Golden Lion (43 page)

‘Ann needs to relieve herself,’ Judith explained. ‘She is too afraid to go alone.’

Pereira muttered a reply. ‘Go there,’ he pointed at a patch of open ground at the edge of the camp. Judith shook her head.

‘Not in front of the men,’ she said.

Pereira pondered his response for a minute. ‘Stay here,’ he ordered in his heavily accented English, and then walked past them back towards the fire.

They waited, Judith desperately hoping Pereira would not wake the Buzzard. But to her relief Pereira ignored the disfigured, sleeping figure; instead he crouched to shake one of his
Pelican
crewmates by the shoulder. The sailor sat up and Judith could see his sleepy scowl in the firelight. Then with a resigned shrug he pushed back his blanket and rose to his feet. He lit the end of his slow match from the fire and came over to the two women. In one hand he gripped his musket, while with the other he signed for them to follow him.

‘Are you sure you can’t wait until morning?’ Judith asked Ann. That was the code they had agreed upon earlier. Judith was giving Ann one last chance to back out.

‘No, I need to go right now,’ Ann replied, hardening the line of her mouth.

Judith nodded. She had expected Ann to renege.
Good for you, young lady
, she thought.

Their chaperon led them to a spot less than thirty paces from the camp where he stopped on the edge of a patch of long grass that swayed in the chill breeze. Even in the depths of night there was enough starlight that they did not need a torch, and Judith looked back to the camp, relieved to see that the thorn bush screen was so thick that even the fire beyond could not be seen. The thin grey smoke and occasional firefly spark drifting up to the sky was the only giveaway that men were camped out there on the savannah.

‘Can you go there?’ the sailor asked, pointing into the patch of grass.

Ann managed to look coy, glancing from him to Judith, and then back to their warder. She nodded, and made a gesture that he should turn his back while she went about her business. He obeyed her without quibble, and then went one better. As Ann hitched up her skirt and squatted, the young sailor lay his musket down on the ground beside him. Then he clamped his burning slow match between his teeth, unbuttoned his breeches and tugged his manhood out of the fly and began to relieve himself with a noisy gushing that covered Ann’s ladylike dribble.

Judith waited until she heard the patter of his urine stream reach its zenith, then she ran her hand down the opening of the neckline of her dress until it closed around the sharpened branch of mangrove. She moved up behind the young sailor as silently as a stalking leopard, and waited until he turned back again towards her.

She launched herself at him and with all her weight behind it drove the sharpened end of the stake into the base of his throat. Then she used her impetus to hook her right leg behind his and carry him over backwards. She landed on top of him and with all the strength of both her arms drove the point of the stake deeper and worked it from side to side to inflict as much damage as possible. He gurgled and choked, but she had so damaged his throat and vocal cords that the sounds he was able to emit were muffled and inhuman, more the sounds of wild animals than those of a human being.

Within a very few minutes even these lapsed into complete silence. Judith pushed herself away from the corpse and sat panting as she regained control of herself. She had killed men before; scores of them on the battlefield. It took little time for her to recover.

‘Quick!’ she hissed at Ann. ‘The musket!’ Ann scrambled through the grass, and gathered up the dead man’s weapon. Judith unbuckled his belt and pulled the leather shot pouch and powder flask from it. She also took his flint and steel, then snatched the dropped match cord from where it lay smouldering in the grass, and snuffed out the flame. She considered taking his cutlass too, but decided against it, for it was a heavy thing and neither of them needed anything that would slow them down. The musket and shot would have to suffice.

‘Water?’ she hissed.

Ann nodded, patting the flask at her hip. Judith also had her own flask, which she had rationed in readiness for this moment. She had watched their captors foraging and had learned a great deal about which plants and fruit were edible.

She looked up at the stars to orientate herself and then they ran. They fled southwards, as Judith was counting on the masked man to assume they would trek eastwards, back towards the coast the way they had come. Her intention was to turn east towards the sea only when they had put a goodly distance between themselves and the pursuit.

In the excitement of the escape their fatigue was half forgotten. They ran like driven wild animals.

he pinnace dropped Aboli and eight of his fellow Amadoda on a deserted beach just north of Quelimane. They took no supplies with them for they had no need. The land over which they were about to travel might seem barren and inhospitable to a white man, but to them it was as bountiful as a crowded marketplace. Nor were they weighed down by powder and shot, for they took no weapons but the spears, shields and throwing clubs with which they had been raised.

There was only one item from his new world that Aboli, on reflection, took back to the world in which he’d grown: a grappling iron on the end of a coil of rope. For a sailor on the
Golden Bough
it served as a means to grab on to and get aboard an enemy ship. Where he was going, Aboli reasoned, he might well need to get over a wall or inside an enemy’s building in order to rescue Judith or Hal and so the iron came with him.

Big Daniel Fisher commanded the pinnace as it took his African crewmates to the shore. He was not, by nature or upbringing, a man who believed in indulging his emotions. But before he saw the Amadoda off, Daniel hugged Aboli, then took half a step back, slapped him on the shoulder and, with a catch in his voice, said, ‘God bless you and your lads. Now go and get our captain back, aye, and his lady too.’

