Birds of Prey

by Wilbur Smith

  ‘Mijnheer, I think you should escort your wife to her quarters.’

  Katinka stepped between them as though he had not spoken, and beckoned Zelda who followed her. ‘Place my stool there in the shade.’ She spread out her skirts as she settled herself on the stool and pouted prettily at Sir Francis. ‘I will be so quiet that you will not even know that I am here.’

  Sir Francis glared at the Governor, but van de Velde spread his pudgy hands in a theatrical gesture of helplessness. ‘You know how it is, Mijnheer, when a beautiful woman sets her heart on something.’ He moved up behind Katinka and placed a proud and indulgent hand on her shoulder.

  ‘I cannot be responsible for your wife’s sensibilities, if they should be offended by the spectacle,’ Sir Francis warned grimly, relieved at least that his men could not understand this exchange in Dutch and be aware that he had bowed to pressure from his captives.

  ‘I think you need not trouble yourself too deeply. My wife has a strong stomach,’ van de Velde murmured. During their tour of duty in Kandy and Trincomalee his wife had never missed the executions that were carried out regularly on the parade ground of the fort. Depending on the nature of the offence these punishments had ranged from burning at the stake to branding, garrotting and beheading. Even on those days when she had been suffering the break-bone pains of dengue fever and, in accordance with her doctor’s orders, should have remained in bed, her carriage had always been parked in its accustomed place overlooking the scaffold.

  ‘Then it shall be at your own responsibility, Mijnheer.’ Sir Francis nodded curtly, and turned back to Daniel.

  ‘Proceed with the punishment, Master Daniel,’ he ordered. Daniel threw back the whip, high behind his shoulder, and the coloured tattoos that decorated his great biceps rippled with a life of their own.

  ‘Three!’ yelled the crew, as the lash sang and snapped.

  Katinka stiffened, and leaned forward slightly on her stool.

  ‘Four!’ She started at the crack of the cat and the high scream of pain that followed it. Slowly her face turned pale as candle tallow.

  ‘Five!’ Thin snakes of scarlet crawled down the man’s back and soaked into the waistband of his canvas petticoat. Katinka let her long golden eyelashes droop half closed to hide the gleam in her violet eyes.

  ‘Six!’ Katinka felt a tiny drop of liquid strike her, like a single spot of warm tropical rain. She tore her eyes from the wriggling, moaning body on the tripod, and looked down at her graceful hand.

  A drop of blood, flung from the sodden lash, had landed on her forefinger. Like a ruby set in a precious ring it sparkled against her white skin. She cupped her other hand over it, hiding it in her lap while she glanced around at the faces that surrounded her. Every eye was fixed in total fascination upon the gruesome spectacle in front of them. No one had seen the blood splash her. No one was watching her now.

  She lifted her hand to her full soft lips as though in an involuntary gesture of dismay. The pink tip of her tongue darted out and dabbed away the droplet from her finger. She savoured its metallic salt taste. It reminded her of a lover’s sperm, and she felt the viscous wetness welling up between her legs, so that when she rubbed her thighs together they slid against each other, slippery as mating eels.

  There would be a need for lodgings on shore while the Resolution was careened on the beach, her hull cleaned of weed and examined for any sign of shipworm.

  Sir Francis put Hal in charge of building the compound that was to accommodate their hostages. Hal took particular care over the hut that would house the Governor’s wife, making it spacious and comfortable and siting it for privacy and security from wild animals. Then he had his men build a stockade of thorn branches around the entire prison compound.

  When darkness brought the first day’s work to a halt, he went down to the beach of the lagoon and soaked himself in the warm, brackish waters. Then he scrubbed his body with handfuls of wet sand until his skin tingled. Yet he still felt sullied by the memory of the floggings he had been forced to watch that morning. Only when he smelt the tantalizing odour of hot biscuit floating across the water from the ship’s galley did his mood change, and he thrust his legs into his breeches and ran down the beach to scramble into the pinnace as it pulled away from the shore.

  While he had been ashore his father had written on the slate a series of navigational problems for him to solve. He tucked it under his arm, grabbed a pewter mug of small beer, a bowl of fish stew and, holding a hot biscuit between his teeth, darted down the ladder to his cabin, the only place on the ship where he could be alone to concentrate on his task.

