Birds of Prey

by Wilbur Smith

  He worked deftly, with flint and steel, to light one of the candles Sukeena had provided. Shielding the flame with cupped hands from any watcher below the mountain he went forward and crawled into the low natural tunnel on hands and knees, dragging the saddle-bag behind him. As Sukeena had told him, the tunnel opened suddenly into a cavern high enough for him to stand. He held the candle above his head and saw that the cavern would make a fitting burial place for a great chief. There was even a natural rock shelf at the far end. He left the saddle bag upon it and crawled back to retrieve the buffalo skin. Before he entered the tunnel again he looked back over his shoulder and reoriented himself in the direction of the moonrise.

  ‘I shall turn his face to greet ten thousand moons and all the sunrises of eternity!’ he said softly, and dragged the heavy skin into the cavern and spread it on the rock floor.

  He placed the candle on the rock shelf and began to unpack the bag. First he set aside those small offerings and ceremonial items he had brought with him. Then he lifted out Sir Francis’s covered head and laid it in the centre of the buffalo hide. He unwrapped it reverently, and showed no repugnance for the thick cloying odour of decay that slowly filled the cavern. He assembled all the other dismembered parts of the body and arranged them in their natural order, binding them in place with slim strands of bark rope, until Sir Francis lay on his side, his knees drawn up beneath his chin and his arms hugging his legs, the foetal position of the womb and of sleep. Then he folded the wet buffalo hide tightly around him so that only his ravaged face was still exposed. He stitched the folds of the hide around him so they would dry into an iron-hard sarcophagus. It was a long and meticulous task, and when the candle burnt down and guttered in a pool of its own liquid wax he lit another from the stump and worked on.

  When he had finished, he took up the turtleshell comb, another of Sukeena’s gifts, and combed out the tangled tresses that still adhered to Sir Francis’s skull, and braided them neatly. At last he lifted the seated body and placed it on the stone shelf. He turned it carefully to face the east; to gaze for ever towards the moonrise and the dawn.

  For a long while he squatted below the ledge and looked upon the ravaged head, seeing it in his mind’s eye as it once was. The face of the vigorous young mariner who had rescued him from the slavers’ hold two decades before.

  At last he rose and began to gather up the grave-goods he had brought with him. He laid them one at a time on the ledge before the body of Sir Francis. The tiny model of a ship he had carved with his own hands. There had not been time to lavish care upon its construction, and it was crude and childlike. However, the three masts had sails set upon them, and the name carved into the stern was Lady Edwina.

  ‘May this ship carry you over the dark oceans to the landfall where the woman whose name she bears awaits you,’ Aboli whispered.

  Next he placed the knife and the bow of olive wood beside the ship. ‘I have no sword with which to arm you, but may these weapons be your defence in the dark places.’

  Then he offered the food bowl and the water bottle. ‘May you never again hunger or thirst.’

  Lastly, the cross of wood that Aboli had fashioned and decorated with green abalone shell, white-carved bone and small bright stones from the river-bed. ‘May the cross of your God which guided you in life, guide you still in death,’ he said as he placed the cross before Sir Francis’s empty eyes.

  Kneeling on the cavern floor he built a small fire and lit it from the candle. ‘May this fire warm you in the darkness of your long night.’ Then, in his own language, he sang the funeral chant and the song of the traveller on a long journey, clapping his hands softly to keep the time, and to show respect. When the flames of the fire burned low he stood and moved to the entrance of the cavern.

  ‘Farewell, my friend,’ he said. ‘Goodbye, my father.’

  Governor van de Velde was a cautious man. At first, he had not allowed Aboli to drive him in the carriage. ‘This is a whim of yours that I will not deny, my dear,’ he told his wife, ‘but the fellow is a black savage. What does he know of horses?’

  ‘He is really very good, better by far than old Fredricus.’ Katinka laughed. ‘And he looks so splendid in the new livery I have designed for him.’

  ‘His fancy maroon coat and breeches will be of little interest to me when he breaks my neck,’ van de Velde said, but despite his misgivings he watched the way Aboli handled the team of greys.

  The first morning that Aboli drove the Governor down from the residence to his suite in the castle, there was a stir and a murmur among the convicts working on the walls as the carriage crossed the Parade and approached the castle gates. They had recognized Aboli sitting high on the coachman’s seat with the long whip in his white-gloved hands.

  Hal was on the point of shouting a greeting to him, but checked himself in time. It was not the sting of Barnard’s whip that dissuaded him, but he realized that it would be unwise to remind his captors that Aboli had been his shipmate. The Dutch would expect him to regard a black man as a slave and not as a companion.

  ‘Nobody to greet Aboli,’ he whispered urgently to Daniel, sweating beside him. ‘Ignore him. Pass it on.’ The order went swiftly down the ranks of men on the scaffold and then to those labouring in the courtyard. When the carriage came in through the gates to a turnout of the honour guard and the salutes of the garrison’s officers, none of the convicts paid any attention. They devoted themselves to the heavy work with block and tackle and iron bar.

  Aboli sat like a carved figurehead on the coachman’s seat, staring directly ahead. His dark eyes did not even flicker in Hal’s direction. He drew the team of greys to a halt at the foot of the staircase and sprang down to lower the folding steps and hand out the Governor. Once van de Velde had waddled up the stairs and disappeared into his suite, Aboli returned to his seat and sat upon it, unmoving, facing straight ahead. In a short time the gaolers and guards forgot his silent presence, turned their attention to their duties and the castle fell into its routine.

  An hour passed and one of the horses threw its head and fidgeted. From the corner of his eye Hal had noticed Aboli touch the reins to agitate the animal slightly. Now he climbed unhurriedly down and went to its head. He held its leather cheek-strap and stroked its head and murmured endearments to it. The grey quietened immediately under his touch, and Aboli went down on one knee and lifted first one front foot and then the other, examining the hoofs for any injury.

  Still on one knee and screened by the horse’s body from the view of any of the guards or overseers, he looked up for the first time at Hal. Their gaze touched for an instant. Aboli nodded almost imperceptibly and opened his right fist to give Hal a glimpse of the tiny curl of white paper he had in his palm, then closed his fist and stood up. He walked down the team of horses examining each animal and making minute adjustments to the harness. At last he turned aside and leaned against the stone wall beside him, stooping to wipe the fine flouring of dust from his boots.

  Hal watched him take the quill of paper and surreptitiously stuff it into a joint in the stonework of the wall. He straightened and returned to the coachman’s seat to await the Governor’s pleasure. Van de Velde never showed consideration for servant, slave or animal. All that morning the team of greys stood patiently in the traces with Aboli soothing them at intervals. A little before noon the Governor re-emerged from the Company offices and had himself driven back to the residence for the midday meal.

  In the dusk, as the convicts wearily climbed down into the courtyard, Hal stumbled as he reached the ground and put out his hand to steady himself. Neatly he picked the scrap of folded paper from the joint in the stonework where Aboli had left it.

  Once in the dungeon there was just sufficient light filtering down from the torch in its bracket at the top of the staircase for Hal to read the message. It was written in a fine neat hand that he did not recognize. Despite all his father’s and Hal’s own instruction, Aboli’s handwriting had never been better than large
, sprawling and malformed. It seemed that another scribe had framed these words. A tiny nub of charcoal was wrapped in the paper, placed there for Hal to write his reply on the reverse of the scrap.

  ‘The Captain buried with honour.’ Hal’s heart leapt as he read that. So it was Aboli who had taken down his father’s mutilated corpse from the gibbet. I should have known he would give my father that respect.

  There was only one more word. ‘Althuda?’ Hal puzzled over this until he understood that Aboli, or the writer, must be asking after the welfare of the other prisoner.

  ‘Althuda!’ he called softly. ‘Are you awake?’

  ‘Greetings, Hal. What cheer?’

  ‘Somebody outside asks after you.’

  There was a long silence as Althuda considered this. ‘Who asks?’

  ‘I know not.’ Hal could not explain for he was certain that the gaolers eavesdropped on these exchanges.

