by Lark, Sarah
“Here, take blanket.” Nandi’s shy voice interrupted Roberta’s desperate attempt to pull Vincent out of his lethargy. “Take man in blanket.” She pointed to the administrative building.
Roberta nodded, relieved. Nandi had apparently seen the murder, too, but she was still thinking clearly. And they could certainly trust her.
“Come on, Vincent, quickly before somebody comes,” Roberta ordered. “Wrap the fellow in the blanket. And, Nandi, you help him. Carry him in—”
“Into shed,” Nandi prompted.
Nobody would find the corpse there by accident.
“Yes. And you, Kevin, take Doortje into the house.”
Nandi’s help invigorated Roberta. Everything had to move very quickly. Now, at the hottest time of day, the women were lying in their tents. But soon this quiet would pass. Dr. Greenway had ridden that morning to do rounds in the black camp. He would be returning any minute.
Vincent now squared himself to act. He wrapped the corpse in the blanket and threw it over his shoulder. The young veterinarian was stronger than Roberta had thought.
Now Nandi saw another issue.
“I clean that away.”
She indicated the puddle of blood on the ground. Roberta’s head whirred. How did one remove blood from sandy soil?
Roberta nodded. “Thank you, Nandi. See what you can do. And I’ll check at the hospital to see if there are any other witnesses. I doubt it, but you never know. If it comes to it, we’ll have to explain to them what he did. Then they’d keep their mouths shut.”
“Keep their mouths shut?” asked Kevin.
Roberta groaned. “Kevin, get ahold of yourself. There are only two options: either we all stay mum about what happened here, or your sweetheart goes to jail and so do you. Is that what you want? Then take her into the house, now.”
Roberta’s inspection of the hospital was to her satisfaction. No one was in the front area, and the first sick bay was empty too. Antje Vooren, who was distributing food in the second hall, asked about Doortje.
“She was acting so strangely. She ran in here, said something like, ‘I can’t,’ and ran out again. Is she ill?”
Roberta was about to say no, but then changed her mind.
“Yes, she was sick just now. And then felt very weak. Dr. Drury is seeing to her.”
Antje Vooren gave a knowing smile. It had not gone unnoticed how much he exerted himself for her. The women now suspected that he was the father of her baby.
“And I just came to ask if I might be able to lend a hand.” Roberta hoped for a no and was relieved when Mevrouw Vooren shook her head.
“No need, we’ll be fine.” Aside from Antje Vooren, two other Boer nursing assistants were caring for a few patients, but they did not seem to have picked up on anything either. “Nurse Jenny will be coming back soon. She can help us before she goes to her Kaffir.”
The thought of her friend gave Roberta another fright. Jenny had been with them on the safari and must be arriving any minute. Every additional person who knew made the business more dangerous.
“I’ll be going, then,” she told the Boer woman. “I’ll go check on Miss van Stout.”
She heard giggling behind her and innuendo in Afrikaans. Apparently, the women were of the opinion that Doortje was in good hands with Kevin.
Roberta realized with surprise and delight that the blood in the square was no longer visible. Nandi was spreading sand over the spot.
“No one will see, baas—miss.” Nandi recalled that neither the nurses nor the young teacher liked to be called baas. “I did always on farm when slaughtered pigs.”
Roberta thanked her again, then went over to the house. Her hands clenched around the stuffed horse she was carrying as always in her skirt pocket.
In the office, Vincent was speaking heatedly to Kevin. Doortje huddled in the armchair in front of the fireplace. Kevin was kneeling in front of her and would not stop stroking her trembling, bloodstained hands. It crossed Roberta’s mind that Doortje needed to wash up and change her clothes. And Kevin’s shirt was just as bloodstained as Doortje’s apron.
“That wasn’t self-defense, Kevin. Use your brain.” Vincent went to the cupboard where the whiskey was. “She killed him in cold blood. She won’t get off scot-free. You won’t either if we tell the truth. So, we need to think up something else. A fight, or something like that. Think, Kevin. How could it have happened?”
