by Wilbur Smith
‘That had occurred to me.’ Tom hid his embarrassment as well as he was able, and answered as forthrightly as his father had broached the subject.
‘I fear you have made an enemy of your twin brother. Be wary of Guy. He does not forgive an injury, and he has an endless capacity for hatred.’
‘I doubt we shall ever meet again. He is in India, and I – well, I shall be at the ends of the oceans.’
‘Fate plays us shabby tricks, Tom, and the oceans may not be as broad as you think.’
The squadron made its southings and at forty-three degrees south latitude swung up on to a westerly heading to make the landfall on the tip of Good Hope. Soon they saw the surf beating white on the southern cliffs of Africa. That same day Hal summoned Tom to the stern cabin and showed him the record of his promotion entered in the ship’s log.
‘Apart from a demonstration of the trust I have in you, Tom, this also means that you will be entitled to an officer’s share of the prize,’ his father told him. ‘That might be as much as a thousand pounds.’
‘Thank you, Father.’
‘There is much that I would do for you that is beyond my powers. William is my first-born, and you know the significance of that. Everything goes to him.’
‘You need not worry about me. I can make my own way in the world.’
‘Of that I am sure.’ Hal smiled, and gripped his arm. He was stronger now than when they had left Flor de la Mar – Tom could feel the power in his fingers, and the sun had put new colour in his cheeks. ‘It must be because we have doubled the Cape and are northward-bound that my thoughts turn once again to High Weald. Do not hate your elder brother, Tom.’
‘It is not I who hate him, Father. It’s Black Billy who hates me.’
‘That contemptuous name betrays your true feelings for him, but when I am gone he will be the head of our family and he has a right to your respect and loyalty.’
‘It was you who taught me, Father, that respect and loyalty have to be earned and not demanded.’
They anchored well off the beach of the little Dutch settlement at the Cape of Good Hope. They watered and revictualled with fresh vegetables and meat, and had neither truck nor bother with the Dutch administration ashore. Within the week they were on their way northwards once more. As suddenly as the squadron entered the Atlantic Ocean, the character of the waters changed, and Hal Courtney’s health with it.
The Cape rollers came marching down upon them, great grey ridges of water with deep valleys between, to batter the squadron day and night. The seas creamed over the ships’ bows and tore away any weak plank or fitting from the decks. The howl of the wind was the voice of this wolf-pack, and the onslaught was merciless and unrelenting. Each day Hal grew weaker again, and when Tom entered his cabin one gale-driven morning he found his father flushed and sweating. His nostrils flared as he detected the familiar stench of corruption in the air, and when he drew back the bedclothes he found telltale stains of yellow pus on the white linen.
He shouted to the watch above to call Dr Reynolds, who came immediately. He unwrapped the bandages from Hal’s left leg, and his kindly features crumpled with dismay. The stump was horribly swollen, and the lips of the freshly healed wound were hot purple and splitting open with pus oozing from the edges. ‘I’m afraid there is a deep corruption in the wound, Sir Henry.’ Dr Reynolds sniffed at the pus, and pulled a face. ‘I do not like these humours. There is the taint of gangrene in them. I must lance the wound at once.’
While Tom held his father’s shoulders, the surgeon pressed the point of a long scalpel deeply into the wound as Hal writhed and whimpered with the pain. When Reynolds withdrew the blade, it was followed by a copious gush of yellow and purple pus, stained with fresh blood, that covered the bottom of the bowl the surgeon’s mate held under the stump. ‘I think we have drained the source of the evil.’ Reynolds looked pleased with the quantity and colour of the discharge. ‘Now I will bleed you to reduce the fever.’ He nodded to his mate. They rolled back the sleeve of Hal’s nightshirt and wound a leather thong around his upper arm. When they twisted it tight the veins on the inside of Hal’s elbow stood proud, like blue ropes beneath the pale skin. Reynolds cleaned the pus and blood from the blade of the scalpel by wiping it on his sleeve, then tested the point on the ball of his thumb before pricking the swollen vein and watching the dark red blood dribble into the pewter bowl to mingle with the yellow pus.
