The Angels Weep

by Wilbur Smith

  Tanase was none of these things. At first she had shocked and horrified him with some of the things she had learned in her apprenticeship for the dark mysteries. However, shock had turned to fascination as she had unfolded each skill before him.

  She had potions and perfumes that could rouse a man even when he was exhausted and wounded from the battlefield, she had tricks of voice and eyes that bit like an arrowhead. Her fingers could find unerringly the spots beneath his skin at places on his body of which even he was unaware, upon which she played like the keys of the marimba, making him more man than he had even dreamed was possible. Her own body she could use more skilfully than he could wield his shield and long bright steel and deal as telling blows. She could make each separate muscle of her body move and tighten in complete freedom from the muscles around it. At will she could bring him to precipitous rushing release or keep him hovering high as a black-shouldered kite when it hunts on sharply stabbing pinions.

  ‘We have been too long apart,’ she whispered, with that combination of voice and slant of wide Egyptian eyes that tripped his breath and made his heart race. ‘I came to meet you alone, so we could be free for a while of your son’s clamorous adoration and the eyes of the villagers.’ And she led him off the track, and unclasped her leather cloak to spread it on the soft bed of fallen leaves.

  Long after the storm had passed, and the aching tension had left his body, when his breathing was deep and even again and his eyelids drooped with the deeply contented lassitude that follows the act of love, she raised herself on her elbow above him, and with a kind of reverential wonder traced out the planes of his face with the tip of one finger, and then said softly: ‘Bayete!’

  It was the greeting that is made only to a king, and he stirred uncomfortably and his eyes opened wide. He looked at her, and knew that expression. Their loving had not softened her, and made her sleepy, as it had done him. That royal greeting had not been a jest.

  ‘Bayete!’ she said again. ‘The sound of it troubles you, my fine sharp-bladed axe. But why should it do so?’

  Suddenly Bazo felt the insects of fear and superstition crawling on his skin again, and he was angry and afraid. ‘Do not talk like this, woman. Do not offend the spirits with your silly girlish prattlings.’

  She smiled, but it was a cruel catlike smile, and she repeated. ‘Oh Bazo, the bravest and the strongest, why do you then start so at my girlish words? You in whose veins runs the purest blood of Zanzi? Son of Gandang, the son of Mzilikazi, do you dream perchance of the little redwood spear that Lobengula carried in his hand? Son of Juba, whose great-grandfather was mighty Diniswayo, who was nobler even than his protégé Chaka, who became King of Zulu, do you not feel the royal blood coursing in your veins, does it make you itch for things you dare not even speak aloud?’

  ‘You are mad, woman, the mopani bees have entered your head and driven you mad.’

  But Tanase smiled still with her lips close to his ear, and she touched his eyelids with her soft pink fingertip.

  ‘Do you not hear the widows of Shangani and Bembesi crying aloud, “Our father Lobengula is gone, we are orphans with no one to protect us.” Do you not see the men of Matabeleland with empty hands entreat the spirits? “Give us a king,” they cry. “We must have a king.”’

  ‘Babiaan,’ whispered Bazo. ‘Somabula and Gandang. They are Lobengula’s brothers.’

  ‘They are old men, and the stone has fallen out of their bellies, the fire has gone out in their eyes.’

  ‘Tanase, do not speak so.’

  ‘Bazo, my husband, my king, do you not see to whom the eyes of all the indunas turn when the nation is in council?’

  ‘Madness,’ Bazo shook his head.

  ‘Do you not know whose word they wait upon now, do you not see how even Babiaan and Somabula listen when Bazo speaks?’

  She laid the palm of her hand over his mouth to still his protests, and then in one swift movement she had mounted and straddled him again, and miraculously he was ready and more than ready for her, and she cried out fiercely:

  ‘Bayete, son of kings! Bayete, father of kings, whose seed will rule when the white men have been swallowed again by the ocean which spewed them up.’

  And with a shuddering cry he felt as though she had drawn the very life force from his guts, and left in its place a dreadful haunting longing, a fire in his blood, that would not be assuaged until he held in his hand the little redwood spear that was the symbol of the Nguni monarch.

