Текст книги "The Burning Shore"

Автор книги: Wilbur Smith

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Текущая страница: 33 (всего у книги 37 страниц)

He's so dangerous, she thought, so dangerous and cruel, and she shivered again and could not sleep. She lay and listened to his breathing in the shelter beside hers, and thought about how he must have undressed her and touched her while she was unconscious, and her flesh tingled at the memory and she blushed in the darkness.

In startling contrast the next day he was gentle and tender, holding her injured leg in his lap while he snipped the threads of cotton and plucked them from her swollen, inflamed flesh. They left dark punctures in her skin, and he bent over her leg and sniffed the wound.

It's clean now. That redness is only your body attempting to rid itself of the stitches. It will heal swiftly now they are gone. Lothar was right. Within two days she was able, with the help of the crutch he had whittled for her, to make her first foray out of the canvas shelter.

My legs feel wobbly, she protested, and I am as weak as Shasa. You'll soon be strong again. He placed his arm around her shoulders to steady her, and she trembled at his touch and hoped he would not notice and withdraw his arm.

They paused by the horse lines and Centaine petted the animals, stroking their silky muzzles and revelling in that nostalgic horse odour.

I want to ride again, she told him.

Anna Stok told me you were a skilled horsewoman she told me you had a stallion, a white stallion. Nuage. Tears prickled her eyes as she remembered, and she pressed her face against the neck of Lothar's hunting horse to hide them. My white cloud, he was so beautiful, so strong and swift.

Nuage, Lothar took her arm, a lovely name. Then he went on, Yes, you will ride again soon. We have a long journey ahead of us, back to where your father-in-law and Anna Stok will be waiting for you. It was the first time she had considered an end to this magical interlude, and she pulled away from the horse and stared at him over its back. She didn't want it to end, she didn't want him to leave her, as she knew he soon would.

I'm tired, she said. I don't think I am ready to start riding just yet. That evening as she sat under the awning with a book in her lap, pretending to read, while watching him from under her lowered lids, he looked up suddenly and smiled with such a knowing glint in his eye that she blushed and looked away in confusion, I'm writing to Colonel Courtney, he told her, sitting at the collapsible travelling bureau with the pen in his hand smiling across at her, I will send a rider back to Windhoek tomorrow, but it will take him two weeks or more to get there and back. I am letting Colonel Courtney know when and where we can meet, and I have suggested a rendezvous for the i9th day of next month. She wanted to say, So soon? but instead, she nodded silently.

I am sure you are most anxious to be reunited with your family, but I don't think we will be able to reach the rendezvous before that date. I understand. However, I would be delighted to send any letter that you might care to write, with the messenger Oh, that would be wonderful, Anna, dear Anna, she will be fussing like an old hen. Lothar stood up from the bureau.

Please seat yourself here and use the pen and what paper you need, Mrs Court they. While you are busy, master Shasa and I will see to his dinner. Surprisingly, once she penned the opening salutation, My dearest dear Anna, she could think of nothing to follow it mere words seemed so paltry.

I give thanks to God that you survived that terrible night, and I have thought of you every day since then-The dam holding back the words burst, and they flooded out on to the paper.

We will need a pack horse to carry that epistle. Lothar stood behind her shoulder, and she started as she realized that she had covered a dozen sheets with close script.

There is so much still to tell her, but the rest will have to wait. Centaine folded the sheets and sealed them with a wax wafer from the silver box fitted into the top of the bureau, while Lothar held the candle for her.

It was strange, she whispered. I had almost forgotten how to hold a pen. It has been so long. You have never told me what happened to you, how you escaped from the sinking ship, how you survived so long, how you came to be so many hundreds of miles from the coast where you must have come ashore– I don't want to talk about it. She cut him off quickly.

She saw for a moment in her mind's eye, the little heartshaped, wrinkled, amber-coloured faces, and suppressed her nagging guilt at having deserted them so cruelly.

I don't even want to think about that. Kindly never address the subject again, sir. Her tone was stingingly severe.

Of course, Mrs Courtney."He picked up the two sealed letters. If you will excuse me, I will give these to Vark Jan now. He can leave before dawn tomorrow. He was stiff-faced and resentful of the rebuff.

