Birds of Prey

by Wilbur Smith

  She straddled him as though she were mounting the mare. ‘Oh, sweet Jesus, what a mighty man you are!’ she cried, as she took him in. The only pleasure she received from it was the thought of Sukeena listening at the screen door. She closed her eyes and summoned up the image of the slave girl’s slim thighs and the treasure that lay between them. The thought inflamed her, and she knew that her husband would feel her flowing response and think it was for him alone.

  ‘Katinka,’ he gurgled and snorted as though he was drowning, ‘I love you.’

  ‘The reprieve?’ she asked.

  ‘I cannot do it.’

  ‘Then neither can I,’ she said, and lifted herself onto her knees. She had to fight to keep herself from laughing aloud as she watched his face swell and his eyes bulge further out. He wriggled and heaved under her, thrusting vainly at the air.

  ‘Please!’ he whimpered. ‘Please!’

  ‘The reprieve?’ she asked, keeping herself suspended tantalizingly above him.

  ‘Yes,’ he whinnied. ‘Anything. I will give you anything you want.’

  ‘I love you, my husband,’ she whispered in his ear, and sank down like a bird settling on its nest.

  Last time he lasted to a count of one hundred, she remembered. This time I shall try to bring him to the finishing line in under fifty. With rocking hips she set herself to better her own record.

  Manseer opened the door of Althuda’s cell and roared, ‘Come out, you murderous dog. Governor’s orders, you go to work on the wall.’ Althuda stepped out through the iron door and Manseer glared at him. ‘Seems you’ll not be dancing a quadrille on the scaffold with Slow John, more’s the pity. But don’t crow too loud, you’ll give us as much sport on the castle walls. Barnard and his hounds will see to that. You’ll not last the winter out, I’ll wager a hundred guilders on it.’

  Hal led the file of convicts up from the lower cells, and paused on the stone step below Althuda. For a long moment they studied each other keenly. Both looked pleased at what they saw.

  ‘If you give me a choice, then I think I prefer the cut of your sister’s jib to yours.’ Hal smiled. Althuda was smaller in stature than his voice had suggested and all the marks of his long captivity were plain to see: his skin was sallow and his hair matted and tangled. But the body that showed through the holes in his miserable rags was neat and strong and supple. His gaze was frank and his countenance comely and open. Although his eyes were almond-shaped and his hair straight and black, his English blood mingled well with that of his mother’s people. There was a proud and stubborn set to his jaw.

  ‘What cradle did you fall out of?’ he asked Hal, with a grin. It was obvious that he was overjoyed to come out from the shadow of the gallows. ‘I called for a man and they sent a boy.’

  ‘Come on, you murdering renegade,’ Barnard bellowed, as the gaoler handed over the convicts to his charge. ‘You may have escaped the noose for the moment, but I have a few pleasures in store for you. You slit the throats of some of my comrades on the mountainside.’ It was clear that all the garrison bitterly resented Althuda’s reprieve. Then Barnard turned on Hal. ‘As for you, you stinking pirate, your tongue is too loose by far. One word out of you today and I’ll kick you off the wall, and feed the scraps to my dogs.’

  Barnard separated the two of them: he sent Hal back onto the scaffold and set Althuda to work in the gangs of convicts down in the courtyard, unloading the masonry blocks from the ox-drawn wagons as they came down from the quarries.

  However, that evening Althuda was herded into the general cell. Daniel and the rest crowded around him in the darkness to hear his story told in detail, and to ply him with all the questions that they had not been able to shout up the staircase. He was something new in the dreary, monotonous round of captivity and heart-breaking labour. Only when the kettle of stew was brought down from the kitchens and the men hurried to their frugal dinner did Hal have a chance to speak to him alone.

  ‘If you escaped once before, Althuda, then there must be a chance we can do it again.’

  ‘I was in a better state then. I had my own fishing boat. My master trusted me and I had the run of the colony. How can we escape from the walls that surround us? I fear it would be impossible.’

  ‘You use the words fear and impossible. That is not a language that I understand. I thought perhaps I had met a man, not some faintheart.’

