Storm Tide Page 10

  ‘Does it excite you?’ Hugo asked. ‘To be following in the footsteps of your ancestors? Your grandfather sailed from London nearly a hundred years ago to make his fortune, and now you will do the same.’

  Rob had told him the story many times, but Hugo could never remember the details properly. Luckily, he never tired of hearing it again.

  ‘Tom Courtney was my great-grandfather,’ Rob corrected him.

  ‘And that magnificent sword you own – that was his?’

  ‘It was presented to his grandfather by Sir Francis Drake himself. It has been in our family for seven generations.’

  ‘What an extraordinary family.’ Hugo upended the last of the bottle into Rob’s glass. ‘I look forward to meeting them.’

  ‘I hope they do not disappoint you.’ A strange wave of melancholy swept over Rob as he remembered his parting with his father. ‘Tom Courtney died years ago. My grandfather was the last link to that age, and he died before I left. You will find the Courtneys of today rather diminished.’

  ‘Then you and I will write a new chapter of that history,’ said Hugo, ‘and in a hundred years, your great-grandchildren will tell tales of the great deeds of Robert Courtney, and despair of the pygmies who live in that time.’

  ‘Maybe,’ said Rob doubtfully.

  It was what he dreamed of most of all, though it was hard to imagine anything he could do that would match the exploits of his famous ancestors. Sometimes the weight of it could be almost unbearable.

  ‘At any rate, you can judge for yourself when we reach Nativity Bay.’

  Rob tried to imagine Hugo at Fort Auspice, with his urban polish and drawling wit. He could not think how his father would react.

  Hugo beckoned to one of the girls for another bottle of champagne. When she bent over to pour it, her chemise rode up to reveal the cleft of her naked buttocks in a most enticing way. She dipped a finger in the champagne and sucked it suggestively.

  ‘Will there be anything else?’

  Hugo saw the look on Rob’s face.

  ‘I believe my friend is ready for more.’

  ‘We should see to the cargo,’ Rob protested weakly.

  ‘We should see to your other needs first.’

  Hugo waved to the girl. She kneeled beside Rob so that her golden hair draped over his naked thighs. She took his manhood in her mouth and started flicking it lightly with her tongue.

  ‘Remind me exactly where Nativity Bay is to be found?’ said Hugo. ‘You know I have no head for geography.’

  ‘On the east coast of southern Africa,’ Rob said. The girl’s tongue was sending shots of delight through him, and it was hard to concentrate.

  ‘It sounds impossibly exotic. Is there civilisation nearby?’

  ‘Cape Town,’ said Rob with a little gasp. ‘But that is a thousand miles away.’

  ‘Are you sure we will be able to find it?’

  ‘It sits in the lee of a cape, with a summit shaped like a whale’s back,’ Rob assured him. ‘I would know it by sight in an instant.’

  ‘Then let us look forward to seeing it together.’

  ‘Mmmmm,’ nodded Rob, as the girl’s eager mouth closed around him.

  N

  ext morning, for the first time since Rob had known him, Hugo was awake before Rob. Rob found him in his dressing room, standing over a chest that was overflowing with clothes. More garments lay strewn around the room.

  ‘You will not want this finery at sea,’ Rob teased him, holding up a pair of striped silk breeches. ‘In any case, we are not sailing for another three days. Today we are only loading the cargo.’

  ‘I cannot wait to be away,’ said Hugo fervently. ‘Every day we delay I fear some disaster.’

  ‘Save your fears for when we are at sea. That is where the true dangers lie.’

  It was a clear, bright morning. Rob’s body still glowed with the memory of his encounter with Mary, coupled with the excitement of their new adventure. He felt as if he was swimming with a strong tide at his back, rushing along, and there was nothing he could not do. Perhaps Hugo had been right. Perhaps one day his exploits would stand comparison with the great Courtney heroes of old.

  The feeling persisted as Hugo’s coach rattled through the morning streets of London. Watching the passers-by, seeing the shops and the great mansions and monuments, it was hard to believe how much they had overwhelmed Rob when he arrived. Now they were familiar – commonplace, even.

