Wilbur Smith - B3 The Angels Weep

by B3 The Angels Weep(Lit)

  "Nomusa, who is more than a mother to me, must she die also, my son? She is so good and kind to our people." Gently Bazo took her by the arm and led her off the path, where they could not be overheard.

  "That very kindness which you speak of makes her the most dangerous of all of them," Bazo explained. "The love that you bear for her weakens us all. If I say to you, "We will spare this one," then you will ask, "Can we not also spare her little son, and her daughters and their children?"" Bazo shook his head. "No, I tell you truly, if I were to spare one of them, it would be One-Bright-Eye himself."

  "One-Bright-Eye!" Juba started. "I do not understand. He is cruel and fierce, without understanding." "When our warriors look on his face and hear his voice, they are reminded once again of all the wrongs we have suffered, and they become strong and angry. When they look upon Nomusa, they become soft and hesitant. She must be amongst the very first to die, and I will send a good man to do that work." "You say they must all die?" Juba asked. "This one, that comes now. Will he die also?" Juba pointed ahead, where the path wound lazily beneath the spreading flat-topped acacia trees. There was a horseman cantering towards them from the direction of the Harkness Mine and even at this distance there was no mistaking the set of his powerful shoulders and his easy and yet arrogant seat in the saddle. "Look at him!" Juba went on. "It was you who gave him the praise name of "little Hawk". You have often told me how as youths you worked shoulder to shoulder, and ate from the same pot. You were proud when you described the wild falcon that you caught and trained together." Juba's voice sank lower.

  "Will you kill this man that you call your brother, my son?" "I will let no other do it," Bazo affirmed. "I will do it with my own hand, to make sure it is swift and clean. And after him I will kill his woman and his son. When that is done, there will be no turning back." "You have become a hard man, my son, "Juba whispered, with terrible shadows of regret in her eyes and an ache in her voice.

  Bazo turned away from her, and stepped back onto the path. Ralph Ballantyne saw him and waved his hat above his head.

  "Bazo," he laughed, as he rode up. "Will I ever learn never to doubt you? You bring me more than the two hundred you promised." Ralph Ballantyne crossed the southern boundary of King's Lynn, but it was another two hours" riding before he made out the milky grey loom of the homestead kopjes on the horizon.

  The veld through which he rode was silent now, and almost empty.

  It chilled Ralph so that his expression was gloomy and his thoughts dark. Where several months ago his father's herds of plump multicoloured cattle had grazed, the new grass was springing up again dense and green and untrodden, as though to veil the white bones with which the earth was strewn so thickly.

  Only Ralph's warning had saved Zouga Ballantyne from complete financial disaster. He had managed to sell off some small portion of his herds to Gwaai Cattle Ranches, a BSA Company subsidiary, before the rinderpest struck King's Lynn, but he had lost the rest of his cattle, and their bones gleamed like strings of pearls amongst the new green grass.

  Ahead of Ralph amongst the mimosa trees was one of his father's cattle-posts, and Ralph stood in the saddle and shaded his eyes, puzzled by the haze of pink dust which hung over the old stockade. The dust had been raised by hooves and there was the sharp crack of a trek whip, a sound that had not been heard in Matabeleland for many months.

  Even at a distance, he recognized the figures silhouetted upon the railing of the stockade like a pair of scraggly old crows.

  "Jan Cherood" he called as he rode up. "Isazi! What are you two old rogues playing at?" They grinned at him delightedly, and scrambled down to greet him.

  "Good Lord!" Ralph's astonishment was unfeigned as he realized what the animals in the stockade were. The curtains of thick dust had hidden them until this minute. "Is this how you spend your time when I am away, Isazi? Whose idea is this?" "Bakela, your father's." Isazi's expression instantly became melancholy. "And it is a stupid idea." The flat sleek animals were striped in vivid black and white, their manes stiff as the bristles in a chimney-sweep's broom.

  "Zebras, by GodV Ralph shook his head. "How did you round them up?" "We used, up a dozen good horses chasing them," Jan Cheroot explained, his leathery yellow features wrinkled with disapproval.

