The Missionary's Wife

by Tim Jeal

  When it was Mponda’s turn to speak, he simply repeated that he had murdered no one. A brief recess followed, during which Francis and his two subalterns went through the formality of considering their verdict. On returning, Francis could not bring himself to look at Clara as she stood facing him across the table.

  He said in a firm, clear voice, ‘This court finds the defendant, Chief Mponda, guilty on both charges and sentences him to suffer death by shooting. The sentence will be carried out at once.’

  As Clara translated his words for Mponda, the chief lifted his massive head from his chest and faced his judges with an expression of immense sorrow – whether for himself or for his accusers, Francis could not tell. Mponda’s emaciated features expressed neither fear nor anger. His lids blinked upon eyes that looked straight through Francis to a world beyond him. The chief turned to Clara and said something in his own language. She answered and clasped his hand.

  While the firing party assembled, Mponda was carried to the barricade on the eastern side of the camp. There, still tied to his stretcher, he was raised into a vertical position and propped against the palisade. As the firing squad shuffled into line, Clara stepped forward and placed something in his hand. Simon also came up and knelt beside him, while Clara said a prayer in Venda. When they withdrew, Carew brought the firing squad to attention. For what seemed an age, he fumbled to get his sword out of its scabbard. At last he raised it.

  ‘Fire!’ he shouted, as his sword flashed down.

  Prrr-ah! The volley rang out. A light-brown wisp of smoke drifted towards the watchers. Something fell from Mponda’s hand as his body sagged against his bonds. Walking forward to give the coup de grâce and feeling uneasy about firing with the revolver in his left hand, Francis paused. A pocket-sized Bible lay in the grass. Blood was flowing from Mponda’s head and chest and splashing on to the earth. No tremor of life was visible. Francis replaced the revolver in its holster and picked up the book. Towards evening, he opened it and read the inscription. ‘To my dearest son, Robert, from his loving mother on the occasion of his christening, the second day of February 1857.’

  It was after dark when Francis finally handed Haslam’s Bible to his widow. Clara took it without a word and turned her back.

  Soon afterwards, a procession set out from the camp. It was led by the young Matabele whom Francis had threatened to hang and was followed by Mponda’s naked body, bent across a mule’s back. Behind their dead chief hobbled strange courtiers, the African walking wounded, and then, on stretchers, were the more serious cases, carried by hussars. These sick and dying men were left on the grass a few hundred yards from the camp, while the soldiers scurried back to safety.

  The moon was high and the black trees were etched sharply against the paler blue sky. The cortege paused at the margin of the trees, and Francis half expected to see a reverent throng come out to meet the chief. No one appeared, and after a few minutes the dark figures entered the wood.

  Francis had decided that whatever the consequences, the column should march at dawn. He had lost one third of his men and could no longer defend the camp. If the enemy attacked his column on the march, the Maxims and field guns would be unlimbered, and they would fight to the death where they stood. That night, fifty of his men were buried – a demoralizing business for the burial parties. Then, for the first time in over a week, Francis slept several hours without waking. The whole column might be lost, but at last he knew he had done everything he could.

  In the morning, in spite of Clara’s bitterness and the stench of the corpses outside the camp, Francis felt as if hidden chains had fallen from him. Horses were being saddled, oxen brought to the pole and yoke, and everywhere there was quiet but purposeful bustle. Even many of the wounded, who had much to fear from a long march, were plainly relieved when lifted into the wagons. Only when the column had formed and was ready to move off did Francis feel fear again. Within an hour they would be either dead or free.

  From a distance the mopane wood had looked dense and mysterious, but entering it, Francis saw that the trees were not close together at all. The pole-like trunks ranged from a few inches to a foot in diameter, and though growing to fifty feet or so, they put out few branches lower down. Since fallen timber was swiftly eaten by white ants, open vistas stretched in every direction between the trees, affording no cover at all.

