by Wilbur Smith
‘There,’ Rhodes said. ‘You know what I need – you and your concession. What do you want from me in return?’
‘What task will I perform?’ Zouga asked.
‘Good.’ Rhodes nodded the untidy leonine head. ‘Glory before gold. You please me, Ballantyne – but to business. I had thought to ask you to lead the occupying expedition, to guide it over the ground you know so well – but other men can do something as simple as that. I shall let Selous do it. I have something more important for you. You will be my alter-ego at the kraal of the Matabele king. The savages know and respect you, you speak their language, know their customs, you are a soldier, I have read your military paper on the tribe – and we must not deceive ourselves, Ballantyne, it may come to a military option. Few other men can do all these things, have all these qualities.’
They stared at each other across the desk, both men leaning forward, and then Rhodes spoke again.
‘I am not a mean man, Ballantyne. Do the job for me and you can name your rewards. Money, ten thousand pounds – land, each land grant will be four thousand acres – gold claims, each will be five hundred yards square. How many shall we say – five of each – ten thousand pounds in cash, twenty thousand acres of prime land of your choice, five claims on the rich gold reef over which you shot the great elephant that you described in Hunter’s Odyssey. What do you say, Ballantyne?’
‘Ten of each,’ said Zouga. ‘Ten thousand pounds, ten land grants, ten gold claims.’
‘Done!’ Rhodes slapped the desk. ‘Write it down, Jordan, write it down. But what of your salary while you are agent at Lobengula’s kraal? Two thousand, four thousand per annum? I am not a mean man, Ballantyne.’
‘And I am not a greedy one.’
‘Four thousand, then – and we are all agreed, so we can go to lunch.’
Zouga stayed five days at Groote Schuur, days of talking and planning and listening.
It amused him to see the legend dispelled. The idea of Rhodes as a solitary and brooding man – withdrawn to some high Olympus where other men could not follow – was proved to be a myth.
For Rhodes surrounded himself with men; there was not a meal at which less than fifteen sat to his generous board. What men they were, clever or rich or both, belted earls or farm-born Boers, politicians and financiers, judges and soldiers. And if they were not wealthy, they were powerful or useful or merely amusing. At one dinner there was even a poet, a bespectacled little shrimp of a man on passage from Indian Service back to England. Jordan had read his Plain Tales from the Hills and secured an invitation for him, and despite his appearance, the company was quite taken with him. Rhodes invited him to return and write about Africa: ‘The future is here, young Kipling, and we shall need a poet to sing it for us.’
Men by the dozen, and never a woman. Rhodes refused to have a woman servant in the house. There was not even a painting of a woman on the walls.
And the taciturn, brooding figure of legend never stopped talking. From the back of a horse as they rode through the estate, striding over the lawns with his clumsy uncoordinated gait, seated behind the teak desk or at the head of the long, laden dining-table, he talked. Figures and facts and estimates poured from him without reference to notes, other than an occasional glance at Jordan for confirmation. Then came the ideas, fateful, ludicrous, prophetic, fascinating or fantastic – but never-ending.
To a visiting member of the British Parliament: ‘We have to make a practical tie with the old country, for future generations will be born beyond its shores; it must be useful, physical and rewarding for both, or we shall drift apart.’
To an American senator: ‘We could hold Parliament for five years in Westminster and for the next five in Washington.’
To a rival financier who enviously sniped at his monopoly of the diamond industry: ‘Without me, the price of diamonds would not make it worthwhile turning over a stone to pick one up. Kimberley would revert to desert and thirty thousand would starve.’
When they began to plan the grand expedition to the north, Zouga had imagined that Rhodes would concern himself with each detail. He was wrong.
He defined the objective: ‘We need a document from Lobengula, ratifying and consolidating all these grants into a single concession, that I can take to London.’ Then he picked the man. ‘Rudd, you have the legal mind.’ And gave him carte blanche. ‘Go and do it. Take Jordan with you. He speaks the language. Take anyone else you need.’
