The Tiger’s Prey

‘Your ship was overrun by pirates. You’d surrendered,’ observed Dorian.

‘I never surrendered.’

‘Then you gave a convincing impression of doing so.’

‘If you want to press the matter, you can take it to the Admiralty court in London.’

Tom swallowed. He had left England fifteen years earlier as a fugitive from justice, wanted for the killing of his eldest brother, Billy. A black-hearted man, quick to fury, Billy had tried to kill Tom in a midnight ambush on the Thames docks. Tom had killed him in self-defence, not recognizing him in the dark, but that would count for little in an English court. If he went back, all he’d face would be the hangman’s noose.

Inchbird couldn’t have known that, but he sensed Tom’s weakness. ‘If you wish to pursue the case, I will gladly give you passage to London aboard my ship.’

‘I risked my life to save your ship.’ An excited chatter arose from the sailors on deck. The Centaurus had come alongside, and Aboli was helping Sarah and Yasmini aboard. ‘I risked my crew, my ship, and my family,’ Tom insisted.

Inchbird softened his tone. ‘You must understand, sir, my hands are tied. If I concede anything now, without consulting my owners, I will never see another command. For myself, I would gladly give you everything aboard for what you did. But for that, you will have to ask the supercargo.’

Tom nodded. The master was responsible for the ship, but the contents of her hold belonged to the supercargo. ‘Then I had best speak to him.’

Sarah and Yasmini climbed the ladder to the quarterdeck. Sarah put her hands on her hips and looked around the carnage on deck.

‘The trouble with men,’ she declared to Yasmini, ‘is that they always leave things in such a mess.’ She turned to Inchbird. ‘I apologize if my husband has caused your ship any distress.’

Inchbird gave an awkward bow. ‘We were just discussing that very matter.’

‘Your husband saved us all,’ said another voice. The woman Tom had earlier rescued from Legrange came up the companion-way. Her voice was low and husky, tinged with an accent Tom couldn’t place. She’d changed into a new dress from the one Legrange had sliced open with his sword. It was a simple blue calico that mirrored the sea around them, cinched just below her full breasts. Her hair was tied back in a ribbon, with a stray wisp floating just above her neck. She couldn’t be much past twenty, but there was strength and wisdom in her face beyond her age. Every man on deck stared at her. An hour ago, they’d seen her most private parts exposed, but she bore their attention now with unflinching equanimity.

‘I hope, Captain Inchbird, you have not forgotten your manners,’ she said. ‘These men saved our lives, and I do not even know their names.’

Tom gave a little bow. ‘My name is Tom,’ he said. ‘My brother, Dorian; his wife, Yasmini; and my wife, Sarah. I am glad we could have been of service.’

‘I am Ana Duarte. And those pirates would have robbed us of everything.’ A small shudder rippled through her body. ‘I understand why Captain Inchbird cannot offer you salvage for his ship. But I do not want you to think we are ungrateful. Whatever the pirates left of our goods, please take what you feel is fair recompense.’

Tom waited for Inchbird to protest. However the captain had gone curiously silent.

‘I’m glad of your concern, ma’am, but I fear the supercargo may not like you being so free and easy with his goods. Especially if he is of the same mind as Captain Inchbird here.’

She tilted her head. ‘They are my goods.’

‘Yours?’

‘I am the supercargo.’

‘You?’ Tom could not hide his astonishment.

Sarah jabbed him in the ribs with her elbow. ‘Tom Courtney, you great booby. You’ve traded up and down the coast of Africa with every chieftain, brigand and cannibal you could find to take your goods. And now you are flummoxed to find a woman who can trade?’

Ana and Sarah shared a glance – some intuitive understanding that made Tom feel dull and dumb. Caught between them, he didn’t notice the strange look Captain Inchbird shot him when Sarah spoke his name.

Sarah looped her arm through his elbow and tugged him away. ‘Come,’ she said sweetly. ‘Miss Duarte has suffered enough for today without having you gawping at her. Let us choose a couple of bales of cloth, to pay for our powder and shot, and then leave these good people to continue their voyage in peace.’

In fact, it took the rest of the day and the next before they parted. Sarah and Yasmini tended the wounded, while Tom, Dorian and Aboli helped Inchbird’s men repair damage to the Dowager and jury-rig a fresh topmast. She had lost almost half her crew, and Centaurus’ men were needed to help splice her rigging and splint her masts before she could get underway again.

