Men of Men

by Wilbur Smith

  ‘All of you heard the king’s word,’ he said. ‘What must be done, must be done in secret; it must be done by me alone, and no other may witness it, nor speak of it after, even in a whisper, on pain of slow and lingering death. You have heard the king’s word.’

  ‘We have heard the king’s word,’ they agreed in deep sonorous chorus.

  ‘Go!’ Bazo commanded. ‘Wait for me at great Zimbabwe, and wipe from your eyes the things you have seen this day.’

  His warriors sprang up and saluted him. They shouldered the body of the man that Ralph had slain, using their shields as a litter, and they bore him away. The double column of running warriors snaked away across the glade and into the forest.

  Bazo watched them go, leaning on his own shield, and then he turned back to Ralph, heavily and unwillingly.

  ‘I am the king’s man,’ he said softly. ‘Strictly charged with your death. What I have to do today will leave a deep scar in my heart for all my life, though I live to be an old greyhead. The memory of this thing will keep me from sleep, and turn the food sour and heavy in my belly.’ Slowly he paced to where Ralph lay and stood over him. ‘I will never forget this deed, Henshaw, though I will never be able to speak of it, not to my father or my favourite wife. I must lock it in the darkness of my soul.’

  ‘If you must do it, then do it swiftly,’ Ralph challenged him, trying to show no fear, trying to keep his gaze steady.

  ‘Yes,’ Bazo nodded, and shifted his grip on the haft of the spear. ‘Intercede for me with your God, Henshaw,’ he said, and struck.

  Ralph cried out at the stinging bum of razor steel, and his blood burst from the wound and spilled into the dry earth.

  Bazo dropped to his knee beside him and scooped up the blood in his cupped hands. He splashed it on his arms and chest. He smeared it on the haft and blade of his spear, until the bright steel was dulled.

  Then Bazo leapt up and ripped a strip of bark from the mopani tree. He plucked a bunch of green leaves and came back to Ralph’s side. He held together the lips of the deep wound in Ralph’s forearm, then he placed the bunch of leaves over it and bound it up with the strip of bark.

  The bleeding slowed and stopped, and Bazo hacked the rawhide bonds from Ralph’s ankles and wrists and stood back.

  He gestured at his own blood-sullied arms and weapon.

  ‘Who, seeing me thus, would believe that I am a traitor to my king?’ he asked softly. ‘Yet the love of a brother is stronger than the duty to a king.’

  Ralph dragged himself upright against the mopani trunk, holding his wounded arm against his chest and staring at the young induna.

  ‘Go in peace, Henshaw,’ whispered Bazo. ‘But pray to your God for me, for I have betrayed my king and forfeited my honour.’

  Then Bazo whirled and ran back across the glade of yellow grass. When he reached the trees on the far side he neither paused nor looked back, but plunged into them with a kind of reckless despair.

  Ten days later, with his boots scuffed through the uppers and the legs of his breeches ripped to tatters by arrow grass and thorn, with his inflamed and infected left arm strapped to his chest by a sling of bark, his face gaunt with starvation and his body bony and wasted, Ralph staggered into the circle of wagons that were outspanned beside the Bushman wells – and Isazi shouted for Umfaan and ran to catch Ralph before he fell.

  ‘Isazi,’ Ralph croaked, ‘the birds, the stone birds?’

  ‘I have them safe, Nkosi.’

  Ralph grinned wickedly, so that his dried lips cracked and his bloodshot eyes slitted.

  ‘By your own boast, Isazi, you are a wise man. Now I tell you also, that you are beautiful to behold, as beautiful as a falcon in flight,’ Ralph told him, and then reeled so that he had to catch his balance with an arm around the little Zulu’s shoulders.

  Lobengula sat cross-legged on his sleeping-mat, alone in his great hut. Before him was a gourd of clear spring water. He stared into it fixedly.

  Long ago, when he had lived in the cave of the Matopos with Saala, the white girl, the mad old witchdoctor had instructed him in the art of the gourd. Very occasionally, after many hours’ staring into the limpid water, and after the utmost exercise of his concentration and will, he had been able to see snatches of the future, faces and events, but even then they had been murky and unclear, and soon after he left the Matopos this small gift had gone from him. Sometimes still, in desperation, he resorted to the gourd – although, as it was this night, nothing moved or roiled darkly beneath the still surface of the spring water, and his concentration kept slipping away. Tonight he kept toying with the words of the Umlimo.

