The Tiger's Prey

by Wilbur Smith

  He means to kill us both, he thought. Without hesitating, he ran to the very end of the yard and leaped across into the Fighting Cock’s shrouds, swung around and grabbed for a stay. He slid down so fast he burned the skin of his palms, bracing himself as he landed hard on deck. In the smoke and chaos, no one noticed him. Her crew rushed about with buckets, trying to put out the blaze; others were trying to lower her long boat, which hung cockeye on its moorings.

  Legrange was reloading the musket. Tom hurled himself at him. They both went down, the musket trapped under Legrange’s body. Legrange bucked and tried to throw him off, but Tom’s weight pinned the pirate down, while he reached for the knife in his stocking.

  Under him Legrange reached out blindly, scraped his fingernails across the deck, trying to find a weapon. They closed around a handspike lying forgotten under the carriage of one of the cannons. With all his strength, he swung his arm back and slammed the iron spike at Tom’s head. Tom saw the movement just in time. He rocked back, so that the spike glanced off his shoulder – but that gave Legrange all the space he needed to free himself. He rolled out from under Tom and came to his feet. He snatched up the fallen musket and aimed it at Tom. He pulled the trigger.

  The flint struck sparks from the steel. Tom flinched – but the musket had misfired. With a howl of fury, Legrange reversed the musket and came at Tom again, swinging the weapon by its barrel.

  Wind whipped the smoke away. Behind Legrange, Tom saw that the two ships were drifting apart. Dorian had cut the Dowager free. He had to get across to her – but Legrange was blocking his way, brandishing the musket like a club. Tom edged backwards, ducking to avoid the pirate’s furious blows. The fire was taking hold; most men had abandoned any attempt to fight it and were instead trying to save themselves. Still Legrange came on, too quickly to allow Tom any chance to pick up a weapon from the littered deck.

  Tom took another step back – and came up short against the ship’s side. He vaulted up onto the gunwale, just avoiding another wild swing of the musket.

  Balanced on the narrow ledge, he darted a glance at the water below him. The ship was drifting down wind. If he fell he realized that he would be pushed under her hull and cut to ribbons by the razor-sharp barnacles that coated her bottom. That was if the sharks did not get to him before that happened.

  Legrange knew it too. He paused a moment to savour the situation. He didn’t know who Tom was, where he had come from or how he had got aboard, but he knew he had cost him his prize – and probably his ship also. Snarling with fury, he lunged at Tom with the musket to force him overboard.

  Tom anticipated the blow, and jumped backwards off the gunwale. To Legrange’s astonishment, he did not drop into the waves below but he swung out into space, flying out from the ship’s side as if he had sprouted wings.

  Legrange had not noticed the taut halyard attached to the ship’s yardarm high above, that Tom had seized hold of. Tom reached the limit of his arc and started swinging back, gathering speed as the ship’s hull rolled and gave him impetus. He pulled his knees up onto his chest and then shot them out as he swooped back at Legrange. Both his booted heels slammed into the pirate’s forehead, driving his head back so hard that clearly Tom heard his vertebrae snap. Legrange staggered backwards with his legs giving way under him. He fell into the leaping flames that were sweeping across the deck towards him. They engulfed him instantly. For a second, Tom had a hellish vision of Legrange wreathed in fire. His beard, hair and clothes alight and the skin of his face blistering and shrivelling.

  Tom swung out over the water on the halyard, and when he reached the limit of its arc he released his grip and dropped into the water. With powerful overarm strokes he covered the distance to the Dowager easily, before the sharks could scent the blood on him. Dorian was waiting on the bottom rung to give him a boost aboard.

  ‘Where are Sarah and Yasmini?’ Tom gasped, before he had fully recovered his breath. Desperately he scanned the waters around the Dowager and then exhaled with a great sigh of relief as he saw her well clear of the burning hulk of the Fighting Cock.

  Tom switched his attention back to the pirate ship. Pillars of fire engulfed her masts and ran along her yards, devouring the canvas and outlining her in flame. Men hurled themselves into the water, flames leaping from their backs. The pirates who had been trapped aboard the Dowager fared no better. The crew were in a savage mood: they’d been given no quarter, and they offered none now.

