Birds of Prey

by Wilbur Smith

  The man’s body was muscular, white and hard, the body of a gladiator. With one explosive movement Katinka sprang off him and spun to face Schreuder. As she stood beside the bed trembling with outrage her inner thighs glistened with the overflow of her venery.

  ‘What are you doing in my bedroom?’ she hissed at Schreuder.

  Stupidly he answered, ‘I came to take you away with me.’ But his eyes went down to the man’s body. His pubic hair was wet and matted and his sex thrust up towards the ceiling, thick and swollen and glistening, with a shiny, viscous coating. The man sat upright and looked straight at Schreuder, with a flat yellow gaze.

  A wave of unspeakable horror and revulsion swept over Schreuder. Katinka, his love, had been rutting with Slow John, the executioner.

  Katinka was speaking, but her words barely made sense to him. ‘You came to take me away? What gave you the notion that I would go with you, the Company clown, the laughing stock of the colony? Get out of here, you fool. Go into obscurity and shame where you belong.’

  Slow John stood up from the bed. ‘You heard her. Get out or I shall throw you out.’ It was not the words but the fact that Slow John’s penis was still fully tumescent that turned Schreuder into a maniac. His temper which, until now, he had been able to keep under restraint boiled over and took control of him. To the humiliation, insults and rejection that had been heaped upon him all that day was added the black rage of his jealousy.

  Slow John stooped to the pile of his discarded clothing, which lay upon the tiles beside the bed, and straightened up again with a pruning knife in his right hand. ‘I warn you,’ he said in that deep, melodious voice, ‘leave now, at once.’

  With one fluid movement the Neptune sword sprang from its scabbard as though it were a living thing. Slow John was no warrior. His victims were always delivered to him trussed and chained. He had never been matched against a man like Schreuder. He jumped forward, the knife held low in front of him, but Schreuder flicked his own blade across the inner side of Slow John’s wrist, severing the sinews so that the man’s fingers opened involuntarily and the knife dropped to the tiles.

  Then Schreuder thrust for the heart. Slow John had neither time nor chance to evade the stroke. The point took him in the centre of his broad, hairless chest and the blade buried itself right up to the jewelled pommel. The two men stood, locked together by the weapon. Gradually Slow John’s sex wilted and hung white and flaccid. His eyes glazed over and turned opaque and sightless as yellow pebbles. As he sank to his knees, Katinka began to scream.

  Schreuder plucked the blade from the executioner’s chest. Its burnished length was dulled by his blood. Katinka screamed again as a feather of bright heart-blood stood out of the wound in Slow John’s chest, and he toppled headlong to the tiles.

  ‘Don’t scream,’ Schreuder snarled, with the black rage still upon him, and advanced upon her with the sword in his hand. ‘You have played me false with this creature. You knew I loved you. I came to fetch you. I wanted you to come away with me.’ She backed away before him, both fists clenched upon her cheeks, and screamed in high, ringing hysteria.

  ‘Don’t scream,’ he shouted. ‘Be quiet. I cannot bear it when you do that.’ The dreadful sound echoed in his head and made it ache, but she retreated from him, her cries louder now, a terrible sound, and he had to make her stop.

  ‘Don’t do that!’ He tried to catch hold of her wrist, but she was too swift for him. She twisted out of his grip. Her screams grew even louder, and his rage broke its bounds as though it were some terrible black animal over which he had no control. The sword in his hand flew without his brain or his hand commanding it, and he stabbed her satiny white belly, just above the golden nest of her mons veneris.

  Her scream turned to a higher, agonized shriek and she clutched at the blade as he jerked it from her flesh. It cut her palms to the bone, and he thrust again to quieten her, twice more in the belly.

  ‘Quiet!’ he roared at her and she turned away and tried to run for the doors of her closet, but he stabbed her in the back just above her kidneys, pulled out the blade and thrust between her shoulders. She fell and rolled on her back, and he stood over her and stabbed and hacked and thrust at her. Each time the blade passed clean through her body and struck the tiles on which she squirmed.

