Power of the Sword

by Wilbur Smith

  ‘Strike swiftly,’ roared Uncle Tromp. ‘Now!’ And Manfred swung, the same fluid, looping, overhead blow with which he chopped wood, and he grunted with effort as the head of the hammer rang on the anvil.

  Manfred lifted the hammer slowly. The diamond was crushed to white powder, finer than sugar, but still the vestiges of its fire and beauty remained as each minute crystal caught and magnified the candlelight; and when Uncle Tromp brushed the diamond dust from the anvil top with his open hand it fell in a luminous rainbow cloud to the earthen floor.

  Uncle Tromp laid another fiery stone upon the anvil, a fortune such as few men could amass in ten years of unremitting labour, and stood back.

  ‘Strike!’ he cried, and the hammer hissed as it turned in the air, and the anvil rang like a great gong. The precious dust was brushed aside and another stone laid in its place.

  ‘Strike!’ roared the Trumpet of God, and Manfred worked with the hammer, grunting and sobbing in his throat with each fateful blow until at last Uncle Tromp cried:

  ‘Praised be the name of the Lord. It is done!’ And he fell on his knees, dragging Manfred down with him, and side by side they knelt before the anvil as though it were an altar and the white diamond dust coated their knees as they prayed.

  ‘Oh Lord Jesus, look upon this act of penance with favour. Thou who gave up Thy life for our redemption, forgive Thy young servant whose ignorance and childishness has led him into grievous sin.’

  It was after midnight and the candle was guttering in a puddle of its own wax before Uncle Tromp rose from his knees and pulled Manfred up with him.

  ‘Go to your bed now, Jong. We have done all we can to save your soul for the time being.’

  He watched while Manfred undressed and slipped under the grey blanket. Then he asked quietly: ‘If I forbade you to go to Windhoek in the morning, would you obey me?’

  ‘My father,’ whispered Manfred.

  ‘Answer me, Jong, would you obey me?’

  ‘I don’t know, Uncle Tromp, but I don’t think I could. My pa—’

  ‘You have so much to repent already. It would not do to add the sin of disobedience to your load. Therefore, I place no such restriction upon you. You must do what loyalty and your conscience dictate. But for your own sake and mine, when you reach Windhoek, use the name of Bierman not De La Rey, Jong, do you hear me?’

  ‘Judgement today! I make a rule never to predict the outcome of any piece of legislation or judicial process,’ Abe Abrahams announced from his chair facing Centaine Courtney’s desk. ‘However, today I break my own rule. I predict that the man will get the rope. No question about it.’

  ‘How can you be that certain, Abe?’ Centaine asked quietly, and Abe looked at her with covert admiration for a moment before replying. She was wearing a simple low-waisted dress which could justify its expense only by its exquisite cut and the fineness of the silk jersey material. It showed off her fashionable small bosom and boyishly slim hips as she stood against the french windows. The bright white African sunlight behind her formed a nimbus about her head, and it took an effort to look away from her and to concentrate on the burning cheroot which he held up to enumerate his points.

  ‘Firstly, the small matter of guilt. Nobody, not even the defence, has made any serious attempt to suggest anything other than he is guilty as all hell. Guilty in intention and execution, guilty of planning it in detail and carrying it out as planned, guilty of all manner of aggravating circumstances, including attacking and robbing a military remount depot, firing on the police and wounding one of them with a grenade. The defence has as good as admitted their only hope will be to pull some arcane technical rabbit from the legal hat to impress His Lordship, a hope which so far has not materialized.’

  Centaine sighed. She had spent two days in the witness stand. Though she had remained calm and unshakable in the face of the most rigorous and aggressive cross-examination, she was exhausted by it, and haunted by a sense of culpability, of having driven Lothar to that desperate criminal folly, and now guilty of heading the pack that was pulling him down and would soon rend him with all the vindictiveness that the law allowed.

  ‘Secondly,’ Abe waved the cheroot, ‘the man’s record. During the war he was a traitor and a rebel with a price on his head, a desperado with a long string of violent crimes to his discredit.’

