The Tiger's Prey

by Wilbur Smith

  Christopher bowed. ‘I will serve only your majesty.’

  The Rani leaned forward from her throne. ‘You have plundered the travellers on my roads, murdered my subjects and abused my counsellors. Can you imagine what punishment we reserve for men like you?’

  Christopher thought of the men he had watched being impaled along the road. The first of them, Vijay, might almost be dead by now. He swallowed painfully, and nodded.

  ‘Do you think you deserve better?’ the Rani asked.

  ‘I beg your highness’s mercy. Let me prove my repentance in the zeal of the service I render you.’

  The Rani considered it. ‘One of your bandit companions still lives,’ she observed.

  She held his eyes, and in the power of her gaze he understood what she wanted. This was the ultimate test – perhaps his only chance to prove his loyalty and secure his life and his freedom. With the ruthless intuition of the truly powerful, she had fixed on the one thing that still meant anything to him. She wanted him to kill Tamaana.

  Had he saved her from jumping into the ravine for this? He could not do it. He gave the urumi another sidelong glance. If he could get his hands on that, he could kill them all; fight his way to the dungeon, free Tamaana and escape the palace. There must be stables. They could take two horses, and ride – all the way to China, if needs be. Another name, another new beginning.

  But then reason and reality washed over him in a cold dark wave. There were twenty guards in the room. He would die before he could even touch the urumi – or, worse, be returned to the dungeon. He remembered the pain and terror of the stake entering his body. He remembered the stygian darkness of the dungeon. He knew what his reply must be.

  ‘I will kill the bandit,’ he agreed. ‘Give me my urumi and I will kill her and present you with her head.’

  The Rani’s expression remained impassive, but something like the ghost of a smile passed behind her eyes.

  ‘I want you to kill one woman only, not every single person in my palace.’

  She snapped her fingers, and a servant came forward, knelt before her and offered her an ivory inlaid teak box. The Rani lifted the lid and revealed a tiny dagger glittering on a silk cushion. The handle was a hollow golden ring, the folded blade was burnished steel barely two inches long. The Rani lifted it from the case and fondled it as a child would her favourite toy.

  ‘This is the bagh-nakh. The tiger claw,’ she told Christopher. ‘I doubt you saw one like it in the kalari?’

  Christopher shook his head. ‘It is beautiful,’ he whispered, in awe as the engravings that decorated the blade caught the light from the windows high above and shot out beams of reflected sunlight.

  The Rani slipped the ring over the index finger of her right hand. The blade folded back against the palm of her hand, and she wrapped her fingers around it.

  ‘An intimate weapon, for an intimate death,’ she whispered.

  She slipped the tiger claw off her own finger and passed it to Tungar.

  ‘Give it to the hat-wearer,’ she commanded, ‘and let us see how it fits his hand.’

  Christopher slipped the ring over his finger and folded his right hand over the golden claw. When he opened his hand it sprang out as of its own accord. He cut left and right with it and it hissed as it turned in air.

  ‘Bring the woman to me,’ he said, and his tone was impassive. The Rani nodded, and Tungar gave the order.

  They waited in silence in the great hall. Nobody moved, not even the Rani.

  Then finally there was the tap and scuffle of feet climbing the staircase from the rooms below and four of the Rani’s bodyguard re-entered the throne room.

  In their midst hobbled Tamaana, although Christopher could hardly recognize her. The soles of her feet had been whipped until they were raw and bleeding. They had stripped her of every shred of her clothing. Her wrists where tied in front of her. Her back was criss-crossed with angry red welts. Her hair hung to her waist; matted with sweat and dried blood. Her eyes had receded into the sockets of her skull, and were bloodshot. Her eyelids were swollen and almost closed. They had knocked out most of her teeth and her jaw was broken so she was unable to close her swollen and bruised lips.

  She looked about her blearily, staggering to balance on her swollen feet. Her eyes ran over Christopher’s face without her showing any sign of recognition. Her breathing whistled through her broken nose.

  ‘Tamaana!’ He called her name, and she looked about her with wild and sightless eyes, trying to trace the source of that familiar voice.

