Authors: Wilbur Smith
‘We won’t tell anybody,’ promised Vicky. ‘If you show us.’
‘I can’t do that.’ And there was an immediate wail of disappointment.
‘Why not?’
‘Didn’t your mother teach you that it’s a sin to show anybody under your clothes?’
They glanced at each other, and then Vicky admitted reluctantly. ‘Yes, we aren’t even really allowed to look at ourselves there. Lizzie got whacked for it.’
‘There.’ Mungo nodded. ‘But I’ll tell you what I will do – I’ll tell you the story of how I got my tail.’
‘Story!’ Vicky clapped her hands, and they spread their skirts and squatted cross-legged at Mungo’s feet. If there was one thing better than a secret, it was a story, and Mungo
St John had stories, wonderful scary, bloodthirsty stories – the kind that guaranteed nightmares.
Each afternoon when he reached the lookout under the leadwood tree, they were waiting for him – captives of his charisma, addicted to those amazing stories of ghosts and dragons, of evil
witches and beautiful princesses who always had Vicky’s hair or Lizzie’s eyes when Mungo St John described them.
Then after each of Mungo’s stories, he would tactfully initiate a lively discussion of the affairs of Khami Mission. On a typical day he would learn that Cathy had begun painting a
portrait of Cousin Ralph from memory, and that it was the considered and unanimous verdict of the twins that Cathy was not only ‘soft’ but, much worse, ‘sloppy’ about Cousin
Ralph.
He learned that King Ben had commanded the entire family to attend the Chawala ceremony at the new moon, and the twins were ghoulishly anticipating the slaughter of the sacrificial black bull.
‘They do it with their bare hands,’ Vicky gloated. ‘And this year we are going to be allowed to watch, now that we are eleven.’
He was told in detail how Papa had demanded from Mama at the dinner table how much longer ‘that infamous pirate’ was to remain at Khami, and Mungo had to explain to the twins what
‘infamous’ meant – ‘famous, but only more so’.
Then on one such afternoon, Mungo learned from Lizzie that King Ben had once again ‘
khombisile
’ with his indunas. Gandang, one of the king’s brothers, had told Juba,
who was his wife, and Juba had told Mama.
‘
Khombisile?
’ Mungo asked dutifully. ‘What does that mean?’
‘It means that he
showed
them.’
‘Showed them what?’
‘The treasure,’ Vicky cut in, and Lizzie rounded on her.
‘I’m telling him!’
‘All right, Lizzie.’ Mungo was leaning forward, interest tempering the indulgent smile. ‘You tell me.’
‘It’s a secret. Mama says that if other people, bad people, heard about it, it would be terrible for King Ben. Robbers might come.’
‘It’s a secret then,’ Mungo agreed.
‘Cross your heart.’
And Lizzie was telling it before he had made the sign of good faith. Lizzie was determined that Vicky would not get in ahead of her, this time.
‘He shows them the diamonds. His wives rub fat all over him, and then they stick the diamonds onto the fat.’
‘Where did King Ben get all these diamonds?’ Scepticism warred with the need to believe.
‘His people bring them from Kimberley. Juba says it isn’t really stealing. King Ben says it is only the tribute that a king should have.’
‘Did Juba say how many diamonds?’
‘Pots full, pots and pots of them.’
Mungo St John turned his single eye from her flushed and shining face and looked across the grassy golden plains to the Hills of the Indunas, and his eye was flecked golden yellow like one of
the big predatory cats of Africa.
J
ordan looked forward to this early hour of day. It was one of his duties to check each evening in the nautical almanac the time of sunrise, and
to waken Mr Rhodes an hour beforehand.
Rhodes liked to see the sun come up, whether it was from the balcony of his magnificent private railway coach or drinking coffee in the dusty yard of the corrugated iron cottage that he still
maintained behind Market Square in Kimberley, from the upper deck of an ocean-going liner or from the back of a horse as they rode the quiet pathways of his estate on the slopes of Table
Mountain.
It was the time when Jordan was alone with his master, the time when ideas which Mr Rhodes called his ‘thoughts’ would come spilling out of him. Incredible ideas, sweeping and grand
or wild and fanciful, but all fascinating.
