by Wilbur Smith
She had told him simplyI have found Pater."
It had deflected his anger instantly. The bitter accusations shrivelled on his tongue, and the realization dawned in his eyes.
They had found Fuller Ballantyne. They had accomplished one of the three major objectives of the expedition. She knew that Zouga was already seeing it in print, almost composing the paragraph that would describe the moment, imagining the newspaper urchins shouting the headlines in the streets of London.
For the first time in her life she -came close to hating her brother, and her voice was crisp as hoar-frost as she told him, "And don't you forget it was me. I was the one who made the march and broke trail, and I was the one who found him."
She saw the shift in his green eyes in the firelight. Of course, Sissy. " He smiled at her thinly, an obvious effort. "Who could ever forget that? Where is he? "First I must assemble what I need."
He had stayed with her until they reached the foot of the hill, and then had been unable to restrain himself.
Ri that none of them He had gone at the slope at a pace had been able to equal. Robyn came out in the little clearing in front of the cave. Her heart was racing and her breathing ragged from the climb so that she had to pause and fight for breath, holding one hand to her breast.
The fire in front of the cave had been built up to a fair blaze, but it left the depths of the cave in discreet shadow. Zouga. stood in front of the fire. His back to the
cave.
As Robyn regained her breath, she went forward. She saw that Zouga's face was deathly pale, in the firelight his sun-bronzing had faded to a muddy tone. He stood erect, as though on the parade ground, and he stared directly ahead of him. Have you seen Pater? " Robyn asked. His distress and utter confusion gave her a sneaking and spiteful pleasure. There is a native woman with him, Zouga whispered, in his bed. "Yes, " Robyn nodded. "He is very sick. She is caring for him. "Why did you not warn me? " That he is sick? " she asked. That he had gone native. "He's dying, Zouga. "What are we going to tell the world? "The truth, she suggested quietly. "That he is sick and dying. "You must never mention the woman. " Zouga's voice, for the first time that she could remember, was uncertain, he seemed to be groping for words. "We must protect the family. "Then what must we tell about his disease, the disease that is killing him? " Zouga's eyes flickered to her face. "Malaria? "The pox, Zouga. The French sickness, the Italian plague, or, if you prefer it, syphilis, Zouga. He is dying of syphilis."
Zouga flinched, and then he whispered, "It's not possibleWhy not, Zouga? " she asked. "He was a man, a great man, but a man nevertheless She stepped past him. "And now I have work to do."
An hour later when she looked for -him again, Zouga had gone back down the hill to the camp beside the river pools. She remained to work over her father for the rest of that night and most of the following day.
By the time she had bathed and cleaned him, shaved off the infested body hair and trimmed the stringy beard and locks of yellowed treated the ulcerations of his le& she was exhausted both physically and emotionally.
She had seen approaching death too many times not to recognize it now. She knew that all she could. hope for was to give comfort and to smooth the lonely road that her father must travel.
When she had done all that was possible, she covered him with a clean blanket and then tenderly caressed the short soft hair which she had so lovingly trimmed. Fuller opened his eyes. They were a pale empty shade of blue, like an African summer sky. The last sunlight of the day was washing the cave, and as Robyn leaned over him, it sparkled in her hair in chips of ruby light.
She saw something move in the empty eyes, a shadow of the man who had once been there, and Fuller's lips parted. Twice he tried to speak and then he said one word, so husky and light that she missed it. Robyn leaned closer to him.
What is it? " she asked.
Helen! " This time clearer.
Robyn felt the tears choke up her throat at the sound of her mother's name. Helen. " Fuller said it for the last time, and then the flicker of comprehension in his eyes was gone.
She stayed on beside him, but there was nothing more.
That name had been the last link with reality and now the link was broken.
As the last light of the day faded, Robyn lifted her eyes from her father's face and for the first time realized that the tin chest was missing from the ledge at the back of the cave.
