Birds of Prey (14 page)

The spare mast was stowed at the bottom of the hold, where the sealed compartment contained the coin and ingots. The cargo had to be removed to reach them.

‘Your father has sent for you,’ Aboli greeted Hal, and Hal hurried aft.

‘You have missed three days of your studies while you were ashore,’ Sir Francis told him, without preamble.

‘Yes, Father.’ Hal knew that it was vain to point out that he had not deliberately evaded them. But, at least, I will not apologize for it, he determined silently, and met his
father’s gaze unflinchingly.

‘After your supper this evening, I will rehearse you in the catechism of the Order. Come to my cabin at eight bells in the second dog watch.’

The catechism of initiation to the Order of St George and the Holy Grail had never been written down and for nearly four centuries the two hundred esoteric questions and answers had been passed
on by word of mouth; master instructing novice in the Strict Observance.

Sitting beside Aboli on the foredeck, Hal wolfed hot biscuit, fried in dripping, and baked fresh fish. Now with an unlimited supply of firewood and fresh food on hand, the ship’s meals
were substantial, but Hal was silent as he ate. In his mind he went over his catechism, for his father would be strict in his judgement. Too soon the ship’s bell struck and, as the last note
faded, Hal tapped on the door to his father’s cabin.

While his father sat at his desk Hal knelt on the bare planks of the deck. Sir Francis wore the cloak of his office over his shoulders, and on his breast sparkled the magnificent seal fashioned
of gold, the insignia of a Nautonnier Knight who had passed through all the degrees of the Order. It depicted the lion rampant of England holding aloft the
croix pattée
and, above it,
the stars and crescent moon of the mother goddess. The lion’s eyes were rubies and the stars were diamonds. On the second finger of his right hand he wore a narrow gold ring, engraved with a
compass and a backstaff, the tools of the navigator, and above these a crowned lion. The ring was small and discreet, not as ostentatious as the seal.

His father conducted the catechism in Latin. The use of this language ensured that only literate, educated men could ever become members of the Order.

‘Who are you?’ Sir Francis asked the first question.

‘Henry Courtney, son of Francis and Edwina.’

‘What is your business here?’

‘I come to present myself as an acolyte of the Order of St George and the Holy Grail.’

‘Whence come you?’

‘From the ocean sea, for that is my beginning and at my ending will be my shroud.’ With this response Hal acknowledged the maritime roots of the Order. The next fifty questions
examined the novice’s understanding of the history of the Order.

‘Who went before you?’

‘The Poor Knights of Christ and of the Temple of Solomon.’ The Knights of the Temple of the Order of St George and the Holy Grail were the successors to the extinct Order of the
Knights Templar.

After that Sir Francis made Hal outline the history of the Order; how in the year 1312 the Knights Templar had been attacked and destroyed by the King of France, Philippe Le Bel, in connivance
with his puppet Pope Clement V of Bordeaux. Their vast fortune in bullion and land was confiscated by the Crown, and most of them were tortured and burned at the stake. However, warned by their
allies, the Templar mariners slipped their moorings in the French channel harbours and stood out to sea. They steered for England, and sought the protection of King Edward II. Since then, they had
opened their lodges in Scotland and England under new names, but with the basic tenets of the Order intact.

Next Sir Francis made his son repeat the arcane words of recognition, and the grip of hands that identified the Knights to each other.

‘
In Arcadia habito
. I dwell in Arcadia,’ Sir Francis intoned, as he stooped over Hal to take his right hand in the double grip.

‘
Flumen sacrum bene cognosco!
I know well the sacred river!’ Hal replied reverently, interlocking his forefinger with his father’s in the response.

‘Explain the meaning of these words,’ his father insisted.

‘It is our covenant with God and each other. The Temple is Arcadia, and we are the river.’

The ship’s bell twice sounded the passage of the hours before the two hundred questions were asked and answered, and Hal was allowed to rise stiffly from his knees.

W
hen he reached his tiny cabin he was too weary even to light the oil lamp and dropped to his bunk fully clothed to lie there in a stupor of
mental exhaustion. The questions and responses of the catechism echoed, an endless refrain, through his tired brain, until meaning and reality seemed to recede.

