Shaka the Great (77 page)

Here is the awe that Farewell hoped to evoke with his guns and tales of Jorgi's mighty empire, thinks Fynn, gazing at the warriors closest to his party and noting how these “formidable fellows” follow the progress of the strips of meat with a mixture of reverence and eager anticipation. They truly believe, and Fynn feels humbled and chastened in some way. It's as if he and his companions are the
exotic creatures here: weak and woebegotten blind men who've blundered into the land of the sighted.

By the time the meat has been fully distributed and the ashes of the bull collected, it's growing dark. The regiments return to their temporary camps, while Shaka goes off with Pampata. She will lead him back to the commoner's hut where he has been staying for these many weeks past. It is the eya emsizini, the hut of his seclusion. After spending some time alone there, allowing the Night Muthi to guide him where it will, Shaka will eventually call for Pampata. For the duration of the King's stay, the hut will be guarded by a regiment of young, unmarried women. After Pampata has entered the hut of seclusion, they will sing and try and coax the King out, but he will not emerge, will not allow himself to be tempted and led astray. And Pampata will wash him, in a purification ritual called ukuqunga, then she will straddle him and they will fuck …

He moves through the night, a silent song, a black mamba in the darkness, an overwhelming urge.

He is naked, knows that is wrong.

Knows that to be seen—spotted, espied—is to put everything in jeopardy.

(But this hunger, this urge …)

Yet is he mistaken? Or does it feel as if he will no longer have a need for such … things?

It might be wishful thinking—he might only be looking for an excuse that will justify taking such a risk—but he doesn't think so.

The becoming … it's happening.

And soon, very soon, it will be complete.

(But first …)

This hunger. The like of which he's never experienced before.

A grin. Hai! If only they knew!

Stupid children, with their stupid games.

Chewing the meat …

Sucking the juice …

Fools!

If only they knew …

This is the way to do it.

This.

Is the way.

And he moves among the makeshift huts, dodging the voices and the laughter.

And the urge pulls him to the nearest cattle pen …

And the cattle barely stir as he eases between them … And he has an iklwa blade in his hand …

And he's on the calf and has slashed its throat …

… not a human, no, but better than nothing …

And he gulps down the warm sticky blood, and is gone before the herd panics and the watchmen come running …

Quietly, unnoticed by his companions, Fynn leaves the fire. He's reminded of a village fair or market day, although none he's ever seen could match this in scale. And there's laughter and shouting and a constant coming and going, as old friends are sought out. Despite the lateness of the hour many children are still up and about, playing their games or gathered around storytellers. Women carry pots of water and beer, sure-footed even in the darkness.

Finally he's free of the smoke and flickering flames, and soon the people noises merge with the crickets and the frogs. He's seeking high ground, a spot from which he can view the whole spectacle.

And a spectacle it most certainly is. He understands he should feel privileged to be here, but what's even more fascinating to him is the fact that this is a spectacle for the Zulus too. That realization struck him a few hours ago, when he was trying to update his journal and ignore the antics of those insufferable Dutchmen—although Farewell and King are just as bad, with their constant one-upmanship. He'd been on the verge of writing something suitably grandiose about being one of the first white men to see this magnificent harvest festival, when it occurred to him their hosts were also awed. This particular harvest festival is clearly something unique and different for them, too.

Fynn settles himself on a rock. If Shaka invited them here primarily to show off his power, he's succeeded. That he can still awe his own subjects, though, says more than those regiments massed around his capital—although that's something to take the breath away, too. Fynn grins in the darkness. He still can't believe it. If, that day on the beach and during the dread-filled weeks that followed, someone had
told him he'd soon be able to wander among these people without fear, he would have laughed in their face.

Mind you, if he'd known then what he knows now, would he have ventured so far?

What
had
he been thinking that day?

He should have instead heeded the words of Frederick and Jantjie, and of Mahamba, a local man they met near the bay and who, of course, knew more than they what they might be letting themselves in for, if they followed the impis.

Later, referring to that day, he'll write: “My life evidently was saved on this occasion by that wonderful talisman of this country, the name of Shaka.” What he doesn't mention is how the glamour of that name had an effect on him, too, drawing him on in the wake of the regiments.

It was as if he'd been bewitched.

Well, yes, but the same might be said of Farewell, Petersen, Hoffman and the others. There is something about this land that enthralls and holds, that gets into your eyes and under your skin … But it's a spell that touches different men in different ways. Farewell, Petersen, Hoffman and the others … their faces are aglow with greed. Like horses who have thrown their riders, they have cast aside reason and move toward what they see as untold wealth, believing they know the way and their destination is in sight.

That day on the beach, Fynn stopped being one of them. He was no longer a trader seeking to make contact with a king, because he'd suddenly realized there was no longer a king.

There was Shaka.

… calling him on.

Peregrinations. Other regiments overtaking his valiant little party. Then a village. And Mbikwana, an emissary from Shaka, waiting to inform them that the Bull Elephant was relieved to see they'd stopped trying to drown themselves and were at last on their way to visit him. Instructing them to adjourn to his village.

