Journey to the River Sea

But it was hopeless. ‘It’s too dangerous,’ was all Finn would say, and that was that. She tried to put it out of her mind but she couldn’t. There were girls at school who wanted to ride, and others who wanted to go on the stage, and there was a girl who had made a terrible fuss till she was allowed to learn the oboe – not the flute, not the clarinet, it had to be the oboe. They knew that these things were for them; and Maia knew that boats were for her. Boats, and going on and on and not arriving unless one wanted to.

When they weren’t working on the boat, Finn took her into the forest. He showed her which nuts to pick and which to avoid, how to get fruit down from the high branches and how to walk quietly, picking up her feet higher than usual, not thumping and blundering about. Once he brought down a paca with his bow and arrow.

‘They’re good to eat,’ he said. ‘You have to be able to kill for food if necessary,’ – and he waited for Maia to make a fuss, but though she turned pale when the little rodent twitched on his arrow, she said nothing. He showed her how to make body paint from urucu berries, and how to fetch water from the river without getting scum into the kettle – and the more she learnt the more she wanted to learn, and the more she dreaded the day of his departure.

But he wasn’t gone yet. Not quite. She could still come into the lagoon and hear him whistling as he did his chores. And she would have been very surprised if she had known that Finn too was fearful of the parting and of making the journey by himself.

Then just two weeks after the Bishop had left Manaus, the liner came out of the maze of waterways at the head of the Amazon delta and headed out for the open sea. Even if Clovis had been found out there would be no chance now of sending him back before they reached England.

‘There’s no point in waiting any longer,’ said Finn. ‘The boat is as ready as she’ll ever be. If we clear the reeds away, she’ll just get through.’

We, thought Maia bitterly. Obviously he expected her to help him clear the passage out of the lagoon, and then he’d wave goodbye and she’d never see him again.

‘If it had been the other way round, I’d have taken you,’ she said.

‘I suppose you think that makes it easier for me,’ said Finn angrily.

‘I wasn’t trying to make it easier for you,’ said Maia, and stalked away.

But Finn did not go immediately. It was as though the Arabella wasn’t so sure if she wanted to go adventuring after her quiet time in the lagoon. First they found a small leak through the hull under the floorboards, and then Finn dropped the washer for the valve which regulated the amount of steam to go into the boiler. He didn’t just drop it, he dropped it into the deepest part of the lake, and though he and Maia dived for it again and again they couldn’t find it. Furo went into Manaus to get a replacement but before they could put it in, another week had passed.

It was harder for Miss Minton to get away to the lagoon. When she did manage it, she bullied Finn about Caesar’s Gallic Wars.

‘Those legions are never going to get across the bridge at this rate,’ she said, looking at the book, still open at page fifty-seven. But when she had finished lecturing Finn about the importance of Latin to someone who wanted to collect plants, she lent a hand with the chores, scrubbing the floor of the hut to whiteness.

‘Having been a housemaid always comes in useful,’ she said.

One afternoon when the children were on their own, they saw that the macaws on the tree that guarded the entrance had flown up, squawking.

But it was not Furo come to fetch Maia. It was Colonel da Silva with his second in command, come to take charge of Bernard Taverner’s possessions.

‘Dios!’ he said paddling up to the hut. ‘What is this?’

So Finn explained and when he had finished the colonel was laughing so much, he looked as if he was going to fall into the water. The idea of the crows bringing a penniless actor to Westwood was the best thing he had heard in ages. ‘And you, senhorita,’ he said to Maia. ‘A heroine no less.’

He told them that instructions to pay out the reward for Finn’s capture had been telegraphed from the Bishop so there could be no suspicion that they did not have the right boy.

Then came the day Maia had dreaded. The last of the provisions were loaded onto the Arabella – manioc flour and dried beans and oil for the Primus and gifts for the Indians.

That night Finn came to say goodbye to Furo and the others.

‘You’re to look after Maia,’ he told them. ‘Promise me you will not let any harm come to her.’

And Furo, who had been sulking because he too wanted to go with Finn, gave his promise, as did Tapi and Conchita. Only old Lila was inconsolable, weeping and rocking back and forth and declaring that she would be dead before he returned.