  ‘Keep the harsh words for our enemies, my friend.’ Althuda returned his hard stare. ‘Instead of telling me what a hero you are, tell me instead now how you receive word from the outside.’ Hal’s stern expression cracked and he grinned at him. He liked the man’s spirit, the way he could meet broadside with broadside. He moved closer and lowered his voice as he explained to Althuda how it was done. Then he handed him the latest message he had received. Althuda took it to the grille gate, and studied it in the torchlight that filtered down the staircase.

  ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘That is my sister’s hand. I know of no other who can pen her letters so prettily.’

  That evening the two composed a message for Aboli to collect, to let him and Sukeena know that Althuda had been released from Skellum’s Den.

  However, it seemed that Sukeena already knew this, for the following day she accompanied her mistress on a visit to the castle. She rode beside Aboli on the driver’s seat of the carriage. At the staircase she helped her mistress dismount. It was strange but Hal was by now so accustomed to Katinka’s visits that he no longer felt angry and bitter when he looked upon her angelic face. She held his attention barely at all, and instead he watched the slave girl. Sukeena stood at the bottom of the staircase and darted quick birdlike glances in every direction as she searched for her brother’s face among the gangs of convicts.

  Althuda was working in the courtyard, chipping and chiselling the rough stone blocks into shape before they were swung up on the gantry to the top of the unfinished walls. His face and hair were powdered white as a miller’s with the stone dust, and his hands were bleeding from the abrasion of tools and rough stone. At last Sukeena picked him out, and brother and sister stared at each other for one long ecstatic moment.

  Sukeena’s radiant expression was one of the most beautiful Hal had ever looked upon. But it was only for a fleeting instant, then Sukeena hurried up the stairs after her mistress.

  A short time later they reappeared at the head of the staircase, but Governor van de Velde was with them. He had his wife on his arm and Sukeena followed then demurely. The slave girl seemed to be searching for someone other than her brother. When she mounted the driver’s seat of the carriage, she murmured something to Aboli. In response, Aboli moved only his eyes, but she followed his gaze, up to the top of the scaffold where Hal was belaying a rope end.

  Hal felt his pulse sprint as he realized that it was him she was seeking. They stared at each other solemnly and it seemed they were very close, for afterwards Hal could remember every angle and plane of her face and the graceful curve of her neck. At last she smiled, it was a brief, honeyed interlude, then dropped her eyes. That night in his cell he lay on the clammy straw and relived the moment.

  Perhaps she will come again tomorrow, he thought, as sleep swept over him like a black wave. But she did not come again for many weeks.

  They made a place on the straw for Althuda to sleep near Hal and Daniel so that they could talk quietly in the darkness.

  ‘How many of your men are in the mountains?’ Hal wanted to know.

  ‘There were nineteen of us to begin with, but three were killed by the Dutch and five others died after we escaped. The mountains are cruel and there are many wild beasts.’

  ‘What weapons do they have?’ Hal asked.

  ‘They have the muskets and the swords that we captured from the Dutch, but there is little powder, and by now it might all be used up. My companions have to hunt to live.’

  ‘Surely they have made other weapons?’ Hal enquired.

  ‘They have fashioned bows and pikes, but they lack iron p
oints for these weapons.’

  ‘How secure are your hiding places in the wilderness?’ Hal persisted.

  ‘The mountains are endless. The gorges are a tangled labyrinth. The cliffs are harsh and there are no paths except those made by the baboons.’

  ‘Do the Dutch soldiers venture into these mountains?’

  ‘Never! They dare not scale even the first ravine.’

  These discussions filled all their evenings, as the winter gales came ravening down from the mountain like a pride of lions roaring at the castle walls. The men in the dungeons lay shivering on the straw pallets. Sometimes it was only the talking and the hoping that kept them from succumbing to the cold. Even so, some of the older, weaker convicts sickened: their throats and chests filled with thick yellow phlegm, their bodies burned up with fever and they died, choking and coughing.

  The flesh was burned off those who survived. Although they became thin, they were hardened by the cold and the labour. Hal reached his full growth and strength in those terrible months, until he could match Daniel at belaying a rope or hefting the heavy hods. His beard grew out dense and black and the thick pigtail of his hair hung down between his shoulder blades. The whip marks latticed his back and flanks, and his gaze was hard and relentless when he looked up at the mountain tops, blue in the distance.

