by Wilbur Smith
‘Horses?’ Gandang asked thoughtfully.
‘It may be so,’ Tanase agreed. ‘Yet a single word of the Umlimo may have as many meanings as there are crocodiles in the Limpopo river.’
‘What is the cross, the great cross, of the prophecy?’ Bazo asked.
‘The cross is the sign of the white men’s three-headed god,’ Gandang answered. ‘My senior wife, Juba, the little Dove, wears that sign about her neck, given to her by the missionary at Khami when she poured water on her head.’
‘Is it possible that the white men’s god will eat up the white men’s horses?’ doubted Babiaan. ‘Surely he is their protector, not their destroyer.’
And the discussion passed from elder to elder, while the watchfire burned low and over the valley the vast shining firmament of the heavens turned with weighty dignity.
To the south of the valley, amongst the other heavenly bodies, burned a group of four great white stars that the Matabele called the ‘Sons of Manatassi’. They told how Manatassi, that terrible queen, had birth-strangled her offspring with her own hands, so that none of them might ever challenge her monarchy. According to the legend, the souls of the little ones had ascended to shine on high, eternal witness to the cruelty of their dam.
Not one of the indunas knew that the name by which the white men knew these same stars was the Southern Cross.
Ralph Ballantyne was wrong when he predicted to Harry Mellow that by the time they returned to the base camp Mr Rhodes and his entourage would have moved on to Bulawayo. For as they rode in through the gates of the stockade, he saw the magnificent mule coach still parked where he had last seen it, and beside it were a dozen other decrepit and travel-worn vehicles: Cape carts and surreys, even a bicycle with worn tyres replaced by strips of buffalo-hide.
‘Mr Rhodes has set up court here,’ Cathy explained furiously, as soon as she and Ralph were alone in the bath tent. ‘I have made the camp too comfortable by half, and he has taken it over from me.’
‘As he does everything else,’ Ralph remarked philosophically, as he stripped off his stinking shirt, and flung it into the far corner. ‘I’ve slept in that for five nights, by God, the laundry boy will have to beat it to death with a club before he gets it into the tub.’
‘Ralph, you aren’t taking it seriously,’ Cathy stamped her foot in frustration. ‘This is my home. The only home I have, and now do you know what that – what Mr Rhodes told me?’
‘Have we got any more soap?’ Ralph demanded as he hopped on one leg to free his breeches. ‘One bar will not be enough.’
‘He said, “Jordan will be in charge of the kitchens while we are here, Mrs Ballantyne, he knows my tastes.” What do you think of that?’
‘Jordan is a damned fine cook.’ Ralph lowered himself gingerly into the bath, and grunted as his naked buttocks touched the nearly boiling surface.
‘I have been forbidden my own kitchen.’
‘Get in!’ Ralph ordered, and she broke off and stared at him incredulously.
‘What did you say?’ she demanded, but in reply he seized her ankle and toppled Cathy shrieking her protests on top of himself. Steaming water and suds splattered the canvas walls of the tent, and when he released her at last, she was sodden to the waist.
‘Your dress is soaked,’ he pointed out complacently; ‘now you have no choice – take it off!’
Naked, she sat with her back to him in the galvanized bath with her knees drawn up under her chin, and her damp hair piled on top of her head, but still she continued her protest.
‘Even Louise could bear the man’s arrogance and misogyny no longer. She made your father take her back to King’s Lynn, so now I have to bear him on my own!’
‘You always were a brave girl,’ Ralph told her and ran the soapy flannel caressingly down her smooth back.
‘And now the word has gone out to every dead-beat and drifter in Matabeleland that he is here and they are riding in from every direction for the free whisky.’
‘Mr Rhodes is a generous man,’ Ralph agreed, and tenderly slid the soapy flannel over her shoulder and down the front.
‘It is your whisky,’ said Cathy, and caught his wrist before the flannel could reach its obvious destination.
‘The man has an infernal nerve.’ For the first time Ralph showed some emotion. ‘We will have to get rid of him. That whisky is worth £10 a bottle in Bulawayo.’ Ralph managed to slip the flannel a little further south.
‘Ralph, that tickles.’ Cathy wriggled.
‘When are your twin sisters arriving?’ He ignored her protest.
