Men of Men (70 page)

In his fair hand, Jordan Ballantyne wrote out the document from Mr Rudd’s dictation.

Robyn Codrington read the text to Lobengula, and explained it to him, then she helped him attach the Great Elephant seal. Finally, she witnessed the mark that Lobengula made beside it.

‘Damn me, Jordan, there’s none of us here that can ride the way you can.’ Rudd made no effort to conceal his jubilation when they were alone. ‘It’s speed now that
counts. If you leave immediately, you can reach Khami Mission by nightfall. Pick the three best horses from those that we left there, and go like the wind, my boy. Take the concession to Mr Rhodes
– and tell him I will follow directly.’

T
he twins ran down the front steps of Khami Mission and surrounded Jordan as he stepped down from the stirrup.

At the head of the steps, Cathy held a lantern high, and Salina stood beside her with her hands clasped demurely in front of her, and her eyes shining with joy in the lantern light.

‘Welcome, Jordan,’ she called. ‘We have all missed you so.’

Jordan came up the steps. ‘I can rest one night only,’ he told her, and a little of her delight died and her smile with it. ‘I ride south tomorrow at first light.’

He was so beautiful, tall and straight, and fair, and though his shoulders were wide and his limbs finely muscled, yet he was lithe and light as a dancer and his expression gentle as a
poet’s as he looked down into Salina’s face.

‘Only one night,’ she murmured. ‘Then we must make the most of it.’

They ate a dinner of smoked ham and roasted sweet yams, and afterwards they sat on the verandah and Salina sang for them while Jordan smoked a cigar and listened with obvious pleasure, tapping
the time on his knee and joining with the others in the chorus.

The moment Salina had finished, Vicky leapt to her feet.

‘My turn,’ she announced. ‘Lizzie and I have written a poem.’

‘Not tonight,’ said Cathy.

‘Why?’ demanded Vicky.

‘Cathy,’ wailed the twins in unison. ‘It’s Jordan’s last night.’

‘That is precisely why.’ Cathy stood up. ‘Come on, both of you.’

Still they cajoled and procrastinated, until suddenly Cathy’s eyes slitted viciously, and she hissed at them with a vehemence that startled them to their feet, to bestow hasty pecks on
Jordan’s face and then hurry off down the verandah, with Cathy close behind.

Jordan chuckled fondly and flicked the cigar over the verandah rail. ‘Cathy is right, of course,’ he said. ‘I’ll be in the saddle for twelve hours tomorrow –
it’s time we were all abed.’

Salina did not reply but moved to the end of the verandah farthest from the bedrooms and leaned on the rail, staring down across the starlit valley.

After a moment, Jordan followed her, and asked softly:

‘Have I offended you?’

‘No,’ she answered quickly. ‘It’s just that I am a little sad. We all have such fun when you are here.’

Jordan did not reply, and after a minute she asked:

‘What will you do now, Jordan?’

‘I shall not know until I reach Kimberley. If Mr Rhodes is at Groote Schuur already, then I shall go there – but if he is still in London, then he will want me to join
him.’

‘How long will it take?’

‘From Kimberley to London and back? Four months, if the sailings coincide.’

‘Tell me about London, Jordan. I have read about it and dreamed about it.’

He talked quietly, but lucidly and fluently, so that she laughed and exclaimed at his descriptions and anecdotes, and the minutes turned to hours, until suddenly Jordan interrupted himself.

‘What am I thinking of; it’s almost midnight.’

She grasped at anything to keep him from going.

‘You promised to tell me about Mr Rhodes’ house at Groote Schuur.’

‘It will have to wait for another time, Salina.’

‘Will there be another time?’ she asked.

‘Oh, I am sure there will,’ he answered lightly.

‘You will go to England, and Cape Town, it could be years before you come back to Khami.’

‘Even years will not dim our friendship, Salina.’ And she stared at him as though he had struck her.

‘Is that it – Jordan – are we friends, just friends?’

He took both her hands in his. ‘The dearest, most precious friends,’ he confirmed.

She was pale as ivory in the dim light, and her grip on his hands was like that of a drowning woman as she steeled herself to speak – but her voice, when at last she summoned it, was so
strained that she was not sure he had understood her.

‘Take me with you, Jordan.’

‘Salina, I don’t know what you mean.’

