When the Lion Feeds (45 page)

The book slid off his lap.

The small tinkle of Duff's chain disturbed him; he awoke and looked at the bed. Duff crouched apelike. The madness was a fire in his eyes and his cheeks twitched.

A yellowish froth coated his teeth and formed a thin line of scum along his lips. Duff, Sean said, and Duff lunged at him with fingers hooked and a noise in his throat that was not human nor yet animal. It was a sound that jellied Sean's stomach and took the strength from his legs.

Don't! screamed Sean, and the chain caught on one of the posts of the bed, jerking Duff back sprawling onto the bed before he could sink his teeth into Sean's paralysed body.

Sean ran. He ran out of the hut and into the bush. He ran with terror trembling in his legs and choking his breath. He ran with his heart taking its beat from his racing feet and his lungs pumping in disordered panic. A branch ripped across his cheek and the sting of it served to steady him. His feet slowed, he stopped and stood gasping, staring back towards the camp. He waited while his body settled and he forced his terror down until it was only a sickening sensation in his stomach. Then he circled through the Thorn bush and approached the laager from the side farthest away from Duff's shelter. The camp was empty, the servants had fled in the same terror that had driven Sean. He remembered that his rifle was still in the hut beside Duff's bed. He slipped into his wagon and quickly opened the case of unused rifles. His hands were unsteady again as he fumbled with the locks, for the chain might have parted and at every second he expected to hear that inhuman sound behind him. He found his bandolier hanging on the end of his cot and he took cartridges from it.

He loaded the rifle and cocked it. The weight of steel and wood in his hands gave him comfort.

It made him a man again.

He jumped down out of the wagon and with the rifle held ready he went cautiously out of the circle of wagons.

The chain had held. Duff stood in the shade of the wild fig plucking at it. He was making a sound like a new-born puppy. His back was turned to Sean and he was naked, his torn clothing scattered about him. Sean walked slowly towards him. He stopped outside the reach of the chain.

Duffi Sean called uncertainly. Duff spun and crouched, the froth was thick in his golden beard; he looked at Sean and his teeth bared. Then he charged screaming until the chain caught him and threw him onto his back once more. He scrambled to his feet and fought the chain, his eyes fastened hungrily on Sean. Sean backed away. He brought up the rifle and aimed between Duff's eyes.

Swear to me. Swear to me you won't bring the rifle to me.

Sean's aim wavered. He kept moving backwards. Duff was bleeding now.

The steel links had smeared the skin off his hips, but still he pulled against them fighting to get at Sean, and Sean was shackled just as effectively by his promise. He could not end it. He lowered the rifle and watched in impotent pity.

Mbejane came to him at last.

Come away, Nkosi. If you will not end it, come away.

He no longer has need of you. The sight of you inflames him.

Duff still struggled and screamed against his chain.

From his torn waist the blood trickled down and clung in the hair of his legs with the stickiness of molten chocolate. With each jerk of his head the froth sprayed from his mouth and splattered his chest and arms.

Mbejane led Sean back into the laager. The other servants were there and Sean roused himself to give orders. I want everyone away from here.

Take blankets and food, go camp on the far side of the water. I will send for you when it is over. He waited until they had gathered their belongings and as they were leaving he called Mbejane back. What must I do? he asked. If a horse breaks a leg? Mbejane answered him with a question. I gave him my word, Sean shook his head desperately, still facing towards the sound of Duff's raving. Only a rogue and a brave man can break an oath, Mbejane answered simply. We will wait for you. He turned and followed the others. When they were gone Sean hid in one of the wagons and through a tear in the canvas he watched Duff. He saw the idiotic shaking of his head, the curious shambling gait as he moved around the circle of the chain. He watched when the pain made him roll on the ground and claw at his head, tearing out tufts of hair and leaving long scratches down his face. He listened to the sounds of insanity: the bewildered bellows of pain, the senseless giggling and that growl, that terrible growl.

A dozen times he sighted along the rifle barrel, holding his aim until the sweat ran into his eyes and blurred them and he had to take the butt from his shoulder and turn away.

Out there on the end of the chain, its exposed flesh reddening in the sun a piece of Sean was dying. Some of his youth, some of his laughter, some of his carefree love of life, so he had to creep back to the hole in the canvas and watch.

The sun reached its peak and started down again and the thing on the chain grew weaker. It fell and was a long time crawling on its hands and knees before it regained its feet again.

An hour before sunset Duff had his first convulsion. He was standing facing Sean's wagon, swinging his head from side to side, his mouth working silently. The convulsion took him and he stiffened; his lips pulled up grinning, showing his teeth, his eyes rolled back and disappeared leaving only the whites, and his body started to bend backwards. That beautiful body, still slim as a boy's with the long moulded legs, bending tighter and tighter until with a brittle crack the spine snapped and he fell. He lay wriggling, moaning softly and his trunk was twisted at an impossible angle from the broken spine.

