by Wilbur Smith
‘As was my custom and my duty, I slept at the portal of your father’s hut. I was at his side when he was struck by a ball from the slavers’ muskets.’ Zama fell silent at the memory, and then he looked up again. ‘As he lay dying he said to me, “Zama, leave me. Save my sons. Save the Monomatapa!” and I hurried to obey.’
‘You came to save me?’ Aboli asked.
‘I ran to the hut where you and your brother slept with your mother. I tried to take you from her, but your mother would not hand you to me. “Take N’Pofho!” she commanded me, for you were always her favourite. So I seized your brother and we ran together into the night. Your mother and I were separated in the darkness. I heard her screams but I had the other child in my arms, and to turn back would have meant slavery for all of us and the extinction of the royal line. Forgive me now, Aboli, but I left you and your mother and I ran on, and with N’Pofho escaped into the hills.’
‘There is no blame in what you did,’ Aboli absolved him.
Zama looked around the hut carefully, and then his lips moved but he uttered no sound. ‘It was the wrong choice. I should have taken you.’ His expression changed, and he leaned closer to Aboli as if to say something more. Then he drew back reluctantly, as though he had not the courage to make some dangerous gamble.
He rose slowly to his feet. ‘Forgive me, Aboli, son of Holomima, but I must leave you now.’
‘I forgive you everything,’ Aboli said softly. ‘I know what is in your heart. Think on this, Zama. Another lion roars on the hill top that once might have been mine. My life now is linked to a new destiny.’
‘You are right, Aboli, and I am an old man. I no longer have the strength or the desire to change what cannot be changed.’ He drew himself up. ‘The Monomatapa will grant you another audience tomorrow morning. I will come for you.’ He lowered his voice slightly. ‘Please do not try to leave the royal enclosure without the permission of the King.’
When he was gone, Aboli smiled. ‘Zama has asked us not to leave. It would be difficult to do so. Have you seen the guards that have been placed at every entrance?’
‘Yes, they are not easy to overlook.’ Hal stood up from the carved ebony stool and crossed to the low doorway of the hut. He counted twenty men at the gate. They were all magnificent warriors, tall and well muscled, and each was armed with spear and war axe. They carried tall shields of dappled black and white ox hide, and their head-dresses were of cranes’ feathers.
‘It will be more difficult to leave this place than it was to enter,’ Aboli said grimly.
At sunset there came another procession of young girls bearing the evening meal. ‘I can see why your royal brother carries such a goodly cargo of fat,’ Hal remarked, as he surveyed this superabundance of food.
Once they declared their hunger satisfied, the girls retired with the platters and pots, and Zama came back. This time he led two maidens, one by each hand. The girls knelt before Hal and Aboli. Hal recognized the prettiest and pertest of the two as the girl who had been the live throne of the Monomatapa.
‘The Monomatapa sends these females to you to sweeten your dreams with the honey of their loins,’ said Zama and retired.
In consternation Hal watched the pretty one raise her head and smile at him shyly. She had a calm sweet face with full lips and huge dark eyes. Her hair had been twisted and braided with beads so that the tresses hung to her shoulders. Her body was plump and glossy. Her breasts and buttocks were naked, only now she wore a tiny beaded apron in front.
‘I see you, Great Lord,’ she whispered, ‘and my eyes are dimmed by the splendour of your presence.’ She crept forward like a kitten and laid her head upon his lap.
‘You cannot stay here.’ Hal sprang to his feet. ‘You must go away at once.’
The girl stared up at him in dismay, and tears filled her dark eyes. ‘Do I not please you, Great One?’ she murmured.
‘You are very pretty,’ Hal blurted, ‘but—’ How could he tell her that he was married to a golden memory?
‘Let me stay with you, lord,’ the girl pleaded pathetically. ‘If you reject me, I will be sent to the executioner. I will die with the sharp stake thrust up through the secret opening of my body to pierce my bowels. Please let me live, O Great One. Have mercy on this unworthy female, O Glorious White Face.’
Hal turned to Aboli. ‘What can I do?’
‘Send her away.’ Aboli shrugged. ‘As she says, she is worthless. You can stop up your ears so that you do not have to listen to her screaming on the stake.’
