A Falcon Flies (15 page)

They buried Thomas Harkness that evening, wrapped in the blanket, under the milkwood grove, for the heat was oppressive in the valley and they could not wait for a coffin to be carted out from the city.

Zouga left the coroner to take charge of the estate, to list the equipment and livestock in the yard and put his seals on the doors of the old house until the contents could be taken in.

Zouga rode home in the golden Cape dusk, his boots dusty and his shirt sticky with sweat. He was exhausted from the day's exertions, and low in spirits, still oppressed by grief for the old man, and angry with him for the last trick he had played.

The groom took his horse in front of the bungalow.

‘Did you deliver the letter to Captain Codrington?' Zouga demanded, and hardly waited for the reply as he went up into the house. He needed a drink now, and while he poured whisky into a cut crystal glass, his sister came into the room, and reached up casually to kiss his cheek, wrinkling her nose at the tickle of his whiskers and the smell of his sweat.

‘You had best change. We are dining with the Cartwrights tonight,' Robyn told him. ‘I could not avoid it.' And then as an afterthought, ‘Oh, Zouga, a coloured servant delivered something for you this morning. Just after you had left. I had it put in the study.'

‘Who is it from?'

Robyn shrugged. ‘The servant spoke only kitchen Dutch and he seemed terrified. He fled before I could find someone to question him.'

With the whisky glass in his hand Zouga crossed to the door of the study, and stopped there abruptly. His expression changed, and he strode through the doorway.

Minutes later Robyn heard his shout of triumphant laughter, and curiously she crossed to the open door. Zouga stood beside the heavy carved stinkwood desk.

On the desk-top lay a draw-string bag of tanned and stained leather from which spilled a heavy necklace of gleaming gold; beside the bag was spread a magnificently illustrated map on a backing of linen parchment, and Zouga stood with his back to her. He held at arm's length a flamboyant picture in oils in a large frame, a figure on horseback with a band of ferocious wild animals in the foreground, and as she watched, Zouga reversed the picture. There was a message freshly carved into the wood of the frame.

For Zouga Ballantyne. May you find the road to all your Monomatapas – would only that I could have gone with you.

Tom Harkness.

Zouga was laughing still, but there was a strange quality to the laughter and when he turned towards her she realized with a shock that her brother's eyes were bright with tears.

Z
ouga brushed the crumbs from his lips with the damask table napkin and chuckled as he picked up the sheet of newsprint and shook it open again at the second page.

‘Damn me, Sissy, I should have known better than to leave you alone.' He read further and laughed outright. ‘Did you really say that to him? Did you really?'

‘I cannot remember my exact words,' Robyn told him primly, ‘you must remember it was in the heat of battle.'

They sat on the terrace of the bungalow under the pergola of vines, through which the early sun flicked golden coins of light upon the breakfast table.

The previous day the editor of the
Cape Times
,with a speculator's eye to making a profit on Dr Robyn Ballantyne's notoriety, had invited her on a tour of the military hospital at Observatory, and in innocence, Robyn had believed that the visit was at the invitation of the Colony's administration and she had welcomed the opportunity to widen her professional experience.

The visit had succeeded beyond the editor's most extravagant expectations, for the surgeon-general of the Colony had scheduled a tour for the same day and he had walked into the hospital's main operating room, followed by his staff, at the moment that Robyn was expressing herself on the subject of sponges to the hospital matron.

The surgeon's sponges were kept in pails of water, clean water from the galvanized rainwater tanks at the rear of the building. The pails were under the operating table, where the surgeon could reach them readily, and after swabbing away blood and pus and other matter the sponge was dropped into a collection tray, later to be washed out and returned to the original pail of fresh water.

‘I assure you, doctor, that my nurses wash the swabs out most thoroughly.' The matron was a formidable figure with the flattened features of a bulldog bitch and the same aggressive thrust to her jaw. She stooped, plunged her hand into the pail, and selected one of the sponges and proffered it to Robyn.

‘You can see for yourself how soft and white they are.'

‘Just like the soft white germs that swarm in them.' Robyn was angry, with red spots of colour in her cheeks. ‘Have none of you here ever heard of Joseph Lister?'

