The Tiger's Prey

by Wilbur Smith

  ‘I repeat, these people are ignorant savages. A month ago, some of the local merchants refused to sell to me. I broke a sword over their heads and sent them packing. And they have no choice. The Rani, their queen, commands it.’

  Tom stiffened. ‘The Rani of Chittattinkara?’

  Again, Foy shot him a cautious look. ‘Do not tell me you are acquainted with her, too?’

  ‘We encountered some of her servants when we were shipwrecked. They stole something valuable from me.’

  ‘Valuable, you say?’ Foy’s face lit up with interest. But at that moment, they stopped at the door of a broad, one-storey house in the Indian style called a bungalo. ‘Here we are.’

  Foy knocked. Behind him, Sarah and Tom exchanged an anxious glance. Sarah had not seen her sister since she was sixteen. Who knew how she might have changed?

  A dark-skinned Indian servant girl opened the door. She curtsied to Foy, lowering her eyes.

  ‘Tell your mistress she has some unexpected guests.’

  Almost before he had spoken, a woman came to the door. She stared at the group on her doorstep, blinking.

  ‘Sarah?’ she breathed. ‘Can it really be you?’

  A shudder of recognition convulsed her. She went white; Tom stepped forward for fear she would faint.

  ‘Dear Agnes,’ said Sarah, trying to control the emotion in her voice. ‘I did not know if you would recognize your old friend Sarah Weald.’

  Foy looked suspiciously between them.

  ‘Did you not have a sister named Sarah, Mrs Hicks?’

  ‘Poor thing, she died years ago.’ Agnes collected her wits. She grabbed Sarah’s hand and led her inside. ‘You must come in my dear. And your friends.’ She beckoned in Tom, Francis and Ana. ‘No doubt we will have so much to talk about. Will you join us, Mr Foy?’

  ‘Alas, I have urgent correspondence that demands my attention.’ He touched his hat. ‘Good day to you all.’

  As soon as he was gone and the door was shut, Agnes threw herself at Sarah, clutching her so tight Sarah gasped for breath.

  ‘Sarah,’ she cried in a low whisper. ‘Can it be possible? I thought you were dead in Africa.’

  ‘I nearly was – more than once.’ Sarah stroked Agnes’ hair back from her face. It came away damp with tears. ‘But here I am.’

  ‘Why did you never let me know that you were still alive?’

  ‘I knew not where to reach you. And I could not be certain that any letter I posted you would not fall into Guy’s hands.’

  She pulled away a little and inclined her head towards Tom.

  ‘Do you remember Tom Courtney?’

  Agnes had lost the capacity for wonder. She simply stared at Tom, then said softly, ‘So the story Caroline told me was true – that you and Sarah eloped together from Zanzibar.’

  Tom bowed. ‘It is a long time since we all left Plymouth on the Seraph.’ Sarah and Agnes had been little girls then, so irrelevant in Tom’s scheme of things that he could hardly tell them apart. He was enraptured only by their elder sister, Caroline, who had eventually married Guy. Since then, the intervening years had emphasised their differences. Agnes had darker hair and lighter skin than her sister Sarah, with tense lines on her face that spoke of many cares. She was a long way from the carefree child she had been back then. But perhaps they all were.

  They sat in Agnes’ parlour. Tom and Sarah told her everything from the moment they had fled from Guy in Zanzibar harbour fifteen years earlier. They related their adventures in Africa, their marriage in Cape Town, everything, right up to their meeting with Francis in Cape Town and their shipwreck on the coast of Brinjoan.

  Agnes listened, completely entranced, clutching Sarah’s hand as if she feared her sister would vanish again if she ever let her go.

  ‘I cannot believe you are here,’ she said hoarsely in the end. ‘And William Courtney’s son Francis also, all grown up. It is nothing short of a miracle!’

  ‘It was a strange twist of fate that brought us here,’ Tom agreed. ‘But now we must consider how we can make our escape. Do you trust your husband?’

  Agnes nodded. ‘Captain Hicks is no friend of Guy Courtney. In Bombay, Guy took every opportunity he found to slight us: I think we are an embarrassment to him. It was Guy who stationed my husband here in this miserable outpost.’

  ‘And Mr Foy?’ asked Francis.