Then he heard faint sounds of movement from beyond the bulkhead and, miraculously, his fatigue cleared. He sat up, his senses tuned to the other cabin. He would not light the lamp for the sound
of steel striking flint would carry through the panel. He rolled off his bunk and, in the darkness, moved on silent bare feet to the bulkhead.

He knelt and ran his fingers lightly along the joint in the woodwork until he found the plug he had left there. Quietly he removed it and placed his eye to the spyhole.

Each day his father allowed Katinka van de Velde and her maid, with Aboli to guard them, to go ashore and walk on the beach for an hour. That afternoon while the women had been away from the
ship, Hal had found a moment to steal down to his cabin. He had used the point of his dirk to enlarge the crack in the bulkhead. Then he had whittled a plug of matching wood to close and conceal
the opening.

Now he was filled with guilt, but he could not restrain himself. He placed his eye to the enlarged aperture. His view into the small cabin beyond was unimpeded. A tall Venetian mirror was fixed
to the bulkhead opposite him and, in its reflection, he could see clearly even those areas of the cabin that otherwise would have been hidden from him. It was apparent that this smaller cabin was
an annexe to the larger and more splendid main cabin. It seemed to serve as a dressing and retiring place where the Governor’s wife could take her bath and attend to her private and intimate
toilet. The bath was set up in the centre of the deck, a heavy ceramic hip bath in the Oriental style, the sides decorated with scenes of mountain landscapes and bamboo forests.

Katinka sat on a low stool across the cabin and her maid was tending her hair with one of the silver-backed brushes. It flowed down to her waist, and each stroke made it shimmer in the
lamp-light. She wore a gown of brocade, stiff with gold embroidery, but Hal marvelled that her hair was more brilliant than the precious metal thread.

He gazed at her, entranced, trying to memorize each gesture of her white hands, and each delicate movement of her lovely head. The sound of her voice and her soft laughter were balm to his
exhausted mind and body. The maid finished her task, and moved away. Katinka stood up from her stool and Hal’s spirits plunged, for he expected her to take up the lamp and leave the cabin.
But instead she came towards him. Though she passed out of his direct line of sight he could still see her reflection in the mirror. There was only the thickness of the panel between them now, and
Hal was afraid she might become aware of his hoarse breathing.

He gazed at her reflection as she stooped and lifted the lid of the night cabinet that was affixed to the opposite side of the bulkhead against which Hal pressed. Suddenly, before he realized
what she intended, she swept the skirts of her gown above her waist and, in the same movement, perched like a bird on the seat of the cabinet.

She continued to laugh and chat to her maid as her water purred into the chamber-pot beneath her. When she rose again Hal was given one more glimpse of her long pale legs before the skirts
dropped over them and she swept gracefully from the cabin.

Hal lay on his hard bunk in the dark, his hands clasped across his chest, and tried to sleep. But the images of her beauty tormented him. His body burned and he rolled restlessly from side to
side. ‘I will be strong!’ he whispered aloud, and clenched his fists until the knuckles cracked. He tried to drive the vision from his mind, but it buzzed in his brain like a swarm of
angry bees. Once again he heard, in his imagination, her laughter mingle with the merry tinkle she made in her chamber-pot, and he could resist no longer. With a groan of guilt he capitulated and
reached down with both hands to his swollen, throbbing loins.

O
nce the cargo of timber had been lifted out of the main hold, the spare mast could be raised to the deck. It was a labour that required half the
ship’s company. The massive spar was almost as long as the galleon and had to be carefully manoeuvred from its resting place in the bowels of the hold. It was floated across the channel and
then dragged up the beach. There, in a clearing beneath the spreading forest canopy, the carpenters set it on trestles and began to trim and shape it, so that it could be stepped into the hull to
replace the gale-shattered mast.

Only once the hold was emptied could Sir Francis call the entire ship’s company to witness the opening of the treasure compartment that the Dutch authorities had deliberately covered with
the heaviest cargo. It was the usual practice of the VOC to secure the most valuable items in this manner. Several hundred tons of heavy timber baulks stacked over the entrance to the strong room
would deter even the most determined thief from tampering with its contents.

