A Falcon Flies

by Wilbur Smith

  Her Hottentots blazed away with their muskets, while Robyn herself fired grimly into the galloping bellowing bodies that charged wildly past her after the first shot had startled them.

  After the dust had settled and the thick bank of powder smoke had drifted away on the faint breeze, they found six of the big black animals lying dead in the reedbeds. Her entourage were delighted, hacking the bodies into manageable chunks which they slung on long poles and carried singing up to the camp. Their delight turned to amazement when Robyn ordered that an entire haunch of fresh buffalo be taken out and left next to the hut in the millet garden.

  ‘These people are eaters of roots and dirt,’ Juba explained patiently. ‘Meat is too good for them.’

  ‘To kill this meat we have risked our lives,’ the Corporal began his protest, then caught the look in Robyn’s eye, broke off and coughed and shuffled his feet. ‘Nomusa, could we not give them a little less than a haunch? The hooves make a good stew, and these people are savages, they will eat anything,’ he pleaded. ‘A whole haunch . . .’

  She sent him away muttering and shaking his head sorrowfully.

  During the night, Juba woke her, and the two of them sat and listened to the faint throb of drums and the singing that carried down from the hilltop village, clearly the sounds of feasting and jubilation.

  ‘They have probably not seen so much meat at one time in all their lives,’ Juba murmured sulkily.

  In the morning Robyn found, in place of the buffalo meat, a bark basket containing fifteen hen’s eggs the size of pigeon’s eggs, and two large earthen pots of millet beer. The look of the bubbling thin grey gruel almost turned Robyn’s stomach. She gave the beer to the Corporal to distribute, and her followers drank it with such obvious relish, smacking their lips and nodding over it like connoisseurs over an ancient bottle of claret, that Robyn controlled her heaving stomach and tasted some; it was tart and refreshing and strong enough to set the Hottentots chattering and laughing raucously.

  With Juba following her, each of them carrying a bundle of half-dried buffalo meat, Robyn returned to the gardens, certain that the exchange of gifts had proved it possible to establish friendly contact. They sat under the shelter and waited. The hours passed without a sign of the Mashona appearing. The hushed heat of noon gave way to long, cool shadows of evening – and then, for the first time, Robyn noticed a gentle stir amongst the millet plants that was neither wind nor bird.

  ‘Do not move,’ she cautioned Juba.

  Slowly a human shape showed itself, a frail bent figure dressed in tatters of a skin kilt. Robyn could not tell whether it was man or woman, and she didn’t dare stare openly at it, for fear of frightening it away.

  The figure emerged from the stand of millet, crouched down on its haunches, and it hopped hesitantly towards them, with long pauses between each tentative hop. It was so thin and wrinkled and dried out that it looked like one of the unbandaged mummies that Robyn had seen in the Egyptian section of the British Museum.

  It was definitely a man, she realized at last, sneaking a glance in his direction, for with each hop his shrivelled and stringy genitals flapped out from under the short kilt.

  Closer still, Robyn saw that his cap of woolly hair was pure white with age, and in the seamed and pouched sockets his eyes wept slow tears of fright, as though these were the last drops of liquid that his desiccated old body contained.

  Neither Juba nor Robyn moved or looked directly at him until he squatted a dozen paces from them, then slowly Robyn turned her head towards him. The old man whimpered with fear.

  It was clear to Robyn that he had been selected as an emissary because he was the least valuable member of the tribe, and Robyn wondered what threats had been made to force him to come down from the hilltop.

  Moving very slowly and calmly, as though she were dealing with a timid wild creature, Robyn held out a stick of half-cured buffalo meat. The old man stared at it, fascinated. As Juba had told her, these people probably existed almost entirely on their meagre crops and such roots and wild fruit as they could glean in the forest. Meat was a rare treat, and such an unproductive member of the tribe would be given only a very little of what there was.

