Birds of Prey - Smith Wilbur (полная версия книги .TXT) 📗

Still on one knee and screened by the horse's body from the view of any of the guards or overseers, he looked up for the first time at Hal. Their gaze touched for an instant. Aboli nodded almost imperceptibly and opened his right fist to give Hal a glimpse of the tiny curl of white paper he had in his palm, then closed his fist and stood up. He walked down the team of horses examining each animal and making minute adjustments to the harness. At last he turned aside and leaned against the stone wall beside him, stooping to wipe the fine flouring of dust from his boots, Hal watched him take the quill of paper and surreptitiously stuff it into a joint in the stonework of the wall. He straightened and returned to the coachman's seat to await the Governor's pleasure. Van de Velde never showed consideration for servant, slave or animal. All that morning the team of greys stood patiently in the traces with Aboli soothing them at intervals. A little before noon the Governor re-emerged from the Company offices and had himself driven back to the residence for the midday meal.

In the dusk, as the convicts wearily climbed down into the courtyard, Hal stumbled as he reached the ground and put out his hand to steady himself. Neatly he picked the scrap of folded paper from the joint in the stonework where Aboli had left it.

Once in the dungeon there was just sufficient light filtering down from the torch in its bracket at the top of the staircase for Hal to read the message. It was written in a fine neat hand that he did not recognize. Despite all his father's and Hal's own instruction, Aboli's handwriting had never been better than large, sprawling and malformed. It seemed that another scribe had framed these words. A tiny nub of charcoal was wrapped in the paper, placed there for Hal to write his reply on the reverse of the scrap.

"The Captain buried with honour." Hal's heart leapt as he read that. So it was Aboli who had taken down his father's mutilated corpse from the gibbet. I should have known he would give my father that respect.

There was only one more word. "Althuda?" Hal puzzled over this until he understood that Aboli, or the writer, must be asking after the welfare of the other prisoner.

"Althuda!" he called softly. "Are you awake?" "Greetings, Hal. What cheer?"

"Somebody outside asks after you."

There was a long silence as Althuda. considered this. "Who asks?"

"I know not." Hal could not explain for he was certain that the gaolers eavesdropped on these exchanges.

Another long silence. "I can guess," Althuda called. "And so can you. We have discussed her before. Can you send a reply? Tell her I am alive."

Hal rubbed the charcoal on the wall to sharpen a point on it and wrote, "Althuda well." Even though his letters were small and cramped, there was space for no more on the paper.

The following morning, as they were led out to begin the day's w "ark on the scaffold, Daniel screened Hal for the moment he needed to push the scrap of paper into the same crack from which he had retrieved it.

In the middle of the morning Aboli drove the Governor down from the residence and parked once more beneath the staircase. Long after van de Velde had disappeared into his sanctum, Aboli remained on the coachman's seat. At last he looked up casually at a flock of red-winged starlings that had come down from the cliffs to perch on the walls of the eastern bastion and give vent to their low, mournful whistles. From the birds his eye passed over Hal, who nodded. Once again Aboli dismounted and tended his horses, pausing beside the wall to adjust the straps on his boots and, with a magician's sleight-of hand to recover the message from the crack in the wall. Hal breathed easier when he saw it, for they had established their letterbox.

They did not make the mistake of trying to exchange messages every day. Sometimes a week or more might pass before Aboli nodded at Hal, and placed a note in the wall. If Hal had a message, he would give the same signal and Aboli would leave paper and charcoal for him.

The second message Hal received was in that artistic and delicate script. "A. is safe. Orchid sends her heart."

"Is the orchid the one we spoke of?" Hal called to Althuda that night. "She sends you her heart, and says you are safe."

"I do not know how she has achieved that, but I must believe it and be thankful to her in this as in so many things." There was a lift of relief in Althuda's tone. Hal held the scrap of paper to his nose, and fancied that he detected the faintest perfume upon it. He huddled on his damp straw in a corner of the cell. He thought about Sukeena until sleep overcame him. The memory of her beauty was like a candle flame in the winter darkness of the dungeon.

Governor van de Velde was passing drunk. He had swilled the Rhenish with the soup and t-GMadeira with the fish and the lobster. The red wines of Burgundy had accompanied the mutton stew and the pigeon pie. He had quaffed the claret with the beef, and interspersed each with draughts of good Dutch gin. When at last he rose from the board, he steadied himself as he wove to his seat by the fire with a hand on his wife's arm. She was not usually so attentive, but all this evening she had been in an affectionate and merry mood, laughing at his sallies which on other occasions she would have ignored, and refilling his glass with her own gracious hand before it was half emptied. Come to think of it, he could not remember when last they had dined alone, just the two of them, like a pair of lovers.

For once, he had not been forced to put up with the company of the rustic yokels from the settlement, or with the obsequious flattery of ambitious Company servants or, greatest blessing of all, without the posturing and boasting of that amorous prig Schreuder.

He fell back in the deep leather chair beside the fire and Sukeena brought him a box of good Dutch cigars to choose from. As she held the burning taper for him, he peered with a lascivious eye down the front of her costume. The soft swell of girlish breasts, between which nestled the exotic jade brooch, moved him so that he felt his groin swell and engorge pleasantly.

Katinka was kneeling at the open hearth, but she regarded him so slyly that he worried for a moment that she had seen him ogle the slave girl's bosom. But then she smiled and took up the poker that was heating in the fire and plunged its glowing tip into the stone jug of scented wine. It boiled and fumed, and she filled a bowl with it and brought it to him before it had time to cool.