Men of Men

by Wilbur Smith

  ‘Because I love you,’ she had replied. ‘And, oh, sometimes how I wish I did not.’

  In Perth, when he had forced her to bait the trap for him, luring in the intended victim – she had for the first time rebelled. She herself had ridden to warn the man, and they had been forced to run again, shipping out on a little trading schooner only an hour or so ahead of the constables with the warrant for Mungo’s arrest.

  He had never trusted her again, although he had never been able to make the decision to desert her. He found that he needed her still. At Cape Town a letter had finally caught up with Mungo. It was one of five copies sent out by his brother-in-law, the Duc de Montijo, a copy to each of the addresses that Mungo had occupied in the years since his wife had left him. Solange, his wife, had taken a chill while out riding and had died five days later of pneumonia. Her children were in the care of the Duc, being educated with his own, and the Duc hinted that he would resist any attempt by Mungo St John to assume custody.

  At last Mungo was free to make good his promise to Louise, the solemn promise he had made to her as they knelt hand in hand before the altar in London’s church of St Martin-in-the-Fields. He had sworn in the sight of God that just as soon as he was able to do so, he would marry Louise.

  Mungo had read through his brother-in-law’s letter three times, and then held it in the flame of the candle. He had crushed the ashes to powder, and never mentioned the letter or its news to Louise. She had gone on believing that he was married, and their relationship had limped on, sickening and staling.

  Yet still she could influence him even when she was not physically present. At the dark crossroads south of Kimberley, even when he had seen the diamonds gleam in Hendrick Naaiman’s hands, he had not been able to banish Louise’s image from his mind: Louise with contempt in her eyes and cold accusation on her lovely lips.

  Expert marksman that he was, the shade of Louise had spoiled his aim. He had fired a wink too late, and a touch too wide. He had not killed the Bastaard, but if he had done so, Louise’s reaction could have been no more severe.

  When he rode back to where she waited, reeling in the saddle, the wounded stallion dragging under him, he had seen her face in the moonlight. Even though she caught him when he might have fallen, and though she had tended his wounds and gone for succour, he had realized that they had crossed a dividing line over which there was no return.

  As if to confirm it, he had seen Zouga Ballantyne staring at her in the lantern light with that unmistakable look in his eyes. Many men had looked at her like that over the years, but this time she had returned Zouga’s scrutiny openly, making no attempt to hide it from either man.

  On the long road northwards, as she walked beside the cart in which he lay wounded, he had challenged her again and she had not denied it.

  ‘ – At least Zouga Ballantyne is a man of honour.’

  ‘Then why do you not leave me?’

  ‘You know I cannot leave you now, not as you are—’ She left it unfinished, and they had not spoken of it again, though in her icy silences he had sensed the presence in her mind of the other man, and he knew that no matter how desperately unhappy a woman might be she will seldom leave a relationship until she has the prospect of something better to replace it. Louise had that prospect now, and they were both aware of it.

  He wondered if he would let Louise go if she finally made the decision. There had been a time not long ago when he would have killed her first; but since they had reached Khami, everything had begun altering even more swiftly. They were rushing towards some climax, and Mungo had sensed that it would be explosive.

  For Mungo had forgotten the magnetism that Robyn Ballantyne had once exerted upon him, but now he had been vividly reminded by the mature woman, Robyn Codrington. She was even more attractive to him now than she had been as a girl. He sensed that her strength and assurance would provide a secure port for a man tired to his guts and the marrow of his bones by the storms of life.

  He knew that she was the trusted confidante of the Matabele king, and that if his fortune awaited him here in the north, as he had come to suspect, then her intercession with the Matabele would be invaluable.

  There was something else, some other darker need within him. Mungo St John never forgave or forgot an injury. Clinton Codrington had commanded the Royal Naval cruiser which had seized Huron off the Cape of Good Hope, an action which seemed to Mungo to mark the beginning of his long decline, and herald his dogged misfortune. Codrington was vulnerable. Through this woman Mungo could be avenged, and the prospect was strangely compelling.

  He sighed and shook his head, roused himself and used the stick to push himself erect. He found himself confronted by the two small figures. Mungo St John liked all women of whatever age, and though he had not seen his own children in many years, the youngest would be about the same age as these two.

