A Falcon Flies (57 page)

More often Fuller referred to himself as the instrument of God's wrath, his blazing sword against the heathen and the ungodly. The weirdest and patently lunatic passages Zouga cut from the journal and burned. He knew he must work swiftly, before Robyn came down from the hilltop. He knew that what he was doing was right, for his father's memory and place in posterity and also for those who would have to live on after him, Robyn and Zouga himself, and their children and children's children.

It was a chilling experience to see his father's great love and compassion for the African people, and the very land itself changing and becoming a bitter unreasoning hatred. Against the Matabele people, whom he referred to as the Ndebele – or the Amandebele – he railed: ‘These leonine peoples who acknowledge no God at all, whose diet consists of the devil's brew and half-cooked meat, both in vast quantities, and whose greatest delight is spearing to death defenceless women and children, are ruled over by the most merciless despot since Caligula, the most grossly blood-besotted monster since Attila himself.'

Of the other tribes he was at least as scornful. ‘The Rozwis are a sly and secret people, the timid and treacherous descendants of the slave-trading and gold-mad kings they called the Mambos. Their dynasties destroyed by the marauding Ndebele and their monstrous Nguni brothers the Shangaans of Gungundha and the blood-smattered Angoni.'

The Karangas were ‘cowards and devil-worshippers, lurking in their caves and hilltop fortresses, committing unspeakable sacrilege and offending in the face of the Almighty by their blasphemous ceremonies in the ruined cities where once their Monomatapa held sway'.

The reference to Monomatapa and ruined cities checked Zouga's eyes in the middle of the page. Then he read on eagerly, hoping for elaboration of the mention of ruined cities, but Fuller's mind had flown on to other ideas, the theme of suffering and sacrifice which has always been the spine of Christian belief.

‘I thank God, my Almighty Father, that he has chosen me as his sword, and that as the mark of his love and condescension he has made his mark upon me. This dawn when I awoke there were the stigmata in my feet and hands, the wound in my side, and the bleeding scratches from the crown of thorns upon my forehead. I have felt the same sweet pain as Christ himself.'

The disease had reached that part of his brain that affected his eyes, and sense of feeling. His faith had become religious mania. Zouga cut out this and the following pages and consigned them to the flames of the camp fire.

Ranting madness was followed by cool sanity, as though the disease had tides which ebbed and flowed within his brain. The next entry in the journal was dated five days after that claiming the stigmata. It began with a celestial observation that placed him not far from where Zouga sat reading the words, always making allowances for the inaccuracy of a chronometer that had not been checked for almost two years. There was no further reference to the stigmata. They had healed as miraculously as they had bloomed. Instead there was a brisk and businesslike entry in the old neat script.

‘The Karanga people practise a form of ancestor worship, which calls for sacrifice. It is extremely difficult to make any one of them discuss either this ceremony or even the basic precepts of this abominable religion. However, my command of the Karanga language is now sufficient to have earned the respect and trust of those members of the tribe with whom I have succeeded in making contact. The spiritual centre of their religion is in a place which they refer to as “the burial place of the kings”, or in their language “Zimbabwe” or “Simbabwee” where the idols which represent their ancestors stand.

‘It would seem that this place is situated to the south and east of my present position.

‘The head of this foul belief is a priestess, referred to as the “Umlimo” who once dwelt in the “burial place of the kings” but fled from there at the coming of the Angoni marauders. She lives in another sacred place, and commands such sway that even the godless Ndebele, that sanguine tyrant Mzilikazi, send gifts for her oracle.

‘So deeply ingrained is the power of this evil belief into the minds of all these people, that they are strongly resistant to the word of Christ which I bear.

‘It has come to me in a revelation which can only be the voice of God Almighty himself that he has chosen me to march upon this citadel of evil, this “Simbabwee”, and to throw down the images of the ungodly – even as Moses threw down and destroyed the golden calf on his descent from the mountain.