  ‘He was pardoned for his wartime crimes,’ Centaine pointed out. ‘A full pardon signed by the prime minister and the minister of justice.’

  ‘Still, they will count against him.’ Abe wagged his head knowingly. ‘Even the pardon will make it worse for him: biting the hand of mercy, flouting the dignity of the law. The judge won’t like that, believe me.’

  Abe inspected the end of the cheroot. It was burning evenly with a firm inch of grey ash and he nodded approvingly. ‘Thirdly,’ he went on, ‘the man has shown no remorse, not a jot nor a shred of it. He has refused to tell anybody what he did with the filthy loot.’

  He broke off as he saw Centaine’s distress at the mention of the missing diamonds, and continued hurriedly: ‘Fourthly, the emotional aspects of the crime, attacking a lady of the highest standing in the community.’ He grinned suddenly. ‘A helpless female so unable to defend herself that she bit his arm off.’ She frowned and he became serious again. ‘Your own courage and integrity will count heavily against him, your dignity in the witness box. You have seen the newspapers: Joan of Arc and Florence Nightingale in one person, the veiled suggestion that his attack upon you might have been more dastardly and beastly than modesty will allow you to tell. The judge will want to reward you with the man’s head on a platter.’

  She looked at her wristwatch. ‘The court will reconvene in forty minutes. We should go up the hill.’

  Abe stood up immediately. ‘I love to watch the law in operation, the dignified and measured pace of it, the trappings and ritual of it, the slow grinding of evidence, the sorting of the chaff from the wheat—’

  ‘Not now, Abe,’ she stopped him as she adjusted her hat in the mirror above the mantel, draping the black veil over one eye, setting the small brim at an elegant angle and then picking up her crocodile-skin handbag and tucking it under her arm. ‘Without any further oratory from you, let’s just go and see this awful thing through.’

  They drove up the hill in Abe’s Ford. The press was waiting for them in front of the courthouse, thrusting their cameras into the open window of the Ford and blinding Centaine with bursting flash bulbs. She shielded her eyes with her handbag but the moment she stepped out of the automobile they were around her in a pack, yelling their questions.

  ‘What will you feel if they hang him?’

  ‘What about the diamonds? Can your company survive without them, Mrs Courtney?’

  ‘Do you think they’ll do a deal for the diamonds?’

  ‘What are your feelings?’

  Abe ran interference for her, barging his way through the crowd, dragging her by the wrist into the comparative quiet of the courthouse.

  ‘Wait here for me, Abe,’ she ordered, and slipped away down the passageway, weaving through the crowd that was waiting for the doors of the main courtroom to open. Heads turned to watch her and a buzz of comment followed her down the passage, but she ignored it and turned the corner towards the ladies’ toilets. The office set aside for the defence was directly opposite the ladies’ room and Centaine glanced around to make sure she was unobserved, then turned to that door, tapped upon it sharply, pushed it open and stepped inside. She shut the door behind her and, as the defence counsel looked up, she said: ‘Excuse this intrusion, gentlemen, but I must speak to you.’

  Abe was still waiting where she had left him when Centaine returned only minutes later.

  ‘Colonel Malcomess is here,’ he told her, and all her other preoccupations were forgotten for the moment.

  ‘Where is he?’ she demanded eagerly. She had not seen Blaine since the second day of the trial when he had given his evidence in that ringing tenor lilt that r
aised the fine hair on the back of Centaine’s neck, evidence that was all the more damning for its balanced unemotional presentation. The defence had tried to trip him on his description of the shooting of the horses and the grenade attack, but had swiftly sensed that he would provide little for their comfort and let him leave the stand after a few futile minutes of cross-examination. Since then Centaine had looked for him unavailingly each day.

  ‘Where is he?’ she repeated.

  ‘He has gone in already,’ Abe replied, and Centaine saw that while she had been away the ushers had opened the double doors to the main courtroom.

  ‘Charlie is holding seats for us. No need to join the scrum.’ Abe took her arm and eased her through the moving crowd. The ushers recognized her and helped clear the aisle for her to reach the seats in the third row that Abe’s assistant was holding for them.

