Birds of Prey - Smith Wilbur (версия книг TXT) 📗

"Then neither can I," she said, and lifted herself onto her knees.

She had to fight to keep herself from laughing aloud as she watched his face swell and his eyes bulge further out. He wriggled and heaved under her, thrusting vainly at the air.

"Please!" he whimpered. "Please!"

"The reprieve?" she asked, keeping herself suspended tantalizingly above him.

"Yes," he whinnied. "Anything. I will give you anything you want."

"I love you, my husband," she whispered in his ear, and sank down like a bird settling on its nest.

Last time he lasted to a count of one hundred, she remembered. This time I shall try to bring him to the finishing line in under fifty. With rocking hips she set herself to better her own record.

Manseer opened the door of Althuda's cell and roared, "Come out, you murderous dog. Governor's orders, you go to work on the wall." Althuda stepped out through the iron door and Manseer glared at him. "Seems you'll not be dancing a quadrille on the scaffold with Slow John, more's the pity. But don't crow too loud, you'll give us as much sport on the castle walls. Barnard and his hounds will see to that. You'll not last the winter out, I'll wager a hundred guilders on it."

Hal led the file of convicts up from the lower cells, and paused on the stone step below Althuda. For a long moment they studied each other keenly. Both looked pleased at what they saw.

"If you give me a choice, then I think I prefer the cut of your sister's jib to yours." Hal smiled. Althuda was smaller in stature than his voice had suggested and all the marks of his long captivity were plain to see. his skin was sallow and his hair matted and tangled.

But the body that showed through the holes in his miserable rags was neat and strong and supple. His gaze was frank and his countenance comely and open. Although his eyes were almond-shaped and his hair straight and black, his English blood mingled well with that of his mother's people. There was a proud and stubborn set to his jaw.

"What cradle did you fall out of?" he asked Hal, with a grin. It was obvious that he was overjoyed to come out from the shadow of the gallows. "I called for a man and they sent a boy."

"Come on, you murdering renegade," Barnard bellowed, as the gaoler handed over the convicts to his charge. "You may have escaped the noose for the moment, but I have a few pleasures in store for you. You slit the throats of some of my comrades on the mountainside." It was clear that all the garrison bitterly resented Althuda's reprieve. Then Barnard turned on Hal. "As for you, you stinking pirate, your tongue is too loose by far. One word out of you today and I'll kick you off the wall, and feed the scraps to my dogs."

Barnard separated the two of them. he sent Hal back onto the scaffold and set Althuda to work in the gangs of convicts down in the courtyard, unloading the masonry blocks from the ox-drawn wagons as they came down from the quarries.

However, that evening Althuda was herded into the general cell. Daniel and the rest crowded around him in the darkness to hear his story told in detail, and to ply him with all the questions that they had not been able to shout up the staircase. He was something new in the dreary, monotonous round of captivity and heart-breaking labour. Only when the kettle of stew was brought down from the kitchens and the men hurried to their frugal dinner did Hal have a chance to speak to him alone.

"If you escaped once before, Althuda, then there must be a chance we can do it again."

"I was in a better state then. I had my own fishing boat. My master trusted me and I had the run of the colony. How can we escape from the walls that surround us? I fear it would be impossible."

"You use the words fear and impossible. That is not a language that I understand. I thought perhaps I had met a man, not some faintheart."

"Keep the harsh words for our enemies, my friend." Althuda returned his hard stare. "Instead of telling me what a hero you are, tell me instead now how you receive word from the outside." Hal's stern expression cracked and he grinned at him. He liked the man's spirit, the way he could meet broadside with broadside. He moved closer and lowered his voice as he explained to Althuda how it was done. Then he handed him the latest message he had received. Althuda took it to the grille gate, and studied it in the torchlight that filtered down the staircase.

"Yes" he said. "That is my sister's hand. I know of no other who can pen her letters so prettily."

That evening the two composed a message for Aboli to collect, to let him and Sukeena know that Althuda had been released from Skellum's Den.

However, it seemed that Sukeena already knew this, for the following day she accompanied her mistress on a visit to the castle. She rode beside Aboli on the driver's seat of the carriage. At the staircase she helped her mistress dismount. It was strange but Hal was by now so accustomed to Katinka's visits that he no longer felt angry and bitter when he looked upon her angelic face. She held his attention barely at all, and instead he watched the slave girl. Sukeena stood at the bottom of the staircase and darted quick birdlike glances in every direction as she searched for her brother's face among the gangs of convicts.

Althuda was working in the courtyard, chipping and chiselling the tough stone blocks into shape before they were swung up on the gantry to the top of the unfinished walls. His face and hair were powdered white as a miller's with the stone dust, and his hands were bleeding from the abrasion of tools and rough stone. At last Sukeena picked him out, and brother and sister stared at each other for one long ecstatic moment.

Sukeena's radiant expression was one of the most beautiful Hal had ever looked upon. But it was only for a fleeting instant, then Sukeena fled up the stairs after her mistress.

A short time later they reappeared at the head of the staircase, but Governor van de Velde was with them. He had his wife on his arm and Sukeena followed then demurely. The slave girl seemed to be searching for someone other than her brother. When she mounted the driver's seat of the carriage, she murmured something to Aboli. In response, Aboli moved only his eyes, but she followed his gaze, up to the top of the scaffold where Hal was belaying a rope end.