  ‘Mr Foy cares only for himself. As Governor, he is legally in command of the garrison here, and he does not let my husband forget it. Nor does his wife. But my husband and I will see that they learn nothing of the truth of our relationship.’

  ‘Then we are safe,’ said Sarah. ‘Thank the Lord.’

  And with that, she toppled over in a dead faint onto Agnes’ lap.

  ‘Poor thing,’ cried Agnes. ‘What have I done? You sit here, starving and soaked in your wet clothes, and all I do is prattle on. You need good food and complete rest.’

  Tom and Francis lifted Sarah between them. Her skin was warm and feverish to the touch; Tom cursed himself for all the hardships he had put her through. They laid her on an upstairs bed, and covered her with a blanket despite the heat. Agnes brought a broth of lentils and lemon, and sat beside her, spooning it tenderly into Sarah’s mouth.

  The front door crashed open. In the hall, a man’s voice called for Agnes. A few moments later, he appeared in the doorway. A tall, lean man, with close-cropped sandy hair and a skin weathered red by the sun. He wore the red coat with green facings of the Bombay regiment.

  ‘Foy told me we had unexpected guests.’ He ran his eye over the visitors and put out his hand. ‘Elijah Hicks, at your service.’

  ‘Tom …’ Tom hesitated. ‘Tom Courtney.’

  ‘Courtney?’ Hicks’ voice thickened with surprise and suspicion. He turned to Agnes. ‘Did you know …?’

  ‘They are family,’ she said. She stroked Sarah’s cheek, pale and hot. ‘This is my sister, Sarah. I have not seen her in almost twenty years. And our nephew Francis Courtney, William’s son.’

  Hicks was at a loss for words. He shook hands with Tom and Francis, and bowed to Ana. Then Agnes shooed them all out. ‘Sarah needs peace, not a company of men all crowding around her. Go!’

  They left the women, and returned to the parlour. Hicks fetched shirts and breeches for the men to change into. They fitted Francis well, though Tom struggled to fasten the buttons on his shirt. Hicks poured them a sweet white wine. The maidservant brought a dish of fish and rice.

  ‘This cursed heat,’ Hicks complained. ‘God knows how I have survived it this long.’

  They sat, awkwardly, drinking the wine and watching the soft rain fall on the settlement. Hicks was a man of few words, and he seemed at a loss to know what to say to these most unexpected arrivals.

  Tom tilted his glass towards the fort. ‘The factory seems lightly defended.’

  Hicks scowled. ‘That is Foy’s doing. He is so jealous of his dignity, he assumes any order I give must necessarily be some stratagem to undermine him, and so he countermands it. I cannot suggest I should drill my men, or reconnoitre the countryside, or even see to the fort’s upkeep without him devising some ploy to prevent me.’

  Tom was glad that Agnes’ husband was not to blame for the garrison’s meagre defences. On first impressions, he warmed to the man, with his no-nonsense demeanour and honest way of speaking. A good man to have on their side.

  And he is my brother-in-law, he thought, wondering again at the chance that should bring Agnes and Sarah together in this distant land after so many years.

  ‘Are the local people friendly?’

  ‘Not so much as I would like. Foy provokes them constantly. He has eyes only for his profit, and is too blind to see what harm he does. He will not concede one peppercorn from his due, though the men who bring it are starving. He forces the merchants to sell at whatever price he stipulates and God help them if they refuse.’

  ‘I am surprised they are not more vocal in their grievances.’

  ‘F
oy believes the Rani will keep them in check.’

  Tom grimaced. ‘That is the third time I have heard of this Rani. Who is she?’

  ‘The local queen. She is very young, but from what I have seen she has the mind of a serpent. Her court is divided between those who would trade with us, and those who would drive us into the sea. She holds them in check – but it is an uneasy balance.’

  ‘If my experience of the Rani’s men is any guide, they do not treat gently with Englishmen.’

  Tom told of his ordeal at the village. Hicks nodded.

  ‘I know that man, Tungar. He is one of the Rani’s captains. He hates the English: his uncles used to control the pepper trade, before we arrived.’

  ‘He took something precious to me. A sword that has been in my family for generations. I must retrieve it.’ Now that they were safe, dry and fed, his thoughts turned instinctively to the blue sword. More than a weapon, in his mind it represented the whole honour and legacy of the Courtneys – all that survived of them, now High Weald was gone. Tom made an oath there and then: that he would not leave this place without the blue sword in his hand.

