by Wilbur Smith
With a squeal, Lydia reached under her skirt. Her hands emerged clutching a small, ivory-handled pistol. She trained it on Agnes.
‘Mr Leigh, return to your previous course, if you please,’ she ordered. The pistol did not waver.
No one moved. Leigh looked beseechingly at Agnes. The men on the oars stared between the two women. The only sound was the soft slap of waves against the hull, and water dripping from the raised oars.
‘Sail.’
Sarah’s voice shattered the false calm. Unnoticed by all, she had sat up, and now pointed out to sea, her mouth open in wonder. Her voice was so hoarse it barely registered, but it cut through the tense silence that gripped the boat.
In an instant, the quarrel was forgotten. They all turned where she pointed, shading their eyes as they took in the white sails that broke the horizon.
‘Thank the Lord, we are saved,’ cried Kyffen, mopping his brow. Beside him, Lydia Foy cast a keen eye at the approaching ship.
‘Is she English?’
‘A grab, by the looks of her,’ said Leigh.
A grab was an Indian style of ship, named from the Arabic word for raven. Like the birds, they could fly in the lightest of winds, with two square-rigged masts that made them formidable sailors. The most distinctive feature was the prow, which was cut away to leave a low, flat foredeck, affording her bow chasers an unimpeded field of fire.
‘Could she be a country trader?’ said Agnes. The ‘country trade’ was how the English termed the internal commerce of the Indian ocean.
‘Not many merchants would risk their cargos at this time of year,’ said Leigh doubtfully.
Their euphoria subsided. They stared anxiously as the ship closed with them – suspended between hope of salvation, and the excruciating fear of a yet worse fate.
‘She’s raising a flag.’
A red pennant ran up to her main topmast. A gust of wind caught it, stretching it out so they could see the serpent design rippling on the crimson cloth.
Agnes had never seen the flag before, but she knew its fearsome reputation. Many nights in Brinjoan at the Company table, talk had turned to the pirate Angria, the scourge of the Malabar coast. Every trader and sailor had a story of a shipmate killed in battle, or captured and made to suffer unspeakable torments in his dungeons.
‘Make for shore,’ cried Kyffen. ‘Flight is our only hope.’
The men bent to the oars. But they were few, and weak. The grab bore down on them, gliding effortlessly across the flat sea.
‘They’ve got the Devil himself blowing them along,’ gasped one of the men.
‘Quiet,’ ordered Leigh. ‘Don’t waste your breath.’
‘If we get closer to shore, perhaps she will not be able to follow us without ripping out her keel,’ said Kyffen hopefully.
Agnes shook her head. ‘I have seen ships like this moored at Brinjoan. They are built with a shallow draft.’
A flame flashed from the grab’s bow. A second later, they heard the flat boom of a cannon. The ball skimmed across the water and splashed down about thirty yards off their beam.
‘Those savages cannot even aim aright,’ said Lydia Foy. She still held the ivory-handled pistol.
‘That was a warning shot,’ said Leigh. ‘The next will be closer.’
As if the pirates had heard him, the grab fired again. This time, the ball landed so close that they felt the touch of its spray.
‘We are overloaded,’ said Leigh urgently. ‘One hit and we will all go under. Can you swim, Mrs Hicks?’
‘A little. But we would never get Sarah ashore.’
They stared at the onrushing ship. She was so close, Agnes could see the sun gleaming on the muzzles of her guns, and the crew massed in her bow. They jabbed their weapons in the air, uttering shrill battle-cries that spoke of terror and torment.
‘What shall we do?’
Slumped in the chair in the Governor’s house, Kyffen stared at his lap. The tropical sunset pouring through the high windows cast him in an almost crimson light.
‘Naturally, I resisted the pirates as best I could. But we were famished, and wasted by so many days at sea. The pirates soon overpowered us. They took the women hostage, and set me adrift in a small boat. They averred, in their savage way, that they wished me to deliver a message to Madras. A ransom demand for the prisoners. And that is how, after much drifting and facing death more than once, I came here.’
