by Wilbur Smith
‘I have business to attend to. But we must meet again soon. You have told me so much about Chester’s mistress, I feel I have to meet her.’
‘That is easily arranged,’ said François. ‘She will be at the Toussaint Ball at Coquet’s ballroom this Saturday.’
‘What is that?’
‘A masked ball. But beneath the masks . . .’ He winked. ‘I promise you will never have seen anything to compare.’
‘I have been to balls before.’
‘But not like this.’ François licked his lips. ‘This is a place where white men gather to dance with coloured women. Does that shock you?’
‘Not particularly.’
François looked surprised. ‘You do not think it offends the natural order of the races?’
‘There is no natural order. Only rules that one race invents to make the other serve its uses.’
François stared. His mouth opened as if to say something, but the thought could not express itself. At last he managed, ‘Your opinions would make a cynic blush.’
‘I do not deceive myself with the masks people wear.’
Again, François was lost for words.
‘In any event,’ he stammered at last, ‘Chester’s negress Camilla will be there.’
‘I would not miss it for my life,’ Mungo assured him.
He left quickly. Lingering glances from many of the women in the room followed him out. He emerged onto Rue St Louis just in time to see an elegant carriage pulling away. It was fashioned like a sleigh, with a royal blue canopy, gilded trim and a chassis as white as the sidewalls on the wheels. The horses were also white – Andalusians from Spain by the look of them. Isabel sat upright in the back, with the slave girl she had purchased beside her.
In the busy streets, the carriage could not move quickly. Mungo was easily able to follow it on foot, up the street and then east along the cobblestones of Rue Royale. The crowds were thinner here – he worried he might lose the carriage – but almost at once it turned through an arch into the courtyard of a handsome mansion.
Mungo examined the house. Constructed of lime-washed brick, it stood three storeys above the street, its wide cast-iron galleries rimmed by decorative railings. The shutters were closed across the ground floor windows, but those on the upper floors were thrown wide to admit the breeze. He imagined Isabel standing at the highest railing, watching the sun set over the city.
There was nothing to gain by seeing her again – and many good reasons to avoid her. She was the one person, other than Tippoo, who knew his real name and who could expose him for who he really was. He could not risk letting Chester Marion learn that he had arrived in New Orleans before he was ready to reveal himself. Also, he reminded himself – and then was angry he had needed reminding – he should be focusing all his energies on Camilla. The prudent choice would be to keep well away from Isabel.
But the sight of her had sparked a desire in him he could not account for, the same inexplicable longing he had felt aboard the Blackhawk.
He walked up to Isabel’s front door and rang the bell.
‘Thomas Sinclair, to see the Marquise de Noailles,’ he announced himself to the doorman.
‘Do you have a card?’
Mungo had not had time to have them printed yet. He took a scrap of paper from his pocket – a bill of sale from Havana – and scribbled a few lines on it.
‘Give her this note.’
The door closed. Mungo waited. A few moments later it opened again, and the doorman stepped aside to usher Mungo in.
‘Mungo St John,’ said a familiar voice – cool, condescending, but shimmering with amusement, like the rainbow veneer on mother-of-pearl. ‘Or is it Thomas Sinclair?’ She spoke in French, just as they always had. ‘I confess I have a terrible memory for names.’
Isabel stood at the top of a grand staircase, silhouetted against a bright window. She wore a gauzy dress, and the sun shone through it so that she seemed to glow. It made the fabric almost transparent, revealing every curve of her body beneath.
‘Mademoiselle da Cruz,’ said Mungo. ‘Or is it the Marquise de Noailles? It has been so long I am certain many things must have changed.’
She waved her hand. ‘Names and titles are so inconstant. We take them on and off like clothes. Now, I am Solange, and I would be grateful if you would use that name. But some things have not changed.’
As she descended the stairs she came into focus. Her dress took substance; her face was no longer shaded. She had grown up in the years since he last saw her. Her face had taken on a strength that made her even more beautiful; the eyes that had watched the world with girlish amusement now surveyed it with the full knowledge of her power.
She was holding the note Mungo had sent. On it, he had written the same lines that she had given him the day she came aboard the Blackhawk.
You asked if love brings happiness / That is its promise, if only for a day.
She tossed the paper onto a console table.
‘You have not forgotten how to make an impression.’
‘I was not sure you would receive me,’ said Mungo. ‘After the way we parted.’ He thought back to the beach – Afonso’s blood staining the sand while the Blackhawk’s boat pulled away through the surf. ‘I am sorry about your brother.’
She arched her eyebrows. ‘Truly?’
‘No.’ There was no point lying to her. Of all the people he had ever met, she was the only one who made him feel that she could see straight through him. ‘He was a fool to challenge me to the duel. He got what he deserved.’
‘I agree. The greatest favour you ever did me was ridding me of my brother.’ She laughed at the expression on his face. ‘Do I shock you?’
‘Nothing you do could shock me.’
‘He was a brute. He had already tried to rape me once and he would doubtless have tried again. Even my father did not mourn him.’
