Birds of Prey (88 page)

‘Bless you, Captain, I had no idea. I thought you was a bunch of heathen savages, begging your pardon, sir.’

‘That we are, Mr Tyler. That we are!’ And Hal grinned at Ned’s confusion as a horde of magnificent warriors swarmed onto the
Golden Bough
’s deck. ‘Think
you’ll be able to make seamen of them, Mr Tyler?’

A
s soon as he had made his offing, Hal turned the bows into the north once more and sailed up the inland channel between Madagascar and the
mainland. He was heading for Zanzibar, the centre of all trade on this coast. There he hoped to have further news of the progress of the Holy War on the Horn and, if he were fortunate, to learn
something of the movements of the
Gull of Moray
.

This was a settling-in time for the Amadoda. Everything aboard the
Golden Bough
was strange to them. None had ever seen the sea. They had believed the pinnaces to be the largest canoes
ever conceived by man, and were overawed by the size of the ship, the height of her masts and the spread of her sails.

Most were immediately smitten by seasickness, and it took many days for them to find their sea-legs. Their bowels were in a turmoil induced by the diet of biscuit and pickled meat. They hungered
for their pots of millet porridge and their gourds of blood and milk. They had never been confined in such a small space and they pined for the wide savannah.

They suffered from the cold, for even in this tropical sea the trade winds were cool and the warm Mozambique current many degrees below the temperature of the sun-scorched plains of the
savannah. Hal ordered Althuda, who was in charge of the ship’s stores, to issue bolts of sail canvas to them and Aboli showed them how to stitch petticoats and tarpaulin jackets for
themselves.

They soon forgot these tribulations when Aboli ordered a platoon of men to follow Jiri and Matesi and Kimatti aloft to set and reef sail. A hundred dizzy feet above the deck and the rushing sea,
swinging on the great pendulum of the mainmast, for the first time in their lives these warriors – who had each killed their lion – were overcome by terror.

Aboli climbed up to where they clung helplessly to the shrouds and mocked them: ‘Look at these pretty virgins. I thought at first there might be a man among them, but I see they should all
squat when they piss.’ Then he stood upright on the swaying yard and laughed at them. He ran out to the end of it and there performed a stamping, leaping war dance. One of the Amadoda could
abide his mockery no longer: he loosed his death grip on the rigging and shuffled out along the yard to where Aboli stood with hands on hips.

‘One man among them!’ Aboli laughed and embraced him. During the next week three of the Amadoda fell from the rigging while trying to emulate this feat. Two dropped into the sea but
before Hal could wear the ship around and go back to pick them up the sharks had taken them. The third man struck the deck and his was the most merciful end. After that there were no more
casualties, and the Amadoda, each one accustomed since boyhood to climbing the highest trees for honey and birds’ eggs, swiftly became adept topmastmen.

When Hal ordered bundles of pikes to be brought up from the hold and issued to the Amadoda they howled and danced with delight, for they were spearmen born. They delighted in the heavy-shafted
pikes with their deadly iron heads. Aboli adapted their tactics and fighting formation to the
Golden Bough
’s cramped deck spaces. He showed them how to form the classical Roman
Testudo, their shields overlapping and locked like the scales of an armadillo. With this formation they could sweep the deck of an enemy ship irresistibly.

Hal ordered them to set up a heavy mat of oakum under the forecastle break to act as a butt. Once the Amadoda had learned the weight and balance of the heavy pikes they could hurl them the
length of the ship to bury the iron heads full length in the mat of coarse fibres. They plunged into these exercises with such gusto that two of their number were speared to death before Aboli
could impress upon them that these were mock battles and should not be fought to the death.

Then it was time to introduce them to the English longbow. Their own bows were short and puny in comparison and they looked askance at this six-foot weapon, dubiously tried the massive draw
weight and shook their heads. Hal took the bow out of their hands and nocked an arrow. He looked up at the single black and white gull that floated high above the mainmast. ‘If I bring down
one of those birds will you eat it raw?’ he asked, and they roared with laughter at the joke.

