Trade Wind (48 page)

It was an effort to conceal her discomfiture, but she did so and said stiffly that it seemed to be a charming property and she was sure he must find its position most useful to him. She was sorry to have disturbed his siesta and would certainly not have trespassed had she known that she would find him here.

“I am well aware of that,” said Captain Frost grimly. “And I won’t ask you what you were doing here, because I think I can make a fairly accurate guess. I imagine you came here to find out who this place belonged to, because you once saw a certain cargo being landed here by night and suspected that other cargoes might be concealed here. That it might, in fact, be a barracoon, and you strongly disapprove of slave traders. That’s right, isn’t it?”

“I seem to remember you asking me that question before,” said Hero, choosing to misunderstand him. “And I also remember telling you that I do not ‘disapprove.’ I
abominate
slave trading—and all who engage in it—”

“So you gave me to understand. Why?”

“
Why?
You surely cannot mean that! The reason must be obvious to any thinking person, and how you can ask such a pointless and—and
abysmally
stupid question I cannot conceive. Good day, sir.”

She gave him a curt nod and would have turned and left him, but she had forgotten the spray of briar that was still entangled in the lace of her petticoat. And as she paused to free herself, Captain Frost stepped lightly over the intervening roses, and catching her wrist in a grip that felt as unyielding as a steel trap, said equably and in a voice that was strangely at variance with that inflexible grasp: “If you knew me better you would realize that I never ask pointless questions. I happen to have a particular reason for being interested in your views.”

Hero looked from his hard fingers to his equally hard face, and managed with considerable difficulty to control a terrified impulse to scratch and kick. But since it was obvious that any such action would only end in humiliating defeat, she forced herself to stand still and say calmly: “You are hurting my wrist.”

A flicker of something very like admiration showed briefly in Captain Frost’s face, and he smiled faintly and released her. Hero snatched her hand away and rubbed the angry marks his fingers had made, but she did not again make the mistake of attempting to leave, and Rory looked at her reflectively for a moment or two; thinking illogically and with a curious sense of surprise that he had not remembered that her eyes were grey or that they had small green flecks in them, and that he would not forget it again.

He said meditatively: “Leaving aside the larger issues, why, specifically, do you abominate slave traders? Because they make money out of it?”

“No.’ Hero’s voice was ice. “I told you once before and I am quite certain that you have not forgotten it But if you really wish to hear me repeat it I shall be happy to oblige you. I abominate them because they are personally responsible for the death and agony and degradation of thousands of people. Of innocent human beings who have done them no harm and with whom they have no quarrel. Because they callously condemn to appalling suffering and misery—”

“Yes, that’s what I thought. I just wanted to make sure I hadn’t got it wrong. Then perhaps. Miss Hollis, you can tell me how it is that, while holding such views, you have recently been doing your damnedest to make yourself personally responsible for the death or mutilation of several hundred human beings who cannot have done you any harm, and with whom—as far as I know—you can hardly have quarrelled? And furthermore, why you should have thought fit to assist in the extension of a trade you profess to abhor? I will absolve you from the charge of doing either of these things for the sake of personal profit; though that at least would have been a more understandable motive than a mere love of meddling. But I confess I find it interesting.”

Hero said blankly:‘I think you must be mad! I have not the least idea what you are talking about, and I cannot believe that you have either. May I go now? It is getting late.”

Captain Frost ignored the request and said unpleasantly: “I advised you once before against meddling in matters that you do not understand, but it seems that you are a young woman who will not take advice. So you can oblige me now by explaining how this tender conscience of yours permits you to assist in smuggling a considerable quantity of arms into the hands of an irresponsible mob of conspirators, while at the same time absolving you from any feeling of responsibility for the deaths that were a direct result of that action?”

“I didn’t!—I never touched…It
wasn’t
arms!” Hero’s indignation led her into passionate incoherence: “It was votes!—I mean people. I mean—”

“You mean,” interrupted Captain Frost scathingly, “that you expect me to believe that you helped to smuggle ballots into Beit-el-Tani—or bodies?”

