Black Horn (20 page)

"Don't
worry, Sister Agatha, I feel OK. A good book will take my mind off
things."

As the
door closed behind her, Michael closed his eyes. He lay absolutely still for
two minutes, then he opened his eyes and with his right hand pulled aside the
sheet. He looked down at his useless feet. He was dressed in a white shift,
loosely tied at the back. He pulled the shift up and looked at his useless
legs. Beside them was a piece of paper. He picked up the paper and laid it on
the table next to the water-bottle. Then he rolled out of the bed, on to the
floor and lay moaning for many seconds. He managed to roll over on to his
stomach.

Inch by
inch, he dragged himself across the carpet towards the window, using his right
elbow and gasping from the pain in his left shoulder. In his mind, it seemed to
take an eternity, but finally he was there. He reached up with his right hand
and gripped the window-sill. His arms and hands were strong from a regular
routine of exercises, but still he had to use every ounce of strength to get
his right elbow on to the window-sill with his legs dragging under him and pain
shooting through his body like electric shocks. He levered himself higher with
his elbow, until he got his lower chest across the window-sill. He looked out.
A well-ordered parkland stretched out in front of him, with trees and lawns and
manicured beds of flowers. He levered himself further forward and looked down.
The private rooms of the hospital were on the top floors, the fourth floor.
Directly below him was a flagstoned pathway. Another minute passed while he
looked down at it. Then he muttered something in Maltese and, with one last
effort, pulled himself out and over.

Ruby
pushed the wheelchair down the corridor, checking the numbers of the rooms, but
Gloria spotted it first and pointed.

"There:
Number Twelve."

Ruby
tapped on the door. There was no answer.

Gloria
said, "The matron told us he was awake. Go ahead."

Ruby
turned the handle and pushed the door open and came back behind the wheelchair
and pushed it through. The bed was empty.

Through
the window, they heard people shouting. Ruby ran to the window. She looked down
and saw the white-clad body and people crouching over it, shouting in alarm.

"Oh,
my God!"

With a
hand over her mouth, she turned back to Gloria. The old woman's wheelchair was
next to the bed. She was holding a piece of paper in her hand and reading it.
The piece of paper fluttered from her hands and those hands came up to cover
Gloria Manner's face.

Ruby
walked across the room and picked up the paper and, with the sounds of her
employer's sobs in her ears, she read the note.

"My Juliet and Creasy,

Do not
blame the nun. I knew I would have to trick her. Creasy, I knew the promise you
made to me would be the only promise you ever failed to keep. You could not
have done it and I know that I would never have changed my mind. Over the past
days, I have watched that woman in her wheelchair, bitter and twisted, taking
out that bitterness on others. The years were few but they were good. Better
than I ever dreamed of. Creasy, those years were a gift from you. Juliet, live
my life for me.

Michael"

He
walked for two hours after leaving the Land-rover. He wore long khaki trousers
and a grey shirt. He carried no weapon. He walked into the southern end of
Matopos, the small game sanctuary, south of Bulawayo. He was far away from the
northern area where the occasional tourist appeared. There were no roads or
man-made trails, just wild African country and its inhabitants. He passed herds
of kudu and impala and zebra. At a distance, he saw buffalo and skirted them.
There were wild dogs, hyenas and wart-hogs. He walked as though he was on
autopilot; he had been this way before, many years ago.

It was
an extraordinary landscape: rolling hills covered by huge boulders, some as big
as several houses, some perched on others in a perpetual balancing act. To the
north was the burial place of Cecil Rhodes, who had tricked and fought the
Matabele into giving up their land. The Matopos resembled an area where God had
played a game, tossing vast boulders around on the seventh day of rest.

