Power of the Sword

by Wilbur Smith

  He purchased a partnership in a prosperous Stellenbosch law firm. The senior partner was an attorney named Van Schoor, very active in politics and a luminary of the Nationalist Party. He sponsored Manfred’s entry into the Party.

  Manfred devoted himself to the affairs of Van Schoor and De La Rey and just as single-mindedly to those of the Cape Nationalist Party. He showed great skills as an organizer and as a fund-raiser, and by the end of 1947 he was a member of the Broederbond.

  The Broederbond, or brotherhood, was another secret society of Afrikaners. It had not replaced the defunct Ossewa Brandwag, but had existed concurrently, and often in competition with it. Unlike the OB it was not flamboyant and overtly militant, there were no uniforms or torchlit rallies.

  It worked quietly in small groups in the homes and offices of powerful and influential men for membership was only bestowed upon the brightest and the best. It considered its members to be an elite of super-Afrikaners, whose end object was the formation of an Afrikaner Republic. Like the disbanded OB, the secrecy surrounding it was iron-clad. Unlike the OB, a member must be much more than merely a pure-blooded Afrikaner. He must be a leader of men, or at the very least a potential leader, and an invitation to join the brotherhood held within it the promise of high political preference and favour in the future Republic.

  Manfred’s first rewards of membership came almost immediately, for when the campaign for the general election of 1948 opened, Manfred De La Rey was nominated as the official Nationalist candidate for the marginal seat of Hottentots Holland.

  Two years previously, in a by-election, the seat had been won for Smuts’ United Party by a young war-hero from a rich English-speaking Cape family. As the incumbent, Shasa Courtney had been nominated by the United Party as their candidate to contest the general election.

  Manfred De La Rey had been offered a safer seat but he had deliberately chosen Hottentots Holland. He wanted the opportunity to meet Shasa Courtney again. He recalled vividly their first meeting on the fish jetty at Walvis Bay. Since then their destinies seemed to have been inextricably bound together in a knot of Gordian complexity, and Manfred sensed that he had to face this adversary one more time and unravel that knot.

  To prepare himself for the campaign as well as to satisfy his brooding enmity towards them, Manfred began an investigation of the Courtney family, in particular Shasa and his mother Mrs Centaine de Thiry Courtney. Almost immediately he found areas of mystery in the woman’s past, and these grew deeper as his investigations continued. Finally he was sufficiently encouraged to employ a Parisian firm of private investigators to examine in detail Centaine’s family background and her origins.

  On his regular monthly visit to his father in Pretoria Central Prison, he brought up the Courtney name and begged the frail old man to tell him everything he knew about them.

  When the campaign opened, Manfred knew that his investigations had given him an important advantage, and he threw himself into the rough and tumble of a South African election with gusto and determination.

  Centaine de Thiry Courtney stood on the top of Table Mountain, a little apart from the rest of the party. Since Sir Garry’s murder the mountain always saddened her, even when she looked at it from the windows of her study at Weltevreden. This was the first time that she had been on the summit since that tragic day, and she was here only because she could not refuse Blaine’s invitation to act as his official partner. ‘And, of course, I am still enough of a snob to relish the idea of being introduced to the king and the queen of England!’ She was truthful with herself.

  The Ou Baas was chatting to King George, pointing out the landmarks with his cane. He was wearing his old Panama hat and baggy slacks, and Centaine felt a pang at his resemblance to Sir Garry. She turned away.

  Blaine was with the small group around the royal princesses. He was telling a story and Margaret Rose laughed delightedly. ‘How pretty she is,’ Centaine thought. ‘What a complexion, a royal English rose.’ The princess turned and said something to one of the other young men. Centaine had been introduced to him earlier; he was an airforce officer as Shasa was, a handsome fellow with a fine sensitive face, she thought, and then her female instincts were alerted as she caught the secret glance the couple exchanged. It was unmistakable, and Centaine felt that little lift of her spirits she always enjoyed when she saw two young people in love.

