Текст книги "Men of Men"

Автор книги: Wilbur Smith

Соавторы: Wilbur Smith
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"Yes," Jordan nodded. "Diamonds are nature's beautiful miracles. I'll never forget my own astonishment when mister Rhodes showed it to me. That hard blue rock is unyielding as any granite when it comes out of the earth, and yet after it has been laid out in the stacking fields for a year or two it starts to crumble. It's the sunlight, we think, that does it. It crumbles up like a loaf of stale bread, and the diamonds, oh Papa, the diamonds. Incredible stones, eleven thousand carats of diamonds each day. The blue is the mother lode, the blue is the heart."

He broke off in embarrassment. "Sometimes I run away with myself," he confessed, and Zouga smiled with him.

Who could resist this beautiful young man, that was the word to describe him, not handsome, not good-looking, but beautiful, with a quality of gentleness and goodness that seemed to form an aura about him.

"Papa." Jordan sobered. "Oh Papa, you will never know how happy I am that you are to be part of it, after all.

You and mister Rhodes."

"mister Rhodes," Zouga thought indulgently. "Always mister Rhodes. And yet it's a good thing for a young man to have a hero. Pity this poor world of ours when the last hero passes."

Can you judge a man by his books? Zouga wondered.

The library was choked with them. One complete wall packed to the ceiling with the sources and references which Gibbon had consulted for his Decline and Fall.

So impressed had Rhodes been with this work that he had ordered Hatchards of London to collect and, if necessary, translate and bind the complete authorities. Jordan said it had cost him 8000 pounds thus far, and was not yet complete.

Ranked beside this formidable array were all the published lives of Alexander, of Julius Caesar and of Napoleon. What dreams of empire they must sustain. Zouga smiled inwardly as he listened to the high hypnotic voice of the burly figure with the flushed swollen face as he sat behind the vast desk into whose panels were chiselled the stylized figures of the bird, the falcon of Zimbabwe.

"You are an Englishman, Ballantyne, a man of honour and dedication; these things have always attracted me to you." He was irresistible, able to conjure up a gamut of emotions with a few words, and Zouga smiled at himself again. He was in danger of the same hero worship as his own son.

"I want you even more than this concession of yours.

You understand, you know what it is we seek, not merely wealth and personal aggrandizement. No, no, it is something beyond that, something sacred."

Then he came to it abruptly, without flourish.

"There," Rhodes said. "You know what I need, you and your concession. What do you want from me in return?"

"What task will I perform?" Zouga asked.

"Good." Rhodes nodded the untidy leonine head. "Glory before gold. You please me, Ballantyne, but to business.

I had thought to ask you to lead the occupying expedition, to guide it over the ground you know so well but other men can do something as simple as that. I shall let Selous do it. I have something more important for you. You will be my alter-ego at the kraal of the Matabele king. The savages know and respect you, you speak their language, know their customs, you are a soldier, I have read your military paper on the tribe, and we must not deceive ourselves, Ballantyne, it may come to a military option. Few other men can do all these things, have all these qualities."

They stared at each other across the desk, both men leaning forward, and then Rhodes spoke again.

"I am not a mean man, Ballantyne. Do the job for me and you can name your rewards. Money, ten thousand pounds, land, each land grant will be four thousand acres, gold claims, each will be five hundred yards square. How many shall we say, five of each, ten thousand pounds in cash, twenty thousand acres of prime land of your choice, five claims on the rich gold reef over which you shot the great elephant that you described in Hunter's Odyssey. What do you say, Ballantyne?"

"Ten of each," said Zouga. "Ten thousand pounds, ten land grants, ten gold claims."

"Done!" Rhodes slapped the desk. Write it down, Jordan, write it down. But what of your salary while you are agent at Lobengula's kraal? Two thousand, four thousand per annum? I am not a mean man, Ballantyne."

"And I am not a greedy one."

"Four thousand, then, and we are all agreed, so we can go to lunch."

Zouga stayed five days at Groote Schuur, days of talking and planning and listening.

It amused him to see the legend dispelled. The idea of Rhodes as a solitary and brooding man, withdrawn to some high Olympus where other men could not follow, was proved to be a myth.

