The Missionary's Wife

by Tim Jeal

  ‘I could ask you the same,’ he sighed. ‘Fynn reckoned that Nashu directed me to this place on Mponda’s orders. He was right, Clara. Nashu only pretended to betray the chief. Nashu and Mponda sucked us into the trap we’re in.’ Francis tried to smile. ‘So please don’t tell me I set out to trick him.’

  ‘Do you deny that you broke your promise not to follow us?’

  ‘I couldn’t bear to let anyone harm you.’

  Tears formed in her eyes, and Francis himself was too upset to speak. It was intolerable that she still believed he had behaved dishonourably. If he really had used Haslam as bait to lure the chief, what sort of man would it make him? The drums were becoming louder, and although Francis longed to make his peace with Clara, he had too many duties to attend to before darkness came.

  Outside the perimeter of the camp, horses were dragging logs across long grass to flatten it. Francis had given orders for every bush to be hacked down as far as the mopane trees, and this had not been done. Nor were the watch fires large enough to give his gunners the light they would need to repel a night attack.

  After dealing with these matters, Francis hurried to the medical officer’s wagon, where he expected to find that his native interpreter had found out by now what Mponda would offer in exchange for his freedom. It was a critical moment. If the chief was ready to cooperate, an all-out attack could still be avoided. Stay calm, Francis told himself, knowing that annihilation was the probable alternative. Stepping up on to the wagon’s tailboard, he looked inside.

  Mponda was lying on one of the truckle beds in the centre of the vehicle. As he twisted from side to side, his torso shone with sweat. One of his eyes was opened unnaturally wide; the other, half closed, gave the bizarre impression of winking. The MO, Dr Lane, tugged anxiously at his muttonchop whiskers.

  ‘Tore off his bandages. Won’t accept chloroform.’

  Francis frowned. ‘Does he think we’re trying to bewitch him?’

  Dr Lane shook his bald head. ‘Won’t take help from his enemies – that’s what your translator chap says. Damn shame. There’s a bullet in his knee that’ll cripple him if we don’t get it out.’

  ‘What about his arm and shoulder?’

  ‘Ought to come off, the arm. Gangrene already.’ The MO coughed to disguise his emotion. ‘He’s a brave old rascal and no mistake.’ He shook his head. ‘How’s your wound, Captain?’

  Francis touched his sling. ‘Throbs a bit.’

  Tiptoeing ahead of his two troopers in the cave, Francis had seen a glint of blue and had flung himself forward fast enough to grab the point of Mponda’s spear. The wounded chief had been too weak to thrust again. Francis still shuddered at the narrowness of his escape. A gashed palm was a small price to have paid. He turned to his interpreter, who was squatting beside the chief’s bed. Nervous by nature, Seda looked even less at ease than usual.

  Francis said gently, ‘Has the chief explained why he ordered Haslam’s murder?’

  Seda hung his head. ‘The chief will answer nothing to me, sah.’ The interpreter’s face conveyed anguished apology. ‘All he says to me is fetch Mrs Robert. I only speak with her, he says.’

  On his way to Clara’s tent, Francis thought the drums sounded softer now, as if the noise was coming from farther away. Of course, it only meant that new native regiments were answering the call. A movement in the upper branches of the mopane trees made Francis look up: a flock of hooded vultures was silhouetted against the sky. If he’d been a more diligent boy at Harrow, he supposed, he would now be consoling himself with elegant classical allusions to Hades and its guardians.

  Clara appeared to be asleep when he entered the tent, but she turned at once as he entered, her cool scrutiny telling him she had been awake.

  ‘I had to come. Mponda won’t speak to my interpreter. He says the chief will talk to you.’

  She swung her legs down from the camp bed. ‘You can’t expect him to help unless you free him.’

  ‘It’s not as easy as that. He’s too badly hurt to walk. We might be able to strap him to a horse.’ He moved closer. ‘Might he agree to write a letter to his headmen?’

  ‘None of them can read.’

  ‘Can I send Simon to talk to them?’

  ‘You’d risk his life after what happened to Robert?’ Her voice had risen to a screech of protest.

  He raised placating hands. ‘We’ll solve that later. All I need to know from Mponda now is the price he’ll pay for his freedom.’

