by Wilbur Smith
‘Your good health, Major Ballantyne.’ And then after he had tasted his own wine, ‘I think I have a berth for you. A ship of my squadron anchored in Table Bay yesterday, and as soon as she has replenished her coal bunkers and revictualled I shall detach her for independent duty in the Mozambique channel.’
Zouga knew from his meetings with the directors of the Society for the Extinction of the Slave Trade, that one part of the Admiral’s standing orders read:
‘You are requested and required to dispose the ships of your squadron in such manner as most expediently to prevent vessels of whatever Christian nation from engaging in the slave trade on the coast of the African continent south of the equator.’
Clearly Kemp intended a sweep of the eastern seaboard with elements of his squadron, and Zouga felt awakening delight as the Admiral went on genially, ‘It will not need much of a diversion for my ship to call at Quelimane, and to land you and your party.’
‘I cannot thank you sufficiently, Admiral.’ His pleasure was transparent, and Admiral Kemp smiled in sympathy. He had put himself out more than his usual wont, for the youngster was attractive and likeable, deserving of encouragement, but now there were other matters awaiting his attention and as he pulled out his gold hunter and consulted it pointedly he went on,
‘You should be ready to sail in five days’ time.’ He returned the watch to the fob of his uniform coat. ‘I hope we will see you on Friday? My Secretary did send you an invitation, did he not? Your sister will be with you, I hope.’
‘Indeed, sir.’ Zouga stood in obedience to his dismissal. ‘And my sister and I are honoured.’
In fact Robyn had said, ‘I do not waste my evenings, Zouga, and I have no intention of enduring the company of a fleet of tipsy sailors nor of suffering the wagging tongues of their wives.’
The Cape wives were agog with the presence in their midst of the notorious Robyn Ballantyne who had impersonated a man and invaded, successfully, an exclusive masculine preserve. Half of them were deliciously scandalized, and the rest were awed and admiring. However, Zouga was certain that she would pay this price for their passage to Quelimane.
‘Very well then.’ Admiral Kemp nodded. ‘Thank you for calling on me.’ And then, as Zouga started for the door, ‘Oh, by the way, Ballantyne. The ship is the Black Joke, Captain Codrington commanding. My Secretary will give you a letter for him, and I suggest you call upon him to introduce yourself and to learn the date of sailing.’
The name came as a shock, and Zouga checked his stride as he thought quickly of the complication which the choice of ship might bring.
Zouga was sensitive to any threat to the expedition, and Codrington had struck him as being a hot-headed, almost fanatical character. He could not afford any slur to his leadership, and Codrington had seen him sailing in company with a suspected slaver. He could not be sure what Codrington would do.
It was a delicate decision: accept the berth and risk Codrington’s denunciation, or refuse the offer of passage and perhaps wait for months in Cape Town before another vessel offered them another.
If they were delayed that long, it would mean missing the cooler and dryer period between the monsoons, they would have to cross the pestilential and fever-ridden coastal lowlands in the most dangerous season.
Zouga made his decision. ‘Thank you, Admiral Kemp. I will call on Captain Codrington as soon as possible.’
Thomas Harkness had asked Zouga to return on the second day, and the map was more important even than swift passage to Quelimane.
Zouga sent Garniet, the Cartwrights’ groom, down to the beach with a sealed letter addressed to Captain Codrington and with instructions to take one of the water boats out to Black Joke and deliver it personally to Codrington. It was a warning, couched in the most polite terms, that Zouga and Robyn would call on the Captain the following morning. Zouga had become aware that his sister had an effect on men quite out of proportion to her physical appearance – even Admiral Kemp had asked for her personally – and he had no compunction in using her to take the edge off Codrington’s temper. He would have to warn her to exert her charm, but now there was more important business.
He had mounted on Cartwright’s big bay gelding and ridden halfway down the gravelled drive between the oaks, when a thought struck him and he swung the horse’s head and cantered back to the guest bungalow again. The Naval Colt revolver was on the top layer of his chest, already fully loaded and with caps on the nipples. He carried it under the tail of his coat while he went back out to the tethered gelding, and then slipped the revolver surreptitiously into the saddlebag as he swung up into the saddle.
He knew he had to have the Harkness map at any price, but he deliberately refused to think what that price might be.
He pushed his mount hard up the steep road to the neck between the peaks, and gave him only a few minutes to blow before starting down the far slope.
The air of dilapidation which hung over the thatched building in the milkwood grove seemed to have deepened. It seemed totally deserted, silent and desolate. He dismounted and threw his reins over a milkwood branch and stooped to ease the girth. Then he quietly unfastened the buckle of the saddlebag and slipped the Colt into his waistband and pulled his coat over it.
As he started towards the stoep, the big ridge-backed Boerhound rose from where it had lain in the shadows and came to meet him. In contrast to its previous ferocity, the animal was subdued, its tail and ears drooping and it whined softly when it recognized Zouga.
He went up on to the stoep and hammered on the front door with his fist, and heard the blows reverberate through the room beyond. Beside him, the Boerhound cocked its head and watched him expectantly, but silence settled again over the old building.