For Rhodes surrounded himself with men; there was not a meal at which less than fifteen sat to his generous board. What men they were, clever or rich or both, belted earls or farm-born Boers, politicians and financiers, judges and soldiers. And if they were not wealthy, they were powerful or useful or merely amusing. At one dinner there was even a poet, a bespectacled little shrimp of a man on passage from Indian Service back to England.

Jordan had read his Plain Tales from the Hills and secured an invitation for him, and despite his appearance, the company was quite taken with him. Rhodes invited him to return and write about Africa: "The future is here, young Kipling, and we shall need a poet to sing it for us."

Men by the dozen, and never a woman. Rhodes refused to have a woman servant in the house. There was not even a painting of a woman on the walls.

And the taciturn, brooding figure of legend never stopped talking.

From the back of a horse as they rode through the estate, striding over the lawns with his clumsy uncoordinated gait, seated behind the teak desk or at the head of the long, laden dining-table, he talked.

Figures and facts and estimates poured from him without reference to notes, other than an occasional glance at Jordan for confirmation. Then came the ideas, fateful, ludicrous, prophetic, fascinating or fantastic, but neverending.

To a visiting member of the British Parliament: "We have to make a practical tie with the old country, for future generations will be born beyond its shores; it must be useful, physical and rewarding for both, or we shall drift apart."

To an American senator: "We could hold Parliament for five years in Westminster and for the next five in Washington."

To a rival financier who enviously sniped at his monopoly of the diamond industry: "Without me, the price of diamonds would not make it worthwhile turning over a stone to pick one up. Kimberley would revert to desert and thirty thousand would starve."

When they began to plan the grand expedition to the north, Zouga had imagined that Rhodes would concern himself with each detail. He was wrong.

He defined the objective: "We need a document from Lobengula, ratifying and consolidating all these grants into a single concession, that I can take to London." Then he picked the man. "Rudd, you have the legal mind." And gave him carte blanche. "Go and do it. Take Jordan with you. He speaks the language. Take anyone else you need."

Then to Zouga: "We need an occupying force, small enough to move fast, large enough to protect itself against Matabele treachery. Ballantyne, that will be your first concern. Let me know what you decide, but remember there is little time."

What might have taken another man six months, was accomplished in five days, and when Zouga left Groote Schuur, Jordan rode with him as far as the neck of the mountain. The wind had gone up into the north-west, and then came down like a ravenous beast, roaring dully against the crags of the mountain and bringing in cold, steely-grey rain squalls off the Atlantic.

It could not blunt their spirits, and although their wind-driven oilskins flogged their bodies and the horses shivered and drooped their ears, they shouted above the wind.

"Isn't he a great man? Every minute spent in his company is like a draught of fine wine, intoxicating with excitement. He is so generous."

"Though he is the one who profits most from his generosity," Zouga laughed.

"That's mean, Papa."

"A saint does not make such a fortune in so short a time. But if anybody can do this thing, then it is Rhodes, and for that I will follow him into hell itself."

"Let's pray that won't be necessary."

At the top of the pass the wind was stronger still, and Jordan had to turn his horse in until their knees touched.

"Papa, the column, the occupying column. There is one person who has the wagons, who knows the route, can requisition the supplies and recruit the men."

"Who is that, Jordie?"

"Ralph."

Zouga watched Jordan ride back down the pass, towards the wind-darkened waters of Table Bay and the sprawling white buildings that clung to the lower slopes of the mountain under the dingy scudding sky. Then he turned his own mount into the wind and went down the other side.

The excitement stayed with him. He realized that it was Rhodes" particular genius to awaken this feeling in men around him. Even though there were quicksands ahead in which he knew he might soon be engulfed, the enthusiasm and quickness of spirit persisted.

Ten land grants meant forty thousand acres of land, but it would take more than 10000 pounds to hold it. Homestead and wells and fences to build, cattle to stock it, men to work it, all that would cost money, a great deal of money.

The gold claims, he could not even begin to imagine how much it might cost to transport stamp mills and sluice boxes from the railhead.

Of course, for lack of money to exploit them, he would have to pass by a hundred opportunities that the new land would offer. in the beginning the land grants of other men would be for sale at bargain prices, hundreds of thousands of acres of the land that he had always thought of as his own, and because he did not have the money, it would go to others.

