Birds of Prey (16 page)

‘Should I not trust my own crew?’ Sir Francis asked.

‘If you trust no man, then no man will ever disappoint you.’ Hal repeated the lesson.

‘Do you believe that?’ Sir Francis turned to watch his face as he replied, and Hal hesitated. ‘Do you trust Aboli?’

‘Yes, I trust him,’ Hal admitted, reluctantly, as though it were a sin.

‘Aboli is a good man, none better. But you see that I do not bring even him to this place.’ He paused, then asked, ‘Do you trust me, lad?’

‘Of course.’

‘Why? Surely I am but a man and I have told you to trust no man?’

‘Because you are my father and I love you.’

Sir Francis’s eyes clouded and he made as if to caress Hal’s cheek. Then he sighed, dropped his hand and looked down at the river below. Hal expected his father to censure his reply,
but he did not. After a while Sir Francis asked another question. ‘What of the other goods I have cached here? The powder and weapons and charts and the like. Why have I placed those
here?’

‘Against an uncertain future,’ Hal replied confidently – he had heard the answer often enough before. ‘A wise fox has many exits to his earth.’

Sir Francis nodded. ‘All of us who sail in the
guerre de course
are always at risk. One day, those few chests may be worth our very lives.’

His father was silent again as he smoked the last few shreds of tobacco in the bowl of his pipe. Then he said softly, ‘If God is merciful, the time will come, perhaps not too far in the
future, when this war with the Dutch will end. Then we will return here and gather up our prize and sail home to Plymouth. It has long been my dream to own the manor of Gainesbury that runs
alongside High Weald—’ He broke off, as if not daring to tempt fate with such imagining. ‘If harm should befall me, it is necessary that you should know and remember where I have
stored our winnings. It will be my legacy to you.’

‘No harm can ever come your way!’ Hal exclaimed in agitation. It was more a plea than a statement of conviction. He could not imagine an existence without this towering presence at
the centre of it.

‘No man is immortal,’ said Sir Francis softly. ‘We all owe God a death.’ This time he allowed his right hand to settle briefly on Hal’s shoulder. ‘Come, lad.
We must still fill the water casks in our own boat before dark.’

A
s the longboats crept back down the edge of the darkening lagoon, Aboli had taken Sir Francis’s place on the rowing thwart, and now
Hal’s father sat in the stern, wrapped in a dark woollen cloak against the evening chill. His expression was remote and sombre. Facing aft as he worked one of the long oars, Hal could study
him surreptitiously. Their conversation at the mouth of the cave had left him troubled with a presentiment of ill-fortune ahead.

He guessed that since they had anchored in the lagoon his father had cast his own horoscope. He had seen the zodiacal chart covered with arcane notations lying open on his desk in his cabin.
That would account for his withdrawn and introspective mood. As Aboli had said, the stars were his children and he knew their secrets.

Suddenly his father lifted his head and sniffed the cool evening air. Then his face changed as he studied the forest edge. No dark thoughts could absorb him to the point where he was unaware of
his surroundings.

‘Aboli, take us in to the bank, if you please.’

They turned the boat towards the narrow beach, and the second followed. After they had all jumped out onto the beach and moored both boats, Sir Francis gave a quiet order. ‘Bring your
arms. Follow me, but quietly.’

He led them into the forest, pushing stealthily through the undergrowth, until he stepped out suddenly onto a well-used path. He glanced back to make certain they were following him, then
hurried along.

Hal was mystified by his father’s actions until he smelt a trace of woodsmoke on the air and noticed for the first time the bluish haze along the tops of the dense forest trees. This must
have been what had alerted his father.

Suddenly Sir Francis stepped out into a small clearing in the forest and stopped. The four men who were already there had not noticed him. Two lay like corpses on a battlefield, one still
clutching a squat brown hand-blown bottle in his inert fingers, the other drooling strings of saliva from the corner of his mouth as he snored.

The second pair were wholly absorbed by the stacks of silver guilders and the ivory dice lying between them. One scooped up the dice and rattled them at his ear before rolling them across the
patch of beaten bare earth. ‘Mother of a pig!’ he growled. ‘This is not my lucky day.’

‘You should not speak unkindly of the dam who gave birth to you,’ said Sir Francis softly. ‘But the rest of what you say is the truth. This is not your lucky day.’

