He stroked her hair, until she fell asleep curled next to him. Looking at her face, peaceful and innocent, it was easy to forget that she had killed men in cold blood.

  It was the last time he ever spoke to her.

  *

  The rain had ceased when he woke, though he could hear water dripping from the sodden thatch. Sunlight shone through the church windows and made the gold leaf in the icons glow. A dark-skinned angel with bushy African hair held a naked sword aloft, gazing down at Paul with soulful eyes. Was it exhorting Paul to battle, or condemning him to eternal punishment?

  Sana had disappeared. Paul felt a flicker of annoyance. They had not travelled far enough from Gondar, and after the battle the countryside would be crawling with bands of soldiers, whichever side had won. They needed an early start to get away.

  He ducked through the doorway and stopped.

  In the storm the day before, he had been too desperate for shelter to notice any of the church’s surroundings. Now he could see that it sat on the outskirts of a village. A series of domed huts, smaller versions of the church, straggled down the valley, surrounded by bleached wood fences. Chickens pecked the dirt, and naked children ground manioc between stones.

  The horses were not where he had left them. A group of about a hundred villagers – mostly dirty and raggedly clothed – had crowded around the front of the church. They chattered excitedly when Paul appeared. He guessed they had never seen a white man before.

  At the head of the group was a man in a white robe, tied with a richly decorated belt. He wore a crimson cape, a pointed hat and a silver cross around his neck. A deferential teenager stood behind, holding an umbrella. It must be the priest whose church Paul had slept in.

  Paul bowed and spoke a greeting in Amharic. He wished Sana was there. Her greedy young mind had picked up the language almost fluently, while Paul could barely stumble through a few phrases. He tried Arabic, but received a blank response.

  ‘God save the king,’ Paul said. It was something he had heard often in the palace.

  The priest frowned. In a time of civil war, it was a dangerous thing to say.

  Paul wanted to offer a gift, but the bags of food they had brought from the castle had vanished with the horses. Paul showed his empty hands and smiled.

  ‘I have nothing.’

  The priest misunderstood. With elaborate courtesy, he ushered Paul down the hill into the village. Paul tried to demur, but the villagers crowded round him, jostling and pressing so he was forced to follow. They gave him injera – thin bread like a pancake – and wat stew from a clay pot. Paul wolfed it down. He had not realised how hungry he was.

  An awkward silence followed. Paul stood, but the priest waved him to sit, and again the press of people around him was so tight he had no choice. As the minutes passed, his anxiety mounted. There would not be many white men wandering these mountains, and he did not want word getting back to Gondar.

  Where was Sana? He didn’t dare to ask the villagers in case they harmed her. But if he left without her, how would she ever find him?

  The priest seemed to be waiting for something. That worried Paul most of all. He rose again, and this time he did not let the crowd push him back.

  ‘I must go,’ he said, summoning up all the authority of the Kitzera. ‘Where are my horses?’ Incomprehension. ‘I had horses. By the church.’

  He mimed riding, and the priest’s face relaxed in a smile of understanding.

  ‘Horse,’ he repeated. ‘We bring.’

  ‘I go.’

  ‘You go,’ the priest agreed.

  A group of men and boys went down towards a pasture by the river. Paul could not see any sign of his horses there. But in a few minutes, he heard the drum of hooves coming up the road.

  It was approaching fast, much faster than a horse which had been half-lamed in the storm should be ridden. Not from the pasture, but from the direction of the mountains. And it was not the sound of a single horse, but the hard pounding of many hooves.

  He had waited too long. Paul shouldered through the crowd, pushing away the hands that tried to grab him. If he could reach the scrubby slopes above the village, the horsemen would struggle to follow. If he . . .

  A company of cavalry galloped out of the trees and reined up in the village square. They carried shields tasselled with fur, hastily painted with the golden lion emblem.

  Yostos must have won the battle, Paul thought, though it did not make any difference.

  He was caught.