None of this could break the mood, not the cold rain in his face that numbed his cheeks, not the realization that his dream was still merely a dream. For now at last they were on the move at the breakneck pace set by an impatient man, towards the realization of that dream.

So Zouga could lift his chin and sit up straight in the saddle, ignoring the icy snakes of rainwater that wriggled down inside his collar, buoyed high above mundane doubts by the gambler's certainty that at last his luck had changed, the dice were hot for him and every time he rolled the aces would flash like spearheads.

The sheets of rain hid the cottage from Zouga until he turned in under the milkwood grove; then a fluke of the wind opened the slanting silver sheets of water, and his mood popped like a bubble.

He had been mistaken, his luck had not changed, it had all been words and illusion, the caravan of his misfortunes rolled on unchecked, for before him his home was partially destroyed.

one of the ancient milkwoods, weary of resisting the gales of a hundred winters, had succumbed at last; it had come crashing down across the front of the cottage. The roof had given under the blow, and sagged in. The supports of the verandah had shattered and a tangle of fallen roof beams and milkwood branches blocked the front entrance. The living-room would be swamped with rain his books, his papers.

Appalled at the havoc, he dismounted and stood before it, and his spirits slid further. He felt his ribs constricting his breathing and dread uncoiled in his guts like an awakening serpent. It was the superstitious terror of one who has offended the gods.

The pillar of blue marbled rock that he had set to guard his threshold had been thrown down. It lay half under the tumbled thatch with the shattered verandah support beside it. Once it had been hard and smooth as granite, but the sunlight and the air had rotted it and the fall had shattered it like chalk.

Zouga went down on one knee and touched a rough, irregular lump of the smashed blue ground. The destruction of his home was as nothing. This was the only one of his possessions that was irreplaceable, and the omen of its destruction struck frost into the secret places of his soul.

Almost as a chorus to his dread, a fresh rain squall came booming down the valley, thrashing the trees and ripping at the scattered thatch. Rain beat down onto the broken surface of the rock he was touching, and at Zouga's fingertips there was a tiny burst of white lightning so dazzling, so searing, that it seemed it could flay the skin from his finger as he touched it. But it was cold, cold as a crystal of Arctic ice.

It had never been exposed to the light of day, not once in the two hundred million years since it had assumed its present form, and yet it seemed in itself to be a drop of distilled sunlight.

Zouga had never seen anything so beautiful, nor touched anything so sensual, for it was the beacon and the lodestone of his life. It made all the striving and the heartbreak seem worthwhile, it was justification for the years he had believed squandered, it exonerated his once firmly held belief that his road to the north began in the gaping chasm of De Beers New Rush.

With hands that shook like those of a very old man, he fumbled open the blade of his clasp knife and gently prised that rainbow of light from its niche in the shattered blue rock, and held it up before his own eyes.

"The Ballantyne diamond," he whispered, and staring into its limpid liquid depths like a sorcerer into his divining ball of crystal, he saw light and shadow ripple and change and in his imagination become vistas of enchanted pastures rich with sweet grass; he saw slow herds of cattle and the headgear of winding wheels of fabulous gold mines spinning against a high blue sky.

They didn't expect him. He came so swiftly that no runner brought word ahead of him. He had left Rudd and the zest of the party to follow from the Shashi and ridden on ahead, leading two spare horses and changing as soon as the mount beneath him tired. The horses were the pick of De Beers" stables, and it took him five days from the frontier of Matabeleland to Khami Mission.

"I'm Jordan Ballantyne," he said, and looked down on the family that had hastily assembled on the front verandah of the Mission. The siege was over without a shot fired; he walked in with his curls shining and that warm, almost shy, smile on his lips, and took their hearts, every one of them, by storm.

The gifts he brought had been chosen with obvious care, and spoke of a knowledge of each of them and their individual needs.

There were two dozen packets of seeds for Clinton unusual vegetables and rare herbs, cornfrey and okra, horseradish and turmeric, shallot and sou-sou. For Robyn a box of medicines, which included a bottle of chloroform, and a folding wallet of shiny, sharp surgical instruments.

