Tidetown (14 page)

‘From way across the seas,' says the man, as Aimu looks up to see the needles of the cedar tree shimmer in the breeze.

Aimu's second cousin Hussein is taking a cart of supplies to the rebels. He knows the sultan's soldiers will be suspicious of any accomplices, so Aimu and I are hidden beneath carefully stacked sacks of carrots and turnips, dried fish and sweet potatoes.

‘It won't be for long,' Hussein said, making sure we weren't crushed and could breathe freely, ‘only until we are well clear of the port and the soldiers. They know me, but they'd ask too many questions about two strange faces.'

The first roadblock is on the main road leading north from the town. I hear Hussein telling the guards he is carrying fish and vegetables to trade for rice and goat meat with the clans in the highlands. Through a chink in the boards I see one of the soldiers walking around to the back of the cart. He is dressed in a black tunic and is heavily armed with a broadsword in a sheath hanging from a belt at his waist, and a musket slung over his shoulder. His face is largely hidden by a scarf and hood, maybe as protection from the dusty road, maybe for anonymity should the tide ever turn the rebels' way. He pushes a few bags around and then takes down a box of whitebait and a sack of parsnips.

‘Souvenirs?' he says, pulling them to the side of the road. Hussein says nothing. Another soldier slaps the horse hard on the nose as a gesture of authority. The beast rears up, rocking the cart, sending another bag of vegetables tumbling to the ground.

‘Ah, a windfall,' says the first guard. ‘You can leave that behind too, a fair barter for your safe passage northward.'

Hussein pulls on the reins, ignoring the gibes of the soldiers as he clicks his tongue to urge the horse forward.

After a mile or two, the air freshens and the temperature cools. The horse is struggling as our path gets softer and muddier and the incline steeper. The cart stops and the horse snorts and breathes heavily, relieved of the break. Hussein pulls the sacks away and Aimu and I stretch ourselves free from the cargo.

‘Don't worry,' says Hussein, ‘there may be another checkpoint, but we'll see them before they see us.'

So we sit up front, we three, musketeers on an adventure. The cart rattles and shakes as we make our way up the hillside. The tree line thickens and soon we are in a dense forest with little sign of the sky above. Hussein seems to know every twist and turn of the track and chats away happily as we make our way ever upwards.

‘When I was a young boy,' he says, pulling the reins this way and that, looking over the side of the cart for potholes and ruts, ‘I travelled this road every week with my father. We always traded with the hill tribes, that's why the soldiers let me pass so easily. In those days it was the bandits who taxed us on the road. Now it's the soldiers. The bandits at least had a sense of fairness. The soldiers take everything if they don't like the looks of you.'

As he speaks the rain begins to fall, heavy and cold, and we hunch forward against the onslaught. The ground begins to level out and we take a number of turns and forks onto smaller and less distinct paths, with Hussein guiding the horse with the greatest of skill.

After about an hour, with the rain easing to a steady drizzle, the path peters out and we arrive at a clearing that seems to lead nowhere. We stop. The only sound is the rattle of the harness as the horse leans forward to eat the long, lush grass.

‘They know we're here,' says Hussein. ‘We'll just sit tight and wait for them to show themselves.'

It's not long before there's a telltale whistle from the fringe of the forest and three heavily armed men appear in the clearing.

‘
Ahlan
,' shouts one of them as they walk quickly towards us, hands aloft in greeting.

Old friends and comrades are reacquainted and I am introduced as a new recruit to the cause. We are led along an overgrown path that winds up the steep side of a hill and then across a causeway to a small plateau. Here is the rebel camp, and it is here, as Aimu told me, that I will spend the next nine days, learning my place in the brigade and coming to understand more of the cause for which we will struggle and fight. This first night I sleep under a rough canvas slung between two saplings. It keeps out the worst of the weather, but my exhaustion is such that I sleep as deep and soundly as ever I have.

In the morning I am woken by a gentle shake of the shoulder from a young man who looks about three years older than me. This is Enrico, who tells me that I will be his partner on the cannon crew that he commands. My experience on board ship will be valuable, and a ‘cannon monkey', the boy who loads the cannon and makes sure of a constant supply of shot and powder, was much needed by the rebels. It feels good to be wanted. I warm to Enrico as he tells me something of his story over a camp breakfast of tea and oat biscuits.

His father, a village elder, is in prison in Rabal, the capital, for delaying some soldiers who were on the lookout for slaves, and allowing the young men of his household to escape to the forest. Enrico was working on the rice terraces at the back of the hamlet, and when he heard that his father had been hauled away to the capital he resolved to join the rebels. That was eighteen months ago, and although he's heard nothing of his father's fate, he is determined to fight against the evil that is blighting his homeland.

Enrico is tall and thin, with thick wiry black hair that sprouts in all directions. His wildman look is extenuated by the pirate coat, complete with tasselled epaulettes that he won in a fist fight in the port during the rebels' last supply mission.

‘The pirate was twice my size,' says Enrico with a cheeky grin, ‘but a well-judged kick to the family jewels sent him groaning to the ground. Then I hit him across the crown with a clay flagon filled with thick navy rum: that did for him. The innkeeper kept a couple of guard dogs, huge hounds they were, and they got very drunk from licking the floor by the time the night was out.'

