Men of Men

by Wilbur Smith

  In the night the first terrible cramps seized her, and she felt her belly muscles spasm up hard as a cannon ball under her clutching hands.

  She wished there had been something formed, a tiny replica of that white animal that had rutted upon her, so that she could have wreaked a form of vengeance upon it. She would have delighted in mutilating and burning it, but there was nothing substantial on which to expend her hatred. So despite the purging of her body, she carried her hatred with her still, fierce and unabated, as she toiled on deeper and deeper into the Matopos.

  The joyful cries and sweet laughter of children at play guided her, and Tanase crept along the river verge, using the tall cotton-tipped reeds as a screen until she over looked the green pool between its sugary sandbanks. They were girls sent to fetch water. The big, black clay pots stood in a row on the white sand with green leaves stuffed in the mouths to stop them slopping over when carried balanced on the girls’ heads.

  However, once the pots were filled, they had not been able to resist the temptation of the cool, green waters, and they had thrown off their skirts and were shrieking and sporting in the pool. The eldest girls were pubescent with swelling breast buds, and one of them spotted Tanase in the reeds and screamed a warning.

  Tanase was just able to catch the youngest and slowest child as she was disappearing over the far bank, and she held the wriggling little body, glossy black and wet from the river, against her bosom while the child wailed and struggled with terror.

  Tanase cooed reassurances and stroked the little girl with gentling hands until she quietened.

  ‘I am of the people,’ she whispered. ‘Don’t be afraid, little one.’

  Half an hour later the child was chattering gaily and leading Tanase by the hand.

  The mothers came swarming out of the caves at the head of the valley to greet Tanase, and they crowded about her.

  ‘Is it true that there have been two great battles?’ they begged her.

  ‘We have heard that the impis were broken at Shangani and again those that remained were butchered like cattle on the banks of the Bembesi.’

  ‘Our husbands and our sons are dead – please tell us it is not so,’ they pleaded.

  ‘They say the king has fled from his royal kraal, and that we are children without a father. Is it true, can you tell us if it is true?’

  ‘I know nothing,’ Tanase told them. ‘I come to hear news, not to bear it. Is there not one amongst you who can tell me where I may find Juba, senior wife of Gandang, brother of the king?’

  They pointed over the hills, and Tanase went on, and found another group of women hiding in the thick bush. These children did not laugh and play, their limbs were thin as sticks, but their bellies were swollen little pots.

  ‘There is no food,’ the women told Tanase. ‘Soon we will starve.’ And they sent her stumbling back northwards, seeking and questioning, trying to blind herself to the agonies of a defeated nation, until one day she stooped in through the entrance of a dim and smoky cave, and a vaguely familiar figure rose to greet her.

  ‘Tanase, my child, my daughter.’

  Only then did Tanase recognize her, for the abundant flesh had melted off the woman’s frame and her once bounteous breasts hung slack as empty pouches against her belly.

  ‘Juba, my mother,’ Tanase cried, and ran into her embrace. It was a long time after that before she could speak through her sobs.

  ‘Oh my mother, do you know what has become of Bazo?’

  Juba pushed her gently to arm’s length and looked into her face. When Tanase saw the devastating sorrow in Juba’s eyes, she cried out with dread.

  ‘He is not dead!’

  ‘Come, my daughter,’ Juba whispered, and led her deeper into the cave, along a natural passageway through the living rock – and there was a graveyard smell on the cool dark air, the odour of corruption and rotting flesh.

  The second cavern was lit only by a burning wick floating in a bowl of oil. There was a litter against the far wall. On it lay a wasted skeletal body, and the smell of death was overpowering.

  Fearfully Tanase knelt beside the litter and lifted a bunch of leaves off one of the stinking wounds.

  ‘He is not dead,’ Tanase repeated. ‘Bazo is not dead.’

  ‘Not yet,’ agreed Juba. ‘His father and those of his men who survived the white men’s bullets, carried my son to me on his shield. They bid me save him – but nobody can save him.’

  ‘He will not die,’ said Tanase fiercely. ‘I will not let him die.’ And she leaned over his wasted body and pressed her lips to the fever-hot flesh. ‘I will not let you die,’ she whispered.

