by Wilbur Smith
‘It is gone.’ Tippoo pointed up to the pilot house. ‘That is all.’
‘Without it, we cannot steer the ship,’ added Wisi.
‘It does not matter.’ By now, the landing stage was little more than a quarter of a mile away. ‘Our course is set.’
They cut the hawsers that connected the wheel to the rudder, and lashed them down. Tippoo and his men chopped away the timbers that supported the pilothouse with their axes, until the whole structure collapsed. They fed it into the flames, not even bothering to cut it. The engines pumped harder; the long iron rods that ran to the wheel pounded like horses driven to the gallop. The wheel churned faster, powering the boat through the water with a final burst of speed. Waves spilled over the side.
Gunshots rang out, but they did not hit anything. Mungo and his men sheltered behind the boilers, protected by the stout iron. He could not see where they were going, but it did not matter because they could not steer anyway. Like a drunken knight, the Nellie Mae continued her last glorious charge, bearing down on the dock.
The shots stopped as the militia realised what Mungo meant to do. Those on the landing stage turned and fled up the bank, running straight into the line behind them. Chaos ensued, a scrum of blue jackets fighting on the steps. Some lost their footing and slipped back down; others, trapped at the back, could not get up at all.
Mungo nodded to Tippoo. At his signal, Tippoo ran forward to the little cannon on the bow. It was not much more than a signal gun, so badly rusted it was as much danger to the men behind it as in front. But – like the boat – it had one shot left in it. Tippoo had loaded it with a vicious mix of musket balls and nails pulled from the dismantled boat’s timbers. He lit the fuse, then ran back to the shelter of the boilers and hurled himself to the deck.
The Nellie Mae rammed into the dock. At full speed, her bow smashed the pilings and splintered the landing. Some of the militia were thrown into the water; others, less lucky, were crushed between the hull and the riverbank. A second before she struck, the cannon fired a storm of jagged metal upwards at the men caught at the top of the slope. The power of the blast blew the cannon apart, adding jagged iron fragments to the onslaught and cutting Chester’s men to pieces.
Before they could recover, Mungo’s crew rose from behind the shelter of the boilers and came at them through the smoke. Mungo led them. He vaulted over the smashed bow, splashed through the shallows and charged into the bloodied mass of men in front of him with his sword. Tippoo stood on his left, wielding a boarding axe, while Wisi stood on his right with the stabbing spear he had brought from Africa.
Chester’s militia was composed of some of the roughest men in the county: brawlers, roustabouts and vagabonds. But they were more used to bar fights and street brawls than pitched battles. They had been guarding Bannerfield for months against an enemy who never came, taking Chester’s money and drinking his whiskey. Now that the assault had finally come, they were utterly unprepared. The air was filled with terror: the death-throes of the Nellie Mae as she broke apart; the hiss of steam from her ruptured boilers; the screams of men dying and drowning.
The militia broke and ran, fleeing into the cotton fields towards the big house in the distance. Mungo went after them, pausing only to grab a pair of abandoned rifles and sling them over his shoulders. He ran so fast, he overtook some of the fleeing militiamen. He cut them down with his sword and left them writhing in the dirt for Tippoo or Wisi to finish off.
He reached the slave quarters, row upon row of whitewashed shacks. Though it was the middle of the day, the inhabitants had disappeared, scattering like birds before an earthquake. They were not willing to defend their master, but if they took up arms they would suffer the most hideous deaths imaginable. Instead they melted away, leaving Mungo to pass through their dwellings unhindered.
Beyond the slave village, the ground rose in a grassy slope. And there, at its centre, stood the house.
The scale of it took his breath away. Chester’s mansion was nothing less than a castle, mounted on a hill and surrounded on all sides by broad ponds like a moat. The only access was a narrow causeway between the ponds that led to the front steps.
And it was well guarded. A bullet thudded into the earth at Mungo’s feet. He threw himself to the ground, behind the shelter of the little wall that ringed the moat, as more bullets struck. The militia might have fled the landing, but they were more than ready to defend the house.
