A Flower for the Queen: A Historical Novel

by Caroline Vermalle

  “What’s that there?” Masson asked, ignoring the flora and pointing at a small encampment of tents and roughly built timber buildings about a mile away.

  “That’s the Company camp at Muyssenberg. They’re busy building a fort to guard the back door to Cape Town. This is about as close as we should get. If they see you here, we’ll have a bit of explaining to do, so maybe it would be better if we went along the shore to the east?”

  As he looked eastward, the only thing that Masson could pick out as different from their present surroundings was a small wood at the eastern end of the bay.

  “I was told that there would be a vast array of new flowers here. But since we came down from the hills, I haven’t seen a single species that hasn’t already been named or collected.” Masson paused, unsure of how to proceed. The shadows were lengthening, and the sun was sinking in the sky towards the mountain that now lay to the west. “I suppose we just need to press on.”

  With the sun at their backs, the men changed course and headed east along the shore. They passed pans of brackish water where flamingos waded and fed. Whilst he fretted that maybe he had misunderstood Banks’s instructions, Masson couldn’t help but wonder at the distance that he had travelled and the shocking beauty of the landscape through which he moved. With a light breeze blowing off the ocean to cool them and with almost no signs of human habitation, Masson felt as though he had been cast adrift in a veritable paradise where even a sand dune was a kaleidoscope of colour, and where time resisted any attempt to be marked by anything other than the footprints of the red-beaked oystercatchers that darted to and fro along the edge of the surf that lapped the shore.

  For the first time since landing on the southern tip of the world, Masson found himself thinking about his father and remembering the look in his eyes as he talked wistfully of the far-flung lands he would travel to.

  Willmer passed the time explaining the system of signals that the colonists used to warn of impending attack, even pointing out the names of the distant hills where the signal stations were located. He waited patiently as Masson noted everything he told him in his journal and even looked over his shoulder to correct any inaccuracies in the maps and drawings that he made along the way.

  When Willmer told him that a bit further inland, but parallel to the coast, there was a track that connected Cape Town to the eastern hinterland, Masson asked if the road was safe to travel or if, like in England, it was plagued by highwaymen. But Willmer just chuckled and replied, “No robbers would survive out here.”

  They followed the shore for the rest of the day until they reached the small wood that Masson had spotted earlier. Now that they were closer, he could see that on the far side of the wood, close to the bay’s extreme eastern edge, was a small village of ramshackle dwellings constructed mostly of pieces of flotsam that looked to have been washed up on the nearby shore. The huge sandstone ridges of the Hottentots-Holland Mountains, which stood like enormous battlements, guarding the bay against the winter winds and wilderness of the eastern hinterlands, were orientated at an angle so that when they plunged into the sea, the coastline was forced to curve south and then west again, enclosing the eastern side of the bay in a wall of towering rock.

  When Masson asked if perhaps they shouldn’t go and ask in the village if there was anyone who knew of the flower, Willmer rebuffed the idea swiftly, saying only “You’ll find no flowers in that den of sin.”

  But when Masson looked over the little hamlet that stood looking proudly out over the sea, he could see nothing to suggest that it was anything else “Surely it can’t be that bad.”

  “Forgive me, Mr Masson, but you don’t know slaves like I do. In there, they keep to their own customs and practise their own religion, or what passes for religion.”

  “Are you afraid that they might taint the pure burghers of Cape Town?” Masson asked, thinking of the swinging metal cages.

  Willmer just shrugged. “Did you know that unless shipments of new seeds arrive from Holland every year, the vegetables that are grown here slowly degenerate until they become absolutely worthless? I am sure you will appreciate that for seeds to thrive, they need to be helped along by the gardener’s hand, and when seeds are weak, they need all the help they can get.”

