Birds of Prey

by Wilbur Smith

  He held out the scabbard of chased gold and silver for Hal to examine. It was decorated with crowns and dolphins and sea sprites gathered around the heroic figure of Neptune enthroned. Sir Francis reversed the weapon and offered Hal the hilt. A large star sapphire was set in the pommel. Hal drew the blade and saw at once that this was not just the ornament of some Spanish fop. The blade was of the finest Toledo steel inlaid with gold. He flexed it between his fingers, and rejoiced in its spring and temper.

  ‘Have a care,’ his father warned him. ‘You can shave with that edge.’

  Hal returned it to its scabbard and his father slipped the sword into the leather bucket of Hal’s cross belt, then stood back again to examine him critically. ‘What do you think of him?’ he asked Oliver.

  ‘Just the shoulders.’ Oliver ran his hands over the satin of the doublet. ‘It’s all that wrestling and sword-play that changes his shape. I shall have to resew the seams.’

  ‘Then take him to his cabin and see to it.’ Sir Francis dismissed them both and turned back to his desk. He sat and opened his leather-bound log-book.

  Hal paused in the doorway. ‘Thank you, Father. This sword—’ He touched the sapphire pommel at his side, but could not find words to continue. Sir Francis grunted without looking up, dipped his quill and began to write on the parchment page. Hal lingered a little longer in the entrance until his father looked up again in irritation. He backed out and shut the door softly. As he turned into the passage, the door opposite opened and the Dutch Governor’s wife came through it so swiftly, in a swirl of silks, that they almost collided.

  Hal jumped aside and swept the plumed hat from his head. ‘Forgive me, madam.’

  Katinka stopped and faced him. She examined him slowly, from the gleaming silver buckles of his new shoes upwards. When she reached his eyes she stared into them coolly and said softly, ‘A pirate whelp dressed like a great nobleman.’ Then, suddenly, she leaned towards him until her face almost touched his and whispered, ‘I have checked the panel. There is no opening. You have not performed the task I set you.’

  ‘My duties have kept me ashore. I have had no chance.’ He stammered as he found the Latin words.

  ‘See to it this very night,’ she ordered, and swept by him. Her perfume lingered and the velvet doublet seemed too hot and constricting. He felt sweat break out on his chest.

  Oliver fussed over the fit of his doublet for what seemed to Hal half the rest of the night. He unpicked and resewed the shoulder seams twice before he was satisfied and Hal fumed with impatience.

  When at last he left, taking all Hal’s newly acquired finery with him, Hal could barely wait to set the locking bar across his door, and kneel at the bulkhead. He discovered that the panel was fixed to the oak framework by wooden dowels, driven flush with the woodwork.

  One at a time, with the point of his dirk, he prised and whittled the dowels from their drilled seats. It was slow work and he dared make no noise. Any blow or rasp would reverberate through the ship.

  It was almost dawn before he was able to remove the last peg and then to slip the blade of his dagger into the joint and lever open the panel. It came away suddenly, with a squeal of protesting wood against the oak frame that seemed to carry through the hull, and must surely alarm both his father and the Governor.

  With bated breath he waited for terrible retribution to fall around his head, but the minutes slid by, and at last he could breathe again.

  Gingerly he stuck his head and shoulders through the rectangular opening. Katinka’s toilet cabin beyond was in darkness, but the odour of her perfume made his breath come short. He listened intently, but could hear nothing from the main cabin beyond. Then, faintly, the sound of the ship’s bell reached him from the deck above and he realized with dismay that it was almost dawn and in half an hour his watch would begin.

  He pulled his head out of the opening, and replaced the panel, securing it with the wooden dowels, but so lightly that they could be removed in seconds.

  ‘Should you allow the Buzzard’s men ashore?’ Hal asked his father respectfully. ‘Forgive me, Father, but can you trust him that far?’

  ‘Can I stop him without provoking a fight?’ Sir Francis answered with another question. ‘He says he needs water and firewood, and we do not own this land or even this lagoon. How can I forbid it to him?’

