Tom followed the far bank of the stream for almost a mile. As he came closer to the swamp in which the arum lilies grew his steps slowed and he paused every fifty paces to listen intently. At the edge of the swamp he squatted and held the big gun across his lap. He waited patiently, never moving even to flick away the mosquitoes that whined around his head. The moon rose higher and its light grew stronger so that the shadows thrown by each tree and shrub had sharp edges.
Abruptly there came a grunt and a squeal from close at hand, and his pulse tripped. He waited, as still as one of the dead tree stumps, as the silence fell again. Then he heard the squelch of hoofs in the mud, more grunts, the sound of hog-like rooting and the champing of tusked jaws.
1 from eased forward towards the sounds. Without warning they ceased as abruptly as they had begun, and he froze. He knew that this was the
customary behaviour of the bush pigs. The entire sounder would freeze together and listen for predators. Although Tom was on one leg, he froze in that attitude, still as an ungainly statue as the silence drew out. Then the grunting and feeding started again.
With relief he lowered his foot, his thigh muscles burning, and crept forward again. Then he saw the sounder just ahead of him: there were several dozen, dark hump-backed sows, with their piglets underfoot, rooting and wallowing. None was large enough to be a mature boar.
Tom moved with infinite care to a mound of harder earth at the edge of the swamp and crouched there, waiting for the big boars to come out of the forest. A cloud blew across the moon, and suddenly, in the utter darkness, he sensed a presence close by. He turned all his attention upon it and vaguely made out massive movement so close that he felt he could touch it with the muzzle of his musket. He inched the butt stock to his shoulder, but dared not cock the hammers. The beast was too close. It would hear the click as the sear engaged. He stared into the darkness, not sure if it was real or his imagination. Then the clouds overhead blew open and the moonlight burst through.
In front of him loomed a gigantic hog. Along its mountainous back rose a mane of coarse bristles, shaggy and black in the moonlight. Its jaws were armed with curved tusks, sharp enough to rip the belly out of a man or to slice through the femoral artery in his groin and bleed him white within minutes.
Tom and the boar saw each other in the same moment. Tom swept back the hammers of the musket to full cock, and the boar squealed and charged straight at him. Tom fired the first barrel into its chest, and the heavy leaden loopers thudded into flesh and bone. The boar staggered and dropped on to its front knees but in an instant it bounded to its feet and came straight in. Tom fired the second barrel, then smashed the empty musket into the pig's face and dived to one side. One tusk hooked into his coat and split it like a razor, but the point missed his flesh. The beast's heavy shoulder struck him a glancing blow, which was powerful enough nevertheless to send him rolling into the mud.
Tom struggled to his feet with his knife clutched in his right hand, ready to meet the next attack. All around him there was the rush of dark bodies and squeals of alarm as the pigs scattered back into the forest.
Silence fell almost immediately after they were gone. Then Tom heard a much softer sound: laboured gasping and snuffling and the convulsive thrashing of back legs in the reeds of the swamp. Cautiously he went towards the sounds, and found the boar down, kicking his last in the mud.
Tom hurried back to the camp and found his ten chosen men where he had left them, waiting his summons. None of them was a Muslim, so they had no religious qualms about touching a pig. Tom led them back to the swamp and they lashed the huge evil-smelling carcass to a carrying pole. It took all ten to stagger with this burden along the bank of the river to where Kadem was still tied to the tree and Mansur was waiting beside him with Batula and Kumrah.
By this time the dawn was breaking, and Kadem stared at the pig carcass as they dropped it in front of him. He said nothing but his expression clearly showed his horror and repugnance.
The bearers of the carcass had brought spades with them. Mansur put them to work at once digging a grave beside the carcass. None of them spoke to Kadem, and they barely glanced in his direction while they worked. However, Kadem's agitation increased as he watched them. He was again sweating and shivering, but this was not only the effects of the shock and agony of the ant stings. He had begun to understand the fate that Mansur was preparing for him.
When the grave was deep enough, the men laid aside their spades at Tom's order, and gathered around the carcass of the boar. Two stropped the blades of their skinning knives while the others rolled the boar on to its back and held all four legs widely separated to make the job of the skinners easier. They were expert, and the thick bristly hide was soon flayed away from pink and purple muscle and the white fat of the belly. At last it was free and the skinners stretched it open on the ground.
Mansur and the two sea captains kept well clear, careful not to let a drop of the vile creature's blood splatter them. Their revulsion was as evident as that of their captive. The stench of the old boar's fatty flesh was rank in the early-morning air, and Mansur spat the taste of it out of his mouth before he spoke to Kadem for the first time since they had brought in the carcass.
"O nameless one who calls himself a true follower of the Prophet, sent by God to carry out His divine purpose, we have no further need of you and your treachery. Your life on this earth has come to an end." Kadem began to exhibit more distress than the agony that the insect's sting had inflicted upon him. He gibbered like an idiot, and his eyes rolled from side to side. Mansur ignored his protests and went on mercilessly, "At my command, you will be stitched into this wet and reeking skin of the pig, and buried alive in the grave we have prepared for you. We will place the flayed carcass of this beast on top of you so that as you suffocate its blood and fat will drip into your face. As you and the pig rot your stinking bodily juices will mingle and you will
become one. You will be fouled, ha from for ever. The faces of God and all his prophets will be turned away from you for all eternity."
