Ghost Fire Read online

  Nathan had followed him down. From here, they could easily leap to the ground outside the fort, get round the back of the mansions and engage the nawab’s archers. It would buy precious time for Connie’s boat to reach the safety of the big ships.

  Theo was about to jump, when his heart missed a beat. The boat, prickling with arrows like a stuck pig, had caught fire at her stern. The women on board shrank away from the flames, but there was nowhere to go. The crowded vessel overturned and her passengers tipped into the river, screaming and thrashing. The water boiled around them, while their skirts bloomed in the water. The heavy fabric weighed them down, sucking them under.

  Theo had lost sight of Connie. The boats at the wharf were already overloaded: there was no space, and they would be too slow to reach the drowning women.

  He threw aside his musket, stripped off his ammunition pouch, and dived off the end of the wall into the river. He took a mouthful of the brown, silty water, spat it out and kicked off.

  The river was wide, and the boat had capsized a distance away. The water stung his eyes and the teeming chaos never seemed to get any closer. Behind it, the hulls of the East Indiamen, with their immaculate paintwork and gilded sterns, rose high above the carnage. Their crews clustered at the rails, watching and pointing, like spectators at a bear pit. Why didn’t they lower their boats?

  Arrows started to fall around him. One struck inches away, so close that the water splashed his eyes. He trod water, checking the faces near him. There were fewer women now, their motions less frantic as they tired. One girl with wide brown eyes slipped below the surface, leaving a trail of bubbles.

  Something hit his shoulder. He turned and saw a woman’s corpse floating face down, bumping up against him. Three arrows stuck out of her back. He pushed her away, but the current returned her to him. He wrestled her out of his way, fighting the cold, rubbery skin until she drifted downriver.

  “Connie!” he shouted, taking more mouthfuls of river water. “Connie!”

  Some of the women had managed to reach the upturned boat and clamber on top of it. Others clustered around, trying to cling on. A vicious fight for survival had taken hold. The women on the boat fought off the others, battering the hands that reached for the hull with broken pieces of oar.

  On the far side of the boat, Theo caught a glimpse of fair hair. He shouted Connie’s name again; the head sank and was blocked by the upturned hull. Theo swam toward her. His body, battered and bruised from days of fighting, summoned one last effort of will.

  Suddenly pain exploded through his skull. Something struck him hard and full in his face. A jealous defender had lashed out with an oar. It swung again. A hollow crack echoed in his ears as it collided with the back of his head.

  The last thing Theo remembered was water flooding his mouth and entering his lungs, mingling with the blood, as he rolled over and lost consciousness.

  •••

  Theo woke with the sun in his eyes. He was lying on his back, on hard planks that made him feel every bruise and wound on his body. Rigging and spars made intricate patterns above him as they rose toward the clouds.

  He felt as if a powder charge had gone off inside his head.

  Constance.

  He opened his eyes again and sat up. The pain doubled, like a hot lance probing his eyeballs, so bad it made him want to vomit. He fought it back. He must find her.

  The deck was crowded with men and women in every state of despair. Sailors moved between them, fixing lines and trimming the sails. He could not see Constance.

  “So they left you a few brains in your skull,” said a voice behind him.

  It was Nathan, sitting on a chest, filling his pipe with the tobacco he kept in his earrings. His smile could not hide the concern in his face.

  Theo touched the back of his head. A lump was swelling like an ostrich egg. “How did you get here?”

  “The same as you.” Nathan touched his shirt, still damp. “I followed you in. And when they swung at me, I managed to duck.”

  “You saved me?”

  “So far.”

  “And Constance?”

  Nathan fiddled with his pipe. “The ship lowered her boats—too late for many, but not for all. They rescued everyone they could.” The look on his face broke Theo’s heart. “I’m sorry.”

  The pain in Theo’s head throbbed harder, but he hardly noticed in his despair. Why had he been so angry with her? Why had they parted in hatred?

  He should have drowned—not her. He rose unsteadily to his feet and stumbled toward the rail. He would end it now.

