The City Of Dreadful Death (Jack Windrush Book 8) - Malcolm Archibald

Windrush - The City Of Dreadful Death: book excerpt

Prelude

DENKYIRA, WEST AFRICA, SUMMER 1800

The family sat together in the courtyard of their house with the wind rustling the leaves of the palm tree in one corner and the food set up before them. Kodzo knew that with the first harvest of the year successfully gathered, there was plenty for everybody, plantains, yams and manioc, together with sweet potato and gourds of beer.

Koshiwa Badu sat at the head, joking with her family, chiding where necessary, allowing the children all the freedom of childhood while keeping them from danger, as was the Denkyira tradition. Beside Koshiwa was Yawo, her daughter, and Kofi and Fifi, her sons. Further away, Kwabena and Kodzo, her grandsons, played happily with the fowls, not caring about the conversation of their elders. They were at home and life was as it had always been.

Koshiwa looked up when she heard the frantic barking of a dog. She glanced at Kofi, who pulled a face and continued to eat, while Fifi reached for his second gourd of beer. A shift of wind rustled the palm leaves and brought the sound of a man shouting in the distance.

“That’s Kwasi Bekoe,” Kofi said. “He’s probably drunk again.” He laughed, with his family joining in. Kwasi Bekoe was something of a standing joke in the village, always getting drunk and falling out with his wife and anybody else who had the misfortune to meet him.

When the dog’s barking ended in a high-pitched squeal, Fifi lowered his gourd, wiped the beer from his chin and smiled. “Kwasi has kicked the dog!”

“I wish he would shut his teeth,” Koshiwa said, as the shouting continued. “Kofi, go and tell him to keep quiet. Either that or I will.”

“You would start a quarrel,” Kofi said. “I’d better go.” Taking a sip at Fifi’s gourd, he stepped outside the courtyard, walked through the open front room and into the village. He saw Kwasi running towards him, his legs blundering as if he were exhausted, and blood sliding down his face.

“Kofi!” Kwasi said. “Run! Run now!”

“What is it?” Kofi dropped his smile as he saw what was behind Kwasi. “Edwesu Asanti slave hunters!”

“Mother!” Kofi only had time for one word before the rush of men overpowered him. Knocked to the ground, he struggled for only a moment as two men held him, and a third cracked a heavy stick on the back of his head. Other men rushed past him and into Koshiwa’s house.

Koshiwa rose from her seat, screaming as the Edwesu warriors charged into her courtyard. Naked except for white loin-cloths, each man had two white stripes painted down each side of his face, and carried a heavy club in his hand.

Fifi was first to react, throwing his gourd at the first man and leaping for the long spear in the corner of the courtyard. The gourd caught the striped man square in the face, sending him staggering back. His companions blocked Fifi’s path, swinging their clubs, knocking him to the ground. The white striped Edwesu circled the courtyard, grabbing everybody, smashing their clubs on the heads of those who tried to resist.

Only Kodzo managed to escape, ducking under the long arms of one Edwesu warrior and side-stepping another to run into the street outside. Panting with fear, he saw more of the white striped warriors all around the village, gathering together the Denkyira people and shoving them under the fetish tree in the small village square. Sliding into a patch of bushes, Kodzo watched the Edwesus grab the Denkyiras and manacle their ankles and wrists, hugged his knees to his chest and lay still, sobbing in fear.

As soon as night came, Kodzo slid free from his hiding place. By that time the Edwesus had marched the Denkyiras away, leaving the village deserted. Wiping away his tears, Kodzo ran home to search for food. He did not notice the man with the white stripes until it was too late.

“Another for the slave market!” The Edwesu said. “Come with me, little slave.”

Kodzo began to scream. It was a sound he would grow used to in the long, bitter years ahead.

Chapter One

ATLANTIC OCEAN, JUNE 1873

“The barometer’s falling fast.” Harry Young, mate of the three-masted barque Lady Luck, tapped the glass, swore softly, and checked the set of the sails.

“Aye,” Captain Hobson glanced aft, where dark clouds piled up from the darkening horizon, and a greasy sheen tinted the sea. “We’re in for the very devil of a blow, I reckon, Mr Young.”