Before they left, Fynn was presented with some cattle. When he asked if three of these animals could be sent to the others at Port Natal, Mbikwana readily agreed, and dispatched them under the care of a group of warriors.

Peregrinations and winding paths. The constant need to reassure his interpreter and servant that it was by no means certain they were being guided to their deaths. Then Mbikwana's kraal. An induna and five men tasked to look after the strangers. They were to stay there until Shaka made his further wishes known.

“I remained in this locality 14 days,” Fynn writes in his
Diary
. On each day he was given an ox. “I distributed the meat to the immense numbers that came to see me,” he notes.

While working as a loblolly boy at Christ's Hospital in London, he'd picked up a smattering of medical knowledge and, after his experiences in fever-ridden Delagoa, he had resolved, on coming to Natal, to bring with him a well-stocked medicine chest. During his stay at Mbikwana's kraal, he'd had occasion to delve into his pack—“two blankets, a feather pillow, a coffee-kettle, some sea biscuits, rice”—groping for the medicine chest so he could treat a sick woman.

The woman had recovered, much to the astonishment of his hosts who'd believed her close to death.

A short while later, another emissary arrived, bringing from Shaka “a present of 40 head of cattle, oxen and milch cows, that my people might not starve.” There were also “seven large elephant tusks.” And the news that Shaka wasn't quite ready yet to welcome this persistent isilwane. Fynn was to wait until the King's army was fully rested, after their recent campaign.

As luck would have it, Jantjie returned, after delivering the livestock and ivory to Port Natal, with the news that Farewell and the rest of the party had now arrived on the
Antelope
. Fynn therefore told Mbikwana he would wait there for word from Shaka.

How impatient he had been, with Shaka so close, but returning to the bay gave him a chance to come to his senses. Jantjie and Michael had been right—what a risk he'd taken! How was he to
know that the generosity shown wasn't a way of gulling them into letting their guard down.

But, no, how could that be? Their hosts could have killed them any time they felt like it!

Feeling the need to justify his actions, looking to tamp down the shuddering what-ifs, was surely a sign that the spell was working (because it was also a way of plucking up the courage to retrace his footprints).

Or perhaps not.

This feeling is not something that stands up to close scrutiny. It's akin to a drunkard's reverie, the grandiose plans that fill his mind while the booze fills his gut. It's the silliness that enters your thoughts when you're alone.

Fynn himself struggles to pin it down in his journal, leaving a mess of scored-out lines: next morning's reason editing midnight's epiphanies. A wringing-out that's all but complete by the time he comes to (re)write the
Diary
. Only, he can't quite bring himself to simply follow Isaacs' advice, and do as Isaacs did in his own memoir, and describe the Zulu kings as “blood-thirsty as you can and endeavor to give an estimate of the number of people they murdered during their reign, and also describe the frivolous crimes people lose their lives for.”

Echoes remain: whispers between the lines that are easily dismissed, yes, but at what cost?

For one there's his own growing disgruntlement with the rest of the group.

Farewell had arrived with thirty men and eleven horses, bringing the complement up to thirty-five, with Farewell, Ogle and Fynn being the only Englishmen.

The Union Flag is raised. The two cannon the traders have brought with them are fired. Port Natal thus becomes British, whether Whitehall likes it or not.

Mbikwana arrives with an escort of about a hundred soldiers, and announces that Shaka will see them now. Leaving the others to finish the building, Farewell, Petersen, Fynn and Frederick, their Xhosa interpreter, set off together with the Zulus.

The going is slower than Fynn would like, as Farewell insists on panning for gold in every stream they cross.

Then there's Farewell's father-in-law, Petersen, who's sixty-three, “corpulent and subject to ill health, not of the sweetest temper,” and who seldom speaks without swearing. After nearly throttling himself in the monkey ropes dangling along the hippo path they're following, he's all for turning back and going home to the Cape.

However, as he's also eager to get an “ocular demonstration” of those cattle kraals made from elephant tusks, he requires “very little soothing,” writes Fynn.

A little later, however, Petersen causes his horse to roll over in a bog. Since he's on the animal at the time (and therefore ends up underneath it), “here was a new scene of difficulty” which necessitated a change of clothes and the making of coffee, “interlarded with strings of Dutch oaths.”

When they stop for the night at a Zulu umuzi (and are presented with two oxen for slaughter), there follows “several hours” of “crimination and recrimination between father-in-law and son-in-law,” with Petersen suggesting that Farewell has dragged him to this barbarous land with the intention of killing him.

And so they gradually make their way to Bulawayo, with Shaka ensuring they take the scenic route, so they can catch a good glimpse of his mighty war kraals.

The barbarians from across the Great Waters are suitably impressed.

“We were struck with astonishment at the order and discipline maintained in the country through which we traveled,” writes Fynn. “Cleanliness was a prevailing custom” at the “regimental kraals,” he adds, “and this not only inside their huts, but outside, for there were considerable spaces where neither dirt nor ashes were to be seen.”