‘A single pint should be sufficient,’ he muttered. ‘I think now we have drained off the morbid humours. Though I do say it myself, that’s as good a job as you’ll see this side of Land’s End.’
Over the following weeks of the voyage, Hal’s strength fluctuated widely. For days he lay wan and inert in his bunk, seeming on the point of death. Then he would rally strongly. When they crossed the equator, Tom was able to have him taken on deck again to enjoy the hot sunshine, and Hal talked eagerly of home, longing for the green fields and wild moorland of High Weald. He spoke of the books and papers in his library. ‘All the log books of your grandfather’s early voyages are there. These I can leave to you, Tom, for you are the sailor in the family and they will be of little interest to William.’
Thinking of Sir Francis made his mood swing again, and he was saddened. ‘Your grandfather’s body will be waiting for us at High Weald, for Anderson sent him back from Bombay. We will lay him in his sarcophagus in the crypt of the chapel. He will be glad to be home again, as glad as I will.’ His expression was tragic as he thought about it. ‘Tom, will you see to it that I have a place in the crypt? I would like to lie with my father and the three women I have loved. Your mother—’ He broke off, unable to continue.
‘That day is still far off, Father,’ Tom assured him with a desperate edge to his voice. ‘We still have a quest to undertake. We exchanged oaths. We have to go after Dorian. You must get well and strong again.’
With an effort, Hal shrugged off the black mood of despair. ‘Of course, you are right. This moping and complaining will profit us not at all.’
‘I have had the carpenters begin to fashion new legs for you, of strong English oak,’ Tom told him brightly. ‘We will have you up before you see High Weald again.’
Tom sent for the head carpenter. The little gnarled Welshman brought the two peg-legs, still only crudely carved, to show Hal. Then he and Tom made a show of measuring and fitting them to Hal’s stumps.
Hal seemed to take a lively interest, and laughed with them, making fatuous suggestions. ‘Can we not fit them with a compass and weather cock to aid my navigation?’ But when the carpenter had gone below, he lapsed back into his dark mood. ‘I will never be too handy with those timber yards on my legs. I fear that you might have to go after Dorian on your own, Tom.’ He held up a hand to still Tom’s quick protest. ‘But I will stand by my word. You shall have all the help I can give you.’
Two weeks later, while the ship lay becalmed on the edge of the sluggish Sargasso Sea at thirty degrees north latitude and sixty degrees west Tom went down to his father’s cabin in the humid calm and found him shrunken in his bunk. His skin was stretched over the bone of his skull, tight and parchment yellow, like the face of the Egyptian mummy that one of Tom’s ancestors had brought back from a voyage to Alexandria, and which stood in its open coffin against one of the back walls of the library at High Weald. Tom called for Dr Reynolds and left his father in his care. Then, unable to bear the atmosphere in the stern cabin any longer, he hurried on deck, and took long draughts of the warm air. ‘Will this voyage never end?’ he lamented. ‘If we do not get him home soon, he will never see High Weald again. Oh, for a wind to hasten us on.’
He ran to the main-mast shrouds and climbed aloft, never stopping until he reached the truck. He hung there, peering at the horizon to the north, vague and smoky with sea fret. Then he drew the dagger from the sheath on his belt and slammed it into the wood of the mast. He left it there, for Aboli had taught him that this was the way to call up the wind. He started to whistle
‘Spanish Ladies’, but that made him think of Dorian, so he changed to ‘Greensleeves’.
All that morning he whistled for the wind, and before the sun had reached noon, he looked back over the stern. The surface of the sea was a polished mirror, broken only by the floating clumps of yellow Sargasso weed. Then he saw the dark blue line of the wind racing swiftly towards them over the shining surface. ‘Deck!’ he yelled down. ‘Squall line! Dead astern.’ And he saw the tiny figures of the watch on deck scramble to the sheets to trim the sails to the coming wind. It picked up all four ships of the squadron and bore them away. The Seraph was still in the van, and the Yeoman, the Minotaur and the matronly Lamb trailed after her. From then onwards it blew steadily out of the west, never faltering, not even during the night. Tom left his dagger pegged into the top of the main mast.
