Princess, Shere Khan, and Duke were already aboard, and I stood, fussing over each of them as the rest of the herd joined them. At last, only Brutus, Vaquero, and Tequila were left in the field. I crossed the riding school to take hold of Tequila’s rope and led him aboard.
“You won’t be able to make a mad dash for the Bvumba now,” I said, steering him up the ramp. “Sorry, Tequila—you’re off to a new home.”
After Tequila, Vaquero—his eye still rolling, his legs still gangly—followed. From the darkness, he looked back. It might have been my imagination, but I could have sworn he still remembered my attempts to foist him onto the Portuguese farmer. He seemed to have a wicked glint in his eyes.
Brutus was the last in, his face contorted in a particularly Brutus-esque expression of worry as we forced him aboard.
“Off to join Jade, Brutus,” I said, as we hauled the ramp shut. “Don’t look so frightened—she’ll be glad to see you.”
I walked one last time around the riding school. At last, I left the empty rooms and barren paddock behind and took my seat in the Land Rover. Albert was behind the wheel. We were to lead the convoy. It would be a long, slow crawl.
“Are we ready, Miss Mandy?”
I felt so relaxed in my seat, it seemed to reach up and envelop me. “Let’s go.”
The road to Vilanculos was pitted with holes, and every time we reached a certain speed we had to slow again, weaving from one side of the road to the next. In stretches where the highway was flat, the Mozambican police lay in wait, eager to trap and elicit bribes from whatever motorists they could. Five times, they pulled us over to check documentation and receive healthy tips. Each time, too bent on Vilanculos to care, we left them grinning and applauding us from the side of the road as the convoy motored past.
That day was long. The sun baked. We stopped at intervals to feed and water the horses. Halfway there, having made sure they were watered and had enough maize still aboard to sustain them, we took the plunge. The road leveled out, the potholes became less frequent, and we sailed on, not intending to stop again.
At last, we could see the ocean. It hung on the horizon, a blue as perfect as the sky above. As soon as it appeared, my heart soared. It was a strange feeling that ran through me then, all up and down my heartstrings. Though I had never lived there before, I felt as if I was coming home.
In my pocket, my phone rang. On the other end of the line, Pat’s voice kept breaking up.
“Are you near, Mandy?”
I looked up, the ocean growing larger in the windshield.
“Nearly . . .” I replied.
Soon we could smell the sea, hear the cries of seabirds as they flew in formation overhead. We left the main highway and followed a road of deep sand that wove its way through the sprawl of huts that surrounded the main road of Vilanculos. Leaving the town behind, we followed the line of the coast. Then, the sea was directly in front of us. Daylight was paling into dusk, but the ocean reflected and caught the last hints of sunlight, its gentle waves sparkling wherever they broke.
The convoy ground to a halt, and Jonathan met us at the side of the road. He looked different from the last time I had seen him, thinner, more drawn, but was still wearing his same irrepressible grin. Albert jumped out of the Land Rover to join him and together they organized the convoy to take the horses down to the stables.
“And Pat?” I asked, sliding into the driver’s seat.
“He is at home, waiting,” Jonathan replied.
“Home?”
“You will see . . .”
He pointed me down the road, and—now behind the wheel myself—I steered the Land Rover in the direction he described.
I came through more wood huts and faced the brilliant glare of the ocean. Down at the shore’s edge, only meters from the line of lapping water, sat a little rondavel hut with concrete walls and a thatched roof, barely big enough to contain a single small room. At its side stood an outhouse made from local timber. A dilapidated trailer sat out front and, in front of that, there was my husband, bent over a saddle with his tools piled up at his side.
I parked the Land Rover and stepped out. A sharp incline dropped down to the rondavel, and I hurried down. Pat was shirtless and looked leaner than I had ever seen him before. When I got close, I realized exactly how lean; it was not only his cheekbones that looked more pronounced, but every bone in his body. My husband had once been broad and strong, but now he looked wiry, almost scrawny. I could see every line of his ribs, his eyes seemed to have retreated inside their sockets, and his hair was thin, with the grayness spreading across his whole pate.
He looked up. A smile twitched at the corner of his lips. Had it really been only a year? Could a year do this to a man? I was struck by a horrifying, absurd thought: here, framed by one of the most beautiful vistas in the world, Pat looked as if he had just stepped out of a concentration camp.
“Pat,” I said, grinning, “you look terrible.”
“Well, you know how it’s been. Cyclones. Malaria. No clean water. And, on top of all that, I haven’t really been eating . . .” He put down the saddle, stepped forward, and threw his arms around me. “Welcome home, Mandy, you’re going to love it . . .”
Chapter 15
I CRASHED into the rondavel.
“Pat,” I said, “Brutus has been arrested.”
Pat looked up from mending a saddle.
“Arrested?”
“Yes.”
“Brutus?”
“Yes.”
“The horse Brutus, that little pony Brutus?”
“The very same.”
Pat didn’t know whether to throw his head back and laugh or lift his fists and rail at the gods.
“Only in Mozambique, Mandy.”
“Come on, Pat, before they do something terrible . . .”
After the devastation of the cyclone, it had taken a long time for the tourists to return to Vilanculos. But return they had. I had been riding with some this morning, along the sweeping blue cove between the little rondavel where we had started living and the stables farther along the beach, when one of our local grooms had come floundering out of the long grass at the cliff’s edge and flailed at me across the sand. Underneath me, Lady seemed to want to shy away, but I kept her reined tight and listened to what the groom had to say.
“Chief Phophopho’s waiting at the Archipelago Lodge,” I explained. “Apparently, we’ve already ignored his summons twice.”
“What?”
I could only shrug. “Somebody hasn’t been passing on the message. Nobody wants to be the bearer of bad news in Africa . . .”
Pat and I hurried out of our little rondavel. The views from our step were perhaps the most beautiful I had ever seen—the pure white fringes of sand and calm, azure water, with the distant humps of islands marking the horizon—but there was no time to stop and admire them now, not when Brutus was in trouble.
The lodge, at which the chief was waiting, was perched on the clifftops between our home and the stables, and we made the short drive there in the Land Rover. Archipelago Lodge was a beautiful hotel with large wooden chalets featuring wide verandahs from which tourists could look over the serene and spectacularly beautiful bay. The owners, Jeff and Jane Reilley, encouraged horse riding, and most of their guests would take the opportunity to ride along the beaches. The lodge had been badly damaged in the cyclone, but builders had worked night and day to restore it.
At the very edge of the cliff, in the shade of palms that had somehow survived the cyclone, the local village chief, a tiny wizened man they called Phophopho, sat with his entourage of three younger men and an Italian woman, who I quickly realized was there to act as translator. As Pat and I tentatively approached, Chief Phophopho’s big white eyes fell on me. He gestured that I should sit.
“What seems to be the problem?” I began.
The chief said something to which his entourage heartily agreed. I turned to the translator.
“First,” the I
talian woman explained, “we drink.”
The old chief motioned and the barman appeared with glasses of wine, which he duly passed around. I lifted mine to drink, but the chief’s eyes opened wide and I stopped. Around the table, he and the entourage drained their glasses. Then, after a little nod of instruction, Pat and I did the same.
“On to business,” declared the translator. “You understand why you have been called to this meeting?”
“Actually,” I said, “I haven’t quite—”
The chief cut me off, speaking rapidly in his own language, Xitswa.
“Your creature—the big dog named Brutus—has been accused of theft. The women of the village reported seeing him in their maize, grazing it down to stubs. Do you deny it?”
I flashed a look at Pat.
“I know what happened here,” he whispered. “I took them out to graze, roped them off so they wouldn’t wander. It’s those grooms—they fell asleep . . .”
