The North Water (8 page)

“Where are your officers?”

The same man gets to his feet and, squinting, walks unsteadily towards them. He stops a foot or two away and spits. His uniform is ragged and stained with blood and gun smoke. He smells of vomit, piss, and beer.

“All dead,” he says. “Every single one.”

Wilkie nods slowly and looks off down the street past the gun emplacement.

“And where is the enemy?” he says. “Is he close by?”

“Oh, he's close enough,” the man says. “If you look over yonder he may even blow you a wee kiss.”

The other men laugh again. Wilkie ignores them and turns back to confer with the others.

“This is a fucking disgrace,” he says. “These men should be hanged for dereliction of duty.”

“This is as far as we can get,” O'Dowd says. “This is the limit of the advance.”

“We are very close now,” Hamid says. “Two minutes more.”

“Too dangerous,” O'Dowd says.

Wilkie rubs his chin and spits.

“We'll send Price,” he says. “He can go on ahead and report back. If it looks safe, the rest of us will follow.”

They all turn to Price.

“Not for a fucking tithe,” he says.

“What say we double it?” Wilkie suggests. He looks at the other two, and the other two nod in agreement.

Price, who has been squatting, stands up slowly, shoulders his rifle, and walks across to Hamid.

“Lead on,” he says.

The others sit down where they are and wait. The drunken soldiers ignore them. Sumner lights his pipe.

“He's an avaricious little shit,” O'Dowd says, “that Price.”

“If he gets killed, we'll have to make up some tale,” Wilkie says. “Corbyn won't be happy.”

“Corbyn,” O'Dowd says. “Always fucking Corbyn.”

“Is it his brother or his brother-in-law?” Sumner asks. “I can never remember.”

O'Dowd shrugs and shakes his head.

“Brother-in-law,” Wilkie says. “Sir Barnabas Gordon. I saw him lecture in chemistry at Edinburgh.”

“You'll get nothing out of Corbyn,” O'Dowd says to Sumner, “don't think you will. He's an ex-Guardsman and his wife's a baroness.”

“After this he'll feel obliged,” Sumner says.

“A man like Corbyn doesn't care to feel obliged. We'll get our share of the loot if the loot exists, but believe me, that will be it.”

Sumner nods at this and thinks for a minute.

“Have you tried him already?”

Wilkie smiles at this, but O'Dowd says nothing.

Ten minutes later, Price comes back and reports that they have found the house, and the route to it appears safe enough.

“Did you sight the treasure?” O'Dowd asks him.

“He says it is buried in the courtyard inside the house. He showed me where and I started him digging.”

They follow Price through a complication of narrow alleyways, then out onto a wider street where the shops have been ransacked and the houses are shuttered and silent. There is no one else about, but Sumner is sure these buildings must contain people nonetheless—terrified families crouching in the tepid darkness, jihadis and ghazis licking their wounds, making quiet preparation. They hear noises of carousing from nearby and, from farther off, the sound of cannon fire. The sun is beginning to set, but the heat is steady and unforgiving. They cross the road, picking their way amongst the smoking piles of bones, rags, and broken furniture, then walk another hundred yards until Price halts in front of an open doorway and nods.

The courtyard is small and square, the whitewashed walls are smeared and grubby, and there are patches of exposed mud brick where the plasterwork has failed. Each wall has two archways let into it, and above the archways runs a ragged wooden balcony. Hamid is squatting down at the center. He has moved one of the flagstones and is scraping away at the loose dirt beneath it.

“Help me please,” he says. “We must be quick now.”

Price kneels down next to him and begins to dig with his hands.

“I see a box,” he says, after a moment. “Look, there.”

The others gather round. Price and Hamid tug the box out of the earth, and O'Dowd smashes it open with his rifle butt. The box contains four or five gray canvas sacks.

Wilkie picks up one, looks inside it, and begins to laugh. “Jesus Christ,” he says.

“Is it treasure?” Price asks.

Wilkie shows the sack to O'Dowd and O'Dowd smiles, then laughs and slaps Wilkie on the back.

Price pulls the other three sacks out of the box and opens them. Two are filled with coins, and the third contains an assortment of bracelets, rings, and jewels.

“Oh, fuck me,” Price whispers softly to himself.

