Birds of Prey (49 page)

Sukeena moved quietly through the scrub that covered the slopes of the mountain. Once or twice she looked back but nobody had followed her. She went on, stopping only to cut a green twig from
one of the flowering bushes. As she walked she stripped the leaves from it and, with her knife, trimmed the end into a fork.

All around her the wild blossom grew in splendid profusion; even now that winter was upon them, a hundred different species were on show. Some were as large as ripe artichoke heads, some as tiny
as her little fingernail, all of them lovely beyond an artist’s imagination or the powers of his palette to depict. She knew them all.

Meandering seemingly without direction, in reality she was moving gradually and circuitously towards a deep ravine that split the face of the table-topped mountain. With one more careful look
around she darted suddenly down the steep, heavily bushed slope. There was a stream at the bottom, tumbling through a series of merry waterfalls and dreaming pools. As she approached one, she moved
more slowly and softly. Tucked into a rocky crevice beside the dark waters was a small clay bowl. She had placed it there on her last visit. From the ledge above she looked down and saw that the
milky white fluid, with which she had filled it, had been drunk. Only a few opalescent drops remained in the bottom.

Daintily she climbed cautiously into a position from which she could look deeper into the crack in the rock. Her breath caught as she saw in the shadows the soft gleam of ophidian scales. She
opened the lid of the basket, took the forked stick in her right hand and moved closer. The serpent was coiled beside the bowl. It was not large, as slender as her forefinger. Its colour was a deep
glowing bronze, each scale a tiny marvel. As she drew closer it raised its head an inch and watched her with black beady eyes. But it made no attempt to escape, sliding back into the depths of the
crevice, as it had the first time she had discovered it.

It was lazy and somnolent, lulled by the milky concoction she had fed it. After a moment it lowered its head again and seemed to sleep. Sukeena was not tempted into any sudden or rash move. Well
she knew that, from the bony needles in its upper jaw, the little reptile could dispense death in one of its most horrible and agonizing manifestations. She reached out gently with the twig and
again the snake raised its head. She froze, the fork held only inches above its slim neck. Slowly the little reptile drooped back to earth and, as its head stretched out, Sukeena pinned it to the
rock. It hissed softly and its body coiled and recoiled around the stick that held it.

Sukeena reached down and gripped it behind the head, with two fingers locked against the hard bones of the skull. It wrapped its long sinuous body around her wrist. She took hold of the tail and
unwound it, then dropped the serpent into her basket. In the same movement she closed the lid upon it.

R
etiring Governor Kleinhans went aboard the galleon on the evening before she sailed. Before the carriage took him down to the foreshore, all the
household assembled on the front terrace of the residence to bid farewell to their former master. He moved slowly along the line with a word for each. When he reached Sukeena she made that graceful
gesture, her fingertips together touching her lips, which made his heart ache with love and longing for her.

‘Aboli has taken your luggage aboard the ship and placed all of it in your cabin,’ she said softly. ‘Your medicine chest is packed at the bottom of the largest trunk, but there
is a full bottle in your small travelling case, which should last you several days.’

‘I shall never forget you, Sukeena,’ he said.

‘And I shall never forget you, master,’ she answered. For one mad moment he almost lost control of his emotions. He was on the point of embracing the slave girl, but then she looked
up and he recoiled as he saw the undying hatred in her eyes.

When the galleon sailed in the morning with the dawn tide, Fredricus came to wake him and help him from his bunk. He wrapped the thick fur coat around his master’s shoulders and Kleinhans
went up on deck and stood at the stern rail as the ship caught the north-west wind and stood out into the Atlantic. He waited there until the great flat mountain sank away below the horizon and his
vision was dimmed with tears.

Over the next four days the pain in his stomach was worse than he had ever known it. On the fifth night he woke after midnight, the acid scalding his intestines. He lit the lantern and reached
for the brown bottle that would give him relief. When he shook it, it was already empty.

Doubled over with pain, he carried the lantern across the cabin and knelt before the largest of his trunks. He lifted the lid, and found the teak medicine chest where Sukeena had told him it
was. He lifted it out and carried it to the table top against the further bulkhead, placing the lantern to light it so that he could fit the brass key into the lock.

