by Wilbur Smith
“Even though Uncle Tom and my father were able to escape from the colony with much of the family wealth, you have multiplied it many times over with what you have captured. Tell me how it happened. Tell me of the battle against this Nguni queen, Manatasee, and her legions.”
“I described it to you last night,” Jim protested.
“It is too good a tale to be told only once,” Mansur insisted. “Tell it to me again.”
This time Jim embellished Louisa’s role in the fighting, despite her protests that he was exaggerating. “I warn you, coz, you must not anger this lady. She is a veritable Valkyrie once she is aroused. She is not feared far and wide as the Dreaded Hedgehog for no good reason.”
They rode to the crest of the next hill and looked down towards the ocean. It was so close that they could just make out the windswept white horses that danced on the horizon. “How far are we from Nativity Bay?” Jim demanded.
“It took me less than three days on foot,” Mansur answered. “Now that I have this good horse under me I could be there before nightfall.”
Jim looked at Louisa with a wistful air, and she smiled. “I know what you are thinking, James Archibald,” she said.
“And what do you think about what I am thinking, Hedgehog?”
“I think we should leave Zama, the wagons and the cattle to come on at their best speed and that we should eat the wind.”
Jim let out a happy shout. “Follow me, my love. This way for Nativity Bay.”
It took less time than Mansur had predicted and the sun was still above the horizon when they reined in on the hills above the wide, glittering bay. The two schooners were anchored off the mouth of the Umbilo river and Jim shaded his eyes with his hat against the sun’s reflection off the water.
“Fort Auspice,” Mansur told them, and pointed out the newly erected buildings on the banks of the river. “Your mother chose the name. She wanted to call it Fort Good Auspice, but Uncle Tom said, ‘That’s a mouthful, and we all know that it an’t a bad auspice, any which way you look at it.’ So that was it. Fort Auspice.”
As they rode closer they were able to make out the palisade of sharpened stakes that enclosed the high ground on which the fort was set. The earth was still raw around the gun emplacements that covered all the approaches to the fortifications.
“Our fathers have taken every precaution against attack by Keyser or other enemies. We have brought ashore most of the guns off the ships,” Mansur explained.
The roofs of the buildings it enclosed showed above the top of the palisade. “There are barracks for the servants and each of our families have their own quarters.” Mansur pointed them out as they trotted down the hill. “Those are the stables. That is the warehouse, and there are the godown and the counting-house.”
All the roofs were still bright and unweathered with new-cut thatch.
“Father has the delusions of Nero.” Jim chuckled. “He has built himself a city, not a trading post.”
“Aunt Sarah did little to dissuade him,” Mansur said. “In fact you could say she was an active accomplice.” He snatched off his hat and waved it over his head. “And there she is now!” A matronly figure had appeared in the gateway of the fort and was staring across at the little band of approaching riders. As soon as Jim waved she threw all dignity to the winds and came running down the path like a schoolgirl released from the classroom.
“Jim! Oh, Jim boy!” Her joyous cries echoed off the cliffs of the bluff. Jim sent Drumfire into a wild gallop to meet her. He jumped from the saddle while the stallion was still at full charge and gathered his mother into his arms.
When they heard Drumfire’s hoofs Dorian and Tom Courtney came running out through the gates of the fort. Mansur and Louisa hung back to let the first frenzy of greeting abate.
It took another five days for the wagons and cattle to reach Fort Auspice. The entire family stood together on the firing platform of the palisade. The herd of spare horses led the way, and Tom and Dorian cheered as they galloped past. “It will be good to have a horse under me again,” Tom exulted. “I have felt that half of me was missing for lack of a good mount. Now we will be able to range through this land and claim it as our own.”