He took the bottle out and filled glasses. For himself, for Kevin, and for the women. Kevin urged Doortje to accept one.
Roberta took the glass, her mind spinning. A better explanation for Coltrane’s death was a good idea. But a fight? Who was supposed to have fought with him? And nothing would explain the wound in the colonel’s back.
“But what,” she said quietly, “if the fellow simply never arrived?”
Vincent drove the camp’s hay wagon out of the camp in broad daylight. As expected, the gate was not watched. Since the women were officially free, no one manned the dusty gatehouse anymore. The veterinarian had hitched Roberta’s mare, Lucie, to the wagon, and Roberta rode Coltrane’s fiery black horse alongside. She was scared to death on the animal, and from close up, no one would have believed the lively gelding was Vincent’s well-behaved mare, Colleen. But from a distance, a black horse was a black horse. No one would suspect anything. Coltrane’s corpse lay beneath several sacks on the wagon bed, still wrapped in the blanket in order not to leave any bloodstains.
“Why don’t we just bury him in our cemetery?” Kevin had asked after Roberta shared her complicated plan. “It is dangerous, you know, for you two to travel miles cross-country.”
After a second glass of whiskey, Kevin had been able to take part in the discussion. The shock was slowly fading, and the consequences were becoming clear to him. If Coltrane’s corpse was found in the camp, someone would answer for it in court. At first, Kevin thought of taking the fall himself, but then Doortje would again be left on her own with the child. No, the only solution was to make Coltrane’s body and his horse disappear—and to staunchly deny that he had ever appeared in the camp.
That was not so simple, however.
“We haven’t had any deaths in a week,” Roberta had reminded him. “If we dig a fresh grave now, what are you going to tell Greenway? And if Coltrane told someone where he was going, they’ll be looking for him here too. Then someone might recall that you two weren’t the best of friends and decide to investigate. No, no, he has to be taken away from here, far away.”
Kevin sipped his whiskey again. “But where? Some alley in Karenstad? As if it were a bar brawl?”
Roberta chewed on her lip. “That’s not bad, but it’s risky. If someone sees us—no, no, I was thinking—”
Vincent’s eyes lit up. “In the veld,” he said. “We’ll take him to the—”
“Lions,” Roberta finished, giving Vincent a complicit half smile.
It was the first time that she had shared a thought with him.
While Roberta and Vincent slipped out of the camp, Kevin and Dr. Greenway tended to the sick in the hospital, and Nandi, hidden in the house, was caring for Doortje, who still seemed as if she were paralyzed. The path, over which the guide had brought Roberta and Vincent back that morning, was easy to find, but the wagon held them back, so it was late in the evening before they reached the place where they had spent the previous night. Only the traces of the campfire and the trampled-down savannah grass testified to human presence.
Roberta trembled as she helped Vincent lift the dead man from the wagon. Beforehand, the veterinarian had lit a fire on the old one’s ashes and also improvised torches on the sides of the wagon to illuminate their return trip. The animals in the bush would keep a distance. They feared people, and fire even more so.
“Will they even come?” Roberta asked anxiously. Vincent had deposited the corpse under a tree. Now, he was burning the bloody blanket. “Do lions scavenge corpses?”
Vincent shrugged. “If the lions won’
t, the hyenas or buzzards will. And they’ll come, as soon as the fire’s out. By the day after tomorrow, nothing will be left but a few bones. If someone finds them, all the better. As long as there’s no corpse with a knife wound in its back. Now, let’s go. Or do you want to pray first?”
Roberta shook her head. She just wanted to get away—and lean her head on Vincent’s shoulder. She still did not know if she loved him, but she now knew him far better than she had ever known Kevin Drury. He might not have been as excitingly devil-may-care as Kevin, and he was not as good-looking. But he was intelligent and kind. Shivering, she watched him take the bridle off Coltrane’s horse and hang it on a bush as if the horse had sloughed it off.
“It would be better to leave it on, but then the animal might get stuck somewhere. Take care, old boy.” Vincent slapped the horse amiably on the neck before raising his arms and driving it away. The black horse set off galloping across the veld as if the devil were on its heels.
