by Wilbur Smith
François bowed, cast one last cautionary look at Mungo, and went inside. As soon as he was gone, Mungo wrapped Camilla in an embrace so tight he threatened to smother her.
‘I cannot breathe,’ she whispered.
He didn’t relax his grip.
‘Come away with me,’ he whispered. ‘I have a ship in the harbour ready to sail – by dawn, we could be far out at sea. We can go to England, or Canada, or Africa, or India – anywhere in the world. You will be free.’
The vision he offered was like a shining door, opening in the prison walls that had confined her since she was born. More than she had dreamed of.
But not if it meant leaving without Isaac.
‘Chester has men all over the city,’ she said. ‘If they suspected I was running away – or who you are – they would kill us before we could reach your ship.’
Everything had happened so fast, Camilla felt as if a dam had burst, as if a torrent of water had swept her off her feet and down into a future she could not control. She had to find a purchase.
‘We must go somewhere we can talk in private,’ she said. ‘There are so many things I must tell you.’
‘Where do you live?’
‘Rue St Louis.’
‘I will come there.’
‘No.’ Her eyes were wide with fear. ‘It is Chester’s house. All the servants are his. He would hear of it.’
‘Then come to me. I am on Rue Bourbon.’
‘I would be seen. Chester is a jealous master. He has me watched, always.’
‘What, then?’
She saw impatience glowing in Mungo’s eyes. His fingers curled into fists. He had changed since she last saw him. When she held his arms, she felt muscles that the Eton schoolboy and the Cambridge undergraduate had never had. There were scars on his face, and lines around his eyes that spoke of experiences she could not guess.
In the precarious world of slavery, he had always made her feel . . . not safe, exactly, but protected. Now, he frightened her.
‘Go to the cathedral tomorrow at sunrise,’ she told him. ‘Wait in the confessional – the priests do not use it so early. I will come to you.’
Mungo nodded.
‘Now go.’ Still he didn’t obey; she had to peel his fingers off her arms. She hoped the bruises would not show the next day. ‘François is coming. We cannot give him any more cause for suspicion.’
The door opened again. François stepped out carrying two fresh glasses of punch. It had taken longer than he expected, but he was pleased to see that Mungo and Camilla were standing a respectable distance apart. He handed one glass to Camilla, and kept the other for himself.
‘I trust you enjoyed a profitable conversation?’ he said, still wondering what had passed between them.
‘Indeed,’ said Mungo. ‘I believe that Chester and I will have plenty of business to take care of.’
‘Excellent.’ François offered Camilla his arm, and this time she took it. ‘Now let us go and enjoy that dance you promised me.’
The next morning, before the bells chimed six o’clock, Camilla entered the Cathedral of St Louis. She dipped her fingers in the cherub’s cistern, crossed herself with holy water and took a seat in one of the pews. She kneeled to pray. She was not Catholic by upbringing – the St Johns were Presbyterians. But New Orleans was a Catholic city, and the cathedral was the only place outside the town house where she could be sure she was alone. She had come to love the ritual of Catholic devotion: the sign of the cross; the kneeling and the standing; the Eucharistic bread and wine. Familiarity was security.
She waited in the pew, mouthing a silent prayer, until she heard the creak of hinges in one of the wooden booths in the side aisle. Her pulse began to race. She knew the priests were busy in the sacristy, preparing for morning Mass. The confessionals should be empty. No one else would bother them, so long as they kept their conversation brief.
She crossed herself again, strode to the rear of the sanctuary and slipped into the confessional.
The divider slid open and she sensed his presence. She could make out the shape of his face through the screen, the yellow hue of his irises and the throaty tenor of his voice. When he spoke her name, she held her hands together to keep them from trembling. The sound of her name on his lips after so long sent the blood coursing to her head.
‘Where have you been?’ she asked. ‘How did you come here?’
A cloud seemed to pass across Mungo’s eyes. All the terrible things he had done had been for Camilla. But now they were face to face, he could not bear to tell her.
