The Fever Tree

by Jennifer McVeigh

  Edwin, she realized, would have been able to articulate her misgivings better than she was able to, and she kept seeing William through his eyes: a tougher, lazier, more selfish man than she had imagined. She felt more trapped now than she had ever done before, and she suspected Edwin had guessed that this was how it would be.

  And she knew she wasn’t immune from risk either. What were the chances they would make it across the border without a search? She had heard stories of the diamond police ambushing men fleeing with diamonds, of gunfights before the border, and men racing for their lives across the veldt, dropping stones as they ran, but she had never thought that anything like that could happen to her. The terror on the boy’s face and his complete helplessness as he was carted off by the inspector had made the danger of their situation very real.

  William was under suspicion, but he seemed confident they wouldn’t be caught. He said they would ride out dressed like a hunting party, insisting she and Mangwa come with him, to make it seem more like a leisure tour. The border was only half a day’s ride away, and their luggage would follow later. He was levelheaded and he knew the risks, and he wasn’t about to take an idle chance on twenty-five years as a convict at the Breakwater. And yet the fact remained that he was going to try to smuggle £100,000 worth of diamonds out of Kimberley.

  • • •

  “I’M GOING OUT to see to the horses,” William said, shaking her awake. He slipped out of the bedroom door. She pressed the nauseous tiredness from her eyes with a damp cloth and dressed quickly in the dark. The new riding habit he had bought for her was blood-red and tight-fitting. It was too provocative, and she felt self-conscious. She would rather have worn something simpler, but William had insisted. When she came through to the sitting room, Leger was standing there, leaning against the window frame, smoking a pipe. When he saw her he gave a low whistle.

  “What are you doing here?” she asked.

  “Didn’t he tell you? I’m coming with you.”

  Frances stared at him. Leger was coming with them? How could William not have told her? She had hoped never to have to see him again. Now they would be sharing their every second with him. There was no chance of her ever feeling like William’s wife when Leger was there to remind her otherwise.

  “That was a good bit of business Westbrook did last night,” he said in his thin, reedy voice.

  “Turning the boy in to the police? I wouldn’t call it business.”

  “But the stone,” he said. “The size of it!”

  “It was clever of him to hand it over.” She straightened her hat in the glass which hung over the desk. “It wasn’t worth taking the risk.”

  He looked at her for a moment, then gave a low chuckle. “You mean he didn’t tell you?”

  “Tell me what?” She glanced at his reflection. Leger knew something she didn’t, and he was enjoying it.

  “He swapped the boy’s stone for one a tenth of the size, of negligible quality. The inspector was none the wiser, and Westbrook is considerably richer. The stone was a Goliath. We haven’t seen one like that for months.”

  It took her a moment to grasp what he was saying, and when she did, she understood something about William. He was utterly ruthless—far more ruthless than she had imagined. He would stop at nothing to get his own way. Of course, it was just like him to coolheadedly take advantage of the situation. And what damage did it do the boy, if he was turning him in anyway? Still, she didn’t like it. He had been too comfortable sending the boy off to a lifetime in prison, and the ease with which he had lied horrified her.

  She stepped out of the back door into the yard. The air was cool and the sky was lightening to a bluer shade of black. She saw shadows and heard the scuffing of horses’ hooves as they shifted under the weight of their saddles. Quickly, not wishing to be seen, she pulled off her gloves and knelt down by the door. There was a brick, which she moved aside, and underneath it a piece of wood, buried in the earth. She levered it up and dug out the diamond that was hidden beneath it. She hadn’t wanted to take it across the border, but Leger’s story had changed her mind. She wasn’t sure she could trust William. The value of the diamond had to be considerable, and she needed something more than just William’s promise of protection. Back in the bedroom she shut the door, unraveled her stocking, and tucked the diamond into the groove of her big toe. She wove a ribbon around it to keep it in place, then put her stocking back on and over it her boot. Her hands, she realized, were shaking.

  “Frances.” William stood in the doorway. “What are you doing?”

