A Flower for the Queen: A Historical Novel (28 page)

They all turned and watched in terror as an indistinct form slinked towards them, its roars now hushed to sinister throaty growls. Its movements were subtle and seemingly slow, and yet in no time at all it had advanced from the shadowy extremities of the firelight to the perimeter of the camp. As the flames threw their light on the apparition, it morphed and separated from a single spectral beast into three young male lions.

The sight of their short and scruffy manes did nothing to lessen the ferocity of their appearance, and for those amongst the group who had knowledge of such things, it only made it worse. For they knew that these were three young males that had been pushed out of the pride and were now roaming the countryside, catching what they could and feeding off the scraps left behind by their pride cousins. In their ravenous and desperate state, they had found a taste for human flesh and at the same time had lost their instinctive respect for fire, seeing it instead as a homing beacon for an easy meal.

Willmer was the first to fire, dropping to one knee immediately afterwards to reload, even as a roar of hurt and defiance erupted from one of the beasts.

Schelling, momentarily paralysed with fear, started to back away, but in doing so, tripped and fell backwards, firing his precious shot harmlessly into the night sky. He let the other rifle fall to the ground as he crawled back towards the illusory safety of the fire and away from the advancing predators.

Masson swallowed his fear to step out into the path of the lions so that he could recover his still-loaded rifle from where Schelling had dropped it, picking it up by the barrel and dragging the stock through the dirt as he pulled it back towards the cart.

Meanwhile, Thunberg had taken Jane by the elbow and lifted her into the back of the cart. He then reached down and took up Schelling’s spent rifle, which he furiously began to reload. Eulaeus also sprang into action, leaping over the fire and mounting the driver’s seat, taking up the reins as Willmer fired off his second shot, killing the lion he had already wounded. But even before the smoke had cleared, Willmer was again reloading, not even pausing to watch as the lion fell, its tongue lolling out of its maw.

The other two lions, surprised by the shots and the subsequent downing of one of their number, retreated into the shadows momentarily before spreading themselves out to create a wider angle of attack so that they could come at the camp from opposite sides. This time they did not creep towards the group, but came with a speed that belied their size and a focus that hinted at a savage intelligence, honing in on the figure that they perceived to be the greatest threat.

Both of the lions made up the thirty feet to where Willmer was kneeling in less time than it took Masson to raise his rifle and take aim and by the time he had put the rifle into full-cock and then fired, they were already out of his sights and upon Willmer. First they knocked his feet out from under him before the larger of the two lions grabbed him by the neck and snapped it with a single shake of its great head. Willmer’s limp and lifeless body was then dragged back into the darkness of the bush, leaving the smaller of the lions angry and frustrated as he turned back towards a hapless Schelling who was rigid with fear and disbelief.

In his haste to escape, Schelling blundered bodily into the fire, and screamed with pain as embers of the fire were scattered in a shower of sparks. His accident had the fortunate consequence of causing the lion to shy, its main and fur singed by the eruption of cinders. The lion howled with fury as it rolled in the dust before righting itself, and then searching for an easier target. In an instant, its gold-flecked eyes settled on Masson, and the lion dropped its head low to the ground as it gauged the distance to its intended prey.

With his rifle spent and no time left to reload, Masson had no choice but to stand up to the lion, clenching the gun barrel in both hands and waiting for the lion to leap so that he could bring the stock down on its head like a club.

But he was not given the chance. Masson felt and then heard a shot pass so close to his cheek that he could have sworn it grazed him. Thunberg had fired from the back of the cart, hitting the lion in the shoulder and causing it to jump back and bellow in fury. But the shot had not found its mark and only produced a flesh wound, sending the lion into a maddened state of rage.

Jane leaped down from the back of the cart behind him at the same time as the lion hurtled towards him, its speed undiminished by the wound that stained its shoulder. Once again Masson raised his rifle like a battle axe, hoping that if his efforts were in vain, then at least his death would be swift and painless.

