A Falcon Flies (75 page)

‘I, Bakela, request that my token be conveyed to your father, the honoured and victorious Mzilikazi, and that he be informed that I request from him the right of the road,' said the man in his atrocious Sindebele and Gandang accepted the token from his hand, the small package with strange signs and marks upon it, bound up with strips of coloured cloth so beautiful that they would have delighted the heart of even the most vain and spoiled woman.

‘It shall be done,' he agreed.

I
n the moments of his confrontation with Gandang, Zouga had been thinking as furiously as the Matabele and making his own calculations of survival. Now that he had fallen in with a border impi he knew he must put aside any thought of escaping southwards. Apart from the fact that they were completely surrounded and heavily outnumbered, he knew that no unmounted man could run ahead of these warriors. They were like machines built for the pursuit and the annihilation of an enemy.

The meeting had not taken him completely unprepared. There had been many a night in the preceding weeks when he had woken in the darkest hours, and he had lain on the hard earth and dreaded a moment such as this.

He had mentally rehearsed his actions – from the concealment of any fear while he won time to don his dress uniform, to the demand to be taken to the King's kraal. When it had gone as he planned it, when the tall Induna had agreed, ‘It shall be done,' it had taken another enormous extension of Zouga's will not to show relief. He had stood aloof, disinterested, while Gandang had picked and called out five of his swiftest runners and had recited a long message that they must memorize, and take to Mzilikazi.

It began with a long recitation of the King's praises which began,

‘Great black elephant who shakes the earth with his tread – ' went on to list the deeds that Gandang had performed since leaving the great kraal at Thabas Indunas, the march eastward, the battle at the pass and the slaying of Bopa, the slave master, right up to this day's encounter with the white man. After a flowery description of the man's magnificent finery (which Gandang knew would intrigue his father), it ended with a repetition of Bakela's request to be ‘given the road' to Thabas Indunas.

The chosen messengers, each in turn repeated the long message, and though he showed no change of expression Zouga was amazed that each of them had it word-perfect. It was an impressive demonstration of the developed memory of people who do not have the art of writing and reading.

Gandang handed them the sealed parchment envelope that contained Zouga's letter of credentials, and the messengers sprang to their feet from where they had squatted, saluted their Induna, formed file and trotted away towards the west.

Gandang turned back to Zouga. ‘You will stay encamped here until the King sends word.'

‘When will that be?' Zouga asked, and Gandang answered him sternly.

‘Whenever the King is pleased to do so.'

Zouga's little party was left unmolested. Although there were a dozen Matabele
amadoda
positioned about the camp, guarding it day and night, not one of them attempted to enter the gateway in the thorn
scherm
. Until the moment when they might slaughter them, the persons and property of their prisoners were inviolate.

The main body of the impi camped a quarter of a mile downstream. Each evening the tall Induna visited Zouga and they sat for an hour or so across the fire from each other, speaking gravely and seriously.

As the days of waiting became weeks so the two men developed each for the other a deep respect, if not actual friendship. They were both warriors, and they had common ground when they spoke of old campaigns and of skirmishes and battles fought. They recognized in each other the strengths, the essential decencies of men who live by and respect the laws of their society, though those laws might diverge widely.

‘I account him a gentleman,' Zouga wrote in his journal. ‘One of nature's own.'

While Gandang, speaking to Juba on the sleeping-mat said merely, ‘Bakela is a man.'

Gandang allowed Zouga's bearers to leave the enclosure, to cut and bring in thatch and timber to strengthen and improve the buildings, so that at last Zouga could sleep dry and warm. This, together with the rest and respite from endless marching brought an immediate improvement in Zouga's health. The deep wound in his cheek healed cleanly, leaving a pink shiny scar. The shoulder mended, the bruising abated, and he no longer needed a staff or a sling for his arm. Within a week he knew he was well enough to shoot the heavy four-to-the-pound.

