A Falcon Flies

by Wilbur Smith

  The disease had reached that part of his brain that affected his eyes, and sense of feeling. His faith had become religious mania. Zouga cut out this and the following pages and consigned them to the flames of the camp fire.

  Ranting madness was followed by cool sanity, as though the disease had tides which ebbed and flowed within his brain. The next entry in the journal was dated five days after that claiming the stigmata. It began with a celestial observation that placed him not far from where Zouga sat reading the words, always making allowances for the inaccuracy of a chronometer that had not been checked for almost two years. There was no further reference to the stigmata. They had healed as miraculously as they had bloomed. Instead there was a brisk and businesslike entry in the old neat script.

  ‘The Karanga people practise a form of ancestor worship, which calls for sacrifice. It is extremely difficult to make any one of them discuss either this ceremony or even the basic precepts of this abominable religion. However, my command of the Karanga language is now sufficient to have earned the respect and trust of those members of the tribe with whom I have succeeded in making contact. The spiritual centre of their religion is in a place which they refer to as “the burial place of the kings”, or in their language “Zimbabwe” or “Simbabwee” where the idols which represent their ancestors stand.

  ‘It would seem that this place is situated to the south and east of my present position.

  ‘The head of this foul belief is a priestess, referred to as the “Umlimo” who once dwelt in the “burial place of the kings” but fled from there at the coming of the Angoni marauders. She lives in another sacred place, and commands such sway that even the godless Ndebele, that sanguine tyrant Mzilikazi, send gifts for her oracle.

  ‘So deeply ingrained is the power of this evil belief into the minds of all these people, that they are strongly resistant to the word of Christ which I bear.

  ‘It has come to me in a revelation which can only be the voice of God Almighty himself that he has chosen me to march upon this citadel of evil, this “Simbabwee”, and to throw down the images of the ungodly – even as Moses threw down and destroyed the golden calf on his descent from the mountain.

  ‘God Almighty has further revealed to me that I have been chosen to seek out the High Priestess of evil in her secret place and to destroy her, and by so doing break the hold that she has over the minds of these people, that they might become receptive to the Holy Word of Christ which I bring them.’

  Zouga raced on through the pages, it seemed as though they were being written by two different men, the rational being with the neat script and the raving religious maniac with the wild looping hand. In some passages the change came from one line to the next, in others the one character was maintained for page after page. Zouga could not afford to miss a word of it.

  It was well after noon, and his eyes felt grainy and tender from continually scanning the cramped sheets, blurred and faded from the improvised ink which Fuller was now using.

  ‘November 3rd. Position. 20￮ 05 S. 30￮ 50 E. Temperature 103￮ in the shade. Heat unbearable. Rain threatens each day and never comes. Have reached the lair of the Umlimo.’

  The single laconic entry electrified Zouga. He almost missed it, for it was squeezed into the bottom of a page. He turned that page and on the next the madman had taken over again, writing in vaunting hyperbole and thunderous religious ecstasy.

  ‘I praise God, my Maker. The one true and Almighty Saviour for whom all things are possible. Thy will be done!

  ‘The Umlimo knew me as the instrument of God’s wrath when I confronted her in that reeking charnel house, for she spoke in the voices of Belal and Beelzebub, the hideous voices of Azazel and Beliar, all Satan’s myriad alter-egos.

  ‘But I stood before her strong and proud in God’s word, and when she saw she could not move me, she fell silent.

  ‘So I slew her, and cut off her head and carried it out into the light. And God spoke to me in the night and said in his small still voice “Go on, my faithful and well-beloved servant. You cannot rest until the graven images of the godless are cast down.”

  ‘So I rose, and God’s hand held me up and carried me onwards.’

  How much of this was fact, and how much was the ranting of madness, fantasy of a diseased brain, Zouga could not know, but he read on furiously.

