'Intshe . . . It is not the best of time, but there may be amaqanda.'
He now saw. How had he not seen so large a bird? And he understood: intshe – ostrich; amaqanda – eggs? Was it the breeding season?
For the next twenty minutes they stalked it: crouching, watching, crawling, dashing, just as he had done as a boy on the Great Plain, the thrill of finding the lark's nest . . . Until at last Pampata was sure, when she rose to her feet and strode purposefully towards a scraping in the earth, perhaps six feet across, in which were eight or nine eggs, some broken, some half buried.
Pampata evidently sensed his puzzlement. 'Many ostriches share the one nest,' she explained.
They rifled the giant clutch as rudely as any wild predator. Pampata discarded several without breaking them; Hervey took one, despite her protest.
He reeled at the stench when he broke it, and threw it as far as he could. Pampata laughed – the first time he had seen her do so.
She handed him another, nodding encouragingly. He drew his sword, wanting to make a better break than the other he had managed. He cracked it cleanly, opened it in two equal halves and gave it back to her. She handed him another, and he broke it the same way.
She let the white trickle away, so that the yolk occupied almost the whole of one half-shell. Despite his hunger, he saw it was no true waste: although there was less yolk than white compared with a hen's egg, he reckoned it was at least the equal of two dozen he would have found in the henhouse in Wiltshire.
They ate their fill.
By the time the shadows were lengthening – longer now than the umbrella thorns which cast them – and the birds of the veld, large and small, were beginning to roost, Hervey calculated they had made not far short of twenty miles. He could feel it in his bones. He had but an elementary knowledge of the human skeleton and its muscles, but he knew where and how a ride across country made its demands, and likewise how that distance on foot told. Pampata showed no sign of the exertion. She seemed, indeed, to be in some sort of trance – not of the kind the witch doctor induced with his potions and spells, as if the body were possessed by some spirit of another place, but instead the product of the most singular concentration of mind (such was her determined intent to reach the kraal of Shaka's beloved). She refused rest. She said they could walk for another two hours before all light was gone, and that in a further three there would be a good moon, and that as long as there were stars to see by, they could continue their march.
Shortly after two o'clock in the morning, Hervey now believing he must insist on rest, for his own as well as Pampata's sake, they came upon a small watercourse set about with lala palms. The moon slipped behind cloud as they stumbled over the thicker tussocks of grass. It had been slipping in and out for the best part of an hour, making the business of marching by the stars ever more difficult, but Pampata had not once faltered in either pace or direction.
Hervey thought this a good place to lie up a while. The shelter of trees was always a recommendation – the soldier's instinct for a roof over his head at night. Pampata was reluctant, however. Already they had startled the roosting birds, which made off with a good deal of noise; and water, she said, especially water at which there were trees, was favoured by the spirits of warriors who had gone home to their Maker. And by nyamakaza, wild beasts.
Hervey tried as best his Xhosa would allow to suggest that the spirits of the warriors would surely approve of their journey, knowing as they must of the murder of the greatest of them (perhaps even the spirit of Shaka himself would be watching them too). And as for nyamakaza, he was ready enough to put a ball into any that had the impudence to challenge them.
But it was pitch dark. Without a moon, under the lala palms, he could make out nothing of Pampata but an indistinct form. He had never been so strangely placed – at the will and capability of a native woman, and one whom he barely knew; yet he was her safeguard, too.
He was just able to see that she stooped to drink. Perhaps she would agree to rest here? He crouched beside her, cupping his hands and taking three good measures from the clear-tasting stream.
The challenge came silent and sudden. The blow pitched him onto all fours, stunned him. And then the snarl so loud, and the breath so hot.
Pampata screamed – but not in fear. She cursed, shrieked, spat, yelled.
The leopard made off as suddenly as it had struck, leaving Hervey grasping for his pistol but not knowing where to point it.
'Come!' hissed Pampata. 'We must leave this place.'
He would not gainsay her.
They stumbled on without moonlight for half an hour, the pain in his left shoulder growing. He could feel the blood down his back – not copious, more a trickle; but a wound nevertheless. How many of the leopard's claws had torn his flesh he could not know until morning, but he knew he had been lucky. In India, a leopard spelled death unless a covering bullet could stop it quickly; and he had no reason to suppose its African cousin was any less deadly.
Pampata knew they must rest. Hervey had not told her the leopard had drawn blood, but she could hear his breathing, and it was laboured. There was a break in the clouds ahead, and it would be good to be halted when the moon lit the veld again, for they would be able to see first, rather than be seen.
They sat down, Hervey supporting himself on his right hand. 'You were brave,' he said, simply.
'I was angry.'
'Why did the leopard go? Was he afraid of a woman's shouts?'
'He was afraid already, before he struck. Afraid we would take his place.'
