The Monsoon (28 page)

A gaunt human figure squatted upon it, staring directly at him with huge empty eye-sockets. Tom recoiled from it instinctively, and choked back the sob that rose in his throat.

“Steady, lad.” Hal reached out and took his hand. He led him step by step towards the seated figure. The wavering lantern light disclosed the details as they drew nearer.

The head was a skull.

Tom knew that the Dutch had beheaded his grandfather, but Aboli must have replaced his head upon his shoulders. Fragments of dried skin still hung on the banc like the dead bark of a fever-tree trunk.

Long dark hair hung down the back of the bony head, lovingly dressed and combed.

Tom quailed, for his grandfather’s empty eyes seemed to be looking deep into his soul. He drew back once more, but his father held his hand firmly, and chided him gently.

“He was a good man. A brave man with a great heart.

There is no reason for you to fear him.” The body was bound in the skin of a beast, a pelt Of black hair, which the bacon beetles had gnawed off in patches, giving it a leprous look Hal knew that the executioner had quartered his grandfather’s body, crudely hacking it into pieces on the scaffold with a cleaver. Aboli had tenderly assembled those parts and bound them up in the hide of a freshly killed buffalo. On the floor below the stone platform were the remains of a small ritual fire, a circle of ash and black charcoal sticks.

“We will pray together,” Hal said softly, and drew Tom ..

down beside him on the stone floor of the cavern.

“Our Father, which art in heaven. Hal began, and Tom clasped his hands before his eyes and joined in the recital, his voice growing more confident as the familiar words rolled off his tongue. Thy will be done, on earth, as it is in heaven.” While Tom prayed he saw from between his fingers, the array of strange objects that had been laid out on the rock platform, grave offerings that he realized Aboli must have placed there all those years ago when he had laid Grandfather’s body to rest.

There was a wooden crucifix, set with abalone shell, and bone and water-worn pebbles that shone softly in the lantern light. There was a crudely fashioned model of a three-masted ship, with the name Lady Edwina carved into her transom, then a wooden bow and a knife. Tom realized that these were symbols of the forces that had dominated his grandfather’s life. The one true God, a tall ship, and the weapons of a warrior. Aboli had chosen his last gifts with love and perception.

When they had finished the prayer they were silent for a while, then Hal opened his eyes and lifted his head.

He spoke quietly to the skeletal skin-bound figure on the platform above them.

“Father, I have come to take you home to High Weald.” He laid out the sack on the platform.

“Hold its mouth open,” he ordered Tom, then knelt over the body of his father and lifted it in his arms.

It was surprisingly light.

The dry skin crackled and small tufts of hair and flakes of skin fell away. After all this time, there was no odour of putrefaction, just the scent of fungus and dust.

He slid the hunched body into the sack, feet first, until only the ancient, ravaged head remained exposed. He paused to stroke the long black tresses of hair, shot through with strands of silver.

Watching that gesture Tom was struck with the love and respect it demonstrated.

“You loved him,” he said.

Hal looked up.

“If you had known him, you would have loved him also.”

“I know how much I love you,” Tom replied, 4so I can guess.”

Hal slipped one arm around his son’s shoulders and hugged him briefly but hard.

“Pray God you never have to perform such an onerous duty for me,” he said, then pulled the sack over Francis Courtney’s head and secured the leather laces tightly. He stood up.

“We must go now, Tom, before the storm reaches its height.” He lifted the sack , then carefully and swung it over his shoulder, then stooped to the entrance tunnel of the cave.

Aboli was waiting for them outside the cavern, and he made as if to relieve Hal of his burden, but Hal shook his head. will carry him, Aboli. Do you lead us down this mountain.”

The descent was more hazardous than the climb had been. In the darkness and the roaring wind, it would have ” been easy to miss the path, and step out over a precipice, or stumble on one of the treacherous scree slopes and break a leg, but Aboli led them unerringly through the night, until Tom felt the gradient ease, and the rock and rolling pebbles under his feet give way to firm soil then to crunching beach sand.

A bolt of vivid blue lightning tore open the clouds and, for an instant, turned the night to brilliant noonday.