  They went side by side, hand in hand, which was a curious thing, for a Matabele wife always walks behind her husband with the roll of the sleeping-mat balanced upon her head. But they were like children caught up in a kind of delirious dream, and when they reached the crest of the pass, Bazo took her in his arms and held her to his breast in an embrace that he had never used before.

  ‘If I am the axe, then you are the cutting edge, for you are a part of me, but the sharpest part.’

  ‘Together, Lord, we will hack through anything that stands in our way,’ she answered fiercely, and then she pulled out from the circle of his arms and lifted the flap of the beaded pouch upon her belt.

  ‘I have a gift to make your brave heart braver and your will as hard as your steel.’ She took something soft and grey and fluffy from her pouch, and stood before him on tiptoe, reaching high with both arms to bind the strip of fur around his forehead. ‘Wear this moleskin for the glory that was and that shall be again, induna of the Moles-who-burrowed-under-a-hill. One day soon, we will change it for a headband of spotted gold leopard skin, with royal blue heron feathers set upon it.’

  She took his hand and they started down from the hilltop, but they did not reach the grassy plain before Bazo stopped again and inclined his head to listen. There was a faint popping sound on the small dry breeze, like the bubbles bursting in a pot of boiling porridge.

  ‘Guns,’ he said. ‘Still far away, but many of them.’

  ‘It is so, Lord,’ Tanase replied. ‘Since you left, the guns of One-Bright-Eye’s kanka have been busy as the tongues of the old women at a beer-drink.’

  ‘There is a terrible pestilence sweeping through the land.’ General Mungo St John had selected a clay anthill as a rostrum from which to address his audience. ‘It passes from one animal to the next, as a bush-fire jumps from tree to tree. Unless we can contain it, all the cattle will die.’

  Below the anthill, Sergeant Ezra was translating loudly, while the listening tribesmen squatted silently facing them. There were almost two thousand of them, the occupants of all the villages that had been built along both banks of the Inyati river to replace the regimental kraals of Lobengula’s impi.

  The men were in the foremost ranks, their faces expressionless but their eyes watchful; behind them were the youths and boys not yet admitted to the rank of warrior. These were the mujiba, the herdboys, whose daily life was intimately interwoven with the herds of the tribe. The present indaba concerned them as much as it did the elders. There were no women present, for it was a matter of cattle, of the nation’s wealth.

  ‘It is a great sin to try to hide your cattle, as you have done. To drive them into the hills or the thick forest. These cattle carry with them the seeds of the pestilence,’ Mungo St John explained, and waited for his sergeant to translate, before going on. ‘Lodzi and I are very angry with these deceptions. There will be heavy fines for those villages which hide their cattle, and as further punishment, I will double the work quotas for the men, so that you will work like amaholi, like slaves you will toil, if you attempt to defy the word of Lodzi.’ Mungo St John paused again, and lifted the black eye-patch to wipe away the sweat that trickled down from under the wide-brimmed slouch hat. Drawn by the lowing herds in the thornbush kraal, the big shiny green flies swarmed, and the place stank of cow dung and unwashed humanity. Mungo found himself impatient with the necessity of trying to explain his actions to this silent unresponsive throng of half-naked savages, for he had already repeated this same warning at thirt
y other indabas across Matabeleland. His sergeant finished the translation and glanced up at him expectantly.

  Mungo St John pointed to the mass of cattle penned in the thorn kraal behind him. ‘As you have seen, it is of no avail to try to hide the herds. The native police track them down.’ Mungo stopped again, and frowned in annoyance. In the second row, a Matabele buck had risen and was facing him quietly.

  He was a tall man, finely muscled, although one arm seemed deformed, for it was twisted from the shoulder at an awkward angle. Though the body was that of a man in his full prime, the face was eroded and ravaged, as though by grief or pain, and was aged before its time. On the neat cap of dense curls, the man wore the headring of an induna, and around his forehead a headband of grey fur.

  ‘Baba, my father,’ said the induna. ‘We hear your words, but like children we do not understand them.’

