Call of the Raven

by Wilbur Smith

  ‘You meant to miss,’ Fairchild hissed in his ear. ‘You could not do it.’

  ‘You have no idea what I can do.’

  In a single motion, Mungo lifted Fairchild over the gunwale and heaved him overboard.

  Fairchild flailed in the air and landed in the water with a fountain of spray. Mungo wondered if he could swim at all, let alone with one arm badly gashed.

  He did not have time to find out. He sensed a movement behind him and turned to see Lanahan rushing at him. The mate’s lips were peeled back with fury, his eyes wild and the cutlass raised to strike.

  ‘I knew you were a traitor!’ he roared. ‘Now we’ve proof!’

  Mungo was unarmed. Even if he’d had the means to protect himself, he had no time to react. The last thing he saw was the cutlass swinging at his neck. Then the world went dark.

  Camilla’s baby was born on the third of May. Camilla was in labour for over twenty agonising hours, the contractions building like a thundercloud until they blotted out the world. But the pushing, when it finally came, was mercifully swift. The midwife – a mulatto woman Chester had shipped up from New Orleans – spread Camilla’s legs and probed with her fingers to widen the opening, urging Camilla to bear down. One push and the baby’s head appeared; twice and it crowned; the third time and the child tumbled out on a current of blood-tinged fluid with a cry that pierced the night. The midwife cut the cord, cleaned the baby and placed it on Camilla’s heaving chest.

  ‘It’s a boy,’ she said. ‘A firstborn son is a sign of blessing.’

  Exhausted as she was, Camilla felt relief flow through her. Chester’s desire for a son had grown so intense that she had spent the last weeks of her pregnancy alternating between states of prayer and dread. She cradled the child in her arms and kissed his small wet head. She offered him her engorged nipple. She caressed his soft skin as he drew it in, whispering his name.

  ‘Isaac . . . Isaac . . . Isaac.’

  It was hard to believe that he could be a child of promise. But Camilla wanted so badly to believe it was true. He was Chester’s bastard, she couldn’t deny it, but he was also her son.

  ‘My blood runs in your veins,’ she whispered to the child. ‘I will not let you forget it.’

  ‘Rest,’ the midwife told her. ‘Call if you need me.’

  Camilla closed her eyes and slept. Soon, dreams came. She saw a bonfire, the tongues of flame that sent sparks into the sky. She felt the heat on her skin, warming her belly and giving courage to her heart. The bonfire was her friend, as were the souls gathered around it.

  A hand tugged at hers. It was a boy about six years of age. His skin was paler than her own, but his proud nose and cheekbones and wide, walnut-coloured eyes resembled the face she saw when she looked in the mirror.

  There was another presence beyond the fire. A man was standing opposite her, staring into her eyes. Her heartbeat quickened when she saw him. Mungo St John. His eyes were bright, his mahogany curls framing a striking and serious face. He turned, his expression gentle yet unfathomable.

  The song of her dream began with a low hum that collected voices until the sound overflowed into words. She closed her eyes and joined the chorus, swept away by the moment. The words freed her from bondage, dissolving her chains. She listened for Mungo’s voice, wondering if he remembered how to sing it, but he didn’t open his mouth. He seemed perplexed. She didn’t understand. He had always been so sure of himself, so confident of his place in the world. What had happened in his absence? What burdens had he brought with him on his return?

  Something was different now. There was a distance between them, a life he had experienced that she could never comprehend. She followed his gaze through the dance of flames to the wizened face sitting at the head of the gathering. The song dropped off and Methuselah spoke, calling them forward as he had when they were children. She went first, holding her son’s hand. Her grandfather was ancient now, his once lustrous skin shrivelled and his hair white. He laid a bony hand on the boy’s glistening head and called him by his name – Isaac. He spoke a prophecy over him.

  ‘Light and darkness are entwined in your blood, opposing destinies that will collide in your youth. A sacrifice they shall demand, and a sacrifice they shall see. There is no other way.’

  ‘Yes, great-granddaddy,’ said the boy, clutching Camilla’s hand with all his strength.