“Best get below, Mary.” Lounging by the rail, Jack Windrush had been listening to the conversation. “If the captain thinks there’s a storm coming, I don’t want you swept overboard.”

Mary smiled. “It’s not stormy yet, Jack. All we have is a fresh breeze.”

Jack grunted. “Aye, but a fresh breeze can soon turn into a howling gale.”

“If that happens,” Mary said, “I might go below.” She stepped along the deck with the wind whipping her long hair around her shoulders and threatening to lift her straw hat. “I can’t stand being cooped up in that tiny cabin, Jack. I’ll stay on deck as long as I can.”

“You’re a stubborn hussy, Mary Windrush!”

Mary gave a small curtsey, with a stray shaft of sunlight reflecting from the silver Celtic cross she wore around her neck. “Why, thank you, Captain Jack. Coming from you, I’ll take that as a compliment.”

“That’s Major Jack, hussy, and I’ll thank you to remember it!”

Mary laughed. “You’ve been Captain Jack to me for too long to change now, Captain Jack!”

The wind increased, coming from the south-west, cracking the canvas against the spars and whistling through the standing rigging. Jack put a protective arm around Mary, who shook it away. “I can stand on my own two feet, thank you!”

“All hands aloft!” Captain Hobson roared. “Make fast the skysails, royals and royal staysails!”

Mary watched the seamen scramble aloft with the wind flapping their loose clothing and shirts and threatening to blast them from their precarious hand-and-foot-holds. “Brave men up there,” she said, tucking her purple-and-gold scarf around her neck.

Jack tapped the glass. “The barometer is still falling.”

“Aye,” Harry Young glanced at the gathering clouds. “We’d better shorten all sail before we’re caught out here.” He watched the seamen return to the deck, some to slip below to the foc’sle.

Captain Hobson grunted, paced the deck for a few moments, checked the sea and made his decision. “All hands!” he roared. “All hands shorten sail!”

“Time for us to get below,” Jack said as a rush of nimble-footed seamen filled the deck and once more swarmed aloft.

“It is getting blowy!” Mary grabbed at her hat a second too late as the wind finally whisked it from her head and tossed it overboard. She watched as if floated for a moment then was lost in the rapidly rising waves.

“The lads are struggling up there,” Jack gestured aloft, where the seamen balanced on the footropes fought with the gaskets. Unfurled, the heavy canvas of the sails billowed and bellied as the wind rose. One bald seaman momentarily lost his footing and wrapped both arms around a spar as the rising gale blasted the sails from the gaskets, thrashed the canvas to pieces and hurled the ragged remnants into the heaving sea.

“Mary!” Jack grabbed his wife as the deck heeled to starboard. After stripping the canvas from the masts, the wind pressed down on Lady Luck, forcing Jack and Mary to hold onto anything solid. The bald seaman slipped and nearly fell until one of his mates hauled him back to comparative safety.

“I can hardly breathe!” Mary gasped as the wind clutched at her.

“Get that woman below!” Jack could hardly hear Captain Hobson’s bellow above the howl of the wind that was now forcing the ship further and ever further over. Waves leapt up the side of Lady Luck, reaching for the frail life on board.

“She’s broaching to!” Harry Young yelled as Lady Luck tilted onto her beam ends, with her lower yards dragging in the frothing white water to leeward. Her seamen held on with white-knuckled hands, while their feet scrabbled for purchase on ropes that were no longer taut.

“Hold on!” Jack held Mary, who had wrapped both arms around the mizzen mast. He saw the white faces and gaping mouths of the helmsmen, both unable to move as the wind pressed them against the wheel.

“Dear God help us!” a half-shaven seaman yelled.

“Aye, Peter,” a rough voice replied. “I knew you were a Christian at heart. I told you before that there are no atheists in a storm.”

