Authors: Will Adams
‘Any news?’
‘No.’ He shook his head. ‘No news.’
‘You’ve been looking?’
‘Of course.’ His eyes flickered, however. He tried a smile. ‘You must understand, we have families to feed.’
‘You have families to feed,’ said Rebecca. She put her hands on her hips, looked around from face to face. ‘My father was good to you. He never let you go hungry.
Never.
My sister was your friend. She nursed you and your children whenever you were sick. But now that they need you, you have families to feed. My father and sister
were
your family. You think they’d have stayed home if you’d gone missing?’ Heads bowed in shame all around her, a congregation before their brimstone preacher. She dropped the Mitsubishi’s tailboard, dragged out the sack of rice she’d bought in Tulear, let it thump to the earth. Two zebu were tethered to an ancient tree, grazing the meagre grass, flicking their tails and shuddering their muscles to scatter flies. ‘Whose are those?’ she asked Jean-Luc.
‘My father’s. But—’
‘How much?’
‘They’re not for—’
‘How much?’
He sighed. ‘Three million.’
She took out her purse, gave him all her cash. ‘I’ll get you the rest next time I go to town.’ He took it reluctantly, started to say something, then thought better of it. ‘I need a knife,’ she announced. ‘Who has a knife?’
There was scurrying. A young lad with a ragged cleftpalate scar came through the ranks a few moments later holding out a long-bladed knife. She took it from him, tested its point and then its blade with her thumb. Not as sharp as she’d like, nor as clean, but it would have to do. She seized the zebu’s jaw in the vice of her elbow, wrenched its head back and up. It took a couple of faltering steps to adjust its balance, leaned trustingly against her. They were strong creatures, but bred to be docile. She plunged the knife through the tough hide of its throat into the softness of the liquid canals inside, felt the puncture of the larynx, holding it there for just a moment before sawing in a jagged, sideways motion, the radiated heat striking her a moment later, and then a geyser of blood spraying everywhere, people shrieking and jumping back, her legs and hands and stomach sticky, and the zebu grunting and trying to buck away too late, crashing to its knees and then on to its side, life-blood pumping in a slackening flow on to the dry brown earth, one eye looking reproachfully up at her. ‘There,’ she told
them. ‘That should feed your families. Let me know when you need more.’
Jean-Luc glared at her, aware he’d lost face. She wiped the knife on her shirt, handed it back to the boy, then climbed on to the Mitsubishi’s flatbed. ‘Three million ariary to whoever finds my father,’ she announced, the blood granting her a certain grotesque authority. ‘Five million if he’s alive. The same for my sister. You hear?’ She looked around their faces. Ten million ariary was a life-changing sum for a Malagasy. And the bush telegraph was a wondrous thing. By tomorrow, word would have spread all along the coast. As for the reward money, she’d just have to cross that bridge when she came to it.
Alphonse and Thierry unknotted the rigging, lowered the sail and the mast, then the four of them together heaved the pirogue up past the high-tide mark of the beach. Thierry found a section of flat sand and fashioned a makeshift tent from the sail and two paddles, just about big enough for them all. Alphonse collected wood and built a fire on which they boiled rice and grilled fish, before sitting in a line looking out over the sea and eating it with their fingers.
‘You never told me what the verdict was,’ said Lucia.
‘How do you mean?’
‘Your science presentation. Did the Chinese discover America?’
He gave her a sideways glance; she must have been aware of all the rancour and commotion on the
Maritsa
last night. Maybe this was her way of angling for the story. ‘I’m never quite sure what people mean by that,’ he answered carefully. ‘It’s always struck me as a little arrogant to say the New World was
discovered
by Columbus or the Chinese or whoever. What about the tribes-people who crossed the Bering Strait sixteen thousand years ago? Don’t they count? Or the Norsemen of the Vinland sagas? Or the men of Bristol, who fished off the American coast long before Columbus. Discovery’s just a euphemism. What people really mean is
conquest.
And, no, the Chinese didn’t conquer America.’
‘Nice sidestep,’ she smiled.
Knox laughed and nodded across the fire at Alphonse and Thierry, helping themselves to more mounds of rice. ‘Did you know that these guys sometimes sail their pirogues all the way across this channel to Mozambique? Two hundred miles of treacherous open sea in a fifteenfoot canoe, armed only with food, fresh water and a pack of cigarettes. People do extraordinary things in boats, and they don’t always leave evidence behind. Frankly, I’d be amazed if no Chinese had ever made it to America before Columbus.’