Using the lid of his own writing-case as a desk, screened from the camp by the thin wall of thatch, Zouga worked swiftly through the contents of the chest.
His horror at the discovery of his father had long ago been submerged by the fascination of the treasures which the chest contained. The disgust, the shame, would return again when he had time to think about it, he knew that. He knew also that there would be hard decisions to make then, and that he would have to use all his force of personality and of brotherly superiority to control Robyn, and make her agree to a common version of the discovery of Fuller Ballantyne and a tactful description of the circumstances to which he had been reduced.
The tin chest contained four leather and canvas-bound journals, each of five hundred pages, and the pages were covered on both sides either with writing or with hand drawn maps. There was also a bundle of loose sheets, two or three hundred of them tied together with plaited bark string. and a cheap wooden pen case with a partition for spare nibs, and cut-outs for two ink bottles.
One bottle was dry, and the pen nibs had obviously been sharpened many times, for they were almost worn away.
Zouga sniffed the ink in the remaining bottle. It seemed to be an evil-smelling mixture, of fat and soot and vegetable dyes that Fuller had concocted when his supplies of the manufactured item were exhausted.
The last journal and most of the loose pages were written with this mixture, and they had faded and smeared, making the handwriting that much more difficult to decipher, for by this stage Fuller Ballantyne's hand had deteriorated almost as much as his mind. Whereas the first two journals were written in the small, precise and familiar script, this slowly turned into a loose sloping scrawl as uncontrolled as some of the ideas expressed by it. The history of his father's madness was plotted therein with sickening fascination.
The pages of the leatherbound journals were not numbered, and there were many gaps between the dates of one entry and the next, which made Zoup's work easier.
He read swiftly, an art he had developed when acting as regimental intelligence officer with huge amounts of reading, reports, orders and departmental manuals, to get through each day.
The first books of writing were ground that had been travelled before, meticulous observations of celestial position, of climate and altitude, ed up by shrewdly observed descriptions of terrain and population. Sandwiched between these were accusations and complaints about authority, whether it were the directors of the London Missionary Society, or "The Imperial Factor" as Fuller Ballantyne referred to the Foreign Secretary and his department in Whitehall.
There were detailed explanations of his reasons for leaving Tete and travelling south with a minimally equipped expedition, and then, quite suddenly, " two pages devoted to an account of a sexual liaison with an exslave girl, an Angoni girl whom Fuller had christened Sarah" and who he suspected was about to bear his child.
His reasons for abandoning her at Tete were direct and without pretence. "I know that a woman, even a hardy native, carrying a child would delay me. As I am on God's work, I can brook no such check."
Although what Zouga had seen on the hilltop should have conditioned him for this sort of revelation, still he could not bring himself to terms with it. Using his hunting-knife, whetted to a razor edge, he slit the offending pages from the journal, and as he crumpled them and threw them in the camp fire he muttered, "The old devil had no right to write this filth."
Twice more he found sexual references which he removed from the journal, and by then the handwriting was showing the first deterioration, and passages of great
lucidity were followed by wild ravings and the dreams and imaginings of a diseased mind.
More often Fuller referred to himself as the instrument of God's wrath, his blazing sword against the heathen and the ungodly. The weirdest and patently lunatic passages Zouga cut from the journal and burned. He knew he must work swiftly, before Robyn came down from the hilltop. He knew that what he was doing was right, for his father's memory and place in posterity and also for those who would have to live on after him, Robyn and Zouga himself, and their children and children's children.
It was a chilling experience to see his father's great love and compassion for the African people, and the very land itself changing and becoming a bitter unreasoning hatred. Against the Matabele people, whom he referred to as the Ndebele, or the Amandebele, he railed:These leonine peoples who acknowledge no God at all whose diet consists of the devil's brew and half-cooked meat, both in vast quantities, and whose greatest delight is spearing to death defenceless women and children, are ruled over by the most merciless despot since Caligula, the most grossly blood-besotted monster since Attila himself."
