The Tiger’s Prey. Wilbur Smith
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paused. Then, all in a rush, he ran to the figure and threw him back in the chair. Stronger than he’d intended: the chair tipped over and fell. His father sprawled backwards and crashed onto the floor, one arm outstretched towards the pistol that lay nearby.
Francis fought back the nausea that rose in his throat. ‘Father?’
Sir Walter Leighton had been handsome, once, before his addictions ruined him. Even in death, his face still bore a trace of that irresistible energy Francis remembered so well; the man who would fling him into the air as a boy and catch him, who would bet him a guinea to jump a fence on his horse, or propose a sudden trip to London. Now his lifeless blue eyes stared up at Francis, as if pleading for forgiveness. From the front, he looked completely untouched. Only further back could you see the edges of the jagged, bloody wound where the pistol ball had blown his brain out through the back of his head.
A short, shrill scream sounded behind him. He spun around to face it. Alice was standing there, her hands raised to her mouth, staring at the body on the floor.
‘I told you to wait upstairs,’ said Francis, horrified that she should have to see this. He ran and wrapped his arms around her, holding her face to his shoulder to block the sight.
She sobbed into his shirt. ‘Why did he do it?’
Francis steered her to one of the leather wingback chairs and made her sit down, where the desk top hid the body from her. She pulled her shawl tight around her, and didn’t try to follow when he went back to the table.
Francis grabbed the topmost paper from the pile and held it up to the light. It was a letter from a solicitor, a firm in London he’d never heard of. He read through the orotund legal phrases, struggling to understand. One paragraph leaped out at him.
If you fail to discharge these debts by midnight on the nineteenth of October, I shall have no alternative but to send bailiffs to seize the said property, including all fixtures and furnishings, in satisfaction of the same.
‘They are speaking about High Weald,’ Francis realized. ‘That’s tonight.’ He looked at the clock on the mantelpiece. It was later than he’d thought. The steeple bell in the little chapel on the hill would already have struck eleven, though he hadn’t heard it over the storm. Horror dawned on him. ‘They’ll be here within the hour.’
He looked down again at his father’s corpse. Anger rose inside him, driving out the sorrow he’d felt. It had been so long, he couldn’t remember when he first realized his father was a compulsive gambler. The way silver disappeared from the chest without explanation, only to reappear equally mysteriously some months later. The card parties in the drawing room he was never allowed to enter, that went on so late he could hear them still going when he woke the next morning. His stepfather’s swings of mood: drawn and silent for weeks at a time, then bright and merry and bringing presents into the house for Francis and Alice. The strange men who arrived on the doorstep at all hours, watched by Francis from behind the banisters on the upstairs landing. The rows afterwards, Alice screaming at him behind the closed bedroom door.
But he’d never realized it was this bad. A frantic banging erupted from outside, and for a moment he thought the bailiffs had already arrived. But it was only the shutters again. A glance at the clock said he had fifteen minutes left.
‘We have to go,’ he cried. He pulled his mother to her feet and led her upstairs again, locking the front door as they passed. Her face was pale, her hand cold as glass. ‘Get your things together, whatever we can carry.’
Listlessly, she went to her wardrobe and pulled out some dresses and petticoats. Francis went to his room and filled a bag with his few possessions. He could almost hear the seconds ticking past.
He ran back to his mother’s room and found her sitting on the four-poster bed surrounded by her clothes.
‘Come on,’ he said fiercely. ‘They’ll be here any minute.’ He started stuffing her clothes into a bag. ‘If only my father—’
‘Don’t call him that,’ she whispered. ‘Sir Walter was not your father.’
‘I know that. But you always said I should call him—’
‘I was wrong. I married him because I was a widow and you needed a father. After William died, my family disowned me; they didn’t even attend his funeral. My father hated me for marrying a commoner, even from a family as rich as the Courtneys. Then the circumstances of William’s death, the scandal that attached to it … He never forgave me.’
‘You never told me.’
‘You were an innocent child who had already suffered too much. Sir Walter Leighton was loving and charming and he made me laugh. I didn’t recognize his true character. Just as I didn’t know your father, until it was too late.’
‘But you always said my father – my true father, William Courtney – was a good man. A kind, noble man.’
Her face crumpled. ‘Oh Francis, those were all lies. I could not bear for you to carry the sorrow of knowing what sort of man William Courtney was. A black-hearted brute who almost danced a jig when his own father died; who beat me black and blue, and would have beaten you too if he’d lived. He almost killed his own brother, Thomas.’
Francis’ legs felt weak under him. He sat down hard on the bed. Angry tears pricked his eyes. ‘No. It was Thomas who killed him. You told me, Mother. You told me.’
‘Yes, that was true. Tom did kill William,’ she admitted. ‘But it was self-defence.’
‘Were you there?’ Francis demanded. ‘Did you see it?’
‘William went to London and never came back. The story went about that Tom had killed him, but I knew if that was true, he must have been provoked. Tom couldn’t have killed his brother in cold blood.’
Francis struggled to breathe. ‘He must have.’
A sudden, clamorous hammering sounded from downstairs, and this time there was no mistaking it: the sound of a heavy fist on a heavy door. Francis heard muffled shouts, and the rattle of someone trying to turn the handle.
Alice clasped him to her. ‘You are nearly of age, now. It is time you learned the truth of things.’
‘You’re lying.’ He shook her off and grabbed the bag. Another furious bout of knocking came from downstairs. ‘I have already lost one father tonight. Now you are trying to destroy the memory of the other.’
‘Open up,’ called a voice, loud enough to impose itself over the storm. ‘Open in the name of the law.’
Francis moved to the bedroom doorway. ‘We have to go. If they find us here, they will take everything.’
‘I will stay.’ Alice wrapped her shawl tightly around her. ‘They will not leave a poor, grieving widow without any succour or shelter. And with Walter dead, they cannot pursue his debts so easily. As for this house, let them have it. Excepting you, my darling, it has brought me nothing but misery and loss.’
He stared at her. Emotion choked his thoughts; he wanted to speak, but no words would come.
‘Open up,’ shouted the voice below once more.
Francis ran. He slipped down the back stairs, through the silent kitchens and into the stable yard. The grooms and stable boys had all been dismissed; the thoroughbreds he had ridden as a boy had long since been sold to new owners. Only one horse remained, Hyperion, the chestnut gelding his stepfather had given him on his thirteenth birthday. Alone in his stall, he whinnied as he heard Francis approach.
Francis lit a lamp and saddled him, working quickly. It wouldn’t be long before the bailiff’s men worked their way around to the back of the house, looking for a way in. He grabbed an oilskin cape from a hook on the wall and led Hyperion out into the yard.
A figure stood there, waiting for him.
‘Mother?’ His anger melted away at the sight of her,