  ‘Foy intends to make an embassy to the Rani in three days,’ said Hicks. ‘Tungar has been making trouble for us again, and Foy hopes to bring him to heel. You may try your suit with the Rani then – though you may find she is more minded to receive gifts than to dispense them. She is as jealous of her dignity as Mr Foy.’

  ‘Then it should be an interesting encounter,’ Tom conceded thoughtfully.

  That night Tom slept like a dead man and woke to find the rain had eased. Sarah’s condition had improved, too, though when Agnes brought her breakfast she could eat no more than a few spoonfuls of her porridge.

  A servant arrived with a note for Tom from Foy. Tom wondered that he could not be bothered to walk the few hundred yards from the fort to the cottage to deliver it himself.

  ‘I trust you have not forgotten our arrangement,’ said the note.

  ‘He wants me to go and look at the wreck,’ Tom deduced. ‘No doubt he is concerned we shall become a burden on him if we do not pay our bill.’

  ‘I will come with you,’ Hicks offered.

  ‘I should be glad of it,’ said Tom gratefully. ‘If you can be spared from your duties here.’

  Hicks snorted. ‘For all the good I do, I may as well be picking coconuts. Mr Foy will be pleased to see the back of me for the day.’

  Tom found eight of Kestrel’s crew who were strong enough to make the journey. Hicks complemented them with four sepoys from his company, led by a hubladar named Mohite who had a magnificent moustache that dangled below his chin. A hubladar was the equivalent of a sergeant in the Bombay army, and Tom could see by the easy respect between the two men that Hicks relied on him utterly.

  They sailed out in a borrowed gallivat, a native craft as big as a longboat, but sporting a triangular sail like a dhow. Tom watched the weather anxiously, but the storm seemed to have relented. The gallivat glided along under the onshore breeze, her lateen sail bending eagerly to the tack.

  ‘I wish Dorian were here,’ grinned Tom. ‘He would know how to get the most from her.’

  ‘With luck, he will soon be drinking coffee with Aboli on the waterfront at Gombroon and toasting the fortune he has made,’ said Francis.

  Having arrived in Brinjoan by land, Tom recognized nothing of the coast. They sailed for some hours, always watching the horizon. The sky hung low and grey, and it would not be long before the next tantrum thrown by the monsoon made landfall.

  They doubled a small headland, and came around into a long, shallow bay. Tom gave a cry. There was the Kestrel: a dark, broken hulk. The wind and the waves had pushed her close to shore, into water so shallow her shattered deck stood clear of the sea.

  But she was not abandoned. Three men stood on her deck, pointing and shouting to a larger group of men on the beach. They had gathered around a team of oxen who were harnessed to traces that ran into the sea towards the wreck. As Tom watched, the drivers urged them forward, beating them with switches. The beasts shuffled forward. The chains slithered out of the sea, dripping wet. The oxen carried on, so far up the beach that they disappeared into a gap in the trees that looked newly cut for the purpose.

  ‘Are they trying to drag the whole ship ashore?’ Francis wondered.

  Hicks had been studying the shore party through his telescope. He passed it to Tom. Through the lens, Tom saw a dark shark-like shape beneath the waves.

  The oxen dragged it from the surf and he saw that it was the long barrel of one of the nine-pounder cannon. As soon as it came out of the water, men ran to it and levered it onto a set of wooden logs so it could roll freely.

  ‘What are they doing with that?’

  ‘European cannon are like hen’s teeth to the natives,’ said Hicks. ‘Their princes would pay their weight in gold to have one, but even your brother Guy draws the line at selling them arms. Whatever the profits, he fears the guns might be turned on his ships and factories one day.’

  Tom scanned the beach again. The cannon had reached the trees. The oxen had been unhitched and were being coaxed back to the shoreline, while two men waded out to the wreck with the ends of the chains. Evidently, they intended to salvage her whole armament.

  With the telescope, Tom found the group’s leader. Tall and broad shouldered, he towered above the other men. He was naked to the waist, with pistols hanging from the bandoliers crossed over his chest, and a pair of swords on his belt. He directed his men with short, confident commands, and Tom noted how they leaped to obey. They were more than well drilled – they feared him.

  ‘He looks a perfect villain,’ Tom muttered. Something about the man unnerved him. ‘Who is he?’

