Chairs rasped and every one of them reached for his glass the moment he was seated.
"He had six hundred and sixty men and guns. By God, it was a carefully planned thing then." "There will be a few tales to tell."
"And heads to roll, no doubt." "Doctor Jim's luck has run out at last."
"Ralph, your father is amongst the prisoners!" Aaron was reading the newsprint.
For the first time Ralph showed emotion. "That's not possible."
He snatched the paper from Aaron's hand, and stared at it in agony.
"What happened?" he muttered. "Oh God, what has happened?" But somebody else was yelling in the lobby. "Kruger has arrested all the members of the Reform Committee he has promised to have them tried for their lives." "The gold mines!" another said clearly in the ensuing silence, and instinctively every head lifted to the clock on the wall above the dining-room entrance. It was twenty minutes to two.
The stock exchange re-opened on the hour. There was another rush, this time out of the club doors. On the sidewalk, hatldss members shouted impatiently for their carriages, while others set out at a determined trot towards the stock exchange buildings.
The club was almost deserted, not more than ten diners were left at the tables. Aaron and Ralph were alone at the corner table. Ralph still held the list of prisoners in his hand.
"I cannot believe it,"he whispered.
"It's a catastrophe. What can possibly have possessed Jameson?"
Aaron agreed.
It seemed that the worst had happened, nothing could match the dreadful tidings that they had received so far, but then the club secretary came out of his office ashen-faced, and stood in the doorway of the dining-room.
"Gentlemen, he croaked. "I have some more terrible news. It has just come through on the wire. Mr. Rhodes has offered his resignation as prime minister of Cape Colony. He has also offered to resign from the chairmanship of the Charter Company, of De Beers and of Consolidated Goldfields." "Rhodes," Aaron whispered. "Mr. Rhodes was in it. It's a conspiracy the Lord only knows what will be the final consequences of this thing, and who Mr. Rhodes will bring down with him." "I think we should order a decanter of port," said Ralph, as he pushed his plate away from him. "I'm not hungry any more." He thought about his father in a Boer prison, and suddenly an image come into his mind of Zouga Ballantyne in a white shirt, his hands bound behind his back, his gold- and silver-laced beard sparkling in the sunlight, the whitewashed wall at his back, regarding the rank of riflemen in front of him with those calm green eyes of his. Ralph felt nauseated and the rare old port tasted like quinine on his tongue. He set the glass down.
"Ralph." Aaron was staring at him across the table. "The bear transaction, you sold the shares of Charter and Consolidated short, and your position is still open." "I have closed all your transactions," said David Silver. "I averaged out BSA shares at a little over seven pounds, that gives you a profit, after commission and levy, of almost four pounds a share. You did even better on the Consolidated Goldfields transactions, they were the worst hit in the crash, from eight pounds when you began selling them short they dropped to almost two pounds when it looked as though Kruger was going to seize the mining companies of the Witwatersrand in retaliation." David Silver broke off and looked at Ralph with awe. "It is the kind of killing which becomes a legend on the floor, Mr. Ballantyne. The frightful risk you took," he shook his head in admiration. "What courage! What foresightV "What luck!" said Ralph impatiently. "Do you have my difference cheque?" "I have." David Silver opened the black leather valise in his lap and brought from it a snowy white envelope sealed with a rosette of scarlet wax.
"It is counted signed and guaranteed by my bank." David laid it reverently upon his Uncle Aaron's desk-top. "The total is," and he breathed it like a lover, "one million and fifty-eight pounds eight shillings and sixpence. After the one that Mr. Rhodes paid to Barney Barnato for his claims in the Kimberley mine, it is the largest cheque ever drawn in Africa, south of the equator. what do you say to that, Mr. Ballantyne?" Ralph looked at Aaron in the chair behind the desk.
"You know what to do with it. Just be certain it can never be traced back to me." "I understand," Aaron nodded, and Ralph changed the subject.
