Call of the Raven Read online

  Praise for

  ‘A thundering good read is virtually the only way of describing Wilbur Smith’s books’

  IRISH TIMES

  ‘Wilbur Smith . . . writes as forcefully as his tough characters act’

  EVENING STANDARD

  ‘Wilbur has arguably the best sense of place of any adventure writer since John Buchan’

  GUARDIAN

  ‘Wilbur Smith is one of those benchmarks against whom others are compared’

  THE TIMES

  ‘Best Historical Novelist – I say Wilbur Smith, with his swashbuckling novels of Africa. The bodices rip and the blood flows. You can get lost in Wilbur Smith and misplace all of August’

  STEPHEN KING

  ‘Action is the name of Wilbur Smith’s game and he is the master’

  WASHINGTON POST

  ‘A master storyteller’

  THE SUNDAY TIMES

  ‘Smith will take you on an exciting, taut and thrilling journey you will never forget’

  SUN

  ‘No one does adventure quite like Smith’

  DAILY MIRROR

  ‘With Wilbur Smith the action is never further than the turn of a page’

  INDEPENDENT

  ‘When it comes to writing the adventure novel, Wilbur Smith is the master; a 21st century H. Rider Haggard’

  VANITY FAIR

  Contents

  Cover

  Praise for Wilbur Smith

  Dedication

  Letter from Author

  Epigraph

  Part I: The Blackhawk

  Part II: The Raven

  Part III: Bannerfield

  Ghost Fire

  King of Kings

  Courtney’s War

  On Leopard Rock

  About the Author

  Also by Wilbur Smith

  Readers First

  Copyright

  This book is for my wife, Nisojon, because my admiration for her and the unequivocal love she spreads keeps my heart and mind constantly beating.

  Dear Reader,

  It’s been forty years since the publication of A Falcon Flies, the first novel in the bestselling Ballantyne Series, featuring a character that my fans both love and love to hate: Mungo St John.

  Some might say that Mungo St John is the incarnate of evil itself: a slave trader who steals native Africans and sells them to plantation owners in the United States. But Mungo, charming, intelligent and irresistible to all around him – both men and women – shows compassion for his slaves and even demonstrates a hint of doubt about his place in this dark chapter of the history of mankind. His complex personality makes the beautiful and determined Robyn Ballantyne question her feelings for him and allow herself to see him as something other than a slaver. Like all good characters, Mungo is full of contradictions: he is both evil and heroic, a complex character who reflects the historical times he lived in.

  Since launching my Facebook page I have been asked by many of my readers, ‘When will the story of Mungo St John be continued?’ I went back and revisited A Falcon Flies and found myself drawn to this man again, who was both Dr Jeckyll and Mr Hyde. Where did he come from? What motivated him? Why is he the way he is in A Falcon Flies?

  Call of the Raven is my answer to those questions. It is, without a doubt, the most interesting historical novel I’ve worked on in some time as it made me question the history of slave trading and its impact on racism in our world. How does evil become acceptable in society? How is it appropriate for someone to hold another human being as their property?

  I was fortunate to work with a co-author who was perfectly suited for the task of helping me explore 1840s New Orleans and Virginia. Corban Addison, a very accomplished novelist and a resident of Virginia himself, helped bring Mungo’s world to life.

  We hope you will find Call of the Raven a fascinating exploration of the dying days of the slave trade. It feels like an important contribution to our understanding of a period in history which continues to throw long shadows into the darkest aspects of the human soul.

  As ever,

  Wilbur Smith

  No man can put a chain around the ankle of his fellow man without at last finding the other end fastened around his own neck.

  Frederick Douglass

  I

  THE BLACKHAWK

  The chamber was packed. Young men in evening dress squeezed ten-to-a-row on the benches; more stood around the edges of the room, bodies pressed together. The lamplit air hung heavy with sweat and alcohol and excitement, like a prize fight at a county fair.

