A Falcon Flies (36 page)

The grave for which she searched stood a little apart from the others. It was demarcated by a square of whitewashed river stones and at the head was a cross built of mortar. It also had been whitewashed. Unlike the other graves, it had been kept cleaned of grass and weed, and the cross and stones freshly painted. There was even a small bunch of wilted wild flowers standing in a cheap blue china vase. They were not more than a few days old. That surprised Robyn.

Standing at the foot of the grave she read the still fully legible lettering on the plaster cross:

In loving memory of
Helen
beloved wife of Fuller Morris Ballantyne.
Born August 4th 1814. Died of fever December 16th
1852.
God's will be done.

Robyn closed her eyes and waited for the tears to come up from deep inside, but there were no tears, they had been shed long ago. Instead there were only the memories.

Little fragments of memory played over and over in her mind – the smell of strawberries as they gathered them together in Uncle William's garden, standing on tiptoe to place one of the lush red fruit between her mother's white teeth and then eating the half that was left especially for her; lying cuddled under her bedclothes as she listened drowsily to her mother's voice reading aloud to her in the candlelight; the lessons at the kitchen table in winter, under the elm trees in summer and her own eagerness to learn and to please; her first pony ride, her mother's hands holding her in the saddle, her legs too short for the stirrups; the feel of the soapy sponge down her back as her mother stooped over the iron hipbath; the sound of her mother's laughter, and then at night the sound of her weeping beyond the thin partition beside her cot; then the final memory of the smell of violets and lavender as she pressed her face to her mother's bodice.

‘Why must you go, Mama?'

‘Because your father needs me. Because your father has sent for me, at last.'

And Robyn's own terrible consuming jealousy at the words, mingled with the sense of impending loss.

Robyn knelt in the soft cushion of dust beside the grave, and began to pray, and as she whispered, the memories came crowding back, happy ones and sad ones together, and she had not felt so close to her mother in all the intervening years.

She did not know how long she had knelt there, it seemed an eternity, when a shadow fell across the earth in front of her and she looked up, jerked back to the present with a little gasp of surprise and alarm.

A woman and child stood near her, a black woman, with a pleasant, even pretty, face. Not young, in her middle thirties possibly, though it was always difficult to guess an African's age. She wore European-style clothing, cast-offs probably, for they were so faded that the original pattern was hardly visible, but starched and fastidiously clean. Robyn sensed that they had been donned for the occasion.

Although the child wore the brief leather kilt of the local Shangaan tribe, he was clearly not a full-blooded African. He could not have been more than seven or eight years of age, a sturdy boy, with a head of dusty-coloured curls and oddly pale-coloured eyes. There was something vaguely familiar about him that made Robyn stare.

He carried a small bunch of the yellow acacia flowers in his hands, and smiled shyly at Robyn before hanging his head and shuffling his feet in the dust. The woman said something to him and tugged at his hand, and he came hesitantly to Robyn and handed her the flowers.

‘Thank you,' she said automatically, and raised the bouquet to her nose. They were faintly, but sweetly perfumed.

The woman hiked her skirts and squatted beside the grave, removed the wilted flowers and then handed the little blue china vase to the boy. He scampered away towards the river-bank.

While he was gone the woman plucked out the first green sprouts of weeds from the mound of the grave and then rearranged the whitewashed stones carefully. The familiar manner in which she performed the chore left no doubt in Robyn's mind that she was responsible for the upkeep of her mother's grave.

Both women maintained a friendly, comfortable silence, but when their eyes met they smiled and Robyn nodded her thanks. The child came trotting back, muddy to the knees and slopping water from the vase, but puffed up with self-importance. He had clearly performed this task before.

The woman took the vase from him and set it carefully on the grave, then both of them looked expectantly towards Robyn and watched her while she arranged the acacia flowers in the vase.

‘Your mother?' said the woman softly, and Robyn was startled to hear her speak English.

‘Yes,' she tried to hide her surprise. ‘My mother.'

‘Good lady.'

‘You knew her?'

‘Please?'

