by M. M. Kaye
Money and high ideals were all very well, thought Aunt Abby uneasily, but would not a little more docility—a little more tolerance, leavened perhaps with a dash of frivolity—be even more desirable? Aunt Abby suspected that Hero might not be tolerant, and the prospect distressed her. Though it did not appear to worry Clay, and after all, he was the one it would most affect. Unless he had thought better of the whole idea? Now that she came to think of it, he was very often out these days and on the whole saw less of Hero than might have been expected. But then perhaps he was merely being wise, for propinquity was something that one could have too much of, and possibly it might be better if he did not come on the proposed picnic. She would make it an exclusively feminine party (so that they could follow Dr Kealey’s advice and find some secluded beach from which they could bathe), and announce it for next Tuesday, as Clay had already arranged to go shooting with Joe Lynch on that day.
Mr Hollis, who disliked eating his meals out of doors, had warmly approved this amendment, and his wife issued invitations to Mrs Kealey, Frau Lessing, Olivia Credwell and Jane Platt, and forgot her anxieties in plans for the preparation of cold pies, desserts and fruit drinks. The German Consul had lent them his own felucca, the Grethe, whose crew were trustworthy members of the Consulate guard, and on the following Tuesday Aunt Abby embarked her party and her picnic baskets and set off to sail gently up the coast and spend a refreshing day in the open air.
The weather had been perfect for such an expedition. The wind that day was no more than a gentle breeze, sufficient to temper the heat to tolerable proportions, but not, the hostess noted thankfully, capable of producing waves that were large enough to cause any discomfort to the Grethe’s passengers. But though Aunt Abby’s first care had been for the comfort of her guests, she had not been too occupied to notice her daughter’s behaviour as the Grethe moved down the harbour; or too simple to divine its cause.
The felucca had passed within less than a dozen yards of the Daffodily and as they approached it Cressy had quickly changed her seat for one on the far side of the boat, and then looked back again as though she could not help herself: her face betraying her as clearly as though she had shouted her thoughts aloud.
Oh dear! So that’s it! I was afraid so, thought Abigail. How agonizing the heart-aches of youth could be, and how comfortable it was to be done with all that. Though it did seem a little unfair that one should have to suffer the same pangs at second-hand on behalf of one’s children. First Clay and now Cressy! And neither of them, in their mother’s opinion, likely to be much happier in the near future.
For her own part, Abigail had taken a liking to Daniel Larrimore, whose manner towards her had always been admirable and whose patent devotion to her daughter she found touching. She had warmed towards him, and might easily have grown fond of him had not Clayton and Nathaniel’s dismay at the very idea of losing Cressida to a “foreigner’ made her feel that she should not give him any encouragement. But although there had been a time when the Daffodil’s arrival in harbour had been a signal that Lieutenant Larrimore could be expected to call at the American Consulate within the hour, he had not been there for some weeks now, and she had allowed herself to hope that the whole thing had died a natural death. Which, taking the viewpoint of her husband and son into account, was a distinct relief, since she herself had always suspected that her daughter was not nearly as indifferent to the Lieutenant’s attentions as she would have her family suppose.
Scanning Cressy’s strained face she was sure now that her suspicion had been correct, and she wondered what could have gone wrong. They had obviously quarrelled about something, but as she did not believe in forcing confidences and Cressy had not as yet chosen to confide in her, there was nothing much that she could do except hope that it would pass as these things did—though she knew that when one was young it was difficult to believe that. Cressy and Clayton…Aunt Abby sighed, and glancing towards the girl whom her son hoped to marry, was as startled by Hero’s expression as she had been disturbed by Cressy’s.
Hero too was staring at a ship; and although her aunt had no reason to recognize the Virago, she was immediately aware that this must be the one on which Hero had spent an uncomfortable ten days after her rescue at sea. Nothing else could account for the forbidding expression on her niece’s face, and though Abigail fully shared Hero’s opinion of the Virago’s owner, she could not think it right that any young woman should look so—so coldly implacable. Especially one who might decide to marry her son! It augured a temper and disposition that was ill suited to dealing happily with such a person as Clay, and Aunt Abby trembled for both of them and was conscious of a sinking feeling of guilt, in that it was she herself who had pressed her niece to come to Zanzibar.
