by Wilbur Smith
man's voice. She tried to shout to him above the chorus of filth and invective, but her enemies swamped her with malicious glee and she knew he would not hear her. With rising despair she peered through her peephole, but the view was restricted.
"I am here," she shouted in Dutch. "I am Louisa."
Abruptly his face rose into her view. He must have been standing on one of the thwarts of the longboat that was moored below her gun port
"Louisa?" He put his eye to the other side of the chink and they stared at each other from a range of a few inches, "Yes." He laughed unexpectedly. "Blue eyes! Bright blue eyes."
"Who are you? What is your name?" On impulse she spoke in English, and he gaped at her.
"You speak English?"
"No, you weak-wit, it was Chinese," she snapped back at him, and he laughed again. By the sound of him he was overbearing and cocky, but his was the only friendly voice she had heard in over a year.
"It's a saucy one you are! I have something else for you. Can you get this port-lid open?" he asked.
"Are any of the guards watching from the deck?" she asked. "They will have me flogged if they see us talking."
"No, we are hidden by the tumble-home of the ship's side."
"Wait!" she said, and drew the blade from her pouch. Quickly she prised out the single shackle that still held the lock in place. Then she leaned back, placed both bare feet against the port-lid and pushed with all her might. The hinges creaked, then gave a few inches. She saw his fingers at the edge and he helped to pull it open a little wider.
Then he thrust a small canvas bag through the opening. "There is a letter for you," he whispered, his face close to hers. "Read it." And then he was gone.
"Wait!" she pleaded, and his face appeared in the opening again. "You did not tell me. What's your name?"
"Jim. Jim Courtney."
"Thank you, Jim Courtney," she said, and let the port-lid thump shut.
The three women crowded round her in a tight circle of protection as she opened the bag. Quickly they divided up the dried meat and the packets of hard biscuit, and gnawed at the unappetizing fare with desperate hunger. When she found the comb tears came to Louisa's eyes. It was carved from dappled honey-coloured tortoiseshell. She stroked it through her hair, and it glided smoothly, not pulling painfully like the ugly hand-whittled thing she had been reduced to. Then she found the file and the knife wrapped together in a scrap of canvas. The knife was horn-handled, and the blade, when she tested it on her thumb, was
keen, a fine weapon. The sturdy little file had three cutting edges. She felt a lift of hope, the first in all those long months. She looked down at the irons on her ankles. The skin beneath the cruel bonds was calloused. Knife and file were invaluable gifts, but it was the comb that touched her deepest. It was an affirmation that he had seen her as a woman, not as gaol dregs from the slums and the gutter. She rummaged in the bottom of the bag for the letter he had promised. It was a single sheet of cheap paper, folded cunningly to form its own envelope. It was addressed to "Louisa' in a bold but fair hand. She unfolded it, careful not to tear it. It was in poorly spelt Dutch, but she was able to make out the gist of it.
Use the file on your chains. I will have a boat under the stern tomorrow night. When you hear the ship's bell strike two bells in the middle watch, jump. I will hear the splash. Have courage.
Her pulse raced. At once she knew that the chances of success were negligible. A hundred things could go wrong, not least a musket ball or a shark. What mattered was that she had found a friend and with it new hope of salvation, no matter how remote. She tore the note into shreds and dropped them into the reeking latrine bucket. None of the gnards would try to retrieve it from there. Then she crept back under the cannon, into the darkness that was her only privacy, and sat with her legs folded under her so she could easily reach the links of her leg irons. With the first stroke of the little file she cut a shallow but bright notch and a few grains of iron filtered down to the deck. The shackles had been forged from untempered steel of poor quality but it would take time and heart-breaking perseverance to cut through a single link.
"I have a day and a night. Until two bells in the middle watch tomorrow night," she encouraged herself, and laid the file into the notch she had already cut. At the next stroke more iron filings dusted the deck.
The longboat had been relieved of the heavy load of produce and now she rode lightly. Mansur was at the tiller, and Jim gazed back over the stern as he rowed. Every now and again he grinned as he went over in his mind the brief meeting with Louisa. She spoke English, good English, with only a touch of a Dutch accent, and she was spirited and quick-witted. She had responded swiftly to the circum62
stances. This was no dull-witted lump of gaol-bait. He had seen her bare legs through the chink in the port-lid as she helped him prise it open. They were starved painfully thin, and galled by her chains, but they were long and straight, not twisted and deformed by rickets. "Good breeding there!" as his father would say of a blood filly. The hand that had taken the canvas bag from his was grubby, and the nails were cracked and broken, but it was beautifully shaped, with gracefully tapered fingers. The hands of a lady, not a slave or scullery maid "She does not smell like a posy of lavender. But she's been locked up in that filthy tub for Lord alone knows how long. What do you expect?" He made excuses for her. Then he thought about her eyes, those wondrous blue eyes, and his expression was soft and dreamy. "In all my life, I have never laid eyes on a girl like that. And she speaks English."