  "Your father hopes to replace the trek oxen with these dumb donkeys. They are as wild and unreasonable as a Venda virgin. They bite and kick until you get them in the traces and then they lie down and refuse to pull." Isazi spat with disgust. it was manifest folly to try to bridge in a few short months the vast gap between wild animal and domesticated beast of burden. It had taken millennia of selection and breeding to develop the doughty courage, the willing heart and strong back of the draught bullock. It was a measure of the settlers" desperate need for transport that Zouga should even make the attempt.

  "Isazi." Ralph shook his head. "When you have finished this boy's game, I have man's work for you at the railhead camp." "I will be ready to go with you when you return," Isazi promised enthusiastically. "I am sick to the stomach with striped donkeys." Ralph turned to Jan Cheroot. "I want to talk to you, old friend. "When they were well beyond the stockade, he asked the little Hottentot, "Did you put your mark on a Company paper saying that we had pegged the Harkness claims in darkness?" "I would never let you down," Jan Cheroot declared proudly. "General St. John explained to me, and I put my mark on the paper to save the claims for you and the major." He saw Ralph's expression, and demanded anxiously, "I did the right thing?" Ralph leaned out of the saddle and clasped the bony old shoulder. "You have been a good and loyal friend to me all my life." "From the day you were born," Jan Cheroot declared.

  "When your mama died, I fed you, and held you on my knee." Ralph opened his saddlebag, and the old Hottentot's eyes gleamed when he saw the bottle of Cape brandy.

  "Give a dram to Isazi," Ralph told him, but Jan Cheroot clasped the bottle to his bosom as though it were a firstborn son.

  "I wouldn't waste good brandy on a black savage," he declared indignantly, and Ralph laughed and rode on towards the homestead of King's Lynn.

  Here there was all the bustle and excitement that he had expected.

  There were horses that Ralph did not recognize in the paddock below the big thatched house, and amongst them the unmistakable matched white mules of Mr. Rhodes" equipage. The coach itself stood under the trees in the yard, its paintwork asparkle and harness-wear carefully stacked on the racks in the saddle-room beside the stables. Ralph felt his anger flare up when he saw it. His hatred burned like a bellyful of cheap wine, and he could taste the acid of it at the back of his throat. He swallowed hard to control it as he dismounted.

  Two black grooms ran to take his horse. One of them unstrapped his blanket-roll, his saddlebags and rifle scabbard, and ran with them up towards the big house. Ralph followed him, and he was halfway across the lawns when Zouga Ballantyne came out onto the wide stoep, and with a linen table-napkin shaded his eyes against the glare. He was still chewing from the luncheon table.

  "Ralph, my boy. I didn't expect you until evening." Ralph ran up the steps and they embraced, and then Zouga took his arm and led him down the veranda. The walls were hung with trophies of the chase, the long twisted horns of kudu and eland, the gleaming black scimitars of sable and roan antelope, and guarding each side of the double doors that led into the dining-room were the immense tusks of the great bull elephant that Zouga Ballantyne had shot on the site of the Harkness Mine. These heavy curved shafts of ivory were as tall as a man standing on tiptoe could reach, and thicker than a fat lady's thigh.

  Zouga and Ralph passed between them into the dining room. Under the thatch it was cool and dark after the brilliant white glare of noon. The floor was of hand-sawn wild teak, and the roof beams of the same material. Jan Cheroot had made the long refectory table and the chairs with seats of leather thonging from timber cut on the estate, but the glinting silver was from the Ballantyne family home at King's Lynn in England, a tenuous link between two p
laces of the same name and yet of such dissimilar aspect.

  Zouga's empty chair was at the far end of the long table, and facing it down the long board was the familiar massive brooding figure that raised his shaggy head as Ralph came in from the stoep.

  "Ah, Ralph, it's good to see you." It amazed Ralph that there was no rancour in either Mr. Rhodes" voice or eyes. Could he have truly put the dispute over the Wankie coal fields out of his mind, as though it had never happened? With an effort, Ralph matched his own reaction to the other man's.

  "How are you, sir?" Ralph actually smiled as he gripped the broad hand with its hard prominent knuckles. The skin was cool, like that of a reptile, the effect of the poor circulation of the damaged heart.