The campfire only glowed now. Roberta climbed onto the box. She did not resist when Vincent put his arm around her. “What happened to your lucky horsey?” he asked to break the tense silence on their return trip through the darkness. “The stuffed horse. We needed it today.”
Roberta shook her head. “No, we didn’t. It didn’t bring me much luck, you know. At least, not the kind I’d wished for.”
Vincent leaned down to her and had to resist kissing her hair.
“Not every granted wish makes us happy,” he whispered. “Did you get it from a man? Were you—were you promised to him? And is that why it’s so hard for you to find something different, something new? Is that why you can’t love me?” The last words broke out almost against his will.
Roberta squeezed her eyes shut. “He never promised me anything,” she said quietly. “It was just a sort of dream.”
Vincent pulled her closer. “Then you could throw it away, you know.”
Roberta nodded. “I could.”
Before they reached the camp, she allowed Vincent to kiss her.
But she did not throw the stuffed animal away.
Colin Coltrane’s horse arrived at the barracks in Karenstad that night, with no trace of its rider. A few people had seen him head out of town, but then his trail went cold. Questions in the prison camp were fruitless, as were the patrols sent out to search the area. Ultimately, they declared Colonel Colin Coltrane missing in action. Since he had not provided a home address, his mother in New Zealand was not informed.
Kevin Drury and Doortje van Stout were married one day after the official peace agreement in a church near Pretoria. Doortje had wanted a wedding according to the rites of the Dutch Church, but the ceremony disappointed her. The pastor performed it curtly and impersonally, and his parishioners left the church when they became aware of the groom’s nationality, so only Vincent, Roberta, Dr. Greenway, Jenny, Daisy, and Cornelis attended, as well as Dr. Barrister and Dr. Preston Tracy.
“I’ll be damned I lived to see it.” Dr. Barrister laughed. “You did always say so, Tracy, that our iron lady had a soft spot for Drury—I could only see it the other way. But that something like this should come of it?” He benevolently indicated Doortje’s now considerably inflated belly.
“It would have been even lovelier in Dunedin,” Kevin noted with regret when he finally led Doortje to a hotel room. The young woman was pale and looked strained. It had been easy to break away early from the small group of celebrants. “But we can always make up for the party.”
“Who says it had to be lovely?” asked Doortje with clenched teeth. “And what do you want me to do now?”
Kevin sighed. Though she had definitively said yes to him the day after Coltrane’s death, afterward she had kept her distance again. She had even let the wedding ceremony pass over her in stoic calm and had insisted on wearing a black dress. The white bonnet and lace collar had lightened it a bit, but she was far from a cheerful bride.
“You don’t have to do anything,” Kevin said wearily. “Just sleep. Today was stressful. And tomorrow we leave for Durban. Our ship sets sail in two days.”
Everyone would be setting out in the next few days. Vincent Taylor was returning home to New Zealand on a troop transport. He would remain in contact with Roberta and was overjoyed when she allowed him to kiss her in parting. Daisy and Cornelis were moving to Durban, where Daisy felt freer than in Pretoria. Dr. Greenway and Jenny would be accompanying the repatriation of the women of Karenstad to the region around Wepener.
Kevin had booked private passage for himself and Doortje to Australia and from there to Dunedin. Roberta was joining them, and she would share a cabin with Nandi, whom Doortje had asked Kevin to bring along.
“She belongs with the family,” she said stiffly. “I’m responsible for her.”
Kevin took that as a sign that Doortje was slowly dismantling her black-and-white thinking. Roberta, however, sensed her displeasure when Nandi shyly went aboard behind them and a steward carried her meager luggage just like the white passengers’.
“If it were up to Doortje, they would lodge Nandi in the cargo hold,” Roberta whispered to Daisy, who was seeing them off. “And the shipping company isn’t excited about a black passenger either, even though it’s an Australian ship, and they all pretend to be so open. They’ve already suggested I keep her in the cabin during mealtimes, so as not to hurt the feelings of the Afrikaners traveling with us. But I’ll only play along so much. For all I care, we can eat in our cabin, but we won’t let ourselves be locked up for the whole voyage. And I’m going to teach Nandi. By the time we get home, she’ll be able to read and write and speak English better than Afrikaans.”
