated as it was by the most exquisite of lusts. No Celestial Emperor had ever enjoyed more perfect a sequence of sensations and now his mind rolled clear of every earthly inhibition, filling with a light more intense than the yellow dawn that flooded the eastern sky. He seemed elevated, lifted to the eminence of a god. Far, far below him lay the broken, used body of Tregembo. After so many years, revenge was infinitely sweet ...
And there was yet one pleasure to enjoy ...
His hearing, tuned to an unnatural acuity by the opium, detected the approaching boats. Swaying slightly he looked down at the upturned face of his catamite.
'Here they come!' he said, and the boy ran from the istana with the news while Morris waited for the moment of consummation he had first thought of when he saw Nathaniel Drinkwater from the curtained secrecy of his palanquin beside the Pearl River.
Drinkwater woke with a start. He had no idea how long he had passed out, but a lemon yellow light already flooded the eastern sky. With quickening anxiety he lifted his head, half expecting to have been discovered, but the lovers had vanished and he was suddenly cold and lonely. The sharp stink of his spew stung his nostrils and, in a sudden wave of self-recrimination, he recalled the events of the night. It had been no nightmare that he had witnessed, though when he sought Tregembo's smashed body it was no longer there.