  ‘We should lower a boat,’ said Dorian, pointing to the pirates floundering in the ocean. Screams rang out across the water as the sharks closed in on them.

  ‘It would be no mercy, rescuing them so they could be hanged in Cape Town,’ Tom pointed out.

  Just then an enormous explosion sucked the air out of their lungs, then blew it back in an angry breath. A huge wave rocked the ship and sent the men staggering across the deck. Burning debris rained down on the roiling waters. But the Fighting Cock had vanished. All that remained were charred timbers settling on the water.

  Tom pulled himself upright. There was no point searching for survivors now. Any men in the water would have been knocked unconscious and drowned by the force of the blast.

  ‘Her powder magazine must have caught.’ A weather-beaten man joined them at the ship’s side. He’d lost his coat; and he was bleeding from his arm and an open wound on his cheek. Even so, Tom recognized the air of command that was imprinted on his face.

  ‘Are you the master of the Dowager?’

  ‘Josiah Inchbird.’ The man nodded at the remnants of the Fighting Cock, the wide field of flotsam spreading across the water. ‘Good riddance to her and the thieves that sailed in her.’

  Tom waited for him to pass comment on the battle, to acknowledge the help he’d received. But Inchbird said nothing further.

  ‘It was lucky we were in sight when you were boarded,’ he said pointedly. ‘We saved your ship.’

  Inchbird took his meaning at once. ‘You’ll get no salvage,’ he warned sharply.

  ‘Your ship was overrun by pirates. You’d surrendered,’ observed Dorian.

  ‘I never surrendered.’

  ‘Then you gave a convincing impression of doing so.’

  ‘If you want to press the matter, you can take it to the Admiralty court in London.’

  Tom swallowed. He had left England fifteen years earlier as a fugitive from justice, wanted for the killing of his eldest brother, Billy. A black-hearted man, quick to fury, Billy had tried to kill Tom in a midnight ambush on the Thames docks. Tom had killed him in self-defence, not recognizing him in the dark, but that would count for little in an English court. If he went back, all he’d face would be the hangman’s noose.

  Inchbird couldn’t have known that, but he sensed Tom’s weakness. ‘If you wish to pursue the case, I will gladly give you passage to London aboard my ship.’

  ‘I risked my life to save your ship.’ An excited chatter arose from the sailors on deck. The Centaurus had come alongside, and Aboli was helping Sarah and Yasmini aboard. ‘I risked my crew, my ship, and my family,’ Tom insisted.

  Inchbird softened his tone. ‘You must understand, sir, my hands are tied. If I concede anything now, without consulting my owners, I will never see another command. For myself, I would gladly give you everything aboard for what you did. But for that, you will have to ask the supercargo.’

  Tom nodded. The master was responsible for the ship, but the contents of her hold belonged to the supercargo. ‘Then I had best speak to him.’

  Sarah and Yasmini climbed the ladder to the quarterdeck. Sarah put her hands on her hips and looked around the carnage on deck.

  ‘The trouble with men,’ she declared to Yasmini, ‘is that they always leave things in such a mess.’ She turned to Inchbird. ‘I apologize if my husband has caused your ship any distress.’

  Inchbird gave an awkward bow. ‘We were just discussing that very matter.’

  ‘Your husband saved us all,’ said another voice. The wo
man Tom had earlier rescued from Legrange came up the companion-way. Her voice was low and husky, tinged with an accent Tom couldn’t place. She’d changed into a new dress from the one Legrange had sliced open with his sword. It was a simple blue calico that mirrored the sea around them, cinched just below her full breasts. Her hair was tied back in a ribbon, with a stray wisp floating just above her neck. She couldn’t be much past twenty, but there was strength and wisdom in her face beyond her age. Every man on deck stared at her. An hour ago, they’d seen her most private parts exposed, but she bore their attention now with unflinching equanimity.

  ‘I hope, Captain Inchbird, you have not forgotten your manners,’ she said. ‘These men saved our lives, and I do not even know their names.’

  Tom gave a little bow. ‘My name is Tom,’ he said. ‘My brother, Dorian; his wife, Yasmini; and my wife, Sarah. I am glad we could have been of service.’