  The way he stared at the piece in Robyn’s hand made her believe that the old man had not had so much as a taste of the buffalo haunch. He was more than half-starved. He rolled his tongue loosely around in his toothless mouth, gathering his courage, and then shuffled close enough to hold out the claws of his bony fingers, palms cupped upwards in the polite gesture of acceptance.

  ‘There you are, dearie.’ Robyn placed the stick in his hands and the man snatched it to his mouth, sucking noisily upon it, worrying it with his smooth gums, drooling silver strings of saliva as his mouth flooded, his eyes streaming again, this time with pleasure rather than fear.

  Robyn laughed with delight, and the old man rapidly blinked his eyes and then cackled around the stick of meat, the sound so comical that Juba laughed also, the laughter of the two younger women rippling and tinkling without restraint. Almost immediately, the dense leaves of the millet garden stirred and rustled, as other dark, half-naked figures came slowly forward, their anxiety relieved by the sound of laughing women.

  The hilltop settlement consisted of not more than a hundred individuals, men, women and children, and every one of them came out to stare and laugh and clap as Robyn and Juba climbed the steep twisting path. The old silver-headed man, almost unbearably proud of his achievement, led Robyn by the hand possessively, screeching out explanations to those around, pausing every now and then to perform a little shuffling dance of triumph.

  Mothers held up their infants to look at this marvellous being, and the children ran forward to touch Robyn’s legs and then squeal with their own courage, skipping away ahead of her up the path.

  The pathway followed the contours of the hillside, and it passed between defensive gateways and under terraced walls. Above the path at every steep place were piled boulders, ready to be hurled down upon an enemy, but now Robyn’s ascent was a triumphant progress, and she came out into the village surrounded by a welcoming throng of singing, dancing women.

  The village was laid out in a circular pattern of thatched and windowless huts. The walls were of plastered clay with low doorways and beside each hut was a granary of the same materials but raised on poles to protect it from vermin. Apart from a few diminutive chickens, there were no domestic animals.

  The space between the huts, and the central courtyard was swept, and the whole village had an air of order and cleanliness. The people themselves were handsome, though none of them carried any excess flesh or fat. Robyn was reminded by their slim, lithe bodies that they were almost exclusively vegetarian.

  They had alert and intelligent faces, and the laughter and singing with which they welcomed her was easy and unaffected.

  ‘These are the people whom Zouga shot down like animals,’ she thought, looking around her with pleasure.

  They had set a low carved stool in the shade for her and Juba squatted beside her. As soon as Robyn was seated, the old man squealed importantly and a giggling young girl brought her a pot of the millet beer. Only when she had drunk a mouthful of the beer did the crowd fall silent, and draw aside to let a commanding figure come through.

  On his head was a tall headdress of animal fur, similar to the one worn by the chieftain on the elephant road pass. He wore a cloak of leopard skin over his shoulders, the skins so worn that they must have been very old, probably the hereditary symbol of his chieftainship. He sat down on another stool facing Robyn. He was a man of middle age, with a pleasant humorous face, and a lively imagination – for he followed Robyn’s sign language with attention, and then acted out his own replies with facial expressions and gestures that Robyn understood readily.

  This way he asked her from where she came and she showed him the north and made a circle of her hands towards the sun for each day’s travel. He wanted to know who was her husband and how many children she h
ad. That she was both unmarried and childless was a source of amazement to the whole village.

  More beer was brought out in the clay pots and Robyn felt slightly light-headed, and her cheeks turned pink and her eyes shone. Juba was contemptuous of their hosts.

  ‘They do not have even a goat!’ she pointed out scornfully.

  ‘Perhaps your brave young men have stolen them all,’ Robyn answered tartly, and raised her beer pot in salute to the chief.