They made their landfall off the Isles of Scilly, and hailed the first sail they had seen in two months. It was a small open fishing-boat with a crew of three.
‘What news?’ Tom hailed them. ‘We have had no news for eighteen months.’
‘War!’ the reply was shouted back. ‘War with the French.’
Tom called Edward Anderson and the other captains on board the Seraph for a hasty council of war. It would be tragic to complete such a perilous voyage and then, almost in sight of home, to fall victim to French privateers. Hal was enjoying one of his stronger periods, and lucid enough to take part in the discussions, so Tom gathered them in the stern cabin. ‘We have a choice,’ he told them. ‘We can dock in Plymouth, or we can run up-Channel for the mouth of the Thames.’
Anderson was for Plymouth, but Ned Tyler and Alf Wilson wanted to head for London. When each had given his opinion, Tom spoke out: ‘Once we are at Blackwall we can offload our cargoes directly into the Company warehouses, and our prize can be on the Company auction floors within days.’ He looked to his father for encouragement. When Hal nodded, Tom went on, ‘If we go into Plymouth, we may be bottled up there for the good Lord only knows how long. I say we run the gauntlet of the French privateers and set a course to weather North Foreland.’
‘Tom’s right. The sooner we can deliver our cargo, the happier I will be,’ said Hal.
They stood the crews to and, with loaded cannon and double lookouts at the mastheads, they ran up-Channel. Twice during the days that followed they saw strange sails that flew no colours but had the look of Frenchies about them. Tom gave the flag signal to close up their formation and the strangers veered off, heading back into the east where the French coast lay just below the horizon.
They raised the light on North Foreland two hours before dawn, and were past Sheerness by noon. In the gloaming of that winter’s day all four ships tied up at the Company docks in the river. Before the gangplank was down, Tom had shouted across to the Company agent, who waited on the wharf to greet them, ‘Send a message to Lord Childs that we have taken great prize. He must come at once.’
Two hours before midnight Childs’s carriage, with the two outriders at full gallop clearing the way, and the sidelights glaring, came clattering through the gates of the yard. The driver reined in the team at the edge of the dock, and Childs almost tumbled from the carriage door before the wheels had stopped turning. He came stumping up the Seraph’s gangplank, his face flushed, his wig awry and his mouth working with excitement.
‘Who are you?’ he blared at Tom. ‘Where is Sir Henry?’
‘My lord, I am Sir Henry’s son, Thomas Courtney.’
‘Where is your father, lad?’
‘He waits for you below, my lord.’
Childs swivelled around and pointed at the Minotaur. ‘What ship is that? She has the look of an Indiaman, but I know her not.’
‘That’s the old Minotaur, my lord, under a fresh coat of paint.’
‘The Minotaur! You retook her from the corsair?’ Childs did not wait for his reply. ‘That other ship beyond her.’ He pointed at the Lamb. ‘What ship is that?’
‘Another prize, my lord. A Dutchman with a full cargo of China tea.’
‘Jesus love you, lad. You are a herald of great good tidings. Lead me to your father.’
Hal was sitting up in the captain’s chair, with a velvet cloak draped across his lap to hide his injuries. He wore a dark blue velvet coat. On his chest glittered the gold and jewelled emblem of the Order of St George and the Holy Grail. Although his face was deadly pale and his eyes sunk into dark cavities, he held himself straight and proud. ‘Welcome aboard, my lord,’ he greeted Childs. ‘Please excuse me for not rising, but I am a little indisposed.’
Childs seized his hand. ‘You are welcome indeed, Sir Henry. I am eager to hear the extent of your successes. I have seen the two prizes tied up alongside the wharf, and your son has given me some idea of the cargo you carry.’
‘Please be seated.’ Hal indicated the chair at his side. ‘My report will take some little time. I have written it all out, but I should like to tell you of our expedition man to man, and face to face. But, first, a glass of wine.’ He gestured to Tom to fill the glasses that stood ready on a silver tray.