  ‘How far is it to the mountains?’ he asked Althuda in the darkness of the cell.

  ‘Ten leagues,’ Althuda told him.

  ‘So far!’ Hal whispered. ‘How did you ever reach them over such a distance, with the Dutch in pursuit?’

  ‘I told you I was a fisherman,’ Althuda said. ‘I went out each day to kill seals to feed the other slaves. My boat was small and we were many. It barely served to carry us across False Bay to the foot of the mountains. My sister Sukeena does not swim. That is why I would not let her chance the crossing.’

  ‘Where is that boat now?’

  ‘The Dutch who pursued us found where we had hidden it. They burned it.’ Each night these councils were short-lived, for they were all being driven to the limit of their strength and endurance. But, gradually, Hal was able to milk from Althuda every detail that might be of use.

  ‘What is the spirit of the men you took with you to the mountains?’

  ‘They are brave men – and women too, for there are three girls with the band. Had they been less brave they would never have left the safety of their captivity. But they are not warriors, except one.’

  ‘Who is he, this one among them?’

  ‘His name is Sabah. He was a soldier until the Dutch captured him. Now he is a soldier again.’

  ‘Could we send word to him?’

  Althuda laughed bitterly. ‘We could shout from the top of the castle walls or rattle our chains. He might hear us on his mountain top.’

  ‘If I had wanted a jester, I would have called on Daniel here to amuse me. His jokes would make a dog retch, but they are funnier than yours. Answer me now, Althuda. Is there no way to reach Sabah?’

  Though his tone was light, it had an edge of steel to it, and Althuda thought a while before he replied. ‘When I escaped I arranged with Sukeena a hiding place beyond the bitter-almond hedge of the colony, where we could leave messages for each other. Sabah knew of this post, for I showed it to him on the night I returned to fetch my sister. It is a long throw of the dice, but Sabah may still visit it to find a message from me.’

  ‘I will think on these things you have told me,’ Hal said, and Daniel, lying near him in the dark cell, heard the power and authority in his voice and shook his head.

  ’Tis the voice and the manner of Captain Franky he has now, Daniel marvelled. What the Dutchies are doing to him here might have put a lesser man up on the reef but, by God, all they have done to him is filled his main sail with a strong wind. Hal had taken over his father’s role, and the crew who had survived recognized it. More and more they looked to him for leadership, to give them courage to go on and to counsel them, to settle the petty disputes that rose almost daily between men in such bitter straits, and to keep a spark of hope and courage burning in all their hearts.

  The next evening Hal took up the council of war that exhaustion had interrupted the night before. ‘So Sukeena knows where to leave a message for Sabah?’

  ‘Naturally, she knows it well – the hollow tree on the banks of the Eerste River, the first river beyond the boundary hedge,’ Althuda replied.

  ‘Aboli must try to make contact with Sabah. Is there something that is known only to you and Sabah that will prove to him the message comes from you and is not a Dutch trap?’

  Althuda thought about it. ‘Just say ’tis the father of little Bobby,’ he suggested at last. Hal waited in silence for Althuda to explain, and after a pause he went on, ‘Robert is my son, born in the wilderness after we had escaped from the colony. This August he will be a year old. His mother is one of the girls I spoke of. In all but name she is my wife. Nobody inside the bitter-almond hedge but I could know the child’s name.’

  ‘So, you have as good a reason as any of us for wanting to fly over these walls,’ Hal murmured.

  The content of the messages that they were able to pass to Aboli was severely restricted by the size of the paper they could safely employ without alerting the gaolers or the sharp, hungry scrutiny of Hugo Barnard. Hal and Althuda spent hours straining their eyes in the dim light and flogging their wits to compose the most succinct messages that would still be intelligible. The replies that returned to them were the voice of Sukeena speaking, little jewels of brevity that delighted them with occasional flashes of wit and humour.

