by Wilbur Smith
‘Heave!’ Hal called sharply, and they lifted Rachid clear just as the great jaws snapped closed, plucking him out of their reach with only inches to spare.
‘It is still not too late,’ Hal said, just loudly enough to reach Rachid through his terror and failing strength. ‘Tell me and end it swiftly.’
‘I do not know where you can find al-Auf, but I know a man who does,’ Rachid answered, his voice broken and rough with terror.
‘Give me his name.’
‘His name is Grey effendi in Zanzibar. He was the one who told us of the great treasure you carry in your ship.’
‘Down!’ Hal gave the signal, and as they lowered Rachid, the tiger shark rushed up to meet him. This time Hal did not attempt to pluck him away – he was of no further value. He sent Rachid to his punishment without a qualm, and watched dispassionately as the shark’s jaws closed over the man’s head, engulfing him to the shoulders.
The shark hung from the rope, flexing and whipping its tail from side to side, jack-knifing its massive body, working its fangs in a shearing action, cutting through flesh and bone. Its great weight and the violence of its movements jerked the men on the other end of the rope off their feet, and sent them skidding across the deck.
Then the fangs met and sheared away Rachid’s head cleanly. The shark dropped back, leaving his corpse dangling and twitching over the surface, blood spraying from the severed neck and clouding the waters.
Hal drew his sword from the sheath on his belt and with a single back-handed slash cut the rope. The headless body dropped into the sea and sank slowly, turning end over end in dark curtains of its own blood. The shark came back and, like a dog accepting a titbit, took the body almost gently in its half-moon mouth and swam away with it into the deeper water. Hal moved away from the ship’s side.
‘The tide will turn in an hour, Mr Tyler.’ He looked up at the dead men hanging at the yard-arm. ‘Rid the ship of those. Throw them overboard. We will sail for Zanzibar on the ebb tide.’
They rounded the point of Ras Ibn Khum with every sail set to the royals and came on to the wind in a broad reach.
‘Your new course is north-east by north, Mr Tyler,’ Hal said. ‘With this wind, we should be off Zanzibar again before sunset tomorrow evening.’
Hal did not wish to give forewarning of his arrival so during the night he hove to in the channel, and took the Seraph into Zanzibar harbour in the dawn. He dipped his colours in courtesy to the fort, and the moment the anchor grabbed a hold on the bottom he ordered the longboat away. Then he hurried down to his cabin and took the brace of double-barrelled rifled pistols from his desk and thrust them into his sword-belt.
As he stepped out of his cabin, Tom was waiting for him. He had his cap on his head, a sword on his belt and boots on his usually bare feet.
‘I wish to come with you, sir,’ Tom said. Hal hesitated – there might be fighting ashore – but Tom went on quickly, ‘I shared the oath with you, Father.’
‘Come on, then.’ Hal ran onto the deck. ‘Be ready to sail again at a moment’s notice,’ he told Ned Tyler, and went down into the longboat with Tom and a dozen men. At the quay he left Alf Wilson and four seamen to take care of the boat. ‘Stand off from the quay, but be ready to come in and pick us up in a hurry,’ he told Alf, then said to Aboli, ‘Take us back to the consul’s house. Go swiftly. Stay together.’
They went through the narrow streets at a trot, in double file, shoulder to shoulder, their weapons at the ready. When they reached the front door of Grey’s house Hal nodded at Aboli, who beat on the carved panels with the butt of the pike he carried. The blows reverberated through the quiet house. After an interval they heard shuffling footsteps approaching from the other side of the door, and the latch was lifted. An ancient female slave stared out at the party of armed men. Her wrinkled features crumpled in consternation, and she tried to slam the door shut again. Aboli blocked it with his shoulder.
‘You have nothing to fear, old mother,’ Hal told her gently. ‘Where is your master?’
‘I dare not say,’ the woman whispered, but her eyes flicked to the broad stone staircase that led from the courtyard to the upper storeys of the house.