  The Hills of the Indunas were deserted; no beast grazed upon them for the herds had long ago been driven afar to try to save them from the invaders. There were no vultures or crows sailing high above the hills, for the Maxim guns had laid a richer feast for them barely twenty-five miles eastwards at the Bembesi crossing.

  The royal kraal of GuBulawayo was almost deserted. The women’s quarters were silent. No child cried, no young girl sang, no crone scolded. They were all hiding in the magical Matopos hills.

  The barracks of the fighting regiments were deserted. Two thousand dead on the Shangani, three thousand more at Bembesi – and nobody would ever count those who had crawled away to die like animals in the caves and thickets.

  The survivors had scattered, some to join the women in the hills, the others to cower, bewildered and demoralized, wherever they could find shelter.

  Of all the fighting impis of Matabele, only one remained intact, the Inyati regiment of Induna Gandang, the king’s half-brother. Gandang alone had been able to resist the madness of hurling his men over open ground at the waiting Maxim guns, and now he waited for his king’s orders in the hills just north of the royal kraal with his impi gathered about him.

  In all of GuBulawayo, there was one small group remaining. Twenty-six of these were white men and women. They were the traders and concession-hunters who had been at the kraal when Jameson had marched from Iron Mine Hill. With them, were the Codrington family, Clinton and Robyn and the twins. Lobengula had ordered them all to remain under his protection, while the impis were out in battle array, and now he had called them to the goat kraal for his last audience.

  Drawn up before the two new brick-built houses which had replaced the great thatched hut, were Lobengula’s four Cape wagons with the teams already in the traces.

  About the wagons were a small party of the royal retainers: two of the king’s senior wives, four elderly indunas, and a dozen or so slaves and servants.

  The king himself sat on the box of the leading wagon. In that wagon were all Lobengula’s treasures, a hundred big tusks of ivory, the little sealed pots of uncut diamonds, and the canvas bags stencilled with the name ‘The Standard Bank Ltd’ containing the sovereigns paid to him during the four years since he had granted the concession to the British South Africa Company, four thousand sovereigns, less than a sovereign for every one of his dead warriors.

  Around the wagon were gathered the white men, and Lobengula looked down upon them. The king had become an old man in the few short weeks since he had thrown the war spear on the Hills of the Indunas. There were deep lines of sorrow and despair carved around his mouth and eyes. His eyes were rheumy and shortsighted, his hair bleached silver-grey, his body bloated and misshapen, and his breathing was racked and irregular like that of a dying animal.

  ‘Tell your queen, white men, that Lobengula kept his word. Not one of you has been harmed,’ he wheezed. ‘Daketela and his soldiers will be here tomorrow. If you go out upon the eastern road, you will even meet them before nightfall.’ Lobengula paused to catch his breath, and then went on. ‘Go now. There is nothing more I have to say to you.’

  They were silent, subdued, and strangely chastened, as they trooped out of the goat kraal. Only Robyn and her family remained.

  The twins stood on each side of Robyn. At twenty-one years of age, they were as tall as she. I
t seemed that the three of them were sisters – for they all had the clear eyes and glossy hair of healthy young women.

  Clinton Codrington, standing behind them, stooped and bald, dressed in sober broadcloth that was mossy green with age and shiny at the cuffs and elbows, seemed father to Robyn as well as to the twins.

  The king looked down upon them with a terrible regret.

  ‘It is the last time that you will make my eyes glad, Nomusa,’ he said.

  ‘Oh King, my heart is on fire for you. I think of what has happened and how I advised you.’

  Lobengula held up his hand to silence her. ‘Do not torture yourself, Nomusa. You have been a true friend of many years, and what you did was done in friendship. Nothing you or I could have done would have changed the manner of it. It was the prophecy; it was as certain as the fall of the leaves from the msasa trees when the frosts are on the hills.’

  Robyn ran forward to the wagon, and Lobengula stooped to take her hand.

  ‘Pray to your three gods that are one god for me, Nomusa.’

  ‘He will hear you, Lobengula, you are a good man.’

  ‘No man is all goodness or all evil,’ the king sighed. ‘Now, Nomusa, soon Daketela and his soldiers will be here. Tell him that Lobengula says thus. “I am beaten, white men, my impis are eaten up. Let me go now, do not hunt me further, for I am an old sick man. I wish only to find a place where I may mourn my people – and at last die in peace.”’

