1812
Moon Ling sat huddled on the deck of the junk, her hands clasped over her ears, trying desperately to block out the sound of the rising storm and the raging sea. She was cold and frightened. She tried to force her mind to focus on happier times. She remembered sitting by the river in the late afternoon sunshine, watching her mother cooking noodles over an open fire. In the distance, further downriver, Moon Ling could see her father mooring his boat, and dividing the day’s catch with his neighbour. Her younger sister sat by her mother’s side, singing an old song about a magic bird. She remembered the sunshine warm against her cheek, the cooking smells, and the sound of the gently rolling river in the background.
A wave crashed over the bow of the junk, drenching her body as she sat on the exposed deck. Then the painful memory returned. She no longer had a mother, or a father, or a sister. They had all perished in the worst winter that anyone could remember in Fukien province. Her aunt Xue Zheng had dragged Moon Ling from their frozen bodies and had looked after her for a few months. But Xue Zheng was an elderly woman with a large family of her own, and she had been forced to sell Moon Ling to the owner of a travelling street opera. Moon Ling had a natural talent for singing and acting, and had quickly established herself as one of the leading players in the company. This year they were travelling by junk on the Northeast monsoon to the port city of Malacca on the Malayan Peninsula, which had become a major trading centre since it was founded by Iskander Shah centuries before. Although it no longer dominated the maritime trade as it had in the days of the Great Malaccan Sultanate, it remained a regional centre of commerce and was home to a thriving Chinese merchant community.
Another wave crashed over the bow of the junk, this time with such force that it rolled Moon Ling onto her back on the crowded deck. The night sky was black as pitch. Suddenly a fork of lightning struck the mast of the junk, sending a violent shudder down the length of the deck. The mast and rigging collapsed and toppled over the side into the dark raging sea, narrowly missing Moon Ling, but carrying away some families and sailors who became entangled in the rigging. A howling gale ripped the night air, and huge waves spun the junk around, like a twig cast upon the great Yangtze River where it roars through Qutang Gorge. Moon Ling grasped her only baggage close to her chest––a sturdy lacquered wooden box that contained her face paints and powders, wrapped in an oilcloth to protect it from the rain and salt water. The next moment a gigantic wave lifted the junk clear out of the water and pitched its passengers into the black depths.
As the darkness and cold engulfed her, Moon Ling clung desperately to her lacquered box and prayed. She prayed to her ancestors, and to Ma Cho Po, Queen of Heaven and protector of travellers and mariners. As she spun around in the water, gasping for air, she lost all track of time. She could not tell whether it was night or day. She could not tell how many seconds, minutes or hours passed before she began to notice the increasing warmth of the water, and the sand and stones under her body. The rolling surf drove her onto the shore of the island. Gulping in the air that she had fought for so desperately and so long, she almost passed out in relief at having survived. But she dragged herself forward, as the returning surf threatened to pull her lacquered box from her grasp. Clutching her only worldly possession to her breast, she made her way up the long stretch of beach, stumbling over the coconut shards that lined the shore, and collapsed behind a large rock at the edge of the jungle, where she fell into a deep and exhausted sleep.
When she woke, the sun was already high in a clear blue sky, and its heat felt like a comforting warm blanket. Moon Ling had no idea where she was, and wondered if any other members of the opera troupe had survived. What would she do if they had not? How would she survive? The thirst and hunger that suddenly gripped her quickly crowded out these thoughts. She made her way cautiously through the dense foliage of the jungle, trying to overcome her fear of snakes and wild animals, and could scarcely contain her delight when she came upon a small stream and a rambutan tree heavily laden with fruit. She drank from the stream and gorged herself upon the rambutans, which fortified her spirit, and she came to appreciate that at least she was alive, wherever she might be.
Then in the distance she heard shouting voices coming from the direction of the beach. Perhaps the mariners had managed to right the junk and save the company, and had come searching for her, she thought. She scrambled to her feet and made her way back quickly to the edge of the jungle, where she recognized the great rock in whose shadow she had recently slept, and grew excited at the prospect of her rescue. She was about to run down the beach to the water’s edge, when a grizzly sight stopped her dead in her tracks.
