The truck drew up in front of the house, where Ouma was standing on the front step, her hand shielding her eyes in a familiar gesture. Her white hair was drawn back into a severe bun, and her skin was tanned to leather from years of exposure to the harsh African sun. We were not a demonstrative family, so her face registered surprise when I bounded down from the truck before it had completely halted and hurled myself into her arms, almost knocking her off her feet.
“Annie-girl, this can mean only one thing,” she said, studying me with resignation. “What have you done now?” She turned to Rudi, who followed at a more dignified pace, and looked closely at him, before drawing him into a hug. “You look like kak, boy.”
“Baaie dankie, Ouma. Thank you.” He laughed. “You always know how to make me feel good about myself.”
We turned to where Nicca was helping Finty down from the vehicle. She looked like she was ready to attend an English garden party as she daintily tried to avoid getting any dust on her blue-and-white cotton dress. Ouma’s face took on an expression that was unique to her. It gave her the appearance of someone who was sucking on a lemon.
“Let me introduce you to my fiancée, Ouma.” Rudi hurried forward to grasp Finty’s hand and escort her up the steps.
“How delightful to finally meet you.” Finty’s upper-class English accent could cut glass. She held out a hand encased in a pristine white glove, and, as if in a trance, Ouma took it in her own strong, tanned, slightly farm-grimy grasp. “I do apologise for looking like such a horrid rag-bag at our first meeting.”
“You will grow to love her, I promise,” I whispered, taking Ouma’s arm as we went into the cool, comfortable lounge to drink iced tea. I did my best to sound convincing. “Rudi does, and that’s the most important thing.”
She cast me a look that spoke volumes about her feelings on the matter and turned instead to appraise Nicca, who was bringing up the rear. In contrast to her reaction to Finty, Ouma nodded her head approvingly. “And why are you here, Meneer Jago?” she asked with her customary bluntness.
“To lend a helping hand, Mrs van der Merwe.”
Ouma’s eyes narrowed to slits that could chip ice. “Don’t think you can fool me,” she barked. Although she still looked at Nicca, we all knew the words were meant for me. “But if, as I suspect, your job here is to keep my Annie-girl alive, then you are welcome at Sonskyn, meneer. And you must call me Ouma. The only person who ever called me Mrs van der Merwe was my husband, and then only in the bedroom.”
∗ ∗ ∗
“The Zulu people call this region Ukhahlamba, which means ‘barrier of spears.’ To the voortrekkers they were the Drakens Berg or Dragon Mountains.” We looked out across the awe-inspiring basalt cliffs, the distant ones of which still wore their winter caps of snow. They towered over the bush, the lush yellow wood forests, the cascading waterfalls, and formed a massive barrier which separated the province of Natal from Basutoland. Even though this was my home, land of my birth, its haunting, wonderland beauty always had the power to take my breath away.
I pointed out the narrow road clinging to the side of the mountain like a serpent. There was only one way by which access to this part of the Drakensberg could be gained. It was the route we had taken to get here and, unless Uther wanted to take his chances scaling the treacherous soaring escarpments and plunging ravines, he would also have to enter the Sonskyn Valley that way.
We stood side-by-side on the stoep in the fading light of late afternoon, close enough for comfort, but not quite close enough to touch. Nicca scanned the terrain thoughtfully with a soldier’s eyes, looking for weaknesses.
“Uther is devious,” he said. “And he’s a seasoned soldier, trained in guerrilla tactics. The only thing we can be sure of is that he won’t do what we expect him to. Tell me again why he has to follow us here, Annie.”
“First, he has to make sure that Rudi cannot stake a claim to the title.”
“True. But he may assume that, since Rudi never knew he was a Jago—let alone Cad’s grandson and heir—that there is no documentation to support any claim he might make. Uther might be content to wait it out and see what happens.”
I turned my head to look at him. “No.” I shook my head firmly. “He will not allow for a glimmer of doubt. He killed Rory, and he has already tried to kill Rudi. He is not going to wait and see if a legal challenge comes his way and then spend years dealing with paperwork and lawyers. You know your brother, Nicca. He will get rid of Rudi just to be sure.”