The latest volume of Tennyson's poetry for Salina, a pair of marvellous lifelike china dogs with moving eyes for the twins, and for Cathy the best of all, a box of oil paints, a bundle of brushes, and a letter from Ralph.

in the first week, while he waited for Rudd and the rest of the party to come up from the Shashi, Jordan used a green twig to divine water, an art that Clinton had never acquired, and helped him dig the new well. They hit clear, sweet water ten feet down. He recited to Cathy a biography of Ralph from the day and hour of his birth, which was so minutely detailed that it took instalments over the entire week to complete, while she listened with a fixed avidity.

He rolled up his sleeves and from the black woodburning stove produced a flow of culinary phenomena !" i quenelles and souffles, croques-en-bouche and meringues, sauces both Holliandaise and Bearnaise, and while Salina hovered near him, eager to learn and help, he quoted to her the entire "In Memoriam" of Alfred Lord Tennyson, from memory: "So fret not, like an idle girl, That life is dash'd with flecks of sin.

Abide: thy wealth is gathered in, When Time hath sunder'd shell from pearl., And she was utterly enchanted by his golden spell.

He showed the twins how to cut and fold from a piece of newspaper all manner of fantastic bird and animal shapes, and he told stories that were the best they had heard since Mungo Sint John had left Khami.

For Robyn he had the latest news from the Cape. He was able to describe for her the rising stars on the political horizon, and categorize their strengths and weaknesses. He had the latest assessments of the political scene at home. Members of both Houses of Parliament, Cape and home, were constant guests at Groote Schuur, so he could repeat the gossip of that "wild and incomprehensible old man", as the Queen had called Gladstone.

He could explain the Home Rule issue and tell her what the odds were for a Liberal victory at the next election, even after Gladstone's failure to rescue Gordon from Khartoum and his consequential loss of popularity.

"At the Queen's jubilee the common people on the pavements cheered him, but the aristocracy hissed him from the balconies," he told her.

For Robyn, this was nectar to a woman lost over twenty years in the wilderness.

Dinners at Khami usually finished by the fall of dark, and the family was abed an hour later, but after Jordan's arrival, the talk and laughter sometimes lasted until midnight.

"Jordan, there is no doubt that if we want Mashonaland, we shall have to square your aunt. I hear that Lobengula will not make a major decision without Doctor Codrington. I want you to go on ahead of Rudd and the others. Go to Khami and talk to your aunt." That had been mister Rhodes" parting injunction to him, and Jordan's conscience found no conflict between this duty and his family loyalties.

Again and again in that week Jordan returned to extol mister Rhodes to Robyn, his integrity and sincerity, his vision of a world at peace and united under one sovereign power.

Instinctively he knew which areas of Rhodes" character to emphasize to Robyn, patriotism, charity, his sympathetic treatment of his black workers, his opposition to the Stropping Act in the Cape Parliament which, if passed, would have given employers the right to lash their black servants, and only when he judged that she was swayed to his views, did Jordan mention the concession to her. Yet, despite his preparations, her opposition was immediate and ferocious.

"Not another tribe robbed of its lands," she cried.

"We do not want Matabeleland, Aunty. mister Rhodes would guarantee Lobengula's sovereignty and protect him "I read the letter you wrote to the Cape Times, Aunty, expressing your concern over the Matabele raids into Mashonaland. With the British flag flying over the Shona tribes, they would be protected by British justice."

"The Germans and Portuguese and Belgians are gathering like vultures, you know, Aunty, that there is only one nation fit to take on the sacred trust."

Jordan's arguments were calculated and persuasive, his manner without guile and his trust in Cecil John Rhodes touching and infectious, and he kept returning to his most poignant argument.

"Aunty, you have seen the Matabele bucks returning from Mashonaland with the blood caked on their blades and the captured Shona girls roped together. Think of the havoc that they have left behind them, the burned villages, the murdered infants and grey heads, the slaughtered Shona warriors. You cannot deny the Shona people the protection that we will offer."

That night she spoke to Clinton, lying beside him in the darkness in the narrow cot on the hard straw-filled mattress; and his reply was immediate and simple: "My dear, it has always been clear to me as the African sun that God has prepared this continent for the protection of the only nation on earth that has the public virtue sufficient to govern it for the benefit of its native peoples."

"Clinton, mister Rhodes is not the British nation."

"He is an Englishman."

"So was Edward Teach, alias Blackbeard the pirate."

They were silent for many minutes and then Robyn said suddenly: "Clinton, have you noticed anything wrong with Salina?"

