As I spoke, all noise and movement back on the ship ceased. One moment, I was raising my voice to compete with the din that drifted across the widening distance from the ship. Another, and we were alone but for the regular splashing of oars on the warm African sea.
And then the oarsmen stopped rowing. One of them slithered round in his seat to face me.
Chapter 17
‘Is it to be thus?’ I asked of the oarsman who’d dropped me in Cartenna. Already, Wilfred had started another of his calm prayers. Edward was clutching himself and beginning to rock backward and forward. I paid them no attention. ‘You’re scared of my ghost if you do the work on board the ship. Isn’t that it? And you don’t believe that I can be killed at all on land.’
No reply from that sweating, yellow-bearded face. His colleague sat still, his back to me. Of course, I didn’t need any answer. When you’ve spent as much of your life as I have dissecting the various modes of superstition that complicate the politics of mankind, nothing is a mystery, nothing a surprise.
‘So how is it to be done?’ I asked again. ‘Will it be the cutting off of my head? Is that to be thrown into the sea, and my body left on land for the wild animals to devour? Or is it to be drowning?
‘Oh – and which one of you gets first crack at Edward’s arse?’ The boy looked up at that. His face was pleasingly scared and miserable. I grinned and went on. ‘I don’t know about you, but a pretty face doesn’t mean much when you’re at the back of the queue for a gang rape. You get more friction if you cut a hole in a dead pig and try fucking that.’
The oarsman who’d dropped me in Cartenna got unsteadily to his feet. Then he braced himself against the rocking of the boat and reached down for me. He carefully avoided looking into my eyes. The knife he held at the end of his outstretched arm was as much an iron charm to protect against anything I might do to him as the weapon with which he was to dispatch me. I uncrossed my legs and looked up at him.
‘You do realise,’ I said, with an easy wave over the sea, ‘that, without me as your leader, you’ll be stuck in this sea. You’ll move about at random until the Imperial battle fleet catches up with you. I imagine you’ve seen men flayed alive. But I’ll bet you haven’t seen the finesse that the Imperial Government can bring to the operation. Heavens, my dear fellow, I’ve seen a man kept alive for days, quite screaming mad from the pain as blood oozed slowly from every inch of his peeled body. Lay hands on me, and that’s what you’ll get – though only if you’re lucky. You won’t believe what torments have been perfected over the centuries for those who try crossing the Empire, or its servants.
‘But enough of unpleasantness. Come, come, my fine young fellow – if you’ll only proceed on our supply gathering mission and return me safe to the ship, I can promise you gold as big as your fist once we’re back in England. It really is an offer you’d be silly to refuse.’
Of course, it wasn’t an offer he or any of the other dear fellows would dream of accepting. Their god Yadina wanted my blood. Nothing I could offer in its place would do for getting them back home. But I thought it worth going through the motions. The man reached down and took hold of me by the stiff brocade of my Cartenna robe. With a single hand, he pulled me to my feet and kept hold as, with an expectant look back at the ship, he held his knife about a foot in front of me. All at once, the pots began their clatter again, and – now as triumphant as the psalm at a victory celebration in church – the chanting rolled at us in swelling waves of sound across the water.
The man opened his mouth for some gibberish of his own, and held up the knife for what I guessed would be a downward stroke between my collar bones.
Now, my dear Reader, do you recall that vicious little knife that Joseph had given me far back in Jarrow to sharpen my pens? When Benedict had finally got me to my feet the next day to go and face whatever grim fact awaited me in the hall, I’d stuffed the thing out of habit into a fold of my clothing. No one had thought it worth bothering to search a poor old creature like me, and I’d ever since then been carrying the knife in its leather sheath next to my skin. To be sure, I hadn’t known how or when it might come in handy. But no one with any pretensions to calling himself a free man should go out – not even in the most civilised place – without some means of defending his life, liberty and property.
There was a time when, no matter how small the blade, I’d have carved the fucker’s head off. But ninety-six is ninety-six. Even so, if age had withered my muscles, it hadn’t dulled my wits. That two-inch gash, in just the right place on his neck, and he was down like something slaughtered in a butcher’s market. I fell on top of him and gasped in the joy of looking close into those horrified, fast-dulling eyes. I felt the warm blood splashing in diminishing bursts on to my chest and face.
It was all very quick, and I was back on my cushions before the other oarsman had so much as turned to see what could have gone wrong. I held up the dripping blade and smiled at him. Over on the ship, the clattering and chanting had given way to a wail of most gratifying terror. If there hadn’t been the other oarsman to deal with, I’d have staggered up and blown them a kiss. But there was outstanding business on the boat that was unlikely to wait.
‘You want some of this?’ I snarled, holding up the little blade. ‘Just you come and get it, you piece of barbarian trash! Come on, then, shit for brains – don’t just sit there with your mouth open.’ With the first oarsman, I’d had the advantage of complete surprise. It really had been as if a sheep had turned and savaged the wolf that was about to eat it. This one couldn’t so easily be tricked. That didn’t mean I proposed to sit there, waiting for the beast to fall on me and complete the work of freeing his band from the evil fortune or whatever that had brought them all into the enclosed sea. Shouting with rage and fear, he was on his feet and screaming at me. He pulled out his own knife, and stepping carefully to avoid the still twitching corpse that lay between us, took a step forward.
You can be sure it was his last step. I’d been sitting with my back against the prow of the boat. I now reached both arms behind me and clamped myself as best I could to the one place where even I could make a difference. I threw my weight to the left. As the boat returned to balance, I threw myself to the right. It was a feeble rocking. The difference between my own effort and its results might have been comical had it not been so depressing a reminder of the obvious. But it was enough. The oarsman tried to drop to his hands and knees. He tried too late. With a heavy splash, he was straight over the side. He surfaced about six feet from us. Like every other seaman I’ve encountered, he’d never bothered with swimming lessons. For all it could help him, six feet out might as well have been sixty yards out. And the smooth African sea might as well have been the northern sea in a storm. He surfaced with a frightened gasp. He splashed ineffectually about. He sank again. He came up a few more times before he finally disappeared. But I’d already seen enough. Without bothering to wait for his end, I leaned forward and picked up my fallen wig.
‘Don’t just sit there,’ I said to the confused, silent boys. ‘This boat won’t row itself ashore.’ I looked over at the ship. Though not yet to much purpose, figures were already running about on deck and shouting. We needed to get inside the safety of the little harbour. If, by the time of Constans, gradual silting really had reduced the draught to about a yard, the ship could never follow us in. With no boat for a pursuit, I doubted anyone would want the risk of wading ashore. Until we were within the harbour, though, it was just a matter of turning the ship about and getting the oars in time with each other. Even scared barbarians were good for that. ‘Come forward, turn about and take an oar each,’ I urged the boys. To emphasise my words, I shook my wig at them.