by Wilbur Smith
‘I doubt I can dance as nimbly as you, sir,’ he said to the captain, ‘but I would be obliged for the chance to try.’
‘By all means,’ the captain said with forced gallantry, ‘but only if the lady is willing.’
Isabel played coy. ‘Captain Townsend was just teaching me a new variation on the cross-step.’
The captain beamed with pride. ‘It’s all the go in England.’
‘Is that so?’ Mungo asked, feigning curiosity. He knew from watching them how badly Townsend had been leading her. He’d learned the dance at Cambridge, and he had danced it many times himself in the ballrooms of England. ‘In that case,’ he said, looking into Isabel’s eyes, ‘perhaps you would rather the captain continue his lesson? I’m happy to defer.’
‘No,’ she said. ‘I think I have learned all I need. Thank you, Captain.’
She gave Townsend a smile that he would never forget, and followed Mungo onto the dance floor. She leaned in close and switched from English to French.
‘The good captain was an insufferable bore,’ she whispered. ‘I would rather learn whatever you have to teach me.’
They danced through the rest of the evening arm in arm. Isabel was as athletic a dancer as Mungo had ever known, matching him move for move without a stumble or misstep. Her energy seemed inexhaustible, as did her appetite for motion. By the time her brother, Afonso, stepped in at the end of the final waltz and summoned her to a private supper with the governor, Mungo felt as if he had run ten miles.
‘I think I have quite worn you out,’ she said. ‘But alas all our pleasures must come to an end. Adieu.’
‘I think you mean “au revoir”,’ Mungo answered. ‘I believe you are to take passage on my ship, the Blackhawk.’
Was it his imagination, or did some flash of promise spark in her eye? Her lips were parted; a sheen of perspiration made her skin shimmer.
‘Then perhaps our pleasure does not need to end just yet.’
She left him in a swirl of silk and perfume as her brother led her away. Mungo watched her go, then caught himself angrily.
You are staring like some lovelorn booby, he chided himself.
He still could not understand the way he felt about her – the way she had pierced so deeply into his thoughts. It made him unaccountably angry. Yet he wanted nothing more than to see her again.
‘Camilla is dead,’ he reminded himself, so agitated he spoke the words aloud. He meant it as a rebuke, yet when the words came out they sounded more like permission.
He scanned the ballroom for Tippoo. Through an open door, he saw the gunner on a balcony overlooking the sea, half hidden in the folds of a yellow dress. He looked fully occupied; Mungo did not interrupt.
He made his way to the punch table for refreshment, wondering if Isabel would return, when a loud voice behind him said, ‘Mungo St John!’
Mungo froze. There should not be a man within a thousand miles who knew him by that name. He turned slowly, before the voice could hail him again.
At first Mungo barely recognised the man who had spoken. Under the tropical sun, his fair skin had burned red and his sandy hair bleached to light gold. He wore the blue dress coat of the Royal Navy, with scarlet facings and a lieutenant’s gold epaulettes on the shoulders.
Then he saw past the uniform and the sunburn, to the young man beneath. It was Fairchild – his old sparring partner from the Cambridge Union – staring at Mungo with utter astonishment.
‘You are a long way from Cambridge,’ Mungo said.
‘So are you.’
Fairchild stepped forward and shook his hand.
‘I am commissioned as junior lieutenant aboard the Fantome. We are bound for Africa to catch slavers. I thought you had returned to Virginia.’
‘I did. There was a problem with my inheritance.’ Mungo lowered his voice. ‘I would be grateful if you could forget the name Mungo St John. Here, I am Thomas Sinclair.’
‘What ship are you on.’
‘The Blackhawk?’
The delight at their meeting vanished from Fairchild’s face.
‘But . . . do you know what she is?’
‘A merchant ship.’
Fairchild leaned closer. ‘Damn you, St John – Sinclair – whoever you pretend to be. I know you too well. Do not play the fool – it does not become you.’
‘We are taking cloth and weapons to Africa,’ Mungo insisted.
‘And what else is in her hold? Have you seen the nails and the lumber, or the great copper kettles she carries to cook for two or three hundred souls when they are crammed below decks? Have you seen the chains and the shackles that will bind them?’