Oh my! thought Aunt Abby helplessly. Oh my! Her pleasure in the glittering day had been quite spoiled, and she found herself wholly unable to enjoy the charming views that slid past them as the felucca won free of the harbour and turned northward up the coast.
So he’s back, is he! thought Hero, staring at the Virago. She might have known it! Captain Frost had presumably made a nice profit out of providing the Sultan with arms to put down the recent rising, but she noticed that he had taken good care to be absent when it occurred. And now here he was back again: basking once more in the protection of his friend Majid, and able, in consequence, to continue his slave-trading activities with the minimum of risk and the maximum of profit. She wondered, as Dan had done, what questionable cargo his ship had been carrying this time, and presumed that it would be men rather than muskets.
The rising would have provided him with an excellent opportunity to bring in any number of slaves under the very nose of authority, since the British Navy, reflected Hero resentfully, had been far too taken up with shooting down the hapless supporters of Seyyid Bargash to pay the least attention to such minor matters as slave trading!
The fact that the Sultan’s victory over his brother meant a corresponding rise in the fortunes of Captain Frost seemed to her one of the worst aspects of the whole affair, and she considered it high time that someone, preferably the British Consul, did something about it. After all, the man was English, and since the British authorities were empowered by their Government to put down slavery and mete out summary justice to any of their subjects caught shipping, selling, buying or owning slaves, she could not understand what they were about to allow such a person to remain at large. It not only made a mockery of justice, but was an open admission of incompetence or blatant national partiality.
The opinion once advanced by Thaddaeus Fullbright that they were waiting for proof could be dismissed as ridiculous,—together with his assertion that Dan Larrimore would get it one day because he was the “persevering kind’. Well, if the Lieutenant had failed to get it by now, he was not really trying and it was quite time someone else took a hand. She had a very good mind to see if she could not do better herself.
Hero removed her hat to let the breeze blow through her curls, and leaned back in the shade of the sail to ponder the problem.
If the Virago’s Captain were running cargoes of slaves he was obviously hiding them in a place where no one had yet thought to look, and that place was almost certainly somewhere on the Island. Probably the house of some Arab acquaintance, for Colonel Edwards’s authority over all British subjects would make it too dangerous to permit of slaves being hidden in any house that might be searched. It was therefore merely a question of discovering “Who’ and “Where’—which should not be so difficult, since the Island was far from large.
“I’ll speak to Fattûma about it, decided Hero. Fattûma heard all the gossip of the bazaars and might be able to pick up some information. And there was also Thérèse, who had spoken of spies being employed by Cholé and her sisters to keep them informed of their enemies’ plans, and implied that it was common practice in Zanzibar. If that were true and information could be bought, then she would discuss the matter with Thérèse and set about buying it herself.
And once the evidence was obtained it could be handed to Colonel Edwards, who should be able to arrange to catch Rory Frost red-handed and thereafter have no difficulty in effecting his arrest and deportation.
Hero was not so foolish as to imagine that putting one slaver out of business was going to make an appreciable difference to the trade, or reduce by more than a fraction the number of wretched captives who yearly passed in and out of Zanzibar on their way to the auction block and a life of servitude. She was fully aware of the size of the problem and the appalling difficulties of cleaning such an Augean stable; but at least she would have struck a blow against white participation in the revolting traffic, and to remove even one cause of offence was something, even though nine hundred and ninety-nine remained to deface the name of humanity.
Coloured slave traders, thought Hero from the lofty standpoint of the West, could hardly be expected to realize die full enormity of their actions, and therefore some slight excuse could be made for them on the score of ignorance. But Western slavers…White men—!
