Authors: Wilbur Smith
He climbed up carefully, favouring his bad leg, and peered into the kraal.
It was deserted, but a low watch-fire burned in front of the barred gateway.
Mungo slid down the rope and he crossed quickly to the shadows of the nearest hut, and there paused to pull on his mittens and settle the cumbersome mask over his head before creeping on again
towards the inner stockade that guarded the women’s quarters.
In the preceding weeks, using his brass telescope from the vantage point of the nearest hilltop, he had been able to see over the walls and to study the layout of the wives’ quarters.
There was a double circle of huts, like the concentric rings of a target, but at the centre, the bull’s-eye, was a larger hut with intricate patterns of thatch and lacing proclaiming its
greater importance. His guess that this was the king’s sister’s residence had been confirmed when he had seen, through the telescope, Ningi’s elephantine gleaming naked body,
escorted by a dozen hand-maidens, emerging into the early sunlight from the low doorway.
Now he reached the gateway in the inner stockade, and studied it from around the sheltering wall of the nearest hut. Again his luck held. He had been prepared to use the assegai here, but both
the guards were stretched out, wrapped in their furs, and neither of them moved as Mungo stepped over their prostrate bodies.
From inside one hut he heard the low regular snores of one fat wife, and in another a woman coughed and muttered in her sleep, but though his nerves jumped, he went on swiftly.
The door to Ningi’s hut was closed. Mungo had honed the edge of the assegai to a razor edge, and with it he sawed through the fastenings of bark rope that secured the opening. The rasp and
rustle of the blade sounded thunderous in his ears, and his skin prickled as he waited for a shouted challenge from within. It did not come, but he found that he was sweating as he stepped back and
brought out the bladders of goats’ blood from under the cloak.
He slit the bladders and splashed the stinking, congealing blood over the portals of the doorway. He had learned from the twins, who were authorities on the supernatural, that a
Tokoloshe
always spurted blood on any doorway through which it passed. It was one of the creature’s more endearing characteristics.
Now with the assegai gripped in his right hand, Mungo stooped into the hut and, crouched in the doorway, he waited for his eyes to adjust to the gloom.
The fire in the centre of the large hut had burned low. There was just enough light to make out two figures curled like dogs on the sleeping-mats on each side of it – and beyond it the
ponderous bulk of the princess under her furs.
Her snores started as a low grumbling like a volcano, and rose to a whistling crescendo that covered any sound Mungo might make as he slipped across to the first of the sleeping hand-maids.
Before she could stir he had slipped a gag of goat’s skin into her mouth and trussed her at the ankles and wrists with a leather thong. She did not struggle, but stared up at his horrific
mask with huge white eyes in the firelight. He tied and gagged the second woman before crossing to Ningi’s sleeping platform.
That afternoon, as one of the king’s guests, Mungo had watched Ningi sitting beside her brother and swilling pot after pot of French champagne. She went on snoring and grunting as he bound
her arms and legs. Only when he thrust the gag into her gaping mouth did she snuffle and moan and come out of her alcoholic slumbers.
He rolled her off the platform and she fell with a thump to the clay floor. He dragged her across to where her bound servants lay. It was heavy work, for she weighed 300 pounds or more.
He threw a log on the fire, and when it flared he pranced and capered around his captives, thrusting his hideous mask into their faces and gibbering at them in fiendish menace. In the firelight
their sweat of fear burst out and ran in little rivulets down their bodies as they writhed and wriggled against their bonds.
Suddenly there was a spluttering explosive rush as Ningi voided her bowels with sheer terror, and the hot stink of faeces filled the hut. Mungo threw a fur kaross over them and immediately they
were still, their grunts and muffled groans ceased.
He moved quickly then. Returning to the sleeping platform he threw the furs aside, and found a pallet of woven bamboo. It lifted like a trap door, and in the low recess below it were a dozen
small clay pots.
His hands began to shake as he reached for one and lifted it out of the recess. His own sweat half blinded him – but through his blurred vision he saw the soapy gleam of reflected
firelight in the mouth of the pot.
He could not take it all, there was too much for him to carry and too much for him later to conceal. Moreover, his survivor’s instinct warned him that the more he took the more remorseless
would be the search and pursuit.