  Hicks took the telescope back. ‘I have not seen this one before. Perhaps he is new to the Rani’s service.’

  ‘Or a bandit.’

  ‘It would be a brave bandit who looted a shipwreck on the Rani’s coast. And taking cannon is not like dipping for travellers’ purses. To bring that many men, a whole team of oxen … to say nothing of the difficulty of transporting the guns away. They could not do it without her knowledge.’

  ‘Then it looks as if we shall have more than just my sword to ask her for when we visit.’

  Hicks frowned. ‘I do not like it. This portends some mischief, I’ll warrant.’

  On the beach, the men had seen the gallivat. They waved and shouted, though whether they were beckoning her in or warning them off, Tom couldn’t tell. He took the telescope again.

  ‘Keep to your course,’ he told Alf Wilson on the tiller. ‘They are too many for us to engage, and they must not know we have seen anything amiss.’ He did not think the men on the beach had a spyglass; with luck, they might not have discerned that the men in the boat were Europeans.

  Hicks read his thoughts. ‘If we are to convince them we are innocent passers-by, you had best put away that telescope. Native fishermen do not usually carry such instruments.’

  ‘Of course,’ said Tom, feeling slightly foolish. He hoped the men on the beach had not seen it; there was little sun to flare on the lens.

  Even so, he could not resist one last look at the man in charge. Perhaps, even at that distance, he caught the movement; perhaps it was pure chance. Either way, as Tom put the telescope to his eye the man looked up, and for a moment they came eye to eye in the lens. Tom was certain he had never seen him before, yet when the stranger’s face leaped into focus a chill ran down Tom’s spine. Some intuition, an inexplicable flash of recognition. Almost as if he had looked in a mirror.

  He lowered the telescope away, and slipped it into its leather case. It was a foolish fancy, he decided, or perhaps something he had dreamed.

  Once again, he remembered the flash of brilliant green on the horizon at Cape Town. A spirit returning from the dead.

  Without the telescope, the man on the beach was little bigger than an ant. But still Tom could not take his eyes off him, until they had rounded
the point and he disappeared from Tom’s sight.

  And all the way back to Brinjoan, he could not forget Hicks’s warning. This portends some mischief.

  Lying on his belly, Christopher crawled forward to the edge of the escarpment. He peered over a rotting tree stump and saw the caravan below. A curtained palanquin led the way, carried on the shoulders of eight slaves. Twenty armed men followed behind.

  Tamaana came up beside him. ‘I told you we were wise to wait.’

  They had watched the same caravan pass by three days earlier travelling in the opposite direction. Christopher had wanted to attack then, but Tamaana had counselled patience. ‘They are taking cloth to the English factory at Brinjoan,’ she had said. ‘When they come back, they will have traded all those heavy bales of cloth for gold.’

  Now Christopher could see the truth of it. Three days ago, almost a hundred native bearers had followed the palanquin, balancing bulky parcels of fine-spun cotton cloth on their heads. Now they had been dismissed, replaced by a single mule straining under the weight of its saddle bags. Christopher was surprised the beast could move at all with so many guards clustered around it. He edged back a little.

  He felt a flicker of misgiving, and wondered why. It certainly wasn’t conscience. In the six months since he had joined Tamaana’s bandit company, they had done this more times than he could count. They had robbed and murdered single travellers, and routed well-guarded caravans. Success had brought attention, both useful – their band had now swelled to a dozen men – and unwanted. Only three weeks ago they had moved north into the kingdom of Chittattinkara to escape a ruler who was determined to capture the bandits who infested his roads.

  ‘Are you sure we should attack now?’

  Tamaana gave a devilish smile. ‘That poor mule’s back will break if we do not relieve him of his burden. Are you frightened?’

  ‘Of course not.’

  ‘Then we should spring the trap, before they escape.’

  It was the obvious place for an ambush. The road twisted through a narrow gully worn deep by the rains. Broken rocks littered the slope above, giving ample cover. The guards knew it. Watching, Christopher saw them loosening the swords in their scabbards. The captain – a huge man in a red turban – barked an order. The men who had guns – four of them – lit the matches for their firelocks and clamped them to the serpentines of their weapons. They scanned the steep slopes that hemmed them in, alert to any sign of movement. Christopher, well-practised in the art of remaining unseen, held his breath.