  ‘Who is this fellow?’ Mungo demanded of Sergeant Ezra, and nodded when he heard the reply. ‘I know about him. He is a troublemaker.’ Then to Bazo, raising his voice, ‘What is so strange about what I say? What is it that puzzles you?’

  ‘You say, Baba, that the sickness will kill the cattle – so before it does, you will shoot them dead. You say, Baba, that to save our cattle you must kill them for us.’

  The quiet ranks of Matabele stirred for the first time. Though their expressions were still impassive, here a man coughed and there another shuffled his bare feet in the dust or yet another flicked his switch at the circling flies. No man laughed, not one mocked with word or smile, but it was mockery nonetheless, and Mungo St John sensed it. Behind those inscrutable black African faces, they were gleefully following the mock humble questions of the young induna with the old worn face.

  ‘We do not understand such deep wisdom, Baba, please be kind and patient with your children and explain it to us. You say that if we try to hide our cattle, then you will confiscate them from us to pay the heavy fines that Lodzi demands. You say in the same breath, Baba, that if we are obedient children and bring the cattle to you, then you will shoot them and burn them up.’

  In the packed ranks an elderly whitebeard who had taken snuff sneezed loudly, and there was immediately an epidemic of sneezing and coughing. Mungo St John knew they were encouraging the young induna in this sly impudence.

  ‘Baba, gentle Father, you warn us that you will double our work quotas, and we will be as slaves. This is another matter which escapes from us, for is a man who works one day at another’s command less a slave than he who works two days? Is not a slave merely a slave – and is not a free man truly free? Baba, explain to us the degrees of slavery.’

  There was a faint humming sound now, like the sound of a hive at noon, and though the lips of the Matabele facing Mungo St John did not move, he saw that their throats trembled slightly. They were beginning to drum, it was the prelude and unchecked it would be followed by the deep ringing ‘Jee! Jee!’ of the chant.

  ‘I know you, Bazo,’ Mungo St John shouted. ‘I hear and mark your words. Be sure that Lodzi also will hear them.’

  ‘I am honoured, little Father, that my humble words will be carried to the great white father, Lodzi.’

  This time there were cunning and wicked grins on the faces of the men around Bazo.

  ‘Sergeant,’ Mungo St John shouted. ‘Bring that man to me!’

  The big sergeant leaped forward with the brass badge of his rank glittering on his upper arm, but as he did so the ranks of silent Matabele rose to their feet and closed up. No man raised a hand, but the sergeant’s forward rush was smothered and he struggled in the crowd as though in living black quicksand, and when he reached the place where Bazo had been, the induna was gone.

  ‘Very well,’ Mungo St John nodded grimly, when the sergeant reported back to him. ‘Let him go. It will wait for another day, but now we have work to do. Get your men into position.’

  A dozen armed black police trotted forward and formed a line facing the throng of tribesmen, holding their rifles at high port. At the same time the rest of the contingent climbed up onto the thorny walls of the kraal and at the command they pumped cartridges into the breeches of the repeating Winchester rifles.

  ‘Let it begin,’ Mungo nodded, and the first volley of rifle fire thundered out.

  The black constables were firing down into the milling mass of cattle in the kraal, and at each shot a beast would fling its horned head high and collapse, to be hidden at once by the others. The smell of fresh blood maddened the herd and it surged wildly against the thorn barrier, the din of the blood-bellow was deafening, and from the ranks of watching Matabele went up a mourning howl of sympathy.

  These animals were their wealth and their very reason for existence. As mujiba they had attended the birthings in the veld, and helped to beat off the hyena and the other predators. They knew each animal by name and loved them with that special type of love that will make the pastoral man lay down his own life to protect his herds.

  In the front rank was a warrior so old that his legs were thin as those of the marabou stork and whose skin was the colour of a tobacco pouch and puckered in a network of fine wrinkles. It seemed there was no moisture left in his dried-out ancient frame, and yet fat heavy tears rolled down his withered cheeks as he watched the cattle shot down. The crash of rifle fire went on until sunset, and when it at last was silent, the kraal was filled with carcasses. They lay upon each other in deep windrows like the wheat after the scythes have passed. Not a single Matabele had left the scene, they watched in silence now, their mourning long ago silenced.