‘Are you suggesting the Blackhawk is a slaver?’ said Mungo, as if the idea was completely preposterous.
‘She is the most notorious slaver of them all.’ Fairchild shook his head. ‘I know you argued the slave cause at the Union, but I never imagined you would stain your hands with the vile trade itself.’
‘The slave trade is against the law,’ Mungo reminded him, as though that rendered the very idea impossible.
‘And if the law were obeyed then neither of us would be here.’ Fairchild laid his hand on Mungo’s arm. ‘I know you are a better man than this. For the sake of all that is holy, I beg you to leave your ship. Sign aboard the Fantome – we are short-handed, and I could vouch for you to the captain. A man of your strength and determination would be a blessing.’
‘I cannot.’
Fairchild searched Mungo’s face, as earnest and heartfelt as he had been at the despatch box in the Union.
‘If it is this matter of your inheritance – a question of income – you need not fear. There is good prize money to be had from the ships we capture.’
For a moment, Mungo let himself entertain the idea. He imagined himself in a fine blue uniform, leading his men onto the decks of slave ships. He imagined heroic profiles in the illustrated newspapers, hearty cheers from men like Fairchild.
Then he saw Camilla’s face, and his father’s, and Chester’s. You do not go against a man like that with only a half-dime in your pocket. A naval officer might earn a comfortable living from his prize money, but it would not be the fortune Mungo needed to redeem Windemere. Whatever he needed to buy or sell, whatever the cost, the bargain would be worth it if it brought vengeance for Camilla and his family.
‘It is impossible,’ he told Fairchild. ‘This is the course on which I am set.’
Fairchild pulled back his arm as if he had been burned.
‘Beware, Mungo St John. You can change your name, but you cannot shed your guilt. If you stay aboard the Blackhawk, you are sailing on the path to the black heart of damnation.’
His words struck Mungo with unexpected force. In an instant, he was back in the old observatory at Windemere, crouched over the body of a dying slave. Beware the black heart, and the thirst that never quenches. What had old Methuselah seen there in his death throes?
He shook it off. It was nothing but slave superstition and mumbo jumbo.
‘I fear we are destined always to be on opposite sides of the debate,’ he said coolly.
Fairchild nodded. There was sadness in his face, but also steel.
‘Be careful. This is not the Union any more. Out here, debates are carried on with guns and blades, and the result is not decided by a vote. If the Fantome encounters your ship again, we will do more than put a shot across your bows.’
‘Then I shall watch out for you.’
When the passengers came aboard, Mungo and Lanahan had to give up their cabins. They were on the same level as the captain’s quarters and on opposite sides of the officers’ wardroom, inside the hatch that led to the aft deck.
Mungo assisted Lanahan and two other sailors as they carried the baggage across the spar deck and into the shadows of the wardroom. The tiny cabins could not accommodate all the luggage the passengers had brought. The viscount considered which of his chests should be consigned to the hold, but Isabel merely waved her
hand and said, ‘Any of them will do.’ She wandered into the starboard cabin and opened the ventilation port to admit a fresh breeze.
While Lanahan waited for Afonso’s decision, Mungo slipped after Isabel.
‘Is there anything I can assist you with?’ he said in French.
‘As it happens, there is.’ A smile played across Isabel’s lips. She reached into the décolletage of her dress and pulled out a folded slip of paper. ‘I would be grateful if you could take this.’
She looked like she wanted to say something else, but Lanahan reappeared in the doorway, calling for Mungo. Isabel’s demeanour changed. She took hold of the sea chest in front of her and tugged hard on the brass latch, as if it was resisting efforts to open it.
‘You see,’ she said in English. ‘It is always getting stuck.’
‘Allow me,’ Mungo replied. He made a show of struggle before sliding the latch and lifting the lid to the chest. ‘There you are.’
‘Thank you,’ Isabel said formally.
Mungo went onto the quarterdeck, the mysterious slip of paper clutched in his hand. The ship was lively with activity in preparation for departure, the bosun calling orders in every direction, riggers aloft preparing the yards and sails, seamen on deck making ready the lines, and the captain reviewing papers with a customs official by the capstan.