  ‘What do you want him to tell his people?’

  ‘To surrender their guns and go home.’

  Clara’s dismay was obvious. ‘Would you do that in his position?’

  ‘I don’t know. But if I can’t get his guns, he’ll use them to murder settlers.’

  ‘Not if he promises to go home peacefully.’

  Her naïveté dazed him. ‘Why would he keep his word?’

  ‘Wouldn’t you keep yours if you’d promised?’

  ‘I’m bound by a code.’

  ‘He’s a Christian, Francis.’

  He wanted to scream that the chief’s treatment of his teacher had not been Christian, but he knew she would simply repeat that Mponda was guiltless of Robert’s murder. Before he could think how to answer her, she hurried from the tent. He scrambled after her.

  In the evening air, she said, ‘I must be on my own with him.’

  ‘Can’t my interpreter stay?’

  ‘Don’t you trust me to tell you what is said?’ Clara flicked some hair away from her face. ‘If I need help, I’ll ask for it.’

  While Clara was closeted with Mponda, Francis inspected the horse lines and tried not to think of the animals’ terror in an attack. He slapped at mosquitoes and wished he could silence the frogs and cicadas even for a few minutes. Africa’s fecundity revolted him. By now, scores of eggs would have been laid in Haslam’s body.

  As Francis waited for Clara to emerge from the hospital wagon, he chatted to his Maxim gunners, who were gazing across the firelit grass towards the woods. When his runners reported for duty, all of them were scared. Wilfred Birch could hardly speak. Francis was not surprised; Birch was the only one with any idea what to expect.

  *

  To make absolutely sure that she understood what Mponda was telling her, Clara summoned Simon. Again and again the chief denied bringing warriors to the meeting place. He had come alone to meet his friend because his headmen would have brought guns to the meeting. Many still hated Christians.

  ‘Could any headmen have followed you at a distance, without you knowing?’

  ‘No, Mrs Robert. They could not.’

  ‘Then who killed the Umfundisi?’

  ‘I do not know, Mrs Robert.’ In spite of his pain and grief, the dying man radiated dignity. ‘Umfundisi said to me that to gain his life a man must lose it. I will soon find out.’ Clara did not trust herself to speak. ‘I do believe him.’ She nodded dumbly, moved in spite of herself by Mponda’s faith in Robert – although, in the end, what sense did any of it make? A missionary labours for ten years to win an African ruler’s trust, and then a young army officer turns up from nowhere and gives the chief a mortal wound.

  A new thought rocked her. Suppose Robert had truly been what Mponda thought him: a holy man; a saint, even. What would that say about her? That she had betrayed a saint for a soldier who would stoop to any deceitfulness, provided it harmed his enemy? Francis had sworn that no soldiers would follow her and Robert, and he had broken his word.

  Clara dipped a cloth in water and wiped the sweat from Mponda’s brow. He knew that he was dying but showed no signs of fear. She leaned closer to one of his surprisingly small ears and said, ‘The chief soldier will allow you to join your own people if you swear to tell them to go home and give up their guns.’

  Raising his head with an immense effort, he gasped, ‘Jesus did not say to people, “You cannot fight to keep your land.” I will not tell them to go.’

  Clara said, ‘If the soldiers free y
ou, and then they try to get away, will your warriors stop them?’

  Mponda let his head sink back again. ‘Who is it who eats last?’ Not understanding, Clara looked to Simon, but he too was puzzled. Mponda smiled. ‘I will tell you who eats last. When hunger comes, the chief feeds his people first. Then he can eat. He shares his power like his food. He must ask his people’s opinion.’

  ‘But if you are freed, will you advise your people to let the white men leave?’

  ‘I will, Mrs Robert.’

  ‘Will they listen?’

  ‘When the old bull speaks, the bleating goats are silent.’ He chuckled and began to choke. He was so wet with sweat that his shoulders shone like molten bronze. Clara tried to get him to drink, but he was too weak to lift his head. At last Mponda said, ‘It is because Umfundisi wished it … That is why I will spare the white men.’

