The Last Leopard (12 page)

As if he’d read her thoughts, Ben said, “There’s no point in dwelling on what we can’t do. Let’s figure out what we can do.”

“I don’t know what that is,” Martine burst out. “I don’t know where to begin.”

“Why don’t we start with the Lazy J?” Ben suggested.

T
hat evening, the aroma of chicken sizzling over the coals and the nutty smell of bubbling
sadza
filled the air. Mouths watering, Martine and Ben warmed themselves beside the fire as the villagers buzzed around them, cooking, chopping, preparing. Martine could imagine that on most nights a relaxed, sociable atmosphere of community and friendship would prevail in the village, but tonight there was tension in the faces of the men, women, and even children. Mercy’s baby had a fever and was now desperately ill. Odilo had sent for the witch doctor.

When the baby finally fell asleep, Mercy joined them for the meal, although Martine noticed that she barely touched her food.

“How is Emelia?” inquired Ngwenya.

Mercy’s expression told him all he needed to know. “I would feel much better if I knew we didn’t have to depend on the witch doctor,” she said. “He is the best we have, but he has a weakness for . . .”

She trailed off in mid-sentence. “Let us hope that he has had a good day.”

Martine and Ben followed the lead of Ngwenya, who, like everyone else, ate with his hands, rolling the
sadza
into snowy balls that he used to scoop up chicken pieces and a spicy relish of spinach and tomato. He and Odilo were interested in Sawubona and asked lots of questions. Odilo wanted to know if the game reserve had what rangers called the Big Five: lion, leopard, rhino, elephant, and buffalo.

“It does,” Martine said proudly. “We don’t have any cheetahs, though. We do have three leopards—a mother and two cubs. They were given to Sawubona by a wildlife park that went out of business. I’ve seen the cubs but never the mother. She’s very elusive.”

“Here in the Matopos, we have the Small Five,” Ngwenya told her with a grin.

“The
Small
Five?”

He counted them off on his fingers. “The leopard tortoise, the rhino beetle, the ant lion, the elephant shrew, and the buffalo weaver!”

Everyone laughed and for a moment the gloom over the village was lifted.

Before Ngwenya could continue, the dogs bounded up barking. Martine glanced nervously at Ben.

“Who’s there?” Odilo called out.

Out of the night strode a tall young man dressed very smartly in a shirt, tie, and trilby. He had a handsome face, blighted by a perpetual sneer, and smelled quite strongly of cologne.

Martine stared at him in shock. It was Ngwenya’s cousin.

The cousin who wanted the leopard dead.

“Good evening, good evening,” he said pleasantly, though it was obvious that no one in the circle was pleased to see him. “I am in time for supper? That is great news. Thank you, Mercy. It’s very nice of you to make it for me.”

He unfolded a plastic sheet from his pocket, sat cross-legged on it, and took off his hat. “Pass me a bowl, Ngwenya.”

Ngwenya made no move to hand it to him, but he took one anyway and helped himself to a large portion of everything. He was sucking the marrow out of a chicken bone when his dark eyes alighted on the young strangers.

He flashed Martine and Ben a sinister smile. Thrusting out his hand so they had no choice but to take it, he said, “My name is Griffin. How do you do?”

“What are you doing here, Griffin?” Ngwenya demanded. “You are not welcome.”

Griffin did not seem in the least offended by this comment. He bit the top off another chicken drumstick, drained it of marrow, and said placidly, “Ah, my cousin, you will be singing a different song when I come home with Lobengula’s treasure. I will be welcome then, I am sure. Any day now I will be returning with sacks full of diamonds and gold sovereigns, and then all of you will want to be my friend.”

“Griffin, my son, you are talking nonsense,” Odilo said in his quiet way, and Martine started at the revelation that shy, mournful Odilo was father to this sharp-dressing vagabond.

Mercy’s face was expressionless. She heaved herself to her feet and went to her hut to be with her child. Odilo soon followed.

