Текст книги "Power of the Sword"

Автор книги: Wilbur Smith

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Deck-load! he bellowed across the diminishing circle of the main net to where Swart Hendrick worked at his own winch, stripped to the waist and glistening like polished ebony.

Deck-load! he bellowed back at Lothar, revelling in the physical effort which allowed him to flaunt his superior strength in the faces of his crew. Already the holds of the trawlers were brimming full, each of them had over a hundred and fifty tons aboard, and now they were going to deck-load.

Again it was a risk. Once loaded, the boats could not be lightened again until they reached harbour and were pumped out into the factory. Deck-loading would burden each hull with another hundred tons of dead weight, far over the safe limit. If the weather turned, if the wind switched into the north-west, then the giant sea that would build up rapidly would hammer the overloaded trawlers into the cold green depths.

The weather will hold, Lothar assured himself as he toiled at the winch. He was on the crest of a wave; nothing could stop him now. He had taken one fearsome risk and it had paid him with nearly a thousand tons of fish, four deck-loads of fish, worth fifty pounds a ton in profits. Fifty thousand pounds in a single throw. The greatest stroke of fortune of his life. He could have lost his net or his boat or his life, instead he had paid off his debts with one throw of the net.

By God,he whispered, as he slaved at the winch, nothing can go wrong now, nothing can touch me now. I'm free and clear. So with the holds full they began to deck-load the trawlers, filling them to the tops of the gunwales with a silver swamp of fish into which the crew sank waist-deep as they dried the net and swung the long handle of the dip.

Over the four trawlers hovered a dense white cloud of seabirds, adding their voracious squawking and screeching to the cacophony of the winches, diving into the purse of the net to gorge themselves until they could eat no more, could not even fly but drifted away on the current, bloated and uncomfortable, feathers started and throats straining to keep down the contents of their swollen crops. At the bows and stern of each trawler stood a man with a sharpened boat-hook, with which he stabbed and hacked at the big sharks that thrashed at the surface in their efforts to reach the mass of trapped fish. Their razor-sharp triangular fangs could cut through even the tough mesh of the net.

While the birds and sharks gorged, the hulls of the trawlers sank lower and still lower into the water, until at last a little after the sun had nooned even Lothar had to call enough. There was no room for another load; each time they swung one aboard it merely slithered over the side to feed the circling sharks.

Lothar switched off the winch. There was probably another hundred tons of fish still floating in the main net, most of them drowned and crushed. Empty the net, he ordered. Let them go! Get the net on board. The four trawlers, each of them so low in the water that seawater washed in through the scuppers at each roll, and their speed reduced to an ungainly waddling motion like a string of heavily pregnant ducks, turned towards the land in line astern with Lothar leading them.

Behind them they left an area of almost half a square mile of the ocean carpeted with dead fish, floating silver belly up, as thick as autumn leaves on the forest floor. On top of them drifted thousands of satiated seagulls and beneath them the big sharks swirled and feasted still.

The exhausted crews dragged themselves through the quick-sands of still quivering kicking fish that glutted the deck to the forecastle companionway. Below deck they threw themselves still soaked with fish-slime and seawater onto their cramped bunks.

In the wheelhouse Lothar drank two mugs of hot coffee then checked the chronometer above his head.

Four hours run back to the factory, he said. Just time for our lessons. Oh, Pa! the boy pleaded. Not today, today is special. Do we have to learn today? There was no school at Walvis Bay. The nearest was the German School at Swakopmund, thirty kilometres away.

Lothar had been both father and mother to the boy from the very day of his birth. He had taken him wet and bloody from the child-bed. His mother had never even laid eyes upon him.

That had been part of their unnatural bargain. He had reared the boy alone, unaided except for the milk that the brown Nama wet-nurses had provided. They had grown so close that Lothar could not bear to be parted from him for a single day. He had even taken over his education rather than send him away.

No day is that special, he told Manfred. Every day we learn. Muscles don't make a man strong. He tapped his head. This is what makes a man strong. Get the books! Manfred rolled his eyes at Da Silva for sympathy but he knew better than to argue further.