  ‘And the Almighty guided me until I came at last alone to the foul city where the devil-worshippers commit their sacrilege. My bearers would not follow me, terrified of the devils. Even old Joseph who was always at my side could not force his legs to carry him through the gateway in the high stone wall. I left him cringing in the forest, and went in alone to walk between the high towers of stone.

  ‘As God had revealed to me, I found the graven images of the heathen all decked with flowers and gold, the blood of the sacrifice not yet dried, and I broke them and cast them down and no man could oppose me for I was the sword of Zion, the finger of God’s own hand.’

  The entry broke off abruptly, as though the writer had been overwhelmed by the strength of his own religious fervour, and Zouga flipped through the next one hundred pages of the journal searching for further reference to the city and its gold-decked images, but there was none.

  Like the miraculous blooming of the stigmata upon Fuller’s hands and feet and body and brow, perhaps this was also the imaginings of a lunatic.

  Zouga returned to the original entry, describing Fuller’s meeting with the Umlimo, the sorceress whom he had slain. He wrote the latitude and longitude into his own journal, copied the rough sketch map and made cryptic notes of the text, pondering it for clues that might lead or guide him. Then, quite deliberately, he cut out the pages from Fuller’s own journal and held them one at a time over the fire, letting them crinkle and brown, then catch and flare before he dropped them and watched them curl and blacken. He stirred the ashes to dust with a stick before he was satisfied.

  The last of the four journals was only partially filled, and contained a detailed description of a caravan route running from ‘the blood-soaked lands where Mzilikazi’s evil impis hold sway’ eastwards five hundred miles or more ‘to where the reeking ships of the traders surely wait to welcome the poor souls who survive the hazards of this infamous road’.

  ‘I have followed the road as far as the eastern rampart of mountains, and always the evidence of the passing of the caravans is there for all the world to see. That grisly evidence which I have come to know so well, the bleaching bones and the circling vultures. Is there not a corner of this savage continent which is free from the ravages of the traders?’

  These revelations would interest Robyn more than they did him. Zouga glanced through them swiftly and then marked them for her attention. There was a great deal on slavery and the traders, a hundred pages or more – and then the penultimate entry.

  ‘We have today come up with a caravan of slaves, winding through the hilly country towards the east. I have counted the miserable victims from afar, using the telescope and there are almost a hundred of them, mostly half-grown children and young women. They are yoked together in pairs with forked tree trunks about their necks in the usual manner.

  ‘The slave-masters are black men, I have been unable to descry either Arabs or men of European extraction amongst them. Although they wear no tribal insignia, no plumes nor regalia, I have no doubt they are Amandebele, for their physique is distinctive, and they come from the direction of that tyrant Mzilikazi’s kingdom. They are furthermore armed with the broad-bladed stabbing spear and long ox-hide shields of that people, while two or three of them carry trade muskets.

  ‘At this moment they are encamped not more than a league from where I lie, and in the dawn they will continue their fateful journey towards the east where the Arab and Portuguese slave-masters no doubt wait to purchase the miserable human cattle and load them like cargo for the cruel voyage half across the world.

  ‘God has spoken to me, clearly I have heard his voice as he enjo
ined me to go down, and, like his sword, cut down the ungodly, free the slaves and minister to the meek and the innocent.

  ‘Joseph is with me, that true and trusted companion of the years, and he will be well able to serve my second gun. His marksmanship is not of the best, but he has courage and God will be with us.’

  The next entry was the last. Zouga had come to the end of the four journals.

  ‘God’s ways are wonderful and mysterious, passing all understanding. He lifteth up and he casteth down. With Joseph beside me I went down, as God had commanded, to the camp of the slave-masters. We fell upon them, even as the Israelites fell upon the Philistines. At first it seemed that we must prevail for the ungodly fled before us. Then God in all his knowing wisdom deserted us. One of the ungodly leapt upon Joseph while he was reloading, and though I put a ball through his chest he impaled poor Joseph from breast bone to spine with that terrible spear, before himself falling dead.

  ‘Alone I carried on the fight, God’s fight, and the slave-masters scattered into the forest before my wrath. Then one of them turned and at extreme range fired his musket in my direction. The ball struck me in the hip.

