by Wilbur Smith
While we know how to wait." They were silent again, sitting with their shoulders just touching, and the fire had burned low before Bazo stirred.
"I will be gone by daylight, "he said. "Where?"Gandang asked.
"East to the Mashona." "For what reason?" "They also must prepare for the day." "You seek aid from Mashona dogs, from the very eaters of dirt? "I seek aid wherever it can be found," said Bazo simply.
"Tanase says that we will find allies beyond our borders, beyond the great river. She speaks even of allies from a land so cold that the waters there turn hard and white as salt." "Is there such a land?"
"I do not know. I know only that we must welcome any ally, from wherever they may come. For Lodzi's men are hard, fierce fighters. You and I both have learned that well." "the windows of the mule coach were open and the shutters were lowered so that Mr. Rhodes could converse freely with the men who rode in close A attendance upon each side.
They were the aristocracy of this new land, only a dozen or so of them, but between them they owned vast tracts of fertile, virgin country, sprawling herds of native cattle, and blocks of mineral claims beneath which lay dreams of uncountable wealth.
The man in the luxurious carriage, drawn by a team of five matched white mules, was their head. In his capacity as a private citizen, he enjoyed such wealth and power as was usually only commanded by kings.
His Company owned a land which was bigger than the United Kingdom and Ireland put together, which he administered by decree as a private estate. He controlled the world's production of diamonds through a cartel that he had made as powerful as an elected government. He owned outright the mines that produced ninety-five per cent of the world's diamonds. On the fabulous Witwatersrand gold fields, his influence was not as great as it might have been, for he had passed up many opportunities to acquire claims along the strike, where the gold-rich ban ket reef had once stood proud, above the surrounding grassland, sharp and black as a shark's dorsal fin, before the miners had whittled it away.
"I do not sense the power in this reef," he had said once, as he stood on the outcrop, staring at it moodily with those pale Messianic blue eyes. "I can sit on the lip of the great hole at Kimberley and I know just how many carats- are coming up with each load, but this-2 He had shaken his head and gone back to his horse, turning his back on 100 million pounds in pure gold.
When, finally, he had been forced to accept the true potential of the "Ridge of White Waters" and was on the very point of hurrying back to pick up what few properties were still available, a tragic accident had distracted him. His dearest friend, a fine and beautiful young man named Neville Pickering, his companion and "partner of many years, had been thrown from his horse and dragged.
Rhodes had stayed at Kimberley to nurse him, and then when Neville died, to mourn him. The great opportunities had slipped away from Rhodes in those weeks. Yet still he had at last founded his Consolidated Goldfields Company upon the reef, and though it was nothing like his De Beers Consolidated Mines Company, nor the gold empire that his old rival J. B. Robinson had built, yet at the end of the last financial year it had paid a dividend of 125 per cent.
His fortune was such that when, on a whim, he decided to pioneer the farming of deciduous fruit in southern Africa, he had instructed one of his managers to purchase the entire Franschhoek valley.
"Mr. Rhodes, it will cost a million pounds," the manager had demurred.
"I did not ask for your estimate," Rhodes replied testily. "I simply gave you an order buy id" That was his private life, but his public life was no less spectacular.
He was a privy councillor to the queen, and thus could speak directly to the men who steered the greatest empire the world had ever known. In truth, some of them were less than sympathetic to him.
Gladstone had once remarked, "I know only one thing about Mr. Rhodes.
He has made a great deal of money in a very short time. This does not fill me with any overwhelming confidence." The rest of the British nobility were less critical, and whenever he visited London, he was the darling of society, lords and dukes and earls flocked to him, for there were lucrative directorships on the Board of the BSA Company to be filled, and a single word from Mr. Rhodes could lead to a killing on the stock exchange.
Added to all this, Mr. Rhodes was the elected prime minister of Cape Colony, sure of the vote of every English-speaking citizen and through the good offices of his old friend Hofineyr and his Afrikander Bond, sure of most of the Dutch-speaking votes as well.
Thus, as he lolled on the green leather seat of his coach, dressed untidily in a rumpled high-buttoned suit, the knot of his Oriel College necktie slipping a little, he was at the very zenith of his wealth and power and influence.
Seated opposite him, Jordan Ballantyne was pretending to study the shorthand notes that Mr. Rhodes had just dictated, but over the pad he was watching his master with a shadow of concern in his sensitive long4ashed eyes. Although the flat brim of his hat kept Mr. Rhodes" eyes in shadow and prevented Jordan from reading any trace of pain in them, yet his colour was high and unhealthy, and though he spoke with all his old force, he was sweating more heavily than the early morning cool warranted.
Now he raised his voice, calling in that high, almost petulant tone, "Ballantyne!" And Zouga Ballantyne spurred his horse up beside the window and leaned attentively from the saddle.
"Tell me, my dear fellow," Rhodes demanded. "What is this new building to be?" He pointed at the freshly opened foundation trenches and the stacks of red burned brick piled on the corner plot at the intersection of two of Bulawayo's wide and dusty streets.
