The Monsoon (25 page)

“Well, now!” he said aloud as he sanded the ink on the paper.

“That arrangement will also take care of Master Tom’s pugilistic and amorous proclivities.” Once he had placed his wax seal on it, he sent for Big Daniel to carry the letter ashore.

“No sign of the Yeoman yet?” he demanded, as soon as Big Daniel stuck his head in at the door.

“Nothing yet, Captain.”

“Tell the officer of the watch to call me the minute she puts her topmasts above the horizon.” He had given the same order more than once before, and Big Daniel rolled his eyes and sucked his gums to illustrate his forbearance. Hal concealed a smile.

Big Daniel was allowed such familiarity.

e stood on the scaffold in the bright morning sunlight. He was still only a lad, perhaps eighteen years of age, certainly no older.

He was very good-looking, Hannah Maakenberg loved it when they were.

He was tall and straight-limbed, with long waving hair, raven’s-wing black, falling to his shoulder. He was terrified, which excited her as it excited the large crowd around her.

Every man, woman and child in the settlement was there, every burgher and housewife, slave and Hottentot. They were in high spirits, boisterous and playful. Even the very young children were among them, infected by the spontaneous gaiety of the occasion, they chased each other, squealing, between the legs of the adults.

Beside Hannah stood one of the free burgher’s wives, a plump, kindly looking woman in an apron dusted with flour. She had obviously come directly from baking bread in her kitchen. Her tiny daughter clutched at her apron.

She was an angelic child, who sucked her thumb and stared solemnly at the man on the scaffold with huge blue eyes.

“It’s her first execution,” the mother explained to Hannah.

“She feels a little strange and afraid of all the people.” The prisoner’s hands were manacled behind his back.

He wore ragged seaman’s petticoats and his feet were bare.

The magistrate stepped to the front of the scaffold to read the charge and the sentence, and the crowd swayed and jostled with anticipation.

“Now hear the verdict of the court of the colony of Good Hope, by the grace of God and the power vested in me by Charter of the States General of the Republic of Holland.”

“Get on with it!” howled one of the burghers at the back of the crowd.

“Let’s see him do his little dance for us.”

“It is hereby decreed that, Hendrik Martinus Ockers, having been found guilty of the crime of murder…”

“I was there,” Hannah told the housewife beside her proudly.

“I saw it all. I even gave evidence at the court, yes, I did!

The woman looked suitably impressed.

“Why did he do it?” she asked.

“Why do any of them do it?” Hannah shrugged.

“They was both pissing, puking drunk.” She remembered the two figures circling each other with the long knives gleaming in the eerie lantern light, throwing distorted shadows on the tavern walls, and the shouts and the sTomping of the watchers.

“How did he do it?”

“A knife, dearie. He was quick, for all the liquor in his belly. Like a panther, he was.” She made a slashing gesture.

“Like that, right across his belly. Opened him up like a fish on the block. His guts fell clean out of him, tangled in his feet, so he tripped and fell on his face.”

“OohP The housewife shuddered with horrified fascination.

“Like animals, these sailors.”

“All of them, dearie, not just the sailors.” Hannah nodded primly.

“All men are the same.”

“And that’s God’s truth!” The woman agreed, picked up the child and placed her on her shoulder.

“There you are, lieveling. You will get a better view from up there” she told her.

The magistrate reached the end of the proclamation of sentence:

“The aforesaid Hendrik Martinus Ockers is hereby condemned to death by hanging. Sentence to be carried out in public on the parade ground of the castle on the morning of the third day of September at ten of the clock in the forenoon.” He moved heavily down the ladder from the scaffold and one of the guards helped him down the last few steps. The executioner, who had been standing behind the condemned man, stepped forward and placed a black cotton bag over his head.

“I hate it when they do that,” Hannah grumbled.

“I like to see his face when he’s on the end of the rope, all purple and screwed up.”

“Slow John never covered their faces,” the woman beside her agreed.

“Ah! Do you remember Slow John? He was an artist “I’ll never forget when he executed Sir Franky, the English pirate. That was a show.”

“Remember it like yesterday,” Hannah agreed.

