by Wilbur Smith
‘A well-merited end, I’m sure. But I confess my curiosity was piqued by one small detail of your story. Did the Buzzard find what he was looking for in the bay where you found him?’
‘I’m sorry, I don’t follow your meaning,’ said Hal, who followed Pett all too well, but had no intention whatever of providing him with a useful answer.
‘It was just that you said that the Buzzard had reasons for being in this bay, as did you, and – correct me if I am wrong – it was the very same bay to which your father sailed after he had taken the treasure-laden ship, the Resolution. Is that correct?’
‘I was talking about the same bay, yes.’
‘Well, my suspicion is that the Buzzard believed, fancifully no doubt, without a shred of good reason, that your father had had time to secrete some of the booty from his captured ship in this very bay.’
‘He may have believed that, I suppose. He had certainly ordered deep trenches to be dug across the sands above the high watermark. I suppose he may have been searching for something. But I can promise you this. My father did not bury anything at that bay on that occasion, to my certain knowledge, or on any other occasion that I am aware of. Nor did he ever tell me of anything that he had buried there. So unless someone else buried gold and silver and jewels, and heaven knows what else there, the Buzzard was wasting his time and his men’s energy. Besides which, he’s dead now.’
‘Well, I’m sure we’re all agreed that that settles the matter,’ said Pett, looking around the table in the manner of a man seeking support for something he’s just said. In fact, he was looking at the faces of the men who had been there on that beach with Captain Hal Courtney and he could not help noticing how Daniel and Stanley evaded his eyes, while Aboli fixed him with a blank stare that made such a point of giving away nothing that it gave Pett the conviction the African certainly had something to hide.
And so, as Hal declared dinner over, and started giving his senior crewmen their instructions for the night, Pett bade his host and hostess a polite goodnight and made his way to the tiny but reasonably clean cabin that had been assigned for his use. There was just room once the door had been closed to sling a hammock. Pett climbed in and lay there, staring blankly at the ceiling. He was thinking about torture and why anyone undertakes it. The obvious answer: to find something out. Question: what could the Dutch – who were not, in his experience, a particularly cruel or bloodthirsty race – possibly want to know so badly that they were prepared to torment a man to death in the hope that he would reveal something to them? It had not been a time of war and so no military secrets or strategies were involved. The man being tortured had recently captured a large ship filled with valuables. Maybe he had managed to hide some or all of those valuables before the Dutch recovered their ship and they wanted to know where they were.
Pett considered that line of reasoning and decided it was sound. He also felt it reasonable to assume that, if the Buzzard had found anything, Courtney would have mentioned it. For either he would have taken his father’s treasure back from the Buzzard, in which case he would surely have sailed straight back home to England, or the Buzzard would have held on to it, in which case Courtney would surely have said so, if only to underline the other man’s treachery.
So there was treasure, but it had not yet been recovered. The crew, or at least Courtney’s most senior and trusted men, knew that the treasure existed. Pett doubted that they knew where it was. No, that wasn’t right. There was one of them who might. For some reason Courtney placed particular trust in that black ape Aboli, the man whose stare had so obviously been hiding something.
It was thus, in theory, possible to discover the location of this hidden fortune. This information would be worth a very considerable amount of money. But why let someone else benefit from his discovery? Why not, thought William Pett, go after the treasure himself?
ahan drove through the streets of Zanzibar with the Buzzard in an open carriage, so that all the world could see the masked man and tremble at his presence. A full company of cavalry preceded the carriage, with another company behind to deter even the most foolhardy troublemaker. Not that anyone would even think of threatening the one-armed monster, for all had heard of his merciless assault on the boy who had dared fling human faeces at him. Many turned their heads away, rather than cast eyes on such an inhuman creature, whom they regarded as an evil djinn, a creature of Shaitan who was not truly of this world.
Only an hour earlier Jahan himself had shown the Buzzard engravings of ancient Egyptian temples and burial sites, with pictures of Anubis, the jackal-headed lord of the underworld. ‘This is the god of death itself,’ he said as the Buzzard tilted his head to give his single working eye a better view. ‘See how his snout is almost the same shape as your leather nose. Think of yourself as Anubis, bringer of death, hater of life, the one who takes mortal souls on their journey to the afterlife.
