Authors: Wilbur Smith
The sudden uproar in the deep silence would have unnerved a
marble statue of Zeus, but Mungo St John completed his stroke
with an almost creamy smoothness, his single yellow eye
unblinking in the calm handsome face as it followed the flight of
the ball from the tip of his cue. The white ball thumped crisply
against the far cushion, doubled the table and the spin hooked it
through the corner, striking the cushion at an angle that bled
the speed off the ivory. It came trundling back and Mungo St John
lifted his left hand to let it pass under his nose; it touched
the other white ball with just sufficient force to deflect it a
hair’s breadth and send it on to kiss the red ball like a
lover. The contact robbed the cue ball of the last of its
impetus, and it hovered on the edge of the corner pocket for a
weary moment and then dropped soundlessly into the net.
It was a perfect cannon and losing hazard, nominated and
executed, and a thousand pounds had been won and lost in those
few seconds, but every man in the room except Mungo St John was
staring at the doorway in a kind of mesmeric trance. Mungo St
John lifted his cue ball from the net, and re-spotted it, then as
he chalked his cue again, he murmured, ‘Victoria, my dear,
there are times when even the prettiest young lady should remain
silent.’ Once again he stooped over the table. ‘Pot
red,’ he announced, and the company was so entranced by the
tall coppery-haired girl in their midst, that no bet was offered
nor accepted, but as Mungo St John took his cue back for the next
stroke, Victoria spoke again.
‘General St John, my mother is dying.’
This time Mungo St John’s head flew up, his single eye
wide with shock, and the white ball screwed off down the table in
a violent miscue as he stared at Vicky. Mungo let the wooden cue
drop with a clatter onto the floor and he ran from the bar
room.
Vicky went on standing in the doorway of the bar room for a
few seconds. Her hair was tangled into thick ropes on her
shoulders by the wind, and her breathing was still so rough that
her breasts heaved tantalizingly under her thin cotton blouse.
Her eyes swept the sea of grinning, ingratiating faces, and then
stopped when they reached the tall figure of Harry Mellow in his
dark riding-boots and breeches and the faded blue shirt open at
his throat to show a nest of crisp curls in the vee. Vicky
flushed and turned to hurry back through the doorway.
Harry Mellow tossed his cue to the barman, and shoved his way
through the disappointed crowd. By the time he reached the
street, Mungo St John, still bareheaded and in shirtsleeves, was
mounted on a big bay mare, but leaning from the saddle to talk
urgently to Vicky, who stood at his stirrup.
Mungo looked up and saw Harry. ‘Mr Mellow,’ he
called, ‘I would be obliged if you could see my
stepdaughter safely out of town. I am needed at Khami.’
Then he put his heels into the mare’s flanks, and she
jumped away at a dead run down the dusty street.
Vicky was climbing up onto the driving-seat of a rickety
little cart drawn by two diminutive donkeys with drooping
melancholy ears, and on the seat beside her sat the mountainous
black figure of a Matabele woman.
‘Miss Codrington,’ Harry called urgently.
‘Please wait.’
He reached the wheel of the cart with a few long strides and
looked up at Vicky.
‘I have wanted to see you again – so very
much.’
‘Mr Mellow,’ Vicky lifted her chin haughtily,
‘the road to Khami Mission is clearly signposted, you could
not possibly have lost your way.’
‘Your mother ordered me off the Mission Station –
you know that damned well.’
‘Please do not use strong language in my presence,
sir,’ said Vicky primly.
‘I apologize, but your mother does have a reputation.
They say she fired both barrels at one unwanted
visitor.’
‘Well,’ Vicky admitted, ‘that is true, but
he
was
one of Mr Rhodes’ hirelings, and it
was
birdshot, and she
did
miss with one
barrel.’
‘Well, I am one of Mr Rhodes’ hirelings, and she
might have upped to buckshot, and the practice might have
improved her shooting.’
‘I like a man of determination. A man who takes what he
wants – and damn the consequences.’
‘That is strong language, Miss Codrington.’
‘Good day to you, Mr Mellow.’ Vicky shook up the
donkeys, and they stumbled into a dejected trot.
