A Flower for the Queen: A Historical Novel

by Caroline Vermalle

  “I thought you were supposed to climb a tree in times of danger, not dig beneath them?”

  “Cussonia,” said Thunberg without pausing as he scraped away the rocky earth with his bare hands from the base of a tree that was about as tall as Masson and which had large, finger-like, fleshy leaves that clung to its branches. “If we can get at the roots, we can scrape them and then squeeze some water out. It won’t be much, but it will stop us from dying of thirst.”

  Masson got down in the dirt next to Thunberg and began to dig. With both of them working away, they soon exposed the large tubular roots. Thunberg pulled out his knife and scraped away at them, and once he had a handful of shavings he raised his hand above his mouth with his thumb extended like a spout and squeezed.

  A cloudy liquid dribbled from his clenched fist, down his thumb and into his mouth.

  “God, that’s good! Here, you try.” He passed the knife to Masson, who copied the process and was soon also enjoying the liquid that tasted a little bit like weak vegetable broth. They took turns scraping and drinking until their hands were raw and their thirst slaked.

  “I’ve been thinking,” Masson said, wiping his hands on his trousers only to find that they came away dirtier than before. “Without supplies and ammunition, and between the lions, the buffalo and the Xhosa, I am struggling to see how we can carry on. I think we should turn back, and the sooner the better.”

  Thunberg looked at Masson. “I assume you’re joking.”

  Masson shook his head. “No, Thunberg. I think this is it.”

  “You’ve got cold feet, haven’t you?”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “I’ve seen it before, you know. A man suffers and toils endlessly for the thing he most wants and then when it’s almost within his reach, he pulls back, afraid of what will be left when all is accomplished.”

  “And you? The great Doctor Carl Peter Thunberg, botanist, surgeon and adventurer extraordinaire — please forgive me if, in coming to my senses and realising that no flower is worth dying for, it puts a premature end to yet another adventure with which you can regale your friends back in Stockholm!”

  “Perhaps it’s cold feet of another kind? If you don’t find the flower, you won’t get your land. No land, no wedding. Is that it? Are you trying to sabotage a union of inconvenience? If so, I can think of much simpler ways to go about it!”

  “How dare you, sir! Not that it is any of your business, but I happen to care very deeply for Constance!”

  “Yes, very deeply — which is why you’ve written a grand total of two letters to your so-called soul-mate since we left Cape Town. One of them was to describe the flowers we had collected, and the other was to ramble on about how the weather here was so fine. Not exactly the sort of stuff to get a lady’s heart racing, if I may say!”

  In an instant, all of Masson’s self-control evaporated. He lunged at Thunberg and buried his shoulder into his solar plexus, slamming him against the tree, leaving him winded but not incapacitated. As Masson stepped back to have another go, Thunberg brought his knee up into the soft tissue of Masson’s nose. Masson staggered backwards, clutching at his face and watching in disbelief as blood streamed through his fingers.

  With a howl of fury, he lunged again at Thunberg and collected him up onto his shoulder before both of them tumbled to the ground, kicking and punching at each other without the slightest consideration to form or Broughton’s Rules.

  When they were at last able to scramble to their feet and face each other once more, there was not much to tell them apart in terms of bruises and cuts. Where Masson’s eyes had already begun to swell from the blow to his nose, Thunberg had received heavy punches to his ears and jaw, and from the way he limped, it was clear that his groin had not escaped unscathed.

  “You’re a coward!” Thunberg said as he struggled for breath. “You’ve been afraid from the moment you set foot on this continent, and now that you’ve had enough, you think that you can simply run back home!”

  “Not only are you a sneak who has descended so low as to read another man’s private letters, but you’re also a reckless fool who thinks only of his own glory,” Masson shot back. “Do you really think that I don’t realise that as soon as we have the flower, you’ll be looking for the first chance to make it your own? Maybe the flower is your means of getting to Japan — I don’t know and I no longer care, because as far as I am concerned, you can have it, but not before I leave you with something else!”

  Masson swung out in a last desperate effort, but Thunberg parried his blow. The two men grappled feebly before falling exhausted to the ground and rolling away from each other, both of them squinting at the bright sky above and panting in short, painful breaths.

  “Do you feel better now?” asked Thunberg.

  “Much,” wheezed Masson.

  “You’re right about only one thing, Masson,” Thunberg said, gathering himself up off the ground.

  “The flower?”

  “No, you were wrong about that. I didn’t come here to take your flower, but rather to get something from Schelling.”

  “The fact that you’re a reckless fool who thinks only of glory?”

  “No, you’re wrong about that as well. Although I suspect that we’ll just have to agree to disagree on that score.”

  “I can’t remember what’s left,” Masson mumbled.

  “The letters. You’re right, it was wrong of me, and I deserve your loathing. But in my defence, it was only accidental. I happened upon them when I was searching for some of the specimens we collected.”

  “But they were folded and hidden in the back of one of my notebooks.”

  “What can I say? The search was a thorough one. In any case, they weren’t sealed, and from the way they were written, I just assumed that they were notes about the landscape. For that, I apologise.”

  “I don’t know — look at us. Are we really in any fit state to accomplish anything?”