Twice more Zouga beat upon the door, before he tried the handle. It was locked. He rattled the brass lock and put his shoulder to the door; but it was heavy teak in a solid frame. Zouga jumped down off the stoep and circled the house, squinting his eyes at the fierce reflected sunlight from the white-washed walls. The windows were shuttered.
Beyond the farmyard stood the old slave quarters, now used by Harkness’ servant, and Zouga called loudly for him, but his room was deserted and the ashes cold in the cooking place. Zouga went back to the main house and stood by the locked kitchen door.
He knew that he should go back to his horse and ride away, but he needed the map, even if just for long enough to make a copy. Harkness was not here, and in three days, perhaps less, he would be sailing out of Table Bay.
There was a pile of broken rusted garden tools in the corner of the stoep. Zouga selected a hand scythe, and carefully probed the metal point of the blade into the crack between jamb and door. The lock was old and worn, the tongue slipped back easily under the blade and he jerked the door open with his free hand.
It was still not too late. He paused in the doorway for many seconds, and then he took a deep breath and stepped quietly into the gloom of the interior.
There was a long passage leading past closed doors towards the front room. Zouga went down it, opening doors quietly as he passed. In one room was a huge fourposter bedstead with the curtains opened and the bed clothes in disorder.
Quickly Zouga passed on to the main room. It was in semi-darkness and he stopped to let his eyes adjust, and immediately was aware of a low sound. The hive-murmur of insects seemed to fill the high room. It was a disturbing, almost menacing sound, and Zouga felt the skin prickle on his forearms.
‘Mr Harkness!’ he called hoarsely, and the hum rose to a loud buzzing. Something alighted on his cheek and crawled across his skin. He struck it away with a shudder of revulsion and stumbled across to the nearest window. His fingers were clumsy on the fastening of the shutters. A shaft of white sunlight burned into the room as the shutter swung open.
Thomas Harkness sat in one of the carved wingback chairs across the cluttered table, and stared at Zouga impassively.
The flies crawled over him, big metallic blue and green fl
ies that glittered in the sunlight. They swarmed with evident glee upon the deep dark wound in the centre of his chest. The snowy beard was black with clotted blood, and blood had formed a congealed pool beneath his chair.
Zouga was rooted by the shock for many seconds, and then reluctantly he took a step forward. The old man had propped one of his big-bored elephant guns against the table leg, reversing the weapon so the muzzle pressed into his own chest and his hands were still locked around the barrel.
‘What did you do that for?’ Zouga demanded stupidly, speaking aloud, and Harkness stared back at him.
Harkness had removed the boot from his right foot, and depressed the trigger with his bare toe. The massive impact of the heavy lead ball had driven the chair and the man in it back against the wall, but he had retained his death grip on the barrel.
‘That was a stupid thing to do.’ Zouga took a cheroot from his case and lit it with a Swan Vesta. The smell of death was in the room, coating the back of his throat and the roof of his mouth. Zouga drew deeply on the tobacco smoke.
There was no reason at all to feel grief. He had known the old man for a single day and night. He had come here for one reason only – to get the map the best way he was able. It was ridiculous now to have the deep ache of sorrow turning his legs leaden and stinging the backs of his eyes. Was he mourning the passing of an era perhaps, rather than the man himself? Harkness and the legends of Africa were interwoven. The man had been history itself.
Slowly Zouga approached the figure in the chair, and then reaching out drew his palm slowly down over the old face, ruined by the elements and by pain, closing the lids down over the staring black eyes.
The old man looked more peaceful that way.
Zouga hooked one leg over the corner of the cluttered table, and smoked the cheroot slowly, in almost companionable silence with Thomas Harkness. Then he dropped the stub in the big copper spittoon beside the chair and went through to the bedroom.
He took one of the blankets off the bed and brought it back.
He brushed the flies away into an angry buzzing circle, and threw the blanket over the seated figure. As he drew it up over the head, he murmured softly, ‘Get in close, old man, and go for the heart,’ the advice that Harkness had given him as a farewell. Then he turned away briskly to the laden table, and began shuffling through the jumbled pieces of canvas and paper, and slowly his impatience turned to alarm – and then to panic as he hunted through pile after pile without finding the map.
He was panting when at last he straightened up and glared at the blanket-covered figure.
‘You knew I was coming for it, didn’t you!’
He left the table and went to the chest, lifted the lid against groaning hinges and the leather bag with its golden contents was gone also. He ransacked the chest down to its floorboards, but it was not there. Then he started to search in earnest, going carefully through any possible hiding-place in the crowded room. An hour later he went back and perched on the edge of the table once more.
‘Damn you, for a cunning old bastard,’ he said quietly. He took one more slow look about the room, making certain that he overlooked nothing. The painting of the lion hunt was no longer on the easel, he noticed.
Suddenly the humour of the situation struck him, and his scowl lightened, he began to chuckle ruefully to himself.
‘You had the last joke on the Ballantynes, didn’t you? By God, but you always did things your way, Tom Harkness, I’ll grant you that.’
