by Wilbur Smith
He accepted her statement without question. ‘So you must know what is to become of us, you and me?’
She smiled, and there was a mischievous gleam in her eye. She slipped a slim arm through his. ‘I would not have to be a great sage to know that, Gundwane. But there is much else that I am able to tell of what lies ahead.’
‘Tell me, then,’ he ordered, but she smiled again and shook her head. ‘There will be time later. We will have much time to talk while your leg heals and you grow strong again.’ She stood up. ‘But now I will fetch the others, I cannot deny them any longer.’
They came immediately, but Aboli was the first to arrive. He greeted Hal in the language of the forests. ‘I see you well, Gundwane. I thought you would sleep for ever.’
‘Without your help, I might indeed have done so.’
Then Big Daniel and Ned and the others came to touch their foreheads and mumble their self-conscious greetings and squat in a semi-circle in front of him. They were not much given to expressing their emotions in words, but what he saw in their eyes when they looked at him warmed and fortified him.
‘This is Sabah, whom you already know.’ Althuda led him forward.
‘Well met, Sabah!’ Hal seized his hand. ‘I have never been happier to see another man than I was that night in the Gorge.’
‘I would have liked to come to your aid much sooner,’ Sabah replied in Dutch, ‘but we are few and the enemy were as numerous as ticks on an antelope’s belly in spring.’ Sabahsat down in the ring of men and, with an apologetic air, began to explain. ‘The fates have not been kind to us here in the mountains. We did not have the services of a physician such as Sukeena. We who were once nineteen are now only eight and two of those a woman and an infant. I knew we could not help you fight out in the open, for in hunting for food we have used up all our gunpowder. However, we knew Althuda would bring you up Dark Gorge. We built the rockfall knowing that the Dutch would follow you.’
‘You did the brave and wise thing,’ Hal said.
Althuda brought his woman out of the gathering darkness. She was a pretty girl, small and darker-skinned than he was, but Hal could not doubt that Althuda was the father of the boy on her hip.
‘This is Zwaantie, my wife, and this is my son, Bobby.’ Hal held out his hands and Zwaantie handed him the child. He held Bobby in his lap, and the little boy regarded him with huge solemn black eyes.
‘He is a likely lad, and strong,’ Hal said, and father and mother smiled proudly.
Zwaantie lifted the infant and strapped him on her back. Then she and Sukeena built up the fire and began to cook the evening meal of wild game and the fruits of the mountain forests, while the men talked quietly and seriously.
First Sabah explained their circumstances, addressing himself directly to Hal, enlarging on the brief report he had already given. Hal soon understood that, despite the beauty of their surroundings now in the summertime and the seeming abundance of the meal that the women were preparing, the mountains were not always as hospitable. During winter the snows lay thick even in the valleys and game was scarce. However, they dared not move down to lower altitudes where they would be seen by the Hottentot tribes and their whereabouts reported to the Dutch at Good Hope.
‘The winters here are fierce,’ Sabah summed up. ‘If we stay here for another, then few of us will be left alive this time next year.’ During their captivity Hal’s seamen had garnered enough knowledge of the Dutch language to enable them to follow what Sabah had to say, and when he had finished speaking they were all silent and stared glumly into the fire, munching disconsolately on the food the women brought to them.
Then, one at a time, their heads turned towards Hal. Big Daniel spoke for them all when he asked, ‘What are we going to do now, Sir Henry?’
‘Are you seamen or mountaineers?’ Hal answered his question with a question, and some of the men chuckled.
‘We were born in Davey Jones’s locker and we were all of us given salt water for blood,’ Ned Tyler answered.
‘Then I will have to take you down to the sea and find you a ship, won’t I?’ said Hal. They looked confused but some chuckled again, though half-heartedly.
‘Master Daniel, I want a manifest of all the weapons, powder and other stores that we were able to bring with us,’ Hal said briskly.
‘There weren’t much of anything, Captain. Once we left the horses we had just about enough strength left to get ourselves up the mountains.’
