A Falcon Flies

by Wilbur Smith

  ‘There is no risk?’

  She hesitated and then replied firmly, ‘There is always risk, but one hundred, nay a thousand times less risk, than if you take the disease from the air.’

  With an abrupt gesture Mungo St John ripped open the sleeve on his left arm with his teeth and offered it to her.

  ‘Do it,’ he said. ‘But in God’s name do it quickly, before my courage fails.’

  She drew the point of her scalpel across the smooth deeply tanned skin of his forearm and the tiny crimson droplets rose behind it. He did not flinch, but when she dipped the scalpel into the bottle and scraped up a speck of the noisome yellow stuff, he blanched and made as if to jerk his arm away, then with an obvious effort controlled himself. She smeared the pus over the tiny wound, and he stepped back and turned from her.

  ‘All of you.’ His voice was rough with his horror and disgust. ‘Every last one of you,’ he told the gaping terrified seamen.

  With Nathaniel, the bosun, there were three others who had survived the disease, and were speckled by the small dimpled scars which were its stigma.

  Four men were not enough to help Robyn care for a thousand slaves, and her losses were much higher than she had expected. Perhaps this strain of the disease was more virulent, or perhaps the black men from the interior did not have the same resistance as the Europeans whose forbears had for generations been exposed to smallpox.

  She introduced the crusted pus into the scratches on their limbs, working in the noon sunlight on into the gloom of dusk and then by the lantern’s gleam, and they submitted with dumb resignation of the slave which she found pitiful and repugnant, but which none the less made her work much easier.

  The reaction began within hours, the swelling and fever and the vomiting, and she went out into the other deserted barracoons to gather more of the loathsome pus from the bodies of those who had survived the smallpox and were now dying of starvation and neglect – resigning herself to the fact that she had only the strength and time to care for those in Huron’s barracoons, resigning herself to the fact that there was farina to feed them only, and closing her mind to the cries and entreaty, to the silent dying stare from wizened faces that streamed pus from open pocks.

  Even in her own barracoon the four of them working hour after hour, night and day, could give only perfunctory attention to each of the slaves, a handful of the cold pasty farina and a mugful of water once a day during the period of the most violent reaction to the inoculation. Those who survived this were left to care for themselves, to crawl to the water bucket when they could or to wolf a lump of farina from the spadeful that Nathaniel left on a wooden platter at intervals between the rows of supine figures.

  Then when they were strong enough to stand they were put to work at piling the rotting bodies of their less fortunate peers upon a gun carriage and dragging them out of the barracoon. There was not the remotest chance of either burying or burning the bodies, and there were too many for the bloated vultures. They piled the corpses in heaps in the coconut grove, well downwind of the barracoon and went back for more.

  Twice a day Robyn went down to the edge of the creek and hailed the anchor watch on Huron’s deck and had the whaler row her out to the ship, and she spent an hour in the stern cabin.

  Mungo St John’s reaction had been frighteningly severe, perhaps he had been weakened by the knife wound. His arm had swollen to almost twice normal size, and the scratch Robyn had inflicted turned into a hideous canker with a thick black crusty scab. His fever was intense, his skin almost painfully hot to the touch, and the flesh seemed to melt off his big-boned frame like candle wax under the flame.

  Tippoo, himself suffering from a raging fever, his own arm swollen grotesquely, could not be made to leave the side of Mungo’s bunk.

  Robyn felt easier knowing that Tippoo was there, strangely gentle, almost like a mother with a child, to care for Mungo while she must go back ashore to the suffering multitude that choked the barracoons.

  On the twelfth day when she went abroad Huron, Tippoo met her at the companionway with that wide toadlike grin which she had not seen for so long, and when she hurried into the cabin she saw why.

  Mungo was propped up on the bolsters, thin and pale, his lips dry and dark purple bruises under his eyes, as though he had been beaten with a heavy club, but he was lucid and his skin cool.

  ‘God’s breath,’ he croaked. ‘You look awful!’ And she felt like weeping with relief and chagrin.

