Wilbur Smith - C09 Birds Of Prey

by C09 Birds Of Prey(Lit)

  Suddenly Sir Francis stepped out into a small clearing in the forest and stopped. The four men who were already there had not noticed him. Two lay like corpses on a battlefield, one still clutching a squat brown hand-blown bottle in his inert fingers, the other drooling strings of saliva from the corner of his mouth as he snored.

  The second pair were wholly absorbed by the stacks of silver guilders and the ivory dice lying between them. One scooped up the dice and rattled them at his ear before rolling them across the patch of beaten bare earth. "Mother of a pig!" he growled. "This is not my lucky day."

  "You should not speak unkindly of the dam who gave birth to you," said Sir Francis softly. "But the rest of what you say is the truth. This is not your lucky day."

  They looked up at their captain in horrified disbelief, but made no attempt to resist or escape as Daniel and Aboli dragged them to their feet and roped them neck to neck in the manner used by the slavers.

  Sir Francis walked over to inspect the still that stood at the far end of the clearing. They had used a black iron pot to boil the fermented mash of old biscuit and peelings, and copper tubing stolen from the ship's stores for the coil. He kicked it over and the colourless spirits flared in the flames of the charcoal brazier on which the pot stood. A row of filled bottles, stoppered with wads of leaves, was laid out beneath a yellow-wood tree. He picked them up one at a time and hurled them against the tree-trunk. As they shattered the evaporating fumes were pungent enough to make his eyes water. Then he walked back to Daniel and Ned, who had kicked the drunks out of their stupor and had dragged them across the clearing to rope them to the other captives.

  "We'll give them a day to sleep it off, Master Ned. Then tomorrow, at the beginning of the afternoon watch, have the ship's company assemble to witness their punishment." He glanced at Big Daniel. "I trust you can still make your cat whistle, Master Daniel."

  "Please, Captain, we meant no harm. just a little fun." They tried to crawl to where he stood, but Aboli dragged them back like dogs on the leash.

  "I will not grudge you your fun," said Sir Francis, "if you do not grudge me mine." he carpenter had knocked up a row of four tripods on the quarterdeck, and the drunkards and gamblers were lashed to them by wrist and ankle. Big Daniel walked down the line and ripped their shirts open from collar to waist, so that their naked backs were exposed. They hung helplessly in their bonds like trussed pigs on the back of a market cart.

  "Every man aboard knows full well that I will tolerate no drunkenness and no gaming, both of which are an offence and abomination in the eyes of the Lord." Sir Francis addressed the company, assembled in solemn ranks in the ship's waist. "Every man aboard knows the penalty. Fifty licks of the cat." He watched their faces. Fifty strokes of the knotted leather thongs could cripple a man for life. A hundred strokes was a sentence of certain and horrible death. "They have earned themselves the full fifty. However, I remember that these four fools fought well on this very deck when we captured this vessel. We still have some hard fighting ahead of us, and cripples are of no use to me when the culver ins are smoking and the cutlasses are out."

  He paused to watch their faces, and saw the terror of the cat in their eyes, mixed with relief that it was not them bound to the tripods. Unlike the captains of many privateers, even some Knights of the Order, Sir Francis took no pleasure in this punishment. Yet he did not flinch from necessity. He commanded a ship full of tough, unruly men, whom he had handpicked for their ferocity and who would take any show of kindness as weakness.

  "I am a merciful man," he told them, and somebody in the rear ranks chuckled derisively. Sir Francis paused and, with a bleak eye, singled out the offender. When the culprit hung his head and shuffled his feet, he went on smoothly, "But these rascals would test my mercy to its limits."

  He turned to Big Daniel, who stood beside the first tripod. He was stripped to the waist and his great muscles bulged in arms and shoulders. He had tied back his long greying hair with a strip Of Cloth, and from his scarred fist the lashes of the cat hung to the planks of the deck like the serpents of Medusa's head.