The surgeon-general answered her question from the doorway.

‘The answer to that question, Doctor Ballantyne, is NO we have never heard of that person, whoever he may be. We do not have time to concern ourselves with the opinions of every crank or, for that matter, with male impersonators.'

The surgeon-general had a very good idea of the identity of the young woman before him. He had followed the gossip which was the Colony's main recreation, and he did not approve of Robyn.

On the other hand, Robyn had no idea as to the identity of the elderly gentleman with the bushy grey whiskers and beetling brows, though by the dried blood stains on the front of his frock coat she guessed that he was a surgeon of the old school, one who operated in his street clothes and let the stains advertise his profession. Here was a much more worthy adversary than the hospital matron, and she rounded on him with the battle light bright in her eyes.

‘Then, sir, I am amazed that you admit so readily your ignorance and your bigotry.'

The surgeon-general spluttered for breath and a ready answer.

‘By God, madam, you do not truly expect me to look for dangerous poisons in each speck of dust, in each drop of water, on my own hands even.' He held them up for her inspection, shaking them in Robyn's face. There were dark rinds of dried blood under the nails, for he had operated that morning. He pushed his face close to hers, and she drew back a little as his spittle flew angrily.

‘Yes, sir,' she told him loudly. ‘Look for them there, and on each breath you exhale, on those filthy clothes.'

The editor scribbled delightedly in his shorthand notebook, as the exchanges became more violent, more loaded with personal insult. He had not bargained for anything so spectacular, but the climax came when Robyn had goaded her adversary until he used an oath as potent as his rage.

‘Your choice of words is as foul as these lowly little white sponges of yours,' she told him, and let him have the sponge full in the face, hurling it with all her strength so that water flew and dripped from his whiskers on to the front of his frock coat as Robyn marched from the operating room.

‘You hit him?' Zouga lowered the newspaper, and stared across the table at his sister. ‘Really, Sissy, sometimes you are no lady.'

‘True,' Robyn agreed unrepentantly. ‘But that is not the first time you have made that observation. Besides I had no idea that he was the surgeon-general.'

Zouga shook his head in mock disapproval and read to her. ‘His considered opinion of you, as expressed to the editor, is that you are a fledgling doctor of dubious qualification very recently obtained from an obscure school of medicine, by even more dubious means.'

‘Oh, rich!' Robyn clapped her hands. ‘He's a better orator than a surgeon.'

‘He goes on to say that he is considering going to law to obtain redress.'

‘For assault with a sponge.' Robyn laughed lightly as she stood up from the breakfast table. ‘A fig for him, but we must hurry if we are to keep our appointment with Captain Codrington.'

Her mood was still gay as she stood beside Zouga in the stern of the water lighter when they came alongside the steel side of the gunboat.

The south-east wind had raked the surface of Table Bay into a cottonfield of white caps, and had spread a thick white table-cloth of cloud upon the flat-topped mountain. The people of the Colony called this wind ‘The Cape Doctor', for without it the summers would have been oppressive and enervating. However, it provided a constant hazard to shipping and the bottom of the bay was littered with wrecks.
Black Joke
had two men on her anchor watch as she lunged and fretted against her cable.

As the lighter came alongside, the thick canvas hoses were passed down and a dozen men on the pumps began to transfer the cargo into the gunboat's boiler room tanks, before any attempt was made to take visitors aboard.

As Robyn came up through the entry port to the main deck she looked immediately to the quarterdeck. Codrington was in shirt sleeves, he was a head taller than the group of warrant officers around him, and his sun-bleached blond hair shone in the sunlight like a beacon.

The group was giving its attention to the coal lighter which was secured against the port side of the ship.

‘Have the hands secure a tarpaulin over the buckets.' Codrington shouted down to his boatswain in the lighter. ‘Else you'll have us looking like a party of chimneysweeps.'

The deck was alive with the purposeful pandemonium of revictualling, bunkering and watering, and with Zouga beside her, Robyn picked her way through the litter. Codrington turned away from the rail and saw them.

