A Flower for the Queen: A Historical Novel (25 page)

He looked up and saw that the defiance in her eyes had not diminished, but burned even brighter than before. He wasn’t sure what made him more angry — her treachery or her blatant lack of remorse. Her continued silence only fuelled his fury and there, in a wood in the middle of Africa, face to face with the one person who, even more than Schelling, was responsible for the hardships he had been forced to ensure, he finally found a vent for all the anguish and frustration that had built up inside.

“Did you know that after they stole my journal, they left me to die out there? Was that your idea, too?”

This time she blinked. Suddenly, her look was less certain.

“What about the fire? What kind of a botanist would countenance such a blatant act of vandalism? Are you even a botanist, or is that also just part of the charade, along with the clothes? What are you getting out of all this? What did Schelling promise you that would make you sink so low?”

Her chin began to drop and tears began to appear in the corners of her eyes as Masson stormed forward and brought his face inches away from hers. Her eyes were definitely wet, but even with the threat of his physical presence, there was still no fear.

He realised he had gone too far. As the first tear escaped, there was not even enough time for it to streak down her cheek before she wiped it away with a hand that was bunched up into a fist.

“Do you think that you’re the only one with something to lose in all this?” she screamed back at him.

Her tears were flowing freely now, but he couldn’t tell if they were tears of shame, sadness, fury or a combination of the three. The more they came, the angrier it made her and Masson saw that she was opening and closing her hands, bunching her fists as if ready for a brawl. He remembered how she had clubbed him with the whip and suddenly wondered if it might not be better to give her a little space.

But as he backed away, she followed, fists still clenched. “You think you know everything, but you don’t understand anything. All you see is yourself at the centre of your own tiny world.”

As he backed away from her, he tripped and fell squarely on his behind. He brought up his arms to cover his face as she leaped forward, raining blows down upon him. Her fists were small and she had seemed fragile, but her spirit was so intense that he sensed that she would rather break every bone in both her hands before she would stop the barrage.

Confused and irate, he had been so blinded by his own frustration and anger that he had failed to see that hers was no less deep.

She continued to hammer away at him, trying to find a way through his defences. Afraid that she would really hurt him or herself, he dropped his arms. Although she landed a few blows on his chest, he managed to pull her towards him and smother her in a bear hug.

At first, this made her fight even harder as she thrashed against the confinement of his embrace. But eventually, either through resignation or exhaustion, her rage gave way to deep, gasping sobs.

When at last she stopped crying, he opened his arms. She peeled herself away from him and sat in the grass beneath the assegai trees with her head in her hands. After a while, she raised her head and turned her face to him. She looked drained and tired, but the steely glint in her eyes told him that she was far from broken.

“My name is Lady Jane Sommerton,” she said slowly. “And I wouldn’t even be here if I hadn’t been foolish enough to fall in love with Sir Joseph Banks.”

Lady Jane Sommerton disappeared back into the tent, closing the flap behind her. At first Masson thought that she had changed her mind and decided to be alone, but she soon reappeared wearing her boots and her coat, all traces of the tears wiped from her face.

Masson had taken a seat against the trunk of an assegai tree. After laying out the blanket on the stubby grass, she sat down opposite him, with only the remains of the dead fire between them.

She took a deep breath and half-started to say something, as if dipping her toes to test the temperature of the water. Finding the water frigid, she pulled back and took a deep breath before launching herself forward, eyes closed, waiting for the shock. “I was the first person that Joseph showed the sketch to, or so he told me. We met at one of those ridiculous soirees where women are either there to snare a husband or to escape from the one they already have, whilst the men just drink. Most times they don’t have the first clue as to why they’re there.

“I had escaped to my usual refuge, an herb garden that I had planted in the grounds of my parent’s home. It was far enough away that I could escape the tedium of polite conversation, but close enough that I could not be accused of being anti-social.

“Banks appeared and seemed genuinely impressed by the range of species that I had managed to plant, congratulating me on the degree to which they had flourished. When I explained to him that I had overseen not just the planting of the herb garden but of the entire estate, he had the good grace to apologise for his patronising condescension and insisted that I give him a tour. I can see now that it was all bluster and show, but back then it was a fine thing to have a man take interest in the things that fascinated me.

“We soon became friends, and we often compared herbariums and argued about Linnaeus or Miller. Although it occurred to me that as a young, single woman, being on friendly terms with one of the most eligible bachelors in England carried its own weight of expectation, I ignored both my instincts and the mountain of advice my poor mother tried to give me. Instead, I decided that our relationship was different, that it was based on science, not emotion, and that it was a shared interest in plants that welded our friendship rather than anything so common as mutual infatuation.

“Of course, the inevitable happened, and we fell into that wretched swooning state that I had so despised seeing in all of my friends: sending saccharine letters to each other consisting of complicated language that tried so desperately to make believe that our love was on a higher plane, when in fact it was so dreadfully ordinary. Soon our botanising trips to gardens across the country became little more than a smokescreen for weekend trysts that could be explained away with a gloss of respectability.

“When he didn’t ask me to marry him, I convinced myself that there was no cause for concern. I was against the idea, anyway, not least because in my own mind I saw marriage as society’s way of putting a woman in her place. I had never seen any good come of it and was convinced that Joseph and I were destined for greater things.

“Even when I saw the announcement of his marriage in the papers, I managed to blind myself to reality. He had warned me about it, saying that it was little more than a business transaction for the good of his family and his fortune. He told me he had been forced to accept and that it would not change things between us.

“To prove it, he told me about his plans for the
Resolution
. He would be making a second voyage around the world, but this time, he wanted me to go with him. We even visited the docks, where he showed me the changes that were being made to the ship, describing the extra deck that was being added so that we would have our own suite of apartments.