‘Speaking of which, I was greatly impressed by the way you avenged yourself for the filth that had been thrown at you. It made me think that we should develop your talent for killing. You must become even more dangerous with one eye and one arm than you ever were with two. You will require training. This morning you will start to receive it.’
Now the Buzzard was being taken to his first session. But he and Jahan were not the only ones making the journey, for a closed coach was following the open carriage. Shutters had been pulled down over all its windows so that its occupants were entirely hidden from view. Nor could the person within look out. It struck the Buzzard that the coach had already been sitting, ready to depart, when he was led out to take his place opposite Jahan. Now, both the conveyances and their escorts passed through the main gates of the city’s largest prison and stopped in the middle of a large quadrangle. Jahan and the Buzzard stood by the carriage as the prison governor approached them and abased himself before Jahan. He stood up again and cast a terrified glance towards the Buzzard. Then he clapped his hands and three prison guards, chosen for their exceptional size and ferocity, stepped forward. One carried a heavy iron chain. The other two flanked him, their right hands hovering just above the pommels of the swords that hung at their sides.
The Buzzard could see that there was a padlock attached to one end of the chain. It was also clear to him, for everything that he did carried with it the possibility of his immediate execution for the slightest sign of disobedience, that the cavalrymen would cut him down in an instant if he attempted to resist any of what was about to happen. So he stood stock-still as the chain was padlocked to the brass ring at the front of his leather collar and allowed himself to be led away like an animal through the body of the prison, where the inmates fell silent as he was paraded past them, into a yard surrounded by high walls on all sides. As he darted his head from side to side, trying to get the best possible view of his surroundings, the Buzzard was faced by three blank expanses of dun-coloured mud-brick walls. But there must have been a viewing gallery of some kind in the wall behind him for now the Buzzard heard a familiar sound from there: a playful squeal of pleasure and a cry of, ‘I see the Ugly One!’ that he recognized at once as the sound of Jahan’s favourite concubine, Aleena. She was a Circassian, from the land of Cherkess on the north-east shores of the Black Sea where the women were famed for both their beauty and their skill as lovers. The pick of the Ottoman Sultan’s harem in Constantinople were Circassians, as were the finest of those who attended to the pleasures of Jahan’s brother the Grand Mogul at the Red Fort in Delhi.
Aleena did not have the prettiest face of all Jahan’s girls, nor the most perfectly trim and shapely figure. But there was a wanton fullness to her lips, a lascivious sparkle in her eyes and every inch of her body, every movement that she made, seemed to exist for the sole purpose of pleasure: both giving it to Jahan and receiving it herself. She had been fascinated by the Buzzard when first he entered the harem, escorted by two harem guards whose great height and muscled bodies gave no clue to their eunuch status. While the other concubines ha
d hung back, clinging to one another in fear, she had stepped up close to the strange, masked creature, so close that the Buzzard could smell the delicious scent of patchouli, roses, orange flower and bergamot that she liked to wear, combined with the warm, animal musk of her own, semi-naked body.
‘Does it speak, like a normal person, my lord?’ she asked Jahan in a husky, deep, yet utterly female, voice.
‘No,’ her prince replied. ‘But it understands what you say.’
Aleena was now standing so close that the Buzzard could feel the gentle press of her body against his. He felt himself becoming aroused, but instead of the strong, blood-filled hardness that had once defined him as a man, now there was just a maddening, throbbing itch from the stump of scar tissue that remained, like a much larger, more intense version of a mosquito bite.
Now the concubine looked up at him and said, ‘Is my lord right, do you understand what I am saying, Ugly One?’
The Buzzard did not know what to do. He could not speak on pain of death. And his whole being was consumed by the throbbing, itching, insufferable and yet ecstatic sensation radiating from his crotch. He longed to rub it or scratch it but knew that would not be allowed. He was vaguely aware of Jahan saying, ‘You may nod,’ but his voice seemed to come from another world away.