“That’s Motoni over there,” said Olivia, pointing with one hand and holding on to a flapping, rose-trimmed hat with the other: “Beit-el-Motoni. Salmé told me that it was her father’s favourite palace, and it’s where she and Cholé and the rest of them spent most of their childhood. I think it’s so sad to picture them all playing together and not knowing that they’d grow up to hate each other, don’t you?”
Hero started guiltily, and abandoning her reflections said contritely: “I’m sorry, Olivia. I was thinking of something else. What were you saying?”
“Nothing very interesting,” admitted Olivia candidly. “I was only pointing out the sights. That pavilion over there, and the long untidy-looking houses among the trees; that’s one of the old Sultan’s palaces. And there’s another one a bit farther on—look, you can see it ahead, just beyond those far trees. That’s Beit-el-Ras. Hubert, my brother, says that Sultan Saïd was still building it when he died and that now it will never be finished. It does seem a pity doesn’t it?”
“I suppose so,” said Hero without much interest “Isn’t that where Majid’s army camped the other day?”
“Yes. And they must have made a dreadful mess of it—five thousand men, and all those horses and carts and cooking fires and so on. But then I expect it was a mess already, because Hubert says they’re always digging up bits of Beit-el-Ras in the hope of finding the treasure, though so far no one has come across even a trace of it.”
“Treasure? What treasure?” enquired Hero, reacting predictably to a word that for centuries has held a potent magic for all mankind.
“Hasn’t anyone told you about that yet? Why, I thought everyone knew it. Hubert says it is just a ‘yarn’; but all the Arabs believe it The old Sultan, Seyyid Saïd, collected an enormous amount of treasure, and no one knows what he did with it except that he hid it somewhere, but a lot of people believe that he buried it at Beit-el-Ras and that if he hadn’t died at sea he would have told his heir where it was. Majid, I suppose. But as he didn’t get back here alive no one knows where it is, though his whole family are quite convinced that the British Consul knows. Not Colonel Edwards; another one who had been a great friend of the Sultan’s. They say that the Sultan kept on calling for him when he was dying and that made them think But of course Hubert says it is all nonsense and there probably wasn’t any treasure in the first place. Or if there was, he’d spent it. I’m afraid Hubert is sadly unromantic, and I cannot think why Jane—”
Olivia broke off abruptly, recalling that her sister-in-law was seated within a few feet of her, and turning hurriedly away began to enquire after the health of Frau Lessing’s children, while Hero, released from the necessity of making conversation, propped her chin on her hand, and gazing out at the lovely coastline, thought how strange it was that so much beauty and such appalling squalor and cruelty could exist side by side.
A mere mile or so behind them lay the rubbish-strewn waters of the harbour and the reeking alleyways of the city. But here the sea was sapphire, veridian and jade, and the breeze smelled sweetly of cloves. Below the felucca’s keel the coral reefs were bars of purple and lilac and lavender, and a strip of white sand three fathoms down was a wide wash of cerulean, freckled with the sequin-shimmer of darting fish. The surf broke cleanly here, uncluttered with ugly flotsam, while the palm-fringed, flower-spangled shores that basked in hot sunlight and cool shadow had the untouched beauty and innocence of Eden.
Lulled by the drowsy swish of the sea and the warm, scented breeze, Hero drifted off into a light sleep…and was suddenly back in the cabin of the Virago, struggling to remove a heavy matting screen that prevented her from looking out through the open porthole. Beyond that matting, she knew, lay a starlit sea and a white house among dark trees, and someone was rowing bodies ashore and carrying them up to the empty house: the bodies of dead men. It was imperative that she should see who that someone was, and she tore and pushed at the coarse matting until at last a hole began to appear in it and the darkness thinned, and she could hear a voice speaking: Aunt Abby’s voice. But what on earth could Aunt Abby be doing on board the Virago…?
“I think we might stop soon,” her aunt was saying. “Somewhere on the far side of those rocks, perhaps?”
