Trade Wind (80 page)

Orders had evidently been given that no one was to be allowed to approach within a range that might permit of clandestine speech, for the garrison kept its distance, and he had no contact with his fellow-men except for three people: Limbili, the surly negro who brought him his food, Bhiru, the slovenly half-witted youth who cleaned his cell, and a huge, silent Nubian who morning and evening stood by with a loaded blunderbuss whenever the door of the cell was unlocked, and by night squatted outside it, additionally armed with a scimitar and an ancient musket.

The youth, a Banyan of low caste, performed his duties under the watchful eye of Limbili and was too frightened to speak; and neither Limbili nor the Nubian could be persuaded into conversation, for the latter had lost his tongue as a result of an accident in early youth, while the former, having been sold into slavery by a Portuguese trader and escaped to Zanzibar from the French plantations of La Reunion, cherished a consuming hatred for all white men.

Limbili would dearly like to have vented that hatred on the prisoner. But he was aware that the Englishman possessed powerful friends in Zanzibar—among them, it was said, no less a person than the Sultan himself; though that at least could no longer be true, since it was by the Sultan’s order that he had been imprisoned in the Fort. Still, it would be wiser to refrain from ill-treating the white man until his position became clearer, and in the meantime Limbili confined himself to such overt acts as spoiling or spilling the larger part of the food and drink that he carried to the prisoner, refusing to answer when spoken to, and permitting the Banyan youth to neglect his duties and leave unemptied (or on occasions deliberately upset) the noisome bucket that served in place of a latrine.

But to Rory the heat and the stench, the ruined food and inadequate water, the lack of exercise and the monotony of the slow, hot aimless hours, were merely discomforts that he had expected, and he accepted them philosophically. They were not new to him, for he had, in one way or another, experienced them all before, and the only thing that he had not foreseen, and that fretted him unbearably, was the lack of any news. He could get no answers to his questions, and he did not know what was happening in the city, or if the cholera had spread or been checked. Or if there was any word yet of the
Cormorant
‘s arrival…

The
Virago
should have reached the Seychelles by now, and The Dolphins’ House would be empty except for the caretaker and a handful of elderly servants who had been there too long to wish to leave, and who would wait hopefully for his return. Perhaps some day Amrah would come back and take possession of it Unless Batty took her to England with him, and they settled there in some grey and grimy house near the Pool of London, where the sight of ships would remind the old man of other days, and Amrah would forget Zorah and Zanzibar, and the renegade slave trader who had been her father.

A week of clear skies and fierce sunlight was succeeded by five days in which the Trade Wind drove belt after belt of rain clouds across the Island, and the courtyard of the Fort became a muddy lake in which frogs croaked and the refuse of the choked gutters drifted as flotsam. The walls and the floor of Rory’s cell ran with moisture, but there was little change in the temperature, and the humidity of the rains was less bearable than the dry heat of the sun-scorched days had been. The food turned mouldy and toadstools and fungus flourished in the cracks between the stones, and the mosquitoes were reinforced by fluttering, crawling hordes of flying ants.

Two more days
, thought Rory; staring out at the driving torrent that obscured what little he could see of the courtyard. If the
Cormorant
was on time she should reach the Island on the seventeenth, and this, unless he had miscalculated, was the fifteenth. But the date of her arrival was an arbitrary one and a dozen things might delay her; wind and weather, the capture or pursuit of a slaver, the necessity of embarking rescued slaves and convoying captured dhows, accidents in the engine room or sickness among the crew. The
Cormorant
might arrive a week or a month late, and unless the situation in the city was causing anxiety, Colonel Edwards could hardly expect to keep the
Daffodil
hanging about at Zanzibar and neglecting her patrolling duties for much longer. Dan would have to take himself off soon, and he would presumably toke Rory with him.
Cormorant
or
Daffodil
, it could not be long now. Two days—three-four?

But the seventeenth came and went And the nineteenth and the twentieth. And still there was no sign from Dan or Colonel Edwards.