  Hal found himself thinking more and more of Sukeena, and when she came again to the castle, following behind her mistress, her eyes went first to the scaffold where he worked before going on to seek out her brother. Occasionally, when there was space in the letters that Aboli placed in the crack of the wall, she made little personal comments; a reference to his bushing black beard or the passing of his birthday. This startled Hal, and touched him deeply. He wondered for a while how she had known this intimate detail, until he guessed that Aboli had told her. He encouraged Althuda to talk about her in the darkness. He learned little things about her childhood, her fancies and her dislikes. As he lay and listened to Althuda, he began to fall in love with her.

  Now when Hal looked to the mountains in the north they were covered by a mantle of snow that shone in the wintry sunlight. The wind came down from it like a lance and seemed to pierce his soul. ‘Aboli has still not heard from Sabah.’ After four months of waiting, Hal at last accepted that failure. ‘We will have to cut him out of our plans.’

  ‘He is my friend, but he must have given me up,’ Althuda agreed. ‘I grieve for my wife for she also must be mourning my death.’

  ‘Let us move on, then, for it boots us not to wish for what is denied us,’ Hal said firmly. ‘It would be easier to escape from the quarry on the mountain than from the castle itself. It seems that Sukeena must have arranged for your reprieve. Perhaps in the same fashion she can have us sent to the quarry.’

  They dispatched the message, and a week later the reply came back. Sukeena was unable to influence the choice of their workplace, and she cautioned that any attempt to do so would arouse immediate suspicion. ‘Be patient, Gundwane,’ she told him in a longer message than she had ever sent before. ‘Those who love you are working for your salvation.’ Hal read that message a hundred times then repeated it to himself as often. He was touched that she should use his nickname; Gundwane. Of course, Aboli had told her that also.

  ‘Those who love you’? Does she mean Aboli alone, or does she use the plural intentionally? Is there another who loves me too? Does she mean me alone or does she include Althuda, her brother? He alternated between hope and dismay. How can she trouble my mind so, when I have never even heard her voice? How can she feel anything for me, when she sees nothing but a bearded scarecrow in a beggar’s rags? But, then, perhaps Aboli has been my champion and told her I was n
ot always thus.

  Plan as they would, the days passed and hope grew threadbare. Six more of Hal’s seamen died during the months of August and September: two fell from the scaffold, one was struck down by a falling block of masonry and two more succumbed to the cold and the damp. The sixth was Oliver, who had been Sir Francis’s manservant. Early in their imprisonment his right foot had been crushed beneath the iron-shod wheel of one of the ox-wagons that brought the stone down from the quarry. Even though Dr Saar had placed a splint upon the shattered bone, the foot would not mend. It swelled up and burst out in suppurating ulcers that smelt like the flesh of a corpse. Hugo Barnard drove him back to work, even though he limped around the courtyard on a crude crutch.

  Hal and Daniel tried to shield Oliver, but if they intervened too obviously Barnard became even more vindictive. All they could do was take as much of the work as they could on themselves and keep Oliver out of range of the overseer’s whip. When the day came that Oliver was too weak to climb the ladder to the top of the south wall, Barnard sent him to work as a mason’s boy, trimming and shaping the slabs of stone. In the courtyard he was right under Barnard’s eye, and twice in the same morning Barnard laid in to him with the whip.

  The last was a casual blow, not nearly as vicious as many that had preceded it. Oliver was a tailor by trade, and by nature a timid and gentle creature, but, like a cur driven into an alley from which there was no escape, he turned and snapped. He swung the heavy wooden mallet in his right hand, and though Barnard sprang back he was not swift enough and it caught him across one shin. It was a glancing blow that did not break bone but it smeared the skin, and a flush of blood darkened Barnard’s hose and seeped down into his shoe. Even from his perch on the scaffold Hal could see by his expression that Oliver was appalled and terrified by what he had done.

  ‘Sir!’ he cried, and fell to his knees. ‘I did not mean it. Please, sir, forgive me.’ He dropped the mallet and held up both hands to his face in the attitude of prayer.

  Hugo Barnard staggered back, then stooped to examine his injury. He ignored Oliver’s frantic pleas, and peeled back his hose to expose the long graze down his shin. Then still without looking at Oliver, he limped to the hitching rail on the far side of the courtyard where his pair of black boarhounds were tethered. He held them on the leashes and pointed them at where Oliver still knelt.