  But no blood would be spilled tonight. This was the Cambridge Union Society: the oldest debating club in the country and the proving ground for the nation’s future rulers. The only sparring would be verbal, the only wounds to pride. At least, those were the rules.

  The front of the room was set up like a miniature parliament. The two sides faced each other from opposing benches, divided by the length of two swords. A young man named Fairchild, with sandy hair and fine features, was addressing the audience from the despatch box.

  ‘The motion before you tonight is: “This house believes that slavery should be abolished from the face of the Earth”. And, indeed, the case is so self-evident I feel I hardly need to argue it.’

  Nods of agreement; he was preaching to the converted. Abolitionist sentiment ran high among the Cambridge undergraduates.

  ‘I know in this house we are used to debating the fine points of law and politics. But this is not academic. The question of slavery speaks to a higher law. To keep innocent men and women in chains, to tear them from their homes and work them to death: this is a crime against God and all the laws of justice.’

  On the facing bench, most of the opposition speakers listened to his oration glumly. They knew they were on to a losing cause. One leaned forward and twisted his handkerchief through his hands. One stared at the speaker with such melancholy he looked as if he might burst into tears. Only the third seemed untroubled. He lounged back nonchalantly, his mouth set in a lazy smile, as if he alone was privy to some enormous joke.

  ‘If you have one ounce of humanity in you, I urge you to support the motion.’

  Fairchild sat down to sustained applause. The president waited for the noise to die away.

  ‘To close for the opposition, the chair calls on Mr Mungo St John.’

  The man who had been lounging on the front bench rose. No one applauded, but a new force seemed to charge the room. Up in the gallery, where a few well-bred young ladies were allowed to observe proceedings as long as they stayed silent, crinolines rustled and stays creaked as they leaned forward to see better.

  You could not ignore him. He was twenty, but he loomed half a head taller than any other man in the chamber. His dark hair flowed over his collar in a long, thick mane; his tanned skin shone with a lustre that no wan English sun could have produced. His suit was cut to accentuate his figure: a slim waist that rose to broad, well-muscled shoulders more like a boxer’s than a Cambridge undergraduate’s.

  If he felt the hostility aimed at him, it did not shake the easy grin from his face. Indeed, he seemed to feed off the crowd’s energy.

  ‘You have heard a great deal this evening about the supposed evils of slavery. But has anyone here ever been to the great tobacco plantations of Virginia, or the cotton fields of the Mississippi?’ His smoky yellow eyes surveyed the room. ‘That is my native soil. I was born and raised in Virginia. Slavery to me is not sensational reports in the newspapers, or hell-raising sermons. I have seen the reality of it.’

  He lowered his voice. ‘Is the work hard? Yes. Do rich men profit from the labour of others? Again, yes. But do not be gulled by these fantasies of brutality
and violence you are peddled. At Windemere – my home, on the banks of the James River – my father keeps four hundred workers, and he cares for each one. When they work well, he praises them. When they are sick, he tends them. If they die, he grieves.’

  ‘That is because each one is worth a thousand dollars to him,’ said Fairchild.

  The audience laughed.

  ‘My friend is quite right,’ said Mungo. ‘But think of something you own that is worth that much. A fine horse, say, or a necklace. Do you beat it and disdain it and leave it in the mud? Or do you take superlative care of it, polish it and watch out for it, because it is so valuable to you?’

  He leaned on the despatch box, as comfortable as if he were leaning on the mantelpiece of his drawing room enjoying a cigar.

  ‘I am a guest in your country. But sometimes, it takes a stranger’s eye to observe what the natives do not see. Go to Manchester, or Birmingham, or any of your other great manufacturing cities. Visit the factories. You will see men and women labouring there twelve, fourteen, even eighteen hours a day, in conditions that would make my father sick to his stomach.’

  ‘At least they are free – and paid,’ said Fairchild.