The latter was not hard. The Boers had always insisted that their servants communicate only in Afrikaans.
“She’ll do you proud,” Daisy said.
Daisy waved good-bye, then laughed when Roberta immediately began negotiating heatedly with a steward. Roberta Fence was no longer chasing after hopeless love. And she was no longer shy.
“I’ll sell your land for you,” Cornelis said in parting from Doortje. He, too, had accompanied them to the ship. “Then I’ll send you the money.”
Doortje eyed him coolly.
“Don’t bother,” she said. “You already sold out your land.” Her disdainful gaze wandered from him to Daisy. “Isn’t that what they say in English? ‘Sold out’?”
Cornelis gave Kevin his hand in parting but stepped back when he wanted to embrace him like a friend. “Good luck,” he said with a glance at Doortje, who was now staring stoically up at the Drakensberg. “You’ll need it.”
Chapter 7
Atamarie was finally ready to give up on Richard Pearse and his aeroplane. It had been too disappointing to see him sit there for hours and hours, saying trivial things, and not receiving any more attention either as a woman or as a friend. Professor Dobbins, however, continued imploring her.
“Don’t just think of him, Miss Turei, but also of your country. Flight is being pursued everywhere, but now a man from New Zealand, of all places, has succeeded. You also had your share in it, and thereby also honored the Maori people. You—”
“The Maori view motorized flight as entirely unnecessary,” Atamarie replied crossly. She had just received a letter from Pania. Rawiri’s mother thanked her for what she had written, promised to forward it to Rawiri, and shared his address with her. Naturally, though, the letter would take months to get there. “They have an interest in conversing with the gods, but they fly kites for that. No one needs to make the effort personally.”
Dobbins laughed. “Oh, I don’t believe it. Just think of the story with Pa Maungaraki and the glider, by means of which he opened the gate to the conquerors.”
“Where’d you hear about that?”
The professor smiled. “From a young Maori who applied to attend here. We would have accepted him, but then he learned about a position with the Wright brothers and thought they might help him reach his goal more quickly.”
&nbs
p; Atamarie was startled. Was he talking about Rawiri?
“The Wright brothers? As in the bicycle makers?”
It was the first she had heard of Wilbur and Orville Wright’s other occupation.
At Dobbins’s insistence, Atamarie rode once again to Temuka, only to find that the flying machine had disappeared.
“What happened?” she asked Shirley in alarm.
The young woman had not greeted her with a smile this time, but neither had she dared simply to turn her away, especially since Richard was again puttering around the farm and seemed somewhat better kempt and more responsive than during her last visit. He greeted Atamarie placidly and as if in passing. Shirley seemed to note that with satisfaction.
“Oh, Dick is getting better,” she informed Atamarie brusquely. “His father gave him a talking to, and now that that infernal machine is gone—”
Atamarie looked at her, horrified. “Mr. Pearse got rid of the aeroplane? He didn’t destroy it, did he? Oh, Shirley, Richard, tell me it isn’t true.”
Shirley made a face. Richard did not even react. Atamarie let her gaze wander in desperation over the yard. Finally, it landed on Hamene. He would at least tell her the truth.
“Hamene,” she pleaded in Maori, “where is the aeroplane?”
A weight was lifted from her shoulders when Hamene smiled. “We have the bird,” Hamene said, employing the word aute, which was also occasionally used for kites, “sitting next to our marae. I took it with me after Mr. Peterson started looking at the engine covetously, and Richard’s father was talking about how much money he could get for the thing. So, I thought I’d take it somewhere safe. The bird is, you know, something sacred. It flew up and, well, it must’ve delivered the gods some sort of message.”
Hamene winked at Atamarie conspiratorially. Atamarie would have liked to hug him, she was so relieved.
In the meantime, Shirley had regained her composure. “You were asking about the aeroplane!” she finally realized. “You don’t even care about Richard.”