‘Bolt the door again,’ Hal ordered Aboli, ‘and leave two men to guard it.’ Then he went up the staircase two steps at a time, and came out at the second level. He paused there and glanced around the salon in which he stood. It was richly furnished with ornamental rugs and heavy dark furniture inlaid with ivory and mother-of-pearl. Hal knew the usual layout of this type of mansion: the zenana, the women’s quarters, would be on the top floor; where he stood were the main living rooms, with the master’s suite beyond the elaborately carved ebony and ivory screens at the far end. Hal slipped quietly between the screens into a smaller salon. The floor was strewn with silk-covered cushions and in the centre a hookah pipe stood on a low table, which was cluttered with used food bowls. The room reeked with the smell of stale bhang smoke, the heavy aroma of food spices and the peculiar musky odour of Grey’s disease.
Hal crossed to another set of screens and stepped through into the room beyond. A low bed filled half the floor space. He stopped in the doorway, taken by surprise. On the bed was a tangle of bodies, white limbs and brown entwined. It took a long moment for Hal to realize what he was seeing. Consul Grey lay upon his back, his swollen limbs spread, his huge belly distended as though he were in the last stages of child-bearing, his chest covered with an animal skin of coarse, curling black hair. His grossly deformed legs were studded with open red ulcers, the stigmata of his disease. The room reeked so strongly of the yellow discharge from these uncovered sores, that Hal felt his gorge rise.
Two slave-girls were kneeling over him, one above his face, the other straddling his body. One raised her head. Hal and she stared at each other, until she screamed. Both girls sprang up and fled from the room, disappearing beyond another screen like a pair of startled gazelles, leaving Grey wallowing upon the bed.
Grey heaved himself on to his side and lifted himself on one elbow. ‘You!’ He gaped at Hal. ‘I did not expect—’ He broke off, and his mouth opened and closed without uttering another sound.
‘I know full well what you expected, sir,’ Hal told him. ‘And I apologize for disappointing you.’
‘You have no right to trespass in my house.’ Grey wiped the girl’s juices from his face with the back of his hand. Then surprise gave way to anger and he snarled, ‘I have armed guards. I shall summon them.’ He opened his mouth to shout, but Hal placed the point of his sword against the man’s throat. Grey subsided like a punctured bladder and tried to wriggle away from the steel.
‘Cover yourself.’ Hal picked up a silk robe from the floor beside the bed and threw it at him. ‘The sight of your carcass sickens me.’
Awkwardly, Grey drew on the robe and seemed to recover a little of his poise and confidence. ‘I did not mean to threaten you,’ he smiled ingratiatingly, ‘but you startled me. Your arrival was at an embarrassing moment.’ He winked lewdly. ‘And I expected you to be halfway to Good Hope by this time.’
‘Again I must apologize,’ Hal said. ‘I have not been altogether honest with you. I am not a trader, nor am I a servant of the East India Company. My true name is Henry Courtney. I am a servant of His Majesty King William.’
‘We are all servants of the King.’ Grey’s tone was reverent and his expression sanctimonious. He wriggled to the edge of the bed and, with a great effort, hoisted himself to his feet.
Hal placed the point of his sword on Grey’s distended belly and gently pushed him down again. ‘Pray, do not discommode yourself,’ he said politely. ‘When I say that I am the King’s servant, I mean that I carry the King’s commission. Included among the powers conferred upon me by this commission is the power of summary trial and execution of any person taken in the act of piracy, or in aiding and abetting any person in the crime of piracy upon the high seas.’ Hal drew the rolled parchment from under his cloak. ‘Do you wish to pe
ruse it?’
‘I am sure it is as you say.’ Grey spoke lightly and with assumed confidence, but his colour had faded to a sickly sepia. ‘However, I am at a loss to see how this affects me.’
‘I beg you to allow me to explain.’ Hal slipped the parchment back into the lining of his cloak. ‘There is no cargo of treasure aboard my ship. You were the only person who believed that. I told you as a test of your honesty. I was baiting a trap for the pirate known as al-Auf.’
Grey stared at him, and sweat broke out in a rash of droplets across his chin and forehead.
‘I also told you the date on which I would sail from Zanzibar, and the route I would take. Al-Auf could not have waylaid my ship without that information. He had been given the precise intelligence that could only have come from one person.’ Hal touched his chest lightly with the sword-point. ‘From you, sir.’
‘That is not true!’ Grey gobbled frantically. ‘I am a loyal servant of the King, a man of honour.’