  Centaine was covertly searching through the bustle for Blaine’s tall form, and she started when the press of bodies opened for a moment and she saw him on the opposite side of the aisle. He was searching also and saw her a moment later; his reaction was as sharp as hers had been. They stared at each other from a few yards that seemed to Centaine to be an abyss wide as an ocean; neither of them smiled as they held each other’s eyes. Then the crowd in the aisle intervened once again, and she lost sight of him. She sank down in the seat beside Abe and made a little show of searching in her handbag to give herself time to recover her composure.

  ‘Here he is,’ Abe exclaimed, and for a moment she thought he was referring to Blaine. Then she saw that the warders were bringing Lothar De La Rey through from the cells.

  Although she had seen him in the dock for every one of the last five days, she was still not hardened to the change in him. Today he wore a faded blue workman’s shirt and dark slacks. The clothes seemed too large for him, and one sleeve was pinned up loosely over his stump. He shuffled like an old man and one of the warders had to help him up the steps into the dock.

  His hair was completely white now, even his thick dark eyebrows were laced with silver. He was impossibly thin and his skin had a greyish lifeless look; it hung in little loose folds under his jaw and on his scrawny neck. His tan had faded to the yellowish colour of old putty.

  As he sank onto the bench in the dock, he lifted his head and searched the gallery of the court. There was a pathetic anxiety in his expression as he ran his eyes swiftly over the packed benches. Then Centaine saw the little flare of joy in his eyes and his masked smile as he found what he was seeking. She had watched this scene enacted every morning for five days, and she twisted in her seat and looked up at the gallery behind her. But from where she sat the angle was wrong. She could not see who or what had attracted Lothar’s attention.

  ‘Silence in court,’ the usher called and there was a shuffling and scrabbling as the body of the court came to its feet and Judge Hawthorne led his two assessors to their seats. He was a silver-haired little man with a benign expression and lively sparkling eyes behind his pince-nez. He looked more like a schoolmaster than the hanging judge that Abe said he was.

  Neither he nor his assessors wore wigs or the colourful robes of the English courts. Roman Dutch law was more sombre in its trappings. They wore simple black gowns and white swallow-tailed neckties, and the three of them conferred quietly, inclining their heads together while the body of the court settled down and the coughing and throat-clearing and foot-shuffling abated. Then Judge Hawthorne looked up and went through the formality of convening the court and the charge sheet was read once again.

  Now an expectant hush fell over the courtroom. The reporters leaned forward with their notebooks poised; even the barristers in the front row of benches were silenced and stilled. Lothar was expressionless but deathly pale as he watched the judge’s face.

  Judge Hawthorne was concentrating on his notes, heightening the tension with subtle showmanship until it was barely supportable. Then he looked up brightly and launched without preliminaries into the delivery of his summation and judgement.

  First he detailed each of the charges, beginning with the most serious: three counts of attempted murder, two of assault with intent to inflict grievous bodily harm, one of armed robbery. There were twenty-six charges in all and it took almost twenty minutes for the judge to cover each of them.

  ‘The prosecution has presented all these charges in an orderly and convincing manner.’

  The red-faced prosecutor preened at the compliment and Centaine felt an unreasonable irritation at this petty vanity.

  ‘This court was particularly impressed with the evidence of the main prosecution witnesses. His Excellency the Administrator’s testimony was a great help to me and my assessors. We were most fortunate in having a witness of this calibre to relate the details of the pursuit and arrest of the accused, from which arise some of the most serious charges in this case.’ The judge looked up from his notes directly at Blaine Malcomess. ‘I wish to record the most favourable impression that Colonel Malcomess made upon this court, and we have accepted his evidence without reservation.’

  From where she was sitting Centaine could see the back of Blaine’s head. The tips of his large ears turned pink as the judge looked at him, and Centaine felt a rush of tenderness as she noticed. His embarrassment was somehow endearing and touching.

  Then the judge looked at her.

  ‘The other prosecution witness who conducted herself impeccably and whose evidence was unimpeachable, was Mrs Centaine Courtney. The court is fully aware of the great hardship with which Mrs Courtney has been inflicted and the courage which she has displayed, not only in this courtroom. Once again, we were most fortunate to have the benefit of her evidence in assisting us to reach our verdict.’

