by Wilbur Smith
One afternoon Sarah brought the box of duelling pistols her father had given her when they parted in Bombay, for her protection in this land of wild animals and wilder men. ‘Papa promised to teach me to shoot, but he never found time,’ she told him. ‘Will you teach me now, Tom?’
They were magnificent weapons. The grips were carved from lustrous walnut, and the locks and long-rifled barrels were chased with gold and silver. There were ramrods of horn, and powder flasks of silver. Fitted into the case was a screw-topped pot containing fifty lead balls that had been selected to ensure that they were perfectly round and symmetrical. The patches were of oiled leather.
Tom loaded with half-measures of powder to reduce the recoil. Then he showed her how to place her feet, and address the target, turned half away, presenting her right shoulder. Then with her left fist on her hip, to bring up the weapon with a straight right arm, pick up the foresight bead in the notch of the back sight and fire as she swung through the target, rather than trying to hold her aim until her arm ached and shook.
He set up a coconut on top of one of the low walls of the monastery, fifteen paces away. ‘Knock it off!’ he said, and called her misses. ‘Low! Still low! Right!’ He reloaded swiftly, and she changed pistols. With the fourth shot she sent the nut spinning and spraying milk. She squealed gleefully, and soon she was hitting more often than she missed.
‘I should be given a prize for each hit,’ she demanded.
‘What sort of prize did you have in mind?’
‘A kiss might be appropriate.’
With this incentive, she hit five nuts in succession, and Tom told her, ‘Clever girl, you have won the grand prize.’ He picked her up in his arms and carried her, protesting weakly and insincerely, through the gateway, into their secret place in the ruins.
A few days later he brought one of London’s best muskets with him in the felucca, and showed her how to load and fire it. Tom had purchased four of these extraordinary weapons before they sailed from England. He could not afford to buy more, for they were staggeringly expensive.
The cheap military muskets were smooth-bored, and the ball did not fit snugly in the barrel, so spin was not imparted to it as it was driven through the lands. Because they were not stabilized, the balls flew erratically.
However, with this rifled weapon the accuracy was startling. Tom could be sure of hitting a coconut with every shot at a hundred and fifty paces. Sarah was tall and strong enough to be able to level the heavy musket from her shoulder without difficulty, and once again she proved she had the quickness of hand and eye to make her a natural marksman. Within an hour of practice she was able to claim her reward from him after almost every shot.
‘I suppose the next thing I shall have to teach you is sword-play,’ Tom remarked, as they lay together on the plaited sleeping mat with which they had now furnished their secret roofless cell in the monastery.
‘You have done a fine job of that already.’ She grinned wickedly, and reached down his body. ‘Here is my trusty sword and, sir, I know already full well how to play with it.’
In serious mood, they discussed their plans for when Tom had succeeded in rescuing Dorian. ‘I will come back for you,’ he said, ‘and take you with me, away from Zanzibar and Guy.’
‘Yes.’ She nodded as though she had never doubted that. ‘And then we will sail back to England together, won’t we, Tom?’ She saw his expression change. ‘What is it, my darling?’ she asked anxiously.
‘I can never return to England,’ he said softly.
She scrambled to her knees and stared at him in dismay. ‘What do you mean, never return home?’
‘Listen to me, Sarah.’ He sat up and took both her hands in his. ‘Something terrible happened before I left England, something I never intended.’
‘Tell me,’ she pleaded. ‘Anything that touches you, touches me.’
And so he told her about William. He started at the beginning, describing their childhood, and the growing tyranny the elder brother had exerted over the younger ones. He recounted many small incidents of heartless cruelty that William had inflicted. ‘I think the only time that Dorian, Guy and I were happy was when we were free of him, those times when he was away at university,’ he said.
Her expression was filled with sympathy. ‘I did not like him when I met him at High Weald,’ she agreed. ‘He reminded me of a serpent, cold and poisonous.’