  When she had bathed and bandaged the shrinking canker on his forearm and was ready to leave, he took her wrist.

  ‘You are killing yourself,’ he whispered. ‘When did you last sleep, and for how long?’

  Only when he spoke did she realize the depth of her exhaustion – it had been two days previously and then only for a few hours that she had slept, and she felt Huron’s deck swing and lurch under her feet as though she rode a high sea and was not lying quietly at anchor in a placid creek.

  Mungo drew her down gently beside him on to the bunk, and she did not have either the strength or will to resist. He made a cradle for her head on his shoulder, and almost immediately she was asleep, her last memory was the feel of his fingers smoothing back the dank ringlets from her temples.

  She awoke with a guilty start, not sure how long she had slept, and still fuzzy with sleep struggled out of Mungo St John’s arms brushing the hair out of her eyes with her fingers, trying ineffectually to straighten her rumpled and sweat-dampened clothing.

  ‘I must go!’ she blurted groggily, still exhausted and half-asleep. How many had died while she slept, she wondered. Before he could prevent it, she was stumbling up the companionway to the deck calling for Nathaniel to row her ashore.

  The few hours of rest had refreshed her so that she looked about the estuary with a new and lively interest again. It was the first time that she became aware that one other vessel, besides Huron, was still lying at anchor in the river. It was one of the small dhow-rigged buggaloos, the coastal slavers similar to the one from which she had rescued Juba. On impulse, she had Nathaniel row her alongside, and when nobody answered her hail, she went aboard. The vessel had clearly been overwhelmed by the plague before she could flee, perhaps she was the vessel from which the original infection had been carried ashore.

  Robyn found the same conditions prevailing aboard as there were ashore, the dead, the dying, and those who would recover. Although they were slavers she was still a physician, and she had taken the Hippocratic oath. What she could do was very little, but she did it and the Arab captain, stricken and weakened, thanked her from his sleeping-mat on the open deck.

  ‘May Allah walk beside you,’ he whispered, ‘and may he give me the opportunity to return this kindness one day.’

  ‘And may Allah show you the error of your ways,’ Robyn told him tartly. ‘I will send some fresh water, before nightfall, but now there are others more deserving.’

  In the days that followed, the plague ran its inexorable course, the weaklings died, some of them consumed by the terrible thirsts of fever crawled from the abandoned barracoons on to the mud flats of the estuary to fill their bellies with the salt water. Their bodies were twisted into grotesque contortions by the cramps of the salt in their blood, and their insane rantings were like the cries of seabirds across the water, extinguished at last by the incoming tide. The surface of the river was troubled by the swirl and splash of the crocodile and the big sharks that had come upstream to gather this grisly harvest.

  Others had crawled away into the forest and groves; they lay under every bush and even before they died they were covered with a red mantle of the fierce safari ants that overnight picked the skeleton to gleaming whiteness.

  Some of those that survived, encouraged by Robyn, crept weakly away towards the west. Perhaps a few would complete the long hazardous journey back to their razed villages and devastated countryside, she hoped.

  However, most of the survivors of the plague were too weak and confused and demoral
ized to move. They stayed on in the squalid stinking barracoons, pathetically dependent upon Robyn and her tiny band of helpers for every mouthful of water and farina, watching her with the eyes of dumb and suffering animals.

  All this time the piles of corpses in the palm groves grew taller, and the stench more penetrating. Robyn knew too well what would happen next.

  ‘The battlefield plagues,’ she explained to Mungo St John. ‘They always follow when the dead are left unburied, when the rivers and wells are choked with bodies. If they strike now, then none will survive. All of us are weakened, we would be unable to resist the typhoid and enteric plagues. Now is the time to leave, for we have saved all those who are for saving. We must fly before the new onslaught, for unlike the smallpox, there is no defence against them.’

  ‘Most of my crew are still sick and weak.’

  ‘They will recover swiftly out on the open ocean.’