  Thunberg started to laugh but was brought up short, clutching at his painful ribs. “Probably not.”

  “Well, at least we tried,” Masson said cheerfully.

  “That we certainly did,” agreed Thunberg.

  “Just one thing, though,” began Masson.

  “Hmm?” replied Thunberg with his eyes closed as he squeezed a final dribble of Cussonia water into his mouth, savouring the liquid nectar.

  “Where are the horses?”

  “Right over there.” Without turning around, Thunberg gestured over his shoulder to an empty patch of flattened grass.

  Masson shook his head. Thunberg opened his eyes and paused, mid-dribble. His head snapped around to look at the spot where the horses should have been.

  “Well, either the horses have smelled water, or they smelled a couple of crazy men. I just hope it’s the former,” Thunberg mumbled almost to himself as he pushed through the bush.

  They continued their march for well over an hour. At one point, they spotted the horses at a distance before the animals bolted off again into the cover of the bush. “Here we are with no rifles, no food and no water, chasing after a couple of animals that can easily outrun us. Yep, it’s definitely crazy they smell.” Despite himself, Masson could not help but giggle, causing Thunberg to curse as he became convinced that Masson had finally gone over the edge. Lost horses were one thing, but a lost mind was an altogether different proposition.

  The horses led them across two more ridges before they approached a steep slope that took them down into a narrow cleft between two hills. Where the horses just ploughed through the mostly small, low evergreen trees and shrubs, the vegetation made tough going for the men as they either had to crouch down or weave around to avoid the branches and thickets. Their brawling wounds did not make the job easier and they were constantly tripping over termite mounds falling into aardvark holes, all the while on the lookout for snakes and scorpions hiding in the undergrowth.

  As they descended the slope, it began to get increasingly steep and
Masson could see where the horses had turned up the ground as they had slid down. In their hurry, the men misjudged the incline, and gravity took over. Soon they found themselves sliding through the loose litterfall and tumbling down the slope, reaching out for anything that would arrest their too-rapid descent.

  They ended up, even more battered, bruised and filthy, at the base of the cleft in a narrow ravine that was three paces across, their fall arrested by a seam of rock face that formed the opposite slope. As they picked themselves up and looked around to see which direction the horses had taken, Thunberg put out an arm and grabbed Masson’s lapel. “Look, Masson. Irides, gladioli …”

  The two men stared at the tall spikes of brightly coloured flowers that shot from the ground in clumps close to where they were standing. They then turned and in a moment of mutual understanding cried out in unison, “Water!”

  Sure enough, they followed the trail left by the horses along the valley floor and saw with relief that the further down the ravine they travelled, the more humid the air and the wetter the ground became. Eventually their footfalls produced a series of sucking noises as spring water percolated up from under the ground and through the mulch, leaving little puddles within the depressions of their footprints.

  Cautiously, so as not to spook the horses, they walked a bit further on until they spied their mounts, heads lowered and drinking from a shallow pool that had formed behind a giant slab of granite.

  The spot was almost arcadian in its tranquillity. The sunlight was dappled and diffuse, and the sound of the occasional flycatcher or bush shrike blended with the burbling of the trickle of water that spilled over the edge of the pool, forming a rivulet that flowed on down the ravine.

  Masson and Thunberg walked over to the horses and took hold of their halters before falling onto their own bellies and gorging themselves on the cool spring water.

  Masson was so preoccupied with drinking the water he did not notice the reflection that bounced off the pool’s rippled surface. Only after he had lifted his head to wipe his face and wash the dust from his eyes did he see what had been in front of him all along. He wondered if he was hallucinating and tried to call out to Thunberg, but found that he had no voice — he wasn’t sure if he was even breathing.

  Afraid that it would vanish if he even blinked, Masson tried to gain Thunberg’s attention by splashing him with his free hand.

  “Have you lost your mind, man? You’ll scare the horses!” But Thunberg swallowed his protestations as he looked up and saw what Masson was staring at on the opposite side of the pool.

  Sitting in a patch of sunlight, like a spotlight on a leafy stage, a clump of slender stems sprang up from the ground, terminating in broad, fleshy leaves like giant green spearheads. Some of the stems climbed even higher, as if reaching for the sun, before exploding into flowers of the most dazzling beauty Masson had ever seen.

  They possessed such a magical quality that when a gentle breeze wafted down the ravine, causing the flowers to flutter, Masson was convinced that they would take flight and never return. He didn’t need Banks’s drawing to verify that this was what he had been searching for — it couldn’t be anything else.

  It was the Queen’s flower.

  So absorbed was he in his discovery that without a word to Thunberg, he retrieved his notebook from his saddle bag and immediately set about trying to draw the flower.

  But this time he wanted to make more than a decent likeness or a two-dimensional facsimile of the forms of its parts that would please a scientist’s eye. He wanted to capture the whole experience — he wanted to set down on paper the intangible feelings of relief, hope and joy that had in an instant expelled the fear and frustration that had become his constant companions. He wanted to have something he could take back home which would communicate everything that words could not. He wanted to be able to show what it felt like to be half-dead with thirst and fear and despair and then find salvation.

