The Angels Weep (48 page)

Slowly Ralph raised his arms above his head. He stood like
that for a moment, a heroic figure glistening with fat, every
muscle in his arms and chest standing proud, the kilt of
civet-tails hanging to his knees, the collar of white cow-tails
around his neck, his charm against the death that lurked in the
darkness beyond the firelight. His blackened features were
twisted into a ferocious grimace that held the watchers
spellbound. The dancing and singing had served its purpose well.
It had distracted the
amadoda
, and masked any noise that
the Zulus and Hottentots might have made while moving into
position around the bivouac.

Now suddenly Ralph let out a demoniacal howl that made the
amadoda
shudder, and he dropped his arms – the
signal for which Harry and Jan Cheroot were waiting.

The curtains of darkness were torn aside by the blast of
massed rifle fire. The range was point-blank, the muzzles almost
touching the press of dark naked bodies. It smashed into them, a
single bullet churning through belly and chest and spine,
bringing down four men, stopping only when the slug broke up
against one of the heavy bones of pelvis or femur.

So unexpected was the assault, that the mass of warriors
milled aimlessly, receiving three volleys from the repeating
Winchesters, before they broke and ran. More than half of them
were down already, and many of those still on their feet were
wounded. They ran on top of Isazi’s Zulus, and piled up
against them like water on a dam wall. Ralph heard the great
shouts of ‘
Ngidla
! I have eaten!’ as the Zulus
put in the steel, and heard the screams of the dying men.

Now at last the Matabele were rallying, closing up shoulder to
shoulder to meet the thin line of Zulus and overrun it. It was
the moment Ralph had waited for. He led his own Matabele racing
across their rear and flung them at the naked undefended backs of
the struggling warriors.

Long ago, as boys on the Kimberley diamond-workings, Bazo had
taught Ralph the art of spearsmanship. Ralph had been as skilful
with the broad blade as any of the Matabele youths who were his
companions. However, it was one thing to practise the long
under-handed killing stroke, and another actually to send the
point into living flesh.

Ralph was unprepared for the sensation of the steel in his
hand running in and slowing against the sucking resistance,
feeling the steel touch and grate on bone, and the haft kick in
his hand as his victims bucked and convulsed at the agony. It
felt like the butt of the rod when a salmon makes its first
run.

Instinctively Ralph twisted the blade in the man’s body,
the way Bazo had taught him, maximizing the tissue damage and
breaking the vacuum that held the steel – then he jerked it
clear, and for the first time felt the fine hot spray of blood
from the wound fly into his face and splatter his right arm and
chest.

He stepped over the dying man who thrashed on the earth, and
sank the steel again and then again. The smell of blood and the
screams maddened him, but it was a cold fierce madness that
magnified his vision and slowed down the micro-seconds of mortal
combat, so that he saw the counter-thrust and turned his
adversary’s blade aside with contemptuous ease, using the
momentum of his shoulders to drive his own point through the
Matabele guard and into the notch formed by the joint of his
collar-bones at the base of his throat. The man’s breath
whistled over his severed vocal cords, and he dropped his assegai
and seized Ralph’s blade with his bare hands. Ralph pulled
it back, and the razor edges cut to the bone of the man’s
fingers, and his hands fell open nervelessly as the Matabele
dropped to his knees.

Ralph leaped over him and poised to thrust again.

‘Henshaw!’ a voice screamed in his face. ‘It
is me!’ and through his madness Ralph saw the white
cow-tail tassels about the neck and held the stroke; the two
lines of attackers had met.

‘It is over,’ Isazi panted, and Ralph looked about
him in bewilderment. It had happened so swiftly. He shook his
head to free the cold vice of fighting madness that gripped
it.

They were all down, though a few of them still twisted and
twitched and groaned.

‘Isazi, finish them!’ Ralph ordered, and watched
the Zulus begin the grim work, passing quickly from body to body,
feeling for the pulse below the ear and if they found it,
stilling it with a quick thrust.

‘Ralph,’ Harry came scrambling down the slope at
the head of the Cape boys. ‘By God, that was
one—’

‘No English,’ Ralph warned him, then raising his
voice. ‘We will take the horses now. Bring the spare
bridles and lead-reins.’

