by Wilbur Smith
‘Five boxes of gin I left in the cave behind the waterfall at the top of the valley,’ whispered Mohammed, and Flynn sighed with relief. ‘But one bottle I brought with me.’ Mohammed produced it from under his tunic. Flynn took it from him and drew the cork with his teeth, before spilling a little into the enamel mug that was standing ready.
‘And the other purchases?’
‘It was difficult – especially the hat.’
‘But did you get it?’ Flynn demanded.
‘It was a direct intervention of Allah.’ Mohammed refused to be hurried. ‘In the harbour was a German ship, stopped at Beira on its way north to Dar es Salaam. On the boat were three German officers. I saw them walking upon the deck.’ Mohammed paused and cleared his throat portentously. ‘That night a man who is my friend rowed me out to the ship, and I visited the cabin of one of the soldiers.’
‘Where is it?’ Flynn. could not hold his patience. Mohammed stood up, went to the door of the rondavel and called to one of the bearers. He returned and set a bundle on the table in front of Flynn. Grinning proudly, he waited while Flynn unwrapped the bundle.
‘Good God Almighty,’ breathed Flynn.
‘Is it not beautiful?’
‘Call Manali. Tell him to come here immediately.’
Ten minutes later Sebastian, whom Rosa had at last reluctantly placed on the list of walking wounded, entered the rondavel, to be greeted effusively by Flynn. ‘Sit down, Bassie boy. I’ve got a present for you.’
Reluctantly, Sebastian obeyed, eyeing the covered object on the table. Flynn stood over it and whisked away the cloth. Then, with the same ceremony as the Archbishop of Canterbury placing the crown, he lifted the helmet above Sebastian’s head and lowered it reverently.
On the summit a golden eagle cocked its wings on the point of flight and opened its beak in a silent squawk of menace, the black enamel of the helmet shone with a polished gloss, and the golden chain drooped heavily under Sebastian’s chin.
It was indeed a thing of beauty. A thing of such presence that it completely overwhelmed Sebastian, enveloping his head to the bridge of his nose so that his eyes were just visible below the jutting brim.
‘A few sizes too large,’ Flynn conceded. ‘But we can stuff some cloth into the crown to keep it up.’ He backed away a few paces and cocked his head on one side as he examined the effect. ‘Bassie boy, you’ll slay them.’
‘What’s this for?’ Sebastian asked in concern from under the steel helmet.
‘You’ll see. Just hold on a shake.’ Flynn turned to Mohammed who was cooing with admiration in the doorway. ‘The clothes?’ he asked, and Mohammed beckoned imperiously to the bearers to bring in the boxes they had carried all the way from Beira.
Parbhoo, the Indian tailor, had obviously laboured with dedication and enthusiasm. The task set him by Flynn had touched the soul of the creative artist in him.
Ten minutes later, Sebastian stood self-consciously in the centre of the rondavel while Flynn and Mohammed circled him slowly, exclaiming with delight and self-congratulation.
Below the massive helmet, which was now propped high with a wad of cloth between steel and scalp, Sebastian was dressed in the sky-blue tunic and riding breeches. The cuffs of the jacket were ringed with yellow silk – a stripe of the same material ran down the outside of the breeches – and the high collar was covered with embroidered metal thread. Complete with spurs, the tall black boots pinched his toes so painfully that Sebastian stood pigeon-toed and blushed with bewilderment. ‘I say, Flynn,’ he pleaded, ‘what’s all this about?’
‘Bassie boy.’ Flynn laid a hand fondly on his shoulder. ‘You’re going to go in there and collect hut tax for …’ he almost said me, but altered it quickly to ‘ … us.’
‘What is hut tax?’
‘Hut tax is the annual sum of five shillings, paid by the headmen to the German Governor for each hut in his village.’ Flynn led Sebastian to the chair and seated him as gently as though he were pregnant. He lifted a hand to still Sebastian’s further enquiries and protests. ‘Yes, I know you don’t understand. But I’ll explain it to you carefully. Just keep your mouth shut and listen.’ He sat down opposite Sebastian and leaned forward earnestly. ‘Now! The Germans owe us for the dhow and that, like we agreed – right?’
