The Missionary's Wife

by Tim Jeal

‘I regret all deaths, natives and settlers,’ murmured Francis, relieved but still wary. ‘I hope today’s events will make Mponda keener to oblige us.’

  Haslam said scornfully, ‘Some men aren’t cowed by force.’

  ‘But they respond to appeals.’ Francis smiled encouragingly. ‘Mponda will agree to go home if you tell him there’ll be no reprisals. He’ll believe what you say.’ Francis paused. ‘Can he read?’ Haslam nodded. ‘Then write to him tonight, and I’ll find a way to get your letter to him in the morning.’

  ‘Understand this, Vaughan. I’ll refuse to meet him if you send soldiers to escort me. I won’t be used by you to trick him.’

  ‘There’ll be no double-crossing.’

  ‘You’re quite right, Captain. But do you know why there’ll be no double-crossing?’ Robert seemed amused by Francis’s silence. ‘It’s because I’ll be taking my wife with me and no one else.’

  ‘That’s mad!’ gasped Francis, dismayed to find his knees shaking. ‘Africans aren’t disciplined like white troops.’

  The missionary smiled blandly. ‘Mrs Haslam has asked to come. She says if she’s with me, Mponda’s men will know you can’t intend treachery.’ Haslam eyed Francis sadly. ‘I’m not a fool, Vaughan. I know you mean to follow my tracks when I go to meet him – you and your assassins. If Mponda dies, his men surrender: you think that’s your best chance, don’t you? So what would it matter if you hit me too?’

  Francis stared at him, appalled. ‘That’s a lie. Mrs Haslam can’t think that I’d murder you unless she goes too. I don’t believe it.’

  The missionary’s face had become deathly pale. ‘How do you presume to know my wife’s thoughts?’

  ‘Because … because I know she thinks …’

  ‘Thinks you honourable?’ Haslam’s smile became a sneer.

  Francis said, ‘Did Simon tell you?’

  ‘Tell me what?’ Again that cold mockery.

  ‘That I love your wife,’ declared Francis.

  ‘No, sir, he didn’t. She told me, this morning.’

  Francis’s mouth hung open. ‘Is that why you think I might kill you? So I could have her afterwards?’

  ‘Yes,’ he hissed.

  Francis looked at Haslam’s suffering face and shuddered. Could the man have any idea of the guilt Clara must be feeling in order to have made her offer? For no other reason would she be prepared to risk her life.

  As Robert Haslam walked away, Francis watched him helplessly. Was there any way he could stop Clara? Everything he knew about her character made him fear there was not.

  *

  Francis arrived, to see the ropes already in place on the branch of a spreading kachere tree. Although the sky was inky black, the distant fires threw a ghostly light on the proceedings. Joined wrist to wrist, the two Matabele sidled along like crabs so that both could keep to the twisting game path and avoid prickly grasses on either side.

  As they gazed incuriously at the pair of ropes and nooses, Francis caught his breath. A sight he had relied upon to breed immediate terror meant nothing to them. Not a thing. But why should it? Clearly they had never seen a hanging. Francis had said ‘no torture’ to Fynn because he had thought that if threatened with hanging, the prisoners would reach the breaking point long before their feet left the ground. Now they would have to be half throttled before they knew the meaning of those innocuous-looking ropes.

  While the men were untied from each other and had their hands and ankles pinioned, Fynn talked to them in their own language. They remained unconcerned and listless, retreating further into a world of their own. Francis’s old regimental MO in India had often regaled the mess with tales of botched hangings. When the drop had been too long, heads had come off; when too short, death had been by strangulation. In such cases, he claimed to have heard heartbeats twenty minutes after men had been suspended. Francis found he had forgotten the only really important fact. How long could people live if hanged without a drop?

  ‘Let’s get ’em up now, Sergeant,’ he rasped.

  Barnes adjusted the nooses. Almost at once, the branch began to creak as troopers heaved on the twin pulleys. Francis heard someone say, ‘Like a bleedin’ Christmas tree’. The prisoners were writhing as they rotated slowly. Their bodies, which had looked so lithe and light a few moments before, now seemed incalculably heavy. One hunched his chin deep into his shoulders; the other’s neck had somehow been bent right back. Francis was aghast as the tribesman’s whole body jerked convulsively like a hooked fish.

  ‘Get ahold of him,’ yelled Fynn. But before anyone moved, there was a muffled crack. The man became limp. When lifted down, though still alive, he could not move a finger.

