The Angels Weep (50 page)

Gifford was the youngest son of an earl, a handsome young
aristocrat and junior officer in a famous guards regiment. He had
been spending his leave on a spot of shooting in Africa, and had
been fortunate enough to have his holiday enlivened by a native
uprising. The general opinion of the Honourable M. Gifford was
that he was frightfully keen, and a damned fine young fellow,
bound to go a long way.

He reined in his horse at the crest of the rise, and held up
his gloved right hand to halt the troop.

‘There they are, sir,’ cried the outrider.
‘Bold as brass.’

The Honourable Maurice Gifford polished the lenses of his
binoculars on the tail of his yellow silk scarf, and then held
the glasses to his eyes.

‘They are all mounted,’ he said, ‘and jolly
well mounted at that,’ he murmured. ‘But, I say, what
a murderous-looking bunch of ruffians.’

The approaching horsemen were half a mile away, a straggling
mob, dressed in war kilts and headdresses, armed with a weird
assortment of modern and primitive weapons.

‘Troop, into extended order, left and right
wheel,’ Gifford ordered. ‘Sergeant, we will use the
slope to charge them, and then disengage and attempt to draw them
within range of the Maxim.’

‘Begging your pardon, sir,’ the sergeant mumbled,
‘but isn’t that a white man leading them?’

Gifford lifted the binoculars and peered through them again.
‘The devil it is!’ he muttered. ‘But the fellow
is dressed in furs and things.’

The fellow gave him a cheery wave, as he rode up at the head
of his motley gang.

‘‘Morning, you aren’t Maurice Gifford by any
chance?’

‘I am sir,’ Gifford replied frostily. ‘And
who are you, if I may be so bold as to ask?’

‘The name’s Ballantyne, Ralph Ballantyne.’
The fellow gave him an engaging grin. ‘And these
gentlemen,’ with his thumb he indicated those who followed
him, ‘are Ballan-tyne’s Scouts.’

Maurice Gifford looked them over with distaste. It was
impossible to tell their racial origins, for they were all
painted with fat and clay to look like Matabele, and they wore
cast-offs and tribal dress. Only this fellow Ballantyne had left
his face its natural colour, probably to identify himself to the
Bulawayo field force, but it was equally probable that he would
blacken it as soon as he had what he wanted from them. He was not
shy about making his wants known, either.

‘A requisition, Mr Gifford,’ he said, and handed
over a folded and sealed note from his belt pouch.

Gifford bit on the finger of his glove, and drew it off his
right hand, before he accepted the note and broke the seal.

‘I cannot let you have my Maxim, sir,’ he
exclaimed as he read. ‘I have a duty to protect the
civilians in my care.’

‘You are only four miles from the laager at Bulawayo and
the road is clear of Matabele. We have just swept it for you.
There is no longer any danger to your people.’

‘But—’ said Gifford.

‘The requisition is signed by Colonel William Napier,
officer commanding the Bulawayo field force. I suggest you take
the matter up with him, when you reach Bulawayo.’ Ralph was
still smiling. ‘In the meantime, we are rather pressed for
time. We will just relieve you of the Maxim, and trouble you no
further.’

Gifford crumpled the note, and glared impotently at Ralph,
then shifted his ground.

‘You and your men appear to be wearing enemy
uniform,’ he accused. ‘That is in contravention of
the articles of war, sir.’

‘Read the articles to the indunas, Mr Gifford,
particularly those dealing with the murder and torture of
non-combatants.’

‘There is no call for an Englishman to descend to the
level of the savages he is fighting,’ said Gifford loftily.
‘I have had the honour to meet your father, Major Zouga
Ballantyne. He is a gentleman. I wonder what he would say about
your conduct.’

‘My father and his fellow conspirators, all of them
English gentlemen, are presently standing trial on charges of
having waged war against a friendly government. However, I will
certainly solicit his opinion of my conduct at the first
available opportunity. Now if you will send your sergeant back
with us to hand over the Maxim, I will bid you good day, Mr
Gifford.’

They unloaded the Maxim from its cart, removed the tripod and
ammunition boxes, and loaded them onto three pack-horses.

‘How did you get Napier to sign away one of his precious
Maxims?’ Harry Mellow demanded, as he clinched the straps
on the pack-saddles.

