It was early morning when they brought her the news. Ronnie was at sea, and Sarah was alone in the house with Mrs Stables and the servants. Grandpapa John had taken the children to Reverend Darrah’s Singapore School on Hill Street. Alexander Johnston was the first to hear the news, which was common enough, since his pier and godown was the first on the river mouth, and Johnston was always alert to the latest shipping intelligence. He dropped everything and rode out to the Simpson mansion. He told Sarah only of their deaths, and not the horror of their mutilation.
She did not scream or faint or curse or tear her hair. She blanched and put her hand to her mouth when he told her the news, but regained her composure quickly. She thanked Alexander Johnston for the courtesy of coming to tell her personally; she would not have cared to hear the news from a messenger or servant. Johnston offered his condolences, and his services if she thought there was anything he could do for her while Ronnie was away. Then he took his leave, saying he would try to get word to her husband as soon as possible. There was a free-trader bound for Canton that might be able to catch him before he left for Manila.
Sarah walked up the stairs to her bedroom like a somnambulant, purposeful but scarcely conscious of her own movements. She closed the door behind her and locked it, and went over to the windows to draw the drapes. But then she changed her mind. She went out and stood on the verandah overlooking the garden and the ocean beyond. Black storm clouds rolled over the horizon, and the thunder rumbled in the distance. As she stood gazing out over the ocean like a woman in a waking dream, the sky grew blacker and blacker until it seemed as if night had fallen in the middle of the day––as if the whole wide world awaited the end of days. The wind rushed through the palms and frangipani, sweeping back and forth across the garden and the balcony, and raising a white spray across the dark waters. The wind felt cool and fresh on her face, and whipped her loose hair behind her head.
A large egret, stunningly white against the jet-black sky, flew across the garden and headed out to sea. Her thoughts swooped and dived with the flight of the egret, racing ahead and beyond her control. She remembered family days in England as a child, of afternoons on the riverbank with her sister, of Sundays in church and Christmases and birthdays at home.
She remembered the day of her sister’s wedding in Penang, and her own in Singapore when Rosemarie and John had come down to join the celebrations. She remembered Annie playing with Lizzie the last time they had visited in Singapore. She thought of the last time she had seen them, when they had said goodbye on the dock. She thought of her plans for when they returned. She felt the emptiness and the pain in her heart. She saw the blood on the deck and their dead faces in the deep of the ocean. Lightning crackled along the wrought iron rails of the verandah, casting up little daggers of blue light that pierced the darkness.
Then the rain came down suddenly like a great waterfall, straight and flat and torrential. She stood still in the darkness as the wind drove the rain against her face and body. It soaked her clothes and hair, and washed like a fast-moving stream around her ankles. It washed away the tears that streamed down her face as she grieved for her sister and her family.
When Grandpapa John returned home and heard the news, he sat outside her door, listening to the rain hammer on the roof and shutters. He did not bother her, for he thought it best to give her time to herself. He sat in the gloom reflecting on the tragedy of young lives taken in their prime. He would gladly have given his own life if it could have saved theirs, but all he could do was to sit helplessly and share his daughter-in-law’s sorrow. She had a strong heart, he knew, and she would survive it. But he felt for her. He remembered when he had first heard of his own brother’s death, struck down with the smallpox at the age of eighteen, and newly engaged to a bonnie lassie from Inverness.
A few hours later she unlocked the door and he went in to her. She embraced him, and he could tell immediately that her resolute spirit had accepted the fact of the matter. She grieved as deep as any other, but her thoughts were now focused on taking her revenge upon the pirates, about whom she had joked so many years before.
When Ronnie returned three weeks later, she was still stunned by the news, but her mind was clear and made up.
‘We must find them,’ she said in a voice that was both calm and chilling. ‘We must find them and kill them.’
* * *
Ronnie went to see Kenneth Murchison, the resident councillor. Murchison was sympathetic and said that he would communicate his concern to Governor Ibbetson in Penang, but Ronnie was sure that nothing would be done, despite the uproar among the residents of Singapore, Malacca and Penang over the brutal murders.
Sarah also went to see him, but received less sympathy. Kenneth Murchison could not believe the foul language she used to describe his failure to protect innocent lives. Then Ronnie went to his merchant friends, in the hope of a raising a private fleet to hunt down the pirates, like the small fleet that had been raised earlier by the Chinese merchants. The merchants were sympathetic, but pointed out that it was one thing driving off some of the more brazen Malay prahus that stood off like vultures at the far edges of the harbour, but quite another matter to hunt down the Illanun fleet that many believed had been responsible for the attack on the Rose of Dublin. For one thing, they had no idea where to find them, and they could search aimlessly for weeks or even months without much chance of a sighting.
‘And I think the Company will finally do something,’ George Armstrong told Ronnie when he came to see him. ‘I spoke to Deputy Resident Bonham the other day, and he said they were sending some ships out from Calcutta. I also think we’re likely to have Bonham as resident soon, and he may be more sympathetic ’
Ronnie was doubtful, and Sarah was mad with frustration and anger. She also went to see Deputy Resident Bonham, who briskly showed her the door when the air turned blue and Bonham’s cheeks turned red.
‘If they don’t do anything soon,’ Sarah told her husband, ‘I want you to arm as many ships as you can and we’ll go in search of them ourselves.’
Ronnie thought about how much such an expedition might cost. It might go on for months or years, and it might ruin them. But he knew she would never rest until she found her sister’s murderers, so he prepared himself for it. He also did not like her use of the pronoun ‘we,’ but he said nothing, because he also knew that nothing would dissuade her from joining such an expedition.