The Angels Weep b-3

by Wilbur Smith

  Then Arnold had arrived to take his place as Jordan's assistant.

  His official title was second secretary, and Jordan had welcomed his assistance with the more mundane details of running the complex household. He had accompanied them on their visit to London in the aftermath of Jameson's misadventure, and remained firmly by Rhodes" side on the long return journey via the Suez Canel, Beira and Salisbury.

  Now Arnold stood attentively beside Mr. Rhodes" desk, handing him a sheet typed upon the caligraph, waiting while he read and corrected it, and then replacing it with a fresh sheet. With the rancid taste of envy, Jordan recognized, not for the first time, that Arnold possessed the clean blond good looks that Mr. Rhodes so much admired. His demeanour was modest and frank, yet when he laughed, his entire being seemed to glow with some inner illumination. He had been up at Oriel, Mr. Rhodes" old Oxford college, and it was more and more obvious that Mr. Rhodes took pleasure and comfort in having him near by, as he had once taken from Jordan's presence.

  Jordan waited quietly by the door, feeling strangely out of place in what he had come to think of as his own home, until Mr. Rhodes handed the last corrected sheet to Arnold and looked up.

  "Ah, Jordan," he said. "I wanted to warn you that I am advancing the date of my departure for Bulawayo. I think my Rhodesians need me.

  I must go to them." "I will see to it immediately," Jordan nodded.

  "Have you decided on a date, Mr. Rhodes?" "Next Monday." "We will take the express to Kimberley, of course?" "You will not be accompanying me," said Mr. Rhodes flatly.

  "I do not understand, Mr. Rhodes. "Jordan made a helpless little gesture of incomprehension.

  "I require utter loyalty and honesty in my employees." "Yes, Mr. Rhodes, I know that." Jordan nodded, and then slowly his expression became uncertain and disbelieving. "You are not suggesting that I have ever been disloyal or dishonest-" "Get that file, please, Arnold," Mr. Rhodes ordered, and when he fetched it from the library table, he added, "Give it to him. Arnold silently came across the thick silk and wool carpet, and offered the box-file to Jordan. As he reached for it, Jordan was aware, for the first time ever, of something other than openness and friendly concern in Arnold's eyes, it was a flash of vindictive triumph so vicious as to sting like the lash of a riding-whip across the face. It lasted for only a blink Of time, and was gone so swiftly that it might never have been, but it left Jordan feeling utterly vulnerable and in dreadful danger.

  He placed the folder on the table beside him, and opened the cover. There were at least fifty sheets in the folder. Most of them had been typed on the caligraph, and each was headed "Copy of original." There were "stockbrokers" buy and sell orders, for shares in De Beers and Consolidated Goldfields. The quantities of shares in the transactions were enormous, involving millions of sterling. The braking firm was Silver & Co of whom Jordan had never heard, though they purported to conduct business in Johannesburg, Kimberley and London.

  Then there were copies of statements from half a dozen banks, in the different centres where Silver & Co. had offices. A dozen or -so entries on the statements had been underlined in red ink. "Transfer to Rholands -"C86,321 - 7s 9d. Transfer to Rholands - f,146,821 - 9s I Id." The name shocked him, Ralph's company, and though he did not understand why, it increased his sense of peril.

  "I don't understand what this has to do with me-" He looked up at Mr. Rhodes.

  "Your brother entered into a series of large bear transactions in those companies most drastically affected by the failure of Jameson's enterprise." "It would appear-" Jordan began uncertainly, and was interrupted by Mr. Rhodes.

  "It would appear that he has made profits in excess of a million pounds, and that he and his agents have gone to extreme lengths to disguise and conceal these machinations." "Mr. Rhodes, why do you tell me this, why do you adopt that tone? He is my brother, but I cannot be held responsible-" Mr. Rhodes held up one hand to silence him. "Nobody has accused you of anything yet your eagerness to justify yourself is unbecoming." Then he opened the leather bound copy of Plutarch's Lives which lay on one "corner of his desk. There were three sheets of writing-paper lying between the pages. Mr. Rhodes took out the sheets, and proffered the top one to Jordan.

  "Do you recognize this?" Jordan felt himself blushing agonizingly.

  At that moment he hated himself for ever having written this letter.

  He had done so in the terrible _" tual travail following the night spirit of Ralph's -discoveries and brutal accusation in the private pullman coach from Kimberley.

  "It is the copy of a private letter that I wrote to my brother. Jordan could not lift his eyes to meet those of Mr. Rhodes. "I do not know what possessed me to keep a copy of it." A paragraph caught his eye, and he could not prevent himself re-reading his own words.

  "There is nothing I would not do to convince you of my continued affection, for only now, when I seem to have forfeited it, am I truly conscious of how much your regard mean to me.." He held the sheet possessively. "This is a private and intimate communication," he said in a low voice, which shook with shame and outrage. "Apart from my brother, to whom it is addressed, nobody has the right to read it."

  "You do not deny that you are the author, then?" "it would be vain of me to do so." "Indeed, it would," Mr. Rhodes agreed, and passed him the second sheet.

