by Tim Jeal
In fact, the missionary received the news of Fynn’s death calmly. Not so Clara, whose hands shot up to her mouth. ‘How did it happen?’
‘A trap. He might have escaped if he hadn’t tried to save his companion.’
Tears brimmed in her eyes. ‘Who was with him?’
‘Corporal Winter.’
‘How horrible!’
Robert Haslam sighed. ‘Sadly, Clara, those who live by the sword really do die by it.’
Francis said sharply, ‘They’re not the only ones, sir. When a chief loses faith in his mentor, he murders him.’
‘What point are you making, Captain?’
The missionary’s bland manner struck Francis as contemptuous. ‘Mponda may blame you for failing to stop my attack on his stronghold.’
Haslam shrugged. ‘I’ve no means of knowing until I speak to him.’
‘Then how can it be safe for your wife to go with you? This isn’t speculation any more. The chief has agreed to meet you.’
The missionary raised bushy eyebrows. ‘Do soldiers expect to be safe when they do their duty?’
‘Of course not,’ snapped Francis.
‘Then why should Christ’s soldiers expect anything different?’
‘Soldiers don’t take their wives to the front line,’ cried Francis.
‘Africa is our front line, sir – the whole country. I can’t tell Mrs Haslam where her duty lies. She is the best judge of that.’
Clara said quietly, ‘Mr Fynn’s death makes it even more important for Robert to meet Mponda. I know I can give him a better chance.’
‘I’m afraid I forbid you to go,’ said Francis.
‘Then I won’t go, sir,’ announced the missionary.
Francis’s cheeks were burning. ‘What compels you to endanger your wife’s life?’
‘You misunderstand, Captain. Mrs Haslam is a free woman entitled to do what she thinks is right. How can I deny her that?’
Francis moved closer. ‘Don’t fool yourself, Haslam. She’s only going with you out of guilt.’
The missionary clapped his hands, almost with glee. ‘Christians are supposed to feel guilt, sir. They seek redemption for it by prayer and good deeds.’
Francis turned to Clara. ‘You’re forcing me to call it off.’
‘Francis,’ she whispered, ‘you can’t place more value on my life than on the lives of all your soldiers.’
Francis met her gaze for several seconds, but she did not waver. He knew her too well to suppose that there was a chance of changing her mind.
With nothing more to be said, he remarked that he would return in an hour to wish them farewell.
*
The bush was thick and tangled; and as Francis and the members of his small patrol crawled forward, thorns pierced their breeches and tore their hands. Working around termite mounds and across streambeds, they struggled to keep in sight the three tiny figures almost half a mile ahead of them. Francis dropped his field glasses with a cry as a puff adder slithered past, inches from his face.
At last the Haslams and their guide reached a belt of trees and disappeared from view, allowing their pursuers to get up and run. Francis used a helio mirror to signal to his troops a thousand yards away, permitting them to come forward. Entering the wood, he gestured to his men to move cautiously. If the messenger saw any bolting antelope, he might decide to guide the Haslams no further.
Beyond the mopane trees, low hills rose on either side of a valley that narrowed to a gorge, blocked at its far end by limestone cliffs. Shadows in the cliffs could indicate caves, and already Francis saw how easy it would be for the chief to cut off anyone entering the valley. Fearfully he scanned the hills in case men were moving among the stunted trees that pimpled the slopes. In the baking valley bottom, acacias trembled in mirages, and the three human figures blurred and dissolved in the haze. Francis hated losing sight of the Haslams for a moment, but he was relieved to know that when the chief’s guide looked back, he too would see everything undulating as if under water.
Finding the absence of game curious, Francis kept glancing at the hills, wanting to summon more men but telling himself it would be criminal to panic and give orders that might stop the vital meeting between Haslam and the chief from taking place.
As the valley became narrower, instinct told Francis that he must move forward to be within sprinting distance of the Haslams by the time they entered the limestone cul-de-sac. Hemmed in by rocks and thorn trees, he kept looking from side to side. Suddenly his heart rose up to choke him. Dark shapes were moving parallel on the slopes to his left. Unable to see anybody straight ahead, he waved his men on, dashing forward with Sergeant Barnes and his trumpeter beside him.