“Let me see those darlings,” Wilkie says. Price passes him the smallest bag and Wilkie tips its contents out onto the dusty flagstones. On their knees now, the three assistant surgeons gather round the glistering pile like schoolboys at a game of marbles.

“We prize out all the stones and melt down the gold,” O'Dowd says. “Keep it simple.”

“We must go back now,” Hamid says again. “For my son.”

Still gripped by the treasure, they ignore him completely. Sumner leans forwards and picks out one of the rings.

“What are these stones?” he says. “Are they diamonds?” He turns to Hamid. “Are these diamonds?” he asks, showing him the ring. “Is this real?”

Hamid doesn't answer.

“He's thinking of that boy,” O'Dowd says.

“The boy's dead,” Wilkie says, not looking up. “The boy was always fucking dead.”

Sumner looks at Hamid, who still doesn't speak. His eyes are wide with fear.

“What is it?” Sumner asks.

He shakes his head as if the answer is much too complicated, as if the time for explanations has gone and they are occupying, whether they realize it or not, a darker and more consequential phase.

“We go now,” he says. “Please.”

Hamid takes Price by the sleeve and tries to tug him streetwards. Price snatches his arm away and pulls back a fist.

“Watch yourself now,” he says.

Hamid stands back and raises both his arms above his head, palms facing forwards—it is a gesture of silent refusal but also, Sumner realizes, of surrender. But surrender to whom?

There is the crack of a musket from the balcony above them, and the back of Price's head explodes in a brief carnation of blood and bone. Wilkie, swiveling on his heels, points his rifle and shoots wildly upwards but hits nothing, and is then shot twice himself—first through the neck and then high up on the chest. They are being ambushed; the place is alive with sepoys. O'Dowd grabs Sumner by the arm and drags him backwards into the safety and darkness of the house. Wilkie is writhing on the flagstones outside; blood is squirting in crimson pulses from his punctured neck. Sumner pushes open the street door with the toe of his boot and an answering bullet thumps into the door frame from outside. One of the ambushers vaults over the rickety balcony and dashes towards them screaming. O'Dowd shoots at him but misses. The sepoy's saber meets O'Dowd's abdomen and emerges, reddened and dripping, halfway up his back. O'Dowd coughs blood, gasps, looks amazed at what has been done to him. As he pushes the sword in still harder, the sepoy's expression is urgent and passionate. His pitch-black eyes bulge wildly; his brown skin is slick with sweat. Sumner is standing two feet away from him, no more; he lifts his rifle to his shoulder and fires. The man's face disappears instantly and is replaced by a shallow, bowl-like concavity filled with meat and gristle, and crazed and shattered fragments of teeth and tongue. Sumner drops his rifle and kicks open the front door. As he steps into the street, a bullet bites him in the calf and another smashes into the wall inches from his head. He staggers, grunts, topples backwards for a second, but then rights himself and commences a lopsided dash for safety. Another bullet whines above his head. He can feel a warm squelch as his left boot fills with blood. From behind him, there is screaming. The street is littered with shattered masonry, potsherds, sackcloth, bones, and dust. Shops and kiosks lie empty-shelved on either hand, their sagging shamianas holed and rotting. He abandons the road and plunges sideways into the crackpot labyrinth of lanes and alleyways.

The high stucco walls are fractured and grease-streaked. There is a smell of sewage, a roar of bluebottles. Sumner limps on, frantic and directionless, until the pain forces him to halt. He crouches in a doorway and prizes off his boot. The wound itself is clean enough but the shinbone is broken. He rips a strip of flannel from his shirttail and binds the wound as tightly as he can to stop the bleeding. As he does so, a hot wave of nausea and faintness passes over him. He closes his eyes, and when he opens them again he sees a black swirl of pigeons wheeling and gathering like airborne spores in the darkening sky. The moon is out already; from all sides there is the constant dreary boom of ordnance. He thinks of Wilkie and O'Dowd and starts to shudder. He takes a long breath in and tells himself to sharpen the fuck up or he will die just like they did. The city will fall tomorrow for sure, he tells himself; when the British troops sober up, they will press forwards. If he sits tight and remains alive, they will find him and bring him home.

