A Flower for the Queen: A Historical Novel

by Caroline Vermalle

  “It’s not that simple. Everything’s changed.” He knew what he wanted to say, but the words refused to form in his mouth.

  “Like what?” she probed, locking her eyes onto his.

  “Like the fact that a little over six weeks ago, I was a simple gardener with modest ambitions and a real chance to realise them. Now I’m a suspected spy who, like it or not, has helped to start a war, and all for what? So that a king who knows nothing about plants can name a flower after a queen who has never even put a foot on the soil from which it has sprung, let alone set her eyes on the land that gives it life.”

  Off in the distance, fireworks erupted over the small town of Stellenbosch celebrating Hogmanay. They finished and were replaced with the sounds of distant singing and cheering as the people of the town began to celebrate the coming New Year.

  Jane looked down at his drawings and then reached down and closed his journal “How is it that you can see plants so clearly to describe them with such precision, and yet you hide from your own feelings?”

  She was so close that he could almost feel the softness of her skin. She had given him the perfect opening, and yet he still hesitated — and then it was lost. Without another word, she turned and ran from the dining room, leaving Masson alone with his journal, its title page seeming to mock him.

  CHAPTER 46

  The night seemed to last an eternity. The moonflowers that hung like elfin trumpets from the trellis outside his window tormented his sleep with their sweet perfume as he lay stretched out on the cot bed, sweltering in the midsummer heat.

  There was no breeze in the air, and even the crickets and cicadas were silent, overwhelmed by the heat and only the frogs croaked from their station at the pond that sat at the bottom of Pieterszoon’s sprawling garden.

  Without the respite of sleep, he could not help but replay in his mind the moment when Jane had hovered over him, giving him the chance that he had been unable to make for himself. Each time he tried to fashion a different and more satisfying ending, but these fantasies evaporated under the heat and stillness of the night.

  Resigned to the certainty of a sleepless night, Masson roused himself and after dressing and taking his journal, reed pens and a lantern, he went to the barn to try to pass the night by drawing.

  By throwing himself into the work, he managed to make the hours pass even if his torment continued unabated. Just as the last of the oil began to flicker in the lamp, the first light of dawn crept under the crack beneath the great timber door. Masson repacked his things and made to go back to the house.

  Not wanting to wake Jane, he avoided the gravel path that led straight back to the house, instead taking a detour via the pond, with the intention of walking across the lawn.

  As he approached the pond, dawn was about to break over the ragged line of the Hottentots-Holland Mountains. The slopes below were shrouded in a fine amaranthine mist that was slowly being melted away by the amber tide of the sun’s burgeoning warmth.

  The surface of the pond was like glass, and at its edge stood Jane, her back to him as she watched the approaching sunrise. Her hair hung down around her shoulders, and as it caught the light, it framed her upturned face in flecks and highlights of gold and copper.

  Without thinking, Masson took up his reed pen and started drawing on the first blank page that fell open, the one that lay opposite the pressed specimen that Jane had given him. The nib raced across the page, seemingly of its own urgent accord, desperately trying to capture the moment.

  When his ink ran dry, he opened his box of watercolours and used the dew that lay upon the grass to wet his brush. Then he stopped and looked at the picture he had created. It was simple, rough and even crude, but it was breathtakingly true to life. It was so unlike any of the drawings that he had done before that, were not for the inkstains on his fingers, he could not have been certain that it was by his hand.

  “It’s beautiful.” Masson had been so entranced by the drawing that he had failed to notice Jane’s arrival at his shoulder. “I thought you only drew plants,” she said with a smile, the soft tones of her voice skipping across the stillness of the dawn without so much as a ripple.

  “Well, I tried to add in the lilies, but I ran out of ink,” he replied. “Besides, I think I managed to get what I was after.”

  “And now that you have it, do you like it?” she asked.

  He paused before taking the leap and then held her gaze. “More than anything.”

  Their kiss was announced by the sunrise and the symphony of birdsong that celebrated its arrival. For an instant, Masson forgot all that came before and all that was yet to come. He abandoned himself to Jane, to Africa, to that freedom whose taste he was discovering was intoxicating because it was absolutely, infinitely, perfectly right.

  They held onto each other, trying to make the moment last, but as the sun rose over the mountains, they were forced to retreat back into the barn.

  Jane pulled away from him gently and looked him square in the face, squinting slightly in the dim light of the dawn, trying to make out what was going on behind his eyes.

  Masson returned her look and knew that he had to tell her now, regardless of the consequences.

  “When we get back to England …”

  But before he could finish his sentence, the barn door burst open. As the sunshine flooded in, the pair were momentarily blinded, unable to recognise the owner of deformed silhouette that stood against the light. Masson felt Jane tense up beside him as the figure slowly limped towards them.

  As their eyes adjusted to the light, a gruesome face, twisted and shattered by hatred and pain, came into focus.

  It was Schelling. Battered, but alive. Hunched over, he cradled a heavily bandaged arm in a sling. The bandage was ragged and dirty, and the smell was unimaginable. The limb around which it was wrapped was much shorter than it should have been. Stuffed into his belt were two pistols, and in his remaining, uninjured hand he held a third. It was fully cocked and pointed directly at Jane.