He unfolded the slip of paper. The words she had written were so small that he had to hold the paper up close to read them. He recognised the lines from a book of French verse he had come across in the library at Cambridge. They were from a poem by Marceline Desbordes-Valmore.
Vous demandez si l’amour rend heureuse / Il le promet, croyez-le, fût-ce un jour.
Loosely translated, it meant: You asked if love brings happiness / That is its promise, if only for a day.
‘What is that?’ Lanahan had come up. He must have rushed – his face was almost as red as his hair. ‘Let me see it.’
He grabbed for the note. Obligingly, Mungo opened his palm as if to let him take it, but the moment he did so the wind snatched the paper out of his hand and blew it over the side.
‘It was nothing,’ said Mungo. ‘Merely something I found in a chest.’
Lanahan’s face burned with suspicion.
‘I am watching you, Mr Sinclair,’ he warned.
Mungo could not forget the words Isabel had written him. He found himself muttering them through the night in his cot, his body tense with desire in a way he had not felt since he was eighteen years old. The locket around his neck weighed on his chest. Why did he feel so beholden to Camilla now, when it made no difference to either of them? Did he fear he might somehow turn fate against his revenge by taking another lover, that some immortal power might punish him for betraying her memory? That was a ludicrous idea. Nothing could stop what he would do to Chester Marion.
He was angry with himself. He did not understand how Isabel had got inside his defences, but he would not lie there mooning like an adolescent. He rose, tore out a strip of paper from the logbook he kept, and hurriedly scrawled two lines of poetry from memory. It was by the Irish poet, Thomas Moore. He darted out of his cabin, slipped it under the door of Isabel’s cabin.
If wishing damns us, you and I / Are damned to all our heart’s content;
Come, then, at least we may enjoy / Some pleasure for our punishment!
He did not sleep any better after that. Next morning, he was tired and out of sorts. He avoided Isabel’s eye when she looked at him, while studying her intently when her back was turned for any indication she had read his note. Isabel sat demurely on the quarterdeck reading her book, and gave no sign at all that she even noticed him.
But that afternoon, she asked to borrow his spyglass to examine a seabird flying behind the ship. When she returned it, there was another slip of paper carefully tucked between two sections of the tube. Mungo pretended he did not see it. But as soon as he went below, he extracted it and read the lines hungrily.
In order to know virtue, we must first acquaint ourselves with vice.
Isabel and Mungo exchanged more notes over the days that followed, each with a snippet of poetry or prose, nothing that would identify them beyond the handwriting. Mungo enjoyed the game, choosing phrases that he knew would delight or amuse or scandalise Isabel. Sometimes he chose lofty passages from the Romantic poets, pure expressions of high sentiment; sometimes frankly carnal lines from the Marquis de Sade or the Earl of Rochester. He enjoyed watching the little pink flush at her throat when she read them – and he enjoyed even more the verses she sent in return. She was, he discovered, surprisingly widely read.
At first the game amused him – a distraction from the routine chores of the ship. Then, like a hunt, it began to obsess him. The sly battle of wits; the glee in passing the notes right under Lanahan’s and Afonso’s noses; the risk of getting caught; and the thrill of the chase. Most of all, there was the hope of the prize at the end of it. At night, he lay in his bunk and dreamed of Isabel’s body against his.
It began to intrude upon his duties. Once, when he was supposed to be checking the powder stores for moisture, Tippoo caught him daydreaming. Another time, while he was helping set the studding sails, he nearly lost hold of the brace when the canvas caught the wind. Captain Sterling complained that he was taking longer than usual to fix their position.
‘If you didn’t look so damn healthy,’ he said one day in his stateroom, ‘I’d swear you were ill. What the devil has gotten into you?’
Mungo knew it had become an infatuation, distracting him from everything else. He could not let it last. But there was only one way to cure it.
Finally, he thought of a plan. It was risky, but it could work if he enlisted a co-conspirator. There was only one man on the ship he trusted to confide in. He was hesitant, but when he asked, it was as if Tippoo had known the moment was coming.