She watched him cross to the servants fire and heard the murmur of voices as he gave Vark Jan his orders.

When he returned to the shelter, she made a pretence of being engrossed with her book, hoping that he would interrupt her, but he seated himself at the bureau and opened his journal. It was his nightly ritual, his entry in the leather-bound journal. She listened to his pen scratching on the paper, and she resented his attention being focused anywhere but on herself.

There is so little time left to us, she thought, and he squanders it so. She closed her book loudly but he did not look up.

What are you writing? she demanded.

You know what I am writing, since we have discussed it before, Mrs Courtney Do you write everything in your journal? Almost everything. Do you write about me?

He laid down the pen and stared at her, and she was flustered by the direct gaze of those serene yellow eyes, but could not bring herself to apologize.

You were prying into things that did not concern you, she told him.

Yes, he agreed with her, and to cover her discomfort, she demanded, What have you written about me in your famous journal I And now, madam, it is you who are inquisitive, he told her as be closed his diary, placed it in the drawer of the bureau and stood up. If you will excuse me, I must make my rounds of the camp.

So she learned that she could not treat him the way she had treated her father, or even the way she had treated Michael Courtney. Lothar was a proud man and would not allow her to trespass on his dignity, a man who had fought his whole life for the right to be his own master.

He would not permit her to take advantage of his strong sense of chivalry to her and to little Shasa. She learned that she could not bully him.

The next morning she found herself dismayed by his formal aloof bearing, but as the day wore on she became angry. Such a small tiff, and he sulks like a spoiled child, she told herself. Well, we'll see who sulks longest and hardest. By the second day her anger had given way to loneliness and unhappiness. She found herself longing for his smile, for the pleasure of one of their long convoluted discussions for the sound of his laughter and his voice when he sang to her.

She watched Shasa tottering around the camp, hanging on to one of Lothar's hands and engaging him in loquacious conversation that only the two of them could understand, and was appalled to find that she was jealous of her own child.

I will give Shasa his food, she told him coldly. It is time I resumed my duties. You need no longer discommode yourself, sir.

Of course, Mrs Courtney. And she wanted to cry, Please, I am truly sorry, But their pride was a mountain range between them.

She listened all that afternoon for the sound of his horse returning. She heard only the sound of distant rifle fire, but it was after dark when Lothar rode in, and she and Shasa were already in their cots. She lay in the darkness and listened to the voices and the sounds as the carcasses of the springbok that Lothar had shot were offloaded from his hunting horse and hung upon the butchering rack.

Lothar sat late at the fire with his men, and bursts of their laughter carried to her as she tried to compose herself to sleep.

At last she heard him come to the shelter beside hers, and she listened to the splash of water as he washed in the bucket at the entrance, the rustle of his clothing and finally the creak of the lacings of his cot as he settled upon it.

Shasa's cries awoke her, and she knew instantly that he was in pain, and she swung her legs off the cot and still half-asleep groped for him. A match flared and lantern light bloomed in Lothar's shelter.

Shh! Quiet, my little one. She cradled Shasa against her chest, and his hot little body alarmed her.

May I enter? Lothar asked from the entrance.

Oh, yes. He stooped into the tent and set down the lantern.

Shasa, he's sick, Lothar took the child from her. He wore only a pair of breeches, his chest and feet were bare. His hair was tangled from the pillow.

He touched Shasa's flushed cheek and then slipped a finger into his squalling mouth. Shasa choked off his next howl and bit down on the finger like a shark.

Another tooth, Lothar smiled, I felt it this morning. He handed Shasa back to her and he let out a howl of rejection.

I'll be back, soldier, and she heard him rummaging in the medicine chest he kept bolted to the floor of his wagon.

He had a small bottle in his hand when he returned, and she wrinkled her nose at the pungent odour of oil of cloves as he pulled the cork.

We'll fix that bad old tooth, won't we just. Lothar massaged the child's gums as Shasa sucked on his finger. That's a brave soldier. He laid Shasa back in his cot and within minutes he had fallen asleep again.

Lothar picked up the lantern. Good night, Mrs Courtney, he said quietly, and went to the entrance.

Lothar! His name on her lips startled her as it did him.

Please, she whispered, I've been alone for so long.

Please, don't be cruel to me any more. She held out both arms towards him and he crossed to her and sank down on to the edge of the cot beside her.

