by Wilbur Smith
It was Lothar's tenderness and gentleness with her son that nudged her affections and her need for him forward, for she recognized that beneath that handsome exterior he was a hard man and fierce. She saw the awe and respect in which his own men held him, and they were tough men themselves.
just once she witnessed him in a cold, killing rage that terrified her as much as it did the man against whom it was directed. Vark Jan, the wrinkled yellow Khoisan, in indolence and ignorance had ridden Lothar's hunting horse with an ill-fitting saddle and galled the creature's back almost to the bone. Lothar had knocked Vark Jan down with a fist to the head, and then cut the jacket and shirt off his back with razor strokes from his sjambok, a five-foot whip of cured hippo-hide, and left him unconscious in a puddle of his own blood.
The violence had appalled and frightened Centaine, for she had witnessed every brutal detail from where she lay on her cot beneath the awning. Later, however, when she was alone in her shelter, her revulsion faded and in its place was a trembly feeling of exhilaration and a heat in the pit of her stomach.
He's so dangerous, she thought, so dangerous and cruel, and she shivered again and could not sleep. She lay and listened to his breathing in the shelter beside hers, and thought about how he must have undressed her and touched her while she was unconscious, and her flesh tingled at the memory and she blushed in the darkness.
In startling contrast the next day he was gentle and tender, holding her injured leg in his lap while he snipped the threads of cotton and plucked them from her swollen, inflamed flesh. They left dark punctures in her skin, and he bent over her leg and sniffed the wound.
It's clean now. That redness is only your body attempting to rid itself of the stitches. It will heal swiftly now they are gone. Lothar was right. Within two days she was able, with the help of the crutch he had whittled for her, to make her first foray out of the canvas shelter.
My legs feel wobbly, she protested, and I am as weak as Shasa. You'll soon be strong again. He placed his arm around her shoulders to steady her, and she trembled at his touch and hoped he would not notice and withdraw his arm.
They paused by the horse lines and Centaine petted the animals, stroking their silky muzzles and revelling in that nostalgic horse odour.
I want to ride again, she told him.
Anna Stok told me you were a skilled horsewoman she told me you had a stallion, a white stallion. Nuage. Tears prickled her eyes as she remembered, and she pressed her face against the neck of Lothar's hunting horse to hide them. My white cloud, he was so beautiful, so strong and swift.
Nuage, Lothar took her arm, a lovely name. Then he went on, Yes, you will ride again soon. We have a long journey ahead of us, back to where your father-in-law and Anna Stok will be waiting for you. It was the first time she had considered an end to this magical interlude, and she pulled away from the horse and stared at him over its back. She didn't want it to end, she didn't want him to leave her, as she knew he soon would.
I'm tired, she said. I don't think I am ready to start riding just yet. That evening as she sat under the awning with a book in her lap, pretending to read, while watching him from under her lowered lids, he looked up suddenly and smiled with such a knowing glint in his eye that she blushed and looked away in confusion, I'm writing to Colonel Courtney, he told her, sitting at the collapsible travelling bureau with the pen in his hand smiling across at her, I will send a rider back to Windhoek tomorrow, but it will take him two weeks or more to get there and back. I am letting Colonel Courtney know when and where we can meet, and I have suggested a rendezvous for the i9th day of next month. She wanted to say, So soon? but instead, she nodded silently.
I am sure you are most anxious to be reunited with your family, but I don't think we will be able to reach the rendezvous before that date. I understand. However, I would be delighted to send any letter that you might care to write, with the messenger Oh, that would be wonderful, Anna, dear Anna, she will be fussing like an old hen. Lothar stood up from the bureau.
Please seat yourself here and use the pen and what paper you need, Mrs Court they. While you are busy, master Shasa and I will see to his dinner. Surprisingly, once she penned the opening salutation, My dearest dear Anna, she could think of nothing to follow it mere words seemed so paltry.
I give thanks to God that you survived that terrible night, and I have thought of you every day since then-The dam holding back the words burst, and they flooded out on to the paper.