Aboli said nothing, just nodded, and the next thing Daniel knew the Amadoda had settled into the loping run that they would maintain all day, and half the night if they had to, and disappeared out of sight between the palm trees that lined the shore.

hat first night, after killing the Portuguese sailor, Judith and Ann had flown like birds, full of fear and the desperate need to escape. But the next day was hard. The sun’s heat pressed down on them like six feet of earth. The savage thrill of the murder ebbed away and fatigue flooded in once more, threatening to overwhelm them. They wasted no strength on talk, each lost in her own thoughts, drifting through the sea of tall grass like wreckage in the wake of a storm, until at last Judith admitted that they must rest.

On the second night they huddled together amongst the low-hanging, leafy branches of a khat tree, huffing into their hands and shivering with cold, when a sudden screaming yell came out of the dark. The scream finished with four sharp yaps, and suddenly Ann was clutching Judith’s arms, her eyes round and full of terror.

‘Jackal,’ Judith said, but she saw that the girl was none the wiser. ‘It is like a dog but no danger to us,’ she explained. ‘They eat rodents and birds and fruit. Even insects.’ She chose not to mention that jackals would also prey on young antelope. Nevertheless, Ann shuffled closer still and every time the jackal called she started, her nails digging into the flesh of Judith’s arm.

Judith had been torn over whether or not to light a small fire, not to keep warm, but rather to have the flame from which to light the match cord should they need to fire the musket. In the end she decided the risk of their pursuers seeing a fire or smelling its smoke on the night air was too great. And so they shivered, praying for dawn and the first pink blush of the sun over the eastern horizon.

Judith had not trusted Ann to stay awake and keep watch, for even as terrified as the girl was, she was down to the dregs of her strength. So Judith tore small pieces bark from the khat tree and chewed them, while the English girl looked on with amazement.

‘I never saw anyone eating a tree,’ Ann said, trying to muster a weary smile.

‘In my country this tree is famous,’ Judith replied. ‘Indeed it is famous throughout the Horn of Africa.’ She pulled off a leaf and offered it. ‘Here, try it. But chew it well.’

Ann took the leaf, sniffed it, and put it in her mouth. She chewed slowly, as if half expecting it to poison her. Judith smiled. ‘The men in my country can always be seen chewing the khat leaves, as goats chew the cud.’

‘I can’t imagine why,’ Ann said, her lips turned down at the corners. ‘It doesn’t taste very nice. It’s sour.’

Judith nodded. ‘But it will make you feel better, stronger. Just wait and see.’

They did not have to wait long. After just a few more leaves Ann’s chattering reminded Judith of the parakeets that roosted in the tall trees in the centre of the mountain village where she was born. The girl talked about her brave husband and how much she had loved him, of how they had met and of the plans they had made together that would now never come to pass.

Then like a small child wanting her favourite bedtime stories to be repeated again and again, Ann insisted on hearing all about Hal, though Judith had told her a score of times before and it made her very soul ache to think of him. She spoke of how she and Hal had met, when she had been the general leading the Christian army of Ethiopia against an army of Mussulmen. Ann’s expression was, as always, a mix of awe and disbelief at Judith’s telling of it, and Judith could understand that reaction, for looking at herself now, even she found it hard to believe she had once been the guardian of the Holy Grail and saviour of the emperor’s throne.

‘I can’t believe I know a lady like you,’ Ann said. ‘And here we are, in the middle of the wilderness, and we’re like sisters, aren’t we, in a funny sort o’ way, even though we’re not even the same colour. So we’ll stick together and help each other and that’s how we’ll get through it all, until we are safe again. No matter what.’

‘No matter what,’ Judith agreed.

For a while Judith let Ann talk, though she allowed her no more khat leaves because, as much as they had lifted the girl’s mood, Ann needed her rest for the days to come. Judith craved sleep too but she knew she was stronger than Ann both in body and in spirit. She had, after all, two spirits driving her on. The child, even unborn, was already a warrior in its way, Judith knew, and she was certain it was lending her its own new strength now: a strength which transcended the frailties of her own body.

Moreover, the masked man was not the only predator to be feared out there on the savannah. If Judith slept at all that night she did so with one eye open.

The next day they set off again towards the breaking dawn. Stiffly at first, though relishing the rising sun’s warmth on flesh that yet held the night’s cold in it. They drank sparingly, barely wetting their throats before thrusting the stoppers back into the flasks. Judith admired Ann’s restraint. Unlike her, this young English girl was not used to hardship, yet she seemed invigorated this morning. It was as if she had overturned some obstacle in her mind that had previously thwarted her. This was not quite Christ the Saviour rising from the dead and rolling aside the stone blocking the entrance to his tomb, but it was a miracle in its way, for Ann was renewed. Seeing her thus gave Judith hope that they could after all reach the coast. From there they would gain passage aboard some vessel bound for who knew where, just so long as it was away from the masked man.

‘We’ll find an English captain. A Company man perhaps,’ Ann enthused, seemingly oblivious to her shoes which were torn and flapping, the mound of the little toe of her left foot poking from the split seam and bloody. ‘I will tell him my story and he will see us safely delivered to Calcutta, or even all the way home to England.’ She looked at Judith. ‘The child will be safe there.’ Her grimy face lit up. ‘You can both come and live with me! I have family near Bristol. It’s beautiful there. Peaceful. Civilized,’ she added, making the comparison by looking around her. Clearly she was in awe of their surroundings, the sweeping panoramas and the huge landscapes, and Judith could only imagine how different this land was to England.