  They were pretty little things. Though he had seen them only fleetingly or at a distance, he had felt the stirring of his paternal instincts; and now their presence was a welcome relief from his dark thoughts, and from the loneliness of the past weeks.

  ‘Good afternoon, ladies.’ He smiled, and bowed as low as his leg would allow. His smile was irresistible, and some of the rigidity went out of the two small bodies, but their expressions remained pale and fixed; their eyes, huge with trepidation, were fastened upon the fly of his breeches, so that after a few seconds silence even Mungo St John felt disconcerted, and he shifted uncomfortably.

  ‘What service can I be to you?’ he asked.

  ‘We would like to see your tail, sir.’

  ‘Ah!’ Mungo knew never to show himself at a loss in front of a female, of no matter what age. ‘You aren’t supposed to know about that,’ he said. ‘Are you, now?’

  They shook their heads in unison, but their eyes remained fixed with fascination below his waist. Vicky was right, there was definitely something there.

  ‘Who told you about it?’ Mungo sat down again, bringing his eyes to the level of theirs, and their disappointment was evident.

  ‘Mama said you were the Devil – and we know the Devil has a tail.’

  ‘I see.’ Mungo nodded. With a huge effort, he fought back his laughter, and kept his expression serious, his tone conspiratorial.

  ‘You are the only ones that know,’ he told them. ‘You won’t tell anybody, will you?’ Quite suddenly Mungo realized the value of having allies at Khami, two pairs of sharp bright eyes that saw everything and long ears that heard all.

  ‘We won’t tell anybody,’ promised Vicky. ‘If you show us.’

  ‘I can’t do that.’ And there was an immediate wail of disappointment.

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Didn’t your mother teach you that it’s a sin to show anybody under your clothes?’

  They glanced at each other, and then Vicky admitted reluctantly. ‘Yes, we aren’t even really allowed to look at ourselves there. Lizzie got whacked for it.’

  ‘There.’ Mungo nodded. ‘But I’ll tell you what I will do – I’ll tell you the story of how I got my tail.’

  ‘Story!’ Vicky clapped her hands, and they spread their skirts and squatted cross-legged at Mungo’s feet. If there was one thing better than a secret, it was a story, and Mungo St John had stories, wonderful scary, bloodthirsty stories – the kind that guaranteed nightmares.

  Each afternoon when he reached the lookout under the leadwood tree, they were waiting for him – captives of his charisma, addicted to those amazing stories of ghosts and dragons, of evil witches and beautiful princesses who always had Vicky’s hair or Lizzie’s eyes when Mungo St John described them.

  Then after each of Mungo’s stories, he would tactfully initiate a lively discussion of the affairs of Khami Mission. On a typical day he would learn that Cathy had begun painting a portrait of Cousin Ralph from memory, and that it was the considered and unanimous verdict of the twins that Cathy was not only ‘soft’ but, much worse, ‘sloppy’ about Cousin Ralph.

 
; He learned that King Ben had commanded the entire family to attend the Chawala ceremony at the new moon, and the twins were ghoulishly anticipating the slaughter of the sacrificial black bull. ‘They do it with their bare hands,’ Vicky gloated. ‘And this year we are going to be allowed to watch, now that we are eleven.’

  He was told in detail how Papa had demanded from Mama at the dinner table how much longer ‘that infamous pirate’ was to remain at Khami, and Mungo had to explain to the twins what ‘infamous’ meant – ‘famous, but only more so’.

  Then on one such afternoon, Mungo learned from Lizzie that King Ben had once again ‘khombisile’ with his indunas. Gandang, one of the king’s brothers, had told Juba, who was his wife, and Juba had told Mama.

  ‘Khombisile?’ Mungo asked dutifully. ‘What does that mean?’

  ‘It means that he showed them.’

  ‘Showed them what?’

  ‘The treasure,’ Vicky cut in, and Lizzie rounded on her.

  ‘I’m telling him!’

  ‘All right, Lizzie.’ Mungo was leaning forward, interest tempering the indulgent smile. ‘You tell me.’