Then they gazed in awed silence as the dark mass of the cattle herds poured down the hills towards them. When Inkunzi and his Nguni herders began to offload the ivory on the open parade in front of the gates, Tom climbed down the ladder from the platform and walked among the tall stacks of tusks, marvelling at the quantity and size of some of them. Then he came back and scowled at Jim. “For the love of all that’s holy, lad! Have you no sense of moderation? Did you not give a thought to where we were going to store all this? We shall have to build another warehouse, and you are solely to blame.” Tom’s scowl faded and he laughed at his own wit, then folded his son in a bear-hug. “After this haul, I think we will have no choice but to declare you a full partner in the company.”
Over the following months, there was employment for all, and much besides to plan and arrange. The main work on the fort was completed, including the extension to the warehouse to accommodate the abundance of captured ivory. Sarah was able at last to bring her furniture ashore. She set up her harpsichord in the hall, which was to serve as the dining and common room to both families. That night she played all their favourite tunes, while they joined in the choruses. Tone-deaf Tom made up in volume for what he lacked in tunefulness, until Sarah tactfully distracted him by asking him to turn the pages of her music book.
For lack of grazing, such a great number of cattle could not be held in the immediate vicinity of the fort. Jim split them into seven smaller herds, and ordered Inkunzi to move them out into the surrounding country, as far as twenty leagues distant from Fort Auspice, wherever good grazing and water could be found. The Nguni herders built their villages close to these new grazing grounds.
“They will form a buffer round the fort,” Jim pointed out to Tom and Dorian, “and they will give us good warning of the approach of an enemy before they come within twenty leagues.” Then he added, as if in afterthought, “Of course, I will have to ride out to inspect them at regular intervals.”
“And that will provide you with a fine excuse to run off hunting elephants.” Tom nodded sagely. “Your devotion to company duty is moving, lad.”
However, after only a few such expeditions the elephant responded to Jim’s attentions by moving out of this country and vanishing into the fastness of the deep interior.
Within a month of their arrival at Fort Auspice, Jim and Louisa waylaid Sarah in her kitchen. After a long and emotional discussion, which left both women in tears of joy, Sarah went off immediately to speak to Tom.
“My oath, Sarah Courtney, I know not what to say,” said Tom, which she knew was his most forceful expression of amazement. “There can be no mistake?”
“Louisa is certain. Women are seldom mistaken in such matters,” Sarah replied.
“We shall need somebody to splice the knot, and make it all shipshape and legal.” Tom looked worried.
“Well, you are a ship’s captain,” Sarah pointed out tartly, “so you have that power vested in you.”
The longer Tom thought about it, the more the idea of having a grandson appealed to him. “Well, it seems Louisa has passed her trials fair enough,” he conceded, with a convincing show of nonchalance.
Sarah placed her fists on her hips, a storm warning. “If that was meant as a jest, Thomas Courtney, it fell far short of the mark. As far as you and I, or anyone else in the world, is concerned, Louisa Leuven will be a virgin bride,” she said.
He gave ground rapidly. “I am convinced of that, and I will fight any man who says different. As you and I are well aware, premature birth runs strongly on both sides of our family. On top of that, Louisa is a comely and likely lass. I daresay our Jim would have to sail a long way to find another better.”
“Does that mean you will do it?” Sarah demanded.
“I suspect I will not hav
e much peace until I do.”
“For once you suspect correctly,” she said, and he picked her up and bussed her on both cheeks.
Tom married them on the quarter-deck of the Sprite. There was not space aboard for all the company so the overflow watched from the rigging of the Revenge or from the palisade walls of the fort. Jim and Louisa spoke their vows, then signed the ship’s log. When Jim brought his bride ashore, Mansur and his men fired a salute of twenty-one guns from the cannons of the fort, which scattered the Nguni warriors in confusion, and reduced little Letee to hysteria until Bakkat could reassure her that the sky was not falling in upon them.
“Well!” said Tom, with satisfaction. “That should hold them, until they can find a priest to do the job properly.” And he doffed his captain’s cocked hat and exchanged the job of clergyman for that of bartender, by knocking the bung out of a cask of Cape brandy.