“But there are too many people now who know the truth. You, me, Rudi himself, Finty, Tristan and now Ouma. Surely even Uther is not arrogant enough to think he can kill us all.” He laughed. “What am I saying? Of course he is, even if it means travelling all the way to Africa.”
“He will have to come to Africa anyway,” I said. “Because of me.”
“Ah, yes. Explain that part of it to me again.” Darkness fell quickly here and, although our faces were close, I couldn’t make out his expression.
“I don’t understand it myself,” I admitted. “There was something that drew us together instantly and powerfully. I don’t have a name for it, but the closest I can get is ‘recognition.’ We knew each other in a past life, or lives. And Tenebris allowed us to relive those feelings—it even intensified those feelings. It won’t let us go, Nicca. So he has no choice, you see. He has to come for me because, as I said to you the night I found out the truth, he can’t live without me.”
“Are you trying to tell me that you belong to Uther?”
“No, I’m trying to tell you that we both belong to…something else. Whatever it is, it needs us to be together at Tenebris.” I placed my hand over his where it lay on the veranda rail. “He will use everything he has to persuade me to go back with him—to him—and I will need every ounce of my strength, and your strength, too, if I am to resist.”
“Has it ever occurred to you, Annie, that he might actually just love you to the point of madness? That there is no black magic at work, that a man might just feel that way about you?”
Although I was only touching his hand, I could sense the tension in his whole body. I knew he was no longer talking about Uther.
“Nicca, I…” I was saved from saying anything further by the sound of the gong that Jabu rang to summon the family to dinner.
∗ ∗ ∗
I lay in the room that had been mine since I was a child. The familiar scents of home—Ouma’s eye-wateringly strong chicory-coffee, dried cloves, oranges and the wood smoke of the fire from the servants’ quarters—stirred my memory, but did not soothe me. Nicca’s words bothered me. I wasn’t being fair to him. I was doing all the taking and offering nothing in return. Because I knew that Nicca was not the sort of man for whom a casual affair would suffice. He might joke about putting up with making love to me, but I knew how deeply his feelings were engaged. And there was a very real possibility that I might break his heart. So why, I wondered, as I slipped from my bed and made my way to his room, couldn’t I do the right thing and stay away from him?
I lifted the mosquito net and slid into Nicca’s bed. With a sigh of relief, I nestled into the strong arms that seemed to have been perfectly designed just to hold me.
“Are you sure, Annie? Here?” he murmured, his lips tender against my temple.
“Ja, Nicca. I need to be with you. Don’t send me away.”
“I couldn’t,” he said, his arms tightening around me. “That would be like sending away my oxygen and then trying to pretend that I don’t need to breathe.”
For a long time we lay on our sides, facing each other and exchanging slow, gentle kisses that seemed to last forever. Our tongues danced in lazy circles around each other. I could feel the rigid column of Nicca’s erection against the soft flesh of my stomach, but there was no urgency about our movements. Eventually, he lifted my knee and draped my leg over his hip so that I could feel him pressing into me. I moved my hips so that he could slide all the way inside.
&
nbsp; “Feels so good,” I murmured, biting my lip as the familiar, exquisite agony began to build.
“Even better from my perspective,” Nicca assured me, rubbing his thumb lightly across my nipple.
He held my buttocks so that we could rock slowly and tightly together until I began to cry out and dig my nails into his shoulders, demanding more. Which Nicca obligingly gave to me.
“Annie, you will have to stop screaming while we are here. People might notice.” There was a note of laughter in his voice as he held me close while I jerked wildly in the throes of orgasm.
“Stop being so bloody good at this, then,” I gasped.
I didn’t want to leave the comfort of his arms when dawn came, but Africa began to awaken with her familiar, haunting morning-song. “Why are you so good to me when I give you nothing in return?” I asked, rising and slipping my nightdress over my head.
“You know why,” he said, lying back with his hands behind his head, his gaze steady on mine. “Besides, I wouldn’t call tonight ‘nothing.’”
“I don’t deserve you, Nicca,” I said, allowing myself to indulge in an unaccustomed maudlin moment.