"That's the new synagogue," Zouga told him.
"So my Jews have come to stay!" Mr. Rhodes said with a smile, and Zouga suspected that Mr. Rhodes had known precisely what those foundations were for, but had asked the question to pave the way for his own witticism. "Then my new country will be all right, Ballantyne.
They are the birds of good omen, who would never roost in a tree marked for felling." Zouga chuckled dutifully, and they went on talking while Ralph Ballantyne, riding in the bunch, watched them with such interest that he neglected the lady riding beside him, until she tapped him on the forearm with her crop.
"I said, it will be interesting to see what happens when we reach Khami" Louise repeated, and Ralph's attention jerked back to his stepmother. She rode astride, the only woman he knew that did so, and though she wore ankle, length divided skirts, her seat was elegant and sure. Ralph had seen her out-ride his own father, beating him in a gruelling point-to-point race over rough terrain. That had been in Kimberley, before the trek to the north and this land, but the years had treated Louise kindly indeed. Ralph smiled to himself as he recalled the youthful crush he had been smitten with when he first saw her driving her phaeton and pair of golden palominos down Kimberley's crowded main street. That was so many years ago, and though she had married his father since then, he still felt a special affection for her that was definitely neither filial nor dutiful. She was only a few years older than he was, and the Blackfoot Indian blood in her veins gave her beauty a certain timeless element.
"I cannot imagine "that even Robyn, my honoured aunt and mother-in-law, would use the occasion of her youngest daughter's marriage for political advantage," Ralph said.
"Are you confident enough to wager on that, a guinea, say?" Louise asked with a flash of even white teeth, but Ralph threw back his head and laughed.
"I have learned my lesson I'll never bet against you again."
Then he dropped his voice. "Besides, I don't really have that much faith in my mother-in-law's restraint." "Then why on earth does Mr. Rhodes insist on going to the wedding? He must know what to expect."
"Well, firstly, he owns the land the Mission is built upon, and, secondly, he probably feels that the ladies of Khami Mission are depriving him of a valued possession." Ralph lifted his chin to indicate the bridegroom who rode a little ahead of the group. Harry Mellow had a flower in his button-hol
e, a gloss on his boots and a grin upon his lips.
"He hasn't lost him," Louise pointed out.
"He fired him as soon as he realized he couldn't talk Harry out of it." "But he is such a talented geologist, they say he can smell gold a mile away." "Mr. Rhodes does not approve of his young men marrying, no matter how talented." "Poor Harry, poor Vicky, what will they do?" "Oh, it's all arranged," Ralph beamed.
"You?" she hazarded. Who else?" "I should have known. In fact it would not surprise me to learn that you engineered the whole business," Louise accused, and Ralph looked pained.
"You do me a grave injustice, Mama." He knew she did not like that title and used it deliberately, to tease her. Then Ralph looked ahead and his expression changed like a bird-dog scenting the pheasant.
The wedding party had ridden out past the last new buildings and shanties of the town, onto the broad rutted wagon road. Coming towards them, up from the south, was a convoy of transport wagons. There were ten of them, so strung out that the furthest of them were marked only by columns of fine white dust rising above the flat-topped acacia trees. On the nearest wagon-tent Louise could already read the company name, RHO LANDS the shortened form of "Rhodesian Lands and Mining Co." which Ralph had chosen as the umbrella for his multitudinous business activities.
"Damn me," he exclaimed happily. "Old Isazi has brought them in five days ahead of schedule. That little black devil is a miracle." He tipped his hat in apology to Louise. "Business calls. Excuse me, please, Mama." And he galloped ahead, swinging off his horse as he came level with the lead wagon, and embracing the diminutive figure in cast-off military-style jacket who skipped at the flank of the bullock team brandishing a thirty-foot-long trek whip.
What kept you so long, Isazi?" Ralph demanded. "Did you meet a pretty Matabele girl on the road?" The little Zulu driver tried not to grin, but the network of wrinkles that covered his face contracted and there was a puckish sparkle in his eyes.
"I can still deal with a Matabele girl and her mother and all her sisters in, the time it would take you to in span a single ox." It was not only a declaration of virility, but also an oblique reference to Ralph's skill as a teams man Isazi had taught him all he knew of the open road, but still treated Ralph with the indulgent condescension usually reserved for a small boy.
"No, little Hawk, I did not want to rob you of too much bonus, money by bringing them in more than five days ahead." This was a gentle reminder of what Isazi expected in his next pay packet.
Now the little Zulu, with the head ring granted him by King Cetewayo before the battle of Ulundi still upon his snowy head, stood back and looked at Ralph with the speculative eye he usually reserved for a bullock.
"Hau, Henshaw, what finery is this?" He glanced at Ralph's suit and English boots, and at the sprig of mimosa blossom in Ralph's button-hole. "Even flowers like a simpering maiden at her first dance.
