II
Alphonse and Thierry unknotted the rigging, lowered the sail and the mast, then the four of them together heaved the pirogue up past the high-tide mark of the beach. Thierry found a section of flat sand and fashioned a makeshift tent from the sail and two paddles, just about big enough for them all. Alphonse collected wood and built a fire on which they boiled rice and grilled fish, before sitting in a line looking out over the sea and eating it with their fingers.
‘You never told me what the verdict was,’ said Lucia.
‘How do you mean?’
‘Your science presentation. Did the Chinese discover America?’
He gave her a sideways glance; she must have been aware of all the rancour and commotion on the Maritsa last night. Maybe this was her way of angling for the story. ‘I’m never quite sure what people mean by that,’ he answered carefully. ‘It’s always struck me as a little arrogant to say the New World was discovered by Columbus or the Chinese or whoever. What about the tribes-people who crossed the Bering Strait sixteen thousand years ago? Don’t they count? Or the Norsemen of the Vinland sagas? Or the men of Bristol, who fished off the American coast long before Columbus. Discovery’s just a euphemism. What people really mean is conquest. And, no, the Chinese didn’t conquer America.’
‘Nice sidestep,’ she smiled.
Knox laughed and nodded across the fire at Alphonse and Thierry, helping themselves to more mounds of rice. ‘Did you know that these guys sometimes sail their pirogues all the way across this channel to Mozambique? Two hundred miles of treacherous open sea in a fifteenfoot canoe, armed only with food, fresh water and a pack of cigarettes. People do extraordinary things in boats, and they don’t always leave evidence behind. Frankly, I’d be amazed if no Chinese had ever made it to America before Columbus.’
‘Really?’
‘Look at a map sometime. Sail north from China, you can have land to your left all the way around Kamchatka to the Bering Sea, then down Alaska to British Columbia and the western United States. Or, if you don’t fancy the cold, you could always island-hop via the Kurils and the Aleutians. Did no fisherman or merchant ever make it there, not even by accident?’
‘Reaching somewhere isn’t the point,’ observed Lucia. ‘It only counts if you report it back.’
‘And maybe they did,’ said Knox. ‘The Chinese certainly believed in a place called Fusang, ten thousand kilometres to their east, pretty much exactly where California is. The third-century emperor Shi Huang despatched a group of settlers there; by all accounts they settled happily enough. A Buddhist monk called Hui Shen followed with a party of missionaries.’ Bizarrely, Hui Shen had had an almostexact Irish counterpart, a sixth-century abbot called Brendan, who’d led a crew of monks west in search of a promised land filled with fruit and meadows and all good things, encountering talking birds and mysterious floating crystal towers on his way. Brendan had existed for sure, and his transatlantic odyssey was certainly plausible. When the Vikings had reached Iceland, they’d found it already settled by Irish Christians. And while Norse longboats had been nothing like as sophisticated as Chinese treasure ships, Leif Eriksson had still managed to sight the North American coast from one, while others had established a settlement in L’Anse aux Meadows in Newfoundland, the only indisputable evidence of Europeans reaching the New World before Columbus.
Lucia nodded. ‘So Zheng He and his admirals would have expected to find land where America was?’
‘They certainly wouldn’t have been surprised by it. Though that doesn’t mean they got there, of course. Or anywhere close.’ They’d finished their food by now, so they took their plates down to the shallows, rinsed them clean. ‘But you have to remember that Chinese ships were absolute pigs to steer. They could hardly sail into the wind at all, and so were utterly dependent upon the monsoon and the other trade winds.’ He gestured out into the Mozambique Channel. ‘If they’d come this far south, and missed their window, their choice would have been to wait out another whole year or risk sailing wherever the wind blew them.’
‘And if it had blown them to Fusang…?’
‘Exactly,’ smiled Knox.
FOURTEEN
I
Rebecca drove the Mitsubishi down to the beach to wash off the blood and put on clean clothes before continuing on to Pierre’s house. It was dark and deserted when she pulled up, and there was no sign of his car. No great shock, frankly, for it was a full day’s drive back from Antananarivo; but she was surprised not to see any of his wives or children.
Pierre had built himself the kind of throwback colonial life that was only still on offer in places like Madagascar. His father had been in the French army, stationed out here before Independence. Convinced it would be the next tourist paradise, he’d bought this whole stretch of coast and forest, including the Eden Reserve. But nothing had come of it, and he and his wife had been killed in a car accident. Pierre, their sole heir, had flown out intending to sell up; but he’d never left. He’d realised that, by living prudently, he’d never have to work again. And the women here were so beautiful.
Mating strategies fascinated Rebecca. Every living creature was the product of an almost infinite regression of successful reproductions: yet each itself had only a limited chance of leaving offspring. To an evolutionary biologist, therefore, sex was war; children victory. It was a battle Pierre had set out to win. He’d started by building guest cabins, even though no tourists had ever come here back then, and had recruited a string of young Malagasy women, ostensibly as staff, but in reality to share his bed and bear his children. Even that hadn’t been enough for him, however. After he’d sold her father a good chunk of his land on which to set up the Eden Reserve, more and more zoologists and other intrepid travellers had started making the trek up here.
A Dutch marine biologist called Cees had arrived for a week with his fiancee Ardine, an otherworldly young woman with crinkled red hair, freckled soft white skin and long, bony witch’s fingers that had glittered with silver rings and semiprecious stones. When Adam had taken Cees diving one day, Pierre had pressed Ardine to let him show her a sacred grotto in the spiny forest. Rebecca had been perhaps ten years old at the time. Without being quite sure why, she’d found herself deliciously titillated by this, and so had followed. The forest trails were difficult if you weren’t used to them. Pierre had kept catching Ardine when she stumbled, plucking thorns from her clothes. The climb down to the grotto itself was narrow and awkward. Pierre went first, then reached back up for Ardine, letting her hips slide through his hands so that her top had rumpled up and his thumbs brushed the undersides of her breasts.
Rebecca had stretched out on the rocks above the pool to watch Pierre strip naked then dive into the water. Ardine had been wearing bikini bottoms beneath her trousers. She’d paddled in the shallows. There was a natural stone bench in the water. Pierre had teased her until she’d sat beside him. He’d taken her hand and talked passionately; she’d blushed and looked away. He’d put a hand behind her head to hold her as he’d kissed her. She’d flapped and struggled, but not for very long. There was something about Pierre that women seemed unable to deny.
Afterwards, Rebecca had often watched Pierre go to work on their female guests. He was powerful, handsome and capable of immense charm. And he had absolutely no shame. Rebecca had learned from him how often people simply defer to strength of purpose. It didn’t much matter what that purpose was, only how fiercely it was held. Some male mosquitoes loiter above salt-water hatcheries, pouncing on females as they struggled from their shells, impregnating them before they could defend themselves. Male Heliconius butterflies punched holes in chrysalises to force themselves upon the females inside. Pierre had something of that ruthlessness. Vulnerability thrilled him. To cuckold gave him joy.
Her father had known all this, but when you were the only two Europeans within a day’s travel, friendship was the only sane option. Besides, Pierre had proved useful. Running a reserve here meant endless bureaucratic