“No, you don’t,” he agreed. He held out his hand and I placed mine in it so that he could draw me back down to him again. Taking my face in his hands, he said, “Before I met you, Annie van der Merwe, I had a picture in my head of the nice, quiet girl I was going to fall in love with. We’d get married, have children, live a sane, ordinary life. Then you came along. Snapping and snarling your way into my life like a wildcat. Now my heart and my head go to war every time I look at you. You drive me to the edge of insanity, infuriate me and make me question my own reason. At least hourly. I’m never quite sure whether I want to kiss you or shake the life out of you. But I do know I wouldn’t exchange a single minute of this mad adventure you have dragged me into for a lifetime with that nameless paragon I pictured myself with.” He kissed the tip of my nose. “Go back to your own room before Ouma wakes up. And Annie…” I had reached the door, but I turned and looked back. “You and I still have some serious talking to do, but we won’t mention the future again until this business with Uther is finally settled.”
∗ ∗ ∗
“The modern day has not quite made it as far as Sonskyn Kraal,” I explained to Finty, deciding that, if Ouma was ever going to accept Rudi’s choice of bride, a swift education about boer life might be in order. “We are still waiting for our lives here to be transformed by cars, electricity, telephones and the latest fashions.”
Finty, clad in a pretty, floating dress in shades of soft lemon and grey, listened with interest as I showed her that the lighting at Sonskyn was provided by smelly kerosene lamps, which we exchanged for a candle when going to bed. We made our way to the kitchen, where there was no refrigerator, and we faced a daily battle to keep our food cool inside a meat safe lined with wet sacking. Jabu showed Finty the massive oil-fired range. Cast iron pots, pans, kettles and utensils hung on hooks over the fire. Jabu was delighted when Finty asked questions about regulating the temperature on the range and bobbed his head in approval when she showed that she knew her way around a kitchen.
“Boo always said time with the cook was time well spent,” she said. “And I tagged along wherever she went, so I couldn’t help picking up a few tips on housekeeping.”
Ouma was a wonderful cook, I explained, although she did employ a cook and a kitchen maid, as well. Most of what we ate came from the kraal itself. Ouma favoured the ‘stick to your ribs’ approach to cuisine. Roasts, casseroles, pies, soups and suet puddings boiled in big copper pans. And there was always fruit from the orchard. She made her own bread in the kitchen’s bread oven. Ouma wasn’t a lady who wasted anything. If an animal was killed, she believed it was a sin to throw any part of it away. She used everything. If she didn’t have a recipe, she made something up.
The housemaids who came in at dawn each day were busy washing clothes. A fire had been lit at six thirty that morning under a huge copper tank filled with water. The girls had done their household chores while the water boiled. Then the clothes were put into the copper and boiled. After an hour they were taken out, rinsed in a clean-water trough, put through a wringer and hung on a line where they dried almost instantly in the blazing sun. Later the clothes were ironed with a flatiron, which was heated on the stove. I eyed the delicate material of Finty’s dress dubiously, wondering how it would fare after undergoing the ruthless laundry routine that prevailed at Sonskyn.
We had indoor bathrooms with flushing toilets now, but only a few years ago, the toilets were outside and we used a tin bath before the fire. One of our biggest challenges still was managing the water supply, which had to come from rainwater. There were three water tanks on the property and these were hugely valuable items to any Natal landowner.
“One way to get into Ouma’s good books is to be sure never to waste a single drop,” I explained. “You can always tell a townsperson because he doesn’t know how precious it is. Household water must never, ever be thrown away. It goes onto the garden, where we only grow hardy flowers like Ouma’s darling geraniums.”
Some time later, Ouma came into the kitchen to find Finty rather inexpertly—but with great enthusiasm—plucking a chicken and preparing it for the pot. She wore a blood-spattered apron over her dress. Ouma didn’t speak, but in response to Jabu’s broad smile, she gave a brisk nod.
“That’s the equivalent of transports of delight in anyone else,” I assured Finty.
