Текст книги "Men of Men"

Автор книги: Wilbur Smith

Соавторы: Wilbur Smith
сообщить о нарушении

Текущая страница: 41 (всего у книги 41 страниц)

In his own small room he quickly stripped off his clothing that was impregnated with the odours of the kitchen.

Naked, he sponged down his body with cold water, admiring his own lithe form in the full-length mirror on the far wall. He scrubbed himself dry with a rough towel, and then rinsed his hands in eau-de-Cologne.

With a pair of silver-backed brushes he burnished his hair until his curls shone like whorls of pure gold wire in the lamplight; then he slipped his arms into the brocaded gown of midnight blue satin, belted it around his waist, picked up the lamp to light his way and stepped out into the passage.

He closed the door to his bedroom quietly and listened for a few seconds. The house was still silent, their guests slept. On silent, bare feet, Jordan glided down the thick carpet to the double doors at the end of the passage to tap lightly on one of the panels, twice then twice again, and a voice called to him softly, "Enter!"

"These are a pastoral people. You cannot take their herds away from them." Robyn Ballantyne spoke with a low controlled intensity, but her face was pale and her eyes sparkled with furious green lights.

"Please, won't you be seated, Robyn."

Mungo Sint John indicated the chair of rough raw lumber, one of the few furnishings in this adobe mud hut that was the office of the Administrator of Matabeleland. "You will be more comfortable, and I will feel more at ease."

Nothing could make him appear more at ease, she thought wryly. He lolled back in his swivel chair, and his booted ankles were crossed on the desk in front of him. He was in shirtsleeves, without a tie or cravat, and his waistcoat was unbuttoned.

"Thank you, General. I shall continue to stand until I receive your answer."

"The costs of the relief of Matabeleland and the conduct of the war were born entirely by the Chartered Company. Even you must see that there must be reparation."

"You have taken everything. My brother, Zouga Ballantyne, has rounded up over a hundred and twenty-five thousand head of Matabele cattle, "

"The war cost us a hundred thousand pounds."

"All right." Robyn nodded. "If you will not listen to the voice of humanity, then perhaps hard cash will convince you. The Matabele people are scattered and bewildered; their tribal organizations have broken down; the smallpox is rife amongst them "A conquered nation always suffers privation, Robyn.

Oh, do sit down, you are giving me a crick in the neck."

"Unless you return part of their herds to them, at least enough for milk and slaughter, you are going to be faced with a famine that will cost you more than your neat little war ever did."

The smile slipped from Mungo Sint John's face, and he inclined his head slightly and studied the ash of his cigar.

"Think about this, General. When the Imperial Government realizes the extent of the famine, it will force your famous Chartered Company to feed the Matabele. What is the cost of transporting grain from the Cape? A hundred pounds a load. Or is it more now? If the famine approaches the proportions of genocide, then I will see to it that Her Majesty's Government is faced with such a public outcry, led by humanitarians like Labouchere and Blunt, that they may be obliged to revoke the charter and make Matabeleland a crown colony after all."

Mungo Sint John took his bottle off the desk and sat upright in his chair.

"Who appointed you champion of these savages, anyway?" he asked. But she ignored his question.

"I suggest, General, that you relay these thoughts to mister Rhodes before the famine takes a hold."

She gloried in the visible effort it took him to regain his equanimity.

"You may well be right, Robyn." His smile was light and mocking again. "I will point this out to the directors of the Company."

"Immediately," she insisted.

"Immediately," he capitulated, and spread his hands in a parody of helplessness. "Now is there anything else you want of me?"

"Yes," she said. "I want you to marry me."

He stood up slowly and stared at her.

"You may not believe this, my dear, but nothing would give me greater pleasure. Yet, I am confused. I asked you that day at Khami Mission. Why now have you changed your mind?"

"I need a father for the bastard you have got on me. It was conceived four months after Clinton's death."

"A son," he said. "It will be a son." He came around the desk towards her.