Tom nodded. ‘I had almost forgotten how vindictive he could be when I was away from home, on the voyage of the Seraph. But when we took Father home after Flor de la Mar it was all brought back to me with a vengeance.’
He told her how William had treated their father when he was dying, and how he had repudiated his oath to help find Dorian after Hal’s death. ‘We fought,’ he said. ‘We had fought before, often, but never like this.’ He paused and the pain of the memory was so plain to see that she tried to embrace him to make him stop the recital. ‘No, Sarah, I have to tell you everything. You have to listen, so that you can understand how it happened.’ Sometimes halting, at other times in a fierce rush of words, he told her about that fight on his last night at High Weald. ‘You asked how I broke my nose, and I could not tell you then.’ He touched the lump. ‘Billy did that.’
He described the battle in simple words that were so vivid and affecting that Sarah paled and clutched his arm, sinking her nails into his flesh. ‘In the end I could not kill him, though he deserved it a hundred times. I was moved by Alice, as she stood there with the baby in her arms, pleading for his life, and I could not kill him. I put up my sword and rode away, thinking that that was the end of it. But I should have known my brother better than that.’
‘There is more?’ she asked in a small, frightened voice. ‘I don’t think I can bear to hear more.’
‘I have to tell you all of it, and you must listen so that you can understand.’
He came at last to the fatal meeting on the river landing below the Tower of London. He described the fight with the band of hired cut-throats. His voice sank lower and lower, and there were long pauses as he searched for the words to describe the terrible climax. ‘I still did not know it was Billy. It was dark. He wore a wide hat and his face was covered. I thought he was the boatman, and I ran to him, asking him to ferry us away. I was thunderstruck when he drew out the pistol. He fired and the ball struck me here.’ He lifted his shirt and displayed the long pink scar across his ribs beneath his arm.
She stared at it, then reached out to trace the raised, twisted cicatrices with her fingertips. She had noticed the scar before, but when she had questioned him, he had been evasive and dismissive. Now she knew why. ‘He might have killed you,’ she breathed in awe.
‘Yes, I thought he had. But, luckily, the ball struck my ribs and glanced away. It knocked me off my feet, and Billy stood over me and aimed the second barrel. That shot would have finished the business. The sword was in my hand. I was afraid, terrified. I threw with all my strength, and it hit him full in the chest and went through his heart.’
‘Oh, merciful God.’ Sarah stared at him. ‘You killed your own brother.’
‘I did not know it was Billy, not even then. Not until I lifted the hat from his head and saw his face.’
They were silent a while.
Sarah looked horrified. Then she rallied. ‘He was trying to kill you,’ she said firmly. ‘You had to do it, Tom, to save yourself.’ She saw the desolation in his eyes, reached out, took his head and pulled it to her bosom, holding him there, stroking his hair. ‘There is no blame. You had to do it.’
‘I have told myself that a thousand times.’ Tom’s voice was muffled. ‘But he was my brother.’
‘God is just. I know that He forgives you, my darling. You must put it behind you.’
He lifted his face, and she knew that there was nothing she could say to ease the pain. It would haunt him if he lived a hundred years. She kissed him. ‘None of it makes any difference to us, Tom. I am your woman for ever. If we can never
go back to England, then let it be so. I will follow you to the ends of the earth. Nothing matters but you and me, and our love.’
She drew him down onto the sleeping mat, and offered him the comfort of her body.
Still the Swallow waited in the harbour. They had completed the repairs long since, and she was once more sleek and lovely. Her hull glistened with new paint, but her canvas stayed furled and she snubbed restlessly on her anchor cables, like a falcon at bate.
Her crew were growing restless. There had been a number of ugly fights among them, their nerves rubbed raw by inactivity, and Tom knew he could not hold them much longer in idleness, like prisoners on their own ship. More and more Tom was tempted to defy the Sultan’s decree and sail north into those forbidden seas where he knew Dorian was held captive, or to take the Swallow across to the mainland and search for those hidden places in the mysterious interior where the ivory, gold and gum arabic were harvested.
