Power of the Sword c-10

by Wilbur Smith

  She noted with grim satisfaction the warmth and respect of the greetings and attentions showered upon her. It was clear that the wild extravagance of the polo tournament had served its purpose and allayed suspicions of her financial straits. As yet no rumours had been set free to ravage her position and reputation.

  That would change soon, she realized, and the thought made her angry in advance. She deliberately snubbed one of the Cape's most determined aspiring hostesses, publicly refusing her obsequious invitation and noting sardonically how the small cruelty increased the woman's respect. But all the time that she was playing these complicated social games, Centaine was gazing over their heads, looking for Blaine.

  The liner's siren blared the final warning and the ship's officers, resplendent in white tropical rig, passed amongst them with the polite instruction: This vessel is sailing in fifteen minutes. Will all those who are not passengers kindly go ashore immediately. Centaine shook hands with Mr Davenport and joined the procession down the steep gangway to the dockside. There she fingered in the jovial press of visitors, staring up the liner's tall side and trying to pick out Isabella or her daughters from the passengers who lined the rail of the boat deck.

  Gaily coloured paper streamers fluttered in the southeaster as they were thrown down from the high decks and seized by eager hands on the quayside, joining the vessel to land with a myriad frail umbilical cords, and suddenly Centaine recognized Blaine's eldest daughter. At this distance Tara was looking very grown-up and pretty in a dark dress and with her hair fashionably bobbed. Beside her, her sister had stuck her head through the railings and was furiously waving a pink handkerchief at someone on the dock below.

  Centaine shaded her eyes and made out the figure in the wheelchair behind the two girls. Isabella was sitting with her face in shadow, and to Centaine she seemed suddenly to be the final harbinger of tragedy, an inimical force sent to plague her and deny her happiness.

  O God, how I wish that she were easy to hate, she whispered, and her eyes followed the direction in which the two children were waving and she began to edge her way through the crowd.

  Then she saw him. He had climbed up onto the carriage of one of the giant loading cranes. He was dressed in a creamcoloured tropical suit with his green and blue regimental tie and a wide-brimmed white Panama had which he had taken from his head and was waving at his daughters high above him. The southeaster had tumbled his dark hair onto his forehead, and his teeth were very big and white against the dark mahogany of his tanned face.

  Centaine withdrew into the crowd, from where she could watch him secretly.

  He is the one thing I will not lose. The thought gave her comfort. I will always have him, after Weltevreden and the H'ani have been taken away. And then suddenly a hideous doubt assailed her. Is that truly so? She tried to close her mind to it, but the doubt slipped through. Does he love me, or does he love what I am? Will he still love me when I am just an ordinary woman, without wealth, without position, with nothing but another man's child? And the doubt filled her head with darkness and sickened her physically, so that when Blaine lifted his fingers to his lips and blew a kiss up

  towards the slim, pale, blanket-draped figure in the wheel

  chair her jealousy struck again with gale force, and she stared at Blaine's face, torturing herself with his expression of affection and concern for his wife, feeling herself totally excluded and superfluous.

  Slowly the gap between the liner and the quay opened.

  The ship's band on the promenade deck struck up. God be with you till we meet again'; the bright paper streamers parted one by one and floated down, twisting and turning, falling like her ill-fated dreams and hopes to lie sodden and disintegrating in the murky waters of the harbour. The ship's sirens boomed farewell, and the steam tugs bustled in to take charge and work her out through the narrow entrance of the breakwater. Under her own steam the huge white vessel gathered speed; a bow wave curled at her forefoot and she turned majestically into the north-west to clear Robben Island.

  Around Centaine the crowds were drifting away, and within minutes she was alone on the dockside. Above her Blaine still stood on the carriage of the crane, shading his eyes with the Panama hat, staring out across Table Bay for a last glimpse of the tall ship. There was no laughter now, no smile upon that wide mouth that she loved so dearly, He was supporting such a burden of sorrow that perforce she shared it with him, and it blended with her own doubts until the weight of it was unbearable and she wanted to turn and run from it. Then suddenly he lowered the hat and turned and looked down at her.

