Call of the Raven

by Smith, Wilbur

  She hardly ever saw Chester. He did not come to New Orleans any more. Since the letter from Virginia, he had retreated to Bannerfield and stayed there, locked behind his gates. Camilla did not know what he was doing there, but there were clues in the manifests of the Windemere as she made her runs upriver. Two hundred boxes of Mississippi rifles; three dozen casks of gunpowder; cavalry saddles; one hundred dragoon swords; four hundred rifle cartridge boxes; fifty percussion pistols; one thousand cases of .54 calibre rifle ammunition.

  Then one day a note arrived from Chester summoning her back to Bannerfield. She feared it meant that she had done something that displeased him – that it had been reported back to him and he wanted to punish her – but even that would be bearable if it gave her the chance to see Isaac.

  She boarded the Windemere at the wharf by the Bannerfield warehouse, down on the levee. It was a lonely journey; apart from Granville, she was the only passenger, and she spent the voyage locked in the only stateroom. All the other cabins had been removed, on her instructions, to make room for cargo. The spring rains had come at just the right time that year, and the summer had been warm – Bannerfield was expecting a record cotton harvest. It would take all the space available on the Windemere to bring it down to New Orleans. For miles before she reached the landing at Bannerfield, the ship steamed past acre upon acre of cotton fields gleaming white in the sunshine. It reminded her of the first time she had seen it.

  But something had changed. Wooden watchtowers had been erected in the fields, manned by men with guns. There were more armed men at the landing when the Windemere docked, and still more around the huge warehouses where the crop was being piled up. Dressed as soldiers in blue uniforms and forage caps, they made Bannerfield look more like an armed camp than a plantation.

  That impression only grew as Camilla disembarked. One of the soldiers, sporting a sergeant’s stripes, was waiting for them. He saluted Granville, and gave Camilla a derisive glance.

  ‘Been expecting you,’ he said. ‘We’ll take you to the judge.’

  A troop of soldiers escorted them to the main house. The gardens around it had been dug up. In their place were broad ponds that almost made a moat around the house, while the excavated soil had been piled up in high embankments like levees. More men paced the earthen ramparts.

  Camilla barely noticed any of it. All she wanted to see was Isaac. She scanned the windows that were now covered with iron bars, the paths that had been trampled to mud, looking for her son. He would be nearly two years old now. Would she even recognise him? Hope and worry swelled inside her until she thought she would burst.

  Chester received her on the rear piazza, a wide terrace populated with marble statues overlooking the ponds and the ramparts. He sat at a table laid for lunch, already well into a bottle of wine. A little distance away, a small boy charged up and down the terrace with a wooden toy rifle.

  Camilla cried out at the sight of him. He was so big, a little man dressed in white trousers and a dark blue jacket exactly like his father. The little puckered mouth that had suckled her breast was now broader; the tightly curled dark hair had grown out and was worn long, tied back with a ribbon. They must have used irons to straighten it.

  He pointed the wooden rifle at her.

  ‘Who that lady?’ he said.

  ‘That is Camilla,’ said Chester. ‘She is . . .’ He paused, searching for a word. ‘One of our people.’

  ‘Oh,’ said the boy, with a dismissive shrug that stabbed Camilla right in her heart.

  At two years old, Isaac already understood what ‘our people’ meant. It meant she was a slave, and that meant she did not matter.

  She approached Isaac slowly, forcing herself to smile.

  ‘I hope that we can be friends.’

  The boy retreated behind his father’s legs.

  ‘My name is Camilla,’ she said slowly. ‘Can you say it?’

  ‘Milla,’ he said.

  ‘That’s right.’ Her smile widened, but only so that he would not see her holding back tears.

  ‘Can we play?’ he asked.

  ‘Not now,’ said Chester. ‘Camilla and I have business to discuss.’

  A black woman in a white bonnet came out and ushered Isaac away. Camilla bit her lip, and took a seat at the table. Servants set out the meal – brown oyster stew and beef collops – but she did not touch anything.

  ‘Why did you bring me here?’

  Chester sawed into his beef with gusto.

  ‘Have you heard anything of Mungo St John?’

  ‘Nothing.’

