‘You not like?’ She could not understand why he was unwilling. She rolled on top of him. The smooth mound between her legs pressed against his thighs.

  His body, starved of intimacy, thrilled to her touch; but still he resisted. Thabisa was beautiful, but a voice in his mind said this was not right.

  Why? Because you do not love her? jeered another voice.

  How many women had he lain with, since his first fumble in a Cantonese brothel? A few, over the years, had fired his heart, but most had been brief, functional affairs. He felt more genuine affection for Thabisa than he had for most of those women. So why did his soul tell him that this was wrong?

  ‘I do not want you.’

  The words came out harshly, unexpectedly vehement. Thabisa recoiled as if he had slapped her in the face. She drew herself up, looking down on him with furious eyes.

  ‘Why—?’

  Before she could finish her question, light fell over them both. Thabisa rolled away. Hamu stood over them, holding a burning brand from the fire.

  He was not looking at them. His spear was in his hand, pointing at the darkness beyond the circle of firelight. ‘Who is there?’

  Ralph heard a high-pitched squeal and the noise of crashing branches. Was it a warthog, or a wild boar? It stopped at the edge of the clearing, just beyond Ralph’s sight. And then, in a clear voice, it said: ‘What are they doing, Mummy?’

  With a shiver of foliage, two people emerged from the bush. One was a boy with fair curls and bright eyes. The other was a woman. The last two people he had expected to see so far away from Nativity Bay.

  Harry and Ann.

  They built up the fire, and Hamu found portions of mealie porridge. Mother and child devoured it as Ann told them what had happened at Nativity Bay.

  ‘We fled as fast as we could,’ she concluded. ‘Marius had told us of the great city you found. We thought we could find you there. But we got lost. We have been stumbling around this jungle these last three days.’

  Ralph tried to imagine it: a woman and a child struggling through the wilderness that had almost defeated three armed men. What sort of courage had it taken her to make such a journey?

  All the time she had been telling Ralph of the atrocities that had taken place in Nativity Bay, she had not met his eye even once. He could sense that she was disturbed by what she had seen earlier. But now she lifted her face and met his gaze. He had forgotten how much strength there was in those eyes.

  ‘Many of the Chunus ran off, but others did not get away. I am sure Marius and Sterling will hunt down as many as possible of those who escaped. We cannot leave them to be carried into slavery. We promised they would be safe.’

  ‘I have given many promises of safety in my life.’ Ralph touched the scars on his cheek. ‘None of them was ever worth a damn.’

  Ann’s face contorted. Perhaps she had expected nothing noble of him.

  ‘Marius has captured Jobe. Did you not swear an oath of brotherhood with him?’

  ‘So did Marius.’

  ‘I hoped you might be a better man.’

  Ralph had no answer to that. His mind raced. He had once sailed aboard a ship that had called at Rio de Janeiro. Half the ships in the bay seemed to be slavers, feeding the machine that ground human blood and sweat into sugar. He would not forget the stench of misery and suffering that had emanated from them. He had watched one crew clear out the corpses of those who had died on the passage, throwing them overboard like unwanted ballast. He had decided that day that there was one trade that he would never be part of.

  ‘I could speak to Marius,’ he said uncertainly.

  ‘You know what kind of man Marius is. You think he will pass up his chance at a fortune, simply because you ask him nicely?’

  ‘What, then?’

  ‘Marius is corrupt and greedy. He has to be forced to confront his wrongdoing and made to set things right.’

  ‘But Marius and I are not enemies,’ he reminded her.

  ‘I am his enemy,’ she said fiercely. ‘Either you set yourself against him, or you set yourself against me and the Chunu.’

  Ralph pondered her ultimatum. ‘You said Ratray and the slavers were well armed?’

  ‘They all have guns, lots of guns – and the ship has cannons.’

  ‘Then we’re powerless.’ Ralph felt a stab of shame, but pushed it away. ‘Look at what we have. A rifle, without ammunition, and two dozen men armed with spears. Do you know what Marius’s guns would do against us? If we were not killed, we would be taken prisoner and added to his haul of slaves.’