After that, there was no speech as the gale mounted, and the waves broke green and white over the heeling deck. Unable to speak, scarcely able to breathe, Jack fought to see through the curtain of spindrift and driving rain. The light had died, with the occasional burst of lightning the only illumination, each flash revealing a nightmare of leaping dark water topped with crests of foaming white. Looking aloft, Jack saw the storm had carried away the main topmast, while the mizzen topgallant hung in the rigging, threatening to fall with every fresh assault of the wind.

Sodden, with her dress and hair slicked close to body and head, Mary wrapped her fingers around Jack’s thumb. He met her gaze, saw no fear in her brown eyes, and tried to muster a smile.

Then the wind died. A great sea broke over the stern, sweeping up the length of the ship, carrying away the steering and standard compass, splintering the ship’s longboat into a thousand pieces and breaking the cover of number two hatch. As that wave receded, Lady Luck dipped by the head, thrusting her bowsprit underwater.

“Are we going to sink?” Mary asked with surprising calmness.

“No,” Jack said. “The storm’s easing. I can hear you talk.”

Mary nodded. “So you can.” Her smile did not look forced. “I can hear you as well.”

Although the wind had receded, Lady Luck still wallowed in a tremendous sea, with waves around her higher than the broken mizzen.

“Sound the well!” Captain Hobson ordered the carpenter. “See how much water we’re making.”

“I tried, sir,” the carpenter was a balding, middle-aged man with a worn-out face. “There’s too much water slopping in there to get an accurate reading.”

“Try again.” The captain stepped aft to examine the damage aloft, holding onto the rail to keep his balance on the heeling deck. “You’re still with us I see, Major and Mrs Windrush?”

“We’re still here, Captain,” Jack confirmed. “How’s Lady Luck?”

Captain Hobson grunted. “Deserted us, Major, deserted us.” He continued his scrutiny of the masts and rigging. “The cap of the lower masthead is broken,” he said to the mate, “and the storm’s wrenched the masthead around. The main yard and both topsail yards are also down.” He nodded to the splintered spars as they lay across what remained of the rail, “and the topmast, topgallant mast and all the upper yards and their gear are floating to leeward, hammering at our hull.”

“Yes, sir,” the mate nodded to the ten-foot-high tangle of broken spars, cordage and various pieces of ship’s timbers that lay across the main deck. “There’s that, too, and the mizzen topgallant mast and yards could fall at any minute.” He raised his voice slightly. “Major Windrush, you and the missus would be better moving elsewhere. If that raffle falls, you are right underneath.”

Jack looked up at the mess above, with only the straining lower rigging holding it in place. He shifted further along the deck as Captain Hobson watched, unsmiling.

Brushing wet hair from her face, Mary looked around Lady Luck. “What happens now, Captain? Can you repair your ship out here at sea? Or do we continue the voyage with only half our masts and no sails?”

The captain glanced at the mate, who screwed up his face.

“We’ll set up a temporary jury rig,” Captain Hobson said, “but we’re making too much water to sail right to London. No, Mrs Windrush, we’ll have to head to the nearest land to fix her up. I’m sorry, but your journey home will be delayed by a few weeks.”

“Sir!” the carpenter appeared from below, “we’re making water fast. About two feet since I checked below. I reckon we’re stove in below the waterline.”

“Well, that confirms it,” Captain Hobson said. “We head for the nearest sheltered anchorage.”

“That would be somewhere in West Africa,” Jack said. “Over there beyond the horizon.”

“Aye,” the captain said. “The Gold Coast; Cape Coast Castle if we can make it, although it’s not the best anchorage in the world.”

“And if we can’t make it?” Mary was still calm. “We don’t seem to have many boats left.”

“We make for Elmina.”

“I don’t know that place,” Jack said.

“It’s part of our Gold Coast colony,” the captain’s eyes were never still, checking the rigging, the set of the masts, the actions of his crew and the slowly decreasing swell of the sea. “It used to be Dutch, but we took it over last year. I’m surprised you haven’t heard about it.”

Jack frowned. “Our regiment has been in Ireland, dying of fever in Hong Kong and doing a little soldiering in Penang. I’ve not had much interest in politicians redrawing maps in West Africa.”