His concern was immediate. "Is she sickening?"

"I'm afraid so, incurably. I think she is in love."

"Good gracious." He sat abruptly upright in the bed.

"Who on earth is she in love with?"

"How many young men are there at Khami at the present time?"

In the morning, on the way to her clinic in the church, she stopped at the kitchen. The previous evening Clinton had slaughtered a pig, and now Salina and Jordan were making sausages. He was turning the handle of the mincing machine while she forced lumps of pork into the funnel. They were so absorbed, chatting so gaily together, that while Robyn stood in the doorway watching them they were unaware of her presence.

They made a beautiful couple, so beautiful indeed, that Robyn felt a sense of unreality as she watched them, and it was followed immediately by uneasiness, nothing in life was that perfect.

Salina saw her, and started, and then unaccountably blushed so that her pixie pointed ears glowed.

"Oh Mama, you startled me."

Robyn felt a rush of empathy, and, strangely, of envy for her eldest daughter. She wished that she were still capable of that pure and innocent emotion, and suddenly she had the contrasting image of Mungo Sint John, lean and scarred and unscrupulous, and what she felt shocked her so her voice was brusque.

"Jordan, I have made up my mind. When mister Rudd arrives, I will go with you to Lobengula's kraal, and I will speak for your case."

After a prolonged and unprofitable trading expedition as far as the Zambezi, Mungo had returned with Louise to the kraal at Gubulawayo, where they were kept almost seven months. But Lobengula's procrastinations worked in Mungo Sint John's favour.

Robyn Codrington had refused to speak to the king on Mungo's behalf, and consequently he was only one among dozens of white concession-seekers camped around Lobengula's royal kraal.

The king would not have let Mungo leave, even if he had wanted to.

He seemed to enjoy talking to him, and listened eagerly to Mungo's accounts of the American War and of Mungo's sea voyages. Every week or so he would summon Mungo to an audience and question him through his interpreter, for hours at a time.

The destructive power of cannon fascinated him, and he demanded detailed descriptions of sundered walls and human bodies blown to nothingness. The sea was another source of intense interest, and he tried to grasp the immensity of waters and the blast of storm and gale across it. However, when Mungo delicately hinted at a land grant and trading concession, Lobengula smiled and sent him away.

"I will call for you again, One Bright Eye, when I have thought on it more heavily. Now is there aught you lack in food or drink? I will send my women to your camp with it."

Once he gave Mungo permission to go out into the hunting veld so long as he stayed south of the Shangani river and killed neither elephant nor hippopotamus. On this expedition Mungo shot a huge cock ostrich and salted and dried the skin with its magnificent plumage intact.

On three other occasions the king allowed him to return to Khami Mission Station when Mungo complained that his leg was paining him. Mungo's predatory instinct was that Robyn Codrington was disturbed and excited by these returns, and each time he was able to draw out the visit for days, gradually consolidating his position with her so that when he again asked her to intercede with Lobengula on his behalf, she actually thought about it for a full day before refusing once more.

"I cannot set a cat upon a mouse, General Sint John."

"Madam, I freed my own slaves many years ago."

"When you were forced to," she agreed. "But who will control you here in Matabeleland?"

"You, Robyn, and gladly would I submit to that."

She had flushed and turned her face away from him to hide the colour.

"Your familiarity is presumptuous, sir." And she had left him so that he could keep his revived assignations under the leadwood tree with the twins. His absence since those first encounters in his convalescence had not dimmed their fascination for him. They had become invaluable allies. Nobody else could have extracted from Juba the vital information he needed for his planning.

Mungo had expressed doubts as to the existence of the diamonds, and declared that he would only be convinced if the twins could tell him where Lobengula kept the treasure.

Juba never suspected danger from such an innocent pair, and in the late afternoon, when she had drunk a gallon pot of her own famous brew, she was always genial and garrulous.

"Ningi keeps the diamonds under her sleeping place, Vicky informed Mungo.

"Who is Ningi?"

"The king's sister, and she is almost as fat as King Ben is."

Ningi would be the most trusted of all Lobengula's people, and her hut in the sanctuary of the forbidden women's quarters was the most secure in all Matabeleland.