  ‘I will tell them, Lobengula.’

  ‘And will they listen, Nomusa?’

  She could not face him, and she dropped her eyes. ‘You know they will not listen.’

  ‘My poor people,’ whispered Lobengula. ‘Will you look after my poor people when I am gone, Nomusa?’

  ‘I swear it to you, oh King,’ Robyn said fiercely. ‘I will stay at Khami Mission until the day that I die, and I will devote my life to your people.’

  Then Lobengula smiled, and once again there was a flash of the old mischievous twinkle in his eye.

  ‘I give you the royal permission which I denied you all these years, Nomusa. From this day forward any of my people – man or woman or child of Matabele who wish it of you – you may pour water on their heads and make the cross of your three gods over them.’

  Robyn could not reply.

  ‘Stay in peace, Nomusa,’ said Lobengula, and his wagon rumbled slowly out through the gates of the stockade.

  Clinton Codrington reined in the mule on the crest of the rise above the royal kraal, and he groped for Robyn’s hand. They sat silently on the seat of the little Scotch cart, watching the last pale shreds of dust thrown up by the king’s wagons disappearing away in the north across the grassy plain.

  ‘They will never leave him in peace,’ Robyn said softly.

  ‘Lobengula is the prize,’ Clinton agreed. ‘Without him, Jameson and Rhodes will have no victory.’

  ‘What will they do with him?’ she asked sadly. ‘If they catch him.’

  ‘Exile, certainly,’ Clinton said. ‘St Helena Island, probably. It’s where they sent Cetewayo.’

  ‘Poor tragic man,’ Robyn whispered. ‘Caught between two ages, half savage and half civilized man, half cruel despot and half a shy and sensitive dreamer. Poor Lobengula.’

  ‘Do look, Papa!’ Vicky called suddenly, pointing down the rude track towards the east. There was a thick column of dust rising above the tops of the thorn trees, and even as they watched, a distant troop of mounted men rode out onto the grassy plain with badges and weapons twinkling in the sunlight.

  ‘Soldiers,’ whispered Lizzie.

  ‘Soldiers,’ repeated Vicky gleefully. ‘Hundreds of them.’ And the twins exchanged a bright ecstatic glance of complete understanding and accord.

  Clinton picked up the reins – but Robyn tightened her grip on his hand to restrain him.

  ‘Wait,’ she said. ‘I want to watch it happen. Somehow it will be the end of an age, the end of a cruel but innocent age.’

  Lobengula had left one of his trusted indunas in the royal kraal, with instructions to lay fire to the train as soon as the last wagons were clear. In the mud-brick building behind the king’s new residence were the remains of the hundred thousand rounds of Martini-Henry ammunition for which he had sold his land and his people. There were also twenty barrels of black powder.

  ‘There!’ said Robyn, as the pillar of black smoke and flame shot hundreds of feet straight up into the still air.

  Only many seconds later did the shock wave and the great clap of sound pass over where they watched from the ridge, and the smoke, still spinning upon itself, blossomed into an anvil head high above the shattered kraal.

  Lobengula’s house that had given him such pleasure and pride was only a shell, the roof blown away and the walls fallen in.

  The beehive huts of the women’s quarters were ablaze, and even as they watched, the flames jumped the stockade and caught in the roofs beyond. Within minutes the whole of GuBulawayo was in leaping, swirling flames.

  ‘Now we can go on,’ Robyn said quietly, and Clinton shook up the mule.

  There were thirty horsemen in the advance scouting party – and as they galloped up, the tall straight figure leading them was unmistakable.

  ‘Thank God that you are safe!’ Zouga called to them. He was handsome and heroic in the frogged uniform with his brass badges of rank ablaze in the sunlight, and the slouch hat cocked forward over his handsome, gravely concerned features.

  ‘We were never in any danger,’ Robyn told him. ‘And well you knew that.’

  ‘Where is Lobengula?’ Zouga sought to divert her scorn, but she shook her head.

  ‘I am guilty of one act of treachery against Lobengula—’

  ‘You are an Englishwoman,’ Zouga reminded her. ‘You should know where your loyalties lie.’

  ‘Yes, I am an Englishwoman,’ she agreed icily, ‘but I am ashamed of that today. I will not tell you where the king is.’