  ‘Broke his own goddamn neck,’ muttered Fynn in stunned admiration.

  An awful choking noise was coming from the throat of the other man. Francis wanted to block his ears but forced clenched fists deeper into his pockets. And I was the one who hated the idea of torture. He bore the noise for almost a minute longer, before yelling, ‘Take him down, Sergeant.’

  The man was still gasping and retching, as Fynn peppered him with question after question. Again and again he waited for an answer. In vain.

  ‘Pull him up,’ groaned Francis.

  The process was repeated twice more before Francis could bear it no longer and declared the experiment at an end. The survivor’s loincloth had slipped, and his penis dragged in the grit as he sank to the earth on naked buttocks.

  ‘They beat us real good, huh?’ grunted Fynn. He pointed to the other Matabele, motionless but still breathing. ‘Can’t just leave ’im, Vaughan.’ He touched his holster meaningfully.

  ‘I agree,’ blurted out Francis. ‘The second one stays our prisoner. That means alive.’

  As he was passing through the picket lines, Francis heard a shot and, after several seconds, another. On the point of running back, he paused. The deed was done and could not be changed. He tried to believe that Fynn had used two bullets on the same man, but his doubts remained. Shame bore down on him. ‘A gentleman,’ his mother had often said, ‘is a man who would never knowingly inflict pain upon another human being.’

  *

  An orange moon faded to dull silver as it drifted above Mponda’s hill. Gazing at it, Clara felt calmer than she had for days. Now that she was going with her husband on his mission, she no longer reproached herself. Their account was in balance again. He would always blame her, of course, but there were things she would never forgive him – among them, letting Mponda trust him, almost as if he himself were Christ.

  In the small hours she lay sleepless, while Robert wrote by candlelight. Even at this eleventh hour, she could not bring herself to ask him whether he expected to live or die. The missionary who died was no longer needed by God. As Robert’s pen scratched across the paper, she wondered what pleasure he had ever got out of his life and whether he felt regrets. She doubted it. To give and not to count the cost had been his golden rule. Did he think of Philemon now, or Hannah and Mabo, and did he miss them? It shocked her not to know.

  After she had confessed her affair to Robert, he had been dumbfounded, having imagined that her pious upbringing would have made such a betrayal impossible. Never sensual himself, he had detected no sensuality in her. Grief and bitterness had washed through him slowly, as if numbed nerves were recovering one by one.

  He had told her that a picture in an anti-slavery pamphlet, which he had seen in boyhood, had never left him: a howling Negro in the Deep South running from a white man with a gun. Now, once again, white men with guns were breaking his heart. How could she love any man prepared to exact vengeance on simple tribesmen for defending their homes? Clara had not argued, but in her mind she had defended her lover. Francis had not come to Africa by choice and had never condoned the settlers’ brutality. Instead he had forbidden the burning of grain and had begged Robert to help him save lives.

  When Clara fell asleep, she dreamed that she had been hit by a bullet and that Francis was holding h
er. She awakened before dawn, longing to tell him that her feelings were unchanged but guessing there would be no chance before she left. Watch fires still glowed on Mponda’s hill, and a cool night breeze made Clara shiver. She knew the danger she faced but, despite her fear, could not risk living the rest of her life believing, if Robert died, that her presence could have saved him.

  CHAPTER 22

  Fynn’s scouts had been out at dawn, quartering the whole valley in their search for fresh tracks, and had summoned Francis to consider various ‘discoveries’. Barely four hundred yards from the camp, an ox had been driven along a game path by a barefooted man. Moist dung and pristine tracks established that the journey had been made during the night. Fynn deduced more: the driver was lame in his left foot and used a stick. Such a man would not have gone on a nocturnal excursion, reasoned the American, unless he had been taking supplies to the rebels.

  Even in the present situation, Francis took pleasure in the progress made by Fynn’s two newest scouts. Both were town boys. Arthur Winter, Francis’s erstwhile orderly, had been an assistant in a department store and had never even seen the countryside before joining the army. Fynn indicated to Francis that he should follow Arthur, who was soon pointing to a particular spot in the grass beside the path. Though Francis himself would have walked straight by, he now saw the clear impression made by the ball of a foot.

  Arthur coughed diffidently. ‘You can see the toes too, sir, splayed out like before jumping.’

