The Tiger's Prey

by Wilbur Smith

  ‘Angria has two prisoners,’ he said. ‘They are two Englishwomen. You know them? Are they safe?’

  Christopher relaxed his grip on the sword. He did not know what had come over Tom, but he had felt the danger in the air.

  ‘Yes,’ he muttered. ‘Yes, the women are healthy and unhurt. One is …’

  He had been about to say ‘with child’, but stopped himself. In the last five minutes, his situation had changed beyond recognition: he needed time to gather his thoughts. He should hoard his knowledge until he had decided how best to use it.

  ‘One is a little thin, but she is not in any danger,’ he said blandly.

  ‘See that no harm comes to them,’ said Tom. Inwardly, he was thinking: who are you? This man who spoke English, allied himself with pirates and brigands, and now possessed his sword? What strange fate kept pitting them against each other?

  Opposite, Christopher did not need to wonder whom he spoke to. The sword belonged to my father … the man had said. If he spoke the truth – and the passion in his voice left Christopher in no doubt of that – he could only be one of Guy’s brothers. William was dead, and Christopher knew from family lore that Dorian had had red hair. This could only be his uncle Tom Courtney to whom he was speaking

  Christopher was immediately seized by a terrible fear that Tom would recognize him. It ought to be impossible – Tom had never seen him before in his life, possibly did not even know of his existence – but then Christopher had never thought it possible he would find himself standing on a beach talking to his dead uncle.

  He had to escape. Without apology, he turned and hurried down the beach towards the boat. So abruptly, Tom almost gave the signal to his sharpshooters for fear of some trick.

  ‘Wait,’ Tom called. Christopher halted. Again, his hand went to the hilt of his sword as he turned, tensed like a panther about to spring.

  Something flew through the air. Instinctively, Christopher reached out and caught it one-handed. It was the purse of diamonds – he could feel them bulging through the soft silk when he closed his fist around it.

  ‘I had almost forgotten,’ he mumbled in surprise.

  ‘Be sure you do not forget to cut the boom,’ Tom warned.

  Waves rippled around Christopher’s ankles as he slid the boat into the sea. The cool water clarified his thinking, waking him from the dream he had slipped into.

  ‘I promise you, the boom will be open.’

  Christopher scrambled out of the boat, gave the boatman a golden coin for his silence, and climbed the stairs cut in the rocks. They were slick with spray thrown up by the breaking waves; swamped by his thoughts, he almost lost his footing.

  He swore, and forced himself to concentrate. He was not out of danger yet. He rapped on the little gate and called his name.

  A face appeared at the small barred window in the door. ‘Was she worth it?’

  Christopher had almost forgotten the lie he’d told. He forced a satisfied smile. ‘And more. You should try her.’

  Heavy bolts slid back. The door opened. He gave the guard a gold coin, and thought of the little bag of diamonds tucked in his belt. ‘Not a word to Angria,’ he cautioned. ‘If he knew I was out of the castle, he would kill me.’

  ‘She must be something, to be worth risking your neck,’ said the guard, hoping for details.

  ‘Sweeter than honey and roses!’ Christopher agreed.

  He went up through the castle to the turret room. Lydia was waiting for him, lying on the bed.

  He unlocked her manacles. It had become routine, now: during the day, she stayed in the dungeon, but each night the jailer brought her up to his chamber. Christopher did not understand why, but he craved her company more than he liked to admit. After so many months and years of living a deception, it was a freedom to speak English again, and be understood. But it was more than that. She had something that he responded to, a spark that touched the dry paper deep in his soul and set it alight.

  She was also the most imaginative and uninhibited lover he had ever had – wilder even than Tamaana.

  She stroked his back. She reached forward and slid her hand across his thigh, between his legs, taking his cock and rubbing it between finger and thumb.

  He did not respond.

  She came around and knelt in front of him. Lifting the skirt of his dhoti, she took him in her mouth. She was no ingénue – she had survived two husbands already, and ten times as many lovers – but she had never taken a man as well-endowed as Christopher. Though she had seduced him with clear-eyed determination to survive, she found he genuinely excited her. She spent all her days looking forward to the moment the jailer would come to take her to the tower.