  It was followed almost immediately by a return of her sombre mood. Thinking of love and young lovers, she studied Blaine. He was unaware of her gaze, relaxed and charming, but there was silver in his hair, shining silver wings above those sticky-out ears she loved so well, and there were deep creases in his tanned face, around the eyes and at the corners of his mouth and his big aquiline nose. Still his body was hard and flat-bellied from riding and walking, but he was like the old lion, and with a further slide of her spirits she faced the fact that he was no longer in his prime. Instead he stood at the threshold of old age.

  ‘Oh, God,’ she thought, ‘even I will be forty-eight years old in a few months,’ and she lifted her hand to touch her head. There was silver there also, but so artfully tinted that it seemed merely a bleaching of the African sun. There were other unpalatable truths that her mirror revealed to her in the privacy of her boudoir, before she hid them with the creams and powders and rouges.

  ‘How much more time is there, my darling?’ she asked sadly but silently. ‘Yesterday we were young and immortal, but today I see at last that there is a term to all things.’

  At that moment Blaine looked across at her, and she saw his quick concern as he noticed her expression. He murmured an apology to the others and came to her side.

  ‘Why so serious on such a lovely day?’ he smiled.

  ‘I was thinking how shameless you are, Blaine Malcomess,’ she answered, and his smile slipped.

  ‘What is it, Centaine?’

  ‘How can you blatantly parade your mistress before the crowned heads of Empire,’ she demanded. ‘I have no doubt it is a capital crime, you could have your head struck off on Tower Green!’

  He stared at her for a moment, and then the grin came back, boyish and jubilant. ‘My dear lady, there must be some way I can escape that fate. What if I were to change your status – from scarlet mistress to demure wife?’

  She giggled. She very seldom did that, but when she did, he found it irresistible. ‘What an extraordinary time and place to receive a proposal of marriage, and an even more extraordinary time and place to accept one.’

  ‘What do you think their majesties would say if I were to kiss you here and now?’ He leaned towards her and she leapt back startled.

  ‘Crazy man, you just wait until I get you home,’ she threatened. He took her arm and they went to join the company.

  ‘Weltevreden is one of the loveliest homes in the Cape,’ Blaine agreed. ‘But it doesn’t belong to me – and I want to carry my bride over the threshold of my own home.’

  ‘We cannot live in Newlands House.’ Centaine did not have to say more, and for a moment Isabella’s ghost passed between them like a dark shadow.

  ‘What about the cottage?’ He laughed to banish Isabella’s memory. ‘It’s got a magnificent bed, what else do we need?’

  ‘We’ll keep that,’ she agreed. ‘And every now and then we will slip away to revisit it.’

  ‘Dirty weekends, good-oh!’

  ‘You are vulgar, do you know that?’

  ‘So where shall we live?’

  ‘We will find a place. Our own special place.’

  It was five hundred acres of mountain, beach and rocky coastline with a profusion of protea plants and grand views across Hout Bay and out to the cold green Atlantic.

  The house was a huge rambling Victorian mansion, built at the turn of the century by one of the old mining magnates from the Witwatersrand, and in desperate need of the attention that Centaine proceeded to lavish upon it. However, she kept the name Rhodes Hill. For her one of its chief attractions was that a mere twenty minute
s in the Daimler took her over the Constantia Nek pass and down to the vineyards of Weltevreden.

  Shasa had taken over the chairmanship of Courtney Mining and Finance at the war’s end, although Centaine kept a seat on the board and never missed a meeting. Now Shasa and Tara moved into the great château of Weltevreden that she had vacated, but Centaine visited there every weekend and sometimes more often. It gave her a pang when Tara rearranged the furniture that she had left and relandscaped the front lawns and gardens, but with an effort she managed to hold her tongue.

  Often these days she thought of the old Bushman couple who had rescued her from the sea and the desert, and then she would sing softly the praise song that O’wa had composed for the infant Shasa:

  His arrows will fly to the stars

  and when men speak his name

  it will be heard as far –

  And he will find good water,

  wherever he travels, he will find good water.

  Although after all these years the clicks and tones of the San language tripped strangely on her tongue, she knew that the blessing of O’wa had borne fruit. That, and her own rigorous training had led Shasa to the good waters of life.