  Francis knelt down and could indeed see the toe marks. And there on the opposite side of the path was another indentation, this time made by a heel – exactly the kind of imprint that would be left by a man landing after a leap. Someone had jumped across the path in order not to leave his footprints on the trodden earth.

  ‘Follow me, please, sir,’ asked Winter, delighted to have his commanding officer’s undivided attention.

  Just yards away, similar prints showed that this person had not been alone in crossing the path. Arthur Winter’s excitement was mixed with alarm as he pointed to more and more footprints. Francis merely smiled and remarked, ‘Well done, Corporal. I see you’re learning fast.’

  Fynn snarled, ‘You gotta believe this, Vaughan: there’s a second force out there, and they’re spoilin’ for somethin’.’

  Francis said sharply, ‘Were none of these tracks made by Mponda’s men?’

  Arthur ran an anxious hand through his cropped hair. ‘We looked all over, sir, but we couldn’t find no tracks comin’ from there.’ He jerked his head towards the chief’s hill.

  What Francis had most dreaded was coming true: there really was another force close by. ‘Are they made by Matabele?’ he asked, nodding towards the tracks, praying the answer would be no.

  ‘Some may be,’ replied Fynn. He produced a few harmless looking fronds from his pocket. ‘The Matabele use this plant’s leaves to stopper their beer pots. It’s not a common plant around here.’

  ‘Take a sniff, sir,’ suggested Arthur, holding out a leaf to Francis.

  The smell of beer was faint but undeniable. Francis said to Fynn, ‘You want to leave now and so do I, but we must wait till Haslam’s had his chat with Mponda.’

  ‘You’ll let Haslam risk his neck while these guys are prowlin’ all over and there’s an impi out there?’ Fynn was shocked.

  ‘Your scouts can follow him closely.’

  ‘For Christ’s sake, Vaughan, they’ll jus’ get a great view when the Holy Joe gets his head blown off.’

  ‘Nonsense,’ cried Francis. ‘Mponda dotes on Haslam. He’s going to lay out the red carpet.’

  ‘How come he’s expecting him?’

  Francis smiled serenely, ‘I’ve been lucky. The pickets captured an old man at first light. He’s on his way to Mponda with a letter from Haslam.’

  ‘The chief can read?’

  ‘His own language, yes.’

  ‘Why won’t your old nigger toss the letter away?’

  Francis grinned. ‘We’ve held on to something he’s fond of.’

  ‘His loincloth?’ scoffed the American.

  ‘His son. And some goats.’

  Arthur and the other young scout laughed, while Fynn remained grim-faced. ‘Did the pickets blindfold the son of a bitch before letting him in?’

  ‘Of course. I promise you that Mponda won’t learn a thing about the camp from him.’ Francis guessed that Fynn was uneasy because he thought the column’s only African interpreter spoke English too badly to translate accurately. ‘The old man understood us, and we understood him,’ soothed Francis. ‘He said Mponda can’t be killed by bullets because he’s drunk the white man’s holy medicine. And this is the bad bit: he thinks everyone who follows Mponda will be bulletproof too.’

  ‘Thanks a lot, Jesus,’ sighed Fynn.

  Later that morning, Francis went outside the perimeter to make a drawing of the graves of Matthew Arnot and the others. As a child, Francis had often drawn and painted for pleasure. Nowadays he rarely drew anything except for money. His sketches of military subjects had often been bought for a few guineas by magazines like The Illustrated London News and Black & White. He meant to send today’s drawings as gifts to the dead men’s next of kin.

  On returning to camp, Francis spotted Clara watching a party of hussars building a barricade out of earth-filled sacks. Since, by some miracle, Haslam was not with her, Francis hurried over to her with a pounding heart.

  ‘Please don’t go with him,’ he implored.

  ‘I must.’ Her voice was small and tight.

  ‘You could die in front of me. I couldn’t bear it.’ His throat ached with the effort of not shouting.

  ‘Not here, Francis,’ she whispered. ‘If Robert dies, people will say you sent him to his death.’

  ‘You mean you’re risking your life to stop tittle-tattle?’

  ‘Try to understand,’ she moaned. ‘White men hate endangering their women. Every native knows that. So if I’m seen at Robert’s side, they’ll know he can’t be trying any tricks. No one will fire at us.’

  ‘Clara, Clara,’ he groaned. ‘Will you never stop trying to do the right thing?’

