‘It was then that I called upon God for guidance and He did not forsake me. I felt His presence and heard His voice as He told me to make good my escape and showed me the means by which I could do so. There, before me, was the captain’s bed, very much like your own, Captain Courtney, though somewhat narrower in design.’
The mood lightened as everyone realized why Hal’s bed was unusually wide. Pett affected to ignore it and said, ‘I knew at once what to do. I used the bed to smash out the stern windows, then threw the bed itself out into the night and threw myself out immediately afterwards. I cannot swim …’
The laughter turned to gasps of astonishment. ‘But how …?’ Big Daniel began.
‘I know, Mr Fisher, I ask myself the same thing: how did I manage both to find the floating bed out there in the darkness and make my way to it through the water? I honestly have no idea …’
That, at least is the absolute truth, Pett thought to himself, then spoke again. ‘All I can say is that I found myself on the bed, adrift on the waters. After a short while I saw a flash of light so bright it was like staring at the sun, so fierce that it felt as though my very eyes were being burned. A second later came the terrible sound of the saltpetre exploding, like the crack of doom. It was deafening. The only thing I could hear was the ringing in my ears, but in time that too passed and then … then there was nothing. It was a calm night, with very little wind and the thing that struck me with a terrible force was the silence. The ship and all the men on it had vanished, vanished utterly, leaving not a sight nor a sound behind.’
There was silence, too, around the table as everyone took in the awfulness of what Pett had described. He finally concluded, ‘I remained adrift, at the mercy of the elements, until I was spotted by the lookout on the Delft, to whose sharp eyes I owe a very great debt of gratitude.’
‘Well we all know what happened after that,’ said Hal, wanting to nip any chance of further arguments in the bud. ‘Now, I’m sure we’re all keen to retire for—’
‘Excuse me, Captain,’ Tromp interrupted.
‘Yes?’
‘You asked me to tell my story—’
‘Well, I’m sure it can wait until tomorrow night.’
‘It’s only a very short story.’
‘Come on, Cap’n, give the man his turn,’ Ned Tyler piped up.
‘Aye, an’ give the rest of us a nice little tot of rum!’ added Big Daniel.
‘A very little tot,’ Hal conceded. ‘After all, we are assured that Captain Tromp’s is only a very short story. So go ahead, sir, since the table seems to demand it. Say your piece.’
Tromp looked around the table. He cleared his throat, and then he began, ‘There was an incident with a girl in Batavia. Her name was Christina. She was an admiral’s daughter.’
Now Hal was intrigued and amused, as were the others at the table. The Bough’s crewmen made a few suggestive remarks under their breath, which Judith affected not to hear, though a smile was playing around her lips as Hal said, ‘Go on.’
Tromp smiled. ‘It was the oldest story of them all. We danced, we laughed, we loved …’ He cocked an eyebrow. ‘And then one day she told me that she was with child. Worse, she told her father. I admit I thought he would explode like a powder charge with a short fuse. He liked me well enough as an officer on his ship, but as the man who had put my seed in his precious daughter?’
‘So did he explode?’ Hal asked.
Tromp shook his head. ‘No, worse. The admiral was calm, cold as the North Sea in midwinter. He told me that he detested the very idea of having me in his family, but nevertheless, there was no choice. I must marry the girl within the week.’
‘So you fled.’
‘I did not love Christina and she did not love me. I don’t believe so. Not really. So I thought about an idea that had been brewing in my mind for some time. First, I went back to the admiral. I said, “Fine, I will marry your daughter. But it must be a proper wedding, with a church and a feast afterwards, so that people believe it is a true love-match. And for this we will need two weeks at the very least.” He did not want to agree, but he could see I had a point. It looked better my way, less shame for him and his family. Then I went to the craftsmen of Batavia and I told them, “Make me these relics, at least six of each kind, in ten days!” Then I went to a ship on which I had served, where I knew all the crew and I said, “I have a plan. Come with me and we will all get rich!”’
‘And they believed you?’ Hal asked, incredulously.