  Willmer could see that his argument had made little headway with Masson, and so continued. “I know that being English, you don’t approve of slavery. Here in the Cape, the VOC doesn’t want any trouble with the local tribes and so, as I said, it is forbidden to take slaves from the local population. We can only trade slaves brought from the far eastern colonies or those that have been captured from Portuguese ships. For this reason, there are never enough, and so here in the Cape slaves are treated better than anywhere else, on account of how difficult it is to replace them. A slave might not have his freedom, but he is well fed and clothed, and if he is sick, he is cared for and healed. If he is to repay the investment that has been made, he must be strong and healthy and live a long and productive life. Can the same be said of those soldiers and sailors that die like flies in the Company Hospital, and who have so little left at the end of their days that all their worldly belongings will buy them is the canvas sack in which they are buried?”

  “But at least they die free men,” replied Masson, unconvinced by the piety in his own voice.

  “Yes, they do. And in spite of how well they are cared for, given half a chance, a slave will just as soon cut your throat if he thinks that it will buy his freedom. So where is the logic in that?”

  Masson looked in the direction of the village and thought of all the slaves that might be eager to cut his throat. He wondered if maybe they were not too close after all.

  Willmer read his thoughts and chuckled. “Don’t worry, Mr Masson, you’re perfectly safe as long as you’re with me.”

  “A man alone cannot survive in Africa?” asked Masson, not trying to disguise the sarcasm in his voice.

  “Exactly.”

  They had crossed almost the entire length of the bay, but Masson had still seen no sign of the Queen’s flower or the treasure trove that Banks had promised. He was disappointed and confused and left with little choice other than to agree to Willmer’s suggestion that they stop for the night. So, with snakes and bloodthirsty slaves not far from his mind, Masson went in search of firewood whilst Willmer set about preparing the camp and making their dinner.

  After eating, Masson sat down gently on his rough blanket, his backside stiff and sore from the ride, and looked over his notes from the day. Remembering Banks’s instructions, he marked out the route they had taken and indicated the major landmarks they had passed. He also marked on the map the location and approximate size of the camp at Muyssenberg as well as the slave village. As a final note, he labelled the locations and names of the signal stations that Willmer had told him about.

  As he scribbled, he realised that other than the brackish pans with their wading flamingos, they had seen no other water sources and certainly no freshwater ones.

  Masson was so busy with his work that he had not noticed that evening had given way to night and that he was working by the light of the largest and brightest full moon he had ever witnessed. When the moon was covered over by thick clouds, the two men were plunged into a most profound darkness.

  From a distance that was hard to judge came familiar whooping bark. “I heard that sound last night in the Gardens. What is it?” asked Masson.

  Willmer swallowed his tea and licked his lips. “You didn’t see it?”

  Masson shook his head.

  “Probably just as well. It’s called a hyena, but it may as well be the devil himself. There was an Arab trader who was in the Cape for a while. He told me that where he came from, the locals believed them to be werewolves roaming the earth in search of fallen warriors on which to feed. They thought that they attacked only the brave, and that they would mesmerise their victims with their eyes or their scent.

  “In truth, they’re much worse. If they only w
ent after the brave, then half the farmers here would have nothing to worry about!” But Willmer’s smile disappeared from his face as he looked into the fire and continued. “At first when you see one, you don’t think much of it. It’s got this small head on a thick neck and runs all lopsided on account of its big, powerful front legs and its smaller, weaker hind legs. It also has this silly little laugh that seems ridiculous when you compare it to a lion’s roar — a thing so terrible that it paralyses your very soul.

  “But make no mistake, given the choice between having to take on a pack of those demons and a lion, I would take the lion any day of the week. Hyenas stay hidden during the day and come out to hunt at night. I don’t know about any hypnotic effects, but what I can tell you is that they leave the most terrible smell in their wake — a little like boiling tallow. Anyway, in a group they can kill anything and their back legs may be weak and feeble, but their jaws are stronger than any lion’s.”

