by Wilbur Smith
‘I know nothing of this.’ Although he still felt bereft and tearful, Dorian put on a show of defiance. ‘I was sleeping and I heard nothing in the night. Perhaps the devil sent you evil dreams.’ He would never betray Tom to them.
‘I do not have to accept your impudence any longer.’ Al-Auf stepped closer. ‘Answer me, you seed of Satan! Who was at the window of your cell? The guards heard you talking to the intruder.’
Dorian stared up at him silently, but he was gathering a ball of spit under his tongue.
‘I am waiting!’ al-Auf told him menacingly, and lowered his face until their eyes were only inches apart.
‘Wait no longer,’ Dorian said, and spat his mouthful into al-Auf’s face. The pirate recoiled in astonishment, then a terrible rage distorted his features and he whipped the curved dagger from his belt.
‘You will never do that again,’ he swore. ‘I’ll have your infidel heart for it!’
As he started his stroke, Ben Abram leaped forward. For a man of such age he was quick and agile. He locked both hands on al-Auf’s knife wrist. Although he did not have the strength to stop the stroke, he deflected it from Dorian’s chest. The glittering point of the dagger snagged in the sleeve of his white robe and left a clean rent in the material.
Al-Auf staggered back, thrown off-balance by the unexpected attack. Then, almost contemptuously, he threw the old man to the ground. ‘You will pay for that, you ancient fool.’ He stepped over him.
‘Lord, do not harm the child. Think of the prophecy and of the gold,’ Ben Abram pleaded, and seized the hem of al-Auf’s robe. The corsair hesitated. The warning had touched him. ‘A lakh of rupees to lose,’ Ben Abram insisted. ‘And the curse of St Taimtaim upon your head if you kill him.’
Al-Auf stood uncertainly, but his lips twitched and his knife hand trembled. He stared at Dorian with such hatred that at last the boy’s courage failed and he shrank back against the wall.
‘The spittle of an infidel! It is worse than the blood of a swine! He has defiled me!’ Al-Auf was whipping up his faltering anger. He started forward again, then froze as a peremptory voice boomed across the chamber.
‘Stop! Put down that knife! What madness is this?’ Prince al-Malik towered in the entrance to the chamber. Summoned by the shouting and the uproar, he had come through from the sleeping quarters at the back. Al-Auf dropped the dagger and prostrated himself on the stone flags. ‘Forgive me, noble Prince,’ he blubbered. ‘For a moment Shaitan stole my wits.’
‘I should send you to visit your own execution field,’ al-Malik said coldly.
‘I am dust in your sight,’ al-Auf whimpered.
‘The child is no longer your property. He belongs to me.’
‘I will atone for my stupidity in any way you wish, only do not turn the face of wrath upon me, great Prince.’
Al-Malik did not deign to reply, but looked at Ben Abram. ‘Take the child down to the lagoon at once and have him placed on board my dhow. The captain is expecting his arrival. I will follow presently. We will sail with the high tide this very night.’
Two of the Prince’s men escorted Dorian down to the lagoon, and Ben Abram walked with him, holding his hand. Dorian’s face was pale, his jaws clenched hard in the effort to maintain a brave face. They did not speak until they reached the beach and the skiff from the royal dhow was waiting to take Dorian out to where she lay at anchor.
Then Dorian begged Ben Abram, ‘Please come with me.’
‘I cannot do that.’ The old man shook his head.
‘Just as far as the dhow, then. Please. You are the only friend I have left in the whole world.’
‘Very well, but only as far as the dhow.’ Ben Abram climbed into the boat beside him, and Dorian moved up close beside him.
‘What will happen to me now?’ he asked in a whisper.
Ben Abram replied gently, ‘Whatever is the will of God, my Lion Cub.’
‘Will they hurt me? Will they sell me to some other person?’
‘The Prince will keep you beside him always,’ Ben Abram reassured him.
‘How can you be so certain?’ Dorian laid his head on Ben Abram’s arm.
‘Because of the prophecy of St Taimtaim. He will never let you go. You are too valuable to him.’