“Well, Major, you’ll see it for yourself soon, if the old Lady holds out until we get there.” Captain glanced looked aloft as another line parted. “I believe the anchorage at Elmina is more sheltered than Cape Coast although I’ve no charts.”

“No charts?” Mary began to look worried.

Jack glanced at the waves, marbled grey-and-white and still as high as the mizzen-mast, their tips white and curling, with the remnants of the storm flicking spindrift onto Lady Luck. “We’d best leave you to carry on.”

“Jack?” Mary clung to his arm as they inched along the deck. Pieces of loose gear rattled above them, with a block swaying precariously a few feet above the deck.

“It’s as bad below,” Jack said. Their cabin was a wreck, with seawater swirling three feet deep through a smashed porthole.

“All our possessions are in there,” Mary gripped Jack’s arm.

“The sea chests are water-proofed,” Jack held her tight as the ship rolled from side to side. “Everything will be fine.”

Captain Hobson shouted orders which saw the crew working aloft, clearing the worst of the mess and tossing cordage and splintered spars overboard. As the wind kicked up again, Lady Luck lurched, with seawater surging over the port quarter.

“Come on, old Lady!” Captain Hobson revealed a tenderness towards his ship that surprised Jack. “We’ll get you sorted out.”

With the south-west wind driving her on, Lady Luck plunged over the sea, raising clouds of spray as the crew worked frantically to save the ship. Captain Hobson and Harry Young nursed Lady Luck towards the shore, chasing the hands from difficulty to crisis as spars broke and water surged through holes in the hull.

“We won’t make Cape Coast,” Harry Young shouted. “We’ll be lucky to reach Elmina.”

“We’ll be lucky to reach anywhere,” Captain Hobson said.

With the waves only gradually decreasing and the masts creaking ominously, Mary lifted her head. “Can you smell that?”

“I can,” Jack said.

“It’s like the Indian jungle,” Mary said, “yet different.” She drew a hand over her head, pushing back her long black hair. “It’s wilder.”

“Aye,” Jack peered eastward, trying to see through the curtain of spray.

“Have you ever been to Africa?” Mary asked.

“Never to stay,” Jack said. “I passed through Egypt on my way to India back in ‘52, and touched at Cape Town a couple of times, but that’s all.”     

“We’re both strangers here, then,” Mary said.

Battling against the offshore wind, Lady Luck limped closer to the shore, hour by wave-battered hour until Jack heard the call from the wreckage aloft. “Land ho!”

“We’re going to make it,” Jack said.

“I’ve never doubted it.” Mary had somehow rescued Jack’s sole remaining dry cheroot and lit it with a salvaged Lucifer. Waving the match in the air to extinguish it, she drew on the cheroot. “So that’s Africa.”

“That’s Elmina,” Captain Hobson said. “Thank you, Lord, for small mercies. If we can cross the bar, we might find the river there a better anchorage than Cape Coast.”

“It’s not what I expected.” Borrowing the mate’s telescope, Jack studied the large white building that dominated the town of Elmina. “It’s like a mediaeval castle.” He checked to ensure that it was the Union flag that hung from the flagpole. “Aye, it’s British, thank God.”

“It’s charming. I’d like to visit that place.” Shifting the cheroot to the corner of her mouth, Mary relieved Jack of the telescope. “I wonder if the captain will allow us to land.”

“How long will repairs take?” Jack asked.

“Weeks,” Harry Young said. “You’d be as well taking Mrs Windrush ashore as letting her remain here in a flooded cabin.”

“We’re making water fast,” the carpenter looked even more worried than he had with his previous report. “There are more planks stove in.”

“Let me see.” Without hesitation, Captain Hobson swung down a length of rope to inspect the hold. He emerged swearing and sodden a few moments later, and in that short space of time, Jack saw the ship had settled further into the water.

“She waited,” Mary murmured, still studying Elmina.

“Who waited?”

“Lady Luck,” Mary said. “She waited until we were close to shore before she decided to sink. She was looking after her crew and passengers.”

“Aye,” Captain Hobson said. “The old Lady would do that.” He gave Mary an approving nod before raising his voice. “Get the hands together! Salvage all that can be salvaged and then abandon ship.”