A Falcon Flies

by Wilbur Smith

  The Sultan himself fled his palace, and with most of his court took refuge in the British consulate, overlooking the harbour.

  ‘I am not a coward,’ the Sultan explained bitterly to Sir John Bannerman, ‘but the Captain of that ship is a madman. Allah himself does not know what he will do next.’

  Sir John was a large man, of large appetite. He possessed a noble belly like the glacis of a mediaeval castle and full mutton-chop whiskers around a florid face, but the clear intelligent eyes, and the wide friendly mouth of a man of humanity and humour. He was a noted oriental scholar, and had written books of travel and of religious and political appraisal of the East, as well as a dozen translations of minor Arabic poets.

  He was also a confirmed opponent of the slave trade, for the Zanzibar markets were held in the square below the windows of his residence and from his bedroom terrace he could watch on any morning the slaving dhows unloading their pitiful cargoes on the stone wharf they called, with cruel humour, the ‘Pearl Gate’.

  For seven years he had patiently negotiated a series of treaties with the Sultan, each one nipping a few more twigs off the flourishing growth which he detested, but found almost impossible to prune effectively, let alone root out entirely.

  In all the Sultan’s territories Sir John had absolute jurisdiction only over the community of Hindu traders on the island, for they were British subjects, and Sir John published a bulletin requiring them to free all their slaves forthwith, against a penalty of £100 for non-compliance.

  His bulletin made no mention of compensation, so the most influential of the merchants sent Sir John a defiance which was the Pushtu equivalent of ‘The hell with you and your bulletins’.

  Sir John, with his one good foot, personally kicked in the merchant’s door, dragged him out from under his charpoy bed, dropped him to his knees with a full-blooded roundhouse punch, chained him around the neck and marched him through the city streets to the consulate and locked him in the wine cellar until the fine was paid and the slaves’ manumission papers signed. There had been no further defiance and no takers for the Hindu merchant’s subsequent, privately circulated offer to pay another £100 to anybody who would stick a knife between Sir John’s ribs during one of his evening promenades through the old city. Thus it was that Sir John was still bluff and hale as he stood on his terrace puffing a cigar – his only indisposition was the gouty foot thrust into a carpet slipper. He watched the little black-hulled gunboat coming up the channel.

  ‘She behaves like a flagship,’ he smiled indulgently, and beside him, Said the Sultan of Zanzibar, hissed like a faulty steam valve.

  ‘El Sheetan!’ His wrinkled turkey neck turned bright red with impotent anger, his bony nose beaked like that of an unhappy parrot. ‘He sails here, into my harbour, and my gunners stand by their cannon like dead men. He who has beggared me, who has plunged my empire into ruins – what does he dare here?’

  The answer that Clinton ‘Tongs’ Codrington would have given him was quite simple. He was carrying out to the letter the orders given him in Cape Town many months previously by Admiral Kemp, the Commander of the South Atlantic and Indian Ocean Squadron.

  ‘You are further requested and required to take advantage of the first opportunity to call into the harbour of Zanzibar, where you will accord to his Royal Highness the Sultan of Zanzibar full honours, while taking the advice of Her Majesty’s Consul, Sir John Bannerman, as to reinforcing existing treaties between His Royal Highness and her Britannic Majesty’s Government.’

  Which, being translated, was an instruction to show the Union Jack against a background of thirty-two pounder cannon, and by doing so remind the Sultan of his commitments under the various treaties.

  ‘To teach the naughty old beggar to mind his P’s and Q’s,’ as Clinton explained cheerfully to Lieutenant Denham with a twirl of his new golden moustache.

  ‘I would have thought, sir, that the lesson had already been given,’ Denham answered darkly.

  ‘Not at all,’ Clinton demurred. ‘The treaties with the new sultans on the mainland no longer affect the Zanzibar fellow. We still have to ginger this old boy up a little.’

  Sir John Bannerman limped up on to Black Joke’s deck, favouring his gouty foot and cocked a lively eye at the young naval officer who stepped forward to greet him.

  ‘Well, sir, you have been busy indeed,’ he murmured. My God, the fellow was little more than a boy, a fresh-faced youngster, despite the cocked hat and moustache. It was difficult to believe that he had created such havoc with this tiny ship.