Sean jumped from the wagon and ran to him: standing over him he shot duff in the head and turned away. He flung his rifle from him and heard it clatter on the hard earth. He walked back to his wagon and took a blanket off Duff's cot. He came back and wrapped Duff in it, averting his eyes from the mutilated head. He carried him to the shelter and laid him on the bed. The blood soaked through the blanket, spreading on the cloth, like ink spilled on blotting-paper. Sean sank down on the chair beside the bed.

Outside the darkness gathered and became complete.

Once in the night a hyena came and snuffled at the blood outside on the earth, then it moved away. There was a pride of lions hunting in the bush beyond the waterhole; they killed two hours before dawn and Sean sat in the darkness and listened to their jubilant roaring.

in the morning, Sean stood up stiffly from his chair and went down to the wagons. Mbejane was waiting beside the fire in the laager.

Where are the others? Sean asked.

Mbejane stood up. They wait where you sent them. I came alone, knowing you would need me. Yes, said Sean. Get two axes from the wagon. They gathered wood, a mountain of dry wood, and packed it around Duff's bed, then Sean put fire to it.

Mbejane saddled a horse for Sean and he mounted up and looked down at the Zulu. Bring the wagons on to the next waterhole. I will meet you there. Sean rode out of the laager. He looked back only once and saw that the breeze had spread the smoke from the pyre in a mile long smudge across the tops of the thorn trees.

Like a bag of pus at the root of an infected tooth the guilt and grief rotted in Sean's mind. His guilt was doubleedged. He had betrayed duff's trust, and he had lacked the courage to make the betrayal worthwhile. He had waited too long. He should have done it at the beginning, cleanly and quickly, or he should not have done it at all.

He longed with every fibre of his body to be given the chance to do it again, but this time the right way. He would gladly have lived once more through all that horror to clear his conscience and clean the stain from the memory of their friendship.

His grief was a thing of emptiness, an aching void, so that he was lost in it. Where before there had been Duff's laughter, his twisted grin and his infectious zest there was now only a grey nothingness. No glimmer of sun penetrated it and there were no solid shapes in it.

The next waterhole was shallow soup in the centre of a flat expanse of dry mud the size of a polo field. The mud was cracked in an irregular chequered pattern forming small brickettes, each the size of a hand. A man could have jumped across the water without wetting his feet.

Scattered thickly round its circumference were the droppings of the animals that had drunk there. Back and forth across its surface, changing direction as the wind veered, a few loose feathers sailed. The water was brackish and dirty. It was a bad camp. On the third day mbejane went to Sean's wagon. Sean lay in his cot. He had not changed his clothes since leaving Duff. His beard was beginning, , to mat, sticky with sweat for it was hot as an oven under the wagon canvas.

Nkosi, will you come and look at the water. I do not think we should stay here What is wrong with it? Sean asked without interest. It is dirty, I think we should go on towards the big river. Do whatever you think is right. Sean rolled away from him, his face towards the side of the wagon.

So Mbejane took the wagon-train down towards the Limpopo. It was two days later that they found the ribbon of dark green trees that lined the banks. Sean stayed in his cot throughout the trek, jolting over the rough ground, sweating in the heat but oblivious to all discomfort.

Mbejane put the wagons into laager on the bank above the river-bed, then he and all the other servants waited for Sean to come to life again.

Their talk round the fire at nights was baited with worry and they looked often towards Sean's living wagon, where it stood unlit by lantem, dark as the mood of the man that lay within.

Like a bear coming out of its cave at the end of winter, Sean came out of the wagon at last. His clothes were filthy. The dogs hurried to meet him, crowding round his knees, begging for attention and he did not notice them.

Vaguely he answered the greetings of his servants. He wandered down the bank into the river bed.

The summer had shrunk the Limpopo into a sparse line of pools strung out down the centre of the watercourse.

The pools were dark olive green. The sand around them was white, glaring snowfield white, and the boulders that choked the barely moving river were black and polished smooth. The banks were steep, half a mile apart and walled in with trees. Sean walked through the sand, sinking to his ankles with each step. He reached the water and sat down at the edge, he dabbled his hand in it and found it warm. as blood. In the sand next to him was the long slither mark of a crocodile, and a troop of monkeys were shaking the branches of a tree on the far bank and chattering at him. A pair of Sean's dogs splashed across the narrow neck between two Pools and went off to chase the monkeys. They went halfheartedly with their tongues flapping at the corners of their mouths for it was very hot in the whiteness of the river-bed. Sean stared into the green water. It was lonely without Duff; he had only his guilt and his sorrow for company. One of the dogs that had stayed with him touched his cheek with its cold nose.

Sean put his arm round its neck and the dog leaned against him. He heard footsteps in the sand behind him, he turned and looked up. It was mbejane. Nkosi, Hlubi has found elephant not an hour's march up stream.