"Has there been an answer to my telegraph yet? My wife is not usually so slow in replying." And because Aaron was an old friend, who loved the gentle Cathy as much as any of her many admirers, Ralph went on to explain. "She is within two months of her time. Now that the dust of Jameson's little adventure has begun to settle and there is no longer any danger of war, I must get Cathy down here, where she can have expert medical attention." "I'll send my clerk to the telegraph office." Aaron rose and crossed to the door of the outer office, to give his instructions. Then he looked back at his nephew. "Was there anything else, David?" The little stockbroker started. He had been staring at Ralph Ballantyne with the glow of hero-worship in his eyes.
Now he hastily assembled his papers, and stuffed them into his valise, before coming and offering his soft white hand to Ralph.
"I cannot tell you what an honour it has been to be associated with you, Mr. Ballantyne. If there is ever anything at all I can do for you-" Aaron had to shoo him out of the door.
"Poor David," he murmured, as he came back to the desk. "His very first millionaire, it's a watershed in any young stockbroker's life."
"My father-" Ralph did not even smile.
"I'm sorry, Ralph. There is nothing more we can do. He will go back to England in chains with Jameson and the others. They are to be imprisoned in Wormwood Scrubs until they are called to answer the charge. "Aaron selected a sheet of paper from the pile on his desk.
"That they, with certain other persons in the month of December 1895, in South Africa, within Her Majesty's dominions, did unlaufully prepare and fit out a military expedition to proceed against the dominions of a certain friendly state, to wit, the South African Republic, contrary to the provisions of the Foreign Enlistment Act of 1870."" Aaron laid down the paper and shook his head. "There is nothing any of us can do now."
"What will happen to them? It's a capital offence-" "Oh no, Ralph, I am sure it won't come to that." Ralph sank down in his chair and stared moodily out of the window, for the hundredth time castigating himself for not having anticipated that Jameson would cut the telegraph lines before marching on Johannesburg. The recall that Cathy had sent to Zouga Ballantyne, the fiction that Louise was gravely ill, had never reached him and Zouga had ridden into the waiting Boer commandos with the rest of them.
If only, Ralph thought, and then his thoughts were interrupted.
He looked up expectantly as the clerk came hesitantly into the office.
"Has there been a reply from my wife?" Ralph demanded, and the man shook his head.
"Begging your pardon, Mr. Ballantyne, Sir, but there has not." He hesitated, and Ralph urged him. "Well, man, what is it? Spit it out, there's a good fellow." "It seems that all the telegraph lines to Rhodesia have been down since noon on Monday." "Oh, so that is it."
"No, Mr. Ballantyne, that's not all. There has been a message from Toti on the Rhodesian border. It seems a rider got through this morning."
The clerk gulped. "This messenger seems to have been the only survivor." "Survivor!" Ralph stared at him. "What does that mean?
What on earth are you talking about?" "The Matabele have risen. They are murdering all the whites in Rhodesia man, woman and child, they are being slaughtered!" "Mummy, Douglas and Suss aren't here. There is nobody to get me breakfast." Jon-Jon came into the tent while Cathy was still brushing out her hair, and twisting it up into thick braids.
"Did you call for them?" "I called and called." "Tell one of the grooms to go down and fetch them, darling." "The grooms aren't here also." "The grooms aren't here either," Cathy corrected him and stood up. "All right, then, let's go and see about your breakfast." Cathy stepped out into the dawn. Overhead the sky was a lovely dark rose colour shaded to ripe orange in the east, and the bird chorus in
the trees above the camp was like the tinkle of silver bells. The camp-fire had died to a puddle of grey powdery ash and had not been replenished.
"Put some wood on, jonjon,"Cathy told him and crossed to the kitchen hut. She frowned with annoyance. It was deserted. She took down a tin from the gauzed meat-safe and then looked up as the doorway darkened.