"You must know that I hate you," she said.

His single eye crinkled as he smiled at her.

"Yes, and that is probably the reason that I love you."

"Never say that again," she hissed at him.

"Oh, but I must. You see I did not even realize it myself. I always believed that I was proof from such a mundane emotion as love. I was deceiving myself. You and I must now bravely face up to that fact. I love you."

"I want nothing from you but your name, and you shall have nothing from me but hatred and contempt."

"Marry me first, my love, and later we will decide who gets what from whom., "Do not touch me," she said, and Mungo Sint John kissed her full on the mouth.

It had taken almost ten full days of leisurely riding to make a circuit of the boundaries of the ranch lands that Zouga had claimed with his land grants.

It stretched eastwards from the Khami river, almost as far as the Zembesi crossing and southwards to the outskirts of Gubulawayo, an area the size of the county of Surrey, rich grasslands with stretches of parklike forests and low golden hills. Through it meandered a dozen lesser rivers and streams, which watered the herds that Zouga was already grazing.

mister Rhodes had appointed Zouga the custodian of enemy property, with powers to take possession of the royal herds of Lobengula. The hundred troopers who volunteered for the duty rounded up almost 130,000 head of prime cattle.

Half of these belonged to the Chartered Company, but that left 65,000 to be distributed as loot to the men who had ridden in to Gubulawayo with Jameson and Sint John. However, at the very last minute, mister Rhodes changed his mind, and telegraphed Sint John with instructions to redistribute 40,000 head to the Matabele tribe.

The volunteers were incensed at having lost more than a third of their rightful loot, and word was soon spreading through the improvised bars and canteens of Gubulawayo that the cattle had been given back to the tribe after threats and representations by the woman doctor of Khami Mission. Credence was given to the rumour by the fact that the same telegraph message authorized the grant of six thousand acres of land to Khami Mission.

mister Rhodes was squaring the God-botherers, and the volunteers were not going to stand for it.

Fifty troopers, all full of whisky, rode out to burn down the mission and string up the hag responsible for their loss. Zouga Ballantyne and Mungo Sint John met them at the foot of the hills, With a few salty sallies, they had them laughing; then they took it in turn to curse them fluently and roundly, and finally they drove them back to town, where they stood them a dozen rounds of drinks.

Despite the redistribution to the tribe, still the flood of cattle upon the market brought the price down to two pounds a head, and Zouga used half the proceeds of the Ballantyne diamond to buy up ten thousand of them to stock his new estates.

Now as Zouga and Louise rode together, with Jan Cheroot following them in the Scotch cart with the tent and camping equipment, they passed small herds of the cattle tended by Matabele herders that Zouga had hired.

Zouga had been able to select only the best animals, and he had graded them by colour, so that one herd might consist of all red beasts while the next of only black ones.

Ralph had contracted to bring up all the materials for the new homestead from the railhead at Kimberley, and with the same convoy would be twenty thoroughbred bulls of Hereford stock that Zouga intended running with his cows.

"This is the place," Louise exclaimed with delight.

"How can you be so certain, so soon?" Zouga laughed.

"Oh, darling it's perfect. I can spend the rest of my life looking at that view."

Below them the land fell away steeply to deep green pools of the river.

"At least there will be good water, and that bottom land will grow excellent vegetables, "

"Don't be so unromantic," she chided him. "Look at the trees.

They soared above their heads like the arched and vaulted spans of a great cathedral, and the autumn foliage was a thousand shades of reds and golds, murmurous with bees and merry with bird song.

"They will give good shade in the hot season" Zouga agreed.

"Shame on you," she laughed. "If you cannot see their beauty, then look at the Thabas Indunas."

The Hills of the Indunas were whalebacked and dreaming blue beneath the tall silver clouds. The grassy plains between were scattered with small groups of Zouga's cattle, and of wild game, zebra and blue wildebeest.