We will need a pack horse to carry that epistle. Lothar stood behind her shoulder, and she started as she realized that she had covered a dozen sheets with close script.
There is so much still to tell her, but the rest will have to wait. Centaine folded the sheets and sealed them with a wax wafer from the silver box fitted into the top of the bureau, while Lothar held the candle for her.
It was strange, she whispered. I had almost forgotten how to hold a pen. It has been so long. You have never told me what happened to you, how you escaped from the sinking ship, how you survived so long, how you came to be so many hundreds of miles from the coast where you must have come ashore- I don't want to talk about it. She cut him off quickly.
She saw for a moment in her mind's eye, the little heartshaped, wrinkled, amber-coloured faces, and suppressed her nagging guilt at having deserted them so cruelly.
I don't even want to think about that. Kindly never address the subject again, sir. Her tone was stingingly severe.
Of course, Mrs Courtney."He picked up the two sealed letters. If you will excuse me, I will give these to Vark Jan now. He can leave before dawn tomorrow. He was stiff-faced and resentful of the rebuff.
She watched him cross to the servants fire and heard the murmur of voices as he gave Vark Jan his orders.
When he returned to the shelter, she made a pretence of being engrossed with her book, hoping that he would interrupt her, but he seated himself at the bureau and opened his journal. It was his nightly ritual, his entry in the leather-bound journal. She listened to his pen scratching on the paper, and she resented his attention being focused anywhere but on herself.
There is so little time left to us, she thought, and he squanders it so. She closed her book loudly but he did not look up.
What are you writing? she demanded.
You know what I am writing, since we have discussed it before, Mrs Courtney Do you write everything in your journal? Almost everything. Do you write about me?
He laid down the pen and stared at her, and she was flustered by the direct gaze of those serene yellow eyes, but could not bring herself to apologize.
You were prying into things that did not concern you, she told him.
Yes, he agreed with her, and to cover her discomfort, she demanded, What have you written about me in your famous journal I And now, madam, it is you who are inquisitive, he told her as be closed his diary, placed it in the drawer of the bureau and stood up. If you will excuse me, I must make my rounds of the camp.
So she learned that she could not treat him the way she had treated her father, or even the way she had treated Michael Courtney. Lothar was a proud man and would not allow her to trespass on his dignity, a man who had fought his whole life for the right to be his own master.
He would not permit her to take advantage of his strong sense of chivalry to her and to little Shasa. She learned that she could not bully him.
The next morning she found herself dismayed by his formal aloof bearing, but as the day wore on she became angry. Such a small tiff, and he sulks like a spoiled child, she told herself. Well, we'll see who sulks longest and hardest. By the second day her anger had given way to loneliness and unhappiness. She found herself longing for his smile, for the pleasure of one of their long convoluted discussions for the sound of his laughter and his voice when he sang to her.
She watched Shasa tottering around the camp, hanging on to one of Lothar's hands and engaging him in loquacious conversation that only the two of them could understand, and was
appalled to find that she was jealous of her own child.
I will give Shasa his food, she told him coldly. It is time I resumed my duties. You need no longer discommode yourself, sir.
Of course, Mrs Courtney. And she wanted to cry, Please, I am truly sorry, But their pride was a mountain range between them.
She listened all that afternoon for the sound of his horse returning. She heard only the sound of distant rifle fire, but it was after dark when Lothar rode in, and she and Shasa were already in their cots. She lay in the darkness and listened to the voices and the sounds as the carcasses of the springbok that Lothar had shot were offloaded from his hunting horse and hung upon the butchering rack.
Lothar sat late at the fire with his men, and bursts of their laughter carried to her as she tried to compose herself to sleep.
At last she heard him come to the shelter beside hers, and she listened to the splash of water as he washed in the bucket at the entrance, the rustle of his clothing and finally the creak of the lacings of his cot as he settled upon it.
