A Falcon Flies

by Wilbur Smith

  Robyn was training Juba as her assistant, teaching her to hold the tray of instruments, and receive the discarded and soiled dressings or instruments. Now she stood back and appraised the healed wound, without looking at Juba.

  ‘You may go now,’ she said quietly. ‘I will call you when I need you.’

  Juba smiled like a conspirator, and murmured, ‘He is truly beautiful, so white and smooth,’ and Robyn blushed pinkly, for that was exact!y what she had been thinking. Clinton’s body, unlike that of Mungo St John, was hairless as a girl’s but finely muscled, and the skin had an almost marble sheen to it.

  ‘His eyes are like two moons when he looks at you, Nomusa,’ Juba went on with relish, and Robyn tried to frown at her but her lips kept puckering into a smile.

  ‘Go swiftly,’ she snapped, and Juba giggled.

  ‘There is a time to be alone,’ and she rolled her eyes lewdly. ‘I shall guard the door, and hardly listen at all, Nomusa.’ Robyn found it impossible to be angry when the child used that name, for it meant ‘the daughter of mercy’, and Robyn found it highly acceptable. She would have had difficulty picking a better name for herself, and she was smiling as she hurried Juba from the cabin with a gentle slap and a push.

  Clinton must have had some idea of the exchange, for he was buttoning his shirt as she turned back to him, and looking embarrassed.

  She drew a deep breath, folded her arms and began.

  ‘Captain Codrington, I have thought unceasingly of the great honour you have done me by inviting me to be your wife.’

  ‘However,’ Clinton forestalled her, and she faltered, the prepared speech forgotten, for her next word would indeed have been, ‘However’.

  ‘Miss Ballantyne, I mean Doctor Ballantyne, I would rather you did not say the rest of it.’ His face was pale and intense, he really was beautiful now, she thought, with a pang. ‘That way I can still cherish hope.’

  She shook her head vehemently, but he lifted a hand.

  ‘I have come to realize that you have a duty, to your father and the poor unhappy people of this land. I understand and deeply admire that.’

  Robyn felt her heart go out to him, he was so good and so perceptive to have understood that about her.

  ‘However, I feel sure that one day, you and I shall . . .’

  She wanted to spare him pain.

  ‘Captain,’ she began, shaking her head again.

  ‘No,’ he said. ‘Nothing you say will ever make me abandon hope. I am a very patient man, and I realize that now is not the time. But I know in the depths of my soul that our destiny binds us together, even if I must wait ten or fifty years.’

  A time-span of that magnitude no longer frightened Robyn. She relaxed visibly.

  ‘I love you, my dear Doctor Ballantyne, nothing will ever alter that, and in the meantime I ask only your good opinion, and friendship.’

  ‘You have both,’ she said, with truth and relief. It had been a great deal easier than she had expected, yet strange that a shadow of regret lingered.

  There was no further opportunity to speak privately, for Clinton was fully occupied with bringing Black Joke into the treacherous channel, with its shifting banks and uncharted shoals guarding the mouth. The channel meandered twenty miles through the mangrove forests to the port of Quelimane on the northern bank.

  The heat in the delta was rendered scarcely bearable by the humid effluxion of mud and rotting vegetation that rose from the mangrove forests. The weird shapes of the mangroves fascinated Robyn and she stood by the rail and watched them slide past. Each tree stood clear of the slick chocolate-coloured mud on its pyramid of roots, like the multiple legs of a grotesque insect reaching up to join the thick pulpy stem which in turn extended upwards to the roof of poisonous green foliage. Amongst the roots skittered the purple and yellow fiddler crabs, each of them holding aloft a single disproportionately huge claw, and waving it in menace or ponderous greeting at the passing vessel.

  Black Joke’s wake spread across the channel, flopping wavelets on the mud banks and startling the small green and purple night herons into laborious flight.

  Around a bend in the channel the decaying buildings of Quelimane came into view, dominated by the square towers of the stucco church. The plaster was falling away in unsightly chunks and the whitewash was streaked and splotched with grey and green mould, like a ripening cheese.