They looked up at their captain in horrified disbelief, but made no attempt to resist or escape as Daniel and Aboli dragged them to their feet and roped them neck to neck in the manner used by
the slavers.

Sir Francis walked over to inspect the still that stood at the far end of the clearing. They had used a black iron pot to boil the fermented mash of old biscuit and peelings, and copper tubing
stolen from the ship’s stores for the coil. He kicked it over and the colourless spirits flared in the flames of the charcoal brazier on which the pot stood. A row of filled bottles,
stoppered with wads of leaves, was laid out beneath a yellow-wood tree. He picked them up one at a time and hurled them against the tree-trunk. As they shattered the evaporating fumes were pungent
enough to make his eyes water. Then he walked back to Daniel and Ned, who had kicked the drunks out of their stupor and had dragged them across the clearing to rope them to the other captives.

‘We’ll give them a day to sleep it off, Master Ned. Then tomorrow, at the beginning of the afternoon watch, have the ship’s company assemble to witness their punishment.’
He glanced at Big Daniel. ‘I trust you can still make your cat whistle, Master Daniel.’

‘Please, Captain, we meant no harm. Just a little fun.’ They tried to crawl to where he stood, but Aboli dragged them back like dogs on the leash.

‘I will not grudge you your fun,’ said Sir Francis, ‘if you do not grudge me mine.’

T
he carpenter had knocked up a row of four tripods on the quarterdeck, and the drunkards and gamblers were lashed to them by wrist and ankle. Big
Daniel walked down the line and ripped their shirts open from collar to waist, so that their naked backs were exposed. They hung helplessly in their bonds like trussed pigs on the back of a market
cart.

‘Every man aboard knows full well that I will tolerate no drunkenness and no gaming, both of which are an offence and abomination in the eyes of the Lord.’ Sir Francis addressed the
company, assembled in solemn ranks in the ship’s waist. ‘Every man aboard knows the penalty. Fifty licks of the cat.’ He watched their faces. Fifty strokes of the knotted leather
thongs could cripple a man for life. A hundred strokes was a sentence of certain and horrible death. ‘They have earned themselves the full fifty. However, I remember that these four fools
fought well on this very deck when we captured this vessel. We still have some hard fighting ahead of us, and cripples are of no use to me when the culverins are smoking and the cutlasses are
out.’

He paused to watch their faces, and saw the terror of the cat in their eyes, mixed with relief that it was not them bound to the tripods. Unlike the captains of many privateers, even some
Knights of the Order, Sir Francis took no pleasure in this punishment. Yet he did not flinch from necessity. He commanded a ship full of tough, unruly men, whom he had handpicked for their ferocity
and who would take any show of kindness as weakness.

‘I am a merciful man,’ he told them, and somebody in the rear ranks chuckled derisively. Sir Francis paused and, with a bleak eye, singled out the offender. When the culprit hung his
head and shuffled his feet, he went on smoothly, ‘But these rascals would test my mercy to its limits.’

He turned to Big Daniel, who stood beside the first tripod. He was stripped to the waist and his great muscles bulged in arms and shoulders. He had tied back his long greying hair with a strip
of cloth, and from his scarred fist the lashes of the cat hung to the planks of the deck like the serpents of Medusa’s head.

‘Make it fifteen for each, Master Daniel,’ Sir Francis ordered, ‘but comb your cat well between the strokes.’

Unless Daniel’s fingers separated the lashes of the cat after each stroke, the blood would matt them together and clot them into a single heavy instrument that would cut human flesh like a
sword blade. Even fifteen with an uncombed cat would strip the meat off a man’s back down to the vertebrae of his spine.

‘Fifteen it is, Captain,’ Daniel acknowledged, and shaking out the whip to separate the knotted thongs, stepped up to his first victim. The man twisted his head to watch him over his
shoulder, his expression blanched with fear.

Daniel raised his arm high and let the lash stream out over his shoulder then, with a peculiar grace for such a big man, he swung forward. The lash whistled like the wind in the leaves of a tall
tree and clapped loudly on bare skin.

‘One!’ chanted the crew in unison, as the victim shrieked on a high note of shock and agony. The lash left a grotesque pattern over his back, each red line studded with a row of
brighter crimson stars where the knots had broken the skin. It looked like the sting from the venomous tendrils of a Portuguese man-of-war.

Daniel combed out the lash, and the fingers of his left hand were smeared with bright fresh blood.