The rain ceased and the sun blazed down from a sky temporarily free of clouds, drying out the mud and the moisture and drawing an abominable stench from the steaming city. But in the reek that filled Rory’s cell the evil odours of the city went unnoticed, for the half-wit youth had not been near him for three days and no one else had taken over the boy’s duties. Limbili, appealed to on this score, showed his teeth in an unpleasant grin and made an obscene and impractical suggestion, and for a moment Rory was sorely tempted to smash his fist into the grinning face. But behind Limbili stood the Nubian mute; vast, unwinking and watchful, one finger crooked about the trigger of the ugly old-fashioned blunderbuss with which, at that range, he could not have missed.

The Nubian’s unnaturally small head might betoken a certain lack of intelligence, but once he had accepted an idea he would retain it; and although he had been told that the prisoner was merely serving a temporary sentence and must eventually be handed over alive and in good health to his own people, Limbili had taken pains to impress upon him that should the white man show any signs of violence or make the smallest move to escape, he was to be shot without mercy; though not through the head or the heart, for that was too good and quick a death: besides, he might miss. The stomach was a better target.

It was a pleasing prospect, but the white man had been disappointingly passive, and even Limbili’s cleverest insults had so far failed to rouse him to anger. And now, yet again, it seemed that he was either too poor-spirited or too cunning to display resentment, though the present provocation should surely have been sufficient to goad any right-thinking man into hitting out blindly and without regard to the consequences.

Rory saw the man’s thoughts reflected clearly on his sneering face and was glad that he had not given way to that sudden savage impulse, for he had long been aware that Limbili resented the fact that his stay in the Fort was not likely to be prolonged, and would welcome an excuse to ensure that he did not leave it alive.

He let his hands relax, and because he knew that to pretend not to understand the insult would only lead to its repetition, forced himself to smile broadly as though in appreciation of a coarse jest. It was a response that Limbili found difficult to deal with and that usually drove him to glowering silence. But today the prisoner’s refusal to rise to the bait had file unexpected effect of sending him into a sudden and entirely im-expected rage, and he began to shout abuse and obscenities in a hoarse, cracked voice, his lean body shaking with fury and his yellow eyeballs starting from his head.

Rory backed away against the far wall out of reach of the clawing, threatening hands, wondering if the man was going to have a fit and what he could do if he were attacked. Even the Nubian, who had begun by grinning in appreciation of Limbili’s picturesque lewdness, grew apprehensive at the spectacle of that frenzied rage, and fearing that the noise would attract the attention of the Baluchi guard, plucked at the negro’s arm and made soothing croaking sounds.

Limbili turned on him and struck his hand away, and taken by surprise the Nubian took a quick step backwards, stumbled, and dropped the blunderbuss, which flew out of his hand and fell with a clatter onto the flags of the verandah. A look of ludicrous dismay contorted his ebony face, and for a moment he hesitated, torn between retrieving the weapon and leaving Limbili alone and undefended with the white man. Then he lunged forward, and gripping the raging negro about the body, dragged him out backwards in one violent heave and slammed the cell door shut behind him.

Rory heard the sound of a brief, panting struggle and a stream of invective, and when at last their footsteps retreated he sat down on the narrow bed feeling oddly unnerved. After a moment or two he reached for the mug of tepid water that Limbili had brought, and drank deeply—and unwisely, for the day had been dry and cruelly hot and the night promised to be no cooler, and he knew that he would get nothing more to drink until the morning. That meagre mug of water which he had all but drained must be made to last through the night, for the liquid in the grimy earthenware bowl that served him as a wash-basin had been foul enough when the boy had brought it three days ago, and by now evaporation had reduced it to a few inches of evil-smelling slime.

But it seemed that Limbili intended to teach him a lesson, because the next day no one came near the cell, and neither food nor drink was brought to him. By the time the last gleam of sunlight left the battlements and the courtyard began to fill with shadows, he realized that he was to be given nothing that day, and his thirst having grown to a raging torment, he assuaged it, nauseously, with the soap-slimed dregs in the wash-bowl. But the relief it brought to his parched throat was only temporary, and when night fell his thirst kept him from sleep, and he leant against the door with his face pressed to the grille in an attempt to breathe fresher air, and in the hope—only a very faint one now—of seeing Limbili approach with the water jar.