  This port had once been one of the most busy slave ports on the entire African coast. The Zambezi river had acted as a highway to the interior for the slave-masters, and the Shire river, its major tributary, led directly to Lake Marawi and the highlands which had been the mother lode from which hundreds and thousands of black slaves had poured.

  When the Portuguese, under British pressure, had signed the Brussels Agreement, the barracoons at Quelimane and Lourenc¸o Marques and Mozambique Island had been closed down. However, the slaving dhow that Black Joke had intercepted proved that the abominable trade still flourished covertly along the Portuguese coast. That was typical of these people, Clinton Codrington thought.

  Clinton curled his lip with distaste. In the many hundred years since their great navigators had opened up this coast, the Portuguese had clung to the narrow unhealthy strip of the littoral, making only one half-hearted effort to penetrate the interior and since then, lying here like their disintegrating buildings and crumbling empire, content with the bribes and extortions of petty officialdom and their seraglios of women, tolerant of any crimes or evil as long as there was a little dash or profit in it.

  As he worked Black Joke in towards the quay, he could see them gathering already, gaudy vultures, in their fool’s motley of uniform, tarnished gold braid and ornate swords sported by even the lowliest customs officer.

  There would be endless forms and declarations unless he was firm, and always the open palm and the leering wink. Well, this time there would be none of that. This was a ship of the Queen’s Navy.

  ‘Mr Denham,’ Clinton called sharply, ‘issue pistols and cutlasses to the anchor watch, and nobody comes aboard without the express permission of the officer of the watch.’

  He turned away to shake hands briefly with Zouga; they had found little in common during the voyage and the parting was cool.

  ‘Never thank you enough, sir,’ said Zouga briskly.

  ‘Only my duty, Major.’ But already Zouga’s eyes were following Sergeant Cheroot as he assembled his men on the foredeck. They were in full marching order, eager to be ashore after the tedious voyage.

  ‘I must see to my men, Captain,’ Zouga excused himself and hurried forward.

  Clinton turned to Robyn and looked steadily into her green eyes.

  ‘I beg a small token of remembrance,’ he said quietly.

  In response to his request she reached up and took one of the cheap paste earrings from her lobe. As they shook hands, she slipped the little ornament into his palm, and he touched it briefly to his lips before slipping it into his pocket.

  ‘I will wait,’ he repeated, ‘ten or even fifty years.’

  Black Joke had come up-channel on the flood, unloaded the mountainous stores of the Ballantyne Africa Expedition on to the stone quay during slack water, and two hours later thrown off her mooring ropes and swung sharply across the ebb, pointing her high bows down the channel.

  From his position on the quarterdeck, Clinton Codrington stared across the widening gap at the slim, tall figure in long skirts standing on the very edge of the quay. Beyond her, her brother did not look up from his lists as he checked the stores and equipment. Sergeant Cheroot stood armed guard with his little pug-featured Hottentots, and the idlers and watchers kept well clear.

  The Portuguese officials had treated the red wax seals and ribbons which decorated Zouga’s letters of authority from the Portuguese ambassador in London with great respect. However, even more important was the fact that Zouga was an officer of Queen Victoria’s army, that he had arrived in a Royal Navy gunboat, and lastly that there was every reason to be
lieve that the same gunboat would remain in the area for the foreseeable future.

  The Governor of Portuguese East Africa himself would not have commanded greater respect. Already minor officials were scampering about the squalid little town arranging the best accommodation, securing warehousing for the stores, commandeering river transport for the next leg of the journey up-river to Tete, the last outpost of Portuguese empire on the Zambezi, drafting orders to have bearers and guides meet the expedition at Tete, and doing everything else that the young British officer casually demanded as though it was his God-given right.