  ‘I managed, I do not know how, to drag myself away before the slave-masters returned to slay me. They did not attempt to follow me, and I have regained the shelter which I left to make the attempt. However, I am sorely smitten and reduced to dire straits. I have managed to remove the musket ball from my own hip, but I fear the bone is cracked through and I am crippled.

  ‘In addition I have lost both my firearms, Joseph’s musket lies with him where he fell, and I was so badly hurt as to be unable to carry my weapon off the field. I sent the woman back to find them, but they have been carried away by the slave-traders.

  ‘My remaining porters, seeing the state to which I have been reduced and knowing that I could not prevent it, have all deserted, but not before they had looted the camp and carried away almost everything of value, not excluding my medicine chest. Only the woman remains. I was angry at first when she attached herself to my party, but now I see God’s hand in this – for although she is a heathen, yet she is loyal and true beyond all others, now that Joseph is dead.

  ‘What is a man in this cruel land without a musket or quinine? Is there a lesson in this for me and posterity, a lesson that God has chosen me to teach? Can a white man live here? Will he not always be the alien, and will Africa tolerate him once he has lost his weapons and expended his medicines?’

  Then a single poignant cry of agony.

  ‘Oh God, has this all been in vain? I came to bring your Word and nobody has listened to my voice. I came to change the ways of the wicked and nothing is changed. I came to open a way for Christianity, and no Christian has followed me. Please, my God, give me a sign that I have not followed the wrong road to a false destination.’

  Zouga leaned back and rubbed his eyes with the heels of both hands. He found himself deeply moved, his eyes stinging not only from fatigue.

  Fuller Ballantyne was an easy man to hate, but a hard man to despise.

  Robyn chose the place with care. The secluded pools on the river, away from the main camp, where nobody could overlook or overhear them. She chose the time, in the heat of midday – when most of the Hottentots and all the porters would be asleep in the shade. She had given Fuller five drops of the precious laudanum to quiet him, and left him with the Mashona girl and Juba to care for him while she went down the hill to Zouga.

  They had barely exchanged a dozen words during the ten days since he had caught up with her. In all that time he had not returned to the cave on the hilltop, and she had seen him only once when she had gone down to the river camp for supplies.

  When she had sent Juba down with a tersely worded note, demanding the return of Fuller’s tin chest of papers, he had sent a porter with it immediately. In fact, with such alacrity that Robyn was immediately suspicious.

  This distrust was a symptom of their rapidly deteriorating relationship. She knew that she and Zouga must talk, must discuss the future, before the opportunity to talk was past.

  He was waiting for her beside the green river pools, as she had asked him to be, sitting in the mottled shade beneath a wild fig tree, quietly smoking a hand-rolled cheroot of native tobacco. He stood up courteously as soon as he saw her, but his expression was reserved and his eyes guarded.

  ‘I do not have much time, Zouga dear.’ Robyn tried to lessen the tension between them by using the small endearment, and Zouga nodded gravely. ‘I must get back to Pater.’ She hesitated. ‘I did not want to ask you to come up the hill since you find it distasteful.’ She saw the green sparks in his eyes kindle immediately, and went on quickly. ‘We must decide what we should do now. Obviously we cannot stay on here indefinitely.’

  ‘What do you suggest?’

  ‘Pater is much stronger. I have subdued the malaria with quinine and the other disease,’ she worded it tactfully, ‘has responded to the mercury. It is only the leg that truly worries me now.’

  ‘You told me he was dying.’ Zouga reminded her levelly, and she could not help herself, despite her good intentions she flared at him.

  ‘Well, I am sorry to disappoint you, then.’

  Zouga’s face stiffened into a handsome, bronzed mask. She could see the effort it took him to control his own temper, and his voice was thick with it as he answered.