  But as they approached the docks, bouncing over the narrow cobbled streets, an uneasy note intruded on his happiness. First there was the smell, a bitter odour tickling his nostrils in the open carriage. The crowds in the street grew tighter; the coachman had to slow down. Everyone seemed to be hurrying in the same direction.

  The smell of smoke grew stronger. A haze covered the blue sky, growing steadily thicker.

  ‘What is happening?’ Rob called.

  Fear rose inside him. The coach had stopped, unable to get through. He leaped down and began pushing his way forwards through the throng. The crowd were talking around him, though he heard only snatches, like the chattering of a great flock of birds. But one word cut through it all. Fire.

  He came around a corner and stared. He should have been looking at the warehouse where they had stored their goods – but it was not there. The buildings either side of it still stood, their red brick walls scorched black. In between, there was nothing. Through the pall of smoke still rising from the heap of charred timbers, he could see only the river and open sky beyond.

  His legs went weak. If not for the crowd pressed so close around him, he might have fallen. Everything he had owned, the cargo he had pinned his future on – gone.

  There was a rumble and a crash, as another part of the building collapsed on itself. It was hard to believe there was anything left to fall, but clearly the fire still smouldered: a fountain of sparks leaped up from the shifting timbers. The crowd shrank back, but Rob moved against them, like a moth drawn to the flames. He stood in front of the crowd, alone, staring at the wreckage of his ambitions. All the money he had borrowed, all the hopes he had bought with it, turned to ash.

  Hugo emerged from the throng and stood beside him. Rob felt another tremor of despair. He had led his friend into this scheme. How could he look him in the eye now?

  ‘This is terrible,’ Hugo breathed. ‘You have lost everything.’

  His words jarred Rob. ‘You mean we have lost everything.’

  Before Hugo could respond, another man pushed his way out of the crowd. Even in the dull light, Rob caught the flash of a golden tooth in a thickset mouth. It was Spinkley, Hugo’s father’s agent. How had he come so quickly?

  The agent stuck his hands in his pocket and surveyed the scene.

  ‘Terrible, terrible, such a loss.’

  A nasty suspicion began to grow in Rob’s mind.

  ‘How did you know to find me here?’

  ‘Bad news travels quickly. And I must protect my investment.’ Spinkley gestured at the smoking ruin. ‘There is a rumour that all your trade goods were held in that warehouse.’

  Smoke had got into Rob’s lungs. He felt his throat constrict.

  ‘That is true.’

  ‘Then I cannot have any confidence in your ability to repay. I regret I am calling in the loan.’

  Rob’s stomach flipped. ‘So soon?’

  ‘It is in the contract you signed.’ He held up the document with Rob’s signature scrawled on it. It might as well have been a death warrant.

  ‘I do not have the money to pay you.’ Rob could hardly force the words out.

  ‘Then I claim your collateral.’

  ‘The sword?’ The ground seemed to sink beneath Rob’s feet. He felt he was falling into a pit, slithering down a crumbling face that turned to dust whenever he tried to grab it. ‘You want the sword to repay the loan?’

  ‘That is the nature of collateral.’ Spinkley spoke perfectly dispassionately, as if this were merely a dry business of numbers, as if he had not noticed that Rob’s life lay in ruins. ‘Although to be precise, the sword was only collateral for the principal loan. There is also the interest to consider.’

  ‘Interest?’

  ‘A further two hundred pounds.’

  He showed Rob another piece of paper, copied from a ledger. Numbers written in red ink, spiralling quickly upwards.

  Rob had a quick mind for figures. He understood the voracious logic of the arithmetic, how a simple percentage could feed off itself until it far surpassed the original amount. That, after all, was how he had intended to make his fortune, one trade building on the profits of the next. But now the process was reversed, he saw how it became an inescapable trap.

  ‘How am I to repay this?’ he asked in a small voice. ‘The sword is all I have. If it is not enough . . .’

  ‘That is not my concern.’ Spinkley folded the papers in two. His fingers rasped along the crease with a noise like slitting a man’s throat. ‘By the terms of the contract, you must pay back the principal and the interest when I demand it. If the sword does not satisfy the debt, you will go to the debtors’ prison until you have paid it in full.’