‘I will eat the feathers as well!’ shouted a big cocky one named Ingwe, the Leopard. In a fluid motion Hal drew and loosed. The arrow arced up, its flight curving across the wind,
and they shouted with amazement as it pierced the gull’s snowy bosom and the wide pinions folded. The bird tumbled down in a tangle of wings and webbed feet, and struck the deck at
Hal’s feet. An Amadoda snatched it up, and the transfixed carcass was passed from hand to hand amid astonished jabbering.

‘Do not ruffle the feathers,’ Hal cautioned them. ‘You will spoil Ingwe’s dinner for him.’

From that moment their love of the longbow was passionate and within days they had developed into archers of the first water. When Hal towed an empty water keg at a full cable’s length
behind the ship, the Amadoda shot at it, first individually then in massed divisions like English archers. When the keg was heaved back on deck it was bristling like a porcupine’s back, and
they retrieved seven out of every ten arrows that had been shot.

In one area alone the Amadoda showed no aptitude: at serving the great bronze culverins. Despite all the threats and mockery that Aboli heaped upon them, he could not get them to approach one
with anything less than superstitious awe. Each time a broadside boomed they howled, ‘It is witchcraft. It is the thunder of the heavens.’

Hal drew up a new watch-bill, in which the battle stations of the crew were rearranged to have the white seamen serving the batteries and the Amadoda handling the sails and making up the
boarding-party.

A standing bank of high clouds twenty leagues ahead of their bows marked the island of Zanzibar. A fringe of coconut palms ringed the white beach of the bay, but the massive walls of the
fortress were even whiter, dazzling as the ice slopes of a glacier in the sunlight. The citadel had been built a century before by the Portuguese and until only a decade previously it had assured
that nation’s domination of the trade routes of the entire eastern shores of the African continent.

Later the Omani Arabs, under their warrior king Ahmed El Grang the Left-handed, had sailed in with their war dhows, attacked the Portuguese and had driven out their garrison with great
slaughter. This loss had signalled the beginning of the decline of Portuguese influence on the coast, and the Omanis had usurped their place as the foremost trading nation.

Hal examined the fort through the lens of his telescope and noted the banner of Islam flying above the tower, and the serried ranks of cannon along the tops of the walls. Those weapons could
hurl heated shot onto any hostile vessel that attempted to enter the bay.

He felt a thrill of foreboding along his spine as he contemplated the fact that if he enlisted with the forces of the Prester, he would become the enemy of Ahmed El Grang. One day those huge
cannon might be firing upon the
Golden Bough
. In the meantime he must make the most of this last opportunity to enter the Omani camp as a neutral and to gather all the intelligence that came
his way.

The harbour was crowded with small craft, mostly the dhows of the Mussulmen from India, Arabia and Muscat. There were two tall ships among this multitude: one flew a Spanish flag and the other
was French, but Hal recognized neither.

All these traders were drawn to Zanzibar by the riches of Africa, the gold of Sofala, the gum arabic, ivory, and the endless flood of humanity into its slave market. This was where seven
thousand men, women and children were offered for sale each season when the trade winds brought the barques in from around the Cape of Good Hope and from all the vast basin of the Indian Ocean.

Hal dipped his ensign in courtesy to the fortress, then conned the
Golden Bough
towards the anchorage under top sails. At his order the anchor splashed into the clear water and the tiny
sliver of canvas was whipped off her and furled by Aboli’s exuberant Amadoda. Almost immediately the ship was besieged by a fleet of little boats, selling every conceivable commodity from
fresh fruit and water to small boys. These last were ordered by their masters to bend over the thwarts, lift their robes and display their small brown buttocks for the delectation of the seamen at
the
Golden Bough
’s rail.

‘Pretty jig-jig boys,’ the whoremasters crooned in pidgin English. ‘Sweet bums like ripe mangoes.’

‘Mr Tyler, have a boat lowered,’ Hal ordered. ‘I’m going ashore. I will take Althuda and Master Daniel with me and ten of your best men.’

They rowed across to the stone landing steps below the fortress walls, and Big Daniel went ashore first to plough open a passage through the throng of merchants, who swarmed down to the
water’s edge to offer their wares. On their last visit he had escorted Sir Francis ashore so he led the way. His seamen formed in a phalanx around Hal and they marched through the narrow
streets.