  She felt guilty that she had spied upon him in this unguarded and private moment, and his own expression hardened into something that she could not fathom. Was it resentment or something worse? She never knew for the moment passed. He jumped down from the carriage, landing lightly and gracefully for such a big man, and came slowly to where she waited in the shade of the crane, settling the hat back on his head and shading his eyes with the brim so that she could not be certain what they contained; and she was afraid as she had never been before as he stood before her.

  When can we be alone? he asked quietly. For I cannot wait another minute longer to be with you. All her fears, all her doubts, fell away and left her feeling bright and vibrant as a young girl again, almost light-headed with happiness.

  He loves me still, her heart sang. He will always love me. General fames Barry Munnik Hertzog came out to Weltevreden in a closed car which bore no mark or insignia of his high office. He was an old comrade in arms of Jan Christian Smuts. Both of them had fought with great distinction against the British during the South African War, and they had both taken a part in the peace negotiations at Vereeniging that ended that conflict. After that they had served together on the national convention that led to the Union of South Africa, and they had both been in the first cabinet of Louis Botha's government.

  Since then their ways had diverged, Hertzog taking the narrow view with his South Africa first doctrine while Jan Smuts was the international statesman who had masterminded the formation of the British Commonwealth and had taken a leading part in the birth of the League of Nations.

  Hertzog was militantly Afrikaner, and had secured for Afrikaans equal rights with English as an official language.

  His Two Streams'policy opposed the absorption of his own Volk into a greater South Africa, and in 1931 he had forced Britain to recognize in the Statute of Westminster the equality of the dominions of the empire, including the right of secession from the Commonwealth.

  Tall and austere in appearance, he cut a formidable figure as he strode into the library of Weltevreden which Centaine had placed indefinitely at their disposal, and Jan Smuts rose from his seat at the long green-baize-covered table and came to meet him.

  So! Hertzog snorted as he shook hands. We may not have as much time for discussion and manoeuvre as we had hoped. General Smuts glanced down the table at Blaine Malcomess and Deneys Reitz, his confidants and two of his nominees for the new cabinet, but none of them spoke while Hertzog and Nicolaas Havenga, the Nationalist minister of finance, settled themselves on the opposite side of the long table. At seventeen years of age Havenga had ridden with Hertzog on commando against the British, acting as his secretary, and since then they had been inseparable. Havenga had held his present cabinet rank since Hertzog's Nationalists had come to power in 1924.

  Are we safe here? he asked now, glancing suspiciously at the double brass-bound mahogany doors at the far end of the library and then sweeping his gaze around the shelves which rose to the ornately plastered ceiling and were filled with Centaine's collection of books, all bound in Morocco leather and embossed with gold leaf.

  Quite safe, Smuts assured him. We may speak openly without the least fear of being overheard. I give you my personal assurance. Havenga looked at his master for further assurance and when the prime minister nodded he spoke with apparent reluctance.

  Tielman Roos has resigned from the Appellate Division, he ann
ounced, and sat back in his seat. It was unnecessary for him to elaborate. Tielman Roos was one of the country's best known and most colourful characters. The Lion of the North was his nickname and he had been one of Hertzog's most loyal supporters. When the Nationalists came to power, he had been minister of justice and deputy premier.

  It had seemed that he was destined to be Hertzog's successor, the heir apparent, but then failing health and disagreement over the issue of South Africa's adherence to the gold standard had intervened. He had retired from politics and accepted an appointment to the Appellate Division of the Supreme Court.

  Health? Jan Smuts asked.

  No, the gold standard, Havenga said gravely. He intends

  coming out against our remaining upon the standard.

  His influence is enormous, Blaine exclaimed.

  We cannot let him throw doubt upon our policies, Hertzog agreed. 'A declaration from Roos now could be disastrous. It must be our first priority to agree upon our joint policy on gold. We must be in a position either to oppose or pre-empt his position. It is vitally important that we offer a united front. He looked directly at Smuts.

