The Angels Weep (5 page)

Now Rhodes beckoned Ralph. ‘Sit here, where I can see
you,’ he commanded, and immediately turned back to Zouga,
and began rapping out questions. His questions cut like the lash
of a stock whip, but the attention with which he listened to the
replies was evidence of the high regard he had for Zouga
Ballantyne. Their relationship went back many years, to the early
days of the diamond diggings at Colesberg kopje which had since
been renamed Kimberley after the colonial secretary who accepted
it into Her Majesty’s dominions.

On those diggings Zouga had once worked claims which had
yielded up the fabulous ‘Ballantyne Diamond’, but now
Rhodes owned those claims, as he owned every single claim on the
fields. Since then, Rhodes had employed Zouga as his personal
agent at the kraal of Lobengula, King of the Matabele, for he
spoke the language with colloquial fluency. When Doctor Jameson
had led his flying column in that swift and victorious strike
against the king, Zouga had ridden with him as one of his field
officers and had been the first man into the burning kraal of
GuBulawayo after the king had fled.

After Lobengula’s death, Rhodes had appointed Zouga
‘Custodian of Enemy Property’, and Zouga had been
responsible for rounding up the captured herds of Matabele cattle
and redistributing them as booty to the company and to
Jameson’s volunteers.

Once Zouga had completed that task, Rhodes would have
appointed him Chief Native Commissioner, to deal with the indunas
of the Matabele, but Zouga had preferred to retire to his estates
at King’s Lynn with his new bride, and had let the job go
to General Mungo St John. However, Zouga was still on the Board
of the British South Africa Company, and Rhodes trusted him as he
did few other men.

‘Matabeleland is booming, Mr Rhodes,’ Zouga
reported. ‘You will find Bulawayo is almost a city already,
with its own school and hospital. There are already more than six
hundred white women and children in Matabeleland, a sure sign
that your settlers are here to stay at last. All the land grants
have been taken up, and many of the farms are already being
worked. The bloodstock from the Cape is taking to the local
conditions and breeding well with the captured Matabele
cattle.’

‘What about the minerals, Ballantyne?’

‘Over ten thousand claims have been registered, and I
have seen some very rich crushings.’ Zouga hesitated,
glanced at Ralph, and when he nodded, turned back to Rhodes.
‘Within the last few days, my son and I have rediscovered
and pegged the ancient workings I first stumbled on in the
sixties.’

‘The Harkness Mine,’ Rhodes nodded heavily, and
even Ralph was impressed by the range and grasp of his mind.
‘I remember your original description in
The
Hunter’s Odyssey
. Did you sample the reef?’

In reply, Zouga placed a dozen lumps of quartz upon the table
in front of him, and the raw gold glistened so that the men
around the table craned forward in rapt fascination. Mr Rhodes
turned one of the samples in his big mottled hands before passing
it to the American engineer.

‘What do you make of these, Harry?’

‘It will go fifty ounces a ton,’ Harry whistled
softly. ‘Perhaps too rich, like Nome and Klondike.’
The American looked up at Ralph. ‘How thick is the reef?
How broad is the strike?’

Ralph shook his head. ‘I don’t know, the workings
are too narrow to get into the face.’

‘This is quartz, of course, not the banket reef like we
have on the Witwatersrand,’ Harry Mellow murmured.

The banket reef was named after the sweetmeat of toffee and
nuts and almonds and cloves which the conglomerated reef so much
resembled. It was made up of the thick sedimentary beds of
ancient buried lakes, not as rich in gold as this chip of quartz,
but many feet thick and extending as wide as the broad lakes had
once stretched, a mother lode which could be mined for a hundred
years without exhausting its reserves.

‘It’s too rich,’ Harry Mellow repeated,
fondling the sample of quartz. ‘I can’t believe that
it will be more than a stringer a few inches thick.’

‘But if it isn’t?’ Rhodes demanded
harshly.

The American smiled quietly. ‘Then you will not only
control nearly all the diamonds in the world, Mr Rhodes, but most
of the gold as well.’

His words were a sharp reminder to Ralph that the British
South Africa Company owned fifty per cent royalty in every ounce
of gold mined in Matabeleland, and Ralph felt his resentment
return in full force. Rhodes and his ubiquitous BSA Company were
like a vast octopus that smothered the efforts and the fortunes
of all lesser men.