It would not have been the first time. Watching a horse eat is not the most captivating activity, and between that and the fierce Mozambican sun, it was all too easy to drift off. I had caught the grooms at it once before, curled up in the shade of some baobab while Echo untied a knot and wandered off. Brutus, I supposed, had had enough of the tough yellow grass he was grazing and, taking advantage of the slumbering grooms, stepped daintily over the rope and off to tastier pastures.
“The big dog wantonly ignored the village women’s cries. They banged tin pots, shooed him away, told him in no uncertain terms that the maize did not belong to him—but he heeded none of their warnings.”
“Well, of course not,” I began. “He’s a horse.”
“A thief is still a thief.”
I whispered to Pat from the corner of my mouth, “Where is Brutus?”
“He was at the stables this morning.”
“Looking well fed?”
“He didn’t look as worried as usual . . .”
“He has been placed under arrest in absentia, awaiting his sentence,” the Italian woman went on, translating Chief Phophopho’s words. “If he cannot answer for himself, you must.”
“Well,” I began, “quite clearly he can’t answer for himself.”
Upon hearing the translation, the chief’s face broke into a broad smile.
“Then perhaps,” said the translator, “we should let the negotiations begin.”
Remembering the last time somebody had accused our horses of theft and the bitter price they had exacted, I steeled myself. I still had no idea what had become of Pink Daiquiri and Ramazotti—but if Chief Phophopho was framing Brutus to take some of our horses for himself, he was in for a shock. I would not let it happen again.
I pitched across the table, angling myself to look the old chief in the eye. “What are you asking for?”
The old man smiled again.
“Everything has its cost,” said the translator. “The chief would like you to pay for the villager’s crops.”
Suddenly, all the memories of Pink Daiquiri and Ramazotti evaporated. I laughed, long and loud. Perhaps it was the wine, perhaps it was the searing heat, perhaps it was just the ridiculous idea that Pat and I should be living here, on this beautiful stretch of coast, with barely enough money to rub two coins together—but it seemed laughter was all that I had.
The chief named his price. I looked, out of the corner of my eye, at Pat. He simply gave an enormous shrug.
“It’s yours,” I said.
Upon hearing the translation, the chief stood and threw his arms open wide.
“I’ll go and get you your money,” I said, turning to leave.
“No.” The translator smiled, her face a tiny imitation of Chief Phophopho’s big grin. “You must not go yet. First, we drink.”
That night, still bewildered and wondering where the next tourists were coming from to pay for Brutus’s adventure, Pat and I walked up to the stables. Roped up, Brutus was happily chewing on a bundle of dried grass. As I approached, he turned to face me. His face creased in exactly the same way it had when he was a tiny foal, as if pleading that he had done nothing wrong.
I scooped up a handful of horse cubes and ambled over to palm them into his mouth. Perplexed at first, he quickly gobbled them up.
“Brutus,” I said, putting my arms around him and remembering the first time I ever saw him, huddled up to Jade on John Crawford’s farm, “you are worth every penny.”
As Jonathan and the grooms fanned out around the pasture, driving in stakes and raising a rope around its edges, Pat and I rode to the head of the column and gently brought the horses to a standstill. Beneath me, Vaquero seemed to be able to sense the lush grass in the field the grooms were roping off and urged me to take him there. In the year since Chimoio he had grown into himself, shedding some of the gangliness of his youth, and though his eye still wandered, and though his teeth still seemed too big for his jaws, there was something refined—almost handsome—about the dappled gray gelding he had become.
“Soon,” I whispered, and I looked over to see Pat in Shere Khan’s saddle, riding up the column of more than thirty of our best horses, checking to make sure that all was well.
Brutus’s little adventure had taught us two things: first, that Brutus was not to be trusted when within sight of a stretch of lush maize; and, second, that grazing in our new part of the world was always going to be a problem. We had run out of grazing, and although we could buy maize from the market in Vilanculos, it was important to find fresh ground for the horses. So we divided the herd into two groups, bringing one group here, where we could leave the horses until the rains came and grazing improved.