  “Nothing,” she said, pulling on her boot.

  “Come on. We’re ready to go.” He paused for a moment. “And for Christ’s sake, if you do have anything you’re taking with you, make sure it’s well hidden.”

  She followed him into the street and mounted the little palomino pony he had bought for her. The breath of the horses clouded in the sharp dawn air. It was the first time she had been out of the house since she had arrived, ten days ago. So much had changed since then. She glanced back once as they rode away and felt a sudden, sharp misgiving at the thought of leaving Kimberley. She shook it off and kicked her pony on. William rode ahead and Leger behind, their horses laden with haversacks and flasks for water. Both men carried rifles, and pistols in their belts. Two boys rode with them on mules. The sharp edges of the diamond ground against her foot, and she made a silent prayer that they wouldn’t be stopped.

  Market Square was quiet except for the shuffling of oxen and the hollow knocking of the horses’ hooves on the hard earth. They rode past two men offloading timber from a wagon, swearing softly under their breath. When they had crossed to the far side, Frances heard voices. A group of natives, wearing uniforms, leant up against a wall, smoking. They watched them ride by, sharp-eyed and alert. She wondered what they were doing up so early and whether they belonged to the diamond police.

  The painted, corrugated houses gave way to a sprawl of canvas tents. A noisy brawl of men swarmed over the road, walking towards the mines. They were mostly diggers, squinting into the first rays of sun, picks swinging from their shoulders. Makeshift canteens had been set up in large tents pinned to shacks. The place smelt of burnt fat and the damp of early mornings; of sweat, and over it all the filth and noise of too many men living in one place.

  When the road widened they were free of the town, riding into the shimmering expanse of the Karoo. Leger rode up beside William, and Frances allowed her pony to fall in behind. The sun had risen, and their shadows stretched out in front of them. She glanced over her shoulder. Arid scrubland extended to the far horizon on every side, broken by the russet-brown tops of aloes which thrust up from the ground like sentinels. There was no sign of the police. Mangwa, a perfect apparition of white and black, walked on a lead rein alongside William. His gait was shorter than the horse’s stride, so that every few yards he broke into a trot to keep up. The flies bothered him, clustering up his eyes like bees in a comb, and he tossed his head to throw them off.

  She could see William’s hand resting on his saddlebag. His wide, calloused fingers ran backwards and forwards over the canvas. There was a pocket at the front which was stuffed full, and he traced his thumb in a smooth pattern along the contours of the bulge, across the leather trim, and down the wide strap to the clean brass buckle. William seemed calm. Too calm, she thought, for someone who was carrying £100,000 worth of illicit diamonds. Her stomach twisted with fear.

  Up ahead, piles of rubble erupted from the ground like vast termite mounds. She saw a Boer family scrambling over one of them, sifting through the sand and gravel. They would be lucky to find anything. This was earth that had been worked through on the mines and dumped here as worthless. The side of the heap collapsed with a grating noise, and a small girl emerged, running down the shifting gravel towards Frances with an outstretched hand. Her skin was brown with dust, and the whites of her eyes shone like marbles from a dark face. Frances reached into her pocket for a few pennies and
threw them down to her.

  The sun was higher now, and they rode past low kopjes which swelled up out of the earth, softening the contours of the landscape. Still the police didn’t come, and she began to hope they might not be stopped. William reined in up ahead. A group of four or five bodies lay twisted together at the foot of a kopje. Vultures squatted on top of them. She saw a tangle of limbs and a movement, as though one of them were trying to stand up. It was only when she drew closer that she realized it was a cloud of flies which settled then rose as the vultures moved, cloaking the carcasses in a shifting mantle. The bodies were naked. They were natives. One man lay towards them, draped over another man’s legs. His head was tipped to one side in the dirt. A vulture had ripped out his throat, but his face hadn’t been touched. The skin was covered in white pustules, a mass of them which had seeped together and were drying in the sun to a crust which was beginning to peel away from the flesh beneath. She covered her nose and mouth against the sweet, noxious stink, and swallowed to stop herself from retching.