  He looked up from his meal. His eyes fixed on her, making her feel exactly as she had when he had her naked in the little room upstairs.

  ‘Do not try to hide anything from me,’ he warned. Blood from the meat oozed onto his plate. ‘I have not forgotten how he thinks of you. If he comes to New Orleans asking after me, he will soon get to hear of you.’

  ‘If you think you cannot trust me, then keep me here,’ said Camilla quickly. ‘Let me stay where Mungo cannot find me.’

  Chester rolled his eyes. ‘I think not. I cannot afford to bring you back from New Orleans – you are far too useful to me there. For one, François de Villiers should return soon from his little trading voyage. You have that little rat eating out of your hand, and with the cotton harvest coming in I will need all your wiles. I have accumulated a great many debts against that crop, so I shall need to wring every cent from the sale.’

  ‘Then I could come here after the crop is sold?’

  ‘No.’ Chester gave her a cruel smile. ‘You are my little bird. I will leave you free to sing in the garden, so that when the cat comes you can fly up and warn me.’ He reached across the table and held her hand, so tight she thought her bones would crack. ‘You will warn me, will you not?’

  Camilla nodded, gritting her teeth against the pain.

  ‘Isaac is turning into a bonny little boy,’ he said.

  The change of tack caught Camilla off guard. She had to fight back the tears that sprang unwanted from the corners of her eyes.

  ‘You miss him?’

  ‘Yes.’ She did not trust herself to say more.

  ‘Of course you do. What mother would not?’ Chester took another mouthful. ‘I cannot risk having you here, corrupting him with false ideas about his heritage.’ Every one of his words was like a blade twisting in her gut. ‘But . . .’ His grey eyes narrowed. ‘If you did something to prove your worth, perhaps I might reconsider. I might allow you to visit, to spend time with Isaac. You would like that? I might even – if you deliver me what I want – give you your freedom. That is more than Mungo St John ever promised you, is it not?’

  He let the possibility dangle in front of her. Camilla stared, a thousand thoughts racing through her mind.

  ‘Think on it,’ said Chester. ‘Your freedom and your son, in exchange for Mungo St John.’

  They sat in silence for a little while. The only noise was the sound of Chester chewing his meat.

  ‘Why do the men call you “Judge”?’ said Camilla.

  ‘I had myself elected County Judge a few months back.’

  ‘What for?’

  In all the time she had known him, Camilla had never seen Chester interested in titles or offices. He did not care about society’s opinion; all he wanted was real power.

  ‘It gives me a certain influence on affairs with my neighbours. Property disputes, business suits . . . But more than that, it gives me the authority to call out the militia.’ He waved at a group of blue-jacketed soldiers marching along the path. ‘As you can see, that is exactly what I have done.’

  ‘It looks as if you have raised a private army.’

  Chester drained his glass and held it out for the servant to refill.

  ‘My agents made enquiries back east. Apparently, Mungo bought a clipper ship and fitted her with a crew of the most notorious cut-throats in Baltimore. He loaded her full of enough weapons and shot to start a revolution, they sa
y. Then he sailed out of Baltimore and vanished.’

  ‘Vanished?’

  ‘This was more than a year ago. He has not been heard of since. But I am certain he is coming.’

  ‘Maybe the ship sank at sea.’

  ‘Maybe,’ said Chester. ‘Until I see his body laid out before me, I will not believe it. That man is capable of anything.’

  He sliced off the last of his beef collop – but instead of eating it, he picked it up and tossed it over the edge of the terrace. It sailed through the air and landed with a splash in the pond.

  No sooner had it touched the surface than the water erupted. Camilla saw an upthrust snout, the snap of glistening jaws, and a long scaly body writhing amid the foam. It streaked away, its back rippling the water, and disappeared into the shade at the edge of the pool.

  ‘What was that?’ she cried.

  ‘An alligator.’

  Camilla stared. ‘You put alligators in the garden?’

  ‘They found their own way in, not long after we dug the ponds. I did not discourage them. If Mungo St John tries to swim the moat, he will get a nasty surprise.’

  ‘But Isaac must play near there. What if he fell in?’