He spilled the contents of all twelve pots into a glittering heap beside the fire, and in its uncertain light made his choice of the biggest and brightest stones from the hundreds that teased
him with their twinkling smiles. Thirty of them filled the leather drawstring bag he had brought with him. He tied it back at his waist, snatched up the assegai and slipped out of the hut.
The guards at the inner stockade still slept, and he passed them silently. Below the wall of the outer stockade he stripped off his cloak, mittens and mask and dropped them on the untended
watch-fire. Then he heaped branches over them – there would be only ash by morning.
He went up the rope swiftly, hand over hand, and pulled it up after him. The royal kraal behind him was silent in heavy midnight stupor, and he climbed lightly down the outer wall of the
stockade.
He bathed in the pool below the camp, washing off the charcoal and fat, and then found his shirt and breeches where he had left them in the hollow of a tree trunk beside the pool.
In the hut he knelt beside Louise and placed one hand, still icy cold from the pool, upon her cheek. She sighed and rolled over onto her side. He felt like laughing and shouting his triumph out
loud. Instead, he hid the bag of precious stones under his mattress and rolled into his blanket. He did not sleep for the rest of the night, and in the dawn he heard the hubbub of superstitious
fear from the king’s kraal, the screams of women and the shouts of men, loudly bolstering their courage against the spirits and the demons.
‘T
his is a cruel thing for a good king to do,’ Robyn told Lobengula bitterly.
‘Nomusa, you are a wise woman, the wisest that I have ever known – but you do not understand the spirits and demons of Matabeleland.’
‘I understand that the world is full of evil men, but that there are very few evil spirits.’
‘The thing that entered my sister’s hut came from the air. All the gates to the kraal were guarded by men unsleeping; they have sworn to me that they stood at their posts from dusk
to dawn, with eyes wide and spears in their hands. Nothing passed them.’
‘Even your best men can doze, and then lie to protect themselves.’
‘Nobody dare lie to the king. It came from air, and it sprayed rotten stinking blood upon the portals of Ningi’s hut.’ Lobengula shuddered despite himself. ‘On
Chaka’s scrawny buttocks, that is a
Tokoloshe
trick. No man can do that.’
‘Except if he carry blood in a pot to hurl on the doorway.’
‘Nomusa—’ Lobengula shook his head sorrowfully. ‘My sister and her servants saw this great hairy thing, black as midnight and stinking of the grave, with blood and not
sweat oozing from its skin. Its eyes were like the full moon, and its voice that of lion and eagle, it had no hands and no feet, just hairy pads.’ Lobengula shuddered again.
‘And it stole diamonds,’ Robyn told him. ‘What does a demon want with diamonds?’
‘Who knows what a demon needs for his spells or his magic, or to please his dark master?’
‘Men lust after diamonds.’
‘Nomusa, to black men diamonds have no value, so it could not have been a black man. On the other hand, if a white man had entered my sister’s hut he would not have been satisfied
with a few stones. A white man would have taken them all, for that is their way. So it could not have been either a white man or a black man – what is left but a demon?’
‘Lobengula, Great King, you cannot allow this thing to happen.’
‘Nomusa, there has been a terrible witchcraft perpetrated within the royal kraal. An evil person or many evil persons have conjured up a black demon, and I would be no king at all if I
allowed them to live. The evil ones must be smelled out, and my birds must feast before we are cleansed of this filthy thing.’
‘Lobengula—’
‘Say no more, Girlchild of Mercy, words cannot divert my purpose, for you and your family and all the guests at my kraal are summoned to see justice done.’
I
t took ten days for the Matabele people to come in to GuBulawayo; they came in their regiments, warriors and maidens, ringed indunas and fruitful
matrons – the toddlers and the greyheaded toothless old droolers – in their thousands and tens of thousands; and on the morning that Lobengula had appointed, the nation assembled, rank
upon rank, regiment upon regiment, a black ocean of humanity that overflowed the great cattle stockade.
There was a peculiar stillness over such an immense gathering, only the plumed headdresses moved softly in the small restless breeze, and a pall of fear hung over them, so palpable that it
seemed to take the heat from the sun and dim its very rays.
