Wilbur Smith - B3 The Angels Weep

by B3 The Angels Weep(Lit)

  Vicky was climbing up onto the driving seat of a rickety little cart drawn by two diminutive donkeys with drooping melancholy ears, and on the seat beside her sat the mountainous black figure of a Matabele woman.

  "Miss Codrington," Harry called urgently. "Please wait." He reached the wheel of the cart with a few long strides and looked up -at Vicky.

  "I have wanted to see you again so very much." "Mr. Mellow," Vicky lifted her chin haughtily, "the road to Khami Mission is clearly signposted, you could not possibly have lost your way." "Your mother ordered me off the Mission Station you know that damned well."

  "Please do not use strong language in my presence, sir," said Vicky primly.

  "I apologize, but your mother does have a reputation. They say she fired both barrels at one unwanted visitor." "Well," Vicky admitted, "that is true, but he was one of Mr. Rhodes" hirelings, and it was birdshot, and she did miss with one barrel." "Well, I am one of Mr. Rhodes" hirelings, and she might have upped to buckshot, and the practice might have improved her shooting." "I like a man of determination. A man who takes what he wants and damn the consequences." "That is strong language, Miss Codrington." "Good day to you, Mr. Mellow." Vicky shook up the donkeys, and they stumbled into a dejected trot.

  The little cart reached the outskirts of the new town, where the dozen or so brick buildings gave way to grass huts and tattered dusty canvas shelters and where the wagons of the transport riders were parked wheel to wheel on both sides of the track, still laden with the bags, bolts and bales that they had carried up from the railhead.

  Vicky was sitting upright on the cart, looking straight ahead but anxiously she told Juba out of the side of her mouth, "Tell me if you see him coming, but don't let him see you looking." "He comes, "Juba announced comfortably. "He comes like a cheetah after a gazelle."

  Vicky heard the beat of galloping hooves from behind, but she merely sat a little straighter.

  "Haul" Juba smiled with nostalgic sadness. "The passion of a man.

  My husband ran fifty miles without stopping to rest or drink, for in those days my beauty drove men mad." "Don't stare at him, Juba." "He is so strong and impetuous, and he will make such fine sons in your belly." "Juba!" Vicky flushed scarlet. "That is a wicked thing for a Christian lady even to think. I shall probably send him back anyway."

  Juba shrugged and chuckled. "Ah! Then he will make those fine sons elsewhere. I saw him looking at Elizabeth when he came to Khami."

  Vicky's blushes turned a deeper, angrier shade. "You are an evil woman, Juba-" But before she could go on Harry Mellow reined in his rangey gelding beside the cart.

  "Your stepfather placed you in my care, Miss Codrington, and it is therefore my duty to see you home as swiftly -as possible." He reached into the cart, and before she realized his intentions, he had whipped a long sinewy arm around her waist, and as she kicked and shrieked with surprise, he swung her up onto the horse's rump behind his saddle.

  "Hold on!" he ordered. "Tightly!" And instinctively she threw both arms around his lean hard body. The way it felt shocked her so that she relaxed her grip and leaned back just as Harry urged the gelding forward and Vicky came so perilously close to flying backwards over his haunches into the dusty track that she snatched at Harry with renewed fervour, and tried -to close her mind and shut off her body from these unfamiliar sensations. Her training warned her that anything that raised such a warmth in the base of her stomach, made the skin of her forearms prickle so, and tendered her breathless and deliriously lightheaded, must be unholy and wicked.

  To distract herself she examined the fine hairs that grew down the back of his neck, and the soft silky skin behind his ears, and found yet another sensation rising in her throat, a kind of choking suffocating tenderness. She had an almost unbearable compulsion to press her face against the faded blue shirt and breathe in the virile smell of his body. It had the sharp odour of steel struck against flint, underlaid with a warmer scent like the first raindrops on sun-baked earth.

  Her confusion was dispelled abruptly by the realization that the gelding was still in a flying gallop and at this pace the journey back to Khami would be brief indeed.

  "You are punishing your mount, Sir." Her voice quavered and played her false, so Harry turned his head.