  Camilla could hardly bear to imagine it – her little son and those bright flashing jaws.

  ‘I have put a high wall around it, as you can see. They cannot get out. And his nurse sees that he does not go where he should not,’ said Chester nonchalantly. ‘She knows what I would do to her if anything happened to the boy.’ He put down his knife and fork and glared at her. ‘Or what will happen to you, if you displease me.’

  Tippoo called out the soundings as the Raven cruised under quarter sails towards the mud-stained mouth of the Nyanga River. The rise of the sea floor was gradual, with no obvious reefs or sandbars. The waves broke evenly along the beaches on either side of the estuary, crashing down with a muted thunder that put Mungo on edge. In a life spent under sail, there was little as terrifying – and exhilarating – as the last minutes of an approach to an unmarked shore.

  Mungo guided the ship around the tip of a coastal peninsula and into the calmer waters of the river’s current. He ordered the sails stowed and the anchor dropped, and left de Villiers with three men to guard the ship. With his broken arm, the American factor would struggle through the jungle and be no use in a fight. Mungo needed him to stay alive, to bring him to Chester.

  ‘Keep the flag flying day and night,’ he said, pointing to the Stars and Stripes hanging from the masthead. ‘As long as we show those colours, no navy patrol can search us.’

  He embarked in the cutter with Tippoo, Pendleton and the rest of the crew, armed with rifles and machetes. They landed on a broad mudflat that stretched along the river’s edge to an embankment. At the top of it, they found the head of a path through massive, seven-foot stalks of grass. Tippoo hacked away with his machete, widening the opening, and sent two seamen ahead with orders to chart their course.

  They followed the grassy track until the savannah ended at the edge of a vast forest. The trees reached high into the hazy sky, their vine-draped limbs overlapping like the thatching of a roof and blocking out the light of the sun. Through the tangle of underbrush, Mungo saw the sweep of the river bending away into the distance, shaded by trees whose trunks stretched over the swirling water like the buttresses of a cathedral.

  They stopped beneath the branches of a tree whose girth exceeded the arm-span of two men. They took swigs of water from leather flasks and swatted away the flies buzzing around them, as sweat oozed from every pore in their skin. It was only nine o’clock, but the air was so dense with humid heat that inhaling it felt like breathing underwater.

  Mungo examined the great tree. Its bark was mottled white, like the sycamores in the forests of Virginia, but its exposed roots were alien to him. They extended outwards from the trunk and stood as tall as a man in some places. He gazed into the canopy of leaves and saw a black object in the highest branches. Had its shape not changed, he would have guessed it was a bird’s nest. But an arm snaked out and he realised it was a monkey, with almond-coloured fur around its nose and chest, and a pair of stumpy legs beneath the bulge of a fat belly. The creature was staring at him. He returned the creature’s gaze until it let out a fearsome screech and swung off its perch, crashing through the upper storey of the forest.

  ‘Chimpanzee,’ Pendleton said, as the men glanced around in fright. ‘They are rare to spot and impossible to hunt. Believe me, I have tried. There are animals in this jungle that no one but God has ever seen. The Portuguese call it o Jardim de Éden – the Garden of Eden.’

  The air was as stagnant as a millpond, not a breath of wind to relieve the heat. A bird took flight and vanished into the trees. Mungo wiped a drop of sweat from his eye and tuned his ears to listen. The forest was quieter than he expected. He heard crickets chirping and the low warble of a songbird. There was the faint murmur of the river, the current so lazy it hardly made a sound.

  ‘Move out,’ ordered Pendleton, and the sailors swung their machetes against the long grass. Mungo stayed put, which drew Pendleton’s attention. ‘What is it?’

  Mungo put a finger to his lips, unslung his rifle and pointed it into the trees. He had caught a flicker of movement – not much more than the twitch of a leaf, but when he looked closer he saw a shadow that had materialised at the edge of the river. It looked like the prow of a dugout canoe.

  ‘Someone’s out there,’ he whispered.

  ‘Someone or something?’ Pendleton whispered.

  ‘A boat.’

