A Flower for the Queen: A Historical Novel (16 page)

Whilst listening to Thunberg, Masson had picked up a twig and, as he replayed the events of the last couple of days, began to doodle in the dirt. Without taking much notice of what it was that he had been drawing, he looked up and saw that some of the Khoikhoi had collected a large number of wild almond nuts and seemed ready to share them out for dinner.

He dropped his twig and leaped up, shouting for them to stop, making gagging gestures and miming someone in the throes of death. But the Khoikhoi just looked at him and laughed — another
umlungu
who had been out too long in the sun.

In desperation, Masson turned to Thunberg and pleaded, “For pity’s sake, explain to them that the nuts are poisonous. They can’t eat them!”

With all conversation stopped, Thunberg said something to Eulaeus. He translated for the Khoikhoi, whereupon there was further laughter and shaking of heads before the men went right back to preparing the nuts.

Masson was at a loss until he saw that the men had boiled the nuts in one of the pots taken from the burgher’s cart before taking them out and roasting them on the embers of the fire.

When the nuts were cooked, they were shared out amongst the men and eaten, with Thunberg making a great show of pretending to choke and feigning death, which amused the Khoikhoi enormously. Masson accepted his share and sat down next to Thunberg.

“Let me guess,” Masson said, looking at the steaming lumps before him. “Once boiled and roasted, these nuts are no longer poisonous and are good to eat?”

Thunberg replied, “Well, I wouldn’t say that they’re good, but they will stop you from starving. You also forgot the part about how this has been a staple food for these people for hundreds of years, and how they can’t understand why we would build a giant hedge of the trees around our village and then not eat the stuff.”

Masson tried the nuts. They tasted bitter and dry, but not especially lethal. As he tried a second bite, one of the Khoikhoi shouted over to them, pointing at the picture of the Queen’s flower that Masson had absentmindedly drawn in the sand.

Thunberg relayed Eulaeus’s translation. “He says it is called
isigude
and that apart from the nectar, it’s not of much use.”

Masson appealed to him silently with his open palms raised heavenwards. “Does he know where it is?”

Thunberg spoke to Eulaeus, who then conferred with the tribesman. The tribesman answered with a lengthy explanation. When he had finished, Masson could not contain himself. “Well, what did he say?”

Eulaeus’s re-telling to Thunberg lasted only a few short sentences, which was and was then reduced even further by Thunberg’s final version. “He says that the flower can be found far to the east, beyond even the farthest colonial settlements, at a place he calls Two Rivers.”

“Is that really all?” asked Masson incredulously.

“More or less,” replied Thunberg.

“Could you get us to Two Rivers?” he asked Thunberg.

“I’ve been in that general direction, but never that far.” Thunberg looked at Masson quizzically. “But Willmer’s probably showing your diary to the Governor even as we speak. Your only hope is to get back to Cape Town. I know the Governor, and if I can explain our side of the story, with a bit of luck he’ll send you on your way back to England. Isn’t that what you want?”

“It was luck that landed me in Banks’s office, where all of this began, and it was luck that gave me the lead poisoning that almost killed me aboard the
Resolution
. I’m happy to take responsibility for the mistake of trusting Schelling, but I won’t make the mistake of placing my fate in the cruel hands of luck once more.”

“But what choice do you have? To find the flower, we would have to go beyond the eastern frontier, where few Europeans have ever been. It won’t be civilised.”

But Masson was not to be dissuaded. “You said yourself that it was the most fantastic story you had ever heard. Well, the only chance I have of anyone believing it to be true is to prove it. If I want to get home, I have to find and bring back that flower.”

Despite the Masson’s determination, Thunberg put up one final piece of resistance. “We would need oxen and supplies to last a journey that could take months. Even if we weren’t being hunted down by the burghers, it could take weeks to arrange.”

“Well, then,” replied Masson. “It seems there’s no time to lose.”

After Thunberg and Eulaeus managed to negotiate the safe return of their horses, the three men mounted up and said goodbye to the Khoikhoi before turning their backs to Cape Town and riding hard to the east.