Shasa's cries awoke her, and she knew instantly that he was in pain, and she swung her legs off the cot and still half-asleep groped for him. A match flared and lantern light bloomed in Lothar's shelter.
Shh! Quiet, my little one. She cradled Shasa against her chest, and his hot little body alarmed her.
May I enter? Lothar asked from the entrance.
Oh, yes. He stooped into the tent and set down the lantern.
Shasa, he's sick, Lothar took the child from her. He wore only a pair of breeches, his chest and feet were bare. His hair was tangled from the pillow.
He touched Shasa's flushed cheek and then slipped a finger into his squalling mouth. Shasa choked off his next howl and bit down on the finger like a shark.
Another tooth, Lothar smiled, I felt it this morning. He handed Shasa back to her and he let out a howl of rejection.
I'll be back, soldier, and she heard him rummaging in the medicine chest he kept bolted to the floor of his wagon.
He had a small bottle in his hand when he returned, and she wrinkled her nose at the pungent odour of oil of cloves as he pulled the cork.
We'll fix that bad old tooth, won't we just. Lothar massaged the child's gums as Shasa sucked on his finger. That's a brave soldier. He laid Shasa back in his cot and within minutes he had fallen asleep again.
Lothar picked up the lantern. Good night, Mrs Courtney, he said quietly, and went to the entrance.
Lothar! His name on her lips startled her as it did him.
Please, she whispered, I've been alone for so long.
Please, don't be cruel to me any more. She held out both arms towards him and he crossed to her and sank down on to the edge of the cot beside her.
Oh, Lothar- Her voice was choked and gusty, and she wrapped her arms around his neck. Love me, she pleaded, oh, please love me, and his mouth was hot as fever on hers, his arms about her so fierce that she gasped as the breath was driven from her lungs.
Yes, I was cruel to you, he told her softly, his voice trembling in his throat, but only because I wanted so desperately to hold you, because I ached and burned with my love for you- Oh, Lothar, hold me and love me, and never ever let me go.
The days that followed were full recompense for all the hardships and loneliness of the months and years. It was as though the fates had conspired to heap upon Centaine all the delights that she had been denied for so long.
She woke each dawn in the narrow cot and before her eyes were open, she was groping for him with a tantalizing terror that he might no longer be there, but he always was. Sometimes he was feigning sleep and she had to try and open one of his eyelids with her fingertips, and when she succeeded, he rolled his eyeball upwards until only the white showed, and she giggled and thrust her tongue deeply into his ear, having discovered that that was the one torture he could not endure, and the gooseflesh sprang up on his bare arms and he came awake like a lion and seized her and turned her giggles to gasps and then to moans.
In the cool of the morning they rode out together with Shasa on the saddle in front of Lothar. For the first few days they kept the horses to a walk and stayed close by the camp. However, as Centaine's strength returned, they ventured further and on the return they covered the last mile at a mad flying gallop, racing each other, and Shasa, secure in Lothar's arms, shrieked with excitement as they tore into the camp, all of them flushed and ravenous for their breakfasts.
The long sultry desert noondays they spent under the thatched shelter, sitting apart, touching only fleetingly when he handed her a book or when passing Shasa between them, but caressing each other with their eyes and their voices until the suspense was a kind of exquisite torment.
As the heat passed and the sun mellowed, Lothar again called for the horses and they rode to the foot of the scree slope below the mountain. They hobbled the horses and with Shasa riding on Lothar's shoulder climbed up into one of the narrow sheer-sided valleys. Here, below a fresco of ancient Bushman paintings, screened by dense foliage, Lothar had discovered another of the thermal springs. It spurted from out of the cliff face and drained into a small circular rock pool.
On their first visit, it was Lothar who had to be coaxed out of his clothes, while Centaine, happy to be rid of long skirts and petticoats which still irked her, delighting in the freedom of nakedness to which the desert had accustomed her, splashed him with water and teased and challenged him until at last, almost defiantly, he dropped his breeches and plunged hurriedly into the pool. You are shameless, he told her, only half-jokingly.
