The Tiger’s Prey

‘You took your time, Hendrick,’ greeted one of them. ‘Jacob’s already getting started on the Courtney bitch.’

A high-pitched feminine scream echoed from the house and the two guards laughed and turned to peer back through the door. One of them died without seeing the stroke of the cane knife that killed him. The second guard heard the blow and the sound of the falling body and began to turn. But he was too slow. Tom’s cane knife chopped into the side of his neck, cutting through his vertebrae so that his head, still partially attached to his shoulders, flopped forward onto his chest.

As Tom jumped over their bodies and ran through the doorway with his heart pumping wildly, a pistol shot rang out ahead of him. He did not pause, but burst into the sitting room. Sarah stood across the room facing him, veiled in a thin cloud of gun smoke. Behind her crouched Mrs Lai, sobbing with terror and clinging to Sarah’s skirts.

In her right hand Sarah held her tiny flint-lock Derringer pistol still fully extended at arm’s length. On the floor at her feet was the spread-eagled body of Jacob de Vries. He lay face down. The back of his skull had been blown away by the exit of the bullet. His buttery yellow brains were splattered over Mrs Lai’s colourful Chinese carpets.

Sarah and Tom stared at each other for the hundredth part of a second then Sarah dropped the empty pistol and ran into his arms.

‘Tom Courtney!’ she cried, and her voice was half a sob and the other half hysterical laughter. ‘You promised to love honour and protect me. But where were you when the chips were on the table?’

‘Oh, my darling, my beloved darling.’ He dropped the cane knife and hugged her to his chest. ‘I shall never leave you again. Never! Never!’ Now they were both talking at the same time.

Then there was a fresh hubbub at the front door and Dorian came through it, shoving a dishevelled and mud-soaked figure ahead of him.

‘Sarah! Tom!’ Dorian shouted with relief. ‘Thanks be to Allah, you are safe. I heard a pistol shot and then I saw this creature running down the hill.’ He gave his captive a kick in the back of his knees which dropped him to the floor. ‘I thought he was up to no good so I grabbed him.’

Tom saw that it was the youthful swordsman who had attacked him in the Botanical Gardens.

‘Yes! He is one of the gang, if not the ringleader,’ Tom said grimly. Still with one arm around Sarah protectively he came to stand over the man on the floor.

‘Who are you?’ he demanded in a murderous tone. ‘Give me a good reason why we should not kill you the way we have done with your henchmen.’

The man on the floor looked up at him. Then with an obvious effort managed to control his terror, and scowled, ‘Yes, Thomas Courtney. You are a natural born killer. You murdered my father – why not do the same to me, his son?’

Tom flinched at the accusation and the ferocity of his expression faded into uncertainty. It was a few seconds before he could gather his wits.

‘Tell me then, who was this person that you accuse me of murdering?’ he demanded.

‘My father was William Courtney, your half-brother and my father.’

‘William …’ Tom gaped at him, ‘You cannot mean that Billy, Black Billy was your father?’

‘Yes, sir. William was my father.’

‘Then that must make you Francis; Francis Courtney.’

Again, Tom remembered the green flash of the Mermaid’s Wink. A soul returning from the dead.

He stooped and took Francis by the wrist and pulled him to his feet. ‘It seems that you and I have much to discuss.’ His tone was mild, but tinged with remorse, ‘At the very least I owe you an explanation.’

When Francis awoke, he was lying in a feather bed. After months at sea, cramped in a narrow cot, it felt like heaven. For a moment, he thought he was back in High Weald, waiting for the servants to bring his breakfast.

He rolled over. A spasm of pain went through his side, and he remembered everything. He wasn’t at High Weald. He hurt all over, he realized.

He opened his eyes. A coffee-skinned woman sat beside him, a shawl drawn over her hair. Behind her, a huge black man with a scarred face guarded the door.

‘Where am I?’

‘In the house of Tom and Dorian Courtney,’ said the black man.

Francis jerked upright – too quick. Another bolt of pain shot through his head. He tried to get out of bed, but the agony was too great.

‘Tom Courtney will kill me if he finds me here,’ he gasped.

‘Tom Courtney has spared your life. Who do you think had us bind your wounds and treat you like the gentleman I doubt you are?’

‘Drink,’ said the woman. She pressed a cup of some foul-tasting concoction to his lips. Francis tasted it, gagged and pushed the cup aside. The scar-faced black man stepped to the bed. He pinched Francis’ nostrils to force him to open his mouth.

‘Miss Yasmini says you drink, so you drink!’ The woman tilted the cup between his lips, and Francis took the easy option, he drank. The effect was swift. The pain of his injuries abated miraculously, and was replaced by drowsiness. The bed was so soft. He closed his eyes.

Yasmini had cleaned his wounds; they were superficial. She had dressed them with ointment that she had prepared from wild herbs she collected with her own delicate hands. With Allah’s grace, they would heal cleanly.

‘Is he really Dorian and Tom’s nephew, I wonder?’ Yasmini asked.

‘If he is not then he has come a long way for a lie.’ Aboli shook his great shaven head. ‘I knew William Courtney from the day he was born. This boy is his spitting image. Also, there is this.’

He showed her the decoration that sat on a dresser: a golden lion with ruby eyes, holding the world between diamond-spangled heavens. ‘This belonged to Klebe’s father. The boy was wearing it beneath his shirt. It proves beyond a doubt that he is who he says.

‘But they say that Tom killed William, his brother. That is why he can never return to England. Tom never forgave himself for what happened with William. He will not make the same mistake with the son,’ said Aboli.

A knock sounded at the door. Tom peered in. ‘How is the patient?’

‘You did not manage to kill him,’ said Yasmini tartly. ‘If you can keep yourself from assaulting him again, he will live.’

Tom went to the bed and looked down at Francis who was sound asleep. He had his father Billy’s dense and coarse black hair, but his features were soft, almost girlishly pretty. Not at all like his father’s had been. Tom hoped that his nature was also different. Black Billy had been hard, domineering and cruel.

Tom counted back the years since he had last seen the squalling baby Francis on the stairs at High Weald. The boy must be seventeen by now – the same age Tom had been when he left home.

Or rather when he had been forced to leave home, and never return to High Weald or to England. A wanted man with his brother’s blood on his hands and on his conscience. He would never forget the dreadful moment when he had lifted the brim of the hat from the face of the man who had attacked him murderously in a dark alley in the dock area of the Thames, and whom he had been forced to kill in self-defence … and found that it was his own half-brother.

He picked up the decoration of the Order of St George, the gilded Lion cupping the world in his paws, and felt the weight of its magnificence. Though Tom had been dubbed a Nautonnier knight, he had never worn the decoration. William had seen to that.

‘Call me when he wakes,’ he told Aboli and Yasmini as he turned back to the door.

I could not save the father. Perhaps I can redeem myself with the son.

When Francis woke again, the woman had gone but the black man still guarded the door. He did not seem to have moved; Francis almost wondered if he might be carved from wood.

He sat up, tentatively, and found that if he moved slowly the pain was tolerable. He swung his legs out of the bed and stood, leaning on the wall for balance. Aboli did not try to stop him.

‘Yasmini’s medicine is working,’ he observed.

Francis stared at him, then at the small window. Was it big enough? He wore nothing but a borrowed nightshirt. He would look like a lunatic, running through Cape Town. Would he be arrested?

Aboli indicated the corner of the room, where a shirt and a pair of breeches sat folded over a chair.

‘If you wish to go, you had better get dressed.’