"Oh Isazi, she greeted the little Zulu. "Where are the other servants?" "Who knows where a Matabele dog will hide himself when he is needed?" Isazi asked contemptuously. "They have most likely spent the night dancing and drinking beer and now their heads are too heavy to carry.". "You'll have to help me," said Cathy. "Until the cook gets here." After breakfast in the dining-tent, Cathy called Isazi from the fire again.
"Have any of them come back yet?" "Not yet, Nkosikazi." "I want to go down to the railhead. I hope there is a telegraph from Henshaw.
Will you put the ponies into the trap, Isazi." Then for the first time she noticed the little frown of concern on the old Zulu's wrinkled features.
"What is it?" "The horses they are not in the kraal." "Where are they then?" "Perhaps one of the mujiba took them out early, I will go to find them." oh, it doesn't matter." Cathy shook her head. "It's only a short walk to the telegraph office. The exercise will be good for me." And she called to Jonathan, "Fetch my bonnet for me, Jon-Jon."
"Nkosikazi, it is perhaps not wise, the little one-" "Oh don't fuss," Cathy told him fondly, and took Jonathan's hand. "If you find the ponies in time you can come and fetch us." Then swinging her bonnet by its ribbon and with Jonathan skipping beside her, she started along the track that led around the side of the wooded hill towards the railhead.
There was no clamour of hammers on steel. Jonathan noticed it first.
"It's so quiet, Mama. "And they stopped to listen.
"It's not Friday," Cathy murmured. "Mr. Mac can't be paying the gangs." She shook her head, still not alarmed. "That's strange. "And they went on.
At the corner of the hill they stopped again, and Cathy held her bonnet up to shade her eyes from the low sun. The railway lines ran away southward, glistening like the silken threads of a spider's web, but below them they ended abruptly at the raw gash of the cut line through the bush. There was a pile of teak sleepers at the railhead and a smaller bundle of steel rails, the service locomotive was due up from Kimberley this afternoon to replenish those materials. The sledgehammers and shovels were in neat stacks where the shift had left them at dusk the night before. There was no human movement around the railhead.
"That's even stranger, "said Cathy.
"Where is Mr. Henderson, Mama?" Jonathan asked. His voice was unusually subdued. "Where are Mr. Mac and Mr. Braithwaite?" "I don't know. They must still be in their tents." The tents of the white surveyor and the engineer and his supervisors were grouped just beyond the square galvanized iron shack of the telegraph. There was no sign of life around the hut nor between the neat pyramids of canvas, except for a single black crow which sat on the peak of one of them.
Its hoarse cawing reached them faintly, and as Cathy watched, it spread its black wings and flapped heavily to earth at the entrance of the tent.
"Where are all the hammer-boys?" Jonathan piped, and suddenly Cathy shivered.
"I don't know, darling." Her voice cracked and she cleared her throat. "We will go and find out." She realized she had spoken too loudly, and Jonathan shrank against her legs. "Mummy, I'm frightened."
"Don't be a silly boy," Cathy told him firmly, and dragging him by the hand, she started down the hill.
By the time she reached the telegraph hut, she was moving as fast as her big round belly would allow, and her breathing in her own ears was deafening.
"Stay here." She did not know what prompted her to leave Jonathan at the steps of the veranda, but she went up alone to the door of the telegraph hut. , The door was ajar. She pushed it fully open.
Mr. Braithwaite sat beside his table facing the doorway. He was staring at her with those pale popping eyes, and his mouth hung open. "Mr. Braithwaite," Cathy said, and at the sound of her voice there was a hum like a swarm of bees taking flight, and the big cobalt blue flies that had covered his shirt-front rose in a cloud into the air, and Cathy saw that his belly was a gaping mushy red pit, and that his entrails hung in ropes down between his knees into a tangle on the floor under the desk. Cathy shrank back against the door. She felt her legs turn rubbery under her and black shadows wheeled through her vision like the wings of bats at sundown. One of the metallic blue flies settled on her cheek and crawled sluggishly down towards the corner of her mouth.