“Worked on him for nearly half an hour, before he chopped him-” She broke off as something else nudged her memory.

Something to do with the pirates, and the pretty lad on the scaffold. She shook her head with irritation, the gin had fuddled her mind.

The executioner placed the noose over the prisoner’s head and pulled it snug under his left ear. The lad was trembling now. Hannah wished again that she could see his face. The whole scene reminded her of someone.

The executioner stood back, and picked up his heavy wooden mallet. He took a full swing at the wedge that held the trap-door.

The condemned man gave a pitiful cry: “In God’s name, have mercy!”

The watchers hooted with laughter. The executioner swung the mallet again and the wedge was knocked out.

With a crash the trap flew open, and the man dropped through. He came up short on the rope’s end, his neck stretched and his head jerked to the side. Hannah heard the vertebrae snap like a dry twig, and was disappointed again. Slow John would have judged it better, and had him kicking and jerking at the rope’s end for many tantalizing minutes with the life being slowly choked out of him. This executioner was ham-fisted, lacking subtlety. For Hannah it was all over too swiftly.

A few shuddering tremors ran through the condemned man’s body and then he hung quietly, revolving slowly on the noose, his neck twisted at an impossible angle.

Hannah turned away, disgruntled. Then she stopped.

The memory that had eluded her so long came back with a rush.

“The pirate’s boy!” she said.

“Sir Franky, the pirate’s boy. I never forget a face. I said I knew him.”

“Who are you talking about?”

the woman with the child on her shoulder asked. Tranky’s boy? Who’s Franky’s boy?” Hannah did not bother to reply but she hurried away, hugging her secret to herself, trembling with excitement.

The memory of the events of twenty years ago crowded back. The trial of the English pirates; Hannah had been young and pretty in those days, and she had given one of the guards a little something for free to let her into the courtroom. She had followed the entire trial from her seat in the back row. It had been better entertainment than any play or fair.

She saw again the lad, Franky’s son, chained to the pirate, standing side by side with him, as old Governor van der Velde sentenced the one to death and the other to a life sentence at hard labour on the castle walls. What was the lad’s name? When she closed her eyes she could see his face so clearly in her mind’s eye.

“Henry!” she exclaimed.

“Henry Courtney!” Then three years later the pirates, led by this same Henry Courtney, had broken out of their dungeon in the castle. Hannah would never forget the sounds of shouting and fighting and of musket fire, then the earth-shaking explosion and the vast towering cloud of smoke and dust that rose high in the air as the English ruffians blew up the powder magazine in the castle. With her own eyes she had watched them gallop out of the castle gates in the carriage they had stolen, and take the road that led out into the wilderness. Although the troops from the garrison had pursued them as far as the savage mountains to the north, they had got clean away.

After that, she remembered seeing the reward posters in the market, and in every tavern along the waterfront.

“Ten thousand guilders!” she whispered to herself.

“It was ten thousand guilders.” She tried to imagine such a vast sum of money.

“With that money, I could go back to Amsterdam. I could live like a grand lady for the rest of my life.” Then her spirits plunged. Will they still pay the reward after all these years? Her whole body sagged with despair as the great fortune receded from her grasp. I will send Annetjie to find out from her sport at the castle.

Annetjie was one of the younger, prettier whores who worked the taverns along the waterfront. Among her regular clients was the Governor’s clerk, her steamer, in the vernacular of the trade. Hannah lifted her skirts and set off at a run for the waterfront. She knew that Annetjie had a room in the Malmok, one of the most popular of the sailors” taverns, named after the wandering albatross.

She was in luck: Annetjie was still stretched out on her stained mattress in the tiny room beneath the eaves.

The room stank of men’s sweat and lust. Annetjie sat up still with her dense black curls in a tangle and her eyes dulled with sleep.

“What are you waking me for at this hour? Are you mad?” she whined angrily. Hannah flopped down beside her and blurted out her story.

The girl sat up and wiped the cheesy granules of sleep from the inner corners of her eyes. Her expression changed as she listened.

“How much?” she asked in disbelief, and crawled off the mattress to gather up her clothing, which was scattered across the floor.