  ‘Keep quiet!’ he yelled, and kept on stabbing until her screams and sobs died away. Even then he continued to thrust at her, standing in the spreading pool of her blood, his uniform drenched with gouts of scarlet, his face and arms splashed and speckled so that he looked like a plague victim covered with the rash of the disease.

  Then, slowly, the black rage drained from his brain, and he staggered back against the wall, leaving daubs of her blood across the whitewash.

  ‘Katinka!’ he whispered. ‘I did not mean to hurt you. I love you so.’

  She lay in the wide deep pool of her own blood. The wounds were like a choir of red mouths on her white skin. The blood still trickled from each of them. He had not dreamed there could be so much blood in that slim white body. Her head lay in a scarlet puddle, and her hair was soaked red. Her face was daubed thickly with it. Her features were twisted into a rictus of terror and agony that was no longer lovely to look upon.

  ‘Katinka, my darling. Please forgive me.’ He started across the floor towards her, stepping through the river of her blood that spread across the tiles. Then he stopped with the sword in his hand as, in the mirror across the room, he glimpsed a wild blood-smeared apparition staring back at him.

  ‘Oh, sweet Mary, what have I done?’ He tore his eyes from the creature in the mirror, and knelt beside the body of the woman he loved. He tried to lift her, but she was limp and boneless. She slid out of his embrace, and flopped into the puddle of her own blood.

  He stood again and backed away from her. ‘I did not mean you to die. You made me angry. I loved you, but you were unfaithful.’

  Again he saw his own reflection in the mirror, ‘Oh sweet God, the blood. There is so much.’ He wiped, with sticky hands, at the mess of crimson that covered his jacket, then at his face, spreading the blood into a scarlet carnival mask.

  For the first time he thought of flight, of the boat waiting for him on the beach and the frigate lying out in the bay. ‘I cannot ride through the colony like this! I cannot go aboard like this!’

  He staggered across the room to the door of the Governor’s dressing room. He stripped off his sodden jacket and threw it from him. A pitcher of water was standing in a basin on the cabinet and he plunged his gory hands into it and sloshed it over his face. He seized the washcloth from its hook and soaked it in the pink water, then scrubbed at his arms and the front of his breeches.

  ‘So much blood!’ he kept repeating, as he wiped then rinsed the cloth and wiped again. He found a pile of clean white shirts on one of the shelves, and pulled one on over his damp chest. Van de Velde was a big man, and it fitted him well enough. He looked down and saw that the bloodstains were not so obvious on the dark serge of his breeches. His wig was stained so he pulled it off and flung it against the far wall. He chose another from the row set on blocks along the back wall. He found a woollen cloak that covered him from shoulders to calves. He spent a minute cleaning the blade and the sapphire of the Neptune sword, then thrust it back into its scabbard. When he looked again in the mirror he saw that his appearance would no longer shock or alarm. Then a thought struck him. He picked up his soiled jacket and ripped the stars and decorations from the lapels. He wrapped them in a clean neckcloth he found on one of the shelves and stuffed them into the inner pocket of the woollen cloak.

  He paused on the threshold of the Governor’s dressing room and looked for the last time at the body of the woman he loved. Her blood was still moving softly across the tiles, like a fat, lazy adder. As he watched, it reached the edge of the smaller puddle in which Slow John lay. Their blood ran together, and Schreuder felt a deep sense of sacrilege that the pure should mingle thus with the base.

  �
�I did not want this to happen,’ he said hopelessly. ‘I am so sorry, my darling. I wanted you to come with me.’ He trod carefully over the rill of blood, went to the shuttered window and stepped out onto the veranda. He gathered the cloak around his shoulders and strode through the gardens to the small door in the stableyard where he shouted for the groom, who hurried up with his horse.

  Schreuder rode down the avenue and crossed the Parade, looking straight ahead. The longboat was still on the beach and as he rode up the boatswain called to him, ‘We was just about to give you up, Colonel. The Golden Bough is shortening her anchor cable and manning her yards.’