  Willmer finished the last of his tea and continued as the sounds of insects and a multitude of invisible creatures overwhelmed them. “What you have to remember is this: in Africa, there are plenty of noisy creatures that like to live at night, and even a mouse sounds like a bloody elephant.” Willmer lay down on his own blanket, pulling his coat over his chest. “Just ignore it and don’t move is my best advice. You’ll get used to it in the end. Everyone does.”

  Masson jumped as a twig snapped and hissed in the dying embers of the fire. As Willmer began to snore, Masson decided that he would sleep when he returned to Cape Town and that sleeping in a room full of coffins would be no problem at all. But whether it was the effort of a day spent in the saddle or the metronomic pounding of the surf, his efforts to remain awake were thwarted, and slowly but surely he was lulled into a deep, if reluctant, slumber.

  ***

  The night-time noises had ceased and a south-easterly wind was blowing hard across the dunes, carrying with it the sand and the sound of the surf, such that Masson awoke thinking he would be swallowed by the advancing tide.

  As he sprang up and flung off his blanket, his whole body ached in protest at the previous day’s activities. He rubbed the sleep and sand from his eyes and after squinting at the bright light of day, was greatly relieved to see that the line of the surf had not moved after all.

  The sun, however, was already high in the sky, and Masson could feel that his lips were cracked and that sunburn had begun to pinch his face. He looked around for Willmer, curious as to why he had been left to sleep for so long.

  But he found nothing. The only sign of Willmer’s presence was the scorched piece of ground where the fire had been and the flattened patch of grass where he had last seen Willmer snoring soundly.

  Willmer was not the only thing to have disappeared. Both the horses were gone, and with them Masson’s tote containing his journal and the box in which all of his drawing tools were kept. Apart from the clothes on his back and his father’s knife, which was still in his pocket, all that remained was the hessian sack with the foul-smelling flower and a single waterskin.

  Masson ran a few paces to the beach, hoping to see tracks in the sand or some other indication of where Willmer had gone, but he saw nothing and soon returned, dejected.

  As he traipsed back to the campsite, cursing the day he set foot on the Resolution, he heard Schelling’s words repeat themselves over and over in his head: “A man alone does not survive in Africa.”

  CHAPTER 20

  The waterskin was full, but with only a small knife for protection and less than a day’s supply of water, Masson found himself caught between the slave village that even Willmer had feared entering and the camp at Muyssenberg, which was forbidden to foreigners.

  The flower was not at False Bay, and there was no trove of undiscovered plants. Banks had misled him, that much was clear — but to what end? All he had managed to accomplish was the survey of False Bay.

  If his journal fell into the hands of the Dutch authorities, they would find not only sketches of flowers but also his carefully drawn map, which included details of the Dutch military installations and signalling systems. He had always hidden his talent for drawing out of fear of ridicule, and now Masson couldn’t help but wince at the irony that, when discovered, it would be the quality and detail of his drawings that would be the damning of him. The truth was that, without knowing it, Banks could not have sent a better man for the job, and with the evidence of the journal before them, no one could be in any doubt that Masson was on a mission of espionage. If they strung up deserters in steel cages to swing in the breeze, he didn’t want to begin predicting the fate that would await a captured spy.

  Just by being there, unaccompanied and unauthorised, he risked being arrested. Other than the undertaker, who was clearly in Schelling’s pocket, and the two burgher sentries, who were in Willmer’s, no one else had seen him leave, and so there was no one who would be able to corroborate his story. And what story was that, exactly? That he had gone flower-hunting in an area where all the flowers were already known, an area which just happened to be right next to the most sensitive military site in the entire colony? Even he would have strung himself up.

  It came as a bitter blow to Masson that had he not been in such a rush to get home, he could probably have reasoned this out for himself. He should have been more questioning of Schelling’s motives, and he should have been alarmed at Willmer’s willingness to impart so much information.