There were fifty-three fine horses in the thornbush kraal.
Most of them carried the BSA Company brand. Each of the unmounted
Zulus and Matabele selected a mount, and the remaining animals
were put onto lead-reins.

In the meantime the Cape boys were going over the field with
the speed and precision of born footpads, selecting the rifles
that could be used and throwing the ancient Martini-Henrys and
muzzle-loaders and knobkerries onto the fire, snapping the
assegai blades in the fork of a tree. The loot they discovered,
cutlery and crockery and clothing of European manufacture, proved
that this impi had taken part in the depredations of the first
few days of the rising. That, too, was thrown upon the flames.
Within an hour of the first rifle-shot, they were moving out
again. This time every man was well mounted, and the spare horses
followed at a canter on the lead-reins.

They rode down the main street of Bulawayo in the uncertain
grey light of pre-dawn. In the front rank Ralph and Harry had
scrubbed most of the blackening from their faces, but to make
certain they did not draw the fire of a jittery sentry, they
carried a flag made from Harry Mellow’s white flannel
undershirt.

The inhabitants of the laager tumbled out of their beds to
gape and question, and then as they began to realize that this
little cavalcade heralded the first retaliation against the
slaughter and arson committed by the tribes, the cheering began
and rose into joyous hysteria.

While Vicky and Elizabeth proudly served them a double ration
breakfast under the wagon awning, Ralph and Harry received an
endless string of well-wishers, of tearful widows whose husbands
had perished under the Matabele assegais, bringing thanks and a
half-dozen eggs or a freshly baked cake, of wistful boys come
merely to stare at the heroes, and of keen young men demanding
eagerly, ‘Is this where we sign up to join
Ballantyne’s Scouts?’

T
here were
shrieks of delight as Judy set about her long-suffering husband
with her baton. The children in the front row clapped their hands
as the blows cracked upon Punch’s wooden head and his
grotesquely humped back, and the bells on his cap jingled.

Swimming valiantly against the mainstream of sentiment,
Jon-Jon’s face was red as Punch’s hooked nose and
screwed up with outrage. ‘Hit her back!’ he howled,
bouncing up and down. ‘She’s only a girl!’

‘Spoken like a true Ballantyne,’ Ralph laughed, at
the same time forcibly restraining his son from leaping into the
fray on the side of down-trodden mankind.

Elizabeth sat beyond Jon-Jon, with Robert on her lap. The
child’s sickly face was solemn and he sucked dedicatedly
upon his thumb like an elderly gnome upon his pipe. In contrast,
Elizabeth was radiant with a childlike joy, her cheeks flushed
and her eyes shining, as she egged Judy on to further
excesses.

A shining lock of her hair had come loose from the
tortoiseshell comb and lay against the tender velvety skin of her
temple, half curled around the lobe of her ear. Her ear was a
faint pink, and so thin and delicately shaped that the sunlight
showed through it as though it were made from some rare
bone-china. The same sunlight made the burgundy sparks flare like
electricity in her thick dark tresses.

It drew Ralph’s attention from the marionettes, and he
watched her covertly over Jonathan’s curly head. Her
laughter was a throaty purr, natural and unashamed, and Ralph
laughed again in sympathy. She turned her head and for a moment
Ralph looked deeply into her eyes. It was like looking into a
bowl of hot honey. He seemed to be able to see into limitless
depths that were flecked with gold. Then Elizabeth dropped the
veil of dark curved lashes over them, and looked back at the tiny
stage, but she was no longer laughing. Instead her lower lip
trembled and a dark flush of blood washed up her throat.

Feeling strangely guilty and shaken, Ralph quickly fastened
his own eyes, if not his attention, on the squawking, battling
marionettes. The sketch ended, to Jonathan’s vast
satisfaction, with Judy being led away to some nameless but
richly deserved fate by a policeman in Mr Peel’s blue
helmet, and the mild bespectacled little bookkeeper of Meikles
Store came out from behind his candy-striped screen with the
glove puppets still upon his hands, to take his bows.

‘He looks just like Mr Kipling,’ Elizabeth
whispered, ‘and he has the same bloodthirsty and violent
imagination.’

Ralph felt a rush of gratitude towards her that she should
gloss over that unexpected moment of awkwardness so gracefully.
He picked up the boys, sat one upon each shoulder, and they
followed the dispersing audience across the laager.