Then to Zouga: ‘We need an occupying force, small enough to move fast, large enough to protect itself against Matabele treachery. Ballantyne, that will be your first concern. Let me know what you decide, but remember there is little time.’
What might have taken another man six months, was accomplished in five days, and when Zouga left Groote Schuur, Jordan rode with him as far as the neck of the mountain. The wind had gone up into the north-west, and then came down like a ravenous beast, roaring dully against the crags of the mountain and bringing in cold, steely-grey rain squalls off the Atlantic.
It could not blunt their spirits, and although their wind-driven oilskins flogged their bodies and the horses shivered and drooped their ears, they shouted above the wind.
‘Isn’t he a great man? Every minute spent in his company is like a draught of fine wine, intoxicating with excitement. He is so generous.’
‘Though he is the one who profits most from his generosity,’ Zouga laughed.
‘That’s mean, Papa.’
‘A saint does not make such a fortune in so short a time. But if anybody can do this thing, then it is Rhodes, and for that I will follow him into hell itself.’
‘Let’s pray that won’t be necessary.’
At the top of the pass the wind was stronger still, and Jordan had to turn his horse in until their knees touched.
‘Papa, the column – the occupying column. There is one person who has the wagons, who knows the route, can requisition the supplies and recruit the men.’
‘Who is that, Jordie?’
‘Ralph.’
Zouga watched Jordan ride back down the pass, towards the wind-darkened waters of Table Bay and the sprawling white buildings that clung to the lower slopes of the mountain under the dingy scudding sky. Then he turned his own mount into the wind and went down the other side.
The excitement stayed with him. He realized that it was Rhodes’ particular genius to awaken this feeling in men around him. Even though there were quicksands ahead in which he knew he might soon be engulfed, the enthusiasm and quickness of spirit persisted.
Ten land grants meant forty thousand acres of land, but it would take more than £10,000 to hold it. Homestead and wells and fences to build, cattle to stock it, men to work it – all that would cost money, a great deal of money.
The gold claims – he could not even begin to imagine how much it might cost to transport stamp mills and sluice boxes from the railhead. Of course, for lack of money to exploit them, he would have to pass by a hundred opportunities that the new land would offer. In the beginning the land grants of other men would be for sale at bargain prices, hundreds of thousands of acres of the land that he had always thought of as his own, and because he did not have the money, it would go to others.
None of this could break the mood, not the cold rain in his face that numbed his cheeks, not the realization that his dream was still merely a dream. For now at last they were on the move at the breakneck pace set by an impatient man – towards the realization of that dream. So Zouga could lift his chin and sit up straight in the saddle, ignoring the icy snakes of rainwater that wriggled down inside his collar, buoyed high above mundane doubts by the gambler’s certainty that at last his luck had changed, the dice were hot for him and every time he rolled the aces would flash like spearheads.
The sheets of rain hid the cottage from Zouga until he turned in under the milkwood grove; then a fluke of the wind opened the slanting silver sheets of water, and his mood popped like a bubble.
He had been mistaken, his luck had
not changed, it had all been words and illusion, the caravan of his misfortunes rolled on unchecked – for before him his home was partially destroyed.
One of the ancient milkwoods, weary of resisting the gales of a hundred winters, had succumbed at last; it had come crashing down across the front of the cottage. The roof had given under the blow, and sagged in. The supports of the verandah had shattered and a tangle of fallen roof beams and milkwood branches blocked the front entrance. The living-room would be swamped with rain – his books, his papers.
Appalled at the havoc, he dismounted and stood before it, and his spirits slid further. He felt his ribs constricting his breathing and dread uncoiled in his guts like an awakening serpent. It was the superstitious terror of one who has offended the gods.
The pillar of blue marbled rock that he had set to guard his threshold had been thrown down. It lay half under the tumbled thatch with the shattered verandah support beside it. Once it had been hard and smooth as granite, but the sunlight and the air had rotted it and the fall had shattered it like chalk.