‘Ach! They believed whatever they wanted. Most of them were pressed men. They didn’t want to be rotting to death in the East Indies. They wanted to go home. I told them, “I will get you back to Holland with plenty of gold in your pockets and all the girls will come running.”’
As he recounted what had happened, Tromp spoke with such enthusiasm that Hal could understand exactly how a group of impoverished, uneducated, mostly illiterate sailors, thousands of miles from their home, could easily be persuaded to join his madcap scheme for self-enrichment.
‘This was the crew of the Delft?’ Hal asked.
‘Absolutely!’ Tromp replied. ‘So, the days go by. I am very nervous. I keep thinking, my God, if these damn natives don’t make the relics on time I’m going to be stuck here with Christina and her father – and I should say also her mother, who was even worse – for the rest of my days. But two days before the wedding, the relics were ready. I put them on a cart and drove it to the docks. The Delft men were waiting for me. We loaded the crates and set sail. We were free! But … and this is maybe something I should have said before.’
Tromp looked around the table and leaned forward, and somehow the others felt compelled to lean in, too, as if being drawn physically into his story. ‘The Delft was a very special boat. For she was not a navy boat, nor even a Dutch East India Company boat. She belonged to the admiral, Christina’s father. She was his little pleasure barge.’
The tension Tromp had created was broken with an outburst of laughter and ironic cheers around the table. ‘I salute you, Captain,’ said Aboli, once his shoulders had stopped shaking with mirth. ‘You take the daughter of a great chief. Now she is no longer a virgin, because of you …’
‘I cannot be sure of that,’ Tromp observed. ‘She did not act like a girl who was doing it for the very first time.’
‘But you fill her belly with your seed and dishonour her before her father and mother and all her tribe. And then you run away … in her father’s ship. Why are you not dead? If you had done that to the Monomatapa – the chief of my tribe – he would have sent his fiercest warriors after you. They would have found you and …’ Aboli sighed with bloodthirsty pleasure, ‘they would have killed you very slowly, and painfully, until you were screaming and begging for death.’
‘Believe me,’ said Tromp. ‘That is exactly how Christina’s father feels. I can guarantee you that every captain of every Dutch ship that has docked in Batavia since I left has been told to hunt me down. There will be a price on my head, whether it is delivered back to Batavia on top of my living, breathing shoulders, or in a bloodstained sack. So now you have a choice, Captain. If you turn us over to the Dutch we are dead men. But your ship has been at war for months. You have lost men. The only reason you can sail this ship at all is because you have turned African warriors into sailors. But they belong here in Africa. You, however, are currently on a course for the Cape. Beyond that lies the Atlantic, and then you can set a course for England, aye, and Holland, too. I think you want to go home, Captain Courtney. You will need sailors who know the cold waters of the north. So take me and my men … take us as your crew … and we will take you home.’
ett heard voices. His head was filled with them. Sometimes they spoke in unison, like a choir, but at others they were as disputatious as a parliament. The urge to kill, however, was more than a matter of a voice in his mind, though the presence of the Saint was certainly part of it. No, the need was something deeper that he felt in his guts, i
n his heart, in his entire being. It ran in his blood. It seeped into his bones. He was in every sense a man possessed.
He could not tell what brought this feeling on, but he knew it once it had seized him. ‘Why so soon?’ he asked himself. When he had first taken up his mantle for the Lord, Pett had been known to spend many months or even years preparing a single swing of his reaper’s scythe. He had learnt that almost as important as the ability to kill was the ability to bide one’s time, to be patient. Yet only a few days had passed since he strangled his fellow prisoner aboard the Delft, and Goddings had met his end barely more than a week before that. The intervals between each event seemed to be shortening, as if the more he killed, the less satisfaction he derived from any one individual death. Now he was compelled to do it again and it struck him that if he were able to despatch two people at one time this might sate him more fully and keep the necessity of repeating the act at bay for that little time longer. And there were, of course, two potential victims lying side-by-side just a few paces from Pett’s tiny cabin, in the captain’s quarters.