  "Make it fifteen for each, Master Daniel," Sir Francis ordered, "but comb your cat well between the strokes." Unless Daniel's fingers separated the lashes of the cat after each stroke, the blood would matt them together and clot them "into a single heavy instrument that would cut human flesh like a sword, blade. Even fifteen with an uncombed cat would strip the meat off a man's back down to the vertebrae of his spine.

  "Fifteen it is, Captain," Daniel acknowledged, and shaking out the whip to separate the knotted thongs, stepped up to his first victim. The man twisted his head to watch him over his shoulder, his expression blanched with fear.

  Daniel raised his arm high and let the lash stream out over his shoulder then, with a peculiar grace for such a big man, he swung forward. The lash whistled like the wind in the leaves of a tall tree and clapped loudly on bare skin.

  "One!" chanted the crew in unison, as the victim shrieked on a high note of shock and agony. The lash left a grotesque pattern over his back, each red line studded with a row of brighter crimson stars where the knots had broken the skin. It looked like the sting from the venomous tendrils of a Portuguese man-of-war.

  Daniel combed out the lash, and the fingers of his left hand were smeared with bright fresh blood.

  Two!" The watchers counted, and the man shrieked again and writhed in his bonds, his toes dancing a tattoo of pain on the deck timbers.

  "Avast punishment!" Sir Francis called, as he heard a mild commotion at the head of the companionway leading down to the cabins in the stern. Obediently Daniel lowered the whip, and waited as Sir Francis strode to the ladder.

  Governor van de Velde's plumed Hat appeared above the coaming, followed by his fat flushed face. He stood wheezing in the sunlight, mopping his jowls with a silk handkerchief, and looked about him. His face brightened with interest as he saw the men hanging on the row of tripods. Ja! Goed! I see we are not too late," he said, with satisfaction. Close behind him Katinka emerged from the hatch with a light, eager step, holding her skirts just high enough to reveal satin slippers embroidered with seed pearls.

  "Good morrow, Mijnheer," Sit Francis greeted the Governor with a perfunctory bow, "there is punishment in progress. It is an unsuitable spectacle for a lady of your wife's delicate breeding to witness."

  "Truly, Captain," Katinka laughed lightly as she intervened, "I am not a child. Heaven knows, there is a great paucity of diversion aboard this ship. just think, you would collect no ransom if I were to die of boredom." She tapped Sir Francis's arm with her fan, but he pulled away from this condescending touch, and spoke again to her husband.

  "Mijnheer, I think you should escort your wife to her quarters."

  Katinka stepped between them as though he had not spoken, and beckoned Zelda who followed her. "Place my stool there in the shade." She spread out her skirts as she settled herself on the stool and pouted prettily at Sir Francis. "I will be so quiet that you will not even know that I am here."

  Sir Francis glared at the Governor, but van de Velde spread his pudgy hands in a theatrical gesture of helplessness. "You know how it is, Mijnheer, when a beautiful woman sets her heart on something." He moved up behind Katinka and placed a proud and indulgent hand on her shoulder.

  "I cannot be responsible for your wife's sensibilities, if they should be offended by the spectacle," Sir Francis warned grimly, relieved at least that his men could not understand this exchange in Dutch and be aware that he had bowed to pressure from his captives.

  "I think you need not trouble yourself too deeply. My wife has a strong stomach," van de Velde murmured. During their tour of duty in Kandy and Trincomalee his wife had never missed the executions that were carried out regularly on the parade ground of the fort. Depending on the nature of the offence these punishments had ranged from burning at the stake to branding, gar rotting and beheading. Even on those days when she had been suffering the break-bone pains of dengue fev
er and, in accordance with her doctor's orders, should have remained in bed, her carriage had always been parked in its accustomed place overlooking the scaffold.

  "Then it shall be at your own responsibility, Mijnheer." Sir Francis nodded curtly, and turned back to Daniel. "Proceed with the punishment, Master Daniel," he ordered. Daniel threw back the whip, high behind his shoulder, and the coloured. tattoos that decorated his great biceps rippled with a life of their own.