  While the judge was speaking, Lothar De La Rey turned his head and looked at Centaine steadily. Those pale accusing eyes disconcerted her and she dropped her own gaze to the handbag in her lap to avoid them.

  ‘In contrast, the defence was able to call only one witness, and that was the accused himself. After due consideration, we are of the opinion that much of the accused’s evidence was unacceptable. The witness’s attitude was at all times hostile and unco-operative. In particular we reject the witness’s assertion that the offences were committed singlehanded, and that he had no accomplices in their commission. Here the evidence of Colonel Malcomess, of Mrs Courtney and of the police troopers is unequivocal and collaborative.’

  Lothar De La Rey turned his head slowly in the judge’s direction once more and stared at him with that flat, hostile expression which had so antagonized Judge Hawthorne over the five long days of the trial, and the judge returned his gaze levelly as he went on.

  ‘Thus we have considered all the facts and the evidence presented to us and are unanimous in our verdict. On all twenty-six charges we find the accused, Lothar De La Rey, guilty as charged.’

  Lothar neither flinched nor blinked, but there was a concerted gasp from the body of the court, followed immediately by a buzz of comment. Three of the reporters leapt up and scampered from the courtroom, and Abe nodded smugly beside Centaine.

  ‘I told you, the rope,’ he murmured. ‘He will swing, for sure.’ The ushers were attempting to restore order. The judge came to their assistance.

  He rapped his gavel sharply and raised his voice. ‘I will not hesitate to have this court cleared—’ he warned, and once again a hush settled over the courtroom.

  ‘Before passing sentence, I will listen to any submissions in mitigation that the defence may wish to put to the bench.’ Judge Hawthorne inclined his head towards the young barrister charged with the defence, who immediately rose to his feet.

  Lothar De La Rey was destitute and unable to afford his own defence. Mr Reginald Osmond had been appointed by the court to defend him. Despite his youth and inexperience – it was his first defence on a capital charge – Osmond had thus far acquitted himself as well as could have been expected, given the hopeless circumstances of his client’s case. His cross-examination
had been spirited and nimble, if ineffectual, and he had not allowed the prosecution to make any gratuitous gains.

  ‘If it please my lord, I should like to call a witness to give evidence in mitigation.’

  ‘Come now, Mr Osmond, surely you don’t intend to introduce a witness at this stage? Do you have precedents for this?’ The judge frowned.

  ‘I respectfully commend your lordship to the matter of the Crown versus Van der Spuy 1923 and to the Crown versus Alexander 1914.’

  The judge conferred for a few moments with his assessors and then looked up with a stagy sigh of exasperation. ‘Very well, Mr Osmond. I am going to allow you your witness.’

  ‘Thank you, my lord.’ Mr Osmond was so overcome with his own success that he stuttered a little as he blurted eagerly: ‘I call Mrs Centaine de Thiry Courtney to the stand.’

  This time there was a stunned silence. Even Judge Hawthorne fell back in his tall carved chair before a buzz of surprise and delight and anticipation swept through the court. The press were standing to get a view of Centaine as she rose and from the gallery a voice called: ‘Put the noose around the bastard’s neck, luv!’

  Judge Hawthorne recovered swiftly and his eyes flashed behind his pince-nez as he glared up at the gallery, trying to identify the wag.

  ‘I will not tolerate a further outburst. There are severe penalties for contempt of court,’ he snapped, and even the journalists sat down again hurriedly and, chastened, applied themselves to their notepads.

  The usher handed Centaine into the witness stand and then swore her in while every man in the room, including those on the bench, watched, most of them in open admiration, but a few, including Blaine and Abraham Abrahams, with puzzlement and perturbation.

  Mr Osmond stood to open his examination, his voice pitched low with nervous respect.

  ‘Mrs Courtney, will you please tell the court how long you have known the accused—’ he corrected himself hurriedly, for now Lothar De La Rey was no longer merely accused, he had been convicted, ‘ – the prisoner.’