Hysterical shouting drew my attention away from the kitchen. It sounded like someone was being murdered. Was it possible that Uther was already here? Could we have misjudged the timing of his arrival so badly? I dashed toward the source of the noise to find Nicca, ashen faced, backing slowly out of his bedroom. He raised a shaking finger and pointed it toward the foot of the bed. His breath was coming in short, sharp gasps so that his muscular chest rose and fell in a staccato rhythm.
The snake was coiled about the bedpost. Clearly disturbed by Nicca’s raised voice it had lifted its head and was watching him, its eyes blank black beads devoid of any emotion or expression. Now and then, its tongue flickered as though to warn him of its nervousness. It was a light, reddish-brown colour with lighter stripes running along the sides of its head.
“It’s only a house snake,” I said.
“A house snake?” Nicca repeated incredulously. “You mean it’s a pet?”
I laughed. “No, that’s its name, silly. It’s a brown house snake. Very common and completely harmless. Well, it might bite you if you upset it, but it won’t kill you. But because you’ve frightened it by shouting, it’s could be difficult to catch it now.”
“Oh, I do apologise.” Nicca seemed to have regained some of his equanimity. “I didn’t realise I’d have to consider the sensitivities of the local invertebrates while I was here.”
“You weren’t to know,” I said kindly, stepping into the room.
“Annie, what are you doing?” Nicca asked.
“Getting rid of your unwelcome visitor. Or are you planning on giving up your room to him?”
“Shouldn’t you get Jabu, or one of the stable boys?” He looked nervous.
“No,” I said, stepping forward and grasping the snake behind its head and by its middle. “Because Jabu is almost as big a baby as you about snakes. Remind me to give you a lesson about which ones you should be scared of.” I carried the snake out of the room and encountered Finty as I made my way to the stoep.
“Oh, my goodness, what a beautiful creature! May I touch it, Annie?” She reached out a hand to caress the scaly body.
“You are a very strange girl, Finty. Are you sure you weren’t born a Jago?” Nicca eyed her bloody attire as he spoke. “Lucent in Tenebris and all that.” Those words did it every time. My mind went back to those closed gates with their flowing inscription, to a shadowed glade with a watchful figure and to a pair of amber eyes that had waited centuries to reclaim their legacy.
�
��I think that’s very unfair,” Finty said, her expression martyred. “After all, I’m not the one carrying a dead snake.”
“It’s not…” But she was right. The snake hung lifeless in my hands.
Chapter Twelve
“What you playing at, Annie-girl?”
I showed Ouma an innocent, questioning face. I wasn’t hopeful. It was impossible to fool my grandmother.
“With the big fella.” She jerked a thumb toward the stoep. Nicca’s broad-shouldered silhouette was dark against the twilight sky.
“I don’t know what you mean,” I said untruthfully.
She snorted. “Don’t give me that, Annie-girl. I hope you know what you’re doing, that’s all. He’s the sort who plays for keeps.”
I sighed. “Ouma, this man who we had to run from—”
“Die slegte bliksem?”
I smiled. Ouma had a way with words. “Yes, the bad bastard. When I first saw him, I fell for him so utterly, so completely, it was like—Oh, I can’t explain it!” She waited. “I can’t just switch that off.”
“You still love him?”
“I don’t know if I do love him. Or if I ever did. I don’t even know what love is because he’s left me so mixed up. But I was intoxicated by him. Almost as if he cast a spell on me and I can’t break free of him, even with all these miles between us. Even after everything he’s done. With Nicca, it’s different. I can’t love them both, can I? I have to sort it out, Ouma.” I tapped my finger against my temple. “In my head.”
“Well, while you’re sorting it out in your head, would you mind not also sorting it out with your bottom half? And maybe keeping your broekies on around the big fella? I don’t want any more little bastards running around the place.”
“Ouma!” I buried my head in my hands.
“Don’t you ‘Ouma’ me, my girl. I’ve got eyes. I’ve seen the pair of you sizzling up the air between you when you look at each other. I was young once, you know. I can remember what it was like.” She grinned at my flaming face. “And, from what I remember, it was very nice. One last thing. If you want my advice, Annie-girl, you’ll forget the bastard and keep the big fella. You don’t come across many like him. When you do, it’s worth hanging on to them.”
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