The Incarnations (35 page)

Down the trapdoor to the galley I went, into the dank, stinking pit of Yang’s cabin. Treading carefully so as not to creak the wooden boards, I stepped over Yang and his gang, snoring on rattan mats, my heart going berserk with fear. But the ruffians sleep deepest in the hour before dawn, and they slumbered on as I stole what Mazu told me to and slipped out.

Back on the deck of the
Scourge
I hid what I’d stolen in my robes, and prayed to Mazu to be long gone from the junk before they knew what was missing.

The sun was midway in the sky when you and Ah Jack were let out of the quail cages. The galley slaves brought you bowls of rice, and the sea ruffians crowded round to stare at the gweilo at feeding time. Captain Yang came up in his turban and robes, and spoke to Pockmark Wan. The plan was to row you and Ah Jack to Hermit Crab Cove, then walk you across the mudflats to the authorities in Canton. The patrol boats on the Pearl River were as bad as sea bandits, and would steal the British devils from the Red Flag Fleet and reap the reward for themselves. The four hundred dollars was Captain Maggot’s alone.

They needed men to row the scrambling dragon to Hermit Crab Cove, and Pockmark Wan chose oarsmen, pointing at chests.
You. You. You
. I rushed to the fore, and thrust my chest in the path of his grime-blackened forefinger.
You
. Though I was not one of the gang, I had been chosen. The Sea Goddess’s intervention, no doubt.

When this was settled, Captain Maggot strutted up to you, puffing his chest out to make up for the fact he was several heads shorter, waving his dagger about. He rubbed the cotton of your shirt between his grubby fingers, as though to check it was up to his high standards, then, gesturing with his dagger, said, ‘Take off your shirts!’ You and Ah Jack looked at each other with panicking eyes. But Yang had a dagger, and not wanting to be stabbed, you unbuttoned your shirts and handed them over to the outstretched hands of his lackeys. Then you stood there, bare-chested before the leering crowd.

‘Look how hairy these barbarians are!’ Captain Yang smirked. ‘More like beasts than men!’

Ah Jack’s chest was broad and muscular, with whorls of dark hair. You were narrower, pale and freckled, with an overhang of belly. Both of you had more meat on you than any of us Hakkas and Tankas, and you couldn’t count your ribs like ours. ‘Cow’s milk bulks them up,’ one of the sea ruffians noted.

Chief Yang gestured again with his dagger. Off with your belts. Off with your trousers. Off with your boots. He wanted them all. I lowered my head in shame as you unbuckled your belt and slid your trousers down your hairy legs. The sea bandits grinned at the sight of you stripped to your underwear.

‘Hairy down to their toes!’ they laughed. ‘Like beasts! Like beasts!’

The sun beat down on the
Scourge
and waves slapped on the broadside, tilting the deck. You stooped and lowered your head, but Ah Jack stood with his chin up, refusing to part with his dignity. Captain Yang grinned at this, then reached to stroke Ah Jack’s brown curls. The lecherous look in Maggot’s eyes made my guts writhe, for now there was no denying what he wanted. Ah Jack looked murderous, but looks can’t defend a man the way weapons can, and there was nothing he could do as Yang stroked his neck.

‘Down on your knees,’ Captain Yang said.

Ah Jack had no understanding of what was being said to him, but you did.

‘How much money do you want, Captain?’ you cried out desperately. ‘I swear we will give you any amount you want if you leave him be!’

Chief Yang didn’t even look at you. One of Yang’s men jerked your head back by your hair to shut you up.

‘On your knees,’ Chief Yang repeated. ‘Down!’

Yang then slapped Ah Jack and stabbed his blade at the wooden boards. Ah Jack reeled from the slap, but stayed on his feet. His stubbornness had the jackals baying for his blood.

‘Knock him down! Knock him down! Teach him respect for the Red Flag Fleet!’

Yang’s henchmen went over to make Ah Jack kneel. They went to grab him, but Ah Jack shouted and thrashed out his arms, fending them off. ‘
Don’t!
’ you shouted. But Ah Jack kept throwing punches at Yang’s men, until Chief Maggot moved into the fray and Ah Jack’s knuckles struck his jaw, sending him lurching back. It was the first time anyone on the
Scourge
had seen the head of the Red Flag Fleet assaulted, and the sea ruffians’ jaws dropped. The deck tilted, as though the
Scourge
itself was reeling in shock, and Chief Maggot roared and stuck his dagger in Ah Jack’s guts.