  Instead, he was left with little choice other than to try to make it back to Cape Town and then strike a deal with Schelling or get passage aboard a ship bound for England. He doubted that he would be able to get the flower now, but he could still remember the details he had sketched in his journal, and perhaps those would be worth enough to the Admiralty that he would be able to at least keep his position at Kew. There was no doubt that he’d be left without land — which meant no nursery, and who knew what Constance’s mother would have to say — but at least he would be alive. As he stood there in the jaws of paradise, he reasoned that would be a pretty good result.

  Deciding not to take the risk of walking along the shore alone in plain sight of the village or the camp, Masson chose to head inland, hoping to connect up with the wagon trail that Willmer had said linked the village to Cape Town.

  As he set off across the dunes, he tried to cheer himself with the knowledge that all he needed to do was to keep a watchful eye on his waterskin and avoid any contact with hyenas, venomous snakes, marauding Hottentots, murdering slaves and sentries who could shoot the eye out of a sparrow at fifty paces. He might not be a hardened explorer, but he was no stranger to long country walks and so should have no trouble making it back to Cape Town by the following evening.

  No trouble at all.

  CHAPTER 21

  With his blanket rolled up under one arm and the waterskin slung over his shoulder, Masson soon found trudging across the dunes to be slow and tedious. The cool south-easterly wind, which blew ever harder under a cloudless sky, seemed to offer some relief from the heat, but in truth it had only disguised the scorching effect of the sunlight reflecting off the dunes and the pans of brackish water.

  He was able to make use of narrow paths that criss-crossed the bush and which, judging by the tracks and droppings, had been made by the comings and goings of small animals. He only hoped that the bigger ones were further off.

  After fighting against the buffeting of the wind and slogging under the sun for most of the morning, Masson came to a small clump of milkwoods on the edge of a saltmarsh where dozens of flamingos waded, skimming their bills through the water as they fed on algae and small crustaceans.

  All morning Masson had been trying to convince himself that everything would be fine, so long as he could get to the road. But the longer he walked without finding it, the more his confidence began to waiver and he began to wonder why Willmer had bothered to leave him any water at all when surely he meant for him to die.

  Tired and defeated, Masson sat down
to rest, sitting against one of the trees and watching the languid movement of the birds. He heard only the creaking of the branches and the fluttering of their leaves in the wind and smiled at the recollection of what Willmer had said about mice sounding like elephants.

  After expending so much nervous energy, combined with the fatigue of the march across the dunes, he was exhausted. The shade brought relief from the sun, but it also blocked out its warming rays, and with nothing to compensate for the frigid wind, Masson was forced to unfurl his blanket. Soon he was lulled him into the sleep that his body so desperately craved. He closed his eyes, promising himself that he would yield for only a moment and that once he had rested, he would redouble his efforts.

  After what seemed like a fraction of a second, but which could easily have been hours, he woke to the sound of a twig snapping. That was no mouse.

  Masson grabbed his knife and tried to stand up but instead became tangled in his blanket and the exposed roots of the tree. He lost his balance and fell to the ground face-first, causing dozens of startled flamingos to take flight.

  Spitting dirt out of his mouth, Masson stood up and thrust his knife up in front of him. As the last of the spooked flamingos cleared the water, a figure came careening out of the woods, bent over and clutching at his abdomen in what appeared to Masson to be the throes of agony. But as the figure approached, its contorted features were revealed, and Masson was shocked to find himself face to face with Doctor Carl Thunberg. His surprise soon gave way to anger when he realised that it was not pain that afflicted Thunberg but laughter. Deep, uncontrollable, hysterical laughter.

  Thunberg gestured to Masson’s knife and wheezed, “I surrender! I surrender!” before finally extricating himself from his fit of mirth and standing, his chest heaving, with a broad smile across his handsome face. In one hand he held a rifle and in the other, a small sack. With both arms outstretched towards Masson, he smiled and bellowed, “Behold the mighty power of England!” before losing himself in a further fit, which subsided only gradually.