  Gradually Shasa with the help of David Abrahams in Windhoek had instilled into the sprawling Courtney Mining and Finance Company a new spirit of youthful vigour and adventure. Although the old hands, Abe Abrahams and Twentyman-Jones, grumbled and shook their heads and although Centaine was occasionally forced to side with them and veto Shasa’s wilder more risky projects, the company regained direction and increased in stature. Each time that Centaine examined the books or took her seat below her son at the boardroom table, there was less to complain about and more cause for self-congratulation. Even Dr Twentyman-Jones, that paragon of pessimists, had been heard to mutter, ‘The boy has got a head on his shoulders.’ And then appalled at his own lapse, he had added morosely, ‘Mind you, it will take a full day’s work from all of us to keep it there.’

  When Shasa had been nominated as the United Party candidate for the parliamentary by-election of Hottentots Holland and had snatched a close-fought victory from his Nationalist opponent, Centaine saw all her ambitions for him becoming reality. He would almost certainly be offered something more important after the next general election, perhaps the job as deputy minister of mines and industry. After that, a full seat in the cabinet, and beyond that? She let the idea of it send little thrills up her spine, but did not allow herself to dwell on it in case the thought brought ill-fortune on the actuality. Still it was possible. Her son was well favoured, even the eye-patch added to his individuality, he spoke amusingly and articulately, and he had the trick of making people listen and like him. He was rich and ambitious and clever – and he had herself and Tara behind him. It was possible and more than possible.

  By some remarkable dialectic contortion Tara Malcomess Courtney had retained her social conscience intact while taking up the management of the Weltevreden household as though to the manner born.

  It was typical that she retained her maiden name, and that she could rush from the elegant surroundings of Weltevreden to the slum clinics and feeding centres for the poor out on the Cape flats without missing a step, taking with her larger charitable donations than Shasa really liked to part with.

  She threw herself into the duties of motherhood with equal abandon. Her first three efforts were all male, healthy and rumbustious. In order of seniority they were Sean, Garrick and Michael. With her fourth visit to the childbed she produced, with little effort and time wasted in labour, her masterpiece. This one Tara named after her own mother, Isabella, and from the moment he first picked her up and she puked a little sour clotted milk on his shoulder, Shasa was totally besotted with her.

  Up to this time it was Tara’s spirit and intriguing individuality that had kept Shasa from growing bored and responding to the subtle and less than subtle invitations that were showered on him by circling female predators.

  Centaine, fully aware that Shasa’s veins were charged with hot de Thiry blood, agonized that Tara seemed oblivious of the danger and dismissed her veiled warnings with an offhand, ‘Oh, Mater, Shasa isn’t like that.’ Centaine knew that was exactly the way he was. ‘Mon Dieu, he started at fourteen.’ But she relaxed after the other woman finally entered his life in the shape of Isabella de Thiry Malcomess Courtney. It would have been so easy for a fatal slip to spoil it all, to dash the sweet cup from her lips just as she was able to savour it to the full, but now at last Centaine was secure.

  She sat under the oaks beside the polo practice grounds of Weltevreden, a guest on the estate she had built up and cherished, but an honoured guest and well content. The coloured nannies had charge of the babies, Michael just a year and a bit and Isabella still at the breast.

  Sean was out in the middle of the field. He sat on the pommel of Shasa’s saddle, shrieking with excitement and delight, as his father ran the pony at a full gallop down between the far goal posts, brought him up short in a swirl of dust, pivoted and came back in a crescendo of hoof beats. Meanwhile Sean, secure in the circle of Shasa’s left arm, urged him ‘Faster! Faster, Papa! Go faster!’

  On Centaine’s knee Garrick bounced impatiently, ‘Me!’ he yelled. ‘Now me!’

  Shasa brought the pony in still at full gallop, then reined him down to a dead stop. He lifted Sean off the pommel against his best effort to stick like a bush tick. Garrick slipped off Centaine’s lap and toddled to his father.

  ‘Me, Daddy, my turn!’

  Shasa leaned out of the saddle, swung the child up in front of him and they were off again at a gallop. It was a game of which they never tired; they had already exhausted two ponies since lunchtime.