  He spoke angrily. What right did she have to make him feel guilty? But Ann did not shrink from the heat in his voice. She held his gaze.

  ‘Marius spoke of a great army. Surely with them at your back you could force the slavers to give up.’

  ‘They would not fight for this.’ He turned to Hamu: ‘What do you do with prisoners of war?’

  Hamu shrugged. ‘If they are caught, they are izigqila.’

  Ralph felt Thabisa stiffen beside him. Izigqila was a word he had heard before, from her lips. Slaves. For a Zulu, it was the natural fate for the people they conquered.

  Ralph translated what Hamu had said for Ann’s benefit.

  ‘You will not make abolitionists of the Zulus.’ He pointed to Thabisa. ‘She is a slave herself.’

  ‘I do not pretend to know what her life has been like,’ Ann sympathised. ‘I am sure she has suffered greatly. But you know this is different. She has not been torn away from her homeland, transported across the ocean like a bundle of goods, and sold to be worked to death.’

  Ralph’s face grew hot. The scar on his cheek began to throb again. ‘What do you expect me to do?’

  ‘Stop them,’ Ann said simply.

  ‘It is not possible.’

  ‘Are you afraid of Marius?’

  ‘I fear no one. But that does not mean I want to charge into his cannons.’

  ‘And what do you think Marius will do if you let him get away with this? He has already betrayed Jobe,’ she reminded him. ‘Do you think the colour of your skin will protect you from his greed?’

  Ann’s remark made Ralph think. He had taken the measure of Marius’s character. The bargain they had struck on Robben Island had endured in large part because all three men had nothing. It survived now because the men were apart, and Ralph had the advantage. But if Marius made his fortune – if he established Nativity Bay as a slave port, with guns and cannon at his disposal – he would become a fearsome presence on the borders of Zululand. He would raid further and further with Sterling’s guns – in pursuit of defenceless tribesmen he could sell as slaves. At best, Ralph would be caught between Shaka and Marius. At worst, he would be destroyed.

  And there was Ann to think of. However much he tried to dismiss her words, they had struck him in a place he thought was immune to feeling.

  Staring at him across the fire, with the flames reflected in his eyes, Ann could not surmise what Ralph was thinking.

  ‘You told me once that you had carried out terrible acts in your life. This is your chance.’ Ann glanced at Harry, and Ralph felt his gut twist with emotion.

  Did she know?

  ‘Save those people. Redeem yourself.’

  When Ralph looked up, the scars on his face seemed to writhe in the firelight.

  ‘I was going to Nativity Bay in any event,’ he said. He still needed powder and shot. ‘I suppose it will do no harm to spy out what Marius is up to.’

  NATIVITY BAY

  R

  alph crouched in the bush that fringed the beach and peered over a rotting tree stump. The settlement at Nativity Bay had grown considerably in his absence, from a castaways’ camp to a proper colony. How long had he been away? Months, certainly. A year? He had stopped counting the days.

  He studied the new landscape. The village the Chunu had built was deserted, but the occupants were not far away. Inside the stockade, he could hear singing, a low and plaintive lament. The slavers had managed to round up a good number of the fugitives. Soon they would load them onto the Nanticoke, which sat at anchor out in the lagoon. Ralph could smell smoke and scorched iron: he guessed the slavers had set up a forge and had begun to shackle the captives. They would take no chances this time.

  Guards stood on the corners of the stockade, while more men patrolled the perimeter outside. Almost twenty of them. There were a few faces Ralph recognised from the Farewell’s crew, and more he did not, who must have come from the Nanticoke. All were armed with rifles – lighter than the one Ralph carried and faster to reload. The Nanticoke was anchored at bow and stern, to keep her broadside to the beach. The snouts of her nine-pounder cannons protruded from her side, with men standing nearby. Ralph did not doubt they were loaded, or that the crew would be ready to fire if the prisoners tried to escape again.

  The slavers must have brought ashore powder and shot for their rifles. Ralph guessed that they would keep their arsenal in the blockhouse in the middle of the stockade. To reach it, he would have to get through the gates, across the compound and into the house. And out again.