‘Powder?’ Hal demanded.
‘Only what we had in our flasks.’
‘When you went on ahead, you had two full kegs on the horses.’
‘Those kegs weighed fifty pounds apiece.’ Daniel looked ashamed. ‘Too much cargo for us to haul.’
‘I have seen you carry twice that weight.’ Hal was angry and disappointed. Without a store of powder they were at the mercy of this wild terrain, and the beasts and tribes that infested it.
‘Daniel carried my saddle-bags up Dark Gorge.’ Sukeena intervened softly. ‘No one else could do it.’
‘I’m sorry, Captain,’ Daniel muttered.
But Sukeena supported him fiercely. ‘There is not a thing in my bags that we could do without. That includes the medicines that saved your leg and will save every one of us from the hurts and pestilences that we will meet here in the wilderness.’
‘Thank you, Princess,’ Daniel murmured, and looked at her like an affectionate hound. If he had possessed a tail Hal knew he would have wagged it.
Hal smiled and clapped Daniel’s shoulder. ‘I find no fault with what you did, Big Danny. There is no man alive who could have done better.’
They all relaxed and smiled. Then Ned asked, ‘Were you serious when you promised us a ship, Captain?’
Sukeena stood up from the fire. ‘That’s enough for tonight. He must regain his strength before you plague him further. You must go now. You may come again tomorrow.’
One at a time they came to Hal, shook his hand and mumbled something incoherent, then wandered off through the darkness towards the other huts spread out along the valley floor. When the last had gone Sukeena threw another cedar log on the fire then came and sat close beside him. In a natural, possessive manner, Hal placed his arm around her shoulders. She leaned her slim body against him and fitted her head into the notch of his shoulder. She sighed, a sweet, contented sound, and neither spoke for a while.
‘I want to stay here at your side like this for ever, but the stars may not allow it,’ she whispered. ‘The season of our love may be short as a winter day.’
‘Don’t say that,’ Hal commanded. ‘Never say that.’
They both looked up at the stars, and here, in the high thin air, they were so brilliant that they lit the heavens with the luminescence of the mother-of-pearl that lines the inside of an abalone shell taken fresh from the sea. Hal looked upon them with awe and considered what she had said. He felt a sense of hopelessness and sadness come upon him. He shivered.
Immediately she sat up straight and said softly, ‘You grow cold. Come, Gundwane!’
She helped him to his feet and led him into the hut, to the mattress against the far wall. She laid him upon it and then lit the wick of the small clay oil lamp and placed it on a shelf in the rock wall. She went to the fire and lifted off the clay pot of water that stood on the edge of the coals. She poured steaming water into an empty dish and mixed in cold water from the pot beside the door until the temperature suited her.
Her movements were unhurried and calm. Propped on one elbow, Hal watched her. She placed the dish of warm water in the centre of the floor then poured a few drops from a glass vial into it and stirred it again with her hand. He smelt its light, subtle perfume on the waft of steam.
She rose, went to the doorway and closed the animal-skin curtain over the opening, then came back and stood beside the dish of scented water. She removed the wild flowers from her hair and tossed them onto the fur blanket at Hal’s feet. Without looking at him, she let down the coil
s of her hair and combed them out until they shimmered like a wave of obsidian. She began to sing in her own language as she combed, a lullaby or a love song, Hal could not be certain. Her voice was mellifluous; it soothed and delighted him.
She laid aside her comb, and let the shift slip from her shoulders. Her skin gleamed in the yellow lamplight and her breasts were pert as small golden pears. When she turned her back to him Hal felt deprived that they were hidden from his sight. Her song changed now – it had a lilt of joy and excitement in it.
‘What is it you sing?’ Hal asked.
Sukeena smiled at him over her bare shoulder. ‘It is the wedding song of my mother’s people,’ she answered. ‘The bride is saying that she is happy and that she loves her husband with the eternal strength of the ocean, and the patience of the shining stars.’
‘I have never heard anything so pleasing,’ Hal whispered.
