The Tiger’s Prey. Wilbur Smith

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      ‘That news would give Guy no great pleasure. Frankly, he would prefer us both dead.’

      Ana sipped her wine, as if this news was the most natural thing in the world. ‘I will not ask what came between you,’ she murmured.

      ‘It was a woman,’ Dorian said flatly.

      ‘And the woman was my sister,’ said Sarah, speaking up for the first time. ‘We were passengers on that fateful voyage, when Dorian was captured by pirates. I was still a child but my elder sister, Caroline, was in full flower. Silly thing; she was much too free with her charms. She went to Tom’s bed only too willingly.’

      ‘I believe it was actually the powder magazine,’ said Dorian with a grin. ‘It was the only place on the ship they could find privacy.’

      ‘It was my fault,’ said Tom, embarrassed to have this history raised in front of Ana. ‘I should have realized that Guy was in love with her.’

      ‘Guy was not in love with Caroline,’ said Sarah flatly. ‘Guy wanted only to possess her, like he would a horse or a cargo or a chest of gold. As soon as he had married her, she no longer was of any value to Guy. You forget, I lived with them as Guy’s ward for years after they were husband and wife. I saw the way he treated her.’ She closed her eyes. ‘He did not love her, God knows.’

      ‘Yet even though he married her, he could not forgive you?’ Ana asked Tom.

      ‘It was more than that. There was …’ Tom broke off. There were some things he could not discuss with Ana.

      What have I done? he asked himself. One brother I killed, and another wants me dead. The two greatest mistakes of my life, and there is nothing I can do to atone for them.

      He thought again of the green flash on the horizon the night before. God grant me wisdom.

      Ana nodded gravely. ‘All families have their secrets.’

      ‘I think you are very brave,’ Sarah told her, lightening the mood with her bright voice, ‘coming to dine with these two wanted scallywags.’

      ‘You saved my life, all of you!’ said Ana, addressing the whole table. ‘You were in no danger. Your ship could have sailed on and left us to our fate. Ninety-nine men out of a hundred would have done that.’

      ‘Ninety-nine men out of a hundred do not have Yasmini and Sarah telling them what they must do,’ grinned Dorian. ‘The choice was not ours.’

      The conversation moved on. After supper, they retired to the parlour, where Sarah entertained them on her harpsichord, playing arias from William Babell’s Book of Lady’s Entertainment. Tom had ordered the new harpsichord shipped all the way from England.

      ‘Tom threw the first one I had into a river,’ Sarah confided to Ana, in between pieces.

      ‘In fairness, you should mention we were stuck on a sandbank in an overloaded ship, pursued by an army of Arab swordsmen who wanted to murder us, and I was near to death,’ said Dorian, sitting on the floor on an ornately embroidered cushion.

      ‘I am sure Miss Duarte could not conceive it could have been otherwise,’ said Yasmini.

      Sarah played some more, ending with a flourish. The others applauded. Sarah took a seat next to Tom.

      ‘Miss Duarte,’ Tom began. ‘When we met yesterday you said you had a proposal for us.’

      She smoothed her skirts. She was the youngest person in the room by at least a dozen years, but she carried herself with calm assurance.

      ‘What do you know of India?’ she asked Tom.

      Tom swirled wine in his glass, staring at the dregs. ‘What I hear on the waterfront. The traders say it is a dangerous country since the old emperor died.’

      ‘Since old Aurangzeb died two years ago, India has become a battlefield,’ Ana agreed. ‘His three sons are contesting the succession, and while they fight each other, every other prince and nabob makes war on his neighbour. In the west, the Marathas have been fighting the Mughals from their mountain fortresses for thirty years. On the Malabar Coast, the pirate Angria has established his own kingdom, ruled from the impregnable fortress of Tiracola. In the south, the Nawabs are in open revolt. The Mughal Empire is tearing itself apart.’

      ‘Bad for trade,’ said Dorian.

      Tom waited while Ana hesitated, as if unsure how to proceed.

      ‘Before I explain my proposal, I must tell you something of myself and my family. My father was a Portuguese merchant from a family that had settled in Goa; my mother was Indian, the daughter of a local Mansabdar. Neither family approved their marriage, so they fled together to the British settlement at Fort St George – Madras. They began with nothing, but they worked hard. Soon, they had a thriving business in the cloth trade. They bought calicoes from the weavers around Madras, and shipped them to Europe. At first, they sold them to the East India Company, but the Company was greedy: they cheated us on the price. So my father resolved to find another way. He contracted with a Danish sea captain to carry his cargo.

      ‘Guy Courtney, the president of East India Company, learned of this. You know what they call these men, private traders who threaten their monopoly? Interlopers.’ She almost spat the word out. ‘The East India Company believe these private traders are nothing more than snakes in the walled garden of Eden which they imagine they have built. So the president informed the pirates when our ship would be sailing. They fell upon her near Cape Cormorin. There were no survivors.

      ‘My father had put everything he owned into that voyage. Even so, he knew the risks. If it had been an act of God, he would have borne the hardship. But President Courtney wanted to gloat. He summoned us to his house and told us to our faces what he had done, as a warning to ourselves and to others. There was nothing we could do, no hope of justice. The president is the judge and the jury.

      ‘My father died a few months later, brokenhearted and ruined.’ A tremor shook her voice; Sarah laid a hand on her arm. ‘I took on his affairs. That is why I was aboard the Dowager. The captain charged me a terrible fee to take my cargo, but I thought I would be safe on an Indiaman.’

      ‘Do you think the pirates we met had been alerted to your coming?’

      ‘No. That was just a stroke of bad luck.’

      She pressed her fingertips together. ‘This is my proposal. I am a merchant, like you. I want to transport my goods to the market at the least cost, to sell for the best price. To pass safely from Madras to Cape Town, you need a pass from the British, a pass from the Dutch, a pass from the pirates and a pass from the Mughal emperor. Even if I bought my own ship, I could not afford to defend her. The crew to man the guns, the protection money I would have to pay … It is impossible.’

      ‘You want us to carry your trade?’

      ‘This is not just for myself. The Indian Ocean is crawling with pirates. The East India companies, the Dutch and the English, they can afford the ships to see them off – but they make their suppliers pay for the protection they give them. But there are other merchants, syndicates and traders in London, Amsterdam, Ostend, a dozen cities I have never seen, who could finance the trade and offer better terms, if СКАЧАТЬ