  Rob felt the jaws of the trap closing around his neck. He could hardly breathe. He had heard about debtors’ prisons, like the notorious Marshalsea in Southwark which was run as a private enterprise for profit, trading in human misery. Hugo’s friends sometimes joked about it but there was always fear in their eyes. It was the spectre that haunted their debt-ridden dreams. Under the terrible logic of the prisons, the prisoner had to pay for his accommodation, so that the longer he stayed the more indebted he became. Those who could not pay were tortured with hot irons, thumbscrews and crushing iron skullcaps. If a man died in the night – which happened often in the overcro
wded, windowless cells – he would be unrecognisable by dawn. The rats would have chewed off his face.

  ‘How long do I have?’ asked Rob.

  Spinkley made a show of thinking about it.

  ‘By the terms written here, you have until noon today.’

  R

  ob stumbled away in a daze. The unfeeling crowds jostled him, oblivious to his despair. In Africa he had faced lions, elephants, even the shark. Debt was nothing but paper, ink and broken promises. Yet somehow he felt more powerless, trapped by an invisible beast he could not fight or even understand.

  In his confusion, he didn’t see Hugo following him until his friend grabbed his arm.

  ‘What will you do?’ Hugo asked.

  ‘What can I?’ Rob was furious with himself for letting himself be snared by the moneylender. ‘Could you lend it to me?’

  ‘You know I am at the end of my credit with Spinkley as it is. All I could do is borrow the money from him, and he would refuse at once if he guessed the reason. He might even call in my own debts.’

  ‘But half of that cargo was yours.’

  Hugo stiffened, and seemed to shrink away a little. ‘You put up the collateral and took the money. The loan is in your name. Do not try to drag me into this business.’

  ‘Drag you into it?’ Rob could not believe what he heard. ‘But we are in this together. This has always been our joint adventure.’

  Hugo shrugged. A coldness had taken over his face, and if Rob had had time to consider it, he might have thought it reminded him of a boy watching a kitten drown in a pond.

  ‘I am sorry, Rob. You are on your own.’ As if to underscore the finality of his words, a cacophony of church bells began to chime ten o’clock in the distance. ‘Spinkley’s bailiffs will be at my house in two hours to claim whatever they can.’

  Only one thing mattered now.

  ‘The sword,’ Rob said. ‘I cannot let him get the sword.’

  ‘But that is your only collateral. Your only hope of avoiding the debtors’ prison.’

  Rob didn’t hear him. He had started to run.

  Hugo’s carriage was still waiting, but Rob was like a hunted animal, trusting to nothing but himself. He ran – through the streets, the teeming city he thought he had tamed, the familiar landmarks that now seemed cold and impervious to his plight – until he reached the front door of the house on Wimpole Street. His head ached and his stomach churned, though whether that was from the shock of his loss or the effort of running he didn’t know.

  He pounded on the door until Hugo’s footman opened it. Rob almost knocked him over in his haste to push past. He took the stairs three at a time to his room and pried up the floorboard where he had hidden the Neptune sword.

  Sunlight shone through the curtains, so that the sapphire in the pommel glowed like the depths of the sea. Before, Rob had only noticed its beauty. Now he saw it with the greedy eyes of a desperate man. He wondered how much the gem would fetch if he pried it out and sold it to the jewellers in Hatton Garden. How much the gold might be worth melted down.

  The thought made him ashamed. Was this what he had come to? Better to die than dishonour his family legacy this way. The Courtneys had wielded that sword in battle against Spanish galleons, Dutch privateers, Indian pirates and the villains of three continents over nearly two hundred years. One day, Rob would see it in the hands of his own son.

  He would take his punishment if he had to. But if he could avoid it, so much the better. He thought of what his grandfather Jim would have done in his position. Jim would not have surrendered meekly to greedy men like Spinkley, simply because they claimed authority. He would not have let them trap him in their snares of paper.

  Jim would have done what he did the day he rescued Louisa from the sinking convict ship. He would have escaped.