They eyed each other for a moment, like a pair of wolves sizing each other up. For the first time, it occurred to Mungo that she might actually have told Afonso about their night-time encounters herself, or helped him discover them, purely so that Mungo could remove an obstacle from her path.
After all the things he had done, he could hardly judge her.
‘How did you come to New Orleans?’ he asked.
‘Not long after we arrived on Prince’s Island, my father died of the fever. With my brother dead, all the inheritance passed to me. I could not stay one day longer in that place – but nor did I want to go back to Europe. A dreary marriage to some dim-witted titled buffoon was all that awaited me there. So I came to America.’
‘Why here?’
‘You know I find American men irresistible. And I thought the New World would be a place where a woman could reinvent herself.’
‘That is how you became the Marquise Solange de Noailles? They say you are related to Louis Napoleon.’
She shrugged. ‘People believe what they want to believe. In a new city, it is useful to be talked about. It opens doors.’
‘You have not married?’
‘I am waiting for the right man.’
‘The man you are in love with?’ Mungo teased her.
She clicked her tongue impatiently. ‘A man who is at least as rich as I am, and too stupid to stop me doing as I wish. Or too clever to try. I will not spend the rest of my life in the sort of gilded cage that Afonso tried to put me in.’
‘I pity the man you make your husband,’ said Mungo.
‘Do you?’
The house was silent; all the servants had vanished. Mungo and Solange – that was how he had to think of her – faced each other in the marble hallway. The only thing that moved were the dust motes caught in the air.
Solange stepped towards him and put her arms around his waist. He felt the heat of her body glowing against him like a hot coal.
‘Why did you come to my house?’
‘I wanted to see you.’
‘Really?’ She put her hand to his ches
t, feeling the bump of the locket under his shirt front. ‘Have you given up trying to avenge your lost love?’
She leaned forward and kissed him, pushing her tongue into his mouth. Her breasts pressed against his chest, while her hand reached for the button of his trousers. The smell of her perfume overwhelmed Mungo’s senses.
He pulled back. ‘Camilla is alive,’ he blurted out.
Solange recoiled as if she’d been burned. Her almond eyes glowed like a cat’s.
‘You told me she was dead.’
‘That was what I believed. Now I know otherwise. She is here in New Orleans.’
Solange’s cheeks were flushed, and there was a patch of red at the base of her throat. It was the first time Mungo had ever seen her angry. She stepped away and pulled a little bell-cord that hung from the ceiling. As if he had read her mind, a slave appeared at once, carrying a tray with two glasses of wine. Solange took one and drained it in a single gulp. The alcohol seemed to calm her.
‘I am happy for you.’
‘She is a slave to the man who murdered my father.’
‘So you are going to kill him.’ She said it as a matter of fact, not even a question.
Mungo gave a grim laugh. ‘That would be too kind. I am going to destroy him. I will dismantle every brick of the edifice he has built his fortune on, until he is left naked in the ruins of his life. I want him to look on his desolation, and know that I have taken away everything he cherished, just as he did to me. And then I will kill him.’
Solange nodded. A lock of hair had come loose and fallen over her face, making her eyes unreadable.
‘I hope you get what you wish for.’
Camilla did not want to go to the ball. She was tired, her head hurt and she missed Isaac. All she wanted was to return to Bannerfield and cradle her son in her lap. But the cotton harvest was approaching, and Chester would be hungry for information: prices, shipping rates, warehouse fees, new officials who could be bribed, properties that might go up for sale. She would keep her ears open, and perhaps afterwards Chester would let her go to Bannerfield to tell him what she had heard.
Also, François would be there, and he would expect to see her in the new costume he had sent her. It was beautiful, and she hated it. The dress was made of shimmering blue and green silks, cut low around her breasts and oversewn with brightly coloured feathers. The mask that accompanied it was made from two crossed peacock feathers, with holes for her eyes at the centre of the whorls. When she looked in the mirror, she did not recognise herself.
Chester’s coachman took her to the ballroom. Not so long ago, she would have tripped at the first step down from the carriage, trying to manage the bustling skirts of her dress; now she moved with easy grace. There were many things she had learned since she came to New Orleans.
Inside, the chandeliers were bright and the room filled with smoke. The air throbbed with conversation and laughter, and strains of an orchestra playing a contredanse. All the guests wore masks – some simple black-and-white affairs, others as colourful as birds of paradise. Their fantastical masks hid the even more extraordinary range of their different skin colours beneath – the Toussaint Ball was a place where, for a few hours, blacks and whites could pretend they were something other than what they were.
Camilla’s fabulous dress made her the most striking woman in the room, but she did not enjoy the attention. Behind those masks she could feel men looking at her, undressing her with their eyes. With her plumage, she felt like a rare bird in a room full of cats.
She made her way around the room, trying to smile at the men who stared at her. Despite their costumes, she recognised several of Chester’s business associates: Jackson, the president of the Bank of New Orleans; Shaw, the commission agent; Levack, the cotton merchant. She flirted with one, danced with another and leaned forward eagerly to listen to what they had to say, giving them fine views straight down her low-cut bodice. She came away with a thorough knowledge of when the biggest plantations would be shipping their cotton to market, and how the prices were likely to move.