“What ship is this kerel on?” she demanded, as she pulled her shift over her head and down over her wobbling white bosom. Hannah baulked at the question. There were over twenty ships in the bay, and she had no idea which one her prey was on. Then her expression cleared. Henry Courtney was an English pirate, and there were only two English ships in the flotilla lying out there at anchor. He must be on one of them.

“You let me worry about that”, she told the girl.

“All you have to do is find out if there is still a reward, and how we can collect it.” The Seraph had been lying at anchor for fifteen days before the Yeoman of York finally beat into Table Bay against the southeaster and dropped anchor a cable’s length astern of her. Edward Anderson had himself rowed across directly, and as he came up the ladder to the Seraph’s deck he greeted Hal.

“I hardly recognized you, Sir Henry.

The Seraph looks like a different ship.”

“Then I have succeeded in my purpose.” Hal took him by the arm and led him to the companionway.

“What kept you so long?”

“Foul winds ever since we parted company. I was carried down within sight of the coast of Brazil,” Anderson grumbled.

“But I am pleased we are together again.”

“Not for long,” Hal assured him, as he waved him to a chair, and poured a glass of Canary wine for him.

“As soon as you have re victualled and refurbished the Yeoman, I am sending you on to Bombay alone, while I am going up the coast to seek out this Mussulman rover.”

“That was not what I expected,” Anderson spluttered into his wine, as he saw the chance of prize money snatched from him.

“I have a good fighting ship and a crew-”

“Perhaps too good,” Hal stopped him.

“From news that I have had since arriving here, it seems that our best chance of coming at Jangiri is to offer him a bait. Two, fighting ships are likely to drive him off rather than suck him in.”

“Ah! So that’s why you’ve changed your appearance.”

Anderson asked.

Hal nodded, and went on, “Besides which, there are passengers, urgent mail and cargo for Bombay. Mr. Beatty is in lodgings in the town, waiting for you to convey him and his family to Bombay. The trade winds will not stand fair much longer before the season changes and the winds turn foul for a crossing of the Ocean of the Indies.”

Anderson sighed.

“I understand your reasoning, sir, though it is of scant comfort. I am loath indeed to part company with you again.”

“By the time you reach Bombay the monsoon wind will have changed. You will be able to discharge your cargo, and catch that wind to hasten your passage back across the Ocean of the Indies to the Fever Coast, where I will be waiting to rendezvous with you.”

“That will take several months, the round trip,” Anderson pointed out gloomily.

Hal was pleased that he showed this eager spirit. Other Company captains would have been delighted to avoid danger, and were well content with the peaceable life of a trader. He tried to mollify him.

“By the time we meet up again, I will have much better intelligence of Jangiri. By then I may have smelt out his lair. You can be certain that it will need both our forces to smoke him out, and that I will not attempt such an enterprise without the assistance of you and your crew, sir.” Anderson brightened a little.

“Then I must make all haste to prepare myself for the next leg of the voyage to Bombay.” He drained his glass and stood up.

“I shall go ashore immediately to speak to Mr. Beatty and have him prepare himself and his family to continue the voyage.”

“I shall send Daniel Fisher, my officer, ashore with you to guide you to Mr. Beatty’s lodgings. I would go with you myself, but for various reasons that is not prudent.” He escorted Anderson up the companionway to the deck, and . At the rail he told him, “I shall have all the cargo and mail
FOR
Governor Aungier loaded into my pinnaces and sent AC CRoss to you tomorrow. I intend to hoist anchor three days from now, and set out to begin the hunt for Jangiri.”

“My men will be standing by to receive your cargo.

By the grace of God, I should be ready to sail myself within ten days, or less.”

“If you would give me the pleasure of being my guest at dinner tomorrow, we can use the opportunity to agree the details of our future plans.” They shook hands, and Anderson seemed a great deal happier as he went down into the longboat, Big Daniel following him.

Hannah sat on the top of one of the tall sand dunes above the beach, from where she could look out to the flotilla anchored in the bay. Two others were with her: Annetjie and Jan Oliphant.