Childs sat forward in his chair and listened intently as Hal began his tale. Occasionally he asked a question, but mostly he listened in rapt silence, as Hal read aloud the cargo manifests of the four ships of the squadron. When at last he fell silent, drained by the effort of the long recital, Childs leaned over and took the parchments from his hand. He scrutinized them carefully, his eyes shining with cupidity. At last he looked up again. ‘Since the outbreak of war with the French, the price of commodities has almost doubled. With the two captured ships, the value of the prize you have won for us might be as much as five hundred thousand pounds. The directors of the Company will be more than grateful, and I think I can speak for His Majesty when I say that the Crown will honour its solemn undertaking to you. You will be Henry Courtney, Baron Dartmouth, before the week is out.’
Childs saluted him with a raised glass. ‘I knew that I had chosen the right man when I sent you. May I drink to your health and fortune, Sir Henry?’
‘Thank you, my lord. I am happy that you are pleased.’
‘Pleased?’ Childs laughed. ‘There are no words to express the extent of my pleasure, my admiration, my amazement at your resourcefulness, your courage.’ He leaned across to place his hand on Hal’s knee. A comical expression of astonishment came over his face. He looked down and groped for Hal’s missing limb.
‘Sir Henry, I am overcome.’ He looked down at Hal’s lower body. ‘Good God, man! Your legs! You have lost your legs!’
Hal smiled wanly. ‘Yes, my lord, there was a certain price to pay. We seamen call it the butcher’s bill.’
‘We must get you out of this ship. You will be my guest at Bombay House while you recuperate. My carriage is on the wharf. I will call my physicians, the best in London. You will lack for nothing. I promise you that.’
One of the first things Hal did after he arrived at Bombay House was write to William, giving him the momentous tidings of the prize he had taken, and of his imminent elevation to the peerage. It took the letter over a week to reach his son in Devon.
With the letter still in his hand, William shouted for his horse and within the hour was riding furiously out through the gates of High Weald and galloping up the main road to London as fast as the relays of fresh horses from the post-houses could carry him.
Five days after leaving High Weald, he rode into the grounds of Bombay House in the middle of the afternoon in a downpour of rain. He left his hired horse in the stableyard; then, soaked and muddy to the waist, he strode through the main doors, brushing aside the steward and footmen who tried to bar his entrance. ‘I am the eldest son of Sir Henry Courtney. I wish to be taken to my father immediately.’
As soon as he heard the name, one of the secretaries came hurrying forward. In the last few days the name of Courtney had taken the city by storm. Every news-sheet had carried pages of print concerning the exploits of Sir Henry Courtney in the Ocean of the Indies
. Some were wildly fanciful, yet as an item of gossip he had supplanted the news of the latest English victory in France, and his name was bandied about every tavern and fashionable gathering in London. To add to the excitement, broadsheets handed out in the street advertised the forthcoming auction sale of the cargo and the prizes at the premises of John Company in Leadenhall Street, describing them as ‘The Greatest Treasures ever taken from an Enemy on the High Seas!’
Within days of the squadron’s arrival, shares in ‘The United Company of Merchants of England Trading to the East Indies’, which was the full and ringing title of John Company, increased in value by over 15 per cent. Over the past five years the Company had paid an annual dividend of 25 per cent, but anticipation of the distribution of this vast treasure drove the shares to unheard-of heights.
‘Thank God you have arrived, sir,’ the secretary greeted William. ‘Your father has been asking for you every day. Please allow me to lead you to him.’
He took William up the broad curving marble staircase. When they reached the first landing, William halted abruptly under the massive Holbein portrait of Lord Childs’s great-great-grandfather, and looked up at the two men descending the stairs towards him. His severe features knitted, and his dark eyes glittered as he took in the younger of the pair.
‘Well met, brother dear. It seems my prayers are unanswered and you have returned to plague me. You, and that great black savage.’ He glanced at Aboli.
Tom stopped on the landing facing William. He was an inch taller now than his elder brother. He looked him up and down, starting at his muddy boots and ending at his arrogant, saturnine head, and smiled coldly. ‘I’m touched deeply by your expression of affection. Please be assured that it is returned in full measure.’