‘Sleight of hand,’ Ralph winked at him. ‘The
pen is mightier—’

‘You forged the requisition,’ Harry stared at him.
‘They’ll shoot you.’

‘They’ll have to catch me first.’ Ralph
turned and bellowed to his Scouts, ‘Troop, mount! Walk
march, forward!’

T
here was no
doubt that he was a wizard. A wizened little fellow, not much
taller than Tungata or any of his companions, but he was painted
in the most marvellous colours, zigzags of crimson and white and
black across his face and chest.

When he first appeared out of the bush beside the stream in
the secret valley, the children were frozen with terror. But
before they could recover their wits sufficiently to run, the
little painted wizard uttered such a string of cries and grunts,
imitating horse and eagle and chacma baboon, at the same time
prancing and flapping and scratching, that their terror turned to
fascination.

Then from the sack over his shoulder, the wizard dug out a
huge lump of rock sugar candy. He sucked it noisily, and the
children who had not tasted sugar in weeks drew closer and
watched him with glistening dark eyes. He proffered the lump of
sugar to Tungata who edged forward, snatched it and scampered
back. The little wizard laughed in such an infectious manner,
that the other children laughed with him and swarmed forward to
grab at the fresh lumps of candy he offered. Surrounded by
laughing, clapping children, the little wizard climbed the path
up the side of the valley to the rock shelter.

The women, lulled and reassured by the sounds of happy
children, came to crowd about the little wizard, to stare and
giggle, and the boldest to ask him:

‘Who are you?’

‘Where do you come from?’

‘What is in the sack?’

In reply to the last question, the wizard drew out a handful
of coloured ribbons, and the younger women shrieked with feminine
vanity and tied them at their wrists and throats.

‘I bring gifts and happy tidings,’ the wizard
cackled. ‘Look what I bring you.’

There were steel combs, and small round mirrors, a little box
that played sweet tinkling music – they crowded about him,
utterly enchanted. ‘Gifts and happy tidings,’ sang
the wizard.

‘Tell us! Tell us!’ they chanted.

‘The spirits of our forefathers have come to aid us.
They have sent a divine wind to eat up the white men, as the
rinderpest ate up the cattle. All the white men are
dead!’

‘The
amakiwa
are dead!’

‘They have left behind them all these wonderful gifts.
The town of Bulawayo is empty of white men, but these things are
there for all to take. As much as you will – but hurry, all
the men and women of the Matabele are going there. There will be
nothing left for those who come after. Look, look at these
beautiful pieces of cloth, there are thousands of them. Who wants
these pretty buttons, these sharp knives? Those who want them
must follow me!’ sang the wizard. ‘For the fighting
is over! The white men are dead! The Matabele have triumphed, who
wants to follow me?’

‘Lead us, little Father,’ they begged him.
‘We will follow you.’

Still digging out gewgaws and trifles from the sack, the
painted wizard started down towards the end of the narrow valley,
and the women snatched up their little ones, strapped them to
their backs with strips of cloth, called to the older children
and hurried after the wizard.

‘Follow me, people of Mashobane!’ he chirped.
‘Your time of greatness has come. The prophecy of the
Umlimo is fulfilled. The divine wind from the north has blown the
amakiwa
away.’

Tungata, almost hysterical with excitement and dread that he
would be left behind, hurried down the length of the rock
shelter, until he saw the huge beloved figure squatting against
the back wall of rock.

‘Grandmother,’ he squeaked. ‘The wizard has
pretty things for us all. We must hurry!’

O
ver the
millennia the stream had cut a narrow twisted exit from the bowel
of the valley, with high cliffs on each side. The granite was
painted with rich orange and yellow lichens. Compressed into this
chasm the stream fell in smoking cascades of white water, before
debouching into a shallower wider valley in the lower
foothills.

The valley was filled with fine grass, the colour of a
ripening wheat field. The pathway clung to the edge of the chasm,
with a perilous drop to foaming white water on one hand and with
the cliff rising sheer on the other. Then the gradient became
more gentle and the path emerged into the quiet valley below.
Rainwater had scarred the side of the lower valley with deep
dongas, natural entrenchments, and one of these afforded an ideal
emplacement for the Maxim.

