Wilbur Smith - B3 The Angels Weep

by B3 The Angels Weep(Lit)

  The first pain hit Cathy before they reached the thick bush at the edge of the cut line, and it doubled her over. They held her while the paroxysm lasted, Jonathan not understanding what was happening, but the little Zulu was grave and silent.

  "All right." Cathy straightened up at last, and tried to wipe the long tendrils of her hair off her face, but they were plastered there by her own sweat.

  They went up on the track at Cathy's pace. Isazi was watching the forest on both sides for the dark movement of warriors, and he carried the broken assegai in his free hand with an underhand stabbing grip.

  Cathy gasped and staggered as the next pain caught her.

  This time they could not hold her and she went down on her knees in the dust. When it passed, she looked up at Isazi.

  "They are too close together. It is happening." He did not have to reply.

  "Take Jonathan to the Harkness Mine." "Nkosikazi, the train?"

  "The train will be too late. You must go." "Nkosikazi you, what will become of you?" "Without a horse, I could never reach the Harkness. It is almost thirty miles. Every moment you waste now wastes the boy's life." He did not move.

  "If you can save him, Isazi, then you save part of me. If you stay here, we will all die. Go. Go quickly!" she urged. Isazi reached for Jonathan's hand, but he jerked away.

  "I won't leave my mummy." His voice rose hysterically. "My daddy said I must look after my mummy." Cathy gathered herself. It took all her determination to perform the most difficult task of her young life.

  She hit Jonathan open-handed across the face, back and forth, with all her strength. The child staggered away from her. The vivid crimson outlines of her fingers rising on the pale skin of his cheeks. She had never struck his face before.

  "Do as I tell you," Cathy blazed at him furiously. "Go with Isazi this very instant." The Zulu snatched up the child, and looked down at her for a moment longer.

  "You have the heart of a lioness. I salute you, Nkosikazi." And he went bounding away into the forest, carrying Jonathan with him. In seconds he had disappeared and then only did she let the sobs come shaking and. choking up her throat.

  She thought then that being entirely alone is the hardest thing in life to bear. She thought of Ralph, and she had never loved nor wanted him the way she did at that moment. It seemed for a time that she had used the last grain of her courage to strike her only child, and to send him away for a faint chance of salvation. She would be content to stay here, kneeling in the dust in the early sunlight until they came for her with the cruet steel.

  Then from somewhere deep within, her she found the strength to rise and hobble on up the path. At the heel of the hill, she looked down at the camp. It looked so quiet and orderly. Her home. The smoke from the camp-fire rose like a pale grey feather into the still morning air, so welcoming, so safe, illogically she felt that if she could only reach her tent then it would be all right.

  She started and she had not gone a dozen paces, before she felt something burst deep within her, and then the abrupt hot rush down the inside of her legs as her waters broke and poured from her. She struggled on, hampered by her sodden skirts, and then, unbelievably, she had reached her own tent.

  It was so cool and dark within, like a church, she thought, and again her legs gave way beneath her. She crawled painfully across the floor, and her hair came tumbling down and blinded her. She groped her way to the wagon chest set at the foot of the big camp cot, and threw the hair out of her eyes as she rested against it.

  The lid was so heavy that it took all her strength, but at last it fell open with a crash. The pistol was tucked under the crocheted white bed covers, that she had hoarded for the home that Ralph would one day build for her. It was a big service Webley revolver. She had only fired it once, with Ralph steadying her from behind, holding her wrists against the recoil. Now it needed both her hands to lift it out of the chest. She was too tired to climb onto the cot. She sat with her back against the chest, both her legs straight out in front of her flat against the floor, and she held the pistol with both hands in her lap.

  She must have dozed, for when she started awake, it was to hear the whisper of feet against the bare earth. She looked up. There was the shadow of a man silhouetted by the slanting rays of the sun against the white canvas of the tent like a figure in a magic lantern show.

  She lifted the pistol and aimed at the entrance. The ugly black weapon wavered uncertainly in her grip, and aman stepped through the flap.

  "Oh, thank God." Cathy let the pistol fall into her lap, "Oh thank God, it's you," she whispered and let her head fall forward. The thick curtain of her hair fell open, splitting down the back of her head, exposing the pale skin at the tender nape of her neck. Bazo looked down at it. He saw a soft pulse throbbing beneath the skin.

  Bazo wore only a kilt of civet-tails, and about his forehead a band of mole-skin no feathers nor tassels. His feet were bare. In his left hand he held a broad stabbing assegai. In his right he carried a knobkerrie like the mace of a medieval knight. The handle was of polished rhinoceros horn, three feet long, and the head was a ball of heavy lead wood studded with hand-forged nails of native iron.

  When he swung the knobkerrie, all the strength of his wide shoulders was behind the blow, and his point of aim was the pulse in the pale nape of Cathy's neck.

  Two of his warriors came into the tent and flanked Bazo, their eyes were still glazed with the killing madness. They also wore the mole-skin headbands, and they looked down at the crumpled body on the floor of the tent. One of the warriors changed his grip on the assegai, ready for the cutting stroke.

  "The woman's spirit must fly," he said.