Of the other tribes he was at least as scornful. "The Rozwis are a sly and secret people, the timid and treacherous descendants of the slave-trading and gold-mad kings they called the Mambos. Their dynasties destroyed by the marauding Ndebele and their monstrous Nguni brothers the Shangaans of Gungundha and the bloodsmattered Angoni."
The Karangas were "cowards and devil-worshippers, lurking in their caves and hilltop fortresses, committing unspeakable sacrilege and offending in the face of the Almighty by their blasphemous ceremonies in the ruined cities where once their Monomatapa held sway'.
The reference to Monomatapa and ruined cities checked Zouga's eyes in the middle of the page. Then he read on eagerly, hoping for elaboration of the mention of ruined cities, but Fuller's mind had flown on to other ideas, the theme of suffering and sacrifice which has always been the spine of Christian belief. I thank God, my Almighty Father, that he has chosen me as his sword, and that as the mark of his love and condescension he has made his mark upon me. This dawn when I awoke there were the stigmata in my feet and hands, the wound in my side, and the bleeding scratches from the crown of thorns upon my forehead. I have felt the same sweet pain as Christ himself."
The disease had reached that part of his brain that affected his eyes, and sense of feeling. His faith had become religious mania. Zouga cut out this and the following pages and consigned them to the flames of the camp fire.
Ranting madness was followed by cool sanity, as though the disease had tides which ebbed and flowed within his brain. The next entry in the journal was dated five days after that claiming the stigmata. It began with a celestial observation that placed him not far from where Zouga sat reading the words, always making allowances for the inaccuracy of a chronometer that had not been checked for almost two years. There was no furtherSo I rose, and God's hand held me up and carried me onwards."
How much of this was fact, and how much was the ranting of madness, fantasy of a diseased brain, Zouga could not know, but he read on furiously. And the Almighty guided me until I came at last alone to the foul city where the devil-worshippers commit their sacrilege. My bearers would not follow me, terrified of the devils. Even old Joseph who was always at my side could not force his legs to carry him through the gateway in the high stone wall. I left him cringing in the forest, and went in alone to walk between the high towers of stone. As God had revealed to me, I found the graven images of the heathen all decked with flowers and gold, the blood of the sacrifice not yet dried, and I broke them and cast them down and no man could oppose me for I was the sword of Zion, the finger of God's own hand."
The entry broke off abruptly, as though the writer had been overwhelmed by the strength of his own religious fervour, and Zouga. flipped through the next one hundred pages of the journal searching for further reference to the city and its gold-decked images, but there was none.
Like the miraculous blooming of the stigmata upon Fuller's hands and feet and body and brow, perhaps this was also the imaginings of a lunatic.
Zouga returned to the original entry, describing Fuller's meeting with the Umlimo, the sorceress whom he had slain. He wrote the latitude and longitude into his own journal, copied the rough sketch map and made cryptic notes of the text, pondering it for clues that might lead or guide him. Then, quite deliberately, he cut out the pages from Fuller's own journal and held them one at a time over the fire, letting them crinkle and brown, then catch and flare before he dropped them and watched them curl and blacken. He stirred the ashes to dust with a stick before he was satisfied.
The last of the four journals was only partially filled, and contained a detailed description of a caravan route running from "the blood-soaked lands where Mzilikazils evil impis hold sway" eastwards five hundred miles or more "to where the reeking ships of the traders surely wait to welcome the poor souls who survive the hazards of this infamous road'. I have followed the road as far as the eastern rampart of mountains, and always the evidence of the passing of the caravans is there for all the world to see. That grisly evidence which I have come to know so well, the bleaching bones and the circling vultures. Is there not a corner of this savage continent which is free from the ravages of the traders? " These revelations would interest Robyn more than they did him. Zouga glanced through them swiftly and then marked them for her attention. There was a great deal on slavery and the traders, a hundred pages or more and then the penultimate entry. We have today come up with a caravan of slaves, winding through the hilly country towards the east. I have counted the miserable victims from afar, using the telescope and there are almost a hundred of them, mostly half-grown children and young women. They are yoked together in pairs with forked tree trunks about their necks in the usual manner. The slave-masters are black men, I have been unable to descry either Arabs or men of European extraction amongst them. Although they wear no tribal insignia, no plumes nor regalia, I have no doubt they are Amandebele, for their physique is distinctive, and they come from.