While he told his tale, Tom had risen from his chair, pacing the room. He paused now, leaning on the windowsill and staring out at the sun setting over the lagoon that lay to the west of the town.
‘How much?’ he asked.
Kyffen shifted uneasily in his seat. ‘I beg your pardon?’
‘How much is the ransom they demanded?’
‘It …’ Kyffen’s jaw flapped like a fish. ‘Five thousand rupees.’
‘And how is it to be paid? Where are they holding the women?’
Kyffen twisted his fingers together until Tom thought they might snap. ‘I do not recall. The situation … Everything was so terrible, you understand. I barely escaped with my life.’
‘Angria’s lair is the fortress at Tiracola, south of Bombay,’ put in the Governor. ‘He will almost certainly have taken them there.’
Tom ignored him. He turned from the window and advanced on Kyffen, until he completely overshadowed him. The little man cringed into the chair.
‘You’re lying.’
Without warning, Tom grabbed him by his coat lapels and jerked him to his feet. He spun him around, carried him kicking across the floor like a recalcitrant child, and slammed him into the wall. Fraser started to protest, but the strength of Tom’s fury held him back.
‘Tell me the truth,’ Tom demanded.
Kyffen had sunk so far down inside his shirt he was almost buried in it. He babbled, flailing his arms and legs. ‘Let me go,’ he squealed.
Tom let him go. He dropped to the floor with a thump and a cry.
‘You are a coward and a wretch,’ Tom told him. ‘If you had obeyed my orders, and not simply thought of saving your own skin, we might all have escaped in the boat. A good many men who are now dead would be alive, and I would have my wife.’
Rage overtook him; the final word came accompanied by a kick in the ribs that had Kyffen squealing anew.
‘Mr Weald,’ said Fraser, appalled. ‘I will call my guards.’
Tom stepped back, breathing hard. He stared at the wall, for he knew if he looked at Kyffen again he would do him more violence.
‘The pirates did not let you go, and they did not give you a message. Did they?’ He raised his fist; Kyffen whimpered and cowered into the skirting board.
‘Mr Weald,’ Fraser cautioned.
‘I was fighting pirates in these oceans when you were fighting toy soldiers. To them, every prisoner is merchandise. They would no more let one go than they would a sack of gold. So I ask you again: what happened?’
Kyffen sat up. Blood dribbled from his nose. He gave Fraser an imploring look.
‘Will you allow him to treat me this way? Call your guards – lock him in prison. He is a villain and a lunatic.’
‘Answer his question,’ said Fraser.
Kyffen stared between the Governor and Tom. Defeat dawned on his face as he realized he had no friend in that room.
‘I did not fight the pirates,’ he whispered.
‘And they never captured you?’ pressed Tom.
‘I jumped overboard,’ Kyffen said miserably. ‘We were close enough to land, I was able to swim. The pirates were too busy securing their prize to concern themselves with me.’
‘You abandoned the women?’ said the Governor.
‘Yes.’ Kyffen hung his head. ‘What could I have done against a hundred pirates? I thought I might find help, raise the alarm.’
‘You thought no such thing,’ said Tom, struggling to control his anger. ‘You thought only to save yourself.’
Kyffen did not deny it. ‘I found
a village and threw myself upon their kindness. When the pirates had gone, fishermen brought me down the coast – village to village, week by week, until I came here. And you must believe me,’ he added piously, ‘that not a single day has passed since then that I did not pray God to spare those poor women. If I could have exchanged my situation for theirs, I would gladly have done so.’
Tom cut him short with a fierce glare. He stared at the man snivelling on the floor, remembering how his own father Hal had dealt with one of the Company’s servants who had betrayed the family to pirates. He had forced a confession from him at the point of his sword, then hung him naked from his own window.
But even if Fraser would have permitted it, Tom did not have the heart to make Kyffen suffer more. Kyffen was a coward, no worse. He had not asked for the responsibility that had been thrust upon him. Blood and snot had crusted on his upper lip, like a bawling child who had been pushed over by bigger boys.
‘Get out of my sight,’ he hissed.
Kyffen crawled away, trembling in fear of another blow, and fled through the door. Tom turned to Fraser.
