Call of the Raven Read online

  Eventually, his anger burst out the only way it could. He drew back his arm and swung a fist wildly at Mungo’s jaw.

  His size gave him power, but he had no training. Mungo boxed every week, taking lessons with a former champion of England who had retired to Cambridge. He dodged Manners’s blow easily, grabbed his arm, then swept his feet from under him and dumped him on his backside.

  Manners jerked on the ground. Mungo looked down at him and, for a second, his eyes flashed with an anger so fierce, anyone who saw it would have feared for Manners’s life. In that moment, you could not doubt that Mungo was capable of anything.

  Then the anger faded, as sudden as a summer squall. Mungo’s smile returned. He nodded to the circle of spectators around him. They edged back, though they could not look away: captivated by the spectacle, yet frightened of Mungo’s power.

  ‘If you will excuse me, gentlemen.’

  The crowded room emptied in front of him as he made his way to the door. He heard Manners staggering to his feet behind him, but he did not look back. Outside, he put on his hat and strode back towards his college. The summer night was warm, but not as warm as it would be at home in Virginia. Windemere would be turning green now, as the young tobacco plants were transplanted from their winter seedbeds out into the fields.

  He had enjoyed his time in Cambridge. He had learned everything he could, made some influential friends who might serve him well later in life, and met more than a few young ladies like Clarissa Manners who were eager to share their charms with him. But he would be glad to be home.

  The moon was rising behind the tower of Great St Mary’s Church as he turned into Trinity Street. It was past curfew. The gates of his college would be locked, but that did not trouble him. He had an understanding with Chapman, the porter.

  ‘St John!’

  An angry voice hailed him from the end of the street. Mungo kept walking.

  ‘St John! Stop, if you are not a coward.’

  Mungo paused. Slowly, he turned back. ‘No one has ever accused me of cowardice.’

  Manners stood there, silhouetted against the street lamp. He was not alone. Two of his friends flanked him, sturdy young men with ham fists and broad shoulders. One of them carried a poker, and the other a wine bottle, which he gripped by the neck.

  ‘If you were a gentleman, I would challenge you to a duel,’ sneered Manners.

  ‘If you were a gentleman, I would gladly accept. But as that is clearly not the case, I will bid you goodnight.’

  Mungo tipped his hat and turned away – as if completely oblivious to the armed men behind him. Manners stared after him for a moment, stupefied by his opponent’s insouciance. Then anger took over. Snarling like a dog, he charged.

  Mungo heard the footsteps on the cobbles behind him. As Manners closed on him, Mungo pivoted on the balls of his feet and delivered a perfectly aimed uppercut to Manners’s chin. Manners stopped dead, howling in pain. Mungo followed up with three quick jabs to the ribs that sent Manners reeling away, clutching his abdomen.

  As Manners retreated, his friends moved in. They circled around Mungo, with the shambling gait of men who have been drinking. Mungo watched them carefully, calculating the effect the alcohol would have. It might make them slower – but also more unpredictable.

  They waited, calling encouragement to each other. None of them wanted to suffer the same fate as Manners, but they did not want to look weak. At last the one with the poker stepped forward.

  ‘I will give you a lesson, you American bastard!’

  He swung the poker at Mungo. Mungo took the blow on his shoulder, moving away so that he barely felt it. As he did, he grabbed the poker with both hands and tugged it forward, pulling his opponent off balance. Mungo thrust the poker back so that it hit him in the stomach, then twisted it out of his hands and cracked him over the shoulders. The man stumbled back.

  Now Mungo was armed, he liked his odds better. He swung around, brandishing the poker. Manners’s friends edged backwards. They were not so devoted to Manners that they wanted their heads cracked for him.

  ‘Are you afraid of this Yankee upstart?’

  Manners had stood up. He snatched the bottle that his friend carried and broke it on the cobbles so that he was left with a jagged and glittering stump. He advanced again, more cautiously this time. Two encounters with Mungo had taught him that much, at least.

  ‘I would not do that,’ Mungo said.

  If Manners had been sober, he might have heard the lethal warning in Mungo’s voice. But he was drunk, and angry, and he had been humiliated. He jabbed the bottle at Mungo, swiping the broken glass towards his face.

