Susan Barker - The Incarnations

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?

XIII

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.

XIV

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.