  Staring over the side, he saw water rippling past her hull. The ship was moving. Nathan’s hand clamped on his shoulder. “There were others I could have saved from the water,” Nathan murmured. “Do not make me regret my choice.”

  The rebuke brought Theo back to himself. “Where are we?”

  Calcutta had disappeared. Off both sides of the ship, the riverbanks showed jungle and small villages, with the peak of a pagoda occasionally breaking through the trees. Gaunt cows trampled muddy paths down to the water to drink.

  “The nawab sent boats loaded with burning straw to try to set us alight. The captain felt it was necessary to remove ourselves downriver.”

  Theo followed Nathan’s gaze, along the row of cannon that lined the main deck. All were tied down tight, their tampions still wedged in their muzzles.

  “One broadside would have turned the nawab’s boats to matchwood.” Theo’s despair hardened to anger. “What sort of coward is the captain?”

  “He was obeying orders.” Nathan pointed aft, where a thin, stooped figure stood in earnest conversation with two young women, who were impressing on him their desperate gratitude. “Colonel Manningham took charge of evacuating the ladies personally—and when they were aboard, he felt honor-bound to chaperone them to safety.”

  Theo strode aft. The two young women recoiled at his approach, sensing his fury, while Manningham raised his chin contemptuously and stared him down. His shirt was immaculate, not a speck of blood or black powder sullying its starched white front.

  “Mr. Courtney.” He sniffed. “I am glad you have woken at last.”

  “You must turn this ship about.” Theo gestured to the cannons, impotent and unused. “With these guns, you could stop the nawab dead.”

  Manningham colored. “My duty is to the ladies aboard this ship.”

  “But there are hundreds of men and women still trapped in the fort.”

  “They will have to look to their own protection.”

  Theo could hardly believe what he had heard. He saw another vessel on station a few cables behind their ship—and another beyond, and another. The whole fleet from Calcutta seemed to have followed Manningham’s lead and deserted the city. “If you do not put about, you will condemn hundreds of loyal Company servants to their deaths.” He glanced at the ship’s wheel on the quarterdeck. He wondered if he could grab it, force the vessel to come about. But that would be madness. Even if he was not stopped, you could not turn a great ship as if it was a landau. In the treacherous shallows and mudbanks of the Hooghly, he might ground the vessel—or worse.

  Manningham read his thoughts. A sneer of triumph spread across his face. “The last time your superior gave you an order, you disobeyed. You assaulted Gerard Courtney. Now, you will pay the price.”

  Unseen, four sailors had come up behind Theo. They seized his arms and legs, lifting him off the deck so that, no matter how he fought, he could not move.

  “Take him below and clap him in irons.”

  They carried him to the brig, a tiny cell in the bowels of the ship, and shackled him to an iron ring.

  Alone in the dark with his regrets, only one thought consoled Theo.

  At least Connie will suffer no more.

  •••

  Constance watched the tragedy unfold from the second floor of the governor’s mansion: the desperate, overcrowded boats, the rain of flaming arrows, the carnage when the boat caught
fire and overturned. She noticed the fair-haired woman among the dark-complexioned fugitives and guessed it was Mary Butler, a merchant’s wife from White Town who had been her friend. She did not see Theo dive into the water, and by the time he reached the boat he was another bobbing head among many.

  “It is too terrible,” she breathed. She knew how easily it could have been her in the river. Some of the women had clambered onto the upturned boat, defending their position by jabbing oars at others who tried to claim their place of safety. It didn’t save them. The arrows fell with relentless accuracy, killing them anyway. Some caught fire. Others died where they lay, clinging to the boat even in death.

  Constance turned away from the window. Belatedly, the anchored ships had begun to lower their boats, hauling up the few survivors who had made it out of range of the arrows. Her friend was not among them.

  “What are you doing here?”

  Gerard had entered. Hours of grim fighting had broken his usual confidence. He looked unutterably exhausted, bleeding from his cheek where a musket ball had come within an inch of ending his life. Constance ran to him with a cry and embraced him.