  "Three!" yelled the crew, as the lash sang and snapped. Katinka stiffened, and leaned forward slightly on her stool.

  "Four!" She started at the crack of the cat and the high scream of pain that followed it. Slowly her face turned pale as candle tallow.

  "Five!" Thin snakes of -scarlet crawled down the man's back and soaked into the waistband of his canvas petticoat. Katinka let her long golden eyelashes droop half closed to hide the gleam in her violet eyes.

  "Six!" Katinka felt a tiny drop of liquid strike her, like a single spot of warm tropical rain. She tore her eyes from the wriggling, moaning body on the tripod, and looked down at her graceful hand.

  A drop of blood, flung from the sodden lash, had landed on her forefinger. Like a ruby set in a precious ring it sparkled against her white skin. She cupped her other hand over it, hiding it in her lap while she glanced around at the faces that surrounded her. Every eye was fixed in total fascination upon the gruesome spectacle in front of them. No one had seen the blood splash her. No. one was watching her now.

  She lifted her hand to her full soft lips as though in an involuntary gesture of dismay. The pink tip of her tongue darted out and dabbed away the droplet from her finger.

  She savoured its metallic salt taste. It reminded her of a lover's sperm, and she felt the viscous wetness welling up between her legs, so that when she rubbed her thighs together they slid against each other, slippery as mating eels.

  There would be a need for lodgings on shore while the Resolution was careened on the beach, her hull cleaned of weed and examined for any sign of shipworm.

  Sir Francis put Hal in charge of building the compound that was to accommodate their hostages. Hal took particular care over the hut that would house the Governor's wife, making it spacious and comfortable and siting it for privacy and security from wild animals. Then he had his men build a stockade of thorn branches around the entire prison compound.

  When darkness brought the first day's work to a halt, he went down to the beach of the lagoon and soaked himself in the warm, brackish waters. Then he scrubbed his body with handfuls of wet sand until his skin tingled. Yet he still felt sullied by the memory of the floggings he had been forced to watch that morning. Only when he smelt the tantalizing odour of hot biscuit floating across the water from the ship's galley did his mood change, and he thrust his legs into his breeches and ran down the beach to scramble into the pinnace as it pulled away from the shore.

  While he had been ashore his father had written on the slate a series of navigational problems for him to solve. He tucked it under his arm, grabbed a pewter mug of small beer, a bowl of fish stew and, holding a hot biscuit between his teeth, darted down the ladder to his cabin, the only place on the ship where he could be alone to concentrate on his task.

  Suddenly he looked up as he heard water being poured in the cabin next door. He had noticed the buckets of fresh river water standing over the charcoal fire in the galley and laughed when the cook had complained bitterly that his fire was being used to heat water to bathe in. Now Hal knew for whom those steaming pails had been prepared. Zelda's guttural tones carried to him through the panel as she harangued Oliver, his father's servant. Oliver's reply was truculent. "I don't understand a word you say, you grisly old bitch. But if you don't like it you can fill the sodding bath yerself."

  Hal grinned to himself, half with amusement and half in anticipation, as he blew out his lamp and knelt to remove the wooden plug from his peephole. He saw that the cabin was filled with clouds of steam, which frosted the mirror on the far bulkhead so that his view was restricted. Zelda was shooing Oliver from the cabin as Hal adjusted his eye to the aperture.

  "All right, you old trull!" Oliver baited her, as he lugged the empty buckets from the cabin. "There's nothing you've got that would keep me here a minute longer."

  When Oliver was gone, Zelda went through into the main cabin and Hal heard her speaking to her mistress. A minute later she ushered Katinka through the doorway. Katinka paused beside the steaming bath and dabbled her fingers in the water. She exclaimed sharply and jerked away her hand. Zelda hurried forward, apologizing, and poured cold water from the bucket that stood beside the bath. Katinka tested the temperature again. This time she nodded with satisfaction, and went to sit on the stool. Zelda came up behind her, lifted the splendid shimmering bundle of her hair with both hands to pile it on top of her head and pinned it there, like a sheaf of ripe wheat.

