Golden Lion

It was the maharajah who spoke next. ‘Now that you two gentlemen have become reacquainted, let me explain the purpose of this audience. I shall start by saying this: I hold the pair of you personally responsible for the insufferable loss of life and the damage and loss of property caused to our people’s shipping by that filthy infidel Henry Courtney. It is my fervent desire, and that of my brother the Grand Mogul himself, to seek vengeance in the fullest measure against Courtney and his men. We find ourselves, however, in a quandary.

‘My brother is currently concluding an agreement with the East India Company, concerning trade between our lands in India and the kingdom of England. He believes that such an agreement will deliver enormous rewards and he naturally does not wish to endanger the prospect of great riches by conducting a public campaign against one of His Majesty the King of England’s subjects, particularly one who comes from an eminent family.’

‘The Courtneys, eminent?’ the Buzzard thought to himself. ‘That’ll come as a shock tae all the lords and ladies who’ve never even heard of ’em!’

‘As a result, we must seek retribution with discretion and subtlety, using proxies who can act as figureheads for our vengeance. And who could be better suited to that role than two men such as yourselves? You both have very good reason to hate Captain Courtney. You know something of this man and how he thinks and you must, I am sure, be keen to atone for your own recent failings, for which many a ruler less merciful than myself might very well have you both executed.’

‘Does your royal highness wish us to kill Captain Courtney ourselves?’ Grey asked, in tones of barely disguised alarm.

‘Well, perhaps not with your own blades, no,’ Jahan reassured him. ‘I fear you would prove no match for him, Consul, and as for the earl here, he was unable to best Courtney with two hands, so I hardly give him much chance with one. But I feel certain that you can devise a way to bring him down. You can find him and trap him, even if others must come in for the kill. And you can then take responsibility for his execution, for who would not agree that you had reason to take his life after the deception with which he tricked you, Consul Grey, or the hideous djinn into which he transformed you, my poor Earl of Cumbrae.’

‘And if we do not agree tae pursue him for you?’ the Buzzard asked.

Jahan laughed. ‘Come now, of course you will agree! In the first place I am offering you all the resources of men and equipment you need for the vengeance you desire above all else. And in the second, both you and Consul Grey will die here, in this building, on this day if you do not agree to my terms. I am a merciful man. But I will not be wronged a second time and let that insult go unpunished.’

Grey threw himself to the floor and abased himself in a grovelling salaam. ‘Your highness is too kind, too merciful for a wretch like me. I am honoured and grateful beyond all telling for the chance to serve you in this way.’

‘Yes, yes, Consul, thank you, but please, stand on your own two feet like a man,’ Jahan replied. Then he looked at the Buzzard. ‘And you?’

‘Aye, I’ll do it. I’ll even tell you where the conniving sod’s bound for too, because there’ll only be one place he’ll want to go.’

‘All in due course,’ Jahan said. ‘First however, it has struck me, Cumbrae, watching you in recent weeks, that your skin must now be especially sensitive. You will not, I believe, be able to survive exposure either to our burning sun, or the winds and spray that will buffet you should you ever step aboard a ship. I have therefore commissioned a form of headgear that will protect you.’

He clapped his hands and at once Ahmed the leather merchant opened his box and pulled out what looked to the Buzzard like some kind of leather cap, or hood. There was a design upon it, too, but the way that Ahmed was holding it made it impossible for him to work out exactly what it was.

Ahmed now approached the Buzzard, his eyes cast down at the floor as he walked, as if he were too terrified even to glance at the face of the monster before him. When the leather merchant reached the Buzzard a new problem presented itself: he was a good head shorter than the Scotsman. Ahmed looked imploringly at Jahan who nodded and said, ‘Be so good as to bow your head, Cumbrae.’

‘I’ll bow tae no man!’ the Buzzard rasped.

‘Then you will lose it.’ Jahan paused and then went on in a conciliatory tone, ‘Please do not force my hand. Bow your head and let this craftsman do his work and I will reward you with everything you need to gain the revenge you so desperately crave. Defy me and you will die. So, what will it be?’

