Call of the Raven

by Smith, Wilbur

  ‘If we go to hunt, we need more. Rope. Better canvas. Powder. Food for the voyage.’

  ‘I have been thinking about that,’ said Mungo. As much as they had patched up the ship, he knew she was not strong enough to risk around the Cape of Good Hope. ‘I have fixed our position. By my reckoning we are only fifty miles south of Ambriz.’

  Tippoo spat on the beach. ‘Pendleton?’

  ‘He is the only person for five hundred miles who can get us the stores we need.’

  When the repairs were finished and the tide was high, they hauled the Raven back in to the water and floated her off. She was a sad shadow of the proud vessel that had sailed out of Baltimore. Patches of bare wood spotted the dark timbers of her hull like mould. Some of her sails were fresh from the hold; others had been sewn together from fragments. She listed slightly to port, where they had not managed to balance the ballast. But she was afloat, and when they took her out to sea her canvas held together as they sailed north.

  As before, a smear of smoke on the horizon told them they were approaching Ambriz. They crossed the bar of the Loge River again, where two years earlier the Blackhawk had sailed in, and moored in the lagoon. They were the only ship there this time; the village seemed almost deserted. Mungo wondered if the navy had raided it, but when he and Tippoo went ashore a gaggle of children emerged from the huts, chattering and pointing.

  ‘Pendleton,’ he said. ‘Where is Pendleton?’

  They led him up the beach. In a clearing fringed by trees, a cluster of mud huts made a rough compound around a thatched house. The children waited at the perimeter, pointing and giggling, while Mungo approached. It was mid-afternoon, and a sleepy haze hung over the place. The only sound was the buzz of flies, and a pig-like grunting coming from the house.

  A wooden terrace overlooked the sea, shaded by a palm awning. A white man stood there, leaning on the rail and staring out over the beach and the breakers to the distant horizon. At first Mungo thought it must be Pendleton, but as he came closer he saw the man was more slightly built, with a high forehead and sharp sideburns.

  The man heard Mungo’s approach and turned. At the sight of another white man his face broke open in a smile; he raised his left hand in greeting. His right hung across his chest, tied up in a sling.

  ‘Greetings,’ he said. His accent was American. He studied Mungo, as if trying to make sense of him. His nervous eyes never seemed to stay still. ‘You’re a long way from civilisation.’

  ‘And even further from Virginia,’ Mungo answered.

  The man laughed. By the skin of his face, burned red-raw by the sun, Mungo guessed he was not long arrived in the tropics.

  He nodded towards the Raven’s masts, just visible above the trees that screened the harbour. ‘You come on business?’

  ‘We put in for repairs. My ship was caught in a storm.’

  The man grimaced. ‘Mine too – though we were not so lucky as you.’ He half-lifted his broken arm. ‘The ship was lost. I was fortunate to come away with nothing worse than this.’

  Mungo was about to ask more, but at that moment there was a loud halloo. Pendleton emerged from the main house, wearing nothing but a colourful cloth like a kilt around his waist. An African woman, wearing even less, followed behind carrying a bottle of geribita and three crystal glasses.

  ‘I was not expecting visitors so late in the season,’ said Pendleton, squinting suspiciously at Mungo. His pupils were small, dulled with a narcotic haze. ‘Who the hell are you?’

  ‘I was here with Captain Sterling two years ago,’ Mungo reminded him.

  Sterling’s name seemed to placate Pendleton. He threw himself into a chair and gestured Mungo to sit.

  ‘Is Sterling with you now? I was surprised he didn’t come this year.’

  ‘Sterling died on the return voyage.’ A flash of memory, choking the life out of Sterling underwater. ‘I have my own vessel now. But she was damaged by the storm.’

  The African woman uncorked the bottle of geribita. She poured three glasses of the liquor and handed them around. Her bare breasts hung low as she bent over to give Pendleton his drink. He gave them a squeeze, then sent her away.

  ‘My house appears to have become a home for castaways,’ Pendleton said. ‘You’ve met my other guest, Mr de Villiers?’

  ‘Just now.’

