The Missionary's Wife

by Tim Jeal

  The next morning, Robert struggled up into the branches of a fig tree and saw what he took to be the count’s farmhouse, apparently unharmed, at the base of an ironstone ridge. Not long afterwards, they came across an outhouse, burned to the ground. The fire had been extinguished by rain, so its age was hard to judge, but Robert reckoned from the bulk of the ashes that it had been alight a day or two earlier. It came to him at once that the fire could have been used as a threat to drive the occupants from the house for fear of being burned alive.

  Some vultures flapped away on their great sooty wings. The birds had been feasting on two tribesmen who had been shot dead and still lay with their shields and spears beside them. The smell was vile. Cartridges were scattered in front of the house. By the door was a large pool of dried blood. Inside, trails of blood were everywhere: on the floor and on the walls, even splashed on the window glass. Robert shouted, ‘Anyone here?’ but his words died in the empty rooms. He followed a thicker trail of gore into the next room, where chairs and tables had been overturned. The place was littered with empty bottles, half-eaten tins, and ransacked boxes. Some rooms were half finished, with only a few floorboards laid across the joists. Clara thought of the high hopes the couple would have had when they started to build. A smashed sewing machine lay on the floor of the kitchen and, near it, a little silver gun that Clara remembered well.

  She ran outside, where Robert found her in tears. High in the trees, plantain-eaters were screeching.

  ‘Can we go?’ she implored.

  ‘I have to find them.’

  Robert stumbled upon two male servants at the back of the house. They had been sliced open and their intestines strewn around. A cloud of flies led his eye to a rocky slope. He forced himself to walk towards it. The count’s body lay pitched backward across a rock. His face and forehead had been blown away by his own gun. He must have fought till his last few cartridges. Three Africans lay a dozen yards away, so badly decomposed and gnawed by wild beasts that Robert abandoned any thought of burying them.

  A vulture, alighting in a misasa tree, drew him to an area of flattened elephant grass. And there she lay. Nina had been killed by a spear, which was still lodged in her back. She rested on her front, her fair curls looking as they had done when she was alive. He could not see her face and was glad. Her eyes and lips would have been eaten by termites. Butterflies clustered like flowers on a blackened arm. Several fingers had been severed to facilitate the theft of her rings. A sob formed in his throat as he recalled her lighthearted boasts. He hoped that her husband had died before knowing her fate.

  After reciting prayers from the burial service, he collected the couple’s personal papers for their next of kin. An episode that had seemed to last hours had actually been over in less than ten minutes.

  ‘We killed them by saying nothing,’ choked Clara.

  Robert did not answer. What could he say? It was very likely true. He knew there was no point now in going to Belingwe. The miners would have been murdered too. As for trying to survive in the bush, or attempting to travel directly to Bulawayo, both courses would be fatal. Their only realistic option was to return to Mponda’s kraal. At least they had friends there. And even if Mponda did not return for many months, the fact of his former support for the mission might still afford a measure of protection.

  In the swaying cart, Clara wept herself to sleep. She dreamed she was a child, breakfasting in the nursery after her mother had dressed her. As always, her mother’s presence was soothing. Later, she was in chapel, breathing in the reassuring smell of horsehair hassocks and polished wood while the preacher droned. But when she woke, she was cold and wet, and knew that she was going to die horribly. Rain was dripping from the cart’s leather hood in streams, while the bush spread drably all around as far as the eye could see.

  PART THREE

  CHAPTER 16

  When Simon saw two columns of white men riding towards the village, he ran home joyfully to put on a clean shirt and his khaki short trousers. Although they were not like the men in tall fur hats he had seen in one of his master’s books, he knew they were soldiers because they had guns. Some wore dark-blue tunics with flaps of braid across their chests; the rest were clad in earth-coloured jackets and wide-brimmed hats.

  As he raced home, Simon was angry to see women and children running from their huts in terror. It was insulting and silly. Why would these white men want to hurt them? Had master ever tried to do that? It was true that the fat bwana and his policemen could be brutal, but they did not kill people – as Nashu and Makufa had tried to do to him.