  I agree, Smuts answered. We must not allow our new coalition to be discredited before we have even come into existence. This is a crisis, Havenga interjected. We must handle it as such. May we have your views, Ou Baas? You know my views, Smuts told them. You will recall that I urged you to follow Great Britain's example when she went off the gold standard. I don't wish to throw that in your faces now, but I haven't altered my views since then. Please go over your reasons again, Ou Baas. At the time I predicted that there would be a flight from the South African gold pound into sterling. Bad money always drives out good money, and I was right. That happened, Smuts stated simply, and the men opposite looked uncomfortable. The resulting loss of capital has crippled our industry and sent tens of thousands of our workers to swell the ranks of the unemployed. There are millions of unemployed in Britain herself, Havenga pointed out irritably.

  Our refusal to go off gold aggravated unemployment. It has endangered our gold-mining industry. It has sent prices for our diamonds and wool crashing. It has deepened the depression to this tragic level where we now find ourselves. if we go off the gold standard at this late stage, what will be the benefits to the country? 'First and by far the most important, it will rejuvenate our gold-mining industry. If the South African pound falls to parity with sterling, and that is what should happen immediately, it will mean that the mines will receive seven pounds for an ounce of gold instead of the present four. Almost double. The mines that have closed down will re-open. The others will expand. New mines will open providing work for tens of thousands, whites and blacks, and capital will flow back into this country. It will be the turning point. We will be back on the road to prosperity. The arguments for and against were thrown back and forth, Blaine and Reitz supporting the old general, and gradually the two men opposite retreated before their logic until a little after noon Barry Hertzog said suddenly: The timing. There will be pandemonium in the stock exchange. There are only three trading days before Christmas. We must delay any announcement until then, do it only when the exchange is closed. The atmosphere in the library seemed palpable.

  With Hertzog's statement, Blaine realized that Smuts had finally carried the argument. South Africa would be off gold before the stock exchange re-opened in the new year. He felt a marvelous sense of elation, of achievement. The first act of this new coalition was to set a term to the country's protracted economic agony, a promise of return to prosperity and hope.

  I still have sufficient influence with Tielman to prevail upon him to delay his announcement until after the markets close. Hertzog was still speaking, but it was only the details that remained to be agreed upon and that evening, as Blaine shook hands with the others in front of the white gables of Weltevreden and went to where his Ford was parked beneath the oaks, he was filled with a sense of destiny.

  it was this that had attracted him into the political arena, this knowledge that he could help to change the world. For Blaine this was the ultimate use of power, to wield it like a bright sword against the demons that plagued his people and his land.

  I have become a part of history, he thought, and the elation stayed with him as he drove out through the magnificent Anreith gates of Weltevreden, the last in the small convoy of vehicles.

  Deliberately he let the prime minister's car, followed by the Plymouth that Deneys Reitz was driving, pull even further ahead and then disappear into the bends that snaked up Wynberg Hill. Only then he pulled off onto the verge and sat for a few minutes with the engine idling, watching the rearview mirror to make certain that he was not observed.

  Then he put the Ford in gear again and swung a U-turn across the road. He turned off the main road before he reached the Anreith gates, into a lane that skirted the boundary of Weltevreden, and within minutes he was once more on Centaine's land, coming in through one of the back lanes, hidden from the chateau and the main buildings by a plantation of pines.

  He parked the Ford amongst the trees and set off along the path, breaking into a run as he saw the whitewashed walls of the cottage ahead of him gleaming in the golden rays of the setting sun. It was exactly as she had described to him.

  He paused in the doorway. Centaine had not heard him.

  She was kneeling before the open hearth, blowing on the smoky flames that were rising from the pile of pinecones she had set as kindling for the fire. For a while he watched her from the doorway, delighted to be able to observe her while she was still unaware of him.