‘If further evidence were needed, one of al-Auf’s men has given me your name. You are in league with the corsair. You are guilty of aiding and abetting the enemies of the King. We need not debate this further. I condemn you to death by hanging.’ He raised his voice. ‘Aboli!’
Aboli appeared at his shoulder, his tattooed face so forbidding that Grey rolled to the far side of the bed and quaked like a beached jelly-fish.
‘Rig the rope for an execution.’
Aboli had the coiled rope over his shoulder. He strode to the window, which reached from floor to ceiling, and kicked open the carved shutters. He looked down into the courtyard where the fountain splashed and gurgled, shook out the noose and let it drop and dangle halfway down the wall. Then he tied the end to the central upright frame of the window with a bowline knot. ‘The drop is too long for such a barrel of lard. It will pull off his head like a chicken,’ Aboli grunted, and shook his head. ‘It will be messy.’
‘We cannot be overly neat and tidy about this,’ Hal said. ‘Put him into the noose.’
Grey screamed and floundered on the bed. ‘For God’s sake, Courtney, you cannot do this to me.’
‘I think I can. Let us put my theory to the test.’
‘I am an Englishman! I demand a fair trial by an English judge!’
‘You have just had one,’ Hal pointed out. ‘Mr Fisher, please help to prepare the prisoner for punishment!’
‘Aye, Captain.’ Big Daniel led his men into the room and they surrounded the man on the bed.
‘I am a sick man!’ Grey blubbered.
‘We have the perfect cure for whatever ails you,’ said Big Daniel calmly. He rolled Grey onto his belly and, with a light line, pinioned his hands behind his back. His men hoisted the heavy body off the bed and dragged the consul to the window. Aboli had the noose ready and slipped it over his head. They turned Grey to face Hal again. They had to support him for his grossly swollen legs could not carry his weight.
‘You will be gratified to hear that your ally, Musallim bin-Jangiri, also known as al-Auf, slipped out of the trap I laid for him.’ Hal sat down on the end of the bed. ‘He has disappeared out into the ocean. We must presume that he has slunk back to his lair to lick the wounds I was able to inflict upon him.’
‘I know nothing of this.’ Grey hung in the arms of his captors, shaking wildly with terror. ‘You must believe me, Sir Henry.’
Hal went on as if he had not spoken. ‘My problem is exacerbated by al-Auf’s capture of my youngest son. I am sure you will appreciate that I will do anything to rescue my boy and I think you know where I can find him.’ He reached out and placed the point of his sword at Grey’s throat. ‘Let him stand on his own two feet,’ he said to the men who held him, and they stepped aside.
‘I beg of you, Sir Henry!’ Grey swayed in the open window. ‘I am an old man.’
‘And an evil one,’ Hal agreed, and pressed the sword a little harder against his throat. A bright drop of blood welled up from the pricked skin and stained the tip of the engraved Toledo blade. ‘Where can I find al-Auf? And my son?’
A bubbling, spluttering sound came from under Grey’s robe and his liquid faeces, brown as tobacco juice, streamed down his bloated legs to puddle on the floor between his feet. The stench was sharp and nauseating in the small hot room, but Hal’s expression did not change. ‘Where can I find my son?’ he repeated.
‘The Flower of the Sea!’ Grey screamed. ‘Flor de la Mar, the old Portuguese fort on the island. That is al-Auf’s sally-port.’
‘I have to point out to you, sir, that your ability to provide this information confirms your guilt beyond any shadow of doubt.’
Slowly he increased the pressure of the steel at Grey’s throat. Grey tried to resist it, arching his back, while his feet slid in his own dung until his heels were over the sill of the open window. He teetered there a moment and then, with a despairing wail, fell out backwards. The rope hissed after him, then came up with a thump as Grey’s full weight stretched it hard over the sill.
Hal led his band down the staircase into the courtyard. There he paused to glance at the bloated body, which dangled quiescent at the rope’s end. Grey was suspended over the fish pool. From the lining of his cloak Hal drew the parchment he had prepared the night before, and handed it to Aboli. ‘Hang that around his neck.’
Aboli jumped onto the parapet of the fountain and reached up to slip the loop of twine over Grey’s head. The parchment hung down onto his chest. Hal’s proclamation was written in both English and Arabic.