He lifted the wooden lid and started. Laid carefully over the contents of the chest was a sheet of paper. He read the black print and, with amazement, realized that it was an ancient copy of the
Company gazette. He read down the page and, as he recognized it, his stomach heaved with nausea. The proclamation was signed by himself. It was a death warrant. The warrant for the questioning and
execution of one Robert David Renshaw. The Englishman who had been Sukeena’s father.

‘What devilry is this?’ he blurted aloud. ‘The little witch has placed it here to remind me of a deed committed long ago. Will she never relent? I thought she was out of my
life for ever, but she makes me suffer still.’

He reached down to seize the paper and rip it to shreds but before his fingers touched it there was a soft, rustling sound beneath the sheet, and then a blur of movement.

Something struck him a light blow upon the wrist and a gleaming, sinuous body slid over the edge of the chest and dropped to the deck. He leapt back in alarm but the thing disappeared into the
shadows and he stared after it in bewilderment. Slowly he became aware of a slight burning on his wrist and lifted it into the lamplight.

The veins on the inside of his wrist stood out like blue ropes under the pale skin blotched with old man’s freckles. He looked closer at the seat of the burning sensation, and saw two tiny
drops of blood gleaming in the lantern light like gemstones as they welled up from twin punctures. He tottered backwards and sat on the edge of his bunk, gripping his wrist and staring at the ruby
droplets.

Slowly, an image from long ago formed before his eyes. He saw two solemn little orphans standing hand in hand before the smoking ashes of a funeral pyre. Then the pain swelled within him until
it filled his mind and his whole body.

There was only the pain now. It flowed through his veins like liquid fire and burrowed deep into his bones. It tore apart every ligament, sinew and nerve in his body. He began to scream and went
on screaming until the end.

S
ometimes twice a day Slow John came to the castle dungeon and stood at the peep-hole in the door of Sir Francis’s cell. He never spoke. He
stood there silently, with a reptilian stillness, sometimes for a few minutes and at others for an hour. In the end Sir Francis could not look at him. He turned his face to the stone wall, but
still he could feel the yellow eyes boring into his back.

It was a Sunday, the Lord’s day, when Manseer and four green-jacketed soldiers came for Sir Francis. They said nothing, but he could tell by their faces where they were taking him. They
could not look into his eyes, and they wore the doleful expressions of a party of pall-bearers.

It was a cold, gusty day as Sir Francis stepped out into the courtyard. Although it was no longer raining, the clouds that hung low across the face of the mountain were an ominous blue grey, the
colour of an old bruise. The cobbles beneath his feet were shining wetly with the rain squall that had just passed. He tried to stop himself shivering in the raw wind, lest his guards think it was
for fear.

‘God keep you safe!’ A young clear voice carried to him above the wild wind, and he stopped and looked up. Hal stood high on the scaffold, his dark hair ruffled by the wind and his
bare chest wet and shining with raindrops.

Sir Francis lifted his bound hands before him, and shouted back, ‘
In Arcadia habito!
Remember the oath!’ Even from so far off, he could see his son’s stricken face. Then
his guards urged him on towards the low door that led down into the basement below the castle armoury. Manseer led him through the door and down the staircase. At the bottom he paused and knocked
diffidently on the iron-bound door. Without waiting for a reply he pushed it open and led Sir Francis through.

The room beyond was well lit, a dozen wax candles flickering in their holders in the draught from the open door. To one side Jacobus Hop sat at a writing table. There was parchment and an inkpot
in front of him, and a quill in his right hand. He looked up at Sir Francis with a pale terrified expression. An angry red carbuncle glowed on his cheek. Quickly he dropped his eyes, unable to look
at the prisoner.

Along the far wall stood the rack. Its frame was of massive teak, the bed long enough to accommodate the tallest man with his limbs stretched out to their full extent. There were sturdy wheels
at each end, with iron ratchets and slots into which the levers could be fitted. On the side wall opposite the recording clerk’s desk, a brazier smouldered. On hooks set into the wall above
it hung an array of strange and terrible tools. The fire radiated a soothing, welcoming warmth.