After the valiant opening, the woman had very little English, and their communication was halting, until Robyn, out of the habit of talking to little Juba, said something in Matabele. The woman's face lit with pleasure and she answered swiftly in a language which was obviously one of the Nguni group, and whose inflection and vocabulary differed very little from that to which Robyn was accustomed.

‘You are Matabele?' Robyn demanded.

‘I am Angoni,' the woman put in hastily, for there was rivalry and hostility between even the closely related tribes of the Nguni.

Her tribe, the Angoni, had swept northwards from their origins in the grassy hills of Zululand, and crossed the Zambezi river thirty years before, she explained in her lilting musical dialect. They had conquered the land along the northern shores of Lake Marawi. It was from there that the woman had been sold to one of the Omani slave-masters, and had come down the Shire river in chains.

Unable to keep up with the slave caravan, reduced by starvation, and the fevers and hardships of the long journey, she had been freed of her chains and left for the hyenas beside the slave road. It was there that Fuller Ballantyne had found her and taken her into his own small camp.

She had responded to his rough nursing and when she was recovered, Fuller had baptized her with the Christian name of Sarah.

‘So my father's detractors are mistaken,' Robyn laughed, and spoke in English. ‘He made more than one convert.'

Sarah did not understand but laughed in sympathy. By now it was almost dusk and the two women, followed by the half-naked child, left the little cemetery and started back along the footpath, with Sarah still telling how when Robyn's mother, summoned at last by Fuller Ballantyne, arrived in Tete with other members of the Kaborra-Bassa expedition, Sarah had been presented to her by Fuller as a personal servant.

By now they had stopped at a fork in the path, and after a moment of hesitation Sarah invited Robyn to her village which was only a short way off the path. Robyn glanced up at the sun and shook her head, it would be dark in an hour and Zouga would be certain to turn out the camp to search for her if she had not returned by then.

She had enjoyed the hours spent with the young woman and the bright sweet child, and when she saw Sarah's obvious disappointment, she said quickly, ‘Although I must go – I will return tomorrow at the same time. I wish to hear all you can tell me of my mother and my father.'

Sarah sent the little boy with her as far as the buildings of the village and after the first few yards Robyn quite naturally took the boy's hand, and he skipped along beside her, chattering gay childish nonsense, which helped to lift her sombre mood until Robyn laughed and chattered with him.

Before they reached the outskirts of Tete, Robyn's fears were confirmed. They met Zouga and Sergeant Cheroot. Zouga was armed with the Sharps rifle and angry with relief the moment he saw her.

‘Damn me, Sissy, but you have had us all beside ourselves. You've been missing for five hours.'

The child stared at Zouga with wide eyes. He had never seen anything like this tall lordly man with the imperious manner and sharp commanding voice. He must be a great chief, and he slipped his hand out of Robyn's, retreated two paces, then turned and darted away like a sparrow from the circling hawk.

Some of Zouga's anger left him as he watched the child go, and a small smile touched his lips.

‘For a moment I thought you'd picked up another stray.'

‘Zouga, I found Mama's grave.' Robyn hurried to him and took his arm. ‘It's only a mile or so.'

Zouga's expression changed again and he glanced up at the sun that was already on the tops of the acacia trees and turning deep smouldering red.

‘We'll come back tomorrow,' he said. ‘I don't like to leave the camp after dark, there are too many jackals lurking about – two legged jackals.' Firmly, he led her back towards the village, continuing his explanation as they walked.

‘We are still having a great deal of difficulty obtaining porters, despite the fact that the Governor in Quelimane assured me they would be readily available, and the good Lord knows there are any amount of able-bodied men hereabouts. Yet that strutting poppinjay Pereira finds obstacles at every turn.' The frown made him look much older than his years as did the full beard which he had allowed to grow since disembarking from
Black Joke
. ‘He says that the porters refuse to contract until they know the direction and duration of the safari.'

‘That seems logical,' Robyn agreed. ‘I know I wouldn't carry one of those huge packs, unless I knew where I was going.'

