Anne Perry - Traitors Gate

“Would you rather have gone up to Kew? I hear the botanical gardens are among the wonders of the world.”

“Not in the least. I am perfectly happy going to Greenwich. Besides, on a day like this, I fear all the world and his aunt will be at Kew.”

He settled a little more comfortably in his seat, relaxing back in the sun and watching the myriad other craft maneuvering the busy waterway, and the carriages and omnibuses on the banks, the stalls selling peppermint drinks, pies, sandwiches and cockles, or balloons, hoops, penny flutes and whistles, and other toys. A girl in a frilly dress was chasing a little boy in a striped suit. A black-and-white dog barked and jumped up and down in excitement. A hurdy-gurdy played a familiar tune. A pleasure boat passed by, its decks lined with people, all waving towards the shore. One man had a red bandanna tied around his head, a bright splash of color in a sea of faces.

Nobby and Kreisler glanced at each other. Speech was not necessary; the same amusement was in both their faces, the same wry enjoyment of humanity.

They had passed under the Southward Bridge. The old Swan Pier was to the left, London Bridge ahead, and then Custom House Quay.

“Do you suppose the Congo will ever become one of the great waterways of the world?” she said thoughtfully. “In my mind’s eye I can only see it as a vast brown sliding stream hemmed in by a jungle so immense it covers nations, and just isolated canoes paddling a few miles from village to village.” She trailed her hand gently in the water. The breeze was warm on her face. “Man seems so small, so ineffectual against the primeval strength of Africa. Here we seem to have conquered everything and bent it to our will.”

“We won’t ever conquer the Congo,” he said without hesitation. “The climate won’t let us. That is one of the few things we cannot tame or subdue. But no doubt we will build cities, take steamboats there and export the timber, copper and everything else we think we can sell. There is already a railway. In time I expect they will build another from Zambezia to the Cape, to take out gold, ivory and whatever else, more efficiently.”

“And you hate the idea,” she said with gravity, all the laughter vanished.

He looked at her steadily. “I hate the greed and the exploitation. I hate the duplicity with which we cheat the Africans. They’ve cheated and duped Lobengula, the king of the Ndebele in Mashonaland. He’s illiterate, of course, but a wily old devil, I think perhaps even intelligent enough to understand some of his own tragedy.”

The ebbing tide had them well in its grip and they passed under London Bridge. A girl in a large hat was staring down at them, smiling. Nobby waved to her and she waved back.

Custom House Quay was to their left, and beyond it Tower Hill and the Great Tower of London with its crested battlements and flags flying. Down at the water’s edge was the slipway of Traitors Gate, where the condemned had been delivered by boat to their execution in days past.

“I wonder what he was like,” Kreisler said quietly, almost as if to himself.

“Who?” Nobby asked, for once not following his thoughts.

“William of Normandy,” he answered. “The last conqueror to subdue these lands and subjugate its people, set up his fortresses across the hills, and with armed soldiers to keep order and take profit from the land. The Tower was his.” They were sliding past it as he spoke, on the swift ebbing water; the boatman had little to do to keep their speed.

She knew what Kreisler was thinking. It had nothing to do with William of Normandy or an invasion over eight centuries ago. It was Africa again, and European rifles and cannons against the assegais of the Zulu impis, or the Ndebele, British formations across the African plains, black men ruled by white as the Saxons had been by the Normans. Only the Normans were blood cousins, allied by race and faith, different only in tongue.

She looked at him and held his gaze steadily. They were passing St. Catherine’s Dock and heading towards the Pool of London. On either side of the river there were docks, wharves, and stairs going to the water’s edge. Barges were moored, others moved out slowly into the stream and went up towards further docks, or down towards the estuary and the sea. Pleasure boats were fewer now; this was the commercial shore. Here was trade with all the world.

As if having taken her thoughts, he smiled. “Cargoes of silk from China, spices from Burma and India, teak and ivory and jade,” he said, lying back a little farther. The sun on his brown face caught the pale color of his hair where it was already bleached by a far fiercer light than that of this gentle English afternoon with its dappled water. “I suppose it should be cedars of Lebanon and gold from Ophir! It won’t be long before it’s gold from Zimbabwe and mahogany and skins from Equatoria, ivory from Zanzibar and minerals from the Congo. And they will be traded for cotton from Manchester, and guns and men from half Europe. Some will come home again, many won’t.”

“Have you ever met Lobengula?” she asked curiously.

He laughed, looking up quickly. “Yes … I have. He’s an enormous man, nearly twenty-two stones in weight, and over six feet tall. He wears nothing except a Zulu ring ’round his head and a small loincloth.”

“Good heavens! Really? So big?” She regarded him closely to see if he was joking, although she knew almost certainly he was not.

His smile was steady, but his eyes were full of laughter. “The Ndebele are not a building people like the Shona, who created the city of Zimbabwe. They live by cattle raising and raiding, and making only villages of grass huts covered with dung….”

“I know the sort,” she said quickly, and memory returned so she could almost smell the dry heat in spite of the rushing and slapping of water all around her and the bright reflections dancing in her eyes.

“Of course you do,” he apologized. “Forgive me. It is so rare a treat for me to be able to speak with someone who needs no explanation or word pictures to imagine what I’m describing. Lobengula holds a very formal court. Anyone seeking audience with him has to approach him crawling on hands and knees-and remain so throughout.” He pulled a face. “It can be a very hot and exhausting experience, and not necessarily with any pleasure or profit at the end. He can neither read nor write, but he has a prodigious memory … for all the good that will do him dealing with Europe, poor devil.”

She waited in silence. Kreisler was lost in thoughts of his own and she was content to allow it. She had no sense of being excluded; it was perfectly companionable. The light, the sound of the water, the wharves and warehouses of the Pool of London slipped by, and the shared dreams of the past in another land, the shared fears for its future as a different kind of darkness loomed over it.

“They duped him, of course,” he said after a while. “They promised they would bring no more than ten white men to work in his country.”

She sat upright suddenly, her eyes wide with disbelief.

“Yes.” He looked at her through his lashes. “Unbelievable to you or me, but he accepted it. They also said they would dig nowhere near towns, and that they and their people would abide by the laws of the Ndebele, and behave generally as Lobengula’s subjects.” The bitterness crept in only at the end.

“And the price?” she asked quietly.

“A hundred pounds a month, a thousand Martini-Henry breech-locking rifles and a hundred thousand rounds of ammunition, and a gunboat on the Zambezi.”

She said nothing. They were passing Wapping Old Stairs on their left as they sped downriver. The Pool of London was teeming with boats, barges, steamers, tugs, trawlers and here and there the odd pleasure boat. Would the brown, jungle-crusted Congo ever be like this, teeming with civilization and the goods of the world to be bought and sold, and consumed by men and women who had never left their own counties or shires?