‘Do not mock me, Aboli. You know I cannot betray the memory of the woman I love.’
‘Sukeena is dead, Gundwane. I also loved her, as a brother, but she is dead. This child is alive, but she will not be so by sunset tomorrow unless you take pity upon her. Your vow was not anything that Sukeena demanded of you.’
Aboli stooped over the other girl, took her hand and lifted her to her feet.
‘I cannot give you any further help, Gundwane. You are a man and Sukeena knew that. Now that she has gone, she might deem it fitting that you live the rest of your life like one.’
He led his own girl to the rear of the hut, where a pile of soft karosses was laid and a pair of carved wooden head rests stood side by side. He laid her down and dropped the leather curtain that screened them.
‘What is your name?’ Hal asked the girl who crouched at his feet.
‘My name is Inyosi, Honey-bee,’ she answered. ‘Please do not send me to die.’ She crawled to him, clasped his legs and pressed her face to his lower body.
‘I cannot,’ he mumbled. ‘I belong to another.’ But he wore only the beaded loincloth and her breath was warm and soft on his belly and her hands stroked the backs of his legs.
‘I cannot,’ he repeated desperately, but one of Inyosi’s little hands crept up under his loincloth.
‘Your mouth tells me one thing, Mighty Lord,’ she purred, ‘but the great spear of your manhood tells me another.’
Hal let out a smothered groan, picked her up in his arms and ran with her across the floor to where his own pallet of furs had been laid out.
At first Inyosi was startled by the fury of his passion, but then she let out a joyous cry and matched him kiss for kiss and thrust for thrust.
In the dawn, as she prepared to leave him, she whispered, ‘You have saved my worthless life. In return I must attempt to save your illustrious one.’ She kissed him one last time, then murmured with her lips against his, ‘I heard the Monomatapa speak to Zama while he bestrode my back. He believes that Aboli has returned to claim the Seat of Heaven from him. Tomorrow, during the audience to which he has commanded you and Aboli, he will give the order for his bodyguard to seize you and hurl you from the cliff top onto the rocks below, where the hyenas and the vultures wait to devour your corpses.’ Inyosi snuggled against his chest. ‘I do not want you to die, my lord. You are too beautiful.’
Then she rose from the pallet and slipped away silently into the darkness. Hal crossed to the hearth and threw a faggot of firewood upon it. The smoke rose up through the hole in the centre of the domed roof and the flames lit the interior with flickering yellow light.
‘Aboli? Are you alone? We must talk at once,’ he called, and Aboli came out from behind the curtain.
‘The girl is asleep, but speak in English.’
‘Your brother intends to have both of us killed during the audience.’
‘The girl told you this?’ Aboli asked, and Hal nodded guiltily at the mention of his infidelity.
Aboli smiled in sympathy. ‘So the little Honey-bee saves your life. Sukeena would rejoice for that. You need feel no guilt.’
‘If we attempt to escape, your brother would send an army to pursue us. We would never reach the river again.’
‘So, do you have a plan, Gundwane?’
Zama came to lead them to the royal audience. They stepped out of the gloom of the great hut into the brilliant African sunlight, and Hal paused to gaze around the concourse of the Monomatapa.
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He could only estimate their numbers, but a full regiment of the royal bodyguard ringed the open space, perhaps a thousand tall warriors with the high head-dresses of cranes’ feathers turning each into a giant. The light morning breeze tossed and tumbled the feathers, and the sunlight glinted on their broad-bladed spears.
Beyond them the nobles of the tribe filled every space and lined the top of the wall of granite blocks that surrounded the citadel. A hundred royal wives clustered about the door to the King’s hut. Some were so fat and loaded with bangles and ornaments that they could not walk unaided and leant heavily on their handmaidens. When they waddled along their buttocks rolled and undulated like soft bladders filled with lard.
Zama led Hal and Aboli to the centre of the courtyard and left them there. A heavy silence fell on the throng and no one moved, until suddenly the captain of the bodyguard blew a blast on a spiral kudu horn and the Monomatapa loomed in the doorway of his hut.