Mansur gestured to the men who were waiting ready, and they came forward. Mansur unlocked Kadem's chains, but left him pinioned at wrists to ankles. The men carried him to the open pigskin and laid him upon it. The ship's sail maker threaded his needle and donned his leather palm to sew Kadem into the winding sheet formed by the skin.
As Kadem felt the wet and greasy folds embrace him, he screeched like a condemned soul cast into eternal darkness. "My name is Kadem ibn Abubaker, eldest son of Pasha Suleiman Abubaker. I came here to seek vengeance for the murder of my father and to carry out the will of my master Caliph Zayn al-Din ibn al-Malik."
"What was the will of your master?" Mansur insisted.
"The execution of the Princess Yasmini and of her incestuous lover, al-Salil."
Mansur turned to Tom who was squatting close by. "That is all we need to know. May I kill him now, Uncle?"
Tom rose to his feet and shook his head. "His life belongs not to me but to your father. Besides, we may have further need of this assassin yet, if we are to avenge your mother."
With his damaged eardrum Kadem was unable to keep his balance and he staggered and toppled over when they lifted him out of the folds of pigskin, cut loose his bonds and placed him on his feet. Tom ordered him to be strapped to the carrying pole on which they had brought in the pig's carcass. The bearers carried him like dead game back to the beach of the lagoon.
"It will be more difficult for him to escape from the ship. Take him out to the Gift,1 Tom told Batula. "Chain him in the orlop, and see to it that he is guarded day and night by your most reliable men."
They stayed on in the encampment beside the lagoon during the forty days of mourning for Yasmini. For the first ten Dorian hung suspended over the black void of death, drifting from delirium into coma, then rallying again. Tom, Sarah and Mansur took turns to wait by his bedside.
On the tenth morning Dorian opened his eyes and looked at Mansur. He spoke
weakly but clearly: "Is your mother buried? Have you said the prayers ?"
"She is buried and I have prayed over her grave, for you and for myself."
"That is good, my son." Dorian sank away, but within an hour he woke again and asked for food and drink.
"You will live," Sarah told him as she brought a bowl of broth. "You ran it very fine, Dorian Courtney, but now you will live."
Relieved of the terrible anxiety over Dorian's condition, Tom let Sarah and the women servants take over his share of the vigil at the bedside, and he and Mansur devoted themselves to other business.
Every day Tom ordered Kadem to be brought up from the orlop deck, and exercised in the sunlight and open air. He made sure he was well fed, and that the gash in his scalp healed cleanly. He felt no compassion for the prisoner, but he wanted to ensure his survival in good condition: he was an important part of Tom's plans for the future.
Tom had ordered the bush-pigskin to be salted and hung in the Gift's rigging. He questioned Kadem almost every day in fluent Arabic, forcing him to squat in the shadow of the pigskin that flapped over his head, a constant reminder of the fate that awaited him if he refused to answer.
"How did you learn that this ship belonged to me and my brother?" he demanded, and Kadem named the merchant in Zanzibar who had given him this information, before the life was choked out of him by the garotte. Tom passed the information to Dorian, when he was strong enough to sit up unaided. "So our identity is now known by the spies of Zayn al Din at every anchorage along the coast from Good Hope to Hormuz and the Red Sea."
"The Dutch know us also," Dorian agreed. "Keyser promised that every VOC port in the Orient would be closed to us. We must change the cut of our jibs."
Tom set about altering the appearance of the two ships. One after the other they warped them to the beach. Tom used the rise and fall of the tide to careen them over. First they scraped away the heavy infestation of weed and treated the shipworm that had already taken nrm hold in the hulls. Some of these loathsome creatures were as thick as a man's thumb and as long as his arm. They could riddle the timbers with holes until the ship was rotten as cheese and might easily break up in rough weather. They tarred the ship's bottom and renewed the copper sheathing where strips had been torn off, allowing the worm to enter. It was the only effective cure. Then Tom changed the masts and rigging. He stepped a mizzen on the Gift. This was something he and Dorian had discussed before: the additional mast altered the appearance and Performance of the ship completely. When he took her out to sea for her trials, she sailed a full point closer to the wind and logged an
additional two knots of speed through the water. Tom and Batula were delighted and reported the success gleefully to Dorian, who insisted on being allowed to hobble to the head of the beach to look at her.
"In God's name, she is as fresh as a virgin again."
"She must have a new name, brother," Tom agreed. "What shall it be?"
Dorian barely hesitated. "The Revenge."
Tom saw by his expression what he was thinking, and gave him no argument. "That is an illustrious name." He nodded. "Our great-great grandfather sailed with Sir Richard Grenville on the old Revenge."
They repainted the hull in sky blue, for that was the hue of the paint they had brought with them in abundance, and chequered the gun ports in darker blue. It gave the Revenge a saucy air.