  Hal might have protested further, but his father silenced him with a quick frown, and turned to greet Lord Cumbrae as the keel of his longboat kissed the sands of the beach and he sprang ashore his legs beneath the plaid furred with wiry ginger hair like a bear’s.

  ‘All God’s blessings upon you this lovely morning, Franky,’ he shouted, as he came towards them. His pale blue eyes darted restlessly as minnows in a pool under his beetling red brows.

  ‘He sees everything,’ Hal murmured. ‘He has come to find out where we have stored the spice.’

  ‘We cannot hide the spice. There’s a mountain of it,’ Sir Francis told him. ‘But we can make the thieving of it difficult for him.’ Then he smiled bleakly at Cumbrae as he came up. ‘I hope I see you in good health, and that the whisky did not trouble your sleep last night, sir.’

  ‘The elixir of life, Franky. The blood in my veins.’ His eyes were bloodshot as they darted about the encampment at the edge of the forest. ‘I need to fill my water casks. There must be good sweet water hereabouts.’

  ‘A mile up the lagoon. There’s a stream comes in from the hills.’

  ‘Plenty of fish.’ The Buzzard gestured at the racks of poles set up in the clearing upon which the split carcasses were laid out over the slow smoking fires of green wood. ‘I’ll have my lads catch some for us also. But what about meat? Are there any deer or wild cattle in the forest?’

  ‘There are elephants, and herds of wild buffalo. But all are fierce, and even a musket ball in the ribs does not bring them down. However, as soon as the ship is careened I intend sending a band of hunters inland, beyond the hills to see if they cannot find easier prey.’

  It was apparent that Cumbrae had asked the question to give himself space, and he hardly bothered to listen to the reply. When his roving eyes gleamed, Hal followed their gaze. The Buzzard had discovered the row of thatched lean-to shelters a hundred paces back among the trees, under which the huge casks of spice stood in serried ranks.

  ‘So you plan to beach and careen the galleon.’ Cumbrae turned away from the spice store, and nodded across the water at the hull of the Resolution. ‘A wise plan. If you need help, I have three first-rate carpenters.’

  ‘You are amiable,’ Sir Francis told him. ‘I may call upon you.’

  ‘Anything to help a fellow Knight. I know you would do the same for me.’ The Buzzard clapped him warmly on the shoulder. ‘Now, while my shore party goes to refill the water casks, you and I can look for a suitable place to set up our Lodge. We must do young Hal here proud. It’s an important day for him.’

  Sir Francis glanced at Hal. ‘Aboli is waiting for you.’ He nodded to where the big black man stood patiently a little further down the beach.

  Hal watched his father walk away with Cumbrae and disappear down a footpath into the forest. Then he ran down to join Aboli. ‘I am ready at last. Let us go.’

  Aboli set off immediately, trotting along the beach towards the head of the lagoon. Hal fell in beside him. ‘You have no sticks?’

  ‘We will cut them from the forest.’ Aboli tapped the shaft of the hand axe, the steel head of which was hooked over his shoulder, and turned off the beach as he spoke. He led Hal a mile or so inland until they reached a dense thicket. ‘I marked these trees earlier. My tribe call them the kweti. From them we make the finest throwing sticks.’

  As they pushed into the dense thicket, there was a explosion of flying leaves and crashing branches as some huge beast charged away ahead of them. They caught a glimpse of scabby black hide and the flash of great bossed horns.

  ‘Nyati!’ Aboli told Hal. ‘The wild buffalo.’

  ‘We
should hunt him.’ Hal unslung the musket from his shoulder, and reached eagerly for the flint and steel in his pouch to light his slow-match. ‘Such a monster would give us beef for all the ship’s company.’

  Aboli grinned and shook his head. ‘He would hunt you first. There is no fiercer beast in all the forest, not even the lion. He will laugh at your little lead musket balls as he splits your belly open with those mighty spears he carries atop his head.’ He swung the axe from his shoulder. ‘Leave old Nyati be, and we will find other meat to feed the crew.’

  Aboli hacked at the base of one of the kweti saplings and, with a dozen strokes, exposed the bulbous root. After a few more strokes he lifted it out from the earth, with the stem attached to it.