She saw that the scattered coconut husks upon which she had stumbled the night before were not coconut husks at all, but the severed heads of men and women, some with their hair and skin still clinging to their skulls. Others had been picked clean by birds and animals, and bleached by the sun and sea. Her legs turned to jelly and she dropped to her knees beside the rock. She peered out at the party of fierce-looking men dragging their longboats ashore. Though she did not know where she was, she knew who these men were. They belonged to one of the many bands of pirates that brought death, slavery and terror to those who braved the voyage from China to the Nanyang.[1] She had thought the stories of their cruelty and depravity hard to believe when she had first heard them in Fukien, and again when the sailors on the junk had repeated them in all their gory detail. But now, as she kneeled at the edge of the silver white beach carpeted with human skulls and bones, she found them only too believable.
She crouched behind the rock, terrified that she might have been seen. Yet she felt compelled to peer out at the pirates, as they drove forward a party of bound prisoners, jabbing them fiercely with their krisses[2] and spears. She watched in horror and disbelief as the pirates made sport with them, while gorging themselves on food and drink served to them by slave boys and girls. The pirates tied some prisoners to bamboo stakes that they had driven into the ground, and used them for archery practice. They roared in laughter as their arrows struck the unfortunate men, women and––the sight of it made her retch––children, in the head, chest, arms, legs and groin. The pirates buried others in the sand, and covered their heads with molasses. Then they watched in cruel glee as the ants devoured their eyes, their lips and their screams. Two young girls were raped repeatedly, and then had their living bodies torn apart in a bloody tug of war.
Moon Ling watched this grisly display for hour upon hour, crouched upon her haunches behind the rock. She wanted to run as fast as her legs could carry her, but she dared not risk discovery by running along the beach or into the jungle. So she remained behind the rock most of the day, until she saw one of the pirates leave the company and make his way up the beach directly towards her. He was a tall Illanun pirate from the island of Mindanao in the Sulu Archipelago (although Moon Ling knew nothing of this). He was dressed in a short tunic and skirt, with dark swirling tattoos over his broad chest and his strong arms and legs. As he strode up the beach, he swung an ugly and bloody club by his side. Moon Ling made to raise herself and creep back into the jungle, but the muscles of her legs were so cramped in frozen terror that she fell over helpless on the sand beside the rock. As she lay there, dreading the pirate’s approach, she tried to pray, but her thoughts were crowded out by dreadful images of the young girls who had been abused by the pirates. She wished that she had a knife or some other weapon to end her life if she was caught. She wondered if she could suffocate herself by holding her breath––she had heard that this could be done, but did not know if she could do it.
But hold her breath she did, as the pirate came closer and closer. He trampled crab shells and coconut shards and human remains underfoot. He was now so close that Moon Ling could hear his grotesque song, in some unfamiliar tongue. Just as she was sure that she was about to be discovered, the pirate suddenly stopped at the other side of the rock, where he proceeded to relieve himself with great noise and gratification, belching in chorus to his loud excretions.
The smell was overpowering. Moon Ling clamped her hands over her mouth and nose, desperately trying to block it out and the sound of her own retching. An eternity seemed to pass as she lay trembling on the ground, but finally the pirate rose and made his way back down the beach. As he did so, Moon Ling let out a long slow breath, and almost fainted when she breathed in again and the oxygen rushed to her brain. As she lay flat on the sand, she watched as the pirates suspended their last living prisoner from the branch of a banyan tree that sat on an elevated grassy slope close to the shore, and began to prepare a fire beneath him. They were going to burn him alive, and, she imagined in her horror, eat him afterwards. She turned her eyes away, as the sun began to sink behind the dark green depths of the jungle. As she did so, her eyes fell on her lacquered box, lying about a foot in front of her, and which would have been in plain view of the pirate had he happened to turn his attention away from the antics on the beach. She leaned forward very slowly and carefully, and grasping the box with both hands, dragged it back behind the cover of the rock.