  She ran her tongue down the length of his manhood. It did not stir.

  She rose, wrapped her arms around him and rubbed her breasts against his chest. She tipped her head back and stared up at him.

  ‘Is something wrong?’

  In his turmoil, Christopher hardly realized she’d spoken. He pulled away from her and took out the long Neptune sword, brooding on his reflection in the blade.

  ‘Have I displeased you?’ said Lydia anxiously. As much as she was attracted to Christopher, she knew she could not afford to leave him unsatisfied. Her life depended on it.

  He looked up. ‘I learned something this evening which I cannot quite comprehend.’

  She stroked his arm with her long fingers. ‘What is it, my love?’

  ‘You would not understand.’

  She felt the muscles in his shoulder, thick as anchor cables. Her fingers worked harder, probing into his flesh. He grunted with satisfaction.

  ‘Try me, my love,’ she said, in her most girlish voice. ‘There is so much knotted up inside you. Why will you not let me share your burden?’

  He had not meant to say it – but her touch released something, like uncorking a bottle. ‘Tom Courtney is here,’ he blurted out.

  Lydia’s fingers stopped moving. ‘Tom Courtney?’

  ‘Guy’s brother. I saw him this very evening. He is here, with the besieging army.’

  ‘How can you be sure?’

  ‘He recognized the sword. He said it belonged to his father. It can only be him.’ Now that he had started, the words spilled out of him like a river bursting its banks. ‘You said one of your companions is Sarah Courtney. She is his wife – he must have come to rescue her.’

  Lydia’s mind raced, trying to absorb this information and discern its import.

  ‘Do you think the Governor sent him?’ she asked cautiously. ‘Could it be that Guy has raised this army to free Agnes and Sarah?’

  Christopher laughed. ‘That is unthinkable. Guy hates Tom even more than he hates me. If Guy knew Tom was here, he would come himself and serve his head on a platter to Angria.’

  ‘You know a great deal about the affairs of the Courtneys,’ Lydia said tartly. ‘Have you had intercourse with Sarah without me knowing?’

  Christopher’s face went dark again. He gazed at Lydia, raking her with his eyes so hard she suddenly feared for her life. In that mood, he might be capable of anything.

  ‘Tell me, my love,’ she begged. ‘I am on your side.’

  He could not keep it pent up inside him any longer. ‘Sarah Courtney is my aunt,’ he said. ‘I am Christopher Courtney, Guy’s son. Two years ago, I defied Guy and ran away from Bombay.’

  Suddenly, everything became clear to Lydia. ‘You must hate Guy very much.’

  ‘With all my heart!’

  The conversation was moving too fast. With so many possible paths, Lydia could no longer calculate her advantage. Perhaps she should keep the secret. But if she did not say it now, and Christopher found out later, he would never forgive her.

  She leaned closer towards him. Even her self-control wavered at what she had to say.

  ‘There is a reason that Guy hates you that you do not even know yourself. Guy is not your father.’

  Christopher was so surprised he almost laughed. Then his face h
ardened, as if he meant to strike her. ‘What mischief is this?’ His voice rose. ‘Do you think because I allow you in my bed you can insult me like this? I can have you chained back in your dungeon this instant – or give you over to Angria for his sport.’

  ‘Sarah Courtney told me,’ screeched Lydia. ‘Her sister Caroline, your mother, lay with Tom when they sailed from England. She was pregnant before Guy ever touched her.’ She saw the realization dawning on his face. ‘With you.’

  ‘That is impossible.’ But even as he clung to the certainty, it disintegrated around him. The truth of it resonated deep in his soul, and he could not block it out. Everything came into place. Like a captain lining up the marks to guide him into harbour, he could chart the course of his life anew. Guy’s moods, his resentment of his wife and his hatred of his son. The way the Company men whispered over his head, ever since he was a child, and the way they always fell silent when Guy entered the room. The fact that his father was red-haired and pale-skinned, while Christopher was dark and strong. Did you think that came from your mother? he chided himself. He was the mirror image of the man on the beach, Tom Courtney – if he had but seen it.