  ‘It’s hard to explain it to you, Francis, but I know if I don’t do this, you and I will never be happy again.’

  Francis pointed to a man near the Maxim pit on the other side of the camp. ‘Suppose you were standing where that man is. Would I know your sex? Not a chance – unless you happened to be balancing a pot on your head.’ He kicked at the grass. ‘If I had any sense, I’d stop this whole wretched business.’

  ‘And condemn hundreds to death?’

  Her faith in Haslam mortified Francis. He said gently, ‘Your husband may fail. Mponda may tell him to go to hell. I can’t bear to be responsible for harming you.’

  ‘It’s my decision … nothing to do with you.’

  ‘Is it really?’ he said dryly. ‘Guilt for what we’ve done doesn’t come into it, I suppose.’

  ‘No,’ she said, stretching out a hand.

  He held it for a moment, certain that she was lying to make things easier for him. His brave, generous, obstinate Clara. ‘I love you.’

  ‘I love you too.’ She squeezed his fingers. ‘Francis, will you do something for me?’ He nodded. ‘Promise not to follow us.’

  ‘If you really want that.’ But he knew, even as he spoke, that he would not be able to stay away while she was shot at. Somehow she had to be saved from herself. If only Haslam had insisted on going alone, how simple everything would have been.

  *

  At midday, Fynn came up to Francis while he was supervising the laying of mines filled with rock-blasting explosive. Elsewhere, Francis had ordered the scattering of broken bottles to slow down barefooted attackers, but Fynn was unimpressed by all his arrangements. He said brusquely, ‘Ever ask yourself why these spies keep comin’ so close and stayin’?’

  Francis frowned. Wasn’t the answer obvious? ‘To study our defences.’

  ‘But why send
so many scouts? A few could have told ’em about trenches and pits. We found spoor for risin’ eighty men.’

  ‘Perhaps they feel safer coming in strength.’ Francis was alarmed by the American’s persistence.

  ‘A lot of these fellers stay out there in the mopane woods all day long, just watchin’ us.’ Fynn raised a warning finger. ‘So don’ let Haslam go anyplace till I find out more.’

  ‘Of course not. I don’t want him harmed either.’ Since Francis liked and trusted Fynn, he had been thankful to learn that the second of the two Matabele prisoners had not been shot and was recovering under guard. It hurt Francis that Fynn appeared to think him ready to risk Haslam’s life unnecessarily, maybe for personal reasons. There was a moral core to the American’s nature, which, though well hidden, made Francis miserable to be misunderstood by him. Wanting to please Fynn before he set out, Francis promised to strike camp the moment Haslam had met Mponda. But Fynn was not pleased. With his grizzled hair and white-flecked beard, he reminded Francis of a truculent and brave old badger.

  ‘You should do it soon as I’m back, if I say so.’

  A few hours later, Fynn rode into the bush with his gun across his knees, vowing to identify the spies in the mopane woods. If they were having dealings with Mponda, or if they were part of a Matabele impi, he would shortly find out.

  Watching him leave with Arthur Winter and another of his young scouts, Francis experienced a sudden chill – less physical fear than superstitious dread. Was it possible, wondered Francis, that Nashu had sent him here not to destroy Mponda, as he had imagined, but to be destroyed by him?

  *

  Beyond the mopane woods, the ground sloped uphill steeply. Fynn and his two companions came to a belt of dark-foliaged trees, which were in turn replaced by thick bamboos. The ground was sodden and the air hot and steamy. Their horses’ ears were laid back as they slipped and slithered. Bamboos whipped across their forelegs, and the smell of elephant droppings made them snort with fear.

  At last the bamboos ended, and a moorland slope began. Tussocks of coarse grass made the going so rough that they dismounted to save their horses. Before them lay a deep valley, and beyond it blue hills. Until now, it had been easy to follow the tracks of the men who had spied on their camp. But here their footprints were lost in the boggy spaces between the tussocks. Hoping to find the spoor again on the far side of the valley, they hurried on, concealing themselves by descending in a shallow ravine, alongside a fast-flowing stream. Fynn took a metal cup from his saddle and, to amuse his companions, scooped a little gravel from the stream’s bed. Having picked out the loose stones and earth, he washed the rest, leaving a fine residue of iron ore at the bottom of the cup. After repeating this process several times, he swirled the tail of fine grit to one side. To the stupefaction of the young scouts, a few specks of gold appeared.