‘A long story. Too long. Tell me about yourself.’
She closed her eyes and collected her thoughts. She told him everything, from the moment she had been dragged away from the observatory and locked in the tobacco store; the trip to Louisiana and Bannerfield; her time picking cotton in the fields; and finally, her life as Chester’s mistress in New Orleans.
There was only one thing she left out.
Mungo took in every word in silence, save a sort of hiss through his teeth every time she spoke Chester’s name.
‘You did not try to run away?’ he said when she had finished.
‘Bannerfield is so large, I would never even have got off Chester’s land. Even from New Orleans, a slave on her own in Louisiana will not go far. Have you seen what they do to runaways?’
And I could not leave Isaac.
That was the one thing she had omitted, the truth she could not tell. She had never kept a secret from Mungo before. But she feared what he would do if he learned about her son. She remembered the savage look that had come over Mungo’s face at the ball, even at the mention of Chester’s name. Could he accept a child who was Chester’s flesh and blood?
You are not the same boy who left me at the end of that summer, she thought, looking at the scarred face. She did not know him – not all of him. She did not know what he was capable of.
For now, Mungo accepted her explanation of why she had not run away.
‘But you can come with me now,’ he said.
Camilla started. ‘Now?’
‘My offer last night still stands. My ship is ready. And this time, there is no François to see us go.’
‘What about Chester?’ She whispered the name so quietly it was like a breath of wind, as if even in this sacred space the Devil might hear.
‘I will come back for him later.’
Mungo had lain awake all night thinking about it. He had spent years planning his revenge, dreaming of Chester’s downfall. To walk away from it now would be like a monk renouncing his God.
But until he met François at Ambriz, the one thing he had never considered was that Camilla might be alive. That changed everything.
‘You said he knows I am looking for him. Let him rot in the palace he has built himself, waiting every day in terror of my return. Let the guilt and fear gnaw away at him, until he is a husk of a man. Then – maybe – I will return to deliver the coup de grâce.’
Camilla didn’t know what to say. She twisted her hand in the skirts of her dress until it made a tight knot.
‘I cannot.’
‘Why?’
‘I cannot just walk out of my life. Even this life. There are . . . some things of mine.’ It sounded so feeble.
‘I am wealthy. Whatever you need, I will buy you.’ He pressed his hand against the wooden grille that divided them. ‘Come with me.’
Camilla did not move. Her mind was racing, weighing truths and lies on which a life might hang. How could she explain it? How could she not explain it?
Out in the cathedral, the service had begun. A priest was reading from the huge leather-bound Bible mounted on an eagle-headed lectern. The words were in Latin, unknowable to Camilla. They would not have reassured her if she had understood them.
Then Abraham bound his son Isaac, and laid him on the altar, and took up the knife in his hand to sacrifice his child.
‘There is something I left out of my story,�
�� she began. ‘I have a son.’
On the far side of the grille, she heard a sigh like a blade rasping over a whetstone.
‘A son?’
‘Born two years ago.’
‘Who was the father?’
‘Chester . . .’ The fury on Mungo’s face made her stumble over her words, hardly able to breathe. ‘Chester’s overseer. You remember the man at Windemere – Granville. He . . .’ She broke off for a moment. ‘Chester let him have me. Many times. The baby was born nine months after.’
On the other side of the grille, Mungo had sunk back into the shadows. She could not see his face, only the two shining points of his eyes.
Did he believe her?
‘Where is the child?’ Mungo asked.
‘Chester keeps him at Bannerfield.’
‘That is why you cannot escape?’
She nodded. Already, she could feel the lie about Isaac’s paternity eating away at her soul like acid.
‘And you love him?’
‘I know he is the child of violence. But he grew in my womb, and my blood flows inside him. I could not leave him, any more than I could leave you.’