Take the wheel. Lothar handed over to the old boatman and went to sit beside his son at the small chart-table. Not arithmetic. He shook his head. It's English today., I hate English! Manfred declared vehemently. I hate English and I hate the English. Lothar nodded. Yes! he agreed. The English are our enemies. They have always been and always will be our enemies.

That is why we have to arm ourselves with their weapons.

That is why we learn the language, so when the time comes we will be able to use it in the battle against them. He spoke in English for the first time that day. Manfred started to reply in Afrikaans, the South African Dutch patois that had only obtained recognition as a separate language and been adopted as an official language of the Union of South Africa in 1918, over a year before Manfred was born.

Lothar held up his hand to stop him.

English, he admonished. Speak English only. For an hour they worked together, reading aloud from the King James version of the Bible and from a two-month-old COPY of the Cape Times, and then Lothar set him a page of dictation. The labour in this unfamiliar language made Manfred fidget and frown and nibble his pencil, until at last he could contain himself no longer.

Tell me about Grandpa, and the oath! he wheedled his father.

Lothar grinned. You're a cunning little monkey, aren't you. Anything to get out of work. Please, Pa, I've told you a hundred times. Tell me again. It's a special day. Lothar glanced out of the wheelhouse window at the precious silver cargo. The boy was right, it was a very special day. Today he was free and clear of debt, after five long hard years.

All right. He nodded. I'll tell you again, but in English. And Manfred shut his exercise book with an enthusiastic snap and leaned across the table, his amber eyes glowing with anticipation.

The story of the great rebellion had been repeated so often that Manfred had it by heart and he corrected any discrepancy or departure from the original, or called his father back if he left out any of the details.

Well then, Lothar started, when the treacherous English King George V declared war on Kaiser Wilhelm of Germany in 1914, your grandpa and I knew our duty. We kissed your grandmother goodbye What colour was my grandmother's hair? Manfred demanded.

Your grandmother was a beautiful German noblewoman, and her hair was the colour of ripe wheat in the sunlight. just like mine, Manfred prompted him.

Just like yours, Lothar smiled. And Grandpa and I rode out on our war-horses to join old General Maritz and his six hundred heroes on the banks of the orange river where he was about to go out against old Slim Jannie Smuts., Slim was the Afrikaans word for tricky or treacherous, and Manfred nodded avidly.

Go on, Pa, go on! When Lothar reached the description of the first battle in which Jannie Smuts troops had smashed the rebellion with machine-guns and artillery, the boy's eyes clouded with sorrow.

But you fought like demons, didn't you, Pa? We fought like madmen, but there were too many of them and they were armed with great cannons and machine-guns.

Then your grandpa was hit in the stomach and I put him up on my horse and carried him off the battlefield. Fat tears glistened in the boy's eyes now as Lothar ended.

When at last he was dying your grandfather took the old black Bible from the saddle bag on which his head was pillowed, and he made me swear an oath upon the book. I know the oath, Manfred cut in. 'Let me tell it? What was the oath? Lothar nodded agreement.

Grandpa said: "Promise me, my son, with your hand upon the book, promise me that the war with the English will never end." Yes, Lothar nodded again. That was the oath, the solemn oath I made to my father as he lay dying. He reached out and took the boy's hand and squeezed it hard.

Old Da Silva broke the mood; he coughed and hawked and spat through the wheelhouse window. You should be ashamed, filling the child's head with hatred and death, he said, and Lothar stood up abruptly.

Guard your mouth, old man, he warned. This is no business of yours. Thank the Holy Virgin, Da Silva grumbled, for that is devil's business indeed. Lothar scowled and turned away from him. Manfred, that's enough for today. Put the books away. He swung out of the wheelhouse and scrambled up onto the roof. As he settled comfortably against the coaming, he took a long black cheroot from his top pocket and bit off the tip. He spat the stub overside and patted his pockets for the matches. The boy stuck his head over the edge of the coaming, hesitated shyly and when his father did not send him away, sometimes he was moody and withdrawn and wanted to be alone, Manfred crept up and sat beside him.

Lothar cupped his hands around the flare of the match and sucked the cheroot smoke down deeply into his lungs and then he held up the match and let the wind extinguish it. He flicked it overboard, and let his arm fall casually over his son's shoulders.

The boy shivered with delight, physical display of affection from his father was so rare, and he pressed closer to him and sat still as he could, barely breathing so as not to disturb or spoil the moment.