A moaning sigh swept through the gathering and, as one, they threw themselves full length to the earth and covered their faces. Only Hal and Aboli remained standing upright.
The Monomatapa strode to his living throne and sat upon Inyosi’s naked back.
‘Speak first!’ Hal breathed from the side of his mouth. ‘Don’t let him give the order for our execution.’
‘I see you, my brother!’ Aboli greeted him, and the courtiers moaned with horror at this breach of protocol. ‘I see you, Great Lord of the Heavens!’
The Monomatapa showed no sign of having heard.
‘I bring you greetings from the ghost of our father, Holomima, who was the Monomatapa before you.’
Aboli’s brother recoiled visibly, as though a cobra had reared up before his face. ‘You speak with ghosts?’ His voice trembled slightly.
‘Our father came to me in the night. He was as tall as a great baobab tree, and his face was terrible with eyes of fire. His voice was as the thunder of the heavens. He came to me to issue a dire warning.’ The congregation moaned with superstitious dread.
‘What was this warning?’ croaked the Monomatapa, staring at his brother with awe.
‘Our father fears for our lives, yours and mine. Great danger threatens us both.’ Some of the fat wives screamed, and one fell to the ground in a fit, frothing at the mouth.
‘What danger is this, Aboli?’ The King glanced around him fearfully, as if seeking an assassin among his courtiers.
‘Our father warned me that you and I are joined in life as we were in birth. If one of us prospers, then so does the other.’
The Monomatapa nodded. ‘What else did our father say?’
‘He said that as we are joined in life, so we will be joined in death. He prophesied that we will die upon the very same day, but that that day is of our own choosing.’
The King’s face turned a strange greyish tone and glistened with sweat. The elders shrieked and those nearest to where he sat drew small iron knives and slashed their own chests and arms, sprinkling their blood on the earth to protect him from witchcraft.
‘I am deeply troubled by these words that our father uttered,’ Aboli went on. ‘I wish that I were able to abide with you here in the Land of Heaven, to protect you from this fate. But, alas, my father’s shade warned me further that should I stay here another day then I will die and the Monomatapa with me. I must leave at once and never return. That is the only way in which we can both survive the curse.’
‘So let it be.’ The Monomatapa rose to his feet and pointed with a trembling finger. ‘This very day you must be gone.’
‘Alas, my beloved brother, I cannot leave here without that boon I came to seek from you.’
‘Speak, Aboli! What is it that you lack?’
‘I must have one hundred and fifty of your finest warriors to protect me, for a dreadful enemy lies in wait for me. Without these soldiers, then I go to certain death, and my death must portend the death of the Monomatapa.’
‘Choose!’ bellowed the Monomatapa. ‘Choose of my finest Amadoda, and take them with you. They are your slaves, do with them as you wish. But then get you gone this very day, before the setting of the sun. Leave my land for ever.’
In the leading pinnace Hal shot the bar and rowed out through the Musela mouth of the delta into the open sea. Big Daniel followed closely, and there lay the Golden Bough at her anchor on the ten-fathom shoal where they had left her. Ned Tyler stood the ship to quarters and ran out his guns when he saw them approaching. The pinnaces were so packed with men that they had only an inch or two of freeboard. Riding so low in the water, from afar they resembled war canoes. The glinting spears and waving head-dresses of the Amadoda strengthened this impression and Ned gave the order to fire a warning shot across their bows. As the cannon boomed out and a tall plume of spray erupted from the water half a cable’s length ahead of the leading boat, Hal stood up in the bows and waved the croix pattée.
‘Lord love us!’ Ned gasped. ‘’Tis the Captain we’re shooting at.’
‘I’ll not be in a hurry to forget that greeting you gave me, Mr Tyler,’ Hal told him sternly, as he came in through the entryport. ‘I rate a four-gun salute, not a single gun.’
‘Bless you, Captain, I had no idea. I thought you was a bunch of heathen savages, begging your pardon, sir.’
‘That we are, Mr Tyler. That we are!’ And Hal grinned at Ned’s confusion as a horde of magnificent warriors swarmed onto the Golden Bough’s deck. ‘Think you’ll be able to make seamen of them, Mr Tyler?’
