Birds of Prey - Smith Wilbur (версия книг TXT) 📗
"I did not want this to happen, "he said hopelessly. "I am so sorry, my darling. I wanted you to come with me." He trod carefully over the rill of blood, went to the shuttered window and stepped out onto the veranda. He gathered the cloak around his shoulders and strode through the gardens to the small door in the stableyard. where he shouted for the groom, who hurried up with his horse.
Schreuder rode down the avenue and crossed the Parade, looking straight ahead. The longboat was still on the beach and as he rode up the boatswain called to him, "We was just about to give you up, Colonel. The Golden Bough is shortening her anchor cable and manning her yards."
As he climbed to the deck of the frigate, Captain Llewellyn and his crew were so absorbed by the business of weighing anchor and getting the ship under sail that they paid him little heed. A midshipman showed him down to his small cabin, then hurried away leaving him alone. His travel chests had been brought aboard and were stowed under the narrow bunk. Schreuder stripped off all his soiled dress and found a clean uniform in one of his chests. Before donning it, he placed the stars and orders upon its lapels. His blood-smeared clothing he tied in a bundle, then looked around for something to weight it. Obviously the thin wooden bulkheads would be struck when the frigate was cleared for action, and his cabin would form part of the ship's gundeck. A culverin filled most of the available deck space. Beside the weapon was heaped a pyramid of iron cannonballs. He stuffed one into the bundle of bloodsoaked clothing and waited until he felt the ship come on the wind and thrust out into the bay.
Then he opened the gun port a crack, and dropped the bundle through it into fifty fathoms of green water. When he went up on deck they were already a league offshore and running out strongly on the sou'easter to make their offing before coming about to round the cape.
Schreuder stared back at the land and made out the roof of the Governor's mansion among the trees at the base of the great mountain. He wondered if they had yet discovered Katinka's body, or whether she still lay joined in death to her base lover. He stood there at the stern rail until the great massif of Table Mountain was only a distant blue silhouette against the evening sky.
"Farewell, my darling," he whispered.
It was only when he lay sleepless in his hard bunk at midnight that the enormity of his situation began to dawn upon him. His guilt was manifest. Every ship that left Table Bay would carry the tidings across the oceans and to every port in the civilized world. From this day forward he was a fugitive and an outlaw.
Hal woke to a sense of peace such as he had seldom known before. He lay with his eyes AH shut too lazy and weak to open them. He realized that he was warm and dry and lying on a comfortable mattress. He expected the dungeon stench to assail him, the mouldy odour of damp, rotting straw, the latrine bucket and the smell of men who had not bathed for a twelve-month -crowded together in a fetid hole in the earth. Instead he smelled fresh woodsmoke, perfumed and sweet, the scent of burning cedar faggots.
Suddenly the memories came flooding back, and, with a great lift of the spirits, he remembered their escape, that he was no longer a prisoner. He lay and savoured that knowledge. There were other smells and sounds. It amused him to try to recognize them without opening his eyes. There was the smell of the newly cut grass mattress on which he lay and the fur blanket that covered him, the aroma of meat grilling on the coals and another tantalizing fragrance that he could not place. It was a mingling of wild flowers and a warm kittenish musk that roused him strangely and added to his sense of well-being.
He opened his eyes slowly and cautiously, and was dazzled by the strong mountain light through the opening of the shelter in which he lay. He looked around and saw that it must have been built into the side of the mountain, for half the walls were of smooth rock and the sides nearest the opening were built of interwoven saplings daubed with red clay. The roof was thatch. Clay pots and crudely fashioned tools and implements were stacked against the inner wall. A bow and quiver hung from a peg near the door. Beside them hung his sword and pistols.
He lay and listened to the burble of a mountain stream, and then he heard a woman's laughter, merrier and more lovely than the tinkle of water. He raised himself slowly on one elbow, shocked by the effort it required, and tried to look through the doorway. The sound of an infant's laughter mingled with that of the woman. Through all his long captivity he had heard nothing to equal it, and he could not help but chuckle with delight.
The sound of feminine laughter ceased and there was a quick movement outside the hut. A lissom ga mine figure appeared in the opening, backlit by the sunshine so that she was only a lovely silhouette. Though he could not see her face, he knew straight away who it was.
"Good morrow, Gundwane, you have slept long, but did you sleep well?" Sukeena asked shyly. She had the infant on her hip and her hair was loose, hanging in a dark veil to her waist. "This is my nephew, Bobby." She joggled the baby on her hip and he gurgled with delight.
"How long did I sleep?" Hal asked, beginning to rise, but she passed the baby to someone outside, and came quickly to kneel beside the mattress. She restrained him with a small warm hand on his naked chest.
"Gently, Gundwane. You have been in fever sleep for many days." " I'm well again now," he said, and then recognized the mysterious perfume he had noticed earlier. It was her woman smell, the flowers in her hair and the soft warmth of her skin.
"Not yet," she contradicted him, and he let her ease his head back onto the mattress. He was staring at her and she smiled without embarrassment.
"I have never seen anything so beautiful as you, he said, then reached up and touched his own cheek. "My beard?"
"It is gone." She laughed, sitting back with her legs curled under her. "I stole a razor from the fat Governor especially for the task." She cocked her head on one side and studied him. "With the beard gone, you also are beautiful, Gundwane."
She blushed slightly as she realized the import of her words, and Hal watched in delight as the red-gold suffused her cheeks. She turned her full attention to his injured leg, drew back the fur blanket to expose it and unwound the bandage.
