would be very pleased to know about it.
Even if there were no new treasures to discover, there were certainly old ones to protect. It would be Camacho Pereira's duty to steer the expedition away from certain areas, to prevent it stumbling on secrets known not even to the Governor's masters in Lisbon.
Camacho's orders were clear: distract the Englishman by accounts of the insurmountable difficulty of travel in certain directions, the swamps, the mountain ranges, the disease, the savage animals and even more savage men, and contrast that with the friendly people in pleasant lands, rich with ivory, that lay in other directions.
If this was unsuccessful, and Major Ballantyne had all the earmarks of arrogance and intractability peculiar to his nation, then Camacho was to use what other means of persuasion came to hand. This was a euphemism perfectly understood by both the Governor and his nephew.
Camacho had almost convinced himself that this was really the only sensible course of action. Beyond Tete there was no law, except that of the knife, and Camacho had always lived by that law. Now he savoured the thought. He had found the Englishman's unconcealed contempt as galling as the woman's rejection had been painful.
He had convinced himself that the reason for the attitude towards him of both brother and sister was his Mulatto blood. This was a sensitive area of Camacho's self-esteem, for even in Portuguese territories where miscegenation was almost universal practice, mixed blood still carried a stigma. He would enjoy the work ahead, for not only would it wipe out the insults he had suffered, but it would bring rich pickings, and even after they had been shared out with his uncle, and others, there would still be much profit in it for himself.
The equipment that the expedition carried represented, in Camacho's view, a vast fortune. There were barge- loads of excellent trade goods. Camacho had taken the first opportunity to check secretly the contents of the packs. There were firearms, and valuable instruments, chronometers and sextants, and there was a forged-steel field-safe that the Englishman kept locked and guarded. The merciful God alone knew how many golden English sovereigns it contained, and if He did not know, then his good uncle the Governor knew less. It would make the division of spoils more in Camacho's favour. The more he brooded upon it, the more he looked forward to the arrival at Tete, and the jump-off into the unexplored territory beyond.
To Robyn the tiny town of Tete marked her real arrival in Africa, and her return to the world for which she had trained so assiduously and yearned so deeply.
She was secretly glad that Zouga had used the unloading of the barges as an excuse not to accompany her. You find the place, Sissy, and we'll go there together tomorrow.'
She had changed back into skirts, for small and isolated as it was, Tete was still a backwater of civilized behaviour and there was no point in giving offence to the local inhabitants. Though she found the heavy folds about her legs annoying, she soon forgot them as she walked the single, dusty street of the village where her father and mother must have walked together for the last time, and peered at the mud-walled trading stores built haphazardly along a rough line with the bank of the river.
She stopped at one of these little duka's and found that the storekeeper could understand a mixture of her basic Swahili, English and Nguni language, enough anyway to direct her on to where the village street petered out in a mere footpath that meandered off into the acacia forest.
The forest was hushed in the heat of the noon, even the birds were silent and the mood weighed on Robyn, depressing her and awakening the memories of long-ago mourning.
She saw a flash of white amongst the trees ahead, and stopped, reluctant to go on to what she knew she would find. For a moment she was transported to girlhood again, to a grey November day standing beside her Uncle William waving upwards at the passenger decks of the departing ship, her eyes so dimmed with tears that she could not make out at the crowded rail the beloved face for which she searched, while the distance between ship and quay opened like the gulf between life and death.
Robyn shook the memory away and went on. There were six graves amongst the trees, she had not expected , that, but then she recalled that there had been heavy mortality amongst the members of her father's KaborraBassa.
expedition, four of disease, one drowned and a suicide.
The grave for which she searched stood a little apart from the others. It was demarcated by a square of whitewashed river stones and at the head was a cross built of mortar. It also had been whitewashed. Unlike the other graves, it had been kept cleaned of grass and weed, and the cross and stones freshly painted. There was even a small bunch of wilted wild flowers standing in a cheap blue china vase. They were not more than a few days old. That surprised Robyn.
Standing at the foot of the grave she read the still fully legible lettering on the plaster cross: In loving memory of Helen beloved wife of Fuller Morris Ballantyne.
Born August 4th i8I4. Died of fever December i6th i852.
God's will be done.
Robyn closed her eyes and waited for the tears to come up from deep inside, but there were no tears, they had been shed long ago. instead there were only the memories.
Little fragments of memory played over and over in her mind, the smell of strawberries as they gathered them together in Uncle William's garden, standing on tiptoe to place one of the lush red fruit between her mother's white teeth and then eating the half that was left especially for her; lying cuddled under her bedclothes as she listened drowsily to her mother's voice reading aloud to her in the candlelight; the lessons at the kitchen table in winter, under the elm trees in summer and her own eagerness to learn and to please; her first pony ride, her mother's hands holding her in the saddle, her legs too short for the stirrups; the feel of the soapy sponge down her back as her mother stooped over the iron hipbath; the sound of her mother's laughter, and then at night the sound of her weeping beyond the thin partition beside her cot; then the final memory of the smell of violets and lavender as she pressed her face to her mother's bodice. Why must you go, Mama? 'Because your father needs me. Because your father has sent for me, at last.'
And Robyn's own terrible consuming jealousy at the words, mingled with the sense of impending loss.
Robyn knelt in the soft cushion of dust beside the grave, and began to pray, and as she whispered, the memories came crowding back, happy ones and sad ones together, and she had not felt so close to her mother in all the intervening years.
She did not know how long she had knelt there, it seemed an eternity, when a shadow fell across the earth in front of her and she looked up, jerked back to the present with a little gasp of surprise and alarm.