“He had it all planned out. I would go on ahead to Madeira disguised as a young botanist called Burnette. From Madeira I would proceed to the Cape Verde Islands, where I would await the
Resolution
’s arrival and join Joseph as his assistant. He said that the disguise would only be to get me aboard the ship and that once I was on board, he would be able to convince Captain Cook to let me stay.

“In order to avoid an argument with my family, and knowing that they would try to stop me, I said that I was visiting an aunt in Kent. I then sent them a letter explaining everything before disembarking from Portsmouth. So as not to arouse suspicions, I took very little money of my own to supplement that which Joseph had given me for the voyage to Cape Verde.

“After enduring two sea voyages alone and two weeks cosseted away in the sweltering heat at Cape Verde, you can imagine my surprise when a much smaller
Resolution
arrived without so much as a note of explanation from the great Sir Joseph Banks, who was nowhere to be seen.

“With little money left and no ships due back to England for months, I had no means of sustaining myself or of returning home. I was left with no choice but to keep to a version of the original plan, and even though I believe he suspected the truth right away, Captain Cook was good enough to agree to take me to the Cape. My mother is Dutch, and I know the language well, so I thought that I would have more chance of getting by in the Cape than at Cape Verde and anyway, the two-month voyage meant two months that I would have my board and lodging paid for. Cook even gave me your cabin so that my true identity had the best possible chance of being protected and if he told anyone of my disguise, I never found out.

“I discovered the sketch in the cabin and recognised it instantly. Joseph had told me that after we brought it back, he would have it named after me.

“Up until then I had clung foolishly to some vain hope that something beyond his control must have happened that forced him to abandon his plans, and that I was just an unintentional casualty.

“When you burst into my cabin, I was, shall we say, out of disguise, and my first thought was that you would reveal my secret to the ship. But it was soon clear that you were in no fit state to reveal anything and when you kept mumbling about the flower, I knew what it was that you were after.

“Fortunately, you fainted and I was able to get dressed before calling for help and getting you back to your hammock. After that, I don’t think I left the cabin for the rest of the voyage until we reached Cape Town.

“I met Mr Schelling on the evening of the party in the Company Gardens. I decided that with the
Resolution
still in port, it would be wiser to keep to the guise of Burnette while I looked for some way of gaining passage back to England. I had heard Captain Cook mention Schelling as someone who could facilitate these things, so I arranged to meet with him. I explained that there had been a mix-up in the planning of the expedition and that a botanist was no longer needed. I told him that if he could arrange for my passage back to England, Sir Joseph would see to it that he was properly reimbursed.”

She paused and bit her lip. “But he refused.”

“He said that without a letter of credit signed by Sir Joseph himself, he could not make me a loan, but that he might be able to give me passage in exchange for my botanical services. He said that he was very keen to find a flower that had been requested by the King himself and asked if I knew anything about it.

“When I pressed him, he explained that he had heard a Scottish gardener sent by Sir Joseph Banks let slip that he was here to find a flower, and that the King wished to have it named after the Queen. Schelling said that he could think of no reason why, if someone else were to find the flower first, there shouldn’t be something in it by way of reward.

“It was then that I knew exactly what had happened. It was clear that my abandonment was no accident, and I could no longer deceive myself about the truth: that I meant no more to Joseph Banks, and probably less, than the ‘flowers’ he had left behind on Tahiti.

“Schelling already had a partner — Reinhold Forster — who would use his Royal Society connections to act as Schelling’s agent in London. But Schelling needed someone who could ensure that the flower would make it back alive. None of the gardeners in the Cape were suitable because they were all employees of the VOC.

“But it was Eulaeus that held the key. Willmer had tracked down Eulaeus the morning after he left you at False Bay and showed him the drawing. Eulaeus told Willmer that he knew the general area but that he would only tell them if Schelling agreed to make a gift of guns to the local chief and then grant him his freedom. He hoped to be accepted back into the tribe after securing the weapons for them.

“Willmer explained that this was not an insignificant cost, as a number of years still remained on his contract, and only if he could be given them the precise location of the flower, would he agree to the terms.

“Eulaeus insisted on being the one to take us there, but Willmer knew that Schelling had no intention of granting him his freedom and said all he wanted was the location, or else Eulaeus would get nothing. Eulaeus had no choice, so he told Schelling about Two Rivers and then Willmer’s burghers were supposed to take care of the rest, but you know all about that.”

Masson stayed silent, waiting for the rest.

“I didn’t see him again until we got to Two Rivers, but a lot had happened by then.

“On board the
Resolution
, I had managed to keep mostly to myself, but it was a very different story on the wagon trail. There was no cabin to hide in this time. I insisted on having my own tent, but although I have a better knowledge of the botanical sciences than most men — it was no problem to maintain that part of the disguise — it was only a matter of time before the rest unravelled.”

She paused, and for the first time since she began her tale, her tough exterior seemed to falter just a little. But a moment later her back straightened, her intense gaze returned and she continued with her story.

“After only a few days, Schelling cornered me one evening and made it clear that he doubted my story. With very little room in which to manoeuvre, I was left with no option but to confess. When he asked whether I was a real botanist, I explained that I had received some botanical training under the same circumstances that I had come to know of how Sir Joseph had failed to propagate the flower from seed: because I was his mistress.

“Schelling was angry at first, but soon he realised that other than having a woman on his expedition in place of a man, nothing had really changed. I was still the only one who knew how to get the flower back alive.

“Thereafter, there was no point in keeping up the charade, and I was surprised at how little any of the people we met along the way seemed to take notice of me. Be they farmers, Trekboers, Xhosa or Khoikhoi, all of them found it completely natural that a woman should be part of a wagon party.