  *

  As Francis was talking to the crew of one of his field guns, Clara rushed up to relay Mponda’s intentions and his account of Robert’s death. ‘So you see the chief had nothing to do with it.’ She then explained that Mponda would let the hussars leave unharmed if he himself was freed. As she spoke, she felt again all the relief and pleasure she had experienced while talking to the chief.

  When she stopped speaking, Francis simply tugged at the corner of his sling and said flatly, ‘So I free one of the most wanted rebels in Mashonaland, and what do I get in exchange?’ He raised incredulous eyes. ‘Not a gun, not a bullet. Nothing.’

  ‘You’ll stay alive … We all will.’

  ‘Save our skins, will we? What about the women who’ll be killed with those guns I failed to capture? What about the settlers’ children? I’ve no choice, Clara. If Mponda won’t give up his guns, I must stay and try to kill as many as possible.’

  Clara said bitterly, ‘What else can they do except attack you, while you hold him prisoner?’

  ‘They’ll attack us whatever we do.’

  ‘If it makes no difference, you should free him anyway. He said he’d order his men home. I beg you to give him the chance.’

  ‘No,’ he cried angrily. ‘They’ll see it as weakness. “The white men are too scared to keep our chief a prisoner.” They’ll sing that old song about him living forever. “The white men couldn’t kill him, so they had to let him go.”’ He touched her arm and added in the gentler tones of the old Francis, ‘Destroy respect for white arms, and a whole brigade could be brushed aside like a fly.’

  ‘I can’t agree with you,’ she sighed, ‘but I do understand.’ Gratitude lit his exhausted face, and for a moment she felt close to him again. He believed what he said and was determined to save his men if he could. What did he think would happen? Was it just a matter of appearances now? Dying like men? She had to know what he thought. ‘Are we going to die, Francis?’

  He gazed out across the flattened grass, towards the distant trees. ‘There’s enough of them out there to eat us up several times over.’ He pulled a face. ‘Let’s hope we stick in their throats.’

  He had spoken in his most matter-of-fact voice, but she saw vulnerability in the line of his jaw and in the dark shadows under his eyes. She thought of Shakespeare’s lines: ‘Golden lads and girls all must,/As chimney-sweepers, come to dust.’ He must have known dozens who had died in India and West Africa: inexperienced boys straight from public school. The tightness at the corners of his mouth spoke of his effort to inspire confidence. Poor Francis. She recalled how much he had leaned on Fynn, and without thinking, she stepped forward and kissed him on the lips.

  Before he could react, she was walking towards the doctor’s wagon. She paused on the steps, and the stillness of the camp sent shivers down the backs of her legs. Around her, men were staring fearfully into the gloom beyond the line of fires. High above them all, the Southern Cross gleamed as if studded with bright nails.

  *

  Francis had ordered tents to be struck so that the enemy would have fewer targets for burning arrows. With fire in mind, he had sent relays of men down to the stream to fill buckets and barrels, and these had been stood near the wagons and in places where thornbush barriers could easily be ignited. The wagons had been brought to the heart of the camp to form a central laager, in which a last stand would be made if the outer defences fell. Both the column’s seven-pounders were loaded with case shot, and the gunners had orders to wait until the natives were within fifty paces. Francis had warned the Maxim crews to expect heavy sniping and always to have a man ready to leap into place the moment an operator was hit; there could be no excuse for belts jamming or anything else causing interruptions in fire.

  While a quarter of the garrison kept watch, the rest slept. Some lay on their sides, others with arms outspread or knees drawn up, looking eerily like corpses. Above their blanketed forms, a crescent moon sailed serenely in the sky.

  Moths, fluttering around the lamplit wagon in which Mponda lay, attracted night birds. Francis lifted the canvas flap and had the illusion of entering a shrine – not of Jesus, but of an ancient idol carved in ebony – until the all too mortal smell of gangrene filled his nostrils.

  Francis murmured to Clara as she sat beside the chief, ‘Does he know he’ll die without help?’

  ‘Yes, but he still refuses it.’

  ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘Are you, Francis?’

  ‘You can’t expect me to feel the same for him as your husband would have done.’