He stood up slowly, and placed his hand on the blanket-covered shoulder. ‘You win, old man. Take your secrets with you then.’ He could feel the twisted old bones through the cloth and he shook him gently and then he went out quickly to his horse for there was much to do. It took him the rest of the day to cross the neck again and reach the magistrate’s court, then to get back with the coroner and his assistants.
They buried Thomas Harkness that evening, wrapped in the blanket, under the milkwood grove, for the heat was oppressive in the valley and they could not wait for a coffin to be carted out from the city.
Zouga left the coroner to take charge of the estate, to list the equipment and livestock in the yard and put his seals on the doors of the old house until the contents could be taken in.
Zouga rode home in the golden Cape dusk, his boots dusty and his shirt sticky with sweat. He was exhausted from the day’s exertions, and low in spirits, still oppressed by grief for the old man, and angry with him for the last trick he had played.
The groom took his horse in front of the bungalow.
‘Did you deliver the letter to Captain Codrington?’ Zouga demanded, and hardly waited for the reply as he went up into the house. He needed a drink now, and while he poured whisky into a cut crystal glass, his sister came into the room, and reached up casually to kiss his cheek, wrinkling her nose at the tickle of his whiskers and the smell of his sweat.
‘You had best change. We are dining with the Cartwrights tonight,’ Robyn told him. ‘I could not avoid it.’ And then as an afterthought, ‘Oh, Zouga, a coloured servant delivered something for you this morning. Just after you had left. I had it put in the study.’
‘Who is it from?’
Robyn shrugged. ‘The servant spoke only kitchen Dutch and he seemed terrified. He fled before I could find someone to question him.’
With the whisky glass in his hand Zouga crossed to the door of the study, and stopped there abruptly. His expression changed, and he strode through the doorway.
Minutes later Robyn heard his shout of triumphant laughter, and curiously she crossed to the open door. Zouga stood beside the heavy carved stinkwood desk.
On the desk-top lay a draw-string bag of tanned and stained leather from which spilled a heavy necklace of gleaming gold; beside the bag was spread a magnificently illustrated map on a backing of linen parchment, and Zouga stood with his back to her. He held at arm’s length a flamboyant picture in oils in a large frame, a figure on horseback with a band of ferocious wild animals in the foreground, and as she watched, Zouga reversed the picture. There was a message freshly carved into the wood of the frame.
For Zouga Ballantyne. May you find the road to all your Monomatapas – would only that I could have gone with you.
Tom Harkness.
Zouga was laughing still, but there was a strange quality to the laughter and when he turned towards her she realized with a shock that her brother’s eyes were bright with tears.
Zouga brushed the crumbs from his lips with the damask table napkin and chuckled as he picked up the sheet of newsprint and shook it open again at the second page.
‘Damn me, Sissy, I should have known better than to leave you alone.’ He read further and laughed outright. ‘Did you really say that to him? Did you really?’
‘I cannot remember my exact words,’ Robyn told him primly, ‘you must remember it was in the heat of battle.’
They sat on the terrace of the bungalow under the pergola of vines, through which the early sun flicked golden coins of light upon the breakfast table.
The previous day the editor of the Cape Times,with a speculator’s eye to making a profit on Dr Robyn Ballantyne’s notoriety, had invited her on a tour of the military hospital at Observatory, and in innocence, Robyn had believed that the visit was at the invitation of the Colony’s administration and she had welcomed the opportunity to widen her professional experience.
The visit had succeeded beyond the editor’s most extravagant expectations, for the surgeon-general of the Colony had scheduled a tour for the same day and he had walked into the hospital’s main operating room, followed by his staff, at the moment that Robyn was expressing herself on the subject of sponges to the hospital matron.
The surgeon’s sponges were kept in pails of water, clean water from the galvanized rainwater tanks at the rear of the building. The pails were under the operating table, where the surgeon could reach them readily, and after swabbing away blood and pus and other matter the sponge was dropped into
a collection tray, later to be washed out and returned to the original pail of fresh water.
‘I assure you, doctor, that my nurses wash the swabs out most thoroughly.’ The matron was a formidable figure with the flattened features of a bulldog bitch and the same aggressive thrust to her jaw. She stooped, plunged her hand into the pail, and selected one of the sponges and proffered it to Robyn.
‘You can see for yourself how soft and white they are.’
‘Just like the soft white germs that swarm in them.’ Robyn was angry, with red spots of colour in her cheeks. ‘Have none of you here ever heard of Joseph Lister?’
The surgeon-general answered her question from the doorway.
‘The answer to that question, Doctor Ballantyne, is NO we have never heard of that person, whoever he may be. We do not have time to concern ourselves with the opinions of every crank or, for that matter, with male impersonators.’
The surgeon-general had a very good idea of the identity of the young woman before him. He had followed the gossip which was the Colony’s main recreation, and he did not approve of Robyn.
On the other hand, Robyn had no idea as to the identity of the elderly gentleman with the bushy grey whiskers and beetling brows, though by the dried blood stains on the front of his frock coat she guessed that he was a surgeon of the old school, one who operated in his street clothes and let the stains advertise his profession. Here was a much more worthy adversary than the hospital matron, and she rounded on him with the battle light bright in her eyes.
‘Then, sir, I am amazed that you admit so readily your ignorance and your bigotry.’