Ralph guessed that they did not have long before the garrison came to see what had happened to their men. Working in haste, he untied Jobe’s bonds and used them to bind the lieutenant. They took Preston’s sword and pistol and ammunition pouch, together with the carbines and cartridges they had stripped off the soldiers in the dunes. Then they mounted up, leading the spare horses on halters behind them.

  They rode north-east, towards the looming bulk of the Hottentots Holland Mountains. But as soon as they were out of sight of the beach, and on hard ground where their tracks would not show, Ralph turned his mount’s head east.

  ‘This is not the way to the Orange River,’ said Marius, riding beside Ralph.

  ‘That was for the officer. With luck, the lieutenant will report what he heard, and they will waste precious days looking for us in the wrong part of the country.’

  ‘Then where do we go?’ Jobe asked.

  Their plan had been to land unnoticed, steal into Cape Town harbour and cut out a small boat. Now that the castle was alerted, that path was impossible.

  ‘We are going where we always said we would. To the land where ivory grows on trees and gold flows out of the ground.’

  ‘You are a dreamer, brak. How can we go there now, with half the rooinek cavalry in the Colony chasing us?’

  ‘We will find a ship. We just have to go a little further to find it.’

  Marius stared at Ralph. Then he tipped back his head and laughed. ‘You are a madman,’ he pronounced. ‘But I will go with you.’ He kicked his horse’s flanks, driving it to a gallop. Ralph spurred after him, came alongside and leaned out to grab Marius’s reins.

  ‘Save the horse’s strength,’ he advised. ‘We have a long way to ride.’

  ALGOA BAY

  A

  fter the catastrophe at Paradise Valley, Ann and Harry had made their way to their closest neighbours, her friends, Simon and Margaret Armstrong. Margaret had immediately led them to the spare room, given them fresh clothes and more food than they had eaten in a month; for days she sat with Ann, holding her hand while Ann wept and grieved for Frank.

  But after a week, Simon began to make comments about Ann moving on. He presented the idea compassionately, but there was a sharp point underneath his concern. ‘Frank would not want you to live off our charity forever. It will be good for you to make a new beginning with your life beyond these lands.’

  ‘This was my new beginning,’ retorted Ann.

  The thought of returning to Paradise Valley made her shake with dread. Even if she’d had the strength to rebuild the house and farm by herself – which she did not – she could not live there again. She looked to Margaret for support, but Margaret was suddenly mute. It was clear that a conversation had taken place between husband and wife and that Margaret had lost the argument. A decision had been made and there was nothing that Margaret could do to help Ann.

  ‘God will find you the right path,’ said Margaret warmly, but she didn’t look up from her embroidery.

  ‘I can earn my keep, if that is your concern,’ Ann pleaded. ‘I can wash and cook and clean, as I did before.’

  ‘That would be unbecoming.’ Margaret pointed out of the window, where a black woman in an apron was sweeping the yard. ‘We have Kaffirs to do that for us now.’

  Ann knew that her time with the Armstrongs was coming to an end. Her time living at Paradise Valley was over. ‘Would you buy the farm from me?’

  Margaret glanced at Simon. ‘It is not yours to sell,’ he explained. ‘Because you did not occupy it for long enough, it reverts to the government.’ He cleared his throat. ‘I spoke to the land agent today, as it happens. He has agreed to transfer the plot to me.’

  ‘So you see, you would not wish to stay with us in any event,’ said Margaret. ‘It would remind you too much of your loss, and your dear husband.’

  Ann felt as if her skin was on fire. After all the hardships she had endured, all the sacrifices she had made, she was going to leave with nothing. She felt light-headed, the same emptiness she had felt when she saw the rust on the wheat. ‘Then Harry and I will not impose on your hospitality any longer.’

  ‘It is for the best,’ said Simon, philosophically.

