by Wilbur Smith
‘I don’t know, darling.’ Her voice cracked and she cleared her throat. ‘We will go and find out.’ She realized she had spoken too loudly, and Jonathan shrank against her legs.
‘Mummy, I’m frightened.’
‘Don’t be a silly boy,’ Cathy told him firmly, and dragging him by the hand, she started down the hill.
By the time she reached the telegraph hut, she was moving as fast as her big round belly would allow, and her breathing in her own ears was deafening.
‘Stay here.’ She did not know what prompted her to leave Jonathan at the steps of the veranda, but she went up alone to the door of the telegraph hut.
The door was ajar. She pushed it fully open.
Mr Braithwaite sat beside his table facing the doorway. He was staring at her with those pale popping eyes, and his mouth hung open.
‘Mr Braithwaite,’ Cathy said, and at the sound of her voice there was a hum like a swarm of bees taking flight, and the big cobalt blue flies that had covered his shirt-front rose in a cloud into the air, and Cathy saw that his belly was a gaping mushy red pit, and that his entrails hung in ropes down between his knees into a tangle on the floor under the desk.
Cathy shrank back against the door. She felt her legs turn rubbery under her and black shadows wheeled through her vision like the wings of bats at sundown. One of the metallic blue flies settled on her cheek and crawled sluggishly down towards the corner of her mouth.
Cathy leaned forward slowly and retched explosively, and her breakfast spattered on the wooden floor between her feet. She backed away slowly out of the door, shaking her head and trying to wipe the sickly sweet taste of vomit from her lips. She almost tripped on the steps, and sat down heavily. Jonathan ran to her, and clung to her arm.
‘What happened, Mummy?’
‘I want you to be a brave little man,’ she whispered.
‘Are you sick, Mummy?’ The child shook her arm with agitation, and Cathy found it difficult to think.
She realized what had caused the hideous mutilation of the corpse in the hut. The Matabele always disembowelled their victims. It was a ritual that released the spirit of the dead man, and allowed it to go on to its Valhalla. To leave the belly pouch was to trap the victim’s shade upon the earth and have it return to haunt the slayer.
Mr Braithwaite had been split by the razor-sharp edge of a Matabele assegai and his hot entrails had been plucked from him like those of a chicken. It was the work of a Matabele war party.
‘Where is Mr Henderson, Mummy?’ Jon-Jon demanded shrilly. ‘I am going to his tent.’
The big burly engineer was one of Jonathan’s favourite friends, and Cathy caught his arm.
‘No, Jon-Jon – don’t go!’
‘Why not?’
The crow had screwed up its courage at last and now it hopped into the opening of the engineer’s tent and disappeared. Cathy knew what had attracted it.
‘Please be quiet, Jon-Jon,’ Cathy pleaded. ‘Let Mummy think.’
The missing servants. They had been warned, of course, as had the Matabele construction gangs. They knew that a war party was out, and they had faded away – and a horrifying thought struck Cathy. Perhaps the servants, her own people, were part of the war party. She shook her head violently. No, not them. These must be some small band of renegades, not her own people.
They would have struck at dawn, of course, for it was the favourite hour. They had caught Henderson and his foreman asleep in the tents. Only the faithful little Braithwaite had been at his machine. The telegraph machine – Cathy started up – the telegraph was her one link with the outside world.
‘Jon-Jon, stay here,’ she ordered, and crept back towards the door of the hut.
She steeled herself, and then glanced into the interior, trying not to look at the little man in the chair. One quick glance was enough. The telegraph machine had been ripped from the wall and smashed into pieces on the floor of the hut. She reeled back and leaned against the iron wall beside the door, clutching her swollen stomach with both hands, forcing herself to think again.
The war party had struck the railhead and then disappeared back into the forest – and then she remembered the missing servants. The camp, they had not disappeared, they would be circling up through the trees towards the camp. She looked around her desperately, expecting at any moment to see the silent black files of plumed warriors come padding out of the thick bush.
The Service train from Kimberley was due late that afternoon, ten hours from now, and she was alone, except for Jonathan. Cathy sank down on her knees, reached for him and clung to him with the strength of despair, and only then realized that the boy was staring through the open doorway.
‘Mr Braithwaite is dead!’ Jonathan said matter-of-factly. Forcibly, she turned his head away. ‘They are going to kill us too, aren’t they, Mummy?’
‘Oh Jon-Jon!’
‘We need a gun. I can shoot. Papa taught me.’
A gun – Cathy looked towards the silent tents. She did not think she had the courage to go into one of them, not even to find a weapon. She knew what carnage to expect there.
A shadow fell over her and she screamed.
‘Nkosikazi. It is me.’
Isazi had come down the hill as silently as a panther.
‘The horses are gone,’ he said, and she motioned him to look into the telegraph hut.
Isazi’s expression did not change.
‘So,’ he said quietly, ‘the Matabele jackals can still bite.’
‘The tents,’ Cathy whispered. ‘See if you can find a weapon.’
Isazi went with the lithe swinging run of a man half his age, ducking from one tent-opening to another, and when he came back to her, he carried an assegai with a broken shaft.
‘The big one fought well. He was still alive, with his guts torn out of him and the crows were eating them. He could no longer speak, but he looked at me. I have given him peace. But there are no guns – the Matabele have taken them.’
‘There are guns at the camp,’ Cathy whispered.
‘Come, Nkosikazi,’ he lifted her tenderly to her feet and Jonathan manfully took her other arm, though he did not reach to her armpit.
The first pain hit Cathy before they reached the thick bush at the edge of the cut line, and it doubled her over. They held her while the paroxysm lasted, Jonathan not understanding what was happening, but the little Zulu was grave and silent.
‘All right.’ Cathy straightened up at last, and tried to wipe the long tendrils of her hair off her face, but they were plastered there by her own sweat.
They went up on the track at Cathy’s pace. Isazi was watching the forest on both sides for the dark movement of warriors, and he carried the broken assegai in his free hand with an underhand stabbing grip.
Cathy gasped and staggered as the next pain caught her. This time they could not hold her and she went down on her knees in the dust. When it passed, she looked up at Isazi.
‘They are too close together. It is happening.’
He did not have to reply.
‘Take Jonathan to the Harkness Mine.’
‘Nkosikazi, the train—’
‘The train will be too late. You must go.’
‘Nkosikazi – you, what will become of you?’
‘Without a horse, I could never reach the Harkness. It is almost thirty miles. Every moment you waste now wastes the boy’s life.’
He did not move.
‘If you can save him, Isazi, then you save part of me. If you stay here, we will all die. Go. Go quickly!’ she urged.
Isazi reached for Jonathan’s hand, but he jerked away.
‘I won’t leave my mummy.’ His voice rose hysterically. ‘My daddy said I must look after my mummy.’
Cathy gathered herself. It took all her determination to perform the most difficult task of her young life. She hit Jonathan open-handed across the face, back and forth, with all her strength. The child staggered away from her. The vivid crimson outlines of he
r fingers rising on the pale skin of his cheeks. She had never struck his face before.
‘Do as I tell you,’ Cathy blazed at him furiously. ‘Go with Isazi this very instant.’
The Zulu snatched up the child, and looked down at her for a moment longer.
‘You have the heart of a lioness. I salute you, Nkosikazi.’ And he went bounding away into the forest, carrying Jonathan with him. In seconds he had disappeared and then only did she let the sobs come shaking and choking up her throat.
She thought then that being entirely alone is the hardest thing in life to bear. She thought of Ralph, and she had never loved nor wanted him the way she did at that moment. It seemed for a time that she had used the last grain of her courage to strike her only child, and to send him away for a faint chance of salvation. She would be content to stay here, kneeling in the dust in the early sunlight until they came for her with the cruel steel.
Then from somewhere deep within her she found the strength to rise and hobble on up the path. At the heel of the hill, she looked down at the camp. It looked so quiet and orderly. Her home. The smoke from the camp-fire rose like a pale grey feather into the still morning air, so welcoming, so safe; illogically she felt that if she could only reach her tent then it would be all right.
She started and she had not gone a dozen paces, before she felt something burst deep within her, and then the abrupt hot rush down the inside of her legs as her waters broke and poured from her. She struggled on, hampered by her sodden skirts, and then, unbelievably, she had reached her own tent.
It was so cool and dark within, like a church, she thought, and again her legs gave way beneath her. She crawled painfully across the floor, and her hair came tumbling down and blinded her. She groped her way to the wagon chest set at the foot of the big camp cot, and threw the hair out of her eyes as she rested against it.
The lid was so heavy that it took all her strength, but at last it fell open with a crash. The pistol was tucked under the crocheted white bedcovers, that she had hoarded for the home that Ralph would one day build for her. It was a big service Webley revolver. She had only fired it once, with Ralph steadying her from behind, holding her wrists against the recoil.
Now it needed both her hands to lift it out of the chest. She was too tired to climb onto the cot. She sat with her back against the chest, both her legs straight out in front of her flat against the floor, and she held the pistol with both hands in her lap.
She must have dozed, for when she started awake, it was to hear the whisper of feet against the bare earth. She looked up. There was the shadow of a man silhouetted by the slanting rays of the sun against the white canvas of the tent like a figure in a magic lantern show. She lifted the pistol and aimed at the entrance. The ugly black weapon wavered uncertainly in her grip, and a man stepped through the flap.
‘Oh, thank God.’ Cathy let the pistol fall into her lap. ‘Oh thank God, it’s you,’ she whispered and let her head fall forward. The thick curtain of her hair fell open, splitting down the back of her head, exposing the pale skin at the tender nape of her neck. Bazo looked down at it. He saw a soft pulse throbbing beneath the skin.
Bazo wore only a kilt of civet-tails, and about his forehead a band of mole-skin – no feathers nor tassels. His feet were bare. In his left hand he held a broad stabbing assegai. In his right he carried a knobkerrie like the mace of a medieval knight. The handle was of polished rhinoceros horn, three feet long, and the head was a ball of heavy leadwood studded with hand-forged nails of native iron.
When he swung the knobkerrie, all the strength of his wide shoulders was behind the blow, and his point of aim was the pulse in the pale nape of Cathy’s neck.
Two of his warriors came into the tent and flanked Bazo, their eyes were still glazed with the killing madness. They also wore the mole-skin headbands, and they looked down at the crumpled body on the floor of the tent. One of the warriors changed his grip on the assegai, ready for the cutting stroke.
‘The woman’s spirit must fly,’ he said.
‘Do it!’ Bazo said, and the warrior stooped and worked quickly, expertly.
‘There is life within her,’ he said. ‘See! It moves yet.’
‘Still it!’ Bazo ordered, and left the tent, striding out into the sunlight.
‘Find the boy,’ he ordered his men who waited there. ‘Find the white cub.’
The driver of the locomotive was terrified. They had stopped for a few minutes at the trading-post beside the tracks at Plumtree siding, and he had seen the bodies of the storekeeper and his family lying in the front yard.
Ralph Ballantyne thrust the muzzle of the rifle between his shoulder-blades, and marched him back to the cab, forcing him to go on northwards, deeper and deeper into Matabeleland.
They had come all the way from the Kimberley shunting-yards with the loco throttle wide open, and Ralph had spelled the stoker on the footplate, shovelling the lumpy black coal into the firebox with a monotonous rhythm, bare-chested and sweating in the furnace glare, the coal dust blackening his face and arms like those of a chimney-sweep, his palms wet and raw from the burst blisters.
They had clipped almost two hours off the record run to the railhead. As they came roaring around the bend between the hills and saw the iron roof of the telegraph shack, Ralph hurled the shovel aside and clambered onto the side of the cab to peer ahead.
His heart leaped joyfully against his ribs, there was movement around the hut and between the tents, there was life here! Then his heart dropped as swiftly as it had risen, as he recognized the skulking dog-like shapes.
The hyena were so intent on squabbling over the things they had dragged out of the tents, that they were totally unafraid. It was only when Ralph started shooting that they scattered. He knocked down half a dozen of the loathsome beasts before the rifle was empty. He ran from the hut to each tent in turn, and then back to the locomotive. Neither the driver nor the fireman had left the cab.
‘Mr Ballantyne, these murdering bloody ‘eathen will be back at any minute—’
‘Wait!’ Ralph shouted at him, and scrambled up the side of the cattle-truck behind the coal buggy. He knocked out the locking-pins and the door came crashing down to form a drawbridge.
Ralph led the horses out of the truck. There were four of them, one already saddled, the best mounts he had been able to find. He paused only long enough to clinch the girth, and then swung up into the saddle with the rifle still in his hand.
‘I’m not going to wait here,’ the driver yelled. ‘Christ Almighty, those niggers are animals, man, animals.’
‘If my wife and son are here, I’ll need to get them back. Give me one hour,’ Ralph asked.
‘I’m not waiting another minute. I’m going back.’ The driver shook his head.
‘You can go to hell then,’ Ralph told him coldly.
He kicked his horse into a gallop, and dragging the spare mounts on the lead-rein behind him, took the track up the side of the kopje towards the camp.
As he rode, he thought once more that perhaps he should have listened to Aaron Fagan, perhaps he should have recruited a dozen other horsemen in Kimberley to go with him. But he knew that he would never have been able to abide the few hours that he would have needed to find good men. As it was, he had left Kimberley less than half an hour after he had received the telegraph from Tati – just long enough to fetch his Winchester, fill the saddlebags with ammunition, and take the horses from Aaron’s stables to the shunting-yard.
Before he turned the angle of the hill, he glanced back over his shoulder. The locomotive was already huffing back along the curve of the rails towards the south. Now, as far as he knew, he might be the only white man left alive in Matabeleland.
Ralph galloped into the camp. They had been there already. The camp had been looted, Jonathan’s tent had collapsed, his clothing was scattered and trampled into the dust.
‘Cathy,’ Ralph shouted, as he dismounted. ‘Jon-Jon! Where are you?’
Paper r
ustled under his feet and Ralph looked down. Cathy’s portfolio of drawings had been thrown down and had burst open, the paintings of which she was so proud were torn and crumpled. Ralph picked up one of them, it was of the lovely dark scarlet trumpet flowers of Kigelia africana, the African sausage tree. He tried to smooth out the rumpled sheet, and then realized the futility of that gesture.
He ran on to their living-tent, and ripped open the flap.
Cathy lay on her back with her unborn child beside her. She had promised Ralph a daughter – and she had kept her promise.
He fell on his knees beside her, and tried to lift her head, but her body had set into an awful rigidity, she was stiff as a carven statue in marble. As he lifted her, he saw the great cup-shaped depression in the back of her skull.
Ralph backed away, and then flung himself out of the tent.
‘Jonathan,’ he screamed. ‘Jon-Jon! Where are you?’
He ran through the camp like a madman.
‘Jonathan! Please, Jonathan!’
When he found no living thing, he stumbled into the forest up onto the slope of the kopje.
‘Jonathan! It’s Daddy. Where are you, my darling?’
Dimly in his anguish he realized that his cries might bring the amadoda, as the bleat of the goat brings the leopard, and suddenly he wanted that to happen with all his soul.
‘Come!’ he yelled into the silent forest. ‘Come on. Come and find me also!’ And he stopped to fire the Winchester into the air, and listen to the echoes go bounding away down the valley.
At last he could run and scream no more, and he came up panting against the bole of one of the forest trees.
‘Jonathan,’ he croaked. ‘Where are you, my baby?’
Slowly he turned down and went down the hill. He moved like a very old man.
At the edge of the camp, he stopped and peered shortsightedly at something that lay in the grass, then he stopped and picked it up. He turned it over and over in his hands, and then balled it into his fist. His knuckles turned white with the strength of his grip. What he held was a headband of softly tanned mole-skin.
Still holding the scrap of fur in his hand, he went into the camp to prepare his dead for burial.