  ‘They are going to set us free!’ he told her, and her face crumpled as she began to weep silently, her chest heaving and her shoulders shaking.

  ‘Fr—ee …’ Her lips formed the word but could not utter it. He walked towards her, gesturing for her guards to release her. They backed away.

  ‘Yes, free to go to a much fairer and finer place than this. Free to fly like the swallows.’

  ‘Swallows …’ she repeated, and now she was sobbing as she recognized him and staggered towards him with both hands outstretched. He went to meet her. The tiger claw in his right hand snapped open.

  ‘No more bonds,’ he told her gently. He cut the ropes that bound her hands. She fell into his arms and he kissed her broken lips. She clung to him desperately as he pressed the point of the tiger claw into her throat below her right ear, and drew it across the carotid artery and all the major veins. The blood erupted from the wound and cascaded over both of them. She struggled weakly but he held her tightly to his chest, and murmured soothing words in her ear while the life oozed out of her.

  The Rani leaned forward on her throne, her expression avid, hugging herself as she watched Tamaana’s death throes. No one else in the throne room moved or uttered a sound.

  Suddenly Tamaana emitted a loud gasp that gushed from her severed windpipe and then she breathed no more, but relaxed in Christopher’s embrace. Her head fell forward onto his shoulder, and her legs gave way. He lowered her corpse gently to the floor, and stood over her.

  ‘That was beautiful!’ cried the Rani and she clapped her hands. Christopher was astonished to see that she was weeping. ‘That was one of the loveliest and most moving things I have ever watched.’

  ‘Worm and sponge!’

  Christopher stood in the palace courtyard and took his men through their artillery drill. He was unrecognizable from the wretched prisoner who had stumbled out of the dungeons a month previously. His beard was combed, and his hair bound in a white turban. He wore a clean robe, with a quilted waistcoat laced over it.

  Tamaana’s loss was still an ache deep in his heart, but Christopher had learned in the kalari to control his feelings. He would not forget; he would take his revenge when the time was right. A curved dagger and a keen-edged sword hung from the orange sash around his waist – a measure of how far he had come in the Rani’s estimation. He did not imagine for one second that he was safe. The court, he had quickly discovered, was divided between two factions: those allied with Poola, who wanted to profit from the English, and those led by Tungar, who wanted war and blood. The one thing that kept him alive was the stalemate that the Rani imposed, playing one faction against the other to keep both in check. Christopher, unwittingly, had become a pawn in her game, but he knew that when the time was ripe he would be readily sacrificed. Christopher was not the only man in the palace biding his time for vengeance.

  Christopher’s life now depended on carrying out to the letter the tasks that the Rani imposed upon him. As the Governor of Bombay, his father also officially served as the Captain General of the Bombay army. He had paraded the troops at noon every Sunday, affecting to drill them, while the real officers sweated and cursed him under their breath. Christopher had been dragged along every week, stifling in a Sunday suit made for English winters rather than Indian summers, longing to be indoors. But now he was grateful for the training.

  ‘Reload.’

  The gun crew moved into position, but so sluggishly
that he longed to whip the skin off their backs. The Rani would not permit that – not yet, at least. He had to content himself with shouting and abusing them as they fumbled the ramrod, mislaid the powder sack and dropped the ball.

  ‘Sweet Jesus! If the English handled a cannon the way you do, then the Great Mughal would be living in London by now, and you’d be kicking my arse for not bringing your dinner on time.’

  The roar of an explosion cut him short. The cannon had fired without warning. The men around the gun collapsed in a heap of torn flesh, kicking and screaming in their death throes. The Subeldar who had wielded the ramrod had been thrown a good ten feet away. He lay clutching his stomach, which oozed a mess of mangled intestines from where his own rammer had torn him open.

  ‘You miserable vermin,’ Christopher raged at the dying man. ‘You did not sponge her out properly.’ The wet sponge was essential to douse any sparks that remained in the gun barrel after it was fired, so they would not ignite the new powder charge when it was rammed home.

  Predictably, it was at that moment that Tungar rode in with a squadron of his men. He swung down from his saddle, saw the split cannon and strode over.