Oh, Lothar– Her voice was choked and gusty, and she wrapped her arms around his neck. Love me, she pleaded, oh, please love me, and his mouth was hot as fever on hers, his arms about her so fierce that she gasped as the breath was driven from her lungs.

Yes, I was cruel to you, he told her softly, his voice trembling in his throat, but only because I wanted so desperately to hold you, because I ached and burned with my love for you– Oh, Lothar, hold me and love me, and never ever let me go.

The days that followed were full recompense for all the hardships and loneliness of the months and years. It was as though the fates had conspired to heap upon Centaine all the delights that she had been denied for so long.

She woke each dawn in the narrow cot and before her eyes were open, she was groping for him with a tantalizing terror that he might no longer be there, but he always was. Sometimes he was feigning sleep and she had to try and open one of his eyelids with her fingertips, and when she succeeded, he rolled his eyeball upwards until only the white showed, and she giggled and thrust her tongue deeply into his ear, having discovered that that was the one torture he could not endure, and the gooseflesh sprang up on his bare arms and he came awake like a lion and seized her and turned her giggles to gasps and then to moans.

In the cool of the morning they rode out together with Shasa on the saddle in front of Lothar. For the first few days they kept the horses to a walk and stayed close by the camp. However, as Centaine's strength returned, they ventured further and on the return they covered the last mile at a mad flying gallop, racing each other, and Shasa, secure in Lothar's arms, shrieked with excitement as they tore into the camp, all of them flushed and ravenous for their breakfasts.

The long sultry desert noondays they spent under the thatched shelter, sitting apart, touching only fleetingly when he handed her a book or when passing Shasa between them, but caressing each other with their eyes and their voices until the suspense was a kind of exquisite torment.

As the heat passed and the sun mellowed, Lothar again called for the horses and they rode to the foot of the scree slope below the mountain. They hobbled the horses and with Shasa riding on Lothar's shoulder climbed up into one of the narrow sheer-sided valleys. Here, below a fresco of ancient Bushman paintings, screened by dense foliage, Lothar had discovered another of the thermal springs. It spurted from out of the cliff face and drained into a small circular rock pool.

On their first visit, it was Lothar who had to be coaxed out of his clothes, while Centaine, happy to be rid of long skirts and petticoats which still irked her, delighting in the freedom of nakedness to which the desert had accustomed her, splashed him with water and teased and challenged him until at last, almost defiantly, he dropped his breeches and plunged hurriedly into the pool. You are shameless, he told her, only half-jokingly.

Shasa's presence placed a restraint upon them, and they touched lightly and furtively under the concealment of the green waters, driving each other to trembling distraction, until Lothar could bear it no longer, and reached for her with that determined set to his jaw that she had come to know so well. Then she would evade his clutches with a maidenly squeal, and leap from the pool, slipping on her skirts over her long wet gleaming legs and her bottom that glowed pink from the heat of the water.

Last one home misses his dinner! It was only after she had laid Shasa in his cot, and blown out the lantern, that she crept breathlessly through to Lothar's shelter, He was waiting for her, strung out by all the touching and teasing and artful withdrawals of the day. Then they went at each other in a desperate frenzy, almost as though they were antagonists locked in mortal combat.

Much later, lying in the darkness in each other's arms, talking very softly so as not to disturb Shasa, they made their plans and their promises for a future that stretched before them as though they stood on the threshold of paradise itself.

It seemed he had been gone only a few days, when in the middle of a baking afternoon, on a lathered horse, Vark Jan rode back into camp.

He carried a package of letters, sewed up in canvas wrapping and sealed with tar. One letter was for Lothar, a single sheet, and he read it at a glance.

I have the honour to inform you that I have in my possession a document of amnesty in your favour, signed by both the Attorney-General of the Cape of Good Hope and the Minister of justice of the Union of South Africa.

I congratulate you on the success of your endeavours and I look forward to our meeting at the time and place nominated when I shall take pleasure in handing the document to you.

Yours truly, Garrick Courtney (Col.) The other letters were both for Centaine. One was also from Garry Courtney, welcoming her and Shasa to the family and assuring them both of all the love and consideration and privilege that that entailed.

