Guns and Guano

by Andrew Knighton

CHAPTER 2: WELCOME TO HAKON

  The pier was made of salvaged planks, bleached the colour of bones by the tropical sun. It creaked beneath Dirk’s feet as he stepped from the St Mary’s gangplank, leaving behind the comfortable shade of the yacht. They seemed to have sailed into the ghost of an inlet, pale sand stretching back to white cliffs, topped off by a lighthouse. The scrubby bushes at the base of the cliffs were the sickly yellow of old sheets.

  A procession emerged out of this ethereal scene - half a dozen men dressed only in trousers and shoes, none shorter than six feet tall, their skin a rich brown. They prowled along the pier, sticks swinging loose and ready in their hands, muscular chests shining in the tropical heat.

  Dirk turned to face them, his hand settling on the butt of his Gravemaker pistol. The only sounds were the caw of gulls and the pad of their footfalls. He tensed, ready to draw.

  A dozen feet away the men stopped and split into two columns, standing solemnly at the sides of the pier. Another figure strode through the gap.

  “I say, are you Mister Dynamo?”

  The man was short and rotund, immaculately dressed in a linen suit and Panama hat. Pink cheeked and freckled, his ginger moustache wriggled into a welcoming smile.

  “Reginald Cullen, Her Majesty’s Governor of Hakon.”

  He switched his ivory handled stick to his left hand and reached out with the right, delivering a hearty handshake.

  “Dirk Dynamo. Pleased to meet you.” Dirk turned to gesture at the figure now descending from the boat. “This is Timothy Blaze-Simms. Tim, this is Governor Cullen.”

  “A pleasure to meet you, sir.” Blaze-Simms set aside a box of instruments and shook hands.

  “The pleasure’s all mine, Sir Timothy. Might I ask how your brother is doing?”

  “Arthur? He’s very well. Just back from a posting in India.”

  “We were in the second team at Eton together, don’t you know.”

  “I say, how splendid! You’ll have to tell me the truth behind Arty’s tales of sporting glory.”

  Dirk coughed and gestured again towards the plank.

  “And this is-” he began.

  “Mrs McNair!” Cullen exclaimed. “What an unexpected pleasure.”

  “Reginald.” Isabelle smiled and offered her hand. “How sweet of you to meet us.”

  She hooked one arm through that of the Governor and began strolling towards the shore, blue skirts swirling, chattering about shared friends and acquaintances. Blaze-Simms ambled behind, joining in with the gossip and laughter, leaving Dirk with the silent islanders.

  “Guess I’d better get the bags.”

  One of the men stepped forwards, shaking his head.

  “No sir,” he said. “That’s our job.”

  A buggy was waiting at the shore, drawn by a pair of chalk-white horses. A young black woman wearing yellow robes and a frown cracked the reins and they shot off, over the beach and up a track running diagonally across the cliff-face. Gulls scattered as they passed, soaring and croaking to each, returning to their perches once the buggy had passed.

  “The rocks themselves aren’t white, of course.” Cullen clutched his hat to his head as they sped round a tight corner. “It’s the gulls that do it. Here on Hakon the cliffs are steep so just enough sticks to create the colour. But Kerelm, the next island over, is absolutely thick in the stuff. Some of our chaps spend months over there, mining for British Guano Incorporated.”

  “So you’re saying the whole island’s covered in...” Just in time, Dirk remembered there were ladies present.

  “Absolutely. Wonderful stuff, it’s reviving the local economy. Where there’s muck there’s gold, as Braithwaite keeps saying.”

  “There’s gold in the gull goo?”

  “Not literally, old chap.” Cullen smiled the cosy smile of a man repeating an old joke. “But there’s a huge market for it as a fertiliser, and even in experimental explosives. They make a fortune selling it back home. Some say African stuff isn’t as good as the Chilean birds produce, but Braithwaite – he’s British Guano’s chap out here, you’ll meet him later – he says that’s poppycock. And isn’t it far more patriotic to use produce from the Empire?”

  White coated rocks glared at them from all around. It seemed incredible to Dirk that something so common could really be worth so much.

  “How do you know it works?” he asked.

  “Because of this...”

  They crested the rise and a blaze of greenery opened up before them. Groves of oranges and mangoes. Fields of beans and golden grain. Acre after acre of farmland carved from the thin soil of this rocky land. And beyond that, lush jungle, swaying up the side of the island’s mountain heart.

  Dark faces looked up from the fields as the buggy rattled past. The labourers’ clothes were worn but not ragged, the mark of poor but careful people. A few smiled and waved at the travellers, and Blaze-Simms waved back with his top hat, grinning and glancing around.