He has counted twenty show good ivory.

Sean looked back at the water. Go away, he said.

Mbejane squatted down beside him with his elbows on his knees. For whom do you mourn? he asked. Go away, Mbejane, leave me alone. Nkosi Duff does not need your sorrow, therefore I think that you mourn for yourself mhejane picked up a pebble and tossed it into the pool. When a traveller gets a Thorn in his foot, Mbejane went on softly, and he is wise he plucks it out, and he is a fool who leaves it and says "I will keep this thorn to prick me so that I will always remember the road upon which I have travelled. " Nkosi, it is better to remember with pleasure than with pain. Mbejane lobbed another pebble into the pool, then he stood up and walked back to the camp. When Sean followed him ten minutes later he found a saddle on his horse, his rifle in the scabbard and Mbejane and Hlubi waiting with their spears. Kandhla handed him his hat, he held it by the brim, turning it in his hands. Then he clapped it onto his head and swung up onto the horse.

Lead, he ordered.

During the next weeks Sean hunted with a single-mindedness that left no time for brooding. His returns to the wagons were short and intermittent; his only reasons for returning at all were to bring in the ivory and change his horse. At the end of one of these brief visits to camp and as Sean was about to mount up for another hunt, even Mbejane complained. Nkosi, there are better ways to die than working too hard.

You look well enough, Sean assured him, although Mbejane was now as lean as a greyhound and his skin shone like washed anthracite. Perhaps all men look healthy to a man on horseback, Mbejane suggested Sean stoppe with one foot in the stirrup. He looked at Mbejane thoughtfully, then he lowered his leg again. We hunt on foot now, Mbejane, and the first to ask for mercy earns the right to be called woman" by the other. Mbejane grinned; the challenge was to his liking. They crossed the river and found spoor before midday, a small herd of young bulls. They followed it until nightfall and slept huddled together under one blanket, then they went on again next morning. on the third day they lost the spoor in rocky ground and they cast back towards the river. They picked up another herd within ten miles of the wagons, went after them and killed that evening three fine bulls, not a tusk between them under fifty pounds weight. A night march back to the wagons, four hours sleep and they were away again. Sean was limping a little now and on the second day out, during one of their infrequent halts, he pulled off his boot.

The blister on his heel had burst and his sock was stiff with dried blood.

Mbejane looked at him expressionlessly. How far are we from the wagons?

asked Sean. We can be back before dark, Nkosi. Mbenjane carried Sean's rifle for him on the return. Not once did his mask of solemnity slip.

Back in camp Kandhla brought a basin of hot water and set it in front of sean's chair. While Sean soaked his feet in it his entire following squatted in a circle about him. Every face wore an expression of studied concern and the silence was broken only by the clucking sounds of Bantu sympathy. They were loving every minute of it and Mbejane with the timing of a natural act or was building up the effect, playing to his audience.

Sean puffed at a cheroot, scowling to stop himself laughing. Mbejane cleared his throat and spat into the fire.

Every eye was on him; they waited breathlessly. Nkosi, said Mbejane, I would set fifty head of oxen as your marriage price, if you were my daughter.

One instant more of silence, then a shout of laughter.

Sean laughed with them at first, but after a while when Hlubi had nearly staggered into the fire and Nonga was sobbing loudly on Mbejaae's shoulder with tears of mirth streaming down his cheeks, Sean's own laughter stopped.

It wasn't that funny.

He looked at them sourly, at their wide open pink mouths and their white teeth, at their shaking shoulders and heaving chests and suddenly it came to him very clearly that they were no longer laughing at him. They were laughing for the joy of it. They were laughing because they were alive. A chuckle rattled up Sean's throat and escaped before he could stop it, another one bounced around inside his chest and he lay back in his chair, opened his mouth and let it come. The hell with it, he was alive, too.

In the morning when he climbed out of his wagon and limped across to see what Kandhla was cooking for breakfast, there was a faint excitement in him again, the excitement of a new day. He felt good. Duff's memory was still with him, it always would be, but now it was not a sickening ache. He had plucked out the thorn.

They moved camp three times in November, keeping to the south bank of the river, following it back towards the west. Slowly the wagons which they had emptied of ivory beside the waterhole began to fill again, for the game was concentrated along the river. The rest of the land was dry but now each day there was promise of relief.

The clouds that had been scattered across the sky began to crowd together, gathering into rounded dark-edged masses or rearing proudly into thunderheads. All of nature seemed impressed by their growing importance. In the evening the sun dressed them in royal purple and during the day the whirlwinds did dervish dances for their entertainment. The rains were coming. Sean had to make a decision, cross the Limpopo and cut himself off from the south when the river flooded, or stay where he was and leave the land beyond undisturbed. It wasn't a difficult decision.