  They shook hands, and Bannerman found himself liking the boy, despite the turmoil that he brought into the Consul’s normally tranquil existence.

  ‘A glass of madeira, sir?’ Clinton suggested.

  ‘Damned decent of you, I must say.’

  In the small cabin, Bannerman mopped his streaming face, and came directly to business.

  ‘By God, you’ve put the cat amongst the pigeons,’ he wagged his big head.

  ‘I don’t see.. . . ’

  ‘Now, listen to me,’ Bannerman snapped, ‘and I’ll explain to you the facts of life as they apply to eastern Africa in general, and Zanzibar in particular.’

  Half an hour later, Clinton had lost much of his newfound bumptiousness.

  ‘What should we do?’ he asked.

  ‘Do?’ Bannerman asked. ‘What we do is take full advantage of the situation which you have precipitated, before these idiots in Whitehall come stumbling in. Thanks to you the Sultan is at last in a mood to sign the treaty I have been after for five years. I’ll trade a handful of these utterly illegal, untenable treaties that you have made with non-existent states and mythical princes for one that will truss the old goat up the way I’ve wanted him for years.’

  ‘Excuse me, Sir John,’ Clinton looked slightly perplexed, ‘from what you said earlier, I understood that you heartily disapproved of my recent actions.’

  ‘On the contrary,’ Sir John grinned at him expansively, ‘you have stirred my blood, and made me proud to be an Englishman again. I say, do you have a little more of the madeira?’

  He raised the glass to Clinton. ‘My hearty congratulations, Captain Codrington. I only wish that I could do something to save you from the fate that so certainly awaits you, once the Admiralty and Lord Palmerston catch up with you.’ Sir John drank half the glass, smacked his lips, ‘Jolly good stuff,’ he nodded, set the glass aside and went on briskly, ‘Now, we have to work fast and get the Sultan to sign an iron-clad treaty – before Whitehall rushes in with apologies and protestations of good faith which will put to naught all the fine work you have done to date. Something tells me that won’t be very long,’ he added lugubriously, and then more brightly, ‘You could have your ship’s guns run out whilst we are ashore. Do wear your sword. Oh, and one other thing, don’t take your eyes off the old goat while I do the talking. There is already talk about your eyes – that extraordinary colour of blue, don’t you know – and the Sultan has heard about them already. As you probably know, they now call you “El Sheetan” on this coast, and the Sultan is a man who sets great store by djinns and the occult.’

  Sir John’s predictions as to the imminent arrival of tidings from higher sources was almost clairvoyant, for as he spoke H.M. sloop Penguin, with urgent despatches on board for Sir John Bannerman, for the Sultan, and for Captain Codrington, was on a fair wind, which, if it held, would bring her into Zanzibar harbour within the next two days. Time was shorter than even Sir John believed.

  With some trepidation, the Sultan had moved back into his palace. He had only half believed Sir John’s assurances, but, on the other hand, the palace was half a mile from the harbour where that evil black ship was displaying its formidable broadside of cannonades, while the consulate was on the harbour front – or the front line of fire, depending on how one looked at it.

  On Sir John’s advice Clinton had come ashore with a bodyguard of a dozen picked seamen, who could be trusted to resist the temptati
ons of the old city’s red-light area, the grog and the women that seamen dream of. It was dusk when the party plunged into the labyrinth of narrow alleys, where the balconies almost met overhead, led by Sir John who despite his game leg set a good pace, picking his way around heaps of noisome garbage and avoiding the puddles in the uneven paving that looked like a cold minestrone soup and smelled a great deal higher.

  He chatted affably with Clinton, pointing out the various sites and buildings of interest, relating the island’s history and giving a quick perceptive character-sketch of the Sultan and the more important men in his empire, including those unfortunate new princes who had signed Clinton’s blank treaty forms.

  ‘That’s one thing, Sir John. I wouldn’t want anything to happen to them,’ Clinton cut in for the first time. ‘I hope they won’t be victimized for having, well, how can one say, for having seceded from the Sultan’s empire—’

  ‘Forlorn hope.’ Sir John waggled his head. ‘Not one of them will be alive by Ramadan. The old goat has a nasty streak.’