  Suddenly he looked up as he heard water being poured in the cabin next door. He had noticed the buckets of fresh river water standing over the charcoal fire in the galley and laughed when the cook had complained bitterly that his fire was being used to heat water to bathe in. Now Hal knew for whom those steaming pails had been prepared. Zelda’s guttural tones carried to him through the panel as she harangued Oliver, his father’s servant. Oliver’s reply was truculent. ‘I don’t understand a word you say, you grisly old bitch. But if you don’t like it you can fill the sodding bath yerself.’

  Hal grinned to himself, half with amusement and half in anticipation, as he blew out his lamp and knelt to remove the wooden plug from his peephole. He saw that the cabin was filled with clouds of steam, which frosted the mirror on the far bulkhead so that his view was restricted. Zelda was shooing Oliver from the cabin as Hal adjusted his eye to the aperture.

  ‘All right, you old trull!’ Oliver baited her, as he lugged the empty buckets from the cabin. ‘There’s nothing you’ve got that would keep me here a minute longer.’

  When Oliver was gone, Zelda went through into the main cabin and Hal heard her speaking to her mistress. A minute later she ushered Katinka through the doorway. Katinka paused beside the steaming bath and dabbled her fingers in the water. She exclaimed sharply and jerked away her hand. Zelda hurried forward, apologizing, and poured cold water from the bucket that stood beside the bath. Katinka tested the temperature again. This time she nodded with satisfaction, and went to sit on the stool. Zelda came up behind her, lifted the splendid shimmering bundle of her hair with both hands to pile it on top of her head and pinned it there, like a sheaf of ripe wheat.

  Katinka leaned forward and, with her fingertips, wiped a small clear window in the clouded surface of the mirror. She examined the vignette of herself in this clear spot. She thrust out her tongue to examine it for any trace of white coating. It was pink as a rose petal. Then she opened her eyes wide and peered into their depths, touching the skin beneath them with her fingertips. ‘Look at these horrid wrinkles!’ she lamented.

  Zelda denied it vehemently. ‘Not a single one!’

  ‘I never want to grow old and ugly.’ Katinka’s expression was tragic.

  ‘Then you had best die now!’ said Zelda. ‘That’s the only way you’ll avoid it.’

  ‘What a terrible thing to say. You are so cruel to me,’ Katinka complained.

  Hal could not understand what they said but the tone of her voice touched him to the depths of his being.

  ‘Come now,’ Zelda chided her. ‘You know you’re beautiful.’

  ‘Am I, Zelda? Do you really think so?’

  ‘Yes. And so do you.’ Zelda lifted her to her feet. ‘But if you don’t bathe now, you will stink just as beautifully.’

  She unfastened her mistress’s gown, then moved behind her, lifted the gown from her shoulders and Katinka stood naked before the mirror. Hal’s involuntary gasp was muffled by the panel and the small sounds of the ship’s hull.

  From that slender neck down to her tiny ankles Katinka’s body formed a line of heartbreaking purity. Her buttocks swelled out into two perfectly symmetrical orbs, like a pair of the ostrich eggs Hal had seen offered for sale in the markets of Zanzibar. But there were childish, vulnerable dimples at the back of her knees.

  Katinka’s own image in the clouded mirror was eth
ereal and could not hold her attention for long. She turned away from it and stood facing him. Hal’s gaze flew to her breasts. They were large for her narrow shoulders. Each would have filled his cupped hands, yet they were not perfectly round as he had expected them to be.

  Hal stared at them until his eye watered and he was forced at last to blink. Then he let his gaze sink down, over the slight but enthralling bulge of her belly, and onto the misty cloud of fine curls that nestled between her thighs. The lamp-light struck them and they sparked purest gold.

  She stood a long time thus, longer than he had dared hope she might, staring down into the bath while Zelda poured perfumed oil from a crystal bottle into the water, and then knelt to stir it with her hand. Katinka continued to stand, her weight on one leg so that her pelvis was tilted at an enchanting angle, and there was a small sly smile on her lips as she reached up slowly and took one of her nipples between thumb and forefinger. For a moment Hal thought she stared directly at him, and he began to pull away guiltily from his peep-hole. Then he knew that it was an illusion for she dropped her eyes and looked down at the fat little berry that poked out rosily between her fingers.