  His whole life was rewritten. He leaned on the windowsill for balance, staring out into the night. Lydia wrapped her arms around him.

  ‘Tom is your father,’ she said again. ‘And he is here, waiting.’ She pointed out the window, to the watchfires burning in the besiegers’ camp. ‘Surely now you cannot deny him his wife, his aunt – and his own son. Let us go to him this very night. I am sure you could get us past the guards. He would be overjoyed to see you. He would embrace you as his son.’

  She waited. Christopher rested the Neptune sword on the window, blade pointing to the horizon, and gazed out.

  ‘This should have been mine by right,’ he murmured. ‘Tom Courtney had it from his father, and I would have had it from him. If he had not abandoned me.’

  ‘Now he has found you,’ said Lydia.

  Christopher looked at her like a man waking from a dream.

  ‘No,’ he said softly. And then, with gathering certainty, ‘No.’

  Lydia had never seen such ferocity in his eyes. She shrank back. ‘I do not understand.’

  Christopher rammed the sword home in its scabbard. ‘What sort of man is Tom Courtney?’ he said viciously. ‘He sated himself on my mother, and then discarded her like a dirty rag when she got with child. With me. No wonder my father – Guy – hated me so. However hard I tried to please him, whatever I did to win his affection, he could not love me because I was not his.’

  ‘You could not have known.’

  ‘How I loathed him.’ The words came out ragged, each one wrenched out of him. ‘I did not understand. He saved my mother’s honour when he could have left her to her shame. It was too much to expect him to love me as well. I was a living rebuke, the proof of his brother’s crime, yet still he accepted me as his own. He did his best, he treated me as his son, and all I repaid him with was hatred. And if you had not come to me, I would never have found it out.’

  He held her face tight in his hands. Lydia did not breathe. She looked into his eyes, and could not tell if he meant to kiss her or snap her neck.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she gasped.

  Christopher kissed her on the forehead. ‘You have done nothing wrong. Thanks to you, I have a great opportunity.’

  Her hopes rose. ‘For reconciliation?’

  ‘For revenge.’

  The boats made no sound as they glided in towards the harbour. Francis had had the men oil the rowlocks, and wrap rags around the oars to muffle them. The Maratha crew were mountain men, unused to boat work. Tom and Francis had drilled them all day, out of sight of the castle, and distributed the Kestrel’s men among them to guide. But at night, on the open water, they were still clumsy.

  One of the rowers missed his stroke. Unbalanced, he let go his oar, fell off the thwart and landed on a pile of weapons stacked in the bilge. He cursed; the oar banged against the gunwale. The blades underneath him clashed and jangled.

  ‘Quiet, there!’ Francis hissed.

  The man, chastened, scrambled back onto the thwart. The crew held their oars level for a moment, not daring to breathe, while they listened for any sign they had been discovered.

  All they heard was the chatter of birds and insects from shore, the lap of waves and the dripping of water from their oars. Beside Francis, Merridew whispered a command, and the rowers took up the stroke again.

  ‘I hope they can keep calm when the musket balls start to fly,’ whispered Merridew. ‘If the boom is not cut, we will need to row away in a hurry.’

  ‘It must be cut,’ Francis insisted, more to reassure himself than his crew mate. Off the starboard beam, the castle loomed high on its headland, black against the starlit sky. A solitary light glowed high in one of the towers. Francis imagined a watchman looking out from the window, and wondered if he would notice the small vessels stealing towards the boom. Four longboats, Indian gallivats, each packed with fifty armed men.

  I wish Tom were here, he thought. For all they had suffered together, he felt safe with his uncle. He had assumed Tom would lead the attack – Tom had demanded it – but Shahuji had forbidden him. ‘You are the man who brought us the great guns and showed us how to fire them like the hat-wearers,’ he had said. ‘If you went astray in the dark, or found a wandering patrol, or were sighted by the sentries – it would break the soul of my army.’

  ‘My wife is out there,’ Tom had protested, but before he could argue it further, Francis had stepped in. He knew what he had to do.

  ‘I will lead the attack.’