Smallboy slaughtered an ox, and they roasted it whole on a spit on the beach below the fort. The festivities went on until it was consumed and the brandy cask was at last drunk dry.
Jim and Louisa began work on the construction of their own private quarters within the walls of the fort. With so many willing hands to join in the work, it was less than a week before they vacated the wagon that for so long had been their home, and moved under a thatched roof between solid walls of sun-baked brick.
Then there were darker matters to address. Rashood was brought out in his chains from the cell in the fort, which had originally been intended as a cellar. Dorian and Mansur who were, by the law of Islam, the judges and the executioners, took him into the forest far out of sight and earshot of the fort. They were gone for only a few hours, but when they returned they were grim of countenance, and Rashood was no longer with them.
The next day Tom convened a session of the family council. For the first time Louisa Courtney attended as the newest addition to the clan. As the eldest, Tom explained the decisions that faced them. “Thanks to Jim and Louisa we are heavily overstocked with ivory. The best markets are still Zanzibar, the factories on the Coromandel Coast or at Bombay in the realm of the Great Mogul. Zanzibar is in the hands of Caliph Zayn al-Din, so that port is closed to us. I will stay on here at Fort Auspice to conduct company business, and I will need Jim to help me. Dorian will take the ships north, laden with as much of the ivory as they can carry, though I doubt that will be even a quarter of our total stock. When it has been sold he has even more pressing business in Muscat.” He looked at his younger brother. “I will ask Dorian to explain it to you.”
Dorian removed the ivory mouthpiece of his hookah from between his teeth, which were still white, even and without gaps. He looked around the circle of well-beloved faces. “We know that Zayn al-Din was ousted by a revolutionary junta in Muscat. Both Batula and Kumrah were able to obtain certain confirmation of that on their last voyage to Oman. Kadem ibn Abubaker,” Dorian’s handsome features darkened as he pronounced the name of Yasmini’s murderer, “purported to bring me an invitation from the junta, to take Zayn al-Din’s place on the Elephant Throne, and to lead the battle against him. We don’t know if the junta are truly trying to find me, or if it was merely another lie to try to entice me into Zayn’s clutches. In any event, I refused for the sake of Yasmini, but in attempting to protect her I condemned her to death.”
Dorian’s voice faltered, and Tom cut in gruffly, “You are too harsh on yourself, brother. No man living could have foreseen the consequences.”
“Nevertheless Yasmini is dead by Zayn’s orders and by the bloody hands of Kadem. There is no surer way for me to avenge her death than by sailing to Oman and throwing in my lot with the revolutionaries in Muscat.”
Mansur got up from his stool at the foot of the long table and went to stand at Dorian’s shoulder. “If you will allow it, I will sail with you, Father, and take my place at your right hand.”
“Not only will I allow it, I will welcome you with all my heart.”
“That is settled, then,” said Tom briskly. “Jim and his bride will be here to help Sarah and me, so we will not be short-handed and we can spare Mansur. When do you plan on sailing, brother?”
“The trade winds will give way to the monsoon within six weeks. The winds should stand fair towards the end of next month,” Dorian replied. “That will give us time to make the preparations.”
“We will strip all the remaining cannon out of the ships to give you more burthen for the ivory,” Tom said. “Besides, we can use them here in the fort to bolster our defences. We can never be certain that Keyser has not smelt us out. Then there are these marauding Nguni impis sweeping through the land. Jim has routed one group under Manatasee, but we know from the fugitives who have come in to us that there are others just as savage running amok out there. Once you have sold the ivory you will be able to buy new guns in India. There are handy armourers in the Punjab. I have seen their work, and they make excellent nine-pounders. Just the right weight and length of barrel for our hulls.”
When the guns had been lifted out of the schooners, and all the powder and shot with them, they were ferried ashore in the longboats, dragged up the hill by teams of oxen and set in the earth emplacements around the fort.
“Well, that should do nicely.” Tom eyed the new defences with satisfaction. “It would take an army with siege machines to subdue us. I think we are safe from marauding tribes, or even from any force that Keyser might care to send against us once he gets wind of where we are.”