The little cart reached the outskirts of the new town, where
the dozen or so brick buildings gave way to grass huts and
tattered dusty canvas shelters and where the wagons of the
transport riders were parked wheel to wheel on both sides of the
track, still laden with the bags, bolts and bales that they had
carried up from the railhead. Vicky was sitting upright on the
cart, looking straight ahead but anxiously she told Juba out of
the side of her mouth, ‘Tell me if you see him coming, but
don’t let him see you looking.’
‘He comes,’ Juba announced comfortably. ‘He
comes like a cheetah after a gazelle.’
Vicky heard the beat of galloping hooves from behind, but she
merely sat a little straighter.
‘Hau!’ Juba smiled with nostalgic sadness.
‘The passion of a man. My husband ran fifty miles without
stopping to rest or drink, for in those days my beauty drove men
mad.’
‘Don’t stare at him, Juba.’
‘He is so strong and impetuous, and he will make such
fine sons in your belly.’
‘Juba!’ Vicky flushed scarlet. ‘That is a
wicked thing for a Christian lady even to think. I shall probably
send him back anyway.’
Juba shrugged and chuckled. ‘Ah! Then he will make those
fine sons elsewhere. I saw him looking at Elizabeth when he came
to Khami.’
Vicky’s blushes turned a deeper, angrier shade.
‘You are an evil woman, Juba—’ But before she
could go on Harry Mellow reined in his rangey gelding beside the
cart.
‘Your stepfather placed you in my care, Miss Codrington,
and it is therefore my duty to see you home as swiftly as
possible.’
He reached into the cart, and before she realized his
intentions, he had whipped a long sinewy arm around her waist,
and as she kicked and shrieked with surprise, he swung her up
onto the horse’s rump behind his saddle.
‘Hold on!’ he ordered. ‘Tightly!’ And
instinctively she threw both arms around his lean hard body. The
way it felt shocked her so that she relaxed her grip and leaned
back just as Harry urged the gelding forward and Vicky came so
perilously close to flying backwards over his haunches into the
dusty track that she snatched at Harry with renewed fervour, and
tried to close her mind and shut off her body from these
unfamiliar sensations. Her training warned her that anything that
raised such a warmth in the base of her stomach, made the skin of
her forearms prickle so, and rendered her breathless and
deliriously lightheaded, must be unholy and wicked.
To distract herself she examined the fine hairs that grew down
the back of his neck, and the soft silky skin behind his ears,
and found yet another sensation rising in her throat, a kind of
choking suffocating tenderness. She had an almost unbearable
compulsion to press her face against the faded blue shirt and
breathe in the virile smell of his body. It had the sharp odour
of steel struck against flint, underlaid with a warmer scent like
the first raindrops on sun-baked earth.
Her confusion was dispelled abruptly by the realization that
the gelding was still in a flying gallop and at this pace the
journey back to Khami would be brief indeed.
‘You are punishing your mount, sir.’ Her voice
quavered and played her false, so Harry turned his head.
‘I cannot hear you.’
She leaned unnecessarily close so that her loose hair touched
his cheek and her lips brushed his ear.
‘Not so fast,’ she repeated.
‘Your mother—’
‘ – is not that ill.’
‘But you told General St John—’
‘Do you think Juba and I would have left Khami if there
was the least danger?’
‘St John?’
‘It was a fine excuse to get them together again. So
romantic, we should allow them a little time alone.’
Harry reined the gelding down to a more sedate pace, but
instead of relaxing her grip Vicky wriggled a little closer.
‘My mother does not recognize her own feelings,’
she explained. ‘Sometimes Lizzie and I have to take things
into our own hands.’
Even as she said it, Vicky regretted having mentioned her
twin’s name. She had also noticed Harry Mellow look at
Elizabeth on his only visit to Khami Mission, and she had seen
Elizabeth look straight back. After Harry had left Khami in some
haste with her mother’s ultimate farewells ringing in his
ears, Vicky had attempted to negotiate with her sister an
agreement that Elizabeth would not encourage further smouldering
glances from Mr Mellow. In reply Elizabeth had smiled in that
infuriating way she had. ‘Don’t you think we should
let Mr Mellow decide on that?’
If Harry Mellow had been attractive before, Elizabeth’s
unreasonable tenacity had made him irresistible now, and
instinctively Vicky tightened her grip around his waist. At the
same time she saw the wooden kopjes that marked Khami Mission
Station looming ahead above the low scrubby bush, and she felt a
sinking dread. Soon Harry would be confronted with
Elizabeth’s honey-brown eyes and that soft dark flood of
hair pierced with russet stars of light.