“I don’t expect you to believe anything!” said Hero hotly.’ And I don’t care what you believe. Of course if wasn’t bodies or It was money.

To pay for food and to get people to support the Prince—the ones who couldn’t afford to do it for nothing—so that there needn’t be any fighting. It was your people—your bullying Navy and your tiresome Consul who started all the shooting and killing. If it hadn’t been for them—”

She stopped abruptly, disconcerted by the expression on Captain Frost’s face and conscious of a dreadful sinking of the heart and a frantic desire to put her hands over her ears and refuse to listen to anything else.

Rory said softly: “You really believe that, don’t you? What a gullible little cat’s-paw it isl Do you mean to say that it never even occurred to you to open one of the chests that you helped to smuggle into Beit-el-Tani? Not even one?”

“They were locked; and—” Hero caught her breath and her eyes were suddenly wide and appalled. She said in a whisper, and as though she had to convince herself rather than him: “It was
money!
”

“It was rifles,” said Rory Frost.

“I don’t believe you.”

“I think you do,” said Rory grimly.

“No,” said Hero in a choked voice. “No! Oh no!”

“What story did they tell you to keep you from opening the boxes?”

“They said that the Arabs might think—” she stopped again, remembering that it was Thérèse who had said that: Clayton had warned her against Thérèse…and against Cholé too; and the others…

Rory said: “That you might have stolen part of the contents? And you swallowed that, and helped them to put two hundred rifles into the hands of a man who needed only that encouragement to start an armed rising!

And now I suppose you are going to say ‘Please, I didn’t know,’ and forget the tiresome maxim that says, ‘
Ignorance of the law excuses nobody
.’

“I wasn’t—it
was
money. It must have been!”

“In chests that size? Don’t be silly! They were rifles all right. And as if that wasn’t enough, you actually took a hand in helping Bargash to escape to his followers and touch off a rebellion in which a hell of a lot of men died. And then you prate to me of the brutal behaviour of that old fool Edwards and a handful of callow young officers, who had the unenviable task of preventing half the island going up in flames and putting a stop to what you and your friends had done their best to start. If you’d known the first thing about the el Harth you’d know that they don’t give a curse for any son of Sultan Saïd, and were only out to get rid of his entire family and grab power for themselves, while half the rest of Bargash’s followers were merely hoping for loot.”

Hero’s face was painfully white and she did not appear to be listening to him. She said in an almost inaudible whisper: “No. No, of course it isn’t true. Thérèse would never…She
promised!

Rory’s laugh was as curt and brutal as an ugly expletive. “Dear Thérèse! she’s an intriguing creature in both senses of the word. She is also—in addition to being hard-headed and unsentimental—an intensely practical and patriotic Frenchwoman, whose husband’s firm has a large stake in sugar and would therefore dearly like to remove Majid, because Majid has the support of the British, and the British have set themselves to put an end to slavery. That is why Monsieur Tissot and his friends (and incidentally, his Government!) elected to support the eldest son, Thuwani, when he tried to claim the whole of his late father’s territories instead of being content with his own lion’s share of the inheritance. And why, when Britain’s East India Company stepped in and sent Thuwani’s warships back to port, they turned their attention to Bargash instead.”

“Because he would have been a better Sultan,” declared Hero defiantly. “He would have done something for his subjects and started reforms and—and been strong where his brother is weak, and been a progressive ruler instead of a backward and medieval one!”

“Is that what they told you? Poor Miss Hollis! That’s what you get for being innocent and credulous.”

“Why shouldn’t it be true?” demanded Hero passionately. “Why should you be so sure you are right just because you took care to make friends with Majid so that you couldn’t be run out of the island? The Prince
would
have made a better Sultan!”