  The Raven’s crew were at a disadvantage. With their backs to the tall grasslands and their eyes more accustomed to the sun than the shadows of the forest, they couldn’t see far enough into the trees to make out an enemy, let alone bring them down. With hand gestures, Mungo ordered the men to fan out in an arc. Meanwhile, his eyes began to adjust. As well as the prow of the canoe, he could now see its gunwales and arrow-shaped stern, along with the handle of a paddle. The canoe was smaller and sleeker than the dugouts that had ferried them to the barracoons in Ambriz, and tiny by comparison to the huge craft that the Bakongo porters had used to deliver the slaves to the Blackhawk. Mungo searched the riverbank for more canoes but saw none.

  ‘Cover me,’ he told the others. ‘I’m going to take a look.’

  He set off into the forest, avoiding dry twigs and leaves on the ground. He kept his rifle trained in front of him, moving the barrel from tree to tree as he advanced. When he passed through a curtain of leaves as wide as lily pads, he startled a family of birds, which flew off in a mad beating of wings. He nearly stepped on the head of a snake lying in a spray of foliage, but lunged out of the way in time, the serpent slithering into the hollow of a log.

  It took him ten minutes to reach the canoe, which was resting on a bank of mud beside an eddy in the river. Three paddles lay propped against it, the blades still wet, but no sign of the men who had wielded them.

  The cocking of a musket broke through the sounds of the bush. Mungo swivelled around and saw a gun barrel pointing from a thicket of leaves. Outnumbered, cursing himself as a fool for walking into the trap, he raised a hand in surrender.

  Three men emerged from the brush. They were Africans, with dark skin and proud faces. Two carried spears, while the third carried the antique-looking musket Mungo had heard being cocked.

  Portuguese was the only European language they were likely to understand. Mungo spoke almost the only words of it he remembered.

  ‘Bom dia.’

  The man with the musket examined Mungo. He was the youngest of the three – younger than Mungo – but he had a fierce energy that the others naturally deferred to. His face was smeared with white clay, tracing the outlines of his mouth and cheeks. He had flat features: a straight nose, sharply cut cheeks and bright eyes that surveyed Mungo like a falcon tracking her prey.

  He said something, though whether it was his own language or heavily accented Portuguese, Mungo couldn’t tell.
It did not sound friendly.

  Mungo laid down his rifle.

  ‘Amigo,’ he said.

  Did that mean friend? If it did, it had no effect.

  A branch snapped behind him. Pendleton walked up, making no attempt to hide himself. His arms were spread wide, with a bottle of geribita in one hand and a string of brightly coloured beads in the other.

  He spoke rapidly to the Africans in Portuguese, underscoring his words with extravagant gestures and beaming smiles. He handed the bottle to the Africans and mimed drinking. They sniffed it suspiciously, but did not drink. They conferred among themselves.

  ‘What are they saying?’ Mungo asked impatiently. He hated not knowing what was going on, almost as much as he hated putting his life in Pendleton’s hands.

  ‘These men are Punu warriors. The one in the middle is called Wisi.’ The man in question glowered to hear his name spoken. ‘His father is the Nganga, a kind of local king.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘They’re going to take us to see him.’

  ‘There is no need—’

  Pendleton put a hand on Mungo’s arm. He never stopped smiling, but his eyes flashed a warning.

  ‘You cannot go slaving in the Nganga’s lands without his permission. It would be . . . impolitic.’

  Over his shoulder, Wisi had noticed the exchange. The prince’s eyes narrowed in distrust. Pendleton waved the bottle at him again.

  ‘Also, now that he has found you, he will expect payment,’ Pendleton went on to Mungo.

  ‘But I have nothing to trade. That is why we came here ourselves in the first place.’

  Pendleton beamed at Wisi, a picture of innocence.

  ‘Then you’d better think of something to offer before we reach the Nganga.’

  After loading the Raven’s men, the Punu tribesmen took up the paddles of the dugouts and propelled them upriver in single file, staying close to the bank and out of the mainstream, except to avoid submerged rocks and brambles. They chanted as they rowed, their strokes guided by the rhythmic beat of a drummer. They reminded Mungo of the Africans he had grown up with at Windemere, the hands who had harvested and cured the tobacco and loaded the carts for sale at market.