It was the time when Jordan could feel that he was part of the vast genius of the man, as he scribbled down Mr Rhodes’ draft speeches in his shorthand pad, speeches that would be made in
the lofty halls of the Cape Parliament to which Mr Rhodes had been elected by the constituents of what had once been Griqualand, or at the board table of the governors of De Beers, of which he was
chairman. De Beers was the mammoth diamond company which Mr Rhodes had welded together out of all the little diggers’ claims and lesser competing companies. Like some mythical boa
constrictor, he had swallowed them all – even Barney Barnato, the other giant of the fields. Mr Rhodes owned it all now.
On other mornings they would ride in silence, until Mr Rhodes would lift his chin from his chest and stare at Jordan with those stark blue eyes. Every time he had something startling to say.
Once it was, ‘You should thank God every day, Jordan, that you were born an Englishman.’
Another time it was, ‘There is only one real purpose behind it all, Jordan. It is not the accumulation of wealth. I was fortunate to recognize it so early. The real purpose is to bring the
whole civilized world under British rule, to recover North America to the crown, to make all the Anglo-Saxon race into one great empire.’
It was thrilling and intoxicating to be part of all this, especially as so often the big burly figure would rein his horse and turn his head and look to the north, towards a land that neither he
nor Jordan had ever seen, but which, during the years that Jordan had been with him, had become a part of both their existences.
‘My thought,’ he called it. ‘My north – my idea.’
‘That’s where it will really begin, Jordan. And when the time comes, I shall send you. The person I can trust beyond any other.’
It had never seemed strange to Jordan that those blue eyes had looked in that direction, that the open land to the north had come to loom so large in Mr Rhodes’ imagination, that it had
taken on the aura of a sacred quest.
Jordan could mark the day that it had begun, not only the day but the hour. For weeks after Pickering had been buried in the sprawling cemetery on the Cape Road, Jordan had respected Mr
Rhodes’ mourning. Then, one afternoon, he had left his office early. He had returned to the camp.
He retrieved the bird image from where it had been abandoned in the yard, and with the help of three black workmen, he moved it into the cottage. The living-room had been too small to hold it;
it hindered access to both the dining-table and the front door.
In the small cottage, there was only one free wall, and that was in Mr Rhodes’ bedroom, at the head of his narrow cot. The statue fitted perfectly into the space beyond the window. The
next morning, when Jordan went to call him, Mr Rhodes had already left his cot and, wearing a dressing-gown, was standing before the statue.
In the fresh pink light of sunrise, as they rode down to the De Beers offices, Mr Rhodes had said, suddenly: ‘I have had a thought, Jordan, one which I’d like to share with you.
While I was studying that statue, it came to me that the north is the gateway, the north is the hinterland of this continent of ours.’ That is how it had begun, in the shadow of the bird.
When the architect, Herbert Baker, had consulted Mr Rhodes on the decoration and furnishings of the mansion that they were building on his Cape Estate, ‘Groote Schuur’ –
‘The Great Barn’, Jordan had sat aside from the two men. As always in the presence of others he was unobtrusive and self-effacing, taking the notes that Mr Rhodes dictated, supplying a
figure or a fact only when it was demanded, and then with his voice kept low, the natural lilt and music of his rich tenor subdued.
Mr Rhodes had jumped up from his seat on the box against the wall of the cottage and begun to pace, with that sudden excitable and voluble mood upon him.
‘I have had a thought, Baker. I want there to be a theme for the place, something which is essentially me, which will be my motif long after I am gone, something that when men look at it,
even in a thousand years’ time, they will immediately recall the name Cecil John Rhodes.’
‘A diamond, perhaps?’ Baker had hazarded, sketching a stylized stone on his pad.
‘No, no, Baker. Do be original, man! First I have to scold you for being stingy, for trying to build me a mean little hovel and now that I have prevailed on you for magnificently barbaric
size and space, you want to spoil it.’
‘The bird,’ said Jordan. He had spoken despite himself, and both men looked at him with surprise.
‘What did you say, Jordan?’
‘The bird, Mr Rhodes. The stone bird. I think that should be your motif.’
Rhodes stared at him for a moment, and then punched his big fist into the palm of his left hand.
‘That’s it, Baker. The bird, sketch it for me. Sketch it now.’