  Jordan read on down the page in mounting bewilderment. The handwriting was his, but the words were not. So skilfully and naturally did they continue from the sentiments of the first page, however, that he found himself almost doubting his own recall. What he was reading was his own acquiescence to pass on to Ralph confidential and privileged information related to the planning and timing of Jameson's intervention in the Transvaal. "I do agree that the contemplated venture is totally outside civilized law, and this has convinced me to give you my assistance and the moral debt that I feel that I owe to you." Only then he noticed the slant and form of a letter that was not in his hand. The entire page was a skilful forgery. He shook his head wordlessly. He felt as though the fabric of his existence had been ripped through and through.

  "That your conspiracy was successful, we know from the rich fruits your brother harvested," said Mr. Rhodes wearily, in the voice of a man so often betrayed that this no longer had the power to wound him. "I congratulate you, Jordan." "Where did this come from?" The page shook in Jordan's hand. "Where-" He broke off and looked up at Arnold, standing behind his master's shoulder. There was no trace of that vindictive triumph remaining, Arnold was grave and concerned and unbearably handsome.

  "I see, "Jordan nodded. "It is a forgery, of course." Mr. Rhodes made an impatient gesture. "Really Jordan. Who would go to the trouble of forging bank statements that can readily be verified?" "Not the bank statements, the letter." "You agreed it was yours." "Not this page, not this-" Mr. Rhodes" expression was remote, his eyes cold and unfeeling.

  "I will have the bookkeeper come up from the town office to go over the household accounts with you, and to make an inventory. You will, of course, hand over your keys to Arnold. As soon as all that has been done, I will instruct the bookkeeper to issue you a cheque for three months" salary in lieu of notice, though I am certain you will understand my reluctance to provide you with a letter of recommendation. I would be obliged if you could remove yourself and your belongings from these premises before my return from Rhodesia."

  "Mr. Rhodes.--" "There is nothing further that we have to discuss." Mr. Rhodes and his entourage, Arnold amongst them, had left on the northern express for KimMberley and the Matabeleland railhead three weeks before. it had taken that long for Jordan to wind up the inventories and complete the household accounts.

  Mr. Rhodes had not spoken to Jordan again after that final confrontation. Arnold had relayed two brief instructions, and Jordan had retained his dignity and resisted the temptation to hurl bootless recriminations at his triumphant rival. He had only seen Mr. Rhodes three times since that fateful evening, twice from his office window as he returned from those
long aimless rides through the pine forests on the lower slopes of the mountain, and the third and final time as he climbed into the coach for the railway station.

  Now, as he had been for three long weeks, Jordan was alone in the great deserted mansion. He had ordered the servants to leave early, and had personally checked the kitchens and rear areas, before locking up the doors. He moved slowly through the carpeted passageways carrying the oil-lamp in both hands. He wore the Chinese silk brocade dressing-gown that had been Mr. Rhodes" personal gift to him on his twenty-fifth birthday. He felt burned out, blackened like a forest tree after the fire has passed, leaving the hollowed-out trunk continuing to smoulder within.

  He was on a pilgrimage of farewell about the great house, and the memories that it contained. He had been present from the very first days of the planning to renovate and redecorate the old building. He had spent so many hours listening to Herbert Baker and Mr. Rhodes, taking notes of their conversations and occasionally, at Mr. Rhodes" invitation, making a suggestion.

  It was Jordan who had suggested the motif for the mansion, a stylized representation of the stone bird from the ancient ruins of Rhodesia, the falcon of Zimbabwe. The great raptor, the pedestal on which it perched decorated with a shark's tooth pattern, adorned the banisters of the main staircase. It was worked into the polished granite of the huge bath in Mr. Rhodes" suite, it formed a fresco around the walls of the dining-room and four replicas of the strange bird supported the corners of Mr. Rhodes" desk.

  The bird had been a part of Jordan's life from as far back as his earliest memories reached. The original statue had been taken by Zouga Ballantyne from the ancient temple, one of seven identical statues that he had discovered there. He had only been able to carry one of them.

  He had left the other birds lying in the ancient temple enclosure, and taken the best-preserved example.

  Almost thirty years later Ralph Ballantyne had returned to Great Zimbabwe, guided by his father's journal and the map he had drawn.

  Ralph had found the six remaining statues lying in the temple enclosure of the ruins just as his father had left them, but Ralph had come prepared. He had loaded the statues onto the draught oxen he had brought with him and, despite the attempts of the Matabele guardians to prevent him, had escaped southwards across the Shashi river with his treasure. In Cape Town a syndicate of businessmen headed by the multi-millionaire, Barney Barnato, had purchased the relics from Ralph for a substantial sum, and had presented them to the South African Museum in Cape Town. The six statues were still on display to the public there. Jordan had visited the premises, and spent an hour standing transfixed before them.

  However, his own personal magic was embodied in the original statue that his father had discovered, and which throughout his childhood had ridden as ballast over the rear wheel-truck of the family wagon, during their wanderings and travels across the vast African veld. Jordan had slept a thousand nights above the bird, and somehow its spirit had pervaded his own and taken possession of him.

