Daylight was fading as Horne emerged from the East India Company’s library in Fort St George. Stepping out into Portuguese Square, he glanced over his shoulder at the Governor’s House and wondered if he should attempt to see Pigot at this late hour and report that the visit to the library had been fruitless.
He felt certain that it was no accident that he had been unable to find the charts he had hoped to inspect. George Fanshaw had lifted them before he had left Madras. Also, the trade documents which Governor Pigot had authorised him to inspect were totally inadequate. Horne had wanted to study receipts, tax permits, duty permissions. He had hoped to glean names of officials in China he might interview. Pigot had only set aside useless bills of lading, quartering tallies and roll musters.
The hour was late; too late to confront Pigot. As he adjusted his hat over his forehead, Horne decided that he would instead keep his appointment with Groot and Jingee in the native quarter. Perhaps they had had some luck this afternoon in learning about the missing Englishman and the commandeered frigate, the China Flyer.
* * *
The Governor’s House dominated the centre of Fort St George, and four stone bastions stood at each corner of the walled fortress. The widest, longest thoroughfare inside the walls led north from the Governor’s House to the Main Gate. Beyond the North Wall lay the native quarter, the area of Madras dubbed the ‘Black Town’ by the British.
Horne moved north from the Governor’s House towards the North Wall, passing a double row of neat white houses lining both sides of Main Gate Street, one side illuminated by coconut oil lamps.
Activity was livelier on the cobbled street than it had been earlier this afternoon. Men walked in groups up and down the thoroughfare. They were mostly British, a mixture of His Majesty’s troops and Company clerks. A few men escorted women dressed in white cottons and wide-brimmed hats, their parasols rolled up for the day.
The sight of men promenading with wives and sweethearts gave Horne a sudden jab of jealousy. Remembering Isabel Springer, he wondered for the hundredth time if she would have come out to India to share a life with him here.
He stopped and chided himself. He would not have come to India at all if Isabel had not been killed, if she were still alive …
He continued walking, forcing himself to concentrate on matters in hand. Shoulders hunched, he ambled along the cobbled streets, wondering what his next move should be regarding George Fanshaw. He had no doubt that Fanshaw had taken or destroyed all vital charts. He was certain, too, that Pigot had purposely not allowed him to inspect privileged documents. The East India Company had suffered one defector. Why risk another?
The iron-studded gates stood open at the end of Main Gate Street; sentries idled inside the guardhouse; evening strollers entered and departed through the gates without question.
Passing under the North Wall arch, Horne saw that the traders’ bazaar was closed for the night. The wooden stalls were stripped of merchandise, except for a few wagons festooned with lanterns—vendors selling hot curries and colourful sweetmeats.
Outside the fortress walls, Main Gate Street continued into the Black Town but paving no longer covered the road. Instead of freshly painted buildings, Horne passed clay hovels, lop-sided pagodas, rows of rickety wooden buildings. A cacophony of bells, pipes, drums and merry laughter sounded all around him; the sweet smell of incense and exotic spices mingled with the stench of smoking charcoal and burning cow dung.
Continuing deeper into Black Town, Horne decided that if the East India Company would not give him the information he needed about China, he should not worry about running to earth the man they were sending him to find. Why should he be so deucedly conscientious when his superiors kept vital information from him?
‘Sahib, sir?’ whispered a man from the shadows. ‘You alone tonight, sahib?’
Horne slowed down and glanced at the man. He looked down the alleyway stretching behind him. Its slanting houses must be the homes of the infamous nautch girls of Madras. Horne remembered the lucky devils he had seen only a few minutes ago promenading with wives and lady friends. He envied those red-blooded men who did not have to contemplate visiting a nautch girl for companionship.
Banishing the pangs of jealousy once more, he continued down Main Gate Street, struggling to keep his thoughts on his duty.
Should he find out if Fanshaw had a wife in Madras? A sweetheart? Cronies in whom he might have confided about China? What had Jingee and Groot learnt about Fanshaw and his friends?
Earlier that afternoon, Horne had met Groot and Jingee in the Black Town for a meal. He had told them about the meeting he had just come from with Governor Pigot. They had agreed to meet later after Horne had visited the Company library; they, meanwhile, would try to sleuth out a few details about Fanshaw and the China Flyer.
‘Captain,’ whispered another voice from a doorway. ‘You like a very good surprise this evening, Captain sahib?’
‘Captain’? Horne remembered he was still wearing his uniform. How conspicuous he must look in this crowd. He stepped closer into the shadows. Spotting the swinging sign he had been looking for, he removed his hat and ducked his head to miss the low beam as he stepped down from the street to the doorway.
Colonials of every nationality frequently attempted to reproduce aspects of their homeland in faraway countries. The Watsons had created Rose Cottage in Bombay. Horne had seen English gardens in Goa; the Liverpool Card Parlours in Surat; the Manchester Dog Pit in Hyderabad. But the London Tavern in the Black Town was the closest thing to an English alehouse he had ever seen outside England.