  ‘It’s a secret. Mama says that if other people, bad people, heard about it, it would be terrible for King Ben. Robbers might come.’

  ‘It’s a secret then,’ Mungo agreed.

  ‘Cross your heart.’

  And Lizzie was telling it before he had made the sign of good faith. Lizzie was determined that Vicky would not get in ahead of her, this time.

  ‘He shows them the diamonds. His wives rub fat all over him, and then they stick the diamonds onto the fat.’

  ‘Where did King Ben get all these diamonds?’ Scepticism warred with the need to believe.

  ‘His people bring them from Kimberley. Juba says it isn’t really stealing. King Ben says it is only the tribute that a king should have.’

  ‘Did Juba say how many diamonds?’

  ‘Pots full, pots and pots of them.’

  Mungo St John turned his single eye from her flushed and shining face and looked across the grassy golden plains to the Hills of the Indunas, and his eye was flecked golden yellow like one of the big predatory cats of Africa.

  Jordan looked forward to this early hour of day. It was one of his duties to check each evening in the nautical almanac the time of sunrise, and to waken Mr Rhodes an hour beforehand.

  Rhodes liked to see the sun come up, whether it was from the balcony of his magnificent private railway coach or drinking coffee in the dusty yard of the corrugated iron cottage that he still maintained behind Market Square in Kimberley, from the upper deck of an ocean-going liner or from the back of a horse as they rode the quiet pathways of his estate on the slopes of Table Mountain.

  It was the time when Jordan was alone with his master, the time when ideas which Mr Rhodes called his ‘thoughts’ would come spilling out of him. Incredible ideas, sweeping and grand or wild and fanciful, but all fascinating.

  It was the time when Jordan could feel that he was part of the vast genius of the man, as he scribbled down Mr Rhodes’ draft speeches in his shorthand pad, speeches that would be made in the lofty halls of the Cape Parliament to which Mr Rhodes had been elected by the constituents of what had once been Griqualand, or at the board table of the governors of De Beers, of which he was chairman. De Beers was the mammoth diamond company which Mr Rhodes had welded together out of all the little diggers’ claims and lesser competing companies. Like some mythical boa constrictor, he had swallowed them all – even Barney Barnato, the other giant of the fields. Mr Rhodes owned it all now.

  On other mornings they would ride in silence, until Mr Rhodes would lift his chin from his chest and stare at Jordan with those stark blue eyes. Every time he had something startling to say. Once it was, ‘You should thank God every day, Jordan, that you were born an Englishman.’

  Another time it was, ‘There is only one real purpose behind it all, Jordan. It is not the accumulation of wealth. I was fortunate to recognize it so early. The real purpose is to bring the whole civilized world under British rule, to recover North America to the crown, to make all the Anglo-Saxon race into one great empire.’

  It was thrilling and intoxicating to be part of all this, especially as so often the big burly figure would rein his horse and turn his head and look to the north, towards a land that neither he nor Jordan had ever seen, but which, during the years that Jordan had been with him, had become a part of both their existences.

  ‘My thought,’ he called it. ‘My north – my idea.’

  ‘That’s where it will really begin, Jordan. And when the time comes, I shall send you. The person I can trust beyond any other.’

  It had never seemed strange to Jordan that those blue eyes had looked in that direction, that the open land to the north had come to loom so large in Mr Rhodes’ imagination, that it had taken on the aura of a sacred quest.

  Jordan could mark the day that it had begun, not only the day but the hour. For weeks after Pickering had been buried in the sprawling cemetery on the Cape Road, Jordan had respected Mr Rhodes’ mourning. Then, one afternoon, he had left his office early. He had returned to the camp.

  He retrieved the bird image from where it had been abandoned in the yard, and with the help of three black workmen, he moved it into the cottage. The living-room had been too small to hold it; it hindered access to both the dining-table and the front door.

  In the small cottage, there was only one free wall, and that was in Mr Rhodes’ bedroom, at the head of his narrow cot. The statue fitted perfectly into the space beyond the window. The next morning, when Jordan went to call him, Mr Rhodes had already left his cot and, wearing a dressing-gown, was standing before the statue.