  "Do it!" Bazo said, and the warrior stooped and worked quickly, expertly.

  "There is life within her," he said. "See! It moves yet." "Still it!" Bazo ordered, and left the tent, striding out into the sunlight.

  "Find the boy, , he ordered his men who waited there. "Find the white cub." The driver of the locomotive was terrified. They had stopped for a few minutes at the trading-post beside the tracks at Plumtree siding, and he had seen the bodies of the storekeeper and his family lying in the front yard.

  Ralph Ballantyne thrust the muzzle of the rifle- between his shoulder-blades, and marched him back to the cab, forcing him to go on northwards, deeper and deeper into Matabeleland.

  They had come all the way from the Kimberley shunting yards with the loco throttle wide open, and Ralph had spelled the stoker on the foot plate shovelling the lumpy black coal into the firebox with a monotonous rhythm, bare-chested and sweating in the furnace glare, the coal dust blackening his face and arms like those of a chimney-sweep, his palms wet and raw from the burst blisters.

  They had clipped almost two hours off the record run to the railhead. As they came roaring around the bend between the hills and saw the iron roof of the telegraph shack, Ralph hurled the shovel aside and clambered onto the side of the cab to peer ahead.

  His heart leaped joyfully against his ribs, there was movement around the hut and between the tents, there was life here! Then his heart dropped as swiftly as it had risen, as he recognized the skulking dog-like shapes. , The hyena were so intent on squabbling over the things they had dragged out of the tents, that they were totally unafraid. It was only when Ralph started shooting that they scattered.

  He knocked down half a dozen of the loathsome beasts before the rifle was empty. He ran from the hut to each tent in turn, and then back to the locomotive. Neither the driver nor the fireman had left the cab.

  "Mr. Ballantyne, these murdering bloody eat hen will be back at any minute.-" "Wait!"" Ralph shouted at him, and scrambled up the side of the cattle-truck behind the coal buggy. He knocked out the locking-pins and the door came crashing down to form a drawbridge.

  Ralph led the horses out of the truck. There were four of them, one already saddled, the best mounts he had been able to find. He paused only long enough to clinch the girth, and then swung up into the saddle with the rifle
still in his hand.

  "I'm not going to wait here," the driver yelled. "Christ Almighty, those niggers are animals, man, animals "If my wife and son are here, I'll need to get them back. Give me one hour, "Ralph asked.

  "I'm not waiting another minute. I'm going back." The driver shook his head.

  "You can go to hell then, "Ralph told him coldly.

  He kicked his horse into a gallop, and dragging the spare mounts on the lead-rein behind him, took the track up the side of the kopje towards the camp.

  As he rode, he thought once more that perhaps he should have listened to Aaron Fagan, perhaps he should have recruited a dozen other horsemen in Kimberley to go with him. But he knew that he would never have been able to abide the few hours that he would have needed to find good men. As it was, he had left Kimberley less than half an hour after he had received the telegraph from Toti just long enough to fetch his Winchester, fill the saddlebags with ammunition, and take the horses from Aaron's stables to the shunting-yard.

  Before he turned the angle of the hill, he glanced back over his shoulder. The locomotive was already huffing back along the curve of the rails towards the south. Now, as far as he knew, he might be the only white man left alive in Matabeleland.

  Ralph galloped into the camp. They had been there already. The camp had been looted, Jonathan's tent had collapsed, his clothing was scattered and trampled into the dust. "Cathy," Ralph shouted, as he dismounted. "Jon-Jon! Where are you?" Paper rustled under his feet and Ralph looked down. Cathy's portfolio of drawings had been thrown down and had burst open, the paintings of which she was so proud were torn and crumpled. Ralph picked up one of them, it was of the lovely dark scarlet trumpet flowers of Kigeha africana, the African sausage tree. He tried to smooth out the rumpled sheet, and then realized the futility of that gesture.

  He ran on to their living-tent, and ripped open the flap. Cathy lay on her back with her unborn child beside her. She had promised Ralph a daughter and she had kept her promise.

  He fell on his knee beside her, and tried to lift her head, but her body had set into an awful rigidity, she was stiff as a carven statue in marble. As he lifted her, he saw the great cup-shaped depression in the back of her skull.

  Ralph backed away, and then flung himself out of the tent.

  "Jonathan," he screamed. "Jon-Jon! Where are you?" He ran through the camp like a madman. "Jonathan! Please, Jonathan!" When he found no living thing, he stumbled into the forest up onto the slope of the kopie.

  "Jonathan! It's Daddy. Where are you, my darling?" Dimly in his anguish he realized that his cries might bring the amadoda, as the bleat of the goat brings the leopard, and suddenly he wanted that to happen with all his soul.

  "Come!" he yelled into the silent forest. "Come on. Come and find me also!" And he stopped to fire the Winchester into the air, and listen to the echoes go bounding away down the valley.

  At last he could run and scream no more, and he came up panting against the hole of one of the forest trees. "Jonathan," he croaked.

  "Where are you, my baby?" Slowly he turned down and went down the hill.

  He moved like a very old man.

  At the edge of the camp, he stopped and peered shortsightedly at something that lay in the grass, then he stopped and picked it up. He turned it over and over in his hands, and then balled it into his fist.