When Francis sighted the Haslams again, they were much closer than he had expected, perhaps two hundred paces away. He signalled to his men to get down and raised his field glasses. A tall and stately African was walking towards Robert and Clara, the heat haze making him appear to float in the air. Mponda must have stepped from a cave in the limestone. Francis scanned the rock face in case other men were creeping out, but the chief was alone. He had kept his word.
Francis lowered his glasses and felt horribly ashamed. The situation was pitiful. Because he had not trusted the chief and had followed the Haslams, warriors had been sent to protect Mponda. Francis could see it all very clearly now. Quite soon the warriors would attack him and his hussars, and if by then Robert was talking to Mponda, the meeting would be broken off in anger, and Robert and Clara would be blamed for leading the chief’s enemies into the valley. They might even be killed for it.
Unable to think or even look about him for several seconds, Francis suddenly came to a decision and indicated that he wanted his men to move closer to the missionary.
*
Standing magisterially in the shadow of the limestone cliff, Mponda was as much at home among these rocks as in his own kraal. Clara could not take her eyes off him. His sudden appearance had been magical – not that there was anything insubstantial about him. He stood as solidly as a statue in his lionskin cloak. Beneath a headband of white and black beads, his face was careworn, and yet he was plainly relieved to see Robert. After Herida’s death, Clara had blotted out her memories of Mponda’s affection for her husband; but when the two men clasped each other, she could not help being moved.
Mponda stepped back and said in Venda to Robert, ‘Long ago you told me that soldiers are evil. Why do you live with them now, Umfundisi?’
‘To make peace between you all.’
‘What do you wish me to do?’
‘Go home to your kraal.’
Mponda sighed. ‘Will the soldiers go home, Umfundisi?’
‘No, my friend, they will not. But if you kill them, more will surely come. One day you will have to learn to live in peace with them.’
Mponda said gravely, ‘Some things are worse than death. To throw one’s people’s pride to the hyenas is worse.’
‘Ask yourself this, Mponda. Do dead men have pride? Do fatherless children have it?’
Clara had been concentrating so hard on understanding what was being said that she was unaware of anything amiss until Mponda pointed in fury. A band of warriors had broken from cover, and its leaders were already springing towards them. A spear landed with a metallic clatter. Some of the attackers had guns and were firing as they ran.
‘Hide, Clara,’ roared Robert.
Mponda reeled sideways, clutching his shoulder, as Clara began to run. She turned for a moment, looking for Robert, but he was not following. She reached a fallen tree, vaulted it, and crouched down, forcing her body in under the curve of the trunk. She refused to imagine what fate awaited her.
*
As Nashu ran, his body felt weightless as the wind. I am the hunting dog that never stops until he kills; I am the leopard that leaps on his prey from a tree. His heart was throbbing wildly, like a drum beating out the madjukwa roll: the call to the spirits. Revenge is the sweetest of all pleasures wh
en the gods delight in it. Nashu raised his spear and shook it. Mponda and the white umfundisi had wronged him and killed his daughter. They had also betrayed the ancestors. Now they would die.
The nganga and his most devoted followers had been tracking the soldiers since they had left Mponda’s kraal. Nashu had known in his bones that the white leader would try to use the umfundisi as bait to catch Mponda. Otherwise why bring the troublemaker along with him? A secret meeting would surely take place between the chief and his teacher. Fearing he might never get a better chance to kill them both, Nashu had thrown a ring of spies around the camp, watching it constantly, day and night. At last he had been rewarded.
