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  Praise for

  ‘A thundering good read is virtually the only way of describing Wilbur Smith’s books’

  IRISH TIMES

  ‘Wilbur Smith . . . writes as forcefully as his tough characters act’

  EVENING STANDARD

  ‘Wilbur Smith has arguably the best sense of place of any adventure writer since John Buchan’

  THE GUARDIAN

  ‘Wilbur Smith is one of those benchmarks against whom others are compared’

  THE TIMES

  ‘Best Historical Novelist – I say Wilbur Smith, with his swashbuckling novels of Africa. The bodices rip and the blood flows. You can get lost in Wilbur Smith and misplace all of August’

  STEPHEN KING

  ‘Action is the name of Wilbur Smith’s game and he is the master’

  WASHINGTON POST

  ‘A master storyteller’

  SUNDAY TIMES

  ‘Smith will take you on an exciting, taut and thrilling journey you will never forget’

  THE SUN

  ‘No one does adventure quite like Smith’

  DAILY MIRROR

  ‘With Wilbur Smith the action is never further than the turn of a page’

  THE INDEPENDENT

  ‘When it comes to writing the adventure novel, Wilbur Smith is the master; a 21st century H. Rider Haggard’

  VANITY FAIR

  This book is for my wife

  MOKHINISO

  I gambled on love and it paid off handsomely

  Thank you for being the best bet I’ve ever made

  Contents

  Paris, 1794

  Cape of Good Hope, 1806. Twelve Years Later . . .

  France, 1798. Eight Years Earlier . . .

  Indian Ocean, 1806

  Cairo, 1798

  Nativity Bay, 1806

  Cairo, 1798

  Cape Town, 1806

  Egypt, 1799

  Indian Ocean, 1806

  Abyssinia, 1800

  Indian Ocean, 1806

  Kingdom of Gondar, 1800

  Calcutta, 1806

  Abyssinia, 1800

  India, 1807

  Indian Ocean, 1803

  Holkar, 1807

  Coast of Africa, 1803

  Holkar, 1807

  Nativity Bay, 1803

  Holkar, 1807

  Nativity Bay, 1803

  Holkar

  Nativity Bay

  Holkar

  Nativity Bay

  Holkar

  Nativity Bay

  Calcutta, 1807

  Nativity Bay, 1803

  Calcutta, 1807

  About the Author

  Also by Wilbur Smith

  Readers’ Club

  Copyright

  Find out more about the Courtneys and see the Courtney family tree in full at www.wilbursmithbooks.com/courtney-family-tree

  PARIS, 1794

  A

  white dove flew from a rooftop above the former Place Louis XV and landed on a tall wooden structure in the middle of the square. It was something like a tree, though unlike a tree, it had hard right angles and unnaturally smooth trunks. It had grown all in one night and been fully formed by morning, as if it had suddenly erupted from the stone cobbles. Straight and rigid, it stood as if guarding one place from another. It smelled of blood.

  The dove had no interest in the violent conflicts of men. She settled on the crosspiece that joined the two uprights and preened her soft feathers busily.

  Below, sparks flew as the executioner rasped his steel against the whetstone. The guillotine blade, blunted with use, was being honed to a fine edge. Death should be quick and painless; this is how Joseph-Ignace Guillotin wanted it to be. Aristocrat or commoner, their fate would be equal – cold steel was indifferent to class. The blade would be busy today.

  The executioner oiled the blade’s edges to aid its downwards velocity, then wiped the surface clean. He fitted it into its housing and screwed it tight. He ran his hands over the cord, checking for weaknesses and snags. He hoisted the blade into position, high above the square like a battle standard. The housing clattered against the crosspiece. The dove, momentarily startled, took to the air quickly, as if gravity held no burden.