Shasa's presence placed a restraint upon them, and they touched lightly and furtively under the concealment of the green waters, driving each other to trembling distraction, until Lothar could bear it no longer, and reached for her with that determined set to his jaw that she had come to know so well. Then she would evade his clutches with a maidenly squeal, and leap from the pool, slipping on her skirts over her long wet gleaming legs and her bottom that glowed pink from the heat of the water.
Last one home misses his dinner! It was only after she had laid Shasa in his cot, and blown out the lantern, that she crept breathlessly through to Lothar's shelter, He was waiting for her, strung out by all the touching and teasing and artful withdrawals of the day. Then they went at each other in a desperate frenzy, almost as though they were antagonists locked in mortal combat.
Much later, lying in the darkness in each other's arms, talking very softly so as not to disturb Shasa, they made their plans and their promises for a future that stretched before them as though they stood on the threshold of paradise itself.
It seemed he had been gone only a few days, when in the middle of a baking afternoon, on a lathered horse, Vark Jan rode back into camp.
He carried a package of letters, sewed up in canvas wrapping and sealed with tar. One letter was for Lothar, a single sheet, and he read it at a glance.
I have the honour to inform you that I have in my possession a document of amnesty in your favour, signed by both the Attorney-General of the Cape of Good Hope and the Minister of justice of the Union of South Africa.
I congratulate you on the success of your endeavours and I look forward to our meeting at the time and place nominated when I shall take pleasure in handing the document to you.
Yours truly, Garrick Courtney (Col.) The other letters were both for Centaine. One was also from Garry Courtney, welcoming her and Shasa to the family and assuring them both of all the love and consideration and privilege that that entailed.
From the most miserable creature, immersed in unbearable grief, you have transformed me at a stroke into the happiest and most joyful of all fathers and grandfathers.
I long to embrace you both.
Speed that day, Your affectionate and dutiful father-in-law, Garrick Courtney The third letter, many times thicker than the other two combined, was in Anna Stok's clumsy, semi-literate scrawl. Her face flushed with excitement, alternately laughing aloud with joy or her eyes spa
rkling with tears, Centaine read snatches aloud for Lothar's benefit, and when she had reached the end, she folded both letters carefully.
I long to see them, and yet I am reluctant to let the world intrude upon our happiness together. I want to go, and yet I want to stay here for ever with you. Is that silly? Yes, he laughed. It certainly is. We leave at sunset.
They travelled at night to avoid the heat of the desert day.
With Shasa sound asleep in the wagon cot, lulled by the motion of rolling wheels, Centaine rode stirrup to stirrup with Lothar. His hair shone in the moonlight, and the shadows softened the marks of hardship and suffering on his features, so she found it difficult to take her eyes from his face.
Each morning before the dawn, they went into laager.
If they were between water-holes, they watered the cattle and the horses from the bucket before they sought the shade of the wagon awnings to wait out the heat of the day.
In the late afternoon while the servants packed up the camp and inspanned for the night's trek, Lothar would ride out to hunt. At first Centaine rode with him, for she could not bear to be parted from him for even an hour.
Then one evening in failing light Lothar made a poor shot and the Mauser bullet ripped through the belly of a beautiful little springbok.
It ran before the horses with amazing stamina, a tangle of entrails swinging from the gaping wound. Even when at last it went down, it lifted its head to watch Lothar as he dismounted and unsheathed his hunting knife. After that Centaine stayed in camp when Lothar went out for fresh meat.
So Centaine was alone this evening when the wind came suddenly out of the north, niggling and chill. Centaine climbed up into the living wagon to fetch a warm jacket for Shasa.
The interior of the wagon was crammed with gear, packed and ready for the night's trek. The carpet bag which contained all the clothing that Anna had provided, was stowed at the rear and she had to scramble over a yellow wood chest to reach it. Her long skirts hampered her, and she teetered on the top of the chest and put out her hand to steady herself.