‘How can I get Sarah and Agnes back?’
Fraser looked uneasy. ‘If Angria has them, he will have sent his ransom demands to Bombay.’
‘And what will happen then?’
‘Governor Courtney does not believe in treating with pirates. He says it merely serves to encourage them.’
‘Then what? Will he attack the fortress?’
Fraser hesitated. ‘Angria is the most powerful pirate on the Malabar coast, and Guy Courtney’s forces are limited.’
‘Do you mean to say he will let them rot? One of the women is Agnes Hicks, Guy Courtney’s sister-in-law.’
‘I cannot speak for him.’ Fraser saw the anguish in Tom’s face. ‘But I will give you passage on a ship to Bombay. You may plead the case with Governor Courtney yourself. If he will not put up the ransom, there may be merchants there or at Surat who will advance you the money.’
‘Against what?’ said Tom bleakly. ‘I have no collateral and no prospects. I risked my life saving your Company’s precious property, and what is my reward? To have my wife left to rot in some pirate’s dungeon?’
Fraser spread his hands. ‘I wish I could do more. As you know yourself, these pirates are men of business, and hostages are their stock in trade. Find the ransom Angria asks for, and he will treat fairly with you.’
‘And if I can not?’
‘Then he will cut his losses, and make an example of his prisoners to those who would not pay.’
They had to wait a week in Madras. Every day Ana took Tom and Francis down to the markets to talk with merchants she knew. All offered sympathy, but none had money to lend.
‘It is the wrong time,’ said Ana. ‘Until this year’s ships arrive from England, all their capital is tied up in their merchandise.’
They sailed at last, slow weeks beating around Cape Cormorin and up the Malabar coast to the rhythm of the winds. In the mornings, the air came off the land, pushing them out to sea; in the afternoons a sea breeze would get up and drive them back inshore.
They passed Brinjoan, a speck on the horizon. From the seaward side, it showed no sign of the devastation it had suffered. Tom was glad to see the back of it. Further north, Ana pointed out Kidd’s island, where the notorious pirate captain had once paused to refit his ships.
‘I wonder if he buried any treasure there,’ Francis wondered. ‘We could certainly use it.’
The palm-fringed beaches gave way to a more jagged, rockier coastline. Thickly wooded promontories shot out one after another all the way to the horizon, split by hidden coves and river estuaries. Stone castles guarded many of them, and often Tom glimpsed boats in the secluded anchorages at their feet.
‘This is a contested country,’ Ana explained. ‘Some thirty years ago, the Maratha people rebelled against the Mughal emperor and carved out their own kingdom. But now they are locked in a civil war among themselves: the dowager queen has rebelled against her step-son. Angria flourishes in the chaos, playing one side against the other.’
As the ship slipped past a headland, a new promontory came into sight at the end of the next bay. White waves foamed around its base, while high above gulls circled around a black-stone fortress that covered the entire summit.
‘There,’ said Ana. ‘That is Tiracola, Angria’s stronghold.’
Tom seized a telescope. He stared at the slit windows, in the vain hope Sarah might be looking out. His soul ached; he could hardly bear the anguish of being so close, and so impossibly far. On the other side of those unforgiving walls, Sarah and Agnes would be lying in God knew what condition, waiting for him to rescue them. In a wild moment, he thought of diving overboard, hauling himself up the rocks and climbing the sheer cliff into the castle.
‘It looks impregnable,’ said Francis in a small voice.
The vessel’s master had joined them. ‘Those walls are eighteen-foot thick. The last governor but one, Sir Nicholas Waite, had a mind to bring Angria to heel. He gathered a fleet of bomb vessels and brought them down here. The walls are too high to bring regular cannon to bear from the ships, so he fitted them out with coehorn mortars to lob exploding shells inside. It did him no good. The shells just cracked like eggs on the rocks, spilled their powder and lost their fuses.’
Tom scanned the fortress and its surroundings. High towers guarded every corner. The walls’ lower reaches had been carved from solid rock, while the masonry above fitted as neat and tight as anything he’d seen in Europe. He saw few guns, but that hardly mattered. The position was unassailable.