  Mungo avoided it easily. As Manners brought the bottle back, Mungo whipped the poker through the air and cracked it against Manners’s wrist. The bone snapped; the bottle flew out of his hand and smashed against a wall.

  Manners howled and dropped to his knees. His two friends took one look at Mungo, the poker raised like the sword of an avenging angel, and fled. Manners was left alone with Mungo.

  Mungo could have walked away. He had done so once already that evening. But Manners had tried to kill him, however incompetently, and that had unlocked a rage he had rarely felt before. He stood over Manners like an executioner, the poker raised. Strength coursed through his arms. He was not minded to be merciful. At that moment, all that existed was his rage. He would break open Manners’s head like an egg.

  But as he moved to strike, a firm hand gripped the poker and stayed the blow. Mungo spun around to see Fairchild’s earnest face, teeth gritted with the effort of holding back Mungo’s arm.

  ‘What are you doing?’ Mungo hissed. ‘Do you think you can save this loathsome rat?’

  Fairchild’s grip did not loosen. ‘I am not saving him. I am saving you. From yourself.’

  ‘I do not need saving.’

  ‘If you kill him, you will be hanged for murder.’ Fairchild prodded Manners with the toe of his shoe. ‘Is he worth that?’

  The two young men stared at each other, both holding the poker. Mungo knew that what Fairchild said was true, but he could not bring himself to let go. He tried to twist the weapon from Fairchild’s grasp, heaving with all his might. Fairchild’s fingers flexed; he was not as strong as Mungo. His grip threatened to break. But he had an iron will and would not yield.

  They might have stayed locked in that position all night, but at that moment footsteps sounded on the street. A sturdy man in a long dark coat emerged from the porter’s lodge and came straight towards them.

  ‘Mr St John, sir?’

  It was Chapman, the college porter. If he was surprised to see Mungo with a poker raised like a weapon, Fairchild wrestling him for it and Manners kneeling helpless at his feet, he made no comment. Chapman had known Mungo since he arrived three years ago, and nothing the undergraduate did could surprise him.

  ‘A letter arrived for you, sir. It was marked “urgent”.’

  Mungo blinked. The poker dropped to the ground. Manners took advantage of his reprieve to scuttle away, whimpering and clutching his wrist. Mungo wiped his hands with his handkerchief, then adjusted his cuffs and his cravat. Only then did he take the letter. It was franked from Norfolk, Virginia, dated six weeks earlier. The address was written in a clear, large script, careful letters formed by a hand that was not used to writing.

  Mungo showed no emotion as he slit it open and read the contents.

  ‘What is it?’ Fairchild asked.

  Mungo ignored him. ‘Have the servants pack my trunk,’ he said to the porter. ‘I must return to Virginia at once.’

  A storm threatened to break. Dense clouds covered the sun and turned the dawn sky grey. In their shadow, the water of the Patapsco River had the look of rain-washed slate. The channel to the inner harbour of Baltimore, normally busy with shipping and pleasure craft, was nearly empty on this morning in August, 1841. The double-masted brig Aurora, fifty-eight days out from Southampton, was the only ship presently underway.

 
On an empty patch of foredeck, a small crowd of first-class passengers had gathered, wrapped in coats against the unseasonable chill. Mungo stood among them, peering through a spyglass. He could make out the battlements of Fort McHenry, where only thirty years earlier the fledgling American republic had come close to surrendering its flag to the British, and the tall masts of the docked merchant ships emerging from the fog behind it.

  His thoughts darkened. He was a practical man, who never wasted energy on problems he could not solve. There was nothing to be done at sea, and so he had been able to put the news he had received that night in Cambridge two months earlier out of his mind. Now, with landfall, he could no longer ignore it.

  He took the letter out of his pocket and read it again, though he could recite it like the Bible.

  Your father is dead. Windemere is bankrupt and they say it is to be sold. There is nothing to harvest for nothing was planted. Come home at once or we will all be lost.