Tippoo crawled up beside him and risked a glance.
‘Chester is there?’
‘I guess so,’ said Mungo.
‘You need cannons to get inside.’
Mungo took another quick look. ‘We could swim the moat.’
Tippoo shook his head. He pointed to the far edge of the pond, where something like a long tree trunk lay on the mud at the foot of the wall.
‘Crocodiles.’
‘Alligators,’ Mungo corrected him.
He had seen their cousins many times in the rivers of Africa, enough to know the folly of trying to swim. He thought hard.
‘Maybe there is another way.’
For the men guarding the house at Bannerfield, it had been a bewildering morning. Since Chester learned that his enemy Mungo St John had been seen in New Orleans, the militia had waited on high alert; but after Chester departed aboard the Windemere three days earlier, they had relaxed their guard. The crop was in, their master was gone. Surely there was nothing to fear now.
Then they had been roused by news from the river of Chester’s sudden return. Before they were fully awake, they had heard shots – then a thunderous boom that had echoed across the fields. Shortly afterwards, Chester – together with his overseer, his son and his slave mistress – had come running up the track, bellowing orders to prepare for battle.
They had grabbed their guns and taken up position, though on a sunny morning in the heart of Louisiana it was hard to imagine who might invade. Soon, though, they had evidence of terrible fighting. Men came back from the river – some running, others limping – all bloodied and stained with powder smoke. They gabbled out extraordinary tales: hordes of blacks swarming off the river; ships on fire; massacres in the cotton fields. For the men in the house, it was hard to credit. But the wounds were real enough.
The tide of fugitives had slowed, but now a last knot of men came running out from the slave quarters towards the main house. There were half a dozen of them, dressed in the militia’s blue tunics and black forage caps. They ran over the embankment, towards the causeway between the ponds. A dozen black men waving spears and guns charged after them.
Perhaps the guards in the house did not immediately recognise the fugitives running towards them. But then, their faces were shaded by the forage caps, and they had their heads down to avoid the pursuers’ bullets. In any case, Chester had enlisted so many men it was impossible to know them all. And one thing was incontrovertible. The men in uniform were white, and the men chasing them were black.
A black man, armed, rising against his white masters, was something that no man in the house could permit. Without hesitation, they opened the doors to let in their comrades.
Mungo raced over the bridge that crossed the moat, afraid he would burst out of the borrowed militia coat he wore. Every instinct in his body screamed it was madness, running headlong towards enemy guns, but he could not let that emotion show. Confidence was his only protection now. If he gave the men in the house any hint he was not who he appeared beneath the blue jacket, he would be dead.
At the far end of the bridge he paused, turned and let off a shot at his pursuers. It flew wide of Wisi’s head – though close enough to be convincing. Wisi threw himself to the ground, rolling behind a stone urn so that the men in the house could not hit him.
Mungo ran on. The stairs were in front of him, leading up to the great door of the house – and it was open. He took the stairs three at a time, with Virgil Henderson and the other white men from the Raven’s crew pounding up behind him.
/> A scarred face peered out like a rat from behind the door.
‘Get in!’ he cried.
Mungo ran in. The cavernous entrance hall had become something between a field hospital and an arsenal. Wounded men lay bleeding against the walls, while the back of the room was stacked with cases of ammunition and casks of powder. Sandbags had been hastily piled at the foot of the stairs to make an impromptu barricade.
‘Don’t shut the door,’ said Mungo. ‘There’s more of us coming.’
The scar-faced man looked out again. The blacks had retreated behind the earthen embankments again, though occasionally they would sneak out to let off a shot.
‘Who the hell are they?’ he said. ‘Mr Marion said we might come under attack. But I never thought it’d be niggers that did it.’
‘I don’t suppose you did,’ Mungo said, and drove his knife into the man’s heart.
With the chaos in the hall, no one noticed for a moment. The man slumped to the floor, oozing blood from his chest, but that did not make him any different from the other wounded in the room. It gave Mungo time to move deeper inside. Henderson and his men fanned out around him.
