Birds of Prey

by Wilbur Smith

  ‘Mistress, you are killing me.’

  ‘Good so! But if you live you will be on board the Standvastigheid when she sails for Holland next week. I can abide you around me no longer. I will send you back in the meanest cabin without a penny of pension. You can eke out the rest of your days in the poorhouse.’ Katinka was panting wildly now, raining her blows on Zelda’s head and shoulders.

  ‘Please, mistress, you would not be so cruel to your old Zelda, who wet-nursed you as a baby.’

  ‘The thought of having sucked on those great fat tits makes me want to puke.’ Katinka lashed out at them, and Zelda whimpered and covered her chest with both arms. ‘When you leave I will have your baggage searched so that you take with you nothing that you have stolen from me. There will be not a single guilder in your purse, I shall see to that. You thieving, lying crone.’

  The threat transformed Zelda from a pathetic wriggling fawning creature into a woman possessed. Her arm shot out and her plump fist seized Katinka’s wrist as she was about to strike again. Zelda held onto her with a strength that shocked her mistress and she glared into Katinka’s face with a terrible hatred.

  ‘No!’ she said. ‘You will not take everything I have from me. You will not beggar me. I have served you twenty-four years and you will not cast me off now. I will sail on the galleon, yes, and nothing will give me greater joy than to see the last of your poisonous beauty. But when I go I will take with me all I own and on top of that I will have in my purse the thousand gold guilders you will give to me as my pension.’

  Katinka was stunned out of her rage, and stared in disbelief at her. ‘You rave like a lunatic. A thousand guilders? More likely a thousand cuts with the whip.’

  She tried to pull her arm free, but Zelda hung on with a mad strength. ‘A lunatic you say! But what will his excellency do when I bring him proof of how you have been rutting with the Colonel?’

  Katinka froze at the threat then slowly lowered her whip arm. Her mind was racing, and a hundred mysteries unravelled as she stared into Zelda’s eyes. She had trusted this old bitch without question, never doubting her complete loyalty, never even thinking about it. Now she knew how her husband always seemed to have intimate knowledge of her lovers and her behaviour that should have been secret.

  She thought quickly now, her impassive expression masking the outrage she felt at this betrayal. It mattered little if her husband learned of this new adventure with Cornelius Schreuder. It would simply be an annoyance, for Katinka had not yet tired of the colonel. The consequences would, of course, be more serious for her new lover.

  Looking back, she realized just how vindictive Petrus van de Velde had been: all her lovers had suffered some grievous harm once her husband knew about them. How he knew had always been a mystery to Katinka until this moment. She must have been naïve, but it had never occurred to her that Zelda had been the serpent in her bosom.

  ‘Zelda, I have wronged you,’ Katinka said softly. ‘I should not have treated you so harshly.’ She reached down and stroked the angry weal on the maid’s chubby cheek. ‘You have been kind and faithful to me all these years and it is time you went to a happy retirement. I spoke in anger. I would never dream of denying you that which you deserve. When you sail on the galleon you will have not a thousand but two thousand guilders in your purse, and my love and gratitude will go with you.’

  Zelda licked her bruised lips and grinned with malicious triumph. ‘You are so kind and good to me, my sweet mistress.’

  ‘Of course, you will say nothing to my husband about my little indiscretions with Colonel Schreuder, will you?’

  ‘I love you much too much ever to do you harm, and my heart will break on the day that I have to leave you.’

  Slow John knelt in the flower bed at the end of the terrace, his pruning knife in his powerful hands. As a shadow fell over him, he looked up and rose to his feet. He lifted his hat and held it across his chest respectfully. ‘Good morrow, mistress,’ he said, in his deep melodious voice.

  ‘Pray continue with your task. I love to watch you work.’

  He sank to his knees again and the blade of the sharp little knife flickered in his hands. Katinka sat on a bench close at hand and watched him in silence for a while.