Upon his father’s shoulder, Jonathan chattered like a
flock of starlings, explaining to Bobby the finer points of the
play which were clearly too subtle for any lesser intelligence
than his own to follow. However, both Ralph and Elizabeth walked
in silence.

When they reached the wagon, Ralph slid both children to the
ground and they scampered away. Half-heartedly, Elizabeth made to
follow them, but stopped and turned back to him when Ralph
spoke.

‘I don’t know what I would have done without you
– you’ve been wonderfully kind—’ He
hesitated. ‘Without Cathy—’ He saw the pain in
her eyes and broke off. ‘I just wanted to thank
you.’

‘You don’t have to do that, Ralph,’ she
answered quietly. ‘Anything you need – I’ll
always be here to help.’ Then her reserve cracked, she
started to speak again, but her lips trembled and she turned away
sharply and followed the two boys into the wagon.

R
alph had paid
siege prices for the bottle of whisky by scrawling a cheque on
the label from a bully beef tin for £20. He took it hidden
under his coat to where Isazi and Jan Cheroot and Sergeant Ezra
sat together beside a fire away from their men.

They swilled the coffee grounds out of their enamel mugs and
proffered them for a good dram of the whisky and sipped in
silence for a while, all of them staring into the camp-fire
flames, letting the warmth of the spirit spread out through their
bodies.

At last Ralph nodded at Sergeant Ezra, and the big Matabele
began to speak quietly.

‘Gandang and his Inyati impi are still waiting in the
Khami Hills – he has twelve hundred men. They are all
blooded warriors, Babiaan is bivouacked below the Hills of the
Indunas with six hundred. He could be here in an
hour—’ Quickly Ezra recounted the positions of the
impis, the names of their indunas, and the mood and mettle of
their warriors.

‘What of Bazo and his Moles?’ At last Ralph asked
the question that concerned him most, and Ezra shrugged.

‘We do not have word of them. I have my best men in the
hills, searching for them. Nobody knows where the Moles have
gone.’

‘Where will we strike next?’ Ralph asked the
question rhetorically, musing as he stared in the fire.
‘Will it be at Babiaan in the Hills of the Indunas, or Zama
with his thousand lying across the Mangiwe Road?’

Isazi coughed in polite disagreement, and when Ralph glanced
up at him, he said, ‘Last night I sat at one of
Babiaan’s camp-fires, eating his meat, and listening to his
men talk. They spoke of our attack upon the camp of the horses,
and how the indunas had warned them in future to be on their
guard against all strangers, even though they wore the furs and
feathers of the fighting impis. We will not work the same trick
twice.’

Jan Cheroot and Ezra grunted in agreement, and the little
Hottentot inverted his mug to prove it empty, and glanced
significantly at the bottle between Ralph’s feet. Ralph
poured again, and as he cupped the mug in his hands and inhaled
the pungent perfume of the spirit, his mind went back to that
afternoon – to the laughter of the children and a lovely
young girl whose hair burned with soft fires in the sunlight.

His voice was rough and ugly. ‘Their women and
children,’ he said. ‘They will be hidden in the caves
and the secret valleys of the Matopos. Find them!’

T
here were five
small boys under the bank of the stream. They were all stark
naked, and their legs were coated to above the knees with slick
yellow clay. They laughed and squabbled good-naturedly as they
dug the clay out of the bank with sharpened sticks and packed it
into crudely woven reed baskets.

Tungata Zebiwe, ‘The Seeker after what has been
Stolen’, was the first to climb out of the stream, lugging
the heavy basket to a shady place where he squatted and set to
work. The others straggled up the bank after him and seated
themselves in a circle.

Tungata took a handful of clay from his basket and rolled it
into a thick soft sausage between his pink palms. Then he moulded
it with practised skill, forming the humped back and sturdy legs.
When it was complete, he set the body carefully between his knees
on a slab of dried bark; then turned his attention to sculpting
the head separately with curved red devil thorns for the horns
and chips of waterworn rock-crystal for the eyes. He attached the
head to the thick neck, sticking out his tongue with
concentration as he adjusted it to a proud angle, and then he sat
back and studied it with a critical eye.