  Camilla woke with a start. Little Isaac was still nuzzled against her nipple, but he was asleep. She looked out of the window, searching the shadows of the night for a way to explain the vision. She began to whisper the Lord’s Prayer. She repeated the last petition three times, once for herself, once for the baby in her arms, and once for Mungo St John.

  ‘Deliver us from evil . . . deliver us from evil . . . deliver us from evil.’

  Mungo opened his eyes to a headache that made his geribita-induced hangover at Ambriz feel like a tap on the shoulder. He was lying in a bunk, but not in his cabin. The smell of blood and lye told him it must be the sickbay.

  He touched his skull and felt a thick bandage. It was dry, which was good.

  A face peered down at him. Montgomery, the surgeon.

  ‘You’re up,’ he said brusquely. There was none of his usual cheerfulness, and no bedside pleasantries. ‘The captain said you were to go to him the moment you were awake.’

  When Mungo went on deck he found a different ship from the clipper that had sailed out of Baltimore. For a start, there was the smell. The slaves had been aboard for a week now, and the stench of so many people packed in chains below decks had permeated the whole ship. But that did not explain the mood of the crew. The faces Mungo passed – friends and shipmates he knew well – were surly and out of sorts. The sails flapped loose; lines lay uncoiled across the deck; there was play in the braces when they should be secured tight. The crew seemed to have lost all sense of discipline. Through the gratings that covered the hatches, Mungo heard the rhythmic squeak and rattle of the chain pumps.

  They were alone on the open ocean. The coast of Africa had vanished, and as far as the horizon there was no sign of the Fantome. The damage from the battle had been patched up, though the workmanship was poor. Mungo wondered how long he had been unconscious.

  ‘Mr Sinclair!’

  Sterling called him aft to the quarterdeck. Lanahan stood beside him, his face a picture of spite.

  ‘I am glad to see you awake,’ said Sterling acidly. ‘I trust you enjoyed your rest. Now, you will answer for your conduct in the battle.’

  He could have done this in his cabin. Instead, he had chosen to do it on deck in front of all the men.

  ‘If I recall correctly, I despatched four of the British sailors who were trying to take our ship,’ Mungo said calmly. ‘Or it may have been five,’ he added. ‘I did not have time to ask for a coroner’s verdict.’

  ‘You let their lieutenant escape.’

  ‘I tried to shoot him through the heart. Every man who was there will stand witness to that.’

  ‘You missed on purpose,’ Lanahan insisted. ‘You aimed wide at the last moment.’

  ‘I shot wide because the ship was hit by a broadside.’

  ‘That happened afterwards. I saw it all.’

  ‘You have confused the matter,’ said Mungo. ‘The shock of battle has addled your memory.’

  ‘And afterwards? Do you deny you threw him into the water so he could escape?’

  ‘I do not deny I threw him in the water.’

  Lanahan turned to Sterling in triumph. ‘You see?’

  ‘I was unarmed, the ship was damaged, and we had an enemy officer loose on our deck,’ Mungo continued. ‘I decided to remove him by the most immediate method to hand.’

  ‘So he could get away.’

  ‘Our ship had been hit and I did not know how badly. I feared the Fantome might overtake us. I thought if she had to pause to rescue her lieutenant, we would put more clear water between us. In any event, he was badly injured. He probably drowned.�
�

  ‘We saw the Fantome haul him out of the water. He appeared to be alive.’

  Mungo swept his arm across the empty sea behind them.

  ‘And now we have lost her. My plan succeeded.’ He touched his arm to his bandaged head. ‘Not that I seem to have earned much gratitude.’

  ‘You are lucky you still have your head,’ said Sterling drily. He had listened to the whole exchange, eyes fixed on Mungo, like a man puzzling over a book in a foreign language. ‘Mr Lanahan would have taken it off your shoulders, if Tippoo had not deflected his arm. You felt the flat of the blade, not the edge.’

  Mungo sought out Tippoo’s bald head in the crowd of seamen around them. The gunner gave him a nod.

  ‘I am obliged.’