  “That’s the pox, all right,” Leger said, kicking his horse on and spitting into the dust.

  “I thought you didn’t believe it?” Frances demanded, riding up to William.

  He glanced at her but didn’t speak.

  “You said you were sure it was pemphigus.”

  “I said the doctors were sure it was pemphigus.”

  A cold and horrible understanding seeped into her. “So you knew it all along?”

  “None of us knows anything, Frances. All we can do is speculate.” His voice was barbed with anger. She had been slapped by him before. She knew the warning signs, but she needed to be sure. “So you knew Edwin wasn’t making a profit out of it?”

  “What does Matthews have to do with anything?”

  “You persuaded me against him.”

  “Good God, Frances, he was your husband! I think you could make up your own mind.”

  “But how could you suspect it was smallpox and do nothing?”

  “Use your common sense,” he said. “Do you have any idea of the expense involved in quarantining thousands of natives? With no business for six months, the mines would collapse. Every man in Kimberley is invested in mining stock, most with borrowed money. The whole of South Africa is in on the racket. This isn’t just about a few men making a profit; this is the fate of a country riding in the balance. If speculators, international investors, banks get wind of smallpox, the whole damn thing will implode. Then where will I be? Where will you be? Where will Matthews’s goddamned natives be?”

  “You have influence over Baier,” she said, barely listening to him.

  “Whether or not there’s smallpox in Kimberley is not my responsibility.”

  “But you can’t just leave, knowing the epidemic will escalate.”

  “Why not?” he said. “You have a wonderfully infuriating habit of blaming other people for the truths you can’t handle. You were married to the man, for God’s sake. If anyone should have believed him, it ought to have been you. I hate to break it to you, but you’re just like the rest of us—you didn’t want to know.” He kicked his horse on, and rode up to Leger. He was right, she realized. She hadn’t wanted to know, and that made her just as guilty as him.

  • • •

  THE SUN WAS OVERHEAD when her pony pricked its ears and let out a shrill whistle. She turned and saw a boiling cloud of dust and, just ahead of it, two men on horseback bearing down on them. William wheeled around and watched as two more officers rode in from the other side, cutting off their route to the border.

  “Stay where you are, Sir!” the sergeant called out, reining in his horse, which stamped and tossed its head, throwing specks of foam into the air. Mangwa wrenched at the lead rope, almost pulling William from the saddle. He turned on his hind legs in a tight circle, eyeing the strangers with the whites of his eyes. Her heart pounded.

  The sergeant had a rifle slung over his shoulder, and his men carried shotguns. Frances saw William swing his rifle off his shoulder, cradling the weight of it loosely in his right hand. He glanced at Leger, who grimaced back at him, holding his rifle in one hand and making a low clicking noise with his tongue. She made a silent prayer that William would give himself up quietly. He was outnumbered. There were four guns to his two. He would be mad to try to fight his way out, but when she looked at him his face was frozen into an expression of contempt.

  “Mr. Westbrook. We need to make a search. I have reason to suspect . . .” The sergeant paused to catch his breath, wheezing as though the dust had silted up his lungs. He swept his hands over their group in a futile gesture, and his eyes flitted nervously over William. To her surprise, William slung his rifle over his shoulder, dropped his reins, and dismounted, motioning to Leger to do the same.

  The sergeant didn’t go straight for William’s saddlebag. Instead, he started by searching the men. When he had finished he beckoned to Frances. Her legs buckled when she dropped off her pony, and the sergeant put out an arm to steady her. Then he ran his hands over her body, starting at her hair, pushing his thumbs round her ears, down her neck, and into her collar. She could see William watching. The tips of the sergeant’s fingers were at her waist, pinching along the seams of her dress, and she had to stop herself from taking a step backwards. His face was no more than an inch from hers, and she could smell the biltong on his breath. She lifted her eyes and saw him staring at her. He asked her to remove her boots. Her throat made a choking sound as she bent down to unlace them.