Ralph had two of his troopers set it up with the thick
water-jacketed barrel just clearing the lip of the donga. There
were 2,000 rounds of ammunition in the oblong boxes, stacked
beside the weapon. While Harry Mellow cut branches of thornbrush
to screen the Maxim, Ralph paced off the ranges in front of the
donga and set up a cairn of loose stones beside the footpath.

He came scrambling back up the slope, and told Harry,
‘Set the sights for three hundred yards.’

Then he went down the length of the donga, giving his orders
to each man, and making him repeat them to ensure there was no
misunderstanding.

‘When Jan Cheroot reaches the cairn, the Maxim will
fire. Wait for the Maxim, then open up on the back of the column,
and move your fire forward.’

Sergeant Ezra nodded, and levered a cartridge into the breech
of the Winchester. He screwed up his eyes, judging the
wind-deflection by the swaying of the grasstops and the feel of
it against his face. Then he settled his elbow on the earthen
parapet of the gulley, and laid his scarred cheek against the
butt.

Ralph returned along the donga to where Harry Mellow was
preparing the Maxim. He watched while Harry twisted the elevation
screw to raise the barrel slightly to the 300 yard setting, and
then swung the gun left and right in its tripod to make certain
that the traverse was free and clear.

‘Load one,’ Ralph ordered, and Taas, who was
loading, fed the brass tag of the cartridge-belt into the open
breech. Harry let the loading handle fly back and the mechanism
clattered harshly.

‘Load two!’ He pumped the handle a second time,
pulling the belt through, and the first round was extracted from
the belt and fed smoothly into the breech.

‘Ready!’ Harry looked up at Ralph.

‘Now all we have to do is wait.’

Ralph nodded, and opened the pouch on his hip. From it he took
the strip of brown mole-skin and bound it carefully about his
right arm above the elbow. Then they settled down to wait.

They waited in the sunlight, and it beat down upon their
greasy naked backs, until their sweat oozed from clogged pores
and the flies came swarming gleefully to it. They waited while
the sun made its noon, and then began to slip down the farther
side of the sky.

Abruptly, Ralph raised his head, and at the movement a little
stirring rippled down the row of marksmen lining the lip of the
donga. There was a sound of many voices at a distance, and they
woke echoes from the lichen-stained cliffs that guarded the
entrance to the gorge. Then there was singing, sweet
children’s voices, the sound of it rose and filled with
each fluke of the wind and each turn in the rocky passage.

From the entrance to the gorge a diminutive figure came
dancing. The weird pattern of red and black and white paints
disguised Jan Cheroot’s flat pug-like features, and the
buttery yellow of his skin, but there was no mistaking his
sprightly step, and the way he carried his head at a birdlike
angle. The sack of pretties that he had used as bait was long ago
empty and had been discarded.

He scampered down the path towards the stone cairn which Ralph
had built, and behind him came the Matabele. So eager were they
that they crowded three or four abreast, and jostled each other
to keep pace with the Pied Piper that led them.

‘More then I had hoped,’ Ralph whispered, but
Harry Mellow did not look at him. The coating of black fat
covered the pallor of his face, but his eyes were stricken as he
stared fixedly over the sights of the Maxim.

The long column of Matabele was still emerging from the gorge,
but Jan Cheroot was almost level with the cairn.

‘Ready,’ Ralph grated.

Jan Cheroot reached the cairn, and then with a miraculous
twinkling movement, he disappeared as though a pitfall had sucked
him in.

‘Now!’ said Ralph.

Not a man in the long line of riflemen moved. They were all
staring down into the valley.

‘Now!’ Ralph repeated.

The head of the column had stopped in bewilderment at Jan
Cheroot’s abrupt disappearance, and those behind pushed
forward.

‘Open fire!’ Ralph ordered.

‘I can’t do it,’ whispered Harry, sitting
behind the gun with both hands on the grips.

‘Damn you!’ Ralph’s voice shook. ‘They
slit Cathy’s belly open, and tore my daughter out of her
womb. Kill them, damn you!’

‘I can’t,’ Harry choked, and Ralph seized
his shoulder and dragged him backwards.

He dropped down behind the gun in his place, and grabbed the
double pistol grips. With his forefingers he hooked the
safety-locks open, and then pressed his thumbs down on the
chequered firing-button. The Maxim gun began its hellish
fluttering roar, and the empty brass cartridge-cases spewed in a
bright stream from the breech.