‘God Almighty has further revealed to me that I have been chosen to seek out the High Priestess of evil in her secret place and to destroy her, and by so doing break the hold that she has over the minds of these people, that they might become receptive to the Holy Word of Christ which I bring them.'

Zouga raced on through the pages, it seemed as though they were being written by two different men, the rational being with the neat script and the raving religious maniac with the wild looping hand. In some passages the change came from one line to the next, in others the one character was maintained for page after page. Zouga could not afford to miss a word of it.

It was well after noon, and his eyes felt grainy and tender from continually scanning the cramped sheets, blurred and faded from the improvised ink which Fuller was now using.

‘November 3rd. Position. 20￮ 05 S. 30￮ 50 E. Temperature 103￮ in the shade. Heat unbearable. Rain threatens each day and never comes. Have reached the lair of the Umlimo.'

The single laconic entry electrified Zouga. He almost missed it, for it was squeezed into the bottom of a page. He turned that page and on the next the madman had taken over again, writing in vaunting hyperbole and thunderous religious ecstasy.

‘I praise God, my Maker. The one true and Almighty Saviour for whom all things are possible. Thy will be done!

‘The Umlimo knew me as the instrument of God's wrath when I confronted her in that reeking charnel house, for she spoke in the voices of Belal and Beelzebub, the hideous voices of Azazel and Beliar, all Satan's myriad alter-egos.

‘But I stood before her strong and proud in God's word, and when she saw she could not move me, she fell silent.

‘So I slew her, and cut off her head and carried it out into the light. And God spoke to me in the night and said in his small still voice “Go on, my faithful and well-beloved servant. You cannot rest until the graven images of the godless are cast down.”

‘So I rose, and God's hand held me up and carried me onwards.'

How much of this was fact, and how much was the ranting of madness, fantasy of a diseased brain, Zouga could not know, but he read on furiously.

‘And the Almighty guided me until I came at last alone to the foul city where the devil-worshippers commit their sacrilege. My bearers would not follow me, terrified of the devils. Even old Joseph who was always at my side could not force his legs to carry him through the gateway in the high stone wall. I left him cringing in the forest, and went in alone to walk between the high towers of stone.

‘As God had revealed to me, I found the graven images of the heathen all decked with flowers and gold, the blood of the sacrifice not yet dried, and I broke them and cast them down and no man could oppose me for I was the sword of Zion, the finger of God's own hand.'

The entry broke off abruptly, as though the writer had been overwhelmed by the strength of his own religious fervour, and Zouga flipped through the next one hundred pages of the journal searching for further reference to the city and its gold-decked images, but there was none.

Like the miraculous blooming of the stigmata upon Fuller's hands and feet and body and brow, perhaps this was also the imaginings of a lunatic.

Zouga returned to the original entry, describing Fuller's meeting with the Umlimo, the sorceress whom he had slain. He wrote the latitude and longitude into his own journal, copied the rough sketch map and made cryptic notes of the text, pondering it for clues that might lead or guide him. Then, quite deliberately, he cut out the pages from Fuller's own journal and held them one at a time over the fire, letting them crinkle and brown, then catch and flare before he dropped them and watched them curl and blacken. He stirred the ashes to dust with a stick before he was satisfied.

The last of the four journals was only partially filled, and contained a detailed description of a caravan route running from ‘the blood-soaked lands where Mzilikazi's evil impis hold sway' eastwards five hundred miles or more ‘to where the reeking ships of the traders surely wait to welcome the poor souls who survive the hazards of this infamous road'.

‘I have followed the road as far as the eastern rampart of mountains, and always the evidence of the passing of the caravans is there for all the world to see. That grisly evidence which I have come to know so well, the bleaching bones and the circling vultures. Is there not a corner of this savage continent which is free from the ravages of the traders?'

These revelations would interest Robyn more than they did him. Zouga glanced through them swiftly and then marked them for her attention. There was a great deal on slavery and the traders, a hundred pages or more – and then the penultimate entry.

