Golden Lion (31 page)

he storm came out of the north-east, from India and the high Himalayas, like the vengeance of God. Young Sam Awdy up in the mizzen was the first to see it coming. He had yelled down to the quarterdeck that the sky three leagues off the
Golden Bough
’s stern was changing. A great towering shelf of cloud darkened the sky and no sooner had Hal turned his telescope on the ominous mass than the ocean below it began to seethe, white spume whipping off the racing furrows.

‘There’s no outrunning her, Mr Tyler,’ Hal called, then looked at Tromp. ‘Better to reef too early than reef too late, eh, Mr Tromp?’

The Dutchman smiled to hear this age-old sailors’ wisdom. ‘Reef too late and you never reef again, Captain,’ he agreed.

‘Let’s not give her too much canvas to play with, Mr Tyler!’ Hal said. ‘Bring the bows around and we shall introduce ourselves like proper gentlemen.’

Mr Tyler gave the order and men scrambled up the shrouds and along the yards to put some reefs in the sails as the helmsman leant against the whipstaff to bring the
Bough
round to face what was coming.

Hal went back to the stern rail to face the colossal mass of cloud and rain sweeping across the sky and was relieved to see that John Lovell, following in line astern, was also taking canvas off the
Delft
, and was bringing her into the wind, matching the
Bough
’s movements like a dancer with her partner.

Now Hal turned back to his own ship. ‘Mr Stanley, secure the hatches. Master Daniel, kindly ensure all the guns are lashed down nice and tight.’ The last thing they needed was a culverin rolling around the gundeck, crushing men or punching a hole through the hull.

‘She’s coming for us, lads!’ Hal called. ‘And she’s got teeth by the looks of her.’

Hal looked over his ship. To an untrained eye it was a scene of chaos, but to a seaman it was a beautiful sight, as the crew rushed to their stations and went about their work, every man, be he an Amadoda tribesman, a Limburger from southern Holland or a Devonshire man, tending to the needs of the ship, giving himself, his crewmates and the
Golden Bough
the best chance of coming through this test unbeaten.

‘Captain, do you suppose this is judgement?’ Robert Moone asked. ‘That we are facing the final summons for what we’ve got down there.’ He gestured towards the main deck but Hal knew he was talking about what lay in the hold beneath it, where the barrels of bogus bones and pieces of the True Cross, the scraps of saints’ skin and an assortment of Holy Grails now sat.

‘If we are to be judged, Mr Moone, it will not be for the cargo in our hold but for the intent in our hearts. For our actions.’

Moone frowned. ‘If you say so, Captain.’

‘Have we not once already rescued the one true Cup of Christ from the infidel, Mr Moone?’ Hal asked. ‘Our cargo is a means to an end, nothing more.’

He had not liked bringing the
Delft
’s strange cargo aboard the
Golden Bough
and truth be told he’d been uncomfortable ever since, knowing it was down there in his hold. But the last thing he needed was a crew fearing divine judgement. Sailors were superstitious enough as it was without them believing they had invited their own doom by seeking to profit from the sale of false relics. Hal switched his full attention to the storm swooping towards them.

‘Well, Mr Moone, have you no work to do?’ Hal asked, and the man begged his pardon and went to make sure the longboats were secure.

There was no time for the crew to go below and put on their tar-daubed canvas jackets. Not that any sailor worth his salt would be thinking about his own comfort now, for they all knew that a squall moving as fast as this one could be a ship-killer. The mass of cloud roiled threateningly, spreading across the heavens, tumbling towards them like an avalanche.

‘Hurry it up, Mr Tyler, if you please.’ Hal felt the nerves in his stomach tightening. ‘No dawdling now. We don’t have long.’

Hal turned away and looked back at the sky. ‘I’m ready for you,’ he challenged it.

Then his eyes switched to the top of the mainmast, and he yelled, ‘Get down, Awdy!’ The lad was still clinging to the crow’s nest. ‘Damn the bone-headed fool!’ Being up there in a battle was the safest place to be. In a storm such as this it was suicide.

‘The storm will take him,’ Aboli said, peering up. The wind was on Hal’s face now as Ned Tyler brought the bows round to face into the teeth of the storm.

‘Brace yourselves!’ Hal bellowed, standing tall and defiant, gripping the windward rail as the storm enveloped the
Golden Bough
, lashing her with freezing, skin-flaying rain, and laying her over so that the sea poured over the lee rail, sweeping men off their feet and rolling waist deep across the deck. Men clung to the shrouds as though to life itself.

‘Aboli! Help Ned!’ Hal shouted. Obediently Aboli struggled over to the helm to lend his strength to the whipstaff. Just then the
Bough
’s buoyancy took over, rolling and rocking her right over in the opposite direction. Men slid back across the deck, crashing into the lee rail unless they had managed to grab a handhold. Hal was plunged underwater for a terrifying, lung-bursting moment. Then the lead-weighted keel levered the ship upright again, and he heard a keening cry even above the wind’s roar. The boy Awdy had been flung from the crow’s nest like a pebble from a slingshot. He hit the surface of the sea and in the same instant was gone as if he had never existed, swallowed by the raging ocean.

As yet Hal had heard no screams or wild shouts from between decks, which told him that the great culverins were still lashed down securely and the
Bough
’s timbers were holding. But then Hal caught the rhythmic creak of the pumps, as the teams below worked to expel the sea that was flooding the bilges.

Now came the waves, great walls of water driving up from the north, and when they struck Hal knew that no matter how thorough his preparations had been he would be lucky not to lose a mast or have the spars snapped like kindling.

