Call of the Raven

by Wilbur Smith

  It was not easy. The longer they stayed, the further they had to range inland to find the huge herds that would give them the most ivory. They strayed into inhabited lands, meeting local tribes whom they befriended with gifts of glass beads and cloth, in exchange for food. And still they kept going.

  After six months, they had enough ivory to fill the ship’s hold. So much, Mungo had to hire porters from the tribes to carry it back to the coast. Their caravan stretched almost a mile, hundreds of men and women with elephant tusks stacked on their heads. Thirty thousand pounds in weight, according to the meticulous tally Mungo kept in his account book. By the time he had sold it in New York or Baltimore, it would be worth nearly half a million dollars.

  ‘Then I will be able to go after Chester,’ he told himself.

  The plan he had devised, in those long nights in his cabin aboard the Blackhawk, was not much different from what Chester had done to his father. He would ruin Chester’s fortune, acquire his debts, and then call them in until Chester was bankrupt. The money that those ivory tusks represented would allow him to achieve it.

  At last the ivory was stowed tight in the hold. The Raven weighed anchor, nosed out of the river mouth, and set her course for home.

  Never in her life had Camilla known such freedom as she enjoyed in New Orleans. She could go anywhere in the city without asking permission. In the sea of Creole faces that thronged the streets – every shade of black and white, slave and free – the colour of her skin attracted no attention at all. The only looks she drew in the street were on account of her beauty. At home, she was mistress of the house. Even the other slaves deferred to her. That horrified her – but when she told them to go away, that she could dress and feed and wash herself, she saw the fear in their eyes. If they did not earn their keep, Chester might sell them, or send them back to the fields at Bannerfield. So, reluctantly, she let them lace up the fine dresses Chester had given her, and brush her hair and bring her breakfast on a silver tray in the mornings.

  Her life in New Orleans settled into a routine. Early each morning, she went to the Cathedral of St Louis on Rue de Chartres and prayed. That was the happiest moment of her day – in the dim hush of the sanctuary, she could feel clean and safe. It was also the only time she could be free of Granville, who found the atmosphere inside the cathedral disagreeable. Once he had visited a few times and assured himself that the only other clientele so early were priests and nuns, he stationed himself by the door and waited outside. Camilla was left by herself, to pray for Isaac and Mungo and, for a few moments, to feel close to them.

  Isaac was the reason that Chester could allow her so much freedom. However far she ranged, she would always come back. However great the delights of the city, she would swap them in a moment to be back at Bannerfield with her son. It was the wound inside her that could never heal. As weeks became months, she could only imagine how her boy was growing: bigger, stronger, weaning, babbling, crawling. In her mind, he was still the tiny baby she had cradled in her arms. Would she even recognise him? Would he remember her?

  She hated what Chester had made her. At Windemere, even at Bannerfield, she had been a simple labourer. They might own her body, but never her soul. Here, though her bed was softer and her clothes as fine as any great lady’s, he had made her his whore.

  But as the months passed, she found herself doing more than simply making herself beautiful for white men, and performing for them in dining rooms and bedrooms (for de Villiers was not the only man she was forced to entertain). It happened so gradually she barely noticed it, but more and more she found herself taking an interest in Chester’s business dealings.

  The first time was a month after she had arrived in New Orleans. Chester was back in town. His book-keeper, a wizened old man named Sullivan, found them at breakfast to ask if he should pay an invoice to François.

  ‘Ask Camilla,’ Chester said through a mouthful of toast. ‘She knows all the tricks François is up to.’

  Sullivan gave her the paper. The look on his face said he could not imagine what a slave girl might make of it. Camilla ignored him and read the bill slowly. It was for flour that had been sent to Bannerfield.

  ‘François has charged you at New Orleans prices,’ she said, pointing to the relevant lines.

  ‘What is wrong with that?’

  ‘Because he had his agent buy the flour in Louisville, where it is cheaper, and shipped direct from there.’

