Wilbur Smith - C09 Birds Of Prey

by C09 Birds Of Prey(Lit)

  "What can I do?" he blurted.

  "I do not know," she said desperately. "This is something beyond my understanding." A spasm of agony seized her in a vice, and her back arched. Then it passed and she pleaded, "I must have my bag. I cannot endure this pain. I have a powder made from the opium poppy."

  Hal sprang to his feet and bounded across the cabin. "Aboli, where are you?" he bellowed. "Bring the bag, and Swiftly!"

  Ned Tyler stood upon the threshold of the door. He held something in his hand and there was a strange expression on his face. "Captain, there is something I must show you."

  "Not now, man, not now." Hal raised his voice again. "Aboli, come quickly."

  Aboli came down the companionway in a rush, carrying the saddle-bags. "What is it, Gundwane?"

  "Sukeena! There is something happening to her. She needs the medicine-" "Captain!" Ned Tyler forced his way past Aboli's bulk into the cabin and seized Hal's arm urgently. "This cannot wait. Look at the dagger. Look at the poi nd He held up the stiletto, and the others stared at it.

  "In God's name!" Hal whispered. "Let it not be so."

  A narrow groove down the length of the blade was filled with a black, tarry paste that had dried hard and shiny.

  "It is an assassin's blade," Ned said quietly. "The groove is filled with poison."

  Hal felt the deck sway under his feet as though the Golden Bough had been struck by a tall wave. His vision went dark. "It cannot be," he said. "Aboli, tell me it cannot be."

  "Be strong," Aboli muttered. "Be strong for her, Gundwane." He gripped Hal's arm.

  The hand steadied Hal and his vision brightened, but when he tried to draw breath the leaden hand of dread crushed in his ribs. "I cannot live without her," he said, like a confused child.

  "Do not let her know," Aboli said. "Do not make the parting harder for her than it need be."

  Hal stared at him uncomprehendingly. Then he began to understand the finality, the significance of that tiny groove in the steel blade, and of the fatal threats that Sam Bowles had shouted at him with the hangman's noose around his neck.

  "Sukeena is going to die," he said, in a tone of bewilderment.

  "This will be harder for you than any fight you have ever fought before, Gundwane."

  With an enormous effort Hal fought to regain control of himself. "Do not show her the dagger," he said to Ned Tyler. "Go! Hurl the cursed thing overboard."

  When he got back to Sukeena he tried to conceal the black despair in his heart. "Aboli has brought your bags." He knelt beside her again. "Tell me how to prepare the potion."

  "Oh, do it swiftly," she pleaded as another spasm gripped her. "The blue flask. Two measures in a mug of hot water. No more than that, for it is powerful."

  Her hand shook violently as she tried to take the mug from him. She had only the use of the one hand now. her wounded arm was swollen and purpled, the once dainty fingers so bloated that the skin threatened to burst open. She had difficulty holding the mug and Hal lifted it to her lips while she gulped down the potion with pathetic urgency.

  She fell back with the effort and writhed on the bunk, drenching the bedclothes with the sweat of agony. Hal lay beside her and held her to his chest, trying to comfort her but knowing too well how futile were his efforts.

  After a while the poppy flower seemed to have its effect. She clung to him and pressed her face into his neck. "I am dying, Gundwane."

  "Do not say so," he begged her.

  "I have known it these many months. I saw it in the stars. That was why I could not answer your question." "Sukeena, my love, I will die with you."

  "No." Her voice was a little stronger. "You will go on. I have travelled with you as far as I am. permitted. But for you the Fates have reserved a special destiny." She rested a while, and he thought that she had fallen into a coma, but then she spoke again. "You will live on. You will have many strong sons and their descendants will flourish in this land of Africa, and make it their own."

  "I want no son but yours," he said. "You promised me a son.

  "Hush, my love, for the son I give you will break your heart." Another terrible convulsion took her, and she screamed in the agony of it. At last, when it seemed she could bear no more, she fell back trembling and wept. He held her and could find no words to tell her of his grief.

  The hours passed, and twice he heard the ship's bell announce the watch changes. He felt her grow weaker and sink away from him. Then a series of powerful convulsions racked her body. When she fell back in his arms, she whispered, "Your son, the son I promised you, has been born." Her eyes were tightly closed, tears squeezing out between the lids.

  For a long minute he did not understand her words. Then, fearfully, he drew back the blanket.

  Between her bloody thighs lay a tiny pink mannikin, glistening wet and bound to her still by a tangle of fleshy cord. The little head was only half formed, the eyes would never open and the mouth would never take suck, nor cry, nor laugh. But he saw that it was, indeed, a boy.

  He took her again in his arms and she opened her eyes and smiled softly. "I am sorry, my love. I have to go now. If you forget all else, remember only this, that I loved you as no other woman will ever be able to love you."

  She closed her eyes and he felt the life go out of her, the great stillness descend.

