Men of Men (75 page)

‘Well, Doctor Jim, Lobengula’s ready for you – his young men are spoiling for a fight – and you have a scanty enough force here. In the ordinary way I would say that to
take it into Matabeleland without reinforcements or a relieving force in the offing would be suicide. However—’

‘However?’ Jameson demanded eagerly.

‘Four of Lobengula’s regiments, those he sent against Lewanika, the king of the Barotse, are still on the Zambezi, and Lobengula will not be able to use them.’

‘Why not?’

‘Smallpox,’ Zouga said. ‘It’s broken out in those regiments, and he dare not recall them to the south. They can take no part in the fighting.’

‘Half the Matabele army out of it,’ Jameson exulted. ‘That’s a nudge from on high, St John – what do you think?’

‘I would say it’s still a risk, a damnable risk. But think of the stake. A whole country to be won with all its lands and herds and gold. I’d say if we are ever to march, we
must march now.’

‘Ballantyne, your sister – the missionary woman, what’s her name – Codrington, is she still at Khami? Is her family there with her?’

Zouga nodded, mystified, and Jameson snatched up a pencil and scribbled a message on his pad. Then he tore off the sheet and handed it to Mungo St John. Mungo read it and smiled. He looked like
a bird of prey, beak-nosed and fierce.

‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Perfect.’ He passed the sheet to Zouga. Jameson had written in block capitals.

‘Even Labouchère couldn’t quibble with that,’ Zouga remarked wryly. Labouchère was the London editor of
Truth
magazine, a champion of the oppressed and
one of Rhodes’ most eloquent and persistent adversaries. Zouga proffered the sheet, but Jameson waved it back.

‘Keep it. Send it. I don’t suppose you could leave this evening?’ Jameson asked wistfully.

‘It will be dark in an hour, and my wife is exhausted.’

‘Very well,’ Jameson agreed. ‘But you will return here as soon as you can with Mr Rhodes’ reply?’

‘Of course.’

‘And there will be something else I want you to do on your return, a most important assignment.’

‘What is it?’

‘General St John will explain.’ And Zouga turned suspiciously to Mungo.

Mungo’s manner was suddenly placatory. ‘Zouga, there’s not one of us who hasn’t read your book
Hunter’s Odyssey.
I would say that it’s the bible of
anybody wanting to know about this country and its people.’

‘Thank you.’ Zouga was unbending still.

‘And one of the most interesting sections is the description of your visit to the oracle of the Umlimo in the hills south of GuBulawayo.’

‘The Matopos,’ Zouga told him.

‘Yes, of course, the Matopos. Could you find your way back to the witch’s cavern? After all, it has been over twenty-five years?’

‘Yes, I could find it again.’ Zouga did not hesitate.

‘Excellent,’ Jameson interrupted. ‘Come along, St John, do tell him why.’ But Mungo seemed to digress.

‘You know the old Zulu who works for your son—’

‘Isazi, Ralph’s head driver?’ Zouga asked.

‘That’s the one. Well, we captured four Matabele scouts and we put Isazi in the stockade with them. He can pass for a Matabele, so the prisoners spoke freely in front of him. One of
the things we learnt is that the Umlimo has called all the witchdoctors of the nation to a ritual in the hills.’

‘Yes,’ Zouga agreed. ‘I heard of it before I left GuBulawayo. The Umlimo is preaching war, and promises a charm to the impis that will turn our bullets to water.’

‘Ah, so it’s true then.’ Mungo nodded – and then, thoughtfully: ‘Just what influence does this prophetess have?’

‘The Umlimo is a hereditary figure, a sort of virgin demi-deity that has her origins long before the arrival of the Matabele in this land, perhaps a thousand years or more ago. First
Mzilikazi and then Lobengula have fallen under her spell. I have even heard it whispered that Lobengula served an apprenticeship in sorcery under the Umlimo’s guidance, in the
Matopos.’

‘Then she does wield power over the Matabele?’

‘Immense power. Lobengula makes no important decision without her oracle. No impi would march without her charms to protect them.’

‘If she were to die on the day we march into Matabeleland?’

‘It would throw the king and his warriors into consternation. They would probably act recklessly. The Umlimo’s charms would perish with her; her advice might turn like a serpent and
strike the receiver. They would be demoralized – and it would take at least three months to choose a prophetess to replace her. During that time the nation would be vulnerable.’