One evening he proposed to Gandang that they hunt together, and the Induna who by this time was finding the waiting as tedious as Zouga was, agreed with alacrity. Gandang's
amadoda
surrounded a herd of Cape buffalo, and drove them down in a bellowing, stampeding black wave to where they waited. Zouga saw the tall Induna rise from cover and race in, bare-footed, shieldless, and kill a mature bull buffalo with a single thrust of the broad-bladed assegai through the ribs behind the heaving shoulder. Zouga knew that he lacked both the skill and courage to emulate that feat.

Gandang watched when Zouga stood to meet the squealing, thunderous charge of an enraged bull elephant, and when the beast went down to the crash of the shot, dropping on to its knees in a storm of dust, Gandang stepped past Zouga and touched the little black hole that punctured the elephant's thick grey hide an inch above the first crease at the top of the trunk.

Gandang inspected the smear of blood on the tip of his forefinger, and said ‘Hau!' quietly but with force, which is an expression of deep amazement. For Gandang, himself, owned a musket, a Tower Musket manufactured in London in 1837. When he first acquired the weapon, Gandang had fired it at buffalo, elephant and Mashona, all of whom had fled headlong, but unscathed.

Gandang understood that when firing it was necessary to close the eyes and the mouth firmly, to hold the breath and at the moment of discharge to shout a rebuke to the devil who lived in the gunpowder smoke, otherwise the devil could enter through the eyes or mouth and take possession of the marksman. In order to throw the musket ball to any distance, it was also necessary to pull the trigger with sudden and brutal force, as in hurling a spear. Furthermore, to minimize the recoil of the weapon, the butt should not touch the shoulder, but be held a hand's span from it. Despite all these precautions, Gandang had never succeeded in hitting the target at which he aimed, and had long abandoned the weapon to rust away, while he kept his assegai polished brightly.

Thus Gandang appreciated to the full the magnitude of the feat that Zouga performed with such apparent ease. So their mutual respect deepened with each day spent in each other's company, and became almost friendship. Almost, but not quite, there were chasms of culture and training between them that could never be bridged, and always the knowledge that on any day a swift runner might come from the west with a message for Gandang from his father.

‘
Bulala umbuna
! Kill the white man!' And both of them knew that Gandang would hesitate not an instant longer.

Zouga had much time alone in camp, and he spent it planning his audience with the King. The longer he dwelt upon that the more ambitious became his plans. The memory of the ancient disused mine-shafts returned to plague these idle hours, and at first merely to amuse himself, and then with truly serious intent, Zouga began to draw up a document which he headed:

‘Exclusive Concession to mine gold and hunt ivory in the Sovereign territory of Matabeleland.'

He worked on it each evening polishing and reshaping it in the gibberish that the layman takes for legal jargon and which he fondly believes will dignify his creation. ‘Whereas I, Mzilikazi, ruler of Matabeleland, hereinafter referred to as the party of the first part—'

Zouga had completed this document to his entire satisfaction when a fatal flaw in his plans became evident. Mzilikazi could not sign his name. Zouga pondered this for a day and then the solution occurred to him. Mzilikazi should by this time have in hand the sealed package. The crimson wax seals must surely impress him, and in his writing-case Zouga had two full sticks of sealing wax.

Zouga began to design a great seal for King Mzilikazi. He sketched the design on the back cover of his journal, and the inspiration came from the first of the King's praise names.

‘Great Black Elephant who shakes the earth.'

In Zouga's design the centre of the field depicted a bull elephant, with long tusks raised and ears spread wide. The upper border bore the legend, ‘Mzilikazi Nkosi Nkulu'. And the lower border carried the translation, ‘Mzilikazi, King of the Matabele'.

He started experimenting with various materials, clay and wood, but the results did not please him – and the following day he asked Gandang for permission to send a party of his porters under Jan Cheroot back to the ancient workings at the Harkness mine to retrieve the ivory buried there.

It took two days of careful consideration for Gandang to agree, and when he did, he sent fifty of his men to accompany the caravan, with orders to kill them all at the first hint of flight or treachery. Jan Cheroot returned with the four huge tusks from the two bull elephants, and Zouga had not only the material from which to carve the King's great seal, but a gift fitting the King's importance.

