by Wilbur Smith
‘I’m Clinton Codrington,’ he said. ‘And I suppose I must count as your uncle, though goodness knows I do not feel that old.’
‘I would have known you anywhere, sir,’ said Ralph.
‘Would you indeed?’
‘I have read Aunt Robyn’s books, and I have always admired your exploits as a Royal Naval officer.’
‘Oh dear.’ Clinton shook his head in mock dismay. ‘I thought to have left that all far behind me.’
‘You were one of the most illustrious and courageous officers in the African anti-slavery squadron, sir.’ Ralph’s eyes shone with a still boyish hero worship.
‘Your Aunt Robyn’s account suffered a dreadful list to port, I’m afraid.’
‘Daddy is the bravest man in the world,’ Victoria declared stoutly, and she released Ralph’s hand and ran to her father.
Clinton Codrington gathered her up and held her on his hip.
‘And yours, young lady, is probably the most unbiased opinion in Matabeleland,’ he chuckled, and Ralph was suddenly sharply jealous of this palpable aura of deep affection and love which welded the little group, from which he felt himself excluded. It was something beyond his experience, something he had never missed until that moment. Somehow Salina seemed to sense his pang of melancholy, and she took the hand that Victoria had relinquished.
‘Come,’ she said. ‘Mama will be waiting. And there is one thing you will soon learn, Ralph. In this family, nobody keeps Mama waiting.’
They went down towards the church, passing between the beds of growing vegetables.
‘You didn’t bring any seed?’ Clinton asked, and when Ralph shook his head, ‘Well, how were you to know?’ and he went on to point out with pride his flourishing crops. ‘Maize, potatoes, beans, tomatoes do particularly well here.’
‘We divide it this way,’ Cathy told Ralph, teasing her father. ‘One for the bugs, two for the baboons, three for the bushbuck – and one for Daddy.’
‘Be good to all God’s creatures.’ Clinton reached out to ruffle her dark hair, and Ralph realized that these gentle people were always touching and kissing one another. He had never experienced anything like it.
Squatting patiently on the shady side against the wall of the church were twenty or more Matabele of all ages and sexes, from a skeleton-thin ancient with a completely white cap of wool on his bowed head and both his eyes turned to blind orbs of milky jelly by tropical ophthalmia to a new-born infant held against its mother’s milk-swollen breasts with its tiny dark face screwed up with the terrible colic of infant dysentery.
Catherine tethered Tom beside the church door, and they all trooped into the cool interior, insulated by thatch and thick walls of unbaked brick from the outside heat. The church smelled of homemade soap, and of iodine. The pews of rough-hewn timber had been pushed aside to make way for an operating table of the same material.
There was a girl at work over the table, but as they came in she tied the last knot in a bandage and dismissed her semi-naked black patient with a word and a pat – then, wiping her hands on a clean but threadbare cloth, she came down the aisle of the church towards them.
Ralph was certain that she was Cathy’s twin, for though she was a little taller, she was as slim and as flat-chested; her hair had the same dark brown colouring, though shot through with tones of russet and chestnut, her skin the same youthful lustre, and her nose and chin the same forceful size and thrust.
Then as she came closer, Ralph realized that he had been mistaken and that she was older than Cathy, perhaps even older than Salina, but not much.
‘Hello, Ralph,’ the girl said. ‘I’m your Aunt Robyn.’ Ralph felt the blasphemy of surprise leap to his lips again, but conscious of Salina’s hand in his he suppressed it.
‘You are so young,’ he said instead.
‘Bless you for that,’ she laughed. ‘You turn a prettier compliment than your daddy ever did.’ She was the only one who made no effort to kiss him; instead she turned to the twins.
‘Right!’ she said. ‘I want ten pages of copperplate written out before Evensong – and I don’t want to see a single blot.’
‘Oh Mama! Ralph—’
‘Ralph has been your excuse for two weeks. Go – or you will eat in the kitchen hut tonight.’
Then, to Cathy: ‘Have you finished the ironing, young lady?’
‘Not yet, Mama.’ Cathy followed the twins.
‘Salina, you’re baking.’
