by Wilbur Smith
‘Ha! Don’t they all?’ Rivers looked at Hal. ‘Provocative young pup aren’t you, boy? I’ll bet you’ve made many a man twice your age angry enough to want you dead.’
‘And yet here I am still alive.’
‘Aye, there you are.’ Captain Rivers drew on his pipe. ‘Now … I have had a long and trying day and I would very much like to lie down in my hammock and rest awhile in the shade, as any sensible man should when the sun is as hot as this. So why don’t you tell your lads to go back to your ship and I’ll order my lads back to the shore? No damage done, no one hurt. And as for you, Franky’s boy, does this order that you Courtneys belong to forbid the taking of strong drink?’
‘I am a knight, not a Mussulman. So yes, I will take a drink with you,’ Hal conceded, trying to force back a smile.
‘Very well then, come back here at sundown. Alone. We will talk then. You will tell me what it is that you want … for if you did not want something you would surely not be here. And I will tell you whether you are going to get it, or not.’
With that Rivers pulled his sword from the sand, thrust it back into the scabbard at his left hip and, turning his back on Hal, strode up the beach.
Torches had been stuck in the sand and their flames flickered and danced in the warm breeze. Hal’s two flintlocks were loaded and primed and his sword was snug in its scabbard. If Captain Rivers had treachery in mind then Hal would go down fighting like the devil himself.
As requested, he had come alone, much to Aboli and his other officers’ dismay. But in the short time Hal had known Captain Rivers he had learnt enough to be certain that the pirate would have things his own way or not at all. And so here they were, the two of them sitting at a small table on the beach, with a bottle of Madeira wine and a couple of crystal glasses between them, all once the property of the Portuguese captain whose ship had foundered on the reef to the south of the island. Above them stretched the infinite vault of heaven in all its magnificence. Stars glutted the night sky, blazing like jewels, and Hal wondered if Judith was looking up at those same constellations, or was she trapped in some dark, airless dungeon with no sight of the sky by day or night?
‘So Tromp tried to take your ship, eh?’ the pirate captain said, filling Hal’s glass with rum.
‘Tried and failed,’ Hal agreed.
Aboli, Tromp and Big Daniel were with the longboat down at the water’s edge. The pinnaces were back with the Bough and Hal was confident that should Rivers’s canoes appear again, Mr Tyler could blast them out of the water before they had a chance to get in under his guns. As for Rivers’s men, Hal could see none though he knew they must be out there in the dark.
‘However, Tromp has proven himself useful to me since then,’ Hal said.
He glanced around. The only signs of life were the small crabs scuttling across the sand and the occasional peal of laughter from folk enjoying themselves somewhere beyond the vegetation behind them.
‘As you are aware, sir, my enemies have taken someone from me.’ The words were almost too painful to speak. ‘Someone dear to my heart. I will get her back, Captain, and I will kill those who took her. But I cannot do it by myself.’
Over the next few minutes, Hal told the story of Judith’s capture and abduction. He explained that she would be coming up for sale at the next big slave market day in Zanzibar and that the only sure way to get her back was to buy her, but that he could not be the buyer.
Rivers listened thoughtfully to what he had to say and then asked, ‘How can you be so certain that she will be on the block when you say?’
‘My men and I extracted the information from Consul Grey.’
‘The same man who betrayed you in the first place?’
‘The very one.’
‘Why should you believe him now, then? Has it not occurred to you that this talk of an auction may simply be a lure to draw you into a trap?’
‘Of course, but then I ask myself: what difference does it make? I may only have a very small chance of recovering the woman I love if I attend the market, but I have no chance at all if I do not.’
‘And where do I come into this?’
‘I want you to bid for her on my behalf. Clearly I cannot be seen to be bidding and nor can anyone known to associate with me. But there is no connection between you and me – or none that anyone outside this island knows. I gather you are known to the traders at the market.’
‘I am.’
‘And that Zanzibar is one place at least where you are not wanted for your crimes.’
