Golden Lion

by Wilbur Smith

  Halfway down the street they came to the entrance to a narrow alley. ‘Down here,’ Pett said, steering Hal and Aboli into the near-darkness that lay between high walls on either side.

  ‘Are you sure this is the way?’ Hal asked, grunting as he did so from the effort of supporting Aboli’s weight.

  ‘Entirely,’ Pett replied, with a curtness that suggested he simply did not have the strength or breath to utter another word. In fact his attention was wholly directed inwards, for now he heard, more clearly than he had done in many a week, the voice of the Saint assuring him, ‘Now, do it now! This is both the time and the place that God has ordained for the removal of Henry Courtney from this earth. You have waited long and patiently. But wait no more. Do it!’

  A sense of great peace coursed through Pett, like a warm and soothing tonic that invigorated his body, sharpened his senses and concentrated his mind. He felt as though the African, for all his bulk and might, were no more of a burden to him than a child might have been. His hand went to the pocket of his breeches, where the sharpened knife, placed beside his plate by Azar, the coffee-shop owner himself, was waiting. How easy it had been to place himself here, with his right hand entirely free. And how satisfying it had been to negate the advantage Courtney had given himself by deciding, at the last minute, to bring his damn sword. For now the captain’s right shoulder was bearing Aboli’s weight and his arm was wrapped around the African’s back, from where he would find it almost impossible to extricate it, so that the blade that hung at his hip might as well not be there for all that he could use it.

  Pett’s grip tightened around the handle of the knife. Moving slowly, without any sudden movement or shifting of his weight, Pett eased his hand and the blade it carried out into the open, then let his right arm hang down beside his body.

  They were halfway down the alley now, at the point where they would be equally hard to make out by anyone passing along the streets at either end. This was the perfect moment.

  ‘Do it!’ screamed the Saint.

  And William Pett struck, as he always did, without warning, at a speed that none of his victims could match, bringing his body across Aboli and swinging his right arm in a great arc so that the painstakingly honed point of his blade was swinging with all his strength at a defenceless Henry Courtney.

  Look at the eyes, Gundwane! Aboli had always taught him. If you watch the blade you will always react too late. The blade tells you what your enemy is doing now. But the eyes tell you what he will do next.

  Hour after hour, day after day, year after year, Aboli had drummed his lessons into his pupil until they had become second nature, so much a part of the way Hal thought that he was no longer even aware of what he had to do. He simply did it.

  And so Hal had been watching Pett’s eyes. All through the great performance of bringing everything to their table, supervised by the owner himself; all through the conversation in which Pett went to such lengths to convince him of the benefits of the hookah pipe; and especially from the moment that Aboli had fallen ill, Hal had been watching.

  It had been the way Pett recounted his conversation with Grey that had convinced Hal that the ever-growing suspicion nagging at his mind had been fully justified. He could have believed that Grey would have furnished Pett with a means to get home if he thought it might bring him to the favourable attention of the directors of the East India Company. But the notion that a corrupt, slave-trading Muslim pederast would suddenly establish some kind of friendship – including the recommendation of a favourite coffee-shop – with a puritanical, High Church eccentric like Pett was simply impossible to believe.

  Unless, that is, Grey and Pett were not at all what they seemed. Hal was now horribly afraid that he had made a grievous error in assuming that Grey would not be unduly troubled by the deceit that had led to the Golden Bough fighting for the Ethiopian cause, not the Arab one as promised. On the contrary, he now felt sure that Grey had been very troubled indeed, and correspondingly eager to seek retribution. As for Pett, the more Hal considered the whole business of the duel with Tromp, from the moment he’d first woken to see Pett standing at the foot of his bed; to the absolute determination with which he had forced Tromp – by any reasonable measure a far more dangerous combatant – to fight him; to the eerie calm with which he had taken a ball to the arm and then fired with such chilling deliberation; and finally, the patent surprise and dissatisfaction that had seized Pett when he realized that his shot was not a fatal one: well, these were not the actions of a placid, peace-loving man who earned his living conducting business conversations on behalf of a commercial enterprise. These were the actions of a killer.