Low ceilings. Pegged floor strewn with sawdust. Even British tavern smells which permeated the depth of one’s soul. Everything about the London Tavern seemed authentic. The one clue that this was India and not England was that turbans dotted the merry crowd of Company revellers drinking ale from tankards.
Accustoming his eyes to the dim lighting, Horne espied Jingee waving at him from across the room and began picking his way through the drinkers. He had not yet reached the wooden bench by the wall when Jingee began reporting. ‘I found Fanshaw, Captain sahib. I found somebody who knows where he’s gone.’
Horne was tired and unable to raise much enthusiasm for Jingee’s news.
‘Congratulations. You’ve had more luck than I,’ he admitted.
‘Fanshaw’s gone to Whampoa, Captain sahib,’ Jingee continued. ‘Exactly as Governor Pigot suspects.’
He waited for Horne to take a seat. ‘I learned from my cousins that an Englishman has been secretly hiring crewmen to sail to … Canton!’
Jingee had never before mentioned to Horne that he had relatives in Madras. But there was no place in India where the little Tamil did not seem to have a cousin or an aunt or some distant uncle.
‘Was the ship the China Flyer?’ asked Horne.
Jingee held up the palms of both hands. ‘I do not know, Captain sahib. The family who gives this news to my cousins is Vaisya. Very good caste. Very honourable. But they do not know enough about boats to realise that boats have names like people.’
‘Is there any way to meet the family—?’ Horne began.
He stopped as Jingee raised his hand and beckoned to someone at the door.
Horne turned and saw Groot moving towards the table.
‘Sorry I’m late, schipper,’ the Dutchman apologised as he looked around the crowded tavern. ‘But I made friends with some Austrians and they told me a few things I thought we could use.’
Horne ordered ale for the three of them, then he and Jingee gave Groot their undivided attention.
‘Lothar Schiller. That’s the man who’s sailing the China Flyer, I think, schipper,’ said Groot, hands folded on the plank table. ‘Schiller’s from Hamburg. He’s a soldier-of-fortune but found work recently aboard British ships. A few months ago he got a job he didn’t want to talk about to his friends. He would only say he planned going to the South China Sea.’
‘Is he a big man, this Schiller?’ asked Jingee.
‘Tall and—’ Groot shrugged. ‘—about as big as Babcock, as far I can understand.’ The question puzzled him.
‘What colour’s his hair?’ asked Jingee.
‘Yellow. Like mine. Why?’
Jingee turned to Horne. ‘This Schiller man must be the same person my cousins’ friends spoke about.’
Groot looked inquisitively from Jingee to Horne. ‘You two know something you’re not telling me?’
Jingee hurriedly repeated the story he had heard from his cousins’ friends, the family whose son had been hired to sail to China with an Englishman who had told him to keep his destination a secret.
‘The family only knew that the captain of the ship on which their son would be sailing spoke German,’ he said, ‘and had hair—’ He pointed at the tavern’s low ceiling. ‘—bright like the sun.’
‘It’s not much of a clue,’ said Horne. He held up his tankard, adding, ‘But it’s a start.’
* * *
The coconut oil lamps of Fort St George twinkled in the night as Babcock stood aboard the Huma in her anchorage in the Madras Roads.
Despite the majestic sight of the turreted fortress stretching along the moonlit shoreline, Babcock was feeling dejected. The sensation was unusual for him, but he knew it was serious because he did not even miss his pet monkey. When Monkey couldn’t make him laugh, something was seriously wrong.
Horne no longer reproached Babcock for fighting the Malagasy pirate in Bombay. Babcock thanked the Lord that nobody had been killed in the sea encounter. He would have blamed himself for any casualties suffered aboard the Huma. When would he ever learn to keep his big mouth shut and avoid getting into brawls?
Was that what was bothering him? Fighting with the Malagasy? Being responsible for the poor devil getting his throat slit and being thrown overboard in the open boat?
Perhaps his recent nightmares were at the root of his problem.
For the past fortnight, Babcock had been dreaming about brawling with his father. Halfway through the fisticuffs, his father would turn into Adam Horne and Babcock would stop fighting, always refusing to strike his Captain. Covering himself with both arms, he would beg Horne not to hit him. But in the dream Babcock called him ‘Pa’ rather than ‘Horne’—‘Don’t hit me, Pa. Don’t hit me.’
A sign of cowardice? Was that what those dreams meant? Was he frightened of fighting Horne?
Looking across the crashing Madras surf, Babcock’s mind went back to the days when Horne had first brought his Marines to Fort St George. Babcock had travelled overland with Bapu, Mustafa, and Groot in a dung cart. Bapu, an Indian, had subsequently been killed at sea—the first of Horne’s Marines to die. The next casualty had been Mustafa the Turk.
Only Groot and Babcock himself were left from that overland party. Babcock turned his back on the fortress. Leaning against the railing, he looked at the stars twinkling in the east and wondered where Horne would next take his Marines. Which one of them, this time, would not return to Bombay?