Birds of Prey (57 page)

Sukeena looked at her in a way that made Katinka’s skin tingle. ‘Oh, but I am in love with a special person,’ she whispered.

‘My naughty little darling,’ Katinka purred.

The carriage came out into the Parade and turned towards the castle. Katinka was so engrossed that for some while she did not realize where they were heading. Then a shadow of annoyance crossed
her face and she called sharply, ‘Aboli! What are you doing, idiot? Not the castle. We are going to Mevrouw de Waal.’

Aboli seemed not to have heard her. The greys trotted straight on towards the castle gates.

‘Sukeena, tell the fool to turn round.’

Sukeena stood up quickly in the swaying carriage then sat down close beside Katinka and slipped her arm through that of her mistress, holding her firmly.

‘What on earth are you doing, child? Not here. Have you lost your mind? Not in front of the whole colony.’ She tried to pull away her arm, but Sukeena held it with a strength that
shocked her.

‘We are going into the castle,’ Sukeena said quietly. ‘And you are to do exactly what I tell you to do.’

‘Aboli! Stop the carriage this instant!’ Katinka raised her voice and made to stand up. But Sukeena jerked her down in her seat.

‘Don’t struggle,’ Sukeena ordered, ‘or I will cut you. I will cut your face first, so that you are no longer beautiful. Then if you still do not obey I will send this
blade through your slimy, evil heart.’

Katinka looked down and, for the first time, saw the blade that Sukeena held to her side. That dagger had been a gift from one of Katinka’s lovers and she knew just how sharp was its
slender blade. Sukeena had stolen it from Katinka’s closet.

‘Are you mad?’ Katinka blanched with terror, and tried to squirm away from the needle point.

‘Yes. Mad enough to kill you and to enjoy doing it.’ Sukeena pressed the dagger to her side and Katinka screamed. The horses pricked their ears. ‘If you scream again I will
draw your blood,’ Sukeena warned. ‘Now hold your tongue and listen while I tell you what you are to do.’

‘I will give you to Slow John and laugh as he draws out your entrails,’ Katinka blustered, but her voice shook and terror was in her eyes.

‘You will never laugh again, not unless you obey me. This dagger will see to that,’ and she pricked Katinka again, hard enough to pierce cloth and skin, so that a spot of blood the
size of a silver guilder appeared on her bodice.

‘Please!’ Katinka whimpered. ‘Please, Sukeena, I will do as you say. Please don’t hurt me again. You said you loved me.’

‘And I lied,’ Sukeena hissed at her. ‘I lied for my brother’s sake. I hate you. You will never know the strength of my hatred. I loath the touch of your hands. I am
revolted by every filthy, evil thing you forced me to do. So do not trade on any love from me. I will crush you with as little pity as I would rid my hair of lice.’ Katinka saw death in her
eyes, and she was afraid as she had seldom been in her life before.

‘I will do as you tell me,’ she whispered, and Sukeena instructed her in a flat, hard tone that was more threatening than any shouting or raging.

A
s Aboli drove the carriage through the castle gates, the usual stir of activity heralded its arrival. The single sentry came to attention and
presented his musket. Aboli wheeled the team of greys and brought the carriage to a halt in front of the Company offices. The captain of the guard hurried from the armoury, hastily strapping on his
sword-belt. He was a young subaltern, freshly out from Holland, and he had been taken by surprise by the unexpected arrival of the Governor’s wife.

‘The devil’s horns!’ he muttered to himself. ‘Why does the bitch pick today to arrive when half my men are sick as dogs?’ He looked anxiously at the single guard at
the door to the Company offices, and saw that the man’s face still had a pale greenish tinge. Then he realized that the Governor’s wife was beckoning to him from her seat in the
carriage. He broke into a run across the courtyard, straightening his cap and tightening the strap under his chin as he went. He reached the carriage and saluted Katinka. ‘Good morning,
Mevrouw. May I assist you to dismount?’

The Governor’s wife had a strained, nervous look and her voice was high and breathless. The subaltern was instantly alarmed. ‘Is something amiss, Mevrouw?’

‘Yes, something is very much amiss. Call my husband!’

‘Will you go to his office?’

‘No. I will remain here in the carriage. Go to him this instant and tell him that I say he must come immediately. It is a matter of the utmost importance. Life and death! Go!
Hurry!’

The subaltern looked startled and saluted quickly, then bounded up the steps two at a time and shot through the double doors into the offices. While he was gone Aboli dismounted, went to the
panniers at the back of the carriage and opened the lid. Then he glanced around the courtyard.

