The Tiger’s Prey

‘We will think on it,’ Tom said. ‘Tomorrow, I will give you our answer.’

Dorian walked with Ana to escort her back to her lodgings. From the veranda of the boarding house Tom watched them descend the hill. He had eaten and drunk his fill, but it had not dulled his mind. He needed air, and space to think.

‘I am going to take a turn in the gardens,’ he told Sarah.

‘Don’t let the lions gobble you up. Take your sword.’

‘I don’t need it,’ he retorted. ‘I kill lions with my teeth, didn’t you know?’

Leaving the house, Tom didn’t notice the single figure lurking in the shadows of the cottage across the road. He walked briskly, whistling ‘Spanish Ladies’ softly to himself, and reached the nearest gate into the botanical gardens of the VOC. The gate was purely ornamental. On the other three sides, the gardens were open, with only a low ditch to keep wild animals out as the ground rose towards the slopes of Devil’s Peak. Sarah’s quip about the lions had not really been a joke.

The VOC had built the gardens for the pleasure of the residents of Cape Town. They had spent heavily when laying them out but recently they had been neglected. The further Tom went, the more derelict they became. Hedges soared twenty feet high, blocking the moonlight and overhanging the paths, which were overgrown with weeds. The sunken ponds had fallen in, becoming slimy holes filled with mud and rubble. The few flowers that had survived grew in sparse, sporadic clusters.

But Tom ignored his surroundings. Ana’s proposal had set his mind on fire. Twenty years ago, he would have agreed to it right there in the parlour. Now, older and wiser, he knew enough of himself to pause before leaping in.

But why not? The Courtneys were a restless family: it was their nature to move on to new lands, new adventures. We have been ploughing the same old furrow much too long, he thought. This is the opportunity I have been waiting for. Why not?

Out in the night, he heard the crazed giggling of a pack of hyenas, scavenging in the colony’s rubbish heaps.

Because of Guy, the more cautious part of his mind answered him. Because if you do this, you will be tweaking the East India Company’s tail, and sooner or later Guy will get to hear of it. Because the last two times you met, he tried to kill you, and if you meet a third time you know one of you will probably die.

Gravel crunched on the path behind him. Tom spun around. A figure stood behind him. Shadows from the wild hedges hid his face, but enough light seeped through to gleam on the naked sword in his hand. Tom was unarmed.

‘Are you Thomas Courtney?’ said an English voice.

‘I am he.’ Tom began to relax. He stepped forward, but the man lunged at him with sword in his right hand.

The morning after the Prophet anchored in Cape Town bay, Francis Courtney took a bumboat ashore. He stood in the bows and gazed at the high peaks cradling the bay, the rolling surf and the few houses clinging to the fringe of this great continent. As a child, he used to pull out the old charts in the library and pore over the strange names and distant shores. In his schoolbooks, he would draw his own maps and imagine exploring those undiscovered countries. And, at last, now he was here.

He went to the harbourmaster’s office to register his arrival.

‘Name?’ asked the clerk. Ink dripped from his pen.

He reached into his coat pocket and produced the false papers that Childs had given him. ‘My name is Frank Leighton.’

From the harbourmaster’s office, he walked along the shore to the fort. It stood about a musket shot from the town, commanding the harbour and the landing areas. Francis stared at it, trying to imagine his great-grandfather labouring in the heat. Growing up in High Weald, Francis had been surrounded by the memories of his ancestors: their effigies in the chapel crypt, their coats of arms in the stained glass, their portraits lining the walls. One by one, those portraits had disappeared: he remembered the first time he’d run down the long gallery and seen a gap on the wall, and the ache each time another painting disappeared to cover Sir Walter’s debts.

Yet here he was. His great-grandfather, the man in the portrait with the stern face and great mane of black hair, had stood on this very ground. So, according to the stories his mother told him, had his grandfather Hal. He imagined them now as they must have been: no longer flat on oil and canvas, but as living, breathing men.

A tremor went through him. He felt the presence of his ancestors, as if all the portraits in the long gallery had come alive, stepped out of their frames and crowded around him, impressing upon him the full weight and expectation of the Courtney name.