  Always the oracle spoke obliquely, always her counsel was shrouded in imagery and riddles. Often it was repetitive, on at least five previous visits to the cavern the witch had spoken of ‘the stars shining on the hills’ and ‘the sun that bums at midnight’. No matter how doggedly Lobengula and his senior indunas had picked at the words, and tried to unravel the meaning that was tied up in them, they had found no answer.

  Now Lobengula set aside the fruitless gourd, and lay back upon his kaross to consider the third prophecy, made in the croaking raven’s voice from the cliff above the cavern.

  ‘Heed the wisdom of the vixen before that of the dogfox.’

  He took each word and weighed it separately, then he considered the whole, and twisted it and studied it from every angle.

  In the dawn there remained only one possible solution that had survived the night. For once the oracle seemed to have given advice that was unequivocal. It was only for him to decide which female was the ‘vixen’ of the oracle.

  He considered each of his senior wives – and there was not one of them that had any interest in anything beyond the begetting and suckling of infants, or the baubles and ribbons that the traders brought to GuBulawayo.

  Ningi, his full-blooded sister, he loved still as his one link with the mother he barely remembered. Yet now when Ningi was sober she was elephantine and slow-witted, bad-tempered and cruel. When she was filled with the traders’ champagne and cognac, she was giggling and silly to begin with, and then incontinent and comatose at the end. He had spoken with her for an hour and more the previous day. Little that she had said was sensible, and nothing she had said could possibly bear on the terrible pressures of Lodzi and his emissaries.

  So at last Lobengula returned to what he had known all along must be the key to the riddle of the Umlimo.

  ‘Guards!’ he shouted suddenly, and there were quick and urgent footfalls, and one of his cloaked executioners stooped through the doorway and prostrated himself on the threshold.

  ‘Go to Nomusa, the Girlchild of Mercy, bid her come to me with all speed,’ said Lobengula.

  Whereas I have been much molested of late by divers persons seeking and desiring to obtain grants and concessions of land and mining rights in my territories –

  Now, therefore, for the following considerations:

  Item One, payment by the grantee to the grantor of £100 per month in perpetuity.

  Item Two, the provision by the grantee to the grantor of One Thousand Martini-Henry rifles, together with One Hundred Thousand rounds of ammunition for the same.

  Item Three, the provision by the grantee to the grantor of an armed steamboat to patrol the navigable reaches of the Zambezi river.

  Now, therefore, I, Lobengula – King of the Matabele people, and Paramount Chief of Mashonaland, Monarch of all territories South of the Zambezi River and Northwards of the Shashi and Limpopo Rivers, do hereby grant –

  Complete and exclusive charge over all metals and minerals in my Kingdom, Principalities and Dominions, together with full power to do all things that they may deem necessary to win and procure the same and to enjoy the profits and revenues, if any, derivable from the said metals and minerals.

  In his fair hand, Jordan Ballantyne wrote out the document from Mr Rudd’s dictation.

  Robyn Codrington read the text to Lobengula, and explained it to him,
then she helped him attach the Great Elephant seal. Finally, she witnessed the mark that Lobengula made beside it.

  ‘Damn me, Jordan, there’s none of us here that can ride the way you can.’ Rudd made no effort to conceal his jubilation when they were alone. ‘It’s speed now that counts. If you leave immediately, you can reach Khami Mission by nightfall. Pick the three best horses from those that we left there, and go like the wind, my boy. Take the concession to Mr Rhodes – and tell him I will follow directly.’

  The twins ran down the front steps of Khami Mission and surrounded Jordan as he stepped down from the stirrup.

  At the head of the steps, Cathy held a lantern high, and Salina stood beside her with her hands clasped demurely in front of her, and her eyes shining with joy in the lantern light.

  ‘Welcome, Jordan,’ she called. ‘We have all missed you so.’

  Jordan came up the steps. ‘I can rest one night only,’ he told her, and a little of her delight died and her smile with it. ‘I ride south tomorrow at first light.’