  ‘You were meant to train the Rani’s army – not destroy it.’

  But Christopher did not rise to the provocation. The gun, the screaming men, the Rani’s displeasure: all were forgotten. He was staring at the new sword Tungar wore on his belt: a beautiful weapon with an immense sapphire in the pommel.

  He knew that sword. He had seen it in the portrait of Sir Francis Courtney that hung in Guy’s office in Bombay. He had spent hours staring at it in his youth, hours when he should have been concentrating on his work, imagining the magnificent weapon hanging on his hip, or sitting clutched in his right hand. More than once, Guy had beaten him for his daydreaming, but it had not deterred Christopher. He had pestered his father, until one day Guy told him the story of the Neptune sword. Hearing those famous names – Sir Francis Drake, Charles Courtney, his grandfather and his great-grandfather – was a roll of honour ringing in his ears.

  ‘Where is the sword now?’ he had asked Guy, full of wonder and desire.

  ‘Your uncle Tom stole it from High Weald, shortly before he murdered William,’ Guy had told him. That explained his reticence: Guy almost never spoke of Tom, and became furious whenever the name was mentioned. ‘He must have had it with him when he died in Africa. Probably it has fallen into hands of some pirate captain or brigand leader.’

  Christopher could not imagine how it could now have arrived on the Malabar coast; or how it had come into Tungar’s heathen hands.

  Tungar saw at once the effect it had had on Christopher. He drew the fabulous blade from its scabbard and cut with it left and right, making the glittering steel hum through the air, flaunting the weapon in Christopher’s face.

  ‘A ship of hat-wearers was wrecked in the storm some days ago. I took this sword from one of the survivors.’ Christopher had to ball his fists and keep his hands behind his back to prevent himself from seizing it and stabbing Tungar through the throat with it. The sword was his – the eldest son of the eldest surviving son, the heir to the honour of the Courtneys. He was meant to have it: why else would fate have placed it in his path. Already, his calculating mind was turning over the possibilities of how he could take possession of it. It would be hard to get Tungar alone, for he lived with his men like a pack of dogs, roaming everywhere with them. But Christopher knew he had to find a way to possess it.

  ‘What of the hat-wearers? Did you kill the survivors?’ he asked, trying to keep his tone uninterested.

  ‘I taught them to respect the Rani’s servants – but I left them alive. Her highness is not yet ready to move against the English.’ Tungar gestured dismissively to the wounded gun crew. ‘Nor will she ever be, if this is the best you can do. Clean up your mess, before I make you lick up that blood with your own tongue.’

  As soon as Tungar had gone, Christopher commandeered a horse from the stables and rode to the coast. The village headman cowered before him. Yes, he admitted, the hat-wearers had been here, but they had since left for the fort at Brinjoan. He did not want such people polluting his village. Everything they touched had to be cleaned and purified with cow dung.

  Christopher left him. He knew he should return to the palace, but first he followed the path down to the beach. The storm had subsided, and the wreck was plain to see. The stumps of her masts jutted from the waves, and the sea was so clear he could clearly make out the dark mass of her hull looming beneath the surface. Not an Indiaman – he had seen so many of those in Bombay he would have recognized it the very instant he laid eyes upon her– nor an Arab corsair. She was a European ship, or had been. She was a private merchantman: an interloper more than likely.

  His mind thrummed with possibilities. If she had come from England, she would have called at the Cape. Perhaps the sword had made its way there, traded from tribe to tribe along the African coast, arriving in Cape Town just in time to go aboard this ill-fated ship. How much had the captain paid for it? Had he won it on a wager – or perhaps killed a man for it?

  It did not matter. The Neptune sword was his by right, and the sea had brought it to him. Now all he had to do was see off Tungar, and for a man who had trained in the kalari that would be little obstacle.

  Still, he stared at the sunken ship. The storm had driven it hard onto the shore, so close he fancied he could almost wade out to it. The tide lapped at it, rocking the exposed timbers like a cradle.

  He shaded his eyes with his hand. As the waves moved, he saw a long narrow shape poking from her side.