Over the coming days we share stories, hopes and dreams, and Enrico and I become like the brother neither of us had. We are inseparable. Together we take the cannon apart, clean it and then reassemble it. We work in unison as if we have known each other all our lives. One meal break, Aimu, who trains and billets with an elite group of fighters apart from the rest of us, sits next to us on the rough trestles hewn from fallen tree trunks and forest vines.

‘You two seem made for each other,' he says, ‘the wild rebel with the crazy hair and the cabin boy from the windswept north.' He puts his huge arms around us both, pulls us close together and bellows, ‘Brothers, brothers, one and all.' In that moment I feel such a sense of being, of connectedness, something unique and wonderful, new and unexpected. It tingles through me, through my skin and sinew, through the wood of the table, the damp air of the early evening. Enrico looks at me, swamped by the sinewy muscles of Aimu's arms, and I feel he shares with me these same sensations.

Next morning the camp is abuzz. Enrico stands over where I sleep and says that the rebel leader, Comrade Cortez, has come to camp overnight and this surely means that action is imminent.

‘He never tells us of his movements, for fear of betrayal,' says Enrico. ‘So we only found out he was here when the dawn guard returned to camp.'

Comrade Cortez stands in front of us, this motley group of rebels that has gathered on the open ground that leads down to the river. The rains have been heavy in recent days and the sounds from the torrential flow below compete with his words.

‘We must all learn from the past,' he bellows. ‘On the field of battle everything can be used to our advantage or ignored at our peril. The density of the forest for cover. The depth of the river to hinder or permit a retreat.'

He is a strong-set man with flowing grey hair and a wispy beard. A jagged scar runs from his forehead to his left check, outlining a milky white eye that sees nothing. His voice and presence are powerful and assertive. We are all transfixed by this man, one who I have learned is famed for his bravery and commitment to the cause of freedom and justice. A leader who will never ask a man to undertake any task, or accept any risk, that he would not perform himself.

‘Nature and surprise can be our most deadly weapons. We all remember Hannibal taking his elephants over the Alps. How in the face of the discipline of the Roman infantry he used all the natural forces at his disposal. In one skirmish he filled huge catapults with thousands of deadly poisonous snakes and rained them down upon the heads of the Roman soldiers. For months his men had been breeding these snakes, waiting for the right time to deploy them.'

We look to each other, each summoning the image, wondering what we might conjure as snakes.

SIX

‘It even tempts him to blurt out stories better never told.'
– Homer

It is New Year's Eve and Tidetown is in a festive mood. In the cobbled main square, school children have draped tinsel and holly branches around the statue memorialising Billy Bones, the long-drowned cabin boy. Beyond the town, farmers have settled their beasts for the night and bid them to sleep in. The fishermen have untangled and tidied their nets, leaving the lobsters and crabs in peace for this one day of the year.

Tidetown is aglow. The populace gathers on the forecourt beneath the solid limestone walls of the town hall, waiting for the clock to strike the turning of the year. Lovers entwine fingers, children suck on toffees, crowds mill from stall to stall to try their luck at tombola, hoopla and the rifle range. Nowhere is there more fun and frolics than down by the harbour. Promenaders walk along the length of the jetty, marvelling at the decorated boats bobbing on the tide. Trestle tables are set out along the esplanade, lit by paper lanterns, groaning under the feasts of fruit and meat laid out on the crisp white tablecloths. In the crowd, Joshua Barnum walks purposely among the revellers, tipping his hat to all and sundry, acquaintance and stranger alike. But he does not stop to try the fare nor gaze at the harbour lights, for he is on a mission, a quest.

When Joshua enters the snug of The Sailor's Arms all conversation stops, all eyes turn in his direction. He doffs his hat and bows.

‘It is I, Joshua Barnum,' he says, rising to his full height. ‘No stranger to these parts. Nay, a citizen no less of this fair town, though seldom these days a patron of this fine establishment. Here tonight to partake in joviality and conviviality amongst his fellows.'

After a second's lull the drinkers regroup, picking up the threads of their conversations from the skeins of pipe smoke hanging in the air. Joshua steps forward, seeking out a familiar form in the shapes and shadows at tables and bar, alcove and fireplace.

‘Over here,' shouts a voice from the far corner of the room. ‘Come see your cousin, home from the cod fields.'

Joshua squints in the haze. He stumbles over the outstretched leg of a drunk asleep on the floor, then falls into the bear hug of the hulk of a man he recognises by sight and smell as kin. It is indeed his kinsman Abel the Walrus, a man from that distant branch of the family that decades ago set sail for the northern ice floes. The slap he receives on his back rattles his kidneys into his liver and pushes every puff of breath from his lungs.

‘Sit and drink, my cousin-with-a-hat-and-fine-silkwaistcoat,' orders the Walrus, slamming down a tankard of dark brown beer onto the table.

Many hours later, his hat at a very jaunty angle indeed, Joshua is in the final of the nose wrestling competition. All are cheering for the Samoan, body of teak, undefeated in thirty contests. Gold doubloons and smuggled treasure are waged at tiny odds, so sure are they all of the Pacific Islander's invincibility. Few, aside from the Walrus, have any idea of Joshua's unique skill and style that he has kept hidden until this final bout of the night.

‘Ten pieces of silver on my cousin in the top hat,' yells the Walrus to Tiny the Bookmaker, who sits quietly by the stuffed bear, collecting money, writing betting slips, using the hairy arm of the inert beast to hang his bag of bounty.