‘What is this prophecy?’ Dorian sat up again and looked into his face. ‘Everyone speaks of the prophecy, but nobody tells me what it says.’
‘It is not the time for you to know.’ Ben Abram drew the child’s head down again. ‘One day it will all be made clear to you.’
‘Can’t you tell me now?’
‘It might be dangerous for you to know. You must be patient, little one.’
The skiff bumped against the side of the dhow, men were waiting to receive Dorian. ‘I don’t want to go.’ He clung to Ben Abram.
‘It is the will of God.’ Gently the old man disentangled Dorian’s fingers. The sailors reached down and lifted him onto the deck.
‘Please stay with me a little longer,’ Dorian said imploringly, looking down into the small boat.
Ben Abram could not refuse the appeal. ‘I will stay with you until you sail,’ he agreed, and followed Dorian down to the small cabin that had been set aside for him. He sat beside him on the mattress and reached into the pouch on his belt.
‘Drink this.’ He brought out a small green glass vial, and proffered it.
‘What is it?’
‘It will soften the pain of our parting, and make you sleep.’
Dorian drank the contents of the vial and pulled a face. ‘It tastes awful.’
‘Like rat’s piss?’ Ben Abram smiled, and Dorian burst out in laughter that was close to a sob, and hugged him.
‘Now lie down.’ The old man pushed Dorian back on the mattress, and for a while they talked together quietly. Then Dorian’s eyelids began to droop. He had not slept at all the night before and his weariness and the drug soon overpowered him.
Ben Abram stroked his head for the last time. ‘Go with God, my child,’ he said softly, rose from the mattress and went on deck.
The clumping of feet above his head and the movement of the hull through the water as the dhow got under way woke Dorian. He looked around for Ben Abram, but found him gone. Instead a strange woman was squatting on the deck beside his mattress. In her black robe and veil, she looked like a roosting vulture.
Dorian stood up groggily and staggered to the small porthole in the cabin. Outside it was dark, and the stars were dancing on the waters of the lagoon. The sweet night air blowing into his face revived him, and cleared his mind a little. He wanted to go up on deck but when he turned to the doorway the woman stood up and barred his way. ‘You must not leave here until the Prince calls for you.’
Dorian argued with her for a while but then gave up the futile effort and returned to the porthole. He watched the walls of the fort glide by, glistening white in the moonlight, as the dhow left the lagoon and threaded its way through the channel. Then he felt the deck surge under his feet at the first strong scend of the ocean. As the ship turned towards the west his view of the moonlit island was cut out. He jumped down from the porthole and threw himself on the mattress.
The black-veiled woman went to the porthole and closed the heavy wooden shutter over it. At that moment the lookout on the deck just above Dorian’s head shouted, so suddenly that Dorian jumped, ‘What boat are you?’
‘Fishing boats with the night’s catch,’ came the answer. The reply was faint, almost inaudible with distance and the closed shutter over the porthole, but Dorian’s heart leaped against his ribs, then raced away with excitement.
‘Father!’ he gasped. Although the voice had spoken in Arabic, he had recognized it instantly. He flung himself across the cabin, and tried to reach the window, but the woman seized him.
‘Father!’ he screamed, as he wrestled with her, but she was heavily built, with big breasts and a full soft belly. And although she was fat, she was powerful. She caught him round the chest and threw
him back onto the mattress.
‘Let me go!’ he screamed at her in English. ‘That’s my father. Let me go to him.’
The woman lay on top of him with her full weight, pinning him down. ‘You cannot leave the cabin,’ she grunted. ‘It is the command of the Prince.’
Dorian wrestled with her, but then froze as from out there in the night his father hailed the dhow again. ‘What boat are you?’ His voice was growing fainter. The dhow must be pulling away fast.
‘The ship of the Prince Abd Muhammad al-Malik,’ the lookout called back, his voice strong and clear.
‘Go with Allah!’ Hal’s voice was so faint and far away that it came as a whisper to Dorian’s ears.
‘Father!’ he yelled, with all his strength, but the woman’s weight was pressing on his chest, smothering him. ‘Don’t go! It’s me! It’s Dorry!’ he cried, in despair because he knew that his muffled cry could never carry from the closed cabin across the water to his father’s ear.