‘Really?’
‘Look at a map sometime. Sail north from China, you can have land to your left all the way around Kamchatka to the Bering Sea, then down Alaska to British Columbia and the western United States. Or, if you don’t fancy the cold, you could always island-hop via the Kurils and the Aleutians. Did no fisherman or merchant
ever
make it there, not even by accident?’
‘Reaching
somewhere isn’t the point,’ observed Lucia. ‘It only counts if you report it back.’
‘And maybe they did,’ said Knox. ‘The Chinese certainly believed in a place called Fusang, ten thousand kilometres to their east, pretty much exactly where California is. The third-century emperor Shi Huang despatched a group of settlers there; by all accounts they settled happily enough. A Buddhist monk called Hui Shen followed with a party of missionaries.’ Bizarrely, Hui Shen had had an almostexact Irish counterpart, a sixth-century abbot called Brendan, who’d led a crew of monks west in search of a promised land filled with fruit and meadows and all good things, encountering talking birds and mysterious floating crystal towers on his way. Brendan had existed for sure, and his transatlantic odyssey was certainly plausible. When the Vikings had reached Iceland, they’d found it already settled by Irish Christians. And while Norse longboats had been nothing like as sophisticated as Chinese treasure ships, Leif Eriksson had still managed
to sight the North American coast from one, while others had established a settlement in L’Anse aux Meadows in Newfoundland, the only indisputable evidence of Europeans reaching the New World before Columbus.
Lucia nodded. ‘So Zheng He and his admirals would have expected to find land where America was?’
‘They certainly wouldn’t have been surprised by it. Though that doesn’t mean they got there, of course. Or anywhere close.’ They’d finished their food by now, so they took their plates down to the shallows, rinsed them clean. ‘But you have to remember that Chinese ships were absolute pigs to steer. They could hardly sail into the wind at all, and so were utterly dependent upon the monsoon and the other trade winds.’ He gestured out into the Mozambique Channel. ‘If they’d come this far south, and missed their window, their choice would have been to wait out another whole year or risk sailing wherever the wind blew them.’
‘And if it had blown them to Fusang …?’
‘Exactly,’ smiled Knox.
Rebecca drove the Mitsubishi down to the beach to wash off the blood and put on clean clothes before continuing on to Pierre’s house. It was dark and deserted when she pulled up, and there was no sign of his car. No great shock, frankly, for it was a full day’s drive back from Antananarivo; but she was surprised not to see any of his wives or children.
Pierre had built himself the kind of throwback colonial life that was only still on offer in places like Madagascar. His father had been in the French army, stationed out here before Independence. Convinced it would be the next tourist paradise, he’d bought this
whole stretch of coast and forest, including the Eden Reserve. But nothing had come of it, and he and his wife had been killed in a car accident. Pierre, their sole heir, had flown out intending to sell up; but he’d never left. He’d realised that, by living prudently, he’d never have to work again. And the women here were so beautiful.
Mating strategies fascinated Rebecca. Every living creature was the product of an almost infinite regression of successful reproductions: yet each itself had only a limited chance of leaving offspring. To an evolutionary biologist, therefore, sex was war; children victory. It was a battle Pierre had set out to win. He’d started by building guest cabins, even though no tourists had ever come here back then, and had recruited a string of young Malagasy women, ostensibly as staff, but in reality to share his bed and bear his children. Even that hadn’t been enough for him, however. After he’d sold her father a good chunk of his land on which to set up the Eden Reserve, more and more zoologists and other intrepid travellers had started making the trek up here.
A Dutch marine biologist called Cees had arrived for a week with his fiancée Ardine, an otherworldly young woman with crinkled red hair, freckled soft white skin and long, bony witch’s fingers that had glittered with silver rings and semiprecious stones. When Adam had taken Cees diving one day, Pierre had pressed Ardine to let him show her a sacred grotto in the spiny forest. Rebecca
had been perhaps ten years old at the time. Without being quite sure why, she’d found herself deliciously titillated by this, and so had followed. The forest trails were difficult if you weren’t used to them. Pierre had kept catching Ardine when she stumbled, plucking thorns from her clothes. The climb down to the grotto itself was narrow and awkward. Pierre went first, then reached back up for Ardine, letting her hips slide through his hands so that her top had rumpled up and his thumbs brushed the undersides of her breasts.
