Golden Lion (38 page)

Let him die now
, Hal pleaded silently, looking up at the sky which was filling with cloud.

His eyes scanned the arena as if they might find an answer there, but they met nothing but a sea of hostile, unfamiliar faces. There were four other men in the ring with him: all armed and all looking directly at him, as if daring him to take them on. And then Hal saw the eyes of a child, filled with tears. They seemed familiar but his mind was so overwhelmed by all that had happened that he could not place them and besides, what could a child be doing in a place like this? Hal tried to concentrate on what he knew to be true, and real, and what he had to do. And so, his hands shaking, he reached out and took hold of the blood-soaked silk over Tromp’s eyes and lifted it from his eyes.

‘I’m sorry,’ Hal murmured. ‘Christ, I’m so sorry … my friend.’

Tromp’s eyes seemed to sharpen a touch, seemed to focus on Hal. Then they dulled as though a skein of ice had formed over them. He pitched forward and Hal caught him. He untied the knot behind the Dutchman’s head and removed the gag. It did not seem right to let him die unable to speak, unable to damn Hal for killing him.

But there were no words. Hal lowered his friend to the ground and looked up through his own tears to see the four armed men standing around him.

‘Take him back to the kennel,’ the master of ceremonies spoke. Two men pulled Hal to his feet and as he stood at his full height once again he looked into the crowd and shouted out in desperate defiance: ‘Here I am! I’m still alive! What now, damn you? What now, you mad bastards?!’

The crowd responded with catcalls, obscene gestures and threw half-chewed meat bones and stale bread rolls in his direction. But then their shouts of contempt gave way to alarm. People were running for the exits. Even the men guarding Hal were looking around in panic. And then he saw the reason why as a company of armed soldiers, at least thirty-strong, entered the yard where the fighting ring stood and forced their way through the crowd, clubbing and even stabbing anyone who got in their way. Hal’s guards turned tail and fled and he was about to follow them, but as he looked around for a way out he saw that it was too late. He was entirely surrounded by troops. Then a man whose plumed helmet and resplendent uniform marked him out as their commander stepped into the filthy, blood- and excrement-stained ring and said, ‘Captain Courtney, please come with me. His Highness the Maharajah Sadiq Khan Jahan wishes to make your acquaintance.’

al had only been in his cell for a few hours when he received a visit from Prince Jahan. Hal had been steeling himself for brutal interrogation, but Jahan’s opening question took him completely by surprise.

‘Your countryman,’ the prince began, ‘the one that is called the Buzzard: did he always have the morals of a pig, even when he was a man?’

Hal made an exhausted attempt at a laugh. ‘He was born a treacherous, thieving rogue. It’s in his blood.’

‘Yes, I thought as much. He has stolen Judith Nazet. This angers me because she was my property …’

‘She is nobody’s property. She is a free woman.’

‘Very clearly, Sir Henry, she is not,’ Jahan pointed out. ‘She is currently the Buzzard’s prisoner, on a ship sailing south. It is my fault. I should have known better. I saw him betray his god for money. A man who will do that has no honour, no shame. If he were a Mussulman and it was known that he had betrayed the prophet, blessings be upon him and Allah, the all-knowing, the all-merciful, in such a fashion, then if he were to die a thousand times it would not be enough. But you are different. You fought for your god.’

‘For my god, for freedom and for the woman I love.’

Jahan gave a rueful sigh and a nod of the head. ‘Ah, I cannot blame you for that, El Tazar. She is a queen among women. She was here, in my harem, and her beauty outshone even my finest concubines. No, fear not, I did not defile her, though I was sorely tempted as any man alive would be.’

‘So why not? You could have raped her. What stopped you?’

‘That is a good question. For of course you are right. Within these walls, and even outside them I may do exactly as I wish. So, what precisely was I thinking …?’ The prince paused for a moment’s thought and then said, ‘She and I spoke. I told her that I was waiting until you were captured. I said that I would force her to give herself to me because if she did not, both she and you would die. She was not concerned for herself, of course, for she is as brave as any man. But she would not want you to suffer for her.’

Hal’s voice was heavy with contempt: ‘Is that how you like to seduce women, by threats of violence if they deny you?’

Jahan’s attitude, which had been one of lordly amiability, suddenly turned as cold as frost. ‘You are either very brave or a very foolish man to make such a suggestion, for I could have you killed for it.’

‘You will have me killed anyway, I have no doubt, if that is what you want,’ Hal said.

‘Yes,’ the prince agreed. ‘But whatever you may think, I am not a man who glories in the power of life and death, as some do. Nor do I take pleasure from hurting women or forcing them to my will. For example, the women of my harem belong to me. They exist to please me, that is their function and they must perform it. But I do not hit them, nor threaten them and you may be sure that the others are always jealous of the one who is my chosen one and wish that they, not she, were enjoying my favours. So it would give me no pleasure to force myself on Judith Nazet, and though I am angered by the defeats she has inflicted on the armies that I sent against her, I do not hate her for them. I respect her. Though she is a woman she fought like a true warrior. If she had been killed in battle, I would have rejoiced. But I came to the conclusion that if I were to take her with threats or violence I would be the one who was most degraded.’

‘That’s a fine speech, I’m sure. But still you put her on the slaver’s block.’

‘That was a matter of necessity – a means of forcing you back to Zanzibar. I wanted to get you here, in front of me, where I could see this barracuda who treated my ships like so many helpless sardines. I wanted you to fight the one-armed monster I had created. I thought it would entertain me.’ The prince looked almost sorry for himself, as though he sought Hal’s sympathy as he said, ‘It is hard, you know, for a man in my position to find something new to entertain himself.’

