A Flower for the Queen: A Historical Novel

by Caroline Vermalle

  Willmer was the first to fire, dropping to one knee immediately afterwards to reload, even as a roar of hurt and defiance erupted from one of the beasts.

  Schelling, momentarily paralysed with fear, started to back away, but in doing so, tripped and fell backwards, firing his precious shot harmlessly into the night sky. He let the other rifle fall to the ground as he crawled back towards the illusory safety of the fire and away from the advancing predators.

  Masson swallowed his fear to step out into the path of the lions so that he could recover his still-loaded rifle from where Schelling had dropped it, picking it up by the barrel and dragging the stock through the dirt as he pulled it back towards the cart.

  Meanwhile, Thunberg had taken Jane by the elbow and lifted her into the back of the cart. He then reached down and took up Schelling’s spent rifle, which he furiously began to reload. Eulaeus also sprang into action, leaping over the fire and mounting the driver’s seat, taking up the reins as Willmer fired off his second shot, killing the lion he had already wounded. But even before the smoke had cleared, Willmer was again reloading, not even pausing to watch as the lion fell, its tongue lolling out of its maw.

  The other two lions, surprised by the shots and the subsequent downing of one of their number, retreated into the shadows momentarily before spreading themselves out to create a wider angle of attack so that they could come at the camp from opposite sides. This time they did not creep towards the group, but came with a speed that belied their size and a focus that hinted at a savage intelligence, honing in on the figure that they perceived to be the greatest threat.

  Both of the lions made up the thirty feet to where Willmer was kneeling in less time than it took Masson to raise his rifle and take aim and by the time he had put the rifle into full-cock and then fired, they were already out of his sights and upon Willmer. First they knocked his feet out from under him before the larger of the two lions grabbed him by the neck and snapped it with a single shake of its great head. Willmer’s limp and lifeless body was then dragged back into the darkness of the bush, leaving the smaller of the lions angry and frustrated as he turned back towards a hapless Schelling who was rigid with fear and disbelief.

  In his haste to escape, Schelling blundered bodily into the fire, and screamed with pain as embers of the fire were scattered in a shower of sparks. His accident had the fortunate consequence of causing the lion to shy, its main and fur singed by the eruption of cinders. The lion howled with fury as it rolled in the dust before righting itself, and then searching for an easier target. In an instant, its gold-flecked eyes settled on Masson, and the lion dropped its head low to the ground as it gauged the distance to its intended prey.

  With his rifle spent and no time left to reload, Masson had no choice but to stand up to the lion, clenching the gun barrel in both hands and waiting for the lion to leap so that he could bring the stock down on its head like a club.

  But he was not given the chance. Masson felt and then heard a shot pass so close to his cheek that he could have sworn it grazed him. Thunberg had fired from the back of the cart, hitting the lion in the shoulder and causing it to jump back and bellow in fury. But the shot had not found its mark and only produced a flesh wound, sending the lion into a maddened state of rage.

  Jane leaped down from the back of the cart behind him at the same time as the lion hurtled towards him, its speed undiminished by the wound that stained its shoulder. Once again Masson raised his rifle like a battle axe, hoping that if his efforts were in vain, then at least his death would be swift and painless.

  As its front paws cleared the ground Masson got ready to swing only to be deafened by the sound of a second rifle shot that erupted from right next to his head. Masson heard a strange metallic sound before being almost crushed by the weight of the lion as it fell against him.

  With the wind knocked out of him, he struggled out from under the corpse of the lion and as he scrambled away, looked back and saw the ramrod of Thunberg’s own rifle, the one that he had let fall to the ground when Willmer and Schelling came into the camp, projecting from the lion’s head like a steel arrow.

  And there, not five yards further back from where he had been tackled by the lion, standing prone with the smoking rifle still aimed at the fallen lion, was Jane.

  “For God’s sake, get on!” screamed Thunberg from the back of the cart as the horses were just about brought under control by Eulaeus.