The Buzzard bowed his head. A moment later he winced and then cried out in pain despite himself as the leather hood was pulled over his raw skin and worked into position. The Buzzard now found himself looking out at the world through a single eye hole, cut into the leather, which was fitted tight, in fact almost moulded to the shape of his face. He could breathe through two more openings beneath his nostrils, but so far as he could tell, the whole of his head was covered except for his mouth. A moment later, even that freedom was curtailed, for Ahmed brought up another flap of leather. Part of it was formed into a cup that fitted around the Buzzard’s chin. There was a gap between the flap and the rest of the mask just wide enough to allow him to move his mouth a little. The Buzzard felt a tugging to one side of his face as the flap was tightened and then he heard a click that sounded very much like the closing of a padlock. Yes, he could feel the weight of it now.

The Buzzard felt a sudden surge of alarm, verging on panic. He jerked his head up and with his one good arm lashed out at Ahmed, knocking him to the ground. Before he could make another move, the soldiers raced across the floor and one of them grabbed his right arm and forced it up behind his back, until the Buzzard had no option but to bend his body and head down.

Once more he felt the tradesman’s nimble fingers, as a broad leather collar was placed around his throat and, like the mask, padlocked. The Buzzard heard Jahan say, ‘Mr Grey, be so good, if you will, as to carry the looking glass that is lying on that table to your right over to your fellow countryman. I’m sure the earl would like to see how he looks now.’

‘M-m-must I …?’ Grey stammered.

‘Please,’ Jahan said, with cold-blooded calm, ‘do not oblige me to remind you of the alternative should you refuse.’

The Buzzard heard Grey’s shuffling footsteps coming towards him and then the soldier let go of his arm and he was able to straighten his body. As he lifted his head, the Buzzard’s eyes were directly level with the mirror, barely two paces away from him. He saw what the world would see and now it was his turn to cry out in revulsion at what confronted him.

His head was entirely enclosed in leather the colour of a tarred ship’s plank. Crude stitches of leather thread held the various pieces of the mask together and formed the sharply angled eyebrows that gave the impression of eyes set in a furious, piercing stare. To make the effect even more shocking, the blank eye was painted with white and black paint to look as though it was open and all-seeing, while the hole through which the Buzzard now gained his pitifully limited view of the world appeared to be a blank, blind void. The nose was a predatory beak, a hand span long, that thrust from his face in a cruel visual pun on his Buzzard nickname. Further stitches shaped the mask’s mouth into a permanently manic grin, made all the more ghastly by the jagged white teeth, with pitch black gaps between them that had been painted around the orifice through which he was expected to speak, eat and drink.

The Buzzard had once seen a mask like this hanging from the wall in a Portuguese slaver’s house. He had got it from the witch doctor of some tribe deep in the hinterland of Musa bin Ba’ik. Now this was his face … The Buzzard could not bear it.

Crying out in pain and frustration he clawed at the padlocks on the side of his head and neck, as if his few remaining fingers could break through the iron that bound him, and as he did so he encountered one last humiliation: a metal ring, attached to his collar, underneath his chin. He at once knew what it meant. If he displeased Jahan, or tried to escape, he could be chained to a wall, or dragged through the streets like nothing more than the lowliest pack animal or whipped dog.

The Buzzard fell to his knees, a broken man. He had survived burning and near-drowning. He had clung to life when the ocean and the sun had done their best to destroy him. He had endured pain beyond any mortal man’s comprehension and the looks of disgust from all who laid eyes on him. But this was the final straw.

Now Jahan came across and crouched down on his haunches beside the Buzzard and held out a metal cup, decorated with exquisite patterns of dark blue, turquoise and white enamel. Speaking as softly as he might to a frightened, angry young horse who had just felt a saddle on his back for the first time, he said, ‘Here, this is sweet, fresh sherbet. Drink.’

The Buzzard took the cup and drew it up to his mouth. He tilted it to drink and the cup banged against his leather beak, so that none of the liquid could escape it. He turned his head to one side and tried to pour the sherbet into his mouth but it just spilled across his mask and not a drop fell into his mouth. He nodded and bobbed his beaky mask into every position he could think of, but he could not find a way to drink.