Relieved of the cannon, the schooners rode lightly at anchor, showing much of the copper sheeting on their bottoms. “We will soon find ballast to restore their trim,” Dorian promised, and he ordered the loading of the ivory and the refilling of the water casks.
Since Yasmini’s murder Dorian had been cast into sudden moods of deep melancholy. He seemed prematurely aged by grief. There were new strands of pure silver in his red-gold hair and beard, and fresh lines deeply etched in his brow. But now, with a definite goal in mind and Mansur beside him, he seemed rejuvenated, once more abounding in vigour and determination.
They began to load the ivory aboard the schooners, and to lay in fresh stores and top up the water casks for the voyage ahead. The pickle barrels were refilled with sides of beef from the captured herds, and the hulls of the two ships settled deeper in the water. Dorian and his captains, Batula and Kumrah, agonized over the trim to wring the best speed and handiness from them.
“Until we have new guns to defend ourselves, we will have to rely on speed to run from any enemy that we encounter. Despite our father’s and brother Tom’s best intentions and effort twenty years ago, there are still pirates at work in the Ocean of the Indies.”
“Keep well offshore from the African coast. That’s where they have their nests,” Tom advised, “and with the monsoon in your sails you will be well able to outrun any pirate dhow.”
They were all so busily employed, the women ordering their new homes, Tom and Jim occupied with the cattle and horses, Dorian and Mansur making the ships ready, that the days sped by.
“It does not seem like six weeks,” Jim told Mansur, as they stood on the beach together and looked out at the two little schooners. The yards were crossed and the crews had gone aboard. All was ready for them to catch the tide on the morrow.
“It seems, these days, that we no sooner set eyes upon each other than it is time to part again,” Mansur agreed.
“I have a feeling that this time it will be for more than just a short while, coz,” Jim said sadly. “I believe that an adventure and a new life await you over the blue horizon.”
“You also, Jim. You have your woman, soon you will have a son, and you have made this land your own. I am alone, and I still seek the country of my heart.”
“No matter how many leagues of sea or land come between us, I shall always feel close to you in spirit,” said Jim.
Mansur knew how great an effort it had taken him to make such a sentimental declaration. He seized his cousin and hugged him hard. Jim h
ugged him back just as fiercely.
The two schooners sailed with the dawn and the tide, and all the family was on board the Revenge as they cleared the mouth of the bay. A mile offshore Dorian hove to, and Tom and Sarah, Jim and Louisa went down into the longboat and watched the two ships sail on and grow tiny with distance. At last they disappeared over the horizon and Jim turned the longboat back for the bay.
The fort seemed strangely empty without Dorian and Mansur, and they missed their marvellous voices at the family singsongs around Sarah’s harpsichord in the evenings.
The voyage across the Ocean of the Indies was swift and almost without incident. With Mansur commanding the Sprite and Dorian the Revenge, the two schooners sailed in close company and the monsoon wind was kind to them. They gave the island of Ceylon a wide berth, mindful of Keyser’s threats to warn the Dutch governor in Trincomalee of their trespasses in the colony of Good Hope, and they sailed on to the Coromandel Coast of south-eastern India, to reach it before the change of season. They called in at the competing trading factories of the English, French and Portuguese, without admitting their true identity. Both Dorian and Mansur adopted Arabic dress and in public spoke only that language. In each port Dorian judged the demand for ivory precisely, and was at pains not to flood the market with abundance. They did much better than he and Tom had calculated. With the ships’ coffers charged with silver rupees and gold mohurs, and still a quarter of their ivory unsold, they turned back southwards and rounded the southern tip of India, sailing through the Palk between Ceylon and the mainland, then northwards again along the western coast until they reached the territories of the Great Mogul. Here they sold the remainder of the ivory in Bombay where the English East India Company had its headquarters, and in the other markets of the western ports of the crumbling Mogul empire.