He gets to his feet and looks about for a place to hide. The door opposite is ajar. He limps across to it, dripping blood as he goes. Behind the door is a room with dusty matting and a broken divan pushed up against one wall. There is an unglazed water jar in one corner, empty, and a teakettle and glasses scattered over the floor. The single high window looks onto the alleyway and gives little light. On the far wall, an archway concealed by a curtain opens onto another smaller room with a skylight and a cooking stove. There is a wooden cupboard, but the cupboard is empty. The room smells of old ghee, ashes, and wood smoke. In one corner of it, a small boy is lying curled on a filthy blanket.

Sumner watches him for a moment, wondering whether he is alive or dead. It is too dark to tell whether he is breathing or not. With difficulty, Sumner leans down and touches the boy's cheek. The touch leaves a faint red fingerprint behind. The boy stirs, moves his hand across his face as though brushing away a fly, and then wakes. When he sees Sumner standing there, he is startled and cries out with alarm. Sumner hushes him. The boy stops shouting but still looks scared and suspicious. Sumner takes a slow step backwards, not taking his eyes off the boy, and lowers himself gradually onto the dirt floor.

“I need water,” he says. “Look. I am wounded.” He points at his oozing leg. “Here.”

He reaches into his coat pocket for a coin and realizes that he still has the ring. He doesn't remember putting it in his pocket, but here it is. He shows it to the boy, then gestures for him to take it.

“I need water,” he says again. “
Pani
.”

The boy looks at the ring without moving. He is around ten or eleven years old—thin-faced, bare-chested, and shoeless, wearing a grubby dhoti and a canvas vest.

“
Pani
,” he echoes.

“Yes,” Sumner nods. “
Pani
, but tell no one I am here. Tomorrow when the British soldiers come I will help you. I will keep you safe.”

After a pause, the boy answers him in Hindustani: a long line of empty, clashing syllables like the bleating of a goat. What is a child doing sleeping in a place like this? Sumner wonders. In an empty room in a city that has become a battleground? Are his family all dead? Is there no one left to protect him? He remembers, twenty years before, lying in the dark in the abandoned cabin after his parents were removed to the typhus hospital in Castlebar. His mother had sworn to him they would come back soon, she had held his two hands tight in hers and solemnly sworn to it, but they never did. It was only William Harper the surgeon who happened to recall the missing child, who rode back the next day and found the boy still lying where they had left him. Harper was wearing his green tweed suit that day; his pigskin boots were muddy and wet from the road. He lifted the boy up off the soiled pallet and carried him outside. Sumner remembers, even now, the smells of wool and leather, the damp warmth of the surgeon's steady breathing and his soft easeful curses, like a newfangled form of prayer.

“When the British soldiers get here I will keep you safe,” Sumner insists again. “I will protect you. Do you understand?”

The boy stares at him for a moment longer, then nods and leaves the room. Sumner returns the ring to his pocket, closes his eyes, leans his head against the wall, and waits. The flesh around his wound is hot and badly swollen. The leg is pulsing with pain, and his thirst is becoming unbearable. He wonders if the boy will betray him now, if the next person he sees will be his murderer. He would be easy enough to kill in his present condition: he has no weapon to defend himself with and little strength left for the struggle even if he had one.

The boy returns with a jug of water. Sumner drinks half of it and uses the remainder to rinse off his wound. Just above the ankle, the shinbone slants backwards at an angle. The foot lolls uselessly below. Compared to the abominations of the field hospital his case is mild, but the sight fills him with fear nonetheless. He shuffles across to the stove and selects two long sticks of firewood from the pile next to it. He takes his jackknife from his tunic pocket, unlocks the blade, and begins to trim and smooth the wood. The boy watches him impassively. Sumner places one piece of firewood on either side of his leg, then gestures for the blanket that the boy was sleeping on. The boy brings it over to him and he tears it into strips. The boy doesn't move or speak. Sumner leans forwards and starts binding the splints with the pieces of dirty blanket. Just tight enough, he tells himself, but not too tight.

Soon he is drenched with sweat and panting. He can feel the sour taste of vomit rising up his throat. The sweat is stinging his eyes, and his fingers are trembling. He prods the second strip of blanket underneath his leg and then draws the ends together on top. He tries to tie them in a knot, but the pain is too severe. He gives up, pauses a moment, then tries and fails again. He opens his mouth in a silent scream, then grunts and falls backwards onto the floor. He closes his eyes and waits for his breath to return. His heartbeat is like a heavy door somewhere off in the distance being slammed hard again and again. He waits, and eventually the shrill pain resolves into a nauseating ache. He rolls over and looks across at the boy.