"They are close enough, Zouga nodded. "When Ralph's construction company finally reaches Gubulawayo with the railway line, then we shall be a few hours" ride from the railhead and all the amenities of civilization."

"So you will build me a home here, on this very spot?"

"Not until you give it a name., "What would you like to call it, my darling husband?"

"I'd like to have a touch of the old country, King's Lynn was where I spent my childhood."

"That's it then."

"King's Lynn." Zouga tested the name. "Yes, that will do very nicely. Now you shall have the home you want."

Louise took his hand, and they walked down under the trees towards the river.

A man and a woman came down the narrow winding pathway through the thick riverine bush.

The man carried his shield on his left shoulder, with the broad-bladed assegai secured to it by the rawhide thongs; but his right arm was shortened and deformed, twisted out from his shoulder as though the bone had been broken and badly set.

There was no superfluous flesh upon his powerfully boned frame; the rack of his ribs showed through, and his skin lacked the lustre of health. It was the dull lifeless colour of lamp-black, as though he had just risen from a long sick bed. On his trunk and back gleamed the satiny rosettes of freshly healed gunshot wounds, like newly-minted coins of pure blue cobalt.

The woman who followed him was young and straight.

Her eyes were slanted and her features those of an Egyptian princess. Her breasts were fat and full with milk, and her infant son was strapped tightly to her back so that his head would not jerk or wobble to her long, swinging gait.

Bazo reached the bank of the river and turned to his wife.

"We will rest here, Tanase."

She loosened the knot and swung the child onto her hip. She took one of her swollen nipples between thumb and forefinger until milk spurted from it, and then she touched it to the boy's lips. Immediately he began to feed with little pig-like snuffles and grunts.

"When will we reach the next village?" she asked.

"When the sun is there." Bazo pointed halfway down the sky. "Are you not weary of the road, we have travelled so far, so long."

"I will never weary, not until we have delivered the word to every man and woman and child in Matabeleland," she replied, and she began to joggle the baby and croon to it: "Tungata is your name, for you will be a seeker.

"Zebiwe is your name, for what you will seek is that which has been stolen from you and your people.

"Drink my words Tungata Zebiwe, even as you drink my milk. Remember them all your days, Tungata, and teach them to your own children. Remember the wounds on your father's breast, and the wounds in your mother's heart, and teach your children to hate."

She changed the infant to her other hip, and her other breast, and she went on crooning until he had drunk his fill and his little head drooped sleepily. Then she slung him upon her back once more, and they crossed the river and went on.

They reached the village an hour before the setting of the sun. There were less than a hundred people living in the scattered huts. They saw the young couple from afar and a dozen of the men came out to greet them with respect and lead them in.

The women brought them grilled maize cakes and thick soured milk in calabash gourds, and the children came to stare at the strangers and to whisper to one another. "These are the wanderers, these are the people from the Hills of the Matopos."

When they had eaten, and the sun had set, the villagers built up the fire. Tanase stood in the firelight, and they squatted in a circle about her, silent and intent.

"I am called Tanase," she said. "And once I was the Umlimo., There was a low gasp of shock at her mention of that name.

"I was the Umlimo," Tanase repeated. "But then the powers of the spirits were taken from me."

They sighed softly and stirred like dead leaves when a random breeze passes.

"There is another who is now the Umlimo, and lives in the secret place in the hills, for the Umlimo never dies."

There was a little hum of assent.

"Now I am the voice of the Umlimo only. I am the messenger who brings you the word of the Umlimo.

Listen well, my children, for the Umlimo prophesies thus." She paused and now the silence was charged with religious terror.

"When the noon sun goes dark with wings, and the trees are bare of leaves in the springtime, then warriors of Matabele put an edge to your steel."

Tanase paused and the firelight gleamed on the hundreds of eyes that watched her.

"When the cattle lie with their heads twisted to touch their flank and cannot rise, then will be the time to rise up and to strike with the steel."