  Pendleton flapped a hand in their direction. ‘Mr de Villiers, Mr Sinclair.’

  Mungo started at the sound of the false name he had taken aboard the Blackhawk. He was surprised Pendleton had remembered it. He thought about correcting his host, then decided against it. There might yet be advantages in hiding his real identity.

  Swilling the poisonous liquor around his mouth, Mungo told the story of his elephant-hunting expedition, the success he had had, and the disaster that had struck.

  ‘I need stores and supplies to refit my ship,’ he said.

  ‘And then to Baltimore?’ said Pendleton.

  ‘Back around the Cape. I must make good the cargo I lost.’

  ‘You could load a cargo here,’ said Pendleton casually. ‘That would save you a deal of time.’

  ‘Do you have that amount of ivory?’

  Pendleton exchanged a wink with de Villiers.

  ‘It was a darker shade of ivory I had in mind. Black ivory.’

  Again, Mungo felt the door in his mind crack open with possibility. Again, he forced it shut.

  ‘I am set on an easier line of work.’

  ‘A pity. You could have turned a profit, and helped François here get home to New Orleans,’ said Pendleton.

  That drew Mungo’s interest. ‘You are bound for New Orleans?’

  ‘That is where I was headed when the ship was caught by the storm.’

  ‘Terrible,’ Pendleton added. ‘Took three hundred of the best people I had to offer. Lost all of them – he was lucky to survive.’

  Lost all of them. Three hundred men and women chained to a sinking ship, unable to escape as the sea sucked them down, screaming until the sea filled their lungs. Mungo refused to think about it.

  ‘Still, his client can afford to replace them,’ Pendleton continued. Another wink. ‘They say Chester Marion is the richest man in Louisiana.’

  The name hit Mungo like a bullet. It was all he could do to keep hold of his glass.

  ‘You work for Chester Marion?’

  He had let too much emotion show. De Villiers gave him a curious look.

  ‘Is he a friend of yours?’

  ‘We have never met,’ said Mungo. ‘But I knew his reputation. In Virginia, before he moved south.’

  ‘What a happy coincidence,’ said Pendleton.

  He glanced between the two of them, as if trying to work out how he could use this turn of events to his advantage. Mungo ignored him. His yellow eyes were fixed on de Villiers.

  ‘If we ever return to New Orleans, you could introduce me to him.’

  ‘Of course.’ De Villiers sipped his drink. His nervous gaze darted this way and that – Mungo, Pendleton, the palm trees and the breaking surf. Like a cornered dog, he could sense Mungo had him at a disadvantage, but he could not work out how or why. ‘Though Mr Marion is not in New Orleans so often any more. Most of the time he is at his estate at Bannerfield. He leaves much of the business in town to his mistress.’ A thought struck him. ‘I wonder if you’d heard anything about her. The rumour is he brought her with him from Virginia.’ He chuckled. ‘I did not know they were so liberal up north as we are in New Orleans.’

  Mungo had never heard of Chester having a mistress at Windemere, black or white. That sort of gossip would not have interested him.

  ‘What is her name?’

  ‘Camilla.’

  The glass of geribita slipped from Mungo’s hand and smashed, exploding across the hardwood floor in a spray of sharp glass and liquor. He sprang to his feet, crunching shards of crystal underfoot, with a cry as if his heart had been ripped out.

  ‘How?’

  Pendleton and de Vil
liers were staring at him. Mungo fought to control his emotions – but how could he? His world had been upended like a ship in a storm. The one fact he had built his entire life around turned out to be a lie. Camilla was alive. All this time, she had been in Chester’s possession – and he had left her there.

  He mastered his feelings enough to speak. He could not let de Villiers anywhere near the truth of who he was.

  ‘My apologies.’ He rubbed the spilled geribita with the toe of his boot. ‘This must be stronger than I remembered.’

  Both men watched him uneasily. De Villiers tried to make light of it.

  ‘If you had seen Camilla, you would certainly not forget her. She is an irresistible beauty. Chester likes it to be thought that she is a free woman of colour, but I happen to know she is still in bondage.’ He grinned uncertainly, still tense from Mungo’s sudden eruption. ‘Chester does not keep her charms to himself. He spreads them around, very generously I may say.’

