Everfair (5 page)

Mr. Owen looked much moved himself. He cleared his throat before speaking. “Yes. I—” He reached inside the grey wool coat he wore despite the kitchen's heat. “I have it in my pocket here.” He drew forth a sheaf of paper softly folded in thirds and spread it open.

Thomas leant forward to examine it. The writing was all in French, and made only a little sense. But one paragraph seemed full of outlandish names coupled with the word “fleuve,” which he knew to mean river. The numbers followed by the degree symbols must indicate latitude and longitude. Still, he shook his head.

Mr. Owen mistook that. “But the tract is vast!” he exclaimed. “Thousands of square miles, and some of the richest croplands on the African continent—”

“No, no, it's not—”

“Do you tell me that my efforts were in vain? After the work I've done to ensure that our common dream—”

Thomas's landlady opened the door and stuck her head through. “Any trouble, Lieutenant Reverend, sir?”

“None, Mrs. Swain. Let us alone, if you please.” No doubt due to his fame, Thomas had found lodging easily enough here in Ireland, and indeed in every place he went among the British Isles. Unlike at home. But the corollary effect of general public interest in all his endeavors had begun to wear on him after three years. He worried it would bring him to the notice of those against whom Morel had warned.

“It's only that your voices have risen a bit, though you may be unaware so, and I'm fearful you'll be disturbing our other tenants at their tea, and I know you was wishful not to, which is why you come in here, but if you'd rather invite your guest up to your rooms I'm certain it will—”

“My apologies.” Mr. Owen bent in a sort of seated bow. “We became excited in our conversation. Momentarily. Excuse us to your boarders, and—have you a boy? Yes?” He held a coin out at the level of the door's knob and Mrs. Swain's hand emerged to take it. “If you don't mind asking him to procure some sort of treat to soothe their ruffled feelings—”

Thus dispatched, she closed the door. “With your permission?” Mr. Owen rose and opened it to reveal her already half the way along the passage. “Though if you're not interested after all, then there's no need for such stringent privacy.”

“Mr. Owen, I am interested. Very much so. I only…” He only wished he were learned enough to have understood the map over which he'd shaken his head in confusion. Thomas hated to admit the irregularities in his education to a man who so obviously took his own more protected upbringing for granted. “I only wonder—if—wonder—how many I will be able to provide—” Nothing could be allowed to hinder his mission; his excuse for not immediately seizing on Owen's offer must make
sense
. “That is, how many other American Negroes I can persuade to join our enterprise.”

In answer to these maunderings he received a rather sharpish look. Then a decisive nod. “I'm of the same mind. We must do our utmost not to repeat the errors of the past. Enforced transportation and settlement, as in Australia, or indenturement, servitude of any sort—the slightest hint of slavery! We must avoid them all.

“Which is why—” Owen stood and peered into the passageway. “Ah. If you will procure your topcoat I'll show you those works now, as I promised.”

There'd been no such promise, but Thomas heard Mrs. Swain's flat-footed tread approaching over the rush mats covering the passage floor. He took the hint, and they left the kitchen on the tide of her thanks.

His Chesterfield hung on the rack by the front entry. He donned it as they descended the steps to the street. It was a new purchase and he felt childishly pleased with it. He berated himself silently for this as they walked beneath pink clouds and lamps recently lit. Pride goeth before a fall. He ought to think instead of his mission, the vow he'd made to rescue his brethren back home in America, who struggled just to put rags on their backs. Ought also to recall the salvation deserved by those poor heathens dying even now in the sweltering jungles of King Leopold's Congo. Their case had been beyond horrible three years ago, and since then he'd done no more than talk about it.

Yet his speeches must have made some difference, must have hindered the tyrant in his hellish designs to some extent. The outcry against Leopold had swelled measurably, and subscriptions to
The Commoner
had increased. The Benevolent Fund he and Mr. Owen's Fabian Society had established had helped, but now it would be spent up. He hoped those who had contributed would appreciate the use to which it was about to be put.