With slow voluptuous movements, she unwrapped the sarong from around her waist and threw it aside. Her buttocks were small and neat, the deep cleft dividing them into perfect ovals. She squatted down beside the dish to soak a small cloth in the scented water and began to bathe herself. She started at her shoulders and washed each arm down to her long tapered fingertips. There were silky clusters of black curls in her armpits.
Hal realized that it was a ritual bath she was performing, part of some ceremony she was enacting before him. He watched avidly each move she made, and every now and then she looked up and smiled at him shyly. The soft hairs behind her ears were damp from the cloth, and water droplets gleamed on her cheeks and upper lip.
She stood at last and turned slowly to face him. Once he had thought her body boyish, but now he saw that it was so feminine that his heart swelled hard with desire for her. Her belly was flat but smooth as butter, and at its base was a triangle of dark fur, soft as a sleeping kitten.
She stepped away from the dish and dried herself on the cotton shift she had discarded. Then she went to the oil lamp, cupped one hand around the wick and leaned towardsitasifto snuff out theflame.
‘No!’ said Hal. ‘Leave the light. I want to look at you.’
At last she came to him, gliding across the stone floor on small bare feet, crept onto the bed beside him, into his arms, and folded her body against his. She held her lips to his mouth. Hers were soft and wet and warm, and her breath mingled with his, and smelled of the wild flowers she had worn in her hair.
‘I have waited all my life for you,’ she whispered into his mouth.
He whispered back, ‘It was too long to wait, but I am here at last.’
In the morning she proudly displayed the treasures she had brought for him in her saddle-bags. She had somehow procured everything he had asked for in the notes he had left for Aboli in the wall of the castle.
He snatched up the charts. ‘Where did you get these from, Sukeena?’ he demanded, and she was delighted to see how much value he placed upon them.
‘I have many friends in the colony,’ she explained. ‘Even some of the whores from the taverns came to me to treat their ailments. Dr Saar kills more of his patients than he saves. Some of the tavern ladies go aboard the ships in the bay to do their business, and come back with divers things, not all of them gifts from the seamen.’ She laughed merrily. ‘If something is not bolted to the deck of the galleon they think it belongs to them. When I asked for charts these are what they brought me. Are they what you wanted, Gundwane?’
‘These are more than I ever hoped for, Sukeena. This one is valuable and so is this.’ The charts were obviously some navigator’s treasures, highly detailed and covered with notations and observations in a well-formed, educated hand. They showed the coasts of southern Africa in wondrous detail, and from his own knowledge he could see how accurate they were. To his amazement the location of Elephant Lagoon was marked on one, the first time he had ever seen it shown on any chart other than his father’s. The position was accurate to within a few minutes of angle, and in the margin there was a sketch of the landfall and seaward elevation of the heads, which he recognized instantly as having been drawn from observation.
Although the coast and the immediate littoral were accurately recorded, the interior, as usual, had been left blank or filled with conjecture, apocryphal lakes and mountains that no eye had ever beheld. The outline of the mountains in which they were now sequestered was sketched in, as though the cartographer had observed them from the colony of Good Hope or from sailing into False Bay and had guessed their shape and extent. Somewhere, somehow, Sukeena had found him a Dutch mariners’ almanac to go with the charts. It had been published in Amsterdam and listed the movements of the heavenly bodies until the end of the decade.
Hal laid aside these precious documents and took up the backstaff Sukeena had found. It was a collapsible model whose separate parts fitted into a small leather case, the interior of which was lined with blue velvet. The instrument itself was of extraordinarily fine workmanship: the bronze quadrant, decorated with embodiments of the four winds, needles and screws were all engraved and worked in pleasing artistic shapes and classical figures. A tiny bronze plaque inside the lid of the case was engraved ‘Cellini. Venezia’.
The compass she had brought was contained in a sturdy leather case; the body was brass and the magnetic needle was tipped with gold and ivory, so finely balanced that it swung unerringly into the north as he rotated the case slowly in his hand.