Zouga went down on one knee and touched a rough, irregular lump of the smashed blue ground. The destruction of his home was as nothing. This was the only one of his possessions that was irreplaceable, and the omen of its destruction struck frost into the secret places of his soul.
Almost as a chorus to his dread, a fresh rain squall came booming down the valley, thrashing the trees and ripping at the scattered thatch. Rain beat down onto the broken surface of the rock he was touching, and at Zouga’s fingertips there was a tiny burst of white lightning, so dazzling, so searing, that it seemed it could flay the skin from his finger as he touched it. But it was cold, cold as a crystal of Arctic ice.
It had never been exposed to the light of day, not once in the two hundred million years since it had assumed its present form, and yet it seemed in itself to be a drop of distilled sunlight.
Zouga had never seen anything so beautiful, nor touched anything so sensual – for it was the beacon and the lodestone of his life. It made all the striving and the heartbreak seem worthwhile, it was justification for the years he had believed squandered, it exonerated his once firmly held belief that his road to the north began in the gaping chasm of De Beers New Rush.
With hands that shook like those of a very old man, he fumbled open the blade of his clasp knife and gently prised that rainbow of light from its niche in the shattered blue rock, and held it up before his own eyes.
‘The Ballantyne diamond,’ he whispered, and staring into its limpid liquid depths like a sorcerer into his divining ball of crystal, he saw light and shadow ripple and change and in his imagination become vistas of enchanted pastures rich with sweet grass; he saw slow herds of cattle and the headgear of winding wheels of fabulous gold mines spinning against a high blue sky.
They didn’t expect him. He came so swiftly that no runner brought word ahead of him. He had left Rudd and the rest of the party to follow from the Shashi and ridden on ahead, leading two spare horses and changing as soon as the mount beneath him tired. The horses were the pick of De Beers’ stables, and it took him five days from the frontier of Matabeleland to Khami Mission.
‘I’m Jordan Ballantyne,’ he said, and looked down on the family that had hastily assembled on the front verandah of the Mission. The siege was over without a shot fired; he walked in with his curls shining and that warm, almost shy, smile on his lips, and took their hearts, every one of them, by storm.
The gifts he brought had been chosen with obvious care, and spoke of a knowledge of each of them and their individual needs.
There were two dozen packets of seeds for Clinton – unusual vegetables and rare herbs – comfrey and okra, horseradish and turmeric, shallot and sou-sou. For Robyn a box of medicines, which included a bottle of chloroform, and a folding wallet of shiny, sharp surgical instruments.
The latest volume of Tennyson’s poetry for Salina, a pair of marvellous lifelike china dogs with moving eyes for the twins, and for Cathy the best of all, a box of oil paints, a bundle of brushes, and a letter from Ralph.
In the first week, while he waited for Rudd and the rest of the party to come up from the Shashi, Jordan used a green twig to divine water, an art that Clinton had never acquired, and helped him dig the new well. They hit clear, sweet water ten feet down. He recited to Cathy a biography of Ralph from the day and hour of his birth, which was so minutely detailed that it took instalments over the entire week to complete, while she listened with a fixed avidity.
He rolled up his sleeves and from the black wood-burning stove produced a flow of culinary phenomena – quenelles and soufflés, croques-en-bouche and meringues, sauces both Hollandaise and Béarnaise – and while Salina hovered near him, eager to learn and help, he quoted to her the entire ‘In Memoriam’ of Alfred, Lord Tennyson, from memory:
‘So fret not, like an idle girl,
That life is dash’d with flecks of sin.
Abide: thy wealth is gathered in,
When Time hath sunder’d shell from pearl.’
And she was utterly enchanted by his golden spell.
He showed the twins how to cut and fold from a piece of newspaper all manner of fantastic bird and animal shapes, and he told stories that were the best they had heard since Mungo St John had left Khami.
