expedition to the northern borders of the colony.' He stared at Dorian. 'Do I make myself clear?' Dorian nodded.
'Is that all, Your Excellency?' Tom asked, with exaggerated politeness.
'No, Mijnheer. Not quite all. I have determined that you should place with me a nominal surety to ensure that you and your family abide by the conditions I have imposed.'
'Just how nominal?' Tom braced himself to hear the response.
'One hundred thousand guilders.' Van de Witten picked up the decanter of honey-golden Madeira wine. He came round the table to refill their spiral-stemmed glasses. A heavy silence hung over the room. 'I will make allowance for the fact you are foreigners and perhaps you did not understand me.' Van de Witten resumed his seat. 'I will repeat myself. I require a surety of one hundred thousand guilders from you.'
'That is a great deal of money,' Tom said at last.
'Yes, I would think it should be sufficient.' The governor nodded. 'But a relatively modest sum when we take into consideration the profits of your last trading voyage.'
'I will need some time to raise that amount in cash,' Tom said. His face was almost impassive; a slight tic of one eyelid was all that betrayed his agitation.
'Yes, I understand that,' van de Witten agreed. 'However, while you are making provision for the surety, you should take into consideration that your residence-licence renewal fee is also due for payment within a few weeks. It would be just as well if you paid both amounts at the same time.'
'An additional fifty thousand guilders,' Tom said, trying to hide his dismay.
No, Mijnheer. On account of these unforeseen circumstances I have had to reconsider the amount of the residence licence. It has been increased to one hundred thousand guilders.'
That is piracy,' Tom snapped, losing his temper for the instant, then recovering it at once. 'I beg you pardon, Your Excellency. I withdraw that remark.'
'You should know about pirates, Mijnheer Courtney.' Van de Witten sighed mournfully. 'Your own grandfather was executed for that crime.' He pointed through the bay windows. 'Out there on the parade-ground within sight of this very room. We must pray that no other member of your family meets the same tragic end.' The threat was implicit, but it lay across the quiet room like the shadow of the gallows.
Dorian intervened for the first time: 'A fee of one hundred thousand on top of the surety deposit will beggar our company.'
Van de Witten turned to him. 'I think that you still misunderstand me,' he said sadly. 'The fee for your brother's family residence is one hundred thousand and for your family an additional one hundred thousand. Then you must add to that the surety for good behaviour.'
'Three hundred thousand!' Tom exclaimed. That is not possible.'
'I am sure it is!' van de Witten contradicted him. 'As a last resort you could always sell your ships and the contents of your warehouse. That will surely bring in the full amount.'
'Sell the ships?' Tom leaped to his feet. 'What madness is this? They are the blood and bones of our company.'
'I assure you it is not madness.' Van de Witten shook his head and smiled at Colonel Keyser. 'I think you should explain the position to these gentlemen.'
'Certainly, Your Excellency.' Keyser hoisted himself out of his chair and swaggered to the window. 'Ah, good! Just in time to illustrate the point.'
On the beach below the ramparts of the castle two platoons of VOC soldiers were drawn up. The bayonets were fixed on their muskets, and they carried full packs. Their green uniform jackets stood out sharply against the white sands. As Tom and Dorian watched they began to embark in two open lighters at the edge of the water, wading out knee deep to reach them.
'I am taking the precaution of placing guards on board both your ships,' Keyser announced, 'merely to ensure your compliance with Governor van de Witten's edict.' Keyser settled back in his chair again. 'Until further notice, both of you will report every day before the noon gun to my headquarters to reassure me that you have not left the colony. Of course, as soon as you can produce a receipt from the treasury for the full amount you owe, and a passport from Governor van de Witten, you will be free to leave. I fear, however, that it might not be so easy to return next time.'
'*-VT Tell, perhaps we have overstayed our welcome,' Tom said, and / beamed round the room. The family was seated in the
V V counting-house of the High Weald go down
Sarah Courtney tried to show her disapproval in sternness, but an expression of resignation was not entirely hidden by her lowered lids. He will never cease to amaze me, this husband of mine, she thought. He revels in circumstances that would devastate other men.
'I think Tom is right.' Dorian joined in between puffs on his hookah. 'We Courtneys have always been voyagers on the oceans and wanderers on the continents. Twenty years in one spot on this earth is too long.'
'You are talking about my home,' Yasmini protested, 'the place where I have spent half my life, and where my only son was born.'
'We will find both you and Sarah another home, and give you both more sons, if that is what will make you happy,' Dorian promised.
'You are as bad as your brother,' Sarah rounded on him. 'You don't understand a woman's heart.'
'Or her mind.' Tom chuckled. 'Come now, my sweeting, we cannot stay here to be beggared by van de Witten. You have been forced to up sticks and run before. Don't you remember how we had to clear out of Fort Providence at five minutes' notice when Zayn al-Din's men came calling?'
'I shall never forget it. You threw my harpsichord overboard to lighten the ship so we could clear the sandbars at the mouth of the river.'
'Ah, but I bought you another,' Tom said, and they all glanced across the room to the triangular instrument standing against the inner wall. Sarah stood up and crossed to it. She opened the lid of the keyboard, took her seat on the stool and played the opening bars of 'Spanish Ladies'. Tom hummed the chorus.
Abruptly Sarah closed the lid, and stood up. There were tears in her eyes. That was long ago, Tom Courtney, when I was a silly young girl.'
'Young? Yes. Silly? Never!' Tom went to her quickly and placed an arm round her shoulders.
'Tom, I am too old to start all over again,' she whispered.
Nonsense, you are as young and strong as you ever were.'
We will be destitute,' Sarah mourned. 'Beggars and homeless wanderers.'
If you think that, you do not know me as well as you think you do.'
Still holding her fondly he looked at his brother. 'Shall we show them, Dorry?'
'There will be no peace for us if we do not.' Dorian shrugged. 'They are scolds and martinets, these women of ours.'
Yasmini leaned over and tugged his curling red beard. 'I have always been a dutiful Muslim wife to you, al-Salil.' She used his Arabic name, the Drawn Sword. 'How dare you accuse me of disrespect? Recant at once or you shall be deprived of all favours and privileges until next Ramadan comes round.'
'You are so lovely, full moon on my life. You grow sweeter and more docile with each day that passes.'
'I shall take that as a recantation.' She smiled and her great dark eyes glowed at him.
'Enough!' cried Tom. 'This dispute tears apart our family and our hearts.' They all laughed, even the women, and Tom seized the advantage. 'You know that Dorian and I were never such fools as to trust that gang of footpads and cut purses who make up the board of governors of the VOC,' he said.
'We always knew that we were in this colony under sufferance,' Dorian went on. 'The Dutch looked upon us as milch cows. For the last twenty years they have been sucking our udders dry.'
'Well, not entirely dry,' Tom demurred, and went to the bookcase at the far end of the room, which reached from floor to ceiling. 'Lend a hand here, brother,' he said, and Dorian went to help him. The bookcase, filled with heavy leather bound tomes, was set on steel rollers cunningly concealed beneath the dark wooden skirting-board. With both of them shoving at one end, it slid aside, with squealing protest from the rollers, to reveal a small door in the back wall, barred with iron cross bolts and locked with an enormous bronze padlock.
Tom lifted down a book, whose spine was embossed in gold leaf Monsters of the Southern Oceans. He opened the covers; in the hollowed out interior lay a key.
'Bring the lantern,' he told Sarah, as he turned the key in the padlock, shot back the bolts and opened the door.
'How did you keep this from us over all these years?' Sarah demanded.
'With the greatest difficulty.' Tom took her hand, and led her into a tiny room, not much bigger than a cupboard. Dorian and Yasmini followed. There was barely enough space for them all and the stack of small wooden chests piled neatly against the far wall.
'The family fortune,' Tom explained. 'The profits of twenty years. We did not have the reckless courage or the lack of good sense to entrust it to the Bank of Batavia, which is owned by our old friends in