‘Father, be with us now,’ he yelled, blinking salt water from his eyes, and calling upon his own father as much as the Lord God in heaven. The next wave coming for them seemed as tall as the mainmast, its crest rolling over itself along its length, breaking into cascading white foam. The Amadoda, none of whom had ever experienced anything remotely like this, were beside themselves with terror, shrieking and chanting invocations to their forest gods.

‘She can take it!’ Hal shouted reassurances to his crew. ‘She’s seen worse than this in her life. She can see this bastard off!’ But the world turned darker still and that wall of water bore down on them. He braced for the impact. The wave crashed down upon them.

In the darkness and the turbulence of wild waters, he thought he heard a familiar and beloved voice calling to him. ‘Hold hard, my darling. We need you. Both me and our baby need you. Please don’t leave us now. Please don’t leave us ever.’

He called back to her, ‘I shall survive. I will survive. Wait for me, Judith, my love! Wait for me!’

For another twelve hours the tempest raged over them. When at last it abated it left the
Golden Bough
battered but still afloat. They had lost only Sam Awdy, and the men were light-headed and grateful to God and Hal to have survived.

Only Hal was despondent. The storm had driven his two-boat flotilla far to the south, away from Zanzibar, and every mile carried him further away from Judith.

‘The wind has abated, Gundwane.’ Aboli tried to cheer him. ‘We can make our way back north again and we will surely reach Zanzibar before …’ Aboli was about to say ‘Judith is sold’ but managed to stop himself in time. ‘Before the day of the market,’ he concluded.

‘That we will be near Zanzibar I have no doubt,’ Hal replied. ‘But in Zanzibar? Jahan and all his men will be expecting us. Every harbour and customs official, every market trader, every porter … the whole population will have been told to watch for me – or for anyone suspicious who might want to rescue Judith Nazet.’

‘But you don’t want to rescue Judith Nazet,’ Tromp pointed out, as if that were a statement of the obvious, rather than the absurd.

‘What do you mean I don’t want to rescue her? Of course I bloody well want to rescue her!’ Hal snapped.

‘No, sir, you do not. You want to buy her. That way you can take her away without anyone getting hurt. She will be your property … although,’ he added with a characteristic smirk, ‘if you don’t mind me saying, that woman will never be anyone’s property.’

‘Buy her …?’ Hal mused. ‘Yes … yes … I can see what you’re getting at. That’s a good idea, Mr Tromp. But my original objection remains. We will be wanted men – certainly Aboli and I will be. How can we possibly bid for Judith if the moment either one of us opens our mouth we will be seized and most likely taken into slavery ourselves?’

‘What if it is not you who bids? What if it is one who is known in Zanzibar, whose presence will not cause any comment?’

Hal looked at Tromp appraisingly. ‘You sound as though you know who such a man might be.’

‘Yes. I know a man and we are not very far – two days’ sail at most – from where I expect him to be. But Captain, I must warn you that if you think me a rogue, this man is far worse. He is a pirate. He would sell his own mother in that very same slave market if he thought he would profit from the trade, and if you should ever cross him he would cut your throat without a second thought.’

Silence fell as Hal considered Tromp’s warning. ‘Let me ask you this, then,’ he spoke at last. ‘This man of yours, if we make a deal and I keep my side of the bargain, will he keep his?’

‘If you are a man of your word then, yes, he will certainly be the same. But you should rather stick your head into a shark’s jaws than give him any reason to think you have betrayed him.’

‘Then in that case, Mr Tromp, I will be sure to keep my word and, if you would be so good, pray tell me where I can find him.’

aptain Jebediah Rivers, master of the sixteen-gun brigantine the
Achilles
, leaned against the rough-skinned trunk of the palm, enjoying the shade provided by its fronds as they rattled and rustled in the warm breeze. The ocean was blinding to look at, glittering and dazzling under the fierce African sun, and the surf rolled in almost reaching the bare feet of the men who had gathered on the beach, many still rum-soaked from the night before.

But the shouting was beginning to irritate Jeb Rivers. John McCawley was stirring up trouble like a whore in a church meeting. Not that there was anything godly about Ilha Metundo, Rivers thought to himself with a sour grin. Still, the man had high aspirations. He wanted to be Captain John McCawley. Rivers had known it for some time but now McCawley was showing his hand.

‘When was the last time we took a decent prize, hey?’ McCawley hectored Jeb. ‘I never signed up to this crew so as I could break my back lugging timber and stone like a god-damned slave!’ This got a few
ayes
from the men at his back, some of them already with hands on their sword hilts and pistol stocks. This encouraged John McCawley. ‘We went on the account ’cause we were promised liberty, equality, and brotherhood. I dare any man here to tell me where these three things are right now. I for one don’t have any liberty, equality nor no bloody brotherhood either.’

He did not look directly at Rivers then but neither did he need to, for every man present appreciated precisely where that challenge was aimed. ‘We all know how this works. No prey, no pay. Well we ain’t going to get our hands on no prize stuck here like bleeding landlubbers.’ He pointed behind him at the shimmering blue ocean. ‘We should be out there hunting. Instead we toil like common labourers.’

‘You mean drink yourselves witless and drown in darling whores, Mr McCawley,’ Quartermaster George Dowling corrected him, then stopped up his right nostril with his thumb and blew a shining ribbon of snot out of the left one into the sand at his feet. Dowling was a fierce fighter and powerful as a bull buffalo. However, McCawley was himself a savage in a brawl and his blood was up now.