‘I have been careful not to offend its rulers, and as long as that remains the case, I am free to go there. As you have discovered, Courtney, Zanzibar is a law unto itself. The world’s laws do not apply there. Think of it as a grand bazaar. You can buy anything there and almost anyone. Well, you know that already. You’re going to buy your own woman.’
‘Or you are, for me.’
‘And what possible reason could I have for doing that, knowing that it will do me no good to be linked with you? I don’t mind risking my skin, Courtney. I wouldn’t be here if I did. But I like to do it on favourable terms.’
Hal looked at Rivers, who was sitting back wreathed in his own pipe smoke. He knew there was nothing to be gained by pleading or appearing too desperate. He had to remain calm, no matter how savagely every second he was away from Judith tore at his heart.
‘Has Tromp ever spoken to you about the trade in religious relics?’ he asked.
Rivers nodded. ‘At great length, yes. He says the Papists’ll pay a fortune for any old piece of tat that they can claim belonged to Jesus or the Virgin. And for once I’m inclined to believe him. I’ve seen all the pilgrims, lining up to see the relics of St James at Compostela. Could just be old chicken bones for all they know. There’s money to be made out of fools like that. Pity Tromp never made it. I might have taken a share.’
‘You still can,’ Hal said. ‘When Tromp attempted the capture of my Golden Bough, he and his men were starving. You see, he couldn’t afford to victual his ship properly before he left Batavia, the reason being that he had squandered – or, as he would see it, invested – all his resources on the manufacture of religious relics. So when I took the Delft I found barrels in her hold stuffed full of relics. There were vials of the Virgin’s tears, fragments of the True Cross, even a number of foreskins said to have been taken from Our Saviour at the time of his circumcision. I could not bring myself to trade such fraudulent geegaws, but I don’t doubt their value to one who would. And so I am prepared to let you have the entire cargo if you will bid for me in Zanzibar.’
‘Are you suggesting I lack morals?’
‘With respect, Captain Rivers, your entire existence suggests that.’
‘With respect, Captain Courtney, you are talking through your arse. You are right that I would happily tout these relics to the Jesuits, to pilgrims, to the damn Pope himself if he’d buy them, for I regard the Catholic faith as the work of the Antichrist and would do it down in any way I could. I fought for Parliament in the War and I did so because I hated the Stuarts not just as tyrants but as Papists, too. So I will have those relics of yours and I will sell them and reap my rewards with a clear conscience. But the relics are not enough.’
‘Tromp assures me that they will be worth many hundreds, even thousands of pounds.’
‘I don’t doubt it. But my neck is worth still more.’
‘So what will it take to make your neck feel that it is getting its due reward?’
Rivers sucked on his pipe as he contemplated the question. He leaned back and looked up at the sky as he breathed a stream of tobacco smoke into the night air. Then he turned back to Hal and said, ‘I’ll take those relics. And I’ll take the ship they came on, too.’
‘But the Delft is worth five hundred guineas!’
‘The Delft is stolen, is she not? You as good as told me so yourself. Tromp spent all his money on relics. If he could not even afford food, he was certainly not in any position t
o buy that fine caravel.’
‘How Tromp came by the boat is his business, not mine.’
‘Until you come to sell it. For were anyone to discover that you were selling a vessel belonging to the Dutch Navy, seized while England and Holland were at peace, well, you’d be hanged for piracy, would you not?’
Rivers’s point was well taken, but still Hal balked at giving in to all his demands. But then, as if reading his mind, Rivers said, ‘Calm down, lad. I can see you don’t like it, a knight like you having to bargain with an old pirate like me. But consider this: you do not want the relics and you have no use for the ship. But you want your woman very much indeed. So if you trade two things you don’t want for one that you do, is that really such bad business?’
‘Perhaps not,’ Hal conceded.
‘In any case, I am only considering your proposition at all because I lost someone once.’ Rivers emptied the last of the Madeira into his glass and drank the wine down, lost in his own thoughts. ‘What is her name, this woman of yours?’ he finally asked.
‘Judith.’ The sound of her name was torture to Hal’s own ears, the taste of it agony to his very soul.