* * *
Badang bin Aman cursed his luck. The rope cut deep into his wrists, and threatened to wrench his arms from their sockets. He hung suspended over the fire they were preparing below him. He had no quarrel with these Illanun pirates, and if his memory served him well, he had traded with them in the past. He had been aboard a Bugis proa[3] when they had attacked. He had been selling the Bugis sailors part of his catch, but the pirates had assumed he was one of their crew. His protests had been futile because the Illanun did not tolerate any, and he would have been dead by now if he had tried to protest further––he had seen men killed and mutilated for much less. Yet he was surprised by the slaughter on the beach. Although they were fierce fighters, the Illanun usually kept their prisoners alive to sell as slaves, particularly the women and children. Something must have angered them, he supposed, or perhaps they already had enough prisoners for the slave markets and were simply disposing of the remainder through their cruel sport. Badang tried to pull himself up on the rope in an effort to loosen the knots that bound him, but soon realized that it was hopeless. His attempts to raise himself only tightened the knots. He also knew that even if by some miracle he could free himself, he had no chance of escaping the pirate horde that cavorted around him, piling brushwood and flotsam below him, and occasionally prodding him with their spears and krisses. He would be cut down the moment he reached the ground, or felled by poisoned arrows and spears before he could make it to the sea or jungle.
He resolved to pray to God and wait for death. He looked out beyond the pirates and the pirate fleet to the crescent moon that hung low in the eastern sky. All men die, and die when their time is come, he thought. If it is my time, it is the will of God, and I will face my death with faith and without fear. A strange calm descended upon him, and his attention wandered from the wild scene below him, as the pirates worked themselves into a frenzy and prepared to put a torch to the firewood.
Badang bin Aman looked out over the dark sea, flecked with white breakers that sparkled in the moonlight, the sea that he had fished for most of his life. He remembered when as a child his father had taken him out for days at a time, and taught him to spear the fish and preserve them by rubbing their flesh with salt and wrapping them in palm leaves. He remembered the lonely nights after his father had died from the bite of the dreaded banded sea krait, the most venomous sea snake, but also how he had come to love the solitude of nights alone on his fishing boat, with only the moon and stars for company. He thought of the kind grey eyes of his aged mother and of her holy power of healing––she was surely a blessed woman.
He remembered the stories his parents had told him about his ancestors, such as the great warrior Badang. He had captured a jinn,[4] who had been stealing from his fishing baskets, and the jinn had promised him great strength if Badang would eat his vomit, which Badang had done. He had become the champion of Paduka Sri Pikrama Wira, one the rajahs of the old city of Singapura. When the leader of a Majapahit[5] invading force had threatened the rajah’s life in battle, Badang had killed the man by flinging a great stone that struck the Majapahit leader in the head, and together they had managed to drive the invaders back into the sea. Legend had it that Paduka Sri Pikrama Wira had raised a stone monument to his champion when Badang had died, upon which accounts of his great deeds were inscribed.
He wondered if the stories were true. Although he had never seen the stone monument himself, he had been able to trace the remains of the old city walls on the island. Badang bin Aman’s thoughts drifted back to an imagined past, and he suddenly felt a momentary sadness at having to leave this world without knowing the love of a wife and children, and without being able to relate to them his father’s stories. He heard the crackling of the fire, as the Illanun chief put a lighted torch to the dry timbers and brushwood. He closed his eyes and prayed for a speedy death as the burning wood hissed beneath him like a pit of vipers.
But now another sound disturbed his consciousness, more violent and vivid. A blood-chilling scream rent the air, so shrill and piercing that it seemed to penetrate the farthest reaches of his soul. He heard the shouts and cries of the pirates as they gesticulated wildly towards the edge of the jungle, and stumbled over themselves as they ran towards their ships, abandoning him to the flames. He looked to where the pirates were pointing, and felt the same cold chill of unholy dread that had overcome the hard-bitten and hard-hearted Illanun pirates. The piercing scream came from the lips of a female jinn, a spirit demon that had suddenly emerged from the shadows of the jungle. As she drifted down towards the shore, Badang made out her dreadful aspect in clearer detail. Her naked skeletal frame was pale white and tinged with blue, the colour of the daylong dead before burial. Her jet-black hair streaked stiff and high behind her, flecked with silver in the shadow of the moon. Dark red blood flowed from her eyes, her lips and her sharp pointed fingernails. Badang easily imagined, as the pirates imagined, that she had fed on the recently dead, but had not yet quenched her ghastly appetite. And all the while the dreadful scream continued unabated, with such piercing strength that it could only have issued from a demon’s fiery lips. The sound seemed to have weight and mass, and threatened to suffocate his very soul. Badang bin Aman watched with mounting horror as the hellish apparition glided past him in pursuit of the pirates. The flames crackled under his feet, and the smoke began to scorch his nostrils.