  Simon observed the soldiers from behind some mongongo bushes, and an hour slipped by while he watched them putting up their tents in straight lines and stacking their weapons in mysterious pointed piles. Everything intrigued him. Why, for instance, when their horses were taken off to graze, were three or four men always sent along to guard them? They must surely know that there were no warriors in the village. Perhaps they had heard that enemies were approaching from somewhere else?

  The white men owned two big guns, which had each been drawn by six oxen. Several smaller guns had been pulled by mules, and these were being taken to the corners of the camp and placed in shallow pits. Men were cutting down thornbushes and placing them like walls around the tents. Simon felt sad that these men had not come before his master’s departure. Perhaps they might still find and protect him.

  Simon was wondering whether to seek out the soldiers’ leader, when he heard behind him what he took to be a snake slithering in the bushes. As he turned, a large hand clamped over his mouth and another lifted him into the air. He tried to bite and kick, but the hand tightened so hard that he let himself go limp as a matter of self-preservation. The man was very black and smelled of fish. A Makalaka. Simon felt faint with humiliation. A stinking dog was carrying him off just as he was about to gain the help of the white men.

  *

  Captain Francis Vaughan ended his inspection of the sick-horse lines. Red-billed tickbirds were feeding on the animals’ backs, so he gave the troopers in charge a dressing-down for poor grooming, but his heart was not in it. Over and over again his eyes returned to the path that led from the village to the dam. He was haunted by his memory of the missionary’s young wife vanishing into the night beside a white-haired old native. Unless she was soon walking towards him up that path, he would have to assume the worst.

  It was less than an hour since he had sent Fynn and six men to the mission to collect Mrs Haslam and her husband – too soon to draw firm conclusions, but in his heart Francis already sensed that they were dead. To end up a mutilated corpse was a rough punishment for nothing more sinful than a little ignorance. Francis screwed up his vivid blue eyes. With good news to report, Fynn would have sent a man back to him at once.

  Francis was ashamed to recall it now, but when he had first heard about the rebellion in Mashonaland, he had been overjoyed. His ivory hunting with Fynn had netted less money than he had hoped, and he had been on the point of arranging a transfer from the 9th Hussars to a cheaper, Indian regiment. Now, on active service, he would enjoy higher pay and better chances for promotion. He was lucky that the 9th had been the only regiment of imperial cavalry in Natal. His first action after receiving confirmation of the posting had been to telegraph Heywood Fynn, hoping to grab the American for the regiment. He had done even better, securing him as a scout for his own squadron.

  On his return to the tented camp, Francis saw Fynn and his men trotting back through the people’s maize gardens. There was no sign of Haslam and his wife. Instead a tall black man and a large woman were walking close to Fynn’s horse – doubtless they would soon be giving him a revolting account of the couple’s murder.

  As they reached the picket line, Francis recognized the gangling fellow as the elderly preacher who had come to greet Clara Haslam those months ago. ‘Get on with it,’ he wanted to shout. The old man was limping along steadily as if he had all day, which he probably did.
r />   ‘Where are the Haslams?’ roared Francis as Fynn dismounted.

  ‘The old guy speaks English.’

  ‘They are gone to Mungora,’ volunteered Philemon.

  Francis eyed him closely. ‘Did they say when they’d be back here?’

  ‘Maybe they will go south and not come here again.’

  Fynn sucked in his cheeks. ‘They sure won’t like what they see in Belingwe.’

  Francis moved closer to Philemon. ‘If they do choose to return here, when will they be back?’

  ‘Mungora is six days’ journey. Already they are gone nine.’

  ‘So they could be here in three or four days?’

  ‘It is possible.’

  Francis was relieved that they were apparently alive, but disappointed not to be able to take them with him. Now they would probably be tracked down and killed somewhere else.

  ‘Three days, four days,’ grunted Fynn. ‘With niggers, that could mean any damn thing.’