They turned down Police Court Street, accompanied only by ordinary passersby. Soon the Foyle flowed before them. Its broad waters lay for the most part in the shadow of the embankment on which they trod, only reflecting the sky's lingering brightness far out near the river's eastern shore.

They stood still a moment, then promenaded slowly north as if admiring the view while Owen laid forth the particulars of his plan. Leopold wanted to sell a far greater portion of his holdings than they had asked for. “About half is what it comes to, as you'll have deduced from the deed,” Owen said. “Of course, now he wants more money than we've raised.”

Thomas hid his traitor hands in the capacious pockets of his Chesterfield. Was the purchase not to go through, then?

“Which brings me to my proposal.”

He kept his voice smooth. “And that is—”

“I have a rich donor. Anonymous. He will provide the complete sum necessary for the sale, leaving what we've collected to be used in buying equipment, supplies, hiring ships—and to be given as grants—small grants—to our settlers.”

“Grants to—” Now even Thomas's well-trained voice failed. The fading clouds above rolled back in his vision to reveal fields of diamonds, paving stones of everlasting pearl—

The smell of tobacco recalled him to the stony earth. Owen was offering him a cigar. He accepted it—a bad habit, smoking, but one he'd never been able to rid himself of. Presently the two of them sent up grey clouds to mingle with the wisps of cirrus gradually disappearing into the darkness.

They continued walking and talking. At first Thomas had a hard time suppressing his elation. But there would be so much work. He soon sobered. Recruiting suitable families for the colony would be rendered both easier and more difficult by the funds to be disbursed. And on what would these grants' exact amounts be based: Skills? Need? The number of souls in a household? Ought they to be advertised openly, or would that attract too many adventurers? Should monies be advanced before recruits set foot in Africa so that they might pay their own passage there, or was this a sure invitation to fraud? Thomas's head fairly spun with questions. All the while he made out to Owen that he was calm, collected, and utterly assured of the next steps they would need to take.

“Unless we mean to walk all the way to Lisahally, it's time to head back.” Owen sounded regretful about stopping, as if ready to proceed down to Loch Foyle at the slightest hint of willingness on Thomas's part. Turning to confirm this impression, Thomas realized with a shock he could barely see the pale blur of the white man's face. The night was moonless, and they'd arrived at a district of industrial docks and warehouses, poorly lighted. Peering about, Thomas found no obvious assassins lurking nearby. Ahead hulked a crane. Its huge iron hook dangled into the ruddy glare thrown through a window high in the black bulk of some otherwise featureless building. The wind carried scents of soot and rust and tar.

“Yes. No doubt.” They reversed their course and sped up. He still held the cigar, which had ceased burning, unattended.

He could think of no way to find out other than asking. “Who is your anonymous backer?”

“Ah. That would be telling. And you
are
a journalist.”

“And your partner.” Silence answered him for long minutes.

“He's a member of the Society,” Owen admitted at last. “Dedicated to our principles. He wanted to found a college, but this is better. It will have more impact.”

Thomas hunched lower in his Chesterfield. All the problems of working with Owen came down to his Fabian Society and its so-called principles. The man was an avowed atheist, an advocate of free love and common property. As were all his closest associates.

Better, however, to consort with an honest atheist than that lying, murdering papist king. Mr. Owen had denied again and again having any desire to hinder the teaching of the Gospel. Thomas believed him. And he knew exactly who'd be capable of holding the man to his word.

On the pavement before his lodgings Thomas bade his partner a hasty farewell, agreeing hurriedly to meet with him again the next day and cross off more logistical details from a list that already seemed endless. Mrs. Swain lay in wait for him in the front parlor. She helped him out of his coat while talking gaily of nothing of consequence, but, noting his distraction, soon left. When he announced he had “something to write” she happily provided him with an extra candle and went off to her bed, probably congratulating herself on contributing her mite to the creation of a masterful speech or sermon.