Hero awoke with a start to find her fingers clenched on the coarse straw of her hat brim. But her dream was still with her. It had not vanished with her waking, for she was still looking at the same view…
It took her a full minute to realize that the house and the trees and the curve of the beach were not a figment of her imagination, but real and three-dimensional; that she was looking at the identical place that she had seen once before (and dreamed that she was seeing again) through a slit cut painfully with a pair of shears in a heavy piece of coconut matting.
There could be no mistaking it. The starlight had concealed details that the midday sun made plain, and the majority of Arab houses were built to much the same plan. But there could not be two identical houses, both high and white with flat, castellated roofs, standing among trees and protected from seaward by a massive wall that appeared to be part of an ancient fort and rose sheer from the rocks on the seashore. A wall with a guardhouse at one end of it.
The beach too was familiar: a crescent of shelving sand, ending on either side in tall, misshapen rocks of wind-torn coral and cliffs topped by casuarina, screw pine and ranks of rustling palms. She could not be wrong…this was the bay and that was the house. And there was the beach where the muskets had been landed! She had found the secret hiding place where the Virago’s contraband was kept concealed until such time as it could be safely distributed to buyers.
Hero drew a long shuddering breath, and for a moment she was almost afraid. This was more than a coincidence: it must be! This was meant! She did not pause to consider that in the normal course of events she was almost bound to pass this way one day, and that there was nothing in the least miraculous about it. It seemed to her, on the contrary, that Providence had led her straight to this spot, and for the express purpose of saving countless men, women and children from being sold into slavery by an unprincipled rogue.
All she had to do now was to discover the name of the man who owned that house, and then go to the British Consul with the whole story—or, better still, to Lieutenant Larrimore, who could hardly fail to act upon such information. It might take him a little time to prove any connection between Captain Frost and the owner of the house, but sooner or later the Captain or some member of his crew was bound to visit it And then the very next cargo of cowed and helpless captives that Emory Frost disembarked or took aboard in that bay would be his last.
She shivered suddenly, and jumping to her feet caught at Mrs Kealey’s sleeve, and said:
“Whose is that house over there? Who does it belong to?”
“I’ve no idea,” said Mrs Kealey, glancing at it without interest.
“One of the local landowners, I expect,” offered Olivia, overhearing the q
uestion, “all the houses in this part of the island are owned by rich Arabs. Do put your hat on. Hero. You’ll get shockingly sunburned.”
They were already past the house, and ahead of them, on the far side of the rocks that shielded the bay, lay a long irregular strip of beach shaded by coconut palms and full of unexpected little inlets and deep, rock-fringed pools that the tide had left behind.
“Surely someone must know who it belongs to?” insisted Hero urgently. But no one seemed to know. It was just a house; and apparently an empty one, for the windows were closed and shuttered and there was no sign of life. The crew of the felucca, when interrogated, professed to be equally ignorant, though one of them muttered something that Hero did not catch and another grinned behind his raised hand.
“What was that?” demanded Hero. “What did you say?”
The man looked blank and shook his head, and Hero appealed again to Olivia: “Livvy, you ask him. I’m sure he knows.”
Olivia appeared a trifle surprised at her insistence, but complied amiably enough and reported that the man said the house was known as Kivulimi.
“Kivulimi’s house? Is that the owner’s name?”
“No; just Kivulimi. It means ‘The House of Shade.’ Because of all those trees about it, I suppose. Oh good, we’re going to stop here—”
“But who does it belong to?” persisted Hero. “Ask him who it belongs to, Olivia. They pretend not to understand when I speak to them.”
The man shrugged his shoulders and spread out his hands, and Olivia said: “He doesn’t seem to know. Why are you so interested, Hero? It isn’t a ruin or a palace or anything like that.”
“I thought I’d seen it before.”
“When? Oh—you mean when you arrived on the Daffodil? I expect you did pass it. But then I always think all these houses look exactly alike. What a lovely beach! Now, if we can find a nice place to bathe—”