  ‘I admire your skills,’ she said at last, and though he did not raise his head he knew that she referred not only to his dexterity with the pruning knife. ‘I have dire need of those skills, Slow John. There would be a purse of a hundred guilders as your reward. Will you do something for me?’

  ‘Mevrouw, there is nothing I would not do for you.’ He lifted his head at last and stared at her with those pale yellow eyes. ‘I would not flinch from laying down my life if you asked it of me. I do not ask for payment. The knowledge that I do your bidding is all the reward I could ever want.’

  The winter nights had turned cold and squalls of rain roared down off the mountain to batter the panes of the windows and howl like jackals around the eaves of the thatched roof.

  Zelda pulled her nightdress over her ample frame. All the weight she had lost on the voyage from the east had come back to settle on her paunch and thighs. Since moving into the residence she had fed well at her corner in the kitchen, wolfing down the luscious scraps as they were carried through from the high table in the main dining hall, washing them down from her tankard filled with the dregs from the wine glasses of the gentry, Rhine and red wine mixed with gin and schnapps.

  Her belly filled with good food and drink, she made ready for bed. First, she checked that the window casements in her small room were sealed against the draught. She stuffed wads of rags into the cracks and drew the curtains across them. She slid the copper warming pan under the covers of her bed and held it there until she smelt the linen begin to singe. Then she blew out the candle and crept under the thick woollen blankets.

  Snuffling and sighing, she settled into the softness and warmth, and her last thoughts were of the purse of golden coins tucked under her mattress. She fell asleep, smiling.

  An hour after midnight, when all the house was silent and sleeping, Slow John listened at the door of Zelda’s room. When he heard her snores rattling louder than the wind at the casement, he eased open the door noiselessly and slipped through it the brazier of glowing charcoal. He listened for a minute, but the rhythm of the old woman’s breathing was regular and unbroken. He closed the door softly and moved silently down the passage to the door at the end.

  In the dawn Sukeena came to wake Katinka an hour before her appointed time. When she had helped her dress in a warm robe, she led her to the servants’ quarters where a silent, frightened knot of slaves was gathered outside Zelda’s door. They stood aside for Katinka to enter and Sukeena whispered, ‘I know how much she meant to you, mistress. My heart breaks for you.’

  ‘Thank you, Sukeena,’ Katinka answered sadly, and glanced quickly around the tiny room. The brazier had been removed. Slow John had been thorough and reliable.

  ‘She looks so peaceful and what a lovely colour she has.’ Sukeena stood beside the bed. ‘Almost as if she were alive still.’

  Katinka came to stand beside her. The noxious fumes from the brazier had rouged the old woman’s cheeks. In death she was more handsome than she had ever been in life. ‘Leave me alone with her for a while, please, Sukeena,’ she said quietly. ‘I wish to say a prayer for her. She was so dear to me.’

  As she knelt beside the bed Sukeena closed the door softly behind her. Katinka slid her hand under the mattress and drew out the purse. She could tell by its weight that none of the coins was missing. She slipped the purse into the pocket of her gown, clasped her hands in front of her and closed her eyes so tightly that the long golden lashes intermeshed.

  ‘Go to hell, you old bitch,’ she murmured.

  Slow John came at last. Many long days and tormented nights they had waited for him, so long that Sir Francis Courtney had begun to imagine that he would never come.

  Each evening, when darkness brought an end to the wo
rk on the castle walls, the prisoner teams came shuffling in, out of the night. Winter was tightening its grip on the Cape and they were often soaked by the driving rain and chilled to the bone.

  Every evening, as he passed the iron-studded door of his father’s cell, Hal called, ‘What cheer, Father?’

  The reply, in a voice hoarse and choked with the phlegm of his illness, was always the same. ‘Better today, Hal. And with you?’

  ‘The work was easy. We are all in good heart.’

  Then Althuda would call from the next-door cell, ‘The surgeon came this morning. He says that Sir Francis is well enough to be questioned by Slow John.’ Or on another occasion, ‘The fever is worse, Sir Francis has been coughing all day.’