  In the fresh pink light of sunrise, as they rode down to the De Beers offices, Mr Rhodes had said, suddenly: ‘I have had a thought, Jordan, one which I’d like to share with you. While I was studying that statue, it came to me that the north is the gateway, the north is the hinterland of this continent of ours.’ That is how it had begun, in the shadow of the bird.

  When the architect, Herbert Baker, had consulted Mr Rhodes on the decoration and furnishings of the mansion that they were building on his Cape Estate, ‘Groote Schuur’ – ‘The Great Barn’, Jordan had sat aside from the two men. As always in the presence of others he was unobtrusive and self-effacing, taking the notes that Mr Rhodes dictated, supplying a figure or a fact only when it was demanded, and then with his voice kept low, the natural lilt and music of his rich tenor subdued.

  Mr Rhodes had jumped up from his seat on the box against the wall of the cottage and begun to pace, with that sudden excitable and voluble mood upon him.

  ‘I have had a thought, Baker. I want there to be a theme for the place, something which is essentially me, which will be my motif long after I am gone, something that when men look at it, even in a thousand years’ time, they will immediately recall the name Cecil John Rhodes.’

  ‘A diamond, perhaps?’ Baker had hazarded, sketching a stylized stone on his pad.

  ‘No, no, Baker. Do be original, man! First I have to scold you for being stingy, for trying to build me a mean little hovel and now that I have prevailed on you for magnificently barbaric size and space, you want to spoil it.’

  ‘The bird,’ said Jordan. He had spoken despite himself, and both men looked at him with surprise.

  ‘What did you say, Jordan?’

  ‘The bird, Mr Rhodes. The stone bird. I think that should be your motif.’

  Rhodes stared at him for a moment, and then punched his big fist into the palm of his left hand.

  ‘That’s it, Baker. The bird, sketch it for me. Sketch it now.’

  So the bird had become the spirit of Groote Schuur. There was barely one of the huge cavernous rooms without its frieze or carved door jambs depicting it, even the bath, eleven tons of chiselled and polished granite was adorned at its four corners with the image of the falcon.

  The original statue had been shipped down from Ki
mberley, and a special niche prepared for it high above the baronial entrance hall, from where it stared down blindly upon everyone who came through the massive teak front doors of the mansion.

  On this morning they had ridden out even earlier than usual, for Mr Rhodes had slept badly and had summoned Jordan from his small bedroom down the corridor.

  It was cold. A vindictive wind came down off the mountains of the Hottentots Holland and as they took the path up towards the private zoo, Jordan looked back. Across the wide Cape flats he saw the snow on the distant peaks turning pink and gold in the early light.

  Mr Rhodes was in a morose mood, silent and heavy in the saddle, his collar pulled up over his ears, and the broad hat jammed down to meet it. Jordan surreptitiously pushed his own mount level and studied his face.

  Rhodes was still in his thirties, and yet this morning he looked fifteen years older. He took no notice of the first unseasonal flush of blue plumbago blooms beside the path, though on another morning he would have exclaimed with delight, for they were his favourite flowers. He did not stop at the zoo to watch the lions fed, but turned up into the forest; and on the prow of land that led to the steeper cliffs of the flat-topped massif they dismounted.

  At this distance the thatched roof of Groote Schuur with its twirling barley-corn turrets looked like a fairy castle – but Rhodes looked beyond it.

  ‘I feel like a racehorse,’ he said suddenly. ‘Like a thoroughbred Arab with the heart and the will and the need to run, but there is a dark horseman upon my back that checks me with a harsh curb of iron or pricks me with a cruel spur.’ He rubbed his closed eyes with thumb and forefinger, and then massaged his cheeks as though to set the blood coursing in them again. ‘He was with me again last night, Jordan. Long ago I fled from England to this land and I thought I had eluded him, but he is back in the saddle. His name is Death, Jordan, and he will give me so little time.’ He pressed his hand to his chest, fingers spread as though to slow the racing of his damaged heart. ‘There is so little time, Jordan. I must hurry.’ He turned and took the hand from his heart and placed it on Jordan’s shoulder. His expression became tender, a small sad smile touched his white lips. ‘How I envy you, my boy – for you will see it all and I shall not.’