‘These are worth twenty pounds at least!’ Hal marvelled. ‘You’re a magician to have conjured them up.’ He took her hand and led her outside, not limping as awkwardly as he had on the previous day. Seated side by side on the mountain slope he showed her how to observe the noon passage of the sun and to mark their position on one of the charts. She delighted in the pleasure she had given him, and impressed him with her immediate grasp of the esoteric arts of navigation. Then he remembered that she was an astrologer, and that she understood the heavens.
With these instruments in his hands, he could move with authority through this savage wilderness, and his dream of finding a ship began to seem less forlorn than it had only a day before. He drew her to his chest, kissed her, and she merged herself tenderly to him. ‘That kiss is better reward than the twenty pounds of which you spoke, my captain.’
‘If one kiss is worth twenty pounds, then I have aught for you that must be worth five hundred,’ he said, laid her back in the grass and made love to her. A long time later she smiled up at him and whispered, ‘That was worth all the gold in this world.’
When they returned to the encampment they found that Daniel had assembled all the weapons, and that Aboli was polishing the sword blades and sharpening the edges with a fine-grained stone he had picked from the stream bed.
Hal went carefully over the collection. There were cutlasses enough to arm every man, and pistols too. However, there were only five muskets, all standard Dutch military models, heavy and robust. Their lack was in powder, slow-match and lead ball. They could always use pebbles as missiles, but there was no substitute for black-powder. They had less than five pounds weight of this precious substance in the flasks, not enough for twenty discharges.
‘Without powder, we can no longer kill the larger game,’ Sabah told Hal. ‘We eat partridges and dassies.’ He used the diminutive of the Dutch name for badger, dasc,to describe the fluffy, rabbity creatures that swarmed in the caves and crevices of every cliff. Hal thought he recognized them as the coneys of the Bible.
The urine from the dassie colonies poured down the cliff face so copiously that as it dried it covered the rock with a thick coating that shone in the sunlight like toffee but smelt less sweet. With care and skill, these rock-rabbits could be killed and trapped in such numbers as to provide the little band with a staple of survival. Their flesh was succulent and delicious as suckling pig.
Now that Sukeena was with them their diet was much expanded by her knowledge of edible roots and plants. Each day Hal went out with her to carry her basket as she foraged along the
slopes. As his leg grew stronger they ventured further and stayed out in the wilderness a little longer each day.
The mountains seemed to enfold them in their grandeur and to provide the perfect setting for the bright jewel of their love. When Sukeena’s foraging basket was filled to overflowing, they found hidden pools in the numerous streams in which to bathe naked together. Afterwards they lay side by side on the smooth, water-polished rocks and dried themselves in the sun. With tantalizing slowness they toyed with each other’s bodies and at last made love. Then they talked and explored each other’s minds as intimately as they had explored their bodies, and afterwards made love yet again. Their appetites for each other seemed insatiable.
‘Oh! Where did you learn to please a girl so?’ Sukeena asked breathlessly. ‘Who taught you all these special things that you do to me?’
It was not a question he cared to answer, and he said, ‘’Tis simply that we fit together so perfectly. My special places were made to touch your special places. I seek pleasure in your pleasure. My pleasure is increased a hundredfold by yours.’
In the evenings when all the fugitives gathered around the cooking fire, they pressed Hal with questions about his plans for them, but he avoided these with an easy laugh or a shake of his head. A plan of action was indeed germinating in his mind but it was not yet ready to be disclosed, for there were still many obstacles he had to circumvent. Instead he questioned Sabah and the five escaped slaves, who with him had survived the mountain winter.
‘How far to the east have you travelled across the range, Sabah?’
‘In midwinter we travelled six days in that direction. We were trying to find food and a place where the cold was not so fierce.’
‘What land lies to the east?’
‘It is mountains such as these for many leagues, and then suddenly they fall away into plains of forest and rolling grassland, with glimpses of the sea on the right hand.’ Sabah took up a twig and began to draw in the dust beside the fire. Hal memorized his descriptions, questioning him assiduously, urging him to recall every detail of what he had seen.