by Wilbur Smith
Hannah had not noticed their reaction. She took a gulp of her gin, and laughed raucously. ‘In the last six months three VOC ships have disappeared from the Ocean of the Indies. Everybody knows it’s Jangiri’s doing. They do say he’s cost the Company a million guilders already.’ Her eyes lit up with wonder. ‘A million guilders! I did not know there was that much money in the world.’ She leaned across the table to stare into Hal’s face. Her breath smelt like a dung-heap, but Hal did not recoil. He did not want to risk giving her offence.
‘You look like somebody I know.’ She puzzled over it for a moment. ‘Were you ever here at Good Hope before? I never forget a face.’
Hal shook his head and Big Daniel chuckled. ‘Perhaps, missus, if he showed you his pink end you would recognize it for certain, better than his face, that is.’
Hal frowned at him but by this time the gin bottle was half empty and Hannah cackled. ‘I’d pay a million guilders for sight of that!’ She leered at Hal. ‘Do you want to come in the back with Hannah? There’ll be no charge for it, such a lovely man you are.’
‘Next time,’ Hal promised her.
‘I do know you,’ she insisted. ‘When you smile like that, I know you. It’ll come back to me. I never forget a face.’
‘Tell me more about Jangiri,’ he suggested to divert her, but she was losing her wits now.
She refilled her tumbler and held up the empty bottle. ‘Everyone I love goes off and leaves me,’ she said, tears flooding her eyes. ‘Even the bottle don’t stay with me long.’
‘Jangiri,’ Hal insisted. ‘Tell me about Jangiri.’
‘He’s a bloody Mussulman pirate. He burns Christian sailors just to hear them scream.’
‘Where does he come from? How many ships does he command? What strength are they?’
‘One of my friends was on a ship that Jangiri chased but didn’t catch,’ she slurred. ‘He’s a lovely boy. He wants to marry me and take me home to Amsterdam.’
‘Jangiri?’ Big Daniel asked.
‘No, you stupid clod of earth.’ Hannah bristled. ‘My boyfriend. I forget his name, but he wants to marry me. He saw Jangiri. He was lucky to escape that bloodthirsty heathen.’
‘Where did this happen, Hannah? When did your friend run across Jangiri?’
‘Not two months past – off the Fever Coast it was, near the isle of Madagascar.’
‘What force did Jangiri have?’ Hal pressed.
‘Many great ships,’ Hannah said uncertainly. ‘A fleet of warships. My friend’s ship fled.’
Hal realized that she was floundering. There was little more she could tell him of importance. But he asked a last question. ‘Do you know which route the VOC convoy takes on its way to Batavia?’
‘South,’ she said. ‘They say far south. I’ve heard that they keep well clear of Madagascar and the islands, for that’s where Jangiri skulks, the filthy heathen.’
‘When will the convoy in the bay sail?’ Hal asked.
But she was gone into the fogs of alcohol. ‘Jangiri is the devil,’ she whispered. ‘He is the Antichrist, and all true Christians should dread him.’ Slowly her head sagged forward, then flopped face down into the puddle of gin on the tabletop.
Daniel took a hank of her greasy grey hair and lifted her head to look into her eyes. ‘The lady has left us,’ he said, and let it drop again to hit the wood with a crack. She rolled off the bench and lay on the floor, snoring loudly. Hal took a silver ten-guilder coin from the purse on his sword-belt and pushed it down Hannah’s bodice.
‘That’s more than she’ll earn on her back in a month of Sundays,’ Big Daniel grunted.
‘But well worth it.’ Hal stood up. ‘That’s better intelligence than we could get from Admiral van Ruyters himself.’
On the beach Alf Wilson was waiting for them with the longboat. As they rowed back across the bay to the Seraph Hal sat quietly, digesting all the news Hannah had given him, and weaving it into his plans. By the time he had climbed the rope-ladder to the main deck he knew what he had to do.
‘Some things seem clear from what Daniel’s ladyfriend told us last night.’ Hal looked around at the intent faces of his officers, who were crowded into the stern cabin. ‘The first is that Jangiri has his nest somewhere along here.’ Hal leaned over the chart spread on his desk and placed his finger on the outline of Madagascar. ‘From here he can harry the trade routes to the south and east with the greatest ease.’