This was the only time in her entire life that Vicky could
remember being free from surveillance, without her mother or Juba
or, particularly, her twin being within earshot or touching
distance. It was an exhilarating sensation added to all the other
unfamiliar and clamorous sensations which assailed her, and the
last restraints of her strict religious upbringing were swept
away in this sudden reckless rebellious mood. She realized with
an unerring woman’s instinct that she could have what she
so dearly wanted, but only if she took direct bold action, and
took it immediately.
‘It is a sad and bitter thing that a woman should be
alone, when she loves somebody so.’
Her voice had sunk to a low purr, and it affected Harry so
that he brought the horse down to a walk.
‘God did not mean a woman to be alone,’ she
murmured, and saw the blood come up under the soft skin behind
his ears, ‘nor a man either,’ she went on, and slowly
he turned his head and looked into her green eyes.
‘It is so hot in the sun,’ Vicky whispered,
holding his gaze. ‘I should like to rest for a few minutes
in the shade.’
He lifted her down from the saddle, and she stood close to him
still, without averting her eyes from his face.
‘The wagon dust has covered everything and left us no
clean place to sit,’ she said. ‘Perhaps we should try
further from the road?’
And she took his hand, and quite naturally led him through the
soft pale knee-high grass towards one of the mimosa trees.
Beneath its spreading feathery branches they would be out of
sight of any chance traveller upon the road.
M
ungo St
John’s mare was lathered in dark streaks down her shoulders
and his riding-boots were splattered with blown froth from her
gaping jaws as he drove her over the top of the neck between the
kopjes, and without pause pushed her down towards the white
Mission buildings. The mare’s hoof beats rang against the
hills and echoed from the mission walls, and Elizabeth’s
slim skirted figure appeared on the wide veranda of the
homestead. She shaded her eyes to peer up the slope at Mungo, and
when she recognized him, hurried down the steps into the
sunlight.
‘General St John, oh, thank God you have come.’
She ran to take the mare’s head.
‘How is she?’ There was a wild, driven look upon
Mungo’s bony features. He kicked his feet from the stirrups
and jumped down to seize Elizabeth by the shoulders and shake her
in his anxiety.
‘It started as a game, Vicky and I wanted you to come to
Mama because she needs you – she wasn’t bad, just a
little go of fever.’
‘Damn you, girl,’ Mungo shouted at her,
‘what has happened?’
At his tone the tears that Elizabeth had been holding back
broke with a sob and streamed down her cheeks. ‘She has
changed – it must be the girl’s blood – she is
burning up with the girl’s blood.’
‘Pull yourself together.’ Mungo shook her again.
‘Come on, Lizzie, this isn’t like you.’
Elizabeth gulped once, and then her voice steadied. ‘She
injected blood from a fever patient into herself.’
‘From a black girl? In God’s name, why?’
Mungo demanded, but did not wait for her reply. He left Elizabeth
and ran up onto the veranda, and burst in through the door to
Robyn’s bedroom, but he stopped before he reached the
bed.
In the small closed room, the stink of fever was as rank as
that of a sty, and the heat from the body in the narrow cot had
condensed on the glass of the single window like steam from a
kettle of boiling water. Crouched beside the cot like a puppy at
its master’s feet was Mungo’s son. Robert looked up
at his father with huge solemn eyes, and his mouth twisted in the
thin pale face.
‘Son!’ Mungo took another step towards the cot,
but the child leaped to his feet and silently he darted for the
door, ducking nimbly under Mungo’s outstretched hand, and
his bare feet slapped on the veranda as he raced away. For a
moment Mungo yearned after him, and then he shook his head and
instead he went to the cot. He stood over it and looked down at
the still figure upon it.
Robyn had wasted until the bones of her skull seemed to rise
through the pale flesh of her cheeks and forehead. Her eyes were
closed, and sunk into deep leaden-purple sockets. Her hair, laced
with silver at the temples, seemed dry and brittle as the winter
grasses of the parched veld, and as he leaned to touch her
forehead, a paroxysm of shivering took her that rattled the iron
bedstead and her teeth chattered so violently that it seemed they
must shatter like porcelain. Under Mungo’s fingers her skin
was almost painfully hot to the touch, and he looked up sharply
at Elizabeth who stood beside him with a stricken expression.