The air outside was as foul as that within, and no cooler; and for once there was no sound of voices from the courtyard or the guardrooms, and the Fort seemed strangely silent. So silent that Rory caught himself listening for the familiar asthmatic breathing of the Nubian, who should have been on guard outside his door. But tonight the man had not come and there was no one on guard: and no loiterers in the courtyard.

The starlight appeared very bright in comparison with the pitch-dark cell and the dense shadows under the arches of the verandah, and staring out into it Rory’s attention was caught by a slight movement at the far edge of the small grey strip that was all he could see of the courtyard. A moment later something flitted across the strip and vanished out of his range of vision.

It had been too large for a cat, and must be some hungry pariah dog, scavenging for scraps. The city was full of masterless dogs; half-starved, cringing, flea-ridden creatures who slunk hopefully from rubbish heap to rubbish heap, feeding on refuse and quarrelling noisily over a bone or the corpse of a dead kitten. But they had learned not to approach the gates of the Fort too closely, because the garrison would often fire at them for sport or to test their marksmanship, and it was surprising to see one inside the courtyard.

Rory supposed that the sentry on duty that night must have fallen asleep at his post, and that a venturesome pariah, lured by the smell of garbage, had slunk past him in search of food: and not only one pariah, but several, for once again his eye caught a flicker of movement across the starlit strip of open ground. Listening, he could hear the light patter of paws on the hot stone of the verandahs, and a soft chorus of snuffling, panting sounds. There must, he thought, be at least a dozen dogs in the courtyard, and that meant that the gate was open and unguarded.

Somewhere on the far side of the courtyard a dog growled and was answered by a snarl and a snap, and there followed a short, savage scuffle that terminated in an anguished yelping that awoke the echoes under the dark arches. Rory waited for the crash of a musket and voices shouting curses at the dogs and calling on the sentry to turn them out. But they did not come, and in the silence that followed the brief explosion of animal sounds the furtive pattering began again: only now it was less furtive, and soon it became quicker and bolder. He could hear impatient claws scratching at closed doors and eager noses snuffling hungrily under thresholds, and presently the growling started again and the darkness at the far side of the courtyard was filled with scuffling shadows and the snarling and worrying of dogs who fought over food.

The ugly sounds went on and on, but no one heeded them and no one woke. And quite suddenly Rory knew that there was no one left to—

He should have realized it before. Long before, if heat and thirst and hunger and the foul state of his cell had not numbed him to anything but physical discomfort. And now if he needed further confirmation, he got it, for a breath of the night wind, blowing in unchecked through the open gate, swung wide the heavy iron-bound outer door and brought with it a whiff of something oily, loathsome and unmistakable. A smell that had permeated the city for over a week and would soon permeate the Fort, and that he would have noticed and recognized long ago had it not been effectively hidden from him by the stench of his own cell.

There were dead men in the city. Too many to allow for the bodies to be properly buried; and the night wind that so often carried the scent of cloves and spices to approaching ships was carrying the scent of those bodies out to sea: a warning to all humans to keep their distance, and an invitation to all eaters of carrion to gather for the feast.

So the cholera had not been checked! thought Rory: it had taken hold as he had warned Dan and the Colonel that it would. Perhaps they had even taken advantage of his offer and shipped Mrs Hollis and her niece and daughter on board the
Virago
while there was still time—though recalling Dan’s scathing comments on the subject he doubted it! But then Dan was in love with Cressida Hollis, and so he might well have thought better of it once his rage had cooled and he had had time to discover the truth of that “cock-and-bull story about cholera’. But there would have been very little time, for Ralub would not have delayed. He would have taken the
Virago
out within a matter of hours, and there was no other ship on which it would have been safe to send the women away, for the crews of the Sultan’s own ships lived with their families in the town, and the chances of the cholera breaking out among them would be too great. Perhaps Dan himself had taken them off on the
Daffodil
? He might well have done so, since once the deadliness of the outbreak was realized, the men from die consulates and the European trading firms would have taken prompt measures to get their families out of the Island, and the
Daffodil
would have been the only ship in harbour that could be trusted to transport them in safety. They had probably all left long ago…