  She had removed her shoes and the soles of her bare feet were pink and smooth, her ankles slim, her calves firm and strong from riding and walking, the backs of her knees dimpled. He had never noticed that before and the dimples touched him. He was moved by the deep tenderness that until now he had felt only for his own daughters, and he made a small sound in his throat.

  Centaine turned, springing to her feet the instant she saw him. 'I thought you weren't coming. She rushed to him, holding up her face to him, her eyes shining, and then after a long time she broke off the kiss and still in his arms studied his face.

  You are tired, she said.

  it has been a long day. Come. Holding his hand she led him to the chair beside the hearth. Before he sat, she slipped the jacket off his shoulders and stood on tiptoe to loosen his necktie.

  I've always wanted to do that for you, she murmured, and hung his jacket in the small yellow-wood cupboard before she went to the centre table and poured whisky into a tumbler, squirted soda onto it from the siphon and brought it to him.

  Is that right? she asked anxiously, and he sipped and nodded.

  Perfect. He looked around the cottage, taking in the bunches of cut flowers in the vases, the gleam of new wax on the floors and simple solid furniture.

  Very nice, he said.

  I worked all day to have it ready for you. Centaine looked up from the cheroot that she was preparing. Anna used to live here, until she married Sir Garry. Nobody else has used it since then. Nobody comes here. It's our place now, Blaine. She brought the cheroot to him, lit a taper in the fire and held it for him until it was burning evenly. Then she placed one of the leather cushions at his feet and settled upon it, leaning her folded arms on his knee and watching his face in the light of the flames.

  How long can you stay? Well, he looked thoughtful. How long do you want me? An hour? Two? Longer? and Centaine squirmed with pleasure and clasped his knees tightly.

  The whole night, she gloated. The whole glorious night! She had brought down a basket from the kitchen at Weltevreden. They dined on cold roast beef and turkey and drank the wines from her own vineyards. Afterwards she peeled the big yellow Hanepoort grapes and popped them into his mouth one at a time, kissing his lips lightly between each morsel.

  The grapes are sweet, he smiled, but I prefer the kisses. 'Fortunately, sir, there is no shortage of either. Centaine brewed coffee on the open hearth and they dr
ank it sprawled together on the rug in front of the fire, watching the flames, neither of them speaking, but Blaine stroked the fine dark hairs at her temples and at the nape of her neck with his fingertips until slowly the tranquil mood hardened and he ran his fingers down her spine and she trembled and rose to her feet.

  Where are you going? he demanded.

  Finish your cheroot, she told him. Then come and find out. When he followed her into the small bedroom she was sitting in the centre of the low bed.

  He had never seen her in a nightdress before. It was of pale lemon satin and the lace at the neck and cuffs was the colour of old ivory that glowed in the candlelight.

  You are beautiful, he said.

  You make me feel beautiful, she said gravely, and held out both hands to him.

  Tonight their loving, in contrast to the other urgent wildly driven nights, was measured and slow, almost stately. She had not realized that he had learned so much about her body and its special needs. Calmly and skilfully he ministered to them and her trust in him was complete; gently he swept away her last reservations and bore her beyond the sense of self, his body deep in hers and she enfolding him and blendmg with him so that their very blood seemed to mingle and his pulse beat in time to her heart. it was his breath that filled her lungs, his thoughts that gleamed and glimmered through her brain, and she heard her own words echo in his eardrums: I love you, my darling, oh God, how I love you. And his voice replied, crying through the cavern of her own throat, his voice upon her lips, I love you. I love you. And they were one.

  He woke before her and the suribirds were twittering in the bright orange-coloured blooms of the tacoma shrubs outside the cottage window.

  A beam of sunlight had found a chink in the curtains and it cut through the air above his head like the blade of a golden rapier.

  Slowly, very slowly, so as not to disturb her, he turned his head and studied her face. She had thrown aside her pillow and her cheek was pressed to the mattress, her lips almost touching his shoulder, one arm thrown out over his chest.