‘Have you forgotten the girl in the locket?’ he teased.
Mungo did not laugh. ‘Sitting here like a monk will not bring her back.’
‘That is true. Every man has his needs. And I have seen how you look at the Lady Isabel,’ Tippoo said. ‘You are like a hot gun in battle. If you do not discharge your powder soon, it will blow up inside you.’
If Mungo had given it thought, he might have wondered who else could have noticed his infatuation with Isabel. Certainly, Afonso and Lanahan were vigilant for any hint of impropriety. The first mate had attached himself to Isabel’s brother, taking every opportunity to ingratiate himself with their illustrious passenger. But Mungo was too busy making his plan to think about that.
‘Middle watch,’ Tippoo said, seeming to relish the prospect of bamboozling Afonso and Lanahan while repaying his debt to Mungo. ‘Make sure she is ready.’
Three evenings later, at the stroke of midnight, Mungo heard the first bell signal the changing of the watch. He swung his legs out of his hammock and placed the soles of his shoes on the worn wooden planks. The lower deck was so dark he could barely see the outline of the other men sleeping around him. He retrieved his tobacco case from his chest, found the companionway and went up on deck.
Tippoo was already there. They made their way aft, guided by the glow of the binnacle light at the helm. The night was clear but moonless, the black sea roiling.
‘All’s quiet,’ said the bosun when they arrived, pulling on his pipe. ‘The wind’s calming down. I reckon the Harmattan’s giving way to the trades.’
‘Aye,’ said Tippoo with a nod. ‘I have the conn.’
The bosun went below. With Tippoo at the helm, Mungo filled his pipe and lit it with a match. He studied the stars as he drew in the smoke. The sky was radiant with them, as if the blanket of night had been pulled over the sun then pricked ten thousand times, letting in the lost light of day. The stars were different this close to the Equator. The Dipper was hanging upside down; Polaris was a speck above the sea; and a new sky had opened up to the south – Scorpio rising beneath Libra, the Southern Cross shimmering beside the Centaur.
Mungo had seen these constellations in books, but never so clearly with his own eyes.
He thought of Isabel lying awake on her bed mere yards from him, though separated by timber and planking, and felt a stirring inside him.
After Tippoo rang the second bell of the watch, Mungo leaned over the starboard rail. Unusually for a merchant ship, the Blackhawk had four ports cut into her hull, close to the waterline, to provide ventilation to the lower deck. In rough weather they could be closed, like gun ports, but in these calm waters they were kept open to alleviate the heat. One of them gave directly into Isabel’s cabin, from where a light glowed out.
He went quickly to the stern and gathered one of the coiled painter lines used by the crew to tow a boat or an empty barrel for target practice. He lashed the painter securely to the base of the starboard rail, tucking in the trailing end so he could no longer see his handiwork in the darkness. He lowered the painter into the sea. He faced the helm again and waited for Tippoo’s signal. This was the point of no return. Once he stepped over the side, he would be guilty of abandoning his post, a transgression punishable by a whipping or even the stripping of his commission. For Tippoo, conniving in the act and not even protected by an officer’s rank, it could be more costly still.
The giant gazed across the deserted deck and angled his ear to listen. When he was satisfied that no one was about, he gave Mungo a nod. Mungo swung his leg over the rail, feeling with his toe for the protruding surface of the ventilation hatch. In the northeasterly winds, the Blackhawk was heeling heavily to starboard; the tilt and motion of the ship made Mungo’s task much harder. He could see the sea rising and falling beneath him. If he slipped, the waves would snatch him away in an instant.
Under the ventilation port was a narrow batten of wood that ran around the hull. After that, there was nothing except a sheer drop to the sea. The batten was so narrow, Mungo didn’t know whether his feet could get a purchase, but there was only one way to find out. He took hold of the line in one hand and the rail with the other, then swung his other leg over the edge, searching for the ledge with his toe. As he did, the ship hit a large wave, which sent the bow lurching sharply upwards and caused the hull to heel over further. Mungo clung fiercely to the rope, as cold spray soaked his backside. When the ship righted again, he braced himself and tried again. This time, he found the thin batten.