They rode through the night, the clouds scattering the light that came from the waning moon. Masson took turns doubling with Eulaeus and Thunberg in order to tire the horses as little as possible. Uncultivated wilderness gave way to neatly arranged vineyards and fields and just as dawn was about to break the men could make out the shadow of a church steeple and thirty odd houses that comprised the village of Stellenbosch.

The trio skirted around the village’s eastern periphery, away from the cobbled main streets so that the horses’ shod hooves would not wake the inhabitants.

They arrived at a large, rather grand, Dutch style farmstead with whitewashed walls and elaborate gables over the main entrance. They dismounted, and Eulaeus took the sweating horses to the stables whilst Masson and Thunberg walked quietly and without speaking towards the main entrance of the house.

But as they approached the front door, Thunberg made a sudden change of direction and tiptoed around to the rear of the house before stopping beneath one of the large sash windows that looked onto a courtyard.

“What are we doing?” hissed Masson, who only knew that they were coming back to Thunberg’s lodgings to retrieve some supplies. No one had mentioned anything about breaking in.

But Thunberg just held his finger to his lips and then eased open the painted shutters that covered the lower half of the window, before lifting the bottom sash by just enough so that the men could climb through.

Once inside, Masson didn’t move for fear of knocking something over in the dark. With barely a sound, Thunberg made his way through the blackness and a moment later had lit an oil lamp which bathed the room in a weak, tepid light.

The square room had an enormous, full-length, hinged mirror that stood next to an ornately decorated armour on one side of the bed, with a desk and a washstand on the other. A single door led towards what Masson would have guessed to be the main entrance hall. Thunberg removed his shoes and gestured for Masson to do the same.

“I don’t want to disturb my host. We’ll need his assistance, and I don’t want to upset him if I can help it,” Thunberg whispered.

Thunberg retrieved a leather holdall from beneath the bed and began to pack into it various items of equipment, most of which came from a wooden chest situated at the base of the bed. The initials ‘CPT’ were emblazoned on its lid in gold leaf.

As Thunberg packed, Masson looked around the room, which was plainly decorated except for a number of different drawings of the same plant, an exquisite type of gardenia that he had not seen before. These had been carefully framed and hung on the wall where Masson would have expected to see family portraits, or perhaps a crucifix.

A beautiful white-bloomed living version of the gardenia had been placed on a table beside the bed. “I see you found my jewel,” Thunberg whispered from over by the armoire, where he was busy retrieving spare shirts and breeches. “I found it in Paarl. Incredibly difficult to bring into bloom, but when you do, it’s worth the effort.”

Next to the plant was a large, leather-bound copy of
Systema Naturae
by Linnaeus. Such a volume was too rare and expensive for a man of Masson’s meagre means, and he had been forced to make do with the copy in the library at Kew. Nonetheless, he knew almost all of its pages by heart. When he opened the cover, he saw opposite the familiar opening page a hand-written dedication to Thunberg in Latin, signed by Carl Linnaeus himself.

Masson passed his gaze across Thunberg’s desk to a stack of journals very similar to the ones that he had lost. They appeared to be new and unused. At the sight of them, Masson thought immediately of Constance, and he found himself wondering whether Thunberg had also left someone behind.

“Don’t be shy — take one, or take them all,” Thunberg said, waving a hand dismissively. “You’ll need lots of pages where we’re headed, and I have plenty more. But in exchange, would you mind going to the pantry to fetch a keg of brandy and some biscuits? First door on the right, then go to the room at the end on the right and it’s on the middle shelf.”

“Do you really think that brandy will help us get to Two Rivers any faster?” Masson protested.

Thunberg held up some large, empty glass jars and said with exaggerated patience, “The brandy, my dear Masson, is for conserving any insects or amphibians we come across. We will be covering virgin territory, as it were, and I plan to collect more than just your flower.”

“Of course,” replied Masson sheepishly. “So, first door on the right, then the room at the end, middle shelf, you said?”

“And don’t forget the biscuits!”

“No doubt some ingenious local method of defending against malaria?”

“Don’t be ridiculous, there’s no malaria where we’re going. It’s because I haven’t eaten a decent meal in hours!”