  He was so beautiful, tall and straight, and fair, and though his shoulders were wide and his limbs finely muscled, yet he was lithe and light as a dancer and his expression gentle as a poet’s as he looked down into Salina’s face.

  ‘Only one night,’ she murmured. ‘Then we must make the most of it.’

  They ate a dinner of smoked ham and roasted sweet yams, and afterwards they sat on the verandah and Salina sang for them while Jordan smoked a cigar and listened with obvious pleasure, tapping the time on his knee and joining with the others in the chorus.

  The moment Salina had finished, Vicky leapt to her feet.

  ‘My turn,’ she announced. ‘Lizzie and I have written a poem.’

  ‘Not tonight,’ said Cathy.

  ‘Why?’ demanded Vicky.

  ‘Cathy,’ wailed the twins in unison. ‘It’s Jordan’s last night.’

  ‘That is precisely why.’ Cathy stood up. ‘Come on, both of you.’

  Still they cajoled and procrastinated, until suddenly Cathy’s eyes slitted viciously, and she hissed at them with a vehemence that startled them to their feet, to bestow hasty pecks on Jordan’s face and then hurry off down the verandah, with Cathy close behind.

  Jordan chuckled fondly and flicked the cigar over the verandah rail. ‘Cathy is right, of course,’ he said. ‘I’ll be in the saddle for twelve hours tomorrow – it’s time we were all abed.’

  Salina did not reply but moved to the end of the verandah farthest from the bedrooms and leaned on the rail, staring down across the starlit valley.

  After a moment, Jordan followed her, and asked softly:

  ‘Have I offended you?’

  ‘No,’ she answered quickly. ‘It’s just that I am a little sad. We all have such fun when you are here.’

  Jordan did not reply, and after a minute she asked:

  ‘What will you do now, Jordan?’

  ‘I shall not know until I reach Kimberley. If Mr Rhodes is at Groote Schuur already, then I shall go there – but if he is still in London, then he will want me to join him.’

  ‘How long will it take?’

  ‘From Kimberley to London and back? Four months, if the sailings coincide.’

  ‘Tell me about London, Jordan. I have read about it and dreamed about it.’

  He talked quietly, but lucidly and fluently, so that she laughed and exclaimed at his descriptions and anecdotes, and the minutes turned to hours, until suddenly Jordan interrupted himself.

  ‘What am I thinking of; it’s almost midnight.’

  She grasped at anything to keep him from going.

  ‘You promised to tell me about Mr Rhodes’ house at Groote Schuur.’

  ‘It will have to wait for another time, Salina.’

  ‘Will there be another time?’ she asked.

  ‘Oh, I am sure there will,’ he answered lightly.

  ‘You will go to England, and Cape Town, it could be years before you come back to Khami.’

  ‘Even years will not dim our friendship, Salina.’ And she stared at him as though he had struck her.

  ‘Is that it – Jordan – are we friends, just friends?’

  He took both her hands in his. ‘The dearest, most precious friends,’ he confirmed.

  She was pale as ivory in the dim light, and her grip on his hands was like that of a drowning woman as she steeled herself to speak – but her voice, when at last she summoned it, was so strained that she was not sure he had understood her.

  ‘Take me with you, Jordan.’

  ‘Salina, I don’t know what you mean.’

  ‘I cannot bear to lose you – take me. Please take me.’

  ‘But—’ he was confused and shaken, ‘but what would you do?’

  ‘Whatever you tell me. I should be your slave, your loving slave, Jordan – for ever.’

  He tried to free his hands from hers, but he did it gently.

  ‘You cannot just go away and leave me, Jordan. When you came to Khami, it was like the sun rising into my life; and if you go you will take the light with you. I love you, Jordan, oh sweet Jesus, forgive me, but I love you more than life itself.’

  ‘Salina, stop! Please stop now.’ He pleaded with her, but she clung to his hands.

  ‘I cannot let you go without telling you – I love you, Jordan, I shall always love you.’

  ‘Salina.’ His voice was stricken. ‘Oh Salina, I love somebody else,’ he said.

  ‘It’s not true,’ she whispered. ‘Oh, please say it’s not true.’