  Ralph was pleased to release it, and pass on down the length of the long table. He was not certain that he could long conceal his true feelings from the close scrutiny of those pale hypnotic eyes.

  They were all there. The suave little doctor at Mr. Rhodes right hand, his appropriate station.

  "Young Ballantyne," he said coldly, offering his hand without rising.

  "Jameson!" Ralph nodded familiarly, knowing that the deliberate omission of the title would rankle with him as much as the condescending young' had annoyed Ralph.

  On Mr. Rhodes" other hand was a surprising guest. It was the first time that Ralph had ever seen General Mungo St. John at King's Lynn.

  There had once been a relationship between the lean grizzled soldier with the dark and wicked single eye and Louise Ballantyne, Ralph's stepmother. That had been many years ago, long before Ralph had left Kimberley for the north.

  Ralph had never entirely fathomed that relationship, nor somehow the breath of scandal clouding it. But it was significant that Louise Ballantyne was not in the room, and that there was no place set at the table for her. If Mr. Rhodes had insisted that St. John was present at this gathering, and Zouga Ballantyne had agreed to invite him, then there was a compelling reason for it. Mungo St. John flashed that wolfish smile at Ralph as they shook hands. Despite the family complications, Ralph had always had a sneaking admiration for this romantically piratical figure, and his answering smile was genuine.

  The stature of the other men at the table confirmed the importance and significance of this gathering. Ralph guessed that the meeting was being held here to preserve the absolute secrecy that they could not have assumed in the town of Bulawayo. He guessed also that every guest had been personally selected and invited by Mr. Rhodes, rather than by his father.

  Apart from Jameson and St. John, there was Percy Fitzpatrick, a partner of the Corner House mining group, and prominent representative of the Witwatersrand Chamber Of Mines, the organ of the gold barons of Johannesburg. He was a lively and personable young man with a fair complexion and ruddy hair and moustache, whose cheque red career had included bank clerk, transport rider, citrus farmer, guide to Lord Randolph Churchill's Africa expedition, author and mining magnate.

  Many years later Ralph would reflect on the irony of this extraordinary man's claim to immortality being founded on a sentimental book about a dog called Jock.

  Beyond Fitzpatrick sat the Honourable Bobbie White, who had just visited Johannesburg at Mr. Rhodes" suggestion. He was a handsome and pleasant young aristocrat, the type of Englishman that Mr. Rhodes preferred. He was also a staff officer and a career soldier as his mess tunic revealed.

  Next to him sat John Willoughby, second-in-command of the original pioneer column, which had taken occupation of Fort Salisbury and Mashonaland. He had also ridden with Jameson's column that had destroyed Lobengula, and his Willoughby's Consolidated Company owned almost one million acres of prime pastoral land in Rhodesia, a rival to Ralph's Rholands Company, so their greetings were guarded.

  Then there was Doctor Rutherford Harris, the first secretary of the British South Africa Company and a member of Mr. Rhodes" political party in which he represented the Kimberley constituency in the Cape Parliament. He was a taciturn grey man with a sinister cast of eye, and Ralph mistrusted him as one of Mr. Rhodes' slavish minions.

  At the end of the table, Ralph came face to face with his brother Jordan, and he hesitated for just a fraction of a second, until he saw the desperate appeal in Jordan's gentle eyes. Then he gripped his brother's hand briefly, but he did not smile and his voice was cool and impersonal as he greeted him like a mere acquaintance, and then took the place that a servant in a white Kanza uniform and scarlet sash had hurriedly laid beside Zouga at the head of the table.

  The animated conversation that Ralph had interrupted was resumed with Mr. Rhodes orchestrating and directing it. "What about your trained zebras? "he demanded of Zouga, who shook his golden beard.

  "It was a desperate measure and doomed from the outset. But when you consider that out of the hundred thousand head of cattle that we had in Matabeleland before the rinderpest, only five hundred or so have survived, any chance seemed worth taking." "They say that the Cape buffalo have been wiped out utterly and completely by the disease," Doctor Jameson suggested. "What do you think, Major?" "Their losses have been catastrophic. Two weeks ago I rode as far north as the Pandamatenga river, where a year ago I counted herds of over five thousand together. This time I saw not a single living beast. Yet I cannot believe they are now extinct. I suspect that somewhere out there are scattered survivors, the ones that had a natural immunity, and I believe that they will breed." Mr. Rhodes was not a sportsman, he had once said of his own brother Frank, "Yes, he's a good fellow, he hunts and he fishes in other words, he is a perfect loafer," and this conversation about wild game bored him almost immediately. He changed it by turning to Ralph.

  "Your railway line-what is the latest position, Ralph?" "We are still almost two months ahead of our schedule," Ralph told him with a touch of defiance. "We crossed the Matabeleland border fifteen days ago I expect as we sit here that the railhead has reached the trading-post at Plumtree already." "It's as well" Rhodes nodded. "We shall have urgent need of your line in a very short while." And he and Doctor Jim exchanged a conspiratorial glance.

  When they had all relished Louise's bread and butter pudding, thick with nuts and raisins and running with wild honey, Zouga dismissed the servants, and poured the Cognac himself, while Jordan carried around the cigars. As they settled back in their seats, Mr. Rhodes made one of his startlingly abrupt changes of subject and pace, and Ralph was immediately aware that the true purpose for which he had been summoned to King's Lynn was about to be revealed.

  "There is not one of you who does not know that my life's task is to see the map of Africa painted red from Cape Town to Cairo. To deliver this continent to our Queen as another jewel in her crown." His voice that had been irritable and carping up until now, took on a strange mesmeric quality. "We men of the English-speaking Anglo Saxon race are the first among nations, and destiny has imposed a sacred duty upon us to bring the world to peace under one flag and one great monarch. We must have Africa, all of it, to add to our Queen's dominions. Already my emissaries have gone north to the land between the Zambezi and the Congo rivers to prepare the way." Rhodes broke off and shook his head angrily. "But all this will be of no avail if the southern tip of the continent eludes us." "The South African Republic," said Jameson. "Paul Kruger and his little banana republic in the Transvaal." His voice was low but bitter.

  "Do not be emotive, Doctor Jim," Rhodes remonstrated mildly. "Let us concern ourselves merely with the facts." "And what are the' facts Mr. Rhodes?" Zouga Ballantyne leaned forward eagerly from the head of the table..

  "The facts are that an ignorant old bigot, who believes that the rabble of illiterate Dutch nomads that he leads are the new Israelites, specifically chosen by their Old Testament God. this extraordinary personage sits astride a vast stretch of the richest part of the African continent, like an unkempt and savage hound with a bone, and growls at all efforts at progress and enlightenment." They were all silenced by this bitter invective, and Mr. Rhodes looked around at their faces before he went on. "Th
ere are thirty-eight thousand Englishmen on the gold fields of Witwatersrand, Englishmen who pay nineteen of every twenty pounds of the revenue that flows into Kruger's coffers, Englishmen who are responsible for every bit of civilization in that benighted little republic, and yet Kruger denies them the franchise, they are taxed mercilessly and denied representation. Their petitions for the vote are greeted in the Volksraad by the contemptuous derision of a motley assembly of untutored oafs." Rhodes glanced at Fitzpatrick.

  "Am I being unfair, Percy? You know these people, you live with them on a day-to-day basis. Is my description of the Transvaal Boer accurate?" Percy Fitzpatrick shrugged. "Mr. Rhodes is correct. The Transvaal Boer is a different animal from his Cape cousins. The Cape Dutch have had the opportunity of absorbing some of the qualities of the English way of life. By" comparison they are an urbane and civilized people, while the Transvaaler has unfortunately lost none of the traits of his Dutch ancestry. he is Slow, obstinate, hostile, suspicious, cunning and malevolent. it galls a man to be told to go to hell by that ilk, especially when we ask only for our rights as free men, the right to vote." Mr. Rhodes, not long to be denied the floor, went on. "Not only does Kruger insult our countrymen, but he plays other more dangerous games. He has discriminated against British goods with punitive tariffs. He has given trade monopolies in all essential mining goods, even dynamite, to members of his family and government.