‘Two!’ The watchers counted, and the man shrieked again and writhed in his bonds, his toes dancing a tattoo of pain on the deck timbers.

‘Avast punishment!’ Sir Francis called, as he heard a mild commotion at the head of the companionway leading down to the cabins in the stern. Obediently Daniel lowered the whip, and
waited as Sir Francis strode to the ladder.

Governor van de Velde’s plumed hat appeared above the coaming, followed by his fat flushed face. He stood wheezing in the sunlight, mopping his jowls with a silk handkerchief, and looked
about him. His face brightened with interest as he saw the men hanging on the row of tripods. ‘
Ja! Goed!
I see we are not too late,’ he said, with satisfaction.

Close behind him Katinka emerged from the hatch with a light, eager step, holding her skirts just high enough to reveal satin slippers embroidered with seed pearls.

‘Good morrow, Mijnheer,’ Sir Francis greeted the Governor with a perfunctory bow, ‘there is punishment in progress. It is an unsuitable spectacle for a lady of your
wife’s delicate breeding to witness.’

‘Truly, Captain,’ Katinka laughed lightly as she intervened, ‘I am not a child. Heaven knows, there is a great paucity of diversion aboard this ship. Just think, you would
collect no ransom if I were to die of boredom.’ She tapped Sir Francis’s arm with her fan, but he pulled away from this condescending touch, and spoke again to her husband.

‘Mijnheer, I think you should escort your wife to her quarters.’

Katinka stepped between them as though he had not spoken, and beckoned Zelda who followed her. ‘Place my stool there in the shade.’ She spread out her skirts as she settled herself
on the stool and pouted prettily at Sir Francis. ‘I will be so quiet that you will not even know that I am here.’

Sir Francis glared at the Governor, but van de Velde spread his pudgy hands in a theatrical gesture of helplessness. ‘You know how it is, Mijnheer, when a beautiful woman sets her heart on
something.’ He moved up behind Katinka and placed a proud and indulgent hand on her shoulder.

‘I cannot be responsible for your wife’s sensibilities, if they should be offended by the spectacle,’ Sir Francis warned grimly, relieved at least that his men could not
understand this exchange in Dutch and be aware that he had bowed to pressure from his captives.

‘I think you need not trouble yourself too deeply. My wife has a strong stomach,’ van de Velde murmured. During their tour of duty in Kandy and Trincomalee his wife had never missed
the executions that were carried out regularly on the parade ground of the fort. Depending on the nature of the offence these punishments had ranged from burning at the stake to branding,
garrotting and beheading. Even on those days when she had been suffering the break-bone pains of dengue fever and, in accordance with her doctor’s orders, should have remained in bed, her
carriage had always been parked in its accustomed place overlooking the scaffold.

‘Then it shall be at your own responsibility, Mijnheer.’ Sir Francis nodded curtly, and turned back to Daniel.

‘Proceed with the punishment, Master Daniel,’ he ordered. Daniel threw back the whip, high behind his shoulder, and the coloured tattoos that decorated his great biceps rippled with
a life of their own.

‘Three!’ yelled the crew, as the lash sang and snapped.

Katinka stiffened, and leaned forward slightly on her stool.

‘Four!’ She started at the crack of the cat and the high scream of pain that followed it. Slowly her face turned pale as candle tallow.

‘Five!’ Thin snakes of scarlet crawled down the man’s back and soaked into the waistband of his canvas petticoat. Katinka let her long golden eyelashes droop half closed to
hide the gleam in her violet eyes.

‘Six!’ Katinka felt a tiny drop of liquid strike her, like a single spot of warm tropical rain. She tore her eyes from the wriggling, moaning body on the tripod, and looked down at
her graceful hand.

A drop of blood, flung from the sodden lash, had landed on her forefinger. Like a ruby set in a precious ring it sparkled against her white skin. She cupped her other hand over it, hiding it in
her lap while she glanced around at the faces that surrounded her. Every eye was fixed in total fascination upon the gruesome spectacle in front of them. No one had seen the blood splash her. No
one was watching her now.

She lifted her hand to her full soft lips as though in an involuntary gesture of dismay. The pink tip of her tongue darted out and dabbed away the droplet from her finger. She savoured its
metallic salt taste. It reminded her of a lover’s sperm, and she felt the viscous wetness welling up between her legs, so that when she rubbed her thighs together they slid against each
other, slippery as mating eels.