  CHAPTER 47

  “They say that some are kept from death’s doorstep by a strong will to live, but in my case, I found that the will to see others die first can be just as effective,” Schelling chuckled darkly, in spite of his obvious pain.

  As Masson pushed himself in front of Jane, shielding her, Schelling let out a deep, rasping cough, spitting out whatever he had hawked up onto the barn floor. “I don’t know where you managed to get the flowers,” Schelling said, gesturing at the boxes that had been stacked along the side of the barn, “but it should help to take the edge off some of the pain.”

  When Masson heard the snap of the flint against the striking plate, he stood firm and closed his eyes. In his mind’s eye, he saw the small flash as the powder in the pan was ignited, followed by the tongue of fire that erupted from the pistol’s muzzle. The report sounded like a cannon within the confines of the barn.

  Masson braced himself for the impact of the steel ball that he was sure would tear through his body. He drew a deep breath of lavender- and jasmine-tinted air, convinced that Jane’s scent would be his last sensation.

  But Masson felt nothing other than the softness of her body pressed against his. Thinking that Schelling had missed — or worse, that he had somehow managed to hit Jane, he opened his eyes and got ready to charge before the wounded man could draw another pistol from his belt.

  But Schelling wasn’t reaching for another pistol. Instead, he stared at Jane and Masson in dumb wonderment before dropping to his knees whereupon his eyes rolled back in their sockets, and he fell face-first onto the straw-covered ground.

  Another silhouette had appeared at the barn door. Eulaeus lowered a smoking rifle and threw it to ground. He half turned, pausing at the door to offer one last explanation without looking back at them. His accent was thick, and the English words sounded like unwelcome visitors in his mouth, but his voice was as clear as the conviction it conveyed.

  “I told him where the flowers were because he
promised me freedom. Then he burned the fields and my village. My people will blame me, and they will be right. I was afraid, but now I can go back. If there is war, they will need me. But if not, then I will accept whatever punishment they decide to give me.”

  By the time they reached the door, Eulaeus had already mounted Schelling’s horse and was galloping off. In the opposite direction, coming at full canter, was Thunberg. He pulled up and hailed Eulaeus, who simply raised his hand in greeting and then rode off without breaking stride as he passed a puzzled Thunberg.

  CHAPTER 48

  After covering Schelling’s body in a sheet and locking the barn door, the trio made their way back to the house. They sat at the yellowwood table as Thunberg gorged himself.

  “Good news,” he said between mouthfuls. “I managed to book a cabin large enough to accommodate two men and the flowers.”

  Masson and Jane looked at each other and then at Thunberg. “What do you mean, ‘two men’?” asked Masson.

  “It’s a naval ship and they have strict rules. No women.” Thunberg talked and ate at the same time.

  “So I booked berths for Mr Burnette and Mr Masson, travelling as two botanists returning with cargo. There is a small hitch, though. You’ll have to share a cabin — is that going to pose a problem?”

  Jane and Masson looked at each other, but Thunberg missed the glance and charged ahead.

  “The only snag is that Forster is practically encamped at the dock. He’s personally checking everything and everyone that’s being loaded aboard that ship. Schelling must have sent word to him, but all we need is a way to distract him for long enough so that you can load the cargo and then get aboard. It shouldn’t be too difficult. Oh, I almost forgot.” Thunberg reached into the saddle bags he had brought with him and handed a packet each to Masson and Jane.

  “These letters were waiting for you at the Customs House.”

  Masson, immediately recognising the handwriting on the envelope, tried to hide his anxiety. He looked across at Jane and saw that she, too, was in no hurry to open her letter.

  “Well? Aren’t you going to open them?” Thunberg asked.

  Masson looked at the letter in his hands. It consisted of a single page which had been folded to make an envelope with a short message written on the reverse side in the same feminine hand that had penned his name and address.

  He took the letter and went outside to the garden so that he could be alone to read it. But when he broke open the seal that held the envelope closed, he saw a second letter within that was written in a less steady hand. When he returned to the dining room, he found Jane in a fit of fury, her own letter laid out in front of her on the table. Thunberg was awkwardly trying to comfort her.

  “It’s from my father,” she said acidly. “He’s threatening to disown me unless I come back to England at once. He has arranged passage for me on the Swallow, which is due to arrive in Cape Town in two weeks. When I get to Plymouth, I am to join my family and we are to take a ship to the Caribbean, where my father plans to set up a sugar plantation. He has said that the scandal of my affair with Joseph would be catastrophic for them and that I have given them no choice.”

  She looked at Masson pleadingly. “If this had arrived yesterday and not today, then I would have been relieved. But now?”

  Masson slumped into a chair. All the joy and enthusiasm he had felt that morning was gone, and in its place was the dreadful certainty of what was to come.

  “Perhaps it’s for the best,” he said flatly.

  If the letter in his hands had broken his heart, the look that Jane gave him shattered it into pieces. “What do you mean?”

  “I mean, what other choice do you really have?”