Mungo’s fingers curled through the holes of the grille. With a sudden jerk of his arm, they tightened around the slats and ripped them away, leaving a splintered hole in the partition. Camilla looked around, terrified that someone would have heard. Mungo’s arm shot through the hole and grabbed her chin, forcing her to look at him.
‘This could be your only chance.’
‘You are hurting me.’
Mungo’s fingers gripped her so tight she thought he would break her jaw. He unbuttoned his shirt and drew out the silver locket. He opened it. In the dim light, she saw the sketch of her he had made that summer before he went to Cambridge.
I look so young, she thought. Before Chester, before Bannerfield, before childbirth and motherhood. Am I the same person?
‘I wore this in some of the darkest places on earth,’ he said. ‘I will not give you up now.’
‘And I suffered things a man can never know,’ she answered. She saw her words strike home. ‘I have more reasons to flee than you will ever understand. But I will not leave the one good thing God has given me from this nightmare.’
There was a pause, broken only by the distant sound of the choir singing the psalm.
‘Can you bring the boy here?’
Mungo’s eyes still glowed with that inexpressible menace, but behind them his mind had started to turn itself to practicalities.
Good, Camilla thought. Better that than more questions, more lies.
‘Chester would suspect something. He never lets Isaac leave Bannerfield.’ She thought quickly. ‘Do you have a riverboat?’
‘I can get one.’
‘There is a landing at Bannerfield where they load the cotton onto Chester’s steamboat. Come to that place at midnight in four days. If it is safe, if I can get Isaac away, I will show a green light and you can dock.’
‘If you cannot?’
‘I will not show the light.’
‘And if that happens? What should I do then? Sail away and leave you to Chester’s mercy?’
She reached through the partition and clasped his hand between hers. What would the priests think when they saw the hole he had torn?
‘We will find a way.’
When François arrived at his office that morning, he found Mungo waiting for him.
‘Did you enjoy the ball?’ François asked. ‘I did not see you go.’
‘I left early. I had had my fill.’
‘You seemed to enjoy your conversation with Miss Camilla. I should warn you,’ François went on, ‘that Chester Marion is a jealous master. You should tread carefully.’
Mungo nodded, and changed the subject. ‘I wish to give you some money.’
François forgot Camilla. His face lit up. ‘How much?’
‘Enough to buy a steamboat. Can you arrange it?’
François took on a pained expression. ‘Of course. But I must tell you that steamboats are not as profitable a proposition as . . . ah . . . other vessels you have commanded. You will earn pennies on the dollar – if she does not sink. A boat depreciates very quickly – then there are the costs of insurance, fuel, the crew . . .’
He might as well have been talking to himself. He could see by the look in Mungo’s eyes that his mind was set. And François had not forgotten that when he gave Camilla the same advice, she had simply taken her business elsewhere. At least if he brokered the sale, he could expect a commission.
‘I will find you just the ship you need.’
Mungo had never been aboard a steamboat before. He had seen them chugging around the harbours at Norfolk and Baltimore on their runs down the Chesapeake, and in New Orleans they were always on the river. Compared to the grace of ships like the Raven and the Blackhawk, they were squat and ungainly things. Yet he could not deny that the intricacy of their machinery intrigued him. Once, in Norfolk, he had stood on the dock looking down at the boiler, watching the great arms grind into motion as the pressure rose. He had been amazed by the raw power that could be generated by nothing more than wood, fire and water.
Now he stood on the deck of the Nellie Mae, a hundred feet long, with four boilers mounted on her main deck powering a large wheel at her stern. Two funnels rose near her bow, like vestigial masts.
‘A bastard contraption,’ Mungo muttered to himself.
Standing on her deck, he felt none of the thrill that he got from the Raven. Even so, there was grudging admiration in his voice.
‘She does not draw much draught?’ he asked the captain.
‘Eight feet, loaded to the guards. Not much more than two feet when she’s empty.’
‘Speed?’