Sebastian nodded, and the helmet slid forward over his eyes. He pushed it back.
‘Well, you are going to go across the river with the gun-bearers dressed as Askari. You are going to visit each of the villages before the real tax-collector gets there and picks up the money that they owe us. Do you follow me so far?’
‘Are you coming with me?’
‘Now, how can I do that? Me with my leg not properly healed yet?’ Flynn protested impatiently. ‘Besides that, every headman on the other side knows who I am. Not one of them has ever laid eyes on you before. You just tell them you’re a new officer – straight out from Germany. One look at that uniform, and they’ll pay up sharpish.’
‘What happens if the real tax-inspector has already been?’
‘They don’t start collecting until September usually – and then they start in the north and work down this way. You’ll have plenty of time.’
Frowning below the rim of the helmet, Sebastian brought forward a series of objections – each one progressively weaker than its predecessor, and, one by one, Flynn annihilated them. Finally there was a long silence while Sebastian’s brain ground to a standstill.
‘Well?’ Flynn asked. ‘Are you going to do it?’
And the question was answered from an unexpected quarter in feminine, but not dulcet tones. ‘He is certainly not going to do it!’
Guiltily as small boys caught smoking in the school latrines, Flynn and Sebastian wheeled to face the door which had carelessly been left ajar.
Rosa’s suspicions had been aroused by all the surreptitious activity around the rondavel, and when she had seen Sebastian join in, she had not the slightest qualms about listening outside the window. Her active intervention was not on ethical grounds. Rosa O’Flynn had acquired a rather elastic definition of honesty from her father. Like him, she believed that German property belonged to anybody who could get their hands on it. The fact that Sebastian was involved in a scheme based on dubious moral foundations in no way lowered her opinion of him – rather, in a sneaking sort of way, it heightened her estimate of him as a potential breadwinner. To date, this was the only area in which she had held misgivings about Sebastian Oldsmith.
From experience she knew that those of her father’s business enterprises in which Flynn was not eager to participate personally always involved a great deal of risk. The thought of Sebastian Oldsmith dressed in a sky-blue uniform, marching across the Rovuma and never coming back, roused in her the same instincts as those of a lioness shortly to be deprived of her cubs.
‘He is certainly not going to do it,’ she repeated, and then to Sebastian. ‘Do you hear me? I forbid it. I forbid it absolutely.’
This was the wrong approach.
Sebastian had, in turn, acquired from his father very Victorian views on the rights and privileges of women. Mr Oldsmith, the senior, was a courteous domestic tyrant, a man whose infallibility had never been challenged by his wife. A man who regarded sex deviates, Bolsheviks, trade union organizers, and suffragettes, in that descending order of repugnance.
Sebastian’s mother, a meek little lady with a perpetually harassed expression, would no more have contemplated absolutely forbidding Mr Oldsmith a course of action, than she would have contemplated denying the existence of God. Her belief in the divine rights of man had extended to her sons. From a very tender age Sebastian had grown accustomed to worshipful obedience, not only from his mother but also from his large flock of sisters.
Rosa’s present attitude and manner of speech came as a shock. It took him but a few seconds to recover and then he rose to his feet and adjusted the helmet. ‘I beg your pardon?’ he asked coldly.
‘You heard me,’ snapped R
osa. ‘I’m not going to allow this.’
Sebastian nodded thoughtfully, and then hastily grabbed at the helmet as it threatened to spoil his dignity by blindfolding him again. Ignoring Rosa he turned to Flynn. ‘I will leave as soon as possible – tomorrow?’
‘It will take a couple more days to get organized,’ Flynn demurred.
‘Very well then.’ Sebastian stalked from the room, and the sunlight lit his uniform with dazzling splendour.
With a triumphant guffaw, Flynn reached for the enamel mug at his elbow. ‘You made a mess of that one,’ he gloated, and then his expression changed to unease.
Standing in the doorway, Rosa O’Flynn’s shoulders had sagged, the angry line of her lips drooped.
‘Oh, come on now!’ gruffed Flynn.
‘He won’t come back. You know what you are doing to him. You’re sending him in there to die.’
