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made his face leaner, harder and more weatherbeaten. His jaw was more firmly set, his mouth more stern, his gaze more piercing.
    Now, though, his eyes dropped to the water lapping against the
Bough
’s hull and he said, ‘I wish my parents could be here to meet Judith, though I don’t even remember my mother, I was so young when she died. But my father …’ Hal sighed. ‘I hope he’d think I was doing the right thing … I hope he wouldn’t think badly of me.’
    ‘Of course not! He was always so proud of you, Gundwane. Think of the very last words he said to you. Say them now.’
    Hal was unable to speak. In his mind’s eye, all he could see was his father’s rotting, dismembered body hanging from a gibbet in the Cape Colony for all its inhabitants to see and for all the gulls to feast upon. Having falsely accused Sir Francis Courtney of piracy, the Dutch had tortured him to the edge of death, hoping to discover the location of his treasure. Yet Sir Francis had not broken. His enemies had been none the wiser as they hanged him from the gibbet while Hal looked on helpless and heartbroken from the high wall where he was serving a sentence of hard labour.
    ‘Say them, for him.’ The voice was gentle, but insistent.
    Hal breathed deeply, in and out, before he spoke. ‘He said that I was his blood and his promise of eternal life. And then … Then he looked at me and said, “Goodbye, my life.”’
    ‘Then there is your answer. Your father sees you now. I who took him to his final resting place can tell you that his eyes face towards the sun and he sees you always, wherever you are.’
    ‘Thank you, Aboli,’ said Hal.
    Now for the first time he looked at the man who had been his father’s closest companion and was now the closest thing he had to a father figure. Aboli was a member of the Amadoda tribe who lived deep in the forests, many days’ journey from the coast of East Africa. Every hair had been ceremonially plucked from the polished ebony skin of his scalp, and his face was marked with ridged whorls of scar tissue, caused by cuts inflicted in his early boyhood and intended to awe and terrify his enemies. They were a mark of royalty for he and his twin brother were sons of the Monomatapa, the chosen of heaven, the all-powerful ruler of their tribe. When both boys were still very young, slavers had attacked their village. Aboli’s brother had been carried to a place of safety, but Aboli had not been so lucky. Many years had passed before Sir Francis Courtney had freed him and, in so doing, created a bond that had endured beyond the grave, from one generation to another.
    The nickname Gundwane by which Aboli referred to Hal meant ‘Bush Rat’. Aboli had bestowed it when Hal was just a boy of four and it had stuck ever since. No other man on board the
Golden Bough
would have dared be so familiar with their skipper, but then, everything about Aboli was exceptional. He stood half a head taller even than Hal, and his lean, muscular body moved with a cobra’s menacing, sinuous grace and deadly purpose. Everything that Hal knew about swordfighting – not just the technique or the footwork, but the understanding of an opponent and the warrior spirit needed to defeat him – he had learned from Aboli. It had been a tough education, with many a bruise inflicted and a quantity of blood spilled along the way. But if Aboli had been tough on his young pupil, it had only been because Sir Francis demanded it.
    Thinking of those days, Hal gave a wry chuckle, ‘You know, I may be master of this ship, but every time I stand here on the quarterdeck I think of being back on the
Lady Edwina
, getting a roasting from my father for whatever it was I’d done wrong. There was always something. Do you remember how long it took me to learn how to use the backstaff and the sun to calculate the ship’s position? The first times I tried, the backstaff was bigger than I was. I’d stand out on the deck at midday, not a scrap of