‘Who’s in charge here?’ Mungo demanded.
A man with a lieutenant’s epaulette turned.
‘I am.’
Mungo drew a pistol and aimed it at him. The lieutenant’s face went wide with shock. Even then, he did not understand the danger. All he could see was a white man in uniform.
‘What in God’s name—?’
‘God has no interest in this.’
Mungo fired; the lieutenant’s brains erupted from his skull and splashed over the faces of the men behind. They were still wiping it out of their eyes when Henderson’s men launched into them with their swords and axes.
Chaos erupted. Unable to tell who was friend or foe, most of the militia simply fled. The wounded, who had just escaped one massacre, tried to join them. Those who could not walk dragged themselves across the floor, tripping up others and clogging the doorways. That left them easy targets for the Raven’s crew.
The men on the upper floors did not know what had happened, but they heard the shots and shouts from downstairs. Somehow, the enemy had got in. They left their posts and ran – some to join the battle, others to flee it. That left the way clear for Wisi and his men to approach. They ran across the causeway and burst through the door, just in time to engage the militia reinforcements that had come down the stairs.
Soon the hall was cleared. The only militia left alive were those too weak to go elsewhere to die.
‘Search the house!’ Mungo shouted above the din. ‘Find Camilla! Find Chester!’
The Raven’s crew spread out, moving from room to room in pairs, pausing only to fire or to reload. Some of the militia tried to hide behind curtains, or under furniture; they were dragged out and killed. Some hurled themselves from windows, but then they found themselves trapped in the moat. A few tried to swim it; none reached the other side.
Mungo moved through the smoke and carnage like a demon, screaming Camilla’s name. In one room, he saw a whole wall decorated with a map picked out in gold. Blood spattered the neatly painted fields; holes pocked the plaster where bullets had struck it. In another room, a grand piano had been turned on its side as a barricade.
He stopped for a moment to reload his pistols. The pause gave him the chance to listen. The sounds of battle were sporadic now – his men had mostly cleared the militia from the house. All he heard were occasional gunshots, and the agonised cries of injured men.
And – much closer by – the sound of a child wailing.
Mungo followed the sound, through a billiards room and a parlour to an open door. It led outside onto a broad marble terrace, filled with statues in classical poses. And there, among the stone figures, four living people: Camilla, Isaac, Granville and Chester.
They were filthy. Under the gaze of those flawless white statues, they seemed like creatures from beneath the earth. Soot, blood and mud stained their clothes; their hair was ragged and wild. They must have fled through the house, hoping to escape across the terrace into the east wing, but a huge cabinet had been pushed against the opposite door and blocked their way out. They had nowhere else to run.
Granville saw Mungo first. He aimed his pistol and fired, but the flint snapped on an empty pan. Mungo smiled. He raised his own gun, and shot Granville straight between the eyes.
Isaac screamed. Mungo advanced across the terrace, staring at Chester. The grey eyes, once so cruel and confident, were rimmed with red and weeping from the smoke. The blisters on his face had burst, streaming blood and pus. He had always been a monster, Mungo thought. Now the evil inside him was manifest for all the world to see.
Vengeance sang in Mungo’s heart with the clarity of angel voices. He had destroyed Chester. He had bankrupted him, humiliated him, proven him to be a coward and torn apart his house. He had stripped him of everything he possessed – every single thing. All that remained now was to finish it.
Mungo stepped closer. He raised the pistol and pointed it at Chester’s head.
‘You took my whole life from me,’ he hissed. ‘I swore I would do the same to you, that I would make you watch while I dismantled your life brick by brick and crushed it to dust.’
He was about to pull the trigger when a burst of motion distracted his attention. Isaac ran out from behind the statue where he had been cowering and threw himself into Chester.
‘Don’t hurt my daddy.’
It was the last thing Mungo had expected him to say. He paused in surprise and lowered his gaze to look at the boy, who was pressing himself back against Chester’s legs, staring defiantly at Mungo. His complexion was darker than Chester’s, his hair black and stiff. But when Mungo looked into his eyes, wide and frightened, he saw the same strength of purpose as the man behind him.
