The Tiger’s Prey. Wilbur Smith
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.’
‘You will not stop me?’
Aboli stepped aside from the door. ‘You are safe, here. But if you are determined to leave …’
‘Safe?’ Francis echoed. ‘Tom Courtney killed my father.’ He had meant it to shock, but Aboli merely nodded. ‘You do not deny it?’
‘I knew your father from the day he was born,’ said Aboli in measured tones. ‘I can tell you from my heart, he was an evil man. A week before William died, Tom went to High Weald seeking help for their brother, and William attacked him. He would have killed Tom, but Tom was the better swordsman, and in the end it was he who had his sword at William’s throat. Yet when Tom tried to make the final blow, he could not do it. His hand would not obey him. A week later, in London, William ambushed Tom on the docks without provocation; he watched other men do his work, and when they failed he drew his pistol to shoot Tom dead himself. I was there. Tom would have died that instant if he had not put his sword through your father’s chest.’
He went on, making no allowances for the impact his words had on the boy. ‘And even then, I think if your father had shown his face – if Tom had known who he really was – Tom would not have been able to strike the blow.’
‘Why are you saying this?’ Francis demanded. ‘To turn me against my father?’
‘It is the truth,’ said Aboli. ‘You may accept it, or not: it is your choice. But if you cling to a lie, eventually it will destroy you.’ He gave a small bow. ‘I will leave you to dress.’
After he had gone, Francis sat a long time on the edge of the bed. The storms that had raged inside him had blown themselves out; he hardly knew who he was any more. He looked at the clothes on the chair, and was not sure he had the strength to put them on. Aboli’s words chased themselves around inside his head until he thought it would split open.
There were some things he could not remember from the night before, but one fact was branded in memory. Tom could have killed him, but he had not done so.
And that one fact had upended everything Francis believed in. He remembered what his mother had told him: