A Flower for the Queen: A Historical Novel (15 page)

“Allow me to leave you in the capable hands of my two associates here, while I ride ahead to inform Mr Schelling of our good fortune. I have a feeling that he’s going to be most pleased. Enjoy the ride, gentleman!”

The uncovered cart clattered and rumbled its way along the dirt track back towards Cape Town. Whilst Masson and Thunberg were tied up, Eulaeus was left to walk behind the cart with his wrists bound, leading the two horses.

One of the Dutch burghers held a rifle in his lap and kept a wary eye on the prisoners; the other walked ahead with the oxen, urging them on with his
sjambok
.

Masson tried to explain. “Sir, I am a gardener sent by the King of England. If you take me to my lodgings, I can show you my letters of recommendation.”

The burgher driving the team turned back and said in heavily accented English, “Don’t waste your time. Captain Willmer showed us your notebook.
Mr Masson’s Botanical Travels in the Fair Cape
, right?” The two men laughed as Masson stared at the dusty floorboards of the cart, his sunburned cheeks flushed.

“You bloody English keep trying to map False Bay so that one day you can land your ships,” said the other burgher. “We might be simple farmers, but we know a spy when we see one. You’re not the first, you know. Although you’re getting more imaginative, I’ll give you that.”

The wind dropped and the sun began to sink towards the west as the cart rumbled on, climbing up out of the plain as they approached the base of Table Mountain. Masson could see the guard’s head nodding as he tried to stay awake, fighting against the rhythmic swaying of the cart and the hazy heat of the afternoon.

Eulaeus traipsed on in stoic silence behind the cart, occasionally scanning the horizon in the direction from which they had come, as if searching for something in the vast expanse of the sandy plain.

Thunberg was looking furtively at the nodding soldiers.

“It’s a pity you didn’t bring your sabre, Mr Masson,” Thunberg said to Masson, the intent in his eyes clear.

Francis felt the weight of the folding knife in his pocket, but could not see how to get at it with his hands tied up.

“You’ll need more than a sabre where you’re headed,” scoffed the guard, his voice thick with drowsiness, before settling back into his doze.

But when the cart next hit a rut and the guard was distracted as he tried to keep his balance, Thunberg pressed against Masson and brought his hands around to Masson’s pocket, grabbing the small knife and then concealing it behind his back, he opened the blade and began to work on his bindings.

Thunberg then leaned over to Masson and whispered in his ear, “One last thing, Masson: long before I was called Doctor, I was a botanist. In the event of my death, my plant collection must be sent to Carl Linnaeus in Uppsala. Tell him I always regarded him as a father. And do choose something nice for my epitaph; I always thought your Scottish poets were very good at sombre melancholy.”

Before Masson could protest, Thunberg leaped up and lunged at the guard with the small knife. Reacting too late, the guard let his rifle fall to the ground but managed to grab the arm that held the knife causing Thunberg to fall against him, his ankles still tied together.

The cart stopped with a jolt as the leading burgher halted the oxen. Thunberg and the guard fell to the ground, still grappling for control of the knife. Masson made ready to lunge at the second guard, but something whistled past his ear and embedded itself in the planking of the cart with a sickening thud. The spear that had so narrowly missed him had an iron head about six inches long. Before Masson could see where it had come from, he was grabbed by Eulaeus, who bundled him under the cart, without a single word of explanation.

From his shelter, Masson heard a strangled cry and saw one of the burghers fall to the ground just next to him, his throat pierced through by another spear.

The other burgher, who moments before had been grappling with Thunberg, had by now broken away and recovered his rifle. He fired off a single shot, the powder fizzing and spluttering before an explosive roar. He set about reloading the rifle, but before he had even poured the powder down the muzzle, he too was felled, this time by a short stick that came cartwheeling through the air. This one had a bulbous end, like the knuckle in a thighbone.

Thunberg hopped and scrambled his way through the dust to join Masson and Eulaeus under the cart. Still clutching the knife, he cut away furiously at the bindings around his ankles before attending to those of his companions. As he cut Eulaeus free, he looked up at him with a searching look, but Eulaeus only frowned and shook his head. Whoever had killed the burghers were no friends of his.