‘And then your monster betrayed you.’

‘Yes, he did. So now you can do me a great service by killing him.’

‘I have to find him first.’

‘I can help you with that,’ Jahan said. ‘The Buzzard is in league with another Englishman called Benbury.’

‘I know him, he’s the master of a ship called the
Pelican
,’ Hal said. ‘But he’s not English. He is Scottish.’

‘And that is not the same thing?’

‘No, not at all.’

‘Huh,’ said the prince at the surprise of learning something new. ‘In any case, one of this Benbury’s crew was seized when we raided the tavern where you were found. He was persuaded to tell us all he knew about his master’s plans.’

‘I heard screaming during the night,’ Hal said.

‘Persuasion often has that effect. It seems that Captain Benbury and the Buzzard hope to sell your woman to a Portuguese called Lobo. I know of this man. He has a gold mine. I can get you there.’

‘How?’

‘You will leave in three days’ time. You will be taken on a journey that will bring you no pleasure, but it is also the only possible way to get you close to Lobo. If you try to attack him, you will fail. If you pay a social call, he will turn you away, or simply kill you. But there is one way you can get into his mine, though you may wish that you had not. For he works men until they die. And so he always needs new men …’

Hal shrugged his shoulders as if he could not care less. ‘I know what forced labour is like. I have the whip-marks to prove it. I can survive.’

‘Maybe so,’ said Jahan, ‘but first you have to get there. And that will be no easy matter, for the man who will take you would happily kill you first.’

‘It sounds to me as though you want me to die more than the Buzzard,’ Hal said.

‘Puh!’ Prince Jahan looked like a man who had ordered a series of apparently delicious dishes only to find that each tasted worse than the last. ‘I want you all gone, all you Englishmen, Scotsmen … you are all equally unwelcome in my sight. You will be put aboard a ship within the hour. As to which of you dies, and when, that is no longer for me to decide. Let the will of Allah be your judge …’

On the afternoon after the slave market, Mossie sat in the captain’s cabin of the
Golden Bough
as she lay at anchor off the Zanzibar coast, far enough from the city to avoid prying eyes. His shoulders were slumped and his head downcast as he told a story that was interrupted by more than one burst of tears. ‘I should have done something. Lady Judith has been taken away, Captain Henry is in chains and Mister Tromp is dead. But I didn’t know what to do!’

‘Do not blame yourself, little Sparrow,’ Aboli comforted him. ‘You did exactly what I asked. You followed as close as you could to the captain until he left the island. So it is thanks to you that we know what happened, thanks to you that I could send men to the harbour to find out which ship took Captain Courtney away. Now we know that he was on the
Madre de Deus
, bound for Quelimane. We know that he is with slaves bound for the gold mines. We would not know any of this without you, Mossie, do you understand?’

The boy nodded his head, feeling a little better thanks to hearing Aboli’s words.

‘Good,’ the first mate continued. ‘Now, Mossie, listen to me as I tell you how we will rescue Captain Courtney.’

The boy nodded eagerly, as if he were listening to an exciting bedtime story.

‘First, we will follow the ship on which our captain is held prisoner. If we catch it at sea, we will attack and take the captain back,’ Aboli said.

‘Will you kill the bad men who took the captain?’

‘Yes, we will look at them like this …’ Aboli contorted his scarred face into a terrifyingly warlike expression that had Mossie shrieking in fear and excitement.

‘Then we will stick our swords and our spears into them like this,’ he lunged his arm forward, ‘and this, and this!’

‘But what if you can’t get to their ship in time?’

‘Ah, then, I will go ashore with my Amadoda brothers. The mines where the captain is going, and Lady Judith too, maybe, are close to our homeland, the Kingdom of the Monomatapa. So we will know the country around us like we know our own hands. And we will get the captain and his lady and bring them back to the coast, where you and Mister Tyler and Mister Fisher and all the crew of the
Bough
will be waiting for us.’

‘So you will bring Lady Judith and Captain Henry back to us, all safe and well?’ Mossie asked.

‘Yes.’

‘Do you promise?’

Aboli looked at Mossie with a deep solemnity in his eyes and said, ‘I have known the captain since he was a little baby. He is like my own son to me and I will never let him come to harm. So yes, little Sparrow, I promise. I will bring the captain and Lady Judith back to you.’

ou must eat,’ the girl said, pointing at the plate of goat’s cheese and fruit bought at a market in Zanzibar that she had put on the table over an hour previously. Judith had not touched it, though she was faint with hunger, for it seemed like an act of surrender to accept food given by men who had stolen her. The girl looked at her plaintively. ‘Think of the little one. Even if you can’t face it, you must keep your strength up.’

Judith picked up a piece of cheese and bit into it and the girl gave her a strained smile, half glancing back at the cabin’s door as though she feared what, or who might come through it.

It was dusk and the
Pelican
had dropped anchor, meaning that the Buzzard would be along soon to check on them: to check on Judith.

When they’d taken her aboard in Zanzibar, they’d shoved Judith into a locked, lightless hold in the bowels of the ship. They gave her a wooden bucket for a latrine and a ragged pair of trousers and a rough canvas smock that had belonged to a cabin-boy – ‘Died of malaria, the little tyke,’ a sailor had informed her – then left her entirely alone aside from occasional deliveries of food and water. Hal had taught her how to tell the time from the ringing of a ship’s bell. So she knew that two days and nights had passed and it was just after ten in the morning, or four bells in the forenoon watch, when a sailor came to the hold, instructed her to follow him and led her to a cabin in the ship’s forecastle. It was cramped and damp but it was far preferable to the hold and Judith had female company there also, for a little while after she had been installed a young woman had been all but thrown into the cabin with her.