She went to the punch table, took a full glass and drained it. It did not help her headache. She wanted to go, but she had not spoken to François yet. He had told her the day before that he had a new client for her to meet, a man he had brought back from Africa who wanted to do business with Chester.
She took another drink, and had just raised it to her lips when she heard the crowd behind her go silent. She turned. François had arrived, but that was not what had transfixed the room. Rather, it was the man who had come in with him.
Camilla stared. Indeed, the whole room had stopped to stare at him. He stood half a head taller than any of them, dressed in an immaculately tailored black coat that made everyone around him seem gaudy. But it was his mask that attracted most attention. It was made in the shape of a sharp-beaked bird – a crow or a raven – but it was not black. It appeared to be made of solid gold, hammered so that the light from the chandeliers rippled over its surface like water, as if a sun had suddenly blazed into existence on the dance floor.
The golden mask hid the man’s face, but his silhouette was so familiar it made her heart almost stop. He looked exactly like Mungo. He was the same height, with the same broad shoulders and finely tapered waist, even the same confident bearing and tilt of his head.
Surely it was impossible.
Camilla had to go. The resemblance was too perfect, bringing back memories and unbearable hopes she thought she had buried forever. Suddenly, her thin dress felt like a lead shroud; the ribs of her corset squeezed her chest, and the mask weighed on her head like a millstone. She turned on her heel and ran to the back of the ballroom.
A door led her on to a small balcony, overlooking the courtyard where coachmen and postilions were playing cards and talking. She tore off the mask and breathed in the night air, sucking it greedily into her lungs, trying to ease the pressure on her chest.
‘Are you unwell?’
It was François’s voice; she’d hoped he hadn’t seen her. She gripped the iron rail and stared down into the courtyard.
‘My apologies,’ she said, drawing on a well of strength deep within her. ‘I took faint. It is passing now.’
‘The air is very close in there,’ François sympathised. ‘I will ask them to open some windows.’
‘That would be kind.’
She wanted him to go and he did, calling for servants and brandy. She heard the door close behind him.
But she was not alone. Someone else was there, standing behind her. He made no sound, but stood so close she could feel the heat coming off him on her bare shoulders. She gripped the railings tighter. There was no point resisting. He must be a white man – all the men at the ball were white – and to be a black woman, alone with a white man, meant only one thing.
She could feel his eyes running over every inch of her body. Though she had been born into slavery, and so never had to stand on the auction block, this was how she imagined it must feel.
Still he did not touch her. Instead: ‘I said I would come back.’
Time stopped. The world changed. Her whole life – everything she had forced herself to think and believe for years – collapsed at the sound of those six words. The voice she had longed to hear through so many terrible nights and lonely days. The voice she had never expected to hear again.
Even then, she refused to believe the evidence of her ears. What if she was wrong? What if she had misheard, or misremembered him. She did not dare to look. To have her hopes crushed again would kill her.
A firm pair of hands grasped her arms. Gently, he pivoted her around so she was looking at him, up at the shrouded face looming over her. The raven mask hid his features – but watching her from behind it she could see a pair of smoky yellow eyes flecked with gold. The only eyes in the world that looked at her like that.
‘Camilla,’ he breathed.
‘How . . . ?’
She was not even sure how to finish the questio
n. Mungo did not give her the chance. He pulled off his mask, bent down and kissed her on the lips – softly at first, then with gathering force. His mouth was so hot she thought he would scald her.
She pulled away, frightened that François would come back. Mungo stiffened. He let her step back, but did not let go of her arms.
‘I thought you were dead,’ he said. He shook his head, angry with himself. ‘I should not have believed it.’
‘Chester kept me for himself. It was part of his triumph over you.’
Her head was so full of wonder she could barely think. But the moment she said Chester’s name, the tender look on Mungo’s face transformed into something so savage that Camilla trembled.
‘He fears you.’ She gripped Mungo’s arms, as if afraid he might melt into the air like a ghost. ‘He knows you are free – he is convinced you will come for revenge. He has made himself the most powerful man in the state to stop you.’
The door behind them banged open. Mungo and Camilla sprang apart as François stepped out on the balcony. His eyes darted between them; his mouth – visible below his half-mask – pursed in a sour expression.
‘I see you have already met my petite amie, Mademoiselle Camilla,’ he said. ‘I had been hoping to make an introduction.’
His eyes flicked around the little balcony, trying to understand what was happening. The night was warm, the music inside was boisterous, the dancers were enjoying themselves – yet out here, the atmosphere felt charged with lightning. And he did not like the way Mungo was staring at Camilla.
François offered her his arm. ‘Perhaps you would care to dance?’
Before she could respond, Mungo said, ‘She is still too faint.’ Through the windows, he saw a pair of slaves taking the punchbowl away to the kitchens to refill it. ‘She needs another drink.’
‘I do not think that is wise,’ François countered. ‘If she is faint, alcohol will not help her.’
‘Please.’ Camilla touched his arm, wishing she still had her mask on. ‘I would be grateful. And afterwards we can dance.’