Authors: Wilbur Smith
‘I think we should order a decanter of port,’ said
Ralph, as he pushed his plate away from him. ‘I’m not
hungry any more.’
He thought about his father in a Boer prison, and suddenly an
image come into his mind of Zouga Ballantyne in a white shirt,
his hands bound behind his back, his gold- and silver-laced beard
sparkling in the sunlight, the whitewashed wall at his back,
regarding the rank of riflemen in front of him with those calm
green eyes of his. Ralph felt nauseated and the rare old port
tasted like quinine on his tongue. He set the glass down.
‘Ralph.’ Aaron was staring at him across the
table. ‘The bear transaction, you sold the shares of
Charter and Consolidated short, and your position is still
open.’
‘I
have
closed all your transactions,’ said David Silver. ‘I
averaged out BSA shares at a little over seven pounds, that gives
you a profit, after commission and levy, of almost four pounds a
share. You did even better on the Consolidated Goldfields
transactions, they were the worst hit in the crash, from eight
pounds when you began selling them short they dropped to almost
two pounds when it looked as though Kruger was going to seize the
mining companies of the Witwatersrand in retaliation.’
David Silver broke off and looked at Ralph with awe. ‘It is
the kind of killing which becomes a legend on the floor, Mr
Ballantyne. The frightful risk you took,’ he shook his head
in admiration. ‘What courage! What foresight!’
‘What luck!’ said Ralph impatiently. ‘Do you
have my difference cheque?’
‘I have.’ David Silver opened the black leather
valise in his lap and brought from it a snowy white envelope
sealed with a rosette of scarlet wax.
‘It is counter-signed and guaranteed by my bank.’
David laid it reverently upon his Uncle Aaron’s desk-top.
‘The total is,’ and he breathed it like a lover,
‘one million and fifty-eight pounds eight shillings and
sixpence. After the one that Mr Rhodes paid to Barney Barnato for
his claims in the Kimberley mine, it is the largest cheque ever
drawn in Africa, south of the equator – what do you say to
that, Mr Ballantyne!’
Ralph looked at Aaron in the chair behind the desk. ‘You
know what to do with it. Just be certain it can never be traced
back to me.’
‘I understand,’ Aaron nodded, and Ralph changed
the subject.
‘Has there been an answer to my telegraph yet? My wife
is not usually so slow in replying.’ And because Aaron was
an old friend, who loved the gentle Cathy as much as any of her
many admirers, Ralph went on to explain. ‘She is within two
months of her time. Now that the dust of Jameson’s little
adventure has begun to settle and there is no longer any danger
of war, I must get Cathy down here, where she can have expert
medical attention.’
‘I’ll send my clerk to the telegraph
office.’ Aaron rose and crossed to the door of the outer
office, to give his instructions. Then he looked back at his
nephew. ‘Was there anything else, David?’ The little
stockbroker started. He had been staring at Ralph Ballantyne with
the glow of hero-worship in his eyes. Now he hastily assembled
his papers, and stuffed them into his valise, before coming and
offering his soft white hand to Ralph.
‘I cannot tell you what an honour it has been to be
associated with you, Mr Ballantyne. If there is ever anything at
all I can do for you—’
Aaron had to shoo him out of the door.
‘Poor David,’ he murmured, as he came back to the
desk. ‘His very first millionaire, it’s a watershed
in any young stockbroker’s life.’
‘My father—’ Ralph did not even smile.
‘I’m sorry, Ralph. There is nothing more we can
do. He will go back to England in chains with Jameson and the
others. They are to be imprisoned in Wormwood Scrubs until they
are called to answer the charge.’ Aaron selected a sheet of
paper from the pile on his desk. ‘“
That they, with
certain other persons in the month of December 1895, in South
Africa, within Her Majesty’s dominions, did unlawfully
prepare and fit out a military expedition to proceed against the
dominions of a certain friendly state, to wit, the South African
Republic, contrary to the provisions of the Foreign Enlistment
Act of 1870
.”’
Aaron laid down the paper and shook his head. ‘There is
nothing any of us can do now.’
‘What will happen to them? It’s a capital
offence—’
‘Oh no, Ralph, I am sure it won’t come to
that.’
Ralph sank down in his chair and stared moodily out of the
window, for the hundredth time castigating himself for not having
anticipated that Jameson would cut the telegraph lines before
marching on Johannesburg. The recall that Cathy had sent to Zouga
Ballantyne, the fiction that Louise was gravely ill, had never
reached him and Zouga had ridden into the waiting Boer commandos
with the rest of them.
If only, Ralph thought, and then his thoughts were
interrupted. He looked up expectantly as the clerk came
hesitantly into the office.
‘Has there been a reply from my wife?’ Ralph
demanded, and the man shook his head.