  It was all Mungo could do not to snap the man’s neck like a chicken. Instead, he forced a ghastly smile.

  ‘He must have changed. Chester Marion was not known for his generosity in Virginia. Indeed, I heard that when he moved South he left a great many debts owing.’

  De Villiers frowned. ‘That is a poor thing to say of a man like Chester Marion.’

  Mungo had to leave. ‘Perhaps I misremembered.’ He put his hands to his head, trying to keep it from spinning. ‘I fear the liquor has gone to my head. Perhaps some air . . .’

  He spun on his heel and walked away, heedless of the two men’s gazes following him. He strode out of the compound and down to the beach. His feet crushed the shells that littered the soft sand.

  At the water’s edge, he stopped. He squatted down on his haunches, staring into the breaking surf.

  For only the second time in his life, tears came to his eyes. He had cried when he thought Camilla was dead; now he cried again at the knowledge she was alive. If it was tears of joy, or anguish that he had left her so long in Chester’s possession, he did not know. The crushing impotence he had felt in the Raven’s hold, confronted with the loss of his cargo, was nothing to what he felt now.

  He needed to go to New Orleans. To rescue Camilla and destroy Chester. He could not wait.

  You do not go against a man like Chester Marion with just a half-dime in your pocket.

  He had nothing. He did not even know how he could pay Pendleton for the stores he needed to get home. And he could not go back to East Africa and spend another year hunting elephants, looking up at the moon every night and knowing that Camilla was in Chester’s bed.

  You could load a cargo here. That would save you a deal of time.

  Once more, the door in his mind edged open, offering him another path. This time, he did not slam it shut. Staring out over the water, he saw the Raven swinging at anchor in the river estuary. He imagined her hold fitted with new decks. He imagined men and women loaded in, packed head to toe as tight as the ivory had been. He imagined a thousand dollars for each of them.

  Could he do it – rip three or four hundred souls from their homes and transport them to a life of misery, simply so he could have his revenge on one man? The pictures in his mind changed. He imagined the Africans locked in this black hole, skin rubbed open by their chains, trapped in pools of their own vomit and blood and excrement. He imagined the stench and the screams that would accompany them all the way across the Atlantic.

  I accept that the forcible extraction of Africans from their homeland is not a pretty thing. It is violent. There are deaths. If it were not so unpleasant, there would be no profit in it.

  He thought of Chester Marion. He thought of the profit to be made in the slave markets of Havana. He thought of the money it would take to bring Chester to justice, and the satisfaction of making him pay for everything he had done. He thought of Camilla.

  I will not play the hypocrite and weep false tears for the choices I have made.

  If he could eat food served by slaves, bought with the labour of slaves, in a house built on the fortunes his grandfather had made in the slave trade, how could he blanch at this? He would be no better than his father, ringing his hands about equality while keeping his slaves in their chains. Better to be a villain than a hypocrite.

  Sterling’s voice came to him, seductive and sure: There is only one law on this earth – the law that gives the strong and wealthy power over the weak and poor.

  A part of Mungo had flinched when the captain said it; now he saw the naked truth. If there was justice in the world, Camilla would not be Chester’s captive. Windemere would not be lost. The ivory he had worked so hard to gain would not be scattered over the African seabed. Rutherford had been right: Mungo had been unforgivably naïve. Now, with every illusion stripped away, he saw the world as it truly was – a heartless place, infinitely indifferent to the sufferings of man. There was no such thing as fate. A man could make of his life what he would; the only thing that could stop him was chance or his own inadequacy.

  Mungo would not be weak. If his conscience protested, that was merely the dying voice of a morality he had left behind, like a snake shedding its skin to grow. He would do whatever he had to do.

  His tears had stopped. Now that he knew his course, he was filled with light and strength. All the bitter energy that had knotted his soul was suddenly loosed to a single purpose. It felt so good and pure, like the time he had punched Lanahan in the bar in Baltimore.