To kill both Courtney and the Nazet woman at the same time was, of course, a wildly risky undertaking. For a start, both were proven fighters, well able to defend themselves, and both probably exceeded Pett’s abilities in their swordfighting skills. Then there was the matter of covering his tracks. Had the fire not done the job for him, it would have been hard enough for Pett to slip the knife that had killed Goddings in amongst the gear of a known malcontent. This captain and his lady, however, were very evidently loved by the crew of the Golden Bough, so that option was not available to him.
Pett didn’t care. He had to do this. The Saint had yet to enter the babble of voices currently echoing in his skull, but he felt sure it was only a matter of time. The deep physical yearning could not be denied. And it was possible to commit the act, he was sure of it. He would do it quickly and quietly and then, if no other idea presented itself, he would repeat his trick with the captain’s bed – a far more commodious vessel in this case – and make his way to the mainland. He had seen the shores of Africa on the western horizon often over the past few days. He could surely reach them easily enough. He would slip over the side and make his way ashore before anyone even knew that Captain Courtney was dead.
He was a little troubled by the thought of killing a woman, for he had never done so before. He prided himself on being a civilized man, who carried out the Lord’s work, and women, in Pett’s view, had an essential innocence and fragility that made them improper targets. On the other hand, another voice argued, this woman was not innocent or fragile. She had gone to war of her own free will. She had chosen to march and fight alongside and against men, as if she were one of them. That made her fair game.
She would say that she had been called by God to defend her country and the Tabernacle it contained. But this was his calling and it was just as holy. There were others who killed. He knew that. But none was as good as him and he took pride in his work. When other children had been playing Put Pin or Heads and Points, he had been learning the use of the dagger, the sword, and the steel sling. He had been studying the properties of different poisons. He had been learning the many and fascinating techniques of taking another human life, up close, and with consummate skill. The business of Courtney and Nazet was just another test.
And Pett had never failed one yet.
For his weapon he chose a marlinspike, a foot-long steel tool resembling a giant sewing needle that the sailors used to work with the ship’s rope. He had purloined it shortly after coming aboard the Golden Bough and had been sharpening it ever since, in whatever private moments he could muster aboard the crowded vessel, until its tip was sharp enough to cut straight through human skin and muscle to the delicate organs beneath.
Pett placed the spike inside the right sleeve of his shirt so that it lay along the inside of his lower arm, cool against his skin, with its tip held in place between two of his cupped fingers, and slipped out of his cabin. His only other tool was a simple ship’s nail that he held in his mouth, between two pursed lips. He did not immediately make his way to the captain’s quarters, but took the time and trouble to establish the situation aboard ship, making himself aware of anyone or anything that might present a potential threat to his ambitions. Up above, the stars filled the sky with that extraordinary profusion that struck Pett as so typical of the tropics. He stood for a moment on the quarterdeck in the shadow cast by the waxing moon, listening to the hushed voices of the watch. He recognized the deep resonant voice of the African, Aboli, and he could see, over by the mainmast, a group of Amadoda bunched around one of their number who was telling them a story, a tale about a talking lion by the look of it, for his arms were raised before him, fingers hooked like claws.
A board creaked above him and his muscles tensed. He held his breath. Someone was coming. Will Stanley doing his rounds as the officer on watch, he guessed. Pett slipped behind the quarterdeck ladder and froze. He did not need Stanley asking questions as to why he was on deck in the middle of the night, let alone coming close enough to see the nail poking out of his mouth. Bare feet on the ladder were followed by the man himself, but by some stroke of luck Stanley’s head turned to larboard as he came down onto the main deck, close enough that Pett could smell the tobacco he was chewing.
Stanley did not see him but walked over to the rail and looked out across the bay, hands clasped behind his back. In a few quick steps Pett could be on him. He could stab the spike deep into his kidney and drag him back into the shadows. He could hide the body in his own cabin.
But what if Stanley were missed and the alarm raised before Pett had dealt with Courtney? What if the boatswain managed to scream before Pett had finished the job of silencing him forever?