  She stepped each foot into the dust, hoping he wouldn’t see the color of the ribbon through her stocking, and handed him the boots. He slid his hands into the warm, soft leather, checking for stones, then handed them back to her. When he thanked her she had to turn her head away to hide her relief. He wasn’t going to check her feet, and—shaking—she pulled her boots back on. William, seeing that he had finished searching her, spat into the dirt at the sergeant’s feet and walked out into the veldt with Leger, where they crouched down, hats pulled low over their heads, their backs to the officers. They talked quietly. She stood at a distance, unsure whether to join them.

  The officers took the saddles off the horses, feeling round the corners of the leather. Finally, with studied calm, the sergeant removed the saddlebag and unbuckled the three straps. He dipped his hand inside and pulled out a handful of something which glinted in the sun. He pushed them round in his palm. His shoulders relaxed, and his face seemed to lose its tension. This was it. He must have found the diamonds. But a second later he let the contents fall through his fingers into the sand, and she saw that what she had thought were stones were in fact nothing more than cartridges.

  The sergeant scraped the sweat from his forehead, and William turned his head and gave a gruff laugh. “You didn’t think they were diamonds, did you, Sergeant?”

  The sergeant turned to his officers. “Search the boys.”

  The two native boys offered themselves up. She knew the routine, and though she had turned her back when they were stripped, she heard the glucking of open mouths as the officers slipped in their fingers, feeling round the inside of the boys’ cheeks and down the backs of their throats until they retched and coughed. They would probe the boys’ ears and run hands down their bodies, checking for small slices in the flesh which could be turned into pockets. There was a clinking noise—the unbuckling of belts—and protesting grunts as they were bent forward so the officers could slide their hands round the boys’ buttocks.

  “Nothing, Sir. What should we do?” The sergeant’s men shuffled nervously in their pockets for cigarettes and looked at him accusingly. Their brash confidence was dissolving fast. Now that they had lost the possibility of bringing down a great diamond trader, they were ashamed, disowning the enthusiasm for scandal that had gripped them just a few moments before. And there was an undercurrent of fear rippling through the group. Baier would protect his cousin, and he had a reputation for reprisal.

  The sergeant paused. The veins
in his neck were swollen, and a thin trickle of sweat ran into his shirt. “Mr. Westbrook,” he called to William, “you’re free to go. Thank you for your patience.”

  “Didn’t find what you were looking for, Sergeant?”

  The officers swung up into their saddles, turned their horses east, and rode back to Kimberley.

  • • •

  THEY RODE ON UNDER the searing midday sun. Frances’s shawl was too hot, and she let it slip back onto the saddle. The soft, red hairs that ran up the backs of her arms began to singe and curl. Her lips were dry, and her tongue, thick with dust, kept flicking moisture into the corners of her mouth.

  In a supple movement, William swung round in the saddle to look at her. She blinked at him through the heat. He watched her carefully, unsmiling. He hadn’t forgiven her. Her blood stopped, then returned with a rapid pulse. One hand fluttered nervously at her throat.

  “Water,” he called to one of the boys, who dug his heels into his mule and trotted up alongside, holding out a flask. He looked straight at her while he drank, liquid spilling down his chin, mingling with the sweat that stained his shirt dark. When he pushed the flask away from him, his face creased and his lips stretched. It was a smile of stealth, and though she was so thirsty her tongue had sealed itself to the roof of her mouth, she couldn’t bring herself to ask for water.

  When they arrived at the straggle of corrugated-iron shacks that marked the end of British territory, William pulled up his horse and waited for her to ride alongside. He took her hand. “They frightened you? Frances, surely you didn’t imagine I would hide the diamonds where they could find them?”

  A laugh spilled out of her, and he smiled back. She was relieved that they had made it. And William seemed conciliatory. He swung himself off his horse, his rifle hanging loosely across his back, and helped her dismount, holding Mangwa’s lead rope in one hand while he supported her with the other.