Birds of Prey - Smith Wilbur (версия книг TXT) 📗
He shouted for his groom and ordered him to saddle his single remaining horse. While he waited for the horse to be brought round from the stables, he stood before the small mirror in his dressing room and rearranged his uniform, brushed out his wig and reshaped his moustaches. He felt a glow of excitement and a sense of release. By the time that the Governor realized that he and Katinka were gone, the Golden Bough would be well out to sea and on course for the Orient.
He hurried down the stairs, out into the yard where the groom now held his horse, and sprang into the saddle. He was in great haste, anxious to be away, and he pushed his mount to a gallop along the avenues towards the Governor's residence. His haste was not so great, however, as to deprive him of all caution. He did not ride up the front drive through the lawns in front of the mansion, but took the side road through the oak grove which was used by slaves and the suppliers of firewood and provisions from the village. He reined his horse in as soon as he was close enough for its hoofbeats to be heard in the residence, and walked the animal sedately into the stableyard behind the kitchens. As he dismounted a startled groom hurried out to take the horse, and Schreuder skirted the kitchen wall, entering the gardens through the small gate in the corner.
He looked about carefully for the gardeners were often working in this part of the estate, but he saw no sign of them. He walked across the lawns, neither dawdling nor hurrying, and entered the residence through the double doors that led into the library. The long, book-lined room was deserted.
Schreuder was well acquainted with the layout of the residence. He had visited Katinka often enough while her husband was about his duties in the castle. He went first to her reading room, which overlooked the lawns and a distant vista of the bay and the blue Atlantic. It was Katinka's favourite retreat, but this noon she was not there. A female slave was on her knees in front of the bookshelves, taking down each volume one at a time and polishing the leather bindings with a soft cloth. She looked up, startled, as Schreuder burst in upon her.
"Where is your mistress?" he demanded, and when she gawked dumbly at him he repeated, "Where is Mevrouw van de Velde?"
The slave girl scrambled to her feet in confusion. "The mistress is in her bedroom. But she is not to be disturbed. She is unwell. She left strict instructions."
Schreuder spun on his heel and went down the corridor. Gently he tried the handle of the door at the end of the passage, but it was locked from within. He exclaimed with impatience. Time was wasting away, and he knew Llewellyn would not hesitate to make good his threat to sail without him when the tide turned. He hurried back along the corridor and stepped through the glazed doors out onto the long veranda. He went down to the windows that opened into the principal bedroom suite. The windows to Katinka's closet were shuttered, and he raised his fist to knock upon them but restrained himself. He did not want to alert the house slaves. Instead he drew his sword, slipped the blade through the gap in the shutters and lifted the latch on the inside. He eased open the shutter and stepped inside over the sill.
Katinka's perfume assailed his senses and, for an instant, he felt giddy with his love and longing for her. Then with a surge of joy, he remembered that she would soon be his alone, the two of them voyaging out, hand in hand, to make a new life and fortune together. He crossed the wooden floor, stepping lightly so as not to frighten her, and gently drew aside the curtains from the door into the main bedroom. Here, also, the shutters were closed and latched and the room was in semi-darkness. He paused to allow his eyes to adjust to the dim light and saw that the bed was in disarray.
Then, in the gloom, he made out the pearly sheen of her flawless white skin among the tumbled bed linen She was nude, her back turned to him, her silver-gold hair cascading down to the cleft of her perfect buttocks. He felt a surge of lust, his loins engorged, and he was so overcome with wanting her that for a moment he could not move, could not even breathe.
Then she turned her head and looked straight at him. Her eyes flew wide and all the colour drained from her face.
"You despicable swine!" she said softly. "How dare you spy upon me?" Her voice was low but filled with scorn and fury. He recoiled in astonishment. She was his lover, and he could not understand that she would speak to him thus, nor that she should look upon him with such contempt and fury. Then he saw that her naked breasts shone with the soft dew of her own sweat, and that she was seated astride a supine masculine form. The man beneath her lay upon his back, and she was impaled upon him, in the act of passion, riding him like a steed.
The man's body was muscular, white and hard, the body of a gladiator. With one explosive movement Katinka sprang off him and spun to face Schreuder. As she stood beside the bed trembling with outrage her inner thighs glistened with the overflow of her venery.
"What are you doing in my bedroom?" she hissed at Schreuder.
Stupidly he answered, "I came to take you away with me." But his eyes went down to the man's body. His pubic hair was wet and matted and his sex thrust up towards the ceiling, thick and swollen and glistening, with a shiny, viscous coating. The man sat upright and looked straight at Schreuder, with a flat yellow gaze.
A wave of unspeakable horror and revulsion swept over Schreuder. Katinka, his love, had been rutting with Slow John, the executioner.
Katinka was speaking, but her words barely made sense to him. "You came to take me away? What gave you the notion that I would go with you, the Company clown, the laughing stock of the colony? Get out of here, you fool. Go into obscurity and shame where you belong."
Slow John stood up from the bed. "You heard her. Get out or I shall throw you out." It was not the words but the fact that Slow John's penis was still fully tumescent that turned Schreuder into a maniac. His temper which, until now, he had been able to keep under restraint boiled over and took control of him. To the humiliation, insults and rejection that had been heaped upon him all that day was added the black rage of his jealousy.
Slow John stooped to the pile of his discarded clothing, which lay upon the tiles beside the bed, and straightened up again with a pruning knife in his right hand. "I warn you," he said in that deep, melodious voice, "leave now, at once."