  ‘And what use is freedom, if it is only the freedom to live in a slum until you are worked to death? What use is a wage if it does not buy you enough to eat? The only thing that money buys is ease for the consciences of the mill owners. Whereas at Windemere, every one of our people enjoys three square meals a day, a roof over his head and clean clothes to wear. He never has to worry if he will eat, or who will take care of his family. I promise you, if any English loom worker or coal miner glimpsed life on the plantation, he would swap his life for that in a second.’

  On the opposite bench, Fairchild had risen. ‘A point of order?’

  Mungo gave a languid wave to allow it.

  ‘Even if we accept this preposterous picture of African slaves holidaying in some benevolent paradise, the gentleman is rather coy about how those persons came to his country. Will he admit that the slave trade is nothing but a trade in suffering? Or will he try to convince us that millions of Africans willingly took a pleasant cruise to America to enjoy the benefits of the climate?’

  That drew a laugh. Mungo smiled broadly, enjoying the joke with everyone else.

  ‘The slave trade has been illegal in Britain and America for over thirty years,’ he said. ‘Whatever our fathers and grandfathers may have done, it is finished now.’

  Fairchild’s face flushed. He tried to calm his emotions – gentlemanly behaviour in these debates was prized just as much as sound arguments – but he could not hold them in check.

  ‘You know perfectly well that despite our government’s strenuous efforts, traders continue to flout the law by smuggling blacks out of Africa under the very noses of the Royal Navy.’

  ‘Then I suggest you take up your complaint with the Royal Navy.’

  ‘I shall,’ said Fairchild. ‘Indeed, I may inform the house that as soon as I have completed my degree, I shall accept a commission in the Preventative Squadron of Her Majesty’s Navy, intercepting slavers off the coast of Africa. I will report back from there as to the accuracy of Mr St John’s picture of the delights of slavery.’

  There were cheers and approving applause. Up on the ladies’ balcony, more than one corset strained with admiration of Fairchild’s manly virtue.

  ‘If you are going to Africa, you can report back how these negroes live in their own country,’ Mungo shot back. ‘Hungry, filthy, ignorant – a war of all against all. And then you can go to America, and say if they are not better off there after all.’

  He turned to the room. ‘My virtuous opponents would have you think that slavery is a unique evil, a moral abomination unparalleled in the annals of civilisation. I urge you to see otherwise. It is merely a name for what men practise wherever they are, whether in Virginia or Guinea or Manchester. The power of the strong and wealthy over the weak and poor.’

  Fairchild had started to object again. Mungo ignored him.

  ‘That may be an awkward truth. But I say to you, I would rather live my life as a slave on a plantation like Windemere, than as a so-called free man in a Lancashire cotton mill. They are the true slaves.’

  He looked around the tight-packed chamber. Only the briefest glance, yet every person in the room felt that his gaze had settled directly on them. On the ladies’ balcony, the fans fluttered faster than ever.

  ‘Perhaps what I say offends your moral sensibilities. I will not apologise for that. Instead, I beg you to look beyond your distaste and examine the proposition with clear-eyed honesty. If you sweeten your tea with sugar from the West Indies, or smoke Virginia tobacco, then you support slavery. If your father owns a mill where they spin Alabama cotton, or a bank that underwrites the voyages of Liverpool ship owners, then I say again you support slavery.’

  He shrugged. ‘I do not judge you. I do not lay claim to any superior moral virtue. But the one sin of which I am wholly innocent is this – I will not play the hypocrite and weep false tears for the choices I have made. If you agree with me, I urge you to oppose the motion.’

  He sat down. For a moment, silence gripped the room. Then, slowly, a wave of applause began from the back and swelled until it echoed around the chamber. The undergraduates might not agree with his politics, but they could appreciate a bravura performance.

  Though not all of them. As the applause rose, so too did an answering barrage of boos and catcalls. Yells of ‘murderer’ and ‘blood on your hands’ were heard.

  Mungo sat back, revelling in the discord.