‘Don’t talk silly. He’s a big boy, he can look after himself.’
‘Oh, I hate you. Both of you – I hate you both!’ and she was gone, running across the yard to the bungalow.
– 22 –
In a red dawn Flynn and Sebastian stood together on the stoep of the bungalow, talking together quietly.
‘Now listen, Bassie. I reckon the best thing you can do is send back the collection from each village, as you make it. No sense in carrying all that money round with you.’ Tactfully Flynn refrained from pointing out that by following this procedure, in the event of Sebastian running into trouble half-way through the expedition, the profits to that time would be safeguarded.
Sebastian, was not really listening – he was more preoccupied with the whereabouts of Rosa O’Flynn. He had seen very little of her in the last few days.
‘Now you listen to old Mohammed. He knows which are the biggest villages. Let him do the talking – those headmen are the biggest bunch of rogues you’ll ever meet. They’ll all plead poverty and famine, so you’ve got to be tough. Do you hear me? Tough, Bassie, tough!!’
‘Tough,’ agreed Sebastian absent-mindedly, glancing surreptitiously into the windows of the bungalow for a glimpse of Rosa.
‘Now another thing,’ Flynn went on. ‘Remember to keep moving fast. March until nightfall. Make your cooking fire, eat, and then march again in the dark before you camp. Never sleep at your first camp, that’s asking for trouble. Then get away again before first light in the morning.’ There were many other instructions, and Sebastian listened to them without attention. ‘Remember the sound of gun-fire carries for miles. Don’t use your rifle except in emergency, and if you do fire a shot, then don’t hang about afterwards. Now the route I’ve planned for you will never take you more than twenty miles beyond the Rovuma. At the first sign of trouble, you run for the river. If any of your men get hurt, leave them. Don’t play hero, leave them and run like hell for the river.’
‘Very well,’ muttered Sebastian unhappily. The prospect of leaving Lalapanzi was becoming less attractive each minute. Where on earth was she?
‘Now remember, don’t let those headmen talk you out of anything. You might even have to …’ Here Flynn paused to find the least offensive phraseology, ‘ … you might even have to hang one or two of them.’
‘Good God, Flynn. You’re not serious.’ Sebastian’s full attention jerked back to Flynn.
‘Ha! Ha!’ Flynn laughed away the suggestion. ‘I was joking, of course. But …’ he went on wistfully, ‘the Germans do it, and it gets results, you know.’
‘Well, I’d better be on my way.’ Sebastian changed the subject ostentatiously and picked up his helmet. He placed it upon his head and descended the steps to where his Askari, with rifles at the slope, were drawn up on the lawn. All of them, including Mohammed, were dressed in authentic uniform, complete with puttees and the little pillbox kepis. Sebastian had prudently refrained from asking Flynn how he had obtained these uniforms. ‘The answer was evident in the neatly patched circular punctures in most of the tunics, and the faint brownish stain around each mend.
In single file, the blazing eagle on Sebastian’s headpiece leading like a beacon, they marched past the massive solitary figure of Flynn O’Flynn on the veranda. Mohammed called for a salute and the response was enthusiastic, but ragged. Sebastian tripped on his spurs and with an effort, regained his equilibrium and plodded on gamely.
Shading his eyes against the glare, Flynn watched the gallant little column wind away down the valley towards the Rovuma river. Flynn’s voice was without conviction as he spoke aloud, ‘I hope to God he doesn’t mess this one up.’
– 23 –
Once out of sight of the bungalow, Sebastian halted the column. Sitting beside the footpath, he sighed with relief as he removed the weight of the metal helmet from his head and replaced it with a sombrero of plaited grass, then he eased the spurred boots from his already aching feet, and slipped on a pair of rawhide sandals. He handed the discarded equipment to his personal bearer, stood up, and in his best Swahili ordered the march to continue.
Three miles down the valley the footpath crossed the stream above a tiny waterfall. It was a place of shade where great trees reached out towards each other across the narrow watercourse. Clear water trickled and gurgled between a tumble of lichen-covered boulders, before jumping like white lace in the sunlight down the slippery black slope of the falls.