‘Begging your pardon, Mr Ballantyne, sir, but there has
not.’ He hesitated, and Ralph urged him:
‘Well, man, what is it? Spit it out, there’s a
good fellow.’
‘It seems that all the telegraph lines to Rhodesia have
been down since noon on Monday.’
‘Oh, so that is it.’
‘No, Mr Ballantyne, that’s not all. There has been
a message from Tati on the Rhodesian border. It seems a rider got
through this morning.’ The clerk gulped. ‘This
messenger seems to have been the only survivor.’
‘Survivor!’ Ralph stared at him. ‘What does
that mean? What on earth are you talking about?’
‘The Matabele have risen. They are murdering all the
whites in Rhodesia – man, woman and child, they are being
slaughtered!’
‘M
ummy,
Douglas and Suss aren’t here. There is nobody to get me
breakfast.’ Jon-Jon came into the tent while Cathy was
still brushing out her hair, and twisting it up into thick
braids.
‘Did you call for them?’
‘I called and called.’
‘Tell one of the grooms to go down and fetch them,
darling.’
‘The grooms aren’t here also.’
‘The grooms aren’t here either,’ Cathy
corrected him and stood up. ‘All right, then, let’s
go and see about your breakfast.’
Cathy stepped out into the dawn. Overhead the sky was a lovely
dark rose colour shaded to ripe orange in the east, and the bird
chorus in the trees above the camp was like the tinkle of silver
bells. The camp-fire had died to a puddle of grey powdery ash and
had not been replenished.
‘Put some wood on, Jon-Jon,’ Cathy told him and
crossed to the kitchen hut. She frowned with annoyance. It was
deserted. She took down a tin from the gauzed meat-safe and then
looked up as the doorway darkened.
‘Oh Isazi,’ she greeted the little Zulu.
‘Where are the other servants?’
‘Who knows where a Matabele dog will hide himself when
he is needed?’ Isazi asked contemptuously. ‘They have
most likely spent the night dancing and drinking beer and now
their heads are too heavy to carry.’
‘You’ll have to help me,’ said Cathy.
‘Until the cook gets here.’
After breakfast in the dining-tent, Cathy called Isazi from
the fire again.
‘Have any of them come back yet?’
‘Not yet, Nkosikazi.’
‘I want to go down to the railhead. I hope there is a
telegraph from Henshaw. Will you put the ponies into the trap,
Isazi.’
Then for the first time she noticed the little frown of
concern on the old Zulu’s wrinkled features.
‘What is it?’
‘The horses – they are not in the
kraal.’
‘Where are they then?’
‘Perhaps one of the
mujiba
took them out early, I
will go to find them.’
‘Oh, it doesn’t matter.’ Cathy shook her
head. ‘It’s only a short walk to the telegraph
office. The exercise will be good for me.’ And she called
to Jonathan, ‘Fetch my bonnet for me, Jon-Jon.’
‘Nkosikazi, it is perhaps not wise, the little
one—’
‘Oh don’t fuss,’ Cathy told him fondly, and
took Jonathan’s hand. ‘If you find the ponies in time
you can come and fetch us.’ Then swinging her bonnet by its
ribbon and with Jonathan skipping beside her, she started along
the track that led around the side of the wooded hill towards the
railhead.
There was no clamour of hammers on steel. Jonathan noticed it
first.
‘It’s so quiet, Mama.’ And they stopped to
listen.
‘It’s not Friday,’ Cathy murmured. ‘Mr
Mac can’t be paying the gangs.’ She shook her head,
still not alarmed. ‘That’s strange.’ And they
went on.
At the corner of the hill they stopped again, and Cathy held
her bonnet up to shade her eyes from the low sun. The railway
lines ran away southward, glistening like the silken threads of a
spider’s web, but below them they ended abruptly at the raw
gash of the cut line through the bush. There was a pile of teak
sleepers at the railhead and a smaller bundle of steel rails, the
service locomotive was due up from Kimberley this afternoon to
replenish those materials. The sledgehammers and shovels were in
neat stacks where the shift had left them at dusk the night
before. There was no human movement around the railhead.
‘That’s even stranger,’ said Cathy.
‘Where is Mr Henderson, Mama?’ Jonathan asked. His
voice was unusually subdued. ‘Where are Mr Mac and Mr
Braithwaite?’
‘I don’t know. They must still be in their
tents.’
The tents of the white surveyor and the engineer and his
supervisors were grouped just beyond the square galvanized iron
shack of the telegraph. There was no sign of life around the hut
nor between the neat pyramids of canvas, except for a single
black crow which sat on the peak of one of them. Its hoarse
cawing reached them faintly, and as Cathy watched, it spread its
black wings and flapped heavily to earth at the entrance of the
tent.
‘Where are all the hammer-boys?’ Jonathan piped,
and suddenly Cathy shivered.
‘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.