Aboli grunted, ‘Finding his sally-port will be the trick. He does not have to use one of the big islands as his base. There are hundreds of other smaller ones, scattered over two thousand leagues from the Oman coast in the Arabian Sea to the Mascarene islands in the south.’
‘You are right.’ Hal nodded. ‘Added to those, there are almost certainly dozens of other islands we do not know, that are neither named nor shown on any chart. We might sail a hundred years and not discover or explore them all.’ He looked around their faces. ‘If we cannot go to him, then what should we do?’
‘Bring him to us,’ said Ned Tyler.
Again Hal nodded. ‘Bring him out of his lair. Give him a bait to tease him. The place to do that is off the Fever Coast. We will have to cruise off the islands of Madagascar and Zanzibar, trail our cloak along the African shore.’ They muttered in agreement.
‘You can be certain he has agents in every port in the Indian Ocean. They send him word of every prize that calls,’ Daniel told them. ‘At least, that’s what I would do, if I were a heathen pirate.’
‘Yes.’ Hal turned to him. ‘We’ll call in at every port, let them know how rich we are, and how poorly armed.’
‘Two fighting ships of thirty-six guns apiece?’ Ned Tyler chuckled. ‘That’s enough force to daunt any pirate.’
‘One ship,’ Hal said, and smiled when they looked askance. ‘I will send the Yeoman on alone to Bombay as soon as she arrives here. She can carry our passengers and all the urgent cargo of which we can rid ourselves and cram into her hold. We will sail the Fever Coast on our own.’
‘The Seraph is still a ship of force,’ Alf Wilson pointed out. ‘Enough to frighten off most pirates.’
‘She will not look like one by the time we are ready to sail.’ Hal unrolled the drawings of the ship’s hull, on which he had been working since they had crossed the equator. ‘A Trojan horse, gentlemen. That is what we shall prepare for Mr Jangiri.’
They crowded round the desk, voicing approval, making eager comment and suggestion as they began to see what Hal had in mind.
‘What we want to make her into is a rich, fat, unarmed trader. The gunports first . . .’
The next morning, Hal had himself rowed round the ship as she lay at anchor. Ned Tyler and the two ship’s carpenters were with him, and he pointed out to them the changes he wanted made to the Seraph’s appearance. ‘We can leave all the carving and gold work as they are.’ He pointed to the beautiful decorative features on the stern and bows. ‘They give her a nice decadent air, like the Lord Mayor’s barge.’
‘More like a French whorehouse.’ Big Daniel sniffed.
‘Besides which Lord Childs will be greatly put out if we damage his little masterpiece.’ He pointed to the Seraph’s sides. ‘It’s the gunports that must be our prime concern.’ The sills of the gunports were picked out in gold leaf, which gave a pleasing chequered effect to the hull but emphasized the Seraph’s warlike capability. ‘You will begin work on them first,’ Hal ordered the carpenters. ‘I want the joints of the lids to the gunports concealed. Caulk them with tar and repaint them so they blend into the timber-work of the hull.’ For an hour longer they studied the ship from the longboat and decided on other small touches to the Seraph’s outline that would make her appear more innocuous.
As they rowed back to the ship, Hal remarked to Big Daniel, ‘One of the reasons I anchored so far off-shore, apart from out-ranging the guns on the fort, was to keep out of sight of prying eyes on the beach.’ He nodded at the bum-boats and other small craft still cluste
red around the ship. ‘As soon as the work begins, I want you to warn off those boats. We must believe that Jangiri has agents in the settlement, and act on that belief. I don’t want beady eyes watching everything we do, and busy tongues passing on the news.’
Once back in his cabin, Hal penned a letter to Mr Beatty addressed to his lodgings in the town, explaining that he and his family would complete the voyage to Bombay in the Yeoman of York, when she arrived, and that Guy would accompany him. Hal was glad to arrange this by note, rather than having to persuade Mr Beatty to make the change by discussion and argument.
‘Well, now!’ he said aloud as he sanded the ink on the paper. ‘That arrangement will also take care of Master Tom’s pugilistic and amorous proclivities.’ Once he had placed his wax seal on it, he sent for Big Daniel to carry the letter ashore. ‘No sign of the Yeoman yet?’ he demanded, as soon as Big Daniel stuck his head in at the door.