The Buzzard nodded and as he did he could not help his hips from squirming from side to side. ‘Oh,’ said Aleena, thoughtfully, ‘it feels pleasure. But how?’
She stood on tiptoe, her head tilted up towards his mask and whispered, ‘Stay completely still, Ugly One, if you wish to live. Above all do not move your hand, for if you touch me with so much as a single finger, your death will not be a quick one. Nod that you agree or I will step away this second and never approach you again.’
The Buzzard gave two quick, desperate nods that made Aleena shriek, leap backwards and then giggle. ‘Be careful with your beak, Ugly One. My prince would have no time for a one-eyed concubine!’
She approached him again, crouched down on her haunches by his feet and took hold of the hem of his black djellaba. ‘So, what do you hide under this?’ she inquired, slowly lifting up the hem, exposing more and more of his lower legs and then his thighs. ‘Ugh!’ she exclaimed, her face twisted into an expression of disgust. ‘Its skin is red and scaly and so foul-smelling.’
There were squeals of horror from the other harem girls, who were now edging closer as their curiosity overcame their fear.
Behind his mask, the Buzzard’s face was burning with humiliation and shame and what made it worse was that the insistent irritation coming from his stump was becoming ever more powerful. His heart was pounding and his breathing was coming in shorter, deeper breaths so that he began to fear he could not draw enough air into his lungs through the meagre hole in his mask. He realized that his lungs didn’t hurt, even as his gasps intensified, nor was there any other pain in his body. The only thing he could feel was the itching.
Now there came another little squeal as Aleena lifted his djellaba high enough to expose the devastation that the fire had wrought between the Buzzard’s legs. ‘Look!’ she called out to the other girls. ‘It is neither man nor woman. But this,’ and now she laid her fingers very delicately on the raw skin that sheathed the Buzzard’s stump. ‘This is like the little pink rosebuds that bring us such delight, is it not? I wonder if it brings delight to Ugly One, also.’
The Buzzard wanted to ram himself into her, but he had nothing left to ram. He wanted to grab her in his arms, but he only had one of those and to use it would lead to his certain death. All the Buzzard could do was to stand on legs that felt as though they might collapse beneath him at any moment, trying to restrain the jerky little thrusts and wriggles of his hips that seemed to be occurring of their own accord while Jahan’s favourite plaything examined him and his other houris looked on.
He could not see them all through his eye hole and so, with the bird-like movements that were increasingly becoming natural to him, the Buzzard darted his head, focussing on one lovely face, or one plump pair of breasts, or one perfectly tiny waist and curving hips and soft, inviting stomach at a time. He had never in all his days seen women to match them, for these were the prize possessions of a man who could have anything he wanted, selected for the sole purpose of arousing his passions. Had he stumbled upon such a prize collection just a few months earlier, he would have ravished them all, gorging himself in a single, self-indulgent banquet of womankind.
Now though, the Buzzard could do nothing but stand in silence as the tension built and built within him. Aleena looked up at him with something close to professional curiosity and mused aloud, ‘I wonder if I could make it feel the pleasure that a real man or woman experiences?’ She gave Jahan her most sultry pout and pleaded, ‘Please may I play with it, sire?’
The maharajah laughed indulgently and said, ‘No, you may not. I want you playing with me. Come here and remind yourself what a real man looks like.’ He glanced over to the guards and said, ‘Take it away.’ And the Buzzard was led, mortified and belittled, back to his chambers. Since then, the Buzzard had not seen Jahan, still less been allowed back into the harem, but now the sound of Aleena’s voice reawakened all the sensations that she had aroused in him and he felt himself exposed again, as though his dismemberment was visible for all the world to see and anger mixed with shame at the degradation he had suffered.
‘Turn around, Ugly One!’ Aleena called out. ‘I have something for you!’
The Buzzard did as he was told and looked up to search for the source of the voice. Above him an open gallery ran at first-floor level, too high for any man to reach from down here in the yard. Its function, he presumed, was to provide a vantage point from which guards could look down on the prisoners below. Now though, its only occupants were Jahan and Aleena, whose face was entirely concealed behind a veil, for no true man aside from her master could ever be allowed to see her. Indeed, it was an extraordinary sign of favour that she had been allowed out of the harem at all.