  ‘I am Ana Duarte. And those pirates would have robbed us of everything.’ A small shudder rippled through her body. ‘I understand why Captain Inchbird cannot offer you salvage for his ship. But I do not want you to think we are ungrateful. Whatever the pirates left of our goods, please take what you feel is fair recompense.’

  Tom waited for Inchbird to protest. However the captain had gone curiously silent.

  ‘I’m glad of your concern, ma’am, but I fear the supercargo may not like you being so free and easy with his goods. Especially if he is of the same mind as Captain Inchbird here.’

  She tilted her head. ‘They are my goods.’

  ‘Yours?’

  ‘I am the supercargo.’

  ‘You?’ Tom could not hide his astonishment.

  Sarah jabbed him in the ribs with her elbow. ‘Tom Courtney, you great booby. You’ve traded up and down the coast of Africa with every chieftain, brigand and cannibal you could find to take your goods. And now you are flummoxed to find a woman who can trade?’

  Ana and Sarah shared a glance – some intuitive understanding that made Tom feel dull and dumb. Caught between them, he didn’t notice the strange look Captain Inchbird shot him when Sarah spoke his name.

  Sarah looped her arm through his elbow and tugged him away. ‘Come,’ she said sweetly. ‘Miss Duarte has suffered enough for today without having you gawping at her. Let us choose a couple of bales of cloth, to pay for our powder and shot, and then leave these good people to continue their voyage in peace.’

  In fact, it took the rest of the day and the next before they parted. Sarah and Yasmini tended the wounded, while Tom, Dorian and Aboli helped Inchbird’s men repair damage to the Dowager and jury-rig a fresh topmast. She had lost almost half her crew, and Centaurus’ men were needed to help splice her rigging and splint her masts before she could get underway again.

  ‘But we can make Cape Town, if the weather holds fair,’ said Inchbird. ‘And there I can find a replacement crew to get me home to London.’ Much remained to be done, but Tom could feel Inchbird’s eagerness to be left alone with his ship, and he respected that. They said their farewells and cast off. The wind freshened. As night fell, Sarah and Tom stood at Centaurus’ taffrail and watched the sun sink towards the hidden African continent in the west.

  ‘You’re thinking about that Duarte woman,’ said Sarah.

  Tom started. ‘I am not.’

  ‘If only we had a son, she’s the sort of woman I would want for his wife.’

  Tom hugged her to him. Ever since they had married, he and Sarah had tried desperately to conceive. A few years ago, she had become pregnant while they were trading on the Lunga river; Tom had felt their life was about to become complete. But she had miscarried, and since then, despite all their efforts, her womb had remained barren.

  ‘Do you ever wish you’d stayed in England?’ she asked. ‘Married a nice Devon girl and settled down at High Weald with a dozen children?’

  He stroked her cheek. ‘Never. Anyway, High Weald belonged to Black Billy.’ Under the laws of primogeniture, the entire fortune passed to the eldest son. Billy, already married to the wealthiest heiress in Devon, had hastened their father to his grave to get his hands on the inheritance, though he had not lived to enjoy it.

  ‘The estate will have passed to Billy’s son Francis.’ Tom paused, remembering a red-faced baby cradled in his mother’s arms. ‘I suppose he must be fully grown now, and lord of High Weald.’

  Sarah smoothed her skirts against the stiffening breeze. ‘Time deals unkindly with us all, Tom Courtney.’

  He stared at the horizon, where the last tongue of sunlight licked the sea. Waves hissed along Centaurus’ hull as it carved through the water, south-west to Cape Town at the southern tip of Africa. The town which was the closest thing he had to a home since he had been driven from High Weald. In Cape Town they would refit and re-provision, sell their goods and buy more – and then many months later another voyage would begin.

  He sighed. He grudged nothing in his life, but he had not forgotten how it had felt growing up: the big old house, the chapel with so many Courtneys buried in its crypt, the servants who had nursed his grandfather and whose children would one day serve generations of Courtneys yet unborn. The sense of belonging, that however far the family tree might spread, it remained rooted strong and deep in that place. He had cut himself off from it, and not yet found new soil in which to replant himself.

  He put his arm around Sarah and kissed the top of her head.