  Then Pett took Hal into the dark and he could not see his eyes. Suddenly Hal became very aware that Aboli’s body lay between his right arm and his sword. He thought back to the smartness with which Pett had taken up his position, with his sword-arm free. Except that Pett did not wear a sword, so he must have something else at his disposal, a hidden weapon.

  With every step they took into the depths of the alley the light dimmed still further. I can’t see! Hal thought. And if I can’t see …

  Then, suddenly, a shutter swung open, somewhere up above them. In the light that spilled from the open window, just long enough for the stinking contents of a bedpan to be sent splattering into the night, Hal glanced across at Pett.

  And then he saw.

  Hal reacted at once, with a speed unhampered by conscious decision-making, acting entirely on a warrior’s instincts as he shoved Aboli in the back, twisting him in the same direction as Pett so that the latter’s momentum was increased still further and he was thrown away from his line of attack, towards the far side of the alley. At the same time Hal swept his right leg across Aboli’s ankles, tripping him. Like a tall, felled pine Aboli toppled to the ground, landing directly on top of Pett and pinning him to the dusty, filth-encrusted ground. For a second Hal feared that he might have thrown his friend onto Pett’s blade, but then, even in the near-darkness, he could see Pett’s arms splayed on either side of Aboli’s body and the dull, blue gleam of his blade lying just out of reach of his desperate attempt to grasp it. Hal kicked the knife away while Aboli, whose wits were slowly returning to him, grabbed Pett’s wrists in his hands and rendered them completely immobile. Now Hal once again heard the clicking sound of the language of the forests and this time the words were clear: ‘Kill him, Gundwane.’

  Pett was defenceless. There were opponents whom one could treat like honourable men, to whom it was not only charitable but wise to extend mercy, but Hal knew only too clearly that Pett was not one of them. He drew the Neptune sword from its scabbard.

  Hal felt, more than saw Pett staring with his cold, unfeeling eyes. He knew that there would be no plea for clemency, just a flat, emotionless, ‘Damn you to hell, Henry Courtney. You and all your spawn.’

  Then Hal took his sword in both hands, holding it so that it pointed straight down, and with the full force of his back and shoulders drove it into Pett’s exposed throat so hard that the tempered Toledo steel not only severed his windpipe but, finding a joint between the vertebrae, sliced right through his spine as well, killing him instantly.

  Hal looked around. The alley was as deserted as ever. The window shutters above him had closed tight once again. No one had heard or seen anything and there was every chance the body would lie undiscovered until morning. Aboli was gingerly getting to his feet as if not quite trusting his ability to stand upright unaided. But Hal had no time to waste. He looked at his friend and said, ‘Judith!’ And then he started running.

  ake up, my lady. You must wake up!’ Judith woke, to Mossie pleading with her trying to keep his voice low, but unable to keep his panic at bay, ‘I’m scared! The djinn is coming! What are we going to do?’

  Judith blinked the sleep from her eyes. For a moment she thought that the boy had been having a nightmare, for there were no djinns, no evil spirits – not in this world. And it was that hesitation that did for h
er. For when the door to the bedroom was kicked open, she was still in bed. Though she could still turn and grab the kaskara sword that she had placed beneath her pillows, she was still lying down, beneath a sheet, and by the time she had sprung to her feet there were five armed men in the room, all with their swords drawn, pointing directly at her.

  And then there was a sixth, and now, as she looked upon the grotesque leather head, made even more nightmarish by shadows thrown by the silvery moonlight glimmering through the window, she understood that Mossie had been speaking nothing but the literal truth, for if ever there was an embodiment of evil on this earth, this was it. A passing thought darted across her mind: Where is Mossie? Where did he go? But she fought to suppress it for his only hope of survival was that none of these invaders should know of his presence.

  The masked man spoke in a voice that rasped like a rusty sword being drawn from a bone-dry scabbard. ‘Dinnae try to fight, General Nazet.’ The rank was emphasized with limitless scorn. ‘You’ll die if you do. Aye, you and the bairn in your belly too.’