‘I cannot bear to lose you – take me. Please take me.’

‘But—’ he was confused and shaken, ‘but what would you do?’

‘Whatever you tell me. I should be your slave, your loving slave, Jordan – for ever.’

He tried to free his hands from hers, but he did it gently.

‘You cannot just go away and leave me, Jordan. When you came to Khami, it was like the sun rising into my life; and if you go you will take the light with you. I love you, Jordan, oh sweet
Jesus, forgive me, but I love you more than life itself.’

‘Salina, stop! Please stop now.’ He pleaded with her, but she clung to his hands.

‘I cannot let you go without telling you – I love you, Jordan, I shall always love you.’

‘Salina.’ His voice was stricken. ‘Oh Salina, I love somebody else,’ he said.

‘It’s not true,’ she whispered. ‘Oh, please say it’s not true.’

‘I am sorry, Salina. Terribly sorry.’

‘Nobody else can love you as much as I do, nobody would sacrifice what I would.’

‘Please stop, Salina. I don’t want you to humiliate yourself.’

‘Humiliate myself?’ she asked. ‘Oh, Jordan, that would be so small a price – you don’t understand.’

‘Salina, please.’

‘Let me prove to you, Jordan, let me prove how joyfully I will make any sacrifice.’ And when he tried to speak, she put her hand lightly over his mouth. ‘We need not even have
to wait for marriage. I will give myself to you this very night.’

When he shook his head, she tightened her grip to gag his words of denial.

She whispered the quotation, with quivering voice. ‘Give me the chance, dear Jordan, please give me the chance to prove that I can love and cherish you more than any other
woman in all the world. You will see how this other woman’s love pales to nothing beside the flame of mine.’

He took her wrist and lifted her hand from his mouth, and his head bowed over hers with a terrible regret.

‘Salina,’ he said, ‘it is not another woman.’

She stared up at him, both of them rooted and stricken, while the enormity of his words slowly spread across her soul like hoar frost.

‘Not another woman?’ she asked at last, and when he shook his head, ‘Then I can never even hope – never?’

He did not reply, and at last she shook herself like a sleeper wakening from a dream to deathly reality.

‘Will you kiss me goodbye, Jordan, just one last time?’

‘It need not be the last—’ But she reached up and crushed the words on his lips so fiercely that her teeth left a taste of blood on his tongue.

‘Goodbye, Jordan,’ she said, and turning from him she walked down the length of the verandah as infirmly as an invalid arising from a long sick-bed. At the door of her bedroom, she
staggered and put out a hand to save herself, and then looked back at him.

Her lips moved, but no sound came from them. ‘Goodbye, Jordan. Goodbye, my love.’

R
alph Ballantyne carried up the rifles, one thousand of them, brand new and still in their yellow grease, five in a wooden case, and twenty cases
to a wagonload. There were another ten wagonloads of ammunition – all for the account of De Beers diamond mines – another three wagonloads of liquor for his own account, and a single
wagon of furniture and household effects for the bungalow that Zouga was building for himself at GuBulawayo.

Ralph crossed the Shashi river with a certain thousand-pound profit from the convoy already safely deposited in the Standard Bank at Kimberley, but with a nagging hollow feeling in the pit of
his stomach.

He had no way of knowing whether Bazo had reported him to Lobengula as the abductor of the stone falcons, or whether one of Bazo’s warriors had recognized him and, despite the king’s
warning, had told a wife, who had told her mother, who had told her husband. ‘Nothing moves in Matabeleland but the whole nation knows of it,’ Clinton Codrington had warned him once.
However, the profits on this run, and the prospect of visiting Khami Mission again, were worth the risk.

On the first day’s march beyond the Shashi, that risk was vindicated, for it was Bazo himself at the head of his red shields who intercepted the convoy, and greeted Ralph inscrutably.

‘Who dares the road? Who risks the wrath of Lobengula?’ And after he had inspected the loaded wagons, as he and Ralph sat alone by the camp fire, Ralph asked him quietly:

‘I heard that a white man died in the bush between great Zimbabwe and the Limpopo. What was that man’s name?’

‘Nobody knows of this matter, except Lobengula and one of his indunas,’ Bazo replied, without lifting his gaze from the flames. ‘And even the king does not know who the
stranger was or where he came from, nor does he know the site of the grave of the nameless stranger.’ Bazo took a little snuff and went on. ‘Nor will we ever speak of this matter again,
you and me.’