They passed through bazaars and crowded souks where the merchants displayed their stocks. Traders and seamen from the other vessels in the harbour picked over the piles of elephant tusks, and
cakes of fragrant golden gum arabic, bunches of ostrich feathers and rhinoceros horns. They haggled over the price of the carpets from Muscat and the stoppered porcupine quills filled with grains
of alluvial gold from Sofala and the rivers of the African interior. The slavemasters paraded files of human beings for potential buyers to examine their teeth, and palpate the muscles of the males
or lift the aprons of the young females to consider their sweets.

From this area of commerce, Big Daniel led them into a sector of the town where the buildings on each side of the lanes almost touched each other overhead and blocked out the light of day. The
stench of human faeces from the open sewers, which ran down to the harbour, almost suffocated them.

Big Daniel stopped abruptly in front of an arched mahogany door, carved with intricate Islamic motifs and studded with iron spikes, and heaved on the dangling bell-rope. Within minutes they
heard the bolts on the far side being pulled back and the huge door creaked open. Half a dozen small brown faces peered out at them, boys and girls of mixed blood and of all ages between five and
ten years.

‘Welcome! Welcome!’ they chirruped in quaintly accented English. ‘The blessing of Allah the All Merciful be upon you, English milord. May all your days be golden and scented
with wild jasmine.’

A little girl seized Hal by the hand and led him through into the interior courtyard. A fountain tinkled in the centre and the air was filled with the scent of frangipani and yellow tamarind
flowers. A tall figure, clad in flowing white robes and gold-corded Arabian head-dress, rose from the pile of silk carpets where he had been reclining.

‘Indeed, I add a thousand welcomes to those of my children, my good Captain, and may Allah shower you with riches and blessing,’ he said, in a familiar and comforting Yorkshire
accent. ‘I watched your fine ship anchor in the bay, and I knew you would soon call upon me.’ He clapped his hands, and from the back of the house emerged a line of slaves each bearing
trays that contained coloured glasses of sherbet and coconut milk and little bowls of sweetmeats and roasted nuts.

The consul sent Big Daniel and his seamen through to the servants’ quarters at the rear of the house. ‘They will be given refreshment,’ he said.

Hal cast Big Daniel a significant look, which the boatswain interpreted accurately. There would be no liquor in this Islamic household, but there would be women and the seamen had to be
protected from themselves. Hal kept Althuda beside him. There might be call for him to draw up documents or to take down notes.

The consul led them to a secluded corner of the courtyard. ‘Now, let me introduce myself, I am William Grey, His Majesty’s consul to the Sultanate of Zanzibar.’

‘Henry Courtney, at your service, sir.’

‘I knew a Sir Francis Courtney. Are you by chance related?’

‘My father, sir.’

‘Ah! An honourable man. Please give him my respects when next you meet.’

‘Tragically he was killed in the Dutch war.’

‘My condolences, Sir Henry. Please be seated.’ A pile of beautifully patterned silk carpets had been set close at hand for Hal. The consul sat opposite him. Once he was comfortable,
a slave brought Grey a water-pipe. ‘A pipeful of
bhang
is a sovereign remedy for distempers of the liver and for the malaria which is a plague in these climes. Will you join me,
sir?’

Hal refused this offer, for he knew of the tricks the Indian hemp flowers played upon the mind, and the dreams and trances with which it could ensnare the smoker.

While he puffed at his pipe, Grey questioned him cunningly as to his recent movements and his future plans, and Hal was polite but evasive. Like a pair of duellists, they sparred and waited for
an opening. As the water bubbled in the tall glass bowl of the pipe and the fragrant smoke drifted across the courtyard Grey became more affable and expansive.

‘You live in the style of a great sheikh.’ Hal tried a little flattery and Grey responded with gratification.

‘Would you find it difficult to believe that fifteen years ago I was merely a lowly clerk in the employment of the English East India Company? When my ship was wrecked on the corals of
Sofala, I came ashore here as a castaway.’ He shrugged and made a gesture that was more Oriental than English. ‘As you say, Allah has smiled on me.’

‘You have embraced Islam?’ Hal did not allow his expression to show the repugnance he felt for the apostate.

‘I am a true believer in the one God, and in Muhammad his Prophet.’ Grey nodded. Hal wondered how much his decision to convert had rested on political and practical considerations.
Grey, the Christian, would not have prospered in Zanzibar as Grey, the Mussulman, so obviously had.