On this long-awaited day, it had come as no surprise to Nashu that some of the soldiers had followed a long way behind the teacher and his wife. Of course white men would have to be on hand when Mponda met his umfundisi. How else could they hope to capture the chief? But the soldiers would not dare follow too close. If the chief’s men spotted them, Mponda would not come to the meeting place. It delighted Nashu that the white men would have to keep their distance. This would give his own men enough time to race ahead and strike first. No white man without his horse could outpace a Venda warrior in the bush. Nashu knew that if his men failed to arrive before the soldiers, the missionary would be saved and Mponda would be taken alive. Because the chief shared the white men’s religion, he might one day be allowed to return to his people, to reimpose foreign beliefs. The umfundisi would be there to help him renew his heresy. Nashu swore that this would never happen.
Just where the valley narrowed, the leading group of soldiers had started to move, so much faster than before that the nganga had briefly lost sight of them. So he had been obliged to order his men to break cover and run. He himself had scrambled up a termite mound to look ahead and with his own eyes had seen Mponda and the umfundisi talking together. In that instant his men had bounded towards them like lions. A flash of colour had caught the nganga’s eye. The teacher’s wife was fleeing; but the black-coated umfundisi did not flee.
That evil man traced a magic sign in the air – like two sticks across one another – but his spell did not stop the men who soon tumbled him to the ground and stabbed him. Nashu leapt for joy. They were washing their spears in the blood of his daughter’s enemy. The chief was wounded too, and as another bullet rocked Mponda, Nashu expected him to run. Instead he knelt beside the umfundisi’s corpse. Only as a warrior ran at him with a spear did he rise and start to stumble away. The soldiers’ ugly metal horn rang out. ‘Kill him,’ roared Nashu. ‘Be quick!’
Though losing blood, Mponda ran with loping strides. Guns crackled. Could no one lay him low? The soldiers were shooting too, and at last another bullet hit the chief. He staggered and ran on, carrying the bullet with him like a wounded elephant. Another shot made him falter, but still he did not fall. And then Nashu knew that Mponda was safe. The nganga’s men were turning back. ‘Imbagha, ingulube!’ Nashu screamed. Dogs, cowardly swine. The fools believed the nonsense about the white man’s medicine making a man live forever. They thought their bullets were being turned to water and were terrified.
Nashu walked back along the valley, glaring at the ground. Although he had failed to kill the chief, the white men might still choke Mponda with a rope if they blamed him for the teacher’s death. The nganga had already summoned the Matabele to deal with the soldiers. Some white horsemen galloped past him. ‘Women!’ he screamed, not deigning to hide. Men fought on their feet, not on an animal’s back. The hussars saw and heard him – a wiry little man, decked out with claws and feathers and jabbering to himself. Lieutenant Carew dismissed him from his mind. All he cared about was reaching his commander’s side. He certainly did not intend to delay his arrival by taking potshots at simpletons on the way.
*
The shouting had ceased, and the noise of firing was becoming faint. Even after Clara had heard a trumpet call, she remained behind her fallen tree. When she crept out, the warriors had gone. She looked around and saw a cloud of flies. Seconds later, she was screaming. Across Robert’s whole torso, blood flowed as if he had been flayed alive. Glazed eyes stared heavenward. Petals of ripped flesh revealed white ribs. ‘Don’t faint … don’t faint.’ She reached down and held his dead hand. ‘O Lord … O Lord, forgive us all.’
There were shouts again, this time in English. In the distance Mponda was running. Hussars raced past Clara. She heard roars of ‘Halt!’ Then a stutter of firing. ‘No!’ she screamed. ‘No!’ She tried to run between Mponda and his pursuers, but already the soldiers were past her. She saw Mponda stagger as he ran. The soldiers were gaining on him – among them was Francis. She called his name, knowing, even as she did, that it was useless. Mponda ran on. At the base of the cliff, he turned for a moment. Then he was gone.
She felt a hand on her arm. ‘Don’t worry, ma’am, they’ll get him.’
Clara gazed in astonishment at a kindly sweating face – the sergeant she had often seen in camp.
‘You don’t understand,’ she gasped.
Behind her, horsemen were fanning out across the valley in a protective crescent. Orders were shouted, and men were dismounting. Sergeant Barnes remained by Clara’s side as she walked on towards the cliff. Ahead was the entrance to a cave with several dozen men gathered outside it.