  ‘My tribe call this club an iwisa,’ he told Hal, as he worked, ‘and today I will show you how to use it.’ With skilful cuts, he sized the length of the shaft and peeled away the bark. Then he trimmed the root into an iron-hard ball, like the head of a mace. When he was finished he hefted the club, testing its weight and balance. Then he set it aside and searched for another. ‘We need two each.’

  Hal squatted on his heels and watched the wood chips fly under the steel. ‘How old were you when the slavers caught you, Aboli?’ he asked, and the dextrous black hands paused in their task.

  A shadow passed behind the dark eyes, but Aboli started working again before he replied, ‘I do not know, only that I was very young.’

  ‘Do you remember it, Aboli?’

  ‘I remember that it was night when they came, men in white robes with long muskets. It was so long ago, but I remember the flames in the darkness as they surrounded our village.’

  ‘Where did your people live?’

  ‘Far to the north. On the shores of a great river. My father was a chief yet they dragged him from his hut and killed him like an animal. They killed all our warriors, and spared only the very young children and the women. They chained us together in lines, neck to neck, and made us march, many days, towards the rising of the sun, down to the coast.’ Aboli stood up abruptly, and picked up the bundle of clubs he had finished. ‘We talk like old women while we should be hunting.’

  He started back through the trees the way they had come. When they reached the lagoon again, he looked back at Hal. ‘Leave your musket and powder flask here. They will be no use to you in the water.’

  As Hal hid his weapon in the undergrowth, Aboli selected a pair of the lightest and straightest of the iwisa. When Hal returned he handed him the clubs. ‘Watch me. Do what I do,’ he ordered, as he stripped off his clothing and waded out into the shallows of the lagoon. Hal followed him, naked, into the thickest stand of reeds.

  Waist deep, Aboli stopped and pulled the stems of the tall reeds over his head plaiting them together to form a screen over himself. Then he sank down into the water, until only his head was exposed. Hal took up a position not far from him, and quickly built himself a similar roof of reeds. Faintly he could hear the voices of the watering party from the Gull, and the squeaking of their oars as they rowed back from the head of the lagoon where they had filled their casks from the sweet-water stream.

  ‘Good!’ Aboli called softly, ‘Be ready now, Gundwane! They will put the birds into the air for us.’

  Suddenly there was a roar of wings, and the sky was filled with the same vast cloud of birds they had watched before. A flight of ducks that looked like English mallard, except for their bright yellow bills, sped in a low V-formation towards where they were hidden.

  ‘Here they come,’ Aboli warned him, in a whisper, and Hal tensed, his face turned upwards to watch the old drake that led the flock. His wings were like knife blades as they stabbed the air with quick, sharp strokes.

  ‘Now!’ shouted Aboli, and sprang up to his full height, his right arm already cocked back with the iwisa in his fist. As he hurled it cartwheeling into the air, the line of wild duck flared in panic.

  Aboli had anticipated this reaction and his spinning club caught the drake in the chest and stopped him dead. He fell in a tangle of wings and webbed feet, trailing feathers, but long before he struck the water Aboli had hurled his second club. It spun up to catch a younger bird, snapping her outstretched neck and dropping her close beside the floating carcass of the old drake.

  Hal hurled his own sticks in quick succession, but both flew well wide of his mark and the splintered flock raced away low over the reed beds.

  ‘You will soon learn, you were close with both your throws,’ Aboli encouraged him, as he splashed through the reeds, first to pick up the dead birds, and then to recover his iwisa. He floated the two carcasses in a pool of open water in front of him, and within minutes they had decoyed in another whistling flock that dropped almost to the tops of the reeds before he threw at them.

  ‘Good throw, Gundwane!’ Aboli laughed at Hal as he waded out to pick up another two dead birds. ‘You were closer then. Soon you may even hit one.’

  Despite this prophecy, it was mid-morning before Hal brought down his first duck. Even then it was broken-winged, and he had to plunge and swim after it half-way down the lagoon before he could get a hand to it and wring its neck. In the middle of the day the birds stopped flighting and sat out in the deeper water where they could not be reached.