  Francis slapped him on the back. ‘Come on, Fynn. How many kaffirs have you met like this one?’ He indicated Philemon’s patched frock coat and uneven chalk-striped trousers.

  ‘If he looked like the goddamn Pope, Vaughan, we still couldn’t wait.’

  ‘We can spare three days,’ snapped Francis, immediately irritated with himself for speaking of future plans in public. He glanced at the woman.

  ‘Who is she?’

  ‘Mponda’s queen.’

  Francis frowned. ‘Is that a joke? I suppose she’s told you where her husband is?’

  ‘I haven’t whipped her yet.’ Fynn grinned through his beard and raised a hand. ‘Now, that is a joke.’

  The old African’s head bobbed up and down excitably. ‘She’s a Christian woman, sir. She knows nothing.’

  Francis muttered to Fynn, ‘What do you think she knows?’

  The American shrugged. ‘Maybe he’s got a dozen wives. Some he talks to, some he don’t. I’ll talk some more to her.’

  ‘Well, do it now.’ Francis smiled at Philemon. ‘You can go home, old man.’

  As Fynn walked away with Chizuva, Francis wished he were less dependent on the American – and not just for his linguistic skills. Though Francis had engaged native ‘friendlies’ as trackers, none had ever rivalled Fynn in drawing accurate deductions from different types of evidence. The American’s present hunch was that Mponda had left here three weeks earlier and would soon join forces with Mucheri, chief of the land around Belingwe. Mucheri had burned Belingwe and killed all the prospectors, with some men vanishing as if they had never existed – tossed down mine shafts and blown to bits with dynamite. In the hotel room where Fynn and Francis first met Clara, they had found twenty charred bodies, male and female, roped together and burned alive.

  Francis was returning from an inspection of the outposts when Fynn came up and told him he had let the queen go. ‘The old guy was right; she knows nothing.’ Fynn’s grey eyes searched Francis’s. ‘Reckon you’d want to stay on here to save an ugly woman?’

  Francis felt his cheeks burn. ‘We’re talking about her husband too,’ he insisted.

  Fynn pulled a long face. ‘I just hope those savages don’t reach Charter before we do.’

  Francis was not impressed by this elephantine hint that he would be endangering white lives if he stayed on here for a few more days. There would be delays later, regardless of how long they stayed here.

  Francis said affably, ‘You know what’s wrong with you, Fynn?’

  ‘I don’t always agree with you?’

  ‘You let your prejudices warp your judgement.’

  ‘The hell I do.’

  ‘You hate missionaries.’

  ‘What of it?’

  ‘It’s stopped you using your brain. We can’t afford not to wait for Haslam.’

  ‘He’ll pray for us?’

  ‘He’ll know where the chief’s gone.’

  ‘Chiefs don’t trust missionaries,’ snorted Fynn, shaking his mane of grizzled hair.

  ‘You’re too cynical. The old chap said the queen’s a Christian. Why shouldn’t the chief be one too?’

  Fynn blew strands of beard away from his mouth. ‘Yeah, but what does being a Christian mean to a chief?’

  ‘You tell me.’

  ‘That Haslam gave him a shotgun and two hundred cartridges.’

  ‘Pure prejudice,’ said Francis coolly, starting to walk towards the mess tent. But Fynn’s barbed remark about Clara had stuck in his flesh. If she really had been ugly, would he have found so many reasons for staying on? As a boy the chivalrous tales of Froissart and Malory had been his bedtime reading. Even now he was susceptible to damsels in distress, especially the haunting dark-haired kind favoured by Dante Gabriel Rossetti.

  *

  Soon after his capture, Simon was blindfolded and forced to walk for a whole day with only a little water and some sorghum stems to chew. As he was dragged along by a leather halter, which chafed his neck, he stopped himself from crying by thinking of Christ’s crown of thorns and the spear in his side. His feet were cut by sharp stones, but he was scarcely aware of it. He knew this plain well from his days as a herdboy, and once or twice he heard a flute and tried to pause; but always he was dragged onwards. Although the sun’s heat on his skin gave him an idea of the direction in which he was being taken, when the blindfold was finally removed he did not know where he was.