  ‘As you wish.’ Zouga looked at Clinton. ‘You know that it is for the good of everyone in this land. Until we have Lobengula, there will be no peace.’

  Clinton bowed his bald head. ‘The king has gone to the north with his wagons and wives and the Inyati regiment.’

  ‘Thank you,’ Zouga nodded. ‘I will send an escort with you to the main column. They are not far behind us. Sergeant!’

  A young trooper with triple chevrons on his sleeve spurred forward. He was a fine-looking lad, with high English colour in his cheeks and broad shoulders.

  ‘Sergeant Acutt. Take the six men from the rear three files and see this party to safety.’

  Zouga saluted his sister and brother-in-law curtly and then ordered, ‘Troop, at the gallop. Forward!’

  The first two dozen troopers went clattering away towards GuBulawayo, while the sergeant and his six men wheeled in alongside the cart.

  Vicky turned her head and looked directly into the young sergeant’s eyes. She took a long slow breath that pushed her bosom out under the faded cotton of her blouse. The sergeant stared, and the flush of dark blood rose from the high stock of his tunic and suffused his cheeks.

  Vicky wetted her pouting lips with the tip of a pink tongue, and slanted her eyes at him – and Sergeant Acutt seemed about to fall out of the saddle, for Vicky’s gaze had struck him from a range of less than six feet.

  ‘Victoria!’ Robyn snapped sharply, without looking back over her shoulder.

  ‘Yes, Mama.’ Hurriedly, Vicky slumped her shoulders forward to alter the cheeky thrust of her bosom to a more demure angle, and composed her expression into dutiful gravity.

  TELEGRAM MESSAGE RECEIVED FORT VICTORIA 10TH NOVEMBER 1893 RELAYED BY HELIOGRAPH TO GUBULAWAYO:

  FOR JAMESON STOP HER MAJESTY’S GOVERNMENT DECLINES TO DECLARE MATABELE A CROWN COLONY OR PLACE IT UNDER THE JURISDICTION OF THE HIGH COMMISSIONER STOP HER MAJESTY’S FOREIGN SECRETARY AGREES THAT THE CHARTER COMPANY IS TO PROVIDE THE MACHINERY OF GOVERNMENT FOR THE NEW TERRITORY STOP BOTH MASHONALAND AND
MATABELELAND NOW FALL WITHIN THE ADMINISTRATIVE AREA OF THE COMPANY STOP COMPANY SHARES QUOTED AT £8 LONDON CLOSE STOP HEARTIEST CONGRATULATIONS TO YOU YOUR OFFICERS AND MEN FROM JOVE FOR JAMESON URGENT AND CONFIDENTIAL DESTROY ALL COPIES STOP WE MUST HAVE LOBENGULA STOP NO RISK TOO GREAT TO PRICE TOO HIGH FROM JOVE

  ‘Reverend Codrington, I am sending out a considerable force to escort Lobengula in.’ Jameson stood at the fly of his tent, looking out beyond the laager to the blackened ruins of the royal kraal. ‘I have already sent this message after the king.’ Jameson came back to his desk and read from his pad:

  ‘Now, to stop this useless killing, you must at once come back to me at GuBulawayo. I guarantee that your life will be safe and that you will be kindly treated.’

  ‘Has the king sent you a reply?’ Clinton asked. He had declined a seat and stood stiffly in front of the camp table that served Jameson as a desk.

  ‘Here.’ The doctor handed Clinton a grubby, folded scrap of paper. Clinton scanned it swiftly:

  I have the honour to inform you that I have received your letter and have heard all what you have said, so I will come . . .

  ‘This is written by a half-caste rogue, named Jacobs, who has joined up with Lobengula,’ Clinton muttered, as he glanced through the rest of the wandering, misspelt and barely literate note. ‘I know his handwriting.’

  ‘Do you think the king means it?’ Mungo St John asked. ‘Do you think he means to come in?’

  Clinton did not turn his head towards where Mungo lolled in a canvas camp chair across the tent.

  ‘Dr Jameson, I do not condone your actions or those of your infamous Chartered Company, but I came here at your bidding in order to do what little I can to redress the terrible wrongs that have been perpetrated on the Matabele people. However, I draw the line at having to speak or in any way communicate with this henchman of yours.’