Cathy leaned forward slowly and retched explosively, and her breakfast spattered on the wooden door between her feet. She backed away slowly out of the door, shaking her head and trying to wipe the sickly sweet taste of vomit from her lips. She almost tripped on the steps, and sat down heavily. Jonathan ran to her, and clung to her arm.
"What happened, Mummy?" "I want you to be a brave little man," she whispered.
"Are you sick, Mummy?" The child shook her arm with agitation, and Cathy found it difficult to think.
She realized what had caused the hideous mutilation of the corpse in the hut. The Matabele always disembowelled their victims. It was a ritual that released the spirit of the dead man, and allowed it to go on to its Valhalla. To leave the belly pouch was to trap the victim's shade upon the earth and have it return to haunt the slayer.
Mr. Braithwaite had been split by the razor-sharp edge of a Matabele assegai and his hot entrails had been plucked from him like those of a chicken. It was the work of a Matabele war party.
"Where is Mr. Henderson, Mummy?" Jon-Jon demanded shrilly. "I am going to his tent." The big burly engineer was one of Jonathan's favourite friends, and Cathy caught his arm.
"No, Jon-Jon don't go!" "Why not?" The crow had screwed up its courage at last and now it hopped into the opening of the engineer's tent and disappeared. Cathy knew what had attracted it.
"Please be quiet, Jon-Jon," Cathy pleaded. "Let Mummy think." The missing servants. They had been warned, of course, as had the Matabele construction gangs. They knew that a war party was out, and they had faded away, and a horrifying thought struck Cathy. Perhaps the servants, her own people, were part of the war party. She shook her head violently. No, not them. These must be some small band of renegades, not her own people.
They would have struck at dawn, of course, for it was the favourite hour. They had caught Henderson and his foreman asleep in the tents. Only the faithful little Braithwaite had been at his machine. The telegraph machine Cathy started up the telegraph was her one link with the outside world.
"Jon-Jon, stay here," she ordered, and crept back towards the door of the hut.
She steeled herself, and then glanced into the interior, trying not to look at the little man in the chair. One quick glance was enough. The telegraph machine had been ripped from the wall and smashed into pieces on the floor of the hut. She reeled back and leaned against the iron wall beside the door, clutching her swollen stomach with both hands, forcing herself to think again.
The war party had struck the railhead and then disappeared back into the forest and then she remembered the missing servants. The camp, they had not disappeared, they would be circling up through the trees towards the camp. She looked around her desperately, expecting at any moment to see the silent black files of plumed warriors come padding out of the thick bush.
The Service train from Kimberley was due late that afternoon, ten hours from now, and she was alone, except for Jonathan. Cathy sank down on her knees, reached for him and clung to him with the strength of despair, and only then realized that the boy was staring through the open doorway.
"Mr. Braithwaite is dead!" Jonathan said matter-of-factly.
Forcibly, she turned his head away. "They are going to kill us too, aren't they, Mummy?" "Oh Jon-Jon!" "We need a gun. I can shoot.
Papa taught me." A gun Cathy looked towards the silent tents. She did not think she had the co
urage to go into one of them, not even to find a weapon. She knew what carnage to expect there.
A shadow fell over her and she screamed. "Nkosikazi. It is me."
Isazi had come down the hill as silently as a panther.
"The horses are gone," he said, and she motioned him to look into the telegraph hut.
Isazi's expression did not change.
"So,"he said quietly, "the Matabele jackals can still bite." "The tents," Cathy whispered. "See if you can find a weapon." Isazi went with the lithe swinging run of a man half his age, ducking from one tent-opening to another, and when he came back to her, he carried an assegai with a broken shaft.
"The big one fought well. He was still alive, with his guts torn out of him and the crows were eating them. He could no longer speak, but he looked at me. I have given him peace. But there are no guns the Matabele have taken them." "There are guns at the camp," Cathy whispered.
"Come, Nkosikazi," he lifted her tenderly to her feet and Jonathan manfully took her other arm, though he did not reach to her armpit.
Wilbur Smith - B3 The Angels Weep Page 31