The Last Leopard (5 page)

It was early evening when they reached the gates of the Matopos National Park. A park official unfolded himself from a makeshift table as they pulled up. He and three uniformed guards had been playing a game of checkers using bottle caps and a piece of cardboard on which they’d drawn squares with a red pen. Their rifles lay on the ground beside them.

“Good evening,” he said formally. “It is after six p.m. The park is closed to visitors.”

“But it can’t be,” cried Gwyn Thomas. “We’ve driven all the way from Cape Town. We need to get to a ranch on the other side.”

“Eeeh, I’m sorry for that,” said the official, sounding genuinely sympathetic. “You must spend the night in a hotel in Bulawayo and come back tomorrow.”

“We can’t possibly do that,” she told him. “For one thing, we can’t afford it, and for another we’re almost out of gas.”

“You have no fuel?” He tutted disapprovingly. “It is not a good idea to come to the Matobo Hills with no fuel. Then you must sleep in your car and wait for morning.”

“But my friend is expecting us,” said Gwyn Thomas despairingly. “Sadie—Sadie Scott at Black Eagle Lodge.”

Behind her, Martine saw the guards exchange a look, although what the look meant she couldn’t tell.

“Sadie Scott?” repeated the official. There was a split second’s hesitation before he continued warmly: “Why didn’t you just say so? Allow me to direct you.”

He drew the route on a tourist map, waved them through the open barrier, and the Matobo Hills were finally in front of them.

From the outset, Martine had expected the national park to be a disappointment. She’d been looking forward to hearing more about the Ndebele king’s lost treasure, but as far as the rocks were concerned she’d been convinced that everyone was making a fuss about nothing. After all, how interesting could piles of boulders be? She’d pictured one or two particularly impressive rocky hillocks of the type Southern Africans called
kopjes
and pronounced “kopies,” maybe with monuments on the top, or one or two balancing rocks. Instead, there were hundreds, if not thousands, of geological marvels.

There were great stacks of teetering boulders—many leaning at angles that defied gravity, or sitting on perches a bird would have had difficulty balancing on. There were individual rocks as wide and high as mountains, and others shaped like animals or castles or faces. Some were thickly encrusted with jade and silver lichen, or streaked with orange or lime stains, as though they’d rusted in the rain. Others were smooth, gray, and bare, with mysterious spaces between them suggesting caves or tunnels or vast, rainwater-filled hollows as big as Olympic swimming pools. Threaded through the rocks or surrounding them were green tufts of African bush.

It was an awe-inspiring sight, and there was not a soul to witness it but the three of them.

“You’d think there’d be lots of tourists here,” observed Ben.

“You would think that,” agreed Gwyn Thomas, “but I suppose people are nervous of coming to a place where it’s hard to find gas. I have to tell you that I’m beginning to feel the same way.”

The sun was setting, turning the tops of the rocks copper. Martine had never seen such a wild, lonely place. It made Sawubona seem as tame as a suburban garden.

“Look!” Ben said. A kudu bull and two kudu cows were watching them with wide, almond-shaped eyes. As the Land Rover passed, they took fright and loped away through the bush.

The park ranger’s map indicated that they should turn shortly after passing a great baobab tree. Gwyn Thomas steered the vehicle off the main road and bumped along a steadily deteriorating track. The needle on the gas gauge crept farther into the red. All three of them noticed it happen, but nobody said a thing. The towering rocks seemed to close in on them. The potholes and craters worsened until Martine was sure that every tooth would be shaken loose from her head. Her grandmother fought to control the bucking vehicle. Martine felt for her. She was plainly exhausted.

After about a mile the track leveled and became smooth and sandy. They passed a village of five mud huts. Ngoni cattle, with wide horns and hides so prettily patterned they might have been decorated by an artist, rested in the dust. They chewed cud sleepily as they watched the Land Rover go by.

At the edge of the village a crudely written sign indicated that Black Eagle Lodge was one mile ahead, beyond a gate and cattle grid.