  The chief clapped his hands, signalling his drummers to stoop to their instruments. The drums were hollowed tree trunks, beaten with a pair of short wooden clubs to a frantic rhythm that soon had the drummers running with rivulets of sweat and glassy-eyed with the mesmeric effects of the beat. The chieftain threw off his leopard-skin cloak and launched himself into the dance, swirling and leaping until his necklaces and bracelets jangled and rattled.

  On his chest he wore a pendant of ivory, snowy-white polished ivory, and it caught the firelight, for by now the sun was long set. Robyn had not noticed the ornament before for it had been covered by the cloak, but now she felt her eye drawn repeatedly to the bouncing white disc.

  The disc seemed too perfectly shaped, and as the chief came bounding up to her stool to perform a solo pass before her Robyn saw that it was decorated with a regular pattern around its border. The next moment her heart raced with excitement for the decoration was writing, she was not sure in what language, but it was Latin script, that was certain. Then the chief had gone, leaping away to prance in front of his drummers, exhorting them to greater efforts.

  Robyn had to wait until the chief exhausted himself, and staggered panting back to his stool to quaff a pot of the thick grey beer, before she could lean forward and get her first close look at the ornament.

  She had been mistaken. It was not ivory but porcelain, and its perfect shape and whiteness was immediately accounted for. It was an item of European manufacture, the lid of a small pot, the type in which tooth-powder or potted meats are sold. The writing was English, printed in neat capitals were the words:

  ‘patum peperium – the gentleman’s relish.’

  She felt her skin go clammy with excitement. Clearly she remembered her father’s rage when the pantry at King’s Lynn had been bare of this delicacy. She remembered as a small girl running down the village street in the rain to the grocer to buy another pot.

  ‘It is my one weakness, my only weakness,’ she remembered her father’s exact words while he spread the savoury paste on his toast, his anger mollified so that he came near to making a joke of it. ‘Without my Gentleman’s Relish, I doubt I would have had strength for the Transversa.’

  When Robyn’s mother left for Africa on that last ill-fated voyage, there had been a dozen cases of the relish in her luggage. There was only one possible way that the porcelain lid could have reached here.

  Robyn stretched out a hand and touched it, but the chief’s expression changed instantly and he jumped back, out of reach. The singing and drumming came to an abrupt halt, and the consternation of the entire village made Robyn realize that the porcelain lid was a charm of great personal magic, and that it was a disaster that another hand had touched it.

  She made an attempt to mollify the chief, but swiftly he covered himself with his leopard cloak and stalked away to his hut at the end of the village. The festivities were clearly ended. The rest of the villagers were subdued and crept away after the chief, leaving only the silver-haired toothless ancient, possessive as ever, to lead Robyn to the hut which had earlier been set aside for her.

  She lay awake most of the night on the plaited reed sleeping-mat, excited at the evidence that her father had passed this way, and worried that she had ruined her relationship with the Mashona chief and would learn no more of the ornament and, through it, of her father.

  She did not have an early opportunity to meet the chief again, and make amends for her breach of manners. The villagers kept away from her, obviously hoping she would go, but she stayed on stubbornly in the hilltop village, attended only by the faithful old man. For Robyn was the most important thing that had ever happened in his long life, and he was not going to relinquish her for the chief or for anybody else.

  In the end, there was nothing for it but to send the chief an extravagant gift. She used the last khete of sam-sam beads and one of the double-bladed axes.

  The chief could not resist such princely bribes, and though his attitude was cooler and more reserved than at first, he listened attentively while Robyn asked her questions, acting out little charades, which the chief discussed seriously with his elders, before giving his answers.

  The answer was southwards again, south for five circles of the sun, and the chief would send somebody to guide Robyn. He was obviously pleased to be rid of her at last, for, though her gifts were welcome, the chief was still deeply troubled by the ill-fortune that her sacrilegious action must bring upon the tribe.

  For a guide the chief chose the silver-headed old man, ridding himself of a useless mouth and an unwelcome visitor at one stroke.