‘I don't think at all that it's the porters – there is no reason why the destination should worry them. I am offering top wages, and not a single man has come forward.'

‘What is it, then?'

‘Pereira has been trying to wheedle our intentions out of me, ever since we left the coast. I think this is a form of blackmail, no porters until I tell him.'

‘Then why don't you tell him?' Robyn asked, and Zouga shrugged.

‘Because he is too damned insistent. It's not a casual interest, and instinct warns me not to trust him with any information which it is not essential for him to know.'

They walked on in silence until they reached the perimeter of the camp. Zouga had laid it out on the lines of a military base, with an outer stockade of acacia thorn branches, a Hottentot guard at the gate and the
boma
for the porters separated from the stores depot by the tent lines.

‘It looks like home already,' Robyn congratulated him, and would have left him for her own tent when Camacho Pereira hurried forward.

‘Ah! Major, I wait for you with good news.'

‘That's a pleasant change,' Zouga murmured drily.

‘I find man who has seen your father, not eight months ago.'

Robyn turned back instantly, her excitement matching that of the flamboyant Portuguese and she spoke directly to him for the first time since the incident in her tent.

‘Where is he? Oh, this is wonderful news.'

‘If it's true,' qualified Zouga, with considerably less enthusiasm.

‘I bring the man, damned quick – you see!' Camacho promised, and hurried away towards the porters'
boma
, shouting as he went.

Within ten minutes he returned dragging with him a skinny old man dressed in greasy tatters of animal skins, and with his eyes rolling up into his head with terror.

As soon as Camacho released him, the old man prostrated himself before Zouga who sat in one of the canvas camp chairs under the awning of the dining tent, and gabbled replies to the queries that Camacho shouted at him in hectoring tones.

‘What dialect is that he speaks?' Zouga interrupted within the first few seconds.

‘Chichewa,' Camacho replied. ‘He no speak other.'

Zouga glanced at Robyn, but she shook her head. They had to rely entirely on Camacho's rendition of the old man's replies.

It seemed that the old man had seen ‘Manali', the man with the red shirt, at Zimi on the Lualaba river. Manali had been camped there with a dozen porters, and the old man had seen him with his own eyes.

‘How does he know it was my father?' Zouga asked.

Everybody knew ‘Manali', the old man explained, he was a living legend from the coast to ‘Chona langa', the land where the sun sets.

‘When did he see Manali?'

One moon before the coming of the last rains, which made it in October of the previous year, as Camacho had said, about eight months previously.

Zouga sat lost in thought, but his gaze fixed with such ferocity on the unfortunate who grovelled before him that the old man suddenly burst out on a plaintive note that made Camacho's handsome face darken with anger and he touched the skeletal ribs with the toe of his boot, a threatening gesture that quieted that old man instantly.

‘What did he say?' Robyn demanded.

‘He swears he speak the truth only,' Camacho assured her, resurrecting his smile with an effort.

‘What else does he know of Manali?' Zouga asked.

‘He speak with the porters of Manali, they say they go follow the Lualaba river.'

It made some sense, Zouga thought. If Fuller Ballantyne was indeed seeking the source of the Nile river to recover his lost reputation, then that is where he would have gone. The Lualaba, which was reputed to run directly northward, was one of obvious choices for the source river.

Camacho questioned the old man for another ten minutes, and would have taken the hippo-hide whip to jog his memory, but Zouga stopped him with a gesture of annoyance. It was obvious that there was nothing further to learn from him.

‘Give him a bolt of
merkani
cloth and a
khete
of beads – and let him go,' Zouga ordered and the old man's gratitude was pathetic to watch.

Zouga and Robyn sat later than usual beside the camp fire, while it collapsed slowly upon itself in spasmodic torrents of rising sparks and the murmur of sleepy voices from the porters'
boma
died into silence.

‘If we go north,' Robyn mused, watching her brother's face, ‘we will be going into the stronghold of the slave trade, from Lake Marawi northwards. From that area into which no white man, not even Pater, has ever ventured must come all the slaves for the markets of Zanzibar and the Omani Arabs—'