‘Yes, Mama.’
Then there were three of them alone in the little church, and Robyn ran a professional eye over her nephew.
‘Well, Zouga has bred a likely boy,’ she gave her opinion. ‘But I never expected anything else.’
‘How did you all know I was coming?’ Ralph voiced his bewilderment at last.
‘Grandpa Moffat sent a runner when you left Kuruman, and Induna Gandang passed here two weeks ago on his way to King Lobengula’s kraal. His eldest son was with him, and Bazo’s mother is an old friend of mine.’
‘I see.’
‘Nothing moves in Matabeleland but the whole nation knows of it immediately,’ Clinton explained.
‘Now, Ralph, how is your father? I was terribly distressed to hear of the death of Aletta, your mother. She was a lovely person, so good and gentle. I wrote to Zouga, but he never replied.’
Robyn seemed determined to catch up on the doings of a decade in the first ten minutes, and her questions were quick and incisive; but Clinton soon excused himself and left the two of them alone in the little church to return to his gardens.
Ralph replied dutifully to all her questions, while he reassessed his first impression of his aunt. Youthful she looked, but childlike she was not. Now at last he could understand the remarkable achievements of this forceful woman. How she had enrolled at a famous London hospital, one which would never accept a female on its student body, by impersonating a man. Dressed in breeches, she had kept her terms and been granted her doctorate when she was twenty-one years of age. The scandal which attended the discovery that a female had invaded an exclusive male preserve had rocked all England.
Then she had accompanied Zouga to Africa, equal partners in the expedition to find their father Fuller Ballantyne, who had been missing in the unexplored interior for eight years. When she and Zouga had fallen out over the conduct of the expedition, she had pushed on, a white woman alone with only primitive black tribesmen as companions, and achieved the main object of the expedition on her own.
Her book describing the expedition, entitled Africa in My Blood, had been a publishing phenomenon and had sold almost a quarter of a million copies – three times as many as Zouga Ballantyne’s A Hunter’s Odyssey published six months later.
Robyn had signed over all her royalties from the book to The London Missionary Society, and that august body had been so delighted by the donation that they had reinstated her as a society officer, had ordained her husband as her assistant, and had approved her heading a mission to Matabeleland.
Her two subsequent publications had not enjoyed the same success as the first. The Sick African, a practical study of tropical medicine, had contained ludicrous theories that had earned her the derision of her medical peers – she had even dared to suggest that malarial fever was not caused by breathing the foul night airs of tropical swamps, when this fact had been known since the time of Hippocrates.
Then her further account of her life as a medical missionary, Blind Faith, had been too homely in style and too prejudiced in championing the indigenous tribes. She had firmly embraced the beliefs of Jean-Jacques Rousseau and had added her own refinements to them. Her round condemnation of all settlers, hunters, prospectors and traders, and of their treatment of the noble savages, had been too salty for her European readers.
Indeed, scandal and contention seemed to follow Robyn Codrington as vultures and jackals follow the lion, and at each new provocation all her previous adventures would be recalled:
What decent female missionary
would provoke men sufficiently to make them fight a bloody duel over her? Robyn Ballantyne had.
What God-fearing lady would sail aboard a notorious slaver, unchaperoned and with only slavers for company? Robyn Ballantyne had.
What lady would choose for her husband a man who had been court martialled, stripped of his naval rank and imprisoned for piracy and dereliction of duty? Robyn Codrington had.
What loyal subject of the Queen would hail the terrible reversal of British arms at Isandhlwana, the bloody death of hundreds of Englishmen at the hands of the savage Zulus, as a judgement of God – Robyn Codrington had, in a letter to the Evening Standard.
Who, other than Robyn Codrington, would write to Lord Kimberley demanding that half the profits of the diamond fields that bore his name should go to the Griqua captain, Nicholaas Waterboer?
Only Robyn Codrington would demand of Paulus Kruger, the newly-elected President of the little Transvaal Republic, that he return to Lobengula, King of the Matabele, the land below the Cashan mountains from which the Boer commandos had driven Mzilikazi, his father.
