Golden Lion (9 page)

But if there was one hour of the twenty-four in each day that they could dedicate to one another, rather than anything or anyone else, it was the one that preceded the dawn. This was the time when the ship seemed at its quietest, when the sea and wind were most often at their calmest and when they could take advantage of the peace and the silence to express, whether in words, or actions, or both, their love for one another.

Hal could never sate his desire for Judith. He loved the moment when he thrust into her, plunging so deep that he could hardly tell where his body ended and hers began, fusing as one being and experiencing the same ecstatic moment of release with such intensity that for that one blissful moment there was nothing and no one in the whole universe but them. And yet for all that shared passion, there was no moment more soothing to Hal’s heart than waking to see Judith still asleep, her lovely face just visible in the darkness of the cabin, her breathing soft and gentle. There was something so peaceful about her, so trusting. She felt completely safe with him, and the depth of her trust and love for him filled Hal with a desire to keep her and protect her for as long as he lived.

One morning, however, when they were eight days and around a thousand miles out of Mitsiwa, heading almost due south along the east coast of Africa, rarely more than thirty miles or so from land, Hal was awoken by a groaning sound. When he opened his eyes, Judith was not lying peacefully beside him but was curled up, with her back towards him and her knees pulled tight to her chest. From the noises she was making, she was in a great deal of physical distress.

‘My darling, are you all right?’ Hal asked, unable to keep the alarm from his voice.

‘It will pass,’ she replied, but then her body shook and she retched convulsively, though nothing but sound came out of her mouth.

‘You’re sick,’ he said, stating the obvious. He put a hand to her forehead. ‘You feel hot. Do you have a fever?’

Judith swallowed hard then rolled over so that she was facing him. She propped herself up on one elbow and laid her other hand on Hal. ‘Don’t be worried, my love. I’m not sick. Far from it. Indeed, I have never in my life been more healthy.’

Hal took the hand she had placed on him and held it tight. ‘Please, my darling, do not feel that you have to reassure me. You’re so brave, but …’

‘Shh …’ she hushed him. ‘I promise you, there is no need to be alarmed.’ She managed a faint smile. ‘Not unless you are troubled by the thought of impending fatherhood.’

‘Impending … what?’ he gasped. ‘Do you … I mean are you …?’

‘Yes, my darling, I am with child. I am going to have a baby, your baby … our baby.’

‘That’s wonderful news!’ Hal exulted, and then he seemed stricken by doubt. ‘But are you sure? How do you know?’

‘Because we were together more than two months ago for the council of war, if you remember …’

‘Oh, I remember perfectly, believe me!’

‘Well, since that time I have not bled and now I feel sick in the mornings. If I were at home, my mother and my aunts and all the women of the family would be telling me what I am telling you.’ She gave a contented little laugh. ‘Perhaps I will have a son who is as strong, and handsome and kind as you.’

‘Or a daughter as beautiful, and loving and as brave as you.’

For a moment they basked in the glow that lovers know when they are young and in love and have just accomplished the miracle that is the most ancient and universal of all human accomplishments and yet for two people is also the newest and most unique. And then Hal started, almost as if he had been shocked or stung, and turned his head away from Judith. He stared out into the darkness beyond the cabin windows, his ears pricked, his nose sniffing the air like a hunting dog that has caught the scent of his prey.

‘What’s the matter, my love?’ Judith asked. ‘Is something troubling you? Have no fear, I will keep our baby safe inside me. All will be well.’

‘No, it’s not that,’ Hal replied. ‘Something else.’

He rose from the bed and dressed hurriedly, pulling on shoes and breeches and leaving his shirt unfastened as he bent down to kiss Judith’s forehead. ‘I just want to check something. Don’t worry, it’s probably nothing.’ Seeing her anxious face Hal grinned reassuringly. ‘It’s wonderful news about the baby. I love you with all my heart. And I’ll be back here with you in a trice.’

As he headed up to the quarterdeck, Hal’s mind snapped free of the bedchamber and concentrated instead on his captain’s duty.

Two days earlier, a lookout had spotted a Dutch caravel, several miles off to starboard. For the rest of the day, the Dutchman had come in and out of sight as the wind and visibility changed, so that it had seemed as though the
Golden Bough
were being tracked. At a time of war, this would be an alarming turn of events. The caravel in itself was smaller than the
Bough
and no threat to her safety, but Hal would be bound to wonder what other, more powerful vessels might be lurking out of sight, over the horizon. But England and Holland had been at peace for over a year, so there was no cause to be worried. Furthermore, when dawn had broken the following day, the caravel had disappeared. Yet still a nagging suspicion had played at the back of his mind, a seaman’s instinct that told him to be on his guard.

Now that same instinct had tugged at Hal again. Something told him, and for all the world he could not be certain what it might be, that the Dutchman was still out there. He would not be able to rest easy until he was sure of what the captain of that mysterious caravel was up to.

Hal emerged on deck to be greeted by something close to serenity. The wind was little more than the most gentle of breezes, and the silvery light of the moon was reflected in the still, glassy waters. Across the deck lay the scattered, sleeping forms of the Amadoda warriors, who always passed the night in the open air rather than endure the filth and stench below decks. Ned Tyler was at the helm and he nodded a greeting to his captain. ‘What brings you up here so early, Cap’n?’ he asked. ‘Can’t believe you’re tiring of the company in your cabin.’

Hal chuckled. ‘No chance of that. I just had a fancy that the Dutchman was still out there.’

‘There’s not been a sound out of young Tom, sir. And he’s a good lad. Not like him to sleep on duty.’

Tom Marley was a spotty, jug-eared lad, the youngest member of the crew and the subject of much good-natured teasing. But Hal agreed he had the makings of a decent seaman. ‘Get him down here, if you will, Mr Tyler.’