  ‘That is a gun!’ He was amazed at his own good fortune. The ship had been armed. It was probable that there were more guns aboard her. They must still be there, on or around the wreck. With a long rope, and a team of draught animals anything was possible.

  He studied it for some time, working out the practicalities and possibilities of a salvage. Then he hurried back to where he had tethered his horse to a jack tree. He swung up onto its back and turned its head towards the palace.

  Tungar would want to punish him for leaving his post without permission, but he would soon change his tune when he heard what Christopher had found. No-one could doubt his loyalty then.

  Three days later, he stood on the same beach. Deep gouges showed where the cannon barrels had been dragged up the beach. It had been a good day’s work: the Rani would be pleased. Yet he was not satisfied.

  He looked again at the small boat loitering offshore. She had been there much of the day, apparently drifting aimlessly, making no attempt to come closer inshore. Probably fishermen, he knew, but something bothered him. A feeling of being watched, a charge in the air like static electricity ahead of an oncoming storm.

  It means nothing, he told himself. He would bring the guns to the Rani, and she would reward him. She might even promote him above Tungar.

  After the escape from the wreck, the monsoon storms returned for a full week. Tom and the others stayed cooped up in Agnes’ cottage, with nothing to occupy them but their thoughts. Sarah’s fever relented a little; although she was still frail and struggled to keep her food down. The Brinjoan factory had no doctor, so Ana and Agnes tended her as best they could.

  Tom spent long hours sitting under the eaves watching the rain. When he was not thinking of Sarah, his thoughts always returned to the Neptune sword.

  At least he was spared Lawrence Foy’s attentions. All the Governor’s time was spent preparing for his embassy to the Rani, prettifying his speeches and going over his accounts and manifests. Day after day, he was forced to delay the journey on account of the weather.

  ‘For my husband cannot appear before the Rani like some drowned rat,’ declared his wife. She had come to pay a call, ostensibly to check on Sarah’s condition, but in reality – Tom suspected – to size up the new arrivals. ‘She is very sensible of her husband’s position,’ Agnes had warned him, ‘and she fears you mean to supplant him.’
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  Tom tried to placate her, talking earnestly about his desire to go home. He did not want this woman asking too many questions about him. But he could see his answers did not satisfy her. Several times, he caught her bright, bird-like eyes watching him closely. Her pert nose twitched as if she could sniff the evasions behind his assurances. She was an extraordinary creature: twenty years her husband’s junior, just seventeen, but possessed of a poise that would have shamed a woman three times her age.

  ‘She is already once a widow,’ Agnes had confided. ‘She came to India with her father, and had barely stepped off the ship but she was engaged to the factor at Tellicherry. He was a fat, loathsome old man named Crupper – when he came to Bombay, his hands would wander under the table at dinner. She was not yet fifteen. But he died inside a year, and left her his fortune – which became her dowry when she married Mr Foy.’

  Now Tom sat in Agnes’ parlour and tried to remain unobtrusive. He did not have to say much. Mrs Foy had a great many opinions and did not hesitate to share them; she dominated the room less by charm or personality than by sheer determination. She was not beautiful. Her nose was sharp, her eyes too round and her mouth too wide; she was slim, but with full breasts that did not quite fit comfortably into the tight bodice of her dress. Yet she had an undeniable energy that seemed to suck all attention in the room to herself. Tom saw Francis staring, until Ana gave him a discreet kick on the ankle.

  ‘Once my husband has arranged matters with this upstart black queen, I am certain that Governor Courtney will reward him with an improved situation,’ Mrs Foy said while she fanned herself with a paper fan. ‘Perhaps at Madras, or Fort William.’

  ‘If we ever reach the palace,’ said Tom.

  Mrs Foy narrowed her eyes. ‘I fancy tomorrow the weather may improve.’

  It did. The next morning dawned dry and hot. However the clouds pressed low, kettling in the heat: the whole earth seemed to steam with vapour. Tom had hardly risen from his bed before he was covered in a clammy sheen of sweat. He put on his coat with the greatest reluctance, an old one of Captain Hicks’ that Agnes had let him have. Foy had decreed that every man must look his best.