The North Water(19)

“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.