The little fleet ran in towards the land, and turned the sharp northern horn of the bay. The seabirds were returning with them, squadrons of yellow-throated gannets in long regular lines skimming low over the cloudy green waters, and the lowering sun gilded them and burned upon the tall bronze dunes that rose like a mountain range behind the tiny insignificant cluster of buildings that stood at the edge of the bay.

I hope Willem has had enough sense to fire up the boilers, Lothar murmured. We have enough work here to keep the factory busy all night and all tomorrow. We'll never be able to can all this fish, the boy whispered.

No, we will have to turn most of it to fish oil and fish meal, Lothar broke off and stared across the bay. Manfred felt his body stiffen and then, to the boy's dismay, he lifted his arm off his son's shoulders and shaded his eyes.

The bloody fool, he growled. With his hunter's vision he had picked out the distant stack of the factory boilerhouse.

It was smokeless. What the hell is he playing at? Lothar leapt to his feet and balanced easily against the trawler's motion. He has let the boilers go cold. It will take five or six hours to refire them and our fish will begin to spoil.

Damn him, damn him to hell! Raging still, Lothar dropped down to the wheelhouse. As he yanked the foghorn to alert the factory, he snapped, With the money from the fish I'm going to buy one of Marconi's newfangled short-wave radio machines so we can talk to the factory while we are at sea; then this sort of thing won't happen. He broke off again and stared. What the hell is going on! He snatched the binoculars from the bin next to the control panel and focused them.

They were close enough now to see the small crowd at the main doors of the factory. The cutters and packers in their rubber aprons and boots.

They should have been at their places in the factory.

There is Willem. The factory manager was standing on the end of the long wooden unloading jetty that thrust out into the still waters of the bay on its heavy teak pilings.

What the hell is he playing at, the boilers cold and everybody hanging about outside? There were two strangers with Willem, standing one on each side of him. They were dressed in dark civilian suits and they had that self-important, puffed-up look of petty officialdom that Lothar knew and dreaded.

Tax collectors or other civil servants, Lothar whispered, and his anger cooled and was replaced with unease. No minion of the government had ever brought him good news.

Trouble, he guessed. Just now when I have a thousand tons of fish to cook and can, Then he noticed the motor cars. They had been screened by the factory building until Da Silva made the turn into the main channel that would bring the trawler up to the off-loading jetty. There were two cars. One was a battered old T model Ford, but the other, even though covered with a pale coating of fine desert dust, was a much grander machine, and Lothar felt his heart trip and his breathing alter.

There could not be two similar vehicles in the whole of Africa. it was an elephantine Daimler, painted daffodil yellow. The last time he had seen it, it had been parked outside the offices of the Courtney Mining and Finance Company in the Main Street of Windhoek.

Lothar had been on his way to discuss an extension of his loans from the company. He had stood on the opposite side of the wide dusty unpaved street and watched as she came down the broad marble steps, flanked by two of her obsequious employees in dark suits and high celluloid collars; one of them had opened the door of the magnificent yellow machine for her and bowed her into the driver's seat while the other had run to take the crank handle. Scorning a chauffeur, she had driven off herself, not even glancing in Lothar's direction, and left him pale and trembling with the conflicting emotions that the mere sight of her had evoked. That had been almost a year before.

Now he roused himself as Da Silva laid the heavily burdened trawler alongside the jetty. They were so low in the water that Manfred had to toss the bow mooring-line up to one of the men on the jetty above him.

Lothar, these men, they want to speak to you. Willem called down. He was sweating nervously as he jerked a thumb at the man who flanked him.

Are you Mr Lothar De La Rey? the smaller of the two strangers demanded, pushing his dusty fedora hat onto the back of his head and mopping the pale line of skin that was exposed beneath the brim.

That's right. Lothar glared up at him with his clenched fists upon his hips. And who the hell are your Are you the owner of the South west African Canning and Fishing Company? Ja! Lothar answered him in Afrikaans. I am the owner and what of it? I am the sheriff of the court in Windhoek, and I have here a writ of attachment over all the assets of the company. The sheriff brandished the document he held.

