Birds of Prey

by Wilbur Smith

  They groaned and shouted protests until he held up his hand again. ‘Or I can take over Captain Llewellyn’s charter and his agreement with the owners of the Golden Bough. On your side, you can sign on with me on the same terms and with the same share of the prize you agreed before. Before you answer me, remember that if you come with me the chances are strong that we will run in with the Buzzard again, and you will have to fight him once more.’

  ‘Lead us to him now, Captain,’ one yelled. ‘We’ll fight him this very day.’

  ‘Nay, lad. We’re short-handed and I need to learn to con this ship before we meet the Buzzard again. We will fight the Gull on the day and at the place of my own choosing,’ Hal told them grimly. ‘On that day we will hoist the Buzzard’s head to our masthead and divide up his booty.’

  ‘I’m with you, Captain,’ shouted a lanky fair-headed sailor. ‘I cannot write my name, but bring me the book and I’ll mark a cross so big and black it will fright the devil himself.’ They all roared with fierce laughter.

  ‘Bring the book and let us sign.’

  ‘We’re with you. My oath and my mark on it.’

  Hal stopped them again. ‘You will come one at a time to my cabin, so that I can learn each of your names and shake you by the hand.’

  He turned to the rail and pointed back over their stern. ‘We have made good our offing.’ The African coast lay low and blue along the horizon. ‘Get aloft now to make sail and bring the ship around onto her true course for the Great Horn of Africa.’

  They swarmed up the shrouds and out along the yards and the canvas billowed out until it shone in the sunlight like a soaring thunderhead.

  ‘What course, Captain?’ Ned Tyler called from the helm.

  ‘East by north, Mr Tyler,’ Hal replied, and felt the ship surge forward under him, as he turned to watch the wake furrow the blue rollers with a line of flashing foam.

  Whenever one of the crew passed the foot of the mainmast where Sam Bowles crouched, shackled at hand and foot like a captive ape, they paused to gather saliva and spit at him.

  Aboli came to Hal in the forenoon watch. ‘You must deal with Sam Bowles now. The men are becoming impatient. One of them is going to cheat the rope and stick a knife between his ribs.’

  ‘That will save me a deal of bother.’ Hal looked up from the bundle of charts and the book of sailing directions that he had found in Christopher Llewellyn’s chest. He knew that his crew would demand a savage revenge on Sam Bowles, and he did not relish what had to be done.

  ‘I will come on deck at once.’ He sighed, surrendering at last to Aboli’s ruthless persuasion. ‘Have the men assembled in the waist.’

  He had thought that Sukeena was still in the small cabin that adjoined the powder magazine, which she had turned into a sickbay and in which two of the wounded men still teetered on the edge of life. He hoped that she would stay there, but as he stepped out onto the deck she came to meet him.

  ‘You should go below, Princess,’ he told her softly. ‘It will not be a sight fitting to your eyes.’

  ‘What concerns you is my concern also. Your father was part of you, so his death touches upon me. I lost my own father in terrible circumstances, but I avenged him. I will stay to see that you avenge your father’s death.’

  ‘Very well.’ Hal nodded, and called across the deck. ‘Bring the prisoner!’

  They were forced to drag Sam Bowles to face his accusers, for his legs could barely support him and his tears ran down to mingle with the spittle that the men had ejected into his face.

  ‘I meant no ill,’ he pleaded. ‘Hear me, shipmates. ’Twas that devil Cumbrae that drove me to it.’

  ‘You laughed as you held my brother’s head under the waters of the lagoon,’ shouted one of the seamen.

  As they dragged him past where Aboli stood with his arms folded across his chest, he stared at Sam with eyes that glittered strangely.

  ‘Remember Francis Courtney!’ Aboli rumbled. ‘Remember what you did to the finest man who ever sailed the oceans.’

  Hal had prepared a list of the crimes for which Sam Bowles must answer. As he read aloud each charge, the men howled for vengeance.

  Finally Hal came to the last item of the dreadful recital: ‘That you, Samuel Bowles, in the sight of their comrades and shipmates, did murder the wounded seamen from the Golden Bough, who had survived your treacherous ambush, by causing them to be drowned.’

  He folded the document, and demanded sternly, ‘You have heard the charges against you, Samuel Bowles. What have you to say in your defence?’