From the most miserable creature, immersed in unbearable grief, you have transformed me at a stroke into the happiest and most joyful of all fathers and grandfathers.

I long to embrace you both.

Speed that day, Your affectionate and dutiful father-in-law, Garrick Courtney The third letter, many times thicker than the other two combined, was in Anna Stok's clumsy, semi-literate scrawl. Her face flushed with excitement, alternately laughing aloud with joy or her eyes sparkling with tears, Centaine read snatches aloud for Lothar's benefit, and when she had reached the end, she folded both letters carefully.

I long to see them, and yet I am reluctant to let the world intrude upon our happiness together. I want to go, and yet I want to stay here for ever with you. Is that silly? Yes, he laughed. It certainly is. We leave at sunset.

They travelled at night to avoid the heat of the desert day.

With Shasa sound asleep in the wagon cot, lulled by the motion of rolling wheels, Centaine rode stirrup to stirrup with Lothar. His hair shone in the moonlight, and the shadows softened the marks of hardship and suffering on his features, so she found it difficult to take her eyes from his face.

Each morning before the dawn, they went into laager.

If they were between water-holes, they watered the cattle and the horses from the bucket before they sought the shade of the wagon awnings to wait out the heat of the day.

In the late afternoon while the servants packed up the camp and inspanned for the night's trek, Lothar would ride out to hunt. At first Centaine rode with him, for she could not bear to be parted from him for even an hour.

Then one evening in failing light Lothar made a poor shot and the Mauser bullet ripped through the belly of a beautiful little springbok.

It ran before the horses with amazing stamina, a tangle of entrails swinging from the gaping wound. Even when at last it went down, it lifted its head to watch Lothar as he dismounted and unsheathed his hunting knife. After that Centaine stayed in camp when Lothar went out for fresh meat.

So Centaine was alone this evening when the wind came suddenly out of the north, niggling and chill. Centaine climbed up into the living wagon to fetch a warm jacket for Shasa.

The interior of the wagon was crammed with gear, packed and ready for the night's trek. The carpet bag which contained all the clothing that Anna had provided, was stowed at the rear and she had to scramble over a yellow wood chest to reach it. Her long skirts hampered her, and she teetered on the top of the chest and put out her hand to steady herself.

Her nearest handhold was the brass handle on the front of Lothar's travelling bureau which was lashed to the wagon bed. As she put her weight on it the handle gave slightly, and the drawer slid open an inch.

He has forgotten to lock it, she thought, I must warn him. She pushed the drawer closed and crawled over the chest, reached the stowed carpet bag, pulled out Shasa's jacket, and was crawling back when her eye fell again on the drawer of the bureau, and she checked herself sharply and stared at it.

Temptation was like the prickle of a burr. Lothar's journal was in that drawer.

What an awful thing to do, she told herself primly, and yet her hand went out and touched the brass handle again.

What has he written about me? She pulled the drawer open slowly and stared at the thick, leather-covered volume. Do I really want to know? She began to close the drawer again, and then capitulated to that overwhelming temptation.

I'll only read about me, she promised herself.

She crawled quickly to the wagon flap and peered out guiltily. Swart Hendrick was bringing up the draught oxen preparatory to inspanning. Has the master returned yet? s e called to him.

No, missus, and we have heard no shots. He will be late tonight. Call me if you see him coming, she ordered, and crept back to the bureau.

She squatted beside it with the heavy journal in her lap, and she was relieved to find it was written almost entirely in Afrikaans with only occasional passages in German. She riffled through the pages until she found the date on which he had rescued her. The entry was four pages long, the longest single entry in the entire journal.

Lothar had given a full account of the lion attack and the rescue, of their return to the wagons while she was unconscious, and a description of Shasa. She smiled as she read: A sturdy lad, of the same age as Manfred when last I saw him, and I find myself much affected.

Still smiling, she scanned the page for a description of herself, and her eyes stopped at the paragraph: I have no doubt that this is indeed the woman, though she is changed from the photograph and from my brief memory of her. Her hair is thick and fuzzy as that of a Nama girl, her face thin and brown as a monkey– Centaine gasped with affront -yet when she opened her eyes for a moment, I thought my heart might crack, they were so big and soft.