  She knew he was right. She had become accustomed to defending herself in the way of a man, but now a deeper intuition told her she would have to resist in the way that women had always done, not by fighting, but by enduring. For men had only themselves to worry about. But a mother had always to live for the sake of her child, far more than for herself.

  She put the sword down and got out of bed. She was wearing nothing but a nightgown of linen so fine it was almost transparent. ‘May I put on my gown?’ she asked.

  ‘No, you may not,’ the masked man said and loomed over her, tilting his head this way and that, so that he could examine her thoroughly through his one eye hole. There was something disgustingly suggestive about the long beak that stuck out like an angry, pointed phallus and Judith longed for armour to shield her from his hungry gaze, and those of his men. She felt utterly exposed, vulnerable, soft and weak and she, who had led armies, killed men in hand-to-hand combat and trampled over the bodies of her vanquished foes, now felt possessed by an overpowering urge to cry.

  No, by God, I will not give them that satisfaction! Judith thought and forced herself to stand tall and stare right back at this malevolent birdman.

  ‘D’ye recognize me yet, eh?’ the voice asked her. ‘Och, why would you? I’m dead, after all. You saw me die.’

  Her mind raced, she pictured a battle at sea and a man on fire as he went down with his ship. No! That’s not possible! But who else …?

  ‘The Buzzard,’ she said, making her voice sound as dull as possible, denying him the pleasure of hearing her astonishment, finding a way to have another small victory, no matter how insignificant.

  ‘Aye, that’s right. I survived … if you can call this living, the way I am, the way your bastard lover Henry Courtney made me. Oh, I’m going to have my revenge on that bonnie laddie, God damn me if I don’t. But not yet … no, there’s more that has to be done to bring him down as low as I want him to be. And there’s another who wants to make your acquaintance. So now you may put on your gown. And when you’ve done that you can come with me.’

  The Buzzard bowed like a footman in an aristocratic household as he said, ‘Your carriage awaits, my lady …’

  She was gone. The apartment was empty. Hal cursed himself for his foolishness and raged at whoever had taken his beloved and then he heard something else in the bedroom: the sound of a child’s stifled crying. It was coming from under the bed. Hal lifted the discarded sheet that had acted like a curtain along the side of the bed and there was Mossie, curled up in a ball, sobbing softly.

  Hal reached out a hand to him and softly said, ‘Don’t worry. You can come out. It’s safe now.’

  The child looked at him blankly. Hal tried again, but with no more success. Then he tried a different tack. ‘Please will you help me, Mossie? I really want to know what’s happened to Judith and I think you will be able to tell me what happened. So you will help me get her back and I will be very, very pleased.’

  That seemed to help, and Mossie emerged from under the bed and spoke, although at first Hal had no more luck than Judith in making sense of his talk of djinns. But then Mossie said, ‘The djinn spoke! It talked to my lady and I think that she knew it, for she replied and I think she said its name, and she called it Bozrrd.’

  Hal frowned, not catching what Mossie had said. So he repeated again, ‘Bozrrd! Bozrrd!’

  Now Hal heard it and he too felt incredulity give way to horror as he tried to come to terms with the possibility that his mortal enemy had risen from the dead. ‘Did she say, “Buzzard”?’ he asked Mossie, speaking very clearly and half-hoping he would say, ‘No.’

  Instead the boy nodded his head up and down several times and squealed, ‘Yes! Yes! Bozrrd!’

  For a moment Hal was lost in thought as all the apparently disconnected events that had happened over the past hour or so suddenly fell into a pattern that made perfect sense. Grey and the Buzzard, traitors both to their country, their king and their god, were both united by one other thing: their mutual hatred of Captain Sir Henry Courtney. Together, though surely with help from some other, third party, they had concocted a plan that was supposed to end with his death and Judith’s abduction. Well, he was alive, and there was one man who could surely tell him where Judith had gone.