Apart from the cries of the burghers and the blast of the rifle, Masson was shocked at how silent the whole episode had been. But that shock turned to terror as he could sense, even if he could not hear, their unseen enemies drawing closer. In an instant, they were surrounded.

From the underside of the cart, he could only see the bottom halves of their assailants. Their legs were covered by bands of animal hide from ankle to knee, whilst a flap of calfskin shielded their privates. A sheepskin around their thighs covered their behinds. Their thighs and lower torsos were slathered in ochre-coloured grease that gave off a strong, aromatic odour that only served to worsen Masson’s rising nausea.

The silence was broken by hushed clicks and words in a language that Masson had never heard before. When one of their attackers knelt down on the grass to look under the cart, Masson saw that his arms were covered in iron, brass and leather bracelets, and that he wore strings of multi-coloured glass beads around his neck and waist, with a piece of leopard skin draped around his neck like a short cape. This man was injured; he held one hand to a bleeding wound in his side as he gestured for the men to come out from their hiding place.

As he exited the cover of the cart, Eulaeus began shouting and pleading with the man. He kept gesturing towards Thunberg, who looked calm and composed, as if this was all part of a regular evening outing.

The man looked sternly at Eulaeus, winced, and then appeared to relent, as he turned to his men and barked an order. At his words, they all seemed to relax a little.

“What’s going on?” asked Masson.

“They’re Khoikhoi from further inland,” answered Thunberg. “They probably just wanted the oxen and the guns, but the burgher managed to hit the chief and he’s in a pretty bad way. The good news is that Eulaeus has told them I am a doctor and that I can heal him.”

Masson did not look convinced.

“You needn’t worry. These men aren’t cannibals, so you won’t end up on the evening menu and, unlike our friends at the garrison in Cape Town, if it all ends badly they’ll kill us quite quickly.”

“Well, that is a relief,” Masson said, deadpan.

Without another word and with the sun already beginning to set behind the mountain to their left, the three captives were pushed and prodded as they were led roughly from the road and pushed north into the bush. The heavy dew that had begun to form on the grass soaked through Masson’s shoes and stockings, whilst the shadows of the trees and scrub stretched across the veldt like long, dark claws.

The group tramped through the bush for hours, walking wordlessly behind the oxen that were being driven on ahead. Just as Masson began to think that the night march would never end, he caught a whiff of wood smoke on the wind. The tribesman began to chatter, and Masson’s heart started beating a little faster as he realised that they had reached their destination at long last.

But just as they emerged from the bush into the clearing of the rough camp, the greetings and cheers from the tribesman who were returning and those who stayed behind quickly melted away into stunned silence as the chief crumpled and fell to the ground, unconscious.

To Masson’s relief, there was indeed no bubbling cauldron, and it seemed unlikely that the small fire that snapped and crackled in the centre of the clearing would be sufficiently large to roast the three of them alive.

Masson couldn’t help but notice, however, that the Khoikhoi men kept their spears close at hand as they sat on their haunches and talked across the flames. As Thunberg and Eulaeus tended to the chief, Masson sat tied up next to a small enclosure made of thorn branches in which the oxen had been corralled for the night.

Occasionally, one or another of the men came to check on his bindings. Masson did not need to understand the language to know that the men around the fire were not happy. Their steely looks were all the proof that Masson needed to know that if Thunberg did not perform some kind of miracle, they were all in desperate trouble.

A howl of pain erupted from the area that Thunberg had designated as his operating theatre, hidden from Masson’s view by the branches. The Khoikhoi all became very agitated and started to bicker amongst themselves. Some clearly wanted to put an end to the affair, and whilst there were others that were holding them back, they were beginning to lose the battle.

But then Eulaeus walked slowly into the circle, and all the men stopped talking and stood up, waiting to hear what he had to say. Eulaeus looked each one in the face and then started to speak. He had only said a few words when all the men cried out in unison and rushed past Eulaeus towards their chief.

Thunberg walked over and dropped down next to Masson, clearly exhausted.

“Well?” asked Masson.

“Oh, he’s going to die for sure,” replied Thunberg.

Masson hung his head in defeat.

A cheeky smile broke over Thunberg’s face. “I said he was going to die for sure, just not today.”