He withdrew the blade and at last Ah Jack obeyed the order to get down, thudding to his knees and slumping on the splintery deck. Your mouth went round, as though you were saying ‘Oh!’, and you clutched your sides as though you had been knifed too. The blood of Ah Jack’s wound puddled around him, and parts of him twitched and he blinked as though he had dust in his eyes. Stabbing Ah Jack had lessened Maggot’s rage none whatsoever. He touched the swelling at his jaw and yelled, ‘Get this British devil, bleeding his stinking barbarian blood everywhere, off my ship!’ He nodded to the oarsmen chosen to row to Hermit Crab Cove, and waved his bloodstained blade at the taffrail. ‘Throw him over! Drown him in the sea!’

There’s no disobeying orders on the
Scourge
, so we all went over to Ah Jack. He’s dying anyway, I told myself. At least drowning will end his agony. We each grabbed one of Ah Jack’s limbs and, as we heaved him up, he screamed. Then Turtle Li shouted, ‘
Wait!
Don’t throw him yet! The head of an Englishman is worth a hundred dollars!’

Chief Yang looked startled. He had forgotten about the reward for an Englishman’s head. ‘Boy! Come here!’ he said.

The ‘boy’ Yang was beckoning to was me. His bloodshot eyes pierced into mine as he put the sweaty handle of the cutlass into my hand. ‘Take off his head first, before you throw him in.’

I turned back to Ah Jack. The oarsmen had lowered him back on the deck, where he lay bleeding, for his heart had not yet stopped beating. Ah Jack looked up as I went over to him, heavy and slow, as though my conscience was dragging in my feet. Ah Jack saw the dagger in my hand and shook his head and mumbled, ‘
No no no
.’ His eyes begged me for mercy as I knelt on the blood-soaked boards besides him. But there was no mercy on the
Scourge
. No mercy for him, and no mercy for those who don’t obey orders.

‘Sorry,’ I whispered in Ghost People tongue. ‘Sorry, Ah Jack.’

Ah Jack moaned and beat his hand against my chest, and two of the oarsmen came and held his wrists down against the deck. Ah Jack turned his head this way and that, with terror in his eyes. So I grabbed his dark curls to hold him steady, and brought the blade to his throat.

‘No!’ you shouted somewhere behind me. ‘
No!
’

But what choice did I have?

We rowed you away from the
Scourge of the Celestial Seas
, the flag of the Red Flag Fleet wilting from the mizzenmast. Oars splashed through the waves and seabirds swooped and soared in the clouded sky above, and we rowed as though the rhythm of our strokes, our heaving chests, had sent us into a trance. My arms were loose and shaking as I pulled the oars. Though I had rinsed my hands, they still looked drenched in Ah Jack’s blood.

Now in the robes of a galley slave, you were nothing like the scholar I had met in Fanqui Town. Bound up with rope and dumped in the bottom of the boat, you glared above your gag, your eyes deranged. Ah Jack’s head was in the burlap sack beside you, stained where the severed part had bled. The seawater that leaked into the boat, sloshing around our feet, had his blood in it too. Turtle Li sat on the bench above you, smoking his pipe, his flintlock aimed at your head. ‘Behave,’ he warned, ‘or your head’s going in that bag with your friend’s.’

We rowed up the Pearl River Bay to Hermit Crab Cove, then pulled the boat through the shoals and up the shore. We hid the boat and untied your ropes, and lent you a broken, splintery oar for a staff. We of the
Scourge
were wobbly at first on dry land; we were so used to pitching our weight to counter the up and down of waves. Mud squelched and splattered our staggery legs as we trudged over the mudflats. The rickety shacks of fisherfolk and pagodas stood out on hilltops in the distance, and further inland the scenery changed to lush green paddy fields, watered by streams of the Pearl River and tended to by crouching farmers in rice-planting hats. ‘Hurry up,
cripple
,’ growled Turtle Li, the muzzle of his gun prodding your back as you limped. Stinky Fu and Ah Xi had our rice and water, and Ah Chen and Scabby Rui each had a flintlock to ward off other bandits. Turtle Li had ordered me to carry Ah Jack’s head in the sack and, as we trudged on, the memory of those eyes of his, begging for his life, haunted my mind.

At dusk the sky began to spit down on our heads, and Turtle Li cursed and spat back at the sky. Though the plan had been to hike overnight, the outlaws of the Red Flag Fleet weren’t the sort for a gruelling slog through the cold and rain, and we detoured to a rocky outcrop Turtle Li knew from his time as a land bandit, where there was a cave.

We built a fire in the cave, under a hole like a chimney, borrowing driftwood left by those who’d sheltered there before. Scabby Rui bound you up with ropes again, and dumped you in the shadows at the back of the cave, with the creatures that scuttle and bite. Though the stench of rotting meat was coming from the burlap sack, Ah Jack’s head was thrown back there too. ‘So Ah Tom won’t be lonesome,’ grinned Turtle Li. Back in the shadows you glared above the gag, looking keen to rip out his throat.