As they watched this performance the other men in the room were first intrigued and then amused. Grey could not help himself. He gave an effeminate titter that set off the guards, and even Jahan, so that the room soon echoed to the sounds of their laughter that quite drowned out the Buzzard’s screams of impotent rage. Finally he threw the cup away and the clatter it made as it skimmed across the marble floor silenced the other men. Jahan spoke again, ‘Know this, you who used to be a lord and a ship’s captain. You have ceased to be a man. Stand, and I will show you how you will be given water to drink.’

Jahan clapped and a black African servant came into the room bearing a copper jug with a long spout of the sort used to water plants. The servant approached the Buzzard with wide-eyed horror on his face and, holding the jug as far away from himself as he possibly could, lifted it and poked the spout into the mask’s mouth hole. The Buzzard’s lips took the spout between them and he drank the cool water with pathetic eagerness and gratitude until Jahan clapped again and the spout was withdrawn.

‘You will be fed and watered by slaves, for whom the duty will be a form of punishment. When you walk through the streets women will turn their heads away from you for fear of what they see. Children who misbehave will be told stories of how you will come in the night to seize them unless they change their ways. Young men who wish to prove their courage will dare one another to throw rotten vegetables at you, until one of them is foolish enough to do so and is executed by my men for his impertinence. And then the people will truly fear and hate you.

‘But next to yours their hatred will be as a grain of sand is to a mighty desert. For your whole being will be consumed by hate. And because you hate, and because I alone can offer you the chance to satisfy that hate, you will serve me.

‘As for you, Mr Grey …’ and now Jahan’s voice became cold and hard as he looked at the consul, ‘you will leave my house and you will not come back, ever again, unless it is with Henry Courtney’s head upon a platter, or the means to destroy him in your possession. Bring me either of those things and your previous standing here will be restored and enhanced, so that you will enjoy honour amongst my people once again. Until then, however, you will be counted a pariah. Now begone!’

The Buzzard almost managed a smile to match the one on his mask as he watched the downcast Grey make his exit. Then Jahan turned back to him and said, ‘It occurred to me just now that you are a eunuch, and so I will grant you a special favour that I would never bestow on any man who was complete. You may accompany me as I have dinner with my favourite concubines. They are creatures of flawless beauty, plucked from India, from Persia, from the Russian steppes and even one seized from a fishing village on the coast of your own island. They will all be fascinated to meet you. I dare say the braver ones will even wish to handle you, just to see if you are real. Of course, you may not touch them, nor eat my food, nor sup my drink. But you can be present and feast your one true eye on the treats laid out before you. And on the day that Henry Courtney dies, I will give you the choice of any woman in my harem and you may do whatever you wish with her, anything at all. So think on that, why don’t you, when they are petting you this evening. Imagine how you will find a way to satisfy your desires. And ask yourself whether any of these women, as lovely as they are, could ever bring you quite as much pleasure as watching Captain Courtney die.’

Three days later, the Buzzard was commanded to make his first expedition into the outside world. Dressed in a hooded black djellaba he was walked down to the docks and back, escorted by six of Jahan’s men, whose job was both to protect their charge and to ensure that he did not escape. They were specifically instructed to march sufficiently far apart so that all whom the Buzzard passed were afforded a good look at him.

Exactly as Jahan had predicted, the masked man’s appearance caused something close to panic among the people thronging the narrow streets of Zanzibar. Women turned away and covered their children’s eyes. Men spat on the ground as he passed, or held up blue nazar amulets to ward off the evil eye that gazed so balefully from the leather face. Finally, as they were walking through a square ringed by shops and eating houses, one hot-blooded young daredevil reached down into the open sewer that ran down one side of the square and with his left hand – the one he used for wiping his backside – picked up and threw a mass of foul-smelling excrement at the Buzzard. Whether by good aim or good luck the noxious projectile flew between the guards, and hit the Buzzard on the left side of his body, just where his arm should have been. At once two of the guards darted into the crowd and seized the young man before he had a chance to make good his escape. He was dragged, screaming insults and curses to the middle of the street, where the commander of the detachment was standing, his scimitar drawn, waiting to carry out Jahan’s orders that anyone who assaulted the Buzzard in any way should be subject to instant, public execution.