‘Zouga, I want you to take a party of mounted men – the toughest and the best we have. I want you to ride to the witch’s cave and destroy her and all her
witchdoctors.’

W
ill Daniel was Zouga’s sergeant. He was a Canadian who had been twenty years in Africa without losing his accent. He had fought the tribes
on the Fish river and in Zululand. He boasted that he had killed three of Cetewayo’s men with a single shot at Ulundi and made his tobacco pouch from the scalp of one of them. He had been in
the Gazaland rebellion and fought at the Hill of the Doves against the free burghers of the Transvaal Republic. Wherever there had been trouble and shooting, Will Daniel had forged his bloody
reputation. He was a big man, heavy in the gut, prematurely bald with large round ears that stood out from his polished scalp like those of a wild dog. His fists were gnarled, his legs bowed from
the saddle, and he wore a perpetual wide white grin which never touched his cold little eyes.

‘You don’t have to like or trust him,’ Mungo St John had advised Zouga. ‘But he is the man for the job.’

With Will Daniel went his henchman, Jim Thorn, half Will’s size but every bit as vicious. A skinny little cockney with the grey tones of the slum-dweller so deeply etched into his gaunt
melancholy face that five thousand African suns had been unable to erase them. Dr Jameson had released him from the Fort Victoria gaol, where the was waiting trial for beating a Mashona servant to
death with a rhinoceros-hide
sjambok.
His pardon dependent on his conduct during the campaign. ‘So you can rely on him to do whatever needs doing,’ Mungo had pointed out to
Zouga.

The other thirteen troopers were men of a similar type. They had all volunteered under Doctor Jim’s Victoria Agreement and signed the enlistment document, a document which Jameson made
sure remained secret. No copy of it went to the High Commissioner in Cape Town nor to Gladstone’s Government in Whitehall, for it promised the volunteers a share of Lobengula’s land and
cattle and treasures; the word ‘loot’ was specifically mentioned in the text.

On the first night out Will Daniel had come silently to where Zouga slept a little apart and, as he stooped over Zouga’s recumbent form, a wiry arm had whipped suddenly around his neck and
the muzzle of a Webley revolver was thrust under his ribs with sufficient force to drive the air from his lungs.

‘Next time you creep up on me, I’ll kill you,’ Zouga hissed into his face; and Will’s teeth flashed in the moonlight as he grinned appreciatively.

‘They told me you were a sharp one.’

‘What do you want?’

‘Me and the boys want to sell our land rights – three thousand
morgen
each, that’s ninety thousand acres. You can have them for a hundred each.’

‘You haven’t earned them yet.’

‘That’s a chance you gotta take, skipper.’

‘I thought you were on guard duty, sergeant.’

‘Well, it was just for a moment, sir.’

‘Next time you leave your post, I’ll shoot you myself, without bothering about a court martial.’

Daniel stared into his face for a moment.

‘Yep, I reckon you would too,’ Will grinned mirthlessly.

Z
ouga led the patrol south and westwards through the forests where once long ago he had hunted the wandering herds of elephant. Now the tuskers
were all gone, and even the herds of lesser game were wild from the unrestrained hunting of the new settlers and they scattered at the first approach of the small party of horsemen.

Zouga avoided the established roads between the Matabele regimental towns, and when they had to pass close to a settlement or the cultivated lands surrounding it, they did so at night. Though he
knew that the impis had all answered Lobengula’s call and were already assembled at Thabas Indunas, still he felt a vast relief when the granite domes of the Matopos rose above the treetops
ahead of them and in single file his horsemen followed him into one of the steep-sided valleys.

That night there was a deputation of four troopers led by Will Daniel and Jim Thorn.

‘The boys have all voted, skipper. We will take a hundred for the lot.’ Will grinned ingratiatingly. ‘There’s not one of us have the price of a drink to celebrate when we
get home – and you have that money belt around your belly. It must be damned heavy by now, and no good it will do you if a Matabele sniper puts a bullet in your back.’

The smile was still on Will’s face, but the threat was naked in his eyes. If Zouga did not buy their land grants, it might be a bullet in the back. They would divide up the contents of his
money belt anyway.