‘Will you allow Harry to ride with me for a few days, Mr
Rhodes, so that he can examine the strike?’ Ralph’s
irritation sharpened the tone of his request, so that
Rhodes’ big shaggy head lifted quickly and his pale blue
eyes seemed to search out his soul for a moment before he nodded,
and then with a mercurial change of direction abandoned the
subject of gold and shot his next question at Zouga.

‘The Matabele indunas – how are they behaving
themselves?’

This time Zouga hesitated. ‘They have grievances, Mr
Rhodes.’

‘Yes?’ The swollen features coagulated into a
scowl.

‘The cattle, naturally enough, are the main source of
trouble,’ Zouga said quietly, and Rhodes cut him off
brusquely.

‘We captured less than 125,000 head of cattle, and we
returned 40,000 of those to the tribe.’

Zouga did not remind him that the return was made only after
the strongest representation by Robyn St John, Zouga’s own
sister. Robyn was the missionary doctor at Khami Mission Station
and she had once been Lobengula’s closest friend and
adviser.

‘Forty thousand head of cattle, Ballantyne! A most
generous gesture by the Company!’ Rhodes repeated
portentously, and again he did not add that he had made this
return in order to avert the famine which Robyn St John had
warned him would decimate the defeated Matabele nation, and which
would have surely brought the intervention of the Imperial
government in Whitehall, and possibly the revocation of the Royal
Charter under which Rhodes’ Company ruled both Mashonaland
and Matabeleland. Not such an outstanding act of charity, after
all, Ralph thought wryly.

‘After giving back those cattle to the indunas, we were
left with less than eighty-five thousand head, the Company barely
recouped the cost of the war.’

‘Still the indunas claim they were given back only
inferior beasts, the old and barren cows and scrub
bulls.’

‘Damn it, Ballantyne, the volunteers earned the right to
first pick from the herds. Quite naturally, they chose the prime
stock.’ He shot out his right fist with the forefinger
aimed like a pistol at Zouga’s heart. ‘They do say
that our own herds, chosen from the captured cattle, are the
finest in Matabeleland.’

‘The indunas don’t understand that,’ Zouga
answered.

‘Well then, the least they should understand is that
they are a conquered nation. Their welfare depends on the
goodwill of the victors. They extended no such consideration to
the tribes that they conquered when they lorded it across the
continent. Mzilikazi slew a million defenceless souls when he
devastated the land south of the Limpopo, and Lobengula, his son,
called the lesser tribes his dogs, to kill or cast into slavery
as the whim took him. They must not whine now at the bitter taste
of defeat.’

Even gentle Jordan, at the end of the table, nodded at this.
‘To protect the Mashona tribes from Lobengula’s
depredations was one of the reasons why we marched on
GuBulawayo,’ he murmured.

‘I said that they had grievances,’ Zouga pointed
out. ‘I did not say that they were justified.’

‘Then what else do they have to complain of?’
Rhodes demanded.

‘The Company police. The young Matabele bucks whom
General St John has recruited and armed are strutting through the
kraals, usurping the power of the indunas, taking their pick of
the young girls—’

Again Rhodes interrupted. ‘Better that than a
resurrection of the fighting impis under the indunas. Can you
imagine twenty thousand warriors in impi under Babiaan and
Gandang and Bazo? No, St John was right to break the power of the
indunas. As Native Commissioner, it is his duty to guard against
resurgence of the Matabele fighting tradition.’

‘Especially in view of the events that are in train
south of where we now sit.’ Dr Leander Starr Jameson spoke
for the first time since he had greeted Ralph, and Rhodes turned
to him swiftly.

‘I wonder if this is the time to speak of that, Doctor
Jim.’

‘Why not? Every man here is trustworthy and discreet. We
are all committed to the same bright vision of Empire, and the
Lord knows, we are in no danger of being overheard. Not in this
wilderness. What better time than now to explain why the Company
police must be made even stronger, must be better armed and
trained to the highest degree of readiness?’ Jameson
demanded.

Instinctively Rhodes glanced at Ralph Ballantyne, and Ralph
raised one eyebrow, a cynical and mildly challenging gesture that
seemed to decide Rhodes.

‘No, Doctor Jim,’ he spoke decisively.
‘There will be another time for that.’ And when
Jameson shrugged and capitulated, Rhodes turned to Jordan.
‘The sun is setting,’ he said, and Jordan rose
obediently to charge the glasses. The sundowner whisky was
already a traditional ending to the day in this land north of the
Limpopo.