  Another long silence. ‘I can guess,’ Althuda called. ‘And so can you. We have discussed her before. Can you send a reply? Tell her I am alive.’

  Hal rubbed the charcoal on the wall to sharpen a point on it and wrote, ‘Althuda well.’ Even though his letters were small and cramped, there was space for no more on the paper.

  The following morning, as they were led out to begin the day’s work on the scaffold, Daniel screened Hal for the moment he needed to push the scrap of paper into the same crack from which he had retrieved it.

  In the middle of the morning Aboli drove the Governor down from the residence and parked once more beneath the staircase. Long after van de Velde had disappeared into his sanctum, Aboli remained on the coachman’s seat. At last he looked up casually at a flock of red-winged starlings that had come down from the cliffs to perch on the walls of the eastern bastion and give vent to their low, mournful whistles. From the birds his eye passed over Hal, who nodded. Once again Aboli dismounted and tended his horses, pausing beside the wall to adjust the straps on his boots and, with a magician’s sleight-of-hand, to recover the message from the crack in the wall. Hal breathed easier when he saw it, for they had established their letterbox.

  They did not make the mistake of trying to exchange messages every day. Sometimes a week or more might pass before Aboli nodded at Hal, and placed a note in the wall. If Hal had a message, he would give the same signal and Aboli would leave paper and charcoal for him.

  The second message Hal received was in that artistic and delicate script: ‘A. is safe. Orchid sends her heart.’

  ‘Is the orchid the one we spoke of?’ Hal called to Althuda that night. ‘She sends you her heart, and says you are safe.’

  ‘I do not know how she has achieved that, but I must believe it and be thankful to her in this as in so many things.’ There was a lift of relief in Althuda’s tone. Hal held the scrap of paper to his nose, and fancied that he detected the faintest perfume upon it. He huddled on his damp straw in a corner of the cell. He thought about Sukeena until sleep overcame him. The memory of her beauty was like a candle flame in the winter darkness of the dungeon.

  Governor van de Velde was passing drunk. He had swilled the Rhenish with the soup and Madeira with the fish and the lobster. The red wines of Burgundy had accompanied the mutton stew and the pigeon pie. He had quaffed the claret with the beef, and interspersed each with draughts of good Dutch gin. When at last he rose from the board, he steadied himself as he wove to his seat by the fire with a hand on his wife’s arm. She was not usually so attentive, but all this evening she had been in an affectionate and merry mood, laughing at his sallies which on other occasions she would have ignored, and refilling his glass with her own gracious hand before it was half emptied. Come to think of it, he could not remember when last they had dined alone, just the two of them, like a pair of lovers.

  For once, he had not been forced to put up with the company of the rustic yokels from the settlement, or with the obsequious flattery of ambitious Company servants or, greatest blessing of all, without the posturing and boasting of that amorous prig Schreuder.

  He fell back in the deep leather chair beside the fire and Sukeena brought him a box of good Dutch cigars to choose from. As she held the burning taper for him, he peered with a lascivious eye down the front of her costume. The soft swell of girlish breasts, between which nestled the exotic jade brooch, moved him so that he felt his groin swell and engorge pleasantly.

  Katinka was kneeling at the open hearth, but she regarded him so slyly that he worried for a moment that she had seen him ogle the slave girl’s bosom. But then she smiled and took up the poker that was heating in the fire and plunged its glowing tip into the stone jug of scented wine. It boiled and fumed, and she filled a bowl with it and brought it to him before it had time to cool.

  ‘My beautiful wife!’ He slurred a little. ‘My little darling.’ He toasted her with the steaming bowl. He was not yet so intoxicated or gullible that he did not realize there would be some price to pay for this unusual kindness. There always was.

  Kneeling in front of him, Katinka looked up at Sukeena, who hovered close at hand. ‘That is all for tonight, Sukeena. You may go.’ She gave the slave girl a knowing smile.