Creasy
came to the small lake just before sunset. Several times on his solitary
journey, he had stopped and listened. He was confident that no human being was
within miles of him. The noises of nature had only been disturbed by himself
and that disturbance was negligible. As he had walked, it seemed as though the
animals had taken him back into themselves. He found a flat area under a Mopani
tree and, for the next half hour, gathered dry wood. All around him, the animals
were coming down to drink at the lake: the skittish impala, the careful kudu,
the giraffes which had to straddle their legs in order to reach the water. It
was an orderly parade. Somehow, each species knew its place in that parade. An
hour earlier Creasy had passed a pride of lions feasting over a kill. There
were not many lions in Matopos, and so a sort of bush telegraph must have gone
through the area, telling the other animals that they would be safe from the
lions these coming days, until they had to kill again.

As the
sun went down, Creasy lit his fire. Close behind him, he had piled up enough
dry wood to keep that fire burning all night. He pulled up a log and sat on it.
From one back pocket of his trousers he took a hip flask, and from the other
back pocket, a wedge of biltong. As the animals departed, he chewed at the
biltong and drank the water from the hip-flask.

The
night noises started. The roosting birds in the surrounding trees, settling and
gossiping, the myriad sounds of the insects, the grunting of a pair of mating
wart-hogs. Far away, the cackle of a hyena and, still further, the coughing
roar of a lion. Small black shapes dipped and swooped over the fire: bats,
feeding off the insects attracted by the light.

Creasy
tried to come to terms with the pain. It was so easy in company to show his
strength and hide his emotions. He had walked into Matopos to try to commune
with a God whom he did not understand. A God who would take Michael's life but
not his. He looked around in the dying light and wondered how God could create
such a paradise and yet could, so often, allow undeserved death and suffering.
His whole life had been witness to that conundrum.

Here in
the Matopos, it seemed that God had no part to play. Only nature. The selection
of death was simple. No one pointed a finger. A lion or a leopard or a cheetah
hunted only from instinct. There was no malice or forethought. It was just a
meal.

The
lions came about two hours later. Four of them, three females and a black-maned
male. Creasy recognised the male as the animal he had seen on his way in,
feeding over the kill while the females waited their turn.

Like
all cats, they had come out of curiosity. Their bellies were full. They
approached the warmth of the fire slowly, but without any indication of fear.
They sank down on to the earth and looked across the flames at Creasy. He
looked back. They were twenty metres away. The fire was dimming. He reached
behind him and gently piled on more branches. One of the females rolled over,
exposing her distended belly to the fire.

The
male lion sat crouched, his vivid yellow eyes watching Creasy. Over the next
hour, the other two females also crept a little closer to the fire and rolled
into sleep. The black-maned male remained motionless, and so did Creasy, except
for occasionally placing another branch on the fire. Another hour passed while
Creasy held a deep-down debate with himself. Once in a while, he bit off a
piece of biltong and drank some water. Sometimes the black-mane belched
inelegantly from his recent feast. Finally, Creasy eased off the log, folded
his arms, lay down and half-slept. The black-mane lowered his head to the
ground and also closed his eyes.

The
noises of the night continued. Just before dawn, another sound was added. The
coughing grunt of a hyena. The sound came from behind Creasy. He opened his
eyes.

Before
he could turn to look, he noticed the black-mane had raised his head and was
looking beyond the fire and Creasy. The lion pushed himself to his feet, walked
around the fire and stood not more than seven metres from the prone human. The
animal looked into the darkness beyond, then drew in a breath and let forth the
roar that for millennia has sent fear through the heart of Africa.

Creasy
heard the scurried pattering of retreating footsteps. Across the fire the three
female lions had lifted their heads. They listened briefly and then slumped
back to sleep. The black-mane went back around the fire and settled himself
again. The fire was almost out. Creasy put no more branches on it. The faint
glow of the sun was rising away to his right. He stood up and stretched, drank
the last of his water and then started throwing earth over the embers. He
headed back towards his Land-rover a couple of hours away. But a hundred metres
away he stopped, turned and looked back. The female lions were still asleep;
the black-mane was sitting upright, looking at him.