As its front paws cleared the ground Masson got ready to swing only to be deafened by the sound of a second rifle shot that erupted from right next to his head. Masson heard a strange metallic sound before being almost crushed by the weight of the lion as it fell against him.

With the wind knocked out of him, he struggled out from under the corpse of the lion and as he scrambled away, looked back and saw the ramrod of Thunberg’s own rifle, the one that he had let fall to the ground when Willmer and Schelling came into the camp, projecting from the lion’s head like a steel arrow.

And there, not five yards further back from where he had been tackled by the lion, standing prone with the smoking rifle still aimed at the fallen lion, was Jane.

“For God’s sake, get on!” screamed Thunberg from the back of the cart as the horses were just about brought under control by Eulaeus.

Masson needed no further invitation as he looked behind to see that the third lion had returned from whichever dark place it had disposed of Willmer and was now moving swiftly towards them.

He managed to get a firm hold on the back of the cart, but as he tried to pull himself up, he felt something slam into his side, pitching him over into the dirt. Schelling had come running from next to the fire and after pushing Masson away, was trying to clamber up as Masson floundered in the dirt.

Masson recovered and grabbed at Schelling’s coat but he only managed to pull the other man on top of him and they were both sent tumbling, straight into the path of the lion. Masson heard Eulaeus apply the break and the horses were now almost deranged by fear.

Masson was sure that they were done for, but the seconds ticked by and still the anticipated crunch of fangs upon bone didn’t materialise. When he looked up he found that the lion’s attack had been checked, but what should have come as a relief turned to certain dread.

With Schelling whimpering beside him, Masson caught the faint stench of carrion just before he heard the deranged cackles of at least half a dozen devils. The enormous rounds of their pitch-black eyes glinted in the light of the fire as they circled the group, dipping their heads to scent out the weak or wounded and conniving with each other via snorts and whoops. Slowly the shadowy forms circled closer and closer until the odour of boiling soap was unmistakable on the breeze and it was then that Masson knew that they were trapped in the midst of a pack of hyenas.

The standoff was broken when one of the hyenas launched itself at a terrified horse. The lion, defending its quarry, intervened and slapped it away with a single stroke of one of its fearsome paws. But the victory was short-lived — with a coordinated effort that was regimental in its execution, the remaining hyenas adjusted their positions and shifted their focus from the carthorses to the lone lion.

In reply, the lion began to make mock charges, lurching forward at each one of its new adversaries and then stopping each time one of the cackling creatures retreated just far enough to be out of harm’s way.

With Schelling incapacitated and moaning softly on the ground, Masson took advantage of the distraction to creep towards the cart, which Eulaeus was now holding back against the combined force of both horses.

Both Thunberg and Jane reached out for him, each grabbing an arm before heaving him up. As Eulaeus released the brake and urged the horses on with everything he had, all three of them fell into a pile with Masson underneath, his head colliding with one of the boxes.

As Masson drifted into unconsciousness, the cart raced across the plain under a bright, starlit sky, leaving behind it the roars of the wounded lion and the crazed barking of the hyenas as they duelled to the death. But amongst the chaos of the animal savagery, the last thing to imprint itself on Masson’s memory was the sound of Schelling’s voice as he begged not to be left behind.

C
ANADA
, 21 N
OVEMBER
, 1805

Night had also fallen
in Pointe-Claire. The fire in the summer kitchen’s hearth lit the faces of all that sat, still listening. The old man searched around him and covered himself again in his blanket, even though he was the closest to the fire. The colour was back in his cheeks and the telling of the tale seemed to have rejuvenated him.

The entire family had returned and young Robert Grant sat with his jaw hanging open, despite the fact that his mother, on whose lap he now sat, had placed both hands over his ears in an effort to protect him from the final gruesome details of the old man’s story.

George Grant looked in from the doorway and saw his son furiously scribbling notes. He caught his eye, but Jack simply frowned and ignored him.