‘We have today come up with a caravan of slaves, winding through the hilly country towards the east. I have counted the miserable victims from afar, using the telescope and there are almost a hundred of them, mostly half-grown children and young women. They are yoked together in pairs with forked tree trunks about their necks in the usual manner.

‘The slave-masters are black men, I have been unable to descry either Arabs or men of European extraction amongst them. Although they wear no tribal insignia, no plumes nor regalia, I have no doubt they are Amandebele, for their physique is distinctive, and they come from the direction of that tyrant Mzilikazi's kingdom. They are furthermore armed with the broad-bladed stabbing spear and long ox-hide shields of that people, while two or three of them carry trade muskets.

‘At this moment they are encamped not more than a league from where I lie, and in the dawn they will continue their fateful journey towards the east where the Arab and Portuguese slave-masters no doubt wait to purchase the miserable human cattle and load them like cargo for the cruel voyage half across the world.

‘God has spoken to me, clearly I have heard his voice as he enjoined me to go down, and, like his sword, cut down the ungodly, free the slaves and minister to the meek and the innocent.

‘Joseph is with me, that true and trusted companion of the years, and he will be well able to serve my second gun. His marksmanship is not of the best, but he has courage and God will be with us.'

The next entry was the last. Zouga had come to the end of the four journals.

‘God's ways are wonderful and mysterious, passing all understanding. He lifteth up and he casteth down. With Joseph beside me I went down, as God had commanded, to the camp of the slave-masters. We fell upon them, even as the Israelites fell upon the Philistines. At first it seemed that we must prevail for the ungodly fled before us. Then God in all his knowing wisdom deserted us. One of the ungodly leapt upon Joseph while he was reloading, and though I put a ball through his chest he impaled poor Joseph from breast bone to spine with that terrible spear, before himself falling dead.

‘Alone I carried on the fight, God's fight, and the slave-masters scattered into the forest before my wrath. Then one of them turned and at extreme range fired his musket in my direction. The ball struck me in the hip.

‘I managed, I do not know how, to drag myself away before the slave-masters returned to slay me. They did not attempt to follow me, and I have regained the shelter which I left to make the attempt. However, I am sorely smitten and reduced to dire straits. I have managed to remove the musket ball from my own hip, but I fear the bone is cracked through and I am crippled.

‘In addition I have lost both my firearms, Joseph's musket lies with him where he fell, and I was so badly hurt as to be unable to carry my weapon off the field. I sent the woman back to find them, but they have been carried away by the slave-traders.

‘My remaining porters, seeing the state to which I have been reduced and knowing that I could not prevent it, have all deserted, but not before they had looted the camp and carried away almost everything of value, not excluding my medicine chest. Only the woman remains. I was angry at first when she attached herself to my party, but now I see God's hand in this – for although she is a heathen, yet she is loyal and true beyond all others, now that Joseph is dead.

‘What is a man in this cruel land without a musket or quinine? Is there a lesson in this for me and posterity, a lesson that God has chosen me to teach? Can a white man live here? Will he not always be the alien, and will Africa tolerate him once he has lost his weapons and expended his medicines?'

Then a single poignant cry of agony.

‘Oh God, has this all been in vain? I came to bring your Word and nobody has listened to my voice. I came to change the ways of the wicked and nothing is changed. I came to open a way for Christianity, and no Christian has followed me. Please, my God, give me a sign that I have not followed the wrong road to a false destination.'

Zouga leaned back and rubbed his eyes with the heels of both hands. He found himself deeply moved, his eyes stinging not only from fatigue.

Fuller Ballantyne was an easy man to hate, but a hard man to despise.

R
obyn chose the place with care. The secluded pools on the river, away from the main camp, where nobody could overlook or overhear them. She chose the time, in the heat of midday – when most of the Hottentots and all the porters would be asleep in the shade. She had given Fuller five drops of the precious laudanum to quiet him, and left him with the Mashona girl and Juba to care for him while she went down the hill to Zouga.