  He waited with them, his woman and his son, until midnight. Then Althuda brought down a bolt of canvas and sail maker needle, thread and palm. Hal placed the stillborn child in Sukeena's arms and bound him there with a linen winding sheet. Then he and Althuda sewed them into a shroud of bright new canvas, a cannonball at Sukeena's feet.

  At midnight Hal carried the woman and child in his arms up onto the open deck. Under the bright African moon he gave them both up to the sea. They went below the dark surface and left barely a ripple in the ship's wake at their passing.

  "Goodbye, my love," he whispered. "Goodbye, my two darlings."

  Then he went down to the cabin in the stern. He opened Llewellyn's Bible and looked for comfort and solace between its black-leather covers, but found none. or six long days he sat alone by his cabin window. He ate none of the food that Aboli -&-Fbrought him. Sometimes he read from the Bible, but mostly he stared back along the ship's wake. He came up on deck at noon each day, gaunt and haggard, and sighted the sun. He made his calculations of the ship's position and gave his orders to the helm. Then he went back to be alone with his grief.

  At dawn on the seventh day Aboli came to him. "Grief is natural, Gundwane, but this is indulgence. You forsake your duty and those of us who have placed our trust in you. It is enough."

  "It will never be enough." Hal looked at him. "I will mourn her all the days of my life." He stood up and the cabin swam around him, for he was weak with grief and lack of food. He waited for his head to steady and clear. "You are right, Aboli. Bring me a bowl of food and a mug of small beer."

  After he had eaten, he felt stronger. He washed and shaved, changed his shirt and combed his hair back into a thick plait down his back. He saw that there were strands of pure white in the sable locks.

  When he looked in the mirror, he barely recognized the darkly tanned face that stared back at him, the nose as beaky as that of an eagle, and there was no spare flesh to cover the high-ridged cheek-bones or the unforgiving line of the jaw. His eyes were green as emeralds, and with that stone's adamantine glitter.

  I am barely twenty years of age, he thought, with amazement, and yet I look twice that already.

  He picked up his sword from the desk top and slipped it into the scabbard. "Very well, Aboli. I am ready to take up my duty again," he said, and Aboli followed him up onto the deck.

  The boatswain at the helm knuckled his forehead, and the watch on deck nudged each other. Every man was intensely aware of his presence, but none looked in his direction. Hal stood for a while at the rail, his eyes darting keenly about the deck and rigging.

  "Boatswain, hold your luff, damn your eyes!" he snapped at the helmsman. />
  The leech of the main sail was barely trembling as it spilled the wind, but Hal had noticed it and the watch, squatting at the foot of the mainmast, grinned at each other surreptitiously. The captain was in command again.

  At first they did not understand what this presaged. However, they were soon to team the breadth and extent of it. Hal started by speaking to every man of the crew alone in his cabin. After he had asked their names and the village or town of their birth, he questioned them shrewdly as to their service. Meanwhile he was studying each and assessing his worth.

  Three stood out above the others, they had all been watch keepers under Llewellyn's command. The boatswain, John Lovell, was the man who had served under Hal's father.

  "You'll keep your old rating, boatswain," Hal told him, and John grinned.

  "It will be a pleasure to serve under you, Captain."

  "I hope you feel the same way in a month from now," Hal replied grimly.

  The other two were William Stanley and Robert Moone, both coxswains. Hal liked the look of them. Llewellyn had a good eye for judging men, he thought, and shook their hands.

  Big Daniel was his other boatswain, and Ned Tyler, who could both read and write, was mate. Althuda, one of the few other literates aboard, became the ship's writer, in charge of all the documents and keeping them up to date. He was Hal's closest remaining link with Sukeena, and Hal felt the greatest affection for him and wished to keep him near at hand. They could share each other's grief.

  John Lovell and Ned Tyler went through the ship's roster with Hal and helped him draw up the watch-bill, the nominal list by which every man knew to which watch he was quartered and his station for every purpose.

  As soon as this was done Hal inspected the ship. He started on the main deck and then, with his two boatswains, opened every hatch. He climbed and sometimes crawled into every part of the hull, from her bilges to her maintop. In her magazine he opened three kegs, chosen at random, and assessed the quality of her gunpowder and slow-match.

  He checked off her cargo against the manifest, and was surprised and pleased to find the amount of muskets and lead shot she carried, together with great quantities of trade goods.

  Then he ordered the ship hove to, and a longboat lowered. He had himself rowed around the ship so he could judge her trim. He moved some of the culver ins to gun ports further aft, and ordered the cargo swung out on deck and repacked to establish the trim he favoured. Then he exercised the ship's company in sail setting and altering, sailing the Golden Bough through every point of the compass and at every attitude to the wind. This went on for almost a week, as he called out the watch below at noon or in the middle of the night to shorten or increase sail and push the ship to the limits of her speed.

  Soon he knew the Golden Bough as intimately as a lover. He found out how close he could take her to the wind, and how she loved to run before it with all her canvas spread. He had a bucket crew wet down her sails so they would better hold the wind, and then, when she was in full flight, took her speed through the water with glass and log timed from bow to stern. He found out how to coax the last yard of speed out of her, and how to have her respond to the helm like a fine hunter to the reins.