Suddenly the old man was shaken with violent bout of coughing. He turned away from the concerned looks of the Grant family and held handkerchief to his mouth.

He concealed the crimson-flecked handkerchief within the folds of his blanket and took a deep breath before turning back to his audience.

“Even though we had escaped the lions and hyenas, surviving the journey back to the Cape was far from certain. We had lost our line horses and so were at serious risk of them falling lame, but with the Xhosa on the warpath, we could not afford to slow our pace.

“Thunberg’s solution, as ever, was to immerse himself in the adventure. Every day he would ride with Eulaeus to scout our back path to make sure that we weren’t being followed, and then he would return and harangue both Jane and I into collecting with him whilst Eulaeus drove on ahead, setting the pace with the cart.

“At first, I could not bear to leave the Queen’s flowers for more than a few minutes. I was constantly riding back to check that Eulaeus had not forgotten to rotate the boxes in the back of the cart so that the flowers each received some sunlight but not too much so that they were scorched.

“Thunberg chided me for shirking my duties and accused me of mothering the plants, but Jane would always say that I should be left to tend to them, as that way it gave her and Thunberg more time together, and at first I believed her. After all, we had not got off to the best of starts, and she and Thunberg came from the same world of privilege and breeding, whilst I was just an under-gardener.

“But slowly I began to see changes in all of us. For my part, I began to trust Eulaeus with the care of the flowers, and he in turn seemed to lose his scowl and brighten. Often I would hear him whispering soothingly in a soft melody of clicking sounds. I had not learned enough of his language to know the details, but I understood that he was encouraging them to be strong because they were of the last of their kind, and they owed a debt of courage to their fellows to survive and prosper so that they might both one day return to the river valley that had been their mutual home, but which now lay scorched and blackened.

“At first, Jane and Thunberg would spend whole afternoons together, collecting specimens for me to draw and then arguing over how they should be classified. But as I spent less time fussing over the flowers, I began to sense that we were becoming a team. However, whereas Thunberg deferred to no one in his judgements of taxonomy, Jane would always turn to me as a referee when she and Thunberg disagreed.

“Thunberg was obsessed with taxonomies and the practical applications that each plant had, but perhaps because I was a gardener and because she had been taught by gardeners and by botanists, our interests revolved more closely around how the plants could be propagated and what they would need to sustain them if they were to flourish. Thunberg would soon grow bored and stalk off in search of yet another new species to fix into his herbarium, but Jane and I could spend days debating how best to nurture a new find.

“The country that I had rushed by on the way to Two Rivers, which I had been so completely closed off to in my single-minded pursuit of the flower, now opened up and revealed to me to be the most bountiful of untamed wildernesses. Every crack and crevice was suffused with an abundance of life that crawled, hopped, slithered, grunted, whistled, chirped or roared in celebration of its very existence. This was not life that had been corralled or organised such that it had a purpose or a use — it was life with no purpose other than to live.

“In the midst of the forests of stinkwood or thigh-deep in the sweetveld that drew herds of every kind of animal to graze or feed on the luscious bounty, I could not escape the fact that I was surrounded by the very essence of that which I had spent my life trying to avoid. It was intoxicating. And in the middle of it all was Jane.

“Perhaps the reason that I began to spend less and less time minding the flowers was not because Eulaeus was proving so adept at caring for them, but because every moment that I did spend with them reminded me of home and of my mother and of Constance. When I was in the veld with Jane, it was easy to forget that there was a world of duty and of obligation awaiting my return.

“It became even easier when, to my astonishment, I began to sense that she was favouring my attentions over those of Thunberg. I tried to disillusion myself of the notion that a woman such as Jane could find any pleasure in the company of a mere under-gardener, and yet all the signs were plain to see, if you only wished to acknowledge them: the hand she held out for help in crossing a stream, even when she was more sure-footed than even the most nimble antelope.