  ‘Order!’ shouted the president. ‘The house will divide.’

  The audience filed through two doors, one for ‘aye’ on the right, and one for ‘no’ on the left. The queue for the ‘ayes’ was noticeably longer, but a surprising number turned the other way. Mungo watched the count from his seat, the grin on his face never wavering.

  The president announced the result. ‘Ayes to the right, two hundred and seven. Noes to the left, one hundred and eighteen.’

  Mungo nodded, accepting the result with perfect equanimity. He shook hands with his teammates, then took two glasses of wine and crossed the room to where Fairchild was talking with his friends. He pressed a drink into Fairchild’s hand.

  ‘Congratulations,’ said Mungo. ‘You spoke with great conviction.’

  Fairchild took the glass reluctantly. By convention, the society’s debates were about rhetorical skill and argument; winning or losing was less important than behaving like gentlemen afterwards. But Fairchild could not hide his disdain for Mungo.

  ‘You take your loss in good part,’ he conceded.

  ‘That is because I did not lose,’ Mungo answered, in the soft drawl of his native Virginia.

  ‘You heard the result. I carried the motion by almost two to one. You lost.’

  ‘Not at all,’ said Mungo. ‘I wagered ten guineas that I could get at least a hundred votes against the motion. Nobody else thought I would get more than fifty. And though the glory of victory is very fine, I would rather have the extra gold in my purse.’

  Fairchild stared. All he could think to say was, ‘I should have thought you had already made enough money out of slavery.’

  ‘Not at all. My father has vowed that when he dies, he will free all his slaves. The will is already written. I will have to find some other way of making my fortune.’ Mungo clapped Fairchild on the shoulder. ‘So, you see, I will never make a penny out of that institution you revile so much. Whereas you –’ he grinned – ‘will depend entirely on the slave trade to make your living.’

  Fairchild almost choked on his wine. ‘How dare you—?’

  ‘You are joining the Preventative Squadron, are you not? You will be paid to capture slave ships.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And that is a very fine and noble profession,’ Mungo agreed. ‘But if you ever actually succeeded in exterminating the slave trade, you would be out of a job. So
it is in your interest to see that slavery endures.’

  Fairchild stared at him in horror. ‘Arguing with you is like arguing with the Devil himself,’ he complained. ‘White is black, and black is white.’

  ‘I should have thought you of all men would agree that black and white are created equal. They—’

  Mungo broke off. The room was still full with undergraduates milling about, talking and drinking and carrying on the argument. But a young man was barging his way through the crowd, upsetting drinks and knocking people out of his way.

  As he reached the front, Mungo recognised him. It was Sidney Manners, a stocky young man who had only got his place at Cambridge because his father owned half of Lincolnshire. With his thick neck, squat shoulders and heavy breathing, he looked like nothing more than a prize bull.

  ‘I have been looking for you,’ he said to Mungo.

  ‘I hope it did not tax your energies. I was not hard to find.’

  ‘You have offered the most grievous insult to my sister.’

  ‘Insult?’ Mungo smiled. ‘You are misinformed. I offered her nothing but compliments.’

  ‘You seduced her!’

  Mungo made a dismissive gesture. ‘Where I come from, gentlemen do not discuss such matters.’

  ‘Then why have I heard of it from five different people?’ Manners took a step closer. ‘They say you had her in the organ loft of Trinity Chapel, while the choir were rehearsing.’

  ‘That is not true. It was during Evensong.’

  Manners’s eyes bulged. ‘You do not deny it?’

  ‘I deny that I made her do anything against her will. Indeed, I could hardly have resisted her advances if I had tried.’

  Mungo carefully put down his drink, then gave a conspiratorial wink. ‘I may say, your sister is a perfectly devout young woman. Always on her knees in chapel.’

  Manners’s face had gone a deep shade of puce. His collar seemed to have shrunk around his neck. He struggled to breathe; his mouth flapped open, but no words emerged.