  ‘It was not my own fault! I swear I would not have done it but I was in terror of my life.’

  The crew shouted him down, and it was some minutes until Hal could quieten them. Then he asked, ‘So you do not deny the charges against you?’

  ‘What use denying it?’ one of the men shouted. ‘We all saw it with our own eyes.’

  Sam Bowles was weeping loudly now. ‘For the love of sweet Jesus have mercy, Sir Henry. I know I have erred, but give me a chance and you will find no more trusty and loving creature to serve you all the days of your life.’

  The sight of Bowles disgusted Hal so deeply that he wanted to wash the foul taste of it from his mouth. Suddenly an image appeared in the eye of his mind. It was of his father lying on the litter, being borne away to the scaffold, his body broken and twisted from the rack. He began to tremble.

  Beside him, Sukeena sensed his distress. She laid her hand softly on his arm to steady him. He drew a deep, slow breath and fought back the black waves of sorrow that threatened to overwhelm him. ‘Samuel Bowles, you have admitted your guilt to all the charges brought against you. Is there anything that you wish to say before I pronounce sentence upon you?’ Grimly he stared into Sam’s flooded eyes, and watched a strange transformation take place. He realized that the tears were a device that Sam could call upon at will. Something else burned out from a deep and hidden part of his soul, a nimbus so feral and evil that he doubted he still looked into the eyes of a human being and not those of a wild beast standing at bay.

  ‘You think you hate me, Henry Courtney? You do not know what hatred truly is. I glory in the thought of your father screaming on the rack. Sam Bowles did that. Remember it every day you live. Sam Bowles might be dead but Sam Bowles did that!’ His voice rose to a scream, and spittle foamed on his lips. His own evil overwhelmed him and his shrieks were barely coherent. ‘This is my ship, my own ship. I would have been Captain Samuel Bowles, and you took it from me. May the devil drink your blood in hell. May he dance on your father’s twisted and rotting corpse, Henry Courtney.’

  Hal turned away from the revolting spectacle, trying to close his ears to the stream of invective.

  ‘Mr Tyler.’ He spoke loudly enough for all the crew to hear above Sam Bowles’s screams. ‘We will waste no more of the ship’s time with this matter. The prisoner is to be hanged immediately. Reeve a rope to the main yard—’

  ‘Gundwane!’ Aboli roared a warning. ‘Behind you!’ And he started forward too late to intervene. Sam Bowles had reached under his petticoats. Strapped to the inside of his thigh was a leather sheath. He was as swift as a striking adder. In his hand the blade of the stiletto sparkled like a sliver of crystal, pretty as a maiden’s bauble. He threw it with a snap of his wrist.

  Hal had begun to turn to Aboli’s warning, but Sam was swifter. The dagger flitted across the space that separated them, and Hal winced in anticipation of the sting of the razor-edged blade burying itself in his flesh. For an instant he doubted his own senses, for he felt no blow.

  He looked down and saw that Sukeena had flung out one slim bare arm to block the throw. The silver blade had struck an inch below her elbow and buried itself to the haft.

  ‘Sweet Jesus, shield her!’ Hal blurted, seized her in his arms and hugged her to him. Both of them stared down at the hilt of the dagger protruding from her flesh.

  Aboli reached Sam Bowles the instant after the stiletto had flown from hi
s fingers and sent him crashing to the deck with a blow of his bunched fist. Ned Tyler and a dozen men leapt forward to seize him, and drag him to his feet. Sam shook his head blearily for Aboli’s fist had stunned him. Blood dribbled from the side of his mouth.

  ‘Reeve a rope through the main yard block,’ Ned Tyler shouted, and a man raced up the shrouds to obey. He ran out along the main yard, and a minute later the rope fell down through the sheave and its tail flopped onto the deck.

  ‘The blade has gone deep,’ Hal whispered, as he held Sukeena against his chest and tenderly lifted her wounded arm.

  ‘It is thin and sharp.’ Sukeena smiled bravely up at him. ‘So sharp I hardly felt it. Draw the blade swiftly, my darling, and it will heal cleanly.’

  ‘Help me here! Hold her arm,’ Hal called to Aboli, who sprang to his side, grasped the slim engraved hilt and, with one swift motion, plucked the blade from Sukeena’s flesh. It came away with surprising ease.