  Dirk shifted uncomfortably in his seat. Just like back home, slavery might be gone but racial divisions remained. He’d taken up arms against his own kin to make men free, but freedom in itself was never enough.

  “What sort of crop rotations do you use?” Blaze-Simms asked excitedly.

  “Rather outside my area of expertise, I’m afraid.” Cullen scratched his head. “Maybe you can ask one of the estate managers at the reception this evening.”

  “There’s to be a party?” Isabelle smiled. “How splendid.”

  Gravel crunched beneath their feet as they stepped from the buggy onto the driveway of the governor’s mansion. The main building was three storeys of white-washed wood, with servants’ quarters and kitchens sprawling off the back. Framed by the jungle and a mountain beyond, it appeared as if a lone artefact of humanity amid nature’s vast expanse. Balconies and wide windows looked out through open storm shutters across flowering gardens and a croquet lawn whose restrained greenery was in marked contrast to the wild jungle canopy.

  Dirk strode from the drive up steps that creaked slightly under his weight and onto a sheltered porch. A native servant in a tailcoat opened double doors, allowing them into an entrance hall that could have held a regiment. The space was bright and airy, lit by wide windows and a glass ceiling high above. To the left of the door hung a painting in which bold oil strokes created the impression of a French country scene, trees and walkers fanning out along a still river. To the right stood a curious sculpture, a metal man twelve inches high perched on a pedestal, oblong face gazed disdainfully from beneath a wide hat, cold fingers clutching crude steel swords.

  “I say, this is rather splendid.” Timothy had stopped before the statue, head darting from side to side as he took in its every angle. “Dahomeyan?”

  “That’s right,” Cullen said. “Many of the locals have ties with the kingdom, and I like to think that I’ve built a rather good working relationship. King Glele sent that piece as a gift last summer. Apparently it’s some sort of war god. They built him to celebrate a victory over their neighbours.”

  “Aren’t the Dahomey absolutely beastly to people they defeat?” There was a hint of shock in Isabelle’s voice.

  “I’m afraid they all are on the mainland.” Cullen played thoughtfully with the tip of his moustache. “Dahomey, Oyo, Sokoto, all these little African kingdoms with their pot-bellied tyrants and their bloodthirsty goons. But I rather feel that, if we are to bring civilisation to these poor people, that can be done better with an open ear and a whispered word than by shouting at them every time they fight. The white man’s burden is a heavy one, but we must bear it with grace.”

  The governor’s words raised a fighting spirit within Dirk. Back home, good people had fought and died to set men free, but it was attitudes like Cullen’s that had made the world such a bitterly broken place.

  But he had to remember, these were old ways of thinking, habits it took men a long time to break. Passing judgement wouldn’t help them get the governor’s cooperation in their
search for the tablet.

  With a sudden hiss the statue turned, raising its arms. Steam erupted from beneath its hat as it leaped from the pedestal and started marching toward Isabelle. Quick as a flash, Dirk pulled off his jacket and scooped up the machine, leather protecting him from its short but sharp blades.

  “Much as I appreciate the gesture,” Isabelle said, “I really don’t think I need rescuing from toy soldiers.”

  Heat rose in Dirk’s cheeks.

  “I just figured-” His mumbled words were cut short by a final spray of steam. The statue fell still.

  “Dash it all.” Cullen peered at the metal man. “That was meant to be a surprise for the party. You haven’t bent the arms, have you?”

  Dirk returned the statue to its pedestal, then followed as the governor led them towards the stairs, walking stick tapping on the pale wooden floor. Other works of art lined the hall, some European, some local. The perfectly polished floor reflected doorways as dark pools on its gleaming surface.

  The room smelt of stale cigar smoke and expensive perfume, the scents of petty power. Dirk half-expected his feet to shoot out beneath him on the mirror-smooth boards. This building was a statement, not a home.

  “I say,” Blaze-Simms exclaimed as they were led up to their rooms. “Isn’t this whole place marvellous?”

  Dirk glanced back down the stairs at the native servants dragging their baggage into the hall.

  “Yep,” he said, “it’s real special.”

  Night was falling when Dirk returned suited and booted to the hall, ready to face the evening reception. For such an isolated island, Hakon had a surprising number of foreign guests.

  “Tis the guano that does it.” George Braithwaite, a tall Yorkshireman with a beard like a bramble, knocked his wine back before continuing. “All sorts of folks want in these days. We even sell to the French, if you’d credit such a thing.”