Masson looked up to see the Khoikhoi chief limping towards the fire, flanked on either side by his comrades. Masson was soon released from his bonds, and all three captives were ushered close to the warmth of the fire, where they were given a waterskin to drink from together with a foul-smelling broth served in upturned tortoise shells.

Masson was about to take a tentative swig from the waterskin before recoiling in disgust at the odour that emanated from the drinking aperture “Are they trying to poison us? I thought you saved the chief!”

Thunberg chuckled as he grabbed the waterskin from Masson and then took a healthy gulp before passing it on to Eulaeus and explaining, “In the north of Sweden we drink soured milk that has been left to age for a few months, but this is like a vintage wine by comparison.” Thunberg smiled as Masson wrinkled his nose. “You should try the broth. I think this one is iris root with a pinch of ixia.”

“Thanks, but I think that I’ve lost my appetite,” Masson replied. He felt like he hadn’t had a decent meal in days, and at the rate things were going, he wasn’t sure if he would ever see another.

“Suit yourself, but you’re missing out on a real African experience.”

“I think I’ve had enough of those for one day.”

Thunberg nodded his head as he unfurled himself and relaxed in front of the fire. “I suppose you have. But tell me, Masson, why did you come here anyway?”

“You know why: to find the flower — at least that’s what I thought, anyway,” Masson said, still stinging from Banks’s deception.

“Yes, but what made you
decide
to come?”

“Decide?” Masson repeated, giving himself time to mull over the question. “I didn’t decide, really, so much as agree. Come to think of it, I didn’t really agree either, I just didn’t object. I was told to come and so I came, and now that I’m here I can’t wait to get back.”

Thunberg seemed to sense Masson’s defensiveness and changed the subject. He pointed at the men who were talking around the fire. “They’re not from around here, either. My guess is that this is just a scouting party. Sent to appraise the colony so that they can report back to the tribal leaders in the east.”

“Why?”

“Why do you think? To prepare for war.”

Masson raised his eyebrows in surprise. No one had mentioned anything about war.

Thunberg continued, “The eastern frontier has been a massive thorn in the Company’s side for years. The Company isn’t interested in colonising the Cape; they just want enough of it so that it pays for itself and makes a decent profit from the ships that pass by.

“The main trouble is that there’s too little water over much of the land and not enough pasture. Disputes have broken out with the tribes, and although a border was agreed upon, nobody respects it. The Governor refuses to incur the cost of sending troops to enforce it, especially when the settlers who would benefit bring so little profit to the Company. They end up feeling that they are nothing more than a buffer between Cape Town and the dangerous hordes lurking in the interior. If the tribes were to set aside their own differences and focus on the common enemy, a war would be inevitable.”

Masson noted that all through Thunberg’s explanation, Eulaeus had not spoken but had simply sipped at his broth. Other than when Thunberg asked him to, he never talked or communicated with the other men, which Masson thought strange. He turned to Thunberg and said, “You told me earlier that these men are from a place not far from Eulaeus’s own tribe. I thought that locals weren’t allowed to be enslaved?”

Thunberg shook his head and smiled ruefully. “That’s true, but Eulaeus is no slave. He’s a warrior of the Xhosa tribe.”

Masson could not reconcile his vision of the fearsome warriors that Trudy had read about with the obedient, soft-spoken man sitting quietly next to him. “Officially, he’s called a Free Black, but unofficially he’s what you might call an unwilling participant.”

Eulaeus appeared not to register the conversation as Thunberg continued. “He’s from beyond the frontier. He got into trouble with his tribal elders, who banished him, and not long afterwards he was picked up by Willmer, who promised to put a roof over his head and food in his belly. All he had to do was put a cross on a piece of paper.

“Of course, that piece of paper turned out to be a work contract. In exchange for bringing him to the Cape, Eulaeus has to pay Willmer an agreed-upon sum every week for the next ten years or face prison. He came to work for the Landdrost at Stellenbosch, who, in addition to being the equivalent of the local magistrate and a fine man, is also my landlord. In view of his excellent local knowledge, the Landdrost agreed that Eulaeus could accompany me on all my journeys into the interior. He doesn’t say it, but I think he enjoys being out and away from the town. He’s a good man, just doesn’t talk very much.”