‘They sent a runner ahead, they should be here before nightfall. Ralph, give me that flannel immediately!’
‘We will see how steely Mr Rhodes’ nerves really are—’
‘Ralph I can do that myself, thank you kindly, give me the flannel!’
‘And we will also see how sharp Harry Mellow’s reflexes are—’
‘Ralph, are you crazy? We are in the bath!’
‘We will take care of both of them with one stroke.’
‘Ralph, you can’t! You can’t – not in the bath!’
‘We will have Jordan out of your kitchen, Harry Mellow overseer of the Harkness Mine and Mr Rhodes on his way to Bulawayo an hour after those two arrive—’
‘Ralph, darling, do stop talking. I can’t concentrate on two things at once,’ Cathy murmured.
The tableau at the trestle-table in the dining tent seemed unaltered since Ralph had last seen it, rather like one of the productions at Madame Tussaud’s Waxworks. Mr Rhodes even wore the same clothing as he dominated the tent with his expansive charisma.
Only the bit players seated in the position of petitioners facing the long table had changed. These were a motley bunch of out-of-luck prospectors, concession-seekers, and impecunious promoters of ambitious ventures, who had been attracted by Mr Rhodes’ reputation and millions like jackal and hyena to the lion’s kill.
It was the mode in Matabeleland to display one’s individuality by adopting eccentric headgear, and the selection which faced Mr Rhodes across the table included a Scottish bonnet with an eagle feather pinned to the brim by a yellow cairngorm, a tall brushed beaver girt with a green St Patrick’s ribbon, and a magnificent embroidered Mexican sombrero, the owner of which was relating a meandering tale of woe which Mr Rhodes cut short. He did not enjoy listening as much as he did talking.
‘So then, you’ve had enough of Africa, have you? But you haven’t the passage money?’ he asked brusquely.
‘That’s it exactly, Mr Rhodes, you see my old mother—’
‘Jordan, give the fellow a chitty to see him home, and charge it to me personally.’ He waved away the man’s thanks, and looked up as Ralph came into the tent.
‘Harry tells me your trip was a great success. He panned your crushings from the Harkness reef at thirty ounces a ton, that’s thirty times richer than the best banket reef of the Witwatersrand. I think we should open a bottle of champagne. Jordan, don’t we have a few bottles of the Pommery ‘87 left?’
‘At least I’m not providing the champagne as well as the whisky,’ Ralph thought cynically, as he lifted his glass to the toast. ‘The Harkness Mine.’ He joined the dutiful chorus and the moment he had drunk he turned on Dr Leander Starr Jameson.
‘What is this about the mining laws?’ he demanded. ‘Harry tells me you are adopting the American mining code.’
‘Do you have any objection?’ Jameson flushed, and his sandy moustache bristled.
‘That code was drawn up by lawyers to keep themselves in fat fees in perpetuity. The new Witwatersrand laws are simpler and a million times more workable. By God, isn’t it enough that your Company royalty will rob us of fifty per cent of our profits?’ As Ralph said it, it dawned upon him that the American mining code would be a smoke-screen behind which the artful Rhodes could manoeuvre at will.
‘Remember, young Ballantyne,’ Jameson stroked his moustache, and blinked piously. ‘Remember who the country bel
ongs to. Remember who paid the costs of the occupation of Mashonaland and who financed the Matabele war.’
‘Government by a commercial company.’ Despite himself, Ralph felt his anger rising again and he clenched his hands on the table in front of him. ‘A company that owns the police force and the courts. And if I have a dispute with your Company, who will decide it – surely not the BSA Company’s own magistrate?’
‘There are precedents.’ Mr Rhodes’ tone was reasonable and placatory, but his eyes were not. ‘The British East India Company—’ And Ralph’s reply crackled:
‘The British government eventually had to take India away from those pirates Clive, Hastings and that ilk, for corruption and oppression of the natives. The sepoy rising was the logical outcome of their administration.’
‘Mr Ballantyne.’ Mr Rhodes’ voice always went shrill when he was excited or angry. ‘I am going to ask you to withdraw those remarks, they are historically inaccurate, and by implication insulting.’