  As soon as the prisoners were locked into the lower dungeon they would gulp down their one meal of the day, scraping out the bowls with their fingers, and then drop like dead men on the damp straw.

  In the darkness before dawn Manseer would rattle on the bars of the cell. ‘Up! Up, you lazy bastards, before Barnard sends in his dogs to rouse you.’

  They would struggle to their feet, and file out again into the rain and the wind. There, Barnard waited to greet them, with his two huge black boarhounds, growling and lunging against the leashes. Some of the seamen had found pieces of sacking or canvas with which to wrap their bare feet or cover their heads, but even these rags were still wet from the previous day. Most, though, were bare foot and half-naked in the winter gales.

  Then Slow John came. He came at midday. The men on the high scaffolding fell silent and all work stopped. Even Hugo Barnard stood aside as he passed through the gates of the castle. In his sombre clothing, and with the wide-brimmed hat pulled low over his eyes, he looked like a preacher on his way to the pulpit.

  Slow John stopped at the entrance to the dungeons, and Sergeant Manseer came running across the yard, jangling his keys. He opened the low door, stood aside for Slow John, then followed him through. The door closed behind the pair and the watchers roused themselves, as though they had awakened from a nightmare and resumed their tasks. But while Slow John was within a deep, brooding silence hung over the walls. No man cursed or spoke, even Hugo Barnard was subdued, and at every chance their heads turned to look down at the closed iron door.

  Slow John went down the staircase, Manseer lighting the treads with a lantern, and stopped outside the door of Sir Francis’s cell. The sergeant drew back the latch on the peep-hole and Slow John stepped up to it. There was a beam of light from the high window of the cell. Sir Francis sat on the stone shelf that served as his bunk, lifted his head and stared back into Slow John’s yellow eyes.

  Sir Francis’s face was that of a sun-bleached skull, so pale as to seem luminous in the poor light, the long tresses of his hair dead black and his eyes dark cavities. ‘I have been expecting you,’ he said, and coughed until his mouth filled with phlegm. He spat it into the straw that covered the floor.

  Slow John made no reply. His eyes, gleaming through the peep-hole, were fastened on Sir Francis’s face. The minutes dragged by. Sir Francis was overwhelmed with a wild desire to scream at him, ‘Do what you have to do. Say what you have to say. I am ready for you.’ But he forced himself to remain silent and stared back at Slow John.

  At last Slow John stepped away from the peep-hole and nodded at Manseer. He slammed the shutter closed and scurried back up the staircase to open the iron door for the executioner. Slow John crossed the courtyard with every eye upon him. When he went out through the gate men breathed again and there was once more the shouting of orders and the answering murmur of curse and complaint from the walls.

  ‘Was that Slow John?’ Althuda called softly from the cell alongside that of Sir Francis.

  ‘He said nothing. He did nothing,’ Sir Francis whispered hoarsely.

  ‘It is the way he has,’ Althuda said. ‘I have been here long enough to see him play the same game many times. He will wear you down so that in the end you will want to tell him all he wants to know before he even touches you. That is why they named him Slow John.’

  ‘Sweet Jesus, it half unmans me. Has he ever come to stare at you, Althuda?’

  ‘Not yet.’

  ‘How have you been so fortunate?’

  ‘I know not. I know only that one day he will come for me also. Like you, I know how it feels to wait.’

  Three days before the Standvastigheid was due to sail for Holland, Sukeena left the kitchens of the residence with her conical sunhat of woven grass on her dainty little head and her bag on her arm. Her departure caused no surprise among the other members of the household for it was her custom to go out several times a week along the slopes of the mountain to collect herbs and roots. Her skills and knowledge of the healing plants were famous throughout the colony.

  From the veranda of the residence Kleinhans watched her go, and the knife blade of agony twisted in his guts. It felt as if an open wound were bleeding deep within him and often his stools were black with clotted blood. However, it was not only the dyspepsia that was devouring him. He knew that once the galleon sailed, with him aboard her, he would never again look upon Sukeena’s beauty. Now that the time for this parting drew near he could not sleep at night, and even milk and bland boiled rice turned to acid in his stomach.