‘But we can make Cape Town, if the weather holds fair,’ said Inchbird. ‘And there I can find a replacement crew to get me home to London.’ Much remained to be done, but Tom could feel Inchbird’s eagerness to be left alone with his ship, and he respected that. They said their farewells and cast off. The wind freshened. As night fell, Sarah and Tom stood at Centaurus’ taffrail and watched the sun sink towards the hidden African continent in the west.

‘You’re thinking about that Duarte woman,’ said Sarah.

Tom started. ‘I am not.’

‘If only we had a son, she’s the sort of woman I would want for his wife.’

Tom hugged her to him. Ever since they had married, he and Sarah had tried desperately to conceive. A few years ago, she had become pregnant while they were trading on the Lunga river; Tom had felt their life was about to become complete. But she had miscarried, and since then, despite all their efforts, her womb had remained barren.

‘Do you ever wish you’d stayed in England?’ she asked. ‘Married a nice Devon girl and settled down at High Weald with a dozen children?’

He stroked her cheek. ‘Never. Anyway, High Weald belonged to Black Billy.’ Under the laws of primogeniture, the entire fortune passed to the eldest son. Billy, already married to the wealthiest heiress in Devon, had hastened their father to his grave to get his hands on the inheritance, though he had not lived to enjoy it.

‘The estate will have passed to Billy’s son Francis.’ Tom paused, remembering a red-faced baby cradled in his mother’s arms. ‘I suppose he must be fully grown now, and lord of High Weald.’

Sarah smoothed her skirts against the stiffening breeze. ‘Time deals unkindly with us all, Tom Courtney.’

He stared at the horizon, where the last tongue of sunlight licked the sea. Waves hissed along Centaurus’ hull as it carved through the water, south-west to Cape Town at the southern tip of Africa. The town which was the closest thing he had to a home since he had been driven from High Weald. In Cape Town they would refit and re-provision, sell their goods and buy more – and then many months later another voyage would begin.

He sighed. He grudged nothing in his life, but he had not forgotten how it had felt growing up: the big old house, the chapel with so many Courtneys buried in its crypt, the servants who had nursed his grandfather and whose children would one day serve generations of Courtneys yet unborn. The sense of belonging, that however far the family tree might spread, it remained rooted strong and deep in that place. He had cut himself off from it, and not yet found new soil in which to replant himself.

He put his arm around Sarah and kissed the top of her head.

‘I wonder whatever became of baby Francis,’ he mused.

Rain lashed the big house. A high wind howled around its turrets and gables, slamming the loose shutters on their hinges. All the windows were dark, except for the last room on the upper floor.

There, in the master bedroom, a single candle guttered and flickered on the mantelpiece, casting monstrous shadows around the vast room. Wind howled down the chimney, rattling the dead embers in the grate. Two figures sat in chairs drawn up beside the fireplace, though the fire had died hours ago, when the last of the coal ran out. A woman stitched her embroidery, while a young man pretended to read a book by the meagre light. It had been opened on the same page for the last fifteen minutes.

The woman gave a little cry. Her son looked up.

‘Are you all right, Mother?’

She sucked blood from her finger. ‘It’s so hard to see in this light, Francis.’

Alice Leighton – once Alice Grenville, later Alice Courtney – looked at her son, touched by the concern on his face. Not yet eighteen, his body was fully grown, big and strong. But there was a softness in his heart that made her worry for his future out there in the wide and wicked world. His jet-black hair framed a handsome face with smooth amber skin and lustrous dark eyes. A rebellious black forelock curled over his forehead, almost touching his left eyelid. She’d seen the way the girls in the village looked at him. It was the same way she’d looked at his father, once upon a time.

The shutters flapped and banged, like the devil himself hammering on the door. Francis closed his book, and rummaged in the grate with the poker. All he stirred was ashes.

‘Do you know where Father is?’

His father – his stepfather, technically, though the only one he’d known – had spent most of the last week locked in the library, going through papers he would not let them see. The one time Francis had tried to go in to him, Sir Walter had cursed him and slammed the door.

Alice put down her embroidery. Her dark hair was streaked with premature grey, her eyes sunken, her grey skin drawn tight across her cheeks. Francis still remembered when she’d been beautiful and gay. His earliest memories were like that: his mother returning from some ball or party, coming into his nursery to kiss him goodnight, her skin radiant and her eyes sparkling. He could almost smell the scent of her perfume as she leaned over his bed, her peach-soft skin against his cheek and the diamonds glittering at her throat in the candlelight. The diamonds had been the first to go.

A bang echoed through the empty house, shivering the floorboards and making the coals rattle in the grate. Francis leaped to his feet.