‘Good woman, is she?’
‘The finest that ever lived.’
‘Best thing a man can have, a good woman to love him,’ Rivers said.
By God, thought Hal, the leathery old bastard has a heart after all. But that rare moment of sentiment was soon gone because the next thing Rivers said was, ‘How did you plan on paying for her? She’ll cost a pretty penny, if she’s as fine as you say.’
‘You know the answer already.’
‘How so?’
‘You recounted my success in the Ethiopian War. I captured many an Arab dhow, with all manner of cargo aboard. As you said, I am Sir Francis Courtney’s son and heir. And while we may argue whether he was a criminal pirate or an honourable privateer, there is no dispute as to his success in his ventures.’
‘Then that is all I need to know. So my answer is yes, Captain Courtney. I will come with you to Zanzibar. And when I get there I’ll buy your woman for you.’
he slave market’s sale of its most prized and highly priced specimens was the talk of Zanzibar, for, as the city’s people proudly told themselves, there was nowhere else in all Africa – possibly in the world – where so much human flesh of such high quality was auctioned. On the afternoon before the great event, Judith was taken down to the barracoon, where slaves were penned in a roofed enclosure like cattle before being put on sale. She had become oddly accustomed to the harem costumes that she had been given to wear while a prisoner of Prince Jahan, but now she was stripped of all clothes, bar a tiny apron that flapped in front of her pudendum, offering a bare pretence of modesty. Her hands were tied behind her back, a halter attached to a rope was slipped over her head and she was led into a ring for examination by a crowd of traders who were inspecting the stock in advance of the sale.
Judith was forced to stand, stock-still and mute, as rough hands felt her breasts, like women testing vegetables on the market place. She was bent double with her legs wide apart and her bottom pointing towards the traders so that they could see her most private parts. The men even prised her lips apart and examined her teeth as they would a horse’s.
All the while she remembered a conversation she and Hal had had with Aboli one night on the Bough. The talk had turned to the two men’s experiences as prisoners and effective slaves of the Dutch in the Cape Colony. ‘You know your problem, Gundwane? You always wanted to fight. But the first thing a slave should learn is that there is nothing to be gained by fighting back. The masters will whip you at best. At worst they will put you in a cage, or a box, or a hole in the ground and leave you in the baking sun, or the monsoon rain until you either die or learn your lesson. So do not give them that pleasure. Say nothing. Endure their cruelty, their insults, their treatment of human beings as less than animals. Endure so that you live and your children live. And pray that one day you will be free.’
So Judith endured and kept silent. She looked out for Hal in the crowd, not knowing whether she really wanted him to be there, just to know that he was coming for her, or whether it would simply be too much to take, for both of them, to see her degraded in this way. But it was hard, so bitter hard, and what made it worse was that though the men who examined her talked freely about what they were seeing, as if she were just another dumb animal, she understood too many of them all too well.
As a girl, Judith had accompanied her father on diplomatic missions not just to Venice, but to many of the other great courts of Europe also. Being young, with a natural gift for languages, she had picked up smatterings or in some cases a considerable degree of fluency in several European tongues as well as the Amharic and Arabic that were part of her birthright. Now, though, her comprehension was a curse, for she knew when a Dutchman told his friend, ‘Did you know that this cow is carrying a calf? Ja, and a white man’s brat, too.’
One Portuguese merchant asked another, ‘Why is the sultan selling a black jewel like that? If she were mine I’d keep her tied to my bed!’
‘I heard a rumour that it’s some kind of revenge,’ came the reply. ‘You can tell she’s high-born, look at her pretty hands, not a callus on them anywhere. The word is, her identity’s going to be revealed when she’s put on the block. They say her name alone will put ten thousand silver rupees on the price.’
‘Who is she then, the Queen of Sheba?’
‘I don’t care what her name is, I’d give her one any day of the week.’
And then, on one of the times when she was bent double and utterly exposed, there came an Arab voice saying, ‘She has not been cut, look at her lips and her bud still intact. So she still feels pleasure.’ And another replying, ‘It is shameful and impure when they scream and moan, but women like that are desperate for a man. The more often they are taken, the happier they are.’