If he killed Thomas, would he be any better than the man he killed? A man who murdered his own family.

‘I owe it to my father,’ he told himself, trying not to think of the reward of five thousand pounds Sir Nicholas Childs had promised him. It seemed a mean motive for an act of such enormity.

He realized the sentry at the castle gate had started to take an interest in him. Francis turned, and hurried back to the waterfront where he found a tavern. This early in the morning it was almost deserted, but he needed a drink.

The beer was deep red in colour, flat and sour. Francis took one sip, and thought of the mornings he had come downstairs to find his stepfather already halfway through a bottle of wine.

A woman came over and sat on a stool at his table. She had bright red lips, and almost enough powder on her cheeks to smooth out the wrinkles that lined them.

‘Looking for something, dearie?’ She played with the ribbon that laced the neck of her blouse. ‘I can help you with whatever you want.’

Francis blushed furiously as he realized what she was offering. For a moment, he could hardly speak. Growing up in High Weald, rarely venturing far, he had never encountered such a person, though he had occasionally heard of them in whispered speculation with other boys.

‘I’m looking for Thomas Courtney,’ he mumbled. And then, seeing the recognition light her eyes, ‘Do you know him?’

He put a coin on the table. The woman snatched it up. She polished it on her skirts, and then slipped it into a pouch which she tucked inside her bodice.

Francis waited. ‘Well?’

‘Aren’t you going to buy me a drink?’ she wheedled. ‘A proper gentleman always buys a lady a drink.’

Awkwardly, Francis called the barmaid, who fetched the woman another glass of beer. She gave Francis a pitying look as she put it on the table.

‘First time, dearie?’ said the prostitute, slurping her beer. ‘A big, handsome lad like you? I don’t believe it.’

‘I’m looking for Thomas Courtney,’ Francis insisted.

‘He won’t do the things I can do for you.’ Under the table, her foot rubbed against his calf. Francis hastily pulled it away.

She grinned at his discomfort. ‘Got any more of those silver coins in your purse? For another one of those, I’ll not just tell you where to find him. I’ll show him to you.’

Francis realized he had been foolish to give her money without getting anything in advance. He took out another coin, but kept it firmly pressed under his thumb.

‘This is yours. When you’ve taken me to him.’

The prostitute looked disappointed. ‘You’re a quick learner. I could teach you a few other things you’d never forget. For another coin that is.’

‘Take me to him,’ Francis insisted.

‘I don’t have to. I can see him from here.’

She pointed out the tavern’s window, smeared with lamp soot and salt spray. Beyond it was the harbour front, and the wooden jetty extending out into the bay. The Prophet’s boats had moored alongside, and a gang of black stevedores was unloading her cargo. In the midst of the bustle, three men stood talking, studying a bill of goods. Francis recognized the first two, the Prophet’s captain and the harbourmaster. The third was the tallest, standing over six feet with shoulders as broad as any of the porters working around him. He wore his thick black hair pulled back in a sailor’s queue. He was smiling as he talked, but his hard features said this was a man who would yield to no one.

‘The tall one is Tom Courtney,’ said the prostitute, with more than a little admiration in her voice.

Francis felt as though the blood was freezing in his veins. For so long, Tom Courtney had been an almost mythic figure, the demon who stalked his nightmares. Now he stood a few yards away, talking and joking with the other men. Utterly unaware of the vengeance that awaited him.

The prostitute read the look on Francis’ face.

‘You hate him,’ she mused. ‘You want to kill him. Yes?’ she asked, then as Francis started to protest, ‘Do not argue. I have seen the look that is in your eyes before, though mostly on men who had drunk a good deal more than you.’

Francis couldn’t take his eyes off Tom. ‘What of it?’

‘Tom Courtney is no stumbling sailor still on his sea legs. He’s the most dangerous man in the colony. The stories they tell of him …’ She shook her head.

His stepfather had failed in many things, but he had made sure Francis knew how to fight with sword and fists. More than once, Sir Walter’s debts had led him to the duelling field at dawn; he knew how to account for himself. Sir Walter had been a ferocious instructor, drilling Francis until his knuckles bled and his numbed fingers could hardly close around the hilt of his sword.