"Hey, coz!" Mansur shouted. "Keep the stroke. You will have us on Robben Island if you're not more careful." Jim started out of his daydream just in time to meet the next swell that lifted the stern high.
"Sea's getting up," his father grunted. "Like as not it will be blowing a gale by tomorrow. We'll have to try to take out the last load before it gets too rough."
Jim took his eyes off the receding shape of the ship, and looked beyond her. His spirits sank. The storm clouds were piling up high and heavy as mountains upon the horizon.
I have to think up an excuse to stay ashore when they take out the next load to the Meeuw, he decided. There is not going to be another chance to make ready.
A the mules dragged the longboat up the beach, Jim told his father, "I have to take Captain Hugo his cut. He might scotch us if he doesn't have some coin in his fat fist."
"Let him wait for it, the old sheep thief. I need you to help with the next shipment."
"I promised Hugo and, anyway, you have a full crew for the next trip out to the ship."
Tom Courtney studied his son with a searching gaze. He knew him well. He was up to something. It was not like Jim to shirk. On the contrary, he was a rock on which Tom could depend. It was he who had established good terms with the purser on the convict ship, he had obtained the licence to trade from Hugo, and he had supervised the loading of the first shipment. He could be trusted.
"Well, I don't know..." Tom stroked his chin dubiously.
Mansur stepped in quickly. "Let Jim go, Uncle Tom. I can take over from him for the time being."
"Very well, Jim. Go and visit your friend Hugo," Tom acquiesced, 'but be back on the beach to help with the boats when we return."
Later, from the top of the dunes, Jim watched the longboats rowing back towards the Meeuw with the final load of produce. It seemed to him that the swells were higher than they had been that morning, and the wind was starting to claw off the tops in a parade of leaping white horses.
"God spare us!" he said aloud. "If the storm comes up I will not be able to get the girl off until it passes." Then he remembered his instructions to her. He had told her to jump overboard at precisely two bells in the middle watch. He could not get another message to her to stop her doing that. Would she have the good sense to stay on board if there was a full gale blowing, realizing that he had not been able to keep the rendezvous, or would she throw herself overboard regardless and perish in the darkness? The thought of her drow
ning in the dark waters struck him like a fist in his belly, and he felt nauseous. He turned Drumfire's head towards the castle and pressed his heels into the horse's sides.
Captain Hugo was surprised but pleased to have his commission paid so promptly. Jim left him without ceremony, refusing even a mug of coffee, and galloped back along the beach. He was thinking furiously as he rode.
There had been so little time to lay his plans. It was only in the last few hours that he had been sure the girl had the spirit to chance such a hazardous escape. The first consideration, if he succeeded in getting her ashore, would be to find a safe hiding-place for her. As soon as her escape was discovered the entire castle garrison would be sent out to find her, a hundred infantry and a squadron of cavalry. The Company troops in the castle had little enough employment, and a manhunt or, better still, a woman-hunt would be one of the most exciting events in years. Colonel Keyser, the garrison commander, would be hot for the honour of capturing an escaped convict.
For the first time he allowed himself to consider the consequences if this hare-brained scheme fell to pieces. He worried that he might be making trouble for his family. The strict law laid down by the directors of the VOC, the almighty Zeventien in Amsterdam, was that no
foreigner was permitted to reside or carry on a business in the colony. However, like so many other strict laws of the directors in Amsterdam, there were special circumstances by which they could be circumvented. Those special circumstances always involved a monetary token of esteem to His Excellency Governor van de Witten. It had cost the Courtney brothers twenty thousand guilders to obtain a licence to reside and trade in the Colony of Good Hope. Van de Witten was unlikely to revoke that licence. He and Tom Courtney were on friendly terms, and Tom contributed generously to van de Witten's unofficial pension fund.
Jim hoped that if he and the girl simply disappeared from the colony, there would be nothing to implicate the rest of his family. There might be suspicions, and at the worst it might cost his father another gift to van de Witten, but in the end it would blow over, just as long as he never returned.
There were only two avenues of escape from the colony. The natural and best was the sea. But that meant a boat. The Courtney brothers owned two armed traders, handy and fleet schooners with which they traded as far as Arabia and Bombay. However, at the present time both these vessels were at sea and were not expected back until the monsoon changed, which would not be for several months yet.
Jim had saved up a little money, perhaps enough to pay for a passage for the girl and himself on one of the ships lying in Table Bay at the moment. But the first thing Colonel Keyser would do as soon as the girl was reported missing was to send search parties aboard every ship. He could try to steal a small boat, a pinnace perhaps, something seaworthy enough in which he and the girl could reach the Portuguese ports on the Mozambique coast, but every captain was alert for piracy. The most likely reward for his efforts would be a musket ball in the belly.