  Francis had sent forward two scouts with a trumpeter. When warning notes rang out, he did not call a halt and ignored the frightened glances being aimed at him. Lieutenant Gradwell rode over to remonstrate, only to be waved back to his place. A few minutes later, campfires were seen away to the right, with warriors standing around them. The trumpet’s notes had not induced the natives to move from their position. Morning mist lay in streamers across the forest floor. Riding slightly ahead of the column, Francis heard the click of the hammers as the warriors brought their old-fashioned guns to full cock. Yet still they remained motionless, like figures on a frieze. Francis gave no new order, and the column proceeded at a stately trot. While his sling still prevented him from holding a sword or carbine, every mounted man behind him was ready to fire.

  More regiments loomed ahead. Moment by moment, Francis expected shots. How easily these waiting spearmen could overwhelm his little column. But as before, the warriors guarded themselves against attack and stood their ground. Francis rode back behind his rear guard, afraid that the Africans would already be cutting off his line of retreat. He could hear nothing except the sounds of his own wagons and horsemen.

  Mist had given the scene a dream-like quality in the first light. As the sun rose, the grey scarves burned away and the rebels could be seen with shocking clarity. A babel of shouts arose from their camps. Warriors were swarming among the trees. And still the column moved forward at the same pace. The natives were forming long lines in front of their night fires. They were carrying shields and guns. The column was well within their range.

  Seeing Clara under the hood of her Cape cart, staring fixedly ahead, with Simon by her side, Francis could find nothing to say. She knew their situation as well as he did. Either Mponda’s death had saved them, and the tribesmen were going to let them pass; or else these warriors were simply funnelling them into the jaws of their strongest regiments. To see so many silent men, watching and waiting, was both terrifying and unearthly. It made Francis think of crowds lining a funeral route – as if they were already a column of the dead.

  The hussars rode on for almost a mile between the trees, until there were no more camps. They rode in silence even after leaving the wood and crossing a broad clearing. Five hundred yards away, across the blowing grass, a herd of zebra was grazing calmly. From the direction of the wind, Francis knew there could be no men beyond them. He and his men had passed through the heart of a vast impi and emerged unscathed. Carew began to weep, and Francis himself could not utter a word. From somewhere behind him, he heard a man let out a cheer. A ripple of sound passed from one end of the column to the other. There was pandemonium: helmets were flung in the air, and cheers and laughter broke out all along the line.

  *

  The sun was setting, and deep shadows crept along the valley. The sight of maize gardens and village huts reminded Francis of everything he had found most idyllic about Africa. Children had been posted on ant hills among the maize to keep the baboons away, and he could hear their piping voices wafted on the evening air. A boy and a girl scampered out of the tall yellow stalks and raced each other down the path to the riverbank. The peacefulness of the scene touched and pained him, since he knew he would never again see and hear such things without undercurrents of sadness.

  While fearing that Clara would never forgive him, Francis yearned to hear her admit that the chief’s death had saved the column. That morning, as if beauty were a sin, she had cropped her hair clumsily, as a naughty child might have done. Recalling how she had teased him about the peccadilloes of cavalry officers, he could hardly believe her the same person.

  When,
finally, he plucked up the courage to approach Clara, she was sitting beside Simon, who was blowing their evening fire into life. She had been washing clothes in a basin, and her sleeves were rolled up. Only weeks ago, Francis had kissed the hollows of those arms. Having dreaded a rebuff, he took heart a little from her decision to send Simon on an errand to the commissariat wagon.

  She said in a lifeless voice, ‘What’s it like to have played God and got away with it?’

  ‘Don’t ask that,’ he murmured. ‘I hated having to do it.’

  ‘How long will it be before you want something else as badly? Once you start breaking life’s most sacred rules, you don’t stop.’ She gave him a glance of cold appraisal. ‘Rules are for other people, aren’t they, Francis? You can shoot an innocent chief. You can betray a man while he’s risking his life for you. And that’s fine, so long as ordinary people don’t join in.’

  He raised a hand in appeal – his other hand, in the sling, throbbed constantly. ‘Only a few years ago,’ he said, ‘Mponda had his enemies clubbed to death. Why be sentimental about him?’

  ‘Because he became a different person.’