Past the promontory, the coast receded into a deep cove at the mouth of a river. Tom counted a dozen ships, including several of the larger grabs that were nearly the size of frigates. They sat behind a long boom made of tree trunks chained together.
‘Make more sail,’ the master ordered, anxious at being so close to the pirate’s lair. But the boom stayed down, and none of the ships ventured forth. Today, evidently, Angria had other business to distract him.
Tom watched the fort recede behind them. ‘I will come back for you,’ he promised. The wind whipped his words away.
Deep in the bowels of the castle, Sarah Courtney stirred. She sat up, feeling the iron fetters bite her wrists, and stared out into the gloom. Water dripped like a ticking clock; some of the other prisoners moaned or wept. She ignored them all, listening through the rock. Hoping, against all reason, it had not been a dream.
A tremor went through her body, like the flicker of a candle in the gust of a passing servant.
‘What is it?’ said Agnes, alert to any change in her sister’s condition. The vomiting had passed; Sarah had no trouble keeping down the meagre rations their captors allowed them. In fact, she had put on weight. But now Agnes had other concerns. ‘Is it the fever again?’
Sarah shook her head. ‘I thought I heard Tom’s voice. I dreamed he had come to rescue us, that he stood in that doorway with the Neptune sword in his hand, and cut through our chains.’ She sighed, resting her hand on her stomach. ‘It must have been a dream. Even the sword is lost, after all.’
She had no concept of the time they had spent in the dungeon, though by now it must be weeks. No daylight penetrated this far down, not even a crack by which they might count the days. They were in a cave, a network of caverns so deep in the promontory Sarah sometimes fancied she could hear the waves beating outside. The dank walls were hewn from raw stone that ran with water whenever it rained. The only light came from a single lamp in the adjoining cave. When the oil ran out, it sometimes took days for the guards to replenish it.
‘He will come,’ said Agnes. ‘If he were snatched up by the winds and driven to the far side of the world, and though all the hosts of the Great Mughal himself stood between you, still he would come for you.’
‘What if he is dead? We do not even know if he escaped the massacre at Chittattinkara.’
Agnes placed her hand over Sarah’s h
eart. ‘If he had died, you would know it here.’ Even in the few days she had lived with Tom and Sarah at Brinjoan, she had seen how profoundly they loved each other. She knew Tom would not abandon them.
From the opposite corner of the cave, she heard a derisive hiss of breath.
‘Do not rely on your husband. If he is alive, most like he has already forgotten he was married.’
‘I have faith in him.’
‘I had faith in Mr Kyffen,’ Lydia retorted, ‘until the coward hurled himself overboard. Who would have thought a gentleman would abandon three ladies, and all their worldly possessions, to those pirates?’
‘Tom is different,’ said Sarah softly. Though she thought of Tom constantly, she tried not to speak of him too often. It would be cruel to dwell overmuch on her husband, when Agnes had not even had a chance to grieve the loss of Captain Hicks.
‘If we are to be saved, it can only come from Guy Courtney,’ said Lydia. ‘Though I cannot comprehend the delay.’ She pointed to Agnes. ‘You are Guy’s sister-in-law. Why has he not ransomed us already?’
‘If you rely on Guy’s love for me to save us, you will be disappointed,’ said Agnes. ‘I committed the worst crime in his book: I passed up an opportunity to advance his career. He wanted me betrothed to some high eminence in the East India Company. Instead, I married Captain Hicks, a humble soldier. He has never forgiven me. That is why he exiled us to Brinjoan.’
She sank back against the cold wall. This was not a new conversation: they had debated it every day since the pirates seized them. But this time, Lydia did not let it pass. She sat up straight, wriggling her wrists in the manacles, and fixed Agnes and Sarah with a sly look.
‘Why do you pretend that you are not sisters?’
Lydia laughed at the shock on their faces. ‘Did you think you had hidden it from me? I have discerning eyes. I watch and I listen. Even before we left Brinjoan, I had my suspicions. In our current confinement, you could hardly hope to conceal it. Your care for each other; the words you whisper when you think I am asleep. I know your secret – and the other matter you do not discuss.’