  His knuckles turned white with the strength of his grip. What he held was a headband of softly tanned mole-skin.

  Still holding the scrap of fur in his hand, he went into the camp to prepare his dead for burial.

  Robyn St. John woke to the soft scratching on the shutter of her bedroom, and she raised herself on one elbow.

  "Who is it? "she called. "It is me, Nomusa." "Juba, my little Dove, I did not expect you!" Robyn slipped out of bed and crossed to the window. When she opened the shutter, the night was opalescent with moonlight, and Juba was huddled below the sill.

  "You are so cold." Robyn took her arm. "You'll catch your death.

  Come inside immediately. I'll fetch a blanket." "Nomusa, wait. "Juba caught her wrist. "I must go." "But you have only just arrived."

  "Nobody must know that I was here, please tell nobody, Nomusa." "What is it? You are shaking-" "Listen, Nomusa. I could not leave you you are my mother and sister and friend, I could not leave you." "Juba-" "Do not speak. Listen for a minute, "Juba pleaded. "I have so little time." It was only then that Robyn realized that it was not the chill of night that shook Juba's vast frame. She was racked with sobs of fear and of dread.

  "You must go, Nomusa. You and Elizabeth and the baby. Take nothing with you, leave this very minute. Go into Bulawayo, perhaps -you will be safe there. It is your best chance." "I don't understand you, Juba. What nonsense is this?" "They are coming Nomusa. They are coming. Please hurry.

  Then she was gone. She moved swiftly and silently for such a big woman, and she seemed to melt into the moon shadows under the spathodea trees. By the time Robyn had found her shawl and run down the veranda, there was no sign of her.

  Robyn hurried down towards the hospital bungalows, stumbling once on the verge of the path, calling with increasing exasperation.

  "Juba, come back here! Do you hear me? I won't stand any more of this nonsense!" She stopped at the church, uncertain which path to take.

  "Juba! Where are you?" The silence was broken only by the yipping of a jackal up on the hillside above the Mission. It" was answered by another on the peak of the pass where the road to Bulawayo crossed the hills.

  "Juba!" The watch-fire by the hospital bungalow had burned out.

  She crossed to it, and threw on to it a log from the woodpile. The silence was unnatural. The log caught and flared. In its light she climbed the steps of the nearest bungalow.

  The sleeping-mats of the patients were in two rows, facing each other down each wall, but they were deserted. Even the most desperately ill had gone. They must have been carried away, for some of them had been past walking.

  Robyn hugged the shawl around her shoulders. "Poor ignorant heathen," she said aloud. "Another witchcraft scare, they will run from their own shadows.". She turned sorrowfully away, and walked through the darkness back towards the house. There was a light burning in Elizabeth's room, and as Robyn climbed the steps of the veranda, the door opened.

  "Mama! Is that you?" "What are you doing, Elizabeth?" "I thought I heard voices." Robyn hesitated, she did not want to alarm Elizabeth, but then she was a sensible child, and unlikely to go into hysteria over a bit of Matabele superstition.

  "Juba was here. There must be another witchcraft scare. She ran off again." "What did she say?" "Oh, just that we should go in to Bulawayo to escape some sort of danger." Elizabeth came out onto the veranda in her nightdress, carrying the candle.

  "Juba is a Christian, she doesn't dabble in witchcraft."

  Elizabeth's tone was concerned. "What else did she say?" "Just that," Robyn yawned. "I'm going back to bed." She started along the veranda, and then stopped. "Oh, the others have all run off. The hospital is empty. It's most annoying." "Mama, I think we should do as Juba says."

  "What do you mean by that?" "I think we should go in to Bulawayo immediately." "Elizabeth, I thought better of you." "I have an awful feeling. I think we should go. Perhaps there is real danger." "This is my home. Your father and I built it with our own hands. There is no power on earth that will force me to leave it," Robyn said firmly.

  "Now go back to bed. With no help, we are going to have a busy day tomorrow." They squatted in long silent ranks in the long grass below the crest of the hills. Gandang moved quietly down the ranks, stopping occasionally to exchange a word with an old comrade in arms. To revive a memory of another waiting before a battle of long ago.

  It was strange to sit upon the bare earth during the waiting time.

  In the old days they would have sat on their shields, the long dappled shields of iron-hard oxhide, squatting upon them not for comfort but to hide their distinctive shape from a watchful
enemy until the moment came to strike terror into his belly and steel into his heart, squatting upon them also to prevent some young buck in the throes of the divine madness from prematurely drumming upon the rawhide with his assegai and giving warning of the waiting impi.

  It was strange also not to be decked out in the full regimentals of the Inyati impi, the plumes and furs and tassels of cow-tails, the war rattles at ankle and wrist, the tall headdress that turned a man into a giant. They were dressed like neophytes, like un blooded boys, with only their kilts about their waists, but the scars upon their dark bodies and the fire in their eyes gave the lie to that impression.

  Gandang felt himself choking with a pride that he once thought he would never experience again. He loved them, he loved their fierceness and their valour, and though his face was quiet and expressionless, the love shone through in his eyes.