  The executioner considered his task. The world had been turned upside down. Terror was the rule, killing was routine and nobody was safe. Blood sacrifices had to be made on the altar of the revolution. So many were condemned to death, the guillotine was the most efficient means of execution, designed to dispatch swiftly, not to torture – unlike the breaking wheel of old, which crushed bones and lacerated flesh. And yet the executioner had witnessed many times the eyes and lips of his decapitated victims moving as if pleading for clemency, the pupils of agonised eyes focusing on him. He shuddered at the reception he would receive at the gates of Hell.

  Today a restless energy gripped the crowd. The taverns surrounding the square had emptied and people jostled for the best viewing position. Children crawled through the legs of grown-ups, laughing and racing one another to reach the front, right under the imposing contraption that was the guillotine on its high platform. Their mothers pushed after them, they, too, not holding back, not wanting to miss any detail of the spectacle.

  Wooden wheels rattled on the cobblestones. The crowd’s raucousness descended to a murmur, necks craned to catch sight of the tumbrel rolling down Rue Saint-Honoré. The cart was packed with all manner of nobility and low-born, clothes torn, heads hanging, but among the bedraggled victims one shone out like the sun between clouds. Tall and slim, dressed in a clean white gown, she stood upright and swayed easily with the motion of the cart. She was more than fifty years old, but even after weeks in prison she could be reckoned to be twenty years younger. Her pale skin was as smooth as marble; her golden hair had lost none of its lustre. The guards had cropped it short, so that it would not cover her neck and impede the blade, but the bobbed style only made her look more beautiful. She raised her head to the sky as if searching for an indefinable meaning, exposing her throat, which was supple and pink and beginning to flush with emotion.

  Today was the execution of the Comtesse Constance de Bercheny.

  Before the revolution, she had been the most notorious woman in Paris. Her name was synonymous with glamour and scandal. She had slept with King Louis, people said – and, it was rumoured, with Queen Marie Antoinette. She had murdered two husbands and cuckolded a third so many times he had died of shame. She had seduced most of the courtiers at Versailles, and blackmailed the rest with an intimate knowledge of their innermost secrets. It was whispered she was as powerful as the king; others said more so. In the web of sex, influence and intrigue that had been the Ancien Régime, she was the deadly spider at its dark heart.

  Now the revolution had caught her.

  The cart came to a halt. A soldier took her arm roughly and tried to lift her down, but she shook him off with a toss of her head and scrambled to the ground unaided. Barefoot, she stepped through the mud and detritus smeared over the cobbles and mounted the scaffold. The stairs were steep and crusted with blood, but she glided up them as if ascending the grand stairs of a palace.

  Boos and jeers rose around the square as she reached the top of the platform. Envy and hatred lubricated their voices. A woman in the crowd started shouting ‘Putain! Putain!’ – whore. Others took up the cry. Eggs were thrown. Constance turned and her ice-blue eyes flashed, and instantly the crowd fell silent. It was as if her beauty had robbed them of their contempt.

  She unwrapped her shawl, baring her shoulders to the top of her breasts. Her skin was as white as her dress, virgin-pure in the cold, cleansing air; her slim figure showed no sign of the five children she’d borne. More than one man in the crowd felt a heaviness in his heart at the waste it would be to remove that beautiful head from such a flawless body.

  Constance de Bercheny could feel the iron glare of those lustful gazes. It did not intimidate her. She knew what men were capable of, and how much power she wielded over them. For one last time, she let herself savour the majesty of her femininity, and how feeble she made them look.

  She was not afraid of dying. She had seen men die, had let men die, and – when necessary – had resorted to murder herself. She had faced death many times and survived through cunning, resourcefulness and force of will. Even in the stinking hole of the Conciergerie prison, where the condemned awaited the guillotine, she had refused to accept defeat. She would seduce one of the guards or persuade an admirer to smuggle her out. But most of her admirers were dead, and the chief jailer was not a chivalrous man. He had put himself in her mouth and forced her to pleasure him, then called her a whore when she appealed to his kindness. Out of malice, he had manacled her with the heaviest set of chains. If a prisoner escaped, it would be the jailer’s head on the guillotine.