‘I withdraw, unreservedly.’ Ralph was angry with himself now, he was usually much too cool-headed to allow himself to be provoked. There was no possible profit to be gained from a head-on collision with Cecil John Rhodes. His smile was easy and friendly as he went on. ‘I am sure we will have no need of the services of a Company magistrate.’
Mr Rhodes answered his smile with the same ease, but there was a steely blue flicker in his eyes as he raised his glass. ‘To a deep mine and a deeper relationship,’ he said, and only one other person in the tent recognized it as a challenge.
Jordan moved restlessly in his camp chair at the back of the tent. He knew these two men so well, loved both so dearly. Ralph his brother had been with him through all that lonely and tempestuous childhood, his protector and his comfort in the bad times and his joyous friend through the good.
Looking at his brother now, and comparing Ralph to himself, it seemed impossible that two brothers could be so different. Where Jordan was blond and slim and graceful, Ralph was dark and muscled and powerful; where Jordan was gentle and self-effacing, Ralph was hard and bold and as hawk-fierce as his Matabele praise-name implied. Instinctively Jordan looked from him to the big burly figure facing him across the camp table.
Here Jordan’s feelings went beyond love itself to a kind of religious fervour. He did not really see the physical changes that a few short years had wrought in this god-head of his existence: the thickening of Mr Rhodes’ already bulky body, the bloating and coarsening of features already mottled with cyanosis caused by the labouring of the damaged heart, the reddish-blond curls receding swiftly now and slashed with grey at the temples. The way a loving woman places little store on the appearance of the man she has chosen as her own, so Jordan saw far beyond the marks of suffering and sickness and the racing years. He saw to the steely core of the man, the ultimate source of his immense power and brooding presence.
Jordan wanted to cry out to his beloved brother, to run to him and physically restrain him from the folly of turning this giant of a soul into an enemy. He had seen other men do just that, and be ruthlessly crushed.
Then with a sickening slide in the pit of his stomach, he knew which side he would cast his lot if that dreaded confrontation ever forced a choice upon him. He was Mr Rhodes’ man, beyond brotherly ties and family loyalties, to the very end of life itself, he was Mr Rhodes’ man.
He sought desperately for some plausible excuse to break the tension between the two most important persons in his life, but relief came from beyond the stockade, in the delighted cries of the servants, the hysterical barking of the camp dogs, the crunch of cartwheels and the excited shrieks of more than one woman. Jordan was the only one watching Ralph’s face, so he caught the sly and smug expression as his brother rose.
‘It seems we have more visitors,’ Ralph said, and the twins came into the inner stockade.
Victoria came first, as Ralph had expected that she would. She came on long shapely legs, outlined beneath the whirl and boil of her thin cotton skirts, barefoot in defiance of all ladylike pretensions, carrying her shoes in one hand, and Jonathan riding on her hip. The child was squeaking like a warthog piglet that has lost the teat.
‘Vicky! Vicky, did you bring me anything?’
‘A kiss on the cheek and a slap on the behind.’ Vicky laughed, and hugged him. Her laughter was loud and gay and unaffected, her mouth was a little too large, but her lips were velvety as rose petals and sweetly shaped, her teeth were large and square and white as bone-china porcelain, and as she laughed her tongue, furry pink as that of a cat, curled between them. Her eyes were green and wide-spaced, her skin was that lustrous silky English perfection that neither sun nor massive doses of anti-malarial quinine could mar. She would have been striking, even without the dense tresses of copper-blonde hair, ruffled by the wind, and wild as the sea, that tumbled about her face and shoulders.
She riveted the attention of every man there, even Mr Rhodes, but it was to Ralph she ran, holding his son on her hip still, and she threw her free arm around his neck. She was so tall that she had only to stand on her toes to reach his lips. The kiss was not long held, but her lips were soft and wet, the pressure of her breasts through her cotton blouse was springy and elastic and warm against his chest, and her thighs against his sent a shock up his spine, so that Ralph broke the embrace, and for an instant her green eyes mocked him, dared him to something that she did not fully understand, revelling in this heady sense of power over all mankind that she had not yet tested to its limits.
Then she tossed Jonathan to Ralph and whirled away to run barefoot down the tent and launched herself into Jordan’s arms.
‘Darling Jordan, oh, how we have missed you!’ She forced him into a prancing jig around the stockade, shaking out her shining hair and carolling joyously.
