Authors: Wilbur Smith
‘Oh Gentle Jesus, help me to be strong—’ His hands fell upon her shoulders; they were hard as bone and cool through the thin cotton of her blouse. She shuddered, and
gasped.
‘ – Have pity. I beg you. Let me be.’
He took her chin in the cup of his hand and forced her face up to his.
‘Will you give me no peace, ever?’ she mumbled brokenly, and then his mouth covered hers and she could not speak again. Slowly the rigidity went out of her body, and she swayed
against him. She sobbed once, and began to slump into the embrace of his hard muscled arms. He caught her behind the knees, and around the shoulders, and lifted her like a sleeping child against
his chest.
He kicked open the door to the bedroom, stepped through and pushed it closed with his heel.
There was a dustsheet on the bed, but no pillow or eiderdown. He laid her upon it, and knelt beside her, still holding her to his chest.
‘He was a saint,’ she choked. ‘And you sent him to his death. You are the very devil.’
Then with the shaking, frantic fingers of a drowning woman, she unfastened the mother-of-pearl buttons down the front of his linen shirt.
His chest was hard and smooth, the olive skin covered with crisp, dark curls. She pressed her open lips to it, breathing deeply the man-smell of him.
‘Forgive me,’ she sobbed. ‘Oh God, forgive me.’
F
rom his cubbyhole beside the pantries, Jordan Ballantyne could overlook the cavernous kitchens of Groote Schuur.
There were three chefs at work over the gleaming, anthracite-burning Aga ranges, and one of them hurried across to Jordan with the enamelled double-boiler and a silver spoon. With it Jordan
tasted the Béarnaise sauce that would go with the galjoen. The galjoen was a fish of the stormy Cape waters; fancifully its shape could be likened to that of a Spanish galleon, and its
delicate greenish flesh was one of the great African delicacies.
‘Perfect,’ Jordan nodded. ‘
Parfait, Monsieur Galliard, comme toujours
.’ The little Frenchman scurried away beaming, and Jordan turned to the heavy teak door
leading to the wine cellars below the kitchens.
Jordan had personally decanted the port that afternoon, ten bottles of the forty-year-old Vilanova de Gaia of the 1853 vintage; it had faded to the beautiful tawny colour of wild honey. Now a
Malay waiter in long white Kanzu robes, with crimson sash and pillbox fez, came up the stone steps, reverently carrying the first Waterford glass decanter on a Georgian silver tray.
Jordan poured a thimbleful into the chased silver
tastevin
which he wore on the chain about his neck. He sipped, rolled it on his tongue and then drew breath sharply through pursed lips
to let the wine declare itself.
‘I was right,’ he murmured. ‘What a fortunate purchase.’
Jordan opened the heavy leatherbound wine register, and noted with pleasure that they still had twelve dozen bottles of the Vilanova, after he had deducted today’s decanting. In the
‘remarks’ column he wrote, ‘Extraordinary. Keep for best,’ and then turned back to the Malay steward.
‘So then, Ramallah, we will offer a choice of Sherry Finos Palma or Madeira with the soup, with the fish the Chablis or the 1889 Krug—’ Quickly Jordan ran down the menu, and
then dismissed him. ‘The company will be coming through presently, kindly see that everyone takes their places now.’
The twelve waiters stood with their backs to the oak panelling of the dining-hall, their white-gloved hands clasped in front of them, expressionless as guardsmen, and Jordan gave each one a
quick appraisal as he passed, looking for a stain on the brilliant white robes or a sloppily knotted sash.
At the head of the long table, he paused. The service was the silver gilt queen’s pattern presented to Mr Rhodes by the directors of the Chartered Company, the glass was long, finely
stemmed Venetian, lipped with twenty-two carat gold to complement the gilt. There were twenty-two settings this evening, and Jordan had agonized over the seating arrangements. Finally he had
decided to place Dr Jameson at the bottom of the table and put Sir Henry Loch, the High Commissioner, on Mr Rhodes’ right. He nodded his satisfaction at that arrangement, and took one of the
Alphonso Havanas from the silver humidor and sniffed it before crackling it against his ear – that too was perfect; he replaced it and took one last lingering look around the hall.
