Power of the Sword c-10

by Wilbur Smith

  She went down to the cottage an hour early with fresh flowers, clean crisply ironed linen for the bed and a bottle of Bollinger champagne, and she was waiting for him when he walked into the living-room.

  There are no words that can adequately express my gratitude, she said.

  That is the way I want it, Centaine, he told her seriously.

  No words! We will never talk about it again. I shall try to convince myself it never happened. Please promise me never to mention it, never again as long as we live and love each other. I give you my solemn word, she said, and then all her relief and joy came bubbling up and she kissed him, laughing. Won't you open the champagne? And she raised the brimming glass when he handed it to her and gave him his own words back as a toast: For as long as we live and love each other, my darling. The Johannesburg Stock Exchange re-opened on January the second and in the first hour very little business could be conducted, for the floor was like a battlefield as the brokers literally tore at each other, screaming for attention. But by call-over the market had shaken itself out and settled at its new levels.

  Swales of Rabkin and Swales was the first of her brokers to telephone Centaine. Like the market, his tone was buoyant and effervescent.

  My dear Mrs Courtney, in the circumstances, Centaine was prepared to let that familiarity pass, my very dear Mrs Courtney, your timing has been almost miraculous. As you know, we were unfortunately unable to fill your entire purchase order. We were able to obtain only four hundred and forty thousand ERPMs at an average price of twenty-five shillings. The volume of your order pushed the price up two and six. However, she could almost hear him puffing himself up to make his announcement, however, I am delighted to be able to tell you that this morning ERPMs are trading at fifty-five shillings and still rising. I am looking forward to sixty shillings by the end of the week Sell them, Centaine said quietly and heard him choke at the end of the line.

  If I may be permitted to offer a word of advice Sell them, she repeated. Sell all of them. And she hung up, staring out of the window as she tried to calculate her profits, but the telephone rang again before she reached a total, and one after another her other brokers triumphantly reported on the contracts she had made. Then there was a call from Windhoek.

  Dr Twenty-man-Jones, it's so good to hear your voice. She had recognized him instantly.

  Well, Mrs Courtney, this is a pretty pickle, Twenty-man-Jones told her glumly. The H'ani Mine will be back in profit again now, even with the parsimonious quota De Beers is allowing us. We've turned the corner, Centaine enthused. We are out of the woods. Many a slip 'twixt cup and lip. Gloomily Twenty-man-Jones capped cliche with cliche.

  Best not to count our chickens, Mrs Courtney. Dr Twenty-man-Jones, I love you. Centaine laughed delightedly, and there was a shocked silence that echoed across a thousand miles of wire. I'll be there just as soon as I can get away from here. There is a lot for us to work on now., She hung up and went to look for Shasa. He was down at the stables chatting with his coloured grooms as they sat in the sun dubbining his polo harness and saddlery.

  Cheri, I am driving into Cape Town. Will you come with me? 'What are you going all that way for, Mater? It's a surprise. That was the one certain way to gain Shasa's full attention and he tossed the harness he was working on to Abel and sprang to his feet.

  Her ebullient mood was infectious and they were laughing together as they walked into Porters Motors showroom on Strand Street. The sales manager came from his cubicle on the run.

  Mrs Courtney, we haven't seen you in far too long. May I wish you a happy and prosperous New Year. It's off to a good start on both counts, she smiled. Speaking of happiness, Mr Tims, how soon can you deliver my new Daimler? It will be yellow, naturally? With black piping, naturally! And the usual fittings, the vanity, the cocktail cabinet? All of them, Mr Tims. I will cable our London office immediately. Shall we say four months, Mrs Courtney? Let us rather say three months, Mr Tims. Shasa could barely contain himself until they were on the pavements in front of the showroom.

  Mater, have you gone bonkers? We are paupers! Well, cheri, let's be paupers with a little class and style. Where are we going now? The post office. At the telegraph counter Centaine drafted a cable to Sotheby's in Bond Street: Sale no longer contemplated. Stop. Please cancel all preparations.

  Then they went to lunch at the Mount Nelson Hotel.