  Mungo St John turned to Nathaniel to ask, ‘How many slaves have survived?’

  ‘More than eight hundred, thanks to the missus here.’

  ‘We will begin to take them aboard at dawn tomorrow,’ he decided.

  That night Robyn came back to his cabin after dark. She could not stay away, and he was waiting for her, she could tell by his expression and the quickness of his smile.

  ‘I was beginning to fear that you preferred the company of eight hundred plague-ridden slaves,’ he greeted her.

  ‘Captain St John, I wish to make one more appeal to you. As a Christian gentleman, will you not release these poor creatures and have them escorted and fed on the journey back to where they came—’

  He interrupted her, his tone light and that smile hovering on his lips.

  ‘And will you not call me Mungo, rather than Captain St John?’

  She ignored the interruption, and went on. ‘After all they have suffered, that terrible march down from the highlands, the error and humiliation of slavery and now this plague. If you would consent to release them, I would lead them back to their homes.’

  He rose from the canvas chair and came to stand over her. His leanness and pallor made him seem even taller.

  ‘Mungo!’ he insisted.

  ‘God would forgive you, I am sure of that, he would forgive you the sins that you have already committed against humanity—’

  ‘Mungo!’ he whispered, and placed his hands upon her shoulders. She felt herself begin to tremble uncontrollably.

  He drew her to his chest. She could feel his ribs, he was so thin, and her voice choked up in her throat when she tried to continue her appeal. Slowly he stooped over her, and she closed her eyes tightly; her arms stiff at her sides, her fists clenched.

  ‘Say Mungo,’ he commanded quietly, and his lips were cool and soft on hers. Her trembling became uncontrolled shaking.

  Her lips opened under his, and her arms went up around his neck.

  ‘Mungo,’ she sobbed. ‘Oh, Mungo, Mungo.’

  She had been taught that her naked body was shameful, but it was the one lesson that she had learned imperfectly, and much of her shame had been mitigated, firstly in the lecture rooms and dissection rooms of St Matthew’s, and secondly in the company of Juba, the little Matabele dove, whose unaffected delight in her nudity she had transmitted to Robyn. Those childlike romps together in the cool green pools of an African river had served to blow away most of the cobwebs of shame.

  Now Mungo St John’s delight in and admiration for her body gave her joy and, far from shame, brought her pride that she had never known before. Their love-making was no longer accompanied by pain, there were no longer barriers between them – so locked together they could ride the dips and swings of emotion from Himalayan heights where the great winds blew, down to the sweet languorous depths where they seemed to be drowning in honey, each movement slowed, every breath drawn out as though it would last for ever, their bodies damp and hot, pressed together and without form, like clay in the hands of a child.

  The night was too short, while the wick of the lantern guttered and smoked, neglected and untrimmed. In the dawn, their loving seemed to have filled them with new strength, to have driven away the weakness of fever and the exhaustion of the past weeks.

  It was only the sound of the first slaves coming aboard that roused Robyn and brought her back from that far frontier to the hot and cramped little cabin on a slave ship in a fever creek on a wild and brutal continent.

  She heard the whisper of bare feet and the clank and drag of slave chains, the sound of men’s voices raised, hectoring and impatient, on the deck above.

  ‘Hurry them, or we load for a week.’ Tippoo’s voice.

  Robyn raised herself on her elbow and looked down at Mungo. His eyes were closed but he was not asleep, she knew.

  ‘Now,’ she whispered. ‘Now you cannot but release them. After last night, I know that something has changed in you.’

  She felt a strange joy, the zeal of the prophet looking down upon a convert for whose soul she had wrestled with the devil and won.

  ‘Call Tippoo,’ she insisted, ‘and give him the order to free the slaves.’

  Mungo opened his eyes, even after the long night in which neither of them had slept, his eyes were clear. There was the shadow of new beard, dense and dark, carpeting his bony jawline. He was magnificent and she knew then that she loved him.

  ‘Call Tippoo,’ she repeated, and he shook his head – a little gesture of perplexity.