‘Nothing yet, Captain.’
‘Tell the officer of the watch to call me the minute she puts her topmasts above the horizon.’ He had given the same order more than once before, and Big Daniel rolled his eyes and sucked his gums to illustrate his forbearance. Hal concealed a smile. Big Daniel was allowed such familiarity.
He stood on the scaffold in the bright morning sunlight. He was still only a lad, perhaps eighteen years of age, certainly no older. He was very good-looking – Hannah Maakenberg loved it when they were. He was tall and straight-limbed, with long waving hair, raven’s-wing black, falling to his shoulder. He was terrified, which excited her as it excited the large crowd around her. Every man, woman and child in the settlement was there, every burgher and housewife, slave and Hottentot. They were in high spirits, boisterous and playful. Even the very young children were among them, infected by the spontaneous gaiety of the occasion, they chased each other, squealing, between the legs of the adults.
Beside Hannah stood one of the free burgher’s wives, a plump, kindly looking woman in an apron dusted with flour. She had obviously come directly from baking bread in her kitchen. Her tiny daughter clutched at her apron. She was an angelic child, who sucked her thumb and stared solemnly at the man on the scaffold with huge blue eyes.
‘It’s her first execution,’ the mother explained to Hannah. ‘She feels a little strange and afraid of all the people.’
The prisoner’s hands were manacled behind his back. He wore ragged seaman’s petticoats and his feet were bare. The magistrate stepped to the front of the scaffold to read the charge and the sentence, and the crowd swayed and jostled with anticipation.
‘Now hear the verdict of the court of the colony of Good Hope, by the grace of God and the power vested in me by Charter of the States General of the Republic of Holland.’
‘Get on with it!’ howled one of the burghers at the back of the crowd. ‘Let’s see him do his little dance for us.’
‘It is hereby decreed that, Hendrik Martinus Ockers, having been found guilty of the crime of murder . . .’
‘I was there,’ Hannah told the housewife beside her proudly. ‘I saw it all. I even gave evidence at the court, yes, I did!
The woman looked suitably impressed. ‘Why did he do it?’ she asked.
‘Why do any of them do it?’ Hannah shrugged. ‘They was both pissing, puking drunk.’ She remembered the two figures circling each other with the long knives gleaming in the eerie lantern light, throwing distorted shadows on the tavern walls, and the shouts and the stamping of the watchers.
‘How did he do it?’
‘A knife, dearie. He was quick, for all the liquor in his belly. Like a panther, he was.’ She made a slashing gesture. ‘Like that, right across his belly. Opened him up like a fish on the block. His guts fell clean out of him, tangled in his feet, so he tripped and fell on his face.’
‘Ooh!’ The housewife shuddered with horrified fascination. ‘Like animals, these sailors.’
‘All of them, dearie, not just the sailors.’ Hannah nodded primly. ‘All men are the same.’
‘And that’s God’s truth!’ The woman agreed, picked up the child and placed her on her shoulder.
‘There you are, lieveling. You will get a better view from up there,’ she told her.
The magistrate reached the end of the proclamation of sentence: ‘The aforesaid Hendrik Martinus Ockers is hereby condemned to death by hanging. Sentence to be carried out in public on the parade ground of the castle on the morning of the third day of September at ten of the clock in the forenoon.’ He moved heavily down the ladder from the scaffold and one of the guards helped him down the last few steps. The executioner, who had been standing behind the condemned man, stepped forward and placed a black cotton bag over his head.
‘I hate it when they do that,’ Hannah grumbled. ‘I like to see his face when he’s on the end of the rope, all purple and screwed up.’
‘Slow John never covered their faces,’ the woman beside her agreed.
‘Ah! Do you remember Slow John? He was an artist.’
‘I’ll never forget when he executed Sir Franky, the English pirate. That was a show.’
‘Remember it like yesterday,’ Hannah agreed. ‘Worked on him for nearly half an hour, before he chopped him—’ She broke off as something else nudged her memory. Something to do with the pirates, and the pretty lad on the scaffold. She shook her head with irritation – the gin had fuddled her mind.
The executioner placed the noose over the prisoner’s head and pulled it snug under his left ear. The lad was trembling now. Hannah wished again that she could see his face. The whole scene reminded her of someone.