  ‘It’s enough!’ Aboli put an end to the hunt, and gathered up his kill. From a tree at the water’s edge he cut strips of bark and twisted these into strings to tie the dead ducks into bunches. They made up a load almost too heavy for even his broad shoulders to bear but Hal carried his own meagre bag without difficulty as they trudged back along the beach.

  When they came round the point and could look into the bay where the three ships lay at anchor, Aboli dropped his burden of dead birds to the sand. ‘We will rest here.’ Hal sank down beside him, and for a while they sat in silence, until Aboli asked, ‘Why has the Buzzard come here? What does your father say?’

  ‘The Buzzard says he has come to make a Lodge for my initiation.’

  Aboli nodded. ‘In my own tribe the young warrior had to enter the circumcision lodge before he became a man.’

  Hal shuddered and fingered his crotch as if to check that all was still in place. ‘I am glad I will not have to give myself to the knife, as you did.’

  ‘But that is not the true reason that the Buzzard has followed us here. He follows your father as the hyena follows the lion. The stink of treachery is strong upon him.’

  ‘My father has smelt it also,’ Hal assured him softly. ‘But we are at his mercy, for the Resolution has no mainmast and the cannon are out of her.’

  They both stared down the lagoon at the Gull of Moray, until Hal stirred uneasily. ‘What is the Buzzard up to now?’

  The longboat from the Gull was rowing out from her side to where her anchor cable dipped below the surface of the lagoon. They watched the crew of the small boat latch onto it and work there for several minutes.

  ‘They are screened from the beach, so my father cannot see what they are up to.’ Hal was thinking aloud. ‘’Tis a furtive air they have about them, and I like it not at all.’

  As he spoke the men finished their secretive task and began to row back to the Gull’s side. Now Hal could make out that they were laying a second cable over their stern as they went. At that he sprang to his feet in agitation. ‘They are setting a spring to their anchor!’ he exclaimed.

  ‘A spring?’ Aboli looked at him. ‘Why would they do that?’

  ‘So that with a few turns of the capstan the Buzzard can swing his ship in any direction he chooses.’

  Aboli stood up beside him, his expression grave. ‘That way he can train his broadside of cannon on our helpless ship or sweep our encampment on the beach with grape shot,’ he said. ‘We must hurry back to warn the captain.’

  ‘No, Aboli, do not hurry. We must not alert the Buzzard to the fact that we have spotted his trick.’

  Sir Francis listened intently to what Hal was saying, and when his son had finished he stroked his chin reflective
ly. Then he sauntered to the rail of the Resolution and casually raised his telescope to his eye. He made a slow sweep of the wide expanse of the lagoon, barely pausing as his gaze passed over the Gull so that no one could mark his sudden interest in the Buzzard’s ship. Then he closed the telescope and came back to where Hal waited. There was respect in Sir Francis’s eyes as he said, ‘Well done, my boy. The Buzzard is up to his usual tricks. You were right. I was on the beach and could not see him setting the spring. I might never have noticed it.’

  ‘Are you going to order him to remove it, Father?’

  Sir Francis smiled and shook his head. ‘Better not to let him know we have tumbled to him.’

  ‘But what can we do?’

  ‘I already have the culverins on the beach trained on the Gull. Daniel and Ned have warned every man—’

  ‘But, Father, is there no ruse we can prepare for the Buzzard to match the surprise he clearly plans for us?’ In his agitation Hal found the temerity to interrupt, but his father frowned quickly and his reply was sharp.

  ‘No doubt you have a suggestion, Master Henry.’

  At this formal address Hal was warned of his father’s rising anger, and he was immediately contrite. ‘Forgive my presumption, Father, I meant no impertinence.’

  ‘I am pleased to hear that.’ Sir Francis began to turn away, his back still stiff.

  ‘Was not my great-grandfather, Charles Courtney, with Drake at the battle of Gravelines?’

  ‘He was, indeed.’ Sir Francis looked round. ‘But as you already know the answer well enough, is this not a strange question to put to me now?’

  ‘So it may well have been Great-grandfather himself who proposed to Drake the use of devil ships against the Spanish Armada as it lay anchored in Calais Roads, may it not?’