  When Zouga at last led the family to the Kimberley diamond-diggings, the bird statue had been unloaded from the wagon and placed under the camelthom tree which marked their last camp. When Jordan's mother, Aletta Ballantyne, had fallen sick with the deadly camp fever, and finally succumbed to the disease the statue had come to play an even larger place in Jordan's life.

  He had christened the bird Panes, after the goddess of the North American Indian tribes, and later he had avidly studied the lore of the great goddess Panes that Frazer had detailed in his Goklen Bough, a study in magic and religion. He learned how Panes was a beautiful woman who had been taken up into the mountains. To the adolescent Jordan, Panes and the bird statue became confused with the image of his dead mother. Secretly he had developed a form of invocation to the goddess, and in the dead of night when all the other members of his family slept, he would creep out to make a small sacrifice of hoarded food to Panes and worship her with his own rituals.

  When Zouga, financially reduced, had been forced to sell the bird to Mr. Rhodes, the boy had been desolated until the opportunity to enter Mr. Rhodes" service and follow the goddess replaced the emptiness of his existence with not one but two deities. the goddess Panes and Mr. Rhodes. Even after he was grown to manhood in Mr. Rhodes'service, the statue continued to bulk large in Jordan's consciousness, though it was only very occasionally, in times of deep turmoil of the spirit, that he actually resorted to the childish rituals of worship.

  Now he had lost the lodestone of his life, and irresistibly he was drawn towards the statue for the last time. Slowly he descended the curve of the main staircase. As he passed, he caressed the carved balustrades which were worked into faithful copies of the ancient bird.

  The lofty entrance hallway below was floored with black and white marble slabs arranged in a chequer-board pattern. The main doors were in massive red teak, and the fittings were of burnished brass. The light of the lantern that Jordan carried sent grotesquely misshapen shadows flowing across the marble or fluttering like gigantic bats against the high carved ceiling. In the centre of the marble floor stood a heavy table, upon which were the silver trays for visiting-cards and mail. Between them was a tall decoration of dried pro tea blooms which Jordan had arranged with his own hands.

  Jordan set the lamp of Svres porcelain upon the table like a ritual lantern upon a pagan altar. He stepped back from it and slowly raised his head. The original stone falcon of Zimbabwe stood in its high niche, guarding the entrance to Groote Schuur. Seeing it thus it was not possible to doubt the aura of magical power that invested the graven image. It seemed that the prayers and incantations of the long-dead priests of Zimbabwe still shimmered in the air about it, that the blood of the sacrifices steamed from the wavering shadows upon the marble floor, and that the prophecies of the Umlimo, the Chosen One of the ancient spirits, invested it with separate life.

  Zouga Ballantyne had heard the prophecies from the Umlimo's lips and had faithfully recorded them in his journal. Jordan had re-read them a hundred times and could repeat them by rote, he had made them part of his own personal ritual and invocation to the goddess.

  "There shall be no peace in the kingdom of the Mambos or the Monomatapa until they return. For the white eagle unU war unth the black bull until the stone falcons return to roost." Jordan looked up at the bird's proud, cruel head, at the sightless eyes which stared blankly towards the north, towards the land of the Mambos and the Monomatapa which men now called Rhodesia, and where the white eagle and the black bull were again locked in mortal conflict, and Jordan felt a sense of helplessness and emptiness, as though he were caught up in the coils of destiny and was unable to break free.

  "Have pity on me, great Panes," and he dropped to his knees. "I cannot go. I cannot leave you or him. I have no place to go." In the lamplight his face was tinged with a faint greenish sheen, as though it had been carved from glacial ice. He lifted the porcelain lamp from the table, and held it high above his head with both hands.

  "Forgive me, great Panes," he whispered, and hurled the lamp against the panelled woodwork of the wall.

  The lobby was plunged into darkness for a moment, as the flame of the shattered lamp fluttered to the very edge of extinction. Then it sent a ghostly blue light skittering across the surface of the spreading pool of oil. Suddenly the flames burned up strongly and touched the trailing edges of the long velvet drapes that covered the windows.

  Still kneeling before the stone statue, Jordan coughed as the first wisps of smoke enveloped him. He was mildly surprised that, after the first burning sting of it in his lungs, there was so very little pain. The image of the falcon high above him slowly receded, dimmed by the tears that filled Jordan's eyes and by the dense swirling curtains of smoke.

  The flames made a low drumming roar as they caught on the wooden panelling and shot to the ceiling. One of the heavy drapes burned through, and as it fell it spread open like the wings of an immense vulture. The fiery wings of thick velvet covered J
ordan's kneeling figure and their weight bore him face down to the marble floor.

  Already asphyxiated by the dense blue smoke, he did not even struggle and within seconds the mound of crumpled velvet was transformed into a funeral pyre, and the flames reached up Joyously to lick against the base of the stone falcon in its high niche.

  Bazo has come down from the place of the Umlimo at last," Isazi said quietly, and Ralph could not contain "Bhimself.