  ‘The carcasses must be burned,’ Mungo St John strode down the front rank of warriors. ‘I want the carcasses covered with wood. No man is spared this labour, neither the sick nor the old. Every man will wield an axe, and when they are covered, I will put the fire to it myself.’

  ‘What is the mood of the people?’ Bazo asked softly, and Babiaan, the senior of all the old king’s councillors, answered him. It was not lost on the others in the packed beehive thatched hut that Babiaan’s tone was respectful.

  ‘They are sick with grief,’ said Babiaan. ‘Not since the death of the old king has there been such despair in their hearts as now that the cattle are being killed.’

  ‘It is almost as though the white men wish to plunge the assegai in their own breast.’ Bazo nodded. ‘Each cruel deed strengthens us, and confirms the prophecy of the Umlimo. Can there be one amongst you who still has doubts?’

  ‘There are no doubts. We are ready now,’ replied Gandang, his father, and yet he also looked to Bazo for confirmation, and waited for his reply.

  ‘We are not ready.’ Bazo shook his head. ‘We will not be ready until the third prophecy of the Umlimo has come to pass.’

  ‘“When the hornless cattle are eaten up by the cross”,’ Somabula whispered. ‘We saw the cattle destroyed today, those that the pestilence has spared.’

  ‘That is not the prophecy,’ Bazo told them. ‘When it comes, there will be no doubt in our minds. Until that time we must continue with the preparations. What is the number of the spears, and where are they held?’

  One by one the other indunas stood and each made his report. They listed the numbers of warriors that were trained and ready, where each group was situated and how soon they could be armed and in the field.

  When the last one had finished, Bazo went through the form of consulting the senior indunas, and then gave the field commanders their objectives.

  ‘Suku, induna of the Imbezu impi. Your men will sweep the road from the Malundi drift southwards to Gwanda mine. Kill anybody you find upon the road, cut the copper wires at each pole. The amadoda working at the mine will be ready to join you when you reach there. There are twenty-eight whites at Gwanda, including the women and the family at the trading-post. Afterwards, count the bodies to make certain that none has escaped.’

  Suku repeated the orders, word-perfectly, displaying the phenomenal recall of the illiterate who cannot rely on written notes, and Bazo nodded an
d turned to the next commander to give him his instructions and to hear them recited back to him.

  It was long after midnight before all of them had received and repeated their orders, and then Bazo addressed them again.

  ‘Stealth and speed are our only allies. No warrior will carry a shield, for the temptation to drum upon it in the old way would be too strong. Steel alone, silent steel. There will be no singing the war songs when you run, for the leopard does not growl before he springs. The leopard hunts in darkness, and when he enters the goatshed he spares nothing – as easily as he rips the throat from the billy, he kills also the nanny and the kids.’

  ‘Women?’ asked Babiaan sombrely.

  ‘Even as they shot down Ruth and Imbali,’ Bazo nodded.

  ‘Children?’ asked another induna.

  ‘Little white girls grow up to bear little white boys, and little white boys in their turn grow up to carry guns. When a wise man finds a mamba’s lair, he kills the snake and crushes the eggs under foot.’

  ‘Will we spare none?’

  ‘No,’ Bazo confirmed quietly, but there was something in his voice that made Gandang, his father, shiver. He recognized the moment when the real power shifted from the old bull to the younger. Indisputably, Bazo was now their leader.

  So it was Bazo who said at last, ‘Indaba pelile! The meeting is finished!’ And one by one the indunas saluted him and left the hut and slipped away into the night, and when the last was gone, the screen of goatskins at the back was pushed aside and Tanase stepped out and came to Bazo.

  ‘I am so proud,’ she whispered, ‘that I want to weep like a silly girl.’

  It was a long column, counting the women and children, almost a thousand human beings. It was strung out over a mile, winding like a maimed adder down out of the hills. Again custom was being flouted, for although the men led, they were burdened with grainbags and cooking-pots. Of old, they would have carried only their shield and weapons. There were more than the two hundred strong men that Bazo had promised Henshaw.