the direction of that tyrant Mzilikazi's kingdom. They are furthermore armed with the broad bladed stabbing spear and long ox-hide shields of that people, while two or three of them carry trade muskets. At this moment they are encamped not more than a league from where I lie, and in the dawn they will continue their fateful journey towards the east where the Arab and Portuguese slave-masters no doubt wait to purchase the miserable human cattle and load them like cargo for the cruel voyage half across the world. God has spoken to me, clearly I have heard his voice as he enjoined me to go down, and, like his sword, cut down the ungodly, free the slaves and minister to the meek and the innocent.
Joseph is with me, that true and trusted companion of the years, and he will be well able to serve my second gun. His marksmanship is not of the best, but he has courage and God will be with us."
The next entry was the last. Zouga had come to the end of the four journals. God's ways are wonderful and mysterious, passing all understanding. He lifteth up and he casteth down. With Joseph beside me I went down, as God had commanded, to the camp of the slave-masters. We fell upon them, even as the Israelites fell upon the Philistines. At first it seemed that we must prevail for the ungodly fled before us. Then God in all his knowing wisdom deserted us.
One of the ungodly leapt upon Joseph while he was reloading, and though I put a ball through his chest he impaled poor Joseph from breast bone to spine with that terrible spear, before himself falling dead. Alone I carried on the fight, God's fight, and the slavemasters scattered into the forest before my wrath. Then one of them turned and at extreme range fired his musket in my direction. The ball struck me in the hip. I managed, I do not know how, to drag myself away before the slave-masters returned to slay me. They did not attempt to follow me, and I have regained the shelter which I left to make the attempt. However, I am sorely smitten and reduced to dire straits. I have managed to remove the musket ball from my own hip, but I fear
the bone is cracked through and I am crippled. In addition I have lost both my firearms, Joseph's musket lies with him where he fell, and I was so badly hurt as to be unable to carry my weapon off the field. I sent the woman back to find them, but they have been carried away by the slave-traders. My remaining porters, seeing the state to which I have been reduced and knowing that I could not prevent it, have all deserted, but not before they had looted the camp and carried away almost everything of value, not excluding my medicine chest. Only the woman remains.
I was angry at first when she attached herself to my party, but now I see God's hand in this, for although she is a heathen, yet she is loyal and true beyond all others, now that Joseph is dead. What is a man in this cruel land without a musket or quinine? Is there a lesson in this for me and posterity, a lesson that God has chosen me to teach? Can a white man live here? Will he not always be the alien, and will Africa tolerate him once he has lost his weapons and expended his medicines? " Then a single poignant cry of agony. Oh God, has this all been in vain? I came to bring your Word and nobody has listened to my voice. I came to change the ways of the wicked and nothing is changed. I came to open a way for Christianity, and no Christian has followed me. Please, my God, give me a sign that I have not followed the wrong road to a false destination."
Zouga leaned back and rubbed his eyes with the heels of both hands. He found himself deeply moved, his eyes stinging not only from fatigue.
Fuller Ballantyne was an easy man to hate, but a hard man to despise.
Robyn chose the place with care. The secluded pools on the river, away from the main camp, where nobody could overlook or overhear them. She chose the time, in the heat of midday, when most of the Hottentots and all the porters would be asleep in the shade. She had given Fuller five drops of the precious laudanum to quiet him, and left him with the Mashona girl and Juba to care for him while she went down the hill to Zouga.