  There was a silence on deck. Lanahan glowered at Mungo, while Sterling stared at the mainmast and thought hard. The crew watched. Few of them liked the first mate, but they liked traitors less. Mungo could see in their faces that Lanahan’s accusations had planted doubts, even among men he counted as friends.

  Sterling reached his verdict.

  ‘No one who saw Mr Sinclair fighting in the battle can doubt his loyalty to the ship. As to the officer, it was a piece of quick thinking executed under stress when the ship was in grave danger. That is the end of the matter and I wish to hear no more of it.’

  He lowered his voice, so that only Mungo and Lanahan could hear.

  ‘This is not the first time I have had to settle differences between my officers, but I trust it will be the last.’ He fixed his gaze on Mungo. ‘Do not forget that you are the subordinate here. It is your duty to obey your superiors.’ He turned away. ‘We will have a hard enough time getting our cargo home without quarrelling among ourselves.’

  The truth of those last words became evident when Mungo went below. The carpenters had fortified the damaged hull, taxing the limits of their skill and exhausting all the spare lumber in the hold. The patch they constructed was sufficient to keep out the sea, at least in ordinary weather. But the Fantome’s last broadside had snapped ribs and breached joints that were irreparable outside a shipyard. The Blackhawk was hobbled; she listed to starboard and lumbered across the waves.

  Worse, the hole in the hull aft had allowed seawater into the food store and spoiled much of their supplies. There was barely enough left for quarter rations. The maize mash that was boiled up in the great copper kettles every day had to serve the crew as well as the slaves. Day by day, the men became more insolent and uncooperative. The cat o’ nine tails came out of its bag almost every afternoon, but that only made the mood worse.

  ‘I’ve never seen such sloth in a crew,’ Lanahan complained in a conference of the officers in Sterling’s cabin. ‘It’s as if they’re under the influence of a foul spirit.’

  ‘It’s hard to convince a man to work when his stomach is empty,’ said Mungo.

  ‘You think I don’t know that?’ Sterling snapped. ‘I need you to tell me what to do about it.’

  ‘We’re flogging men who’ve never given us trouble before,’ said Mungo. ‘We can’t beat obedience into them. We should try inducements.’

  Sterling shook his head. ‘They’re already receiving an extra ration of rum. We get them any more drunk, we’ll lose control of them.’

  ‘We could threaten to withhold their wages,’ offered Montgomery, the surgeon.

  ‘That would be a quick way to spark a mutiny.’

  Lanahan leaned forward. ‘I say we open the hold and let them have their pick of the girls. We’ll handle it like they do at the bawdy-houses, all calm and orderly, no drama. It’ll be a perk of the forenoon watch. While we’re exercising the darkies, the watch crew can go below and have their fun.’

  ‘You want me to turn this ship into a brothel?’ Sterling said.

  ‘What could it hurt?’

  Sterling drummed his fingers on the table, his thick brows furrowed in thought. Mungo could see he was considering it.

  ‘I guess every man here knows how a brothel works,’ Mungo said. ‘But there are rules in such places that keep men in line. With this, it’ll be an orgy. You let the crew loose below decks and who knows what they’ll do. They’ll pick favourites and argue over them, and soon enough there’ll be violence. We’ll end up worse than when we started.’

  Lanahan gave him a sneering look. ‘I always said you were soft on niggers.’

  ‘I’m soft on anything that turns this voyage to profit, and hard on whatever threatens that. A randy crew thinking with their cocks, and a boatload of beaten-up slave women with bellyfuls of mulatto babies – that does us no good. The Havana traders would rake us over the coals on margin.’

  For a moment, Mungo thought that his good sense had prevailed. Then the captain locked eyes with him.

  ‘The crew and the cargo are my concerns, Mr Sinclair. Are you suggesting that I am neglecting my duty?’

  ‘My only concern is for the Blackhawk,’ said Mungo. ‘She is in a precarious way, and I believe Mr Lanahan’s idea is dangerous.’

  ‘These are dangerous times,’ said Sterling.

  ‘Aye, Captain. But what purpose would it serve to imperil the ship further?’