By this time the pirates had scrambled into their longboats and headed out to their prahus, and some had already raised their anchors and begun to row out to sea. The jinn glided down to the edge of the seashore, her scream turning into a dreadful howl, like a hellish gale pursuing them across the water and the waves, as she waded out into the surf towards them. Through the smoke and heat Badang prayed that the jinn had not noticed him, and that he would die before she returned. Yet as he prayed, and as the flames licked higher and the smoke choked his lungs, he saw the jinn turn from the sea and the pirates, and make her way directly towards him. He grew faint with fear. He who had recently embraced the prospect of death with dignity now hung in mortal terror of the supernatural powers of the jinn. She would suck his soul from his body and he would be bound to her evil will for all eternity. Now she was almost upon him, and she reached down to seize a bloodied sword that one of the pirates had abandoned. The jinn raised the sword to strike him, her face a grotesque white mask of pale and bloody death.
He heard a thudding cut upon the rope and crashed down into the fire, landing on a loose log that sent him spinning onto the sand and free of the flames. Turning in surprise and terror, he saw the jinn standing before him. Yet she had changed dramatically. The naked form, once deathlike in its blue paleness, now revealed large expanses of pink living flesh, and the surf had washed the bloody streaks away. Her soul-piercing scream turned first into a hysterical laugh, and then into uncontrollable sobbing. The jinn grasped a scarlet cloak that had been left by one of the fleeing pirates, and tried to cover her nakedness. Then he realized that she was no demon, but a young Chinese girl, as frightened and helpless as he was. Badang bin Aman gave thanks to God and raised himself from the ground. He tried to rub life back into his hands and arms as he removed the ropes that bound them. He had a minor burn on his shoulder, but otherwise had suffered nothing more than a few cuts and bruises, and a dry stinging sensation in his mouth and lungs. Looking back out to sea, he tried to indicate with a sweeping motion of his hand that the pirates might return at any time, and that they should escape into the darkness further along the beach. Moon Ling understood what he meant and nodded her agreement.
Her heart was pounding with such ferocity that she thought her chest might burst. Her impersonation of the jinn had been the most desperate and dangerous performance of her life, but it had worked better than she had hoped. It had saved her life and that of the young man who now ran along the beach beside her. Her legs still trembled beneath her, and she was overcome with shame by the nakedness she had displayed before him, but she followed the young Malay along the beach and into the darkness. In her stunned relief to be alive, she left her paints and powders and the lacquered box that she had carried from Fukien, which now lay scattered in the sand at the edge of the dark jungle, close by the rock where she had hidden for most of the day.
They followed the line of the beach, stumbling through the darkness, clambering over the rocky promontories, and groping their way through patches of jungle and mangrove that reached down to the edge of the ocean. After they had put some distance between themselves and the place where the pirates had landed, they rested against the body of a fallen coconut tree. They felt safe in the darkness. Heavy grey clouds rolled across the sky and obliterated the light of the moon and the stars, as if to protect them. Within a few moments they both fell into an exhausted and dreamless sleep.
Moon Ling woke shortly after dawn, as the sun crept up in a clear blue sky dotted with powder puff clouds. She went down to the sea and washed the remaining paint and powder from her face and body. She arranged the pirate cloak into a makeshift sarong, and made her way back up the beach. She had a sudden moment of panic when she realized that the young man was gone from the place where she had left him sleeping, but her panic turned to relief when she saw him emerge smiling from the jungle with a bunch of bananas in his hand. In the clear light of morning, she saw that he was a tall Malay, with a strong muscled body and long brown hair. As he drew closer, she noticed that his face was strangely angular, as if it had been carved from hard teak wood, with a long aquiline nose and sharp chin, but with soft and friendly brown eyes, which seemed to sparkle as he smiled.
They ate the bananas and drank the fresh water he had brought in an empty coconut husk. Then they set off again along the beach, hand in hand, a secret bond now formed between them after their narrow escape from death. They made their way around the end of what she now saw to be a small island, about two miles long. On the way they came across many grisly reminders of the fate they had escaped. Human skulls and bones were littered across areas of the beach, and they picked their way between them in grim gratitude for their salvation.
When they reached the far side of the island, Moon Ling could see a larger landmass a few miles distant, with a long strip of silver beach shimmering in the early morning sunlight. Then the young man let out a great yell, and pulled her along beside him as he ran towards a figure in the distance, who stood smoking a pipe beside his fishing boat.