  There was the sound of a motor vehicle coming down from the château, and Centaine sprang to her feet involuntarily as she recognized the distinctive beat of the Bentley’s engine. Then she composed herself and went to meet Blaine with a little more dignity than her eagerness dictated, but as he stepped out of the vehicle she saw his expression and she quickened her step.

  ‘What is it, Blaine?’ she demanded as he kissed her cheek. ‘Is something wrong?’

  ‘No, of course not,’ he assured her. ‘The Nationalists have announced their candidates for the Cape constituencies, that’s all.’

  ‘Who have they put up against you?’ She was all attention now. ‘Old Van Schoor again?’

  ‘No, my dear, new blood. Someone you have probably never heard of, Dawid Van Niekerk.’

  ‘Who have they nominated for Hottentots Holland?’ When he hesitated, she was immediately insistent. ‘Who is it, Blaine?’

  He took her arm and began to walk her slowly back to join the family at the tea-table under the oaks.

  ‘Life is a strange thing,’ he said.

  ‘Blaine Malcomess, I asked you for an answer, not a few gems of homespun philosophy. Who is it?’

  ‘I’m sorry my dear,’ he murmured regretfully. ‘They have nominated Manfred De La Rey as their official party candidate.’

  Centaine stopped dead, and she felt the blood drain from her face. Blaine tightened his grip on her arm to steady her as she swayed on her feet. Since the beginning of the war Centaine had heard or seen nothing of her second, unacknowledged, son.

  Shasa began his campaign with an open meeting in the Boy Scouts hall of Somerset West.

  He and Tara drove out the thirty miles from Cape Town to this beautiful little village which nestled at the foot of Sir Lowry’s Pass beneath the rugged barrier of the Hottentots Holland mountains. Tara insisted that they take her old Packard. She never felt comfortable in Shasa’s new Rolls.

  ‘How can you bear to drive around on four wheels that cost enough to clothe, educate and feed a hundred black children from the cradle to the grave?’

  For once Shasa saw the practical wisdom of not flaunting his wealth in front of his constituents. Tara was really tremendous value for money, Shasa reflected. An aspiring politician could not ask for a better running mate
– a mother of four lovely children, outspoken, holding strong opinions and possessing a natural shrewdness that anticipated the prejudices and fickle enthusiasm of the herd. She was also strikingly beautiful with all that smouldering auburn hair and a smile that could light up a dreary meeting, and despite four childbirths in almost as many years, her figure was still marvellous, small waist, good hips – only her bosom had burgeoned.

  ‘I’d back her in a showdown with Jane Russell – tit for tat she’d win by a length going away.’ Shasa chuckled aloud, and she looked across at him.

  ‘That’s your dirty laugh,’ she accused. ‘Don’t tell me what you are thinking. Let me hear your speech instead.’

  He rehearsed it for her, with appropriate gestures and she made an occasional suggestion on content and delivery. ‘I would pause longer there,’ and, ‘look fierce and determined,’ or, ‘I wouldn’t make too much of that bit about the Empire. Not really in fashion any more.’

  Tara still drove furiously and the journey was soon over. There were larger-than-life posters of Shasa pasted at the entrance and the hall was gratifyingly full. All the seats were taken and there were even a dozen or so younger men standing at the back – they looked like students, Shasa doubted they were old enough to vote.

  The local United Party organizer, a Party rosette on his lapel, introduced Shasa as a man who needed no introduction and extolled the fine work he had done for the constituency during his previous short term of office.

  Then Shasa rose, tall and debonair in a dark blue suit that was not too new or fashionably cut, but with a crisp white shirt – only spivs wore coloured shirts – and an airforce tie to remind them of his war record. The eye-patch further emphasized what he had sacrificed for his country and his smile was charming and sincere.

  ‘My friends—’ he began, and got no further. He was drowned out by a pandemonium of stamping and chanting and jeering. Shasa tried to make a joke of it, pretending to conduct the orchestrated abuse, but his smile became steadily less sincere as the uproar showed no signs of abating, instead becoming louder and more vindictive as the minutes passed. Finally he began to deliver his address, bellowing it out to be heard above the din.