With a sudden twist and heave he threw off the big woman and slipped out from under her. Before she could hoist her bulk to her feet he had darted to the cabin door. As he struggled with the lock, she lumbered at him. He just managed to throw open the door as her fingers hooked into the collar of his robe. He threw himself forward with such force that the cotton ripped and he wriggled free.
Dorian shot up the companionway with the woman hard after him, screeching at the top of her voice, ‘Stop him! Catch the infidel!’
An Arab seaman was waiting for Dorian at the top of the stairs and blocked his way with outstretched arms, but Dorian dropped to the deck and, quick as a ferret, wriggled between his legs. He raced down the deck towards the stern.
He could see the dark shape of the longboat from the Seraph moving across the slick waters of the dhow’s wake, pulling away swiftly towards the island, the oars swinging and dripping phosphorescence from their blades. A figure stood tall in the stern. Dorian knew it was his father. ‘Don’t leave me!’ His voice was small in the night.
He reached the stern rail and jumped onto it, gathering himself to dive overboard into the dark waters, but a strong hand closed on his ankle and dragged him down. Within seconds he was covered by the weight of half a dozen Arab crewmen. They carried him back down the companionway, kicking, biting and scratching, and pushed him into the cabin.
‘If you had jumped into the sea, they would have thrown me after you to be eaten by the fish,’ the fat old woman complained bitterly. ‘How can you be so cruel to me?’ She huffed and fussed, and sent to ask the captain to post two men outside the cabin door, then she made certain the shutter over the porthole and the cabin door were both securely barred to prevent another escape attempt. Dorian was so distraught and exhausted that when he fell asleep at last it was as though he were still drugged.
It was almost midday when she woke him. ‘The Prince has sent for you,’ she told him, ‘and he will be angry with old Tahi if you are dirty and smelly as a kid goat.’ Once again he submitted to being bathed and having his hair combed and dressed with perfumed oil. Then he was led to the pavilion on the foredeck of the dhow.
A roof of canvas shaded the area from the scorching tropical sun almost directly overhead, but the sides of the tentlike structure were raised to let the cool winds of the monsoon blow through. The deck had been covered with silk rugs and the Prince reclined on a slightly raised dais, on a bed of cushions, while the mullah and four others of his personal retinue sat cross-legged below him. They were in deep discussion when Dorian was brought to them, but al-Malik gestured them to silence as Tahi brought the child to stand before him.
She prostrated herself on the deck, and when Dorian refused to follow her example, she tugged at his ankle. ‘Show respect for the Prince!’ she hissed at him. ‘Or else he will have you beaten.’
Dorian was determined to resist her order. He set his jaw and raised his eyes to stare into the Prince’s face. After only a few seconds he felt his determination waver and he dropped his eyes. Somehow he found it impossible to defy this regal person. He made the gesture of respect. ‘Salaam aliekum, lord!’ he whispered, and prostrated himself.
Al-Malik’s expression remained stern, but little laughter lines crinkled around his eyes. ‘And peace unto you also, al-Ahmara.’ He beckoned Dorian to come closer, then indicated a cushion below his dais, close to his right hand. ‘Sit here, where I can stop you jumping over the ship’s side when next the cafard, the madness, overtakes you.’
Dorian obeyed without protest, whereupon the men ignored him and continued with their discussions. For a while Dorian attempted to follow their conversation, but they spoke swiftly and in a formal manner that tested his understanding to the limits. Their talk was full of the names of men and places of which he was ignorant. One place name he recognized, though, was Lamu. He tried to orientate himself, and conjured up in his mind’s eye the charts of the Fever Coast that he had been made to study so often during his navigation lessons with Ned Tyler.
Lamu was several hundred leagues north of Zanzibar. It was a smaller island and, from what he remembered of the sailing orders in his father’s log book, it was another major trading port and centre of government of the Omani empire.
He could tell by the wind direction and the angle of the afternoon sun that the dhow was on an approximately north-westerly heading, which would indicate that Lamu was probably where they were heading. He wondered what fate awaited him there, then craned his neck to look back over the stern.