Ralph glanced at Mr Rhodes, and when he saw his expression of shock and unease, he grinned and released Jonathan, letting him race across to cling to Vicky’s skirt and add his shrill voice to the uproar, then he turned to greet the second twin.
Elizabeth was as tall as Vicky, but darker. Her hair was polished mahogany, shot through with sparks of burgundy and her skin was sun-kindly, gilded to the colour of a tiger’s eyes. She was slim as a dancer, with a narrow waist and shoulders supporting a long heron neck, and her breasts were smaller than Vicky’s, yet elegantly pointed, and though her voice was soft and her laughter a throaty purr, yet there was a mischievous quirk to her lips, a jaunty tilt to her head and a measured sexual candour and awareness to the gaze of her wild honey eyes.
She and Cathy were arm in arm, but now she slipped out of her elder sister’s embrace and presented herself to Ralph.
‘My favourite brother-in-law,’ she murmured, and looking into her eyes Ralph was reminded that though her voice was softer, and her manner seemingly more restrained than that of her twin, yet Elizabeth was always the instigator and prime mover in any mischief that the pair conjured up. This close, her true beauty was apparent, less flamboyant than Vicky’s perhaps, but the balance of her features and the depths beyond those golden-brown eyes were more disturbing.
She kissed Ralph, and the contact was as brief but even less sisterly than had been the elder twin’s embrace, and as she drew back from it, she slanted her eyes with a pretence of innocence, that was more deadly than any brazening. Ralph broke the electric contact, and looked to Cathy, making a comical moue of resignation, and hoping that she still believed his studied avoidance of the twins was because he found them boisterous and childish.
Flushed and panting, Vicky released Jordan, placed her hands on her hips and asked Ralph, ‘Ralph, are you not going to present us to the company?’
‘Mr Rhodes, may I present my sisters-in-law,’ said Ralph with relish.
‘Oh, the famous Mr Rhodes,’ Vicky gushed theatrically, but there were little green sparks in her eyes. ‘It is such an honour to meet the conqueror of the Matabele nation, because, you see, King Lobengula was a personal friend of our family.’
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‘Please excuse my sister, Mr Rhodes.’ Elizabeth curtsied, and her expression was demure. ‘She intends no discourtesy, but our parents were the first missionaries to the Matabele, and our father sacrificed his life trying to help Lobengula while your troops were pursuing him to his death. My mother—’
‘Young lady, I am fully aware who your mother is,’ Mr Rhodes forestalled her sharply.
‘Oh good,’ Vicky chimed sweetly. ‘Then you will appreciate the gift that she asked me to present to you.’
Vicky reached into the deep pocket of her long skirt and brought out a thin volume. It was bound in cardboard, not morocco leather, and the quality of the yellow paper was coarse and matt. She laid it on the trestle-table in front of Mr Rhodes, and when he saw the title his heavy jaw clamped closed. Even Ralph quailed slightly. He had counted on the twins providing an unsettling influence, but he had not expected them to be so instantly explosive.
The book was entitled Trooper Hackett of Matabeleland, by Robyn Ballantyne, for the twins’ mother wrote and published under her maiden name. There was probably not a man in the stockade who had not already read the slim volume, or at least heard of its contents, and if Vicky had thrown a live mamba on the table, their consternation could not have been more intense.
The contents of the book were so dangerous that three reputable London publishers had rejected it, and finally Robyn St John had published it privately and created an immediate sensation. In six months it had sold almost two hundred thousand copies, and had been treated to extensive reviews in almost every influential newspaper both at home in England and abroad in the colonies.
The frontispiece of the book set the tone for the text that followed. It was a murky photograph that depicted a dozen white men in BSA Company uniform standing under the spreading branches of a tall wild teak tree and looking up at the corpses of four semi-naked Matabele hanging by their necks from the topmost branches. There was no caption to the photograph, and the faces of the white men were too indistinct to be recognizable.
Now Mr Rhodes reached out and opened the book at the gruesome illustration. ‘Those are four Matabele indunas who were wounded at the battle of Bembesi, and who committed suicide by hanging, rather than surrender to our forces,’ he growled. ‘They are not the victims of some atrocity as this scurrilous piece of offal implies.’