Power of the Sword - Smith Wilbur. Страница 86

Did you find him? she demanded anxiously.

I'm sorry, Centaine. No sign of anyone of that description. I want the boy found and brought to me, Abe. Use as many men as you need. I don't care what it costs. Search the town. Do everything possible to find him. He must be staying somewhere. All right, Centaine. I'll get on to it right away. You say his name is Manfred De La Rey, then he will be related to the prisoner? His son, she said.

I see. Abe looked at her thoughtfully. May I ask why you Want him so desperately, Centaine? And what you are going to do with him when you find him? No, you may not ask. Just find him., Why do I want him? she repeated Abe's question to herself wonderingly. Why do I want him after all these years And the answer was simple and self-evident. Because he is my son.

And what will I do with him if I find him? He is poisoned against me. He hates me. I saw that in his eyes. He does not know who I really am. I saw that also. So what will I do when I meet him face to face, and she answered herself as simply: I don't know, I just do not know. The maximum penalty provided by law for the first three offences on the prisoner's charge sheet is death by hanging, said judge Hawthorne. The prisoner has been found guilty of these and the further offences with which he has been charged. In the normal course of events this court would have had no hesitation in inflicting that supreme penalty upon him. However, we have been given pause by the extraordinary evidence of an extraordinary lady. The submissions made voluntarily by Mrs Centaine de Thiry Courtney are all the more remarkable for the fact that she has suffered most grievously at the prisoner's hands, physically, emotionally and materially, and also for the fact that her admissions might be construed by small-minded and mean persons as invidious to Mrs Courtney herself.

In twenty-three years service on the bench I have never been privileged to witness such a noble and magnanimous performance in any courtroom, and our own deliberations must, by necessity, be tempered by Mrs Courtney's example. judge Hawthorne bowed slightly towards where Centaine sat, then took the pince-nez from his nose and looked at Lothar De La Rey.

The prisoner will rise, he said.

Lothar De La Rey, you have been found guilty of all the various charges brought against you by the Crown, and for purpose of sentence, these will be taken as one. It is, therefore, the sentence of this court that you be imprisoned at hard labour for the rest of your natural life. For the first time since the beginning of the trial, Lothar De La Rey showed emotion. He recoiled from the judge's words. His face began to work, his lips trembling, one eyelid twitched uncontrollably, and he lifted his remaining hand, palm up, in appeal towards the dark-robed figure on the bench.

Kill me, rather. A wild heart-cry. Hang me rather than lock me up like an animal, The warders hurried to him, seized him from either side and led him shaking and calling out piteously from the dock, while a hush of sympathy held the whole room. Even the judge was affected, his features set and grim as he stood up and slowly led his assessors from the room. Centaine remained sitting, staring at the empty dock as the subdued crowd filed out of the double doors like mourners leaving a funeral, Kill me, rather! She knew that plea would stay with her for the rest of her life. She bowed her head and covered her eyes with her hands. In the eye of her mind she saw Lothar as he had been when she first met him, hard and lean as one of the red Kalahari lions, with pale eyes that looked to far horizons shaded blue by distance, a creature of those great spaces washed with white sunlight. And she thought of him now, locked in a tiny cell, deprived for the rest of his life of the sun and the desert wind.

Oh Lothar, she cried in the depths of her soul. How could something once so good and beautiful have ended like this? We have destroyed each other, and destroyed also the child that we conceived in that fine noon of our love. She opened her eyes again. The courtroom had emptied and she thought she was alone until she sensed a presence near her and she turned quickly and Blaine Malcolmess was there.

Now I know how right it was to love you, he said softly.

He stood behind her, his head bowed over her, and she looked up at him and felt the terrible regret and sorrow begin to lift.

Blaine took her hand that lay along the back of the bench and held it between both of his. I have been struggling with myself all these last days since we parted, trying to find the strength never to see you again. I almost succeeded. But you changed it all by what you did today. Honour and duty and all those other things no longer mean anything to me when I look at you now. You are part of me. I have to be with you. When? As soon as possible, he said.

Blaine, in my short life I have done so much damage to others, inflicted so much cruelty and pain. No more. I also cannot live without you, but nothing else must be destroyed by our love. I want all of you, but I will accept less, to protect your family. It will be hard, perhaps impossible, he warned her softly.

But I accept your conditions. We must not inflict pain on others. Yet I want you so much I know, she whispered, and stood up to face him. Hold me, Blaine, just for a moment. Abe Abrahams was searching for Centaine through the empty passages of the courthouse. He reached the double doors of the courtroom and pushed one leaf open quietly.

Centaine and Blaine Malcomess stood in the aisle between the tiers of oak benches. They were in each other's arms, oblivious to anything around them, and he stared for a moment without comprehension, then softly closed the door again and stood guard before it, wracked by fear and happiness for her.

You deserve love, he whispered. Pray God, this man can give it to you. Eden must have been like this, Centaine thought. And Eve must have felt the way I do today. She drove slower than her usual frantic pace. Although her heart cried out for haste, she denied it to make the anticipation keener.

I have been without sight of him for five whole months, she whispered. Five minutes longer will only make it sweeter when at last I am in his arms again. Despite Blaine's assurances and best intentions, the conditions that Centaine had placed upon them had prevailed.

They had not been alone together since those stolen moments in the empty courtroom. During most of that time they had been separated by hundreds of miles, Blaine shackled by his duties in Windhoek, Centaine at Weltevreden, fighting desperately day and night for the survival of her financial empire which was now in its death throes, stricken by the loss of the diamond shipment, no part of which had ever een recovered . In her mind she compared it to the hunting arrow of O'wa, the little yellow Bushman: a tiny reed, frail and feather-light, but tipped with virulent poison which not the greatest game of the African veld could withstand. It weakened and slowly paralysed the quarry, which first reeled and swayed on its feet, then dropped and lay panting, unable to rise, waiting for the cold lead of death to seep through the great veins and arteries or for the swift mercy stroke of the hunter.

That is where I am now, down and paralysed, while the hunters close in on me. All these months she had fought with all her heart and all her strength, but now she was tired, tired to every last fibre of muscle and mind, sick tired to her bones. She looked up at the rearview mirror above her head and hardly recognized the image that stared back at her with stricken eyes, dark with the heavy mascara of fatigue and despair. Her cheekbones seemed to gleam through the pale skin, and there were chiselled lines of exhaustion at the corners of her mouth.

But today I will set despair aside. I won't think about it, again, not for a minute. Instead I will think of Blaine and this magical display that nature has laid out for me. She had left Weltevreden at dawn and was now one hundred and twenty miles north of Cape Town, driving through the vast treeless plains of Namaqualand, heading down to where the green Benguela current caressed Africa's rocky western shores, but she was not yet in sight of the ocean.