  Blaine had promised to meet her as early as he was able to escape from the meeting of the proposed new coalition cabinet. He was as good as his word, waiting for her in the pine forest, and when she saw his face her happiness shrivelled.

  What is it, Blaine? Let's walk, Centaine. I've been indoors all day. They climbed the Karbonkelberg slopes behind the estate.

  At the summit they sat on a fallen log to watch the sunset and it was magnificent.

  This was the fairest Cape which we discovered in all our circumnavigation of the earth, she misquoted from Vasco da Garna's log, but Blaine did not correct her as she had hoped he might.

  Tell me, Blaine. She took his arm and insisted, and he turned his face to her.

  Isabella, he said sombrely.

  You have heard from her? Her spirits sank deeper at the name.

  The doctors can do nothing for her. She will be returning on the next mail ship from Southampton. in the silence the sun sank into the silver sea, taking the light from the world, and Centaine's soul was as dark.

  How ironic it is, she whispered. Because of you I can have anything in this world except that which I most desire you, my love. The women pounded the fresh millet grain in the wooden mortars into a coarse fluffy white meal and filled one of the leather sacks.

  Carrying the sack, Swart Hendrick, followed by Moses his brother, left the kraal after the rise of the new moon and crept silently up the ridge in the night. While Hendrick stood guard, Moses climbed to the old eagle owl nest in the leadwood tree and brought down the cartridge paper packets.

  They moved along the ridge until they were beyond all possible chance of observation from the village, and even then they very carefully screened the small fire that they built amongst the ironstone boulders. Hendrick broke open the packets and poured the gleaming stones into a small calabash gourd while Moses prepared the millet meal in another gourd, mixing it with water until it was a soft porridge.

  Meticulously Hendrick burned the cartridge paper wrappings in the fire and stirred the ashes to powder with a stick.

  When it was done he nodded at his younger brother and Moses poured the dough over the coals. As it began to bubble Hendrick buried the diamonds in the unleavened dough.

  Moses muttered ruefully as the millet cakes bubbled and hardened. It was almost an incantation. These are death stones. We will have no joy of them. The white men love them too dearly: they are the stones of death and madness. Hendrick ignored him and shaped the baking loaves, squinting his eyes against the smoke and smiling secretly to himself. When each round loaf was crisped brown on the underside he flipped it over and let it cook through until it was brick hard; then he lifted it off the fire and set it out to cool. Finally he repacked the crude thick loaves into the leather sack and they returned quietly to the sleeping village.

  In the morning they left early and the women went with them the first mile of the journey, ululating mournfully and singing the song of farewell. When they fell behind neither of the men looked back. They trudged on towards the low brown horizon, carrying their bundles balanced on their heads. They did not think about it, but this little scene was acted out every single day in a thousand villages across the southern. sub-continent.

  Days later the two men, still on foot, reached the recruitment station. It was a single-roomed general-dealer's store, standing alone at a remote crossroad on the edge of the desert. The white trader augmented his precarious business by buying cattle hides from the surrounding nomadic tribes and by recruiting for Wenela'.

  Wenela was the acronym for the Witwatersrand Native Labour Association, a ubiquitous sprawling
enterprise which extended its tentacles into the vastness of the African wilderness. From the peaks of the Dragon Mountains in Basutoland to the swamps of the Zambezi and Chobe, from the thirstlands of the Kalahari to the rain forest of the high plateau of Nyasaland, it gathered up the trickle of black men and channelled them first into a stream and finally into a mighty river that ran endlessly to the fabulous goldfields of the Ridge of White Waters, the Witwatersrand of Transvaal.

  The trader looked over these two new recruits in a perfunctory manner as they stood dumbly before him. Their faces were deliberately expressionless, their eyes blank, the only perfect defence of the black African in the presence of the white man.

  Name? the trader demanded.

  Henry Tabaka. Hendrick had chosen his new name to cover his relationship to Moses and to throw off any chance connection with Lothar De La Rey and the robbery.

  Name? The trader looked at Moses.

  Moses Gama. He pronounced it with a guttural G'.

  Have you worked on the mines before? Do you speak English? 'Yes, Basie. They were obsequious, and the trader grinned.

  Good! Very good! You will be rich men when you come home from Goldi. Plenty of wives. Plenty of jig-jig, hey? He grinned lasciviously as he issued them each with a green Wenela card and a bus ticket. The bus will come soon. Wait outside, he ordered, and promptly lost all interest in them.

  He had earned his guinea-a-head recruitment fee, good money easily made, and his obligation to the recruits was at an end.

  They waited under the scraggy thorn tree at the side of the iron-roofed trading store for forty-eight hours before the railway bus came rattling and banging and blowing blue smoke across the dreary wastes.

  it stopped briefly and they slung their meagre luggage up onto the roofrack that was already piled with calabashes and boxes and bundles, with trussed goats and cages of woven bark stuffed with live fowls. Then they climbed into the overloaded coach and squeezed onto one of the hard wooden benches. The bus bellowed and blustered on over the plains and the rows of black passengers, wedged shoulder to shoulder, jolted and swayed in unison as it pitched and rolled over the rutted tracks.

  Two days later the bus stopped outside the barbed-wire gates of the Wenela staging post on the outskirts of Windhoek, and most of the passengers, all young men, descended and stood looking about them aimlessly until a huge black overseer with brass plaques of authority on his arm and a long sjambok in his hand chivied them into line and led them through the gates.

  The white station manager sat on the stoep of his office building, his boots propped on the half wall of the stoep and a black bottle of German lager at his elbow, fanning himself with his hat. One at a time, the black boss-boy pushed the new recruits in front of him for appraisal. He rejected only one, a skinny little runt of a man who barely had the strength to shuffle up to the verandah.

  That bastard is riddled with TB. The manager took a gulp of his lager. Get rid of him. Send him back where he came from. When Hendrick stepped forward he straightened up in his thonged chair and set down the lager glass.

  What is your name, boy? he asked.

  Tabaka. Ha, you speak English. The manager's eyes narrowed. He could pick out the troublemakers; that was his job. He could tell by their eyes, the gleam of intelligence and aggression in them. He could tell by the way they walked and carried their shoulders; this big strutting, sullen black was big trouble.

  ,R

  You in trouble with the police, boy? he asked again. You steal other man's cattle? You kill your brother perhaps, or jig-jig his wife, hey? Hendrick stared at him flatly.

  Answer me, boy. No!

  You call me Baas when you speak to me, do you understand? Yes, Baas, Hendrick said carefully, and the manager opened the police file that lay on the table beside him and thumbed through it slowly, suddenly looking up to catch any sign of guilt or apprehension on Hendrick's face. But he was wearing the African mask again, dumb, and resigned and inscrutable.

  Christ, they stink. He threw the file back onto the table again.

  Take them away, he told the black boss-boy, and he picked up his beer bottle and glass and went back into his office.

  You know better than that, my brother, Moses whispered to him as they were marched away towards the line of thatched huts. When you meet a hungry white hyena, you do not put your hand in his mouth, and Hendrick did not reply.

  They were fortunate; the draft was almost full, three hundred black men already gathered in and waiting in the line of huts behind the barbed-wire fence. Some of them had been there ten days and it was time for the next stage of their journey, thus Hendrick and Moses were not forced to endure another interminable wait. That night three railway coaches were shunted onto the spur of line that ran beside the camp and the boss-boys roused them before dawn.

  Gather your belongings. Shayile! The hour has struck.

  The steamer waits to take you to Goldi, to the place of gold. They formed up in their ranks again and answered to the roll-call. Then they were marched to the waiting coaches.