Having been tried and found guilty of complicity with the corsair known as al-Auf in acts of piracy on the high seas, the prisoner, William Grey, was sentenced to death by hanging. Sentence was duly carried out by me, Henry Courtney, under power vested in me by commission of His Majesty King William III.
Tom stood beside his father and read aloud the Arabic text of the proclamation. When he came to the end he said, ‘It is signed “El Tazar”. That means the Barracuda. Why?’
‘It’s the name I was given by the Mussulmen when first I voyaged in these waters.’ Hal looked down at his son. Once again, he felt a pang of concern that one as young as Tom should have been witness to such grisly proceedings. Then he remembered that Tom was seventeen, and that with sword and cannon he had already killed more than one man himself. He was no child, and he had been prepared by vocation and training for such grim work. ‘Our work here is completed,’ Hal said quietly. ‘Back to the ship.’ He turned to the tall carved doors, and Big Daniel gave the order to the men who stood guard there. They swung them open.
The old crone who had met them on their arrival and given them access to the house now stood on the threshold. The street behind her was crowded with guards. There were at least a dozen, armed with jezails and curved scimitars, a fearsome band of ruffians who surged forward as the doors opened.
‘See what the infidels have done to our lord,’ the old woman wailed, as she saw Grey’s body hanging from the rope. ‘Murder!’ She opened her toothless mouth and gave forth the high, keening cry that Arab women use to goad their men into a murderous rage.
‘Allah akbar!’ screamed the leader of the guards. ‘God is great!’ He flung up the long jezail to his shoulder and fired it into the band of English seamen. The ball struck one of Hal’s sailors full in the face, blowing out most of his teeth, shattering his jaw and driving on deep into his skull. He dropped without a cry, and Hal stepped forward with one of the rifled pistols levelled in his left hand.
His first shot hit the guards’ leader in the right eye. His eyeball burst, leaving a gaping hole in the socket, and the jelly trickled down his cheek. As he dropped, Hal fired the second barrel at the man who appeared in the gap behind him, and hit him cleanly in the centre of his forehead. The dead man fell back into the pack of his companions, knocking one off his feet.
‘Have at them, lads!’ Hal shouted, and his seamen charged through the doorway in a solid phalanx.
‘Seraph!’ They yelled the war-cr
y, as they carried the mob of robed figures before their charge. None of their foes was able to lift his long musket in the close ruck of bodies, and all were driven back by the bright hedge of cutlasses. Three more went down, then Hal’s party was in the street where they had more room for sword-play.
Hal had the second, unfired pistol in his left hand, but he reserved the shots, and instead used his blade to cut down another Arab who blocked his way. He glanced round for Tom and found him a pace behind him. In that brief glimpse he noticed that Tom’s blade was held high, its point already dulled with blood. He too had scored a hit. ‘Good lad,’ Hal grunted. ‘Stay close.’ He ran at the remaining Arabs. They had seen the fate of their comrades at the front of the line. Now they were confronted by the ferocious white faces bearing down on them in a pack. They broke away and fled back down the alley.
‘Let them go!’ Hal restrained Tom sharply. ‘Back to the boat.’
‘What about old Bobby?’ Big Daniel asked, and indicated the dead seaman behind them. He was surrounded by the corpses of the Arabs they had cut down.
‘Bring him,’ Hal ordered. It was bad for the men to see one of their mates left on a battlefield. They must know that, dead or wounded, he would never desert them. ‘As soon as we are at sea again, we will give him a decent burial.’
Daniel stooped and Aboli helped him haul the body over his shoulder. Then, bared cutlass in hand, the two big men led the rest at a run back through the narrow streets towards the quay. So early in the morning, there were few townsfolk abroad, and those who saw them coming disappeared swiftly into the alleys and doorways. They reached the harbour unchallenged and Alf Wilson brought in the longboat to pick them up.
As they pulled back to where the Seraph lay, a few bolder souls came out of hiding to fire their muskets and shout insults or bold challenges across the waters of the harbour, but the range was already long and none of the musket-balls came near the longboat. Ned Tyler had the anchor cable firmed up and a dozen men standing by the capstan. As soon as they had swarmed up the ladder and the longboat was lifted out of the water, he gave the order to hoist the anchor and set the sails.