  ‘If we’d broken out, I couldn’t have dragged him along rough tracks in an unsprung wagon. Think of the pain.’

  ‘You could have left him behind. The prisoners would have cared for him.’

  ‘How long would he have lived?’

  Her eyes were angry, ‘Even if he’d had no more than an hour to live, you still would not have had the right to shoot him.’

  As a young cornet, Francis had been sent to Kandahar. It had been just after the last Afghan war, when hundreds of men had been hanged by Lord Roberts in retribution for a massacre of British troops. Half of those executed could have played no part in what had happened. And how does my crime rate? he asked himself. Is it anything by comparison? The thought pleased him briefly, until the pain in his hand obliged him to reach for his flask.

  ‘Want some?’ he asked.

  She shook her head, and he swallowed deeply, remembering how amused he had been the first time he had seen her drink. He understood her feeling of guilt for what he and she had done together, and he hated it. Haslam had been too old for her, had deceived her about the life she would lead in Africa, and might easily have caused her death. But because she had been unfaithful, she blamed herself for everything.

  He said emotionally, ‘Things will seem different when you’re in England.’

  She held herself very straight. ‘I mean to go back to Mponda’s kraal. Philemon and the others must settle in a safer place. Simon can stay on and help them.’

  ‘Will you stay on too?’

  ‘I don’t know what I’ll do. At some stage I’ll spend a few months in England with my father. Then, who knows?’

  He said in an even-tempered voice, ‘When you stop wanting to punish us both, a letter to my regiment will find me. I’ve never loved anyone as much.’ With his eyes filling, he walked away towards the big fire within the circle of wagons. The pain in his hand was almost a comfort, since it prevented his thinking of anything else. Later that evening, it ached so deeply and fiercely that a dozen times he was on the point of visiting Dr Lane. But on each occasion, he recalled the kindly doctor’s disgusted face after the trial and decided to dress the wound himself.

  *

  During the next few days, Francis thought often of his last conversation with Clara and what he might have said. Perhaps his fear of seeming pitiful had destroyed his chances. If he had begged on his knees, would he have been forgiven? Deep down, he doubted it.

  Only once before had Francis known the bitterness of rejection; on that occasion he had been cast aside for being insufficiently well connected – a less hurtful situation than being found wanting in character. Francis’s mother had taught him never to think himself so admirable as to deserve special exemption from trouble. He hoped the same mixture of pride and realism would sustain him now, with his professional future looking equally bleak. He would not be forgiven for losing so many men against ‘untrained natives’, and Dr Lane would probably make an official complaint against him for shooting Mponda. Yet if Haslam could have survived long enough to negotiate with Mponda, four thousand tribesmen might have returned to their villages without a shot being fired. Great careers had been founded on smaller successes.

  Soon after the column had clattered into the tin-hut town of Charter, Clara announced that she intended to sell her Cape cart and to head south as soon as the next mail coach was allowed to run. Francis felt as if she had ripped out his heart and flung it away.

  The following day, he had to acknowledge something he had been trying to ignore; his hand was not healing properly. The wound smelled peculiar, and black streaks had appeared in the ragged flesh that lay across the centre of his palm. His arm was badly swollen below the elbow, and he was feverish. A visit to Dr Lane could no longer be deferred.

  CHAPTER 26

  Clara’s journey back to Mponda’s kraal had taken two months of travelling, at first by mail coach and then in a trader’s wagon. When she arrived, the women were returning from the fields and gardens, carrying great loads of firewood on their heads. As the cows were brought home, Clara held Simon’s hand. He might so easily have been one of the herdboys riding, laughing, on a broad back or running alongside the herd, driving it onward. Instead he was condemned to look on, an outsider.

  Familiar sights were all around: the dam, which Robert had built so laboriously; the khotla, where Mponda had humiliated Nashu. On their way to the mission, Clara and Simon were pointedly ignored by several children they both remembered from the school. Not a soul came out to greet them.