“From the Arab point of view, yes,” agreed Rory. “They’ve always been in favour of ruthlessness and cunning. But the other attributes with which you have endowed him are purely imaginary, and Thérèse knows that even if you don’t. There is one reason, and only one, why her husband’s firm would prefer to see either the Seyyid Thuwani or Bargash, whom they regard as Thuwani’s deputy, in Majid’s place as ruler of Zanzibar and the mainland territories. Because either would permit, for a consideration, the shipping of African slaves to work the sugar plantations on Bourbon and La Reunion.
Now
do you understand?”

“No…’ Once again Hero’s voice was a whisper. “You can’t know that. You are making it up. I’ve never heard of Reunion, and it’s probably only something that you ” her voice failed her.

“There would appear to be a great many things you haven’t heard of,” said Rory unkindly. “But for your information, the islands of Bourbon and La Reunion are French possessions, and His Imperial Majesty Louis Napoleon—or his Government if you prefer—have permitted the importation of negro slaves under the pleasing title of ‘
Libres engagés
’; which is supposed to mean that they have freely volunteered their services, though the results are precisely the same as before. The negroes are purchased by native agents all along the Mozambique coast, and herded aboard French ships, where they are asked if they are willing to engage themselves for a term of ten years. And since they do not understand a word that is spoken to them and have been ordered by the dealers to nod when spoken to—which normally means “no’ to an African and not “yes’ as it does to us—this is taken for consent. They are thereupon registered and numbered, and forwarded in shiploads to the plantations; where they do not survive for long. Do you know how many slaves are needed to work the plantations of La Reunion alone? A hundred thousand! And as they reckon the average life of a slave there as five years, they need twenty thousand new ones every year. They need them so badly that they send French men-of-war to escort the slave ships safely to port, and intrigue against Sultan Majid because England supported his nomination. And they have created such a demand for slaves that the prices have risen to a point where the tribes have found it more profitable to hunt and kidnap their neighbours than to bother with more normal methods of earning a livelihood. That, my public-spirited young woman, is what you and your friends have been doing your damnedest to assist. It’s an entertaining thought, isn’t it?”

“I…’ began Hero, and found that she could not continue.

Captain Frost laughed. “Yes, ironically enough, you. Miss Hollis. Your enthusiastic and uninstructed meddling in the Bargash plot helped to bring a good many men to their deaths, and had it succeeded you would have had a share—admittedly a very small one, but still a share—in the capture and disposal of a vastly increased number of negro slaves for the French Colonies (and I daresay for a great many other places as well) by anyone who cared to join in.”

“Such as yourself!” said Hero in a shaking voice.

“Such as myself,” agreed Captain Frost affably.

Horror and disbelief had assailed Hero in turn and served for a brief space to submerge her anger. But now it returned again as she recalled that the man who stood there lecturing her as though she had been a guilty schoolgirl was, by his own admission, a thief, a slave trader and a libertine, and for all she knew, a pirate as well! Yet he dared to take her to task for becoming innocently involved in something that he himself had knowingly engaged in for years—and for profit.

The colour flooded back to her white face and she said furiously: “You have had a great deal to say in my dispraise, but at least I intended no harm, while you! How did you know that there were muskets in those boxes? If there were (which I do not have to believe) it could only be because they were the ones that you yourself had smuggled into Zanzibar and carried up to this very house.
Your
house! And yet you dare suggest that I had a share in the death of men who could only have been armed with muskets that you yourself must have sold to Bargash.”

“Not to Bargash,” corrected Rory equably. “To an agent who I believe re-sold them to Seyyid Bargash at a nice profit.”

“Then you admit it!”

“Why not? I can’t see that because you prefer to shirk your share of the responsibility for their transfer to Beit-el-Tani, I should do the same over my part in the transaction.”

Hero gave a scornful and triumphant laugh and said: “There—! I thought you were lying and now I know it. Those boxes were not the ones I saw you landing here.”

“Of course they weren’t. But their contents were. And don’t say ‘I don’t believe it’ again, because that remark is getting a little monotonous. I assure you I know who bought them and who re-sold them and to whom. And also that it was you who devised a way of getting them to Bargash.”

“And you can admit that, and still have the—the
audacity
to accuse me of responsibility for the deaths of men to whom you sold muskets, for money?”