  As he climbed to the deck of the frigate, Captain Llewellyn and his crew were so absorbed by the business of weighing anchor and getting the ship under sail that they paid him little heed. A midshipman showed him down to his small cabin, then hurried away leaving him alone. His travel chests had been brought aboard and were stowed under the narrow bunk. Schreuder stripped off all his soiled dress and found a clean uniform in one of his chests. Before donning it, he placed the stars and orders upon its lapels. His blood-smeared clothing he tied in a bundle, then looked around for something to weight it. Obviously the thin wooden bulkheads would be struck when the frigate was cleared for action, and his cabin would form part of the ship’s gundeck. A culverin filled most of the available deck space. Beside the weapon was heaped a pyramid of iron cannonballs. He stuffed one into the bundle of blood-soaked clothing and waited until he felt the ship come on the wind and thrust out into the bay.

  Then he opened the gunport a crack, and dropped the bundle through it into fifty fathoms of green water. When he went up on deck they were already a league offshore and running out strongly on the sou’easter to make their offing before coming about to round the cape.

  Schreuder stared back at the land and made out the roof of the Governor’s mansion among the trees at the base of the great mountain. He wondered if they had yet discovered Katinka’s body, or whether she still lay joined in death to her base lover. He stood there at the stern rail until the great massif of Table Mountain was only a distant blue silhouette against the evening sky.

  ‘Farewell, my darling,’ he whispered.

  It was only when he lay sleepless in his hard bunk at midnight that the enormity of his situation began to dawn upon him. His guilt was manifest. Every ship that left Table Bay would carry the tidings across the oceans and to every port in the civilized world. From this day forward he was a fugitive and an outlaw.

  Hal woke to a sense of peace such as he had seldom known before. He lay with his eyes shut, too lazy and weak to open them. He realized that he was warm and dry and lying on a comfortable mattress. He expected the dungeon stench to assail him, the mouldy odour of damp, rotting straw, the latrine bucket and the smell of men who had not bathed for a twelve-month crowded together in a fetid hole in the earth. Instead he smelled fresh woodsmoke, perfumed and sweet, the scent of burning cedar faggots.

  Suddenly the memories came flooding back, and, with a great lift of the spirits, he remembered their escape, that he was no longer a prisoner. He lay and savoured that knowledge. There were other smells and sounds. It amused him to try to recognize them without opening his eyes. There was the smell of the newly cut grass mattress on which he lay and the fur blanket that covered him, the aroma of meat grilling on the coals and another tantalizing fragrance that he could not place. It was a mingling of wild flowers and a warm kittenish musk that roused him strangely and added to his sense of well-being.

  He opened his eyes slowly and cautiously, and was dazzled by the strong mountain light through the opening of the shelter in which he lay. He looked around and saw that it must have been built into the side of the mountain, for half the walls were of smooth rock and the sides nearest the opening were built of interwoven saplings daubed with red clay. The roof was thatch. Clay pots and crudely fashioned tools and implements were stacked against the inner wall. A bow and quiver hung from a peg near the door. Beside them hung his sword and pistols.

  He lay and listened to the burble of a mountain stream, and then he heard a woman’s laughter, merrier and more lovely than the tinkle of water. He raised himself slowly on one elbow, shocked by the effort it required, and tried to look through the doorway. The sound of an infant’s laughter mingled with that of the woman. Through all his long captivity he had heard nothing to equal it, and he could not help but chuckle with delight.

  The sound of feminine laughter ceased and there was a quick movement outside the hut. A lissom gamine figure appeared in the opening, backlit by the sunshine so that she was only a lovely silhouette. Though he could not see her face, he knew straight away who it was.

  ‘Good morrow, Gundwane, you have slept long, but did you sleep well?’ Sukeena asked shyly. She had the infant on her hip and her hair was loose, hanging in a dark veil to her waist. ‘This is my nephew, Bobby.’ She joggled the baby on her hip and he gurgled with delight.

  ‘How long did I sleep?’ Hal asked, beginning to rise, but she passed the baby to someone outside, and came quickly to kneel beside the mattress. She restrained him with a small warm hand on his naked chest.

  ‘Gently, Gundwane. You have been in fever sleep for many days.’