We were thirty kilometers outside of Vilanculos, and it seemed too perfect to be true. At the bottom of the pasture, the grasses grew thick around the edges of a natural lake of crystal clear water. With enough water and grass here to nourish the herd for weeks on end, it seemed as if we had walked into a desert oasis.
In a fit of joy, a horse thundered past me and cantered into the middle of the field. On Fleur’s back, there sat Kate. She lifted a hand and waved at me from the center of the field, then she drew Fleur back around and trotted back in my direction. Kate had graduated from the University of Stellenbosch in South Africa and had been staying with us in Vilanculos while she planned her next move. To my shame, there was no room for her at the little rondavel that Pat and I now called home. Though it had one of the most perfect views on the planet, mere yards from the placid waters of the Bazaruto bay, our room was scarcely big enough for our two single beds, pushed together with a big mosquito net to cloak us, and the water basin out back. As Jay did when he came down from Gorongosa, Kate was staying in the kitchen area. She had been with us four months, but though she loved the horses and was quite brilliant at entertaining the tourists we took out for rides, I could tell that her heart wasn’t in it. Mozambleak, she called it. Vilanchaos. She had her sights set on following Paul to London, and I could not blame her.
We shepherded the horses into the field and roped off the entrance. Bewildered at their good luck, the herd fanned out and instantly started to graze. Marquess and Fleur drifted down to the banks of the lake, while Shere Khan remained in the middle of the field, surveying the herd for a long time after they had all dropped their heads to eat, like the queen that she was.
“If only this was at our doorstep,” Pat said.
We milled around the herd, and when we heard the noise of a truck drawing around beyond the rope, we set off to join it.
The last thing I saw as we climbed aboard to make the drive home was Vaquero, watching me with a mischievous glint in his eye, turning the grass between oversize teeth.
In Vilanculos, we rose with the dawn. Down at the stables, some of the local grooms were preparing horses for the day’s ride. Duke and Black Magic were already saddled up when Pat and I arrived, with Fanta and Viper, the little purebred Arabian, waiting dutifully in the wings.
Today we rode down the coast, through ric
h coconut plantations, and to the local fishing village, where families of local Mozambicans had, from time immemorial, set out at dawn in their sailing dhows to cast their nets into the pristine waters of the bay. Our clients were a South African couple and their daughter who were on a whistle-stop tour of the east African coast. As Kate helped them sort out chaps and riding hats, I checked the stirrups and girths of each horse and prepared to climb into Duke’s saddle.
“There’ll be fresh coconut waiting at the other side,” Kate said to the couple’s daughter, helping adjust her stirrup straps. The girl was in Lady’s saddle, the preening little pony the perfect size for her. “And matapa. Have you tried matapa? It’s made from cassava leaves. I’ll let you in on a secret . . .” Kate paused, then she whispered into the girl’s ear, “It’s disgusting . . .”
The little girl was thrilled.
I had one foot in the stirrup and was about to swing my leg over when a car rumbled into the stable, through overhanging bush, and Jonathan stepped out. With a simple gesture of the hand, he got Pat’s attention.
I was leading Duke on a little walk, waiting for Kate to saddle up and the tourists to be ready, when Pat called over.
“It’s Echo,” he said. “He’s gone. You’ll have to ride this one alone, Mandy. I’ll go and find him.”
“You know where he’ll be?”
Pat grinned. “Halfway back to the Bvumba.”
I shook my head. He had a very long way to go.
Hours later, Pat found Echo calmly walking along the side of the road with Evita and Jazzman at his side. Driving them back to the grazing land, he found two of the grooms asleep in the sun, and a length of rope lying coiled in the grass like a snake. Somebody, it seemed, had untied it from the tree around which it had been wound. The telltale teeth marks around the end told him the culprit had not been human.
One Hundred and Four Horses Page 25