  ‘Couldn’t we put a clause in the new treaty to protect them?’

  ‘We could, but it would be a waste of paper and ink.’ Sir John clapped his shoulder. ‘Your concern is misplaced. The finest collection of ruffians, rogues and assassins south of the equator, or north of it, for that matter. One of the side benefits of the whole business, getting rid of that lot. Old goat will have a lovely time, compensate him for the loss of face when he straps their heads or hands them the cup of datura tea. Ghastly death, datura poisoning. Oh, by the way, you must look at these gates.’ They had reached the front of the palace. ‘One of the most magnificent examples of craftsmanship on the island.’

  The massive teak doors were fifteen feet high, intricately carved, but in accordance with Muslim law the carvings depicted neither human nor animal figures. They were the only impressive feature of the drab square building with its blank walls relieved by the wooden balconies high above street level, shuttered against the night air and the gaze of the curious.

  The gates swung open at their approach, and the palace guards armed with ancient jezails were the first living beings they had seen since leaving the harbour. The city was still deserted, and cowering under the menace of Black Joke’s guns.

  Clinton noticed, since Sir John had mentioned it, that the guards averted their gaze as he passed, one of them actually covering his face with the loose tail of his turban. So the business of the eyes was true. He was not sure whether to feel insulted or amused.

  ‘You must see these.’ Sir John stopped him in the cavernous ante-chamber lit with guttering oil lamps suspended in heavy brass chandeliers from a ceiling lost in the gloom. ‘The heaviest recorded specimens in the world, one of them over three-hundred-pounds weight.’

  They were a pair of African elephant tusks, suspended on the stone wall with retaining bands of copper, two incredible curves of ancient ivory, as thick as a girl’s waist, taller than a man could reach, with hardly any taper from hilt to blunt tip, gleaming with the lustre of precious porcelain.

  ‘You have not hunted these beasts?’

  Clinton shook his head, he had never even seen one of them, but the huge teeth impressed him none the less.

  ‘Before my foot, I shot them in India and in Africa. No other sport to beat that, incredible animals.’ He patted one of the tusks. ‘The Sultan killed this one when he was a young man, with a jezail! But there aren’t any monsters like that around any more, more’s the pity. Come along, mustn’t keep the old goat waiting.’

  They went on through half a dozen chambers, each of them Aladdin’s caves of rare treasures, carved jade, beautifully worked ivory carvings, a palm tree and suspended moon, the symbol of Mohamed, in solid gold, carpets of silk and thread of gold and silver, a collection of fifty priceless Korans in silver and golden containers set with precious and semi-precious stones.

  ‘Look at that shiner.’ Sir John stopped again, and pointed out a native-cut diamond in the hilt of an Arabian scimitar. The diamond was cushion-shaped and a little out of true, but burning with a weird blue and icy fire even in the semi-dark. ‘Legend says the sword was Saladin’s, I doubt it, but the stone is one hundred and fifty-five carats. I weighed it myself.’ And then as he took Clinton’s arm and stumped off again, ‘Old goat is rich as Croesus. He has been milking rupees out of the mainland for forty years, and his father for fifty years before that. Ten rupees for every slave, ten for every kilo of ivory, God knows how much for copra and gum-copal concessions.’

  Clinton saw instantly why Sir John called him the old goat. The resemblance was startling, from the white, pointed beard and square yellow teeth to the mournful Roman nose and elongated ears.

  He took one look at Clinton, catching his eye for a split part of a second, before he looked away hurriedly, blanching visibly, as he waved his two visitors to the piles of velvet and silk cushions.

  ‘Keep the old beady eye on him,’ Sir John counselled aside, ‘and don’t eat anything.’ He indicated the display of sweetmeats and sugared cakes on the bronze trays. ‘If they aren’t poisoned, they’ll probably turn your stomach anyway. It’s going to be a long night.’