  Chester snatched the paper from her and stared at it. He was so rich, and so busy keeping rich, it was easier for him to pay François’s inflated prices than examine them too closely. Yet if ever he found out he had been cheated, his anger was a fearsome thing.

  ‘He told you this?’

  ‘I happened to see the letter he had written to his agent.’

  Chester gave her an appreciative nod.

  ‘Tell the foreman at Bannerfield to inspect the flour sacks and see where it was milled,’ he told Sullivan. ‘If what Camilla says is accurate, inform François that he has made a mistake with his invoice.’

  ‘He tried to cheat you,’ Sullivan grumbled. ‘You should take your business elsewhere.’

  ‘Not at all.’ Chester gave a malicious grin. ‘I know every factor in this city will try to cheat me. The difference is, with François I can now find out how he is doing it.’

  After that, every time a bill came from François, or an order had to be placed, Chester would tell his clerks to ask Camilla. Soon it became a habit for them, even when Chester was not there. Without any formal authority or position, she became indispensable to the running of his affairs.

  To her surprise, she discovered she had an aptitude for it. She liked totting up the columns of numbers, the order they represented, the feeling of control when they obeyed her. When she did not understand something, she applied herself to learning it until she had it perfect. She found books in Chester’s library – on maritime insurance, stock markets, and a hundred other topics – and smuggled them up to her room, poring over them by candlelight until her eyes hurt. It became an obsession. The more useful she could make herself to Chester, the more chance she would be allowed to see Isaac again.

  Sometimes, if there was something she wanted to know, she would visit François’s office and flirt with him until he explained it to her.

  ‘I only see you when you want something,’ he complained, but that was not true.

  He saw her in the evenings, when she dressed up in her finery to attend the soirées and dinners where the beau monde of New Orleans entertained their mistresses; several nights a week he saw her undress from that same finery and take him to her bed.

  She supposed François knew what she was doing. He must realise that everything he said was reported back to Chester. Or maybe he did not – she knew men could be blind to things they did not want to see, and it was easy to dismiss a black woman. Perhaps he did know, and accepted it as the price of her company. Or perhaps he did not care. Chester’s business was so vast, and growing, that however much Camilla found out, François would still make a fortune. And enjoy the pleasures of her body while he did.

  ‘How much would it cost to buy a steamboat?’ Camilla asked him one night, curled against him in bed.

  He laughed. ‘That is a funny question.’

  ‘Chester said he was considering getting one. For Bannerfield.’

  That was not true; Chester had no idea about it. But François believed her. He propped himself up on one arm and looked down at her.

  ‘He said that?’

  ‘I overheard him talking to Granville.’ She lay flat on the bed, her eyes wide and innocent.

  ‘It is a very foolish idea,’ said François, frowning. ‘It would cost fifty thousand dollars at least to buy a steamboat. Then there are the costs of fuel, the crew, to say nothing of the hazards of navigation. And if Chester kept it purely for Bannerfield, it would be sitting idle more than half the time.’

  ‘Perhaps I should not have mentioned it,’ said
Camilla meekly.

  François smiled and kissed her. ‘It is lucky you did. Now, with a few tactful words, I can save Chester from making a big mistake. Much better for him to leave it to me to arrange shipping as and when he needs it.’

  And take ten per cent of the price. François did not say it, but he did not have to. At that moment, unbeknown to him, Camilla was thinking exactly the same thought.

  The next thing he said put it out of her head.

  ‘I will not see you for some time after this. Chester has asked me to sail to Africa.’

  Camilla tensed. ‘To Africa?’

  ‘He is buying a plantation in Havana, and he needs people to work it.’ He sighed. ‘I told him the markets in Havana are perfectly adequate, but he insists he will be cheated there. So he has asked me to go and choose them myself.’

  ‘I thought the slave trade was illegal.’