  The Armstrongs gave her a small purse of money. Desperation outweighed Ann’s pride and made her take it, though when she looked inside there was such a tiny amount that she wished she had refused. Her pride reasserted itself and Ann insisted that she and Harry would walk to Algoa Bay – a three-day trip by foot. Mercifully, a Boer farmer passed them on the road and let them ride into town in his ox wagon. It wasn’t much faster than walking, but it did mean that they only spent a single night beneath the stars, huddled together for warmth, listening to the oxen pulling at the grass and the old farmer snoring after too much brandy.

  When, finally, after a day and a half of travelling, Ann and Harry had reached Algoa Bay, Ann was astounded by how much things had changed. The last time she had set eyes on the bay there had been no buildings save the fort, and a few hundred tents hastily pitched on the foreshore. The town had been improved since then. The governor had named it Port Elizabeth, after his late wife. The government had built a customs house, and private enterprise had supplied a winkel: a building that managed to cram the functions of tavern, gaming hall, bank, brothel and general dealer under one small roof. A few thatched houses had replaced the tents. Otherwise, there was little to see. The only semblance of a port were the men who loitered by the longboats drawn up on the beach, ready to unload any vessels that called in on their way to or from India, which didn’t happen often. This was the far eastern edge of British settlement in South Africa. Beyond it lay hundreds of miles of unexplored and uncharted coast, marked only by the wrecks of the vessels that had ventured too close.

  But that day, there was a ship in the harbour. She was not like the great Indiamen that could sometimes be seen out to sea: she was a simple two-masted brig, with low decks and functional lines. A coastal trader; a beast of burden. To anyone with a nautical eye, it was clear she had many voyages behind her – and not too many ahead. The thick paint on her stern suggested she had carried various names in her life; now she went by Farewell. Her crew were busy hoisting aboard casks of gunpowder from the longboat moored alongside.

  ‘Mummy, that big ship . . .’ Harry, standing beside Ann on the foreshore, pointed at the ship. ‘Where is she going?’

  Her boy knew about ships from the stories Frank had read him from Daniel Defoe, and was fascinated by them. When Ann had told him they would actually see ships at Port Elizabeth, he had bombarded her with questions all the way to Algoa Bay. Ann had answered as much as she could, struggling to remember details of the voyage from England.

  ‘I do not know where she is going, my darling.’ Ann watched the ship with a yearning so strong she felt sick. She was desperate to be on it, to escape with her son and leave this unfortunate land.

  But how would she afford it?

  Ann went to the governor’s office at the fort, where she and Harry queued in the sun for three hours to see someone, anyone who might be able to help them. Eventually, a minor clerk with bad breath and five different inkwells lined up in front of him on his desk received her. Even after hearing the account of her devastation, he exuded not an ounce of pity – he had been hardened by the stories he heard each and every day.

  ‘The government has been more than generous, Mrs Waite,’ he said, without looking up from the parchment in front of him. ‘Tools, seed, land – everything that was promised. We cannot pay your passage back to England after incurring so much expense. We are not a charity. It is not our fault that your husband could not make his farm bear fruit.’ He tapped the end of his quill against the cap of one of his ink pots. ‘Of course, we are sorry for your loss.’

  His callous dismissal made Ann flush with shame and anger. But emotion would not put food in Harry’s belly, or a roof over their heads. The few coins the Armstrongs had given her would not even pay for a single night’s lodgings. Ann had to think and act. She had no possessions except Frank’s book of Daniel Defoe, and there was little value put on books in Port Elizabeth even if she had been willing to sell it.

  Harry slipped free of her hand, ran down to the water’s edge and started throwing stones into the waves. It was the place where he had entered Ann’s life three years earlier, though he did not know it. Looking at him now playing with such joy, in his bare feet and the too-big smock she had been loaned by Margaret Armstrong, she ached with the need to keep him safe.

  Ann looked down the beach. At the end, past the lightermen and the drying fishing nets, stood a low shack, the winkel. Ann knew from its reputation what happened there, and as a married Christian woman had never set foot in such an establishment.

  Angry, frustrated, hungry and frightened, she walked towards it.

  Ralph Courtney stood at his table in the corner of the winkel, one hand holding his drink and the other on the pistol in his belt. His hat was pulled down low to cover his face, though from under the brim his eyes missed nothing as they scanned the room. It was late afternoon, and the winkel was already half full, loud with talk and laughter.