‘So will you bid for her?’
‘Why spend money? A woman like that will give herself to you for nothing!’
She spent a terrified, restless, often tearful night. In the morning she was given a bowl of millet porridge then a bucket of water was thrown over her and a bored, fat, middle-aged African woman slapped fat on her skin to make it shine in a way that suddenly made Judith feel almost grateful for the gentle care the girls had taken to ready her for the prince.
The hours dragged by. Slowly the holding pen where she was being kept, directly behind the sale-block itself, was emptied as one slave after another was led away to be sold. She could hear the Omani auctioneer’s voice speaking in Arabic as he described each new piece of merchandise and urged customers to up their bids. Then an African, himself a slave of the auctioneer, came up to her, grabbed the rope that was hanging between her breasts and led her towards the block. Suddenly she realized that the auctioneer was talking about her, saying, ‘And now, respected gentlemen, I have a jewel beyond price to offer you, the property of the Sultan Sadiq Khan Jahan himself, whom he captured when she was foolish and proud enough to believe that she could spy in secret on Zanzibar. This woman is General Judith Nazet!’
A gasp went up from the crowd of bidders and spectators, followed by an excited buzz of chatter so that the auctioneer had to shout to make himself heard as he went on, ‘She is the pride of the infidel people of Ethiopia, the scourge of the faithful, the killer of those who love God … but our great prince has humbled her and now, in his infinite generosity, he offers her to any man who will have her.’
A huge cheer broke out and the auctioneer had to wait for it to subside before he went on. ‘But there is more. This woman is not just a vengeful she-demon. She is a whore, a slut who has opened her legs to a man and taken his seed inside her. Now she is bearing a child, who is sold with her … the child of the English sea captain Henry Courtney, whom men called El Tazar, for, like a barracuda, he killed without mercy as he struck at the ships of the faithful. Gentlemen, the next item in the auction is General Judith Naze
t!’
And thus, to the sound of cheers, catcalls, obscene suggestions being shouted in a myriad tongues, Judith was taken from the pen and led out onto the block to be sold.
Hal wiped the sweat from his forehead and did his best to bring his racing heart under control. There was a covered stand along one side of the market, two rows of benches, raised high enough for the wealthiest buyers to watch the proceedings in some degree of comfort. Halfway along that stand a special box had been built for the sultan and a few chosen guests to sit, screened from the public view. Hal meanwhile, had hidden himself among the common folk and riff-raff, a crowd of several hundred people, crammed into an unshaded, outdoor enclosure in the full glare of the noonday sun, all shouting, jostling and barging as they did their best to get a better view of the slaves when they came up for sale. Facing the unruly mob, the actual slave block looked like a short flight of four steps, viewed side-on. The slave who was being sold was led up to the top step, to give the buyers the best possible view. The auctioneer stood on the second step, occasionally moving up to the third if he needed to see a bidder at the very back of the crowd. At the bottom were two of the auctioneer’s largest, most heavily muscled slaves, trusties who both carried long, heavy clubs with which to beat anyone on the block who was foolish enough to jump off and try to escape.
Hal was about two-thirds of the way back from the front. He had not shaved since he’d left Zanzibar on the night that Judith was taken and had also let his hair hang lank and loose about his face. At the same time he was dressed in the most splendid finery he possessed, the intention being to suggest a man of squalid behaviour and morals who nevertheless had the cash to spend on expensive tailoring. Someone like a slave-trader, in other words.
To his great fury, Aboli had been left behind on Rivers’s ship the Achilles, along with Big Daniel and enough bloody-minded Golden Bough men to prevent the pirate and his crew doing a runner and leaving Hal stranded, should anything go wrong.
‘I’m sorry, old friend,’ Hal had said, ‘but you are too recognizable and our association is too well known. If you are spotted then my presence will immediately be inferred. Mister Tromp will be my companion on this occasion. It will be safer that way.’