  ‘Your reservations are noted, Mr Sinclair, but if this voyage has taught me anything, it is your talent for instilling discipline in the men. I am therefore putting you in charge of this scheme. You have full authority to maintain discipline while the crew take their pleasures with the darkies. Any sailor who transgresses your orders will receive ten lashes with the cat. The same goes for anyone caught quarrelling over a lady. Let them have their fun, but let it be orderly. Otherwise, you will answer for it. Is that clear?’

  Across the cabin table, Lanahan smirked at Mungo. ‘Every brothel needs a madam.’

  Mungo ignored him. He had heard the deeper challenge in Sterling’s words. The incident with Fairchild was not forgotten. The captain was testing Mungo, reminding him he had no higher allegiance than obeying his captain’s command.

  Mungo shrugged, and gave a smile to show he did not care one way or the other.

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  The crew called them ‘liberties’, the term used during the leave they were granted at every port of call. They took to the idea with enthusiasm; their spirits and their discipline revived quickly.

  When it was a man’s turn to stand the forenoon watch, he waited for the nod from the helmsman and climbed down the ladder from the main hatch. There, he could browse among the slave decks like a trader in a market, picking out the choicest merchandise – though the stench and the filth did not encourage him to linger. When he had chosen, Mungo would undo the shackles that bound the girl to the big chains that ran all along the deck, leaving the leg manacles on. Then the man would lead or drag her to the alcove outside the magazine, and rape her. Some of the men were particular about the girls they selected, others took the first woman they saw. But the conclusion of the liberties was always the same – a man climbing back up the ladder with a sated smile on his face, and a woman stumbling back naked and weeping.

  As Mungo had predicted, the crew developed attachments to the women they favoured. Although there were over a hundred women in the hold, the men developed a taste for no more than a dozen of them. Tensions arose when two seamen standing watch together became aware of their mutual preference for a single woman. Seniority sometimes resolved the issue, but a fight often broke out when competing seamen were equal in rank. Mungo disciplined them with the cat but he could do nothing to quiet their raging jealousy. The hold was a primitive place, and the men were quick with their fists.

  Mungo tried again to reason with Captain Sterling, to convince him to suspend the liberties for the sake of order.

  ‘It’s not just the women,’ Mungo said. ‘It’s the effect it has on the male slaves.’ Men and women were kept on separate decks, but the sounds of the sailors taking their pleasure could be heard through the whole ship. ‘Some are brothers and fathers and cousins of those girls. There is a rage building o
n the lower deck, and one day it will explode.’

  ‘That is why we keep them chained up,’ said Sterling. ‘And as for the crew, I have never seen such an improvement in their work rate.’ He threw Mungo an ironic smile. ‘You are doing an excellent job.’

  The Blackhawk sailed past Guadeloupe and into the Caribbean, borne by the trade winds. Soon they would reach Cuba. The cargo would be sold, the extra decks broken down, the ship scrubbed clean ready to return to the United States. Mungo would not be sorry when the voyage ended. He had known the slave trade was not a pretty business – and it was a point of pride for him not to shy away from the horrors of the world. Yet the foul reality had been worse than anything he could have imagined.

  Deep in his soul, it troubled him that he could not master his feelings. That had always been Oliver St John’s weakness. As much as Mungo loved his father, he had always sworn to himself he would be a better man. I will not play the hypocrite.

  One more week, he told himself. Then the slaves would be gone and he would have money in his pocket. That was the only thought that gave him any consolation. At night he lay awake, planning how he might get his revenge on Chester Marion.

  On a Friday afternoon, Mungo stood in the square of light beneath the hatch and waited for the first man of the day to come for his liberties. He heard heavy boots, catcalls from some of the crew. He knew who it would be even before he descended the ladder: Lanahan.

  ‘Mr Sinclair,’ said the first mate when he reached the base of the ladder. ‘The wheel of fortune has spun in my favour today.’ He sauntered forward. ‘Tell me – how many of these blackbirds have you fucked? I bet you’ve screwed so much pussy you find it hard to get your cock up, am I right?’

  Mungo said nothing.

  Lanahan laughed. ‘None? Is that just because you’re a nigger lover, or because you’re a sodomite as well?’

  ‘If you only came to insult me, I can find another to take your place.’