‘Aye-aye, sir.’

Ned looked up towards the top of the mainmast and gave a short, piercing whistle. Tom Marley immediately waved back, whereupon Ned gestured to him to get down on deck. Marley began descending the rigging with a fearless speed and agility that reminded Hal of the time, not so very long ago, when he was up and down to the crow’s nest at his father’s behest, several times a day.

The lad reached the deck, ran across to where Hal and Ned were standing and stood straight up, his hands behind his back, looking nervous.

‘It’s all right, Tom, you’ve not done anything wrong,’ said Hal and the boy’s shoulders relaxed as the tension left his body. ‘I just want to know if you’ve spotted anything recently, like that Dutchman that was following us two days ago, for example.’

Tom shook his head decisively. ‘No sir, I ain’t seen nothing like that Dutchman, nor any other ship neither. And I’ve kept my eyes open, Captain. I’ve not been dozing off or nothing.’

‘I’m sure you haven’t. Now, Cook should be up by now, you run along and get something to eat.’

‘But my watch ain’t finished yet, sir.’

‘Don’t worry,’ Hal said, suddenly feeling an urge to see for himself for once, rather than rely on others as a captain so often had to do.

‘You sure it’s a good idea you going back up there, Cap’n?’ Ned asked. ‘Been a while.’

‘Are you suggesting I can’t still get up there faster than any man on this ship?’

‘No sir, wouldn’t dream of it.’

‘Well, watch me and I’ll show you.’

And with that, Hal ran to the mast, grabbed a rope and started clambering up the rigging, past the limp, windless sails towards the inky sky above.

ett was hungry. Of course, everyone aboard was hungry. The ship’s decks and even the bilges had been scoured for rats to eat. Any gulls that were foolish enough to land on deck or perch in the rigging were greeted with volleys of stones, small pieces of shot, or anything else anyone could grab and throw that might kill or stun a bird. Playful dolphins that swam alongside the boat found themselves attacked by the ship’s smaller guns and any shots that managed to hit their targets were swiftly followed by splashes as the crew’s best swimmers dived into the water to retrieve the corpses before the sea of nearby sharks could take them.

Pett’s hunger, however, was of a different kind. He’d spent the past week locked in a dark, stinking, rat-infested cockpit on the orlop deck. He had assured the ship’s captain that he was
a senior official of the British East India Company and demanded to be treated as a gentleman, but the man had refused to listen, insisting that this imprisonment was for Pett’s own safety.

‘You must understand that it is not long since my men were fighting the British, so they have no great love for your people,’ the captain had said, with a regretful shrug of the shoulders. ‘They are also starving and so desperate for food that they might resort to – how shall I say? – inhuman methods to find it. You should count yourself lucky, sir, that I gave the order to have you rescued. Many of my men were very displeased by that decision. They did not like the idea of adding another mouth to feed. Forgive me; I made a foolish jest: I said that if they did not like you, they could eat you. It is my honest fear that some of them might have taken me at my word.’

Since then, Pett had survived on what amounted to barely starvation rations. His body, already thin, was becoming close to skeletal. But he was never a man who possessed the slightest interest in or appreciation for the pleasures of the dinner table, so a lack of decent meals was no loss to him. No, he suffered from another hunger, that which clawed at his guts when the voices called him, the Saint’s voice above all, imploring him to do God’s will by scouring the world of sin and the impure souls who perpetrated it. Pett could never be sure when the voices would come. Sometimes, months would pass without a single visit, but there were also times like this when the clamour in his head would barely die down at all from one day or even week to the next: always the voices, shouting at him, imploring him, repeating again and again the same implacable commandment:
thou shalt kill
.

Yet there could be no candidates for his deliverance as long as he was locked away in this solitary confinement. And then the Saint, as he always did, provided the means of Pett’s salvation. He was an emaciated, thirst-ravaged member of the crew. His crime, so far as Pett could gather, was that he stole one of the very last crusts of stale bread from the locked chest in the captain’s quarters. The man was delirious. He must have been, Pett thought, to have thought he could possibly succeed in his theft when the only way of opening the chest in which the precious crumbs were located was to blow the lock off with a pistol shot that could be heard from one end of the ship to the other.

Or perhaps the man just didn’t care. For twelve hours he had sat opposite Pett, occasionally breaking into rambling, slurred, incomprehensible speeches before falling into an uneasy slumber, during which he still cried out in tones of rage and alarm, though he remained asleep all the while. Pett would long since have despatched him into a silent, eternal slumber were not both men chained to iron rings set in the ship’s hull with a good ten-foot span of filth-encrusted planks between them.

Pett’s chain, attached to another ring round his ankle, was just five feet long, making it almost impossible for him to reach the other man and strike a fatal blow. But he felt entirely confident that the Saint would not have brought him the man without providing the means with which to send him from this world to the next. Sure enough, events were moving in Pett’s direction for the ship’s company – or at least a goodly portion of it – appeared to be setting off on an expedition. The ship’s walls made it hard to work out exactly what was being said, but one message came through above all others: this was a do-or-die attempt to seize more supplies. Orders were barked and passed on. There was much bustle, movement and all the noise that one would associate with a group of men preparing for an important endeavour.

Eventually Pett heard boats being lowered, along with muffled demands for silence. Wherever they were going, clearly they did not wish to alert anyone to their movements. But no sooner had the boats set off from the ship than those who had been left behind settled down to what sounded like heated debates, presumably about the likely outcome of the expedition. No matter: the key point was that they were not paying the slightest attention to William Pett, or his cell companion.

He thus had the perfect opportunity to take action without being interrupted in his labours. That was why he was already on the move. Slowly for the first few inches, silent as a leopard in the dark, ignoring the cramping pain in his limbs from long confinement.