They've closed the factory, Willem called down to Lothar miserably, his moustaches quivering. They made me draw the fires on my boilers. You can't do that! Lothar snarled, and his eyes slitted yellow and fierce as those of an angry leopard. I've got a thousand tons of fish to process. Are these the four trawlers registered in the company's name? the sheriff went on, unperturbed by the outburst, but he unbuttoned his dark jacket and pulled it back as he placed both hands on his hips. A heavy Webley service revolver hung on a leather holster from his belt. He turned his head to watch the other trawlers mooring at their berths on each side of the jetty, then without waiting for Lothar to answer he went on placidly, My assistant will place the court seals on them and their cargoes. I must warn you that it will be a criminal offence to remove either the boats or their cargoes. You can't do this to me! Lothar swarmed up the ladder onto the jetty. His tone was no longer belligerent. I have to get my fish processed. Don't you understand? They'll be stinking to the heavens by tomorrow morning They are not your fish. The sheriff shook his head. They belong to the Courtney Mining and Finance Company., He gestured to his assistant impatiently. Get on with it, man. And he began to turn away.

She's here, Lothar called after him, and the sheriff turned back to face him again.

She's here, Lothar repeated. That's her car. She has come herself, hasn't she? The sheriff dropped his eyes and shrugged, but Willem gobbled a reply.

Yes, she's here, she's waiting in my office. Lothar turned away from the group and strode down the jetty, his heavy oilskin breeches rustling and his fists still bunched as though he were going into a fight.

The agitated crowd of factory hands was waiting for him at the head of the jetty.

What is happening, Baas? they pleaded. They won't let us work.

What must we do, Ou Baas? Wait! Lothar ordered them brusquely. I will fix this. Will we get our pay, Baas? We've got children, 'You'll be paid, Lothar snapped, I promise you that. It was a promise he could not keep, not until he had sold his fish, and he pushed his way through them and strode around the corner of the factory towards the manager's office.

The Daimler was parked outside the door, and a boy leaned against the front mudguard of the big yellow machine. It was obvious that he was disgruntled and bored. He was perhaps a year older than Manfred but an inch or so shorter and his body was slimmer and neater. He wore a white shirt that had wilted a little in the heat, and his fashionable Oxford bags of grey flannel were dusty and too modish for a boy of his age, but there was an unstudied grace about him, and he was beautiful as a girl, with flawless skin and dark indigo eyes.

Lothar came up short at the sight of him, and before he could stop himself, he said, Shasa! The boy straightened up quickly and flicked the lock of dark hair off his forehead.

How do you know my name? he asked, and despite his tone the dark blue eyes sparkled with interest as he studied Lothar with a level, almost adult self-assurance.

There were a hundred answers Lothar could have given, and they crowded to his lips: Once, many years ago, I saved you and your mother from death in the desert.. . I helped wean you, and carried you on the pommel of my saddle when you were a baby ... I loved you, almost as much as once I loved your mother ... You are Manfred's brother you are half brother to my own son. I'd recognize you anywhere, even after a t s time. But instead he said, Shasa is the Bushman word for "Good Water", the most precious substance in the Bushman world. That's right. Shasa Courtney nodded. The man interested him. There was a restrained violence and cruelty in him, an impression of untapped strength, and his eyes were strangely light coloured, almost yellow like those of a cat. You're right. It's a Bushman name, but my Christian name is Michel. That's French. My mother is French. Where is she? Lothar demanded, and Shasa glanced at the office door.

She doesn't want to be disturbed, he warned, but Lothar De La Rey stepped past him, so closely that Shasa could smell the fish smell on his oilskins and see the small white fish scales stuck to his tanned skin.

You'd best knock, Shasa dropped his voice, but Lothar ignored him and flung the door of the office open so that it crashed back on its hinges. He stood in the open door and Shasa could see past him. His mother rose from the straight-backed chair by the window and faced the door.

She was slim as a girl, and the yellow crape-de-chine of her dress was draped over her small fashionably flattened breasts and was gathered in a narrow girdle low around her hips. Her narrow-brimmed cloche hat was pulled down, covering the dense dark bush of her hair, and her eyes were huge and almost black.

She looked very young, not much older than her son, until she raised her chin and showed the hard, determined line of her jaw and the corners of her eyes lifted also and those honey-coloured lights burned in their dark depths. Then she was formidable as any man Lothar had ever met.