  Masson needed no further invitation as he looked behind to see that the third lion had returned from whichever dark place it had disposed of Willmer and was now moving swiftly towards them.

  He managed to get a firm hold on the back of the cart, but as he tried to pull himself up, he felt something slam into his side, pitching him over into the dirt. Schelling had come running from next to the fire and after pushing Masson away, was trying to clamber up as Masson floundered in the dirt.

  Masson recovered and grabbed at Schelling’s coat but he only managed to pull the other man on top of him and they were both sent tumbling, straight into the path of the lion. Masson heard Eulaeus apply the break and the horses were now almost deranged by fear.

  Masson was sure that they were done for, but the seconds ticked by and still the anticipated crunch of fangs upon bone didn’t materialise. When he looked up he found that the lion’s attack had been checked, but what should have come as a relief turned to certain dread.

  With Schelling whimpering beside him, Masson caught the faint stench of carrion just before he heard the deranged cackles of at least half a dozen devils. The enormous rounds of their pitch-black eyes glinted in the light of the fire as they circled the group, dipping their heads to scent out the weak or wounded and conniving with each other via snorts and whoops. Slowly the shadowy forms circled closer and closer until the odour of boiling soap was unmistakable on the breeze and it was then that Masson knew that they were trapped in the midst of a pack of hyenas.

  The standoff was broken when one of the hyenas launched itself at a terrified horse. The lion, defending its quarry, intervened and slapped it away with a single stroke of one of its fearsome paws. But the victory was short-lived — with a coordinated effort that was regimental in its execution, the remaining hyenas adjusted their positions and shifted their focus from the carthorses to the lone lion.

  In reply, the lion began to make mock charges, lurching forward at each one of its new adversaries and then stopping each time one of the cackling creatures retreated just far enough to be out of harm’s way.

  With Schelling incapacitated and moaning softly on the ground, Masson took advantage of the distraction to creep towards the cart, which Eulaeus was now holding back against the combined force of both horses.

  Both Thunberg and Jane reached out for him, each grabbing an arm before heaving him up. As Eulaeus released the brake and urged the horses on with everything he had, all three of them fell into a pile with Masson underneath, his head colliding with one of the boxes.

  As Masson drifted into unconsciousness, the cart raced across the plain under a bright, starlit sky, leaving behind it the roars of the wounded lion and the crazed barking of the hyenas as they duelled to the death. But amongst the chaos of the animal savagery, the last thing to imprint itself on Masson’s memory was the sound of Schelling’s voice as he begged not to be left behind.

  CHAPTER 44

  CANADA, 21 NOVEMBER, 1805

  Night had also fallen in Pointe-Claire. The fire in the summer kitchen’s hearth lit the faces of all that sat, still listening. The old man searched around him and covered himself again in his blanket, even though he was the closest to the fire. The colour was back in his cheeks and the telling of the tale seemed to have rejuvenated him.

  The entire family had returned and young Robert Grant sat with his jaw hanging open, despite the fact that his mother, on whose lap he now sat, had placed both hands over his ears in an effort to protect him from the final gruesome details of the old man’s story.

  George
Grant looked in from the doorway and saw his son furiously scribbling notes. He caught his eye, but Jack simply frowned and ignored him.

  Suddenly the old man was shaken with violent bout of coughing. He turned away from the concerned looks of the Grant family and held handkerchief to his mouth.

  He concealed the crimson-flecked handkerchief within the folds of his blanket and took a deep breath before turning back to his audience.

  “Even though we had escaped the lions and hyenas, surviving the journey back to the Cape was far from certain. We had lost our line horses and so were at serious risk of them falling lame, but with the Xhosa on the warpath, we could not afford to slow our pace.

  “Thunberg’s solution, as ever, was to immerse himself in the adventure. Every day he would ride with Eulaeus to scout our back path to make sure that we weren’t being followed, and then he would return and harangue both Jane and I into collecting with him whilst Eulaeus drove on ahead, setting the pace with the cart.