"I believe you now. You are clever girls, both of you," Mungo told them, and they glowed with pleasure. There was nothing he could not ask of them.

"Vicky, I need some paint. It's for a secret thing, I will tell you about it later, if you can get the paint for me."

"What colour?" Lizzie cut in. "I'll get it for you."

"Red, white and yellow."

In the end Lizzie stood guard while Vicky raided Cathy's paintbox, and they delivered their offering to Mungo and basked in his extravagant praise.

In his planning, it was not enough merely to get the diamonds into his hands; even more vital was to escape the consequences. No man or woman could hope to reach the frontier without the king's permission; it was hundreds of miles of wild country patrolled by the border impis.

He could not grab and run. He had to use guile and perhaps turn the Matabele dread of darkness and witchcraft to his own advantage.

So he planned with meticulous concentration" and waited for the right moment with the patience of the stalking leopard, for he knew that this was his last attempt. If he failed this time, then not even his white skin nor his status as a guest of the king could save him.

If he failed, the Black Ones would wield their knobkerries, crushing in his skull, and his corpse would be flung from the cliffs to the waiting vultures or into the flooded river pools where the crocodiles would rip it into chunks with their spiky yellow saurian teeth. Louise would suffer the same fate, he knew, but it was a chance he was prepared to take.

He was careful to conceal his preparations from her and this was made easier by the distance that she had for long now been maintaining between them. Though they shared the thatched hut that Lobengula's men had built for them in the grove beyond the royal kraal, and though they ate the same meals of beef and sour milk and stone-ground maize cakes that the king sent down to them each evening, Louise spent her days alone, riding out on one of the mules in the early morning and not returning until dusk. Her mattress of straw in the farthest recesses of the hut she had screened with the tattered canvas sunshade from the cart, and he only once tried to pass the screen.

"Not again," she hissed at him. "Never again!" And she showed him the knife that she kept under her skirts.

So he was able to work uninterrupted, during the day, and to hide his equipment under his own mattress each evening. He carved the mask from the naturally curved portion of a hollow tree trunk, a hideous grimacing apelike visage with staring eyes and a gaping mouth full of white fangs, and he painted it with the colours from Cathy's paintbox.

From the plumed ostrich skin he tailored a cloak that reached from neck to ankles, and for his feet and hands he made grotesque mittens of black goatskin. In full costume he was enough to paralyse even the bravest warrior with supernatural terror. He was the very embodiment of the Tokoloshe of Matabele mythology.

Robyn Codrington had given him repeated doses of laudanum for the persisting pain in his leg, but he had saved these for the occasion. He had decided on one of the Matabele festivals, and he waited until the third night when every man and woman of the entire nation, surfeited with beer and thtee days and nights of wild dancing, had fallen asleep where they fell.

At nightfall he gave the laudanurn to Louise in a cup of soured milk, and the tart flavour concealed the musky taste of the drug. An hour after dark he crept across the hut, drew aside the screen and listened to her even breathing for a minute before leaning over her and slapping her cheeks lightly. She did not move nor murmur, and the rhythm of her breathing did not alter.

He dressed swiftly in the feather cloak, not yet donning the mask and mittens, but blackening his face and limbs with a mixture of crushed charcoal and fat. Then with the mask and a length of rope under one arm and a heavy assegai in the other hand, he crept out of the hut.

The grove was deserted, no Matabele would venture here when the spirits were abroad, so he hurried through it, and from the treeline surveyed the stockade of the royal kraal.

There was a sliver of the old moon rising, and it gave just enough light for him to pick his way, but not enough to betray him to watchful eyes. There would be few eyes open on this night. Even so he crouched low as he crossed the open ground; the cloak made a shaggy hyena shape that would excite no real interest.

At the outer stockade he paused to look and listen, then flicked the length of manila rope over the barrier of sharpened poles.

He climbed up carefully, favouring his bad leg, and peered into the kraal.

It was deserted, but a low watch-fire burned infront of the barred gateway.

Mungo slid down the rope and he crossed quickly to the shadows of the nearest hut, and there paused to pull on his mittens and settle the cumbersome mask over his head before creeping on again towards the inner stockade that guarded the women's quarters.

In the preceding weeks, using his brass telescope from the vantage point of the nearest hilltop, he had been able to see over the walls and to study the layout of the wives" quarters.