The flowers had been arranged by Jordan’s own hands, great banks of protea blooms from the slopes of Table Mountain. In the centrepiece, yellow English roses from the gardens of Groote
Schuur, and of course Mr Rhodes’ favourite flowers, the lovely blue plumbago blossom.
From beyond the double doors came the clatter of many feet on the marble floor of the hall and the high, almost querulous voice which Jordan knew and loved so well carried to him.
‘And we shall just have to square the old man.’ Jordan smiled fondly at the words, the old man was certainly Kruger, the President of the Boer Republic, and ‘square’ was
still one of the central words in Mr Rhodes’ vocabulary. Just before the doors swung open to admit the company of brilliant and famous men clad in sombre dinner jackets, Jordan slipped out of
the hall, back to his little cubbyhole – but he raised the hatch beside his desk an inch, so that he could hear the conversation at the long, glittering table in the hall beyond.
It gave him a glorious feeling of power, to be sitting so close to the centre of all this and to listen to the pulse of history beating, to know that it was within him subtly to alter and
direct, and to do so in secrecy. A word here, a hint there, even something so trivial as the placing of two powerful men side by side at the long dinner table. On occasions, in privacy, Mr Rhodes
would actually ask, ‘What do you think, Jordan?’ and would listen attentively to his reply.
The tumultuous excitement of this life had become a drug to Jordan, and barely a day passed that he did not drink the heady draught to the fill. There were special moments that he treasured and
whose memory he stored. When the meal ended, and the company settled down to the port and cigars, Jordan could sit alone and gloat over these special memories of his.
He remembered that it had been he who had written out that legendary cheque in his own fair hand for Mr Rhodes to sign the day that they had bought out the Kimberley Central Company. The amount
had been £5,338,650, the largest cheque ever drawn anywhere in the world.
He remembered sitting in the visitor’s gallery of Parliament as Mr Rhodes rose to make his acceptance speech as Prime Minister of Cape Colony, how Mr Rhodes had looked up and caught his
eye and smiled before he began speaking.
He remembered after that wild ride down from Matabeleland when he had handed the Rudd Concession with Lobengula’s seal upon it to Mr Rhodes, how he had clasped Jordan’s shoulder and
with those pale blue eyes conveyed in an instant more than a thousand carefully chosen words ever could.
He remembered riding beside Mr Rhodes’ carriage down the Mall to Buckingham Palace and dinner with the queen, while the Union Castle mailship delayed its sacred sailing by twenty-four
hours to wait for them.
This very morning had added another memory to Jordan’s store, for he had read aloud the cable from Queen Victoria to ‘Our well-beloved Cecil John Rhodes’, appointing him one of
Her Majesty’s Privy Councillors.
Jordan started back to the present.
It was after midnight, and in the dining-hall Mr Rhodes was abruptly breaking up the dinner in his characteristic fashion.
‘Well, gentlemen, I’ll bid you all a good night’s rest.’
Quickly Jordan rose from his desk and slipped down the servants’ passageway.
At the end he opened the door a crack and anxiously watched the burly, appealingly awkward figure mount the stairs. The company had done justice to Jordan’s choice of wine, but still Mr
Rhodes’ tread was steady enough. Though he stumbled once at the top of the sweeping marble staircase, he caught his balance, and Jordan shook his head with relief.
When the last servant left, Jordan locked the wine cellar and the pantry. There was a silver tray left upon his desk, and on it a glass of the Vilanova and two water biscuits spread thickly with
salted Beluga caviar. Jordan carried the tray through the silent mansion. A single candle burned in the lofty entrance hall. It stood upon the massive carved teak table in the centre of the
floor.
Jordan paced slowly across the chequer board of black and white marble paving, like a priest approaching the altar, and reverently he laid the silver tray upon the table. Then he looked up at
the carved image high in its shadowy niche, and his lips moved as he silently began the invocation to the bird goddess, Panes.
When he had finished, he stood silent and expectant in the fluttering light of the candle, and the great house slept around him. The falcon-headed goddess stared with cruel blind eyes into the
north, a thousand miles and more towards an ancient land, now blessed, or cursed, with a new name, Rhodesia.
Jordan waited quietly, staring up at the bird like a worshipper before a statue of the Virgin, and then suddenly in the silence, from the bottom of the gardens, where grew the tall dark oak
trees that Governor van der Stel had planted almost two hundred years before, came the sad and eerie cry of an eagle owl. Jordan relaxed and backed away from the offering that he left upon the
table. Then he turned and went bounding up the marble staircase.