The executioner stood back, and picked up his heavy wooden mallet. He took a full swing at the wedge that held the trap-door. The condemned man gave a pitiful cry: ‘In God’s name, have mercy!’
The watchers hooted with laughter. The executioner swung the mallet again and the wedge was knocked out. With a crash the trap flew open, and the man dropped through. He came up short on the rope’s end, his neck stretched and his head jerked to the side. Hannah heard the vertebrae snap like a dry twig, and was disappointed again. Slow John would have judged it better, and had him kicking and jerking at the rope’s end for many tantalizing minutes with the life being slowly choked out of him. This executioner was ham-fisted, lacking subtlety. For Hannah it was all over too swiftly. A few shuddering tremors ran through the condemned man’s body and then he hung quietly, revolving slowly on the noose, his neck twisted at an impossible angle.
Hannah turned away, disgruntled. Then she stopped. The memory that had eluded her so long came back with a rush. ‘The pirate’s boy!’ she said. ‘Sir Franky, the pirate’s boy. I never forget a face. I said I knew him.’
‘Who are you talking about?’ the woman with the child on her shoulder asked. ‘Franky’s boy? Who’s Franky’s boy?’
Hannah did not bother to reply but she hurried away, hugging her secret to herself, trembling with excitement. The memory of the events of twenty years ago crowded back. The trial of the English pirates; Hannah had been young and pretty in those days, and she had given one of the guards a little something for free to let her into the courtroom. She had followed the entire trial from her seat in the back row. It had been better entertainment than any play or fair.
She saw again the lad, Franky’s son, chained to the pirate, standing side by side with him, as old Governor van der Velde sentenced the one to death and the other to a life sentence at hard labour on the castle walls. What was the lad’s name? When she closed her eyes she could see his face so clearly in her mind’s eye.
‘Henry!’ she exclaimed. ‘Henry Courtney!’
Then three years later the pirates, led by this same Henry Courtney, had broken out of their dungeon in the castle. Hannah would never forget the sounds of shouting and fighting and of musket fire, then the earth-shaking explosion and the vast towering cloud of smoke and dust that rose high in the air as the English ruffians blew up the powder magazine in the castle. With her own eyes she had wa
tched them gallop out of the castle gates in the carriage they had stolen, and take the road that led out into the wilderness. Although the troops from the garrison had pursued them as far as the savage mountains to the north, they had got clean away. After that, she remembered seeing the reward posters in the market, and in every tavern along the waterfront.
‘Ten thousand guilders!’ she whispered to herself. ‘It was ten thousand guilders.’ She tried to imagine such a vast sum of money. ‘With that money, I could go back to Amsterdam. I could live like a grand lady for the rest of my life.’ Then her spirits plunged. Will they still pay the reward after all these years? Her whole body sagged with despair as the great fortune receded from her grasp. I will send Annetjie to find out from her sport at the castle. Annetjie was one of the younger, prettier whores who worked the taverns along the waterfront. Among her regular clients was the Governor’s clerk, her steamer, in the vernacular of the trade. Hannah lifted her skirts and set off at a run for the waterfront. She knew that Annetjie had a room in Die Malmok, one of the most popular of the sailors’ taverns, named after the wandering albatross.
She was in luck: Annetjie was still stretched out on her stained mattress in the tiny room beneath the eaves. The room stank of men’s sweat and lust. Annetjie sat up with her dense black curls in a tangle and her eyes dulled with sleep. ‘What are you waking me for at this hour? Are you mad?’ she whined angrily. Hannah flopped down beside her and blurted out her story.
The girl sat up and wiped the cheesy granules of sleep from the inner corners of her eyes. Her expression changed as she listened. ‘How much?’ she asked in disbelief, and crawled off the mattress to gather up her clothing, which was scattered across the floor. ‘What ship is this kerel on?’ she demanded, as she pulled her shift over her head and down over her wobbling white bosom. Hannah baulked at the question. There were over twenty ships in the bay, and she had no idea which one her prey was on. Then her expression cleared. Henry Courtney was an English pirate, and there were only two English ships in the flotilla lying out there at anchor. He must be on one of them. ‘You let me worry about that, lieveling,’ she told the girl. ‘All you have to do is find out if there is still a reward, and how we can collect it.’