Rebecca had stretched out on the rocks above the pool to watch Pierre strip naked then dive into the water. Ardine had been wearing bikini bottoms beneath her trousers. She’d paddled in the shallows. There was a natural stone bench in the water. Pierre had teased her until she’d sat beside him. He’d taken her hand and talked passionately; she’d blushed and looked away. He’d put a hand behind her head to hold her as he’d kissed her. She’d flapped and struggled, but not for very long. There was something about Pierre that women seemed unable to deny.
Afterwards, Rebecca had often watched Pierre go to work on their female guests. He was powerful, handsome and capable of immense charm. And he had absolutely no shame. Rebecca had learned from him how often people simply defer to strength of purpose. It didn’t much matter what that purpose was, only how fiercely it was held. Some male mosquitoes loiter above salt-water
hatcheries, pouncing on females as they struggled from their shells, impregnating them before they could defend themselves. Male
Heliconius
butterflies punched holes in chrysalises to force themselves upon the females inside. Pierre had something of that ruthlessness. Vulnerability thrilled him. To cuckold gave him joy.
Her father had known all this, but when you were the only two Europeans within a day’s travel, friendship was the only sane option. Besides, Pierre had proved useful. Running a reserve here meant endless bureaucratic meetings in Antananarivo, the constant greasing of palms. Her father had hated that side of Madagascar, but Pierre relished it. He enjoyed, too, delivering papers written by her father at Antananarivo’s never-ending cycle of wildlife conferences, like the one he’d just been at this past week, so that he could then use his tales of life on the frontline to seduce any impressionable young delegates.
‘Becca! Becca!’ Rebecca turned to see a Malagasy woman in pale clothes approach over a grass-topped dune, an infant in one arm, another in a sling around her neck. ‘Becca!’ she screeched again, waving exuberantly.
Rebecca squinted through the darkness. ‘Therese?’
Of course Therese! Had Rebecca forgotten her old friend so quickly? Had she aged that much? For all her scolding, Therese radiated such joy to see her that Rebecca couldn’t help but be warmed. As far back as she could remember, Therese had been part of her life, for she’d
developed such a passion for medicine and nursing as a young girl that she’d spent her free time helping Rebecca’s mother out in Eden’s clinic. In fact, she was now running it herself the two mornings a week it was open, as well as in emergencies.
‘Michel?’ asked Rebecca, indicating the child in Therese’s arm.
Therese shook her head shyly. ‘She mine. Xandra Yvette. Xandra for Pierre’s grandmother. Yvette for your mother. She so kind to me.’
‘She’s beautiful.’
‘Yes,’ beamed Therese proudly. She opened the flap of her shawl. ‘This is Michel,’ she said. ‘Your nep’ew.’
Rebecca took him in one arm. He was smaller than she’d expected, yet heavier. He had tight purple slivers of lips, dark upturned nostrils and clenched eyes. He looked so like Emilia that Rebecca’s chest fluttered. She touched his cheek. His eyelids sprang open, revealing the shiny conkers within. He grasped her finger and pulled it towards his mouth.
‘He like you bery much,’ beamed Therese.
Rebecca couldn’t tear her eyes from him. From nowhere, she had a sudden, wild vision of taking him back with her to England, rebuilding her life around him. But she stamped down on the treacherous thought. She was here to rescue Emilia, not bury her.
‘You hab news?’ asked Therese.
‘Nothing,’ said Rebecca.
Therese pulled an anguished face. ‘Your bu’ful sister, so kind, so
young.
Your won’ful father.’
Rebecca’s heart tightened. ‘We’ll find them. We’ll get them back.’
‘Yes.’ Therese brushed her cheeks with the heel of her hand, then smiled radiantly again, sunshine after a squall. ‘Sure! We get them both back, now you are here. But tomorrow, yes. Tonight you eat. Not go Eden. No food at Eden. All dark and empty and nasty. Yes. First eat, then sleep, ebryt’ing better in morning. Okay! Yes!’ She crooked a finger at Zanahary, standing by the Mitsubishi. ‘And you too, li’l boy. Come eat. Come. Come.’