  A tray appeared at Braithwaite’s shoulder, supported by a straight-laced servant in bowtie and tails. Being waited on like this was something Dirk had never got a liking for. It felt doubly awkward when the servants were the only black faces in the room.

  “Ta.” The British Guano manager switched glasses and continued. “Yon fellow in the yellow jacket, he’s from some fancy French farming consortium. Those great musclebound fellows are meant to be his secretaries, but if they take minutes I’m the Queen of Sheba. That little fellow in the robes is Chinese. Don’t trust ’im myself, shifty eyes, but his missus is pretty as a picture. Then there’s Simpson...”

  Dirk nodded and smiled as Braithwaite gave a verbal tour of the room, picking over the dregs of each guest’s habits and reputation. He seemed to have picked Dirk out as a kindred spirit, a good sort to keep company with.

  While Braithwaite talked, Dirk took the time to absorb his surroundings. Upwards of seventy guests were milling around the hall, a half dozen native waiters drifting between them with placid assurance. The room was lit by scores of candles, fixed to brackets on the walls or reaching up from iron stands in the centre of the room. Sculptures threw long shadows across the floor, their edges blurring with the flicker of flames. Beside Dirk, the silhouette of the warrior statue stretched across the threshold, his blades guarding against intruders from the outer dark. The doors had been fastened wide, allowing fresh night air into the house. The scent of jungle flowers and the chirp of crickets flooded in, the African wild mingling with the bustle, chatter and clinking glasses of a very European evening’s entertainment.

  Undercover work was always tense, and undercover work was what this boiled down to. Isabelle had insisted that they maintain the image of tourists, just curious about this out-of-the-way island. Blend in. Keep people happy. Look for any clues about where the wreck might be. Dirk had done his share of undercover work for the Pinkerton Agency both during and after the war. But that had mostly been on the streets and carrying a gun. A mansion and a champagne glass were a very different matter.

  “Cracking canapes,” Blaze-Simms said, wandering up with Isabelle on his arm. He brushed absently at the crumbs on the lapel of his tailcoat, then reached out a hand to Braithwaite. “Timothy Blaze-Simms, at your service.”

  “Pleased to meet you. I’m George Braithwaite.”

  “And this is Mrs Isabelle McNair.”

  “Think we’ve met,” Braithwaite said. “Some London do.”

  “The African Importers’ Ball.” Isabelle beamed, and Braithwaite came as close to cheerful as he’d looked all evening. When faced with Isabelle in evening dress, draped with red velvet and a sparkling smile, it would be hard for any man to remain dour. “Perhaps we could find some champagne and you could finish telling me about puffin guano.”

  She took his arm and sailed off into the crowd, nodding and smiling as he enthused about the merits of exotic bird waste.

  Dirk breathed a sigh of relief. Braithwaite was probably better company than most of the folks here, but a man could only take so much gossip and guano talk.

  “Come on,” Blaze-Simms said, snatching a glass of wine from a passing waiter. “I’m sure it’s not that bad.”

  Dirk shifted uncomfortably in his dinner suit. He’d never enjoyed dressing up smart, not even when it was an army uniform. He didn’t own a black tie outfit, and wouldn’t have brought it if he did. The servants had found an old suit that just about fit him, but the shoes pinched his feet, and he didn’t dare breathe deep for fear of bursting buttons across the room.

  Blaze-Simms, on the other hand, looked at home in both clothes and surroundings. His suit might be flecked with pastry but it fitted him like skin, and there were enough people in any conversation to hide his occasional mental absences.

  “I’ll say this for Cullen,” the Englishman said, sipping his drink. “He knows how to host a party, and he doesn’t let some remote posting get in his way.”

  Dirk nodded. He didn’t know much about parties, but this one seemed to be a success. A selection of wines and spirits were circulating the room in tall, elegant glasses, accompanied by small pastries in the French style. The waiters, all locals, wore immaculate black tie, not a bead of perspiration showing on their straight faces. They stepped anonymously through the room, taking orders and collecting glasses. The host also roamed the floor, making introductions, cracking jokes, finding the connections necessary to spark conversations. Ever present at his shoulder, striking in a yellow and blue dress of African design, was the woman who had driven the cart earlier, staring at the world with a sternness that would have taken the jollity out of any man but Cullen.

  “Ain’t that a funny thing though?” Dirk said. “Such a sociable guy, working out here, miles from society.”