  It should not have shocked her that Chester could do such a thing, but it still did. She had been born a slave; no other life had ever been possible. But for ordinary people who had known freedom to be wrenched from their lives, simply because another man’s greed demanded it – the injustice burned at her. How could anyone justify such a thing?

  It did not seem to trouble François.

  ‘The navy patrols are the least of it. Storms, shipwreck, fever . . . It will be a miracle if I return.’ His face brightened. ‘Though if I do, I will be considerably wealthier.’

  ‘How long will you be gone?’

  ‘Six months, at least. More, if the weather is against us.’ François stroked her hair. ‘But do not worry. I will not forget you.’

  ‘François is up to something,’ said Chester.

  He and Camilla were walking along the levee, near the Bannerfield warehouse. They looked like a pair of sweethearts, Chester in a handsome suit and Camilla wearing a purple dress that accentuated every curve of her body. She held his arm, and smiled, and tried to forget all the things he had done to her.

  ‘I dined with François today, and all he could talk about was the ruinous cost of steamboats,’ Chester continued. ‘Is he planning to charge me more for our shipping?’

  ‘He is already overcharging you for the shipping,’ said Camilla. ‘What worries him is that while he is away in Africa, you might realise how much he makes from you and buy your own boat.’

  ‘Why would he think that?’

  ‘Because that is what you should do,’ said Camilla. ‘I have looked at your accounts. Everything that Bannerfield uses or produces travels by the river. You spend nearly a hundred thousand dollars a year on it. For that money, you could buy and operate two steamboats of your own and still save money. If you used spare capacity to carry goods for the other plantations, it would even be a source of income.’

  Chester stopped dead. He stared down at her, his face caught between suspicion and surprise.

  ‘How did you work that out?’

  ‘I got the idea from you,’ she said humbly. ‘Do you remember, at dinner last month, you were complaining how much it cost to bring the crop down river? I simply added up all the shipping costs in the ledgers, and then asked some of your friends how much a steamboat might cost. It was not very difficult.’

  Never let him see what you are capable of. Never become a threat.

  She saw the idea taking root in Chester’s mind. Without him noticing, she had been steering him along Front Levee to a jetty near the Union Cotton Press. At crop time, the wharf would be jammed with steamboats unloading cotton bales at every hour of the day. Now, it was mostly deserted. Only a single steamboat was moored up at the wharf.

  ‘Why don’t we take a look at her,’ said Chester, as if the idea had just occurred to him spontaneously.

  A man with a weather-beaten face and a wiry frame strode down the gangplank. He offered Chester a hand that was as gnarled as old tree roots.

  ‘Ezekiel McMurran,’ he introduced himself. ‘Master of this vessel.’

  Chester did not bother with formalities. ‘Is she for sale?’

  McMurran nodded. ‘She was built last year for a consortium, planned to run a packet line service up to Louisville. But one of the partners died, and the others fell out, and now they want rid of her.’

  ‘Is she reliable?’

  ‘I can show you.’

  Chester and Camilla followed McMurran aboard. He showed them the machinery: the great boilers mounted on the main deck, the furnaces that fired them and the long mechanical arms that took their power to the stern-wheel. He showed them the cabins on the deck above – confusingly, known as the boiler deck. They were not as luxurious as the stateroom that Camilla had had on the voyage down from Bannerfield, but that did not matter.

  ‘You do not need passenger quarters,’ she told Chester. ‘You can rip out most of these cabins to create more room for cargo.’

  Finally, McMurran took them up to the hurricane deck, the topmost deck where passengers could promenade. The only structure here was a cabin for the crew, known as the Texas, surmounted by a small glassed-in structure that held the ship’s wheel.

  ‘The pilot house,’ McMurran explained. ‘That is where we steer the ship.’

  They stood on the hurricane deck looking out over the length of the ship, and the broad crescent of the river and the city beyond. The captain waited expectantly. Camilla wanted to say more, to nudge Chester towards a decision. But she sensed it was not the moment to pressure him.

