The Tiger’s Prey. Wilbur Smith

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СКАЧАТЬ watched by Francis from behind the banisters on the upstairs landing. The rows afterwards, Alice screaming at him behind the closed bedroom door.

      But he’d never realized it was this bad. A frantic banging erupted from outside, and for a moment he thought the bailiffs had already arrived. But it was only the shutters again. A glance at the clock said he had fifteen minutes left.

      ‘We have to go,’ he cried. He pulled his mother to her feet and led her upstairs again, locking the front door as they passed. Her face was pale, her hand cold as glass. ‘Get your things together, whatever we can carry.’

      Listlessly, she went to her wardrobe and pulled out some dresses and petticoats. Francis went to his room and filled a bag with his few possessions. He could almost hear the seconds ticking past.

      He ran back to his mother’s room and found her sitting on the four-poster bed surrounded by her clothes.

      ‘Come on,’ he said fiercely. ‘They’ll be here any minute.’ He started stuffing her clothes into a bag. ‘If only my father—’

      ‘Don’t call him that,’ she whispered. ‘Sir Walter was not your father.’

      ‘I know that. But you always said I should call him—’

      ‘I was wrong. I married him because I was a widow and you needed a father. After William died, my family disowned me; they didn’t even attend his funeral. My father hated me for marrying a commoner, even from a family as rich as the Courtneys. Then the circumstances of William’s death, the scandal that attached to it … He never forgave me.’

      ‘You never told me.’

      ‘You were an innocent child who had already suffered too much. Sir Walter Leighton was loving and charming and he made me laugh. I didn’t recognize his true character. Just as I didn’t know your father, until it was too late.’

      ‘But you always said my father – my true father, William Courtney – was a good man. A kind, noble man.’

      Her face crumpled. ‘Oh Francis, those were all lies. I could not bear for you to carry the sorrow of knowing what sort of man William Courtney was. A black-hearted brute who almost danced a jig when his own father died; who beat me black and blue, and would have beaten you too if he’d lived. He almost killed his own brother, Thomas.’

      Francis’ legs felt weak under him. He sat down hard on the bed. Angry tears pricked his eyes. ‘No. It was Thomas who killed him. You told me, Mother. You told me.’

      ‘Yes, that was true. Tom did kill William,’ she admitted. ‘But it was self-defence.’

      ‘Were you there?’ Francis demanded. ‘Did you see it?’

      ‘William went to London and never came back. The story went about that Tom had killed him, but I knew if that was true, he must have been provoked. Tom couldn’t have killed his brother in cold blood.’

      Francis struggled to breathe. ‘He must have.’

      A sudden, clamorous hammering sounded from downstairs, and this time there was no mistaking it: the sound of a heavy fist on a heavy door. Francis heard muffled shouts, and the rattle of someone trying to turn the handle.

      Alice clasped him to her. ‘You are nearly of age, now. It is time you learned the truth of things.’

      ‘You’re lying.’ He shook her off and grabbed the bag. Another furious bout of knocking came from downstairs. ‘I have already lost one father tonight. Now you are trying to destroy the memory of the other.’

      ‘Open up,’ called a voice, loud enough to impose itself over the storm. ‘Open in the name of the law.’

      Francis moved to the bedroom doorway. ‘We have to go. If they find us here, they will take everything.’

      ‘I will stay.’ Alice wrapped her shawl tightly around her. ‘They will not leave a poor, grieving widow without any succour or shelter. And with Walter dead, they cannot pursue his debts so easily. As for this house, let them have it. Excepting you, my darling, it has brought me nothing but misery and loss.’

      He stared at her. Emotion choked his thoughts; he wanted to speak, but no words would come.

      ‘Open up,’ shouted the voice below once more.

      Francis ran. He slipped down the back stairs, through the silent kitchens and into the stable yard. The grooms and stable boys had all been dismissed; the thoroughbreds he had ridden as a boy had long since been sold to new owners. Only one horse remained, Hyperion, the chestnut gelding his stepfather had given him on his thirteenth birthday. Alone in his stall, he whinnied as he heard Francis approach.

      Francis lit a lamp and saddled him, working quickly. It wouldn’t be long before the bailiff’s men worked their way around to the back of the house, looking for a way in. He grabbed an oilskin cape from a hook on the wall and led Hyperion out into the yard.

      A figure stood there, waiting for him.

      ‘Mother?’ His anger melted away at the sight of her, a grey apparition in the stable yard. Her soaking dress clung to her slender frame, like a little girl lost in the rain. She held a small velvet bag.

      ‘I couldn’t part from you without saying goodbye.’

      He hugged her. ‘Goodbye, Mother.’

      ‘Where will you go?’ She had to shout in his ear to make herself heard over the rain.

      He hadn’t thought about it until that moment – but the moment he did, he knew the answer.

      ‘The only family I have left in the world is my uncle Guy, in Bombay. I will go to the East India Company in London, and ask them for a position, and passage in one of their ships.’ He glanced back at the great house, so pregnant with memories. ‘Perhaps I will make my fortune, and return one day to reclaim High Weald.’

      She twisted the drawstring of the little velvet bag in her fingers, trying to hide the pain in her heart at the thought of her only son going so far away.

      ‘It is a good plan. But be careful with your uncle Guy. Strange to say, when you were two years old you were the largest shareholder in the East India Company outside its Court of Directors. Your grandfather Hal had amassed more than twenty thousand shares, and when William died so soon after his father, they all came to you. They were to be held in trust, but Guy advised us to sell them. I followed his advice, but since then I have always wondered if he dealt honestly with us. If we had kept those shares in a trust, Walter could never have touched them. Once we converted them to cash …’

      She sighed. Whatever William’s faults, he had left her one of the richest widows in England. In the fifteen years since, her second husband had turned that inheritance into nothing but debt and regret. How could she ask Francis to stay? There was nothing for him here. Sir Walter had seen to that.

      ‘Take this.’ She handed him the velvet bag. Rain had soaked the fabric, but he felt something hard and heavy inside. He opened it.

      After the poverty of the past months, it was like a vision of heaven. By the light of the stable lamp, he saw that it was a large golden medal depicting a lion with a shaggy mane. It was holding in its paws the globe of the world, with СКАЧАТЬ