  Francis felt bitter to be placed in the wrong by her. Couldn’t she see that Haslam had brought nothing but misery to his chosen tribe? So why must he be their martyred saviour now? Francis’s distaste for missionaries ran deep. What impudence to tell Africans that spiritual things were worth more than physical ones, when white prospectors were killing for gold.

  He wanted to confide fully in Clara about their situation, but caution held him back. Perhaps he had already been too honest. If Clara let slip to Mponda that he was pessimistic, Francis feared it would destroy any chance he might otherwise have to bargain for his men’s lives.

  When Francis held out his revolver for her to take, Clara frowned as she weighed it in her hand.

  ‘Shouldn’t you keep it?’

  ‘I couldn’t hit a wounded elephant with my left hand.’

  ‘Better than nothing at close range, surely?’

  ‘Things won’t get that bad.’ He forced a smile. ‘A few natives may creep in undetected. That’s the only reason to let you have it.’ After a silence, he said, ‘Will you ask the chief if there’s anything he wants to say to me?’

  Francis waited patiently while they spoke together in Venda. At last Clara announced, ‘He said, “The black ants can swallow a herd of buffalo.”’

  ‘So can the white ones. Anything else?’

  Clara said thickly, ‘He hopes God will forgive you your sins.’

  ‘I return the compliment.’

  ‘He really meant it.’

  ‘I’m sorry. Please thank him.’

  As Francis stepped down from the wagon, he wondered if he would ever see Clara alive again.

  *

  The only tent that Francis had allowed to be left standing was Dr Lane’s hospital. Inside, the doctor and his assistants were laying out their instruments. A lookout post had been built at the centre of the camp, but because of his wounded hand, Francis could not climb the ladder. So he sat on a chair placed within earshot of the men on the platform. His runners were close by, as was Seda, his interpreter. Mark Carew clattered down the ladder, his eyes red-rimmed with sleeplessness. James Gradwell, the youngest subaltern in the column, followed him.

  ‘What are the natives up to, sir? No signs of life at all.’ Carew sounded tense and querulous.

  Francis shrugged. ‘Eating their breakfast, I daresay.’

  ‘At four in the morning?’ faltered Gradwell.

  ‘I was trying to be humorous,’ muttered Francis. ‘If I were in their shoes, I’d attack with the rising sun behind me.’

  ‘Christ almight
y!’ exclaimed Carew. ‘We won’t see a bloody thing.’

  Young Gradwell looked so forlorn that Francis relented. ‘Don’t worry; they’ll be so close together, a blind man won’t be able to miss.’

  ‘Do you really think so, sir?’ Gradwell gulped. ‘Not another joke, I mean?’

  Francis managed a fairly convincing laugh. ‘Of course it isn’t.’

  As Carew and Gradwell clambered back on to the platform, Francis wished that occasionally people would try to make him feel better. He thought of the natives creeping down from the hills and through the bush, and the horror of it choked him – the feeling that something wild and implacable was closing in and could not be stopped. With their muscular, greased bodies and their kilts of catskin and monkey tail, these men were astonishingly vivid to him and yet utterly mysterious. They hid their penises within strange little reed cases, they sacrificed to ancestral spirits and believed that European inventiveness arose solely from taking medicine. White skin reminded them of ghosts and unbleached calico. They thought that men in shoes had no toes. And these were the people who meant to kill him and all his soldiers. It was so astonishing that for a moment, quite literally, it took his breath away.

  Shortly before dawn, Francis fell asleep and did not wake even when Trooper Birch covered him with a blanket. Half an hour later, the notes of reveille had him scrambling to his feet, heart pounding. The sky was brightening fast. For the first time, he heard the sound of tramping feet and, suddenly, shouts and snatches of song. At first he thought his enemies were approaching on two sides. A rapid circuit of the camp told him that he was wrong; the sounds were coming from every direction.

  Francis steadied his field glasses on top of the outer barricade. Warriors were assembling under their captains in the half-light. The Matabele were less numerous than the other natives and, unlike them, almost naked. They stood back and leaned on their spears, watching the proceedings superciliously. For what could these Venda herdsmen teach the martial Matabele about war? Their leaders wore lionskins, but would they stand firm in the place of killing when the fighting was hard? Francis sent a runner to the platform to make sure that these tall warriors were closely watched.