Gwyn Thomas exhaled. “Thank goodness,” she said. “We’ll be fine now. Living in such a remote area, Sadie’s bound to have spare fuel.”

Ben hopped out to open the wire gate and they set off again. The grass along the edges of the track was overgrown and the trees crowded close, rapping the roof of the Land Rover with their branches. Seedpods cracked and popped beneath the wheels. The air was muggy and still.

Martine began to feel claustrophobic. She was glad when they finally rounded a bend and found themselves in a clearing at the foot of an imposing, elephant-shaped mountain cast from a single slab of granite. Stone cottages with sagging, rain-darkened thatch were dotted around the foot of it. Two black eagles wheeled overhead. There was no other sign of life.

Gazing upon the empty scene, Martine was struck by the silence. There was something spooky about it. It was a silence so intense she could almost touch it and taste it. It swirled around her like a cloak of fog. It wouldn’t have surprised Martine to learn that there was nothing at all beyond the mountain; that the landscape stopped right here. It was, she thought with a shiver, as if they’d taken a wrong turn and found the end of the world.

G
wyn Thomas was the first to speak. “Well,” she said huffily. “I must say it’s not quite the welcome I was expecting. Especially after a two-thousand-mile drive.”

But almost immediately a worried frown came over her face and she added, “Oh, my goodness, what if something’s happened to Sadie? I’d never forgive myself for not getting here sooner.”

Ben said, “I think I just saw a curtain move.”

He didn’t tell them what he’d really seen, which was what appeared to be a frightened face at the window of a house partially concealed by the mountain’s long shadow, just in case he was mistaken and alarmed Martine and her grandmother unnecessarily. Before he could make up his mind what to do next, the door of the house opened and an attractive woman, who appeared years younger than the sixty Gwyn Thomas had told them she was, swung out on crutches. She had on a floral sundress that had seen many summers. It flared over the bright pink plaster cast encasing her left leg and foot. The sandal she was wearing on the other foot had apparently been crafted from a piece of recycled car tire.

“You can wipe that sour expression off your face for starters,” was her opening remark to Gwyn Thomas. “I know what you’re thinking.
I’ve driven all the way from the Western Cape and Sadie hasn’t put the welcome mat out.
Well, I’m sorry. Service is not quite what it used to be at Black Eagle, and it’s even worse when I’m out back trying to do the laundry on one leg.”

There was a brief pause, during which Martine expected there to be an explosion of some kind from her grandmother. Instead Gwyn Thomas’s nut-brown face creased into a huge smile. “I see that apart from the cherry-pink cast nothing much has changed,” she retorted. “Still as crusty as ever!”

Then she rushed forward and embraced the other woman, taking care to avoid Sadie’s injured leg. “It’s wonderful to see you, my dear,” she said. “It’s been far too long. Sadie, I’d like you to meet my granddaughter, Martine, and her best friend, Ben.”

Sadie hugged them both. “Hello, Martine and her best friend Ben. I’ve been counting the hours until you all arrived. When the sun started to set today with still no sign of you, I began to feel quite desperate.”

There was so much emotion in her voice that Martine, recalling her grandmother’s words about Sadie being the proudest, most independent woman she knew, wondered if Gwyn Thomas had been correct in her suspicions that there was something more going on at Black Eagle than a broken leg.

“We came as soon as we could,” Gwyn Thomas responded. “But I felt it only fair that Martine and Ben get to see one or two sights along the way.”

“Of course, of course. And I don’t mean to sound selfish. I’ve just been so looking forward to your visit. Anyway, you’re here now and that’s all that matters. I’m actually surprised that the national park guards let you through the main gate. I’ve had a few difficulties with them recently. Having said that, one of my ex-employees recently started working on the gate and if you’re lucky enough to come into the park when it’s his shift, he’s always a sweetheart.”

Her eyes widened as Ben and Martine began unloading bags of rice, buttermilk rusks and cans of guavas, smoked tuna and chopped tomatoes, along with their suitcases, from the trunk of the car. “What’s all this?”