  "I cannot hear you." She leaned unnecessarily close so that her loose hair touched his cheek and her lips brushed his ear.

  "Not so fast," she repeated. "my mother-" "is not that ill."

  "But you told General St. John-" "Do you think Juba and I would have left Khami if there was the least danger?" "St. John?" "It was a fine excuse to get them together again. So romantic, we should allow them a little time alone." Harry reined the gelding down to a more sedate pace, but instead of relaxing her grip Vicky wriggled a little closer.

  "My mother does not recognize her own feelings," she explained.

  "Sometimes Lizzie and I have to take things into our own hands." Even as she said it, Vicky regretted having mentioned her twin's name. She had also noticed Harry Mellow look at Elizabeth on his only visit to Khami Mission, and she had seen Elizabeth look straight back. After Harry had left Khami in some haste with her mother's ultimate farewells ringing in his ears, Vicky had attempted to negotiate with her sister an agreement that Elizabeth would not encourage further smouldering glances from Mr. Mellow. In reply Elizabeth had smiled in that infuriating way she had. "Don't you think we should let Mr. Mellow decide on that?" If Harry Mellow had been attractive before, Elizabeth's unreasonable tenacity had made him irresistible now, and instinctively Vicky tightened her grip around his waist. At the same time she saw the wooden kopjes that marked Khami Mission Station looming ahead above the low scrubby bush, and she felt a sinking dread.

  Soon Harry would be confronted with Elizabeth's honey-brown eyes and that soft dark flood of hair pierced with russet stars of light.

  This was the only time in her entire life that Vicky could remember being free from surveillance" without her mother or Juba or, particularly, her twin being within earshot or touching distance. It was an exhilarating sensation added to all the other unfamiliar and clamorous sensations which assailed her, and the last restraints of her strict religious upbringing were swept away in this sudden reckless rebellious mood. She realized with an unerring woman's instinct that she could have what she so dearly wanted, but only if she took direct bold action, and took it immediately.

  "It is a sad and bitter thing that a woman should be alone, when she loves somebody so." Her voice had sunk to a low puff, and it affected Harry so that he brought the horse down to a walk.

  "God did not mean a woman to be alone," she murmured, and saw the blood come up under the soft skin behind his ears, "nor a man either," she went on, and slowly he turned his head and looked into her green eyes.

  It is so hot in the sun," Vicky whispered, holding his gaze. "I should like to rest for a few minutes in the shade." He lifted her down from the saddle, and she stood close to him still, without averting her eyes from his face.

  "The wagon dust has covered everything and left us no clean place to sit," she said. "Perhaps we should try further from the road?" And she took his hand, and quite naturally led him through the soft pale knee-high grass towards one of the mimosa trees. Beneath its spreading feathery branches they would be out of sight of any chance traveller upon the road.

  Mungo St. John's mare was lathered in dark streaks down her shoulders and his riding-boots were splattered with blown froth from her gaping jaws as he drove her over the top of the neck between the kopjes, and without pause pushed her down towards the white Mission buildings. The mare's hoof beats rang against the hills and echoed from the mission walls, and Elizabeth's slim skirted figure appeared on the wide veranda of the homestead. She shaded her eyes to peer up the slope at Mungo, and when she recognized him, hurried down the steps into the sunlight.

  "General St. John, oh, thank God you have come." She ran to take the mare's head.

  "How is she? "There was a wild, d
riven look upon Mungo's bony features. He kicked his feet from the stirrups and jumped down to seize Elizabeth by the shoulders and shake her in his anxiety.

  "It started as a game, Vicky and I wanted you to come to Mama because she needs you she wasn't bad, just a little go of fever."

  "Damn you, girl," Mungo shouted at her, "what has happened?" At his tone the tears that Elizabeth had been holding back broke with a sob and streamed down her cheeks. "She has changed it must be the girl's blood she is burning up with the girl's blood." "Pull yourself together." Mungo shook her again. "Come on, Lizzie, this isn't like you." Elizabeth gulped once, and then her voice steadied. "She injected blood from a fever patient into herself." "From a black girl?

  In God's name, why?" Mungo demanded, but did not wait for her reply.

  He left Elizabeth and ran up onto the veranda, and burst in through the door to Robyn's bedroom, but he stopped before he reached the bed.

  In the small closed room, the stink of fever was as rank as that of a sty, and the heat from the body in the narrow cot had condensed on the glass of the single window like steam from a kettle of boiling water. Crouched beside the cot like a puppy at its master's feet was Mungo's son. Robert looked up at his father with huge solemn eyes, and his mouth twisted in the thin pale face.

  "Son!" Mungo took another step towards the cot, but the child leaped to his feet and silently he darted for the door, ducking nimbly under Mungo's outstretched hand, and his bare feet slapped on the veranda as he raced away. For a moment Mungo yearned after him, and then he shook his head and instead he went to the cot. He stood over it and looked down at the still figure upon it.

  Robyn had wasted until the bones of her skull seemed to rise through the pale flesh of her cheeks and forehead. Her eyes were closed, and sunk into deep leaden-purple sockets. Her hair, laced with silver at the temples, seemed dry and brittle as the winter grasses of the parched veld, and as he leaned to touch her forehead, a paroxysm of shivering took her that rattled the iron bedstead and her teeth chattered so violently that it seemed they must shatter like porcelain.

  Under Mungo's fingers her skin was almost painfully hot to the touch, and he looked up sharply at Elizabeth who stood beside him with a stricken expression.

  "Quinine?"he demanded.

  "I have given her more than I should, a hundred grains since this morning, but there is no response." Elizabeth broke off, reluctant to tell him the worst.

  "Yes, what is it?" "Before this, Mama had not taken quinine for six weeks. She wanted to give the fever a chance to strike, and to prove her theory." Mungo stared at her aghast. "But, her own studies-" He shook his head in disbelief. "She has shown herself, that abstinence followed by massive doses-" He could not go on, as though the words might conjure up the spectre he feared most.

  Elizabeth had anticipated his fears. "Her pallor," she whispered, "the total lack of response to the quinine I am so afraid."

  Instinctively Mungo put his arm around Elizabeth's shoulders, and for a few seconds she shrank against him. Mungo had always enjoyed a special relationship with the twins, they had always been his willing accomplices and secret allies at Khami Mission, from the first day that he had arrived, dying of the suppurating gunshot wound in his leg.

  Though they had been barely pubescent at that time, the twins had not been proof against the strange mesmeric effect he had on women of all ages.

  "Vicky and I tempted fate by telling you that Mama was dying."

  "That's enough." He shook her gently. "Has she passed water?" And then, roughly, to cover the embarrassment between them, "Has she urinated?" "Not since last night." Elizabeth shook her head miserably, and he pushed her towards the door. " "We must force her to take liquid. There is a bottle of Cognac in my saddlebag. Get lemons from the garden, a bowl of sugar and a big jug of boiling water." Mungo held Robyn's head, while Elizabeth forced small sips of the steaming liquid between her white lips, and Robyn fought them in her delirium, hounded and driven by the terrible phantoms of malarial fever.

  Then, as they worked, the icy chills that had racked Robyn's body gave way abruptly to a baking heat that desiccated her, and though she did not recognize either Mungo or Elizabeth, she drank thirstily from their hands, gulping and choking in her eagerness, even though she was so weak that when she tried to lift her head, it lolled and rolled to one side, so that Mungo had to steady her. His hands, powerful and brutal-looking, were strangely tender and gentle as he cupped her chin and wiped away the drops that dribbled from her lips.

  "How much has she taken? "he asked.

  "Over four pints," Elizabeth answered, checking the level in the jug.

  The light in the room altered as evening began to fall, and Elizabeth stood up and held her back as she went to the door and looked across the veranda at the road that led down from the neck.

  "Vicky and Juba should have been home before now," she said, but her mother cried out again, and she closed the door and hurried back to the cot.

  Suddenly, as she knelt beside Mungo, she became aware of the sharp ammonia cal odour that pervaded the room. She averted her eyes and said softly, "I must change her." But Mungo did not rise. "She is my wife," he said. "Neither Vicky nor Juba is here, and you will need help."

  Elizabeth nodded and drew down the bedclothes, and then whispered huskily, "Oh sweet God." "It is what we feared," Mungo said quietly, hopelessly.

  The skirts of Robin's nightdress were tucked up high around her pale girlish thighs. They were sodden, as was the thin mattress beneath her, but it was not the sulphur yellow urine stain that they had hoped to see. Staring bleakly at the soiled bed clothes, Mungo recalled the piece of callous doggerel that he had heard the troopers of Jameson's column sing. "Black as the angel Black as the ace, When the fever waters flow They are as black as disgrace. Soon we'll lay him down below, And chuck dirt in his face." The reeking stain was black, black as old congealing blood, the drainage from kidneys that were trying to purge the bloodstream of the wild-fire anaemia that was coursing through Robyn's body, the destruction of the red corpuscles that was the cause of the dreadful pallor. For the malaria had been transmuted to something infinitely more evil and deadly.

  As they both stared helplessly at it, there was a commotion on the veranda and the door burst open. Victoria stood at the threshold. She was transformed, glowing from within, charged with that strange fragile beauty of a young woman awakened for the first time to the wonder and mystery of love.

  "Where have you been, Vicky?" Elizabeth asked. Then she saw the tall young man in the doorway behind her twin. She realized what Harry Mellow's bemused yet proud expression meant. She felt no resentment, no envy, only a small quick pleasure for Vicky. Elizabeth had never wanted Harry Mellow, she had teased her sister by pretending interest but her own love was for a. man she could never have, she had long ago resigned herself to that. She was happy for Vicky, but sad for herself, and Vicky misinterpreted her expression.

  "What is it?" The glow faded from Vicky's lovely face, and she lifted a hand to her bosom as though to stem the panic that rose within her. "What has happened, Lizzie? What is it?" "Blackwater," Elizabeth answered flatly. "Mother has blackwater fever." She did not have to elaborate. The twins had lived their lives on a hospital station.

  They knew that the disease was peculiarly selective. It attacked only white persons, and Robyn's researches had linked that peculiarity to the use of quinine, which was restricted almost entirely to the whites.

  Robyn had treated fifty or more cases at the mission over the years.

  At first it had been the old ivory hunters and itinerant traders, then more recently the troopers of Jame son's column and the new settlers and prospectors that were swarming across the Limpopo river.

  The twins knew that of those fifty cases of blackwater, only three had survived. The rest of them lay in the little cemetery beyond the river. Their mother was under virtual sentence of death, and Vicky flew to the bedside and knelt beside her.

  "Oh, Mam
a," she whispered, stricken with guilt. "I should have been here." Juba heated rounded river stones in the open fire and wrapped them in blankets. They packed them around Robyn's body, and then covered her with four karosses of wild fur. She fought weakly to throw off the covers, but Mungo held her down. Despite the internal heat of the fever and the external temperature of the hot stones trapped under the furs, her skin was burning dry and her eyes had the flat blind glitter of water-worn rock crystal.

  Then as the sun touched the tree-tops and the light in the room turned to sombre orange, the fever broke and oozed from the pores of her marble pale skin like the juice of crushed sugar cane from the press. The sweat came up in fat shining beads across her forehead and chin, each drop joining with the others until they ran in thick oily snakes back into her hair, soaking it as though she had been held under water. It ran into her eyes, faster than Mungo could wipe it away. It poured down her neck and wetted and matted the fur of the kaross. It soaked through the thin mattress and pattered like rain on the hard dry floor below.

  The temperature of her body plunged dramatically, and when the sweat had passed, Juba and the twins sponged her naked body. She had dehydrated and wasted, so that the rack of her ribs stood out starkly, and her pelvis formed a bony hollowed- basin. They handled her with exaggerated care, for any rough movement might rupture the delicate damaged walls of the renal blood vessels and bring on the torrential haemorrhage which so often ended this disease.