  The prediction was accurate, the talk went on hour after tedious hour, in flowing Arabic hyperbole and flowery diplomacy, that concealed the hard bargaining. Clinton understood not a word. He forced himself not to fidget, though his buttocks and legs soon lost all feeling from the unusual position on the cushions, yet he maintained a stern expression and kept his gaze fixed on the Sultan’s wrinkled and whiskered visage. Sir John assured him later that it had helped greatly to shorten the negotiations, yet it seemed a full round of eternity before Sir John and the Sultan were exchanging polite fixed smiles and deep bows of agreement.

  There was a triumphant gleam in Sir John’s eye, as he strode out of the palace, and he took Clinton’s arm affectionately.

  ‘Whatever happens to you, my dear fellow, generations unborn will have reason to bless your name. We have done it, you and I. The old goat has agreed. The trade will wither and die out within the next few years now.’

  On the walk back through the narrow streets, Sir John was as lively and cheerful as a man returning from a convivial party rather than the bargaining table. His servants were still waiting his coming, and all the lamps in the consulate were burning.

  Clinton would have liked immediately to go back aboard his ship, but Sir John restrained him with an arm about his shoulder, as he called for his Hindu butler to bring champagne. On the silver tray with the green bottle and crystal glasses was a small package in stitched and sealed canvas. While the uniformed butler poured the champagne, Sir John handed Clinton the package.

  ‘This came in earlier on a trading dhow. I did not have the opportunity to deliver it to you before we left for the palace.’

  Clinton accepted it warily, and read the address: – ‘Captain Clinton Codrington, Officer Commanding Her Majesty’s Ship Black Joke. Please forward to H.M. Consul at Zanzibar to await collection.’

  The address was repeated in French, and Clinton felt a quick thrill kindle his blood as he recognized the bold round script in which the package was addressed. It took an effort to restrain himself from ripping the package open immediately.

  However, Sir John was handing him a glass of wine, and Clinton suffered through the toasts, the loyal toast to the Queen, and that ironical one to the Sultan and the new treaty, before he blurted out, ‘Excuse me, Sir John, I believe this to be a communication of importance,’ and the Consul waved him into his study and closed the door after him to give Clinton privacy.

  On the leather top of the marquetry desk, Clinton slit the seals and stitching of the package with a silver knife from the Consul’s desk set. From it fell a thick sheaf of closely written notepaper, and a woman’s earring of paste and silver, the twin to the one that Clinton wore under his shirt against his chest.

  Black Joke groped her way out through the dark, unbuoyed channel an hour before the first
flush of dawn in the eastern sky. Turning southwards she set all canvas and worked up swiftly to her best speed.

  She was making eleven knots when she passed the sloop Penguin a little before midnight the following night. Penguin bearing her urgent dispatches was hull down on the eastern horizon and her running lights were obscured by a heavy tropical deluge, the first fanfare of the coming monsoon that passed between the two vessels hiding them from each other’s lookouts.

  By dawn the two ships were fifty nautical miles apart, and rapidly widening the gap, while Clinton Codrington paced his quarterdeck impatiently, stopping at every turn to peer impatiently into the south.

  He was hurrying to answer the most poignant appeal, the most pressing duty of a dutiful man, the call for succour from the woman he loved, a woman in terrible and pressing jeopardy.

  The flow of the Zambezi had a majesty that Zouga Ballantyne had seen on no other great river, neither the Thames, nor the Rhine, nor the Ganges.

  The water was the almost iridescent green of molten slag pouring down the side of a steel-yard dump, and it formed powerful, slowly turning vortices in the angles of the broad bends, while in the shallows it seemed to roll upon itself as though the leviathan of all the world sported below its dark mysterious surface. Here the main channel was more than a mile across, though there were other lesser channels, and other narrower mouths beyond the waving banks of papyrus and cotton-headed reeds002E

  The small flotilla of boats hardly seemed to move against the current. In the lead was the steam launch Helen, named after Zouga’s mother.

  Fuller Ballantyne had designed the vessel and had it manufactured in Scotland for the disastrous Zambezi expedition which had penetrated only as far as the Kaborra-Bassa gorge. The launch was almost ten years old now, and for most of that time had been the victim of the engineering prowess of the Portuguese trader who had purchased her from Fuller Ballantyne when the expedition was abandoned.