  Mevrouw van de Velde, his hostess since she had taken over the residence, had been kind to him. She had even sent Sukeena out this morning to gather the special herbs that, when seeped and distilled with the slave girl’s skills, were the only medicine that could alleviate his agony for even a short while – long enough at least to allow him to catch a few hours of fitful sleep. At Katinka’s orders Sukeena would prepare enough of this brew to tide him over the long voyage northwards. He prayed that, once he reached Holland, the physicians there would be able to cure this dreadful affliction.

  Sukeena moved quietly through the scrub that covered the slopes of the mountain. Once or twice she looked back but nobody had followed her. She went on, stopping only to cut a green twig from one of the flowering bushes. As she walked she stripped the leaves from it and, with her knife, trimmed the end into a fork.

  All around her the wild blossom grew in splendid profusion; even now that winter was upon them, a hundred different species were on show. Some were as large as ripe artichoke heads, some as tiny as her little fingernail, all of them lovely beyond an artist’s imagination or the powers of his palette to depict. She knew them all.

  Meandering seemingly without direction, in reality she was moving gradually and circuitously towards a deep ravine that split the face of the table-topped mountain. With one more careful look around she darted suddenly down the steep, heavily bushed slope. There was a stream at the bottom, tumbling through a series of merry waterfalls and dreaming pools. As she approached one, she moved more slowly and softly. Tucked into a rocky crevice beside the dark waters was a small clay bowl. She had placed it there on her last visit. From the ledge above she looked down and saw that the milky white fluid, with which she had filled it, had been drunk. Only a few opalescent drops remained in the bottom.

  Daintily she climbed cautiously into a position from which she could look deeper into the crack in the rock. Her breath caught as she saw in the shadows the soft gleam of ophidian scales. She opened the lid of the basket, took the forked stick in her right hand and moved closer. The serpent was coiled beside the bowl. It was not large, as slender as her forefinger. Its colour was a deep glowing bronze, each scale a tiny marvel. As she drew closer it raised its head an inch and watched her with black beady eyes. But it made no attempt to escape, sliding back into the depths of the crevice, as it had the first time she had discovered it.

  It was lazy and somnolent, lulled by the milky concoction she had fed it. After a moment it lowered its head again and seemed to sleep. Sukeena was not tempted into any sudden or rash move. Well she knew that, from the bony needles in its upper jaw, the little reptile could dispense death in one of its most horrible and agonizing manifestations. She rea
ched out gently with the twig and again the snake raised its head. She froze, the fork held only inches above its slim neck. Slowly the little reptile drooped back to earth and, as its head stretched out, Sukeena pinned it to the rock. It hissed softly and its body coiled and recoiled around the stick that held it.

  Sukeena reached down and gripped it behind the head, with two fingers locked against the hard bones of the skull. It wrapped its long sinuous body around her wrist. She took hold of the tail and unwound it, then dropped the serpent into her basket. In the same movement she closed the lid upon it.

  Retiring Governor Kleinhans went aboard the galleon on the evening before she sailed. Before the carriage took him down to the foreshore, all the household assembled on the front terrace of the residence to bid farewell to their former master. He moved slowly along the line with a word for each. When he reached Sukeena she made that graceful gesture, her fingertips together touching her lips, which made his heart ache with love and longing for her.

  ‘Aboli has taken your luggage aboard the ship and placed all of it in your cabin,’ she said softly. ‘Your medicine chest is packed at the bottom of the largest trunk, but there is a full bottle in your small travelling case, which should last you several days.’

  ‘I shall never forget you, Sukeena,’ he said.

  ‘And I shall never forget you, master,’ she answered. For one mad moment he almost lost control of his emotions. He was on the point of embracing the slave girl, but then she looked up and he recoiled as he saw the undying hatred in her eyes.