There was one guard at the gates and another at the head of the stairs but, as usual, the slow-match in their muskets was unlit. There was no sentry posted at the doors to the armoury, but from
where he stood he could see through the window that three men were in the guard room. Each of the five overseers in the courtyard carried swords as well as their whips and canes. Hugo Barnard was
at the far end of the yard and had both his hounds on the leash. He was haranguing the gang of common convicts laying the paving stones along the foot of the east wall. These other convicts, not
part of the crew of the
Resolution
, might be a hazard when they made their attempt to escape. Nearly two hundred were working on the walls, the multihued dregs of humanity. They could easily
hamper the rescue attempt by blocking the escape route or even by trying to join in with the
Resolution
’s crew and mobbing the carriage when they realized what was happening.

We will deal with that when it happens, he thought grimly, and turned his full attention to the armed guards and overseers who were the primary threat. With Barnard and his gang, there were ten
armed men in sight but any outcry could bring another twenty or thirty soldiers hurrying out of the barracks and across the yard. The whole business could get out of hand quickly.

He looked up to find Hal and Big Daniel watching him from the scaffold. Hal already had the rope of the gantry in his hand, the tail looped around his wrist. Ned Tyler and Billy Rogers were on
the lower tier, and the two birds, Finch and Sparrow, were working near Althuda in the courtyard. They were all pretending to carry on with their tasks, but were eyeing Aboli surreptitiously.

Aboli reached into the pannier and loosened the twine that secured the rolled silk carpet. He opened a flap of it and, without lifting them clear, revealed the three Mogul scimitars and the
single
kukri
knife that he had chosen for himself. He knew that, from their vantage point, Hal and Big Daniel could see into the pannier. Then he stood immobile and expressionless at the
back wheel of the carriage.

Suddenly the Governor burst hatless and in his shirt sleeves through the double doors at the head of the staircase and came down at an ungainly lurching run.

‘What is it, Mevrouw?’ he called urgently to his wife, when he was half-way down. ‘They say you sent for me, and it’s a matter of life and death.’

‘Hurry!’ Katinka cried plaintively. ‘I am in the most terrible predicament.’

He arrived at the door of the carriage, panting wildly. ‘Tell me what ails you, Mevrouw!’ he gasped.

Aboli stepped up behind him and hooked one great arm around his neck, pinning him helplessly. Van de Velde began to struggle. For all his obesity he was a powerful man and even Aboli had
difficulty in holding him.

‘What in the devil’s name are you doing?’ he roared in outrage. Aboli placed the blade of the
kukri
at his throat. When van de Velde felt the cold touch of steel and the
sting of the razor edge, his struggles ceased.

‘I will slit your throat like the great hog you are,’ Aboli whispered in his ear, ‘and Sukeena has a dagger at your wife’s heart. Tell your soldiers to stay where they
are and throw down their arms.’

The subaltern had started forward at van de Velde’s cry, and his sword was half-way out of its scabbard as he rushed down the stairs.

‘Stop!’ van de Velde shouted at him in terror. ‘Don’t move, you fool. You will have me killed.’ The subaltern halted and dithered uncertainly.

Aboli tightened his lock around the Governor’s throat. ‘Tell him to throw down his sword.’

‘Throw down your sword!’ van de Velde whinnied. ‘Do as he says. Can’t you see he has a knife at my throat?’ The subaltern dropped his sword, which clattered down
the steps.

Fifty feet above the courtyard, Hal sprang out from the scaffold, hanging on the rope from the gantry, and Big Daniel belayed the other end, braking the speed of his fall. The sheave squealed as
he plummeted down and landed in balance on the cobbles. He leaped to the rear of the carriage and seized one of the jewelled scimitars. With the next leap he was half-way up the steps where he
stooped and swept up the subaltern’s sword in his left hand. He placed the point under the officer’s chin and said, ‘Order your men to throw down their weapons!’

‘Lay down your arms, all of you!’ the subaltern yelled. ‘If any man among you brings harm to the Governor or his lady, he will pay for it with his own life.’ The sentries
obeyed with alacrity, dropping their muskets and sidearms to the paving stones.

‘You too!’ van de Velde howled at the overseers, and with reluctance they obeyed. However, at that moment Hugo Barnard was screened by a pile of masonry blocks. He stepped quietly
into the doorway to the kitchens, dragging his two hounds with him, and crouched there, waiting his opportunity.