  ‘That’s not worthy of you.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she agreed, and drew a deep breath. ‘Zouga, he has rallied strongly. Food and medicine, care and his own natural strength have made an immense difference. I am even convinced that if we could get him to civilization to a skilled surgeon – we could cure the ulceration of his leg, and possibly even induce the bone to mend.’

  Zouga was silent for a long time, and though his face was expressionless, she could see the play of emotion in his eyes.

  He spoke at last. ‘Father is mad.’ She did not answer. ‘Can you cure his mind?’

  ‘No.’ She shook her head. ‘That will get worse, but with care and skilled attention in a good hospital, we can improve his body and he could live for many years still.’

  ‘To what purpose?’ Zouga insisted.

  ‘He would be comfortable and perhaps happy.’

  ‘And all the world would know that he was a syphilitic madman,’ Zouga went on quietly for her. ‘Would it not be kinder to let the legend stand untarnished? No, more than that, to add to it by our own account, rather than drag back this poor diseased and demented thing for all his enemies, his numerous enemies, to mock?’

  ‘Is that why you tampered with his journals?’ Robyn’s voice was shrill, even in her own ears.

  ‘That’s a dangerous accusation.’ He was losing his control also. ‘Can you prove it?’

  ‘I don’t have to prove it; we both know it’s so.’

  ‘You cannot move him.’ Zouga changed direction. ‘He is crippled.’

  ‘He could be carried on a litter. We have more than enough porters.’

  ‘Which way would you take him?’ Zouga demanded. ‘He would never survive the route over which we have travelled

  – and the route southwards is uncharted.’ ‘Pater himself has charted the slave road in his journal. We will follow that. It will lead us directly to the coast.’ ‘With the major objectives of the expedition unfulfilled?’

  Zouga asked quickly. ‘The major objectives were to find Fuller Ballantyne, and report on the slave trade, both of which we can accomplish if we march down the slave road to the sea.’ Robyn broke off, and then made a show of dawning comprehension. ‘Oh dear, how silly of me, you mean the gold and the ivory. Those were the major objectives all along, were they not, my dear brother?’

  ‘We have a duty to our sponsors.’

  ‘And none to that poor sick old man up there?’ Robyn flung out one hand dramatically, and then spoiled the effect by stamping her foot. Angry with herself as well as with him, she yelled at him. ‘I am taking Pater down to the coast, and quickly as
I can.’

  ‘I say you are not.’

  ‘And I say the hell with you, Morris Zouga Ballantyne!’ The oath gave her a dark pleasure, and she turned and strode away from him, long-legged in her tight-fitting breeches.

  Two days later Robyn was ready to march. All exchanges between Zouga and herself since their final meeting at the river had been in the form of written notes, and Robyn realized that her brother would be keeping copies of all this correspondence to justify his actions later.

  She had briefly repudiated his written command not to attempt a march with the sick man. Zouga had listed half a dozen reasons, each neatly enumerated, why she should remain. Once he had her written defiance, his next note sent up the hill in Juba’s sweating little hand was magnanimous, written for future readers other than herself, Robyn decided sourly.

  ‘If you insist on this folly,’ he began and he went on to offer her the protection of the entire force of Hottentot musketeers – with the exception of Sergeant Cheroot who had expressed a desire to remain with Zouga. Under the Corporal they would form an escort capable, as Zouga worded it ‘of bringing you and your charge safely to the coast, and protecting you from any hazards upon the way’.

  He insisted that she take most of the remaining porters. He would keep five porters to carry his essential stores, together with his four gunbearers, Matthew, Mark, Luke and John.

  He also ordered her to take the Sharps rifle and all the remaining stores, ‘leaving me only sufficient powder and shot, and the bare minimum of medicines to enable me to complete the further objectives of this expedition which I deem to be of prime importance’.

  His final note reiterated all his reasons for keeping Fuller Ballantyne on the hilltop, and asked her once more to reconsider her decision. Robyn saved him the trouble of making fair copies by simply turning over the note and scribbling on it. ‘My mind is made up. I will march at first light tomorrow for the coast.’ Then she dated and signed it.