So the bird had become the spirit of Groote Schuur. There was barely one of the huge cavernous rooms without its frieze or carved door jambs depicting it, even the bath, eleven tons of chiselled
and polished granite was adorned at its four corners with the image of the falcon.
The original statue had been shipped down from Kimberley, and a special niche prepared for it high above the baronial entrance hall, from where it stared down blindly upon everyone who came
through the massive teak front doors of the mansion.
On this morning they had ridden out even earlier than usual, for Mr Rhodes had slept badly and had summoned Jordan from his small bedroom down the corridor.
It was cold. A vindictive wind came down off the mountains of the Hottentots Holland and as they took the path up towards the private zoo, Jordan looked back. Across the wide Cape flats he saw
the snow on the distant peaks turning pink and gold in the early light.
Mr Rhodes was in a morose mood, silent and heavy in the saddle, his collar pulled up over his ears, and the broad hat jammed down to meet it. Jordan surreptitiously pushed his own mount level
and studied his face.
Rhodes was still in his thirties, and yet this morning he looked fifteen years older. He took no notice of the first unseasonal flush of blue plumbago blooms beside the path, though on another
morning he would have exclaimed with delight, for they were his favourite flowers. He did not stop at the zoo to watch the lions fed, but turned up into the forest; and on the prow of land that led
to the steeper cliffs of the flat-topped massif they dismounted.
At this distance the thatched roof of Groote Schuur with its twirling barley-corn turrets looked like a fairy castle – but Rhodes looked beyond it.
‘I feel like a racehorse,’ he said suddenly. ‘Like a thoroughbred Arab with the heart and the will and the need to run, but there is a dark horseman upon my back that checks me
with a harsh curb of iron or pricks me with a cruel spur.’ He rubbed his closed eyes with thumb and forefinger, and then massaged his cheeks as though to set the blood coursing in them again.
‘He was with me again last night, Jordan. Long ago I fled from England to this land and I thought I had eluded him, but he is back in the saddle. His name is Death, Jordan, and he will give
me so little time.’ He pressed his hand to his chest, fingers spread as though to slow the racing of his damaged heart. ‘There is so little time, Jordan. I must hurry.’ He turned
and took the hand from his heart and placed it on Jordan’s shoulder. His expression became tender, a small sad smile touched his white lips. ‘How I envy you, my boy – for you will
see it all and I shall not.’
At that moment Jordan thought his own heart might break and, seeing his expression, Rhodes lifted his hand and touched his cheek.
‘It’s all too short, Jordan, life and glory – even love – it’s all too short.’ He turned back to his horse. ‘Come, there is work to do.’
As they rode out of the forest, the course of that mercurial mind had changed again. Death had been pushed aside and he said suddenly:
‘We shall have to square him, Jordan. I know he is your father – but we shall have to square him. Think about it and let me have your thoughts, but remember time is running short and
we cannot move without him.’
T
he road over the neck between the main massif of Table Mountain and Signal Hill was well travelled and Jordan passed twenty coaches or more
before he reached the top, but it was another two hours’ ride beyond that and the road became steadily less populous, until at last it was a lonely deserted track which led into one of the
ravines in the mountainside.
In this winter season the protea bushes on the slopes beyond the sprawling thatched building were drab and their blooms had withered and browned on the branches. The waterfall that smoked down
off the mountain polished the rocks black and cold, and the spray dripped from the clustering trees about the pool.
However, the cottage had a neat cared-for look. The thatch had recently been renewed. It was still bright gold, and the thick walls had been whitewashed. With relief Jordan saw smoke curling
from the chimney stack. His father was at home.
He knew that the property had once belonged to the old hunter and explorer Tom Harkness, and that his father had purchased it with £150 of his royalties from
A Hunter’s
Odyssey.
A sentimental gesture perhaps – for old Tom had been the one who had encouraged and counselled Zouga Ballantyne on his first expedition to Zambezia.
Jordan dismounted and hitched the big glossy hunter from the stables of Groote Schuur to the rail below the verandah, and he walked to the front steps.
He glanced at the pillar of blue marbled stone that stood at the head of the steps like a sentinel, and a little shadow flitted over his face as he remembered the fateful day that Ralph had
hacked it out of the Devil’s Own claims and brought it to the surface.