  Rob threw a few clothes into his bag and wrapped the sword in a coat. He probably should say goodbye to Hugo, but he had evidently not returned yet. Rob guessed he wanted to be well clear of Spinkley’s men when they came.

  A hammering sounded from the front door. Looking out of his window, Rob saw a gang of stout-looking men armed with cudgels gathered around the steps. Spinkley had lost no time sending his bailiffs. It was not even twelve o’clock.

  Rob heard the footman open the door smartly. A shouted conversation followed, and then feet pounding up the stairs. Rob did not wait. He slipped out of his room onto the landing, took off his shoes so that he would not make a sound and ran down a corridor in his stockinged feet. He threw open the sash window that opened onto the rear garden and dropped his bag out.

  It was too high for Rob to jump. And the bailiffs were almost there. Rob darted through a side door just as they reached the top of the stairs. From inside a cupboard, Rob heard them run into his room, then emerge again onto the landing. One man ran past where he was hiding, making the door tremble on its hinges.

  Rob heard him pause by the window.

  ‘Look here,’ cried a gruff voice. ‘There’s a bag in the garden. He must have gone out the window.’

  The footsteps receded. Rob counted to twenty, then let himself out. He did not dare descend the stairs. Instead, he climbed to the servants’ quarters at the top of the house. The ceiling sloped low over his head, but there was a window in the gable that led onto the roof. Rob climbed through.

  The city was small and muted below, but the height didn’t worry him. It was like being up in the rigging of a sailing ship. The fresh air and the thrill of escape cleared the fog from his mind. It gave him a sharp purpose.

  In his stockings, with the sword tied over his back in a makeshift sling using the sleeves of the coat, he ran unerringly along the ridge of the roof. At the end of the row of houses, he let himself down a drainpipe – as easy as sliding down the backstay – and climbed over a wall into the street.

  There was no question of where to go. Apart from Hugo, he only had one friend in London.

  Exhausted as he was by having run halfway across London, it took more than two hours to walk back to the docks. The crowds thickened as the day drew on, slowing his progress, but he didn’t mind. They offered protection, the chance to be anonymous. It reminded him of the wildebeests he had seen in Africa, herding together in their thousands to safeguard themselves from the lion’s teeth, or the hunter’s gun. Before, he had only ever seen them down a gunsight. Now, he saw how the world looked through their eyes.

  He told himself he should not be so afraid. The bailiffs could not possibly know where he would go in this vast city. The further he went from Hugo’s house, the safer he was, the more he began to relax. At last, he saw the masts of the ships at anchor rising over the rooftops and hurried ahead. Even among the hundreds of vessels clogging the river, he could make out the Dunstanburgh Castle in an instant, swinging easily at anchor as the tide turned. He was safe.

  He was about to go down the steps to catch a boat when a voice stopped him short.

  ‘Robert?’

  Rob turned to see Hugo hurrying up the street behind him.

  Rob embraced his friend. ‘Thank God you are here. I did not want to leave without saying goodbye, but Spinkley’s men left me little choice.’ He paused. ‘How did you find me?’

  Hugo smiled. ‘I knew you had nowhere else to go.’ He noticed the bundle Rob was carrying. ‘Is that the sword?’

  ‘I could not let Spinkley get his hands on it.’ A wave of exhaustion hit Rob. Suddenly, he felt on the brink of tears. ‘I know it is a cowardly thing to do. But this sword is all I have here of my family.’

  Hugo touched his arm gently. ‘It is quite understandable. I know how precious the sword is to you.’

  Rob became aware that the crowd around him had gone still. He glanced about him. Four large men with bruised faces and clubs in their hands had appeared, forming a ring around him that pushed everyone else on the bustling dock away.

  Rob tried to move. Hugo’s hand tightened around his arm, holding him still. The men with the clubs pressed closer.

  ‘What . . .?’

  A figure appeared over Hugo’s shoulder, a horribly familiar mass of chins and flesh, and the sparkle of a gold tooth.

  ‘I am obliged to you, Mr Lyall,’ said Spinkley. ‘You have helped apprehend a great villain.’

  Rob stared at Spinkley, and then at Hugo.