She was slightly mollified and skimmed forward, turning the pages quickly, listening like a thief for the sound of Lothar's horse. A word caught her eye in the neat blocks of teutonic script; Boesmanne. Her attention flicked to it. Bushmen', and her heart tripped, her interest entirely captivated.

Bushmen harassing the camp during the night. Hendrick discovered their spoor near the horse lines and the cattle. We followed at first light. A difficult huntThe word jag stopped Centaine's eye. Hunt? she puzzled. This was a word only applied to the chase, to the killing of animals, and she raced on.

We came up with the two Bushmen, but they almost gave us the slip by climbing the cliff with the agility of baboons.

We could not follow and would have lost them, but their curiosity was too strong, again, just like baboons. One of them paused at the top of the cliff and looked down at us. it was a difficult shot, at extreme upward deflection and long range The blood drained from Centaine's face. She could not believe what she was reading, each word reverberated in her skull as though it were an empty place, cavernous and echoing.

However, I held true and brought the Bushman down. Then I witnessed a remarkable incident. I had no need of a second shot, for the remaining Bushman fell from the cliff top. From below it seemed almost as though he threw himself over the edge. However, I do not believe that this was the case, an animal is not capable of suicide. It is more likely that in terror and panic, he lost his footing. Both bodies fell in difficult positions. However, I was determined to examine them. The climb was awkward and dangerous, but I was in fact, well rewarded for my endeavours. The first body, that of a very old man, the one that had slipped from the cliff, was unremarkable except that he carried a clasp knife made by "Joseph Rodgers"

of Sheffield on a lanyard about his waist.

Centaine began to shake her head from side to side. No! she whispered. No!

This, I believe, must have been stolen from some other traveller. The old rogue probably entered our camp in the hope of similar booty.

Centaine saw again little O'wa squatting naked in the sunlight with the knife in his hands and the tears of pleasure running down his withered cheeks.

Oh, in the name of mercy, no! she whimpered, but her eye was drawn remorselessly on by the orderly ranks of brutal words.

The second body, however, yielded the greater trophy. It was that of a woman. If anything she was more aged than the man, but around her neck she wore a most unusual decorationThe book slid from Centaine's lap and she covered her face with both hands.

H'ani! she cried out in the San tongue. My old grandmother, my old and revered grandmother, you came to us. And he shot you down! She was rocking from side to side, humming in her throat, the San attitude of grief.

Suddenly she hurled herself at the bureau. She pulled the drawer from its runners, scattering loose pages of writing-paper and pens and sticks of wax on the floor of the wagon.

The necklace, she sobbed. The necklace. I have to be certain! She seized the handle of one of the small lower compartments and tugged at it. It was locked. She snatched the handle of the wagon jack from its slot in the frame, and with the steel point shattered the lock and jerked the compartment open. It contained a silver framed photograph of a plump blonde woman with a child in her lap and a wad of letters tied up with a silk ribbon.

She spilled them on to the floor and smashed open the next compartment. There was a Luger pistol in a wooden holster, and a packet of am-munition. She threw them on top of the letters, and at the bottom of the compartment she found a cigar box.

She lifted the lid. It contained a bundle wrapped in a patterned bandanna and as she picked it out with shaking hands, H'ani's necklace tumbled from the roll of cloth.

She stared at it as though it was a deadly mamba, holding her hands behind her back and blubbering softly, H'ani – oh, my old grandmother. She brought her hands to her mouth, and pressed her lips to stop them quivering. Then she reached out slowly for the necklace and held it up, but at the full stretch of her arms.

He murdered you, she whispered, and then gagged as she saw the black stains of blood still upon the gaudy stones. He shot you down like an animal. She hugged the necklace to her breast, and began to hum and rock herself again, her eyes tightly closed to dam back her tears. She was still sitting like that when she heard the drum of hooves and the shouts of the servants welcoming Lothar back to the wagons.

She stood up and swayed on her feet as an attack of giddiness seized her. Her grief was like an affliction, but then when she heard his voice, Here, Hendrick, take my horse! Where is the missus? her grief changed shape, and though her hands still shook, her chin lifted and her eyes burned not with tears but with a consuming rage.

She snatched up the Luger pistol and drew it from its curved wooden holster. She snapped back the slide and watched a shiny brass cartridge feed up into the chamber.