  With love and deepest affection,

  Camilla

  He touched the paper to his lips. There was still a trace of scent on it, though almost worn away now. The smell of dogwood blossoms: ripe, sticky and vaguely obscene. Had Camilla been picking them when she wrote the letter, or had she rubbed the petals on the paper deliberately to remind him of home? He imagined her poring over the paper, tongue sticking out as she concentrated on forming the unfamiliar letters. It must have taken a huge effort. What desperation drove her?

  Despite her childish handwriting, Camilla was a full-grown woman, two years Mungo’s junior. But she had never sat in a schoolroom. She had been born a slave, and from the age of eleven had served Mungo’s mother, Abigail, as her maid. When Abigail died, Mungo had persuaded his father not to sell Camilla.

  ‘I will soon bring home my own wife,’ he had argued, ‘and she will expect me to provide a good lady’s maid.’

  That was not the whole truth of it.

  Mungo strolled back along the rail towards the quarterdeck. The bosun’s mate greeted him with a tip of his cap, as did the officer of the watch when he climbed the ladder. In the nearly nine-week voyage, Mungo had been a regular on deck. He had befriended the officers, swapped stories with the sailors, fine-tuned his knowledge of the winds and currents of the North Atlantic, and even learned to read the sextant. He loved the sea. In another life, he would have liked to be a mariner and then a master of his own vessel.

  That was not the life he had come back to.

  The Aurora docked at the quay, a stone’s throw from the Waterfront Hotel. Stevedores shouted and hauled in the lines, and seamen manning the masts furled the sails and stripped them down to bare poles. Mungo collected his sea bag from his cabin and descended the gangplank. Unsteady after weeks at sea, he made his way through the crowd of dock workers to the livery yard at the Admiral Fell Inn. He had planned to hire a hack to ride to Windemere, but when he introduced himself, the groom led him at once to the stables. Two familiar faces greeted him.

  ‘Jack,’ Mungo cried in delight. ‘Bristol.’

  In reply, he received happy whinnies of recognition. Two Arabian horses trotted forward and nuzzled him. They were the finest horses in the yard, one patterned with high white markings, the other midnight black. They were not large, but they had the strength and stamina to outdistance any other breed.

  ‘How do they come to be here?’ Mungo asked.

  ‘A negro boy brought them from Windemere,’ answered the groom. ‘He said you would call. Paid two months’ board in advance and left this for you.’

  He gave Mungo a leather bag hung from a nail. Inside was a riding cape and hat, a purse and a slim wooden case, surprisingly heavy. Mungo knew without opening it what it contained. He wondered why she had felt the need to send him a pistol.

  There was also a note, again in Camilla’s familiar hand. Come quick. Be careful.

  Mungo pocketed the paper. He tossed the groom a coin and mounted up.

  ‘Don’t you want breakfast, sir?’ the groom asked. ‘You must be hungry.’

  ‘I have no time to waste.’ Mungo put on the broad-brimmed riding hat that Camilla had sent along with the horses. He snapped open the wooden case, loaded the pistol and stuck it in his belt. ‘I have a long ride ahead.’

  He navigated the streets of Baltimore at a trot, then spurred Bristol into a canter when he reached the King’s Highway, with Jack loping behind. He set a pace he knew the athletic Arabians could keep until sundown. The road stretched out before him, a trail of hard-packed dirt and occasional gravel that wound through field and forest, hamlet and metropolis.

  He passed by Washington, as the sun climbed the sky and descended again, the humid summer air soaking the cotton of Mungo’s shirt with sweat. Twice, he stopped at a creek to allow the Arabians to drink, but he gave the horses no time to graze. His lunch was a wedge of hard cheese and a handful of carrots, the latter shared with Bristol and Jack. At dusk, as the moon rose above the leafy trees, he reached the outskirts of Fredericksburg. There, he halted for the night at an inn.

  Next morning, he crossed the Rappahannock and turned west on James River Road. The timberlands of the Piedmont, thick with maples and oaks, poplars and sweet gum, gave way to the plains and marshes of the low country. Mungo knew the contours of this land like his own face, every homestead and plantation, every creek and hill and bend in the road. His father, Oliver, had made sure of it, leading Mungo on countless excursions to hunt deer and rabbit and the elusive grey fox.