Aboli and Ned Tyler advised patience, but Tom rounded on them angrily. ‘Patience is for old men. Fortune never smiled on patience.’
The monsoon fell away, into the breathless period of the doldrums, then swung right round the compass and whispered almost inaudibly out of the north-east, those first gentle breaths that herald the change of season, harbinger of the big rains of the kaskazi.
The kaskazi gathered strength, and the heavily laden trading ships in the harbour hoisted their anchors, spread their canvas to the fresh new wind and bore away southwards to round Good Hope.
The Swallow waited in the almost empty harbour. Then, on one of Tom’s regular visits to the fort, the vizier greeted him as though he were newly arrived in the port, and offered him a seat on a brocaded cushion and a thimble cup of thick, sweet black coffee. ‘All my efforts on your behalf have borne fruit. His Excellency, the Sultan, has looked favourably on your petition for a licence to trade.’ He smiled disarmingly, and produced the document from the sleeve of his robe. ‘Here is his firman.’
Tom reached for it eagerly, but the vizier slipped it back into his sleeve. ‘The firman is restricted to the island of Zanzibar alone. It does not entitle you to sail further north, or to call at any port on the mainland. If you do so, your ship will be seized and the crew with it.’
Tom tried to hide his irritation. ‘I understand, and I am grateful for the generosity of the Sultan.’
‘A tax will be levied on any goods you acquire in the markets, which must be paid for in gold before the goods are loaded aboard your ship. The tax is one fifth part of the value of all goods.’
Tom swallowed hard, but kept on smiling politely. ‘His Excellency is generous.’
The vizier held out the document, but as Tom reached for it, he again withdrew it, and exclaimed at his own forgetfulness. ‘Ah! Forgive me, effendi. I have overlooked the small matter of the licence fee. A thousand rupees in gold and, of course, another five hundred rupees for my own intercession with His Excellency.’
With the royal firman at last in his grasp, Tom could visit the markets. Each day he came ashore at dawn, bringing Master Walsh and Aboli with him, and he returned to the ship only at the hour of Zuhr, the early-afternoon prayer, when the merchants closed their stalls to answer the call of the muezzin to their devotions.
For the first few weeks he made no purchases, but each day sat for hours with one or other of the merchants, drinking coffee and exchanging pleasantries, examining their wares without any show of enthusiasm, striking no deals, but comparing price and quality. Tom had believed at first that his bargaining power would be strengthened by most of the other European traders having sailed already with the kaskazi, and that there would be little competition for the goods on offer.
He soon found that this was far from the case. The other traders had picked over the goods, and selected the best. The ivory tusks remaining in the market were mostly immature, few any longer than his arm, many deformed and discoloured. There was nothing even approaching that mighty pair his father had purchased from Consul Grey on their first visit to the island. Despite the poor quality, the merchants were already fat with profits and they maintained their prices, shrugging indifferently when he protested.
‘Effendi, there are few men who hunt the beasts. It is dangerous work, and each season they have to travel further to find the herds. Now it is very late in the season. The supply of ivory has been taken up by the other Frankish traders,’ one of the merchants explained smoothly. ‘However, I have a few fine slaves for your consideration.’
With all the grace he could muster, Tom refused the offer to examine these human chattels. Aboli had been captured as a slave in childhood, but every detail of the horrors inflicted upon him had remained starkly clear in his memory. Before he had ever sailed from the shores of England Tom had grown up with his descriptions of the heinous trade. During his many voyages Tom’s father had accumulated first-hand knowledge of the trade, and he had helped instil in the young Tom an abhorrence of its inhuman practices.
Since he had first rounded Good Hope, Tom had come in regular contact with the slavers and their victims. During their long wait in Zanzibar Roads there had always been slave-ships anchored close to them, near enough for the stink and heartbreaking sounds to carry clearly to where the Swallow was lying.