  ‘I wish you sweet sleep and dreams of paradise, master and mistress.’ Sukeena gave that graceful genuflection, and glided from the room. She slid the carved oriental screen door closed behind her, and knelt there quietly with her face close to the panel. These were her mistress’s orders. Katinka wanted Sukeena to witness what transpired between her and her husband. She knew that it would tighten the knot that bound the slave girl to her.

  Now Katinka moved behind her husband’s chair. ‘You have had such a difficult week,’ she said softly, ‘what with the affair of the pirate’s body being stolen from the scaffold, and now the new census and taxation ordinances from the Seventeen. My poor darling husband, let me massage your shoulders for you.’

  She removed his wig and kissed the top of his head. The stubble prickled her lips, and she stood back and dug her thumbs into his heavy shoulders. Van de Velde sighed with pleasure, not only with the sensation of the knots being eased from his muscles but because he recognized this as the prelude to the infrequent dispensation of her sexual favours.

  ‘How much do you love me?’ she asked, and leaned over him to nibble at his ear.

  ‘I adore you,’ he blurted out. ‘I worship you.’

  ‘You are always so kind to me.’ Her voice took on that husky quality that made his skin tingle. ‘I want to be kind to you. I have written to my father. I have explained to him the circumstances of the pirate’s demise and how it was not your fault that it happened. I shall give the letter to the captain of the homeward-bound galleon, which is anchored in the bay at the moment, to hand to Papa in person.’

  ‘May I see the letter before you dispatch it?’ he asked warily. ‘It would carry much weight if it could accompany my own report to the Seventeen, which I shall send on the same ship.’

  ‘Of course you may. I shall bring it to you before you leave for the castle in the morning.’ She brushed the top of his head with her lips again, and slid her fingers from his shoulders down over his chest. She unhooked the buttons of his doublet and slipped both hands into the opening. She took a handful of each of his pendulous dugs and kneaded them as though they were lumps of soft bread dough.

  ‘You are such a good little wife,’ he said. ‘I would like to give you a sign of my love. What do you lack? A jewel? A pet? A new slave? Tell your old Petrus.’

  ‘I do have a little whimsy,’ she admitted coyly. ‘There is a man in the dungeons.’

  ‘One of the pirates?’ he hazarded.

  ‘No, a slave named Althuda.’

  ‘Ah, yes! I know about him. The rebel and runaway! I shall deal with him this coming week. His death warrant is already on my desk waiting for my signature. Shall I give him to Slow John? Would you like to watch? Is that it? You want to enjoy the sport? How can I deny you?’

  She reached down and began to unlace the fas
tening of his breeches. He spread his legs and lay back comfortably in the chair to make the task easier for her.

  ‘I want you to grant Althuda a reprieve,’ she whispered in his ear.

  He sat bolt upright. ‘You are mad,’ he gasped.

  ‘You are so cruel to call me mad.’ She pouted.

  ‘But – but he is a runaway. He and his gang of thugs murdered twenty of the soldiers who were sent to recapture him. I could never free him.’

  ‘I know you cannot release him. But I want you to keep him alive. You could set him to work on the walls of your castle.’

  ‘I cannot do it.’ He shook his shaven head. ‘Not even for you.’

  She came round from behind his chair and knelt in front of him. Her fingers began work again on the lacing of his breeches. He tried to sit up but she pushed him back and reached inside.

  All the saints bear witness, the old sodomite makes it difficult for me. He is as soft and white as unrisen dough, she thought as she grasped him. ‘Not even for your own loving wife?’ she whispered, and looked up with swimming violet eyes, as she thought, That’s a little better, I felt the drooping lily twitch.

  ‘I mean, rather, that it would be difficult.’ He was in a quandary.

  ‘I understand,’ she murmured. ‘It was just as difficult for me to compose my letter to my father. I would hate to be forced to burn it.’ She stood up and lifted her skirts as though she were about to climb over a stile. She was naked from the waist down and his eyes bulged like those of a cod hauled up abruptly from deep water. He struggled to sit up and at the same time tried to reach for her.

  I’ll not have you on top of me again, you great tub of pork lard, she thought as she smiled lovingly at him and held him down with both hands on his shoulders. Last time you nearly squashed the life out of me.