‘She’s the fastest boat on the river. With a fair wind she can make twenty knots.’
Mungo ran his hand over the boiler. The iron was cool to the touch, but he imagined it throbbing under full steam, the metal burning red-hot.
Tippoo had gone to the prow and was peering at a small six-pound cannon mounted there.
‘Does it work?’ he asked.
‘We use her for salutes, signalling and suchlike.’
‘But she would take a ball if necessary?’ Mungo prompted.
The captain looked astonished. ‘What for?’
‘Pirates,’ said Tippoo.
‘There are no pirates on the Mississippi,’ said François.
‘She will do handsomely for my purposes.’ Mungo turned to the captain. ‘How much do you want for her?’
The captain chewed his wad of tobacco. ‘Thirty thousand dollars.’
‘That is so high you should arraign him for theft,’ objected François. ‘You could build a brand new boat for that, with change to hire a crew.’
‘Thirty thousand dollars is fine,’ said Mungo. ‘And I would appreciate it if you could fill the bunkers with coal. I hear it burns stronger than wood.’
Tippoo handed him a pen and ink. Balancing on a bollard, Mungo wrote out a draft.
‘You may cash this against my account at the Bank of New Orleans.’ A thin smile. ‘They are always happy to oblige.’
‘And the crew?’
Mungo gestured to the rest of the men he had brought. Tippoo was there, and Virgil Henderson; also Wisi, and a number of his warriors. The Punu had taken to life aboard the Raven, and had not complained when Mungo explained there would be a delay returning to their homeland.
‘I have my own crew.’
The captain stared at them disbelievingly. ‘You think you can crew this boat with niggers?’
‘I’ll trouble you not to speak about my crew that way,’ said Mungo. ‘They are free men, and the equal of any sailor in New Orleans.’
The captain looked as if he was about to object more, but something in Mungo’s eyes made him think better of it.
‘Have it your own way,’ he muttered.
Stepping through the gates of Bannerfie
ld made Camilla a different person. In New Orleans, she could live with the illusion of being free. At Bannerfield, that was gone. Whatever Chester might permit her out of his sight, in his house she could only be one thing. She took off her fine city clothes and put on a simple white house-slave’s dress. She undid her hair and let it hang down under a simple cap. She ate dinner with the other servants in the kitchen, barely touching her food. Upstairs, in the dining room, Chester and Isaac would be dining off fine china and silver cutlery.
At least she was there. She had thought it would be hard to find a pretext to persuade Chester to let her come to Bannerfield. But chance, for once, had smiled on her. Chester had summoned her himself, without explanation, the morning after she had seen Mungo. A day to prepare herself, and then two days upriver, had brought her to Bannerfield on the exact day she had set. A part of her worried that it was not a coincidence, that someone had seen them together, but even that fear could not completely quell the hopes that she allowed herself to feel. She would take Isaac, join Mungo, and escape this life forever.
Chester would not let her see Isaac straight away. Instead, he sent her to the little room in the attic. Being there, trapped in that close space, peeled away her hopes. It could have been her first night at Bannerfield – or even further back, in the tobacco store at Windemere. She was utterly helpless.
She did not know how long she had waited when she heard the footstep on the stair. Just like in the old days, but heavier now. Her muscles clenched. The handle turned, the door opened. Chester surveyed her from the doorway.
Even in the few months since she had last seen him, he had grown more terrible to look at. His hair had thinned to the point where he could not hide it. Instead, accepting the inevitable, he had shaved his head bald. He had grown even fatter, his stomach sagging over his waist and his arms as fat as a cow’s haunches. Another man might have looked pathetic, but Chester carried the weight with a natural strength. He was no longer the feeble attorney others had overlooked; the great mass of his body seemed like an emanation of the power that had grown within him. Or perhaps the power had always been there, and no one had noticed.
There was no mistaking what he wanted. He wore only a silk dressing gown with nothing underneath. His belly pushed open the folds of the gown.