And now he lifted his eyes at last, and there was something in their dark depths that had never been there before, and Ralph thought that it was the look of a man destroyed, a man who would
never trust a brother again.

In the morning, Bazo was gone, and Ralph faced northwards, with the doubts dispelled and his spirits soaring like the silver and mauve thunderheads that piled the horizon ahead of him. Zouga was
waiting for him at the drift of the Khami river.

‘You’ve made good time, my boy.’

‘Nobody ever made better,’ Ralph agreed, and twirled his thick dark moustache, ‘and nobody is likely to, not until Mr Rhodes builds his railroad.’

‘Did Mr Rhodes send the money?’

‘In good gold sovereigns,’ Ralph told him. ‘I have carried them in my own saddle-bags.’

‘All we have to do is get Lobengula to accept them.’

‘That, Papa, is your job. You are Mr Rhodes’ agent.’

Yet three weeks later the wagons still stood outside Lobengula’s kraal, their loads roped down under the tarpaulins while Zouga waited each day from early morning until dusk in front of
the king’s great hut.

‘The king is sick,’ they said.

‘The king is with his wives.’

‘Perhaps the king will come tomorrow.’

‘Who knows when the king will tire of his wives,’ they said, and at last even Zouga, who knew and understood the ways of Africa, became angry.

‘Tell the king that Bakela, the Fist, rides now to Lodzi to tell him that the king spurns his gifts,’ he ordered Gandang, who had come to make the day’s excuses, and Zouga
called to Jan Cheroot to saddle the horses.

‘The king has not given you the road.’ Gandang was shocked and perturbed.

‘Then tell Lobengula that his impis can kill the emissary of Lodzi on the road, but it will not take long for the word to be carried to Lodzi. Lodzi sits even now at the great kraal of the
queen across the water, basking in her favour.’

The king’s messengers caught up with Zouga before he reached Khami Mission, for his pace was deliberately leisurely.

‘The king bids Bakela return at once, he will speak with him at the moment of his return.’

‘Tell Lobengula that Bakela sleeps tonight at Khami Mission and perhaps the night after – for who knows when he will see fit to talk with the king again.’

Somebody at Khami must have put a spy-glass on the dust raised by Zouga’s horses, for when they were still a mile from the hills, a rider came out to meet them at full gallop, a slim
figure with long dark plaits streaming behind her lovely head.

When they met, Zouga jumped down from his saddle and lifted her from hers.

‘Louise,’ he whispered into her smiling mouth. ‘You will never know how slowly the days pass when I am away from you.’

‘It’s a cross you make us both carry,’ she told him. ‘I am fully recovered now – thanks to Robyn – and still you make me loiter and pine at Khami. Oh, Zouga,
will you not let me join you at GuBulawayo?’

‘That I will, my dear, just as soon as we have a roof on the cottage, and a ring on your finger.’

‘You are always so proper.’ She pulled a face at him. ‘Who would ever know?’

‘I would,’ he said, and kissed her again, before he lifted her back into the saddle of the bay Arab mare which had been his betrothal gift to her.

They rode with their knees touching and their fingers linked, while Jan Cheroot trailed them discreetly out of earshot.

‘We shall have only days longer to wait,’ Zouga assured her. ‘I have forced Lobengula’s hand. This matter of the rifles will be settled soon and then you can choose where
you will make me the happiest man on earth, the cathedral at Cape Town perhaps?’

‘Darling Zouga, your family at Khami has been so kind to me. The girls have become like my own sisters, and Robyn lavished care upon me when I was so ill, so burned and desiccated by the
sun.’

‘Why not?’ Zouga agreed. ‘I’m sure that Clinton will agree to say the words.’

‘He has already, but there is more to it. The wedding is all planned, and it is to be a double wedding.’

‘A double wedding – who are the others?’

‘You would never guess, not in a thousand years.’

T
hey looked more like brothers than father and son, as they stood before the carved altar in the little whitewashed church at Khami.

Zouga wore his full dress uniform, and the scarlet jacket, tailored twenty years before, still fitted him to perfection. The gold lace had been renewed to impress Lobengula and his indunas, and
now it sparkled bright and untarnished, even in the cool gloom of the church.