In that moment they saw the sweep of the bay before them, its surface churned to confusion by the gale, boiling and foaming, leaping and spouting white. Then the blackness closed over them again and the thunder crashed down in an avalanche of sound that numbed their eardrums.

“The longboat is still there.” Hal shouted his relief above the wind. The stark, fleeting image of the boat was imprinted upon his vision.

“Hail them, Aboli!”

“Seraph!” Aboli bellowed into the night, and heard the reply faint upon the storm.

“Ahoy!” It was All Wilson’s voice, and they started down the dunes towards it. Hal’s burden, which had weighed so lightly at the beginning of the descent, now bowed him over, but he refused to relinquish it. They reached the foot of the dunes in a close group. Aboli opened the shutter of the lantern and shone the feeble yellow beam ahead.

“On guardV he shouted a desperate warning, as he saw in the light that they were surrounded by the dark figures of men or beasts, he could not be certain which.

“Defend yourselves!” he cried, and they threw open their cloaks and drew their blades, instinctively forming a ring, back to back, facing outwards, the points of their levelled weapons forming a circle of steel.

Then lightning broke over them again, a blinding bolt that split the low clouds, lit the beach and the gale-beaten waters. In its light they saw a phalanx of menacing shapes charging down upon them. The lightning flashed on the naked blades they wielded, on the clubs and spears they brandished, and for a moment it revealed their faces. They were all Hottentots, not a Dutch face among them.

Tom felt a rush of superstitious dread as he saw the man coming at him. He was as hideous as a thing from a nightmare. Long tresses of black hair writhed in the wind, like serpents, about the terrible face, a livid scar slashed through the bloated nose and purple lips, the mouth was twisted and deformed, drooling saliva, and the eyes flashed fiercely as the creature rushed at him.

Then the darkness closed over them all again, but Tom had seen the man’s sword raised over his head, and he anticipated the stroke, twisting aside his shoulders and ducking under it. He heard the blade hiss past his ear, and the explosive grunt of the effort his attacker put into the blow.

All Aboli’s training came to the fore. Tom went smoothly on the riposte, lunging for the sound of the man’s breathing, and felt his blade sink into living flesh, a sensation he had never experienced before, which startled him. His victim shouted with pain, and Tom felt a surge of savage joy. He recoiled and shifted his feet, quick as a cat, and lunged blindly again. Once more he felt the hit, the soggy slide of steel into flesh, then the clash as the point struck bone. The man squealed, and for the first time in his life Tom rode the wild exhilaration of battle lust.

The lightning flamed across the heavens, and Tom saw his victim reel away, his sword dropped into the sand.

He was clutching at his deformed face. His cheek was Iaij open to the bone, and the blood was black as tar in the blue light, pouring in a sheet down his chin and splashing over his chest.

Tom saw in the same flash of lightning that both his father and Aboli had killed: their victims were down, one kicking and convulsing in the sand, the other curled into a ball clutching his wound with both hands, his mouth open in a silent cry of agony.

Big Daniel was engaged, blade to blade with a tall, sinewy figure naked to the waist, body black and shiny as an eel-skin. But the rest of the attackers were backing away, repulsed by the vigour of the little knot of defenders, Darkness shut down over them like the slamming of a door, and Tom felt Aboli’s fingers close on his upper arm, his voice close to his ear: “Back to the boat, Klebe. Keep together.” They ran blindly through the soft sand, bumping into each other.

“Is Tom with us?” His father’s voice was harsh with concern for him.

“Here, Father!” he shouted.

“Thank God! Danny?”

He reV Big Daniel must have killed his man, for his voice was close and clear.

fall “Seraph!” Hal bellowed.

“On meV “Seraph!” All’s voice acknowledged the order, and the lightning flared again to reveal it all. The four of them were still a hundred paces from where the longboat lay at the edge of the roaring sea. Led by All, the eight men waiting with it were running to join the fight, brandishing their pikes, cutlasses and boarding axes. But the pack of Hottentots had rallied and like hunting dogs were baying at their heels.