  Constance wouldn’t give in. Even on the scaffold, a part of her refused to surrender. She scanned the crowd for a familiar face, a spark of hope. But there was no one. She would not give her captors the victory of seeing her doubt herself.

  She touched the wooden neck brace of the guillotine, rubbed smooth by the bodies and fluids of the men and women who had lain there before her. The oblique-edged blade hung above like a gash in the sky, glinting in the light. She was glad to see it had recently been sharpened.

  The other women in the prison had talked about this moment many times. Their minds were fevered with anticipation.

  ‘I’ve heard that your whole life plays out before your eyes as the blade falls,’ one had said – a girl of seventeen who played en
dlessly with her rosary. Constance had laughed.

  ‘I’ve lived too many lives for that,’ she’d said. ‘So many I barely remember.’

  But in her heightened state, memories came to her like fireflies in the dark. From the height of the scaffold, the crowd below seemed to dissolve. They weren’t the Paris mob, but dark-skinned Indians in turbans and cloth armour; and the clouds above were not the powder-puffs of a French spring, but the heavy thunderheads of the oncoming Bengal monsoon, so dense you could feel them press on your shoulders. A different continent, another lifetime: a young woman called Constance Courtney, a merchant’s daughter, far from innocent but still a blushing rosebud compared to the woman she had become.

  She would confront death, laugh in its face. If she entered an afterlife, she would charm the angels to let her into Heaven despite everything she’d done.

  Constance lay on the guillotine’s hard bed. The executioners tightened the leather straps across her chest, her belly and her thighs. The two upright posts towered above her like a doorway waiting for her to step through.

  ‘I am going to meet my children.’

  She said it quietly, as if to herself, but loud enough so it would be heard. She knew people would repeat her last words, and because they were sentimental fools, they would believe them. Perhaps they would say that beneath her scandalous reputation, she had been a good mother. They would recall that of her five children, two had been killed in the wars with England, one was taken by disease, and one executed in the revolution. Her legend would grow. She would be immortalised on canvas by great painters. In time, she might become a martyr.

  The executioner placed his hand on the lever. The black-clad judge began reading the final sentence. The crowd surged forward, urged by the scent of blood, by the sight of beauty, privilege and excess brought to its knees.

  One man hung back. A youth, wearing long trousers and a short carmagnole jacket which sagged on one side from the weight of an implement hidden in the lining. His head was bowed; he was concentrating on the charcoal sketch he was composing of the scene. He had been in his place since early morning, and the drawing was nearly complete.

  Everyone who saw his work agreed that the young artist had an exceptional talent. The picture before him was uncannily realistic: the marquise, in particular. The artist had captured every curve of her grace, her fierce beauty and her defiance. In delicate charcoal strokes, she almost came alive on the page.

  ‘I will give you ten sous for the picture,’ the man beside him offered.

  He wore a red cap, and a butcher’s apron smeared with animal blood. He knew he could sell it to the handbill printers for at least triple the price, such was the interest in Constance de Bercheny.

  The boy shook his head and remained silent. He didn’t trust himself to speak. He barely looked up, except to glance at the scene through the long fringe that hung over his eyes. He was sixteen years old, though he seemed younger: buttery smooth skin, clear blue eyes, and feathery flicks of dark hair sticking out above his ears. There was a musty scent about him from the stable-yard he had been sleeping in. He had been on the run for four months, stealing to eat and snatching shelter where he could. There were so many other dispossessed homeless on the streets that he melded with the crowds. The authorities couldn’t round them all up. If they had caught him, they would certainly have sent him to the scaffold.

  His name was Paul de Bercheny. The woman strapped to the guillotine was his mother.

  *

  The last time he had seen her was a year ago. By then, the vast château where he had grown up had long been abandoned to the mob. Paul and Constance had taken a cottage in the country near Rouen, far from their former lives. Inconspicuous, but not invisible. A peasant dress and a shawl could hardly hide Constance’s famous beauty.