Then they began work on the Maid of York. She had always shown a flighty inclination to broach-to when driven hard before the wind. Tom took this opportunity to add an additional ten feet to the mainmast and give it five degrees more rake. He also lengthened the bowsprit and moved the jib stay and the staysail stay a touch forward. He repositioned the cradles of the water casks in the holds nearer to the stern to alter her trim. This not only changed her profile but made her more responsive to the helm and corrected her tendency to being down by the head.
Tom gave her the contrary colour scheme to the Revenge: a dark blue hull and sky blue gun ports.
"She was named after you, the Maid of York," Tom reminded Sarah. "Fair is fair, you must rename her now."
"Water Sprite," she said immediately, and Tom blinked.
"How did you hit on that? Tis a quirky name."
"And I am a quirky lady." She laughed.
"That you are." He laughed with her. "But just plain Sprite might be better."
"Are you naming her, or am I?" Sarah asked sweetly.
"Let's say rather, we are." Sarah threw up both her hands in capitulation.
When the forty days of mourning for Yasmini had passed, Dorian was sufficiently recovered to walk unaided to the far end of the beach and swim back across the channel. Although he had recovered much of his strength, the loneliness and deep sadness had marked him. Whenever Mansur could find time from his duties he and Dorian spent it sitting together and talking quietly.
Each evening the entire family gathered around the campfire and discussed their plans. Soon it became obvious that none of them wished to make the lagoon their new home. As they were without horses Tom
and Mansur's scouting expeditions on foot did not penetrate far inland, and they encountered none of the tribes that had once inhabited this country. The old villages were burned and deserted.
There's no trade, unless you have someone to trade with," Tom pointed out.
"It is a sickly place. Already we have lost one of our people to the fever." Sarah supported him. "I had hoped so much to meet our Jim Boy here, but in all this time there has been neither sign nor sight of him. He must have moved on further to the north." There were a hundred other possible reasons why Jim had disappeared, but she put them out of her mind. "We will find him there," she said firmly.
"I, for another, cannot remain here," Mansur said. In these last weeks he had taken his place quite naturally at the family councils. "My father and I have a sacred obligation to find the man who ordered the death of my mother. I know who he is. My destiny lies to the north, in the kingdom of Oman." He looked at his father enquiringly.
Slowly Dorian nodded agreement. "Yasmini's murder has changed everything. I now share your sacred obligation of vengeance. We will go northwards together."
"So, it's settled, then." Tom spoke for all of them. "When we reach Nativity Bay, we can decide again."
"When can we sail?" Sarah asked eagerly. "Name a day!"
The ships are almost ready, and so are we. Ten days from now. The day after Good Friday," Tom suggested. "A propitious day."
Sarah composed a letter to Jim. It ran to twelve pages of heavy parchment in her elegant close-written script. She stitched it into a canvas cover and painted the packet with sky blue ship's paint and sealed the seams with hot tar. She printed his name on it in white paint and block capitals: James Archibald Courtney Esq. Then she carried it up the hill and, with her own hand, hid it in the recess below the post stone. She built a tall cairn on top to signal to Jim when he came that a letter was waiting for him.
Mansur hunted far up the valley and killed five more Cape buffalo. The women salted, pickled and dried the meat, then made spiced sausage for the voyage ahead. Mansur supervised the crews as they refilled all the water casks on both ships. When this was done, Tom and the Arab captains were rowed around the ships to check their trim. Though heavily laden, both vessels rode well. They looked wonderfully elegant in their new paint.
Chained and heavily guarded, Kadem al-Juri was allowed on deck for a few hours each day. Tom and Dorian took turns to interrogate him. With the dried pigskin casting its shadow across the deck Kadem responded to their questions, if not willingly at least with some show of respect. However, that disconcerting stare never faded from his eyes. Though Tom and Dorian phrased the same questions in different guises, Kadem's replies were consistent and he avoided the traps they set for him. He must have known what his eventual fate would be. The law allowed Dorian and Mansur little discretion of mercy: when they stared at him Kadem saw death in their eyes, and all he could hope for was that when the
time came they would grant him a swift, dignified execution, without the horror of dismemberment or the sacrilege of the pigskin.
Over the weeks, Kadem's incarceration in the orlop developed its own routine and rhythm. Three Arab seamen shared the duty of acting as his warders during the night, each taking a shift of four hours. They had been carefully chosen by Batula, and at first they were mindful of his orders. While themselves remaining mute, they reported Kadem's most casual remarks to Batula. However, the nights were long and the guard duty as dull as the need to remain awake was onerous. Kadem had been trained by the most famous mullahs of the Royal House of Oman in dialectic and religious debate. The things he whispered in the darkness to his warders while the rest of the crew were ashore or sleeping on the upper deck were compelling to those devout young men. The truths he spoke were too poignant and moving to report to Batula. They could not close their ears to him, and they listened at first with awe when he spoke of the truth and beauty of God's way. Then they began, against their own will, to respond to his whispers with their own. From the fire in his eyes they knew Kadem to be a holy man. By the fervour of his own devotion and the unassailable logic of his words they were convinced. Slowly they were held in thrall by Kadem ibn Abubaker.
Wilbur Smith - C11 Blue Horizon Page 48