  She rolled it softly back and forth, and while Hal stared in amazement it changed colour and shape. It swelled and hardened and darkened. He had never imagined anything quite like this – a little miracle that should have filled him with reverence but instead tore at his loins with the claws of lust.

  Zelda looked up from the bath she was mixing and, when she saw what her mistress was doing, snapped a prim reprimand. Katinka laughed and stuck out her tongue, but dropped her hand and stepped into the bath. With a luxurious sigh she sank into the hot, perfumed water, until only the thick coil of golden hair on top of her head showed above the rim of the bath.

  Zelda fussed over her, lathering soap on a flannel, wiping and washing, murmuring endearments and cackling at her mistress’s replies. Suddenly she rocked back on her heels and gave another instruction, in response to which Katinka stood up and the soapy water cascaded down her body. Her back was turned to Hal, and now the rounds of her bottom glowed pinkly from the hot water. At Zelda’s instructions she moved compliantly to allow the old woman to soap down each leg in turn.

  At last Zelda climbed stiffly to her feet and shuffled out of the cabin. As soon as she was gone Katinka, still standing in the bath, glanced over her shoulder. Again, Hal had the guilty illusion that she was looking directly into his own staring eye. It was only for a moment, then slowly and voluptuously she bent. Her buttocks changed shape at the movement. Katinka reached behind herself with both hands. She laid those small white hands on each of her glowing pink buttocks and drew them gently apart. This time Hal could not choke back the little abandoned cry that rose to his lips as the deep crease of her bottom opened to his feverish gaze.

  Zelda bustled back into the cabin bearing an armful of towels. Katinka straightened and the enchanted crevice closed firmly, its secrets hidden once more from his eyes. She stepped from the bath and Zelda draped a towel over her shoulders that hung to her ankles. Zelda loosened the coil of her mistress’s hair and brushed it out, and then braided it into a thick golden rope. She stood behind Katinka and held a gown for her to slip her arms into the sleeves, but Katinka shook her head and gave a peremptory order. Zelda protested but Katinka insisted and the maid threw the gown over the stool and left the cabin in an obvious pet.

  When she was gone Katinka let the towel drop to the deck and, naked once more, crossed to the door and slid the locking bolt into place. Then she turned back and passed out of Hal’s sight.

  He saw a fuzzy pink blur of movement in the clouded mirror but could not be sure what she was doing until, abruptly and shockingly, her lips were an inch from the opposite side of his peep-hole and she hissed viciously at him, ‘You filthy little pirate!’ She spoke in Latin, and he recoiled as though she had flung a kettle of boiling water into his face.

  Even in his confusion, though, the taunt had stung him to the quick, and he answered her, without thinking, ‘I am not a pirate. My father carries Letters of Marque.’

  ‘Don’t you dare to contradict me.’ Confusingly she was switching between Latin, Dutch and English. But her tone was sharp and stinging as a scourge.

  Again he was stung into a reply. ‘I did not mean to offend you.’

  ‘When my noble husband finds out that you have been spying on me, he will go to your pirate father, and they will have you flogged on the tripod like those other men this morning.’

  ‘I was not spying on you—’

  ‘Liar!’ She would not let him finish. ‘You dirty lying pirate.’ For a moment she had run out of breath and insults.

  ‘I only wanted to—’

  Her fury was recharged. ‘I know what you wanted. You wanted to look at my katjie – ’ he knew that was the Dutch word for kitten ‘ – and then you wanted to take your cock in your hand and pull it—’

  ‘No!’ Hal almost shouted. How had she known his shameful secret? He felt sick and mortified.

  ‘Quiet! Zelda will hear you,’ she hissed again. ‘If they catch you it will be the lash.’

  ‘Please!’ he whispered back. ‘I meant no harm. Please forgive me. I did not mean it.’

  ‘Then show me. Prove your innocence. Show me your cock.’

  ‘I can’t.’ His voice quivered with shame.

  ‘Stand up! Put it here next to the hole so I can see if you are lying.’

  ‘No. Please don’t make me do that.’