She spared no one. Nothing was sacred to her except her God, whom she treated rather like a senior partner in the business of running Africa.
Her enemies, and they were legion, hated her fiercely, and her friends loved her with equal passion. It was impossible to be unmoved by her, and Ralph found himself fascinated as she sat beside him on the church pew and subjected him to an exhaustive catechism that covered every aspect of his life and that of the family.
‘You have a brother,’ she seemed to know it all. ‘Jordan? That is his name, isn’t it? Tell me about him.’ It was a command.
‘Oh, Jordie is everybody’s favourite; everybody loves him.’
Ralph had never met anybody like her. He doubted he could ever bring himself to like her, she was far too prickly. That was the exact word to describe her, but he would never doubt her strength and her determination.
Clinton Codrington came back into the church as the light outside was mellowing into late afternoon.
‘My dear, you really must let the poor fellow go now.’ He turned to Ralph. ‘Your wagon has come up. I showed your driver where to outspan. He seems a first-rate chap, I must say.’
‘You will sleep in the guest house,’ Robyn announced as she stood.
‘Cathy has taken your soiled clothes from the wagon, and she has washed and ironed them,’ Clinton went on.
‘You will want to put on a fresh shirt before Evensong,’ Robyn told him. ‘We shall not begin the service until you return.’
He had liked it better on the open road, Ralph thought sourly; then he had made his own decisions as to when he made his ablutions, as to how he dressed and where he spent his evenings – but he went to change his shirt as he was bidden.
The distaff side of the Codrington family filled the front pew. Clinton Codrington faced them from the pulpit. Ralph was between the twins; there had been a brief but ferocious competition between Victoria and Elizabeth to decide who should sit closest to him.
Apart from the family, there was nobody else in the church, and Victoria saw his glance and explained to Ralph in a penetrating whisper, ‘King Ben won’t let any of his people come to our church.’
‘King Lobengula,’ Salina corrected her sweetly, ‘not King Ben.’
Despite the full attendance, Clinton delayed the commencement of the evening service, finding and losing his place in the Book of Common Prayer half a dozen times – and glancing repeatedly towards the rear of the tiny church.
From this quarter there was a sudden commotion. A small retinue of Matabele women had arrived outside the church. Clearly they were servants, house slaves and ladies-in-waiting to the imposing female figure in their midst. She dismissed them with a royal gesture and came in through the doors of the church. Every one of the Codringtons turned their heads and their faces lit with pleasure.
The way in which this matron paced majestically down the aisle left not a doubt as to her high breeding and her place in the aristocracy of Matabeleland. She wore bangles and bracelets of beaten red copper, strings of highly prized sam-sam beads that only a chief would afford. Her cloak was of beautifully tanned leather, ornamented with feathers of the blue jay and worked with designs of chipped ostrich shell.
‘I see you, Nomusa,’ she declared.
Her huge naked breasts shone with an ointment of fat and red clay; they pushed out ponderously from under her tanned cloak and dangled weightily to the level of her navel.
Her arms were thick as a grown man’s thigh, her thighs as thick as his waist. There were rolls of fat around her belly, and her face was a black full moon, the glossy skin stretched tightly over her abundant flesh. Her merry eyes sparkled from between creases of fat, and her teeth flashed like the sunlit surface of a lake as she smiled. All this size was evidence to the world of her station, of her amazing beauty, of her fecundity. It was also unassailable proof of the high regard of her husband, of his prosperity and importance in the councils of Matabeleland.
‘I see you, Girlchild of Mercy,’ she smiled at Robyn.
‘I see you, Juba, the little dove.’ Robyn answered her.
‘I am not a Christian,’ Juba intoned. ‘Let no evil one bear false tidings to Lobengula, the Black and Mighty Elephant.’
‘If you say so, Juba,’ Robyn answered primly, and Juba pinioned her in a vast embrace while at the same time she called to Clinton in the pulpit.
‘I see you also, Hlopi. I see you. White Head! But do not be deceived by my presence here, I am not a Christian.’ She drew an elephantine breath and went on, ‘I come merely to greet old friends – not to sing hymns and worship your God. Also I warn you, Hlopi, that if you read the story tonight of a man called the Rock who denied his God three times before the call of the cock, I shall be displeased.’