  Katinka leaned forward and, with her fingertips, wiped a small clear window in the clouded surface of the mirror. She examined the vignette of herself in this clear spot. She thrust out her tongue to examine it for any trace of white coating. It was pink as a rose petal. Then she opened her eyes wide and peered into their depths, touching the skin beneath them with her fingertips. "Look at these horrid wrinkles!" she lamented.

  Zelda denied it vehemently. "Not a single one!"

  "I never want to grow old and ugly." Katinka's expression was tragic.

  "Then you had best die now!" said Zelda. "That's the only way you'll avoid it."

  "What a terrible thing to say. You are so cruel to me," Katinka complained.

  Hal could not understand what they said but the tone of her voice touched him to the depths of his being.

  "Come now," Zelda chided her. "You know you're beautiful."

  "Am I, Zelda? Do you really think so?"

  "Yes. And so do you." Zelda lifted her to her feet. "But if you don't bathe now, you will stink just as beautifully."

  She unfastened her mistress's gown, then moved behind her, lifted the gown from her shoulders and Katinka stood naked before the mirror. Hal's involuntary gasp was muffled by the panel and the small sounds of the ship's hull.

  From that slender neck down to her tiny ankles Katinka's body formed a line of heartbreaking purity. Her buttocks swelled out into two perfectly symmetrical orbs, like a pair of the ostrich eggs Hal had seen offered for sale in the markets of Zanzibar. But there were childish, vulnerable dimples at the back of her knees.

  Katinka's own image in the clouded mirror was ethereal and could not hold her attention for long. She turned away from it and stood facing him. Hal's gaze flew to her breasts. They were large for her narrow shoulders. Each would have filled his cupped hands, yet they were not perfectly round as he had expected them to be.

  Hal stared at them until his eye watered and he was forced at last to blink. Then he let his gaze sink down, over the slight but enthralling bulge of her belly, and onto the misty cloud of fine curls that nestled between her thighs. The lamp-light struck them and they sparked purest gold.

  She stood a long time thus, longer than he had dared hope she might, staring down into the bath while Zelda poured perfumed oil from a crystal bottle into the water, and then knelt to stir it with her hand. Katinka continued to stand, her weight on one leg so that her pelvis was tilted at an enchanting angle, and there was a small sly smile on her lips as she reached up slowly and took one of her nipples between thumb and forefinger. For a moment Hal thought she stared directly at him, and he began to pull away guiltily from his peep-hole.

  Then he knew that it was an illusion for she dropped her eyes and looked down at the fat little berry that poked out rosily between her fingers.

  She rolled it softly back and forth, and while Hal stared in amazement it changed colour and shape. It swelled and hardened and darkened. He had never imagined anything quite like this a little miracle that should have filled him with reverence but instead tore at his loins with the claws of lust.

 
Zelda looked up from the bath she was mixing and, when she saw what her mistress was doing, snapped a prim reprimand. Katinka laughed and stuck out her tongue, but dropped her hand and stepped into the bath. With a luxurious sigh she sank into the hot, perfumed water, until only the thick coil of golden hair on top of her head showed above the rim of the bath.

  Zelda fussed over her, lathering soap on a flannel, wiping and washing, murmuring endearments and cackling at her mistress's replies. Suddenly she rocked back on her heels and gave another instruction, in response to which Katinka stood up and the soapy water cascaded down her body. Her back was turned to Hal, and now the rounds of her bottom glowed pinkly from the hot water. At Zelda's instructions she moved compliantly to allow the old woman to soap down each leg in turn.

  At last Zelda climbed stiffly to her feet and shuffled out of the cabin. As soon as she was gone Katinka, still standing in the bath, glanced over her shoulder. Again, Hal had the guilty illusion that she was looking directly into his own staring eye. It was only for a moment, then slowly and voluptuously she bent. Her buttocks changed shape at the movement. Katinka reached behind herself with both hands.