  Robyn had doubted that her guide’s thin legs could carry him either very fast or very far. However, the old man surprised her. He armed himself with a long throwing spear which looked as old and frail as he did himself and on his head he balanced a rolled sleeping-mat and a clay cooking pot – these clearly constituted his total worldly possessions. He girded up his tattered kilts and set off southwards at a pace that had Robyn’s porters grumbling again. Robyn had to restrain him.

  It took a little time to get the old man to understand that he was now her language tutor. As they marched she pointed at herself, and everything around them, naming them clearly in English, and then looking at him enquiringly. He returned the look with equal enquiry in his rheumy old eyes. However, she persevered, repeating her own name ‘Nomusa’ as she touched her chest, and suddenly he understood.

  He slapped his own chest. ‘Karanga,’ he squeaked. ‘Kar-anga!’ Once again his enthusiasm for this new activity was such that she had to restrain him. Within a few days Robyn had dozens of verbs and hundreds of nouns which she could begin stringing together, much to old Karanga’s delight.

  However, it was four days before Robyn realized that there had been an initial misunderstanding. Karanga was not the old man’s name, but the name of his tribe. It was too late to rectify, because by that time everybody in the caravan was calling him ‘Karanga’, and the old man answered to it readily. It was difficult to get him to leave Robyn’s side. He followed her wherever she went, much to Juba’s disgust and undisguised jealousy.

  ‘He smells,’ she told Robyn virtuously. ‘He smells very bad.’ Which was true, Robyn had to admit.

  ‘But after a while you do not notice it,so much.’ There was one thing, however, which could not be so readily overlooked, it appeared from under the old man’s kilts whenever he squatted, which he did whenever at rest. Robyn solved this by giving old Karanga a pair of Zouga’s woollen underwear and taking her chances with her brother’s wrath later. The underwear filled old Karanga with almost unbearable pride. He preened and strutted like a peacock, as they flapped around his long thin legs.

  Old Karanga led them cautiously wide of every occupied village along their route, although he assured Robyn they were also of the same tribe. There seemed to be no trade nor commerce between these settlements, each perched on its fortified hilltop in suspicious and hostile isolation.

  By this time, Robyn could speak enough of the language to find out from Karanga more about the great wizard – from whom the chief had received the magical porcelain talisman, and the story filled her with excitement and anticipation.

  Many rainy seasons ago, old Karanga was not sure how many, at his age every season blurred into the one before or the one after, anyway, at some not too far distant date an extraordinary man had come out of the forest, even as she had come, and like her he had been fair skinned. However, his hair and beard were the colour of flames (he showed her the camp fire), and h
e was without doubt a magician and prophet and rainmaker, for the day he arrived the long drought had broken with thunderous storms that filled the rivers for the first time in many years.

  This pale wizard had performed other rare and wonderful feats, transforming himself first into a lion and then into an eagle, raising the dead from the grave, and directing the lightning with a wave of his hand. The tale had lost nothing in the retelling Robyn noted wryly.

  ‘Did anybody speak to him?’ Robyn asked.

  ‘We were all too afraid,’ Karanga admitted, shaking theatrically with terror, ‘but I myself saw the wizard as an eagle fly over village and drop the talisman from the sky.’ He flapped his skinny old arms in pantomime.

  The strong anchovy smell would have attracted the bird to the discarded pot, Robyn reflected, but when it proved inedible the bird would have dropped it, by chance over Karanga’s village.

  ‘The wizard stayed a short time near our village and then went away to the south. We have heard that he travelled swiftly, obviously in his guise as a lion.

  ‘We heard of his miracles, the word shouted from hilltop to hill-top or tapped out by the drums. How he cured others sick to death, how he challenged the ancestral spirits of the Karanga in their most sacred places shouting abuse at them so all who heard him trembled.

  ‘We heard also how he slew the high priestess of the dead, an Umlimo of vast power in her own stronghold. This strange pale magician slew her and destroyed her sacred relics.’