  ‘Mossie, fetch my pistols,’ Hal said, hoping to God that the Buzzard hadn’t taken them, as well.

  ‘What are you doing?’ Aboli asked him.

  ‘I’m going to call on His Majesty’s Consul,’ he said. ‘You’re going to come with me, and so is every other man we’ve got here in Zanzibar. And he is going to tell me everything I wish to know or I will geld him like a damned eunuch.’

  ‘No.’ Aboli shook his head. ‘That is not the way. Think, Gundwane. The consul’s house is guarded. The moment he knows you are still alive he will bar his door. We would have to fight our way in and the town guard will come like hyenas to the smell of blood.’

  Hal seethed with anger but he knew Aboli was right. They could not expect simply to march into the consul’s apartments and demand answers. Grey was a powerful and influential man, who always boasted of his connections here in Zanzibar. Hal did not need a war with the local Omani population any more than the Golden Bough needed to face the wrath of those big guns on the fortress walls.

  ‘What do you suggest, Aboli?’ he asked, tying a red silk sash around his waist into which he thrust the two pistols that Mossie handed to him.

  Aboli frowned. ‘Maybe it is not a matter of how many men we need, but how few.’

  ‘You mean, achieve by stealth what we cannot do by force?’

  ‘Correct,’ said Aboli with a grin.

  The two men talked for a few minutes more. Then, bringing Mossie with them, they went down to where the longboat was tied up next to a flight of steps that led down from the quayside. Hal sent Mossie to the stern of the longboat and told him to stay there, no matter what. Then he and Aboli explained their plan of action to the other men of the Bough. They waited until the streets of the city had emptied and its people were asleep. Then Hal and Aboli, along with two of the Bough’s most doughty fighters, Big Daniel Fisher and Will Stanley, picked up a length of rope and set off into the night.

  udith was taken through the streets of Zanzibar in a carriage whose windows had been covered so that she had no idea where she was going. There came a point, however, when she heard orders being barked, a gate opened and then the echoing of hooves and wheels as the carriage passed beneath an arch, crossed some kind of open courtyard before passing through a second gate and only then coming to a halt.

  The door of the carriage was opened and before her stood a portly, middle-aged man with a chin as perfectly hairless as his shaven scalp. In a high, effeminate voice he said, ‘Follow me. His Highness wishes to see you, but he will not wish to set eyes on you looking like that.’

  He’s a eunuch, Judith thought and then, as she was led into a large, marble-floored ro
om, strewn with soft rugs decorated with intricately woven patterns and heady with the scent of roses, amber and musk wafting from the candles that cast a golden glow over the half-naked women draped in poses of idleness and boredom on the cushions and divans with which it was furnished, she realized, I’ve been taken to a harem.

  The man led her into a chamber in the middle of which was a pool filled with softly steaming water and strewn with rose petals. Two young women, servants or handmaidens of some kind, she supposed, were waiting for her. ‘See that she is prepared for His Highness,’ the eunuch commanded, sounding less like a man than a petulant child.

  ‘Your bath has been prepared, my lady,’ one of the servant girls said. ‘May I take your gown?’

  Judith’s immediate instinct was to reply, ‘No, you may not!’ But there was no purpose in picking a fight with underlings who lacked the power to do anything that might help her. Her quarrel was with the man who ruled them and the only way she was going to see him was if she allowed herself to do what the eunuch deemed necessary. So Judith bathed and was then dried and scented oil was rubbed into her skin. One of the servants asked her to sit and then smoky black kohl was painted around her eyes, rouge was dabbed on her lips and her hair was pinned up and draped in strings of pearls like fabulously extravagant versions of the headdress she had worn to greet Hal at Mitsiwa, just a few weeks earlier. The girls placed ornately jewelled pendants in her ears and then asked her to stand so that they could dress her.

  ‘Oh, my lady, you are so beautiful,’ one of the servants said, as Judith stood naked before her. ‘The prince will be overwhelmed by desire.’

  ‘Aleena will be wild with jealousy!’ the other girl giggled. ‘You are bound to be his new favourite!’