Then she dropped it into the pocket of her skirt and turned to the wagon flap.

As she jumped down, Lothar was coming towards her, and his face brightened with pleasure at the sight of her.

Centaine– he paused as he saw her expression. Centaine, something is wrong! She held out the necklace towards him, and it glittered and twinkled between her shaking fingers. She could not speak.

His face darkened and his eyes were hard and furious. You have opened my bureau! You killed her!

Who? He was truly puzzled, and then, Oh, the Bushwoman 'H'ani! I don't understand. My little grandmother. He was alarmed now. Something is very wrong, let me – He stepped towards her, but she backed away and screamed, Keep away, don't touch me! Don't ever touch me again! She reached for the pistol in her skirt.

Centaine, calm yourself. And then he stopped as he saw the Luger in her hands.

Are you mad? He gazed at her in amazement. Here, give that to me. Again he stepped forward.

You murderer, you cold-blooded monster, you killed her. And she held the pistol double-handed, the necklace entangled with the weapon, the barrel waving in erratic circles. You killed my little H'ani. I hate you for it! Centaine! He put out his hand to take the pistol from her.

There was a flash of gunsmoke and the Luger kicked upwards, flinging Centaine's hands above her head. The shot cracked like a trek whip, numbing her eardrums.

Lothar's body jerked backwards and he spun on his heels. His long golden locks flickered like ripe wheat in a high wind as he collapsed on to his knees, and then toppled on to his face.

Centaine dropped the Lugger and fell back against the side of the wagon, as Hendrick rushed forward and snatched the Luger out of her hand.

I hate you, she panted at Lothar. Die, damn you. Die and go to hell!

Centaine rode with a slack rein, letting her mount choose its own pace and path. She had Shasa on her hip with a sling under him to support his weight. She held his head in the crook of her arm, and he slept quietly against her.

The wind had scourged the desert for five days now without cease, and the driven sands hissed and slithered across the earth's surface like sea spume across a beach, and the round seed pods of tumbleweed trundled across the plain like footballs. The small herds of springbok turned their backs to its chilling blast and tucked their tails up between their legs.

Centaine had wound a scarf around her head like a turban, and thrown a blanket over her shoulders to cover Shasa and herself. She hunched down in the saddle and the cold wind tugged at the corners of the blanket and tang led her horse's long mane. She slitted her eyes against the gritty wind, and saw the Finger of God.

It was still far ahead, indistinct through the dun dustladen air, but it spiked the low sky, even in this haze visible from five miles off. This was the reason that Lothar De La Rey had chosen it. it was unique, there could be no confusion with any other natural feature.

Centaine pulled up the pony's head and urged him into a trot. Shasa whimpered a protest in his sleep at the change of gait, but Centaine straightened in the saddle, trying to throw off the sorrow and rage that lay upon her with a weight that threatened to crush her soul.

Slowly the silhouette of the Finger of God hardened against the dusty yellow sky, a slim pillar of rock, thrusting towards the heavens and then thickening into a flaring cobra's head, two hundred feet above the plain. Staring at it, Centaine was aware of the same superstitious awe that must have gripped the old Hottentots who named itMukurob.

Then from the base of the great stone monument a dart of light, reflected off metal, pricked her eyes and she shaded them with the blanket and peered intently.

Shasa, she whispered. They are there! They are waiting for us. She urged the weary pony into a canter, and rose in the stirrups.

in the shadow of the stone pillar was parked a motor vehicle, and beside it a small green cottage tent had been d. erected There was a camp fire burning in front of the tent, and a plume of smoke, blue as a heron's feather, smeared by the wind across the plain.

Centaine whipped the turban from her head and waved it like a banner. Here! she screamed. Hullo! Here I am! The two indistinct human figures rose from beside the fire, staring towards her.

She waved and hulloed, still at full gallop, and one of the figures broke into a run. It was a woman, a big woman in long skirts. She held them up over her knees, ploughing with desperate haste through the soft footing. Her face was bright scarlet with effort and emotion. Anna! Centaine screamed.

Oh, Anna! There were tears streaming down that broad red face, and Anna dropped her skirts and stood with her arms spread wide.

My baby! she cried, and Centaine flung herself from the saddle and clutching Shasa to her breast, ran into her embrace.