As Masson turned to leave, Thunberg whispered, “When you go into the pantry, be careful not to wake up Old Pieterszoon. Remember, we’ll be needing his help!”

Masson felt his way through the large entrance hallway and entered the first door he came to on the right, which led into a long dining room. As he tiptoed through the room, he had to lean against the chairs for support, lest his stocking feet slip on the highly polished floorboards. He made his way to the rear of the room, where Thunberg had said he would find the pantry door.

But as he came closer, he thought he could hear unusual sounds coming from behind the door adjacent. It was a series of rhythmic squeaks followed by an all-consuming groan.

Suddenly, the door opened and light flooded into the dining room. A buxom black woman wearing nothing more than a nightshirt stood and stared for a moment at Masson, who looked back at her in wonder and fright.

“I beg your pardon, madam,” he started, when he eventually came to his senses. But the woman simply put her hands to her mouth and let out a scream so shrill and loud that Masson was sure she would bring sentries all the way from Cape Town.

Masson tried to reassure her, but this only served to make matters worse. She turned and fled back into the room, followed closely by Masson, who persisted in apologising and begging forgiveness. But after he had broached the threshold of the room, he simply stopped and stared at the sight before him: the entire room, from polished floor to the timber crossbeams that supported the roof, was piled high with thousands of pressed or dried plants. Any space not occupied by plants was taken up with rows of reference books, specimen jars containing bulbs or roots, or wooden chests with neatly labelled drawers. This incredible collection of items from the natural sciences reminded Masson of Banks’s office; however, where that was a museum, Masson felt that this was a laboratory — it was science in progress.

The woman’s screams subsided as she tried in vain to hide her curvaceous frame behind the spindly figure of a wizened old man in a wheelchair wearing nothing but a flannel nightshirt and a tall, flat-topped hat.

Masson’s reaction changed instantly from awe to embarrassment at discovering the couple. No matter where he looked, his eyes seemed pulled by a magnetic force back to the vignette of the elderly man and his buxom mistress. Eventually, to spare his own shame, he turned and made to leave, but he was halted by the old man’s accusatory voice. “Who are you?” the old man thundered in a voice that belied his years as he pointed to Masson’s stocking feet. “And what are you doing creeping around?”

“Forgive me, sir, I’m a guest of Doctor Thunberg. We are preparing for a botanical expedition, and I was just looking for the pantry. I’m extremely sorry if I frightened your … the lady.”

“Thunberg, eh? Well, that explains it!” The old man turned back to his companion. After he had patted her hand soothingly and reassured her in a patois Masson did not recognise, she bustled past him, giving him a disapproving scowl before disappearing into the darkness.

Masson stood awkwardly as the old man manoeuvred his wheelchair closer, in the process producing the same squeaking sounds that he had heard earlier. He stopped only when he was almost directly beneath Masson’s chin.

He looked Masson over and after finding nothing that merited further comment, harrumphed with disdain and followed after the woman, casually opening the pantry door on his way, and saying without looking back, “Take whatever you need, but don’t touch the bloody brandy!”

Just then Thunberg appeared at the end of the dining room and with a crooked smile on his face greeted the old man as if it were high tea rather than nearer to five o’clock in the morning. “Greetings, my dear Hendrik. From all that screaming, am I to deduce that you have decided to ignore my advice about over-exerting yourself? Have you been chasing Hannah around the dining room table again?”

“Bugger off, Thunberg. You know bloody well what the cause was. It’s bad enough that you’ve taken over my study with all your sorcery, but now your accomplices are getting in on the act, too! What the hell are you two up to anyway, sneaking around in the middle of the night? That’s my job!” He shook his head wearily. “I was already interrupted once when that devil Schelling came round yesterday evening, and now you two this morning. I came to the colonies for a quiet life — if I wanted this kind of excitement, I could have stayed in Amsterdam!”

Masson started at the mention of the name.

“Schelling?” asked Thunberg.

“Yes, he came banging on my door, demanding a permit for him and his crew so that they could go to the east country. He was gibbering on about a place called Two Rivers, and he was in some kind of hurry, too.”