  In this turmoil of activity Robyn Ballantyne stood alone, staring after the blue-clad figure on Black Joke’s quarterdeck. How tall he was, and his hair caught the sunlight in a flash of white gold as he lifted his hand in farewell. She waved until Black Joke disappeared behind a palisade of mangrove, though her masts and fuming smoke stack stayed in view for a long time after. She watched until they, too, dwindled to nothingness, and only the smear of black smoke lay low over the tops of the green mangrove.

  Clinton Codrington stood on his deck, hands clasped loosely at the small of his back, and an expression of near rapture in the pale blue eyes. In this temper the knight-errant of old must have ridden out at chance, Clinton thought.

  He did not find the notion at all melodramatic. He felt truly ennobled by his love, sensing somehow that he must earn something so precious, and that the opportunity to do so lay ahead of him. The earring that Robyn had given him was suspended by a thread around his neck, lying under his shirt against his skin. He touched it now, peering impatiently ahead down the channel. It seemed to him that for the first time he had a steady direction in his life, constant as the pole star to the navigator.

  This gallant mood was still strong five days later when Black Joke rounded the headland of Ras Elat and steamed into the anchorage. There were eight large dhows keeled over on the exposed sand bar at low tide. The tidal fall on this coast at full springs was twenty-two feet. These craft were designed to take the ground readily, and it facilitated loading. The long ranks of chained slaves were being goaded out to the stranded vessels, slipping and splashing through the shallow tidal pools, to await patiently their turn to climb the ladder up the side of the dhow.

  Black Joke’s unannounced arrival caused pandemonium, and the beach was alive with running stumbling figures, the screams and shrieks of the slaves, the pop of the kurbash whips and the frantic cries of the slave-masters carried clearly to Black Joke’s deck as she dropped her anchor just beyond the reef and rounded up to the wind.

  Clinton Codrington stared longingly at the heeled vessels and the concourse of panicky humanity, the way a slum-child stares at the display in the window of a food shop.

  His orders were clear, had been spelled out by Admiral Kemp with painful attention to detail. The Admiral remembered with lingering horror his young Captain’s capture of the slaving fleet at Calabash after forcing the masters to load their cargoes and sail north of the equator. He wanted no repetition of this type of risky action on this patrol.

  Black Joke’s commander was strictly adjured to respect the territorial integrity of the Sultan of the Omani Arabs, and the exact letter of the treaty that the British Consul had negotiated at Zanzibar.

  Clinton Codrington was strictly forbidden to interfere with any subject of the Sultan who was engaged in trade between any of the Sultan’s dominions. He was denied even the right of search of any vessel flying the red-and-gold flag of Omani on any of the Sultan’s recognized trade routes, and these were carefully defined for Captain Codrington’s benefit.

  He was to confine his patrol to intercepting only vessels that did not belong to the Sultan, particularly vessels of the European powers. Naturally no American vessel might be searched on the high seas. Within these limits Captain Codrington had powers of independent action.

  Far from being allowed to seize or search the Sultan’s vessels, Clinton was ordered to use the first opportunity to make a courtesy call on the port of Zanzibar. There he would take counsel from the British Consul as how best to use his influence to reinforce the existing treaties, and especially to remind the Sultan of his own obligations under those treaties.

  So now Clinton paced his deck like a caged lion at feeding time, and glowered helplessly, through the pass in the coral reef, at the slaving fleet of Omani engaged in legitimate trade, for the Gulf of Elat was very much part of the Sultan’s possessions, and had so been recognized by Her Majesty’s Government.

  After the first wild panic ashore, the beach and dhows were now deserted, but Clinton was aware of the thousands of watchful eyes upon him from the mud-walled town and the shadows of the coconut groves.

  The thought of hauling his anchor and sailing away filled him with bitter chagrin, and he stood bare-headed and stared with cold hungry blue eyes at the prize spread before him.

  The palace of the Sheikh of Elat, Mohamed Bin Salim, was an unpainted mud-walled building in the centre of the town. The only opening in the parapeted wall was the gate closed by thick, brass-studded double doors in carved teak, which led through to the dusty central courtyard.