  “At first, I could not bear to leave the Queen’s flowers for more than a few minutes. I was constantly riding back to check that Eulaeus had not forgotten to rotate the boxes in the back of the cart so that the flowers each received some sunlight but not too much so that they were scorched.

  “Thunberg chided me for shirking my duties and accused me of mothering the plants, but Jane would always say that I should be left to tend to them, as that way it gave her and Thunberg more time together, and at first I believed her. After all, we had not got off to the best of starts, and she and Thunberg came from the same world of privilege and breeding, whilst I was just an under-gardener.

  “But slowly I began to see changes in all of us. For my part, I began to trust Eulaeus with the care of the flowers, and he in turn seemed to lose his scowl and brighten. Often I would hear him whispering soothingly in a soft melody of clicking sounds. I had not learned enough of his language to know the details, but I understood that he was encouraging them to be strong because they were of the last of their kind, and they owed a debt of courage to their fellows to survive and prosper so that they might both one day return to the river valley that had been their mutual home, but which now lay scorched and blackened.

  “At first, Jane and Thunberg would spend whole afternoons together, collecting specimens for me to draw and then arguing over how they should be classified. But as I spent less time fussing over the flowers, I began to sense that we were becoming a team. However, whereas Thunberg deferred to no one in his judgements of taxonomy, Jane would always turn to me as a referee when she and Thunberg disagreed.

  “Thunberg was obsessed with taxonomies and the practical applications that each plant had, but perhaps because I was a gardener and because she had been taught by gardeners and by botanists, our interests revolved more closely around how the plants could be propagated and what they would need to sustain them if they were to flourish. Thunberg would soon grow bored and stalk off in search of yet another new species to fix into his herbarium, but Jane and I could spend days debating how best to nurture a new find.

  “The country that I had rushed by on the way to Two Rivers, which I had been so completely closed off to in my single-minded pursuit of the flower, now opened up and revealed to me to be the most bountiful of untamed wildernesses. Every crack and crevice was suffused with an abundance of life that crawled, hopped, slithered, grunted, whistled, chirped or roared in celebration of its very existence. This was not life that had been corralled or organised such that it had a purpose or a use — it was life with no purpose other than to live.

  “In the midst of the forests of stinkwood or thigh-deep in the sweetveld that drew herds of every kind of animal to graze or feed on the luscious bounty, I could not escape the fact that I was surrounded by the very essence of that which I had spent my life trying to avoid. It was intoxicating. And in the middle of it all was Jane.

  “Perhaps the reason that I began to spend less and less time minding the flowers was not because Eulaeus was proving so adept at caring for them, but because every moment that I did spend with them reminded me of home and of my mother and of Constance. When I was in the veld with Jane, it was easy to forget that there was a world of duty and of obligation awaiting my return.

  “It became even easier when, to my astonishment, I began to sense that she was favouring my attentions over those of Thunberg. I tried to disillusion myself of the notion that a woman such as Jane could find any pleasure in the company of a mere under-gardener, and yet all the signs were plain to see, if you only wished to acknowledge them: the hand she held out for help in crossing a stream, even when she was more sure-footed than even the most nimble antelope.

  “I knew, standing there in that country so fulsome with life, that it could be true. All I had to do was declare my feelings and it would unlock the shackles that had thus far bound my heart to a life that would lead only to the fulfilment of duty and not to the expression of a love that suddenly seemed to be inescapable.

  “But I could not. Each day as the sun rose to meet a landscape that was never the same as the day before, my fear remained constant. I could not say what was on the tip of my tongue for the simple reason that I could not overcome the fear that it might all be a mistake — one last cruel trick played by a land where death was just as ever-present as life, and every bit as vivid in its intensity.

  “I had faced down any number of perils and had managed to travel thousands of miles to find a flower that no one was sure existed, and yet I could not bring myself to say the one thing that would have made it all worthwhile — that I loved her.”