  “I told you to go to the ships,” he admonished her. And then, “Thank God you did not.”

  “I could not abandon Theo. He always made me promise I would never leave him. Even after everything that has happened . . .” She fingered the pendant she wore at her neck, a pearl set in gold that had belonged to her mother. “If we die, it will be together.”

  “I fear you are mistaken.” Gerard had picked up a telescope and was studying the river. He pointed to the nearest of the big ships, the Dodaldy, where survivors were being lifted on board. “There is your brother.”

  Constance snatched the telescope from him. It was true. Theo was standing on the deck, conversing with another sailor. There was no mistaking his shock of red hair.

  She looked away, trembling.

  “Your loyalty was misplaced,” said Gerard, drily. “You would not abandon your brother, but it seems he had no such scruples.”

  She looked again. She couldn’t help herself. The sailor walked away. Theo turned toward Fort William and Constance—his features were close through the glass, his face full of despair. For a second, he and she stared at each other across a distance that had suddenly become unbridgeable.

  Then he disappeared behind the hammocks stuffed into the ship’s netting. Constance passed the telescope back to Gerard.

  “So now it is us,” she said, in a voice as cold as stone. Even with the naked eye, she could see sailors running up the rigging to unfurl the sails. Others were fitting the spokes to the anchor capstan, readying the ship to get under way. “I never thought he would run away.”

  “He keeps eminent company,” said Gerard, running his eye over the ship with the spyglass. “I can see the gallant colonels, Manningham and Frankland aboard that ship. Governor Drake has fled too.”

  “What shall we do?” asked Constance.

  “We cannot leave even if we wanted to.” All along the river, the East India fleet was following the Dodaldy’s lead and making sail. “There is no way out. We will have to fight, and trust to Providence to save us.”

  The building shuddered as a cannonball struck home. Constance put out her hands to steady herself against the windowsill. “I trust nothing anymore.”

  •••

  The fighting continued through the night. The nawab’s French gunners had brought their cannon closer, making embrasures in the church and the mansions from where they could target the buildings inside the fort with lethal accuracy. It was impossible to sleep. Constance drifted between the governor’s mansion and the parade ground, only dimly aware of the progress of the battle. Men with ladders tried to gain the walls by stealth. A Dutch sergeant mutinied and deserted with his band of mercenaries. A fierce attack was mounted on the river gate but was repelled. Constance watched it all with the indifference of a spectator. All she could do was await her fate.

  Next morning, the fort’s commanders assembled for a final council of war in the ruined council chamber. The roof had been torn off, so it lay open to the sky; the long mahogany table was strewn with rubble, and the gilt mirror on the wall had cracked into a thousand shards. Heavy clouds pressed down, kettling in the immense heat that refused to break.

  With the Company leadership having deserted, seniority fell to a man named John Holwell, the chief magistrate. He was a serious man, a veteran of India, whose lined face and gray hair belied the fact he was only forty-five. More than one man around the table could not help wondering how the battle might have gone if he had been in command from the start. Now it was too late. He sat in an upholstered chair at the head of the table, with Gerard and the other surviving merchants on either side.

  “The first order of business,” Holwell announced, “is to record that in the absence of Governor Drake, and colonels Manningham and Frankland, I am duly elected president and governor of Fort William and its Presidency.”

  The clerk to his left had managed to salvage the minute book from the carnage. He recorded it in a neat copperplate hand, tutting where the dust made fat gobs of the ink, or when the shiver of another cannonball made his letters wobble.

  “What is the butcher’s bill today?” Gerard asked.

  “We lost twenty-five killed and seventy wounded overnight,” said the surgeon. “Some thirty have also deserted to the enemy.”

  Holwell did the sums in his head. “There cannot be more than two dozen men able to hold a musket.”

  A silence fell, heavy with despair. Everyone knew there could be only one conclusion. No one wanted to voice it.