  Chester slapped the side of the Texas.

  ‘I will take her,’ he declared. ‘And you too, if you will stay on as her captain.’

  McMurran grinned and shook his hand. ‘Honoured.’

  ‘You will not regret this,’ Camilla promised him. ‘Now it will be easier for you to come and go between New Orleans and Bannerfield whenever you like. And I will be able to visit you more often.’

  ‘Indeed,’ said Chester. The thought of the money he could save had put him in a merry mood. ‘We will make the inaugural trip together. Isaac will be so surprised when he sees what we have bought.’

  In that moment, Camilla knew the nearest thing to happiness she had felt since Isaac was born. She threw her arms around Chester, a gesture that was only half contrived.

  ‘Thank you.’

  Did it trouble her, that all her efforts only served to increase Chester’s fortune? That he would use the money she saved him to buy more land, which would need more slaves to work it? That the boats would be used to carry those slaves to Bannerfield, along with seed for them to plant and whips for the overseers to lash them with?

  All that passed through her mind. But every day was a battle for her life. She might lie awake at night yearning for Mungo, dreaming of the day he would step through the door and rescue her – but as the months passed, that dream slowly died. She had to rely on her own wits to survive; guilt was a luxury she could not afford. All that mattered was getting back to Isaac.

  ‘I will rename her,’ said Chester with a sweep of his arm. ‘She will be the Windemere. A memory of happy times.’

  Camilla wasn’t sure how he wanted her to respond.

  ‘I had almost forgotten Windemere,’ she murmured.

  Footsteps sounded on the boiler deck below. The joy of the moment was ruined as Granville’s head appeared at the top of the stairs that led up to the hurricane deck. His face was flushed, his breathing short.

  ‘A letter came from Virginia,’ he said. He passed it to Chester. ‘You ought to read it.’

  Chester took it in surprise. The seal was unbroken.

  ‘How do you know what is in it?’

  Granville pointed to the sender’s address scrawled on the back above the seal.

  ‘There.’

  All the warmth of the day seemed to drain from the hurricane deck as Chester read aloud.

  ‘Mungo St John, Baltimore.’

  He snapped the seal so hard it tore the paper. As he read, his face went white.

  ‘I must return to Bannerfield at once.’

&
nbsp; ‘What has happened?’ said Camilla.

  At the sight of Mungo’s name, that familiar handwriting, her heart had lurched sideways. He was alive. He had not forgotten her after all.

  Chester turned away without answering. He seemed oblivious to Camilla as she peered over his shoulder and read the letter.

  I have returned from my adventures a considerably richer man than before. I have a few affairs to attend to, but rest assured I know where to find you and I have not forgotten the debt I owe you. I shall join you presently to settle the matter with interest.

  Chester turned to Camilla, his grey eyes burning into her.

  ‘Did you know?’

  ‘How could I?’

  The utter shock in her voice was enough to convince him. He was more agitated than she had ever seen him. His face was grey, the muscles in his cheek twitching as if he was having a seizure.

  ‘He means to kill me.’

  Camilla did not think she had betrayed any emotion, but perhaps she had allowed a trace of hope to flash across her face. Perhaps Chester, in his turmoil, simply assumed it. He shot out his hand and grabbed her by her throat.

  ‘Do not think Mungo is coming like some kind of white knight to save you,’ he hissed. ‘I would kill you sooner than let him have you. And as for Isaac . . .’ He gave a grim laugh, though Camilla thought she saw a stab of pain in his eyes. ‘You know what he would do to the boy to hurt me.’

  Camilla gripped the rail of the hurricane deck. She wanted to tell Chester he was wrong, that Mungo could never hurt the child because Isaac was Camilla’s flesh and blood.

  Of course she could not tell him that. Partly because it would only enrage Chester further – but also, partly because deep in her heart she could not be sure it was true. Would Mungo’s love for her be greater than his hatred for Chester?