Stinky Fu heated some rice over the fire and we dug in with grubby hands. When our supper was eaten, they passed round a flask of grog, grimacing as they swigged. The time had come for me to reveal what I’d stolen from Chief Maggot. So I brought the wooden box out of my robes and opened the lid. I spoke for the first time since the
Scourge
: ‘Look what I got.’

Turtle Li’s eyes went round, and he choked on his liquor. ‘How did you come by
that
?’ he spluttered.

‘I found it on the deck.’

‘You don’t find foreign mud lying about,’ said Turtle Li. ‘You stole it.’

‘That’s Chief Yang’s,’ added Ah Chen. ‘He’ll flay you alive.’

I said nothing and shrank back, leaving the opium out for the taking. They were opium-fiends, every last one, and the opium was here and Yang and his jackals were not. There’s no harm in smoking a pinch, they all soon agreed. Turtle Li stabbed his stubby finger at my chest.

‘Anyone gets done for this, it’s you, Tanka boy. Got that?’ Then he pounced on the opium and stuffed some in his pipe.

And so they smoked and spent an hour or so bragging about the merchant ships they’d sailed on, and the faraway lands they’d been to, and guffawing about the sinner’s boils they’d caught off the whores they’d poked. Smoke fogged the cave as they puffed on pipe after pipe and I had to crawl to the opening to clear my head.

The opium stole away their brains, or what they had of them, right before my eyes. They smoked themselves into a stupor, then stared into the fire, hypnotized by the leap of flames. When they spoke it was the same foolishness Three Pipes Qin used to come out with after a pipe or two:

‘I remember this cave from before I was born,’ said Ah Xi. ‘This cave’s where all humans come from before they are born . . .’

‘When we’re back on the
Scourge
, I’ll challenge Chief Yang to a duel and win,’ boasted Turtle Li. ‘Then I’ll be head of the Red Flag Fleet. ’Tis the prophecy of the seagull with the ruby eyes!’

What a relief it was when one by one they lay down their opiummuddled heads and slept. Turtle Li was the last to go.

‘Anyone’s getting done for this,’ he slurred as he stabbed his finger at me, ‘it’s you, Tanka boy . . .’

Then he was out cold, gone from the here and now.

In the gloom at the back of the cave, your eyes blinked in the dark.

I watched them by the light of the dying fire. Though they were strewn lifeless as bodies from a shipwreck, I watched to make sure they were properly out. Then, shuddering at the risk I was taking, I tugged Turtle Li’s dagger out of the scabbard on his belt. At the back of the cave, you were wriggling on your side. Nervous you would wake the bandits, I crawled over and hacked through your bindings with Turtle Li’s cutlass, breathing deeply to steady my shaking hands. You ripped off your gag and gasped. Then you grabbed Ah Jack’s head in the sack and hobbled over to the sleeping bandits. You reached for Ah Chen’s flintlock and limped out of the cave.

Silently we hobbled through the mud up the Pearl River Bay. You were using the broken, splintery oar as a staff and had thrown the flintlock in with Ah Jack’s head and slung the sack over your shoulder. Under the cloudy and drizzly night sky we went as fast as our legs could go, Tanka fisherboy and Red-haired Devil, knowing the more distance between us and the cave of sea bandits the better.

Grieving over Ah Jack, you didn’t say a word as I led the way over the mudflats to the other British devils in Wangpo. But fleeing from the
Scourge
had lifted my spirits, and my heart had quickened with the eagerness to go back to Ma Qin’s wash boat and show them I was alive. First and Second Sisters would shed some tears to see me again, and Ma Qin would tell me off for getting captured by sea bandits. ‘How was I cursed with such a fool for a son!’ she’d scold. ‘No more seafaring for you, Ah Qin!’ Then I would work as a porter in Canton harbour and forget the
Scourge
and lose my sea-ruffian ways. I’d do my duty as first-born son and look after Ma Qin and my sisters, and never leave the Pearl River again. I’d had enough of the sea for this life, no matter what the Sea Goddess had foreseen.

We hiked through the mud of the Pearl River Bay until sunrise, when we stopped to catch our breath. We could see Wangpo in the distance and, though you were soon to be with your British-devil kin again, you looked miserably at the sun rising over the sea and shimmering on the waves. ‘Are you thirsty, Ah Tom?’ I asked, wondering where we might find some drinking water. You did not respond but dropped the sack you’d been carrying on the muddy ground, reached in and pulled out the flintlock. Then you spun around, and pain cracked in my skull as you hit me with the butt. You cocked the gun and upped the barrel level with my chest.