The atmosphere around the fire was strained. For a while there was no sound but the crackling of the smoldering wood. Then, to Martine’s astonishment, Ben asked, “What will you do with the treasure if you find it, Griffin?”

Griffin seemed pleased to be asked. He said grandly, “I will buy a Mercedes-Benz and a house with many bathrooms and a flat-screen television in Bulawayo. I will fly to England first-class and buy some suits for myself. Some cigarettes. Some whisky.”

Ngwenya said, “Lobengula’s treasure belongs to the tribe, to the Ndebele people. If you find it, you will have to give it to the chiefs. The elders will come together and will have to make a decision whether or not to keep it.”

Griffin gave a scathing laugh. “Are you mad, Ngwenya? Do you think that if I find gold and diamonds I will share it with those doddering old men? They know nothing. Chief Nyoni will probably put it back in the ground. Or maybe he will use it to buy false teeth. No, if I find the treasure I will keep it for me and my friends. If you want to share it, you must look for it yourself.”

“I don’t want to find the treasure,” Ngwenya told him. “All over Africa, men have gone crazy with greed trying to follow this false promise. We do not want this to happen in our tribe. If the treasure is never found, it may be for the best.”

The conversation was getting heated and Martine was afraid that a fight would break out, but it was interrupted by a swirl of black, white, and yellow. Before Martine could register what was happening, the hornbill had swooped out of the night and landed on her knee, using the creases in her jeans as brakes.

“Magnus!” she cried, inexplicably cheered by the reappearance of the odd, serious bird, her last connection with her grandmother and Sadie. “How did you find us?”

“We think his nest is in the place we call Rock Rabbit Hill in our language,” said Ngwenya. “It is very close to here, so perhaps he spotted you when he was on his way home to roost for the evening. Rock Rabbit Hill is riddled with holes and tunnels. If you fall into one, you might never come out. Some guests at the retreat who have lost their jewelry have tried to locate this nest, but it is very unsafe to climb up this hill and no one has ever managed. I myself think that when the nest is found it will be full of bottle caps and other rubbish.”

Martine rubbed the top of the hornbill’s head and his eyelashes fluttered up and down in ecstasy.

Griffin wiped chicken grease from his mouth and scrutinized her as if she were a specimen under a microscope. “I have just come from visiting the witch doctor, who will be here shortly. He told me that there were some children staying in my uncle’s village tonight, and that he has been hearing some stories that one of these children, a white girl, rides a giraffe back home in South Africa. He threw the bones and they helped him to remember the Zulu legend about the child who rides the white giraffe having power over all the animals.”

He nodded at Magnus. “You are obviously a friend to the wild birds. Does this mean you are the girl in the ancestors’ story? Is your giraffe in South Africa white?”

Martine didn’t respond. She didn’t want him, of all people, knowing anything about her or Jemmy. She hoped that if she ignored him he’d get the message and leave her alone, but Ngwenya innocently put her on the spot.

“A
white
giraffe?” he exclaimed. “An albino one? Is this true, Martine?
Now
I understand. Now it becomes clear. When Gogo said you rode a giraffe, I wasn’t too sure whether to believe her. Then I saw how the horses loved you and what a good rider you are, and I thought that maybe some people had helped you to train a giraffe from when it was very young. Nobody told me it was a white one. Is this correct? Are you the child in the Zulu legend?”

Forced to respond, Martine said, “Trust me, I don’t have power over any animals. Sometimes I help them a little, that’s all.”

“Which way do you help them?” Griffin wanted to know.

Martine had no intention of answering him. “Would you like me to wash the dishes?” she asked Mercy’s sister.

“Maybe we can help each other, Martine,” Griffin persisted. “There is an animal I would like to have power over. If you assist me, maybe I can let you have a little piece of treasure. A gold sovereign, perhaps, or a diamond.”

There. It was out in the open. That’s what he was here for. That’s why he had just happened to come by the village on the exact night Martine and Ben were staying.