T
he brilliant
white gems of the Southern Cross hung over Ralph’s camp,
dimming the lesser stars, and sprinkling the bald domes of the
granite kopjes with a pearly light as Ralph picked his way
towards his tent. He had inherited his father’s head for
liquor, so that his step was even and steady. It was ideas, not
whisky, which had inebriated him.

He stooped through the fly of the darkened tent and sat down
on the edge of the cot. He touched Cathy’s cheek.

‘I am awake,’ she said softly. ‘What time is
it?’

‘After midnight.’

‘What kept you so long?’ she whispered, for
Jonathan slept just beyond the canvas screen.

‘The dreams and boasts of men drunk with power and
success.’ He grinned in the dark and dragged off his boots.
‘And by God, I did my fair share of dreaming and
boasting.’ He stood to strip off his breeches. ‘What
do you think of Harry Mellow?’ he asked, with an abrupt
change of pace.

‘The American? He is very—’ Cathy hesitated.
‘I mean, he seems to be manly and rather nice.’

‘Attractive?’ Ralph demanded. ‘Irresistible
to a young woman?’

‘You know I don’t think like that,’ Cathy
protested primly.

‘The hell you don’t,’ Ralph chuckled, and as
he kissed her, he covered one of her round breasts with his
cupped hand. Through the thin cotton nightdress it felt taut as a
ripening melon. She struggled genteelly to free her lips from his
and to prise his fingers loose, but he held her fast and after a
few seconds she struggled no more, and instead she slipped her
arms around the back of his neck.

‘You smell of sweat and cigars and whisky.’

‘I’m sorry.’

‘Don’t be, it’s lovely,’ she
purred.

‘Let me take off my shirt.’

‘No, I’ll do it for you.’

Much later Ralph lay upon his back with Cathy snuggled down
against his bare chest.

‘How would you like to have your sisters come down from
Khami?’ he asked suddenly. ‘They enjoy camp life, but
even more, they like to escape from your mother.’

‘It was I who wanted to invite the twins,’ she
reminded him sleepily. ‘You were the one who said they were
too – unsettling.’

‘Actually, I said they were too rowdy and
boisterous,’ he corrected her, and she raised her head and
looked at him in the faint moonlight that filtered through the
canvas.

‘A change of heart—’ She thought about it
for a moment, aware that her husband always had good reason for
even his most unreasonable suggestions.

‘The American,’ she exclaimed, with such force
that behind the canvas screen Jonathan stirred and whimpered.
Instantly, Cathy dropped her voice to a fierce whisper.
‘Not even you would use my own sisters – you
wouldn’t, would you?’

He pulled her head down onto his chest again. ‘They are
big girls now. How old are they?’

‘Eighteen.’ She wrinkled her nose as his damp,
curly chest hairs tickled it. ‘But, Ralph—’

‘Old maids, already.’

‘My own sisters – you wouldn’t use
them?’

‘They never get to meet decent young men at Khami. Your
mother frightens them all off.’

‘You are awful, Ralph Ballantyne.’

‘Would you like a demonstration of just how awful I can
be?’

She considered that for a moment, and then, ‘Yes,
please,’ she giggled softly.

‘O
ne day
I will be riding with you,’ Jonathan said.
‘Won’t I, Papa?’

‘One day, soon,’ Ralph agreed, and ruffled the
child’s dark curling head. ‘Now I want you to take
care of your mother while I am away, Jon-Jon.’

Jonathan nodded, his face pale and set, the tears grimly
restrained.

‘Promise?’ Ralph squeezed the small warm body that
he held on his lap, and then he stooped from the saddle and stood
the child beside Cathy, and Jonathan took her hand protectively,
though he did not reach to her hip.

‘I promise, Papa,’ he said, and gulped, staring up
at his father on the tall horse.

Ralph touched Cathy’s cheek lightly with his
fingertips.

‘I love you,’ she said softly.

‘My beautiful Katie.’ And it was true. The first
yellow rays of sunlight in her hair turned it into a bright halo
and she was serene as a madonna in the deep fastness of their
love.

Ralph spurred away, and Harry Mellow swung his horse in beside
him. It was a fine red thoroughbred from Mr Rhodes’ private
stable, and he rode like a plainsman. At the edge of the forest
both men turned to look back. The woman and child still stood at
the gate of the stockade.