Tom glanced over his shoulder and saw the man that he had wounded had recovered and was charging along at the head of them. Though his face was a mask of blood he was slashing the air with his sword, and screeching a war cry in a strange language. He had singled out Tom, and was rushing directly at him.

Tom tried to estimate how many there were. Perhaps nine or ten, he guessed, but the darkness closed down again before he could be sure.

His father and All Wilson were shouting to keep contact with each other, and now the two groups came together. Immediately Hal called, “Meet them! Skirmish line!” Even in darkness they smoothly executed the manoeuvre they had practised so often on the Seraph’s deck.

Shoulder to shoulder they stood to meet the attack, which burst into them like a wave out of the night. There was the clatter and clash of metal on metal and the shouts and curses of men struggling together. Then the lightning flared again.

Hannah staggered to the edge of the milk wood grove with fifteen men. The night had been too long for them, the fury of the storm debilitating, and the boredom of the ambush had overcome them. They had crept away into the grove to find a spot out of the wind in which to curl up and sleep. Then the shouting and the sounds of battle had roused them. They had seized their weapons and now poured out from among the trees.

The lightning revealed the struggling, evenly matched men, close to the water’s edge where the empty longboat lay. In the same flash, Hannah saw Henry Courtney clearly.

He was in the first rank of the fight, his face turned towards her, his cutlass lifted high in his right hand then slashing down at the head of one of the Hottentots.

“Dis hotn!” Hannah screeched.

“It’s him! Ten thousand guilders for the picking. Kom kerels! Come, lads!” She waved the pitchfork with which she was armed, and charged down the dune. The men, who had hesitated at the edge of the grove, were galvanized by her example.

Now they raced down behind her, a howling, shrieking mob.

Dorian was alone in the longboat. He had been curled up asleep on the floorboards when the fighting started, but now he crawled to the bows and knelt behind the falconer.

He was wide-eyed with sleep, but in the lightning he had seen Tom and his father beset by the enemy, and the new threat rushing down upon them from out of the dunes.

During battle practice on the Seraph, Aboli had shown Tom how to swing and aim the falconet in its swivel seating, and how to fire it.

Dorian had watched avidly and begged for a chance to try it. As always, he had been met with the infuriating answer, “You are too small. When you are older.” Now was the chance he had been denied, and Tom and his father needed him. He reached for the length of burning match in the tub of sand below the gun. All Wilson had lit it and placed it at hand for just such an emergency. He took it in one hand, seized the long monkey-tail of the falconer with the other and swivelled it in the direction of the screams and shouts of the mob charging down the dunes. He looked over the barrel but could not see the sights of the gun, nor any glimpse of his target in the darkness.

Then the thunder crashed directly overhead, and the beach was lit brilliantly by the lightning. Directly under his barrel Dorian saw them coming, led by a witch from mythology, a terrible female creature waving a pitchfork, long grey hair streaming out behind her, her white dugs swinging and flopping out of the bodice of her gown, a face ravaged by age and debauchery, screaming. Dorian pressed the burning match to the touchhole of the falconers i Twenty feet of flame shot from its muzzle, and a bucketful of grapeshot, each ball the size of a man’s eye, was hurled down the beach. The range was just sufficient for the blast to reach its optimum spread. Hannah caught the full brunt of it: a dozen lead balls shattered her chest, and one struck her in the centre of the forehead, taking the top off her skull like the shell off an egg. She was flung backwards into the white sand with another six of her troop down around her. The rest staggered with the shock and disruption of the air around them. Three of those still on their feet howled with terror and fled back towards the protection of the grove. The others were stunned, and milled in confusion, stumbling over their dead companions, some bleeding from their wounds, uncertain which way to turn.

The burning wad from the falconet was blown into the long windrow of dry driftwood at the top of the beach.

The flames took hold swiftly and, fanned by the wind, burned brightly, showering blue sparks from the salt crystals, which lit the beach with a wavering, flickering light.

The fight swung back and around. Although they had reduced the odds against them with pike and blade, Hal’s men were still heavily outnumbered.

Hal had three men against him, circling him like a pack of hyena harassing a black-maned lion. He was fighting for his life and could not even glance in the direction of his son.