Martine was so taken aback by his audacity, and so enraged that this arrogant stranger thought that her gift and the life of the leopard—for she was quite certain that the animal he wanted power over was Khan—could be traded for a few dusty trinkets that were probably nothing more than a myth, that for a moment she didn’t trust herself to speak or move.

In the event, she didn’t have to, because Ngwenya leaped to his feet and shouted, “That is enough, Griffin. I told you that you are not welcome here, and now it is time for you to leave.”

Martine expected Griffin to protest, but he jumped up in one lithe, easy movement, took off his hat, and bowed. “Good-bye, friends,” he said. “Next time you see me I shall be a rich man.”

Turning on his heel, he flashed another sinister smile. Martine had a bad feeling it was intended for her.

Not surprisingly, she and Ben found it nearly impossible to sleep. They were still awake, discussing the events of the day and how best to tackle the problem of getting into the Lazy J, an hour after saying good night to Ngwenya. The horse wrangler had gone to check on the retreat, some twenty minutes’ ride away. He was planning to spend the night there and return at the crack of dawn. Martine had been afraid he’d try to stop them, that he’d tell them they were insane to imagine they could sneak into the hunter’s ranch to attempt to find evidence that the Rat was blackmailing Sadie and behind the arrests at Black Eagle. But all he said was, “Martine and Ben, I think you are both
penga
. This is the word we have in Zimbabwe for people who are mad. But if you are
penga
, then so am I. We will leave before sunrise.”

Martine and Ben were making another attempt to close their eyes when they heard a commotion outside.

Ben bounded up and pushed back the Hessian cloth that covered the doorway. “Martine, there are a lot of people milling around the fire and waving their hands in the air as if they’re angry or upset. Either the police are on their way or baby Emelia is really ill. I think we should see what’s going on.”

They put on their sweatshirts and went out into the cold night air. As they neared the fire, they saw the witch doctor. He had his back to them and was sitting opposite Mercy and Odilo, whose faces were tense with anxiety. The villagers were gathered in a circle behind them, buzzing with anticipation. Baby Emelia lay between Mercy and Odilo, wrapped in a sheepskin rug.

Nobody noticed Ben and Martine approaching through the darkness—nobody, that is, except the witch doctor. After holding up his hand for silence, he slowly and very deliberately turned to face the young outsiders. There was something very ancient and tribal about his necklace of horns, belt of ostrich feathers, and leopard-skin kilt. It was as if the modern world had never touched him. It was impossible to say how old he was. He could have been ninety or thirty.

Martine found herself looking at his leopard-skin kilt and thinking about something Ngwenya had told her. He’d explained that the kilts were handed down from one generation to the next. The hide of leopards was specially chosen because the leopard was regarded by the Ndebele as the politest and most respectful of all the animals, and the witch doctors wished to show the same politeness and respect to the ancestral spirits. Martine’s own opinion was that it might have been more polite and respectful not to rob the leopard of its skin, but she’d known better than to say that.

The witch doctor fixed her with a fierce glare, as if he’d known her in a past life and she’d done him a great wrong. “There is no work for you here,” he said.

The villagers murmured in alarm, and one or two motioned her and Ben away. The witch doctor held up his hand for silence again. He turned his back on Martine, took a swig from a brown bottle at his side, removed his ceremonial pouch, scattered some bones on the ground, and began to chant.

Martine and Ben retreated to the shadows, feeling like unwanted guests intruding on a sacred ritual. Which, in effect, they were. But after half an hour of chanting they were so cold they dared to creep back to the fireside. Nobody chased them away. They were too absorbed in another spectacle. In between chants, the witch doctor had continued to take long swallows from his brown bottle, and two other empty bottles of what Ben suspected was “some powerful home-brewed moonshine” lay on the earth beside him. His eyes were red and streaming. He was swaying over his bones and his chanting sounded slurred.