  Now, in the boat, he did not regret it – though he felt mortally afraid. Ahead, he heard the creak of ropes and timbers. They were approaching the anchorage. He scanned the darkness, looking for the boom and hoping it was not there.

  ‘At least they do not seem to be expecting us,’ Francis murmured. None of the ships carried lights, and no watch fires burned on the shore. Perhaps Angria had pulled all his men back into the castle.

  He felt the sack at his feet. It contained clay pots filled with oil, each with a slow fuse protruding from its lid. They had not dared carry fire in the boats for fear of being seen, but in each boat they had a tinderbox. As soon as they were among Angria’s ships, they would light the fuses and hurl the bombs aboard.

  They had come past the promontory and into the cove. The land rose on both sides, solid black against the speckled sky. They must be nearly at the boom now. Or maybe they had passed it without realizing it. Perhaps the traitor had been as good as his word.

  Francis rose from his bench, swaying with the motion of the boat. He stared forward. Was there something ahead, or was it just a patch of calm on the dark water?

  With a bump, the bow struck something solid. Francis was pitched back and sat down hard on his seat. The men murmured in alarm; some let go of their oars and reached for their weapons.

  ‘Is it the boom?’ called Francis in alarm.

  Merridew reached out and felt around in the darkness. ‘It’s a boat,’ he answered. ‘We are inside the harbour.’

  Francis took a deep breath of relief. He did not doubt the traitor’s greed, but still he had not trusted him. Until that moment, he had not been sure the boom would be open.

  ‘Shall I make ready the grenadoes?’ asked Merridew.

  ‘Wait until we are further in,’ said Francis. ‘Once the first ship goes up, we will need all haste to make good our escape.’

  He checked back to see that the other boats had followed. Rows of wet oars glistened faintly behind. ‘Pass the order back for the last boat to wait here and guard our escape. For the rest – on we go.’

  The boats worked their way through the anchorage. Merridew knelt in the bow with a boat hook, ready to fend off any unexpected obstacle. Now that they were among Angria’s fleet, Francis could see the ships more clearly. Many were small craft, no bigger than his own gallivat, but several were the large
r grabs, snub-nosed vessels whose masts towered over the men in the boat. Francis guessed they would carry substantial magazines of powder, unless Angria had taken it to supplement the castle’s supply. He would want to be well away before those blew.

  They rowed on. There were no more grabs ahead, now: they must have come to the shallower waters at the back of the anchorage, near where the river flowed in. Francis ordered the rowers to stop.

  ‘This is far enough,’ he declared. ‘Ready the grenadoes.’

  He hesitated. This was the moment of maximum danger – deep in the cove, with two score ships between them and safety. And now they had to spark a flame, announcing their presence to anybody with eyes to see.

  But it was what they had come to do. Francis produced the tinder box and laid out a small pile of kindling. Merridew emptied the sack and lined up the grenadoes on the stern thwart. Francis scraped the flint against the steel.

  The first spark had not yet touched the kindling when a shot shattered the still of the night. Francis’ head snapped up, just in time to see the flash of a muzzle flare somewhere near the mouth of the bay.

  ‘Was that our men?’ But even as a second report reached his ears, he knew it could not be. The boat he had left to guard their escape should have been in the middle of the channel. The shot had come from nearer shore.

  ‘Turn the boats around,’ he yelled. ‘We are discovered.’

  The men dropped their weapons and grabbed for the oars. In the dark, many collided with each other. Some pulled in opposite directions and knocked their oars together; the boat spun in an aimless circle.

  ‘Together, damn you,’ Francis shouted. Everything before him was a dark chaos of bodies, blades and oars. He could not even see to straighten them out.

  But suddenly, everything was illuminated. All down the bay, along both shores, huge bonfires burst into life. Their flames rose so high, so bright, Francis was temporarily blinded. More lights appeared on the moored ships, drummed on by the sounds of many feet rushing on deck from their hiding places below.

  Night became day. As his vision adjusted, Francis saw the men in the boat frozen in their panic, as if glimpsed in a flash of lightning. Except the light only got brighter. More fires were lit, beacons on the hilltops. Lights came on inside the castle keep. From the ships, he heard the ominous rumble of cannons being run out through the gun ports.