For Robyn he had the latest news from the Cape. He was able to describe for her the rising stars on the political horizon, and categorize their strengths and weaknesses. He had the latest assessments of the political scene at home. Members of both Houses of Parliament, Cape and home, were constant guests at Groote Schuur, so he could repeat the gossip of that ‘wild and incomprehensible old man’, as the Queen had called Gladstone. He could explain the Home Rule issue and tell her what the odds were for a Liberal victory at the next election, even after Gladstone’s failure to rescue Gordon from Khartoum and his consequential loss of popularity.
‘At the Queen’s Jubilee the common people on the pavements cheered him, but the aristocracy hissed him from the balconies,’ he told her.
For Robyn, this was nectar to a woman lost over twenty years in the wilderness.
Dinners at Khami usually finished by the fall of dark, and the family was abed an hour later, but after Jordan’s arrival, the talk and laughter sometimes lasted until midnight.
‘Jordan, there is no doubt that if we want Mashonaland, we shall have to square your aunt. I hear that Lobengula will not make a major decision without Dr Codrington. I want you to go on ahead of Rudd and the others. Go to Khami and talk to your aunt.’ That had been Mr Rhodes’ parting injunction to him, and Jordan’s conscience found no conflict between this duty and his family loyalties.
Again and again in that week Jordan returned to extol Mr Rhodes to Robyn, his integrity and sincerity, his vision of a world at peace and united under one sovereign power.
Instinctively he knew which areas of Rhodes’ character to emphasize to Robyn, patriotism, charity, his sympathetic treatment of his black workers, his opposition to the Stropping Act in the Cape Parliament which, if passed, would have given employers the right to lash their black servants, and only when he judged that she was swayed to his views, did Jordan mention the concession to her. Yet, despite his preparations, her opposition was immediate and ferocious.
‘Not another tribe robbed of its lands,’ she cried.
‘We do not want Matabeleland, Aunty. Mr Rhodes would guarantee Lobengula’s sovereignty and protect him—’
‘I read the letter you wrote to the Cape Times, Aunty, expressing your concern over the Matabele raids into Mashonaland. With the British flag flying over the Shona tribes, they would be protected by British justice.’
‘The Germans and Portuguese and Belgians are gathering like vultures – you know, Aunty, that there is only one nation fit to take on the sacred trust.’
Jordan’s arguments were calculated and persuasive, his manner without guile and his trust in Cecil John Rhodes touching and infectious, and he kept return
ing to his most poignant argument.
‘Aunty, you have seen the Matabele bucks returning from Mashonaland with the blood caked on their blades and the captured Shona girls roped together. Think of the havoc that they have left behind them, the burned villages, the murdered infants and grey heads, the slaughtered Shona warriors. You cannot deny the Shona people the protection that we will offer.’
That night she spoke to Clinton, lying beside him in the darkness in the narrow cot on the hard straw-filled mattress; and his reply was immediate and simple:
‘My dear, it has always been clear to me as the African sun that God has prepared this continent for the protection of the only nation on earth that has the public virtue sufficient to govern it for the benefit of its native peoples.’
‘Clinton, Mr Rhodes is not the British nation.’
‘He is an Englishman.’
‘So was Edward Teach, alias Blackbeard the pirate.’
They were silent for many minutes and then Robyn said suddenly:
‘Clinton, have you noticed anything wrong with Salina?’
His concern was immediate. ‘Is she sickening?’
‘I’m afraid so, incurably. I think she is in love.’
‘Good gracious.’ He sat abruptly upright in the bed. ‘Who on earth is she in love with?’
‘How many young men are there at Khami at the present time?’
In the morning, on the way to her clinic in the church, she stopped at the kitchen. The previous evening Clinton had slaughtered a pig, and now Salina and Jordan were making sausages. He was turning the handle of the mincing machine while she forced lumps of pork into the funnel. They were so absorbed, chatting so gaily together, that while Robyn stood in the doorway watching them they were unaware of her presence.
They made a beautiful couple, so beautiful indeed, that Robyn felt a sense of unreality as she watched them, and it was followed immediately by uneasiness, nothing in life was that perfect.
Salina saw her, and started – and then unaccountably blushed so that her pixie pointed ears glowed.