But it was, again, a letter Thomas composed on his much-employed traveling desk, as in Boma. Not, this time, an open letter to a monarch to be published, but a private letter to a widow woman. A comrade in the armies of Christ.

“Dear Martha,” he began, and went on for an hour, covering five pages and crossing them, explaining the situation in full. Telling her how and why their colonial enterprise had suddenly widened in scope, with their partner providing the additional funds this would necessitate. Asking her to undertake to manage their affairs so that this imbalance in the colony's financial underpinnings would not disadvantage them. Exhorting her to heighten her watchfulness in all to do with these new and worldly allies.

 

On Board
White Bird,
June 1894

Lisette Toutournier sailed with the Albins to their new African home as a matter of course, to outward appearances merely the children's governess. Her attachment to Laurie, never robust, had weakened over the years, but that to Daisy became ever stronger. And once aboard
White Bird
she found she also loved the ship: its stacks and railings, decks and companionways. Loved its deep, sleek secrets, black and shining with grease, throbbing with power.

On the long voyage to Freetown the sailors had come to respect Lisette and indulge her open admiration of
White Bird,
though at first, of course, she was suspect, being a woman, and young, and beautiful. But eventually—some time between Funchal and the Canary Islands, she believed—they came around. They accepted her. It helped that she was never in the slightest ill, and that she wore trousers, and shoes of sensibleness, or sometimes no footgear at all. That she tanned in the fierce sun instead of burning—thanks to her half-Negro
grand-père,
but they would not hear of him from her—did no harm either. Nor did she complain at any time of the warm, insistent rain.

Daisy had accompanied her husband Laurie Albin and his “secretary” Ellen ashore to meet with Mr. Owen, and she'd brought Laurie Junior along with her as his birthday treat. One would think that the older children would have tired by now of shipboard life and be aching also to disembark, but here they sat, ranged round her like so many pirates awaiting orders from their chief. George had even gone so far as to tie one of Lily's scarves around his head. Rosalie, who had earlier suffered much from the sun, had borrowed her mother's best hat, without, Lisette was certain, either Ellen's or Daisy's permission. As the near-constant equatorial rain had subsided for the afternoon the hat would not be hurt.

She would happily have taken pity on poor Rosalie's strawberry red cheeks and retired below to the library, for while there she could have surreptitiously composed a new chapter in her saga of the trouble-hungry sprites accompanying her to a new continent. But she anticipated sure protests from the older ones if they lost their view of the so-briefly blue sky and this famous Gold Coast: the gently climbing green gardens studded with houses like blocks of pastel chalk; the white beach where the bright waves came at last to rest. Above their crashing the damp air echoed with the cries of the barge crews ferrying coal for the ship's capacious fuel bunkers, the clang of loaded buckets being raised and lowered.

Could she bring her charges, somehow, to venture with her to see the end result of this process? But no, she herself had barely gotten permission to visit the bunkers, fierce with the heat of nearby furnaces. Occult clouds of black had swirled in their almost-emptiness; she had ruined a white blouse simply by wearing it in such an atmosphere. She treasured its dusky folds more than the silk chemise Laurie gave her at the voyage's outset, but the bunkers were no place for these well-brought-up infants. She sighed.

“It's not going to be a sad story, is it?” asked Lily.

“Sad stories are for girls,” George opined. “Tell us an adventure.”

“I have promised you not one story of any sort!” Lisette shook her blond head in denial. “And besides, you have been far too naughty for—”

“
I
have been good!
Very
good!” declared Rosalie. “And I don't want a story—” Over the expostulations of her siblings she continued, “
I
want a
pretend
.”

The others agreed this would be an acceptable alternative, with George stipulating that there should be a good swordfight in it, and Lily pleading for something about their new home.

Lisette bent her creative powers to producing a “pretend.” “You, George,” she announced, “are a king—”

“Not that blighter Leopold!”

“No, no,” she assured him. “An African king, who is plotting to rescue his sister and daughter—”