A red-haired officer approached her. Lieutenant Carew cleared his throat. ‘The captain and two volunteers went in after him, ma’am. The chief left a spoor of blood spots. One of our chaps hit him.’
‘How long has the captain been gone?’
The officer glanced at his wristwatch. ‘Three minutes.’
‘Will anyone else go in … to help?’
‘He left orders forbidding it.’
‘How long will you wait here?’
‘Captain Vaughan said fifteen minutes.’
So that was it. If Francis was not out in a dozen minutes, he would be presumed dead. Somehow Clara’s legs continued to support her. If he killed Mponda, it would be unjust, terrible; but if Francis himself was dragged out dead, how would she survive it? As if by magnetism, her eyes were drawn repeatedly to the dark opening. Blackness must have wrapped around him like a blindfold. Images of her lover’s bleeding limbs flashed into her mind.
A muffled shot was heard and, seconds later, another. Such flat, matter-of-fact bangs, but every man at the cliff’s base stood frozen.
And then they were there, blinking in the sunlight. Mponda was supported between two troopers, his right leg dragging, blood dripping from an arm. Francis followed them, cradling an injured hand. Released from her prison, Clara could breathe again.
Robert Haslam’s body was lifted up and roped to a horse’s back. As Clara rode behind, she wept not just for his death but for his confidence in God’s protection. His hands were hanging down below the horse’s belly. With them, he had built their house and the village dam. If there is no eternal life, she found herself asking, what then for Robert? What had his life meant?
CHAPTER 24
The drumming began while Robert Haslam’s funeral was in progress. A sequence of slow, ominous thumps would be followed by silence, and then by a pattern of faster, more urgent beats. Dark bloodstains spotted the canvas sack into which the missionary’s body had been sewn, reminding all those present of the violent end that many of them might soon be sharing. As Francis read the words of the burial service in the fading light, his wounded hand and arm throbbed sharply, exacerbated by the tightness of his sling. Head down in his prayer book, he managed to stop himself from glancing at Clara when the first scattering of earth pattered down on the corpse and Simon’s high-pitched sobbing rose to a crescendo. Francis was never going to forget that his decision to disregard Fynn’s final advice had cost the missionary his life.
Clara looked so frail and unhappy that Francis longed to go and comfort her, and he would have done so if fear of being disrespectful to the dead man’s memory had not prevented him. Clara, he guessed, would behave befi
ttingly, for though she had stopped loving the man, she would still grieve for him. To avoid seeming to be eager to resume their liaison without interruption, Francis merely murmured some words of sympathy at the end of the service and walked away.
‘Francis,’ she gasped, snatching at his unhurt arm. ‘You must never risk your life again like that. Never!’ He felt as bewildered as if she had hit him on the head. Her husband’s corpse was scarcely covered, and yet she was speaking like this. There was something in her eyes that had nothing to do with love. She was angry.
He said pleadingly, ‘Tell me what I can do.’
Her long silence dismayed him. At last she gave a painful sigh that came from the depths of her lungs. ‘If you love me, Francis, please be truthful.’ She moved closer. ‘Did you send Robert to meet Mponda simply so you could capture him?’
‘It never entered my mind.’ He placed a hand on his heart. ‘I swear to you.’
‘But you followed us.’
‘Yes,’ he shouted back. ‘To protect you, of course. What else?’
‘Then why did you risk your life hunting down Mponda?’
‘For God’s sake, Clara! He’d just ordered your husband’s execution.’
Her eyes were bright with indignation. ‘He tried to stop those men. He was furious.’
‘But those men—’ said Francis, ‘they must have been Mponda’s people, acting on his orders. Who else could have known about the meeting?’
She said sharply, ‘Give me one reason why he wanted to kill Robert.’
‘Mponda blamed him for bringing my men here in the first place.’
‘Nonsense!’ she cried. ‘Mponda was delighted to see Robert. He couldn’t have been acting. I was there, Francis.’
‘He had to put you at your ease until his thugs arrived.’
‘They weren’t his men.’ She cradled her face in her hands. ‘Why won’t you believe me?’