  ‘You still do not understand,’ he answered her. ‘This is my life. I cannot alter that, not for you nor for anybody.’

  ‘Eight hundred souls,’ she pleaded, ‘and you have their salvation in your hands.’

  ‘No.’ He shook his head again. ‘You are wrong, not eight hundred souls but eight hundred thousand dollars – that is what I have in my hands.’

  ‘Mungo.’ His name still felt awkward on her lips. ‘Jesus has said that it is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than that a rich man should enter the kingdom of Heaven. Let them go, you cannot judge human lives in gold.’

  He laughed and sat up,

  ‘With eight hundred thousand bucks, I can bribe my way into Heaven, if I want to, but between us, my dear, it sounds an awfully dull place. I think the devil and I might have more to talk about.’

  The mocking gleam was back in his eye again, and he swung his legs out over the edge of the bunk, and naked crossed to where his breeches hung on a wooden peg from the bulkhead.

  ‘We have lain too long abed,’ he said briskly. ‘I must see to the loading, and you had best begin your own preparations for the voyage.’ He belted his breeches and stuffed his shirt into them. ‘It will take us three days to load, I would be obliged if you would test the water barrels.’ He came to sit on the edge of the bunk and began dragging on his boots, talking the while in crisp business-like fashion, detailing the preparations that she should make for the welfare of the slaves during the voyage. ‘We will have less than a full cargo, which will make it easier to exercise them on deck and keep the holds clean.’ He stood up and looked down at her.

  With a rush like a roused fawn she threw off the blanket that covered her and knelt on the edge of the bunk, seizing him about the waist with both arms.

  ‘Mungo,’ she whispered urgently, ‘you cannot torture us so.’ She pressed the side of her face to his chest, feeling the harsh springing curls of his body hair even through the linen of his shirt. ‘I cannot offend further against my God and my conscience – unless you free these poor damned souls, then I can never marry you.’

  His expression changed swiftly, becoming tender and concerned. He lifted his hand to stroke the dense russet locks of her hair, still damp and tangled from the loving of the night.

  ‘My poor darling,’ his lips formed the words, soundlessly, but her face was still pressed to his chest and she could not see his lips. He drew a deep breath, and though his eyes were still marked with regret and his expression sober, his tone was light and casual.

  ‘T
hen it is just as well that I have no intention of freeing a single one of them – for what would my wife say otherwise?’

  The words took many seconds to make sense to Robyn, and then her whole body spasmed, her grip around his waist tightened and then slowly relaxed. She released him. Slowly she sat back on her heels, naked in the midst of his disordered bunk, and she stared at him with an expression of desolation and disbelief.

  ‘You are married?’ Robyn’s voice echoed strangely in her own ears, as though from the end of a long bare corridor, and Mungo nodded.

  ‘These ten years past,’ he answered quietly. ‘A French lady of aristocratic birth, a cousin of Louis Napoleon. A lady of great beauty who with the three fine sons she has borne me awaits my return to Bannerfield.’ He paused and then went on with infinite regret. ‘I am sorry, my dear, I never dreamed that you did not know.’ And he reached out to touch her cheek, but she cringed away as though he held a poisonous serpent in his hand.

  ‘Will you go away, please,’ she whispered.

  ‘Robyn—’ he began, but she shook her head violently.

  ‘No,’ she said. ‘Please don’t say any more. Just go. Go away! Please go away.’

  Robyn locked the door of her cabin and sat down at the sea chest which she used for a desk. There were no tears. Her eyes felt dry and burning as though blasted by a wind off the desert. She had very little paper left and had to tear the end sheets from her journal. They were speckled with mildew and distorted from the heat and dryness of the highlands and the humidity of the monsoon-ridden littoral.

  She smoothed out the first sheet carefully on the lid of her writing case, dipped her pen in the remaining half-inch of India ink and headed the sheet with a hand that was calm and unshaken.

  16th November, 1860.

  Aboard the Slaver Huron.

  And then in the same clear unhurried script began to write: