Power of the Sword

by Wilbur Smith

  Still carrying the child, he led them down the hill towards the largest of the clusters of huts, and he stooped through the opening in the matting fence. The yard was bare and swept, the circle of huts facing inwards. There were four women working in a group, all of them wearing only loincloths of coloured trade cotton; they rocked on the balls of their feet, singing softly in chorus, stamping and crushing the raw dried maize in tall wooden mortars, their bare breasts jerking and quivering with each stroke of the long poles they wielded as pestles in time to their chant.

  One of the women shrieked when she saw Hendrick and rushed to him. She was an ancient crone, wrinkled and toothless, her pate covered with pure white wool. She dropped on her knees and hugged Hendrick’s thick powerful legs, crooning with happiness.

  ‘My mother,’ said Hendrick, and lifted her to her feet. Then they were surrounded by a swarm of delighted chattering women, but after a few minutes Hendrick quieted them and shooed them away.

  ‘You are lucky, Manie,’ he grunted, with a sparkle in his eyes. ‘You will be allowed only one wife.’

  At the entrance to the farthest hut the only man in the kraal sat on a low carved stool. He had kept completely aloof from the screeching excitement, and now Hendrick crossed to him. He was much younger than Hendrick, with paler, almost honey-coloured skin. However, his muscle had been forged and tempered by hard physical labour, and there was a confidence about him, that of a man who has striven and succeeded. He had also an air of grace, and fine intelligent features with a Nilotic cast like those of a young pharaoh. Surprisingly he held a thick battered book in his lap, a copy of Macaulay’s History of England.

  He greeted Hendrick with calm reserve, but their mutual affection was apparent to the white boy watching them.

  ‘This is my clever young brother; same father, but different mothers. He speaks Afrikaans and much better English than even I do, and he reads books. His English name is Moses.’

  ‘I see you, Moses.’ Manie felt awkward under the penetrating scrutiny of those dark eyes.

  ‘I see you, little white boy.’

  ‘Do not call me “boy”,’ Manie said hotly. ‘I am not a “boy”.’

  The men exchanged glances and smiled. ‘Moses is a boss-boy on the H’ani Diamond Mine,’ Hendrick explained in placatory fashion, but the tall Ovambo shook his head and replied in the vernacular.

  ‘No longer, Big Brother. I was sacked over a month ago. So I sit here in the sun drinking beer and reading and thinking, performing all those onerous tasks which are a man’s duty.’ They laughed together, and Moses clapped his hands and called to the women imperiously.

  ‘Bring beer – do you not see how my brother thirsts?’

  For Hendrick it was good to divest himself of his western European clothing and dress again in the comfortable loincloth, to let himself drift back into the pace of village life. It was good to savour the tart effervescent sorghum beer, thick as gruel and cool in the clay pots, and to talk quietly of cattle and game, of crops and rain, of acquaintances and friends and relatives, of deaths and births and matings. It was a long leisurely time before they came circumspectly to the pressing issues which had to be discussed.

  ‘Yes,’ Moses nodded. ‘The police were here. Two dogs of the white men in Windhoek who should be ashamed to have betrayed their own tribe. They were not dressed in uniform, but still they had the stink of police upon them. They stayed many days, asking questions about a man called Swart Hendrick – smiling and friendly at first, then angry and threatening. They beat a few of the women, your mother—’ He saw Hendrick stiffen and his jaw clench and went on quickly, ‘She is old but tough. She has been beaten before; our father was a strict man. Despite the blows, she did not know Swart Hendrick, nobody knew Swart Hendrick, and the police dogs went away.’

  ‘They will return,’ said Hendrick, and his half-brother nodded.

  ‘Yes. The white men never forget. Five years, ten years. They hanged a man in Pretoria for killing a man twenty-five years before. They will return.’

  They drank in turn from the pot of beer, sipping with relish and then passing the black pot from hand to hand.

  ‘So there was talk of a great robbery of diamonds on the road from the H’ani, and they mentioned the name of the white devil with whom you have always ridden and fought, with whom you went out on the big green to catch fish. They say that you were with him at the taking of the diamonds, and that they will hang you on a rope when they find you.’

  Hendrick chuckled and counterattacked. ‘I also have heard stories of a fellow who is neither unknown nor unrelated to me. I have heard he is well versed in the disposal of stolen diamonds. That all the stones taken from the H’ani Mine pass through his hands.’

  ‘Now who could have told you such vile lies?’ Moses smiled faintly, and Hendrick gestured to Klein Boy. He brought a rawhide bag from its hiding place and placed it in front of his father. Hendrick opened the flap and, one at a time, lifted out the small packages of brown cartridge paper and laid them on the hard bare earth of the yard – fourteen in a row.

  His brother took up the first package and with his sheath knife split the wax seal. ‘This is the mark of the H’ani Mine,’ he remarked, and carefully unfolded the paper. His expression did not change as he examined the contents. He placed the package aside and opened the next. He did not speak until he had opened all fourteen, and studied them. Then he said softly, ‘Death. There is death here. A hundred deaths, a thousand deaths.’

  ‘Can you sell them for us?’ Hendrick asked, and Moses shook his head.

  ‘I have never seen such stones, so many together. To try to sell these all at once would bring disaster and death upon us all. I must think upon this, but in the meantime we dare not keep these deadly stones in the kraal.’

  The next morning in the dawn the three of them – Hendrick and Moses and Klein Boy – left the village together and climbed to the crest of the ridge where they found the leadwood tree that Hendrick remembered from the days when he roamed here as a naked herdboy. There was a hollow in the trunk, thirty feet above the ground, which had been the nesting hole of a pair of eagle owls.

  While the others stood guard, Klein Boy climbed to the nesting hole, carrying the rawhide bag.

  It was many days more before Moses gave his carefully considered summation.

  ‘My brother, you and I are no longer of this life or this place. Already I have seen the first restlessness in you. I have seen you look out to the horizon with the expression of a man who longs to breast them. This life, so sweet at first, palls swiftly. The taste of beer goes flat on the tongue, and a man thinks of the brave things he has done, and the braver things which wait for him still somewhere out there.’

  Hendrick smiled. ‘You are a man of many skills, my brother, even that of looking into a man’s head and reading his secret thoughts.’

  ‘We cannot stay here. The death stones are too dangerous to keep here, too dangerous to sell.’

  Hendrick nodded. ‘I am listening,’ he said.

  ‘There are things which I have to do. Things which I believe are in my destiny, and of which I have never spoken, not even to you.’

  ‘Speak of them now.’

  ‘I speak of the art which the white men call politics and from which we as black men are excluded.’

  Hendrick made a dismissive scornful gesture. ‘You read too many books. There is no profit or reward in that business. Leave it to the white men.’

  ‘You are wrong, my brother. In that art lie treasures which make your little white stones seem paltry. No, do not scoff.’

  Hendrick opened his mouth and then closed it slowly. He had not truly thought about this before, but the young man facing him had a powerful presence, a quivering intensity which stirred and excited him although he did not understand fully the implication of his words.

  ‘My brother, I have decided. We will leave here. It is too small for us.’

  Hendrick nodded. The thought did not disturb him. H
e had been a nomad all his life, and he was ready to move on again.

  ‘Not only this kraal, my brother. We will leave this land.’

  ‘Leave this land!’ Hendrick started up and then sank back on his stool.

  ‘We have to do this. This land is too small for us and the stones.’

  ‘Where will we go?’

  His brother held up his hand. ‘We will discuss that soon, but first you must rid us of this white child you have brought amongst us. He is even more dangerous than the stones. He will bring the white police down upon us even more swiftly. When you have done that, my brother, we will be ready to go on to do what we have to do.’

  Swart Hendrick was a man of great strength, both physical and mental. He feared very little, would attempt anything and suffer much for what he wanted, but always he had followed someone else. Always there had been a man even fiercer and more fearless than he to lead him.

  ‘We will do as you say, my brother,’ he agreed, and he knew instinctively that he had found someone to replace the man he had left to die upon a rock in the desert.

  ‘I will wait here until the sun rises tomorrow,’ Swart Hendrick told the white boy. ‘If you do not return by then, I will know you are safe.’

  ‘Will I see you again, Hennie?’ Manie asked wistfully, and Hendrick hesitated on the brink of empty promise.

  ‘I think that our feet will be on different paths from now on, Manie.’ He reached out and placed a hand on Manfred’s shoulder. ‘But I shall think of you often – and, who knows, one day the paths may come together again.’ He squeezed the boy’s shoulder and he noticed that it was sheathed in muscle, like that of a man full grown. ‘Go in peace, and be a man like your father was.’

  He pushed Manfred away lightly, but the white boy lingered. ‘Hendrick,’ he whispered, ‘there are many things I want to say to you – but I do not have the words.’

  ‘Go,’ Hendrick said. ‘We both know. It does not have to be spoken of. Go, Manie.’

  Manfred picked up his pack and blanket roll and stepped out of the undergrowth onto the dusty rutted road. He started down towards the village, towards the spire of the church which he recognized somehow as a symbol of a new existence, that at once both beckoned and repelled him.

  At the bend in the road he looked back. There was no sign of the big Ovambo, and he turned and trudged down the main street towards the church at the far end.

  Without conscious decision he turned from the main street down a side opening and approached the pastory along the sanitary lane as he had done on the last visit with his father. The narrow lane was hedged with fleshy moroto plants, and he whiffed the sanitary buckets behind the little sliding doors of the outhouses that backed onto the lane. He hesitated at the back gate of the pastory and then lifted the latch and started at a snail’s pace up the long pathway.

  Halfway along the path he was stopped by a bellow, and he stared about him apprehensively. There was another roar and a loud voice lifted in exhortation or acrimonious argument. It came from a ramshackle building at the bottom of the yard, a large woodshed perhaps.

  Manfred sidled down towards the shed and peered around the jamb of the door. The interior was dark but as his eyes adjusted Manfred saw that it was a toolroom, with an anvil and forge at one end and tools hanging on the walls. The earthen floor was bare and in the centre of it knelt Tromp Bierman, the trumpet of God.

  He was wearing dark suit trousers and a white shirt with the white tie of his office. His suit jacket hung on a pair of blacksmith’s tongs above the anvil. Tromp Bierman’s bushy beard was pointed to the roof and his eyes were closed, his arms lifted in an attitude of surrender or supplication; but his tone was far from submissive.

  ‘Oh Lord God of Israel, I call upon you most urgently to give answer to your servant’s prayers for guidance in this matter. How can I perform your will if I do not know what it is? I am only a humble instrument, I dare not take this decision alone. Look down, oh Lord God, have pity on my ignorance and stupidity and make known your intentions—’

  Tromp broke off suddenly and opened his eyes. The great shaggy leonine head turned, and the eyes, like those of an Old Testament prophet, burned into Manfred’s soul.

  Hastily Manfred snatched the shapeless sweatstained hat from his head and held it with both hands to his chest.

  ‘I have come back, Oom,’ he said. ‘Just like you said I must.’

  Tromp stared at him ferociously. He saw a sturdy lad, broad-shouldered and with powerful shapely limbs, a head of dusty golden curls and contrasting eyebrows black as coal dust over strange topaz-coloured eyes. He tried to see beyond the pale surface of those eyes and was aware of an aura of determination and lucid intelligence that surrounded the youth.

  ‘Come here,’ he ordered, and Manfred dropped his pack and went to him. Tromp seized him by the hand and dragged him down.

  ‘Kneel, Jong, get down on your knees and give thanks to your Maker. Praise the Lord God of your fathers that he has heard my supplications on your behalf.’

  Dutifully Manfred closed his eyes and clasped his hand.

  ‘Oh Lord, forgive your servant’s importunity in bringing to your notice such other trivial matters, when in fact you were occupied with more dire affairs. We thank you for delivering into our care this young person, whom we shall temper and hone into a sword. A mighty blade that shall strike down the Philistine, a weapon that shall be wielded to your glory, in the just and righteous cause of your chosen people, the Afrikaner Volk.’ He prodded Manfred with a forefinger like a pruning shear.

  ‘Amen!’ Manfred gasped at the pain.

  ‘We will glorify and praise you all the days of our life, O Lord, and we beg of you to bestow upon this chosen son of our people the fortitude and the determination—’

  The prayer, punctuated by Manfred’s fervent ‘Amens’ lasted until Manfred’s knees ached and he was dizzy with fatigue and hunger. Then suddenly Tromp hauled him to his feet and marched him up the path to the kitchen door.

  ‘Mevrou,’ the trumpet of God sounded. ‘Where are you, woman?’

  Trudi Bierman rushed breathlessly into the kitchen at the summons and then stopped aghast, staring at the boy in ragged, filthy clothing.

  ‘My kitchen,’ she wailed. ‘My beautiful clean kitchen. I have just waxed the floor.’

  ‘The Lord God has sent this Jong to us,’ Tromp intoned. ‘We will take him into our home. He will eat at our table, he will be as one of our own.’

  ‘But he is filthy as a kaffir.’

  ‘Then wash him, woman, wash him.’

  At that moment a girl slipped timidly through the doorway behind the matronly figure of Trudi Bierman and then stiffened like a frightened fawn as she saw Manfred.

  Manfred barely recognized Sarah. She had filled out, firm well-scrubbed flesh covered her elbows, which had so recently been bony lumps on sticklike arms. Her once pale cheeks were apple pink, the eyes that had been lacklustre were clear and bright, her blond hair, brushed until it shone, was plaited into twin pigtails and pinned on top of her head, and she wore long modest but spotless skirts to her ankles.

  She let out a cry and rushed at Manfred with arms outstretched, but Trudi Bierman seized her from behind and shook her soundly.

  ‘You lazy wicked girl. I left you to finish your sums. Back you go this instant.’ She pushed her roughly from the room and turned back to Manfred, her arms folded and her mouth pursed.

  ‘You are disgusting,’ she told him. ‘Your hair is long as a girl’s. Those clothes—’ Her expression hardened even more fearsomely. ‘And we are Christian folk in this house. We’ll have none of your father’s godless wild ways, do you understand?’

  ‘I’m hungry, Aunt Trudi.’

  ‘You’ll eat when everybody else eats, and not before you are clean.’ She looked at her husband. ‘Menheer, will you show the boy how to build a fire in the hotwater geyser?’

  She stood in the doorway of the tiny bathroom and remorselessly supervised his ablu
tions, brushing aside all his attempts at modesty and his protests at the temperature of the water, and when he faltered, taking the bar of blue mottled soap herself and scrubbing his most tender and intimate creases and folds.

  Then with only a skimpy towel about his waist she led him by the ear down the back steps and sat him on a fruit box. She armed herself with a pair of sheep shears and Manfred’s blond hair fell about his shoulders like wheat before the scythe. When he ran his hand over his scalp it was stubbly and bristly and the back of his neck and the skin behind his ears felt cool and draughty.

  Trudi Bierman gathered up his discarded clothing with a pantomime of distaste and opened the furnace of the geyser. Manfred was only just in time to rescue his jacket, and when she saw his expression as he backed away from her, holding the garment behind his back and surreptitiously fingering the small lumps in the lining, she shrugged.

  ‘Very well – perhaps with a wash and a few patches. In the meantime I’ll find you some of the dominie’s old things.’

  Trudi Bierman took Manfred’s appetite as a personal challenge to her kitchen and her culinary skills. She kept heaping his plate even before he had finished, standing over him with a ladle in one hand and the handle of the stewpot in the other. When at last he fell back satiated, she went to fetch the milk tart from the pantry with a victorious gleam in her eye.

  As strangers in the family, Manfred and Sarah were allocated the lowliest seats in the centre of the table, the two plump, pudding-faced, blond Bierman daughters sitting above them.

  Sarah picked at her food so lightly that she earned Trudi Bierman’s ire. ‘I didn’t cook good food for you to fiddle with, young lady. You’ll sit here as long as it takes you to clean your place, spinach and all – even if that takes all night.’ And Sarah chewed mechanically, never taking her eyes from Manfred’s face.

  It was the first time that Manfred had paid for a meal with two graces, before and after, and each of them seemed interminable. He was nodding and swaying in his chair when Tromp Bierman startled him fully awake with an ‘Amen’ like a salvo of artillery.