  The soldiers bound his hands and tethered him behind one of the horses, so that he had to run to keep up when they set off. They did not take him far. Blundering through the storm, Paul and Sana must have wandered in circles. Between two hills, clouds of vultures came into view as they scavenged the battlefield like sheets of rain. Bodies littered the ground; the ground was spattered with blood.

  Further down the valley, a safe distance from the carrion birds, they reached the camp. Paul was taken to a large, gold-trimmed tent with the royal lion standard fluttering outside it. He steeled himself to face Yostos’s fury.

  The curtain flap lifted. But it was not Yostos who emerged. It was a squat figure, his plump body straining the chain mail he wore as he waddled forward. On his head was the wide-brimmed silver hat of the king, with the silver chains veiling his face. Before he spoke, Paul knew who he was.

  ‘The Kitzera,’ Goshu said with mock grandeur. ‘The king’s loyal executioner.’

  Paul said nothing.

  Goshu pulled off the veil. His face was smooth and unmarked: he must have kept well out of the fighting.

  ‘I thought of you often during my exile,’ Goshu went on. ‘How you were lying in my bed. Wearing my clothes. Fucking my slaves. You, who promised me your loyalty. I spent many nights thinking what I would do to you.’

  ‘The king commanded it,’ Paul protested.

  Goshu’s corpulent body quivered with laughter. His mouth split open, white teeth bared in delight.

  ‘And did the king command you to slip poison herbs in his supper?’

  ‘That was your brother.’

  Goshu’s grin broadened.

  ‘Was it his hand that fed my father the poison? I doubt he had the balls for that. He would have found a willing accomplice to be his executioner.’

  ‘It was Yostos,’ Paul insisted.

  ‘And you would swear it in front of him?’

  Paul was trapped. He could not back down now.

  ‘I will.’

  Goshu led Paul through the camp to an enormous sycamore tree. Its trunk was twisted and gnarled; its bare branches had been festooned with crimson cloths. The ground underneath was carpeted with what looked like pink and red flowers, as if a gust of wind had suddenly made the tree drop all its blossoms. They were the severed testicles of the defeated army.

  A man dangled from one of the branches, strung up by a leather tarade. Even by the standards of mutilated corpses, there was something uniquely terrible about this one. His naked body was bloated and deformed, the limbs flabby as if they’d been rolled out of dough. It looked more like a scarecrow than a man, though not enough to scare away the crows who perched on his shoulders and pecked at his lips.

  A breath of wind spun the hanged man around so that he was facing Paul. It was barely recognisable as Yostos. His features, once so strong, had somehow been flattened. His commanding jaw and aquiline nose were no more than pimples, while his eyes were ragged sockets.

  Paul realised why. It was only his skin. Goshu had flayed him, then stuffed the shell with grass and straw to make a plump effigy. Paul wondered if Goshu had killed Yostos before he did it. He suspected not.

  ‘My poor brother,’ Goshu said. ‘He put all his faith in your white man’s war magic. He forgot that when the rains come, even the greatest musket is no better than a stick.’

  Paul could only imagine the horror of the battle, fighting at close quarters in that lancing downpour. Blood flowing so thick that the rain could not wash it away. Yostos’s schemes and ambition drowned by something as commonplace as the weather, and a brother’s hatred.

  ‘I told you he would bring ruin on the kingdom,’ Goshu whispered in Paul’s ear. ‘I told you to be loyal to me. Instead, you betrayed me. Now you will pay the price.’

  ‘I only ever . . .’

  There was no point protesting. Everything was futile. If Yostos had not killed the king, Goshu would have done so. Whoever won, Paul would have been crushed between them like grain under millstones.

  Goshu pulled the veil back over his face.

  ‘Your voice is poison to my mind. I never want to hear it again.’

  While they had been speaking, a group of guards had formed up around them. They were the same men Paul had fought on the day of the hunt – Tigréan warriors with long colobus monkey skins fixed to their helmets. They seized Paul by the arms. Their captain stepped forward, and again Paul felt the shock of familiarity as he saw the open jaws of the snarling mouth that surmounted his helmet. He wore two leather tarades wrapped around his wrists.