They stared at each other, assessing the changes that the years had wrought since their last meeting.

How old is she? Lothar wondered, and then immediately remembered. She was born an hour after midnight on the first day of the century. She is as old as the twentieth century

that's why she was named Centaine. So she's thirty-one

years old, and she still looks nineteen, as young as the day

I found her, bleeding and dying in the desert with the

wounds of lion claws deep in her sweet young flesh.

He has aged, Centaine thought. Those silver streaks in

the blond, those lines around the mouth and eyes. He'll be over forty now, and he has suffered – but not enough. I am glad I didn't kill him, I'm glad my bullet missed his heart. It would have been too quick. Now he is in my power and he'll begin to learn the true-

Suddenly, against her will and inclination, she remembered

the feel of his golden body over hers, naked and

smooth and hard, and her loins clenched and then dissolved

so she could feel their hot soft flooding, as hot as the blood

that mounted to her cheeks and as hot as her anger against

herself and her inability to master that animal corner of her

motions. In all other things she had trained herself like an

athlete, but always that unruly streak of sensuality was just

beyond her control.

She looked beyond the man in the doorway, and she saw ... ...

Shasa standing out in the sunlight, her beautiful child,

watching her curiously, and she was ashamed and angry to

have been caught in that naked and unguarded moment

when she was certain that her basest feelings had been on

open display.

Close the door, she ordered, and her voice was husky

and level. Come in and close the door. She turned away and

stared out of the window, bringing herself under complete

control once More before turning back to face the man she

had set herself to destroy.

The door closed and Shasa suffered an acute pang of disappointment . He sensed that something vitally important was taking place. That blond stranger with the cat-yellow eyes who knew his name and its derivation stirred something in him, something dangerous and exciting. Then his mother's reaction, that sudden high colour coming up her throat into her checks and something in her eyes that he had never seen before, not guilt, surely? Then uncertainty, which was totally uncharacteristic. She had never been uncertain of anything in the world that Shasa knew of. He wanted desperately to know what was taking place behind that closed door. The walls of the building were of corrugated galvanized iron sheeting.

If you want to know something, go and find out. it was one of his mother's adages, and his only compunction was that she might catch him at it as he crossed to the side wall of the office, stepping lightly so that the gravel would not crunch under his feet, and laid his ear against the sun-heated corrugated metal.

Though he strained, he could only hear the murmur of voices. Even when the blond stranger spoke sharply, he could not catch the words, while his mother's voice was low and husky and inaudible.

The window, he thought, and moved quickly to the corner. As he stepped around it, intent on eavesdropping at the open window, he was suddenly the subject of attention of fifty pairs of eyes. The factory manager and his idle workers were still clustered at the main doors, and they fell silent and turned their full attention upon him as he appeared round the corner.

Shasa tossed his head and veered away from the window.

They were all still watching him and he thrust his hands into the pockets of his Oxford bags and, with an elaborate show of nonchalance, sauntered down towards the long wooden jetty as though this had been his intention all along.

Whatever was going on in the office now was beyond him, unless he could wheedle it out of his mother later, and he didn't think there was much hope of that. Then suddenly he noticed the four squat wooden trawlers moored alongside the jetty, each lying low in the water under the glittering silver cargo they carried, and his disappointment was a little mollified. Here was something to break the monotony of his hot dreary desert afternoon and his step quickened as he went onto the timbers of the jetty. Boats always fascinated him.

This was new and exciting. He had never seen so many fish, there must be tons of them. He came level with the first boat. It was grubby and ugly, with streaks of human excrement down the sides where the crew had squatted on the gunwale, and it stank of bilges and fuel oil and unwashed humanity living in confined quarters. It had not even been graced with a name: there were only the registration and licence numbers painted on the wave-battered bows.

A boat should have a name, Shasa thought. It's insulting and unlucky not to give it a name. His own twenty-five-foot yacht that his mother had given him for his thirteenth birthday was named The Midas Touch, a name that his mother had suggested.

Shasa wrinkled his nose at the smell of the trawler, disgusted and saddened by her disgracefully neglected condition.