  She said softly, ‘There is little harm done,’ but her cheeks had paled and tears trembled on her lower eyelids. Hal lifted her in his arms and started towards the companionway of the stern. A wild scream stopped him.

  Sam Bowles stood beneath the dangling rope. Ned Tyler was snugging the noose down under his ear. Four men waited ready with the tail of the rope in their hands.

  ‘Your bitch is dead, Henry Courtney. She is dead just like your bastard sire. Sam Bowles killed both of them. Glory be, Captain Bloody Courtney, remember me in your prayers. I am the man you will never forget!’

  ‘’Tis a little cut. The Princess is a strong, brave girl. She will live on,’ Ned muttered grimly in Sam Bowles’s ear. ‘You are the one who is dead, Sam Bowles.’ He stepped back and nodded to the men on the rope’s end, who walked away with it, slapping their bare feet on the deck timbers in unison.

  The instant before the rope came up tight and stopped his breath, Sam screamed again, ‘Look well at the blade that cut your whore, Captain. Think on Sam Bowles when you try the point.’ The rope bit into his throat and yanked him off his feet, throttling the next word before it reached his lips.

  The crew howled with wolflike glee as Sam Bowles rose spiralling in the air, swinging on the rope’s end as the Golden Bough rolled under him. His legs kicked and danced so that the chains on his ankles tinkled like sleigh bells.

  He was still twitching and gurgling when his neck jammed up tight against the sheave block at the end of the main yard high above the deck.

  ‘Let him hang there all night,’ Ned Tyler ordered. ‘We’ll cut him down in the morning and throw him to the sharks.’ Then he stooped and picked up the stiletto from the deck where Hal had flung it. He studied the blood-smeared blade and his tanned face turned yellow grey. ‘Sweet Mary, let it not be so!’ He looked up again at Sam Bowles’s corpse swaying to the ship’s motion high above him.

  ‘Your death was too easy. If it were in my power, I would kill you a hundred times over, and each time more painfully than the last.’

  Hal laid Sukeena on the bunk in the main cabin. ‘I should cauterize the wound but the hot iron would leave a scar.’ He knelt beside the bunk and examined it closely. ‘It is deep but there is almost no bleeding.’ He wrapped her arm in a fold of white linen that Aboli brought him from the sea-chest at the foot of the bunk.

  ‘Bring me my bag,’ Sukeena ordered, and Aboli went immediately.

  As soon as they were alone, Hal bent over her and kissed her pale cheek. ‘You took Sam’s throw to save me,’ he murmured, his face pressed to hers. ‘You risked your own life and the life of the child in your womb for me. It was a bad bargain, my love.’

  ‘I would strike the same bargain—’ She broke off and he felt her stiffen in his arms and gasp.

  ‘What is it that ails you, my sweetheart?’ He drew back and stared into her face. Before his eyes, tiny beads of perspiration welled up out of the pores of her skin, like the dew on the petals of a yellow rose. ‘You are in pain?’

  ‘It burns,’ she whispered. ‘It burns worse than the hot iron you spoke of.’

  Swiftly he unwrapped her arm and stared at the change in the wound that had taken place as they embraced. The arm was swelling before his eyes, like one of the Toby fish of the coral reef that could puff itself up to many times its original size when threatened by a predator.

  Sukeena lifted the arm and nursed it to her bosom. She whimpered involuntarily as the pain flowed up from the wound to fill her chest like glowing molten lead.

  ‘I do not understand what is happening.’ She began to writhe upon the bunk. ‘This is not natural. Look how it changes colour.’

  Hal stared helplessly as the lovely limb slowly bloated and discoloured with lines of crimson and vivid purple, that ran up from the elbow to her shoulder. The wound began to weep a viscous yellow fluid.

  ‘What can I do?’ he blurted.

  ‘I do not know,’ she said desperately. ‘This is something beyond my understanding.’ A spasm of agony seized her in a vice, and her back arched. Then it passed and she pleaded, ‘I must have my bag. I cannot endure this pain. I have a powder made from the opium poppy.’

  Hal sprang to his feet and bounded across the cabin. ‘Aboli, where are you?’ he bellowed. ‘Bring the bag, and swiftly!’

  Ned Tyler stood upon the threshold of the door. He held something in his hand and there was a strange expression on his face. ‘Captain, there is something I must show you.’

  ‘Not now, man, not now.’ Hal raised his voice again. ‘Aboli, come quickly.’

  Aboli came down the companionway in a rush, carrying the saddle-bags. ‘What is it, Gundwane?’

  ‘Sukeena! There is something happening to her. She needs the medicine—’

  ‘Captain!’ Ned Tyler forced his way past Aboli’s bulk into the cabin and seized Hal’s arm urgently. ‘This cannot wait. Look at the dagger. Look at the point!’ He held up the stiletto, and the others stared at it.

  ‘In God’s name!’ Hal whispered. ‘Let it not be so.’

  A narrow groove down the length of the blade was filled with a black, tarry paste that had dried hard and shiny.

  ‘It is an assassin’s blade,’ Ned said quietly. ‘The groove is filled with poison.’

  Hal felt the deck sway under his feet as though the Golden Bough had been struck by a tall wave. His vision went dark. ‘It cannot be,’ he said. ‘Aboli, tell me it cannot be.’

  ‘Be strong,’ Aboli muttered. ‘Be strong for her, Gundwane.’ He gripped Hal’s arm.

  The hand steadied Hal and his vision brightened, but when he tried to draw breath the leaden hand of dread crushed in his ribs. ‘I cannot live without her,’ he said, like a confused child.

  ‘Do not let her know,’ Aboli said. ‘Do not make the parting harder for her than it need be.’

  Hal stared at him uncomprehendingly. Then he began to understand the finality, the significance of that tiny groove in the steel blade, and of the fatal threats that Sam Bowles had shouted at him with the hangman’s noose around his neck.

  ‘Sukeena is going to die,’ he said, in a tone of bewilderment.

  ‘This will be harder for you than any fight you have ever fought before, Gundwane.’

  With an enormous effort Hal fought to regain control of himself. ‘Do not show her the dagger,’ he said to Ned Tyler. ‘Go! Hurl the cursed thing overboard.’

  When he got back to Sukeena he tried to conceal the black despair in his heart. ‘Aboli has brought your bags.’ He knelt beside her again. ‘Tell me how to prepare the potion.’

  ‘Oh, do it swiftly,’ she pleaded as another spasm gripped her. ‘The blue flask. Two measures in a mug of hot water. No more than that, for it is powerful.’

  Her hand shook violently as she tried to take the mug from him. She had only the use of the one hand now: her wounded arm was swollen and purpled, the once dainty fingers so bloated that the skin threatened to burst open. She had difficulty holding the mug and Hal lifted it to her lips while she gulped down the potion wit
h pathetic urgency.

  She fell back with the effort and writhed on the bunk, drenching the bedclothes with the sweat of agony. Hal lay beside her and held her to his chest, trying to comfort her but knowing too well how futile were his efforts.

  After a while the poppy flower seemed to have its effect. She clung to him and pressed her face into his neck. ‘I am dying, Gundwane.’

  ‘Do not say so,’ he begged her.

  ‘I have known it these many months. I saw it in the stars. That was why I could not answer your question.’

  ‘Sukeena, my love, I will die with you.’

  ‘No.’ Her voice was a little stronger. ‘You will go on. I have travelled with you as far as I am permitted. But for you the Fates have reserved a special destiny.’ She rested a while, and he thought that she had fallen into a coma, but then she spoke again. ‘You will live on. You will have many strong sons and their descendants will flourish in this land of Africa, and make it their own.’

  ‘I want no son but yours,’ he said. ‘You promised me a son.’

  ‘Hush, my love, for the son I give you will break your heart.’ Another terrible convulsion took her, and she screamed in the agony of it. At last, when it seemed she could bear no more, she fell back trembling and wept. He held her and could find no words to tell her of his grief.

  The hours passed, and twice he heard the ship’s bell announce the watch changes. He felt her grow weaker and sink away from him. Then a series of powerful convulsions racked her body. When she fell back in his arms, she whispered, ‘Your son, the son I promised you, has been born.’ Her eyes were tightly closed, tears squeezing out between the lids.

  For a long minute he did not understand her words. Then, fearfully, he drew back the blanket.