‘I shall not read that story,’ Clinton answered. ‘For by now you should know it by heart.’
‘Very well, Hlopi, then let the singing begin.’ And led by Juba in a startlingly clear and beautiful soprano, the entire Codrington family rollicked into the first verse of ‘Onward Christian Soldiers’ – which Robyn had translated into the Matabele vernacular.
After the service Juba bore down on Ralph.
‘You are Henshaw?’ she demanded.
‘Nkosikazi!’ Ralph agreed, and Juba inclined her head to acknowledge the correct style of address to the senior wife of a great chief that Ralph had employed.
‘Then you are the one whom Bazo, my first-born son, calls brother,’ Juba said. ‘You are very skinny and very white. Little Hawk – but if you are Bazo’s brother, then you are my son.’
‘You do me great honour, Umame!’ Ralph said, and Juba took him in those mammoth arms. She smelled of clarified fat, and ochre and wood-smoke, but the embrace was strangely comforting, not at all unlike the feeling, only half remembered, that he had once experienced in Aletta’s arms.
The twins knelt side-by-side at the low truckle cot, both in long nightdresses, their hands clasped before their eyes which were so tightly closed that they seemed to be in pain.
Salina, also in her nightdress, stood over them to supervise the last prayer of the day.
‘Gentle Jesus meek and mild—’
Cathy was already in her own bed, hair ribboned for the night, writing the day’s entry in her diary by the light of the guttering candle made from buffalo fat and cloth wick.
‘Pity my simplicity—’ gabbled the twins, at such a speed that it came out as, ‘Pretty mice, and pretty me!’
Arriving at the ‘Amen’ in a dead heat, the twins leaped into the bed that they shared, pulled the blanket to their chins and watched with fascination as Salina began to brush her hair, one hundred strokes with each hand, so that it rippled and flamed with white fire in the candlelight. Then she came to kiss them, blew out the candle, and the thongs of her bed squeaked from across the small thatched hut as she climbed into it.
‘Lina?’ whispered Victoria.
‘Vicky, go to sleep.’
‘Just one question, please.’
‘All right then, just one.’
‘Does God allow a girl to marry her own cousin?’
The silence that followed the question seemed to hum in the darkened bedroom like a copper telegraph wire struck by a sword.
Cathy broke the silence.
‘Yes, Vicky,’ she answered quietly. ‘God does allow it. Read the Table of Kindred and Affinity on the last page of your prayer book.’
The silence was contemplative now.
‘Lina?’
‘Lizzie, go to sleep.’
‘You allowed Vicky to ask a question.’
‘All right then, just one.’
‘Does God get cross if you pray for something just for yourself – not for Daddy or Mama or your sisters, but just for you alone?’
‘I don’t think so,’ Salina’s voice was becoming drowsy. ‘He might not give it to you but I don’t think He will be cross. Now go to sleep, both of you.’
Cathy lay very still, on her back with her hands clenched at her sides, staring at the lighter oblong across the hut where the moon defined the single window.
‘Please God,’ she prayed. ‘Let him look at me the way he looks at Salina, just once. Please.’
‘What do you think of Zouga’s boy?’ Robyn took Clinton’s arm as they stood together on the darkened stoep and looked out at the star-pricked black velvet curtain of the African night.
‘He’s a powerful lad – and I don’t mean merely muscle.’ Clinton took his pipe from between his teeth and peered into the bowl. ‘His wagon is loaded with cases, long wooden cases from which the markings have been burned with a hot iron.’
‘Guns?’ Robyn asked.
‘I think so.’
‘There is no law against trading guns north of the Limpopo,’ Robyn reminded him. ‘And Lobengula needs all the power he can get to defend himself.’
‘Still, guns! I mean, it does go against the grain.’ Clinton sucked at his pipe, and each puff of smoke he exhaled was denser and ranker. They were both silent for a while.
‘He has a hard and ruthless streak, like his father,’ Robyn judged at last.