  But when he tried to liberate his hand from the tyranny of perspective geometry or shut his eyes so that he could look inside himself, he felt the familiar doubts and fears creeping through the unguarded alleyways of his subconscious. In the end, his hand would be restrained, and the line that trailed from his nib remained true. With each accurate line and carefully considered nib stroke, he grew more and more frustrated, tearing the pages from the journal and tossing them into the breeze to flutter down onto the surface of the water, where they glided away with the current until they disappeared over the edge of the pool.

  The struggle that he had endured in finding the flower was nothing compared to the battle that he waged against a part of himself that would not yield.

  When at last his ink ran out, he looked down at the drawing he had made and he knew that even though he had succeeded in finding the flower, he had failed to capture anything of the moment of its discovery.

  “It’s a good likeness,” said Thunberg, his voice breaking the quiet that had settled on the pond. “Although I thought the first, second and third attempts were fine efforts, too. I can certainly see why Banks wants it so badly. Who knows the bounds of gratitude that a queen might show for having such a thing named after her, or the gratitude of a king for being the one to make that dream happen?”

  Masson remained silent, his reed pen still clutched in his hand.

  “Now all that remains is to get back to the Cape alive.”

  “Thunberg,” Masson called out after Thunberg who was walking back towards the horses. “I don’t know how to thank—”

  But Thunberg stopped and turned, putting a finger to his lips and motioning for Masson to join him.

  “No, really, if it wasn’t for you and Eulaeus—” Masson began to protest, but Thunberg silenced him and gestured towards a thicket that enclosed the side of the pool that led downstream, but Masson could hear nothing unusual.

  He turned to go back to the flower, but Thunberg grabbed him by the sleeve and motioned for him to follow. They felt their way into the prickly evergreen on hands and knees, pausing at every twig snap. As they crept forward, Masson realised what it was that had made Thunberg so nervous. It was the sound of people — and lots of them.

  CHAPTER 35

  Masson and Thunberg followed the voices, creeping forward through the thicket until they came to a sheer drop of about twenty feet.

  To their left, the water from the pool trickled down a sandstone cliff face. They followed the course of the water, still concealed by the thicket, as it flowed out of the pool and then further down the ravine before eventually disgorging into a large river that hugged the base of the hill on the opposite side of the valley.

  On the eastern slope of the ravine sat a village of about two dozen beehive-shaped huts. Built so that they faced the rising sun, they were positioned near the top of the ridge line — high enough so that they were well drained and low enough to be well sheltered from the prevailing winds. The huts were constructed from a framework of branches, plastered with clay and cow dung and then thatched with long grass. They were arranged in a wide semi-circle, and together with a line of mimosa thorn bushes, they formed a large enclosure with a single gate. Within the enclosure, Xhosa men could be seen herding cattle with ornately shaped horns and speckled hides through the gate and down to the pastures below.

  Further down the slope, cowpeas, sweet cane and pumpkins as well as melons and sorghum had all been planted, although none were yet ready for harvesting. The children that stood sentry over the gates to the gardens chatted to one another or threw stones at the birds that occasionally settled down amongst the crops.

  What caught Masson’s eye most of all, however, were the flowers. Hundreds and hundreds of the Queen’s flower nestled at the base of the ravine, along almost the entire length of the stream. Dozens of Xhosa women were at work collecting the flowers growing along the stream, carefully digging them up and then transplanting them into dampened hessian sacks filled with soil.

  Thunberg nudged Masson and pointed to
a bare plot of land about three hundred yards distant, where a small camp had been erected.

  One of the wagons close to the camp appeared to be already fully loaded with crates into which the plants had been transplanted, and as Masson looked closer, he could see why. A lone figure was standing under the shade of a parasol, smoking a pipe as the plants were harvested. It was Schelling.

  He was at the centre of a group that included the local chief, with his leopard-skin cape and red beaded necklace and some tribesman. Schelling stood with his foot on an open crate, from which he pulled out a rifle still tied up in wax paper. He unwrapped the rifle and then began to demonstrate its use, mock firing at the slaves who laboured on the wagons, much to the amusement of the chief and his cohorts.

  “What in God’s name is that?” asked Thunberg in whispered awe.

  “Brilliant. We bring some tobacco and Schelling brings guns. I don’t suppose there’s much hope for that beef-and-beer dinner now!”

  “No, you fool, that!” Masson followed Thunberg’s pointed finger. There, at Schelling’s side, dressed in roughly the same clothes as those worn by Masson and Thunberg, although it has be said in better condition, had appeared a fine featured and incredibly beautiful woman.

  She was holding a piece of sodden paper and seemed to be arguing with Schelling, who grabbed it from her, causing her to storm off towards one of the tents. As she reached the entrance flap, she turned and looked back in Masson and Thunberg’s direction, causing them to instinctively duck down. When, after a few moments, they looked back they saw only the tent flap swaying in the breeze.

  “Damn! She saw us,” said Thunberg.

  “She couldn’t have, not at this distance,” argued Masson without much confidence.

  “Old Pieterszoon must be getting senile. How could he have missed a beauty like that?” asked Thunberg.