  It was hard not to like the governor, however he looked down on his African neighbours. He was so cheerful, so eager to please. It made him seem all the more out of place on an isolated island with all the worst trappings of colonialism and the old feudal order. Or maybe, Dirk admitted to himself, he just didn’t like thinking that anyone could smilingly oppress his fellow man.

  “Comes with the career.” Timothy waved a hand, absently sloshing white wine over his sleeve. “Chap does a year or two in some quaint backwater, shows he can take the responsibility, gets moved on to somewhere a bit more civilised.”

  “Listen to Cullen talk.” Dirk noticed the unease lying behind his own words. “He’s been here more than a year or two.”

  “Maybe he likes the place.”

  “Maybe he likes the women.”

  “I say, Dynamo, there’s no call for that sort of...”

  “Relax. I’m messing with you.” Dirk turned and guided his colleague to one of the governor’s objets d’art, a painting of tangled pink and brown bodies against a background of swirling blue and grey. “I’ve been staring at this thing half the damn evening, trying to fathom it out. What do you make of it?”

  “I suspect it is the work of a local artist.” Blaze-Simms peered at the painting. “Note the distinctive proportions of the figures
and the formalised facial expressions. The abstracted scene indicates the influence of French impressionist work, an attempt to use foreign methods to depict native experiences, encapsulating the moment of exposure to the alien. Note the intertwining of African and European bodies, reflecting the coming together of the fates of two continents.”

  “I note that the white guys are on top.”

  “Oh yes, so they are.”

  Blaze-Simms’s casual tone showed how little Dirk’s point had sunk in. But then, Blaze-Simms was one of those people so used to the top of the tree that they never thought about what lay amid the roots. That and he had no sense of irony.

  “What do you make of that brown thing down the bottom?” Dirk asked.

  “Very dynamic brushwork. Probably a burnt umber pigment.”

  “What does it represent?” Dirk had once read a manual on teaching that said folks learnt more by drawing their own conclusions. Moments like this made him doubt it, but he soldiered on.

  “Oh, well, it’s rather angular, lots of straight lines, so something man made. Brown could be soil or wood, probably the latter, and the background colours fit a maritime context, which combined with the curved lower lines implies a boat or ship. The lines become disjointed in the centre, as by some sort of rupture – clearly the ship is broken.”

  “Which would make this a painting of...?”

  “A shipwreck, of course.”

  There was a pause, Blaze-Simms smiling indulgently. Then his jaw dropped and his eyebrows shot up.

  “You think it’s the wreck the stone was lost in?”

  “Well, it doesn’t have a label saying ’1733’ or ’lost treasure here’, but how many wrecks do you reckon there have been around these parts?”

  “Let’s find out.”

  Cullen was talking with the Chinaman, the governor’s grand gestures and lively demeanour restrained to suit his guest. The governor’s amazon companion stood motionless opposite the Chinaman’s diminutive wife, their eyes locked, frozen glares filling the air between them. Dirk waited for Cullen to excuse himself, then waved him over.

  “Gentlemen! I trust you’re enjoying our little soirée?” Cullen’s face was lit by a jovial grin.

  “Splendid.”

  “Mighty fine, thank you.”

  “I don’t believe I made proper introductions earlier.” Cullen turned to his female companion. “Sir Timothy Blaze-Simms, Mr Dirk Dynamo, this is Bekoe-Kumi of the ahosi.”

  “Pleased to meet you, ma’am,” Dirk said.

  “Delighted,” Blaze-Simms added.

  Bekoe-Kumi nodded silently. In a place like this, Dirk could understand anyone getting a little reserved.

  “Tell me, is ahosi your tribe?” Timothy flashed his most winning smile, to no response. “I don’t believe I’ve heard the term before.”

  “It means that I am a bride of the King of Dahomey,” Bekoe-Kumi replied.

  “Gosh, royalty eh?” Blaze-Simms raised his eyebrows. “Does the king have many wives?”

  “Enough to crush the Yoruba and send them whimpering like dogs.”

  “Must make family parties terribly crowded.”

  So much for Bekoe-Kumi’s signs of social discomfort. If she was royalty then she’d be as comfortable in high society as anyone else here. Her stiffness probably reflected a very different mindset, a disdain Dirk had seen far too often in his life.

  “Governor Cullen,” he said before the conversation could go down an awkward path. “Could you tell me about this painting?”

  “Of course, old chap.” Cullen turned with a smile toward the picture. “It was painted by Felipe, one of the local lads. Frightfully pleasant young man, his family are church-goers and the minister, when we had one, encouraged him to take an interest in culture. Turned out he was rather gifted. He’s even had some sales in the more excitable European galleries.”