  They thought they were safe. The revolution was faltering: half the provinces were in revolt, foreign armies were camped on French soil, and Toulon had fallen to the British.

  ‘We will wait them out,’ Constance declared. ‘The revolution will pass like a storm on a summer’s day.’

  Paul, comforted, had believed her.

  Then one day an old servant, a woman whose loyalty to her former mistress had not been dulled by the revolution, had come hurrying across the fields.

  ‘They are coming, madame. The Watch Committee.’

  Constance had not so much as flinched.

  ‘You must say “Citizen” now,’ she reminded the woman gently. ‘“Madame” or “Monsieur” will get you killed.’

  ‘But the Committee . . .’

  ‘I will be ready for them,’ Constance promised. ‘Do not fear on my account. But go. If they find you here, they will kill you.’

  The old woman had kissed her hand, trembling with emotion.

  ‘You were a better woman than all of them put together,’ she declared.

  As soon as she had gone, Constance pulled out a small valise from a cupboard by the fireplace and thrust it into Paul’s arms.

  ‘Here is everything you need.’

  Paul had opened the valise, and felt a sickening creep of dread as he saw the blued metal of a pistol barrel gleaming up at him. He snatched it up and brandished it wildly. Through the open door, he could see dust rising from the freshly harvested fields as a crowd approached.

  ‘I will defend you,’

  ‘No.’ Constance’s voice was as hard as a slap in the face. She tore the gun from his hand, almost breaking the finger that had curled through the trigger guard. ‘Use it to survive.’

  Paul’s face flushed. Tears threatened. ‘But, Maman . . .’

  ‘You must run.’

  They could hear shouts now coming across the field. She gripped his face, fixing him with those impenetrable blue eyes.

  ‘You were my last, my best hope,’ she whispered. ‘For your brothers I wanted glory, power, but you were always my baby. My own. One good thing, for all my sins.’

  He did not understand, but her words stung his pride. Growing up the youngest, his brothers had been almost mythical creatures: stiff and remote, always in a hurry, talking of tactics and battles and important people Paul felt he should have heard of. He remembered how stiff their shirts had been, and how their spurs struck sparks when they crossed the stable yard flagstones. Paul had always thought that one day he would be as grand and confident as they were.

  ‘I am as good as any of my brothers.’

  ‘Yes. And where are they now?’ She held his face so tight his cheeks hurt. ‘Keep yourself alive. Will you do this for me?’

  Paul nodded. Not enough to convince her. She gripped him tighter still, as if she could impress her will directly into his brain.

  ‘Do whatever you must, endure anything, say anything, become anything. But promise you will survive.’

  Specks of dust and chaff drifted through the open door, caught in a shaft of sunlight. A fly crawled over the crumbs of the bread they had had for lunch. He noticed the tiny beads of sweat glistening on his mother’s cheeks, a red spot on the bodice of her dress where she had spilled a drop of wine. The smell of her perfume, sweet like ripe lilies, wafted off her warm skin and enveloped him.

  ‘I promise,’ he whispered.

  She released him. Blood flooded his skull; he felt dizzy.

  ‘Now go.’

  ‘But what about you?’

  She shook her head. ‘It is too late.’

  ‘But—’

  Her eyes flashed with fury. ‘They know who I am. They will not stop until they find me. But I can delay them long enough to save you.’

  He hugged her, burying his face in her chest, and would still have been there when the revolutionaries arrived if she had not prised him off her.

  ‘Go. And stay alive.’

  He picked up the valise and ran out of the back door. Over the garden wall, across the fields and into the copse: his mother’s perfume still caught in his hair and her final words ringing in his ears.

  Stay alive.

  *

  In the Place de la Révolution, the man in the butcher’s apron was straining to get a better view.

  ‘For Marie Antoinette I was in the front row,’ he said. ‘This far away.’ He held up his finger and thumb, an inch apart. ‘She was a sight to behold. Makes me hot just to think about how her headless body spasmed and kicked, you know what I mean, lad?’