In his own small room he quickly stripped off his clothing that was impregnated with the odours of the kitchen. Naked, he sponged down his body with cold water, admiring his own lithe form in
the full-length mirror on the far wall. He scrubbed himself dry with a rough towel, and then rinsed his hands in eau-de-Cologne.
With a pair of silver-backed brushes he burnished his hair until his curls shone like whorls of pure gold wire in the lamplight; then he slipped his arms into the brocaded gown of midnight blue
satin, belted it around his waist, picked up the lamp to light his way and stepped out into the passage.
He closed the door to his bedroom quietly and listened for a few seconds. The house was still silent, their guests slept. On silent, bare feet, Jordan glided down the thick carpet to the double
doors at the end of the passage to tap lightly on one of the panels, twice then twice again, and a voice called to him softly,
‘Enter!’
‘T
hese are a pastoral people. You cannot take their herds away from them.’ Robyn Ballantyne spoke with a low controlled intensity, but
her face was pale and her eyes sparkled with furious green lights.
‘Please, won’t you be seated, Robyn.’
Mungo St John indicated the chair of rough raw lumber, one of the few furnishings in this adobe mud hut that was the office of the Administrator of Matabeleland. ‘You will be more
comfortable, and I will feel more at ease.’
Nothing could make him appear more at ease, she thought wryly. He lolled back in his swivel chair, and his booted ankles were crossed on the desk in front of him. He was in shirtsleeves, without
a tie or cravat, and his waistcoat was unbuttoned.
‘Thank you, General. I shall continue to stand until I receive your answer.’
‘The costs of the relief of Matabeleland and the conduct of the war were borne entirely by the Chartered Company. Even you must see that there must be reparation.’
‘You have taken everything. My brother, Zouga Ballantyne, has rounded up over a hundred and twenty-five thousand head of Matabele cattle—’
‘The war cost us a hundred thousand pounds.’
‘All right.’ Robyn nodded. ‘If you will not listen to the voice of humanity, then perhaps hard cash will convince you. The Matabele people are scattered and bewildered; their
tribal organizations have broken down; the smallpox is rife amongst them—’
‘A conquered nation always suffers privation, Robyn. Oh, do sit down, you are giving me a crick in the neck.’
‘Unless you return part of their herds to them, at least enough for milk and slaughter, you are going to be faced with a famine that will cost you more than your neat little war ever
did.’
The smile slipped from Mungo St John’s face, and he inclined his head slightly and studied the ash of his cigar.
‘Think about this, General. When the Imperial Government realizes the extent of the famine, it will force your famous Chartered Company to feed the Matabele. What is the cost of
transporting grain from the Cape? A hundred pounds a load. Or is it more now? If the famine approaches the proportions of genocide, then I will see to it that Her Majesty’s Government is
faced with such a public outcry, led by humanitarians like Labouchère and Blunt, that they may be obliged to revoke the charter and make Matabeleland a crown colony after all.’
Mungo St John took his bottle off the desk and sat upright in his chair.
‘Who appointed you champion of these savages, anyway?’ he asked. But she ignored his question.
‘I suggest, General, that you relay these thoughts to Mr Rhodes before the famine takes a hold.’
She gloried in the visible effort it took him to regain his equanimity.
‘You may well be right, Robyn.’ His smile was light and mocking again. ‘I will point this out to the directors of the Company.’
‘Immediately,’ she insisted.
‘Immediately,’ he capitulated, and spread his hands in a parody of helplessness. ‘Now is there anything else you want of me?’
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘I want you to marry me.’
He stood up slowly and stared at her.
‘You may not believe this, my dear, but nothing would give me greater pleasure. Yet, I am confused. I asked you that day at Khami Mission. Why now have you changed your mind?’
‘I need a father for the bastard you have got on me. It was conceived four months after Clinton’s death.’
‘A son,’ he said. ‘It will be a son.’ He came around the desk towards her.
‘You must know that I hate you,’ she said.
His single eye crinkled as he smiled at her.
‘Yes, and that is probably the reason that I love you.’
‘Never say that again,’ she hissed at him.