‘Baya Kay!’ he yelled out, recognizing the man. The pipe smoking fisherman called back to him in return, ‘Badang bin Aman!’
Moon Ling recognized that this was the young man’s name, and pointed to herself and announced her own. Badang nodded his head in recognition and smiled at her. For the first time since they had met, he held her gaze for a few moments. She was strangely beautiful, he thought to himself. She had long jet-black hair and an oval face, with soft brown eyes and full red lips. She had a slim but full figure, with small hands and feet. Badang motioned her into the boat, and Baya Kay guided the craft across the water. They passed sandy beaches and mangrove swamps, until they landed a few miles to the east at the mouth of a river. There were a few small huts scattered along the beach, and stilted cottages and boats moored inside the mouth of the river.
Moon Ling went to live in the cottage of the Malay fisherman called Badang bin Aman. In due course she learnt his language, and helped him tend his nets and vegetable garden. She learned that the small community at the mouth of the river dwelt on the site of what had once been the ancient city of Singapura, which had been destroyed centuries before by the Majapahit, during the reign of Sri Sultan Iskander Shah, the last great rajah. One day Badang had shown her the remains of the walls of the old city, but although she begged him many times, he would not venture up the hill overlooking the mouth of the river, which was called Bukit Larangan,[6] because he said that the ghosts of the dead warriors of Singapura still walked upon it. He claimed that on some nights the sounds of a great battle could be heard, when the battle cries of men and the lamentation of women were carried on the night breeze. She also learned the name of the island where she had saved them both from the pirates. It was known as Pulau Belakang Mati.[7]
A number of Malay families lived in attap[8] cottages along the seashore east of the river. A few hundred orang laut, or sea gypsies, dwelt just inside the mouth of the river. Some lived on stilted houses along the eastern bank, but many lived on their boats and only rarely came ashore. They were small and dark-skinned, with tight wooly hair, and dressed in flimsy skirts. They slept and cooked under attap shelters erected over their dugout boats, although they often ate their fish raw, and tossed the entrails into the bottom of the boat. This caused a disgusting smell, but protected them against the attention of sharks and crocodiles. They were a simple people who kept themselves to themselves and seemed to have no interest in the world beyond their boats and fishing grounds. They had no written laws but followed a strict moral code, and crime and warfare were strangers to them. Further up the river there was a larger compound of Malays. They served the Temenggong Abdul Rahman, who ruled the island in the name of the Sultan of Johor, Riau and Lingga. The temenggong’s bamboo and attap lodge was set back from the river, with a commanding view of the strait and the islands beyond.
There were a few Chinese living near the temenggong’s compound, under their Capitan China.[9] Further inland, there were also Chinese gambier and pepper farmers. From them Moon Ling learned that a Chinese trading junk came down once a year on the Northeast monsoon and bought their produce, and later returned to China with the Southwest monsoon. There were also occasional Bugis or Malay trading vessels that put in on their way to Malacca and Penang, where there were thriving Chinese communities. She did not know what she would do. Her family was dead, and her opera troupe likely drowned, but she supposed that she could persuade a captain to take her on board the first junk bound for China or the Malayan Peninsula.
Yet when a junk bound for Amoy arrived six months later, she did not leave on it. By that time the secret bond that had developed between the Malay fisherman and the young Chinese opera performer had blossomed into a deep and lasting love. Shortly after Moon Ling bade farewell to the captain of the Amoy junk, they became man and wife. Ten months later their first child was born, in the holy month of Ramadan, a boy of unusual strength and beauty. Moon Ling set up a small joss-house near the fresh water stream that ran behind Bukit Larangan and debouched into the sea beside their cottage, and dedicated it to Ma Cho Po, the Queen of Heaven and protector of mariners and fishermen.
* * *
1819
The boy sat alone on the beach, playing carelessly with some seashells. His mother, sitting with her younger daughter, watched him lovingly from the shade of the cottage doorway. Yet all the while she kept her eyes on the square-rigged ships anchored in the bay. Presently she watched three men descend into a longboat, which made its way towards the mouth of the river. Moon Ling had learned from the Capitan China that they were not pirates, but barbarians come to meet with the temenggong. But she was not taking any chances. She snatched up the boy and carried him back inside the cottage, as she watched the longboat enter the mouth of the river. There was an axe hanging on the wall by the back door, and she took it down for protection.