  The old man sipped his tea and shook his head ruefully. Even Jack paused his scribbling and it was as if the entire room held its breath.

  “And then,” the old man continued, “it was too late. I saw it in her eyes when we passed through that great basin, right before we emerged at the top of the Kloof pass. The look on her face was not one of eager anticipation or of relief that we had survived and were soon to be back in the warm embrace of a safe and civilised world, but one of disappointment and sorrow.

  CHAPTER 45

  STELLENBOSCH, 30 DECEMBER, 1772

  After arriving back in Stellenbosch late in the evening, the group found that Pieterszoon was away in Cape Town on business, and so they were free to wash up and eat in peace without fear of interrogation.

  The next morning, they awoke to a clear and bright summer’s day and enjoyed their first decent breakfast in months. “I thought that I would go into Cape Town and find out when the next ship bound for England is due to depart,” Thunberg offered jovially.

  Masson and Jane looked across the table at each other, neither of them wanting to be the one to address the topic that had managed to remain unresolved over the three weeks hard travelling back to the Cape.

  At length, it was Masson who spoke first. “Why don’t we both take back the flower? I am sure that the letter of credit that I have from Sir Joseph would cover the cost of a cabin, and I could use your help to care for the flowers. That way you would have your passage back to England.”

  Jane did not seem convinced. Masson, assuming her hesitancy to be due to the suggestion of a shared cabin, moved to reassure her. “We could travel as husband and wife — just for the sake of the journey, of course — and then I could take a hammock whilst you stay in the cabin with the flowers.”

  “I’ve already taken your cabin once, and I’m sure that a married couple failing to share the same cabin on a ship would only cause unwanted questions,” replied Jane.

  “If you don’t mind my saying,” interrupted Thunberg, “I think Masson’s plan is a good one. Your staying here in the Cape any longer than is necessary could lead to even more awkward conversations.”

  Thunberg got up from the table and made as if to go. “I’ll let you two work out the details, but in the meantime you need to stay away from Cape Town. Leave the rest to me.”

  “I should come with you — to make sure the ship is suitable for the flo
wers,” insisted Masson.

  “No,” replied Thunberg. “It’s too much of a risk. What if Forster were to corner you and start asking about where you’ve been and what’s become of Schelling? And we don’t know for sure that Schelling didn’t show him or anyone else that journal. No, your priority must be to get out of here as quickly and as quietly as possible — with or without the flowers.”

  Seeing that Masson was not convinced, Thunberg continued. “In any case, I have to go into town to warn van Plettenberg about the likelihood of a Xhosa uprising. Something like that could hurt a fellow’s reputation if it wasn’t done in the right kind of way …”

  “Not to mention his chances of an all-expenses-paid trip to Japan,” Masson chimed in.

  “Precisely,” said Thunberg. “In any case, I’ll also find out if he knows anything about the journal. I’ll be back in a couple of days, and then we can decide on how to proceed.”

  As Thunberg cantered off towards Cape Town and Eulaeus set to work attempting to repair Pieterszoon’s wrecked cart, Masson and Jane were left to their own devices. Masson retired to the barn, where he continued to draw the samples that he had collected, but Jane seemed restless and could not settle in any one place for longer than a few minutes.

  That evening, they ate alone in the vast dining room, the tall sash windows left open to allow the cooling breeze to waft over them. Even at dinner, Masson continued to work at his drawings, using them as a shield from the feelings and emotions that threatened to engulf him.

  “There’s something that we haven’t discussed,” Jane said at last. “What happens when we get back to England?”

  “I hadn’t really thought much about it,” Masson lied.

  “Well, what do you think about it now?” She pushed back her chair and walked towards him, bringing with her the faint scent of lavender and jasmine.

  Masson had spent the past four weeks asking himself the exact same question. For all that time, he had managed to find an excuse to delay answering, but he knew that now there could be no more prevaricating.