presented itself: he was a good head shorter than the Scotsman. Ahmed looked imploringly at Jahan who nodded and said, ‘Be so good as to bow your head, Cumbrae.’
‘I’ll bow tae no man!’ the Buzzard rasped.
‘Then you will lose it.’ Jahan paused and then went on in a conciliatory tone, ‘Please do not force my hand. Bow your head and let this craftsman do his work and I will reward you with everything you need to gain the revenge you so desperately crave. Defy me and you will die. So, what will it be?’
The Buzzard bowed his head. A moment later he winced and then cried out in pain despite himself as the leather hood was pulled over his raw skin and worked into position. The Buzzard now found himself looking out at the world through a single eye hole, cut into the leather, which was fitted tight, in fact almost moulded to the shape of his face. He could breathe through two more openings beneath his nostrils, but so far as he could tell, the whole of his head was covered except for his mouth. A moment later, even that freedom was curtailed, for Ahmed brought up another flap of leather. Part of it was formed into a cup that fitted around the Buzzard’s chin. There was a gap between the flap and the rest of the mask just wide enough to allow him to move his mouth a little. The Buzzard felt a tugging to one side of his face as the flap was tightened and then he heard a click that sounded very much like the closing of a padlock. Yes, he could feel the weight of it now.
The Buzzard felt a sudden surge of alarm, verging on panic. He jerked his head up and with his one good arm lashed out at Ahmed, knocking him to the ground. Before he could make another move, the soldiers raced across the floor and one of them grabbed his right arm and forced it up behind his back, until the Buzzard had no option but to bend his body and head down.
Once more he felt the tradesman’s nimble fingers, as a broad leather collar was placed around his throat and, like the mask, padlocked. The Buzzard heard Jahan say, ‘Mr Grey, be so good, if you will, as to carry the looking glass that is lying on that table to your right over to your fellow countryman. I’m sure the earl would like to see how he looks now.’
‘M-m-must I …?’ Grey stammered.
‘Please,’ Jahan said, with cold-blooded calm, ‘do not oblige me to remind you of the alternative should you refuse.’
The Buzzard heard Grey’s shuffling footsteps coming towards him and then the soldier let go of his arm and he was able to straighten his body. As he lifted his head, the Buzzard’s eyes were directly level with the mirror, barely two paces away from him. He saw what the world would see and now it was his turn to cry out in revulsion at what confronted him.
His head was entirely enclosed in leather the colour of a tarred ship’s plank. Crude stitches of leather thread held the various pieces of the mask together and formed the sharply angled eyebrows that gave the impression of eyes set in a furious, piercing stare. To make the effect even more shocking, the blank eye was painted with white and black paint to look as though it was open and all-seeing, while the hole through which the Buzzard now gained his pitifully limited view of the world appeared to be a blank, blind void. The nose was a predatory beak, a hand span long, that thrust from his face in a cruel visual pun on his Buzzard nickname. Further stitches shaped the mask’s mouth into a permanently manic grin, made all the more ghastly by the jagged white teeth, with pitch black gaps between them that had been painted around the orifice through which he was expected to speak, eat and drink.
The Buzzard had once seen a mask like this hanging from the wall in a Portuguese slaver’s house. He had got it from the witch doctor of some tribe deep in the hinterland of Musa bin Ba’ik. Now this was his face … The Buzzard could not bear it.
Crying out in pain and frustration he clawed at the padlocks on the side of his head and neck, as if his few remaining fingers could break through the iron that bound him, and as he did so he encountered one last humiliation: a metal ring, attached to his collar, underneath his chin. He at once knew what it meant. If he displeased Jahan, or tried to escape, he could be chained to a wall, or dragged through the streets like nothing more than the lowliest pack animal or whipped dog.
The Buzzard fell to his knees, a broken man. He had survived burning and near-drowning. He had clung to life when the ocean and the sun had done their best to destroy him. He had endured pain beyond any mortal man’s comprehension and the looks of disgust from all who laid eyes on him. But this was the final straw.
Now Jahan came across and crouched down on his haunches beside the Buzzard and held out a metal cup, decorated with exquisite patterns of dark blue, turquoise and white enamel. Speaking as softly as he might to a frightened, angry young horse who had just felt a saddle on his back for the first time, he said, ‘Here, this is sweet, fresh sherbet. Drink.’
The Buzzard took the cup and drew it up to his mouth. He tilted it to drink and the cup banged against his leather beak, so that none of the liquid could escape it. He turned his head to one side and tried to pour the sherbet into his mouth but it just spilled across his mask and not a drop fell into his mouth. He nodded and bobbed his beaky mask into every position he could think of, but he could not find a way to drink.
As they watched this performance the other men in the room were first intrigued and then amused. Grey could not help himself. He gave an effeminate titter that set off the guards, and even Jahan, so that the room soon echoed to the sounds of their laughter that quite drowned out the Buzzard’s screams of impotent rage. Finally he threw the cup away and the clatter it made as it skimmed across the marble floor silenced the other men. Jahan spoke again, ‘Know this, you who used to be a lord and a ship’s captain. You have ceased to be a man. Stand, and I will show you how you will be given water to drink.’
Jahan clapped and a black African servant came into the room bearing a copper jug with a long spout of the sort used to water plants. The servant approached the Buzzard with wide-eyed horror on his face and, holding the jug as far away from himself as he possibly could, lifted it and poked the spout into the mask’s mouth hole. The Buzzard’s lips took the spout between them and he drank the cool water with pathetic eagerness and gratitude until Jahan clapped again and the spout was withdrawn.
‘You will be fed and watered by slaves, for whom the duty will be a form of punishment. When you walk through the streets women will turn their heads away from you for fear of what they see. Children who misbehave will be told stories of how you will come in the night to seize them unless they change their ways. Young men who wish to prove their courage will dare one another to throw rotten vegetables at you, until one of them is foolish enough to do so and is executed by my men for his impertinence. And then the people will truly fear and hate you.
‘But next to yours their hatred will be as a grain of sand is to a mighty desert. For your whole being will be consumed by hate. And because you hate, and because I alone can offer you the chance to satisfy that hate, you will serve me.
‘As for you, Mr Grey …’ and now Jahan’s voice became cold and hard as he looked at the consul, ‘you will leave my house and you will not come back, ever again, unless it is with Henry Courtney’s head upon a platter, or the means to destroy him in your possession. Bring me either of those things and your previous standing here will be restored and enhanced, so that you will enjoy honour amongst my people once again. Until then, however, you will be counted a pariah. Now begone!’
The Buzzard almost managed a smile to match the one on his mask as he watched the downcast Grey make his exit. Then Jahan turned back to him and said, ‘It occurred to me just now that you are a eunuch, and so I will grant you a special favour that I would never bestow on any man who was complete. You may accompany me as I have dinner with my favourite concubines. They are creatures of flawless beauty, plucked from India, from Persia, from the Russian steppes and even one seized from a fishing village on the coast of your own island. They will all be