  In this courtyard, under the spreading branches of an ancient takamaka tree the Sheikh was in earnest conclave with his senior advisers and the emissaries of his supreme sovereign – the Sultan of Zanzibar. They were discussing a matter, literally, of life or death.

  Sheikh Mohamed Bin Salim had the plump smooth body of the bon vivant, the bright red lips of the sensualist, and the hooded eyes of a falcon.

  He was a very worried man, for his ambition had led him into dire danger. His ambition had been quite simply to accumulate the sum of one million gold rupees in his treasury, and he had very nearly satisfied that reasonable goal, when his overlord, the omnipotent Sultan of Zanzibar, had sent his emissaries to call the Sheikh to account.

  Sheikh Mohamed had begun to satisfy his ambition ten years previously by very gently mulching the Sultan’s tithe, and each year since then he had increased his depredations. Like all greedy men, one successful coup was the signal for the next. The Sultan had known this, for though he was old, he was also exceedingly cunning. He knew that the missing tithes were safely stored for him in the Sheikh’s treasure house, to be collected whenever he felt inclined. He need only benignly feign ignorance of the Sheikh’s manipulations, until he was so deeply in the trap that no squirming or squealing would get him out again. After ten years that moment had arrived. The Sultan would collect not only his due but the Sheikh’s own accumulations.

  Further retribution would be a lengthy business. It would begin with a beating on the soles of the Sheikh’s bare feet, until all those delicate little bones were cracked or fractured making it extremely painful for the Sheikh to be marched into the Sultan’s presence. There, the final judgement would be read, and it would end with the knotted strip of buffalo hide wound up tighter and tighter around the forehead, until first the Sheikh’s falcon eyes popped from their sockets and then his skull collapsed like a bursting melon. The Sultan truly enjoyed these spectacles – and had been looking forward to this particular one for ten years.

  Both men knew the ritual, and it had begun with the polite visit of the Sultan’s emissaries who even now were sitting opposite the Sheikh under the takamaka, sipping thick black coffee from the brass thimbles, munching the yellow and pink coconut sweetmeats, and smiling at the Sheikh with cold passionless eyes.

  It was into this chilling atmosphere that the messengers from the harbour came running to fling themselves prostrate and gabble out the news of the British warship, whose great guns threatened the harbour and the town.

  The Sheikh listened quietly and then dismissed the messengers, before turning back to his distinguished guests.

  ‘This is a serious business,’ he began, relieved to be able to change the subject under discussion. ‘It would be wise to view this strange vessel.’

  ‘The Ferengi have a treaty with our master,’ pronounced one greybeard
, ‘and they set great store by these pieces of paper.’

  They all nodded, none of them showing the agitation which filled all of their breasts. Although this coast had only received passing attention from these brash northern people, still it had been enough to engender fear and apprehension.

  The Sheikh deliberated for a few minutes, stroking his thick curly beard, hooding his eyes as the ideas began to flow. His mind had been almost paralysed with the extent of the disaster which had overtaken him, but now it began to work again.

  ‘I must go out to this warship,’ he announced. There was an immediate hubbub of protest, but he held up his hand to silence them. He was still the Sheikh of Elat, and they had, perforce, to hear him out.

  ‘It is my duty to ascertain the intentions of the commander and to send word immediately to our master.’

  Clinton Codrington had almost resigned himself to give the order to weigh anchor. There had been no sign of life on the beach for many hours, and there was nothing he could accomplish here. His hope that he might catch a European slaver, actually taking on slaves in the anchorage, had proved forlorn. He should have sailed hours ago, the sun was half way down the sky already and he did not want to run the dangers of the inshore channel in darkness, but some instinct had kept him here.

  He kept returning to the starboard rail, and glassing the flat-roofed mud buildings that just showed amongst the palm trees. Each time his junior officers stiffened expectantly, then relaxed as he turned away without a word or change of expression.

  This time Clinton saw movement, the flash of white robes in the deserted, single street of the town, and as he watched through the telescope he felt a prickle of excitement and a lift of self-congratulation. A small deputation was emerging from the grove and coming down the beach.