Slow John stood beside the rack. His coat and his hat hung from a peg behind him. He wore a leather blacksmith’s apron.

A pulley wheel was bolted into the ceiling and a rope dangled from it with an iron hook at its end. Slow John said nothing while his guards led Sir Francis to the centre of the stone floor and
passed the hook through the bonds that secured his wrists. Manseer tightened the rope through the sheave until Sir Francis’s arms were drawn at full stretch above his head. Although both his
feet were firmly on the floor he was helpless. Manseer saluted Slow John, then he and his men backed out of the room and closed the door behind them. The panels were of solid teak, thick enough to
prevent any sound passing through.

In the silence, Hop cleared his throat noisily and read from the transcript of the judgement passed upon Sir Francis by the Company court. His stutter was painful, but at the end he laid down
the document and burst out clearly, ‘As God is my witness, Captain Courtney, I wish I were a hundred leagues from this place. This is not a duty I enjoy. I beg of you to co-operate with this
inquiry.’

Sir Francis did not reply but looked back steadily into Slow John’s yellow eyes. Hop took up the parchment once more, and his voice quavered and broke as he read from it. ‘Question
the first: is the prisoner, Francis Courtney, aware of the whereabouts of the cargo missing from the manifest of the Company ship, the
Standvastigheid
?’

‘No,’ replied Sir Francis, still looking into the yellow eyes before him. ‘The prisoner has no knowledge of the cargo of which you speak.’

‘I beg you to reconsider, sir,’ Hop whispered hoarsely. ‘I have a delicate disposition. I suffer with my stomach.’

F
or the men on the windswept scaffolding the hours passed with agonizing slowness. Their eyes kept turning back towards the small, insignificant
door below the armoury steps. There was no sound or movement from there, until suddenly, in the middle of the cold rainswept morning, the door burst open and Jacobus Hop scuttled out into the
courtyard. He tottered to the officers’ hitching rail and hung onto one of the iron rings as though his legs could no longer support him. He seemed oblivious to everything around him as he
stood gasping for breath like a man freshly rescued from drowning.

All work on the walls came to a halt. Even Hugo Barnard and his overseers stood silent and subdued, gazing down at the miserable little clerk. With every eye upon him, Hop suddenly doubled over
and vomited over the cobbles. He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, and looked around him wildly as though seeking an avenue of escape.

He lurched away from the hitching rail and set off at a run, across the yard and up the staircase into the Governor’s quarters. One of the sentries at the top of the stairs tried to
restrain him but Hop shouted, ‘I have to speak to his excellency,’ and brushed past him.

He burst unannounced into the Governor’s audience chamber. Van de Velde sat at the head of the long, polished table. Four burghers from the town were seated below him, and he was laughing
at something that had just been said.

The laughter died on his fat lips as Hop stood trembling at the threshold, his face deathly pale, his eyes filled with tears. His boots were flecked with vomit.

‘How dare you, Hop?’ van de Velde thundered, as he dragged his bulk out of the chair. ‘How dare you burst in here like this?’

‘Your excellency,’ Hop stammered, ‘I cannot do it. I cannot go back into that room. Please don’t insist that I do it. Send somebody else.’

‘Get back there immediately,’ van de Velde ordered. ‘This is your last chance, Hop. I warn you, you will do your duty like a man or suffer for it.’

‘You don’t understand.’ Hop was blubbering openly now. ‘I can’t do it. You have no idea what is happening in there. I can’t—’

‘Go! Go immediately, or you will receive the same treatment.’

Hop backed out slowly and van de Velde shouted after him, ‘Shut those doors behind you, worm.’

Hop staggered back across the silent courtyard like a blind man, his eyes filled again with tears. At the little door he stood and visibly braced himself. Then he flung himself through it and
disappeared from the view of the silent watchers.

In the middle of the afternoon the door opened again and Slow John came out into the courtyard. As always he was dressed in the dark suit and tall hat. His face was serene and his gait slow and
stately as he passed out through the castle gates and took the avenue up through his gardens towards the residence.