  ‘Greet the new Kitzera,’ said Goshu’s voice from behind the veil. ‘As you know, his first job is to kill his predecessor.’

  Paul’s eyes went instinctively to the tarades. Goshu shook his head.

  ‘That is too easy a death for a traitor like you. First, he will cut out your tongue. Then he will take you to the wilderness. The hyenas and jackals will eat you alive.’

  Paul struggled. He fought and twisted to get free, but the guards were too strong. Two held his legs, and two his arms, while a fifth stood behind him and gripped his skull like a vice.

  The executioner drew his knife. He approached Paul until he was so close that Paul could see into the shadows beneath the screaming mask. Paul clenched his teeth, but fingers squirmed between his lips and pried his jaw apart. Paul tried to bite the hands, until suddenly he felt the cold steel of the executioner’s blade in his mouth. If he bit down now, he would slice his mouth open.

  The executioner lifted his tongue with the point of the knife, like a doctor performing an examination. He started to cut. Paul screamed and screamed, until there was so much blood in his mouth, he could scream no more.

  The executioner pulled out Paul’s tongue, now a grotesque lump of flesh. He showed it to Paul, then tossed it in the dust. A pair of hunting dogs flew on it. Paul spat out blood, in the executioner’s face, but the captain laughed. He licked it off slowly, moving his tongue lasciviously around his lips.

  The guards stuffed a rag in Paul’s mouth, bound his hands, and took him to the wilderness to die.

  CALCUTTA, 1806

  T

  he Mornington’s anchor dropped into the brown Hooghly river. Adam heard the splash and the gurgle of water as the flukes sank into the mud. There was excited chatter as the passengers boarded boats to row ashore. Adam had not seen the other passengers before, but Lizzie had described them in such mischievous detail, he felt he almost knew them. She had a keen eye for their absurdities and ridiculous mannerisms. Often, during their long nights talking together, she had almost made Adam give himself away by laughing at her impersonations.

  He imagined her among the other passengers in her bright dress and sun bonnet, gazing at the continent that was to become her home. He imagined her as he had last seen her, naked and beautiful, and felt an ache inside. She had offered him a life of happiness, and he had spurned it.

  He told himself to forget her. All that mattered now was his revenge.

  He had to leave the ship unnoticed. He stripped naked, tied his breeches around his waist to make a rough loincloth, and wrapped his shirt in a turban about his head. The dark skin he had inherited from his mother could easily pass as an Indian’s. He stooped, so that his height would not mark him out, and hoisted one of the casks onto his back. When the Indian lascars entered the hold to unload it, he slipped in among them unnoticed and carried his load up on deck.

  As he climbed the ladder through the main companionway, the light was so bright he cried aloud. It was the first time he had seen the sun in weeks, and his eyes were unprepared for the harsh tropical glare. He screwed them shut, and nearly fell back down the ladder in his blindness.

  Tentatively, he squinted, enough to see his way. Dressed as a native, he became invisible to the ship’s officers and crew: with so many stevedores swarming aboard, one unfamiliar face was unremarkable. No one challenged him as he carried his load to the ship’s side and slithered down the ladder into the waiting boat.

  This was his first visit to Calcutta, and in all his voyages nothing had prepared him for it. It was as if imperial Rome had been rebuilt in the middle of the Indian jungle. As far as he could see, the river was lined with palatial villas whose long gardens ran down to the water. Closer to the centre, the bastions of Fort William sprawled over almost a square mile footprint, stamping down the East India Company’s military power. It had been built to replace a predecessor fort, which had been sacked by an Indian army some fifty years earlier. The defenders who were captured had been locked in an airless cell, nicknamed the ‘Black Hole’, on the hottest night of the year. Of the hundred and fifty who were incarcerated, only thirteen had survived.

  Beyond the fort stood the administrative centre, where the East India Company ran the commerce and government for the empire they had built. These buildings were white and grand, proud blocks dressed up with pillars and domes and porticoes. The greatest of them was the new Government House, so excessively huge that even the Company had balked at the cost and recalled its architect in disgrace. The Governor-General of India, the first Marquess Wellesley, was sacked for profligacy.