Mungo went still. He looked at Camilla, his eyes brimming with a terrifying emotion.
‘I thought he was your son.’
‘Yes,’ she whispered.
‘You told me the father was one of Chester’s overseers.’
Camilla did not answer. It didn’t matter. The truth was written clear and bold on Chester’s face.
‘If there is one ounce of human kindness in your heart, I beg you to spare him,’ Chester pleaded. Isaac had started to cry. Almost without thinking, Chester lifted him up and cradled him against his chest. ‘He is innocent.’
Mungo looked between them: Chester, Isaac and Camilla. For perhaps the only time in his life, he seemed to be paralysed by indecision.
‘Why didn’t you tell me?’ he said softly.
‘Because I was afraid you would kill him,’ said Camilla.
‘You did not trust me?’ Fire flashed in Mungo’s eyes. ‘When were you going to tell me? When I had killed Chester and set you free? When I had adopted the boy as my own? When I had named him as my own heir? Did you think I would be deaf to the sound of Chester laughing at me beyond the grave, his ultimate revenge to have planted his cuckoo in my nest?’
‘You would not understand,’ said Camilla. Her eyes were pregnant with tears. ‘You say Chester took everything away from you. But did you ever lose your freedom? Your name? The very right to call yourself a human being? Isaac is all I have ever had of my own.’
‘You had me,’ said Mungo.
‘And if that means anything – if you truly love me as you say – then spare Isaac.’
The gun swayed left and right, like a compass in a storm. Camilla and Chester; love or revenge. The two emotions warred in Mungo’s breast so fiercely, he thought he might split apart. Chester stood at the back edge of the terrace with Isaac in his arms. The boy’s body blocked Chester’s torso and part of his head, leaving Mungo with little to aim at. Even if he hit, the force of the shot might push Chester backwards, off the terrace and into the moat. He would carry Isaac with him.
‘Let him go,’ said Camilla. ‘You have done enough.’
Mungo hardly heard
her. How could he spare Chester, leave his revenge incomplete? But if Isaac died, Mungo would lose Camilla forever.
I do not intend to have to choose, Mungo had told Solange. Once again, just as he had on the shores of Africa, he heard the Fates laughing at him.
What will you do?
Once again he found himself in the slave hold of the Blackhawk. The stench, the suffering, the sounds – the pit of human misery – and a young girl with frightened eyes. If Mungo did not kill Chester, every terrible thing he had done would be for nothing. The thirst for revenge that had driven him to the darkest places of the earth would never be quenched.
‘Please,’ Camilla begged.
Mungo nodded. His face cleared. Deep in his soul, some great knot seemed to have unbound itself.
He aimed the pistol at Chester’s head and fired.
The shot crashed around the marble terrace, echoed back by the mansion’s walls like the full broadside of a man-of-war. Yet even above it all, Mungo heard a high-pitched scream that cut through the noise, then abruptly cut off.
Smoke stung his eyes, but not so much that he could not see what he had done. Across the terrace, Chester stood petrified in shock. He was not looking at Mungo. He stared at the floor, where a figure in white lay bleeding at his feet. A round hole, just above her left breast, showed where the bullet had struck as she threw herself in its path.
‘Milla!’ Isaac screamed. He wriggled free of his father’s grip and jumped down, bawling like a baby taking his first breaths in the world. He ran to Camilla’s side. He tugged her arm but she did not move. ‘Mammy!’
Mungo could barely take his eyes off Camilla. But behind her, he saw Chester’s hand reaching into his coat – just as he had in the study at Windemere, the day Mungo returned from Cambridge, when he had pulled out the little pearl-handled revolver he kept there.
Chester never finished drawing it. With a roar, Mungo sprang at him over Camilla’s fallen body. Chester’s right hand was still inside his coat; he was not ready to defend himself. Before he could react, Mungo grabbed him by both arms. He lifted Chester’s whole body into the air, took one step forward and hurled him off the edge of the terrace.