‘Look!’ she called out. She held out both her hands in front of her and the Buzzard saw that she was holding a long, slender sword that curved at its tip: a scimitar. ‘Use it well, Ugly One, and we may meet again.’
Aleena leaned forward so that her hands were beyond the low wall of the gallery and dropped the sword onto the dusty earth in front of him. The Buzzard picked it up and now it was Jahan who addressed him.
‘Step back into the centre of the courtyard. Look back at the gate through which you entered. Soon that gate will open again and another man will step through it. He is a murderer. He has been condemned to death. So kill him.’
‘Kill him!’ Aleena echoed, sounding like a woman who lusted after blood as much as she did for love.
The Buzzard stood on the balls of his feet, legs wide enough apart to give him balance, but not too far to hamper his mobility. For the first time in months he felt strong, capable – filled with a desperate desire to prove himself in front of the beautiful woman up in the gallery, to show her that despite everything he was still a man.
A few seconds later the gate opened a little and unseen hands pushed the condemned prisoner out into the yard. He was small and scrawny, wearing no more than a cloth tied around his waist and between his legs to cover his modesty, and with only a thin covering of wiry grey hair on his head. Yet the eyes that looked across the yard at the Buzzard were not filled with the fear that he had become accustomed to seeing, but with the undiluted malice of a man who was bad to the bone.
The Buzzard could see his quarry sizing him up and searching for his weaknesses. They weren’t hard to find. With no left eye or arm and his beak blocking half his field of vision he was desperately vulnerable on one entire side of his body. Sure enough, the old man darted with surprising speed to the Buzzard’s left. The Buzzard tried to turn to follow the man’s movement, but he was too slow and lost sight of him as he dashed past.
‘Behind you!’ shrieked Aleena, excitedly.
�
�Turn round,’ Jahan called down.
The Buzzard spun round as nimbly as he could, turning to his left, and caught a fleeting glimpse of the old man dashing past him again. There were more shouts from up in the gallery. But now the Buzzard’s own fighting instincts were returning to him. He had turned the wrong way. He should have spun round to the right, leading with his sword-arm and his good eye. And he should have turned with his arm extended, cutting as he went.
He spun again, using the slashing of his arm to give himself momentum and this time he felt the tip of his blade striking something, encountering resistance and then continuing, followed by a cry of pain. The Buzzard came to a standstill and saw the old man standing, hunched over, clutching his right hand. Then something caught his eye, something on the ground. He lowered his masked head and saw two severed fingers lying on the parched earth. As he raised his head again, the old man was backing away, but the pain he was in had knocked the fight out of him.
Unaware of how far he had gone, the man bumped his back against the wall of the yard. Now he was trapped. He looked up at the Buzzard and begged for mercy. For a moment the Buzzard hesitated and then he heard Jahan’s voice repeat, ‘This one is a murderer. Kill him,’ in a flat, unemotional tone of command, followed by Aleena, much more excitedly: ‘Kill him, Ugly One!’
The Buzzard did not hesitate. It was an act of butchery, a punch in his guts to make the man bend forward and then a chopping blow straight down onto the back of his exposed neck. The killing felt good. His shaming in front of the women of the harem had made him very angry and the bile had been swilling around inside him for the past few days with nowhere to go. Now it had a focus, but there was no time to take pleasure in that fact for Jahan was already calling to him, ‘The gate! Turn towards the gate!’
The Buzzard turned, his head darted as he found his bearings and another man emerged into the yard. He was younger and much more strongly built than the first victim, but he had some kind of impairment of the leg that gave him a shambling, half-hobbled gait. The Buzzard realized now that he had to keep his head moving, so that his eye was always locked on his target, and at the same time his feet had to be in motion too. It wasn’t a matter of being in one position, then turning to another, for that involved moments of stillness, and if he were fighting someone with a weapon in his hand then stillness would mean death.