  The crew worked without complaint, and Aboli heard them talking among themselves in the forecastle. Far from complaining, they seemed to be enjoying the change from Llewellyn's more complacent command.

  "The young "un is a sailor. The ship loves him. He can drive the Bough to her limit, and make her fly through the water, he can."

  "He's happy to drive us to the limit, also," another opined.

  "Cheer up, all you lazy layabouts, I reckon there'll be prize money galore at the end of this voyage."

  Then Hal worked them at the guns, running them out then in again, until the men sweated, strained and grinned as they cursed him for a tyrant. Then he had the gun crews fire at a floating keg, and cheered with the best of them as the target shattered to the shot.

  In between times, he exercised them with the cutlass and the pike, and he fought alongside them, stripped to the waist and matching himself against Aboli, Big Daniel or John Lovell, who was the best swordsman of the new crew.

  The Golden Bough sailed on around the bulge of the southern African continent and Hal headed her up into the north. Now with every league they sailed the sea changed its character. The waters took on a vivid indigo hue that stained the sky the same colour. They were so clear that, leaning over the bows, Hal could see the pods of porpoises four fathoms down, racing ahead of the bows and frolicking like a pack of boisterous spaniels, until they arched up to the surface. As they broke through it he could see the nostril on top of their head open to breathe, and they looked up at him with a merry eye and a knowing grin.

  The flying fish were their outriders, sailing ahead of them on flashing silver wings, and the mountains of towering cumulus clouds were the beacons that beckoned them ever northwards.

  When they sailed into the great calms he would not let his crew rest, but lowered the boats and raced watch against watch, the oars churning the water white. Then at the end of the course he had them board the Golden Bough as though she were an enemy, while he and Aboli and Big Daniel opposed them and made them fight for a footing on the deck.

  In the windless heat of the tropics, while the Bough rolled gently on the sluggish swells and the empty sails slatted and lolled, he raced the hands in relay teams to the top of the mainmast and down, with an extra tot of rum as the prize.

  Within weeks the men were fit and lean and bursting with high spirits, spoiling for a fight. Hal, however, was plagued by a nagging worry that he shared with nobody, not even Aboli. Night after night he sat at his desk in the main cabin, not daring to sleep, for he knew that the grief and the memories of the woman and the child he had lost would haunt his dreams, and he studied, the charts and tried to puzzle out a solution.

  He had barely forty men under his command, only just sufficient to work the ship, but too few by far to fight her. If they met again, the Buzzard would be able to send a hundred men onto the Golden Bough's deck. If they were to be able to defend themselves, let alone seek employment in the service of the Prester, then Hal must find seamen.

  When he perused the charts he could find few ports where he might enlist trained seamen. Most were under the control of the Portuguese and the Dutch, and they would not welcome an English frigate, especially one whose captain was intent on seducing their sailors into his service.

  The English had not penetrated this far ocean in any force. A few traders had factories on the Indian continent, but they were under the thrall of the Great Mogul, and, besides, to reach them would mean a voyage of several thousand miles out of his intended course.

  Hal knew that on the south-east shore of the long island of St. Lawrence, which was also called Madagascar, the French Knights of the Order of the Holy Grail had a safe harbour which they called Fort Dauphin. If he called in there, as an English Knight of the Order he could expect a welcome but little else for his comfort, unless some rare circumstance such as a cyclone had caused a wreck and left sailors in the port without ship. However, he decided that he must take that chance and make Fort Dauphin his first call, and laid his course for the island.

  As he sailed on northwards, with Madagascar as his goal, Africa was always there off the larboard beam. At times the land dreamed in the blue distance, and at other times it was so close that they could smell its peculiar aroma. It was the peppery scent of spice and the rich dark odour of the earth, like new-baked biscuit hot from the oven.

  Often Jiri, Matesi and Kimatti clustered at the rail, pointing at the green hills and the lacy lines of surf, and talking together quietly in the language of the forests. When there was a quiet hour, Aboli would climb to the masthead and stare across at the land. When he descended his expression was sad and lonely.

  Day after day they saw no sign of other men. There were no towns or ports along the shore that they could spy out, and no sail upon the sea
, not even a canoe or coasting dhow.

  It was not until they were less than a hundred leagues south of Cap St. Marie, the southernmost point of the island, that they raised another sail. Hal stood the ship to quarters and had the culverin loaded with grape and the slow-match lit, for out here beyond the Line he dared take no ship on trust.

  When they were almost within hail of the other ship, it broke out its colours. Hal was delighted to see the Union flag and the croix pott6e of the Order streaming from her masthead. He replied with the same show of cloth and both ships hove to within hail of each other.

  "What ship?" Hal asked, and the reply came back across the blue swells, "The Rose of Durham. Captain Welles." She was an an ned trader, a caravel with twelve guns a side.

  Hal lowered a longboat and had himself rowed across. He was greeted at the entry port by a spry, elfin captain of middle years. "In Arcadia habito."