  ‘I am well again now,’ he said, and then recognized the mysterious perfume he had noticed earlier. It was her woman smell, the flowers in her hair and the soft warmth of her skin.

  ‘Not yet,’ she contradicted him, and he let her ease his head back onto the mattress. He was staring at her and she smiled without embarrassment.

  ‘I have never seen anything so beautiful as you,’ he said, then reached up and touched his own cheek. ‘My beard?’

  ‘It is gone.’ She laughed, sitting back with her legs curled under her. ‘I stole a razor from the fat Governor especially for the task.’ She cocked her head on one side and studied him. ‘With the beard gone, you also are beautiful, Gundwane.’

  She blushed slightly as she realized the import of her words, and Hal watched in delight as the red-gold suffused her cheeks. She turned her full attention to his injured leg, drew back the fur blanket to expose it and unwound the bandage.

  ‘Ah!’ she murmured, as she touched it lightly. ‘It heals marvellously well with a little help from my medicines. You have been fortunate. The bite from the fangs of a hound is always poisonous, and then the abuse to which you put the limb during our flight might have killed you or crippled you for the rest of your life.’

  Hal smiled at her strictures as he lay back comfortably and surrendered himself to her hands.

  ‘Are you hungry?’ she asked, as she retied the dressing over his wound. At that question Hal realized that he was ravenous. She brought him the carcass of a wild partridge, grilled on the coals, and sat opposite him, watching with a proprietary air as he ate and then sucked the bones clean.

  ‘You will soon be strong again.’ She smiled. ‘You eat like a lion.’ She gathered up the scraps of his meal, then stood up. ‘Aboli and your other seamen have been pleading with me for a chance to come to you. I will call them now.’

  ‘Wait!’ He stopped her. He wished that this intimate time alone with her would not end so soon. She sank down beside him once more and watched his face expectantly.

  ‘I have not thanked you,’ he said lamely. ‘Without your care, I would probably have died of the fever.’

  She smiled softly and said, ‘I have not thanked you either. Without you, I would still be a slave.’ For a time they looked at each other without speaking, openly examining each other’s face in detail.

  Then Hal asked, ‘Where are we, Sukeena?’ He made a gesture that took in their surroundings. ‘This hut?’

  ‘It is Sabah’s. He has lent it to us. To you and me, and he has gone to live with the others of his band.’

  ‘So we are in the mountains at last?’

  ‘Deep in the mountains.’ She nodded. ‘At a place that has no name. In a place where the Dutch can never find us.’


  ‘I want to see,’ he said. For a moment she looked dubious, then nodded. She helped him to stand and offered her shoulder to support him as he hopped to the opening in the thatched shelter.

  He sank down and leaned against the doorpost of rough cedar wood. Sukeena sat close beside him as he gazed about. For a long time neither spoke. Hal breathed deeply of the crisp, high air that smelled and tasted of the wild flowers that grew in such profusion about them.

  ‘’Tis a vision of paradise,’ he said at last. The peaks that surrounded them were wild and splendid. The cliffs and gorges were painted with lichens that were all the colours of the artist’s palette. The late sunlight fell full upon the mountain tops across the deep valley and crowned them with a golden radiance. The long shadow thrown by the peak behind them was royal purple. The water of the stream below was clear as the air they breathed, and Hal could see the fish lying like long shadows on the yellow sandbanks, fanning their dark tails to keep their heads into the current.

  ‘It is strange, I have never seen this place nor any like it, and yet I feel as though I know it well. I feel a sense of homecoming, as though I was waiting to return here.’

  ‘’Tis not strange, Henry Courtney. I also was waiting.’ She turned her head and looked deep into his eyes. ‘I was waiting for you. I knew you would come. The stars told me. That day I first saw you on the Parade outside the castle, I recognized you as the one.’

  There was so much to ponder in that simple declaration that he was silent again for a long while, watching her face.

  ‘My father was also an adept. He was able to read the stars,’ he said.

  ‘Aboli told me.’

  ‘So you, too, can divine the future from the stars, Sukeena.’

  She did not deny it. ‘My mother taught me many skills. I was able to see you from afar.’