  ‘Quickly or I will scream for my husband to come.’

  Slowly he came to his feet. The peep-hole was at almost exactly the same level as his aching crotch.

  ‘Now, show me. Open your breeches,’ her voice goaded him.

  Slowly, consumed by shame and embarrassment he lifted the canvas skirt, and before it was fully raised his penis jumped out like the springy branch of a sapling. He knew she must be nauseated and speechless with disgust to see such a thing. After a minute of thick, charged silence that seemed the longest in his life, he began to lower his skirt over himself.

  Instantly she stopped him in a voice that seemed to him to tremble with revulsion, so that he could hardly understand her distorted English words.

  ‘No! Do not seek to cover your shame. This thing of yours condemns you. Do you still pretend you are guiltless?’

  ‘No,’ he admitted miserably.

  ‘Then you must be punished,’ she told him. ‘I must tell your father.’

  ‘Please don’t do that,’ he pleaded. ‘He would kill me with his own hands.’

  ‘Very well. I shall have to punish you myself. Bring your cock closer.’

  Obediently he pushed his hips forward.

  ‘Closer, so I can reach it. Closer.’

  He felt the tip of his distended penis touch the rough wood that surrounded the peep-hole, and then shockingly cool soft fingers closed over the tip. He tried to pull away, but her grip tightened and her voice was sharp. ‘Stay still!’

  Katinka knelt at the bulkhead and threaded his glans through the opening, then eased it out into the lamp-light. It was so swollen that it could barely fit through the hole.

  ‘No, do not pull away,’ she told him, making her voice stern and angry, as she took a firmer grip upon him. Obediently he relaxed and gave himself over to the insistent pressure of her fingers, allowing her to draw his full length through the opening.

  She gazed at it, fascinated. At his age she had not expected him to be so large. The engorged head was the glossy purple of a ripe plum. She drew the loose prepuce over it, like a monk’s cowl, and then pulled back the skin again as far it would go. The head seemed to swell harder as though on the point of bursting, and she felt the shaft jump in her hands.

  She repeated the movement, slowly forward and then back again, and heard him groan beyond the panel. It was strange but she had almost forgotten the boy. This mannikin she held in her hands had a life and existence of its own.

  ‘This is your
punishment, you dirty, shameless boy.’

  She could hear his fingernails scratching at the wood, as her hand began to fly back and forth along the full length of him as though she were working the shuttle of a weaver’s loom.

  It happened sooner than she had expected. The hot glutinous spurting against her sensitive breasts was so powerful that it startled her, but she did not pull away.

  After a time, she said, ‘Do not think that I have forgiven you yet for what you have done to me. Your penitence has only just begun. Do you understand?’

  ‘Yes.’ His voice was ragged and hoarse.

  ‘You must make a secret opening in this wall.’ She tapped the bulkhead softly with her knuckle. ‘Loosen this panel so that you can come through to me, and I can punish you more severely. Do you understand?’

  ‘Yes,’ he panted.

  ‘You must conceal the opening. No one else must know.’

  ‘It is my observation,’ Sir Francis told Hal, ‘that filth and sickness have a peculiar affinity, one for the other. I know not why this should be, but it is so.’

  He was responding to his son’s cautious enquiry as to why it was necessary to go through the onerous and odious business of fumigating the ship. With all the cargo out of her and most of the crew billeted ashore Sir Francis was determined to try to rid the hull of vermin. It seemed that every crack in the woodwork swarmed with lice, and the holds were overrun with rats. The galley was littered with the black pellets of their droppings, and Ned Tyler had reported finding some of the stinking bloated carcasses rotting in the water casks.

  Since the day of their arrival in the lagoon a shore party had been burning cordwood and leaching the ashes to obtain the lye, and Sir Francis had sent Aboli into the forest to search for those special herbs that his tribe used to keep their huts clear of the loathsome vermin. Now a party of seamen waited on the foredeck, armed with buckets of the caustic substance.

  ‘I want every crack and joint of the hull scrubbed out, but be careful,’ Sir Francis warned them. ‘The corrosive fluid will burn the skin from your hands—’ He broke off abruptly. Every head on board turned towards the distant rocky heads, and every man upon the beach paused in what he was doing and cocked his head to listen.