Stanley turned and Pett saw his face in profile as the boatswain looked along the rail towards the bow, his frown visible even in the gloom. Pett did not know what Stanley had seen, or thought he’d seen, and did not care. All that mattered was that Stanley muttered something under his breath and marched away down the deck. Pett let the breath seep out of his mouth, ears still sifting the night sounds for danger.
‘Now, do it now,’ the Saint said and Pett thrilled to hear the sound of that, of all voices, at last. His guide and protector was with him and all would be well.
He moved out from behind the steps and, crouching low, scurried to Captain Courtney’s cabin. He raised his right arm so that the marlinspike slid back inside his shirtsleeve and with his freed fingers took the ship’s nail from between his lips. Then he slowly inserted it into the lock. His lock picks and his weapons had gone down to the sea bed with the Earl of Cumberland but that was merely an inconvenience and the old ship’s nail, which he had bent for his purpose, would do the job well enough.
Just then a thought occurred to him. Had not the path been laid out for him since the captain of the Delft pulled him from the ocean? Had this young Courtney not been served up like a banquet?
‘You think we do everything for you?’ the Saint asked.
Nevertheless, Pett turned the handle and, as he had known it would, the latch clicked. Tucking the nail into the waistband of his breeches he pushed the door open, slipped inside and closed it behind him, almost laughing at the Lord’s designs. It was a source of constant wonder that God could play His part even to the most infinitesimal detail, the mundane minutiae such as a man’s neglecting to lock his own door.
And now there was Courtney, deeply asleep. Dreaming of a golden future, if Pett were to put money on it. Dreaming of heroic deeds and conquest. Of his dynasty perhaps, for there was no doubting that the young captain believed himself to be a man of destiny as his father had been. His woman was asleep next to him, to his left, lying on her side with her face against his neck. The white of her petticoats made a stark contrast against the dark skin of her bare arms and legs, and for a moment Pett allowed himself to watch her. Then he moved closer.
A board beneath his foot creaked and he cur
sed inwardly, holding still as Judith stirred and made herself comfortable. She did not wake. An inexperienced man might be breathing too fast now, his nerves getting the better of him, but Pett’s breathing was deep and natural. He edged closer, moving around the bed until he stood over Henry Courtney who was asleep on his back, his face turned up to the low-beamed ceiling.
Pett flexed the muscles of his stomach and took a deep, silent breath, flooding his blood with energy and releasing the tension that always built before a kill.
Courtney’s breathing was deep and even as Pett slid the marlinspike out of his shirtsleeve, held it in his right hand and drew his hand back to strike. As a weapon the spike was perfectly suited to stabbing, but lacked the sharp-edged blade required for cutting. He would therefore have to work with great precision, leaning over the bed and in one movement clasping his left hand over Courtney’s mouth while using the right to push rather than stab the blade so that it went into the side of the neck, beside the jawbone and just below the ear, and cutting the right carotid artery in as smooth a motion as possible. There would be a lot of blood, on the body, on the sheets, on Pett himself, and unless he moved with exceptional speed the woman would wake to a nightmare scene. At that point it was simply a matter of stabbing her with as much speed and violence as possible, striking her repeatedly so as to silence her before she could scream for help.
Just then the cabin was washed with a thin silvery light and Pett looked out of the stern windows. A skein of cloud had torn apart to reveal stars and a sliver of moon and their glow illuminated the captain’s quarters, and Pett’s blood turned cold in his veins. For there on a table at the head of Courtney’s bed, caught in the heart of the shaft of light spilling through the glass, was a bible, the gold inlaid cross shining against the black leather cover.
In that moment Pett’s mind floundered as he himself had when he’d first jumped from the flaming Earl of Cumberland into the sea. Was this a sign from the Saint? Was this the Lord’s way of telling him to spare Henry Courtney? Surely not. And yet the Saint had fallen strangely quiet. Normally, it was at this moment above all that his voice was clearest, yet on this occasion he was nowhere to be heard.