As soon as he had made his offing, Hal turned the bows into the north once more and sailed up the inland channel between Madagascar and the mainland. He was heading for Zanzibar, the centre of all trade on this coast. There he hoped to have further news of the progress of the Holy War on the Horn and, if he were fortunate, to learn something of the movements of the Gull of Moray.
This was a settling-in time for the Amadoda. Everything aboard the Golden Bough was strange to them. None had ever seen the sea. They had believed the pinnaces to be the largest canoes ever conceived by man, and were overawed by the size of the ship, the height of her masts and the spread of her sails.
Most were immediately smitten by seasickness, and it took many days for them to find their sea-legs. Their bowels were in a turmoil induced by the diet of biscuit and pickled meat. They hungered for their pots of millet porridge and their gourds of blood and milk. They had never been confined in such a small space and they pined for the wide savannah.
They suffered from the cold, for even in this tropical sea the trade winds were cool and the warm Mozambique current many degrees below the temperature of the sun-scorched plains of the savannah. Hal ordered Althuda, who was in charge of the ship’s stores, to issue bolts of sail canvas to them and Aboli showed them how to stitch petticoats and tarpaulin jackets for themselves.
They soon forgot these tribulations when Aboli ordered a platoon of men to follow Jiri and Matesi and Kimatti aloft to set and reef sail. A hundred dizzy feet above the deck and the rushing sea, swinging on the great pendulum of the mainmast, for the first time in their lives these warriors – who had each killed their lion – were overcome by terror.
Aboli climbed up to where they clung helplessly to the shrouds and mocked them: ‘Look at these pretty virgins. I thought at first there might be a man among them, but I see they should all squat when they piss.’ Then he stood upright on the swaying yard and laughed at them. He ran out to the end of it and there performed a stamping, leaping war dance. One of the Amadoda could abide his mockery no longer: he loosed his death grip on the rigging and shuffled out along the yard to where Aboli stood with hands on hips.
‘One man among them!’ Aboli laughed and embraced him. During the next week three of the Amadoda fell from the rigging while trying to emulate this feat. Two dropped into the sea but before Hal could wear the ship around and go back to pick them up the sharks had taken them. The third man struck the deck and his was the most merciful end. After that there were no mor
e casualties, and the Amadoda, each one accustomed since boyhood to climbing the highest trees for honey and birds’ eggs, swiftly became adept topmastmen.
When Hal ordered bundles of pikes to be brought up from the hold and issued to the Amadoda they howled and danced with delight, for they were spearmen born. They delighted in the heavy-shafted pikes with their deadly iron heads. Aboli adapted their tactics and fighting formation to the Golden Bough’s cramped deck spaces. He showed them how to form the classical Roman Testudo, their shields overlapping and locked like the scales of an armadillo. With this formation they could sweep the deck of an enemy ship irresistibly.
Hal ordered them to set up a heavy mat of oakum under the forecastle break to act as a butt. Once the Amadoda had learned the weight and balance of the heavy pikes they could hurl them the length of the ship to bury the iron heads full length in the mat of coarse fibres. They plunged into these exercises with such gusto that two of their number were speared to death before Aboli could impress upon them that these were mock battles and should not be fought to the death.
Then it was time to introduce them to the English longbow. Their own bows were short and puny in comparison and they looked askance at this six-foot weapon, dubiously tried the massive draw weight and shook their heads. Hal took the bow out of their hands and nocked an arrow. He looked up at the single black and white gull that floated high above the mainmast. ‘If I bring down one of those birds will you eat it raw?’ he asked, and they roared with laughter at the joke.
‘I will eat the feathers as well!’ shouted a big cocky one named Ingwe, the Leopard. In a fluid motion Hal drew and loosed. The arrow arced up, its flight curving across the wind, and they shouted with amazement as it pierced the gull’s snowy bosom and the wide pinions folded. The bird tumbled down in a tangle of wings and webbed feet, and struck the deck at Hal’s feet. An Amadoda snatched it up, and the transfixed carcass was passed from hand to hand amid astonished jabbering.
‘Do not ruffle the feathers,’ Hal cautioned them. ‘You will spoil Ingwe’s dinner for him.’