Each day now he walked with Aboli through the slave compounds, and it was more difficult to ignore the misery all around them: the wailing of children torn from their parents’ arms, the weeping of bereaved mothers, and the dumb suffering in the dark eyes of young men and women deprived of their free, wild existence, chained like animals, abused in a language they did not understand, spreadeagled on the whipping-block, flogged with the vicious hippo-hide kiboko until their ribs showed white in the wounds. The very thought of making a profit out of the torment of these lost souls made the bile rise in the back of Tom’s throat.
Back on the Swallow he discussed their predicament with his ship’s officers. Although the foremost object of the voyage was to find Dorian, and Tom never wavered from that goal, he had a duty to his crew and he had inveigled many of them aboard with the promise of reward. So far there had been no rewards and there was little prospect of any profit to share with them.
‘There are few bargains to be had hereabouts,’ Master Walsh confirmed lugubriously. He opened his notebook, adjusted his gold-rimmed spectacles on his nose, and quoted the list of the ivory and gum arabic prices he had compiled before they left England. ‘The price of spices is more favourable, but still leaves little profit when we take into account the hardships and expenses of the voyage. The cloves and pepper, now, there is always a ready market for them, and to a lesser extent for cinnamon and, of course, the cinchona bark is in demand in America and in the Mediterranean countries afflicted by malaria.’
‘We must have a few hundredweight of cinchona for our own use,’ Tom cut in. ‘Now that the big rains are beginning there will be much fever among the men.’ The boiled extract from the bark was bitter as gall but, a century ago, the Jesuit monks had discovered that it was a sovereign remedy for the malarial fever. It had been the fathers who had first introduced the cinchona trees to this island. Now it grew here profusely.
‘Yes,’ agreed Aboli softly. ‘You will need the cinchona. Especially if you’re going inland to search for your own ivory.’
Tom looked at him sharply. ‘What made you think I would be so foolhardy as to flout the decrees of the Sultan and John Company, Aboli? Even you have counselled me strongly against such a course.’
‘I have watched you sitting in the bows each evening and staring across the channel at the African mainland. Your thoughts were so loud that they almost deafened me.’
‘It would be dangerous.’ Tom stopped short of denying the accusation, but his head turned instinctively towards the west, and a dreamy look came into his eyes as he stared across at the hazy outline of the land fading into the dusk shadows.
‘That has never stopped you before,’ Aboli pointed out.
‘I would not
know where to begin. It is a land unknown, terra incognita.’ He used the caption from the charts in his cabin that he studied so avidly. ‘Not even you have travelled out there, Aboli. It would be folly to go without a guide to lead us.’
‘No, I do not know this northern land,’ Aboli agreed. ‘I was born much further south, near the great River Zambezi, and it is many years since I was last there.’ He paused. ‘But I know where we can find somebody who could lead us into the interior.’
‘Who?’ Tom asked, unable to hide his excitement. ‘Where will we find this man? What is his name?’
‘I do not yet know his name or his face, but I will recognize him when I see him.’
When they went ashore the next morning, the first chained files of slaves were being led to the market from the barracoons where they had been incarcerated overnight.
Like all the other commodities at this late season, their ranks were thinned, and fewer than two hundred specimens were on offer. When the Swallow had first arrived, there had been several thousand for sale. Most of those remaining were old or frail, thin with sickness or scarred from the kiboko. Buyers were always chary of a whip-marked slave, for it usually meant that he or she was incorrigible, not amenable to training.
Previously, when passing through the market, Tom had averted his gaze, had tried to avoid studying them, his repugnance and pity too troubling. But now he and Aboli took up a position at the main gate of the slave-market from which they could watch the sorry columns being herded past. They scrutinized every individual as he came level with them.
There were two or three black men in the ranks who seemed to Tom to be of the type they were seeking, tall and strong and heroic despite their chains. But when he touched Aboli’s arm and glanced at him in enquiry, Aboli shook his head impatiently.
‘Nothing?’ Tom asked quietly, despondent. The last of the slaves were filing past, and Aboli had shown no interest in any of them.