Even in his most optimistic expectations he had to face the fact that the sea route was closed to them. There was only one other still open, and he turned and looked northwards at the far mountains on which the last of the winter snows had not yet thawed. He pulled up Drumfire and thought about what lay out there. Jim had not travelled more than fifty leagues beyond those peaks, but he had heard of others who had gone further into the hinterland and returned with a great store of ivory. There was even a rumour of the old hunter who had picked a shiny pebble out of a sandbank of a nameless river far to the north, and had sold the diamond in Amsterdam for a hundred thousand guilders. He felt his skin prickle with excitement. On countless nights he had dreamed of what lay beyond that blue horizon. He had discussed it with Mansur and Zama, and they had promised each other that one day they would make the journey. Had the gods of adventure overheard his
boasts, and were they conspiring now to drive him out there into the wilderness? Would he have a girl with golden hair and blue eyes riding at his side? He laughed at the thought, and urged Drumfire on.
With his father, his uncle Dorian and almost all the servants and freed slaves out of the way for the next few hours, he had to work quickly. He knew where his father kept the keys to both the strongroom and the armoury. He selected six strong mules out of the herd in the kraal, pack-saddled them and took them on a lead rein up to the rear doors of the go down He had to choose carefully as he selected goods from the warehouse to make up the loads. A dozen best Tower muskets and canvas ball-pouches, kegs of black powder, and lead bars and moulds to cast more ball; axes, knives and blankets; beads and cloth to trade with the wild tribes they might meet; basic medicines, pots and water bottles; needles and thread, and all the other necessities of existence in the wilderness, but no luxuries. Coffee was not a luxury, he consoled himself, as he added a sack of beans.
When they were loaded he led the string of mules away to a quiet place beside a stream in the forest almost two miles from High Weald. He relieved the animals of their packs so they could rest, and left them with knee-halters to allow them to graze on the lush grass on the stream bank.
By the time he returned to High Weald the longboats were on their way back from the Meeuw. He went down to meet his father, Mansur and the returning crews as they came back over the dunes. He rode along with them, and listened to their desultory conversation. They were all drenched with seawater and almost exhausted, for it had been a long haul back from the Dutch ship in the heavy seas.
Mansur described it to him succinctly: "You were lucky to get out of it. The waves were breaking over us like a waterfall."
"Did you see the girl?" Jim whispered, so his father would not overhear.
"What girl?" Mansur gave him a knowing glance.
"You know what girl." Jim punched his arm.
Mansur's expression turned serious. "They had all the convicts locked up and battened down. One of the officers told Uncle Tom that the captain is anxious to sail as soon as he can finish re provisioning and filling his water butts. By tomorrow at the very latest. He does not want to be pinned down by the storm on this lee shore." He saw Jim's despairing expression, and went on sympathetically, "Sorry, coz, but like as not the ship will be gone by noon tomorrow. She would have been no good for you anyway, a convict woman. You know nothing about her, you don't know what crimes she has committed. Murder, perhaps.
Let her go, Jim. Forget about her. There is more than one bird in the blue sky, more than a single blade of grass on the plains of Camdeboo."
Jim felt anger flare and bitter words rose to his lips, but he held them back. He left the others and turned Drumfire towards the top of the dunes. From the height he looked out across the bay. The storm was mounting even as he watched, bringing on the darkness prematurely. The wind moaned and ruffled his hair, and whipped Drumfire's mane into a tangle. He had to shield his eyes against the sting of flying sand and spume. The surface of the sea was a welter of breaking white spray, and tall, heaving swells that rose up and crashed down on the beach. It was a wonder that his father had been able to bring the boats in through that turmoil of wind and water, but Tom Courtney was a master mariner.
Almost two miles out the Meeuw was an indistinct grey shape that rolled and pitched with swinging bare masts, and disappeared as each fresh squall swept across the bay. Jim watched until the darkness hid her completely. Then he galloped down the back of the dune towards High Weald. He found Zama still working in the stables, bedding down the horses. "Come with me," he ordered, and obediently Zama followed him out into the orchard. When they were out of sight of the house they squatted down side by side. They were silent for a while, then Jim spoke in Lozi, the language of the forests, so that Zama would know there were deadly serious matters to discuss.
"I'm going," he said.
Zama stared into his face, but his eyes were hidden by the darkness. "Where, Somoya?" he asked. Jim pointed with his chin towards the north. "When will you return?"
"I do not know, perhaps never,"
said Jim.
"Then I must take leave of my father."
"You're coming with me?" Jim asked.
Zama glanced at him pityingly. No answer was needed to such a famous question.
"Aboli was a father to me also." Jim stood up and placed an arm around his shoulder. "Let us go to his grave."