Creasy
did something he had not done for many years. He stiffened and his right arm
swept up swiftly in a brief salute. Then he turned and walked on.

After
he had moved away through the bush, a figure of a man rose from a cluster of
boulders about a hundred and fifty metres from the extinguished fire.

For the
first time in hours, Maxie MacDonald moved the switch on his rifle to safety.
Then, very carefully, he followed his friend's spoor out of the Matopos ... in
the same way he had followed it in.

The
funerals in Gozo have a strange ritual at the end. The men of the congregation
file silently down the isle and circle the coffin. As they move away from it,
they kiss their right thumbs, then lower their hands and touch the coffin with
that thumb.

Father
Manuel Zerafa had conducted the service. Creasy was in the front row, with an
arm around Juliet. Guido was next to her and the Schembri family next to him.
The church of Our Lady of Loreto, perched above the Mgarr Harbour, was full to
capacity, not only in mourning for Michael but as a sign of respect to Creasy,
the man the locals called simply, Uomo.

Creasy
watched the faces of the men as they silently filed around the coffin,
following their ritual. He recognised their faces but could not remember all
their names. They ranged in age from the very old to boys in their teens. The
line seemed to go on for an eternity, and then his head jerked up in surprise.
He was looking at the face of Frank Miller, who merely glanced at him and went
through the ritual. Then another surprise -Rene Callard followed. More
surprises -Jens Jensen and The Owl. Maxie was the last one. Paul and Joey
Schembri moved past, circled the coffin and stood waiting by the door. Guido
did the same.

The
church had emptied except for the immediate group, the new arrivals who were
waiting by the entrance, and of course, Father Zerafa. Six young men walked in,
the pall-bearers. Paul Schembri whispered something to Guido, who nodded. Paul
went up to the young men, spoke to them quietly and they turned and walked out.
He gestured towards the five men at the entrance and they walked down. Together
with Joey, they lifted the coffin on to their shoulders and bore it out of the
church, down the steps and into the hearse. Creasy followed with Juliet and the
rest of the Schembri family behind him and Father Zerafa.

A long
stream of cars followed the hearse to the nearby cemetery and, after the brief
graveside service, Creasy turned to the new arrivals and said, "It was a
surprise to see you."

Frank
Miller shrugged. "We heard there was going to be a good wake after the
funeral." He glanced at the others. "We were never ones to miss a
party." None of them spoke words of condolence to either Creasy or Juliet.
They were not the type to use a word when a gesture was enough.

Lucy
Kwok found it hard to believe. She stood on the patio with a glass of white
wine in her hand, looking out at the magnificent view across Gozo and the sea.
It was early evening. As an air hostess, she had travelled wide and seen much,
but she found all this hard to understand. She had stood at the back of the
church during the funeral. Although she herself was a Roman Catholic, she had
never seen such richness in a church outside of the Vatican. Statues and walls
gleamed with gold and precious stones. The heavy, ornate candlesticks on the
altar looked as if they were made of solid silver. But, judging from the
congregation, the people did not seem to be rich.

Behind
her was a babble of noise, and even laughter. She turned and surveyed forty-odd
people who had made their way up to the house after the brief graveside
ceremony. There were two priests among them, both holding glasses. To the left,
Creasy was tending a smoking barbecue, surrounded by the five men who had
arrived at the church just as the funeral began. They seemed to be giving him
good-natured advice and their attitudes showed anything but grief. Beside the
kitchen door a table had been set up as a temporary bar, and a young Gozitan
was manning it with enthusiasm.

Lucy's
eyes moved back to Creasy, and her mind went back to the moment she had first
met him at Bulawayo Airport, when the coffin containing Michael's body had been
loaded into the Gulfstream. His presence had an immediate effect on her -- that
scarred impassive face and sense of not caring -- until she had managed to get
a look into his eyes. Her skin had prickled at the lurking hatred she had seen.

As soon
as the plane had taken off, he had sat down opposite her. She had started to
speak some words of condolence. He had held up a hand.