Sebastian paused on the bank and allowed his men to proceed. He watched them hop from boulder to boulder, the bearers balancing their loads without effort, and then scramble up the far bank and disappear into the dense river bush. He listened to their voices becoming fainter with distance, and suddenly he was sad and alone.
Instinctively he turned and looked back up the valley towards Lalapanzi, and the sense of loss was a great emptiness inside him. The urge to return burned up so strongly, that he took a step back along the path before he could check himself.
He stood irresolute. The voices of his men were very faint now, muted by the dense vegetation, overlaid by the drowsy droning of insects, the wind murmur in the top branches of the trees, and the purl of falling water.
Then the soft rustle beside him, and he turned to it quickly. She stood near him and the sunlight through the leaves threw a golden dapple on her, giving a sense of unreality, a fairy quality, to her presence.
‘I wanted to give you something to take with you, a farewell present for you to remember,’ she said softly. ‘But there was nothing I could think of,’ and she came forward, reached up to him with her arms and her mouth, and she kissed him.
– 24 –
Sebastian Oldsmith crossed the Rovuma river in a mood of dreamy goodwill towards all men.
Mohammed was worried about him. He suspected that Sebastian had suffered a malarial relapse and’ he watched him carefully for evidence of further symptoms.
Mohammed at the head of the column of Askari and bearers had reached the crossing place on the Rovuma, before he realized that Sebastian was missing. In wild concern he had taken two armed Askari with him and hurried back along the path through the thorn scrub and broken rock – expecting at any moment to find a pride of lions growling over Sebastian’s dismembered corpse. They had almost reached the waterfall when they met Sebastian ambling benignly along the path towards them, an expression of ethereal contentment lighting his classic features. His magnificent uniform was not a little rumpled; there were fresh grass stains on the knees and elbows, and dead leaves and bits of dried grass clung to the expensive material. From this Mohammed deduced that Sebastian had either fallen, or in sickness had lain down to rest.
‘Manali,’ Mohammed cried in concern. ‘Are you well?’
‘Never better – never in all my life,’ Sebastian assured him.
‘You have been lying down,’ Mohammed accused.
‘Son of a gun,’ Sebastian borrowed from the vocabulary of Flynn O’Flynn. ‘Son of a gun, you can say that again – and then repeat it!’ and he clapped Mohammed between the shoulder blades with such well-intentioned violence that it a
lmost floored him. Since then, Sebastian had not spoken again, but every few minutes he would smile and shake his head in wonder. Mohammed was truly worried.
They crossed the Rovuma in hired canoes and camped that night on the far bank. Twice during the night Mohammed awoke, slipped out of his blanket, and crept across to Sebastian to check his condition. Each time Sebastian was sleeping easily and the silver moonlight showed just a suggestion of a smile on his lips.
In the middle of the next morning, Mohammed halted the column in thick cover and came back from the head to confer with Sebastian. The village of M’topo lies just beyond,’ he pointed ahead. ‘You can see the smoke from the fires.’
There was a greyish smear of it above the trees, and faintly a dog began yapping.
‘Good. Let’s go.’ Sebastian had donned his eagle helmet and was struggling into his boots.
‘First I will send the Askari to surround the village.’
‘Why?’ Sebastian looked up in surprise.
‘Otherwise there will be nobody there when we arrive.’ During his service with the German Imperial Army, Mohammed had been on tax expeditions before.
‘Well – if you think it necessary,’ Sebastian agreed dubiously.
Half an hour later Sebastian swaggered in burlesque of a German officer into the village of M’topo, and was dismayed by the reception he received. The lamentations of two hundred human beings made a hideous chorus for his entry. Some of them were on their knees and all of them were wringing their hands, smiting their breasts or showing other signs of deep distress. At the far end of the village M’topo, the headman, waited under guard by Mohammed and two of his Askari.
M’topo was an old man, with a cap of pure white wool, and an emaciated body covered with a parchment of dry skin. One eye was glazed over with tropical ophthalmia, and he was clearly very agitated. ‘I crawl on my belly before you, Splendid and Merciful Lord,’ he greeted Sebastian, and prostrated himself in the dust.