  Holwell sighed. “I had hoped that if we held out long enough the ships might return.” A bite of anger came into his voice. “God knows a single sloop could have laid waste to the nawab’s forces, and given us safe passage out, if only they had been willing to fight.”

  He gazed around the table. “Now our hopes have expired. The fleet is not coming. I will send an envoy to the nawab under a flag of truce and sue for peace.”

  No one disagreed. Looking at their reflections in the cracked fragments of the great mirror, it was obvious that any notions of honor or glory had been crushed, like the brittle bricks of the fort’s walls.

  “You must not concede too much,” Gerard warned. “The nawab is cruel and greedy. If he finds out how desperate we are, he will offer no quarter.”

  Holwell nodded. “I will send the message this very hour, offering surrender with dignity, if he will guarantee safe conduct.”

  Outside, the city looked like the Day of Judgment. Smoke turned the air black, while a red glow tinged the sky, like a false sunset, from the burning buildings. Dust clogged every pore and made eyes weep. Everything was broken. The families that crowded the courtyard, still in their hundreds despite all who had died, were like lost souls awaiting punishment.

  Gerard found Constance curled in a ball, in a corner of the fort where the walls offered a modicum of shade. She looked up with dead eyes. “Why have the guns gone silent?”

  “We are negotiating our surrender.”

  “What will become of us? Will the nawab’s men—?”

  She put her hand over her breasts and lowered her eyes. For the first time in weeks, Gerard remembered how young she was: sixteen. With her fair hair and golden skin, she would be a tantalizing prize for the victorious army.

  Gerard had heard many stories of the nawab’s appetites. It would do no good to tell Constance now. “He has made his point and won his victory,” he said, with more confidence than he felt. “It suits his purpose to appear magnanimous. He must know that our masters in London cannot leave this insult unavenged. If he is merciful, it will go easier with him later.”

  Constance tugged up the bodice of her dress. She had not changed in three days. With the heat, the damp fabric clung to her body like a second skin, revealing her curves. She felt hopelessly vulnerable.

  A shout rose from the sentries on the wall
. Gerard ran to the broken rampart. An Indian jemmautdar, wearing the vivid blue turban that signified high rank in the nawab’s army, was approaching over the broken ground between the ruined houses. One of the sentries aimed his musket, but Gerard pushed the muzzle down even before the jemmautdar had spread his arms wide in a gesture of peace.

  Through signs and a mix of broken languages, he explained that if they ceased fighting, his master the nawab would graciously consent to discuss the terms of their surrender.

  “We need his word that he will deal with us honorably,” Holwell shouted down.

  The jemmautdar bared his teeth in a wide white smile, nodding emphatically. A bargain was made. The jemmautdar retired. A hush fell on the fort, uncanny and nerve-racking for being the first time there had been quiet in four days and nights. Even the wailing of the children seemed muted in the hot, exhausted silence that gripped the courtyard.

  “I do not trust him,” Gerard told Holwell. “We should keep our men on guard.”

  Holwell shrugged. “We must not give the nawab any reason to question our sincerity. Besides, we have so few men there is little we could do.”

  “He will take it as evidence of weakness,” Gerard warned.

  Holwell looked at him through glassy eyes. “No Indian prince would dream of going back on his word once he had agreed a truce. They would rather negotiate than fight.”

  “If I had a rupee for every man who said that and is now lying dead with an Indian blade or bullet in his belly, I would have a lakh,” said Gerard, acidly. A lakh was one hundred thousand rupees.

  “We have no choice.”

  The minutes ticked past in the long, hot afternoon.

  The few dozen soldiers in the garrison left the walls and lounged on the parade ground with their families. Heat, hunger and exhaustion had paralyzed them all.

  Gerard sat on the ramparts, scraping a whetstone over the blade of his sword. His head ached from thirst; each rasp of the stone was like a knife through his skull, but he could not help himself. He had to drown out the menacing stillness that had settled on the city. In the shells of the surrounding mansions, shadows flickered behind broken windows. He heard noises of rubble shifting within.