  That was the Calcutta the Company wanted to show to the world – a place of imperial authority and power. But there was another city that existed behind the mansions and away from the mighty civic architecture, where rickety bamboo buildings lurched over dark, narrow alleys. This was Black Town, home to hundreds of thousands of Indians who had flocked to the new metropolis to serve as shopkeepers, servants, carriers, stevedores, labourers, whores and thieves – anything to profit from the appetites of their occupiers.

  The scene was so overwhelming, it made Adam almost physically sick. After weeks in virtual isolation, he felt like a fasting monk suddenly made to gorge himself on a banquet. Half a million people lived here, and it felt as if he could see every one of them crowded on the waterfronts and the great avenues.

  The only clothes he had were the makeshift loincloth and turban he wore, and the one good suit that he had brought in a sack from the Requin. He could pass for a native, if no one looked too closely, but he knew little of the language apart from what he had taught himself from Lizzie’s grammar book. Nor could he present himself at Government House and announce his real name. Word of his disappearance would have circulated in the convoy. Verrier would have warned all the captains to look out for him. Already, perhaps, Adam’s name was being added to the lists of deserters and undesirables that the authorities kept.

  He plunged into the city without any destination in mind. For the moment, it was enough to breathe fresh air – even the heavy, fetid air of Calcutta – to stretch his legs, and walk upright. In the crowds, dressed like an Indian, he was at the least risk of discovery since he had dived off the stern of the Requin. The British were visible only to each other, oblivious to anyone with brown skin. They floated above the city like clouds in their curtained palanquins and chaises.

  ‘Courtney,’ said a voice.

  Adam froze. He hesitated for a second, but that would be enough to give himself away. How could someone have recognised him so soon?

  ‘Courtney of India. Greatest hero since Marlborough,’ said the voice again.

  Were they talking about him? Adam edged away, then turned a little to see who had spoken. Two English officers, with red coats and red faces soaked with sweat, had descended from their palanquins to admire a statue in the middle of the boulevard.

  It was an imposing monument. It stood on a marble plinth higher than the men themselves. Atop it, a soldier on horseback stretched out an arm to the horizon. A turbaned Indian warrior lay on the ground, being trampled under the horse’s hooves.

  Adam read the inscription on the plinth.

  GERARD COURTNEY

  HERO OF THE DEFENCE OF CALCUTTA, 1756

  SURVIVOR OF THE BLACK HOLE

  CONQUEROR OF BENGAL

  GOVERNOR-GENERAL OF INDIA

  HONOUR, COURAGE AND VIRTUE

  Adam stared up at the bronze figure, imperious and untouchable. How strange, to encounter his ancestor here. He knew a branch of his family had made their fortunes in India. One of them, Christopher, had entered Parliament and become a high-ranking member of the British government. That side of the family carried an unshakeable grudge against Adam’s ancestors, dating back over a hundred years to the two brothers, Tom and Guy. When Rob went to London as a young man, Christopher had ordered his accomplices to murder Rob. Rob had only escaped by joining the Royal Navy as a sailor. Later, when Rob returned to England as an officer and a hero of the American war, he had threatened to expose the treasonous plot Christopher had concocted with the West India sugar planters. Christopher had tried to kill Rob in his chambers in the House of Lords, but Rob had defended himself and killed Christopher instead. Adam had heard the story often: it was Christopher’s bullet that had shattered the Neptune sword that day.

  Gerard Courtney must have been Christopher’s son. Had he been the paragon described on the statue? Adam thought it unlikely. After Calcutta had been captured by a local ruler in alliance with the French, the East India Company and the British army had returned in force to make a brutal example of their enemies. By the time the campaign was over, they had done more than recapture Calcutta: they had grasped almost immeasurable power. The Company’s possessions in India had grown tenfold. Britain had gone from a mercantile power to an imperial overlord. And the generals who led it – Lord Clive, Lord Hastings, Gerard Courtney – had made themselves the richest men in the world.