There was no sign of Flor de la Mar on the horizon behind them. During the night they must have run the island under and severed all contact with the Seraph, his father and Tom. At the thought he felt again that enervating mood of despair, but determined not to let himself capitulate to it. He made another effort to follow the discussions of the Prince and his retainers. ‘Father will expect me to remember everything they say. It could be very valuable to him in making his plans,’ he told himself, but just then the mullah stood up and went to the bows. From there he began the call to prayer, in a high, quavering voice. The Prince and his men broke off their discussions and made preparations for the midday worship. Slaves brought ewers of fresh water for the Prince and his retinue to wash.
In the stern, the helmsman pointed up into the north, indicating the direction of the holy city of Mecca, and every man aboard who could be spared from the running of the dhow faced that way.
In unison, following the plaintive cries of the holy man, they performed the ritual of standing, kneeling and prostrating themselves on the deck, submitting themselves to the will of Allah and offering him their devotions.
This was the first time Dorian had been caught up in such an efflorescence of devotion. Although he sat apart from it, he felt himself strangely moved by its force. He had never felt the same way during the weekly services in the chapel at High Weald, and he followed the chanting and the exaltations with a keener interest than their local clergyman had ever evoked in him.
He looked up towards the heavens, into the vast blue bowl of the African sky, filled with the cloud ranges marching ahead of the monsoon winds. In religious awe, he imagined he could see in the eddies of silver cloud the beard of God and his terrible features adumbrated in the shapes and outlines of the thunderheads.
Prince Abd Muhammad al-Malik rose from his position of prostration and stood erect on the low dais, still facing towards the holy city, crossing his hands over his breast in the final expression of his devotion. Dorian looked up at his bearded face, and thought that perhaps God looked like that, so noble, so terrifying, and yet so benign.
The dhow was running before the monsoon, her huge lateen sail filled tight and hard as a water-skin. The single boom was carved from joined lengths of some dark, heavy tropical timber, almost as thick as a man’s waist, and longer in all than the dhow herself. Its full weight was held aloft on the stubby mast by the main halyard. As the dhow rolled to the swells, the shadow of the boom swung back and forth across the deck, alte
rnately shading the Prince’s regal figure, then allowing the full brilliance of the tropical sunlight to pour down upon him. He stood to his full height under the swinging boom. The Arab helmsman’s attention was diverted, and he allowed the bows of the ship to come up too far into the eye of the wind. The sail jarred and creaked ominously.
Dorian had been taught by Ned Tyler that the lateen sail was notoriously fickle and unstable in any real blow of wind, and he could sense the ship’s distress at the rough handling to which she was being subjected.
From the corner of his eye he noticed a sudden change in the sail shadow cast across the deck below the dais. His eyes flickered up into the rigging, and he saw the main halyard begin to unravel just below the heavy wooden sheave block. The rope untwisted like a nest of mating serpents as, one after the other, the strands gave way. Dorian stared in horror, for precious seconds too appalled to move or cry out. He had watched the boom being lowered and trained around when the dhow was tacked, so he knew what a vital role the main halyard played in the lateen rigging.
He started to rise to his feet, still staring up at the single mast, but as he did so the last strand of the halyard parted with a crack like a pistol shot. With a rush and roar of canvas the boom hurtled down from on high, half a ton of heavy timber, swinging towards the deck like the stroke of an executioner’s blade. The Prince was oblivious to everything but his religious devotions, and stood directly under the falling boom.
Dorian threw himself forward, shoulder first into the back of al-Malik’s knees. The Prince was taken completely unprepared, balancing himself in the contrary direction to meet the ship’s movement. He was thrown off the raised dais face downward onto the deck. The piles of rugs and cushions strewn across the timbers broke his fall, and Dorian’s small body landed on top of him.
Behind them the hardwood boom crashed through the roof of the low deck-house, shattering it into a heap of broken planking and raw splinters. The great baulk of timber snapped at the splice and the fore-end whipped down, gaining velocity as it struck the foredeck. It crushed the low wooden dais on which, moments before, the Prince had been standing, smashed through the bulwarks of the bows and stove in most of the deck planking.