She spread her arms like a crucifix and cried out: "That is the prophecy. Harken to it, children of Mashobane; Harken to the voice of the Umlimo. For the Matabele will be great once again."

In the dawn the two wanderers, carrying the infant who was named the "Seeker after what has been stolen", went on towards the next village, where the elders came out to greet them.

In the southern springtime of 1896 on the shores of a lake near the southern extremity of the Rift Valley, that mighty geological fault which splits the African Continental Shield like an axe stroke, a bizarre hatching occurred.

The huge egg masses of schistocerca gregaria, the desert locust, that were buried in the loose earth along the border of the lake, released countless multitudes of flightless nymphs. The eggs had been laid by females in the solitary phase of the locust's life cycle; but so vast was the hatching of their progeny that the earth could not contain them, and though they spread out over an area of almost fifty square miles, they were forced to crawl upon one another's backs.

The constant agitation and stimulation of contact with other nymphs wrought a miraculous change in this teeming tide of insects. Their colour turned to a vivid orange and midnight black, unlike their parents" drab brown.

Their metabolic rate surged and they became hyperactive and nervous. Their legs grew longer and stronger, their gregarious instincts more powerful, so that they flowed in a compact body that seemed to be a single monstrous organism. They had entered the gregarious phase of the life cycle, and when at last they moulted fox the last time and their newly-fledged wings had dried, the entire swarm took spontaneously to the air.

In that first baptism of flight, they were spurred by their high body temperature, which was raised further by their muscular activity. They could not stop until the cool of evening, and then they settled in such dense swarms that the branches of the forest snapped under their weight. They fed voraciously all night, and in the morning the rising heat spurred them into flight once more.

They rose in a cloud so dense that the sound of their wings was the drumming roar of hurricane winds. "the trees they left behind were stripped completely of their tender springtime foliage. As they passed overhead, their wings eclipsed the noonday sun, and a deep shadow fell over the land.

They were headed south towards the Zambezi river.

From the Great Sud where the infant Nile river weaves its way through fathomless swamps of floating papyrus, southwards over the wide savannahs of eastern and central Africa, down to the Zambezi and beyond, roamed vast herds of buffalo.

They had never been hunted by the primitive tribes who preferred easier game; only a few Europeans with sophisticated weapons had ventured into these remote lands, and even the lions which followed the herds could not check their natural multiplication.

The grasslands were black with the huge bovine black beasts. Twenty or thirty thousand strong, the herds were so dense that the animals in the rear literally starved, for the pasture was destroyed before they could reach it.

Weakened by their own vast multitudes, they were ripe for the pestilence that came out of the north.

It was the same plague that Moses" God had inflicted on the Pharaoh of Egypt, the rinderpest, the peste bovine, a virus disease which attacks cattle and all other ruminants. The stricken animals were blinded by the discharge of thick mucus from their eyes. It poured in ropes from their gaping jaws and nostrils to contaminate the pastures and infect any other animal that passed over them.

Their emaciated bodies were wracked by spasms of profuse diarrhoea and dysentery. When at last they dropped, the convulsions twisted their heads back upon their tortured necks, so that their noses touched one of their flanks, and they could never rise again.

So swift was the passage of the disease that a herd of ten thousand great homed black beasts was wiped out between dawn and sunset. Their carcasses lay so thickly that they touched each other, and the characteristic fetid odour of the disease mingled with the stench of rotting flesh; for although the vultures gorged, they could not devour one thousandth part of this dreadful harvest of death.

Swiftly, carried by the vultures and the blundering, bellowing herds, the plague swept southwards towards the Zambezi river.

On the banks of that mighty river Tanase stood beside another watch-fire and repeated the prophecy of the Umlimo: "When the noon sun goes dark with wings, and the trees are bare of leaves in the springtime "When the cattle lie with their heads twisted to touch their flank, and cannot rise Thus she cried, and the people of the Matabele listened and took new heart and looked to their steel.

The End