He seemed younger than Robyn remembered, for his expression was relaxed and his manner easy. He had an almost boyish air when contrasted to the grizzled and weatherbeaten sailors about him, but the illusion was dispelled the moment he recognized his visitors. Suddenly his features were stern and the line of his mouth altered, the eyes chilled to the hardness of pale sapphires.

‘Captain Codrington,' Zouga greeted him with his most studied charm. ‘I am Major Ballantyne.'

‘We have met before, sir,' Codrington acknowledged, making no effort to return the smile.

Zouga went on unruffled, ‘May I present my sister, Doctor Ballantyne?'

Codrington glanced back at Robyn. ‘Your servant, ma'am.' It was more a nod than a bow. ‘I have read something of your further exploits since our last meeting in this morning's news-sheet.' For a moment the stern expression cracked, and there was a mischievous spark in the blue eyes. ‘You have strong views, ma'am, and an even stronger right hand.'

Then he turned back to Zouga. ‘I have orders from Admiral Kemp to convey you and your party to Quelimane. No doubt you will find our company dull, after your previous travelling companions.' Deliberately Codrington turned and looked across a half mile of wind-creamed green water to where
Huron
still lay at her anchor, and for the first time Zouga fidgeted uncomfortably as he followed the direction of the Captain's eyes. Codrington went on. ‘Be that as it may, I would be grateful if you could present yourselves aboard this ship before noon on the day after tomorrow when I expect a fair tide to leave the bay. Now you must excuse me. I must attend to the management of my ship.' With a nod, not offering to shake hands or make any other civility, Codrington turned away to his waiting warrant officers, and Zouga's charm deserted him. His face darkened and seemed to swell with anger at the abrupt dismissal.

‘The fellow has a damnable cheek,' he growled fiercely to Robyn. For a moment he hesitated and then with a curt, ‘Come, let us leave,' he turned, crossed the deck, and clambered down into the water lighter, but Robyn made no move.

She waited quietly until Codrington had finished the discussion with his boatswain, and looked up again, feigning surprise to see her still there.

‘Captain Codrington, we left
Huron
on my insistence. That is why we are now seeking other passage.' She spoke in a low husky voice, but her manner was so intense that his expression wavered.

‘You were correct. That ship is a slaver and St John is a slave-master. I proved it.'

‘How?' he demanded, his manner altering instantly.

‘I cannot speak now. My brother—' She glanced back at the entry port, expecting her brother to reappear at any moment. He had given her strict instructions as to how he expected her to act towards Codrington.

‘I will be at the landing place at Rogger Bay this afternoon,' she went on quickly.

‘What time?'

‘Three o'clock,' she said, and turned away, lifted her skirts above her ankles and hurried to the ship's side.

A
dmiral Kemp sat impatiently in the immense carved abbot's chair which his junior officers referred to as the ‘throne'. The size of it emphasized the thinness of the old man's body. It seemed his shoulders were too narrow to support the mass of gold lace which decorated his blue uniform. He clasped the arms of the chair to keep from fidgeting, for this young officer always made him uneasy.

Clinton Codrington leaned forward towards him and spoke quickly, persuasively, using the finely shaped hands to emphasize each point. The Admiral found this much energy and enthusiasm wearying. He preferred men with less mercurial temperament, who could be relied on to carry out orders to the letter without introducing startling improvisations.

Officers with a reputation for brilliance he viewed with deep suspicion. He had never had that reputation as a young man, in fact his nickname had been ‘Slogger' Kemp, and he believed that the word brilliance was a pseudonym for instability.

The nature of duty on this station made it necessary for young men like Codrington to be detached for months at a time on independent service, instead of being kept with the battle fleet under the strict eye of a senior officer, ready with a signal of rebuke to check any hot-headedness.

Kemp had an uneasy conviction that he was going to be seriously embarrassed by this particular officer before his appointment of Commander to the Cape Squadron terminated, and allowed him to collect his knighthood and retire to the peace and beloved seclusion of his Surrey home. That his future plans had not already been prejudiced by young Codrington was only a matter of the utmost good fortune, and Kemp had difficulty keeping his expression neutral when he remembered the Calabash affair.