Down from the scaffold scrambled the other seamen. Sparrow and Finch from the lower tier were first to reach the courtyard but Ned, Big Daniel and Billy Rogers were seconds behind them.

‘Come on, Althuda!’ Hal called, and Althuda dropped his mallet and chisel and ran to join him. ‘Catch!’ Hal lobbed the jewelled scimitar in a high, glinting parabola, and
Althuda reached up and caught it by the hilt, plucking it neatly out of the air. Hal wondered what class of swordsman he was. As a fisherman it was unlikely that he would have had much
practice.

I shall have to shield him if it comes to a fight, he thought, and looked around quickly. He saw Daniel pulling the other weapons out of the pannier at the back of the carriage. The twin
scimitars looked like toys in his huge fist. He tossed one to Ned Tyler and kept the other for himself as he ran to join Hal.

Hal picked up a sword that a sentry had dropped and threw it to Big Daniel. ‘This one is more your style, Master Danny,’ he yelled, and Daniel grinned, showing his broken black
teeth, as he caught the heavy infantry weapon and made it hiss in the air as he cut left and right.

‘Sweet Jesus, it’s good to have a real blade in my hand again!’ he exulted, and tossed the light scimitar to Wally Finch. ‘A tool for a man, but a toy for a
boy.’

‘Aboli, keep a firm hold on that great hog. Cut his ears off if he tries to be crafty,’ Hal shouted. ‘The rest of you follow me!’ He dropped down the staircase and raced
towards the doors of the armoury with Big Daniel and the others on his heels. Althuda began to follow him also, but Hal stopped him. ‘Not you. You look after Sukeena!’

As Althuda turned back and they ran on across the courtyard, Hal snapped at Daniel, ‘Where’s Barnard?’

‘The murdering bastard was here not a moment past, but I don’t see him now.’

‘Keep a good lookout for his top sails. We’ll have trouble with that swine yet.’

Hal burst into the armoury. The three men in the guard room were slumped on the bench: two were asleep and the third scrambled to his feet in bewilderment. Before he could recover his wits,
Hal’s point was pressed to his chest. ‘Stay where you are, or I’ll look at the colour of your liver.’ The man dropped back into his seat. ‘Here, Ned!’ Hal called
to him as Ned rushed in. ‘Play wet-nurse to these infants,’ and left them in his charge as he ran after Daniel and the other seamen.

Daniel charged the heavy teak door at the end of the passage and it burst open before his rush. They had never before had a chance to look into the armoury, but now at a glance Hal saw that it
was all laid out in a neat and orderly fashion. The weapons were in racks along the walls, and the powder kegs stacked to the ceiling at the far end.

‘Pick your weapons and bring a keg of powder each,’ he ordered, and they ran to the long racks of infantry swords, polished, gleaming and sharpened to a bright edge. Further back
were the racks of muskets and pistols. Hal thrust a pair of pistols into the rope that served him as a belt. ‘Remember, you’ll have to carry everything you take with you up the
mountains, so don’t be greedy,’ he warned them, and picked up a fifty-pound keg of gunpowder from the pyramid at the far end of the armoury, which he hoisted to his shoulder. Then he
turned for the door. ‘That’s enough, lads. Get out! Daniel, lay a powder trail as you go!’

Daniel used the butt of a musket to stove in the bungs of two of the powder kegs. At the foot of the pyramid of barrels he poured a mound of black gunpowder. ‘That lot will go off with an
almighty bang!’ He grinned, as he backed towards the door, the other keg under his arm spilling a long dark trail behind him.

Under their burdens they staggered out into the sunlight. Hal was the last to leave. ‘Get out of here, Ned!’ he ordered, and handed him the weapons he carried as Ned ran for the
door. Then Hal turned on the three Dutch soldiers, who were cowering on the bench. Ned had disarmed them – their weapons were thrown in the corner of the guard room.

‘I’m going to blow this place to hell,’ he told them in Dutch. ‘Run for the gates, and if you’re wise you’ll keep running without looking back. Go!’
They sprang up and, in their haste to get clear, jammed in the doorway. They struggled and fought each other until they burst out into the courtyard and raced across it.

‘Look out!’ they yelled, as they sprinted for the gates. ‘They’re going to blow up the powder store!’ The gaolers and the other common convicts who, until this
point, had stood gaping at the carriage and the hostage Governor in Aboli’s grip, now turned their heads towards the armoury and stared at it in stupid surprise.