Zouga considered defying the big ugly sergeant, but there were fifteen of them. The gold in his belt could be his death warrant. He was in enough danger from the Matabele.

‘I have seventy-five sovereigns in my belt,’ he said grimly.

‘Fine,’ Will agreed. ‘You’ve got yourself a bargain, Major.’

Zouga wrote out a contract of land grant sale on the back page of his message pad, and twelve of them signed it. Will Daniel and two other illiterates made their marks, and then they squabbled
over the division of the gold sovereigns from Zouga’s belt. Zouga was relieved to be rid of them, and as he returned the pad to his saddle-bag, he realized abruptly that, if those grants were
valid, then Will Daniel was right. He had got a bargain. He decided that when he rejoined Jameson’s column, he would buy up all the other grants that were on offer from any of the rootless
drifters who wanted to sell for the price of a bottle of whisky.

Z
ouga had forgotten just how intense were the peculiar brooding silences of the magical Matopos hills. The silence was a thing of weight and
substance that made their spirits quail. No bird twittered or danced upon a twig in the dense undergrowth that pressed in upon the narrow path, and no breeze reached into the depths of the
granite-sided valleys.

The silence and the heat weighed even upon the hard and unsusceptible men who followed Zouga in single file. They rode with their rifles held across their laps, their eyes narrowed against the
glare from the sparkling chips of mica in the granite walls, watchful and anxious, the dense dark green bush about them charged with a nameless menace.

At times the narrow game trails they were following pinched out or ended abruptly in the gut of a valley, and they were forced to retrace their route and try another; but always Zouga kept
working south and west. Then, on the third day, he was rewarded.

He cut the broad beaten road that led from GuBulawayo to the hidden valley of the Umlimo. It was wide and smooth enough for Zouga to spur his horse into a canter. At Zouga’s orders, his
troopers had muffled their equipment, and put leathers over the hooves of their mounts, so the only sound was the creak of saddlery and the occasional brush and whip of an overhanging branch.

The earlier uneasiness was gone now, and they leaned forward in their saddles, eager as hunting dogs on the leash with a hot scent in their nostrils. Jameson had promised them a bonus of twenty
guineas each and all the loot that they could carry away from the valley of the Umlimo.

Zouga began to recognize landmarks that he passed. There was a pile of rocks, the largest of them the size of St Paul’s dome, and three others, graded down in size, all of them weathered
to almost perfect spheres and balanced one upon the other, and he knew they would reach the entrance to the valley before noon. He halted the patrol and let them snatch a quick meal standing at
their horses’ heads as he went down the line checking their equipment and assigning each of them a separate task.

‘Sergeant, you and Trooper Thorn are to stay close behind me. We will be the first through the pass and into the valley. There is a small village in the centre of it, and there may be
Matabele amongst the huts. Don’t stop for them – even if there are warriors with them, leave them for the others. Ride straight on to the cave at the end of the valley; we must find the
witch before she can escape.’

‘This witch, what does she look like, skipper?’

‘I am not sure, she may be quite young, probably naked.’

‘You leave ‘er to me, mate.’ Jim Thorn grinned lasciviously and nudged Will, but Zouga ignored him.

‘Any woman you find in the cave will be the witch. Now don’t be put off by the sound of wild animals, or strange voices – she is a skilled ventriloquist.’ He went on,
giving precise details, and ended grimly: ‘Our orders are harsh, but they may eventually save the lives of many of our comrades by breaking the morale of the Matabele fighting
impis.’

They mounted again, and almost immediately the road began to narrow so that the branches brushed their stirrups as they passed, and Zouga’s horse stumbled in a narrow stream, clumsy with
the leathers over its hooves. Then he was through and he looked up the sheer granite cliff that blocked their way. The entrance to the passage through the rock was a dark vertical cleft and high
above it a thatched watch-hut was perched in a niche of the granite.

As he stared up at it, Zouga saw an indistinct movement on the ledge.

‘Look out above!’ Even as he yelled, a dozen black men appeared on the lip of the cliff, and each of them hurled a bundle of what looked like staves out over the edge. They scattered
as they fell, and the steel sparkled as the weighted heads dropped, points first, towards them. There was a fluting sound in the air all around them, soft as swallows’ wings, then the rattle
of steel against rock and the thud of the points into the earth beneath the hooves of the horses.