Hervey wondered how she knew these things, how the king's favourite, the best-loved of the isigodlo, could be so versed in the lore of the wilderness. He tried to form the question, but he could not summon the words. And at that moment the moon slipped from behind its masking cloud, and lit the veld like an oil lamp brought into a darkened room.
They could see for two hundred yards, for it was flat and treeless. There were grazing animals, but he could not discern what they were. He looked about with all the intent of a scout who finds himself suddenly among the enemy, yet concealed.
Pampata had taken in the prospect at once – and it bore no fears for her. But she saw that he rested on one hand, and knew at once the reason. She began examining the wound with her fingers. It spanned the whole of his shoulder blade.
'Only three – you are fortunate. But the leopard's claws are always unclean. You must have medicine.'
Hervey might have smiled. Where did she suppose they would find the surgeon?
She rose and walked off a little way. He watched her casting around, then bending, before returning with a handful of leaves.
'What is that?'
'Umhlaba,' she replied, pulling at his tunic so that he would slip his left arm from the sleeve.
He held her hand to his face so that he could smell the leaves: aloe – he was content.
She crushed them and dabbed the wound with the moist pulp, and he felt the balm at once.
'When the sun rises I will search for ncwadi,' she said, helping him put his arm back into the sleeve. 'And inconi.'
He knew neither word, but trusted in her remedy, for the aloe was already making the wound but an ache. 'Ngibonga kakhulu, Nkosazana . . . Thank you, madam.'
'Nami ngiyabonga, mfowethu . . . I, too, thank you, my brother.'
Hervey could not but feel the warmth of that change in her salutation. 'Ngiyabonga,' he repeated simply.
Pampata nodded. And then, in a little while, said, 'We must sleep.'
Hervey replied that first she should sleep, while he kept watch, and then he would wake her so that he in turn could rest. But Pampata objected. There was nothing here, in the middle of the wilderness, to keep watch on, she said. Besides, if a herd of wild beasts should choose to pass over them, they would hear them and feel the earth tremble, and wake therefore, long before they would see them. And if Mbopa's men were indeed following them, they could not do so when it was dark.
; Hervey saw her reasoning, and said he was content. He took off his tunic once more, and made a pillow of it, offering one half to her. She laid down her head without a word. He, facing the opposite direction, laid down his, and, looking up at the stars as he had so many a time, thought for a fleeting moment of Georgiana, of how neglectful was his adventure, chosen or not, then closed his eyes and fell into a deeper sleep than he would have cared to own to.
Pampata woke him gently, with a hand to his sound shoulder. Hervey opened his eyes, and for once he did not instantly comprehend his situation, as invariably he comprehended in the field, alert at the first touch – Johnson's touch, more often than not. The stars had gone, the moon too, but the first fingers of light were stretching up from the eastern horizon, already seeming to bring warmth, and welcome.
He knew now where he was, and he shivered a little. The night had not been cold – not as cold as his first back at the Cape – but the ache in his shoulder was now more insistent, making him feel the need of a blanket. He raised himself on one hand again.
'Ulale kamnandi na?' It was what he had heard the Natal natives ask of him the morning after they had pitched camp ashore.
'Yes,' she replied – she had slept well. Had he?
He said – he thought he was saying – that he had slept so well that he could not believe it had been but the one night.
He began looking about, but keeping his eyes from the east and the growing glare of the breaking day. The veld was as peaceful as it had appeared by moonlight, not even much birdsong, nothing like the chorus that would have accompanied the break of an English day.
Pampata rose. 'Come,' she said, holding out a hand as if to help. 'We must find ncwadi.'
He got up by himself – stiff, but no more so than a hundred times before when he had risen unaided after a sodden night on cold ground. He breathed deep several times, as if the air had some restorative power – which it seemed indeed to have, as if it were somehow washed clean in the dark, silent hours, to begin again another day as pure as those which Adam himself had known.
It was no time for reverie. They had run, perhaps, a quarter of their course, and he supposed it would get no easier, and might very well get harder – much harder. He had not asked her: must they climb many hills, skirt many kraals, cross many rivers? Three times the distance still to go – the doubts began to press upon him.
They had been making tracks for an hour when Pampata at last saw what she was seeking, a small, undistinguished plant which she at once began uprooting.
To Hervey, the ncwadi's bulbous root looked unpromising, but Pampata crushed it first with her teeth, and then ground it in her hands – which she rubbed clean with the unwanted leaves – to make a dressing. Hervey removed his arm from the sleeve once more to let her apply the mulch. This time he felt only pain, however, for there was no balm in the root. Pampata told him it would make the wound clean, for the leopard's claws were always foul. Still, she insisted, they must find the inconi, for that could reverse any poison.
But not immediately, for when he had slipped his arm back into his tunic sleeve he saw – and with some astonishment – that she had in her hand an ostrich egg.
Pampata smiled: yes, she had concealed the egg.
He returned her smile as he drew his sabre. Her eyes were for the first time bright, and her mouth at ease. Her teeth, he marked, would have been the envy of many a lady of fashion.
He took the egg and gave the shell a sharp crack with the blade, edging as before around half its full circumference, allowing her then to pull it open in two perfectly equal parts. She drained off the white, just as she had with the others, and then pinched the yolk, dividing it between the two half-shells.
Thus they breakfasted: hazree basar, not chota, for although it was the first of the day, half a dozen hen's eggs were no small affair.
'Tea would complete our feast,' he said, before the thought reminded him painfully of Johnson, and he had to fight down the lump in his throat.
Pampata rose and held a hand to shade her eyes as she scoured the veld. Hervey knew better than to ask: he had seen how she picked the mark upon which they would march, and then examined the ground in between to choose her line of advance (there were as yet no prominent hills). She did so, indeed, with the skill of the dragoon-scout, and so far with entire success. He asked her on what she had fixed, and she pointed to a line of trees on the far, north-west, horizon. How tall they were, he could not tell, but he could not suppose them great – perhaps palm. Whatever their height, he did not reckon them closer than a couple of leagues: the mark would see them through the next two hours at least.
But after only half an hour Pampata made a sudden diversion to a stony outcrop by what was evidently a dry waterhole. Hervey thought he knew why: an abundance of dark-green leaves, and brilliant red shrubs clustered with fruit the size of grapes.
A flock of small but equally colourful birds quit their gorging as they approached, and rabbits bolted to their burrows. He felt sorry, almost, for having disturbed them.
But Pampata waved him from his interest in the fruit, making a sign that could not be mistaken for anything but 'poison', and instead took herself to the outcrop, where she crouched and then beckoned him over. 'See, inconi.'
He could see nothing, nothing but the rock itself. How was that to heal his wound?
She pointed.
The white marks – streaks, patches – he had merely thought to be the colour of the rocks. Pampata shook her head. She began to explain, but he understood nothing. She pointed to the burrows, and made a motion with her fingers to suggest rapid movement – the rabbits running, perhaps – but still he could not see what she meant. Then she pointed between his legs and arched her hand towards the ground with a 'psss' sound, which ended with a girlish giggle as Hervey grasped her meaning.
So the white marks were rabbit urine; but he was none the wiser.
Pampata picked a broad, flat leaf from one of the shrubs, motioned to his sabre and made a scraping gesture at the white patches.
Hervey drew his sword to oblige. Pampata was not content until they had collected two teaspoons' worth.
He then removed his arm from the tunic sleeve for a third time, and sat on a rock to await the application of the white magic. He had no second thoughts about her medicine, for he had learned an age ago, in India, how effective native cures could be (and, besides, some of what he had seen 'respectable' practitioners in England do smacked of so much quackery). The aloe had eased the pain to begin with, and although the ncwadi had brought no relief, the wound hurt no more now than before, which in his experience was unusual. What manner of cure, then, would the inconi work? Horse urine was an ammoniac, he knew; was the rock rabbit's?
Pampata wiped the wound clean of the ncwadi pulp. Blood began again to ooze, though not so freely as before. She let it fill the claw marks, dabbed at them with the torn sleeve of Hervey's shirt, then pressed the linen on the wound with the flat of her hand, and with increasing force until she was satisfied that the oozing would not defeat her purpose.
For a full five minutes Hervey endured such a pain as brought the most prodigious sweat to his brow.
She removed the linen, threw back her head and poured the white powder into her mouth, which she had filled with saliva.
Before he could ask her purpose – he now saw it was wholly impractical – she took his shoulders firmly in her hands, put her mouth to the wound, and squirted the milky astringent into the torn flesh.
Hervey was at once filled with admiration, and more – which he could not rightly determine. When she was finished, a new poultice of ncwadi applied and his arm eased carefully back into its sleeve, he turned to thank her. 'Ngibonga kakhulu, Nkosazana.'
She made a face, as if to say it was nothing.
But Hervey would not have it. He took her wrists to express his earnest. 'Ngibonga kakhulu.'
She gave a half smile of content, though of sadness too, unlike the earlier exchange, and rose.
'We have many miles to make today, mfowethu.'
He nodded. This was mere diversion; it gained them nothing in their true mission. But he could not let it pass without a proper expression of his esteem. He did what he had not done in many a year: he pulled a button from his tunic – not one of the black ones, but the silver dragoon button which he wore on the inside of his tunic-fall – he buffed it bright on the leg of his overalls, and presented it to her. 'Ngibonga kakhulu . . . dadewethu.'
He had called her 'my sister', as she had called him 'my brother'.
Pampata took the token reverently.
XX
A SOLITARY DUTY Earlier
Johnson had lain all day among the wild pear trees on the little hill to the south-east of the kraal, with Molly calmly pulling at the grass beside him. He had fastened the reins to his swordbelt so that if he fell asleep she would not break cover and reveal their hiding hole – or, worse, take off and leave him in this wild and Godless place.
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