Ivory was a treasure of which the Matabele had long ago realized the value in trade. It was, however, a scarce commodity, for even the bravest of men cannot kill a bull elephant with a stabbing spear. They had to rely on pickups from animals that had died of natural causes, or the very occasional victim of the pitfall.

Gandang's amazement when he saw the span and weight of the four tusks decided Zouga. The largest and most pleasingly shaped tusk would be Zouga's gift to Mzilikazi, if he were ever allowed to reach the great kraal at Thabas Indunas alive.

Not only was the threat of the King's wrath still hanging over him, but his supply of quinine powder was reduced to a few ounces. All around the camp steamed the swampy ground, fed each day by the interminable rains, and in the night he could even smell the evil fever-bearing vapours rising from the stagnant waters to waft over the camp. Yet he was forced to reduce his daily preventative dose of the bitter powder to perilously small quantities in an attempt to eke it out.

The inactivity and the dual threat of spear and disease wore on Zouga's nerves, until he found himself toying with suicidal plans to make an attempt to avoid the guarding impi and to escape on foot southwards. He thought of seizing Gandang and holding him as hostage, or using the remaining fifty pounds of black powder to manufacture a combustible with sufficient power to destroy the entire impi host at a blast. Reluctantly, one after another, he recognized these as plans of folly and abandoned them.

G
andang's impi came again in the dawn. Zouga was awakened by a stentorian voice calling him out of the thorn
scherm
. Zouga threw a fur kaross over his shoulders and went out into the grey and icy drizzle of rain, sloshing through the red mud to the gate, and he knew at a single glance that the King had at last sent his reply. The ranks of silent Matabele surrounded the camp, still as statues carved from the black wild ebony.

Zouga judged how swiftly he could reach the loaded gun beside his cot in the little thatched hut behind him, and guessed that he would probably be cut down before he could fire a single shot, yet he knew he would still make the attempt.

‘I see you Bakela,' Gandang stepped from the dark and silent ranks.

‘I see you Gandang.'

‘The King's messenger has arrived—' Gandang paused a moment, solemn and stern, and then his perfectly square white teeth gleamed in the grey of dawn as he smiled. ‘The King has given you the road, and bids you attend him at Thabas Indunas.'

The two men grinned at each other with relief, for both of them it meant life. The King had determined that Gandang had done his duty and correctly interpreted his commands, while Zouga had been accepted as an emissary and not as an enemy.

‘We will march at once,' Gandang smiled still. ‘Before the sun!' The King's summons brooked of no hesitations or delays.

‘Safari!' Zouga roused his camp. ‘We march at once!'

A
natural delicacy and tact had made Gandang keep little Juba out of sight and hearing of Zouga's camp, nor had he mentioned the girl's name to Zouga while sentence of death still hung over the white man. However, that first night of the journey to Thabas Indunas after they had camped, he brought Juba to Zouga's hut, and she knelt and greeted him as ‘Baba-father' and then with Gandang seated between them and listening attentively, he allowed them to talk for a short while.

Zouga was avid for news of his sister, and he listened in silence to the account of Fuller Ballantyne's death and his burial. It was better this way, and Zouga was already preparing his own fulsome tributes to the memory of his father.

While relieved also to hear that Robyn was safe, Zouga was less happy with the swift progress she seemed to be making. It must have been nearly three months since Juba last saw her, almost within sight of the eastern mountain range, and by this time Robyn must have surely reached the coast, and could be on board a Portuguese trade ship, well on her way to Good Hope and the Atlantic.

He did not know how long he would be delayed by the Matabele King, and then how long the overland journey down half the length of Africa might take him. Robyn's manuscript could be in London a year or even more before his own.

Zouga had exchanged one worry for another, and on the following day's march he chivvied his porters, heavily laden though they were, to keep up with their captors. It was of little avail, and they struggled along behind the trotting impi until Zouga demanded of Gandang that his own bearers be ordered to help with the load of ivory and the even greater weightier package of bark and plaited grass which contained the granite bird which Zouga had plundered from the tomb of the Kings.