  It was a humble place: bare, lime-plastered walls and a rough earth floor. A few upturned barrels served as tables; more barrels stood on a shelf at the back. Otherwise, there was just the sturdy bar, and a stuffed leather chair in the corner from which Mrs Robinson – the winkel’s landlady, proprietor, and madam – presided. She kept a small dog curled up on her lap and usually had a pipe in her hand.

  Marius stood by the door, monitoring every man who walked in. Jobe was outside, watching the road. They had arrived at Port Elizabeth that morning after a week’s desperate riding from Cape Town, pausing only for new mounts whenever they could steal them. Ralph did not fool himself that he was far ahead of the soldiers pursuing them. Word spread fast in Africa, and three men breaking out of the inescapable prison that was Robben Island would be news all the way to the frontier.

  He forced himself to relax and concentrate on what the man on the other side of the table was saying to him.

  ‘I have sailed that coast a dozen times, and I would swear on the Book of Judgement that there is no harbour there.’ The speaker’s name was Thaddeus Conway, and he was the master of the ship in the bay. Like his vessel, he was nearing the end of his career. His coat was threadbare, his shirt dappled with red wine stains. His unkempt hair was neither fashionably long nor respectably short, while his two chins wobbled when he spoke.

  ‘The bay is there,’ said Ralph. ‘I have seen it on a map.’

  ‘Then show me the map.’

  ‘It was lost,’ said Ralph. His hand crept to the scars on his right cheek. ‘My present circumstances do not allow me to retrieve it.’

  ‘Alas.’ The captain’s expression spoke his feelings plainly: Ralph was a fraud or a fantasist, and either way there could be no profit dealing with him. He began to back away.

  Before he could move, Ralph’s hand shot out and grabbed Conway’s wrist. ‘I studied that map,’ Ralph hissed. ‘I know every bearing, every position and every sounding marked on it. I could find the bay with my eyes closed. All I need is a ship to take me there.’

  Thaddeus Conway had spent more than thirty years at sea. He had risen from a fo’c’s’le hand to be master of his own vessel, and fought his way up each rung of that ladder. He had bargained, haggled and argued against the most unyielding merchants to be found in every port from Aceh to Dahomey. Yet none of them had left him as uncomfortable as this man, with his ice-blue eyes and his horribly disfigured face. It made Conway even more certain that he did not want the man aboard his ship. But it also made him afraid to refuse.

  ‘How much profit do you make in a season?’ Ralph asked. ‘And how many more voyages do you think your ship will make before her bottom rots?’ He leaned closer. ‘Do this, and you will be able to retire in comfort wherever takes your pleasure.’

  ‘How much are you offering?’ Conway asked.

  ‘To take me . . . not much. I have three good horses outside. I will sell them to pay for my passage.’ Ralph saw Conway losing interest again. ‘You are sailing past where I want to go in any event. All I am asking is that you take me with you and put in to see if this bay exists. If it does not, then what I have paid will compensate you for your time. But if it does . . .’

  He had let go of Conway’s wrist. The captain did not pull away.

  ‘That is virgin land,’ Ralph continued. ‘Ripe fruit ready for the plucking. You will leave us there and return six months later. By that time, either we will be dead – or we will be the richest men in Africa.’

  For a moment, Conway seemed to be staring into the far distance. Then he blinked. ‘How do I know you will honour the bargain?’

  ‘Because everything that we find – ivory, hides, gold, gems – it will all be worthless until we put it up for sale in Cape Town. You are our only way out. When you return for us, you will be able to name your price.’

  Ralph’s eyes fixed on Conway’s. He was so absolutely certain that the captain could not doubt what he said.

  ‘The government forbids all settlement and exploration beyond the frontiers,’ Conway pointed out.

  ‘So they do.’ Ralph shrugged. ‘I was led to believe that you are a man who is not too nice about the letter of the law.’

  Conway accepted the point. It was true that the Farewell’s registry papers would not bear close inspection; and there was plenty of cargo in his hold that – by some oversight – lacked the proper tax stamps.