The silence was oppressive; it seemed to crush the breath from their lungs. Only once when a black crow flew low over the serried ranks and screeched its raucous cry into the silence, all their
heads lifted and a soft sigh shook them, like the wind through the top branches of the forest.
Before the gates of the royal kraal, facing this huge concourse, were drawn up the senior indunas of the Matabele, Somabula and Babiaan and Gandang and the lesser princes of Kumalo, while behind
them again, their backs to the poles of the stockade, were Lobengula’s white guests, almost one hundred of them, Germans and Frenchmen, Dutchmen and Englishmen, hunters and scholars and
businessmen and adventurers, petitioners and missionaries and traders. Soberly clad in broadcloth, wearing hunting leathers and bandoliers or dressed in spangled and gaudy uniform, they waited in
the sweltering silence.
There were only two white women present, for Robyn had flatly refused to bring her daughters from Khami for the smelling-out ceremony, and Lobengula had relented and made an exception for
them.
The king had given permission for the two women to be seated. Robyn sat beside the entrance to the stockade, and Clinton stood over her protectively while the members of Mr Rhodes’
deputation flanked her. Mr Rudd, red-faced and whiskered, with his Derby hat set four square on his head, and Jordan Ballantyne, bare-headed and golden-haired at Robyn’s other hand.
Further down the line of guests, Louise St John sat on a stool of leather thongs. Her thick sable plaits hung to the waist of her simple white dress, and the eyes of the men around her kept
returning surreptitiously to her exotic high-cheeked beauty. Behind her stood Mungo St John, one eye hidden by the black patch, leaning easily on his cane and smiling to himself as he saw the
direction of the eyes of the men about him.
The nation surged like a slumbering black sea struck by a sudden gale of wind, and the plumes tossed like spume. There was a single clap of sound like the volley of massed cannon as every right
leg was lifted shoulder high and brought down to stamp the hard earth, and every throat corded and strained to the royal salute.
‘
Bayete!
’
The Great Black Elephant of Matabele came through the gateway, and behind him his wives led by Ningi swayed and shuffled and sang his praises.
With the toy spear of kingship in his hand, Lobengula paced towards the mound of packed clay on which the bath chair, which had been his father’s throne, was set, and Gandang and Babiaan,
his brothers, came forward to help him ascend the steps.
From his platform, Lobengula looked upon his people, and those closest to him saw the terrible sorrow in his eyes.
‘Let it begin,’ he said, and slumped into his chair.
There was a ragged chorus of shrieks and whines and maniacal laughter from beyond the stockade walls, and through the gateway came a horrid procession of beldams and crones, of prancing
hell-hags and gibbering necromancers.
At their throats and waists were hung the trappings of their wizardry, skull of baboon and infant, skin of reptile, of python and iguana, carapace of tortoise, and stoppered horns, rattles of
lucky bean pods and bones, and other grisly relics of man and animal and bird.
Wailing and hooting they assembled before Lobengula’s throne.
‘Dark sisters, can you smell the evil ones?’
‘We smell their breaths – they are here! They are here!’
One of the witches collapsed in the dust, with froth bubbling over her toothless gums; her eyes rolled back into her skull and her limbs twitched spasmodically. One of her sisters dashed the red
powder from a snuff-horn in her face, and she shrieked and leaped into the air.
‘Dark sisters, will you bring forth the evil-doers?’ Lobengula asked.
‘We will bring them to you, Great Bull of Kumalo. We will deliver them up, son of Mzilikazi.’
‘Go!’ ordered Lobengula. ‘Do what must be done!’
Some of them went whirling and cavorting, brandishing their divining rods, one the tail of a giraffe, another the inflated bladder of a jackal on a staff of red tambooti wood, still another the
stretched and sun-dried penis of a black-maned lion, the rods with which they would point out the evil ones.
Others crept away, slinking and sly as the night-prowling hyena. Others again crawled on all fours, snuffling the earth like hunting hounds quartering for the scent as they spread out amongst
the rows of waiting people.
One of the witches came down the line of white guests, hopping like an ancient baboon, her empty teats flapping against her withered belly, her skin crusty grey with filth and her charms
clattering and jangling; and she stopped in front of Mungo St John and lifted her nose to sniff the air, then she howled like a bitch in season.