Gwyn Thomas smiled. “I wasn’t sure if there were enough groceries in the whole of Matopos to feed these two for a month. They might look undernourished, but given half a chance they’ll eat you right out of Black Eagle Lodge!”

“You didn’t have to do that,” responded Sadie, laughing, “but the more the merrier.” However, Martine noticed that she didn’t protest.

As if suddenly reminded of her duties as host, Sadie exclaimed, “You poor things, you must be worn out. Let me show you to your cottage.”

They ate dinner by candlelight. “More romantic,” Sadie said.

Martine wondered if the real reason was that the electricity wasn’t working, but decided it didn’t matter. It was more romantic or, at least, more magical, to do everything by candlelight.

Night had fallen on the retreat with typical African abruptness. At 6:45 p.m. the red sun slid behind Elephant Rock, the mountain that gave Black Eagle its spectacular backdrop, and by seven an ink-black darkness of the type only found in places far from city lights had descended. Sadie had shown them to their cottage along paths lit by cats’ eyes, which, she explained, were solar-powered, and not dependent on the erratic power supply. There were three bedrooms, a lounge, and a bathroom, all very simple, with faded curtains and threadbare rugs, but comfortable enough. The occasional gecko or blue-tailed lizard skittered across walls of glittering stone.

Over butternut squash stew, Sadie talked to them about the Matopos, an area rich in African history, much of it documented in the cave paintings found among the balancing rocks. Martine’s ears pricked up at the mention of cave paintings, and for an instant she caught herself wondering about the likelihood of finding further clues to her destiny in Zimbabwe. But that, she told herself, was ridiculous, not to say egotistical. The San Bushmen had had better things to do than go around Africa predicting the future of some white child they’d never heard of.

She was curious about what seemed a quite unlikely friendship between Sadie and her grandmother, but Sadie explained that it had come about when they were thrown together at an extremely strict boarding school near White River in South Africa. “We were both lonely and far from home, and Gwyn was the only kid who talked any sense,” she said with a laugh.

Gwyn Thomas nodded. “I felt the same. In lots of ways we were very different and we clashed a fair amount—still do. The best thing about Sadie was that she loved animals as much as I did. While all the other girls were poring over fashion magazines for skin and hair tips, I was dreaming about one day working with wild animals, and Sadie was obsessing over horses.”

“Wasn’t I ever.” Sadie smiled. “After we left school, I returned to Zimbabwe and Gwyn moved to the Western Cape. We’re hopeless communicators. I don’t know who is worse at staying in touch—Gwyn or me.”

“I am,” Gwyn Thomas said. “But the important thing is we’re always there for each other. We can count on each other. I know that I only have to pick up the phone and Sadie will coming running if I need her.”

“And I’m thankful to say that I can say the same about Gwyn,” said Sadie sincerely. “I can’t tell you how thrilled I am that you’re all here.”

She pushed the pot of butternut squash stew over to Martine and Ben. “Help yourselves to more. Anyway, enough of all this sentimental reminiscing. I’m sure these two are more interested in how they’re going to be spending their vacation. First things first.

“Tomorrow morning, you’ll meet Ngwenya, my right-hand man. He’s the groundskeeper and horse wrangler here at Black Eagle. He’s also the only remaining staff member. Ngwenya is from the Ndebele tribe, and he’s much more of an expert on Matopos than I am, so you should save all your questions for him.”

Gwyn Thomas pursed her lips. “Ngwenya? That’s similar to the Zulu word for leopard—
Ingwe
. Is there any connection?”

“There is.
Ingwenya
means ‘leopard’ in Ndebele. Ngwenya has an ordinary name like you and I, but it’s respectful to address him by his clan name. As a member of that particular clan he has a sworn duty to protect and honor all leopards, but that’s a hard thing to do in these difficult times. We used to have the highest concentration of leopards in the world right here in the Matopos, but not anymore.”