  Still, he hesitated. He was tempted by Ralph’s proposition, fantastical as it was. But he had not survived three decades in the cut-throat waters of the Indian Ocean without a keen sense of danger. With Ralph, that sense was clanging like a fire bell.

  ‘I do not even know your name.’

  ‘Ralph Courtney!’

  The name rang out in the winkel, clear above the din in the room. But it was not Ralph who had spoken. A woman stood facing him, staring in open-mouthed shock.

  Ralph stared back. There were plenty of women in the world who might want to accost him, but of this one he had no memory. She wore a tired, old-fashioned dress, and a small child trailed behind her. Her hands were calloused and scabbed; her bare arms covered in bruises. Obviously, she was a beggar who had pushed her way into the winkel in hope of a few coins. Ralph would not have given her a second glance.

  But how did she know his name?

  He looked at the boy. Was he part of the answer? A bastard Ralph had left behind? With his shock of dark hair, and his deep brown skin, he did not look like Ralph.

  ‘You are Ralph Courtney,’ the woman said. She tipped back his hat, revealing the burn marks on his face. ‘I would know you anywhere.’

  ‘A friend of yours?’ Conway asked.

  Ralph shook his head. The woman’s eyes widened. ‘Have you forgotten?’

  ‘I do not think we have ever met.’

  ‘On the beach – the boat – the day we arrived.’ She clutched his arm, and though her hands were small her grip was desperate. ‘I saved you.’

  All the power in Ralph’s gaze melted away. The scars on his face pulsed like a living organ. A curtain opened in his mind, though the window of memory was dim. After weeks in the open boat he had been half dead, his mind crazed by hunger and guilt. He remembered the woman’s presence as a blur. He could not remember her face.

  She knew his name. There was no other explanation.

  ‘You were there,’ he whispered. ‘And him . . .’ He looked at the boy, who was studying him with a frank and fearless expression. ‘He was the boy.’

  Ann nodded, a warning in her eyes. She had mothered Harry as her own son and never told him the truth about how she found him. She could not let him learn it now, this way.

  ‘Help me,’ she said. ‘I have nothing. Three years ago, I saved you from the sea. Surely God has put you here now to rescue me.’

  ‘I doubt that God has much interest in my movements,’ said Ralph, collecting some of his poise. ‘And I am not in a position to rescue anyone.’

  ‘Please. If you have one ounce of Christian charity in your heart.’

  ‘Not nearly so much.’

  But Ralph’s words were lost as the boy suddenly piped up: ‘Who is that man?’

  Ralph did not wait for Ann to answer. The other customers in the tavern had noticed their confrontation. His name had been spoken twice, and that was at least once too often for a man in his situation. If the news of his escape from Robben Island had not already reached Port Elizabeth, it would come soon enough, and then there would be a great deal of interest in the name of Ralph Courtney.

  ‘Let us talk outside,’ he said. He turned to Conway, who had listened to the exchange in astonished silence. ‘Do we have a bargain?’

  Conway had hoped Ralph might be distracted enough to leave him alone. But at the same time, Ralph’s promises had ignited a fire in him. The captain wanted to refuse, but one phrase would not stop echoing in his mind: The richest men in Africa.

  ‘We sail tomorrow.’

  ‘I will be there.’

  With Ann still clinging to his arm, Ralph steered her away from the table and through the door, with Marius and Harry in tow. He did not stop until they were on the beach.

  ‘How did you find me?’

  ‘I went to the winkel looking for work. I never dreamed you would be there.’

  ‘It does not matter.’ Ralph knew the real answer: it was fate. He had spent his life trying to escape it, but it always dragged him back to where he belonged.

  Harry had squatted down on the sand and was excavating a hole with his hands. Ralph could not bring himself to look at the boy. Instead, he forced his attention on to Ann. She had been pretty, and would be still with decent clothes and a few meals to fill her out. Her long brown hair was tied back in a simple braid, and though there were lines in the corners of her eyes they only made her seem wise beyond her years. If she ever smiled again, her face would light up with beauty.