Golden Lion. Wilbur Smith

the East Indies, was forty days out of Bombay with a hundred tons of saltpetre on board. She was bound for the Port of London where the saltpetre would be unloaded and taken to the royal armoury at Greenwich Palace, there to be mixed with sulphur and charcoal to provide gunpowder for His Majesty King Charles II of England’s army and navy. At the stern of the vessel, where the captain had his quarters, there were a number of other cabins for the ship’s senior officers and any important passengers that might be aboard. In one of these cabins a man was on his knees, his hands clasped together in prayer and his eyes closed as he sought permission to kill.

      His name was William Pett. He had come aboard with official papers identifying him as a senior official of the East India Company and requiring any person engaged in Company business to provide him with whatever assistance he might require in the furtherance of his duties. Pett had approached Captain Rupert Goddings, master of the Earl of Cumberland, at a dinner hosted by Gerald Aungier, the first Governor of Bombay. He explained that his business in India was completed, hinting that it had been a delicate matter, involving negotiations with various Portuguese and Indian notables that he was not at liberty to discuss in any detail.

      ‘You understand the need for discretion, I’m sure,’ Pett said, in the tone of one man of the world to another.

      Goddings was a large, ebullient, cocksure man with a splendidly upturned black moustache, whose years as a merchant captain had made him a considerable fortune. He was a perfectly competent seaman, and, if only because he lacked the imagination to be scared, possessed a degree of bravery. But not even his closest friends would have called him a great intellect. Now he adopted a suitably thoughtful expression and replied, ‘Quite so, quite so … Very easily offended, some of these Indians, and the Portuguese aren’t much better. It’s all that spicy food, in my view. Heats up the blood.’

      ‘I have, of course, sent regular reports home, summarizing the progress of our talks,’ Pett continued. ‘But now that they’re done it’s essential that I return home as soon as possible so as to discuss them in detail with my directors.’

      ‘Of course, quite understand. Vital to keep John Company fully informed. You’ll be wanting a berth on the Sausage, then, I dare say.’

      For a moment, Pett had been caught unawares. ‘I’m sorry, Captain, the sausage? I don’t quite follow.’

      Goddings had laughed. ‘By God, sir, I dare say you don’t! It’s Cumberland, don’t you see? They make sausages up there, so I’m told. I’m a Devonshire man myself. Anyway that’s why the Earl of Cumberland has always been known as the Sausage. Surprised you don’t know that, come to think of it, being a Company man.’

      ‘Well, I’ve always been more involved with financial and administrative functions than with nautical affairs. But to return to your kind invitation, yes, I would be very grateful of a berth. Of course, I have funds with which to pay for my passage. Would sixty guineas be sufficient?’

      ‘It certainly would,’ said Goddings, thinking to himself that the Company must really value Mr Pett if they were prepared to let him spend that kind of money. ‘Come aboard!’

      Pett smiled, thinking to himself how easy it was going to be to earn the five hundred guineas he was being paid to kill Goddings. It was apparent, even on this brief encounter, that Goddings was prey to a trait that Pett had observed in many stupid people: a total unawareness of his own stupidity. This blissful ignorance led to a fatal excess of self-confidence. Goddings had, for example, believed that he could cuckold an elderly director of the Company by the brazenly public seduction of the old man’s much younger wife, and that he would get away with it. He was about to discover, a very short time before he departed this world, just how wrong he had been.

      Upon boarding the Earl of Cumberland Pett had taken his time before making his move against the captain. He needed to find his sea legs and to learn as much as he could about the ship’s company and the various friendships, alliances, enmities and tensions that existed within it, all of which he intended to exploit in the execution of his plan. More than that, however, he was waiting for the signal without which he could not kill, the voice in his head, a messenger from heaven whom Pett knew only as the Saint, who came to assure him that his victim deserved to die and that he, William Pett, would be rewarded in heaven for his efforts to purify the earth of sin.

      Pett slept each night in a wooden cot that was suspended from hooks in the timbers that spanned the cabin, so as to keep it stable when the ship rolled. Now he knelt by the cot as the presence of the Saint filled his mind and soul – indeed, his entire being – with the knowledge that he was blessed and that the whole company of angels and archangels was watching over him and protecting him. For as long as the vision lasted, Pett experienced a blissful ecstasy greater than any he had ever known with a woman, and when he rose it was with joy in his heart, for he would be doing God’s work tonight.

      His chosen weapon was a perfectly ordinary table knife that he had taken from the captain’s table, where he ate every night with Goddings and his senior officers. Pett had honed its blade with a whetstone he had discreetly purloined from the ship’s stores until it was as sharp as any dagger. Once he had used it to kill Goddings, he planned to take advantage of the confusion that the discovery of the captain’s body was bound to cause and leave it amongst the personal effects of a sulky, unpopular young midshipman, whose incompetence and bad character had made him the target of the captain’s wrath on a number of occasions. No one would doubt that the lad had reason to want revenge and he would have no friends to speak in his defence, though Pett was minded to volunteer to act on his behalf as summary justice was meted out. That was for later. Now, however, he placed the knife in the right-hand pocket of his breeches, left his cabin and knocked on the door of the captain’s quarters.

      ‘Come in!’ Goddings called out, suspecting nothing for it had become the two men’s custom to share a glass of brandy every evening, while discussing the day’s events aboard ship, ruminating on the ever-growing might and wealth of the East India Company (with particular reference to how a man might get his hands on a larger share of it), and generally setting the world to rights.

      The two men talked and drank in their usual companionable fashion, but all the while Pett was waiting for the moment to strike. And then the Saint, as he always did, provided the perfect opportunity. Goddings, by now somewhat befuddled by drink, having consumed much more than Pett who had discreetly kept his consumption to a minimum, got up from his chair to fetch more brandy from a wooden chest whose interior had been divided into six compartments, each of which contained a crystal glass decanter that was filled with a variety of spirits and cordials.

      Goddings turned his back as he rummaged through the decanters to find one containing more brandy, quite oblivious to Pett, who had risen silently from his seat, taken the knife from his pocket and was crossing the cabin towards him. At the very last moment, just as Pett was about to stab the blade into Goddings’s right kidney, the captain turned around.

      For Pett, moments such as these seemed to stretch out forever. He was aware of every movement his victim made, no matter how tiny; every breath he took; every flicker of expression on his face. Goddings’s eyes widened in a look of utter bewilderment, the total surprise of a man who simply could not understand what was happening to him or why. Pett delivered three quick stabs, as sharp and fast as a prizefighter’s jabs, into Goddings’s fleshy gut. The captain was too shocked to shout out in alarm, or even to scream in pain. Instead he mewled like an infant as he looked down helplessly at the crimson outpour of blood that was drenching his white waistcoat and, for he had wet himself with fear and shock, the stain of urine spreading across his breeches.

      With his last iota of strength, Goddings attempted to defend himself. He hurled the decanter, missing Pett who easily swayed out of its way, instead striking the lantern which hung from a low beam above his desk, knocking it off its peg onto the escritoire on which lay his open logbook and a nautical chart. The oil from the lantern and the brandy from the decanter were both highly inflammable, as were the paper documents. The lantern’s flame was the final ingredient and soon fire was flickering across the varnished wood of the escritoire and running in streams of burning liquid across the cabin floor.

      Pett did not move. He was still