  ‘I am sorry, Salina. Terribly sorry.’

  ‘Nobody else can love you as much as I do, nobody would sacrifice what I would.’

  ‘Please stop, Salina. I don’t want you to humiliate yourself.’

  ‘Humiliate myself?’ she asked. ‘Oh, Jordan, that would be so small a price – you don’t understand.’

  ‘Salina, please.’

  ‘Let me prove to you, Jordan, let me prove how joyfully I will make any sacrifice.’ And when he tried to speak, she put her hand lightly over his mouth. ‘We need not even have to wait for marriage. I will give myself to you this very night.’

  When he shook his head, she tightened her grip to gag his words of denial.

  ‘So fret not, like an idle girl,

  That life is dash’d with flecks of sin.’

  She whispered the quotation, with quivering voice. ‘Give me the chance, dear Jordan, please give me the chance to prove that I can love and cherish you more than any other woman in all the world. You will see how this other woman’s love pales to nothing beside the flame of mine.’

  He took her wrist and lifted her hand from his mouth, and his head bowed over hers with a terrible regret.

  ‘Salina,’ he said, ‘it is not another woman.’

  She stared up at him, both of them rooted and stricken, while the enormity of his words slowly spread across her soul like hoar frost.

  ‘Not another woman?’ she asked at last, and when he shook his head, ‘Then I can never even hope – never?’

  He did not reply, and at last she shook herself like a sleeper wakening from a dream to deathly reality.

  ‘Will you kiss me goodbye, Jordan, just one last time?’

  ‘It need not be the last—’ But she reached up and crushed the words on his lips so fiercely that her teeth left a taste of blood on his tongue.

  ‘Goodbye, Jordan,’ she said, and turning from him she walked down the length of the verandah as infirmly as an invalid arising from a long sick-bed. At the door of her bedroom, she staggered and put out a hand to save herself, and then looked back at him.

  Her lips moved, but no sound came from them. ‘Goodbye, Jordan. Goodbye, my love.’

  Ralph Ballantyne carried up the rifles, one thousand of them, brand new and still in their yellow grease, five in a wooden case, and twenty cases to a wagonload. There were another ten wagonloads of ammunition – all for the account of De Beers diamond mines – another three wagonloads of liquor for
his own account, and a single wagon of furniture and household effects for the bungalow that Zouga was building for himself at GuBulawayo.

  Ralph crossed the Shashi river with a certain thousand-pound profit from the convoy already safely deposited in the Standard Bank at Kimberley, but with a nagging hollow feeling in the pit of his stomach.

  He had no way of knowing whether Bazo had reported him to Lobengula as the abductor of the stone falcons, or whether one of Bazo’s warriors had recognized him and, despite the king’s warning, had told a wife, who had told her mother, who had told her husband. ‘Nothing moves in Matabeleland but the whole nation knows of it,’ Clinton Codrington had warned him once. However, the profits on this run, and the prospect of visiting Khami Mission again, were worth the risk.

  On the first day’s march beyond the Shashi, that risk was vindicated, for it was Bazo himself at the head of his red shields who intercepted the convoy, and greeted Ralph inscrutably.

  ‘Who dares the road? Who risks the wrath of Lobengula?’ And after he had inspected the loaded wagons, as he and Ralph sat alone by the camp fire, Ralph asked him quietly:

  ‘I heard that a white man died in the bush between great Zimbabwe and the Limpopo. What was that man’s name?’

  ‘Nobody knows of this matter, except Lobengula and one of his indunas,’ Bazo replied, without lifting his gaze from the flames. ‘And even the king does not know who the stranger was or where he came from, nor does he know the site of the grave of the nameless stranger.’ Bazo took a little snuff and went on. ‘Nor will we ever speak of this matter again, you and me.’

  And now he lifted his eyes at last, and there was something in their dark depths that had never been there before, and Ralph thought that it was the look of a man destroyed, a man who would never trust a brother again.

  In the morning, Bazo was gone, and Ralph faced northwards, with the doubts dispelled and his spirits soaring like the silver and mauve thunderheads that piled the horizon ahead of him. Zouga was waiting for him at the drift of the Khami river.

  ‘You’ve made good time, my boy.’