  Fires had recently been lit. Crude, misshapen grass huts, like those built by Bushmen, were ranged around the opening of a cave at the base of a rocky hill. The men squatting by the fires were either Venda or their Makalaka servants. An ominous figure wearing a grass skirt and a leopardskin cap emerged from the cave. Fearing that his death was close, Simon closed his eyes and said the Lord’s Prayer. When he opened them, he saw Nashu’s face, framed by twists of greasy hair that fell like lizards’ tails to his shoulders. The nganga folded his arms and gazed at Simon with unblinking eyes before indicating to the boy that he should squat. Expecting an axe-blow at the base of his skull, Simon prayed again.

  ‘I want to talk with the leader of the white soldiers.’ The strange high-pitched voice continued: ‘You will help me, Ganda.’

  ‘Help you?’ faltered Simon.

  ‘You know his tongue. You must tell him I know where he can find Mponda.’

  ‘If you tell me, I can tell him.’ Though dazed with relief, Simon was shaking.

  ‘Fool! How can I trust you?’ He lashed Simon across the cheek with his giraffe-tail whisk. ‘Your master loves Mponda. I must tell the white man myself.’

  ‘Then why did your dog drag me here?’

  ‘You must bring me something from the white man, something to show he will not harm me. A paper with his God’s words on it. A ring of yellow metal or some other fetish. Deceive me, and I will kill your master.’

  ‘My master is here?’ cried Simon thankfully. Again he felt the lash of the giraffe tail.

  ‘Silence. Nobody questions Nashu.’

  At dawn, Simon, again blindfolded, was led away by the same Makalaka.

  *

  During the second day at Mponda’s kraal, the camp was hit by an unusually heavy storm. The latrines flooded, and no amount of sand taken to the horse lines and spread there made them any less slippery. Francis was sitting under an umbrella in his sodden tent, writing up his staff diary, when his orderly, Corporal Winter, brought in a bedraggled boy and a large, very black native who had been spotted near the outposts. The boy was wearing a shirt and khaki trousers. Francis was about to shout for Musa, his translator, when the boy spoke to him in English. Francis was soon listening to Simon’s account of his capture and release.

  Nobody said a word until Corporal Winter blurted out, ‘Think it’s some kind of trick, sir?’

  Francis said sharply to Simon, ‘You say this man is an nganga. Then why does he want to betray his own chief’s hiding place?’

  ‘Nashu hates him. His daughter was one of the chief’s rejected wives. She killed hers
elf.’

  ‘The witch doctor wants revenge?’

  ‘Yes, sah.’

  He frowned at Simon. ‘How can I be sure you’re not in league with him and trying to lead me into a trap?’

  ‘Nashu tried to kill me. Master will tell you.’

  ‘I look forward to it,’ remarked Francis dryly. As Simon started to cry, Francis noticed cuts on the boy’s neck and cheeks. He said gently, ‘I’ve decided to trust you. You will be given a watch and the Queen’s photograph for your nganga. You and your friend must have something to eat. Take them to the cookhouse, corporal.’

  Francis flicked at the air with his riding crop and laughed to himself. When would be the best time to tell Fynn? Perhaps when he next started to moan about being delayed here. ‘While you’ve been fooling about with your tracks and footprints, I’ve found out where the chief is hiding.’ Fynn’s face would be a treat.

  CHAPTER 17

  As the light grew brighter, Clara saw Mponda’s crag and could not help being moved by the familiar landmark. Since the rains, the hard and barren plain with its rash of anthills had vanished under a sea of green, gashed here and there by the dark earth of freshly dug gardens. The water in the dam shone like silver.

  A trumpet sounded from beyond the maize gardens: a tripping flow of notes that sang in her ears. Could it really mean what she imagined? A great bubble of emotion swelled within her. As they came down from the ridge and saw the neat rows of tents, she wept. They were going to live. Surely they were going to live.