  Without saying another word, she turned and ran.

  “Masson — what?” Thunberg stood up, flabbergasted.

  Masson held up his own letters. “It’s news from home. My mother has passed away.”

  “I’m so sorry,” Thunberg said.

  “Not as sorry as I am. She wrote me a note before she died asking me to come home as soon as possible so that—” Masson broke off and looked longingly at the doorway that Jane had passed through moments before. “So that I can make good the promises that I made to her before I left. I have to marry Constance.”

  “But what about Jane?”

  “Jane will be better off. What future could I possibly have to offer her, anyway? A nursery and a cottage?”

  “Perhaps all she wants is what you have already given her.”

  “But what good is a past with no future?”

  CHAPTER 49

  Masson was woken by a knock at his door before the sun had risen. Thunberg, already fully dressed, had prepared a breakfast for both of them, which they ate in silence. Then they loaded the cart with the boxes of flowers and specimens that Masson had organised the day before. As they packed the last of their luggage, the eastern sky began to brighten. Thunberg handed Masson an oilskin envelope tied together with hemp string and sealed with wax to make it watertight.

  “Think of it as a going-away present. I managed to retrieve them after the accident when I went looking for the cart. If I were a real patriot, I would have kept them, but I guess I’m not so Dutch after all.”

  “What is it?” Masson accepted the envelope and felt the outline of a notebook through the rough oilskin.

  “The missing pages from your journal. To save them from being discovered by the customs men, I would keep them in one of the flowerboxes. After all the trouble they have caused you, I would have thought that would be the best place for them. The oilskin and wax will protect them until you get to England.”

  “I don’t know what to say, except thank you — for everything.” The two men shook hands. Masson carefully lifted out the contents of the smallest of the flower boxes, placing the packet at the bottom and covering it over with soil before carefully re-potting the plant.

  “I’ll ride out in front and deliver the news about Schelling to Mr Forster,” said Thunberg. “I’ll explain to him that he would be better served by allowing you to leave in peace. I’ll also explain that to ease his disappointment, I have made enquiries and have managed to secure a position for him at the Company Gardens. The salary is not enormous, but if he is prudent, he should be able to save enough to pay for a return trip to England in time to see the Resolution returning from her voyage.”

  “What’s the position?” asked Masson as Thunberg mounted his horse.

  “Assistant to the under-gardener,” Thunberg replied mischievously as he spurred on his horse and sped off at full canter in the direction of Cape Town.

  Masson looked over to the house, hoping to catch a last glimpse of Jane, who had retreated to her room and refused to come out. But either she was concealing herself behind the great sash windows or she had no wish to prolong their suffering with a last goodbye, so he set the horses moving just as the sun began to break over the mountains, lighting up the endless rows of vines that surrounded the hamlet of Stellenbosch.

  As the sun rose, a fair breeze blew in from across the mountains, leaving no trace of a cloud in the sky. It looked like it would be another perfect day in the Cape.

  CHAPTER 50

  Masson arrived at the dock at midday and proceeded to the Customs House, where he introduced himself to the ship captain’s secretary, who seemed annoyed at having to accommodate a non-working passenger at such late notice. But Masson’s letters of credit and recommendation signed by Sir Joseph Banks and the Admiralty Board mollified him, and once he had inspected the boxes, he entered the details of the cargo into his manifest.

  The customs officers were more concerned with making sure that he wasn’t smuggling wine and had less than no interest in the plants, which they let pass with only a cursory inspection.

  The porters carried the boxes one by one to a waiting launch. When about half the boxes were loaded, they heard shouting coming from behind them. They turned to see a tubby and sweating Forster running towards
them as fast as his rotund little body could manage, waving his arms and doing his best to shout in between rasping breaths. “Stop! Thief!”

  The customs officers turned in the direction that the naturalist was pointing and saw Masson backing away slowly towards the launch. But he knew that he would not make it in time, so he decided to stand his ground. As the furore quietened down, the only sound that could be heard was the wheezing of Forster as he caught his breath.

  “This is outrageous,” Masson started to protest before being cut off by Forster.

  “What is outrageous, sir, is that you would attempt to make off with botanical samples that have been transported to the Cape by Mr Schelling and which are therefore his property and which he has entrusted to me to deliver back to England.”

  The chief customs officer had arrived at the scene, having heard the commotion from his office. “Mr Forster, I am sorry, but the cargo has already been entered into the ship’s manifest and has passed through the customs inspection.”

  “But this is daylight robbery!” screeched Forster. He then lowered his voice to a conspiratorial tone. “I am sure that Mr Schelling would be most grateful to you if you could see your way to amending the entry in your log. After all, the cargo hasn’t even left the dock.”

  The customs officer’s face reddened as he motioned for the porters to continue loading the cargo. “Despite what you may think, sir, this is not some backwater outpost. This cargo is now the charge of the vessel on which it is to be carried, and any dispute as to its rightful ownership must be resolved at the port of disembarkation. I bid you good day, sir!”

  Forster cursed as the rest of the customs officers turned back to their business, resuming their inspection of the remaining items on the dock.