  Here there was another white man in charge. He was tall and sunbrowned, his khaki shirtsleeves rolled up high on his sinewy biceps and wisps of blond hair hanging from under the shapeless black hat that was pulled low down on his forehead. His features were flat and Slavic, his teeth crooked and stained with tobacco smoke and his eyes were light misty blue; he smiled perpetually in a bland idiotic fashion and sucked at a cavity in one of his back teeth. He carried a sjambok on a thong from his wrist, and now and then, for no apparent reason, he flicked the tapered end of the hippohide whip against the bare legs of one of the men filing past him; it was a casual act born of disinterest and disdain rather than calculated cruelty, and though each stroke was feathery light, it stung like a hornet and the victim gasped and skipped and shot up the ladder into the coach with alacrity.

  Hendrick drew level with him and the foreman's lips drew back from his bad teeth as he smiled even more widely. The camp manager had pointed the big Ovambo out to him.

  A bad one, he had warned him. Watch him. Don't let him get out of hand. And now he used his wrist in the stroke that he aimed at the tender skin at the back of Hendrick's knee.

  Che-cha! the overseer ordered. Hurry up! And the lash popped as it wrapped around Hendrick's leg. It did not split the skin, the overseer was an expert, but it left a purple black welt on the dark velvety skin.

  Hendrick stopped dead, the other leg lifted to the first rung of the boarding ladder, gripping the rail with his free hand, with the other hand balancing his bundle on his shoulder, and he turned his head slowly until he was staring into the overseer's pale blue eyes.

  Yes! I The overseer encouraged him softly, and for the first time there was a sparkle of interest in his eyes. He altered his stance subtly, coming onto the balls of his feet.

  Yes! he repeated. He wanted to take this big black bastard, here in front of all the others. They were going to be five days in these coaches, five hot thirsty days during which tempers and nerves would be rubbed raw. He always liked to do it right at the beginning of the journey. It only needed one, and it would save a lot of trouble later if he made an example right here on the siding. That way all of them would know what to expect if they started anything, and in his experience they never did start anything after that.

  Come on, kaffir. He dropped his voice even lower, making the insult more personal and intense. He enjoyed this part of his work, and he was very good at it. This cocky bastard would not be fit to travel when he had finished with him. He wouldn't be much use to anybody with four or five ribs stoved in, and perhaps a broken jaw.

  Hendrick was too quick for him. He went up the ladder into the coach in a single bound, leaving the overseer on the siding, braced and poised for his attack with the sjambok held over-hand, ready to drive the point of the butt into Hendrick's throat as he charged.

  Hendrick's move took him completely off balance so that when he aimed a hard cut of the lash at Hendrick's legs a
s he went up the ladder, he was too late by a full half second and the stroke hissed and died in air.

  Following behind his brother, Moses saw the murderous expression on the white overseer's face as he passed. It is not yet ended, he warned Hendrick as they placed their bundles on the overhead racks and settled on the hard wooden bench that ran the length of the coach. He will come after you again. In the middle of the morning the three coaches were pulled off the spur and coupled to the rear of a long train of goods carriages, and after another few hours of shunting and jolting and false starts, they rumbled slowly up the hills and then ran southwards.

  Late in the afternoon the train stopped for half an hour at a small siding and a food barrow was loaded into the leading coach. Under the pale eyes of the white overseer the two black boss-boys wheeled the barrow down the crowded coaches and each of the recruits was handed a small tin dish of white maize cake over which a dollop of bean stew had been spooned.

  When they reached Swart Hendrick's seat, the white overseer shouldered the boss-boy aside and took the dish from his hands to serve Hendrick's portion himself.

  We must look after this kaffir, he said loudly. We want him to be strong for his work at Goldi. And he spooned an extra portion of bean stew into the dish and offered it to Hendrick.

  Here, kaffir. But as Hendrick reached for the dish, he deliberately let it drop onto the floor. The hot stew splashed over Hendrick's feet and the overseer stepped into the mess of maize porridge and ground it under his boot. Then he stood back with one hand on the billy club in his belt and grinned.

  Hey, you clumsy black bugger, you only get one ration.

  if you want to eat it off the floor, that's up to you. He waited expectantly for Hendrick to react, and then grimaced with disappointment when Hendrick dropped his eyes, leaned forward and began to scrape the mashed cake into the dish with his fingers, then scooped a ball of it into his mouth and munched on it stolidly.