  “And the painting?” Dirk asked.

  “Based on a local legend. A slave ship went down outside the bay, near Reinhart’s Spur, sometime in the 1730s I believe. All aboard were lost, terrible tragedy, but of course that whole period was pretty ghastly. Fellows dragged off in chains, worked to the bone in plantations in the Americas. Thank God even your lot have stopped that business now.”

  “Every nation has its shame,” Dirk replied. Down memory’s long trail he saw soldiers in grey march toward him as he stood, hands bloody, in the thin blue line. He remembered a summer’s day on a small, round hill, the crackle of gunfire and wet thud of bayonets into flesh, the ache of his arms and the sudden flash of pain. He tilted his head to one side, felt damaged muscles twinge.

  “Anyway, the locals have rather clung onto the story of this sinking,” Cullen continued. “They believe that the spirits of the slaves, still shackled to the ship as it went down, were unable to leave this world. They haunt the vessel, trapped in the suffering and fear that were their lot in life and death. So powerful is their loss that they draw others to them, the ghosts of drowned slaves from all over the Atlantic. Men, women and children, victims of that terrible trade. Those who died trying to escape. Others who drowned in wrecks or were thrown overboard for expediency’s sake. Now they supposedly gather at our wreck, a sort of alumni reunion for the departed, rattling their ethereal chains and talking about the bad old days.”

  “I say,” Blaze-Simms said, “that sounds rather like-”

  “Fine story, governor,” Dirk interjected. After the attack on the Epiphany Club, he was worried that other folks might be after the same stones as them and the trail to the lost library. No sense letting Blaze-Simms get carried away and talk about it in public. “I bet this island has plenty more like it.”

  “Oh yes,” Cullen said. “They say it was first settled by a man named Nahweni, who arrived by accident after getting drunk on fermented mango juice and falling asleep on his raft. He woke up just down the coast from here, on the beach now known as Coconut Cove. Of course, he couldn’t settle the place alone...”

  Cullen started into an excitable account of the island’s early history, prior to its days as a slave staging post. It was a rich mix of the deeply implausible and the all too likely, mingling tales of talking animals and angry hills with those of petty tyrants and unfaithful husbands. But before he reached the arrival of Europeans, Cullen was interrupted by a young man asking about the next day’s hunting. He was drawn off to one side, leaving Bekoe-Kumi with his guests.

  “You bring much baggage,” she said sternly.

  “Mostly scientific equipment,” Blaze-Simms explained. “I promised a chap at the Royal Society that I’d take some weather recordings and soil samples while I was here. And then there’s the diving clobber, that’s most of the heavy stuff.”

  “You go diving?” Her stare was like her body, fierce and unwavering.

  “Oh yes, of course.” Blaze-Simms smiled and sipped his wine, apparently oblivious to the force levelled at him.

  “You stay away from the wreck.”

  So much for secrecy. It looked like folks had worked out their aim here, and some of them didn’t like it.

  “Oh, I’m not worried about ghost stories,” Blaze-Simms said, smiling. “This is the age of science, I consider myself very safe from the unprovable.”

  Bekoe-Kumi stepped closer. “I am not asking. I am telling.”

  “What?” Blaze-Simms blinked.

  “The wreck is a special place. If you go there people will be angry.” She flexed the muscles of her well-formed arms. “I will be angry.”

  Blaze-Simms tried to back away, ended up pressed against a wall. “Well, I’m sure we can...”

  “You do not want me angry.”

  They were so close now that their faces almost touched. She took the glass from his hand, squeezing it between finger and thumb. It frosted with cracks, then exploded, showering them both in flashing points of crystallised light. Other guests made a great show of not staring, even as their glances flicked toward the confrontation.

  “No need for t
hings to get unpleasant.” Dirk stepped forward, pushing Bekoe-Kumi back as he placed himself between her and his friend. “We ain’t here to make trouble for anyone, are we Tim?”

  “On no,” Blaze-Simms said. “We just want to-”

  “We just want to take in the sights,” Dirk said. “Then we’ll be on our way.”

  He snatched an empty tray from a passing waiter, bent it casually in half and held up the twisted results in front of Bekoe-Kumi.

  “No need for trouble,” he said.

  She fixed Dirk with a dark stare filled with the deepest of hatred. Then she turned on her heel and strode away.

  “What a strange girl.” Blaze-Simms said. He frowned at the broken glass, then brightened, turning to Dirk with a grin. “Good thing it was such awful wine. Do you fancy a brandy?”