  You are insane for even thinking of doing this, he told himself. He could have walked up to the gate and introduced himself as Marius’s business partner. But that would have been too dangerous: it was a reckless man who put himself in Marius’s power.

  And without gunpowder, Ralph was powerless. He began to move, crawling through the bush along the edge of the beach towards the camp until he found the place he wanted, about twenty yards from the stockade gates.

  It stank of urine and excrement; the foliage was black and shrivelled from having been repeatedly showered with human waste. In the time he had been watching, Ralph had seen several of the guards leave the stockade and wander over to this place. It was where they had made their latrine.

  Ralph had not waited long when one of the guards laid his rifle against the stockade wall and sauntered to the patch of bushes, undid his belt and dropped his trousers.

  Ralph waited until he could hear the patter of water sprinkling the bushes. Then he pounced. He had one hand over the guard’s mouth, and the other holding a knife at his throat, before his enemy knew what was happening.

  ‘If you make a sound, I will kill you,’ Ralph whispered in his ear. ‘If you do exactly as I say, you will live. Nod if you understand.’

  The man nodded. Soundlessly, Hamu and two of his warriors emerged from the undergrowth. They stripped the man naked, bound his hands, and tied a gag made of braided vines over his mouth. His eyes widened in horror at being held captive by black men, which gave Ralph a great measure of satisfaction.

  See how you like it.

  ‘You wait here,’ Ralph told Hamu, as he put on the guard’s clothes.

  Hamu touched his arm and held Ralph’s gaze with a frank stare. He was silent, but the concern on his face spoke his mind eloquently enough: When you go in there, I cannot help.

  ‘I will be careful,’ Ralph reassured the induna.

  Ralph pulled the guard’s wide-brimmed hat low over his face, though with his scars it was not much of a disguise. He peered out at the stockade again, looking for Marius among the guards, but did not see him. He was relying on the men from the different ships not knowing one another well enough to identify a stranger.

  The moment he left the shelter of the trees, he was vulnerable. Every step of the walk across the hot sand felt like a death sentence. With his hat low, head down, he could not see if the guards were paying him any attention. Sweat prickled on his skin and ran down his back. His body tensed as he approached the gate, expecting to feel a bullet tearing through his flesh at any moment. If anyone challenged him now, he had no chance of escape.

  One of the guards looked up. His shoulders twitched, as if he could sense that something was not quite right. Ralph forced himself to keep still and calm.

  ‘What d’you want?’ The man’s voice was slurred, his eyes dull. Clearly he had helped himself to the rum barrel.

  ‘The Dutchman told me to fetch powder and shot,’ said Ralph. ‘He wants to go hunting.’

  The man spat on the sand. ‘That’ll be more game for supper, then.’ He cracked the gate open. ‘In you go. Don’t let them darkies give you no trouble.’

  Ralph squeezed through the gate, brushing so close to the guard he jostled his elbow. The man’s head jerked up; his startled eyes fell on Ralph, inches away from his face. Surely the man could not fail to see who Ralph was now.

  ‘Watch where you’re standing,’ Ralph said, stepping quickly through the gate.

  ‘Watch yourself,’ the guard snapped.

  The gate closed behind him, and Ralph heard the bar drop back into place. He was inside the stockade.

  Ralph had seen many gruesome sights in his life, but what he saw inside the stockade was truly abhorent. Captured Africans lay around the edge of the compound, with iron shackles on their legs; some so still they might be dead. Many were women, some pregnant, some nursing starving babies. Even if Ralph closed his eyes, he could not escape the stench. It was like the place the sailors had used as their latrine, but concentrated a thousand-fold, and layered with blood and sweat and desperate misery.

  A chill went through Ralph’s body. He knew enough of the slave trade to know that the young children would never be put aboard a ship. In the economics of the business, they were worthless – nothing more than extra mouths and extra space.

  He picked his way across the open square. The sun was almost directly above him, shrinking his shadow to a pool around his feet. Guards with rifles watched from the walls, ready to fire if the Africans showed any sign of attacking him. But none would try. Even the smallest children, who wandered free because their feet were too small for the shackles, cowered away from him as he passed.