  The reason was soon apparent. Although her own house was still standing, the mission and the chapel had been burned to the ground. It came to her, with a twist of fear, that Makufa had already returned to claim his inheritance. Or if not Makufa, Nashu. Because Simon was too scared to climb the crag in search of his mother, Clara went up alone, thinking of the first time she had scrambled up this dusty, twisting path, following in Robert’s footsteps.

  Of all the chief’s relations, only Chizuva would talk to her. Some few dozen warriors had returned from the north, and Nashu had ordered them to destroy the mission. The queen already knew that her husband was dead, so there had been no need to break the news. Chizuva told Clara that Simon’s mother, along with Philemon, Mabo, Matiyo, and others, had left the village in the mission’s ox wagon a month earlier, hoping to settle in Tuli or Mafeking. If no missionary could be found to welcome them, they planned to seek work in traders’ stores or as watchmen or maids. Clara imagined them scrubbing floors and doing other menial jobs: they who had called themselves ‘children of God’.

  She stared at the ground for a long time before inquiring, ‘And you, Chizuva, what will you do?’ The queen’s skin had lost the well-oiled glossiness that Clara remembered from her days of grandeur.

  ‘I will stay here. Makufa will not kill me when he comes. My ancestors will protect me.’

  Clara nodded sympathetically. She understood her return to her former faith. Poor woman; Christ had not brought her the blessings she had expected.

  When Clara found Simon again, he seemed neither surprised nor even particularly upset by his mother’s departure. He had always meant to remain with Robert. From the beginning, when Simon had annoyed her by saying only what would please Robert, Clara had guessed that he would choose not to sacrifice everything for his faith, preferring the path that offered a better way of life. Paul would not have done that; nor Philemon. Perhaps, thought Clara, if Philemon had stayed, she might have tried to start another school, but that was impossible now.

  At times on her long and lonely journey here, Clara had believed she might possess the courage and inspiration to remain in Africa. But standing among the beehive huts and granaries, she realized that, like Robert, she had not been thinking of the everyday world. His vision had always been directed towards another place – another dimension, almost
– somewhere beyond the daily pleasures and temptations of this earth. Life was proceeding most satisfactorily here. Young girls were singing as they helped their mothers prepare their evening meals; soon the menfolk would be home. Clara closed her eyes and imagined Herida’s lovely smile. If Robert had never come here, she would still be alive, and so would Mponda.

  She walked along the dam with Simon, recalling Robert’s thankfulness that the drought had lasted long enough to cause suffering. Without misfortune, why would anyone think of Jesus? Why crave salvation, unless fearing hell? How she had hated such reasoning. Gazing across the placid lake, she thought. that salvation was a tragic word. Life was not a preparation for anything except itself. Recently, Francis’s actions had started to appear to her in a less negative light. If Robert could act morally for years and cause universal grief, should she be so sure that an immoral act, even the killing of a dying man, should be unreservedly condemned if many of its results were good? Memories came back to haunt her: Francis rallying his men and handing her his revolver; Francis looking down on her in the darkness. Yet because he had chosen what he thought the least of the various evils facing him, she had left him without one kind word.

  The old men sitting outside the cattle kraal were singing when Clara and Simon left Mponda’s village next day. She had heard their song before. Death has no home, they sang. If we knew the place where death could be found, we would hurry there at once with our spears and clubs to fight him. But since nobody knows, what is there left for us to do but drink and sing and make love? Francis, who had never been crudely cynical, would nevertheless have enjoyed this song. As she thought this, she burst into tears.

  *

  In Cape Town, the busy streets with their fashionable shops disturbed Clara, reminding her of a time when such places had been her favourite haunts. New electric trams ran from central Adderley Street as far out as Claremont, and people all knew where they were going, and why. Most white women were smartly dressed as well as purposeful, making Clara feel like a shabby vagrant who had drifted in from the bush. On the journey from Mashonaland she had often felt sick, blaming the queasy motion of the mail coach or the heat in the train, but the persistence of the sensation after her arrival at the Cape suggested ‘nerves’ as the likeliest explanation. She had read about people collapsing through nervous exhaustion at the end of a long ordeal, and perhaps this was to be her experience.