If this is what Mater drove all the way from Windhoek for, He did not finish the thought for a boy stepped around the far side of the tall angular wheelhouse.

He wore patched shorts of canvas duck, his legs were brown and muscled and he balanced easily on the hatch coarning on bare feet.

As they became aware of each other both boys bridled and stiffened, like dogs meeting unexpectedly; silently they scrutinized each other.

A dandy, a fancy boy, Manfred thought. He had seen one or two like him on their infrequent visits to the resort town of Swakopmund up the coast. Rich men's children dressed in ridiculous stiff clothing, walking dutifully behind their parents with that infuriating supercilious expression upon their faces. Look at his hair, all shiny with brilliantine, and he stinks like a bunch of flowers. One of the poor white Afrikaners, Shasa recognized his type. A bywoner, a squatter's kid. I His mother had forbidden him to play with them, but he had found that some of them were jolly good fun. Their attraction was of course enhanced by his mother's prohibition. One of the sons of the machine-shop foreman at the mine imitated bird calls in such an amazingly lifelike manner that he could actually call the birds down from the trees, and he had shown Shasa how to adjust the carburettor and ignition on the old Ford which his mother allowed him to use, even though he was too young to have a driver's licence. While the same boy's elder sister, a year older than Shasa, had shown him something even more remarkable when they had shared a few forbidden moments together behind the pumphouse at the mine. She had even allowed him to touch it and it had been warm and soft and furry as a new-born kitten cuddling up there under her short cotton skirt, a most remarkable experience which he intended to repeat at the very next opportunity.

This boy looked interesting also, and perhaps he could show Shasa over the trawler's engine-room. Shasa glanced back at the factory. His mother was not watching and he was prepared to be magnanimous.

Hello. He made a lordly gesture and smiled carefully. His grandfather, Sir Garrick Courtney, the most important male person in his existence, was always admonishing him. By birth you have a specially exalted position in society. This gives you not only benefit and privilege, but a duty also. A true gentleman treats those beneath his station, black or white, old or young, man or woman, with consideration and courtesy. My name is Courtney, Shasa told him. 'Shasa Courtney.

My uncle is Sir Garrick Courtney and my mother is Mrs Centaine de Thiry Courtney. He waited for the deference that those names usually commanded, and when it was not evident, he went on rather lamely. 'What's your name? My name is Manfred, the other boy replied in Afrikaans and arched those dense black eyebrows over the amber eyes.

They were so much darker than his streaked blond hair that they looked as though they had been painted on. Manfred De La Rey, and my grandfather and my great-uncle and my father were De La Rey also and they shot the shit out of the English every time they met them. Shasa blushed at this unexpected attack and was on the point of turning away when he saw that there was an old man leaning in the window of the wheelhouse, watching them, and two coloured crewmen had come up from the trawler's forecastle. He could not retreat.

We English won the war and in 1914 we beat the hell out of the rebels, he snapped.

Well! Manfred repeated, and turned to his audience. This little gentleman with perfume on his hair won the war. The crewmen chuckled encouragement. Smell him, his name should be Lily, Lily the perfumed soldier. Manfred turned back to him, and for the first time Shasa realized that he was taller by a good inch and his arms were alarmingly thick and brown. So you are English, are you, Lily? Then you must live in London, is that right, sweet Lily? Shasa had not expected a poor white boy to be so articulate, nor his wit to be so acerbic. Usually he was in control of any discussion.

Of course I'm English, he affirmed furiously, and was seeking a final retort to end the exchange and allow him to retire in good order from a situation over which he was swiftly losing control.

Then you must live in London, Manfred persisted.

I live in Cape Town. Hah! Manfred turned to his growing audience. Swart Hendrick had come across the jetty from his own trawler, and all the crew were up from the forecastle. That's why they are called Soutpiel, Manfred announced.

There was an outburst of delighted guffaws at the coarse expression. Manfred would never have used it if his father had been present. The translation was Salt Prick and Shasa flushed and instinctively bunched his fists at the insult.

A Soutpiel has one foot in London and the other in Cape Town, Manfred explained with relish, and his willy-wagger dangling in the middle of the salty old Atlantic Ocean. You'll take that back! Anger had robbed Shasa of a more telling rejoinder. He had never been spoken to in this fashion by one of his inferiors.