  This is what Marius has taught them, he thought. That a white man is to be feared above all else. The thought made him sicker even than the stench.

  The guard in front of the blockhouse noticed Ralph staring at the Chunus. ‘Filthy, ain’t they?’ he said. ‘We’ll have to clean ’em up afore we reach Havana, or even the cane planters won’t want ’em.’

  Ralph felt anger rising inside him. He wanted to tell the man that you could take the grandest British duke or American merchant, and if you brutalised him in this way he would seem as wretched. He wanted to show the man the splendour of the Zulu empire: twenty thousand warriors in the great kraal at KwaBulawayo, singing Shaka’s praise songs. He wanted to draw his knife and ram it through the guard’s throat.

  ‘Dutchman sent me to fetch powder,’ Ralph said, burying his rage.

  The guard peered at him. Further from the rum barrel, closer to the prisoners, he had not drunk so much as the man on the gate, and it showed in his sharp eyes.

  ‘Do I know you?’

  Ralph gave what he hoped was a careless shrug. ‘Dunno. Do you?’

  The guard squinted. ‘Was you on the Farewell?’

  Ralph froze. What was the right answer?

  If the man was from the Farewell’s crew, and Ralph said yes, the lie would be obvious. But if the man was from the Nanticoke, he would know Ralph was not one of his shipmates.

  Ralph shot the man a quick look. Did he recognise him from the voyage out from Port Elizabeth? Or the muster on the beach, after the shipwreck, when the men had chosen sides? He could not remember.

  ‘I sailed on the Nanticoke.’

  ‘Is that so?’

  Even as he spoke, the guard’s hand was already moving to his gun. Ralph did not wait. He sprang forward, barrelling the man backwards through the open doorway into the blockhouse. Before the man could retaliate, Ralph smashed his forehead ferociously into the man’s face. The guard’s nose broke with a crack and a spray of hot blood. Dazed, the man reeled away, but two more sharp punches from Ralph knocked him, unconscious, to the floor.

  Ralph glanced back through the open door. Half a dozen faces stared at him in shock at what they had just witnessed. But none of them spoke. The Africans chained in the courtyard had already learned one immutable lesson: there was no gain in drawing attention to themselves. They looked away.

  None of the guards had seen Ralph’s actions. There were no shouts of alarm, or warning shots. The stockade was quiet, only the low singing of the prisoners disturbing the afternoon heat.

  Ralph bound the man he had knocked out, gagged him and took his rifle. Now he was armed – but also running out of time. It would not be long before someone noticed the guard was not at his post.

  It was dark inside the blockhouse. There was only one window in the mud-plastered walls, covered by a curtain made of scraped animal hide. In the dim light, Ralph saw casks and chests piled almost to the ceiling. He prised open one of the boxes, and saw it was filled with paper cartridges. Sterling’s men had brought enough powder and shot ashore to start a war.

  What I could achieve with all of this, in Shaka’s service, Ralph thought.

  He reached out for the guard’s ammunition pouch and filled it with cartridges, then stuffed his pockets with a few more.

  He grabbed one of the small casks of powder. Taking it was a big risk – but it might tip the odds a little more in his favour.

  He glanced at the guard he had assaulted, lying on the floor. The man twitched, groaning. Soon he would regain consciousness. It would be safer to cut his throat and silence him forever – one less enemy to contend with – yet Ralph hesitated. To kill a man in battle, or in anger, was fair. To kill a helpless captive was murder.

  That is more mercy than they would show their slaves.

  Once before, he had stood over an unarmed man with the chance to kill him. The choice he had made then had shaped his entire life.

  Stepping out of the blockhouse, Ralph was temporarily dazzled by the sun; he tensed in expectation of a challenge or a hail of bullets, but strode on blindly.

  No one had noticed him.

  And no one noticed as he crossed the courtyard with the cask of black powder straining his arms. Even the prisoners flopped in the sun seemed more preoccupied with their own misery than with him.