  ‘This is your heritage,’ Oliver had said. ‘A man should never forget where he came from.’

  Could his father really now be dead?

  It was the afternoon of the second day, and the oppressive heat was at its peak, when Mungo arrived at the gate that stood at the entrance to his home. Unlike the wooden fences that surrounded it, the gate had been wrought out of black iron and gleaming brass, the pattern of interlinked whorls and fleur-de-lis framing the St John family crest. Mungo’s great-grandfather had carried it with him from Scotland in the 1750s. The unlatched gate stood half-open. A sign was planted in the earth beside it.

  By order of the Fidelity Trust Bank of Charles City.

  And in block letters beneath that, a single word:

  FORECLOSURE.

  Mungo peered closely at the sign. He had never heard of the Fidelity Trust Bank of Charles City, though it was the nearest town and all the estate’s business was done there. A host of questions swarmed in his mind, but they were beaten back by the force of his anger. In a single motion, he drew the pistol from his belt and pulled the trigger. At point-blank range, the lead ball blasted the wooden stake into splinters and left the announcement lying face down in the dirt.

  He spurred Bristol into a gallop towards the house. By the first week of August, the fields on either side of the gravel path should have been green with tobacco plants ready for the harvest. But they were barren. There were no slaves tending them, or children playing – only crows picking through the weeds.

  At the end of the drive stood the house, overlooking a lawn and the blue sweep of the river. It was constructed of red brick and laid out in the Georgian style favoured by the American colonists. It had two wings: on one side the slave quarters and the kitchen, and on the other a colonnaded addition that housed the drawing rooms and the library.

  Mungo left the weary horses tethered to a post beside the garden gate and ran to the porch. There was no one to open the door, but it was not locked. He threw it open himself, so hard that the heavy oak slammed into the pillar behind.

  He waited a moment to see if the noise would bring anyone, but no one came. He crossed the threshold. Even though it was his property – his home – it felt different. Like stealing into someone else’s house as a thief.

  His footfalls echoed on the marble hallway. Everything was in its place and as he remembered it, except for a film of dust on the furniture. His eyes swept the adjoining rooms: the formal parlour where his parents and grandparents had entertained so many di
stinguished guests, including three of America’s first five presidents; the youth parlour where his grandfather had taught him to play chess and poker and where, at his mother’s insistence, he had dabbled with Beethoven on her Chickering piano; the dining room with its walnut table large enough to accommodate a party of twenty; and the long staircase to the bedrooms on the second floor.

  But Mungo sensed a vast emptiness. Three years ago, when he left for Cambridge, fifteen servants – slaves – had lived and worked in the house. Whatever the season, the house had always hummed with life. Now it was as quiet as a burial chamber.

  ‘Camilla!’ Mungo called out, striding through the empty rooms. He left the dining room by way of the butler’s pantry and walked down the hallway towards the servant quarters. He tried other names: Esther, the family’s talkative cook; Old Joe, the chief carpenter; Charles, his father’s personal attendant; Nora, the maid who maintained the ground floor, and her sister, Amelia, who looked after the upper chambers. He listened closely, sure that someone would respond, but no one did. He entered their rooms and found beds made and clothing still in closets. It was as if the entire staff had simply vanished.

  If his father was dead, then they should all have been set free. But where could they have gone?

  He went back downstairs and crossed the colonnade to the library in the east wing. This was the only room in the house that was not covered in dust; someone had used it recently. The ink in the inkwell was fresh, and papers were stacked on the desk. He took a handful and scanned them quickly, searching for any clue as to what had happened. Many of them bore the same letterhead he had seen on the foreclosure sign: the Fidelity Trust Bank of Charles City. There were also a great many bills of sale that recorded the dismantling of the estate, all signed with the same name.

  From the hallway, Mungo heard a door click. Then footsteps. He listened. Ten minutes ago, all he had wanted was to hear another human sound in the empty house. Now, he was suddenly cautious. His pistol was empty from being fired at the sign and he had no time to reload it, but a penknife lay on the desk. He palmed it, just as the study door swung open.