  He walked back up to the compound. Pendleton and de Villiers were still there, now well into the bottle of geribita. Mungo knew they had been watching him, wondering about his extraordinary behaviour. He offered no explanation. He no longer had to justify himself to any man.

  ‘You wanted three hundred slaves for Chester Marion?’ he asked de Villiers. ‘I will carry them for you – for a price.’

  He had stepped through the door in his mind, not even noticing as it slammed shut behind him. He had made his choice. There would be no going back.

  But it would not be easy.

  ‘There is no rush,’ said Pendleton. Night had fallen and they had moved inside the house. ‘De Villiers emptied my barracoons with that last shipment. Now the season is over, the natives will not bring any more captives for months.’

  ‘I cannot wait that long,’ said Mungo.

  Pendleton shrugged. ‘You cannot whip up niggers from river clay either.’ He pointed to one of his serving women, a girl of about fifteen. She was naked, except for a thin strip of cloth around her hips. ‘You will find ways here to pass the time.’

  Mungo ignored him. ‘Where do the slaves come from?’

  ‘Upriver. Inland.’

  ‘Have you been?’

  ‘Of course not.’ Pendleton made it sound an absurd suggestions. ‘The traders bring them to me. Why do you ask?’

  ‘If the slaves will not come here, then I will go to them.’

  Pendleton banged his cup down. Liquor slopped out of it.

  ‘That is a bad idea.’

  ‘I have no choice. I must get back to America.’

  ‘I don’t think you understand how things are here.’ Absently, Pendleton traced a pattern with his finger on the table. ‘They’ve been buying and selling slaves in this country since the ink was wet on the Bible. There is a web of rules, customs, allegiances and debts that surrounds this trade, and it runs so deep in the land it’s practically bedrock. So if a white man comes into it thinking he can have it all his own way just because they’re savages, he’s in for a rude awakening.’

  ‘I don’t underestimate the dangers.’

  ‘How many men do you have? Maybe twenty? The local kings can muster thousands of warriors.’

  ‘Would they go to war because we took a few hundred of their people?’

  ‘They don’t give two shits about their people!’ shouted Pendleton. ‘They’d go to war because you’d be muscling in on their trade and they don’t care for competition.’ He took another sip and shot Mungo a cra
fty look. ‘The only way you could do this is if you had local help. Someone who appreciates the intricacies involved.’

  Mungo understood him perfectly.

  ‘Perhaps I have not been clear about my intentions,’ he said. ‘I never imagined I could do this without your help. I rely on you completely to guide me.’

  ‘Why should I do that?’ Pendleton asked, and though he slurred his words there was no missing the avarice in his voice.

  ‘Because I will give you ten per cent of the slaves I take.’

  Pendleton looked horrified. ‘If we are to be partners in this venture – true partners – then the division should reflect that. Half each.’

  Mungo settled back, took another mouthful of geribita and settled in for a negotiation.

  They finally agreed on thirty-five per cent. It was more than Mungo wanted to pay, but he had little to offer. He would need gunpowder, supplies, shackles, food for the slaves – everything, in fact, except the manpower. He did not mind being out-haggled. All it meant was that they would have to capture more slaves. Whatever else happened, he would make sure the Raven’s hold was full when they left.

  Pendleton hadn’t finished.

  ‘We cannot take the slaves here,’ he said. ‘We must go up the coast, to the Nyanga River.’

  ‘Why? You know people there?’

  ‘The opposite. Because I know people here.’ Pendleton sighed. ‘Didn’t you ever hear the expression “don’t shit where you eat”?’

  They loaded up the Raven with shackles, copper kettles, maize and rice, and a new anchor. Then they sailed north.

  As the months stretched out in New Orleans and the year turned, Camilla found she thought less and less of Mungo – her whole life at Windemere was like a dream she could remember only in snatches. Losing Mungo had hurt, but there was another, deeper wound that drove out every other thought. Each night she fell asleep weeping, her body aching for the embrace of her son. Sometimes, she would receive a letter from Bannerfield with news – ‘Isaac has started to walk’; ‘Isaac is chattering like a little bird’; ‘Isaac is a proper little lord’ – and thought her heart would break.