While the crew crowded the opening of the hatch above them Sir Francis and the boatswains went down, each carrying a lighted lantern, and knelt in the bottom of the hold to examine the seals
that the Dutch Governor of Trincomalee had placed on the entrance.

‘The seals are intact!’ Sir Francis shouted, to reassure the watchers, and they cheered raucously.

‘Break the hinges!’ he ordered Big Daniel, and the boatswain went to it with a will.

Wood splintered and brass screws squealed as they were ripped from their seats. The interior of the strong room was lined with sheets of copper, but Big Daniel’s iron bar ripped through
the metal and a hum of delight went up from the spectators as the contents of the compartment were revealed.

The coin was sewn into thick canvas bags of which there were fifteen. Daniel dragged them out and stacked them into a cargo net to be hoisted to the deck. Next, the ingots of gold bullion were
raised. They were packed ten at a time into chests of raw, unplaned wood on which the number and weight of the bars had been branded with a red-hot iron.

When Sir Francis climbed up out of the hold he ordered all but two of the sacks of coin, and all the chests of gold bars, to be carried down to his own cabin.

‘We will divide only these two sacks of coin now,’ Sir Francis told them. ‘The rest of your share you will receive when we get home to dear old England.’ He stooped over
the two remaining canvas sacks of coin with a dagger in his hand and he slit the stitching. The men howled like a pack of wolves as a stream of glinting silver ten-guilder coins poured onto the
planking.

‘No need to count it. The cheese-heads have done that job for us.’ Sir Francis pointed out the numbers stencilled on the sacks. ‘Each man will come forward as his name is
called,’ he told them. With excited laughter and ribald repartee, the men formed lines. As each was called, he shuffled forward with his cap held out, and his share of silver guilders was
doled out to him.

Hal was the only man aboard who drew no part of the booty. Although he was entitled to a midshipman’s share, one two-hundredth part of the crew’s portion, almost two hundred
guilders, his father would take care of it for him. ‘No fool like a boy with silver or gold in his purse,’ he had explained reasonably to Hal. ‘One day you’ll thank me for
saving it for you.’ Then he turned with mock fury on his crew. ‘Just because you’re rich now, doesn’t mean I have no more work for you,’ he roared. ‘The rest of
the heavy cargo must go ashore before we can beach and careen her and clean her foul bottom and step the new mast and put the culverins into her. There’s enough work in that to keep you busy
for a month or two.’

N
o man was ever allowed to remain idle for long in one of Sir Francis’s ships. Boredom was the most dangerous enemy he would ever
encounter. While one of the watches went ahead with the work of unloading, he kept the off-duty watches busy. They must never be allowed to forget that this was a fighting ship and that they must
be ready at any moment to face a desperate enemy.

With the hatches open and the huge casks of spice being lifted out, there was no space on the deck for weapons practice so Big Daniel took the off-duty men to the beach. Shoulder to shoulder,
they formed ranks and worked through the manual of arms. Swinging the cutlass – cut to the left, thrust and recover, cut to the right, thrust and recover – until the sweat streamed from
them and they gasped for breath.

‘Enough of that!’ Big Daniel told them at last, but they were not to be released yet.

‘A bout or two of wrestling now, just to warm your blood,’ he shouted, and strode among them matching man against man, seizing a pair by the scruff of their necks and thrusting them
at each other, as though they were fighting-birds in the cockpit.

Soon the beach was covered with struggling, shouting pairs of men naked to the waist, heaving and spinning each other off their feet and rolling in the white sand.

Standing back among the first line of forest trees, Katinka and her maid watched with interest. Aboli stood a few paces behind them, leaning against the trunk of one of the giant forest
yellow-woods.

Hal was matched against a seaman twenty years his elder. They were of the same height, but the other man was a stone heavier. Both struggled for a hold on each other’s neck and shoulders
as they danced in a circle, trying to force one another off balance or to hook a heel for a trip throw.

‘Use your hip. Throw him over your hip!’ Katinka whispered, as she watched Hal. She was so carried along by the spectacle that unconsciously she had clenched her fists and was
beating them on her own thighs in excitement as she urged Hal on, her cheeks pinker than either the rouge pot or the heat had coloured them.