When the culprit drew near it became clear that he was no more than fourteen or fifteen years old, a hot-headed lad who’d acted in youthful high spirits without giving the slightest thought to the consequences. The commander hesitated. He was a decent man with a son of his own and he did not want to deprive another man’s family of their boy, simply for expressing the disgust that everyone – the commander included – felt in the presence of the masked man.

The Buzzard noted the commander’s hesitancy. He could hear the first, nervous cries for mercy coming up from the crowd. Every instinct told him that this was a crucial moment: one that might determine whether he was seen as a monster to be feared or a freak to be pitied, and of the two he knew exactly which he preferred.

‘Give me your sword,’ he growled at the commander, then reached out with his right hand and ripped it from the man’s grasp before he had a chance to argue.

The beak and the glaring eyes turned their predatory gaze on the two soldiers who were holding the boy. ‘You two, tie his hands behind his back!’ the Buzzard commanded. ‘And look sharp or I swear the maharajah will hear of it.’

The men, who looked almost as frightened as their captive, immediately did as they were told. The Buzzard heard one of them apologizing to the boy and begging for his forgiveness. ‘Silence!’ he rasped.

A heavy weight of bitter resentment settled over the watching throng, but no one said a word as the boy was bound and then forced to his knees. All his adolescent bravado had vanished and he was just a fearful, weeping child as one of the soldiers forced his head down so that the back of his neck was exposed.

The Buzzard looked down at the boy’s bare, brown skin, raised the scimitar and swung it down as hard as he could.

He missed the neck.

Instead the blade sliced into the top of the boy’s back between his shoulder blades. A terrible, high-pitched wail of pain echoed around the square. The Buzzard tugged on the blade that was stuck between two vertebrae, forced it free and swung again, hitting the neck this time, but failing to sever it.

Three more blows were required and the boy was already dead – a corpse held in place by the two soldiers – before his head finally dropped from his shoulders onto the dusty ground. The Buzzard stepped back, his chest heaving, and looked right around the square, turning through three hundred and sixty degrees as he surveyed the scene and all the people in it, basking in the fear and hostility he saw on every face. Then he ordered the commander of the guards, ‘Take me back tae the palace,’ and as the soldiers reformed the escort around him he thought to himself, Aye, that’ll do it. I believe I’ve made my point.

A ship’s captain had to be on duty, or ready to be summoned by those who were, at any hour of day or night. Once Hal had set to sea, he did not allow Judith’s presence to distract him from his responsibility to his ship and all who sailed in her. To do so would have been to take undue liberties with the admiration and affection his crew felt for him. Nor would Judith have allowed it. She knew what it was to be a leader and would not have wanted to come between Hal and his duties, nor would she have respected him if he had allowed that to happen.

But if there was one hour of the twenty-four in each day that they could dedicate to one another, rather than anything or anyone else, it was the one that preceded the dawn. This was the time when the ship seemed at its quietest, when the sea and wind were most often at their calmest and when they could take advantage of the peace and the silence to express, whether in words, or actions, or both, their love for one another.

Hal could never sate his desire for Judith. He loved the moment when he thrust into her, plunging so deep that he could hardly tell where his body ended and hers began, fusing as one being and experiencing the same ecstatic moment of release with such intensity that for that one blissful moment there was nothing and no one in the whole universe but them. And yet for all that shared passion, there was no moment more soothing to Hal’s heart than waking to see Judith still asleep, her lovely face just visible in the darkness of the cabin, her breathing soft and gentle. There was something so peaceful about her, so trusting. She felt completely safe with him, and the depth of her trust and love for him filled Hal with a desire to keep her and protect her for as long as he lived.

One morning, however, when they were eight days and around a thousand miles out of Mitsiwa, heading almost due south along the east coast of Africa, rarely more than thirty miles or so from land, Hal was awoken by a groaning sound. When he opened his eyes, Judith was not lying peacefully beside him but was curled up, with her back towards him and her knees pulled tight to her chest. From the noises she was making, she was in a great deal of physical distress.