And what is that under your coat, surely the Nkosikazi is the one who carries the babies in your family?" Ralph glanced down at his own midriff. Isazi was being unfair, there was barely a trace of superfluous flesh there, nothing that a week of hard hunting would not remove, but Ralph sustained the banter that they both enjoyed.
"It is the privilege of great men to wear fine apparel and eat good food, "he said.
"Then fall to, little Hawk with fine feathers." Isazi shook his head disapprovingly. "Eat your fill. While wiser men do the real work, you play like a boy." His tone belied the warmth of his smile, and Ralph clasped his shoulder.
"There was never a driver like you, Isazi, and there probably never will be again." "Hau, Henshaw, so I have taught you something, even if only to recognize true greatness when you see it," Isazi chuckled at last, and put the long lash up into the air with a report like a shot of cannon, and called to his oxen. (COme, Fransman, you black devil! Come, Sathan, MY darling.
Pakamisa, pick it up!" Ralph mounted and backed his horse off the road and watched his laden wagons trundle by. There was 10,000 pounds of profit in that single convoy for him, and he had 200 wagons, plying back and forth across the vast sub-continent. Ralph shook his head in awe as he remembered the single elderly eighteen-footer that he and Isazi had driven out of Kimberley that first time. He had purchased it on borrowed money, and laden it with trade goods that he did not own.
"A long road and a hard one," he said aloud, as he wheeled his horse and kicked it into a gallop in pursuit of the mule coach and the wedding party.
He fell in again beside Louise, and she started from a reverie as though she had not even noticed his absence. "Dreaming," he accused her, and she spread the fingers of one graceful hand in admission of guilt, and then lifted it to point.
"Do look, Ralph. How beautiful it is!" A bird flitted across the track ahead of the coach. It was a shrike with a shiny black back, and a breast of a stunning crimson that burned in the white sunlight like a precious ruby.
"How beautiful it all is," she exulted as the bird disappeared into the scrub, and Louise turned in the saddle to take in the whole horizon with a sweep of her arm that made the tassels of her white buckskin jacket flutter. "Do you know, Ralph, that King's Lynn is the very first real home I have ever- known." And only then Ralph realized that they were still on his father's land. Zouga'Ballantyne had used up the entire fortune he had won from the blue ground of Kimberley's pit to buy the land grants of the drifters and never-contents amongst Doctor Jameson's troopers who had ridden into Matabeleland in the expeditionary force that had defeated Lobengula. Each of them had been entitled to four thousand acres of his choice, and some of them had sold that right to Zouga Ballantyne for as little as the price of a bottle of whisky.
It would take a rider on a good horse three days to ride around the boundary of King's Lynn. The home that Zouga had built for Louise stood on one of those distant hills, overlooking the wide plain of acacia trees and sweet grass, its thick golden thatch and burned brick blending with the shading grove of tall trees, as though it had always been there.
"This beautiful land will be so good to us, she whispered, her voice husky and her eyes brimming with an almost religious joy. "Vicky will be married today, and her children will grow strong here.
Perhaps--" She broke off and a little cloud passed behind her eyes.
She had not yet given up all hope of bearing Zouga's child. Every night, after his gentle loving, she would lie with her hands clasped over her stomach, and her thighs clenched as if to hold his seed within her and she would pray, while he slept quietly beside her. "Perhapsbut it would be ill-ome ned to even mention it and she changed it, "perhaps one day Jonathan or one of your sons yet unborn will be the master of King's Lynn." She reached across and laid her hand on his forearm. "Ralph, I have his strange premonition that our descendants will live here for ever." Ralph smiled fondly at her and covered her hand with his. "Well, now, my dear Louise, even Mr. Rhodes himself only gives it four thousand years. Will you not settle for that?" "Oh you!" She struck him playfully on the shoulder. "Will you never be serious!"
And then she exclaimed, and turned her horse out of the procession.
Under one of the flat-topped acacias beside the track, stood a pair of Matabele boys, neither of them older than ten years. They wore only the little mutsha loincloths, and hung their heads shyly as Louise greeted them in fluent rippling Sindebele. King's Lynn employed dozens of these mujiba to tend the vast herds of native cattle and the fine breeding bulls that Zouga had brought up from the south. These were but two of them, yet Louise knew them by name, and their faces shone with genuine affection as they returned her greeting.
"I see you also, Balela." The praise name the Matabele servants of King's Lynn had given her meant "the One who brings Clear and Sunny Skies" and the two children waited expectantly, answering her questions dutifully, until Louise at last reached into the pocket of her skirt and dropped a morsel of candy into each of their cupped pink palms.
They scampered back to their herds, cheeks bulging like those of squirrels,
and their eyes huge with delight.
"You spoil them, "Ralph chided her, as she rejoined him. "They are our people," she said simply, and then almost regretful. "here is the boundary. I hate to leave our own land." And the wedding procession passed the simple roadside peg, and rode onto the land of Khami Mission Station. However, it was almost an hour later that the mules hauled the coach up the steep track, through thick bush, and paused to blow on the level neck of ground high above the whitewashed church and its attendant buildings.