  ‘I wonder whatever became of baby Francis,’ he mused.

  Rain lashed the big house. A high wind howled around its turrets and gables, slamming the loose shutters on their hinges. All the windows were dark, except for the last room on the upper floor.

  There, in the master bedroom, a single candle guttered and flickered on the mantelpiece, casting monstrous shadows around the vast room. Wind howled down the chimney, rattling the dead embers in the grate. Two figures sat in chairs drawn up beside the fireplace, though the fire had died hours ago, when the last of the coal ran out. A woman stitched her embroidery, while a young man pretended to read a book by the meagre light. It had been opened on the same page for the last fifteen minutes.

  The woman gave a little cry. Her son looked up.

  ‘Are you all right, Mother?’

  She sucked blood from her finger. ‘It’s so hard to see in this light, Francis.’

  Alice Leighton – once Alice Grenville, later Alice Courtney – looked at her son, touched by the concern on his face. Not yet eighteen, his body was fully grown, big and strong. But there was a softness in his heart that made her worry for his future out there in the wide and wicked world. His jet-black hair framed a handsome face with smooth amber skin and lustrous dark eyes. A rebellious black forelock curled over his forehead, almost touching his left eyelid. She’d seen the way the girls in the village looked at him. It was the same way she’d looked at his father, once upon a time.

  The shutters flapped and banged, like the devil himself hammering on the door. Francis closed his book, and rummaged in the grate with the poker. All he stirred was ashes.

  ‘Do you know where Father is?’

  His father – his stepfather, technically, though the only one he’d known – had spent most of the last week locked in the library, going through papers he would not let them see. The one time Francis had tried to go in to him, Sir Walter had cursed him and slammed the door.

  Alice put down her embroidery. Her dark hair was streaked with premature grey, her eyes sunken, her grey skin drawn tight across her cheeks. Francis still remembered when she’d been beautiful and gay. His earliest memories were like that: his mother returning from some ball or party, coming into his nursery to kiss him goodnight, her skin radiant and her eyes sparkling. He could almost smell the scent of her perfume as she leaned over his bed, her peach-soft skin against his cheek and the diamonds glittering at her throat in the candlelight. The diamonds had been the first to go.

  A bang echoed through the empty house, shivering the floorboards and making the coal
s rattle in the grate. Francis leaped to his feet.

  ‘Was that thunder?’ said Alice uncertainly.

  He shook his head. ‘Nor the shutters, either. It came from downstairs.’

  He went down the long gallery and descended the great staircase. Wax dribbled from the candle and scalded his fingers: there were no silver candlesticks in High Weald any longer. He paused at the foot of the stairs and sniffed the air. He knew the smell of gun smoke well enough from game shooting, and watching the local militia at drill, but he’d never smelled it in the house before.

  Dread rose in his chest, and his heart began to pound. He hurried crossed the hall to the library door. ‘Father?’ he called. ‘Father is all well with you?’

  The only answer was the rattle of rain on the windows. He tried the door handle, but it was locked. He knelt, and put his eye to the keyhole. The stub of a key in the lock blocked any view inside.

  ‘Father?’ he tried again, louder this time. His father had been drinking almost without pause these last two weeks. Perhaps he’d lost consciousness.

  Putting the candle aside, he reached in his pocket for his penknife and opened the blade. Then he pushed it gently into the key hole and fiddled the key, until he heard it drop on the floor inside. The old door had a good inch gap beneath it. He found a riding crop hanging on the hat rack in the corner of the hallway. Reaching with the tip of it under the door he was able to slide out the key.

  He unlocked the door and opened it. The candle pushed back the shadows as he advanced across the long room. As a child, he could remember sliding across the polished floorboards. Now they were rough and splintered; they hadn’t been polished in many years. Empty bookcases lined the walls; the books had been sold like nearly everything else. He could see shadows on the plaster where shields and swords had once displayed the proud crest of arms and armorials of the Courtneys. Like the silver and cut glass, all of it had been sold.

  At the far end of the room stood an old oak table, covered with papers and an open bottle of wine. No glasses or decanter. His father lay slumped in the chair behind it, as if he’d fallen asleep. A dark red pool spread across the papers.